#Neil and Miles are the only ones who told the truth about the punch | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ninyard · 3 years ago

Note

part two of the stefan/andrew au PLEASE

WELP this might not be the part two people wanted but here’s what I wanted so~ enjoy!

(Part 1 ? is here)

((this got rly long so I had to stop but if u want a third part lmk 🥺👉👈))

Neil made his first mistake by not bolting the opposite way when Coach Hernandez told him he had visitors. An Exy racquet to the chest and a single glance at those bright hazel eyes turned Neils entire world sideways in seconds. This couldn’t be happening. Neil almost couldn’t hold back the ‘Andrew?’ that wished to escape his lips. Of course, this wasn’t Stefan’s Andrew, but Neil knew that already. Life had turned Andrew Minyard into a man of manufactured emotions, a life of violence and misled decisions landing him on Coach Wymack’s pity party guest list that was the Foxes’ lineup. Andrew didn’t flinch looking at Neil, and Neil begged the universe to have erased the memory of Stefan from Andrew mind. He hung around a motel, for Christ’s sake, how many other people would he have met before and after Stefan? Neil Josten looked totally different, with puberty, hair dye and new contact lenses on his side.

The second mistake he made was not realising Kevin Day was going to be around. If Andrew wasn’t dangerous enough, Kevin was even more so. Neil couldn’t believe his eyes the moment he looked closely at the teams lineup from the previous year. Kevin Day would have forgotten Nathaniel Wesninski, he was sure of it, but to look across to a picture of the teams goalkeeper and seeing the short blond boy he met in California? It was a sure sign for Neil to stay the hell away from South Carolina.

Neil’s biggest mistake was deciding to push his luck and take a plane there to sign with the Foxes. He was signing a death wish; but he didn’t care anymore. He was a dead man walking, living off stolen hours. It was only a matter of time before someone caught up with him. His mother was dead, god, his mom, Mary Hatford, the woman who taught him how to be. It wasn’t just like Debby, who died leaving Toronto, or Alice, who died leaving London, or Judy who died on the train between Germany and Prague. This was permanent, and Neil didn’t think he could run for much longer.

Andrew didn’t say anything during their meeting, in which he had plenty of opportunities to at least look like he recognised Neil, or the features of Stefan still left on his face. Kevin didn’t say anything either, and his words made it clear he didn’t remember Nathaniel, either. Neil was walking a thing line between life and death, with Stefan on one shoulder and Nathaniel on the other, waiting to tip him over, to expose the truth, to leave him buried like his mother.

The first night Neil slept - or more so lay on the couch in silence for hours, brain filled with noise and regret - in David’s apartment, he couldn’t stop thinking about Andrew. He couldn’t stop thinking about the kid with white-blond hair and a toothy smile, who ran his fingers so gently over Stefan’s skin, like he would break if Andrew dared get any closer. He couldn’t stop thinking about the playground, and the motel, and the kisses… and the punches, the kicks, the pulling of hair, the slaps across the face with yells to accompany them. Before Neil knew it he was stuck with his face hovering over the toilet bowl, his stomach threatening to burst at any moment. After a minute of gagging and spitting into the water, Neil washed his face and headed towards the balcony that David told him to smoke on if he needed to. This was one of those needing to moments.

Weeks went by without any indication he was going to be caught. Kevin looked at him like a stupid amateur, which was good for Nathaniel’s sake, but for Neil? Neil, who fought like his life depended on the racquet in his hands? Neil, who ran like his father was hot on his heels every single time he set off down the court? It hurt him to be insulted so often, but Kevin was leagues above him when he played. Neil was never going to be good enough. Andrew avoided him as much as possible. Nicky told him that was just how Andrew was; if you brought him no benefit, or if you made him bored, he would put you on a high shelf and never look at you again. By the way Andrew only spoke to Neil when Neil stood up to Kevin, Neil thought it was obvious that Andrew didn’t recognise him.

And then came the invite to Columbia.

“Get rid of the contacts, by the way.” Nicky had brushed off the realisation like it was nothing. It sounded like ‘you have something in your teeth’ but felt like a screaming siren above Neil’s head. It felt like a punch to the gut, like a gun to his head. “Andrew’s decision. And brown, Neil? You’re so predictable and boring it’s adorable.” He’d left a bag of clothes with Neil.

When Neil looked at his blue eyes, he felt too many feelings he couldn’t describe, or name. He felt like he was looking at his father. He felt like he was looking into the mirror like he had the last time he was Nathaniel. The last time he was in Baltimore. He’d cycled through the catalogue of contacts during his time on the run, but never once went back to blue. They were the icy eyes of a murderer, not the eyes of quiet, boring Neil. But at least they weren’t green. Neil was worried about Kevin recognising him by his eyes, but it was going to be dark out by the time they left. Neil would just have to stay in the dark around Kevin, and hope he got too drunk to notice, too drunk to remember.

When Andrew’s group came to pick Neil up, there was a change in dynamic Neil hadn’t seen before. Instead of Nicky being the middle man in their conversations, or Kevin being the reason to talk, Andrew was taking charge of their night. Neil’s heart raced every time he looked into his eyes. Every time he heard that voice it told him to run, the same voice as before, only deeper, emotionless. Neil couldn’t imagine this Andrew crying. Neil couldn’t imagine this Andrew being open, about his sexuality, or his feelings. If he didn’t look almost the same only older, he would probably doubt this was even the same Andrew.

“Oh! Oh, now, that’s interesting!” Andrew had commented as Neil left his dorm room. Nicky, Aaron and Kevin had walked ahead of the two of them. When they’d disappeared around the corner into the elevator down, Andrew turned and grabbed Neil’s face to inspect it. “What a change, hmm? Blue to brown is a bit drastic for fashion, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never liked my eyes,” Neil spoke through the fingers that rested over his lips. “I’ve worn them brown most my life.” Andrew tutted as Neil spoke, but left that thought there. His features were angry, like Neil had insulted him, but he S miled like he’d been talking to his best friend. He placed a cigarette between his lips as they joined the others in the elevator.

Before long, they were walking through the doors of Eden’s Twilight, music pumping and swirling through the air, vibrating their bodies as they walked. Andrew motioned for Neil to follow him to the bar once they’d found a table.

“Shots on me.” He’d come down from his manic high, waiting for his dust adrenaline to kick in. His smile was gone, but his tone and way of speaking was still the same. “What do you drink?”

“I don’t,” Neil answered, having to yell over the music.

“Sure you do.” Andrew waved him off. “I’m being polite. What do you drink?” He asked again, as the bartender came over.

“A coke for me.” Neil told the man behind the bar before he could ask Andrew. “Just a little ice.”

“See, now, Pinocchio, when someone offers you a gift you say thank you and accept it.” Andrew turned towards the man. “Roland. This is Neil. He’s a newbie.”

“I hear you,” Roland nodded, already placing shot glasses on the tray he’d put on the bar. “My choice, with dash for the new kid.” He poured a clear spirit into eight shot glasses, and used the fountain tap to fill a larger glass with cola. Andrew passed cash over and waved off his change as a tip. Before Neil knew it he was heading through the crowd, Andrew balancing the tray on one hand held high above his head. They reached the table and nothing has spilled, and before Neil knew it, the shot glasses were stacked in a tower on the tray as Neil nursed his coke.

“You don’t drink.” Andrew turned to Neil after watching the others take to the dance floor, coming up on their high, dusting when they couldn’t be seen. “Why?”

“Hate the taste, mostly.” That would be the truth if ‘taste’ actually meant ‘feeling of being out of control of my body’. He shrugged at Andrew’s dissatisfaction with that answer.

“You come to university and you don’t drink?” Andrew scoffed. “Do you smoke?” Neil shook his head. He’d tried an edible by accident once in some cafe in Europe, and got so paranoid they had to move on that night. He swore he saw his dad staring in the windows in the red-light district, a blunt between his lips, a smile made of murder wrapped around it.

“Not for me.” Neil took a sip from the cold coke. “Hard to find when it’s not legal and I hate the cops. Takes too much effort to roll.” Neil lied, like he knew what he was talking about, but he just remembered watching people in the cities he went to, everywhere having their local stoners, the folks who sat in the parks without a care in the world.

“You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you won’t dust.” Andrew rattled off the options. “Is it molly you’d prefer?” And when Neil shook his head again: “Psychedelics? Benzos?”

“I’m just not interested.” Neil looked into his glass, focusing on the ice. If he kept looking at Andrew he felt like he would crack. “Don’t we get tested before games anyway? What’s the point?” Andrew didn’t answer before he heading back up the bar. Neil didn’t follow this time. When he came back, there was ten shot glasses on the table. Again, eight filled with an unnamed spirit that burned Neil’s nose and twisted his stomach. The other two were cola.

“I’d hate for the new boy to feel left out.” Aaron, Nicky and Kevin had arrived back to the table for their shots. Andrew handed Neil one of his glasses. Neil knocked it back when the others did. It was ordinary coke, no surprises, no weird tastes, no reason for Neil to believe Andrew would have given him a shot of alcohol instead. That was, until he clinked glasses with the others and swallowed the second shot in a quick movement. He felt the alcohol burn his throat. It warmed his chest, but the familiar feeling wasn’t what worried him. It was the taste of salt on his tongue when he hadn’t licked any before hand. He quickly excused himself from the table and left for the bathroom.

Andrew had drugged him. He didn’t know why, but all he knew was the crackers were already coursing through his veins with deadly adrenaline. He was sure his racing heart wasn’t helping. It didn’t help, either, when Nicky reached the stairs before he did, and pulled him in for a salty, dusty kiss. Neil pushed him off as discreetly as he could.

“Nothing?” Nicky complained as he Neil bounced up the sticky stairs two steps at a time. Neil was sure he heard him say something about Neil being too hot to be straight, but the roaring anxiety in his ears was enough to drown it out. He locked himself in a stall and tried to best to throw up. He hadn’t eaten before he’d left, and he hadn’t drank anything other than he soda, so his attempts were fairly futile. A knock at the door interrupted him, and when he answered with a quick ‘occupied!’ He heard the door unlocking from the outside. Andrew pushed his way into the cramped stall and shut the door behind him. Before Neil could even begin to object Andrew had grabbed him by the collar and shoved him against the wall, Neil struggling to keep his balance with the toilet in the way.

“You don’t like the taste of alcohol or you’re afraid of losing control? Telling your truths?” Andrew’s drug induced smile had returned with mischief and malice. “Let’s see how this does!” His voice was low as he spoke, with an enthusiasm to his words that made Neil sweat. When he went to protest, Andrew covered his mouth with his free hand.

“Shut up,” He clicked his tongue. “You have spent your entire extended stay here lying to me and lying to poor, gullible Coach. I see the way you look at Kevin, too. Either you’re lying about not swinging or there’s something deeper to that intimidation.” Neil tried to get out a ‘I don’t swing.’ Before Andrew shushed him again. “Don’t keep lying, newbie! One last chance at honesty.” He lifted his hand no more than an inch from Neil’s mouth. Neil was sweating, his hands shaky, his mind turning into fog, desperate to cling to any sort of euphoria it could find. When it’s search came up empty, it filled his stomach, his head, his hands, his feet, with anxious buzzing instead. He couldn’t ignore the nauseating feelings the drugs brought with them.

