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wonderrdies · 4 years ago

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if love be rough with you - part 2

In which you and Harry are professors at a prestigious Art and Language university and the animosity of part one is discussed. Also, you fuck.

disclaimer: just a huge thank you to everyone who said nice things about part one, especially @for-fucks-sake-h. I hope y’all enjoy this one!

warnings: it has sex, folks. I’m not that good at writing it, but it’s in there. also, use condoms; these intellectuals are very fictional and also horny dumbasses.

word-count: about 6,000 words

part 1

As the car rolled to a stop, lighting tore across the sky.

“Come upstairs,” you said. Obnoxiously loud thunder boomed, providing much needed context for your invitation. You didn’t like the idea of him in your space, your privacy and vulnerability out in the open where he could pick them apart. The alternative was worse, though. Finding him annoying wasn’t the same as wanting him dead in a ditch.

“No need,” Harry said calmly, the way he did everything else.

“Look, just come upstairs and leave once the rain stops. You owe me, remember?”

He raised an eyebrow, clearly not expecting you to fight him on this. His coat was still draped over your shoulders and you had spent the last fifteen minutes in his comfortable leather seats, sipping on a water bottle he got you at a gas station. There was also a milk chocolate bar on your lap, the kind you used to eat during movie nights in university. You knew what he was thinking: if he had owed you, that didn’t look to be the case anymore. But half an hour of kindness didn’t erase the sound of his condescending darling making you feel small and embarrassed, especially when you were the one trying to help him.

“I’m not going to say please, Harry. Let’s go.”

So you walked out into the pouring rain, barely keeping from slipping and falling on your ass. His coat precariously covered your hair as you fumbled for your keys and finally got into the building.

Harry was right behind you, not saying a word as you climbed the stairs. The apartment looked so much smaller with him in it. You refused to feel embarrassed, but you could see him examining every corner from his spot next to the door as you dropped your purse and keys onto the counter that separated the kitchen and your bed.

"I—" you stopped yourself before telling him I know it's small. Having a home of your own, no matter how small, was not something you would apologize for. "Do you want something to drink or eat?"

You proceeded to take off your shoes, tie your hair back in a ponytail and brush your teeth, all while Harry stood, stiff, in the same spot without giving you an answer.

"Styles, what the hell?"

"Huh," was his brilliant response.

"Huh what?"

"You just look a little different, 's all."

"Must be the gin," you said. "Speaking of which, do you want water or wine?"

"Water's good," smiling to himself, he said: "Thank you."

"What's so amusing?"

His smile faded and you instantly regretted asking. While you poured his glass of water to the sound of heavy rain, Harry leaned on your door as if ready to run away at any second. It was a little hurtful, if you were being honest.

“You can have a seat, you know,” you handed him the glass, hoping to sound breezy and relaxed, or whatever. It didn’t come naturally. “The rain’s not going anywhere for awhile.”

Harry nodded and sitted on one of the two kitchen stools. The fact that he was so quiet almost made you miss his usual outspokenness.

As he drank his water, you sorted through the drawers of your dresser in the awkward silence, pushing aside turtlenecks and pencil skirts so you could get dry and actually comfortable clothes. Two t-shirts, two boxer shorts.

“I’ll change into something dry, you should probably do it too,” you pointed to the clothes you just dropped onto the bed, his eyes on you the whole time. “I figure these might fit you.” And before you could talk yourself out of it, you said: “You can also practice saying words while I’m in there.”

The bathroom door clicked as it closed between the two of you. Taking a deep breath, you undressed while listening for any sign that he had moved from the kitchen stool. A sign that he was mirroring your every move, peeling off wet clothing while trying to picture the other side of the door. It was foolish to project your filthy thoughts into Harry, but you couldn’t help it. You just wanted so badly to believe that he was out there wanting you too, that he didn’t bring up that night so often just to humiliate you.

The soft cotton of the old university t-shirt you wore to bed looked like something out of a time machine under the bright bathroom lights with him standing outside. How many nights had you worn that same thing and smiled at him from across whatever room, beating yourself up for not being able to just say hello? Maybe more than hello.

All of it seemed to have happened many lives ago.

“Can I come out? Are you decent?” you asked, barely recognizing your own voice. It sounded too casual.

“Decent, me?” his answer came muffled. “Never, darling.”

You walked out, only to find yourself in a scene straight out of a porno. Harry was leaning on your kitchen counter, amusement in his eyes, dressed in your shakespeare is my boyfriend extra large t-shirt and way-too-tight boxers. His lilac pants and cream sweater laid in a pile on your bed looking like an afterthought and, even though he looked so different from his usual posh self, his pearl necklace was still decorating his absolutely maddening neck. He looked so much bigger. Maybe it was the way your clothes clung to his biceps and thighs, or the fact you hadn’t been this close to him without heels in years. Maybe your apartment was just too small.

“Am I wearing some other guy’s underwear?” Harry asked, suddenly serious.

“Huh?”

He looked down, pointing to his restricted and very prominent bulge, and your face was suddenly on fire. This certainly couldn’t be considered an appropriate move for a co-worker, right?

“It’s mine, Styles. I wear them to bed,” you cleared your throat, looking up again. Tugging at your own, admittedly much looser, shorts, you said: “See?”

“Yeah,” his voice was rough, barely more than a whisper. You could feel his eyes all over you, like they were fingertips threatening to touch you but never quite doing so. A shiver, like the one in the pub, ran through you, and you were suddenly aware that your nipples were very much visible and poking through thin cotton. “I see it.”

You stood still as he spoke again, trying to keep your eyes above his chin. But then again, those lips and eyes were not that much better than his cock straining against your clothes.

“Sorry about the weirdness earlier,” he continued. “I was just trying to get used to all this.”

“What’s all this?”

“You, so careless, in your natural habitat. It’s like the inside of this place is an alternate universe.”

An alternate universe, indeed. The hours of uninterrupted storming had eventually tired both of you out; you couldn’t let him stand in a corner or sit in a stiff stool all night. As it became clearer and clearer that he’d spend the night, you suggested watching a movie, even though it was obvious the two of you were exhausted. The whole thing was a poor attempt at avoiding the fact that there was no place for him to sleep but your bed. You certainly could handle smirks, teasing looks, sexually charged remarks, even handle his thighs and the outline of his cock in your clothes, or the vanilla smell he would definitely leave on your nerdy t-shirt. Would sitting in bed together and watching a movie be hard? Absolutely. But falling asleep next to him crossed some terrifying line; it had happened before, and the slightest possibility of having it happen again only so he’d use it against you later was just too much.

So now you were on your bed, backs resting against the headboard as you watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. While his legs stretched out beneath the shared gray comforter, yours were against your chest; if you curled up a little more, you’d probably disappear into thin air. His slightest move could be felt by you just by the shifting of the mattress, and the movie was next to inaudible for the sole reason that you couldn’t help but focus on the sound of him breathing right next to you. On your bed. Every few minutes you’d feel him staring at the side of your face, but your gaze remained stoically on the TV screen until he called your name in a whisper.

“Yeah?” you answered, glassed over eyes still on the movie. The second task of the Triwizard Tournament had just begun.

“I’m sorry.”

That got your attention. “What do you mean?”

“I just—” Now Harry was the one looking away from you. As if talking to the movie, he said: “I know the whole darling shit I say gets to you. And I know it’s gross to keep bringing up that night.”

Your breath got stuck in your throat. The whole thing was just too much; how dare he apologize and catch you off guard like that? Out of everything in this world he could say, that was what you least expected. It was not that you found him to be disgusting and immoral, or that you believed he acted mean because he was a genuinely bad person. You wouldn’t have put up with all the teasing if that had been the case. But you also couldn’t have imagined that he’d be brave or mature enough to apologise.

Maybe that was related to the fact that you, out of pure pride and spite, couldn’t see yourself apologizing to him.

“I think I do it because—”

“Styles,” you finally cut him off. “You don’t have to.”

“No, I want to. I want to tell you I’m sorry that I’m a dick to you only because I’m insecure and kind of a coward, to be honest.”

You scoffed before realizing how rude that was.

“What?” he asked. You could see him tense up, his brows furrowing, and guilt started burning in your cheeks.

“Sorry,” you muttered. “It’s not funny, I just find it hard to believe you do things out of insecurity.”

“Well,” he said, “I find it hard not to be insecure when things happened the way they did.”

Great.

“And how did things happen, huh? What are you even talking about, Harry?”

He sighed. His hand was halfway up to his face before it fell back onto the mattress af if he’d changed his mind about putting something between your eyes and his. Again, braver than you figured he could be.

“Look, I don’t want to fight. I guess I was just trying to make sure you didn’t forget.”

Suddenly there was no clarification needed. You looked at him as he nervously tugged at his pearls after having just admitted whatever happened between you two had meant something to him. At least it had meant enough that he needed you to remember it. How could I ever forget it?, you wanted to ask him. But it was stupid and cheesy, so you settled for wondering it in silence. How could you ever forget the giggles as he shut the bathroom door behind you, or the way you gasped as he fucked you with his fingers against the wall, his warm breath on your neck and his other palm keeping you quiet? There certainly was no forgetting his gaze through the rest of the graduation party, the brush of his hand against his lips like he wanted you to see what he was thinking about.

Once the party was almost over, he had walked over to you and said Please in the softest of voices while taking your hand. How could you ever forget that?

“I didn’t forget,” you told him now.

Harry must have seen something true in your expression, because he didn’t say another word until the movie was over.

“Should I go?” he asked, voice thick after just waking up. He had inevitably fallen asleep during the third quarter of the movie. Also exhausted, you had laid beside him at some point, making sure to put as much space as possible between your bodies. It wasn’t a lot of space.

The room was dark except for the street lights shining dimly through your curtains, so you could barely see him even though you were facing each other. His head was already on your extra pillow, your calves already on the brink of touching. Your comforter already smelled of vanilla. Should he go? Probably. But what would be the use of him leaving? There was more damage to be done if he were to drive on dark and slick roads without enough sleep.

“No,” you murmured back. “Stay.”

“That’s what I told you,” he said, sleepiness nearly gone from his voice. “Back then.”

The shadow of a smile settled on your lips. “Yeah. I was so fucking awkward about the whole thing, wasn’t I?”

“No, I thought you looked cute in my kitchen.”

You chuckled and looked at his shoulder, because it seemed close enough to his face that he wouldn’t notice you couldn’t look him in the eye anymore. The nervous edge to your laughter seemed to echo in the room.

“And then you laughed, just like that, when I told you to come back to bed.”

“I was embarrassed, Harry.”

“I could tell,” he said. Harry shifted a little; you could feel his leg leaning on yours as he got closer. “You kept tugging at my t-shirt like you wanted to hide your thighs from me.”

“Kind of pointless,” you said. He stayed quiet for a second too long as one of his legs found its way between yours. Your breath hitched in your throat even though there was no pressure; his thigh was just there, and if you moved just a tiny bit—

“Yeah, but I sort of appreciated it,” his hand touched your chin so lightly you could have imagined it. So much for looking away. Staring you in the eye, as stern as you’d ever seen him, he said: “I enjoyed watching you squirm.”

Fuck him. That’s not what insecure men sounded like. You turned away from him, your core rubbing against his thigh in the process of disentangling your legs. Hopefully the gasp leaving your lips had been made quieter by the sound of the covers moving and your body hitting the mattress. With Harry’s breath on the back of your neck, you anxiously moved, trying to find a comfortable position in which you could forget, for even a split of a second, that he was right there behind you.

“Hey,” he said, amused. “I know I just said I like it when you squirm but maybe you should—”

A careless shift of your hips and your ass was suddenly right against his cock.

“—stop.”

And he was hard. Now still, with your back to his front, you called his name.

“Harry?” It wasn’t supposed to sound like a question, but your voice trembled at the last second.

“Sorry,” but he didn’t sound apologetic at all. “We were just talking about you in my shirt and all of that, so…”

“God, Styles.”

Harry laughed, and you felt it in the spot right under your ear. You pressed your thighs together since your frustration with his shamelessness wasn’t able to end the urge of grinding back against him. Just a little bit more, and then maybe you could fall asleep and wait until he was gone to masturbate and pretend this all had been a fever dream.

His hand grabbed your waist harshly as you moved your ass again.

“Are you sure you want this?”

You didn’t answer him, or ask what exactly this was, but you did push against him once more. Some stupid part of you hoped he would play along and let things go unspoken, but Harry just used the hand on your hip to keep you still as he spoke again.

“Say you’re sure,” he murmured. His mouth was closer now, and you could feel every word on his lips against your neck. The hand that rested on your waist fell to your stomach, pulling you into him. “And I’ll help you."

"Styles," you breathed out, looking down as he lifted your t-shirt just enough so his fingertips would brush the skin above the waistband of your shorts. "I don't—"

"What?" his chuckle echoed through your entire body. There wasn't an inch of space between the two of you. "Are you going to say you don't know what I'm talking about?"

You choked on a whimper.

"All you have to do is ask," a light kiss under your ear. That was the first time he kissed you in years, and it almost broke you. But that wasn't what did it. Harry broke you by whispering, so quietly you could have imagined it: "I won't hold it against you, love."

The realisation that you believed him was enough to make you say a soft okay.

There was no hesitation; his hand slid down the front of your boxers, the heat of his palm right between your legs. Your thighs closed around him, a moan caught in your throat as two of his fingers rubbed your clit through your panties. You were a mess, it was true, but Harry didn't seem much better. His heavy breath sounded obscene against your neck, his cock twitching at the small of your back.

"Spread your legs," he said, struggling to touch you in such a tight space. It sounded like an order.

"Don't tell me what to do," you said, barely disguising your lust behind annoyance. Then you spread your legs, letting Harry move his fingers in small circles that got you dripping without ever being enough. You tried shifting your hips to get more friction, but he kept rubbing you slowly as you soaked through your panties, seemingly entertained by your desperation. "Harry," you called, breathless.

"Yeah?"

The hand that wasn't under your clothes came to tug on your hair, and you burned. Your scalp, your skin, your pussy. He set it all on fire. One of your hands gripped his thigh, a soft moan leaving your lips as he responded to your touch by tightening the hold on your makeshift ponytail.

"Touch me."

He didn't try pretending to not understand what you meant, which you were thankful for. Then he fucked that up by muttering, ever so fucking smug, "Don't tell me what to do."

"Asshole," you hissed at the same time he moved the fabric of your underwear aside to tease your entrance with the fingers that had been touching your clit.

"Don't be mean, love," he started fingering you, slow but firm, the filthy sound of your wetness echoing in the room as his fingers curled inside you. "I know how you really feel."

There was no way you could muster up an answer; eyes hazy and jaw slack with arousal, you let him fuck you for what felt like ages without being able to form a single word. Sometimes he'd brush his thumb against you clit just so you'd clench around his hand, whining quietly as he muffled his own sounds on the crook of your neck. Once or twice he appeared to think you were gone enough to not notice as he tried to get his cock away from your body in a futile attempt of self-restraint, but each time you pulled him back by the thigh, grinding into him and getting fucked deeper as a result. Harry punished you for that by pulling harder on your hair, delighting himself in the fact that it only made you wetter, your movements more eager.