“I don’t swing,” Neil stood his ground. “I don’t.” Andrew brought his hand up to Neils hair and yanked him down to his level, hard. He kept an inescapable grip in his curls as their faces almost touched.

“Still don’t know?” Andrew pouted in fake-pity. “Ten years later and you still don’t know?” Neil’s stomach would’ve fallen from his body if it’s got the chance. His heart would’ve went with it when Andrew continued. “There better be a good reason for Neil existing, Stefan, and I can’t wait to hear it.”

“What?” He tried, but it was no use. His voice failed him, cracking as the futile attempts at lying left his lips. “I don’t know what-“

“Shut up.” Andrew repeated. His grip not relaxing. Neil was worried he was pulling his hair from the root, but that was probably the least of his worries. Probably. “Do not lie to me again.” Neil searched his eyes for a sliver of doubt. A tiny, tiny possibility that he might think he was wrong. It wasn’t there. He’d been caught.

“Andrew.” He wrapped his hands around Andrew’s wrist, the one hovering over his head, muscles tense from the grip on his head. “Can we talk without ripping my fucking hair out?”

Before Neil could react, Andrew had let go of his hair, but in doing so, had swung his head with full force into the side walls of the stall. His balance finally failed him, but Andrew caught him by the neck of the black turtleneck he’d been gifted. He heard a few stitches pop, but it didn’t matter. The sudden movements turned Neil’s stomach with a violent wave, and he gagged hard, his stomach threatening to come out his mouth. He leaned over to spit into the toilet and bared his teeth at Andrew, breathing heavily through them.

“So he lives,” Andrew smiled, his pupils blown, a white-knuckled hold on Stefan-Neil’s collar. Neil was afraid he was going to pass out. His body was on fire, his mind screaming like an emergency broadcast alarm. “Tell me you didn’t know, oh humour me! I’d hate to think you’re stupid enough to come here still in possession of the memory from there.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember.” Neil didn’t break eye contact.

“So you ARE that stupid!” Andrew pushed him back, letting go of his top. Neil tried to assess his escape routes, but it was no use. He couldn’t get out of this. “I remembered little Stefan the second Kevin showed me your file. I didn’t think it would be you, surely it couldn’t be, but our little visit to fuckport, Arizona couldn’t lie to me like you did. So is it Neil, or is it Stefan?”

“Neither.” He spat out the honesty, worried if he waited, another lie would take it’s place. “But you can call me Neil.”

“Oh, no, no!” Andrew grabbed him by the neck, holding his jaw in a way that could become a choke very quickly. “Maybe I’ll stick with Stefan. You don’t get a say. You know, I thought mommy killed you.” A knife twisted in Neil’s gut.

“She’s dead.” Neil tried to breath through his unwanted come-up. “That’s the only reason I’m here. Because she wasn’t alive to stop me.”

“Did you do it?” He held Neils face like the world would end if he let go. He held even tighter when Neil tried to pull away.

“No.” That was all he said. He thought about continuing, considering the fact he was a dead man already. But he stopped himself. How could he say it was his dad without saying he was the mafias right-hand-murderer? Was he wasting his time lying?

“Didn’t think you did.” Andrew laughed, barely even blinking as he intimidated Neil. “No balls then, no balls now.”

“I was twelve.” He spat through crushed cheeks. “We were kids.”

“Old enough to be a liar.” Andrew let go of Neil’s face with a forceful push and turned to open the stall door. “You’re going to lead us outside. If you deviate or try to run I’ll kill you. I will kill you.” So Neil did just that. He led the way in silence, down the stairs and towards the exit. When Nicky stopped and excitedly asked where they were going, Neil looked back to Andrew who waved his pack of cigarettes, a smile on his face, no essence of a lie present. Neil just kept walking, kept his head down, and tried to ignore the pain on the side of his head. When they reached the outside of the club, the brisk air biting their exposed skin, Neil turned to the first man he saw, a club-goer at the top of the queue, and swung a punch up. Andrew noticed the second his hands left his sides, balled up with a plan. The man threw a hefty punch back, shouting intimidations, knocking Neil’s short frame to the ground. As quick as humanly possible, Andrew had hoisted him up, wrapped his arms around his back and twisted his wrist in such a way that a single jolt would break it. He held him in that position with one hand, putting all his strength into keeping Neil still.

“He gets crazy on tequila!” Andrew laughed, shaking his head as he took out his wallet and pulled out a fifty note. He threw it at the guy as compensation, his friends holding him back from beating Neil’s vulnerable, ballsy ass. He continued yelling as Andrew hauled him away. He grunted in pain as he refused to loosen his grip on Neil’s wrists. He walked him around the back of the club, to an empty, barely lit parking lot. He threw him to the ground so quickly he didn’t have time to stop his fall.

“Every moment I spend around you, you prove you’re much fucking dumber than I thought.” Andrew spat down, then crouching down to Neil’s level, balancing on the tops of his feet. Neil cradled his head, arms wrapped around the nape of his neck. He was sure he had a concussion. He could barely open his eyes through the pulsing blood rushing through his head, but forced himself to, to look up at Andrew’s smiling face.

“What happened?” Spit dripped down his chin, blood slowly trickling from the busted lip he’d earned himself. “What happened to that Andrew?” Andrew froze for half a second, and Neil noticed. “The Andrew who cried because he was gay? The kid who actually fucking cared about anything?”

“Oh, you are treading thin fucking ice for someone who doesn’t know how to swim.” Andrew tilted his head. “Mention another precious memory and I won’t hesitate to actually break your wrist next time.”

“Why?” He spat blood at Andrew’s feet. “Afraid somebody might remember what you’re actually like when you’re not pretending to be a sociopath?” Andrew opened his mouth at the challenge, a smile creeping up one side of his face. “Are you afraid to actually have someone around you know anything about you? I’m a threat. That’s all you care about.” He continued. “What, do you think I’ll use it against you? You’ve been treating me like shit since we met. If I was going to stab you in the back I’d have done it already, asshole.”

“Since we met, again.” He corrected the most irrelevant part of Neils sentiment.

“Let me go now and I’ll move on. You won’t ever see me again.” Neil bargained. Andrew’s eyebrows twitched ever so slightly. “This time I’ll get a chance to say goodbye.”

“No,” Andrew stopped him. “You don’t get to arrive in to my life like a tornado and disappear. You don’t get to dig your own grave and push me into it.” He bent down to get closer to Neils shaking face. “You’re going to tell me exactly what happened first. Tell me what she did to you.”

“No.” Neil strained. “I moved on. You were dangerous. You almost got me killed.”

“Boohoo, do you hear my tiny violin, liar?” Andrew grabbed a hold of his hair again. Neil let out a cry of pain, trying to pry Andrew’s fingers from his scalp. “Talk. Talk or I will get you killed.”

“My father is a very dangerous man. He’s murdered more people than there are days in a year.” Neil wiped the blood from his lips. It stung as he did so, but it didn’t matter. He took out a small stack of IDs from his wallet and threw them across to Andrew. For a second, anyone would’ve thought they were real, but closer inspection killed that thought. Andrew was holding a driver’s license belonging to Chris Angle, 21, from New York. A European passport card signed by George Debois from Paris. A gym membership from Seattle, an employee pass from Toronto, two more drivers licenses from cities across the globe. All the names were different, but they didn’t belong to different people. They all had pictures of Neil on them. Some he had long hair, short hair, an unfortunate buzz-cut. He wore a beard in some, the baby face of a teenager in others. “You aren’t the only one I’ve lied to. Don’t think you’re special.” Andrew snapped the IDs with angry force. Neil took a deep breath, knowing the last memories of his mother were buried in the face of Christopher Hart, snapped in half, just like that. He continued searching through his wallet. Deep into the card pockets of the tattered leather. He didn’t look up when he heard Andrew drop the scraps of his identities on the ground. Neil found what he was looking for and threw it again, across the space separating them, it clattering by his feet. “If my mom found that she’d have killed me herself. We ran so she could protect me. I made that so much harder on her by meeting you.” Andrew inspected the card he’d been thrown. An under-eye twitch and a slow inhale accompanied his realisation. “You want to hate me for what she made me do, fine, but it was inevitable. You were never going to be the reason that made us stay.”

Neil had given Andrew something he couldn’t bare to part with. His old wallet stayed buried deep, deep in his belongings, so well hidden his mother hadn’t even known it existed. He usually kept his current IDs on his person, and never in a wallet. It was a ticking time bomb, but Neil needed something. He needed a reason to feel, and if that was the memory of the good day his mom had had when they finally showered after weeks of baby wipes and deodorant, it was something to hold on to. Neil had to stay grounded in some sort of reality. He was on the run, sure, but the people he met, the things he’d done? They were real. It hurt to see those memories snapped on the ground like trash, but Andrew didn’t snap the memory he held in his hands.

Andrew held the library card of Stefan Montgomery. It had a faded black and white photo on it, scratched out with time. He had begged the librarian to let him have the card without taking a picture, but she had insisted it was necessary so people didn’t have more than one. In the photo was a scared little boy, a gash on his cheek, with crispy curls and a skinny face. Neil remembered walking to the library when he couldn’t find Andrew, taking out books to help him learn any of the languages he needed to know. The library in Oakland taught him about the history of Spain, and the culture in France. There was something about Stefan that Neil didn’t want to forget. He’d kept that library card safe as if it were a lifeline, like he knew it would come in handy some day.

And then Andrew threw it across the empty parking lot like a frisbee.

“She didn’t see anything.” Neil tried, as if it would help. “We left because I made a friend. Not because… you know.”

“I was not your friend.” Andrew stood up and put a cigarette between his teeth. He lit it, one puff, two puff, three puffs until it burned red. “I was never your friend.”

“You were.” Neil struggled to stand up and join him. “Don’t lie to a liar.”

“You remember it wrong!” He took a short drag and flicked ash as he spoke. “You were a toy to play with when there was nothing else to do.”

“You could’ve went home.” Neil took the cigarette from Andrew’s fingers. “But hey, I wasn’t the only one who needed to escape heavy hands, right?” He pulled the smoke into his lungs and breathed out before flicking the barely smoked cigarette away. “You were my friend. You had Stefan killed because I cared about you when Stefan wasn’t supposed to care about anybody.”

“Be quiet.” Andrew pulled another cigarette from the packet and squared up to Neil who was standing so close he could feel Andrew’s breath hot on his face. “You didn’t care.”

“Are you listening?” Neil spat again, the heat of the cigarette having hurt his cracked lips. “We left because of you. Because I let you in, and I’m sorry you were collateral damage in our war against the world but fuck, we didn’t have a choice. Do you think I wanted to leave? I was going to leave you a note, but she wouldn’t leave my side until we were in another city and Stefan was just another name in the pile. Fuck you if you don’t want to believe that. I don’t owe you an explanation but you’ve got one anyway. Tell me to leave and I’ll go. Tell me you understand and I’ll go, Andrew.”

“I waited for you.” Andrew exhaled honestly through cigarette smoke. “Every day! The fourth day I tried knocking on the door of your motel room. Fifth day a random couple opened the door and I knew you weren’t coming back. Why should I give you another chance, hmm? When you so easily could run away before, who’s to say you won’t do it again?”

“I’m not asking for another chance,” Neil head was pounding. He felt like he could pass out, his ears ringing and body jittery. “I don’t know, maybe I’m asking you to remember what I meant to you.” Andrew pursed his lips at that. He was struggling to keep his composure, like the memory of before was chipping away slowly at this version of Andrew. He was holding himself together with twitches and small fidgets.

“I hate you.” He said, coldly. He had lit his cigarette and smoked through half of it before speaking again. Neil just stood, suddenly thinking about if Kevin were to find the IDs scattered on the floor. He didn’t even think he could lie to Nicky about that. He would pick them up in a moment, but he couldn’t afford to lose Andrew’s interest in the conversation. If Neil got distracted now he could ruin every chance he possible had at reconciling some sort of relationship with Andrew.

“I hate what the world has turned you into.” Andrew snorted a laugh at Neil’s dramatics.

“Oh, you are a pipe bomb.” Andrew started to walk away, but when Neil grabbed his arm to stop him, in a quicker movement he had twisted Neil’s arm in some sort of self defence move that hurt. “You don’t have a right to touch me anymore. Keep your lying hands to yourself or I’ll break every one of your fingers.” He didn’t let go immediately.

“Do you miss it?” Neil searched Andrew’s eyes for something, anything. “Being vulnerable? Being comforted instead of being alone, blaming the world for your problems?” Before Neil could even think to keep going, Andrew had used his free hand to manoeuvre a knife from his arm bands and hold it up to Neil’s face.

“I dare you to keep pushing.” His words were casual, but a threat nonetheless. “Stop trying to control a life you left. I won’t be a scratching post for your mommy issues, runaway.”

“What did Jakub do to you?” Neil brought a memory out from the depths. As soon as the name left his lips, Andrew’s entire body hardened and his eyes turned to glass. He slashed a cut into Neil’s cheekbone without hesitation and proceeded to let go of his arm and jam a thumb into the fresh wound. “Why did you spend your childhood alone in a playground?” Neil spoke through gritted teeth.

“If you want to keep your fantasy alive I advise you to really shut up now.” Andrew pushed him backwards, a final squeeze in the gash as he did so. Even more blood dripped down his face. Andrew wiped his hands in his pants and picked up the ignored cigarette he’d dropped in the altercation. “You are going in circles. This is your last warning.”

“My mom nearly broke half the bones in my body trying to get rid of the memory of you.” Neil took his spot back up so close to Andrews face he could practically see every one of the pores in his face. He still had freckles scattered across his face, his skin soft, with faint acne scars here and there across his cheeks. “I never stopped thinking about you.”

“You should have.” Andrew threw his cigarette at Neil. “Make your choice. Run like you’re used to.” He looked him up and down one more time and turned on his feet back towards the club. Neil didn’t follow. He started to pick up the remnants of his past and he felt his nose ache in psychosomatic pain, remembering a nose-breaking punch his mother threw when Neil dared asked if they could stay. He spat again, still trying to get the salty taste out of his mouth. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold onto the shards of plastic evidence of who he used to. After picking them all up he had to stop, and sit down. He was afraid he was having a panic attack, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of the drugs still ravishing his system, or if it was because of Andrew. Maybe it was both. It probably was. He didn’t think he could’ve spoken the truth if he wasn’t high, but God, if he were sober it would’ve been so much easier to run. High Neil was emotional Neil, empathetic Neil, hurt Neil. He’d only had the experience of being really, genuinely high a few times, and every single time just reminded him how much he hated the feeling of being out of control. Of his nerves, his feelings, every fibre in his being misfiring and doing the opposite to what he wanted. His brain was begging him to feel the chemicals it was pumping out, but all it did was amplifying the aching feeling in his chest. He let out a noise that didn’t quite resemble a cry, or a sigh, or a grunt. It was a noise born from pain, a mixture of anxiety and heartbreak, maybe. He wasn’t sure what that felt like. Maybe this was it.

He tried to steady his breath and he stumbled across the empty lot. The booming bass from the music at Eden’s practically shook the ground as he walked, at least, it sure felt like it did. He stumbled as he reached down to pick up the library card so carelessly thrown away. It hurt him even more looking at Stefan, feeling this pang in his stomach that wished things could’ve been different. He didn’t think he liked Andrew like that, and being on the same team was just the destruction of a childhood crush. Neil tried to come up with excuses in his head to how Andrew felt, but it was obvious he had thrown Stefan into the bad memories pile a long, long time ago. Neil showing up again just ripped through Andrew’s closure, and knowing he had feelings beneath what he showed, he was probably hurting too. It didn’t seem like it, but maybe he was. Neil had put the ID away, and looked around. He had no real idea where he was, or how to get home. Before he knew it, he was sprinting away from the club, going nowhere, going anywhere but there. His head wasn’t in a place to decide that he should stay. He’s worth it. His heart raced at the thought of Andrew’s face, looking down at the long unused library card. He’s worth it. Neil couldn’t look back. He was wondering what Andrew was telling the others, and if they would believe him. He wondered if he’d told Nicky about Neil’s Idontknow sexuality, and that’s why Nicky thought it okay to kiss him. But he didn’t feel anything with Nicky. He didn’t look at anyone in the way he looked at Andrew. He ran and ran and ran until he’d sweat out the drugs, until his head was more focused on trying to breathe than it was on Andrew, and his mom. It took a while, and he was lost when he stopped. Unfamiliar streets, him a stranger in someone else’s hometown. Maybe that made things worse. This feeling was too familiar. Lost, lost, lost. Sometimes lost became familiar, became home. He didn’t think he could be un-lost again.

Part 3

#this is about older andy n Neil #so pls send an ask if u want more of them when they were young #cos I love Stefan + Andrew #Andrew minyard #Neil josten #andreil #tfc #aftg #the foxhole court #all for the game #andreil hc #just want ppl to read this bc I’m really happy with it :(

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powercloud · 3 years ago

Text

At The End of The Day

pairing: tsukishima kei × reader

wc: 2.4k

genre: fluff, pining!tsukki

warnings: timeskip tsukishima, ooc tsukishima maybe(?) He's just so in love with you okay :(

The night was getting colder, the sky already a pretty shade of black, and the moon hung over their heads with a smile. Tsukishima took this as a good sign as if the moon smiling is a green light to pursue his plan. He looks over to you, your eyes distant and looking straight ahead, you were bracing yourself under the blazer he lent you. The view was astonishing. Under you and him the city was busy, flashes of light twinkling brightly, almost nearly outshining the bright stars above. The breeze was noisy as well, blowing your and his hair. But the warmness of Tsukishima’s heart was enough not to completely freeze him over, he was more worried about you though. But after a few stolen, glances he figured you were all right. The rooftop was your favorite, you've gotten used to it.

It's been silent between the two of you. You always fill in the quiet with your antics and puns and dumb realizations, but Tsukki supposes that’s why he was oddly fond of you after a week of knowing you first year in high school.

It’s been years since he concluded he was in love with you. Specifically three, but if he ever mentions the exact number he feels like a hopeless idiot. If he told you about that, would you call him so? He’d never know unless he confesses.

Tsukishima tightens his grip on the metal railings, his knuckles turning white. He bites his lower lip, nearly making it bleed. He’s nervous, he’s scared but he’s willing to push through it. All for you.

Tsukishima steals yet another yearning glance at you, this time his head snaps forward when you caught him red-handed cheeks turn a bit red before he sniffs and got a hold of himself. You laugh gently at his uncharacteristic expression.

“Something bothering you?” you ask, taking one or two steps closer to him. Any more he’d explode.

“Nothing,” Tsukishima lies. And you know this because you always have this certain facial expression where you’re unsure of his answer; one well-defined eyebrow rise, the bridge of your nose scrunched slightly, and your lips on a pout. You always were adorable when you were sure he was lying.

“Well, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Sometimes Tsukki wishes you knew how close he held you in regard, how he won’t get upset if you push him further into questioning. Hell, he’d tell you the truth right away.

But you turn away, leaving him be and respecting his privacy, eyes back forward and thoughts miles away.

Tsukishima follows where you were looking, and he wonders what you were thinking. The future? The past? The inevitable fall of humanity and the universe?

Him?

Tsukishima would very much like to know if you’d thought of him. He won’t hesitate to tell you he’s thinking of you, too. Most days you never go away from his mind. He wants you to think of him right now as he’s thinking of you, too. But Tsukishima thinks that’s not the case. You never look so troubled when you were thinking of a person unless you worried.

Tsukishima nudges your elbow with his, and finally, he looks at you straight in the eyes, flushing lightly as always. “What’s bothering you?” He asks, his mouth in a straight line, seemingly uncaring.

“Nothing, just—” you sigh deeply, shoulders falling. Tsukki holds his breath, maybe it would be you that confesses? He always thought you liked him back. Tsukki waits as your gaze flutter from the city below then finally to his honeysuckle eyes. “I don’t know if I’d rather wake up in the middle of a war or the middle of a zombie apocalypse.”

He mentally slapped himself for assuming you’d be the first to say something sentimental.

Of course, he thought to himself disappointingly. On a daily, you weren’t even worried about important things like school or true love. You were thinking of choices you’d likely choose in a situation that would never happen, like the zombie apocalypse you mentioned.

You don’t think of me much, do you?

Tsukishima tries to hide his disdain. “I thought you said you had a plan when the zombies come.”

“Yeah, but I mean, like at the beginning of every zombie apocalypse movie, y’know. Like when they start growing in rapid numbers, and the panic rising out of people, the raging undead and their unquenchable thirst for human blood. As in the part where they just start flooding in.” you were very dramatic in using hand gestures. “I don’t know what I would do if that suddenly happened.

“That would never happen,” said Tsukki and you frown, and he smirks, always enjoying irking you. “Neil D. Tyson already said so.”

“Thank God. But still—if it could, what would you rather wake up in the middle of, Tsukki?” you ask him, leaning closer again and his heart palpates. “War or the apocalypse?”

He pretends he’s thinking hard, then he just shrugs nonchalantly, then you whine and tell him how he’s such a killjoy. If he were honest and cheesy, whatever situation he’d suddenly wake up to, Tsukishima wouldn’t hesitate to protect you in either one.

“Women can’t fight in a war, pick war,” Tsukki said, and he smirks again as you scoff and roll your eyes.

“You know how much I’m brave.” Oh, he knows alright. You were intensely afraid of heights, yet look where your favorite spot in the whole world is. “I wouldn’t think twice to enlist,” you said, chest puffed out. “’sides, it’s the 21st century, Tsukki, equality is much softer now. It's indulged..”

“And?” Tsukki encourages you to go on as it looked like you wanted to add something.

“War is worse than hell. I’m fine laying down my life for what’s right, but I’m not ok with children dying or starving, or widows crying over their dead husbands or wives, or old people going cripple. I don’t like seeing good people get hurt.”

God, you were always such a fucking wholehearted, good, kind, courageous, generous person. He loves you so fucking much it hurts to think you’d sacrifice your life for the people you don’t even know.

“Always such a martyr, aren’t you?” you punch Tsukishima on his shoulder. He only laughs at your feeble attempt to hurt him. When you push yourself away to frown again, Tsukki softens. “If you think those kinds of people don’t deserve to die you need to know that you don’t deserve it, too. Fuck dying for the country. Wars are bullshit.” Tsukki had to cut out the part where he’d say he’d want you to hide with him. Later, he tells himself, it's too early.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” you said.