As your hips stuttered at another soft touch to your clit, Harry whispered, "Does it feel good?"

What a prick. He wanted you praising him, didn't he? Wanted you admitting how hot this all was, how you would have let him do anything to you. Harry wanted you to tell him how good he was at pushing your every button, clearing every thought on your head until him filling you was all that was left.

"What do you think?" you said between gritted teeth. Sweat dripped down the back of your neck as his fingers shifted in your cunt and he hit that particular spot inside you. Your glassy eyes fell shut at the sound of his voice.

"I think I missed this pussy," he said. You moaned as a third finger slid easily beside the others and the hand on your ponytail went down to your throat, over the chain of your necklace. "I think you can tell I did."

You could feel his hand hesitate on your neck, so you squeezed his thigh to assure him it was alright. Within a fraction of a second, the pressure on your throat tightened. If you could look down, you'd see your golden cross gleaming right below the hand he was choking you with. It was too much. You were going to cum and he could feel it.

"You feel incredible," Harry confessed. "I missed you."

You convulsed, a silent scream shaping your mouth as you rode out your orgasm, his three fingers still stuck between your legs. As the aftershocks stopped, you could faintly hear Harry whispering your name, the tenderness in his voice bringing tears to your eyes. But then again, maybe that was the intense orgasm.

“Are you okay?”

His easygoing voice, usually so grating, sounded quite comforting now. You relaxed your thighs, and the sound of his fingers leaving you was just a little louder than the sigh you couldn’t hold back. You mumbled an agreement to his question, and you could feel his smile at the back of your neck as he said, “Just sensitive, then.”

A beat of heavy silence, and then: “Can I touch you?”

He didn’t answer right away, even though you could still feel him hard behind you, and it killed you a little bit inside. You were about to roll away from him, already forming an excuse about cleaning up, when he spoke.

“You don’t have to,” he didn’t sound like he was smiling anymore. You wanted to turn and check, to look into his green eyes and try to find out what he was thinking, but you were scared. If his hesitation meant that you had been vulnerable for him when he couldn’t do the same for you— “I don’t want you to think that's why I apologized."

You rolled your eyes at his chivalry, but were relieved by it all the same.

“Styles,” you said. “I’m trusting you here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you finally rolled on the mattress so you could meet his eye. “Now take off your shorts.”

He smirked as you shoved the comforter off of both of your bodies, taking a second too long to admire the dimly lit outline of his body. “Y’think you’re gonna boss me around now, huh?”

“I think you’re gonna let me, if it gets you off,” you shrug.

Harry opens his mouth to argue, but stays silent once he sees you reaching for the hem of your t-shirt. You throw it to the ground and hope he doesn’t notice your expression as you make a mental note to pick it up later, but that’s obviously unnecessary since he’s staring at your chest, the glinting of the cross between your boobs and your hard nipples monopolizing his attention. His right hand, still messy with your juices, reaches out to touch you, but you lean back and make him watch as you lower your shorts and underwear in one go before kneeling back on the bed.

“So?”

He shook his head, unbelieving, and took one final look at your naked body before meeting your eyes. “You love this, don’t you?”

Harry undressed like you’d done; t-shirt, then shorts, then kneeling back on the bed. You wanted to look down at his cock, see the proof of how much you got to him, but couldn’t leave his gaze. There you both stood on your knees, silently staring at each other’s mere silhouettes. Like the gold of your chain, the pearls on his neck were more visible than the rest of him. “You love talking like we’re at some game you can win,” he clarified, smiling.

“Are you saying you don’t do the same?” skepticism dripped down your words.

“I’m saying you can’t win.”

The way he could go from earnest to cocky in the blink of an eye was sort of giving you whiplash. It did make things interesting, though. He threw whatever he felt like saying your way, apparently without thinking twice; for the second time that night, you surprised yourself by thinking of him as brave.

His clean hand came to touch your face, his thumb brushing your cheek in the most romantic gesture you had witnessed since he’d held your hand all the way back to his place when you were graduating university. Harry called your name like a prayer.

“Can I kiss you?”

It was such a weird question, considering you’d just cum all over his hand. But it felt so fitting, so right. Being attracted to him and having teasing banter were not questionable, that was just how you operated. It had been taken to an extreme, sure, but it wasn’t new. This was new. You nodded anyway.

He met you halfway, his lips tasting yours as your bare bodies touched for the first time in years. You whimpered into each other's mouths, Harry's hands tangled in your hair while you held his face like it could break. You could feel his erection between you, twitching every now and again when your tongue dragged against his, some precum getting on your belly.

"H," you moaned between kisses when one of his hands descended to your chest and teased your nipple.

He stopped kissing you for a second too long, leaving your swollen lips tingling as you waited for him to catch his breath. But he didn't kiss you again, just stood there touching your boob and the back of your neck, eyes going over every inch of your face. You could feel yourself blushing at the attention, already at the brink of an awkward giggle, when he said quietly "You haven't called me that in a while," he cupped your face gently, then planted the ghost of a soft kiss to your lips. "I like it."

You smiled and kissed him again, because you were worried about what you would say if you put that kiss into words. Each feverish movement brought you closer until you were practically on top of him, sitting on his thigh. Harry grabbed your ass, urging you to move; you gasped as he pushed you to grind on his leg, no longer able to keep kissing his lips but definitely working on making a mess of his thigh.

"Love," he whispered in your ear. "I really wanna fuck you. Can we do that?"

The nails digging into his back made Harry let out a breathy laugh. You made a move to touch his dick, but his hand grabbed yours right before you could. "I want you to cum on my thigh first."

"But you—"

You sounded broken, legs burning as you rode his thigh frantically.

"I'll have my way with you, don't worry," he said. "So desperate to get on my dick, aren't you?"

The only sound of outrage you could muster was a low growl as you threw your head back, neck exposed for his teeth as your clit pulsed against the muscle of his leg. Harry kept holding onto you, assisting your every move as his lips worked on your neck. The sharp sting of his teeth followed by his tongue as he tended to the bruises he had just created, his soft curls on the side of your face, a tight grip on your ass and your back.

"Are you going to come for me again so I can fuck that pussy like I've been wanting to?"

Your hips stuttered and you came for the second time, whimpering and refusing to let him go as he gently laid you down on your back, still shaking. Harry tried to get up but you wouldn’t let his shoulders go, and he laughed against your lips as your mouth searched for his.

“Y’know,” you said, voice sounding unnaturally raspy, words practically breathed into his mouth. “You can’t talk like that.”

“Yeah? Why is that?”

��It’s not fair, H.”

He didn’t argue with that. You felt him reaching between your bodies, hissing a little when he touched himself. “I’ll make it fair,” he told you. “Like it used to be. Okay?”

Maybe you had been made insane by your post-orgasm haze, because that made perfect sense. You nodded, not a bit of hesitation, as he teased your oversensitive clit with the head of his cock.

“Don’t tease, Styles,” you said, and it sounded so much more like your usual self that it brought a sparkle of defiance to Harry’s eyes. “Don’t even think about it.”

He arched an eyebrow, smirking, but seemed to give in to your command. “You know me too well.”

Then he fucked into you slowly, and you could feel your cunt gripping his every inch as he bit into your neck again, muffling whatever sounds he felt like making. His pearls hung between you as he thrusted, losing all the control he had seconds ago. Harry was doing it fast and hard, a little out of it, until you caught his necklace between your teeth and he moved his hips with such precision that you held back a scream.

"Like that, huh?"

He grabbed one of your thighs and lifted it just enough to get the same angle everytime he moved into you. Your wetness made a mess of his crotch and the insides of your thighs, your eyes rolled behind your now closed eyelids, you drooled all over his pearls. Harry called your name, desperate, when you pulled his hair with enough strength to leave his scalp sore.

"I can't," he mumbled into your ruined neck, holding your thigh so hard it would be sure to bruise as he used his other arm as leverage to fuck you, fist tight on the comforter. "Sorry, love."

He moved as if he'd pull out, and you held him closer, letting his necklace fall from your lips. "No, H," you said. "It's ok."

His brows furrowed as he hesitated, torn between listening to your words or his own head, that knew better than to cum inside you. Not wearing a condom had been reckless enough, and he wasn’t a stupid kid anymore.

“I’m on the pill,” you told him. A particularly sharp thrust followed your statement, and you turned your face away from him, staring at the arm supporting his body so Harry wouldn’t see the entirely fucked-out look on your face. You kissed his bicep softly, just a drag of your panting lips against his skin. “Just give it to me.”

That was enough for him to cum with a low drawn out groan followed by a quiet whimper of your name, body shaking over your own. Barely any time had passed when he pulled out of you, spilling onto your sheets and your thighs. You shivered, feeling his cum staining your skin as he mumbled nonsense into your throat.

Apparently the nonsense meant he still wasn’t done with you, because Harry started kissing down your side as soon as his legs could move enough to get him up the bed and kneeling on the ground. “Styles,” you said urgently, sitting up. “You don’t—”

“Shut up,” he said against the crook of your hip.

“Don’t be a dick—”

He interrupted you by licking a stripe from your entrance, still dripping in his cum, to your neglected clit. You cried out, too sensitive, as he licked, sucked, and kissed your swollen flesh until he had you coming for a third time, his chin glistening with the mess you made together as your lifeless body fell back on the bed.

Harry stood up, still shaking a little, and pulled the comforter over you before falling onto the bed himself.

“Next time we do this,” he said, breathless, while you were still twitching from your last orgasm, and you found that very presumptuous of him. “I’ll bring over that old t-shirt so you can wear it.”

You turned slowly onto your side so you could face him, letting him see your puzzled expression. Then you remembered what he was talking about. That morning, with you in his kitchen, you had been wearing his but daddy, I love him t-shirt. You laughed, incredulous.

“Want me to call you daddy, H?” you joked.

His cock twitched against your thigh. “Oh my God,” you cried out, cheeks hurting a little because you couldn’t help the widest smile. “I can’t believe you!”

The echo of his laughter followed you to sleep.

Harry woke up to silence and an empty bed. From where you sat at the kitchen counter, you could see him anxiously looking around as if he’d find at any second that you had panicked and left, abandoning him in your own apartment. The moments he spent searching for you made guilt tug at your heart; he knew you could, at any second, decide to pretend last night hadn’t happened.

But the fact that you could didn’t mean that you would do it, so when he finally turned on the bed and met your eyes, you smiled softly.

“Good morning, Styles,” you said. “How do you feel about tea?”

You lifted your own mug in a sort of awkward toast. Harry didn’t seem to mind, though. He just smiled and nodded, hoping that would suffice as an answer.

“Your clothes are in the dresser, but you can just take mine if they’re more comfortable.”

Harry dressed in silence, his cream sweater over your boxer shorts, as you poured his tea. You laid his mug beside your own, watching him. His hair was adorably disheveled, eyes a little swollen with sleep, and his thighs looked just as amazing as last night in your clothes. He also looked very cozy in his sweater, and the realisation that you wanted to hug him didn’t scare you as much as it would have yesterday.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes with one hand and grabbing his tea from the counter with the other. He looked at you, fresh out of the shower and wearing a cardigan over a sundress, like Markham and your kitchenette had collided to form an outfit. “You look good.”

You shrugged but smiled, a relatively comfortable silence falling over the both of you.

“We should talk—”

“Do you want to—”

Harry put his mug to his lips to let you know you could speak first. You cleared your throat, at a loss for words.

"Last night was nice."

What a poet. Harry smirked, but didn't interrupt you.

"And I—” you took a deep breath, shifting your gaze to his hands so you wouldn't have to look him in the eye. He had very nice hands. "I'm sorry for the past couple years, too. I felt like you were trying to make my life harder just for a laugh, using whatever good thing had happened between us to hurt me. It made a little bitter."

He arched an eyebrow.

"Very bitter."

"And I was very childish," he said. "I was upset that you treated me like a stranger when I got to Markham, and I became a little shit about the whole thing."

"I just—I wanted to make something out of myself here. And then you showed up and I couldn't be that person around you. It drove me mad," you finally looked up at him. "You drive me mad."

Harry carefully put his mug on the counter, then took yours from you and did the same. With warm hands, he held your face while planting the sweetest kiss on your mouth.

"We'll do better," he whispered against your lips. "Won't we?"

"Yeah," you whispered back. "We will."

But first, payback. Harry Styles could fuck you to the moon and back, or whatever it was he'd spent the last weekend doing, but he would not get away with last week's little stunt, or with robbing you of precious room 103. Your beige heels clicked on the creaking floors of the disgusting classroom where you taught on Mondays as you talked your students through next week’s lesson plan. Was it a little beyond your qualifications as someone with a master's on Literature? Yes. Would that stop you? Absolutely not. They seemed excited about the whole ordeal, and that was enough to convince you that you weren't being a bad teacher, exactly. Good teachers were fun, right?

Maybe Harry had been a good teacher all along. Having that nice, kind thought cleared your conscience entirely as you proceeded with your plan.

The teasing between you two wasn’t entirely gone throughout the week, but it did lose most of its mean edge. Calling him a fucking hippie, or whatever was something that could apparently be accomplished in a much more tender tone, the one you also used to say “Fuck off, H,” when he jokingly called you Professor Umbridge. Every day of the week he had driven you home after class, bought dinner that you ate together on your bed, and kissed your neck in very particular spots. Talking to him was surprisingly easy, and you could entertain each other for hours only by telling weird anecdotes both from university and Markham, friends and professors and colleagues and students all becoming the background to the life you had lived together even though you were apart. There was also so much you still had to learn about one another, childhood and teenage years and post-grad, and the time for all of it would eventually come. Now was the time for retribution.

It was the next Monday, and both of your classes had started a few minutes ago. Well, his had. Your students were all standing around the corridor on the first floor, silently waiting in costume for their cue.

The fact that Harry was so soft spoken made it pretty hard for you to pick an appropriately disturbing time to get the plan going, but at some point you could hear a few of his students’ voices. Assuming that meant a discussion was taking place, you nodded towards Richard, your Romeo, and he stepped forward.

Some of the other Drama students followed suit, prop torches in hand as the scene indicated, and together they burst into room 103 as Richard, with the poise of a Shakespearean character, recited loudly: “What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?”

Khalil, head held high, walked in right after and spoke as Benvolio.

As the student playing Mercutio was saying something about gentle Romeo, you walked up the classroom door.

Harry was standing behind his desk, your golden cross shining beneath his pearls; you had put the necklace on him as a joke during your Saturday dinner and he hadn’t taken it off since. His brows were furrowed and his mouth gaping as if he had forgotten to close it, while his students appeared to be mildly amused. Your kids without speaking parts were pacing between rows of desks on their way to a nonexistent ball as Mercutio, standing right before Harry, called to the Romeo at the back of the room.

“You are a lover. Borrow Cupid’s wings and soar with them above a common bound.”

Harry smiled, and the part of you seeking silly revenge took the backseat for the slightest moment. He seemed to get over the initial shock of the disruption and watched them with a delighted curiosity.

“Is love a tender thing?” Richard asked his classmate, but he could’ve been talking to the music professor. “Is it too rough , too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.”