“I have never been.”

“Shut up, jackass.”

“You first, dumbass.”

After a few petty insults are thrown at each other you both settle down with Tsukishima letting you win. He doesn’t care if you call him a salty bitch, as long as he gets to see you grin triumphantly after.

Then it was silent again. The wind was stronger this time. One blow and you gripped Tsukishima’s blazer and winced as you took the cold bite. Tsukishima wanted to wrap his arms around you to keep you warm, uncaring of the fact he was cold, too. Very. He had nothing else on besides his thick sweater, apparently not thick enough. Tsukishima wanted to lead you downstairs, back to the party which he’s sure has died down by now. It was nearly 2 in the morning.

But before you two could go he wanted to say something first. Confess before another perfect moment like this slips from his fingers. He looks at you, and you’re so gorgeous. Your hair is a perfect mess behind your head. Your cheeks are flushed, and you kept wetting your lips as the cold had dried them. The city lights shadowed perfectly on the half bottom of your face, the stars mirrored in your eyes. You were serene, too. Seemingly enjoying this time. This time with him.

It was either now or never.

“I love you,” he told you. Except he told the wind instead as another harsh blow blew on the rooftop. You and him wince simultaneously, but both for very different reasons. You hadn’t heard him, that was obvious, because you hadn’t as much reacted any differently. Tsukishima knows you weren’t pretending to not hear him either. Unlike him, you weren’t mean. You would even acknowledge the ignored person who tried to relay a message across a group with a curt nod, and an inviting smile—you listened, as Tsukishima was the reason for that person being reluctant in talking.

Tsukishima frowns, his heart falling. Above him, the smiling moon disappears behind a gray cloud, a red light. Maybe tonight wasn’t the night after all. Maybe no night was the night. But it would be stupid of him to give up after one try. Tsukishima would never forgive himself for letting you go so easily. He knows at the end of the day it’d always be you he loves. He knows he’ll follow his heart to you even though it would break sometimes.

Jesus, he thought. Love is frightening.

A few months later was another perfect moment to tell you Tsukishima’s true feelings. He had just come home from his night shift from the museum, coffee in his hands yet he was still tired and exhausted, but when he saw you sitting down in front of his apartment door, waiting, he smiles to himself.

Once you sensed him, you looked up from the floor you were sitting on, eyes huge and jade. Most people compare eyes to oceans or galaxies. Not your eyes though, they reminded Tsukishima of his favorite thing. Glancing down and his tiny plastic toy dinosaur, and then sliding further down to your green eyes. Tsukishima realized that’s probably why he felt so awake when he was with you. You were like a loud inspiring roar in the morning.

You had plans, you told him. There was a spot in the park, though you suppose it wasn’t even part of the park anymore. There was a forest, more natural than man-made, just beside the park. And when you were bored one day, you ventured through it and found the most amazing spot to view the sky. There were no outside noises, not another human has found it, you prided yourself in that. There were lots of pests and insects though, which was why you brought with you two huge blankets.

So there you two were, beneath the galaxy, feeling small and vulnerable to alien sight. But it was utterly beautiful.

The two of you lie on top of a small hill covered in grass and pretty flowers, there were trees around but it was a clearing where you and he were at. Looking up it was as if the sky was moving and the stars were burning bright. He held your hand shamelessly. And he thanked every God listening when you didn’t pull away, instead you wrapped it firmly as if you’d be taken by a UFO and he’d be your only grip to this Earth.

“Did you see that, Tsukki?” you asked, flabbergasted. You had to let go of his hand to prop yourself up and point to the violet sky. “I think I saw an alien ship!”

“They’re coming to get you,” Tsukishima said. Leaning on his elbow to snicker at you. “Their long-lost family.”

You punch him on his shoulders and he laughs. It’s been years but Tsukishima knows his saltiness isn’t going anywhere.

You lie down again, Tsukishima does the same but this time he can’t hold your hand, not when it's clasped with your other hand and laying on top of your stomach. He hides the fact he’s a tad bitter about that.

“Did you know,” you began, Tsukishima turns to you, intently listening because the stars have never captured him like the way it captured you anyway. What he felt about you, you felt in the infinite universe. Tsukishima’s fine being a close second. “Most people forget dinosaurs have ears because dinosaur ears don’t have bones.”

Tsukishima glares at you incredulously. First of all, how dare you question his lengthy knowledge about dinosaurs. Second, he knows for a fact that’s not true and that you stole it off a kid’s show you watch every fall.

“And that’s a rock fact!” you said, proud and overjoyed. But of what? You didn’t get to fool him successfully.

“No, it’s not, you idiot.” Tsukishima went his way to flick your forehead harshly. When he pulls his hand away you nearly bit off a finger.

Feral bitch, Tsukishima thought affectionately.

“Ok, fine, how about—” you trail off, a finger tapping on your chin, eyes darting from one dead star to another. “Most books on witchcraft tell you witches work naked.” Tsukishima knows which show you got this from off, too. “And that’s because most books on witchcraft are written by men.”

"Now, that I won’t deny.”

The two of you laughed lightly before looking back up again, heart alight. This time, Tsukishima stares at the stars, trying to find reason why you were so smitten with it as he was with you. He tries to find something in between the spaces of dead stars and see if there’s something like that in him, too. So that maybe you can love him as much as you loved the infinitesimal. He doesn’t find anything, unfortunately, he’s distracted by your harmonious humming.

“Tsukki,” his heart skips a beat. You say his name so magically it's hypnotic. He didn’t think he’d fall in love further just by the way you say his name.

“Yeah, y/n?” he cringes at how soft he sounded.

He looks at you, glazes over your direction to see you already looking at him. And his body is on fire. There was something different with you, with the way you look back at him. Something entirely different.

Finally, Tsukishima thought, staring deeper into your glossy eyes, you’re looking at me like I’m something you love, like I put the stars in your sky.

“I love you.”

And the moon in him explodes.

“I love you, too.”

And it’s the end of the day. You’re still and always will be the one that he wants

#haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu imagines #tsukishima x reader #tsukishima kei #haikyu x reader

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the-chicken-or-the-banana · 4 years ago

Note

i had an idea i would love to see from your perspective (you're so good at andreil oh my god) if you wanted to write some stuff about it? i always wondered how andrew reacted when he first found neil missing after the binghampton game (starts pg 235 in the king's men). thoughts? (-- the ttyl blog <3)

omg i literally finished re-reading that scene before seeing your ask skjflsj ~ i hope you like this ! (i'm just realizing that i barely followed ur request and just rambled a lot but that's FINE 😬)

read it on ao3 here :)

«««———»»»

Andrew walked in line to the bus with the rest of the Foxes, mind going a million miles an hour behind his impassive expression.

"Thank you," Neil had said, eyes truer than Andrew had ever seen them. "You were amazing."

Andrew wasn't such a fool for Neil Josten that he couldn't figure out there was something more happening under the surface, something bigger than just an Exy shutout, that he wasn't telling anyone. Something forcing truth out of him.

Neil looked scared.

Apparently, no one else received the memo, because behind him, Matt Boyd kept kicking at Andrew's heels and Andrew could nearly see the nosy smile on Reynold's face. Boyd's voice was drowned out by the cacophony of both jeers and shouts of approval coming from all around them, but he had no doubts that Boyd was fishing for information surrounding his and Neil's "not this" to settle a bet of some sort.

Andrew didn't really care. He was more focused on leaving Binghamton, getting some answers out of Neil, and then kissing him senseless.

Of course, Andrew had no plans to tell Neil of that last item on the list, but he was sure he (and everyone else, apparently) knew anyway.

Maybe not Nicky, though. For all his cousin boasted about having an "incredible gaydar," he tended to be a bit clueless about Andrew.

Andrew's eyes were unfocused, gazing at the bounce of Neil's red curls while his thoughts wandered around nothing at all.

Nothing? his mind mused unhelpfully. Or Neil? Or is that one in the same now?

Shut up, he huffed internally. I hate him.

Lost in his head, it was only until he heard a pained curse from Aaron that he jerked straight and saw the world burning around him.

«««———»»»

Andrew's vision went red.

He nearly would have broken out of line and straight into the tidal wave of rioters had he not noticed the police trying to push back the crowd. He had never trusted the pigs, but Andrew supposed he could let them handle the mess until he'd gotten a chance to check on Aaron at the bus.

He had nearly fooled himself with that thought when an ice cooler sailed through the air and missed Danielle's face by an inch. An enraged shout came from Andrew's right, and he could feel the familiar heat of adrenaline in his stomach that always came when he and Renee sparred.

There was going to be a fight.

No sooner than he had that thought, the crowd around him exploded into madness, nearly running the Foxes over. Andrew may have been ready to throw some punches, but he was not at all prepared for the onslaught of unfamiliar bodies piling on him. Moving around him. Touching him.

Andrew couldn't breathe.

He lost sight of Neil's head in the mess, hoping one of the security guards would bring Neil to safety while Andrew tried to ground himself. What had Bee taught him?

What is your name? Andrew Minyard.

How old are you? 20 years old.

What is upsetting you? Hands. Everywhere.

Can you do something about it? Yes. I can move now.

He felt the glancing blow of someone's elbow on his face, nearly hitting his eye. It was sure to bruise later, but for now, the sharp pain mixed with Bee's words were enough to shake Andrew out of his stupor.

He ducked to the left, neatly missing a thrown shoe and was grateful to his limited stature for once. He kept an eye out for a flash of red, the glint of blue eyes, but seeing that Neil was nearly as short as Andrew himself, the effort was futile.

He'll be fine, Andrew thought. Find Nicky, Aaron, and Kevin, and get to the bus.

To his surprise (or maybe not), Andrew found Reynolds trading fierce blows with someone twice her size, Renee at her back. He caught Renee's glance and she gave him a firm nod of reassurance.

He nodded back, already swiveling to find the rest of his group.

After a few minutes, he spotted Nicky and Kevin huddled together, slowly moving to the edge of the crowd. He caught up and grabbed Nicky's wrist, who jerked away and reared his hand back for a punch before realizing it was Andrew.

Despite it all, Andrew felt a thrum of satisfaction. A few years ago, Nicky had let people beat him down over and over again. At least now he was learning to fight back.

"Oh thank god," Nicky cried, catching Kevin's attention, before his eyes widened. He reached out, remembering himself at the last second. "Andrew... your face, what happened?"

Andrew shrugged. He'd been through worse.

Nicky looked like he wanted to say something, but Kevin cursed loudly and began pushing out of the sea of bodies with renowned vigor.

"It's getting more violent and more people are joining," Kevin said, voice strained. "We need to get out and regroup at the bus."

"Aaron?" Andrew asked. Nicky glanced around a few moments before pointing to his right.

"There!" he exclaimed, and motioned to Kevin to go in that direction. Kevin nodded and they made their way over to Aaron, who was ducking under beer bottles and was nearly smacked in the face by a PSU banner.

"Aaron!" Kevin called, and Aaron's shoulders dropped with relief as he swerved a growing fight and made his way over to them.

Andrew scanned his brother quickly and, after seeing no visible injuries, motioned to start back towards the parking lot. They made their way over to the bus and found Boyd and Danielle standing, the former looking like he'd just lost a fight with a mountain lion.

Danielle was gripping his arm as Abby tended to his wounds, but Andrew heard her say he might need to go to the hospital for the more serious injuries. Boyd looked pained at the thought, but when he glanced up and caught Andrew's eye, he smiled and waved them over.

"Andrew, here," Abby said, noticing his injury. He took an ice pack from her and glanced around.

"Where's Neil?" he asked, choosing to ignore the suggestive look between Boyd and Danielle. Abby shrugged and opened her mouth before her eyes caught on something behind Andrew and she waved.

Andrew turned around to find Renee and Reynolds walking proudly towards them. Reynolds had a mosaic of bruises all over her, and Renee was holding her wrist precariously.

Abby sighed and began treating them as Wymack rounded the front of the bus and finally found his team.

Not the whole team, a ringing voice said in Andrew's head. Neil isn't here yet.

Which was odd, no? He had a security guard in front of him, surely he would have made it here first? Perhaps Wymack had seen him and taken him somewhere. Maybe he was already safe in the bus and Abby hadn’t noticed him.

Andrew pushed past Danielle and boarded the bus, walking the length of it but not finding a loudmouthed striker in its shadows. His stomach became knotted with a curious feeling he slowly identified as dread.

Andrew was at the door of the bus again. He looked at Wymack.

"Where. Is. Neil." he demanded. He saw Wymack's confused expression and before he even said anything, Andrew felt his heart stop.

"I don't know. I thought he was with you."

Reynold's knowing smirk gave way to uncertainty as the rest of the Foxes quieted. There was silence for a moment. Two.

Then Andrew threw his ice pack on the floor and raced back into the heart of the riot.

«««———»»»

He ignored the shouts coming from behind him, his mind an endless loop of Neil, Neil, Neil, is he safe, has he been hurt, he was supposed to be nothing, NEIL

After a few minutes of searching and more than a few near punches, the police finally regained some control over the situation and Andrew was able to scour the grounds for any hint of where Neil might be.

He saw the racquet first. The duffle bag was a few meters away from it.

Numbly, Andrew picked up both items, grabbing Neil's phone as it fell from the netted side pocket.

0, it said.

Andrew felt a piercing emptiness when he saw Neil's things without their rightful owner beside them.

He slowly walked back to the Foxes' bus, head pounding but unable to really register the dwindling fight behind him. And when the Foxes finally came in view, he saw the confusion on their faces when they saw no Neil walking with him.

Andrew mentally ran through everything that he knew. Neil was scared. He was running from someone, someone Kevin knew about? A zero on his phone from an unnamed number — a countdown, perhaps. He would never leave his things unattended, so maybe he wanted to tell Andrew he had been taken unwillingly, knowing that Andrew would never leave without him.

There was something he was missing, some vital piece of information that Neil hadn't told him that was causing this mess.

The guilty look on Kevin's face told Andrew everything he needed to know. He knew something.

He dumped Neil's things on the ground by Wymack's feet, mentally assessing himself. His cheek throbbed, each breath he took was sticky with sweat, his heart was pounding.

Neil was gone.

Andrew felt such a blind hot rage at that, the likes of which he hadn't felt in so long, the type where he felt like laughing at how cruel the world could be.

And before he could tell his body to stop, Andrew's hands were around Kevin's throat.

«««———»»»

"Shit Andrew! You're hurting— " "Andrew, stop— " "Get off of— "

«««———»»»

Andrew couldn't remember what happened after that, not immediately at least. It was a bit disorienting, going from a perfect recollection to being so overrun by anger that his mind went blank. Was this how everyone else felt all the time? He felt like someone just took out a Jenga piece from his mind, like it was close to collapsing.

Distantly, he recalled being yanked off of Kevin as he gasped some explanation about a mob boss, Kengo's right hand man, Nathaniel Wesninski. But none of it mattered. Andrew had broken his promise. He had hurt the person he had vowed to protect, just like so many had done to him.

And he still didn't have Neil.

«««———»»»

Neil used to make the emptiness a bit fuller, a bit easier to manage, Andrew thought. It felt so impossible to navigate himself now without Neil by Andrew's side.

«««———»»»

There was a hospital. A hotel. There were FBI agents. The news turned on. Off. On. There was another hotel. Handcuffs. Taken away.

«««———»»»

There was Nathaniel Neil. Standing in front of him. Blue eyes, wild hair, bandages unable to hide how irresistible he was, unable to stop the jolt in Andrew's heart.

There was Neil. And everything felt right again.

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mysticpenguincreation · 6 years ago

Text

So I’ve watched (partially) leaked episodes of American Gods and there is no way I’m not gonna post about it.

Clear and explicit spoilers are under the cut, so read away at your own risk.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

This is going to be mainly about the one and only, my love #1 Mad Sweeney.

Before I get down to business, I have to make some points clear.

1. In my opinion, AG is one of the BEST shows to grace our screens in many many long years, because:

It’s based on Neil Gaiman novel.

Storytelling is compelling.

Have you seen the editing? The lights and colors? The camera work?! This shit is AMAZING. There are few things I like more about the shows than good editing and visual aesthetics. And this right here? It’s pure pleasure.

The casting and acting is mind-blowing.

2. I know better than fixate on only one character, because the whole plot, the story in general is so much more than fate of one character (even if they’re the lead).

With that being stated in advance, I would like to clarify that AG is a complex story created through crossing paths of many different characters. It’s not about Mr. Wednesday, it’s not even about Shadow Moon and it’s sure as hell is not about Mad Sweeney.

But the latest was the reason why I was renewing AG and his tags this whole fucking week. So when THREE episodes (INCLUDED the one dedicated to Sweeney) were leaked in my country at three in the morning, I, tired from work and lack of sleep, naturally decided to give middle finger to my master’s thesis and watch them.

Unfortunately, I am no god and have basic human needs, so I’ve only watched parts regarding Sweeney, but I’m sure as hell watching whole episodes later.

And finally to the points:

Episode 2x05.

Sweeney thinking at first that Laura was an angel made me laugh so hard.

She was so fucking jealous of him, when he was flirting with this blonde girl! And then he looked right at Laura!!! He knew what he was doing and it was working!

He was so fucking jealous when this voodoo couple started to get sexy with Laura! Oh how he didn’t like it!

Let me tell you, this scene made me hot all over. He’s savage, huge and built like a brick wall. I’d climb this fine piece of fairy-godlike king any day any time.

At first I was disappointed because ‘THE HELL! So it was JUST the Horde and Sweeney’s deepest desires?! They’re gonna go and fuck different people’. I’d ideally prefer them to fuck each other, at the lack of better option this happening in an orgy, but to become swingers without actually having sex even once? C’mon guys! But my fears were in vain, eventually everything happened the way it should have happened.

Laura is so smol and Sweeney is HUGE. They’re outing my (enormous) size kink / height/built difference kink.

This scene was what I was anticipating since midseason 1 and I FINALLY GOT IT GODDAMIT!

First few seconds of ‘the morning after’ were just too damn hilarious.

Sweeney is not good at dealing with his shit, but Laura confirmed that she is way way worse. She didn’t know how to deal with him, this situation and her (or his for this matter) feelings anymore. So she fled and hurt my ginger giant bb in the process.

Episode 2x06.

There is no Laura or Sweeney in this one, so I skipped through it in like 5 min and understood next to nothing.

HOWEVER! This ep. featured my beautiful love #2 Tech Boy (a sight for sore eyes). In one of his recent interviews Bruce said that Tech Boy is a God of Technology, but technology can be many things. Like for our ancestors a sharp stone fixated on the end of the stick was already a technology. So maybe Tech Boy’s purpose is to renovate and update himself in accordance with the change of times. Maybe ithat’s what let him pass as the “New God”, when in reality he might be one of the oldest of the “Old Gods”. It’s an interesting theory and a glimpse of it is shown in ep. 6 through Tech Boy and Wednesday’s (!!!) common history, but in order to understand it I had to watch it, and now I have to prioritize and simply don’t have time for that. Though, my beautiful Tech Boy, I’m glad that you can show up at the most of unexpected of times and give me feels, when there’s not even one Sweeney within a mile.

Episode 2x07.

WHERE TO BEGIN!

In order to write this AND get some sleep I had to skip some parts of Sweeney’s story too, so please forgive me for any misunderstandings.

Of course I read all the theories based on what was in the book and how it correlated with the story in the show now. I was impatiently waiting and dreading this episode at the same time.

This ep. Sweeney was all about destruction and madness. More so than usual. He was unhinged and I loved him about it.

So much self-loathing. It was so brilliant I couldn’t watch it.

The fact that Sweeney couldn’t remember his own story was just plainly terrifying. When people loose faith in you and forget you it’s one thing. But when you loose faith in yourself so much that you can’t remember who you are anymore is depressing and legitimately scary.

He must have been freaking out of his fucking mind cause of constantly seeing Banshees. He might have told Shadow not to interfere, but he instantly knew that this time these women were crying for him.

I was happy to see that once, long long time ago he was loved. He knew what true happiness was. Even if we had to watch him fall so far (NOT HIS FAULT BY THE WAY).

I loved every single verbal drop about Sweeney caring for (possibility being nuts deep in love with) Laura:

How he couldn’t get it up for hot redheaded voodoo queen until she called him out on it.

How he was broken and laughing madly under this bridge about Laura leaving him AGAIN.

I hate Wednesday guts, but he saw right through Sweeney with this one eye of his. ‘She fucked you, broke your heart and left you’. Cruel, but hit too close to home.

Conversation with Salim. Sweeney: ‘It’s his fight, not yours. You don’t have to die. Just go and leave it all behind’. Salim: ‘No, I’m staying with him’. ‘Why?’ ‘I guess it’s what love is’. ‘Would he have done the same for you if the roles were reversed? What if someone ordered him to kill you? Would he have done that [while loving you]?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Ugh, nothing. Forget it’. Like come on!!! This conversation takes place RIGHT AFTER Wednesday orders Sweeney to “finish his job” and kill Laura for good. Sweeney and Salim are talking about love and loved ones and what they would/wouldn’t have done for them! Sweeney’s implying Laura and love in one sentence! It’s the most explicit articulate closest to confession thing that we got from Sweeney aside from multiple defensive Fuck you’s said to different people and longing glances when she isn’t looking.

Little side note: Salim might be the sweetest person in the world but I wanted to punch him in the face so hard, when he said that it’s pointless to explain the concept of love to someone who’s never felt it. I know that Sweeney was never nice to him, but it’s rich coming from human to go and assume something about a creature that’s walked this Earth for centuries. You don’t know him well enough. So, please, kindly shut up.

(8) The bloodbath scene from times when Sweeney was a god once was just poetic cinema. I was SO looking forward to it when the trailer came out. Barbaric, savage, courageous, spear-throwing, ripping-out-throats-with-bare-teeth, crushing-skulls-with-bare-hands. Just the way I like them👌

(9) Sweeney with ass long red mane dressed in next to nothing but blue paint is the image that burnt into my mind and the reason I was living for.

(10) They fucking did it. They killed him. THEY BROKE ME.