Green eyes searched for you and found you leaning on the wooden door, ankles crossed nonchalantly and a triumphant smile on your face.

“If love be rough with you,” Mercutio told Romeo,”be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.”

But Harry was not watching them anymore as you mouthed “Got you, Styles”, the scene unfolding behind the two of you as you won.

#harry styles #harry styles fic #harry styles smut #mine #writing #if love be rough with you #enemies to lovers

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ariesnicolo · 4 years ago

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teacher au preview!! @of-scythia

for context: nicky is coming to the school a few days early to set everything up in his classroom and get his orientation/paper work done, and joe stops by his room to say hello and then ends up walking him to the admin offices but they make a stop at joe’s art classroom first. not exactly fluffy pining like i said before but i wanted to show what kind of teacher joe is. pls enjoy <3 (also Alessa is the name of nicky’s younger sister)

As the two of them walk down the hallway together, Nicky remembers that they’re in the hallway for art classes. Nicky never found out which room was Joe’s during his tour with Copley, and he admits that he’s very curious to find out which room is his and what it looks like. “Which room is yours?”

“Oh, this one is mine.” Joe points to a slightly open door on the left side of the hallway, stops so he can open the door more and show Nicky inside. Nicky’s first impression of the room is that it’s a disaster. Joe’s classroom was the one Nicky saw earlier with the sketchbooks and pencils scattered around, but now that Nicky can actually take in the room, he realizes it’s much more than that.

Joe’s classroom is a lot bigger than Nicky’s, which Nicky quickly comes to understand is a necessity. Where Nicky’s classroom has about thirty individual desks, Joe’s room has six big, wooden tables scattered around the room surrounded by stools. Under all the sketch books, the tables are covered in a mess of color that Nicky can only assume is from paint and colored pencils. The walls are completely plastered in the student’s work, and Nicky spots paintings, detailed sketches, photos, and a few tasteful collages. Joe’s back counters are covered in complicated art supplies that Nicky can’t even begin to understand, and the windows in his room are covered in very thin, colorful paper, designed to look like stained-glass windows.

Nicky wants to ask if it’s actually Joe who needs help setting up his room, but he keeps that question to himself.

“It isn’t normally this messy.” Joe says, a little wince accompanying his words. “I’m just organizing the sketch books to return them to any students who aren’t taking any classes with me again.”

Nicky nods, figuring that every other part of Joe’s classroom is just as chaotic during the school year. The lack of organization for the rest of Joe’s stuff would bother Nicky, but it doesn’t seem to bother Joe, who is probably used to his room looking messy at the end of the day. Nicky can’t even imagine the horror scene an elementary school art room would be at the end of the day. “Were these all done by your students?” Nicky asks, looking around and pointing to the art on the walls.

“Yeah.” Joe sighs, and Nicky looks over at Joe to see a proud shine in his eyes. “If they’re comfortable with it, I keep all their work on the walls during the school year. I hate taking it all down at the start of the new school year, but I would never have space for anything new if I didn’t return them to the students.”

“They’re all really good. You have very talented students, Joe.” Nicky says, looking at a beautifully detailed picture of a field of wildflowers at sunset. Nicky’s eyes then catch a colored drawing of a man wearing a short, white wig and black frame glasses. Nicky does a double take on the painting, looking at it again just to be sure. “Is that… is that Danny DeVito?”

Joe laughs loudly at the surprise in Nicky’s voice, but quickly confirms that it is Danny DeVito. “I assign a portrait piece in three different mediums for all my juniors to help with their portfolios, and it can be a portrait of anybody, so Marissa- that was her name, she chose to do Danny DeVito.”

“That’s not his real hair, is it?” Nicky had only seen one movie with him in it at Alessa’s insistence, something about a little girl with special powers, and even though Alessa made him watch the movie repeatedly when they were little, Nicky doesn’t know much about him. “It looks very realistic in the drawing.”

“No, he’s practically bald. I think.” Joe says, furrowing his eyebrows as if he has to think about it to be sure. “This was just from a show he was in that she liked.” Joe smiles, but it’s small and private, like he’s thinking of the student who did this portrait. “She graduated last year and now she’s at RISD.” Nicky doesn’t know if that’s good or bad for Marissa, and it must show on his face. “Oh, uh, it’s a college in Rhode Island that’s one of the best for fine arts.”

“That’s nice. You must have been really proud.” Nicky says, because it doesn’t take a genius to see that Joe carries his pride for his students and their work in his heart. From the way he talks about his students to how he treats their art with such respect, Nicky has no doubt that Joe is a wonderful teacher and loved by every student he comes across.

“Yeah, I am.” Joe says, but the way he says it and how he looks around at all his previous student’s art, Nicky feels like he’s intruding on something personal. Nicky lets Joe have his moment to think and reminisce and looks at more of the art on the walls. All of the pieces are exceptional and detailed and well thought out, but it’s the variety in the art that gets Nicky.

It’s clear that Joe assigns themes for each project, like portraits or nature or still life, but Nicky gets the impression that each student is allowed to take that theme and do what they want with it. Nicky spots a beautiful painting from an outsider point of view of a group of people looking up at a cloud with the outline of another person in it, like Mufasa in The Lion King. Nicky also sees an equally skilled painting of The Scream, but instead of having a person’s face, it has the face of a mouse and the background looks like it’s been placed in a cage. Nicky gets the sense that Joe loves, and even encourages, all his student’s weird artistic choices.

Joe claps his hands together, breaking Nicky’s train of thought and directing his attention to Joe’s hands. Nicky’s brain short circuits when he sees that Joe is wearing thick, silver rings that are engraved with something Nicky can’t make out. Nicky thinks it’s really unfair that Joe is clearly a kind, thoughtful person and has an obvious love for all his students, but he also has shoulders that drive Nicky wild and he wears rings that Nicky is endlessly curious about.

#this is my side blog that i finally started sorry if there is any confusion about that #again sorry if it cuts off weird i just didn't know where to stop and that seemed like a good place #hope you like it and that this whole thing will be worth the wait <333

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theabominableblogger · 4 years ago

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Rewatching “Fright Night” (the 1985 version)

No I ain’t watching the remake with David Tennant. ‘Cause I said so.

*does Borat impression while loading the movie on Amazon Prime*

“Sit here beside me on the veranda.” Is this the... TV show scene? The show with Roddy McDowall?

SCARE CHOOORD!

“So... luminescent.” *laughs*

Those were some... horrible kissing noises

I like the out of context implication that as soon as the woman asks the dude to lay on her chest, Peter Vincent’s like “NONE IN THIS HOUSE!”

“IF SHE BREATHES...”

What idiot puts their smelly ass soccer cleats on their headboard?

“We’ve been going together almost a year, and all I ever hear is ‘Charley, stop it.’“ Well then maybe that’s a you problem

Also what the hell is that map thing next to Amy?

“Let’s get into bed.” *bug eyes*

Amy, that is not the look of someone who is ready to have sex.

“It says right here that the divorce rate is 76% higher among couples who don’t argue before marriage.” Shut up, Mom.

“Thank you [Amy] for helping Charley with his homework.” ...I was gonna make a sex joke here but nah.

Oh I hate Charley’s friend in his movie.

Charley’s car, while super nice, looks like a sunburnt cow

“My luck. He’s [the neighbor] probably gay.” AAAAAHHH THEY EVEN SAID IT!

I really Charley to slap Teach [Ed] at some point but I know it’s never gonna happen.

For a moment, I thought that the carpenter dude partner was gonna be like Kenny from “The War at Home” but nah. He probably just uses his teeth a lot.

*silently jamming to the background synth music*

*Charley spots a woman removes her bra in the window* What was this rated again?

AN: It’s rated R

*yells when Jerry looks over to see Charley through the window*

*Shot of Jerry’s hand pulling down the window blind* That... is a lady hand.

AN: They were actually extensions that Chris wore and he helped apply them himself so that he could just rip them off after a day of shooting

*Charley’s mom ruins Charley’s cover* DAMN IT MOM

This movie is basically “Who Cried Wolf” but with vampires?

“I’m his roommate Billy Cole.” Can you believe just that the fact that this movie was made in the mid 80s when the AIDS crisis in the US was getting ready to happen and director Tom Holland and the screenwriter went “YES they’re gonna be GAY and THAT’S FINAL”

“You actually saw the body, Charley?” Uh doesn’t that tone raise any suspicion from the detective STANDING NEXT TO HIM?

*snorts in hilarity when Billy jokingly does the sign of the cross*

Charley, I would not trust anything Teach tries to tell you.

AND OF COURSE CHARLEY’S MOM INVITED JERRY OVER

OMINOUS SYNTH CHORD

My God, Chris Sarandon...

What’s with the celery?

Charley’s mom is the most oblivious character in this whole movie, I swear

FISH EYE LENS

I forget, do we ever see Jerry in vampire bat form or do we just see him as Chris Sarandon with fangs the entire movie?

Why yes, Charley, use your tiny crucifix.

Doesn’t the whole “enter with permission” count with bedrooms too or just the house in general? If it counted with bedrooms, couldn’t Charley just put up a sign on his door that said “NO ADMISSION WITHOUT PERMISSION” and that would keep Jerry out?

Jerry is the most casual vampire I’ve seen so far. Someone would just throw a chair at him and he’ll just No-Sell it like “Listen... I was just saying...”

There’s got to be a logical way to explain this Christmas thing.

We just need a vampire that’s like Catherine O’Hara from “Schitt’s Creek”

I love how Charley’s like 80% out the window and yet he can still reach for an entire mug of pencils

NO WAIT WE SEE HIS [Jerry’s] VAMPIRE FACE NEVERMIND

Valium?!?

Christopher Lee!

THAT FRAMING [of Billy kneeling directly in front of Jerry’s legs] ISN’T OBVIOUS AT ALL TOM HOLLAND

The logic for this movie is something else. Charley sees someone on TV perform a vampire killing ON A TV SHOW and thinks “YES I’m going to ask him to help me with this vampire situation!”

This is like asking Drew Carey if he can assist in a vampire hunting

*imitates Peter Vincent shooing Charley away*

*snorts at Teach and Amy walking in on Charley setting holy stuff ALL OVER HIS HOUSE*

Also I absolutely forgot about the weird side plot with Amy being an incarnation of a past love. What is it with this and Bram Stoker’s Dracula going this route?

Man, Roddy McDowall is just a masterclass in classical acting. You can tell the different style between him and the other actors.

There’s a bust of Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu in the glass box!

AN: *in best Janet from ‘The Good Place’ impression* Fun fact, Klaus Kinski was actually an asshole

I like the red and black plaid night coat

God, all those clocks going off at once reminds me of the scene in Pinocchio. That would give me so much anxiety in real life.

WHO TOSSED JERRY THE APPLE?!?

OH AND THEY [Jerry and Billy] WALK OFF TOGETHER OF COURSE

*imitates Peter Vincent saying “Good evening good evening”*

*going through AO3′s Fright Night 1985 tag as Peter explains what he’s doing* Wow there’s four pages. I might have to bookmark some of these.

Ohhhh kay, nevermind on half of these. Not into that. Nope nope nope.

I forget, is Billy also a vampire? Or is he like some ghoul? Werewolf?

...Interspecies romance?

For a fact, I know that if CinemaSins covers this movie, they would award Jerry the “eating an apple because he’s an asshole” sin and I would laugh

Oh he’s [Jerry] gonna go for the hand kiss, isn’t he?

OH GOD DAMMIT

*has to still register it*

Wait, did Jerry hold the bottle up in front of the fire in case there was actually holy water? Would heating it up counteract the holy water inside?

WAIT DOESN’T PETER CATCH JERRY’S LACK OF REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR AS THEY LEAVE?

How did they do that? Did they just... comp Chris Sarandon out or did they have him tuck out of frame but still say his lines?

AN: Tom Holland originally goofed up the shot I guess but they ran with it

JERRY IS BI HEADCANON CONFIRMED

WAIT HE FOUND THE MIRROR SHARDS

The overhead tracking shot following Ed in the alleyway is actually pretty good. And the way it slides to a normal shot is great.

Oh they do the creepy Dracula fog!

Wait, this movie came out the same year as Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Dang.

And that movie also had a weird homoerotic tone to it.

You know what, the way Jerry offers Ed salvation only to attack him was actually pretty solid. Just good acting from both of them. I was sold.

WAIT IT’S THE CLUB SCENE!

*Peter presses a cross to Ed’s forehead* Great prosthetic too, holy crap!

*jams out to the song playing at the club*

Why do Jerry’s dance clothes look like either my pajamas or really lame exercise clothes?

God, it’s [Jerry pacing back and forth watching Amy] like a cat stalking a bird holy crap

NOOOO I DON’T NEED TO WATCH THIS SHE’S LIKE SIXTEEEEENNNN

*jaw drops when Jerry runs his hand up Amy’s leg* NOOOOOO

Not gonna lie, this song almost sounded like a remix of the Nightmare on Elm Street theme

NOOOOOOOO STOOOOOPPPP CEASE DESIST

Amy’s hair just gets wilder and wilder during this dance sequence

STOOOOOOPPPP

Quick, Charley, start a fight! Just... punch someone! Commotion!

*just yells when Jerry steals a kiss from Amy*

*Amy wakes up in a white dress in Jerry’s house* NOPE

God and he [Jerry] took off his shirt too just *hides face in hands*

*covers mouth with hand in attempt not to say anything*

*Jerry’s dragging finger scrapes off wood on the banister* Oh that’s just mean

*Jerry drapes his arms over the back of Billy’s shoulders* HMM

They would be that duo who would pick up a phone and take turns to go “...surprise, Sidney...”

*A wolf walks out of Mrs. Brewster’s room* WHAAAAATTT?!?

Dang they really just tossed a plushie wolf off the stairs

WAIT the guy that did the VFX for this movie also did “Ghostbusters” if I remember correctly

AN: Yes

They are just... really dragging out Ed’s death scene

That kinda exasperated look Peter gives the smoking house is great

Wait is Billy a vampire too? Zombie? What is he?

I really just want Charley to reach out and just slightly poke dying Billy in the chest so that he crumbles backwards. That would have been hilarious.

How long is Amy’s hair?

HE [Jerry] DOES TURN INTO A BAT!

Real plot twist would be that the bat bite also starts turning Charley into a vampire so Peter would have to kill three birds with one stone (heal Charley and Amy and kill Jerry)

Boss move: Peter closing the coffin in front of Jerry

And it ends with the same shot as the opening!

“Oh, you’re so cool, Brewster.” So is Ed alive?

#fright night #fright night 1985 #chris sarandon #roddy mcdowall #peter vincent #jerry dandridge #the blogger reacts #q post

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anjuschiffer · 5 years ago

Note

Kiss 11, IzuOcha

Oh god! I haven’t written BNHA in like...months! Tho tbh, its a nice change of pace! Enjoy! :D

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Under Wraps [IzuOcha]

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Prompt: Kiss 11: Public Kiss - IzuOha

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Context: Ochako is at a press conference, talking about her latest deed - rescuing workers that were trapped in a burning enterprise caused by an ex-employee. While answering questions pertaining to the incident, reporters keep noticing that she liked to pick a certain reporter among the bunch.

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“-but seeing as we haven’t seen this new skill from you in your previous rescue, does that mean you’ve recently developed it?” A man around her age asked her, his pencil touching his notepad as he looked at her with anticipating emerald eyes.

Ochako managed to make her smile grow wider as she repeated the question to herself, all the reporters in the room noticing how her eyes softened. All cameras that were there quickly captured the moments, a few reports jotting this detail in their books.

It wasn’t the first time this occurred with the Zero Gravity Heroine.

It started four years ago, two years after her Hero debut. Ever since the rookie reporter -Deku- came into the scene, Uravity started to answer more questions, made her press conferences longer and convinced her agency to do more Q&A sections in her conferences that didn’t relate to the recent incident.

Everyone knew that Deku was the reason behind Uravity’s change, but they didn’t know how exactly. After all, what can a Quirkless reporter like him do to change one of Japan’s Top 20 Heroes?

Not only was he Quirkless, he had a horrible sense of fashion. Round glasses, a blazer and hat combo. And no, it wasn’t a fedora or a regular solid colored shirt. It was always, always, some type of hero merch.

Today’s outfit included Creati merch under his brown blazer. Yes, that simple red t-shirt was Creati merch, a matryoshka doll peeping from the breast pocket.

“Yes! Yes I did! I’m so glad that you caught it!” Ochako said with glee, placing her fingers together, making sure her pinkies didn’t touch. Despite having one of her pinkies covered by a single bandaid, it was still a habit Ochako did as a precaution. Old habits die hard after all. “I found out I was able to stabilize the amount of gravity pulling on a person a few months ago and only until this recent rescue was I able to show everyone the efforts placed into developing this skill.”

Ochako watched as the reporter wrote furiously into his notepad, not once looking down. She couldn’t help but notice the breton hat on his head, his hair peeking from under it.

If she remembered correctly, that was the hat he got from when he went to interview the Wild Pussycats. An anniversary report relating to the Waterhose Heroes. A very emotional read now that she remembered.

“And do you plan to keep working on your Quirk?”

“I do! After all, it’s how I perfected this skill.” Ochako looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching them. She looked at the scars that ran across them, each one a story to them. She looked back up. “Who knows what other skills I have yet to uncover! The only way I can discover them is if I keep working on perfecting my Quirk to save everyone in my reach.” Ochako said with a soft smile, watching as the freckled reporter watched her with starry eyes through his round framed glasses from Creati’s new fashion line.

Red definitely complimented him.

“Seeing as we are running out of time,” the conference planner said, hearing complaints from the myriad of reporters in the auditorium. “We’ll allow one final question pertaining-”

“Is it true you have yet to find a partner, Uravity?” One idiot reporter yelled from the back, all the senior ones groaning in annoyance.

Who’s clown was this? Who forgot to teach this idiot that asking that type of question made a conference end earlier than intended? That it got rid of all opportunity on elongating the already short conference? And why did he think about that question now? Uravity’s Q&A was in two days. Two. Days! Why couldn’t he wait until then to ask that question?

As the conference planner tried to wrap things up, Ochako sighed, grabbing the microphone from her manager, mouthing an apology.

“Can the reporter who said that please come to the front?”

Everyone looked around as they wondered what idiot had asked Uravity the question of the status of her love life.

Everyone groaned as they watched Reo walk up to the stage, the man sporting a grin as he walked up.

Reo - Cupid’s Nightmare. Notorious for digging into every hero’s love life, as if his life depended on it. (It didn’t.) He would do anything to try and grab a scoop, especially when it came to single heroines, but everyone also knew that he had a thing for the anti-gravity hero.

He even admitted it during a panel when he was a guest at Tokyo’s Hero Con last year.

“My ideal girl? Probably Uravity.”

Ochako frowned as Reo stood in front of her, fully knowing where this was going. “Can you repeat your question?”

“I asked if there’s anyone you’re seeing, Uravity.” Reo stated, taking out his phone to record their conversation. “After all, you’re the only heroine in your age group that has yet to find a partner. Being 24 years old, everyone would expect you to be a relationship or at least been through one.” Reo let out a smirk. “Any guy would die to have you, seeing as you haven’t changed a bit since your highschool years.” Reo let out a chuckle before stretching out his phone to Ochako. “So tell us, are you seeing anyone?”

Ochako sighed, wanting to badly roll her eyes, but she knew that it wasn’t worth it.

She had heard of Reo through her friends, Momo and the rest of the girls had warned her about him. How they talked about him finding their old apartment addresses, how he would stalk them, how they had to get restraining orders for him and how he would pester them until they would give him an answer to satisfy his question and make them feel uncomfortable and at times unsafe.

She wasn’t going to let him get his way. Not against her.

“First and foremost, I find it very rude and uncomfortable that my body should be the sole reason as to why someone should ever date me.” Ochako started, her lips a thin line. She hated that Reo still had a grin on his face, as if saying he had finally cornered her. Oh how wrong he was. “But setting that aside, my answer to your question is yes,” oh how she loved the way Reo’s grin fell. How his face paled. “I am seeing someone.”

Gasps filled the room, reporters shouting about who the lucky person was as camera shutters attempted to drown them down. No one watched as a breton hat made its way to the side of the stage.

“As a matter a fact, the two of us are getting married.” Ochako said with a smile, internally grinning as Reo dropped his phone, his eyes wide. “In the timespan of five months, may I add.”

The room soon filled with applause and shouts that congratulated her.

“You’re lying!” Reo shouted, Ochako still smiling. She had already done her part, so she let him go on. “You’re lying! I would’ve known if you were dating some!” Reo blabbered on, not registering as cameras rolled, filming his every word. “You’re just saying this to-”

“Why would she lie about something she greatly respects?”

More clicks and shutters filled the room as everyone stared with wide eyes as they saw Deku on stage, his hand on Uravity’s waist, snuggly pressed against him. “Seeing as you’re her biggest fan, you would think that you would know that Uravity holds marriage with the utmost respect. Or am I wrong, Reo?” Deku asked, a smirk on his face.

“Deku. How-”

“How did I get up here?” Deku tilted his head towards the side stage. “The perks of being her fiance I guess.” The room once again ruptured into shouts.

“Stop lying. The two of you.” Reo gritted through his teeth. He looked at Uravity with round eyes. “Please tell us that you were lying, Uravity. That you were simply saying it so that-”

“-so that people like you would get off her back.” Deku cut off, frowning. “Look man, do you know how frustrating it is to hold myself back every time someone kept hitting on her? How hard it was to pretend like I was just another face in the crowd? That I couldn’t punch you for saying countless disturbing things to my girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?” Reo asked, looking at the smirk on Uravity’s face. “You’ve never-”

“Interacted with her? Um, sorry to disappoint, but I have?” Deku pretended to count his fingers. “Have been for the past five years. We’ve been dating for the past four though.”

“How can that be?”

“Result of being an ace reporter I guess.” Deku provided, telling the truth. He also had his quirklessness to thank.

When was security going to learn to place barriers that kept everyone out and just not those with Quirks? Thanks to the flaw in the system, Deku was able to slip through Quirk detection barriers and since he didn’t have one, he was able to slip every single time.

“Ace reporter my ass. You’re just another Quirkless idiot who can’t do a single thing besides run after heroes, seeing as that the next best thing besides having a Quirk.” Reo crossed his arms, smirking when Deku frowned. “What makes you think that you’re capable of protecting Uravity. Of deserving her love?”

“First off, it’s called connections buddy.” Izuku smiled, snapping his fingers. Soon, security was escorting Reo out the room, Reo shouting insults at Deku. “Second, if she chose me, that’s all I need to know that I am worthy of her love.”

“You’ll regret taking Uravity from me, you Quirkless Deku! You'll pay for this!”

“See you in court!” Deku yelled back. “I also suggest you invest in a lawyer! I’ve never seen so many lawsuits against a tabloid reporter like yourself!”

As Deku watched the room quiet down, Ochako decided to speak up.

“Now that that is over, we would be happy to answer any-”

“KISS!” Someone from the back shouted, the other reports laughing at the request. Ochako couldn’t help but also laugh, only to stop when she felt hands cup her face.

“Izuku?” Ochako stared with wide eyes as she felt his lips pressed against hers, the clicks of cameras going mute as she melted into the gesture, pulling Izuku deeper into their kiss as she closed her eyes.

How long she had waited to do this with him. To announce her happiness to the world.

How she found love with the reporter who viewed her as Ochako and not only Uravity.

The reporter who managed to sweep her off her feet by simply asking her questions about her Quirk and work along with other mundane questions about her day.

The man who talked endlessly about his job and how he enjoyed learning about Quirks despite not having one himself.

The reporter who managed to keep Reo away from her and her friends thanks to his connections and collections of blackmail.

The man named Izuku MIdoriya, who proposed to her after having received her ranking of number 11, just like the hero she had idolized as a child and who heavily inspired her career.

As the two parted from each other, Ochako stared at Izuku, watching as he stared at her with dreamy eyes before a blush formed onto his face.

“I just remembered we are on a live stream.”

#bnha #izuocha #prompting anju #anju writes

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syncogon · 4 years ago

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sad only 480p version this time, and delayed. oh well, temptation too strong, and clips on the weibo looked promising, so let’s go

mjy sighhh i guess he’s just dumb not malicious but man

“the truth isn’t important” glasses shing. oh wow that hair swish tho that was like unnecessarily well animated hahaha

iiiii just want jhx to tell off yy!! i think that’d be great, what a faceslap! also wtf is this thing? iron supplements?? a spray? icy-hot? 铁打损伤喷雾?? god i spent like five minutes trying to mouse-trace those characters and i still don’t know if this is supposed to be significant or if it’s just significant that jhx caught yy doing shady shit

anyway given music / context it seems jhx is annoyed at what yy is doing? so yay friggin finally. “our classes aren’t at nanhua” nice

“xu-da” vs “xu-ge” hmm. anyway jhx don’t fall for the lies. jhx is like sx, annoying and chuuni but probably isn’t as obnoxiously awful as he first appears... probably.... maybe.

goddd sucks that the full version of this op is kinda weird, because i LOVE this op so much like holy crap. jiyi bei yingfu huanxing....

man now im like stressed about the yf at the airport scene. trailer showed an airport. what’s gonna happennn

this exchange about dd feels so weird like it sounds like ctg is trying to explain they’re not in any pre-relationship or smth but maggie is like “i don’t mind” in a way that makes it sound like she wouldn’t mind if they’re together? what??? but whatever

ok i really enjoy this cr/yf dynamic. like i feel like it’s a bit ooc and yf as portrayed here is maybe too far on the acquiescence but also it’s really funny and sparks joy for me so i’ll buy it. i’m happy to see like established relationship stuff i think bc i generally don’t in the stuff i watch. speaking of which i’m super glad that they didn’t make the awful dumb move of trying to insert like Another wack love triangle drama dynamic thing in this like the fans want yecong and tianmai!!

wowwww it’s so nice how supportive cr is being tho like i love to see it!

handholding!! soft!! nice inversion of the earlier part where cr is bandaging his fingers. but like -

WHY DOES SHE HAVE MARKS/CALLUSES ON HER THUMB AND NOT HER PINKY??? like ok i have not played ukelele but i sure have my own share of stringed instrument finger calluses and you don’t?? press on the string with your thumb???

still, they’re trying, it’s a cute detail, i appreciate it. i liked that one wwgk review i watched yesterday that pointed out s1 was like a coming of age story disguised as a music story, whereas s2 is like a real music story....

wait this is incredibly cute wtf. oh my god.

YF SIGHED/FACEPALMED AT THAT? COME ON!! WTF THAT’S SO RUDE? THAT WAS ACTUALLY LIKE PRETTY GOOD?? AND SHE DID THIS JUST FOR YOU? like maybe not performance ready but bro she’s learned for two days!! also holy shit the strumming animation is really good for smth like this im impressed! that reminds me of the like actually legit violin animation they showed in the trailer yo im so ready

like i totally understand the frustration (damn, maggie’s face... 3 free performances? really?) but also i feel SO BAD FOR CR HERE this is so awkward oh my godddd at least ctg like tries to apologize to her (and cr’s reaction to this whole thing is also v solid, good for her) but still like damn

aww ahh man im glad maggie still like! supports encourages cr here! that’s also char dev being able to like get past her own complicated emotions at least for this sort of gesture

awwww i also like seeing maggie’s coping, the happiness philosophy i always thought that was super interesting. she’s a great char! and i think running is good

animators animate a girl running normally challenge

oh nice you have to walk a bit after sprinting, good

the train track scenes are so pretty wahhh

does... does the track just end there? what

the ~significance~ of maggie now sharing this piece of her that used to be a yf thing, with ctg

also excellent bgm - oh omg it’s og soul link remix!!!

“i don’t want you to go”

MY GOD HE’S FINALLY MAKING A REAL MOVE. and one based in real friendship. GOD FUCKING FINALLY CTG AAAAAA she’s cryyying man this exchange is also pretty cute ngl

i can’t believe they figured this out a full 4 episodes before the finale

this is so pretty here wahhhhhh i wanna ss the whole thing in 1080p

awhhhhhh

they never released pink twilight shanghai!! i want this ver!!!

aww yayyy open still cheering her on - YF BE NICE TO YOUR GF COME ON

haha this is like reverse of cr tutoring him - WAIT YEAH YF YOU WERE A SHITTY ASS STUDENT COMPARED TO HER BE EXTRA NICE

also remixed dream i dig it! sounds like new lyrics?

julliard hahahaha

dong dong goddess

HAHAHA did dd just steal ctg’s fries

ctg: expressing some deep thoughts

me: just watching dd

“forever confident, forever happy”

wait sooooooo are they a thing now or what did that count as a confession

“and qing’er is finally here” WHAT’S THE TEAAAAA WE STILL DON’T REALLY KNOW

“im a guitarist this is fine” YOU GO DD I LOVE YOU

BEACH EPISODE BEACH EPISODE BEACH EPISODE

omg oyzq. you’d think they were trying to extort a confession from him. what the hell is this instrument he said what is a xiao 箫. A WOODEN FLUTE? YOOO THAT’S COOL my god PLEASE let us get some kickass trad/modern fusion music im so ready

“i trust ouyang” ahhh double char surnames are cool

HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE FUCK

“because i’m about to have surgery on my knee” REALLY? REALLY? IS THIS REALLY HOW YOU’RE GOING TO JUSTIFY ALL THIS? FOLKS I AM LOSING MY SHIT I HAVEN’T LAUGHED OUT LOUD LIKE THIS IN SO LONG

ok this is interesting tho he’s not a dick for the hell of it it’s out of desperation or smth. but like half a year, oh no, what a horror. (i’m fresh out of hb feels ok you shaddap // tho i can also imagine the knife, like in lotus bloom, where they didn’t think szp’s injury was permanent). tho i do also like the “then we’ll be seniors we won’t have time to perform” but also that’s just a reminder that all of these ppl are like frigging 16 year olds and i still cannot take this seriously

i like “i didn’t expect, that i couldn’t give you the confidence to win”. god im so glad this confrontation is happening. man this feels like a wrap up already are they really spending all 3 last episodes on the competition? what’s the story gonna be?

feel like he’d be less ugly with hairstyle that looked more consistently like this. anyway sucks that both of them are so ugly otherwise there’s some nice sun/moon (+stars?) imagery you can get going here

GROUP CHAT GROUP CHAT GROUP CHAT

pretty! i wanna save this hq

it’s this bgm!!! godd i just want this track so bad

an empty beach?? in china near shanghai???

anyway ahhh it’s the iconic beach shot! i like how the promo ver cuts out dd lmfao

wow nine episodes in and cookie finally gets a character moment??? cookieeeeeeee i missed you

ok i can’t ship them he calls her shifu but also THIS IS SUCH A CUTE FRIENDSHIP calling every day 10 minutes?? wow!! i love dongdong and i love cookie. also this hits different in covid times “no one says that we can’t be friends because of distance”

oh i guess they are pushing this as a ship. meh.

wahhhhh. need this hq then i have more propic material.