Regarding Sweeney’s death I have QUITE A LOT OF THINGS TO SAY:

I knew it was coming but still hoped they wouldn’t go through with it. As much as it hurts, I respect this decision. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do and cut the cord. Sweeney’s death was in the book. It’s what was necessary for the story to move forward (see point 2 at the beginning of the post). It’s better this way than for his character to be dragged around the story just for fan service (as much as it pains me to admit it, BECAUSE I WANT THIS FAN SERVICE GODDAMIT!).

As far as I know in the book Shadow was indirectly involved in Sweeney’s death. It was honestly the redhead’s fault only. The way he went out was pathetic, so I’m glad that they changed it according with the development of tv character.

Shadow. You fucking gave your word. Not. To. Interfere. Fine, I get it, you’re Wednesday’s man, you have to protect him (even after Sweeney reveled the whole truth, seriously, Shadow?!), BUT DON’T GO POKE AT PEOPLE WITH A GIGANTIC POINTY STICK IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO ISE IT!!! I know it was an accident, he didn’t truly MEAN it, but maybe it even makes it worse.

This ‘I’m sorry’, I can’t even discuss it. Sorry doesn’t fucking cut it, Shadow!!!

I know that people say that Shadow’s speech at Sweeney’s wake is a beautiful part of the book, but with the way things turned out in the show, I don’t think that Shadow deserves to make this speech.

Sweeney, my bb went out like a fucking champ. Ruining old fart’s plans and taking the spear somewhere he can never reach it anymore. My hero ❤️ I hope Wednesday didn’t foresee it and it wasn’t another grand part of his plans. I want Sweeney to fuck him up good. He died because he didn’t want to be Wednesday’s bitch and I wouldn’t want him to be that especially in his death.

I wish Laura could see it with her own eyes. The last big FUCK YOU from Mad Sweeney.

In conclusion:

Mad Sweeney was barely on Old Gods’ side, I bet he would have gone minding his own business if it wasn’t for Wednesday’s debt.

With Sweeney gone now, fuck the Old Gods, I’m going to the New Gods’ side.

But at the same time Tech Boy is “deleted” or “fired” or whatever.

So basically now, I don’t really give a shit who wins now and who loses. They can kill each other until no one’s left, for all I care.

AG is still great and moving forward.

I’m still interested in the story, but I can’t bring myself to be invested anymore.

SIDE NOTES:

I know better than to hope, but I need a reaction out of Laura regarding Sweeney’s death.

It’ll probably never happen, but I hope Laura will crush Shadow’s nuts.

And spears Mr. Wednesday.

I wonder how Laura’s undead state will be affected now with Sweeney and his horde and his magic gone. Will his lucky coin work the same?

Laura is capable of surviving and protecting herself. She needs no one to do that for her. But Sweeney was ready to run to her, do anything for her as soon as she snapped her fingers. How much will it affect her? Will she appreciate him now?

I might have had some other notes, but I’ve tried for 2,5 hours to carefully and logically arrange this post without insulting any character TOO MUCH and now my brain’s exploding.

Please, feel free to talk to me about the FEELS, because I’m heartbroken and don’t know how to deal with it.

#american gods #mad sweeney #buile suibhne #the leprechaun #tech boy #spoiler

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gutterdreams · 7 years ago

Text

Ten Feet Over Pt 3 [Billy Hargrove]

Disclaimer: I don’t own Stranger Things or the GIF. Warnings: Swearing. Word Count: 3.9 k

PART ONE PART TWO

There were three very small windows on Billy’s front door, but due to their opaque glass, none of them gave you any indication of what was lurking inside. Max had tore past you on the driveway once Billy rolled up to the house, the front door long since closed when she rushed in and away from you, her annoying step-brother, and his incessant need to play with your hair while he drove. She lost count of how many times she rolled her eyes in the backseat.

Billy was just a half step ahead of you on his front steps, ready to go inside and throw himself down on top of his bed. He was usually high energy, but he felt calm enough to let himself relax today. You two had been flirting since he arrived in Hawkins, had gone on a date two months ago, a redo first date two weeks from that, and now you were together. It shifted some of the venomous weight that Billy carried around with him like a shadow made of wet cement. You were a constant, something routine to count on, and had proven yourself loyal in a short period of time. Billy felt like he actually took in full breaths around of you instead of stealing staccato inhales in-between distractions like he did in every other pocket of his life.

“You okay?” He looked behind himself, hand on the door knob. There was suddenly too much space between you both, he could feel it, and it prompted Billy to check on you.

Staring up at the door, a look of uneasy bewilderment had a starring role on your face. Eyes wide and nervous as they memorized the subtle fades of yellow paint on his front door.

“I’m a little freaked out.” You tried to laugh at yourself while admitting honestly.

“Why?” Billy’s brows stuck you in a tight frame as he turned further around to face you.

“I’ve never been to your house before.”

“It’s just a house.” In comparison to yours, it was quaint and Billy had come to resent it since going to so many house parties in town. Other people’s homes made his place look like a shed and he wanted better for himself. It made him miss California even more. They had two bathrooms in California, in the house that he grew up in with his mom and dad. It had been a bungalow like this place, but there was more breathing room which Billy longed for whenever Neil was home.

“It’s your house.” You pointed out with a cute wiggle of your hips. “I’ve never heard you say anything nice about your parents.”

“She’s just my step mom.” He corrected you with his eyes miffed at the very sight of Max’s mother. Sure, Susan was nice, but Billy thought that was the bare minimum a person could offer. Nice was never enough. He held the door open for the occasional old lady at the gas station, he carried your books to your morning class and the one after lunch, and he waited for Max to buckle up her seat-belt before darting out of a parking lot. Billy could be nice and he knew he was a self-obsessed asshole.

“Is your Dad home?” Neil Hargrove’s reputation proceeded him. To you, Billy had exclusively referred to him as a ‘fucking dick’.

“Never before five.” Sometimes later than that, but Billy had that much of his dad’s schedule memorized. He wiped at the peach fuzz above his lip and waved his fingers inward to his face, encouraging you to follow him inside. “If you want, we can leave as soon as they get here.” With one step, Billy closed the gap between you and promised. He put his hand gently behind your neck, taking some hair to the back of your ear as he did. “Say the word and we go.” If you were that uncomfortable, Billy had no problem corralling Max back into his car and driving you to your place.

“Thanks.” After a moment of collecting some serenity, you nodded. He was smiling down at you and, for a moment, you couldn’t detect any of the tough exterior he was known for. Leaning in, you kissed him and pressed your body against his, warmth pushing from each other and onto the other. “You’re good to me.” It was early days, but you already felt secure with Billy. Everyone told you to never go out with him, Nancy going the extra mile and telling you ‘not to be one of those girls who gets in Billy’s car’, but you swore up and down in moments like this that they were wrong, that they just didn’t know him, that he wasn’t so awful.

“Always.” Billy chuckled with his bottom lip against yours, the promise vibrating against you.

In retrospect, Billy had been sort of possessive in how he looked out for you, but the memory still played fondly as you stood outside of his place, your dad’s pick-up truck parked at the end of the street out of discretion. The house was just as frightening to you now as it had been the first time Billy brought you over, but you weren’t worried about having to see Neil anymore. You were far more scared about having to hear Billy’s voice or seeing any kind of sad blanket of sadness or cracking flame of anger in his eyes.

A deep breath in, you hugged the white cardboard box meant for files to your waist and headed up his driveway. The Camaro was gone as you suspected it would be. Before Saturday, if someone asked you how well you felt you knew Billy, you would have honestly told them that you knew the earring-wearing teenage boy better than you knew yourself. Right now, you felt like everything he shared with you and all the little tidbits you learned from being with him for fifteen months must have been wrong. Still, you knew that if he only had to watch Max until Susan was home at six that he would be out the door and looking for ways to handle the stress you were causing him. So, you safely headed up the three front steps and knocked on the door of the house that you had been in well over a hundred times.

You didn’t know who you wanted to answer. If it was Neil, you knew you would have to hear some sort of snide and undoubtedly sexist remarks. He would pick at you for information about what was going on and most likely use that as ammo to humiliate Billy with at some point. If Max answered, you would have to hear her 'hmph’ and 'grumph’ around with hateful eyes, telling you that you couldn’t break up with Billy because if you did, he would become a worse thorn in her side than he already was. You knew this because she once expressed those feelings after you and Billy had gone back and forth the whole drive home from school, arguing in front of her. If Susan answered, she would probably try to talk you down, tell you to cool off, and choose forgiveness. You had seen Neil disregard her feelings at the dinner table before and, even with flushed cheeks, she would shrug it off and force a smile big enough that the corners of her mouth poked the tears in her eyes back.

Susan pulled the door open after just a few seconds and it was the best of three bad options you supposed.

“Well, hello beautiful girl,” As she greeted you, she relaxed one side of her pelvis against the open yellow door. “God, I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.” The last time you were over was the Thursday night before the fateful Saturday. Of course, she probably just meant it was weird not seeing you at all on the weekend.

“Yeah, I just came to drop Billy’s stuff off.” The box in your hands was full. Undershirts, his jewelry, jewelry he gave you, two mixtapes, photographs, almost empty cigarette pack, a variety of lighters, a box with six condoms left in it, the leaf necklace, and all the notes he wrote you in class and one on Garfield stationary he found in your kitchen’s junk drawer when he was drunk and used it to write a stupid poem about you on. At the time, it had been cute, but now it just made you angry.

Susan’s face had gone from fair to powdery at your words. It was the last thing she expected to hear, but it certainly explained how Billy had been behaving for the last two days. He had been the same short tempered kid that she was used to, but mopier.

“Well, come in. Let’s chat.” She offered and stepped aside so you walk over the threshold, box first. “Do you want something to drink?” As she locked the door behind you, she offered, but you declined with a head shake while kicking off your shoes.

“I don’t have a lot of time.” You didn’t know when Billy would be back. “Just dropping stuff off.” The path from the front door to Billy’s bedroom in the back, right by Max’s, was one you had made many times before. You had done it in the dark while drunk with an incoherent and very belligerent Billy tugging on your sleeve, but this twelve step journey felt more challenging. Inside, you knew it would be the last and that was hard.

You walked right by Susan and headed to his room, pushing it open with a kick of your toes against the bottom of the door. It opened slowly and revealed the minimalistic room. Billy didn’t have a lot of stuff. His clothes were overflowing out of the white plastic hamper in one corner while his hair product and cassette collection were unorganized on shelves by his makeshift crate-and-mirror vanity. His bed was unmade with your sweater at the edge.

“What happened?” Susan knew it wasn’t her business, but she stood in Billy’s door frame and asked anyway while you went to the side of his bed. You had planned to just leave the box behind, but instead you turned it upside down and let the contents spill out over his crumpled up blue blanket. After seeing your sweater, you realized this was your only real chance at getting your stuff back.

“Just ran it’s course.” With a shrug, you told her. It wasn’t really a lie, but it certainly didn’t feel like the truth.

“I’m sure you two could work on it if you wanted to.” She knew how much Billy cared for you. She couldn’t imagine that he was okay with this. The fact that he hadn’t punched a hole in any of her walls yet came as a bit of surprise. It occurred to Susan, only then, that, maybe, he didn’t know about this break up yet and that frightened her.