HE HAS COVID

ah lang is VIBING oh to be the ah lang of my own life. parasurfing. walking into poles.

wow this is so modern! the red bag thing! wow i do love this show flexing the modern-ness

this is the mercedes benz arena im SURE of it ahhhh holy crap this crowd. oh to be in a crowd without mask

IT’S THIS DUDE AGAIN like the trailer spoiled this but if i found out this right here right now i would’ve lost my shit my god hahhaah

im like torn about how i feel about cr’s dress like idk if it fits her well even if it’s pretty

oh im scared i hope this doesn’t become embarrassing

OMG THEY INCLUDED PENCIL SKETCH OF THAT S1 SCENE. HAHAHA. char growth yayyyyy

ok anyway im happy!! spent like an hour watching this or something lmao but good times!! much better than last ep HAHA yayyy im so glad we’re finally at the comp and lots of these little things have been tied up now im ready for new song drops!!!

#music up #mine #synco talks

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mxliv-oftheendless · 4 years ago

Note

"I'm sorry, it will never happen again." Modern Gene/Vin? 👀☂️

So I will be giving zero context for this, other than that this idea was inspired by a scene in a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which the antagonist runs into a room chasing after Bugs, we hear a scream, and the door opens to reveal Bugs in a Southern Belle outfit hitting the man over the head with a parasol. So make of that what you will XD Also for plot purposes everyone is staying in a hotel for the 2018 KISS Expo. Thanks for enabling me, Ash. Enjoy!

(Also the Looney Tunes episodes quoted in here are Mississippi Hare and Rabbit Fire, if anyone’s curious.)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM YOU PEEPING TOM!”

“Vinnie, calm down--”

“CAN’T EVEN FUCKING CHANGE INTO MY PAJAMAS WITHOUT PEOPLE TRYING TO GET INTO MY ROOM!”

“Vinnie stop swinging that thing!”

“WELL NOT TODAY, SATAN, NOT TODAY!!”

“VINNIE IT’S ME, GENE!”

“...”

“... GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Oh, you beast! You cad! It’s getting so a girl can’t travel alone without you withered old mashers--”

Paul was in the middle of watching an old Looney Tunes cartoon when he heard a knock at his hotel room door. Sighing quietly, he got up from lying in his bed to see who dared have the audacity to interrupt his watching of Bugs Bunny bashing a man over the head with a parasol while dressed as a Southern belle.

He opened the door, and stared. “Gene?”

The bassist was looking abashed, embarrassed, and had a humiliated scowl on his face. And... was his face red? Gene’s face never got red. “Can I come in? I need advice.”

Paul raised an eyebrow, but let him in anyway, and closed the door behind him. He sat back down on his bed while Gene plopped into the armchair. He glanced at the television screen. “Bugs Bunny, huh?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Well... You know how Vinnie is staying in the same hotel as we are?”

Paul frowned slightly, confused, but nodded. “Yeah...”

“Well turns out he’s one floor below me...”

“And....”

Gene sank down a little in the armchair. “And... I may have accidentally thought I was on my floor when really I wasn’t... and thought his room was my room...”

Paul sighed and facepalmed. “Oh, God, Gene... Tell me what I think happened didn’t happen.”

Gene sank down even further. “It did,”

“Son of a...”

“It gets worse,”

Paul looked up. “How?”

“When I walked in, he was in the middle of changing into his pajamas...”

“Oh my god. What did he do?”

At this, Gene fidgeted, looking like a child who’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Well... he screamed... then grabbed an umbrella and tried to hit me with it.”

Paul stopped and blinked at him. “... He tried to hit you?”

“Yes,”

“With an umbrella?”

“Yes.”

“What, did he think you were a peeper or something?”

“His exact words were “Peeping Tom” but yes.”

A smile slowly formed at the corners of his mouth. “He thought you were a Peeping Tom???”

Gene sighed. “Yes.”

There was a pause. Then Paul burst out laughing.

Gene rubbed at his eyes in embarrassment as Paul fell back onto the bed, cackling madly. “This isn’t funny, Paul!”

“Actually it is,” Paul guffawed. “Vinnie, Vinnie Vincent, one of the band’s many shorties, swinging an umbrella at you, while shouting at you to get out of his room, because he thought you were a Peeping Tom...!” He fell into laughter again. “Oh, I wish I could’ve seen that.”

“Good thing you didn’t,” Gene muttered. Then he said aloud, “Seriously, Paul, this isn’t funny. If Vinnie decides he’s going to quit the Expo over this we’re fucked.”

“So make it up to him. Y’know, with an actual apology.” Paul sniggered. “And knock first when you go do it.”

“That’s not gonna be enough! Vinnie won’t accept it!”

“How do you know he won’t?”

“I just... I feel like he’s not going to easily accept an apology. He actually looked panicked. Then when he saw it was me, he looked like he wanted to murder me with his bare hands.”

Paul shrugged. “Isn’t that how he always looks with you?”

“Paul, I’m being serious!”

“So deal with it! And deal with it on your own, I don’t wanna get involved in this.”

Gene gaped at him in betrayal. “Paul, I thought you were my friend!”

Paul shrugged. “I’m married, Gene, I don’t have to deal with this crap.”

“What crap? There’s no crap!”

“So all the times I caught Vinnie sneaking out of your room back in the eighties mean nothing now, huh? Don’t let Vinnie hear you say that.” Gene sighed, and he went on. “Gene, just apologize. Get on your knees if you have to.”

“I might...”

“Though I thought that was Vinnie’s job,” Paul grinned.

Gene stared at him. “... That didn’t land well,”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Anyways, figure out a way to apologize. Do candy or something. Or flowers.”

Gene sighed and stood up. “Fine... I guess I can do flowers.”

“Make sure they’re purple hyacinths. They symbolize a plea for forgiveness.”

“Noted. Thanks, Paul,”

“Anytime, Gene. Now get outta my room so I can watch Looney Tunes.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Vinnie avoided speaking to Gene all the next day of the Expo. He was sure some people had noticed how every time they made eye contact he gave the bassist his most searing glare. But he also didn’t care. Bastard deserved it for barging into his room.

At one point a part of him wondered if he had overreacted a little bit. But he couldn’t be too careful. Especially with the rumors going around on the Internet... but Vinnie tried not to pay attention to those. And once again, the bastard deserved it for barging into his hotel room, while he was changing. Fucking Gene Simmons thought he could do whatever he liked...

He managed to get through the day without hitting anything or breaking anything in two (save one poor pencil he’d been holding), and when he went back to his hotel room he was ready to change, in the bathroom this time, fall into bed and sleep.

But when he walked into his hotel room, closed the door, and turned around, he froze.

There sitting on his bed was a large bouquet of purple flowers, a gold box he recognized as a box of chocolates, and a small folded note. Vinnie went to his bed and picked up the note to unfold it.

Could you please open the door?

As if on cue, there was a knock at his door. He jumped, then put down the note. An ominous feeling was stirring in the pit of his stomach; he had an idea of who the flowers, chocolates, and note had been from...

Sure enough, he opened the door and scowled. “What do you want?”

Gene stood there, hands behind his back, actually looking a little sheepish. “Can we talk?”

“About what? Seeing me half-naked? After you barged in on me?”

“Vinnie... Can I just come in, please?”

For a moment, Vinnie seriously considered shutting the door in his face. Then he sighed heavily and let him inside, closing the door behind him. He turned and crossed his arms as Gene stood in the center of the room. “Well?”

Gene sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I entered your room. I thought it was my room, and my floor.”

Vinnie gave a raised eyebrow of skepticism. “And I’m supposed to just believe you???”

“... Yes?”

He frowned. “Well I’m not convinced,”

“Seriously, it was! I was tired, I thought this was my floor, and I think your room is in the same placing as mine! I swear I didn’t mean to barge in on you like that.”

“Well it wasn’t funny. You gave me a heart attack.”

Gene sighed. “I know...” He went to the bed to pick up the flowers, and offered them to Vinnie. “Look... I’m sorry. It will never happen again. I swear.”

Vinnie looked down at the flowers. Then he looked up at Gene, and his surprisingly sincere expression. A part of him wanted to refuse. Shove Gene out of the room. Maybe even for extra measure visibly throw the flowers and the chocolates in the trash.

Then again... wasn’t this the most sincerely Gene had looked at him in literal years?

“I...”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Oh, Bugsthy! Bugsthy pal! There’sth a friend here to sthee ya! Sthurvival of the fittestht. And besthidesth, it’sth fun! Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!”

There was yet another knock at Paul’s door. He sighed and got up to answer. Again? Why couldn’t he just watch Looney Tunes in peace for just one night? This television station seemed to play Looney Tunes shorts 24/7; how many channels did that??

He opened the door, and found Gene standing on the other side. He looked like he had hurriedly buttoned his shirt, his hair was all disheveled, and there was a dark blemish on the side of his neck. And he looked very satisfied.

Paul raised an eyebrow at him. “So I guess the apology went well?”

Gene smiled. “Yep,”

“You gave him the purple hyacinths, right?”

“Like you suggested. I don’t think he recognized them, though.”

“Didn’t think he would. It’s still a nice gesture to actually seek out the right flowers. So is that all you came to tell me?”

“Pretty much,”

“Okay. Can I go back to watching my Looney Tunes now?”

“Sure thing. You’ve been watching a lot of Looney Tunes lately.”

“There’s a channel that plays them in the evening. I think it’s reruns of the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, but I can’t be sure.”

“I think I’ll check that out,”

“Like how you were checking out Vinnie tonight?” Paul grinned. Gene blinked at him, and he sighed. “Didn’t land, did it?”

“You’ve got to work on your jokes, Paul,”

#kiss band #kiss au writing #gene simmons #vinnie vincent #kiss fanfiction #paul stanley #special thanks goes to bugs bunny and his crossdressing ways for inspiring this lol #my writing #writing #writeblr #fanfiction #hope you enjoyed!#demonankh #gene accidentally scares and pisses off vinnie #and paul is the reluctant helper in this whole mess

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onewhoturns · 5 years ago

Text

fictober.23.: the first appointment

#Fictober19 Prompt: 23. You can’t give more than yourself. Fandom: Oxenfree Characters: Jonas, Duke (OC) Rating: T (no warnings apply) Tags: Angst-ish, emo Jonas, mental health & therapy Word Count: 2802

So... I'm posting this in order to maintain Fictober, but in all honesty this is actually a side scene/side story to a previously mentioned project that is still in the works and has yet to be posted. There may be some spoilers for the beginning of that fic. This is more an exploration of who this AU's version of Jonas is, how he's been affected by the things in his life- I'm calling it 'emo Jonas' but it may not be the type of emo you're expecting, I don't know.

If you want to read it when it comes up in the fic, it's looking like that would be anywhere from chapter 6 to chapter 9 (we're still in the midst of writing at the moment), and I'll update the summary and add it in as a related work when that becomes applicable.

For now, if you still want to read now (and it's cool if you don't), enjoy Jonas's first meeting with Duke, with no context to the rest of the story.

An appointment. ‘Like a doctor’s visit.’ Yeah. Well, maybe.

“Hey. You want to come on in?”

Jonas holds his breath for a second, standing from the waiting room to follow the man inside. The guy is in his early 30s, brown hair with a bit of gray starting in, just barely this side of messy, with glasses that look like he should be drinking craft brews at some gastropub in Portland. Duke. That’s a name, alright.

“Nice to finally meet in person.”

Jonas just nods. He’s not great at speaking to new people. Took him a couple weeks to start talking in intake. But he has kinda met Duke before. A pretty long phone interview, not to mention emails. They wanted to find a good therapist, and Camena had options. He’d settled on Duke.

“It’s nice to have all the paperwork out of the way already. Kind of a waste of session time, really.”

Jonas’s brows raise as he tips his head in acknowledgment and agreement.

Duke has a leg crossed over the other, and Jonas realizes, in retrospect, that the guy is actually his height. Maybe an inch shorter, but pretty damn close.

“How tall are you?” They’re the first words out of Jonas’s mouth, but they do their part.

“Six three. On a good day, anyway.”

“Nice.”

“Shoe size?”

“13.”

Duke winces audibly. “Damn, you beat me. 12 and a half.”

Jonas smirks a bit. And the ice is broken.

“You came from school?”

Jonas’s eyes wander to the side table between his chair and the unoccupied couch. He reaches for some kind of adjustable wire toy, turning it inside out and flipping it into different shapes. “Yup.”

“What’s your electives?” It’s a better question than ‘how was your day,’ at least. Duke’s foot is bouncing idly, as well.

“Gym and weight training; shop.”

“At CHS, right? Wilkinson still teaching wood shop?”

Wilkinson? “Yeah, I think that’s his name. Old guy, wears a lanyard with a whistle on it even though I don’t think he does any sports stuff?”

“Yep. He’s not too bad. Get him talking about baseball, that’s a thing. Does he still have that slugger in the workshop?”

“I… don’t know?”

“He’s got two, actually, I think. Louisville Slugger wooden bats, one official and one he made. If he still has it. I heard one year some kids stole it for a prank.”

“Kinda a dick move, the guy’s gotta be at least 70.”

“Yeah. Kids can be idiots. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Technically an adult, and I’d agree regardless.”

“When we talked before, you sounded kinda meh on the Individual Studies thing. How’s that looking?”

“It’s…” Jonas pulls a face. “Still meh on it. Some of the other kids are… ehh. Remind me of guys from North Valley, thinking they’re the shit. And the teachers - or whatever they’re called, aides? They’re a mixed bag. This one girl - woman, I guess - she seems pretty cool. Darcy. Good attitude, even if she seemed kinda fake at first.”

“I’m not sure I totally get what the course is, to be honest.”

“I mean, I’ve got three periods of it, it gets old fast. Though— I mean I guess they’re not all the same. First period for me seems more like… learning skills?” Jonas winces. “I dunno, it’s kinda cringey sometimes. And then third is gonna be assessment stuff— kinda miserable, just packets of standardized test questions and shit like that. Last period is chill though. Basically like a study hall for me, working on the stuff from the tests. And I’ve been getting out a little early, so I can-” He stops.

Duke waits a second for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, he lifts his chin from looking at the pad of paper in his lap (where Jonas can see little geometrical doodles as well as his illegible scrawl of whatever he’s noting). “A reminder; mandatory reporting doesn’t include stuff like truancy, just plans to harm yourself or others. And I consider ‘plans’ to actually mean plans.”

“So… there’s this girl, right?”

“A friend?”

Jonas hesitates. “Yyeahhh…”

“Or… sounds like maybe not just a friend?”

He shakes his head, “No, definitely just a friend, just… kinda insane.”

“Fun fact; ‘insane’ is really a legal term.”

Jonas rolls his eyes. “Kinda wild, then. Her and this other guy, too. They kinda like… adopted me?”

“Is that a positive or a negative?”

“I think it’s a positive? But— right, my point was, it gives me time to dip out the back and then meet them in the other parking lot.”

“Why the other parking lot?”

Jonas shoots Duke a flatly skeptical look. “Well they’re not gonna come meet me over in the ‘special’ wing.”

Duke huffs out a short laugh. “Wow, okay, strong feelings about IS are still there I see.” Even as Jonas is rolling his eyes again, he goes on. “So the wild duo. What kind of wild? You think they’ll get in the way of treatment?”

That makes him think for a second. “Um… no? I dunno. The guy is kinda stupid rich and somehow has a line to a shit ton of weed, apparently. Which could be a problem.”

Duke’s brows have risen high. “Could be, yeah. Does your JPPO do random testing? Think being around them could mess with your results?”

Jonas shakes his head. “Nah, they’re scheduled. Every other two weeks. And that should be done by the end of June, and the testing might be ditched entirely when we go down to only meeting once a month. Plus apparently he’s more of an edibles guy, so I’m not super worried about anything accidental. I can always just keep away for a few days before testing, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Even though you’ve been adopted?”

He snorts a bit at that. “Guess I can’t know for sure. Not too worried, though.”

“That’s good. How exactly did you manage to get adopted?”

“The girl was my tour guide first day. I guess she thought I was cool, ‘cause she introduced me to her friend and… I dunno. We exchanged numbers and stuff. Texted. They’re kinda high energy for me, but also-” Jonas hesitates, rolling his eyes before continuing. “It’s weird, ‘cause Alex is kinda… popular? She’s a total dork, constantly jokes about being a witch, but it feels like everyone knows her? And likes her? It’s weird.”

“Huh. Are you saying you think they shouldn’t?”

“I’m saying…” Jonas shrugs. “Eh. She’s nice enough, I get that. But like… I feel like at North Valley she would’ve been… I mean, not disliked. Considered annoying, maybe, in large doses. Not exactly a class clown, but that same idea. More of a subject of entertainment than friendship.”

“That’s an interesting way of seeing things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Analytical.”

Jonas considers that for a second. “…Maybe? It’s just kinda how the world is, I’m not complaining about it or anything.”

“Are you unhappy about it?”

He shrugs. “No? Like I said; it’s just how it is. People offer certain benefits, right? Sometimes that’s, like… like someone who always knows the homework. If we’re thinking concretely here. And then there’s the one who always has a pencil you can borrow. —It’s like a study group sorta analogy. There’s someone who’s able to get everyone together at once, and someone who can talk to the teacher and argue on your behalf, but who you might not want to spend time with outside of class ‘cause they argue with everyone. And there’s a class clown type, who’s really entertaining but can sorta get in the way if you’re trying to be serious.” Jonas pauses again. “I mean, there’s a lot. But everyone kinda has their strengths and weaknesses, right? It’s like a teamwork thing.”

“So where do you fit in this?”

He thinks for a moment, still playing with the wire cage. “I dunno. I have a car.” That’s part of it at least, even if other things come to mind as well.

“You think that’s what people see you for? Your car?”

Jonas’s lips pull. “I’m not saying that’s my only redeeming quality, I know I’m not just some dude with a car. That’s just, like, the prime benefit.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your other ‘redeeming qualities.’”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m— I know I have them, okay? I’m- I have skills. But they aren’t- y’know, like, my function in a social group.”

“What if you didn’t have your car? You can’t give more than yourself— what qualities do you think you’re bringing.”

“…Alex seems to think my height is a benefit.”

“She obviously has not been 6’3 and attempted to sit in a compact sedan.”

Jonas cracks a smile. “Yeah it’s cute, she’s not tiny but both her and Ren are like… she said it before, I don’t remember what it was 5’5 or 6 or something. Joked about needing me to retrieve pickle jars or whatever.”

“So you’re the guy with the car and the pickle-getter.”

“Sure.”

“That all?”

“Well- I mean, the tall thing is also like—” he waves a hand, “-y’know, the other tall stuff.”

“Can’t say I know what you mean, apart from reaching things and being asked about the weather.”

“You know.” Jonas fidgets slightly. Duke has to know that part of things. “The kinda… intimidation thing.”

“How do you mean?”

Jonas’s lips pull again in that vague passing annoyance. “You know. Being tall and looking— not scary exactly, but like… imposing, I guess. Basically looking like someone you don’t want to mess with.”

“And that’s what you think you bring to a friendship?”

“Yeah. Like… like a bodyguard or something.”

“You think your friends are in danger you have to protect them from?”

“No- well.” He lets out a short sigh, a rueful smirk hooking his lips. “Not yet, anyway. And once they are, I’m betting they’ll have put themselves into it.”

“What does the whole ‘bodyguard’ thing mean, then?”

“Um.” A few images pass through Jonas’s mind, and he hesitates, face impassive for a second before he shrugs again. “Trying to keep her from getting hurt. I guess.”

“…That doesn’t really sound like something based solely on height.”

His fingers twitch, and Jonas’s ears feel warm. “Look, I spent a year in juvie for physical assault. It might not just be the height.”

“You think she wants you to fight for her? Is this like… an American Gladiators kinda thing, or…?”

The laugh is just a huff of breath, but the corners of Jonas’s mouth are lifting. “I don’t think she wants me to fight. I’m just— And I don’t want to fight!” he assures Duke. “But like… there’s probably some element of ‘this guy makes a good meat shield’ or whatever.”

“You ever think they might just… like you? Like just, as you?”

He snorts. “I— I’m not saying they don’t! I mean, at the very least they tolerate me, and I assume they must like me, otherwise we wouldn’t text all the time. It’s really easy to ignore someone’s texts and make excuses.” Jonas isn’t even mad about the question, it’s so far removed from how he feels. “I’m just saying that there’s this fringe benefit for them.”

“And is that how you see them, as well?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Honestly, they’re my allies right now. Not in a bad way - I like them, they’re fun - but at the moment their function in my social circle is connecting me to my new community, right? They’re transitional aids, like a kinda PREP thing. Or IS. I mean, she was a tour guide.”

“Sounds kinda dehumanizing.”

“It’s not meant to be. I’m— Look, we talked all the time about support systems and community engagement, and buying in, right? So, I’m building a support system of peers.”

Duke cocks his head, looking mildly bemused.

“What?”

“It sounds like you know the words pretty well.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t talk much. Mostly listened.”

“Is that really how you think about the people around you? As… I don’t know, bricks in your support structure?”

“I mean, it’s not the only thing I’m thinking. I like the company, I like the distraction, they’re fun. But…” Another one-shouldered shrug. “I dunno, man, call it a justification if you want.”

“What do you mean?”

Jonas sighs. “Gives me a reason to keep trying.” Again, it’s not said in anger, or even in sadness. Just a straightforward factual statement.

“What would you do if you didn’t think of things that way?”

“Can’t know for sure, obviously. But— I dunno. Call it distress tolerance. Giving them a function gives me a reason to tough it out. Like—” He pauses. “…Yeah, no, I can’t figure out an analogy for the brick thing. Sticking with people instead of being— transient.”

“Transient.”

“Kinda drifting around. Moving through things.”

“You think you’re transient?”

“I think I’d survive without friends. Until shit started to go wrong, I guess.”

Duke is quiet, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to parse the statement, considering. “…I’m not sure I get it.”

“I like people, but all the— politics, I guess. It stresses me out. I’d rather just… not. At least, in group things. School, juvie— the social dynamic is this constant thing where you’re maintaining. Don’t shit where you eat and all that. Don’t fuck it up, you’re stuck there. All this work to not make things worse for yourself. Honestly, I’d rather just see people when I see them. All day every day is… a lot.”

“…Can I ask you a question?” He’s leaning forward, and his tone is a different kind of curious than he has been.

“I mean… that’s literally all you’ve been doing.”

“Your residential center, your stepdown stuff— they had GED programs. Why come back to high school?”

Jonas is spinning the little wire toy around one finger steadily, keeping an eye on it to avoid having it fly off, even as he picks up speed. “Dad wanted me to.” His stomach dips, and his voice is a little quieter. “Mom would, too.” He’s silent for a second, still spinning. “And it’s supposed to be good for me. Community engagement, support structures, all that.”

“Why do you think they wanted you to do school?”

“I mean, my mom was a teacher. My dad… just wants me to be well-adjusted. I think he wants me to feel normal again.”

“What do you think?”

Jonas’s gut has been steadily, gradually, slowly but surely filling with lead. He breathes evenly. Too evenly. Actively making the attempt. When he speaks, it’s a low mutter. “Not sure that’s possible, if we’re being honest.”

“Why not?”

He shakes his head. “I dunno. Things just— changed. Can’t really undo that.”

“…I mean, I agree that you can’t live in the past. Things happened, you can’t undo them, but you also can’t spend every minute thinking about them. I know mindfulness tends to get a bad rap ‘cause it’s sort of trendy in the mental health field right now, but there’s definitely a ton of upsides to it.”

“I’m… vaguely familiar.” Jonas’s voice is a bit wry.

“So you know the whole idea of where you’re living. The goal is being present. So not living in the past, or in the future, but in the here and now, without judgment.”

“…Okay…”

Duke is still bouncing his foot a bit. “What do you think? Like— really consider it for a second. What that means.”

“What, living in the present?” Duke shrugs in a casual kind of confirmation. Jonas sighs, fixes his eyes on the therapist, and tries to do as asked. “…I guess I just feel like that’s asking for trouble.”

“How so?”

“I mean… thinking about the future is kinda important. Otherwise you fuck things up and can’t undo them.”

“Who says you can’t?”

Jonas snorts. “You? Like… a minute ago?”

“I guess— maybe it’s just the use of ‘undo.’ You can’t rewind and make something not have happened, but you can control how you handle the consequences, how you potentially repair the situation, your reactions to things, all of that. But if you’re constantly fearing every possible outcome of anything you do… you do nothing.”

“So you’re saying not to think of consequences. You want me to just go party and violate parole and not care what might happen?”

“Well, no.” Duke actually rolls his eyes. “Hell— it’s a delicate balance, right? But some part of that has to be just allowing yourself to exist without judgment.”

“O…kay?”

“Or analysis.”

“…Ah.”

“I mean, it’s not like I’m advocating underage drinking or drugs or truancy or anything, but… You’re out, y’know? You’re in this do-or-die headspace, but your situation has changed dramatically. Now’s your chance to go back to being a kid. Live a little.”

[source for AO3]

#fictober19 #oxenfree #jonas oxenfree #oxenfree fic #my writing #mach3 #cjgj #prompt fill #kinda

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ancientbooshartifacts · 5 years ago

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Goths

Author: Beansidhe_Baby

Year: 2010

Rating: PG

Characters: Richmond, Anthrax & Ebola

The first few times Richmond went out on the scene he was largely ignored by everyone else. He thought that perhaps that was part of the air of studied apathy that seemed to permeate all of goth culture, but eventually he figured it out. He was a... what was it that Roy had said the other day. Oh yes, a noob. It was really rather depressing, here he was among his own people and he was as ignored there as he was at work. Even if he wasn't in a room all by himself here, he might as well have been. Oh well, at least there was absinthe here. Within seconds of that thought entering his mind, his drink was knocked out of his hand as a short, or perhaps petite was the correct word in the circumstances, young woman was pushed against him, jostling his shoulder by the slowly undulating crowd. She turned to look at him and smiled slowly, exposing sharp elongated canines like a vampire's fangs. Presumably they were false, although body modification was taken rather seriously hereabouts, so who knew? “I'm terribly sorry,” he said, gulping nervously, slightly intimidated by her feral grin. He hadn't seen a goth girl smiling before, he'd thought there were rules, or at least guidelines, against them. “S'alright,” the girl said, lifting up a hand to stroke his hair, “You're pretty.” Richmond blinked, by now completely out of his depth. “Oh, um, that's lovely of you to say,” he stammered, “you're very beautiful.” She nodded, as though he had said something like 'the sky is blue' or 'Robert Smith has fantastic hair'. Her eyes drifted towards his throat and she trailed a fingertip against his jugular. His eyes remained glued to her parted lips as she moved slowly closer to him, teeth bared in a silent snarl, before she stopped with her head tucked just underneath his chin. He felt his adams apple bob nervously and bump against her mouth, and her soft breath warm against his skin. After an eternity she closed her mouth and pressed a gentle kiss against his neck and he sighed in relief. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed another girl walking purposefully in their direction. His chest seized up, almost fearful of the look on her face. “Do you, do you, that is to say, you don't happen to be here with someone?” he said, looking down at the top of the other girl's dark head. She looked up into his eyes and smiled beatifically, her whole face lighting up like it was backlit by a thousand megawatt light bulbs. “Ebola!” and she said delightedly, leaving him utterly confused as she turned to the newcomer with an expression of near irrepressible joy. The other girl was by their side now, frowning slightly with her hands on her lips. She was as fair as the other girl was dark, though they were both as pale as untouched snow. “I've found a new puppy,” the dark girl said to her companion (Ebola? What an unusual name. He vaguely wished he had thought of it first). “Anthrax,” Ebola said flatly, her lips pressed into a thin red line, “Let him go, he doesn't like it.” Richmond felt like he should intercede, he didn't want to hurt the dark girl's, Anthrax he corrected himself in his mind, feelings and make her feel as though she was unwelcome. She was the first person to talk to him in this club after all and he'd been going here for almost two months. It was nice to have someone to talk to. “Oh, it's no trouble,” he said, fanning his hands out in front of him palm first. “See!” Anthrax squeezed his arm and smiled back up at him. He managed a shy smile back. Ebola sighed with an air of one making a great concession and rolled her eyes. Richmond noticed for the first time that her eyes didn't match, she was wearing a contact lens in one, and admired the effect in had on her face. * He learned over the next few weeks, that Anthrax and Ebola were living in a small house together in Shoreditch. During the day Anthrax worked as a secretary with her face scrubbed clean, her hair in a sensible ponytail and wearing pencil skirts and white blouses.