“I don’t want to.” Quickly, you responded without having to think. Right now, you felt good. You had had one more power pep talk from your girlfriends before leaving your house to drop off his stuff. Nancy’s voice was coaching you through the whole thing, 'Drop it off and go. If he says 'hi’, you say? Nothing. If you really have to say something, tell him to choke.’ It was intense, but that was who Nancy had become since Barb disappeared. She wasn’t a timid church mouse any more.

In ball form, you stuffed your sweater into the box and went to his mirror. You plucked the photo of you, one Max took at Christmas of you with your head on his shoulder while he looked down at whatever was out of frames and in your hands. Gripping the top, your fingers wasted no time doing to it what you had to every picture you brought over in the box. You ripped it down the middle and took yourself out of it. If you could help it, you would remove evidence of ever having been with Billy from the planet.

The door unlocked and Susan’s attention was sent to the right. She sighed, fear passing from her mouth, as she went limp and stepped out of his doorway and into the other room.

“She wasn’t home.” Billy said to no one, assuming that Max was still in the living room where she was when he left to go to your house and talk you back into his arms.

“She’s in your room.” Gentle as languo hair on a newborn baby, Susan informed him from the free space between his room and Max’s. Her arms were crossed under her breasts while she fit the free edge of her nail between two teeth, nervously nibbling.

Billy had stepped over your shoes while kicking off his own and darted to his bedroom. In his mind, you would be sitting on his bed and waiting for him, an apology in your eyes and a sweet smile welcoming him in for a kiss. This is what he had been painfully waiting for all day. Instead, he saw you looking over his shelves and the mess of discarded mementos of your relationship on top of his bed.

Just once, he panted in panic and then swung his door shut behind him. Your attention was on him, away from the shelf of his beloved cologne, hair comb, putty gel. The door was closed you were completely alone together. Susan might have been on the other side of the door, but you were chalking her up to useless in this situation. When you had examined your fresh fingerprint bruises in the mirror on Sunday morning, your mind let itself wonder if, maybe, Susan, too, wore sweaters to cover up Neil’s heavy-handed way of winning arguments.

I don’t want to be alone with you. I don’t love you anymore. I’m over it.

The words you managed to say in the hallway to him had been ringing from wall to wall in his head ever since lunch break. Billy felt brow beaten relentlessly by them and they only started to echo louder when he was looking over the contents that you had spilled over his bed top. His fingers rummaged through the contents, each thing sparking a memory great or small, and tightening an invisible grip over his exhausted heart.

“Why did you bring all this stuff over?” He asked to avoid the truth that was starting to light up in his brain. “I thought you just wanted some space…”

“I never said that.” Billy had been the one to toss the idea into the ring. “I said that I’m not your girlfriend anymore.” You let the support of your friends keep you strong, shoulders back and breathing in and out.

“I made you this. It’s the first thing I gave you.” Picking up a mixed tape from the top of the pile, the corner between his thumb and index finger, Billy reminded you. Burnin’ For You by Blue Oyster Cult was the first song on both sides of the tape as it had been playing the first time you two made out against his car. Billy had been pretending to be a gentleman and got out to walk you to your front door, but you met him at the door and pulled him in, surprising him with what he wanted badly. It was mostly music that he liked on the tape, but Promises in the Dark by Pat Benatar made an appearance because he figured you would like it and he was right. He had been sort of embarrassed by how much he liked you when he presented the cassette to you. Billy kept running his hand down his head and shrugging as he pulled it from the pocket of his jean jacket and gave it to you, dropping you off on a Friday after a late movie. Since you went on and on about how much you liked it, he was inspired to make a second five months later. “You should keep it.” He offered it to you, but you turned away and kept looking for things of yours in his room. Surely, he had some underwear somewhere or a lip gloss tube.

“I don’t want it.” Just like you had told Susan minutes ago, you muttered. Right now, the plan was simple: get your things and leave.

“I want you to have it. I made it for you.” Billy wanted to roar, to throw the tantrum that a toddler could only dream about in their racecar bed, but he held himself back with his feet planted on the floor and his heart stuck beating off tempo in his chest. It was impulsive reaction that put him in this awful situation.

When you ignored him, plucking two of your gold hoop earrings off his window sill and into the box, Billy resorted back to the pile of belongings on his bed. He put the cassette down and ran his hands over all the ripped up photos. He had to inhale a whistled breath through the thin gaps of his teeth. There had to have been over ten pictures that you were missing from, they were just Billy and blank spaces. It hurt. It actually felt like someone had stabbed him over and over in his belly.

“You don’t think we can work things out?” He asked you while roaming through the stuff, finding the necklace tangled and then laying it over the side of his hand so the pendant was flat against his palm. “We’ve put each other through shit before and just…” He sat on the edge of his bed, looking at the gold jewelry that he had done so much babysitting and household chores in order to buy. It had felt worth the bullshit his Dad wrangled him with at the time. He wanted to get you a nice birthday gift and through that, he did. “Come on, babe.” He looked up at you as you were going to the door, eyes hollowed out to make room for melancholy, and sighed into himself. “Can you, please, stay?” Where was this guy on Saturday? Why couldn’t Billy have expressed himself this way instead of tackling you like an opposing team’s linebacker.

“No.” It was Nancy’s voice in your head that made you say it. Your arms were flimsy under the mostly empty box and your heart was crying at you to put it down and run to him. “No, Billy. It’s done. You ended us.”

“That’s not true.” He refuted, clutching the necklace, and standing up to face you better. “I’m the one who wants to try and work shit out, you’re the one with a box full of stuff, leaving.” To him, it seemed obvious that you were the one who was ending things. If it was up to him, he would making the weekend up to you with a blanket in a bare field, his hands squeezing it’s way up your thighs, and sweet nothings in your ear. “How is this fair to me?” It was such a typical Billy question that you couldn’t believe you didn’t see it coming.

“You? I’m the one hiding bruises from my friends and parents!” Putting down the box at your side, you shouted at him and rolled up your sleeves. He squinted at the sight of them just as he had looked ill the first time he spotted them in the hall, but you were going to make him look at them so he could understand the way you did that things had changed and could not go back to how they used to be. The point of no return had a mark and his fingerprints were it. “If you want to fairness, we can talk fairness, but you won’t like how that conversation goes!” Nancy’s voice was practically screeching in the corners of your mind now, telling you to leave. You were giving him too much.

Billy lunged forward, necklace held in one hand and the other hand flat, and kissed you as hard as he could. His fingers were on both sides of your face, holding you to him and trying to draw you in. Your eyes held themselves open, alarmed, but you wiggled away and almost fell back with urgency, leaving Billy to stare at you with an open, wet mouth.

Both of you were trapped in the tension, so Billy took your silence as an okay and went in again. This time, he opened up his hand and tried to wrestle the necklace of your head, but you reached up and shoved him away by the wrists. The necklace spilled from his fingers and fell somewhere on the floor by his bed.

“No! Stop it!” Scolding him as if he was a puppy that kept trying to jump on you, your voice hit the turned off ceiling light right between both of you. “Stop it.” Again, you gasped. “We are done, Billy. You lost me.” He did it in a terrible fashion too, a way you never assumed would happen. “I never want to see you - “

“Never?” He scoffed at the hyperbolic term.

“I never want to hear you!” Over top of him, you kept going. “Don’t ever touch me again!”

“Never?” This time, he sounded sad. It was as if you two were in the hallway again, not in his house that he was used to having to be defensive in. “Tell me what to do, [Y/N/N], and I’ll do it. Please.” He begged, but it was far too little, too late. The sleeves of your top unrolled themselves to cover the end of your relationship and you turned your burning face away from him. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing you wanted him to do. “It was an accident!”

At the knees, you bent down to pick up the box and kept your eyes on his feet. If he was going to come close to you again, you wanted to be ready. Once standing up, you wrestled with your tongue on whether or not you should say 'goodbye’. Instead, you didn’t so much as look at him, you turned to your side and reached for the silver knob on his door in order to exit.

“Don’t leave.” His hand brushed up against the space on your back between the end of your shirt and waist of your jeans. Billy’s voice was weak, breaking in places, and he was clearly beginning to cry.

You still didn’t turn around, you shimmied your body to push away his touch, and opened up the door. On the other side, Susan and Max were pretending to be busy in the recreational space, fumbling their fingers over surfaces and looking off into corners. They had been listening to every word said between you two. Susan’s face looked soft and gutted for her step son. He was a wild child and she didn’t think that he would be able to get over this gracefully. It would sting him for a long time.

Looking away from them, you did turn to see Billy, his face without bruises, but very evidently beaten.

“Don’t touch me.” You sounded as firm as Neil when laying down the law and it hit Billy hard in the gut. Once you had moved out of Billy’s line of sight, he treated his bedroom like the locker from early and slammed it with all his might. It didn’t feel like enough, but he knew that Susan would have his Dad on his ass if he knocked it off it’s hinges. You were still slipping your shoes on when Metallica started to rock through the whole house, covering up the sounds of Billy throwing the stuff you returned and hating himself.

@penguinlover15 @devintagekids @desertsivan1995 @daddyslittlemunster @4-a-m @stevesharrlngtons @lovelydacre @ineedacureforme @springrollover

@can-youmoveyourseatup @inspiredbynewt@inspiredbynewt @princessnancy@mistressofmanyfandoms @kaliforniacoastalteens

@inspiredbynewt @stephaniecats @fearwill @eggo-child @springrolllover

@gemgemswift @tegan-eva

@basickassandra @flirtygerty @fangirlinganditswonders

#billy hargrove au #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove imagine #billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove #dacre montgomery #billy hargrove one shot #stranger things billy hargrove #billy hargrove angst

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jimsturgessnews · 6 years ago