She hated it and wanted to someday be able to live off the SF and fantasy short stories she wrote freelance. Ebola was a medical student, “training to be a mad scientist,” she'd said to him completely straight faced, and she worked three nights a week in the morgue at the hospital. They were lovely girls, though he'd certainly never say that to their face, or at least not to Ebola, and they taught him all sorts of things. They lived together in a happy state of near poverty, spending all their money on clothes and going out (though they didn't spend a great deal of money past the cover charge in most clubs, seeing as they never had to buy their own drinks). If it was a choice between a pair of boots that had caught one of their eyes or eating meat that month, the footwear would win out every time. The first time he'd gone over to their house (it was tiny and ramshackle, making him deeply embarrassed of his well lit open plan penthouse) he'd thought they were vegetarian, seeing the amount of chick peas, soy and potatoes that they ate, but it was just because they could get those things cheaply in bulk. “You can live very well on potatoes,” Anthrax had told him, “They have as much vitamin C as oranges.” Anthrax was full of such advice. She'd also counselled him to cut his own hair, to save money and to make sure that no one could cast a spell on him by stealing his offcuts. Though he'd nodded sombrely at this, he'd quietly decided that perhaps not all of her advice was completely on the money. Still though, his acquaintanceship, nay friendship, he thought hesitantly, with the girls had proved invaluable. For they were the first to give him what he had lacked since the first time he'd heard Dani Filth scream exquisite torture through his earphones to his very soul. Acceptance. “All goths know each other, like cats,” Ebola had said to him sternly one day and he'd looked back, surprised. “And pregnant ladies,” Anthrax added, Ebola nodding primly “Exactly, and just like them-” “We all hate each other,” Anthrax finished, smiling widely at him, no fangs today. He stared blankly at them, clutching the cup of tea that he'd been given when he sat down in their living room. “Well, maybe not hate, but it's very clique-y,” she went on, and stirred her own tea, “Everyone hates snobs who act all 'more gothic than thou' but not nearly as much as everyone detests weekenders and people who just haven't been into it as long as they have. Oh the hypocrisy!” she giggled and stirred her tea. “Oh,” Richmond looked down rather glumly, “How long does it take for one to be considered legitimate?” “Depends,” Anthrax shrugged, “But for you, not long, because we're adopting you. You can be my brother if you like, you look a bit like me.” * Under their wing, he'd thrived in the community, suddenly accepted where he'd been outright scorned previously. Sometimes he was introduced as Anthrax's twin, sometimes as her lover, sometimes as Ebola's, sometimes both (he'd always betray himself with a blush when they would press into his sides in tandem and press kisses into his hair and the side of his neck. He was by no means a prude, but within mere weeks of knowing them thinking of them in a sexual context brought on the same horror as thinking of his own mother in flagrante delicto), but the inconsistencies were hand waved. As long as he was being introduced by one of them, it didn't seem to matter what it was he had been introduced as. Eventually he began to be recognized and remembered even without them, and he started going out on his own more and more. They were still friends of course, but he was not nearly as dependent on them as he had been. At first he'd felt horrendously guilty, but they'd assured him that there was no need, they'd wanted this for him and he should by all means enjoy the benefit of all their hard work. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and eventually it was over a year since he'd seen them. He was getting along better with his work mates these days and he was never as lonely as he had been those first few months he'd spent as a goth. He was... happy. Content. Accepted.

Then, of course, he'd gotten scurvy and all his tenuous friendships had dried up save for a few emails from Moss occasionally. He lay on his depressingly beige sofa and stared at the glass of fizzing vitamin C on the low coffee table in front of him. He should really drink that. In a minute perhaps. He drifted off into a fitful sleep, his dreams full of unhappy puppies sitting in puddles and baby bats without nests in a storm. A loud knocking woke him and he stared for a few seconds at his own front door without moving. Finally he drew a thin blanket around his shoulders and walked with trepidation towards the door, opening it on the safety chain. He was greeted by Ebola's most angry scowl through the narrow gap and he did a slight double take, hurrying to open the door fully. “We buzzed all of the flats, someone always is expecting someone,” Anthrax said smugly as she walked in. Ebola dropped a twenty five kilo bag of potatoes inside his doorway, swearing under her breath, and joined her. “Come in,” Richmond said, redundantly as they were already inside, looking his barely lived in home. “We couldn't get through to you at your work, they said you were ill,” Anthrax frowned at him this time, walking over to lay a hand on his forehead, “Scurvy, you absolute idiot, how you managed it I'll never know.” He felt embarrassed by everything from his bland tasteful furniture to his bleeding gums and yellowed eyes. “Well, don't worry,” she patted his hand and led him back to the sofa, where he sat with his thumb resting against his lower lip. “We're here now.” And they were. For the first time in two weeks, Richmond smiled.

#the mighty boosh #mighty boosh #boosh #richmond avenal #richmond #the it crowd #it crowd #anthrax #ebola #anthrax & ebola

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brightbeautifulthings · 6 years ago

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Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

"'You know what would be a brilliant twist now? If everything turned out to be just a guy in a mask.'"

Year Read: 2018

Rating: 3/5

Context: Is there a person alive who didn't love Scooby Doo at some point in their lives? Not surprisingly, it was a major part of my childhood, and I tend not to let go of the things I really love. I still watch Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island when I'm sick (and, in hindsight, that may have been the beginnings of the zombie love...). I would have picked up Meddling Kids for its title alone, but there's also that stunning cover. Trigger warning: suicide, mental illness, hallucinations, death, transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism.

About: When they were kids, Andy, Kerri, Nate, Peter, and their Weimaraner formed the Blyton Summer Detective Club. Every year, they joined forces to solve mysteries and uncover bad guys in masks, but their last case broke up the club and left them more traumatized than any of them are willing to admit. They're plagued by nightmares, mental illnesses, and Peter's tragic suicide. When the masked man finally makes parole, Andy confronts him and learns what she's always feared: something else was going on in the Deboen mansion that night. She urges the club to get back together and return to Blyton for one final mystery, but the monsters might be real this time.

Thoughts: There's so much potential in this story and equal amounts of expectation, so it was almost bound to go wrong. Within pages, it was clear that the writing style wasn't going to work for me. I can blue-pencil straightforwardly bad narration from my awareness after a while, but Cantero's is the kind that won't let me ignore it. It's constantly breaking the fourth wall and changing up the style for no apparent reason. Metafiction can be used to great effect, but I'm not sure what's to be gained by constantly reminding readers that they're reading a mystery/comedy. It's a cheap trick that does little besides make it difficult to stay invested. The dialogue periodically reverts to script style which, frankly, looks like pure laziness. The jokes are constant, the descriptions weird, and some of the words invented or mashed together into clunky portmanteaux. The prose is preoccupied with its own cleverness at the expense of telling its own story, and the level of attention I have to pay to Cantero's linguistic cartwheels isn't worth the payoff. It was a slog.

Humor as a constant wears on me quickly, or maybe the book just isn't as funny as it thinks it is. There are slapstick scenes where characters break someone out of a mental hospital or fight off hordes of monsters single-handedly that are reminiscent of the cartoons. The action scenes are excessive, at one point devolving into pages of run-on sentences. Feel free to skim because nothing important happens. The words "transphobic", "sexist", "homophobic", "ableist", and "racist" showed up in my margin notes. The jokes aren't as malicious as they are superficial--other than the astonishingly poor trans representation, they blow by as quickly as any other joke in the book, but that doesn't make them acceptable. I can see why some reviewers find Andy's representation as a lesbian troubling; Cantero doesn't seem to have a grasp of when the word "butch" is offensive and when it's empowering, and there are moments where it needed to be handled with more sensitivity. However, Andy and Kerri share a couple of semi-intimate moments that are never at all sexualized, so it has that going for it.

Once you get past all that (assuming you're still with Cantero at this point), the story itself is fairly interesting and moves fast enough. There seems to be plenty of actual science behind the creepy happenings at Sleepy Lake, with plausible monsters and a claustrophobic trip into the mine. The characters are, for the most part, well-drawn and more three-dimensional than their cartoon counterparts. I actually love that the main character, Andy, is a badass lesbian. She's always the one moving the story forward, unraveling plots, and kicking hordes of monster ass. Kerri is a close second as the scientific brain; she always has an answer to everything, and while the descriptions are excessive, I kind of enjoyed that her hair has its own personality. Nate is overshadowed by both of them, which is a nice change from the usual. The mental illness representation is dramatically bad though, as he hallucinates Peter's ghost throughout the novel. Ghost-Peter is a dick, and most of the offensive comments in the novel come from him.

The final confrontation balances between scientifically plausible and utterly ridiculous, with the end wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly for my tastes, but at that point, I was happy to be finished with it. I doubt I'll put myself through one of Cantero's novels again, but if not for the writing, it might have been enjoyable.

#book review #meddling kids #edgar cantero #mystery #thriller #comedy #3/5 #rating: 3/5 #2018 #tw: suicide #tw: mental illness #tw: mental health #tw: hallucinations #tw: death #tw: transphobia #tw: homophobia #tw: racism #tw: sexism #tw: ableism

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norowareshimono · 7 years ago

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Gray Log’s Monochrome Gallery: Hoshino’s Chapter Covers Selection

Other DGM translations

Presenting the chapter covers that Hoshino herself has selected with her commentary! It includes the her personal Top 3 too!

First place:

Chapter 167 “Hint”

I like the balance of the whole picture and how it combines scariness and cuteness. You can feel the bond between them, but at the same time something feels off. Moreover, I think I did a good job at giving it a meaningful air.

Second place:

Chapter 193 “Friend”

My second favorite.

I drew this cover just after the last scene of the chapter, the one where Kanda destroys the rampaging Alma, and I remember being overcome with emotion. Alma had become very dear to me by then, so I wanted to give him one of his lovely expressions for last.

However, drawing him smiling was difficult to do. Regarding the letters saying “friend” behind Alma, they are supposed to be made with “blood.” Had this been a color page, I would have probably painted them in a black to red gradation, instead of pure black.

I’m sure this Alma is turning towards Yuu, a smile coming to his lips.

Third place:

Chapter 105 “A Stage in Rouge”

I adore Krory and Eliade’s tragic love.

It’s a pitiful one, but I love it (laugh) and I think this cover was able to express it well. I think it’s a shame that, due to time constraints, the rose garden in the background ended up looking so rough, but there is something in how you can only see Eliade’s shoulder that’s really sad and painful. The situation, with Krokins holding an umbrella, is cute too, to the point I feel like praising past me (laugh).

The Nominees:

Chapter 2 “Full Moon Night”

The current me wouldn’t ever come up with a composition like this, would I? There is something nostalgic in realizing that I once came up with these kinds of ideas. The resemblance to the movie “Nightmare before Christmas”, the likening of the end of the curtain to a city, the roses blooming from what appears to be a pool of blood… The me back then had some spooky yet cute ideas, didn’t she?

Chapter 43 “Laughter”

Of all the Tyki I’ve drawn, I think this one is the most handsome (laugh). Often, whenever I forget how to draw him, I give a look at this cover (laugh). It’s a refreshing image, very much like him. I like the simple background too.

Chapter 59 “White Heartbeats”

Miranda sitting with her legs crossed is a sort of refreshing sight, isn’t it? (laugh) The second uniform fits Miranda really well, so I’m glad I got to draw a full body picture of her.

Chapter 60 “The Path of Oath”

A back view of Allen and Tim, which sort of parallels the Mana and Allen cover that took first place. You ought to look at Tim’s shapely, terse butt! The tight line between its legs is especially cute!

Chapter 62 “Battle Plan”

This cover was drawn with just a pencil. It illustrates nicely the pencil’s characteristic softness, or so I think. After seeing this, I felt like drawing my manuscripts using a pencil (laugh). However, erasing the sketch seems like it would be a problem…

Chapter 85 “To Portray ‘Love’ in that Play”*

I like this one because of how well it fits the chapter’s title and how good is this composition for a cover. I was able to portray the uncanniness in Allen’s Innocence in it. It’s a good depiction in more than one sense, so I like it.

* Translator Note: I’m not 100% sure about this one, but I think this title may have a double meaning. The first, as seen above, being “to portray ‘love’ in that play” and the second “to portray ‘myself’ in that play.” アイ (pronounced ai) is in katakana, a strange choice if you were talking only about 愛 (also ai, meaning love). The only other option that makes sense in context is the English “I”, which is also written as アイ in katakana. Both are very fitting, so I think this was intentional.

Chapter 99 “Debt Crisis”

I was in a real hurry when I drew this one. I can clearly remember myself drawing in a rush with the calligraphy pen. The detailed parts, like the buttons or the hair, were made using a normal pen, but everything else was drawn with the calligraphy one.

Chapter 103 “An Unruly Child”

I like a lot of covers depicting Krory, don’t I? It’s the same pose I gave Allen in chapter 14, but it’s a good fit for Krory as well. I like it. The gentleman look is a good match for Krory, don’t you think? He’s tall too, and that gives him the air of a fashion model.

Chapter 119 “La + vi”

If you were to use only objects, I think this picture would be the only possible metaphor for Lavi’s character. The small objects within the coffin are all the things he has recorded in his travels. This represents that Lavi is empty inside, that he’s filled only with information. There is also a reason for the birdcage to be empty, but that’s still a secret!

I was able to cram a lot of information about Lavi in this one page, so I’m quite fond of it.

Chapter 123 “Voice of Darkness”*

I drew this as my idea of how Allen’s “Crown Clown” would look if it took human form.

* Translator Note: The furigana says こえ, voice, but the kanji is 吟, which means “recital” or “lament.”

Chapter 124 “Black Carnival”

This cover doubles as a panel of the manga, but I drew it so Allen and Tyki were the picture of “eeriness” and “fear.”

Chapter 130 “Eyes of Hatred”

I’m satisfied with how I drew Allen’s eyes here. Back then, that made me so happy. The smoke trail and the frills in Cross’ hand are lovely and well done too.

Chapter 132 “The Musician!!?”

After lots of worrying about this cover, I thought "let's include every element associated with Allen!" and this is how it turned out. This page took an unusual amount of time.

Chapter 138 “But Time Goes On”

Drawing this cover was fun. In Allen’s drawers there are only sweets (rations) and detailed debt accounts (laugh). The room is so small there isn’t enough space for two beds, that’s why Link is waking up an a futon.

Chapter 195 “Ripple”

I managed to draw a good pose here. There is no other character in DGM that could pull this off (laugh). At the time, my assistants thought that the flashing light over his head was hilarious (laugh), but I wanted to add it for the symbolism!

Chapter 198 “The Truth of the Barren Flowers” & Chapter 190 “The Garden of Barren Flowers”

After drawing this, I was filled with satisfaction. This cover marks the first appearance of Alma in a cover without a smile, I think. It’s an image of Kanda and Alma once they learnt the truth of the “Second Exorcist Project.” My goal was to liken them to lotus flowers, and I think I was able to convey that idea here. The cover, title included, forms a set with the one for chapter 190. They are standing outside the lotus at first, all to get inside at the end. The idea was to use these two pages to represent the beginning and the end.

Chapter 208 “We, Who Live Lost”

Those who depart and those who return. This image left a huge impression in me, as it was the first time I drew something with that kind of concept. It was really fun to do. Johnny’s pose is absolutely uncool, yet for some reason it makes me want to cheer for him. I like that about it.

Chapter 209 “In Search of A.W. – Travelling Companions”

I like this Reever. I want you, readers, to imagine who is in the photo he is looking at. Ehehe. What’s bringing out that smile?