Photo

Actor Jim Sturgess, recently seen in BBC drama Hard Sun with Agyness Deyn, divides his time between Hollywood movies and songwriting. He talks to The Cork about constantly getting beaten up, the similarities between film and music, and swapping his skateboard T-shirts for a bespoke English Cut suit. As a fixture on the red carpet at Hollywood film premieres, Jim Sturgess has had to get used to being decked out by brands. “I remember the first time I got put in a suit,” the Wandsworth-born actor recalls. “I got on my bike the next day and delivered it back to them. They were like, ‘No, no, it’s yours, you can have it.’ I was like, ‘Are you joking?’” Even now, selecting from English Cut’s vast menu is a novel experience for someone accustomed to choosing from a rail of off-the-peg suits. “It’s like ordering a salad in America,” he says of the bespoke process, speaking like a man who spends extended periods of time in health-conscious Los Angeles for work. “You have a million options: do you want three buttons or two? I got quite into it. You start off thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Then you go, ‘Actually, let me see what pleated trousers look like … ’” After chewing it over, Sturgess settled on a rustic dark green. “I have a load of black and grey suits, so it was a chance to create something a bit different,” he explains. “It’s got a sort of tweed feel, a bit boxier than I’d typically go for … I’m sounding like a pro now, aren’t I?” His self-conscious laugh betrays that tailoring is not his, well, strong suit. “I live in Dickies trousers and a pair of white canvas shoes,” confesses the fresh-faced 39-year-old, who could comfortably pass for a twentysomething and still dresses, by his own admission, like a teenage skateboarder, even if he no longer actually skates in the park like he did when he was a teenager growing up in Surrey. “I sort of still think that I do, but I don’t,” he says. “Last year, I was messing around on my board, and I fell off and really hurt myself. Like, it hurt and hurt for a long time. You start to learn the hard way that your body’s not the same as it once was. Plus I have to go and throw myself around and get beaten up for work. You get injuries, and it makes life pretty difficult.” “You have a million options: do you want three buttons or two? I got quite into it. You start off thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Then you go, ‘Actually, let me see what pleated trousers look like’” Sturgess does seem to have a history of being on the receiving end of on-screen violence, from 2008 thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking, in which he played a British agent infiltrating the IRA, with Sir Ben Kingsley as his handler, to 2016 US TV series Feed the Beast, in which he played a Bronx chef with David Schwimmer as his fellow restaurateur. “I’ve got a punchable face,” Sturgess quips. “I suppose I’m attracted to stories that have an edge. Now I just assume that’s what acting is: getting beaten up.” Most recently, he was punched in the face by model-slash-actress Agyness Deyn – with a brass knuckle – for Hard Sun. (She learnt Israeli special forces fighting system Krav Maga for the role.) Written by Neil Cross, the scribe behind Idris Elba series Luther, the pre-apocalyptic BBC series stars Sturgess and Deyn as police detectives who inadvertently uncover a government-level conspiracy to conceal the inconvenient truth that the sun is going to destroy the Earth in five years. As knowledge of impending doom becomes more widespread, the fabric of society begins to unravel. At the time of writing, Sturgess has been selling Hard Sun to audiences in America. “They get bombarded with a lot of regal stuff, and they have a particular idea of what England looks like and sounds like,” he says. “It’s nice to show another side of London – a bit more contemporary.” Less like, say, 2008’s Tudor period drama The Other Boleyn Girl, where he played the brother of Natalie Portman’s Anne and Scarlett Johansson’s Mary, with Eric Bana as Henry VIII. Besides, Hard Sun is “very international”, even if it’s set in the UK: “If you live on this planet, you’re definitely involved.” Hard Sun also involved Sturgess wearing a suit every day, something he’d usually only do on special occasions. “It killed the joy,” he says. “I remember going to the Baftas, so I got out of one suit that I’d been wearing for months and put on another. Normally I’m pretty scruffy, so to put on a suit is quite a big change. It’s nice to put something on occasionally and feel a bit … You just feel different in a suit, don’t you?” Sturgess feels different whenever he gets into costume for a role. “It’s when the character comes alive, when you put on his clothes and the shoes that he wears,” he says. “It’s your identity. When you put on a different pair of shoes, you feel like a different version of yourself. So it’s really not until you put the costume on, clothes that you’ve specifically chosen to represent the character, that you understand, ‘OK, this is who he is.’” It’s surprising to hear that it all comes together at that late a stage, albeit after much planning and research. “Yeah, for sure,” insists Sturgess. “It’s always a very exciting moment, actually, when you go, ‘All right, there he is. That’s the way he’s going to look.’” One of Sturgess’s most sartorially memorable roles was the one furthest removed from any semblance of fashion: 2010’s The Way Back, inspired by the memoir of a Polish officer who claimed to have escaped from a Siberian gulag during WWII and trekked 4,000 miles across the Himalayas to British India. (A 2006 Radio 4 documentary questioned the veracity of the account, although there is evidence that someone did do the walk – just not the author.) “One of the great things that the survival expert told us was that you would never throw anything away,” remembers Sturgess. “So you wouldn’t get rid of your jacket, even in the desert – you’d cut it up and wear it as a headband.” Sturgess went straight from that to 2011’s One Day, the adaptation of the then-unavoidable David Nicholls novel with the instantly recognisable orange cover. Over the course of two decades of on-off romance with Anne Hathaway’s Emma, his character Dexter graduates from student to successful 90s TV personality. “Suddenly I’m in a tight pair of leather trousers and a giant jacket,” Sturgess laughs. “You couldn’t feel more different. And the clothes definitely navigate those feelings.” Those feelings were more combative in the case of London Fields, the adaptation of the Martin Amis novel also starring Billy Bob Thornton, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which has been trapped in legal limbo since 2015 after the director sued the producers for allegedly releasing their own cut (panned by the few critics who saw it). Sturgess played petty criminal and pub darts virtuoso Keith Talent, covered in tattoos and a grimy beard that made him feel “a bit tastier than I probably was”. This nearly proved disastrous when someone almost ran him over in a car: “I got really aggressive with him, and quickly realised that he was double my size.” Still, at least he’s used to being beaten up. Sturgess’ own sartorial identity was influenced by American skateboarding culture. “Certainly, when I was in my teenage years, I was very skateboard-heavy in my fashion,” he says. “And now most people look like skateboarders. It blows my mind that the standard footwear is a pair of Vans. Because when I was younger only someone who was into skateboarding would wear Vans.” He’s similarly bemused that lowly streetwear brands have ascended to the height of fashion, and that kids now queue round the block and overnight for the latest product drop at the Supreme store he used to wander into when it was just a skate shop. At the same time though, he totally gets it. “I remember my mum trying to put me into a pair of shoes that weren’t Converse All Stars,” he says. “They looked exactly the same, and they’d probably be way cooler now, but I was mortified. I was like, ‘No, they have to be Converse.’ My mum was like, ‘But they’re too expensive. These one look exactly the same – they’ve even got a star.’ And I was in tears: ‘Mum, you don’t understand. I can’t wear these to school: I’ll get crucified.’” The other major key to Sturgess’s wardrobe choices was music. He started a band when he was 15, singing and playing bongos in pubs despite being under-age. When school and the band finished, he went to the University of Salford to study media and performance, and be closer to the Manchester music scene. “There were a lot of jackets done up to the top and desert boots,” he says. “I miss that different kinds of music were so influential in the way people dressed. It was almost like a gang mentality: you’d have mods, you’d have rockers, you’d have two-tone … And now everyone looks roughly the same. But maybe that’s because I’m just hanging out with 40-year-old men. I don’t know.” Sturgess was as obsessed with films growing up as he was records. “Even at school, drama and music were the two things I was interested in,” he says. His uni course taught him scriptwriting, editing and theatre production as well as acting; he wrote and performed a one-man show called Buzzin’ that brought him to the attention of an agent, who encouraged him to move to London. Instead of kickstarting his acting career, he got into the Camden music scene and started a band called Saint Faith, taking bit parts in TV and ads to pay the rent. When they broke up, Sturgess was cast in 2007’s Across the Universe, a film musical based on Beatles songs and a perfect fit for his skill set. The common thread between music and acting is creativity and, perhaps not obviously in the latter’s case, self-expression. “It’s interesting because they’re very similar and totally opposite at the same time,” says Sturgess. “When you’re writing and playing music, it’s completely you, naked and bare; when you’re acting, you’re pretending to be somebody else. But you use your own emotions and life experiences to try and relate to the character. At the same time, people behind a microphone are playing some sort of a character. They might tell you that they’re not, but there is a level of performance that isn’t you while you’re just sitting with your mum and dad having a roast dinner.” Sturgess describes his diversion into acting as “circumstantial”; even now that he’s a star, music remains a big part of his life. “I’ve got a little studio at home, and then a lot of my friends are musicians,” he says. Over the years and the various bands, he’s amassed a vast quantity of unreleased material; he’s just now really putting his mind to doing something that might actually get out there. “I just want to finish a cohesive record that kind of has a beginning, a middle and an end,” he says. “Not just a load of scratchy demos that are all just lying around that could potentially grow into something great.” Songwriting inspiration can strike Sturgess in different ways. “Sometimes it’s just a thought,” he says. “Sometimes you’ll be messing around on the guitar and a little melody comes into your head, but you have no idea what the song’s about. Sometimes it’s lyrics: you build a song around the words first. Sometimes you can hear a drum loop, someone starts messing around with some melodies and then you just start singing on top.” Either way, it tends to be followed by a great deal more perspiration: “the grinding bit”. Sometimes Sturgess will know from the first page of a script how he’ll play a character – and sometimes not. “I’ve been offered things and I’m like, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me to do this,’” he admits. “And that’s always quite exciting because it’s out of your comfort zone. You have to build a character, and change the way you speak and move.” For that, he accesses a database being constantly compiled. “Sometimes you’ve got a character in your head that you’d love to find a story for, and then you read something and go, ‘I could put that into this,’” he says. “Or you’ve noticed somebody on the Tube: ‘That’s interesting, the way he is.’ Then you read something and go, ‘I could use a bit of that.’” Getting noticed on the Tube is not something that Sturgess has to worry about – not even on buses with a picture of his face on the side. “Nobody’s that interested, really, so it’s very grounding,” he says. “In LA, people are very excited about movies, it’s an city built around the movie industry, and actors are kind of the commodity of that industry. So you feel a bit of treatment that you definitely don’t get when you come home.” London brings him back down to earth with a bump: “I’m very quickly getting knocked over on the Underground.” He tells an anecdote about a foreign tourist at King’s Cross who kept saying to him, “You’re a star, you’re a star.” Turned out she was looking for the Eurostar. That probably has more to do with Sturgess’s down-to-earthness than any lack of profile. Certainly, though, his flight path has brought him into the orbit of some massive stars. Like Tom Hanks, his co-star on 2012’s Cloud Atlas, who Sturgess describes as “the nicest guy you could possibly imagine” (exactly how you’d imagine him, then). “He took it on himself to organise a movie night every Sunday at his apartment in Berlin,” Sturgess says. “He’d order loads of food and put out the word to the cast and crew. And we’d all pile round there, hungover from Saturday night, to sit on his couch and watch movies.” Hanks would also talk with Sturgess about music: “He knew quite a lot about hip-hop.” Ed Harris, his co-star on The Way Back, is another. “He was one of the first actors that I worked with who I was so in awe of, and who became a friend, which was amazing,” says Sturgess. “He really took me under his wing, we bonded and we’ve stayed in touch ever since.” A surreal scene ensued in a hotel in New Orleans where the pair were working together for a second time, on 2017’s Geostorm. “We bumped into Billy Bob Thornton, who I’d just done a film with in London, in the foyer of the hotel,” says Sturgess. “We were in an elevator – a lift – and I introduced Ed Harris to Billy Bob Thornton. And I was just standing in the middle of two of the coolest dudes I know.” Sturgess doesn’t know what the future holds, beyond the release of two films that he shot after Hard Sun. The first, JT Leroy, is the strange but true story of a woman, played by Laura Dern, who writes a fictional memoir in the persona of a 15-year-old boy. When it becomes a literary sensation, she convinces the younger sister of her boyfriend, played by Kristen Stewart and Sturgess respectively, to masquerade as the non-existent male author – for six years. The second, Berlin, I Love You, is an anthology of 10 romantic stories set in the German capital and the latest in the series that began with 2006’s Paris Je T’’Aime; Dame Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley grace the ensemble cast. “It always surprises you,” Sturgess says of his fluid profession. “Which I quite like. What’s going to happen next? What sort of story am I going to be involved in telling?” Back in his normal “scruffy” clothes, he blends into the Chiltern Street foot traffic like a chameleon, just another anonymous extra in the movies of everyone else’s lives. (credit)

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