Chapter 214 “In Search of A.W. – Awakening”

This was my first time drawing a full body picture of Nea. Just as the theme of “Kanda and company = lotus flowers” exists, the same goes for “Nea and company = the wind.” If you can perceive that more or less in this scene, that’ll make me happy.

#dgm #d gray man #d.gray man #d.gray-man #dgnetwork #dgm translations #gray log

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chiseler · 7 years ago

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MAE CLARKE: An Honest Woman

There is a certain look of wary, contained bitterness that you see on women’s faces in movies from the early thirties. Their eyes become veiled; the women seem to retreat inside themselves defensively, tasting memories of hurt and humiliation, of men who made them feel dirty and how they had to keep on smiling and flirting so they could pay the rent on their drab hall rooms and buy their automat coffee. It’s the look of the chorus girl who has learned to protect herself by shutting down the gates, even while wiggling in her scanties. Barbara Stanwyck carried it throughout her long career, like an eternally livid scar; “bubbly” Joan Blondell wore it quietly; and in Waterloo Bridge (1931) it’s branded on the face of Stanwyck’s one-time roommate, Mae Clarke.

Waterloo Bridge opens with a shorthand summation of a chorus girl’s life. It’s the all-hands-on-deck finale of a fluffy musical revue on the last night of its run. The camera pans past the interchangeable faces of the chorines in their platinum wigs and sparkly tricorn hats, and comes to rest on Mae Clarke, as Myra Deauville. She throws up her arms and gives an open-mouthed laugh, then lapses into exhausted boredom, then switches on the faux exuberance again, then yawns. Throughout the film she keeps doing this: putting on her game “Hello, big boy” act and then flinging it aside with furious disgust. Director James Whale doesn’t bother with transitions, but conveys the whiplashing ups and downs of his heroine’s life through blunt cuts. We see her backstage in her bra, receiving a white fox stole from an admirer; in the next scene, out of work for two years, she’s wearing the stole low around her décolletage, standing outside the theater with a fellow hooker looking for pickups. (The setting is World War I, but when Myra says hopefully, “I’ll get a job soon,” 1931 audiences must have foreseen the worst.)

Spotting a prospective john, the friend primps and smiles flirtatiously, while Myra turns on him with a defiant yet seductive scowl; a sullen, defensive stance that she assumes throughout the film. She suffers from incurable decency, which becomes a scalding torment when she meets an innocent young doughboy who has no idea that she’s a prostitute. She brings Roy (Kent Douglass) to her flat, intending to pluck him for the back rent she needs to satisfy her sour-faced landlady. But it’s too easy: when the sweet, boyish soldier pleads with her to accept the money, she abruptly drops the good-natured frankness she’s been charming him with and turns hard and caustic, hating him because she hates herself for tricking him. She’s so stung with hurt pride that she has to lash out and hurt someone else. Preparing to go out on the streets after sending him away, she stares at her hard face in the mirror, dabbing make-up on the rigid mask that barely conceals the tired, angry sadness beneath.

Waterloo Bridge is the only film that reveals the breadth of Mae Clarke’s talent. In other movies she played nice, open-faced girls or mean, petulant golddiggers. As Myra she is a kaleidoscope of confused emotions. Her best scene comes when Roy tells her he loves her: she turns away, hunched as though against a cold rain, her eyes narrow and tense. This is the final insult from life: for her dream guy to come along too late, when she feels unworthy of him. Leaving, he kisses her hand, and reacting to this tribute she passes through exaltation, anxiety, and rage—growling as she forces herself to cast it aside. She’s too honest to grab the expedient of letting a man make “an honest woman” out of her. But we know she loves him, because in the next scene she’s trying to knit him a pair of socks, sitting at the breakfast table with her hair piled on her head, a cigarette planted in her mouth, mangling the stitches.

The worst is yet to come: well-meaning oblivious Roy tricks her into visiting his posh family in the country. They’re kind and welcoming in that self-satisfied upper-class way bound to cause excruciating discomfort in someone like Myra. Roy’s mother (Enid Bennett) is polite, complacent and deadly. Watching her sweetly confide to Myra that she doesn’t want her son to marry a chorus girl, but that she knows she has nothing to fear from such a “fine” person, is almost unbearably painful. Reduced to abject guilt, Myra confesses her true profession and pitifully sobs, “I just wantcha to know, I could’ve married him…”

Roy does, in the end, learn the truth about Myra. The ground has already been prepared for his announcement that he doesn’t care, that he knows it wasn’t her fault. Earlier, when Roy talks about how he joined the army out of “boyish enthusiasm,” and wryly admits it didn’t last, we can see that though he’s inexperienced, he can deal with the loss of illusions. His persistence finally steamrolls Myra’s increasingly frantic attempts to give him up. A rather histrionic scene of hysterics is the only point in the film at which Clarke puts a foot wrong, though she quickly recovers. The tearjerker ending seems a bit gratuitous, but it’s in line with Myra’s certainty all along that things can only end badly. Waterloo Bridge epitomizes the other side of the pre-Code era: not racy irreverence but humane, unsentimental honesty about human flaws and the pain of encounters between innocence and experience.

Mae Clarke was born Violet Klotz in Philadelphia in 1910, which sounds like a mean joke from a W.C. Fields movie. She grew up in Atlantic City and was a young teenager when she started dancing professionally. In the 1920s she lived for a few years in Manhattan with another chorus girl, born Ruby Stevens, while both worked at midtown nightclubs. After appearing in the Broadway play The Noose they both went to Hollywood, and Clarke had arguably the better movie debut—a lead role in Big Time (1929), co-starring another newcomer, pre-Code fireball Lee Tracy. But while Ruby Stevens, as Barbara Stanwyck, would establish herself as—can we all just agree?—the greatest of Hollywood’s women stars, Mae Clarke had only a few years of good roles, followed by a long and painful decline, crowned by the ignominy of being remembered solely as the recipient of Cagney’s grapefruit in Public Enemy. (Her obituary in the Los Angeles Times was headlined, “Mae Clarke, Famed for Grapefruit Scene, Dies.” Shame on you, L.A. Times.) But in those few years, in the heady atmosphere of pre-Code Hollywood, she revealed an unusual versatility and strikingly direct, unmannered force.

From 1931 through 1933, she made around six films a year, starting 1931 with the small but dramatic role of Molly Malloy in The Front Page and ending it with Frankenstein, which gave her one of her best-known but blandest parts, as Dr. Frankenstein’s bride. The film reunited her with James Whale, to whom she owed her big break in Waterloo Bridge, and whom she found a sensitive and sympathetic director. With characteristic frankness, Clarke attributed the success of her best performance to “a basic confusion and insecurity that I didn’t mind projecting into my work.” Bette Davis, who had the small and thankless role of Roy’s sister in Waterloo Bridge, yearned to play the part of Myra and later said typically, “And I could have too!” Of course she could, but she wouldn’t have been as touching as Clarke: Davis never projected much vulnerability or self-doubt.

What set Mae Clarke apart from her peers was this willingness to let unease show in her performances, grounding them with a solid realism that often outweighed her movies. In an era of glamorous artifice, of platinum permanents and penciled-on eyebrows, her beauty was natural. Her acting style was plain and at times raw in its honesty. She could be vivacious, but undercurrents of moodiness and uncertainty were never far below the surface; she had none of Stanwyck’s steel, her laser focus. Like other actress who didn’t suggest pampered debutantes, Clarke got hard-luck roles: hoofers, hookers and gang molls. At the lowest point of the Depression, there was a lot of hard luck to go around.

She rarely looked as carefree as she does in her very first movie scene, dancing with Lee Tracy, both loose-limbed and light-footed. A pleasant back-stage story of vaudeville, Big Time doesn’t give her very much to do besides wait patiently for her cocky, immature husband to grow up (“Right now you could stage Ben-Hur in his hat,” another character says of Tracy’s big-headed character.) She had a much better dancing role in Night World (1932), a kind of brisk, down-and-dirty, nocturnal Grand Hotel, set in a club owned by none other than Boris Karloff, whose moniker is ��Happy.” Mae is Ruth Taylor, one of the chorus girls who tap their way through tight, polished floor routines by Busby Berkeley and expertly fend off passes (in Ruth’s case, from a gangster played by George Raft.)

Ruth appoints herself guardian angel to Michael Rand (Lew Ayres), a miserable rich kid who sits alone every night, pickling himself in bad liquor because his mother shot his father in another woman’s apartment. Here Clarke achieves the tricky task of making a thoroughly nice person fun to watch, and she also makes the giddy debauchery of the hot spot look like shoddy tinsel. She ministers to Rand with wisecracks, street smarts (taking his wallet after he’s been knocked out so he won’t get rolled for it), and sex appeal—she’s encouraged when he revives sufficiently to notice how cute she looks in rehearsal shorts. In the context of this spectacularly compact 58-minute epic, the love that blossoms between Ruth and Michael doesn’t seem unrealistically sudden. A few hours after meeting, they decide to set sail for Bali, and after most of the other characters in the film have met violent deaths, it seems like a perfectly sane move. Life, like pre-Code movies, is short—both on running time and on narrative logic.

Clarke and Ayres starred in another James Whale film, Impatient Maiden (1932), which blasts off with ten minutes of biting cynicism, then slackens to become a tepid, offbeat romance-cum-medical drama, climaxing with an emergency appendectomy. Clarke plays the secretary to a divorce lawyer whose job has made her disenchanted about marriage. The movie backs her up with a breezy, shocking montage of everyday wedded misery, and though it eventually herds her back toward conventional domesticity, it can’t wash out the sour taste of those opening scenes.

In The Front Page, which kicked off and defined the newspaper movie genre, Clarke brought out raw hurt in her role as the kind-hearted prostitute who’s teased and insulted by callous newspapermen until she jumps out a window. A year later in The Final Edition she got to play a smart and plucky reporter on the trail of a killer, whom she captures partly by the expedient of donning a bathing suit and using herself as bait. Her love interest is Ralph Bellamy, who—in the days before he found his glorious niche as the opposite of Cary Grant—was a utility leading man with a loutish edge. He’s a real lout in Parole Girl (1933), a movie that awkwardly tries to cobble a love story onto a tale of revenge that ought to snap shut like a mouse-trap. It opens with Mae’s character, Sylvia Day, working a racket in which she and her partner extort money from department stores by getting her falsely arrested for shoplifting. At first we don’t know what she’s up to, and with another actress the slight phoniness of her outraged sobbing might be put down to bad acting. The second time she goes through the routine it’s definitely phony, and when she gets caught her desperation as she pleads not to be arrested is in an entirely different key. Only a very good actor can control degrees of realism so skillfully.

When the store manager refuses to give her a break, she vows to get even with him. She proves to be a brilliant schemer, earning her parole for battling a fire she actually started, then stalking her nemesis (Bellamy) and tricking him into a fake marriage while he’s blotto. She knows he’s already married and thus vulnerable to a bigamy charge, and also that being married to him will look good to her parole officer, but still it’s a weird plan: why would she want to shack up with the man she hates? She enjoys spending his money, casting marriage in a uniquely mercenary light when she announces she is “in the wife business.” But once she ties on an apron and condescends to make dinner for her husband’s boss—who takes a creepy interest in his employee’s domestic bliss—you know she’s going to fall for the guy, even though the film neglects to give him any appealing qualities. It’s always hard to watch an honest actor doing his or her best with dishonest material.

In her memoirs, Clarke spoke at length about playing prostitutes, starting with Molly Malloy. Her own years as a chorus girl (in fact, a specialty dancer) were happier and more sheltered than the sordid situations in her movies; she had to use her imagination to delve into the feelings of fallen women. Being religious and self-respecting, she refused to play the “happy hooker,” but she easily sympathized with women who had been forced or tricked into lives of sin. Most of her pre-Code roles could be summed up by the title of another of her 1931 films, The Good Bad Girl. But sometimes she was just a bad bad girl, as in three more films from 1933, Fast Workers, Lady Killer and Penthouse. In both guises she was trapped in the intersection of money and sex that defined the female experience in pre-Code movies.

Tod Browning’s Fast Workers (1933) is a tough, excitingly well-made, and wholly misogynistic film. Next to its acrid bile, the snappy cynicism of Warner Brothers’ pre-Code flicks feels light as cracker jacks. John Gilbert is excellent as an attractive heel, a cocky riveter nicknamed Gunner who has assigned himself the task of protecting his naïve buddy from conniving women—by seducing them himself to prove they’re no good. (The movie itself proves that there was nothing wrong with Gilbert’s voice, as my friend the Self-Styled Siren recently wrote in what should be a definitive rebuttal of the stale myth that he was ruined by a squeaky voice.) Mae Clarke plays a strangely split role: she’s Gunner’s girlfriend Mary, dog-like in her devotion despite his refusal to settle down with her; but she’s also a shameless chiseler who lives off men, the kind of gal who simpers, “I hate to take it,” as she stuffs money into her purse.

She enters slouching sullenly downstairs, her eyes lighting up only when she spots a man with a large bankroll. “Who’s the guy with all the lettuce?” she purrs, before pulling a spilled-beer-in-the-lap gag to lure the man (Gunner’s best friend Bucker) up to her room. There she goes into an extravagantly extended crying jag that finally convinces Bucker that she is just a poor, innocent, down-and-out waif. He falls for the routine even though he’s seen it all before. What’s going on between the sexes in this movie is not just a battle but a kind of arms race: the more cynical the men become, the more outrageous the women have to get in conning them out of their dough. The iron-workers with their good paying jobs are prey for golddiggers, but they are just as guilty of viewing women as prey, feeling entitled—with the arrogance instilled by their lofty perch on the high steel—to casual sex without consequences.

Much of the movie has an ambivalent, even-handed tone, but when Mary squeezes money out of the gullible Bucker to finance her grandmother’s operation (“Good thing your grandmother died when you were a kid,” Gunner says, “They’d have had the knife in her every week”), and then marries him for a meal ticket, you start to realize you’re not meant to spare her any sympathy. Mary and Gunner spend a ghastly weekend in Atlantic City—a potent depiction of love turned sour and the special awfulness of a bad vacation. Gunner has just found out that Mary is the latest tramp to get her hooks into his friend, and he stews in a bitter, drunken mixture of jealousy, contempt and self-loathing, putting his fist through a window, but still going ahead with his plan to expose her. Things just get uglier after that, and Mae Clarke had a special brand of ugliness that she brought out when she played nasty, money-grubbing women.

Her face hardens into a heavy, sulky sneer or a taunting, malicious smile. Her voice gets sharp and relentless. But Clarke’s skill at playing rotten women doesn’t fully explain why she was so often a target for misogyny in her movies. A more depressing explanation is Hollywood’s habit of trying to repeat success: if audiences enjoyed seeing Mae Clarke smacked with a grapefruit, they would presumably enjoy seeing her dragged by the hair (Lady Killer), or gunned down with chilling indifference (Penthouse).

Given the fame of the grapefruit scene, it’s easy to forget how very brief Clarke’s role is in Public Enemy (1931). She has only two scenes, and no opportunity to establish a character. In the first, the camera pans across a nightclub to find her and Joan Blondell sitting gloomily at a table with their two escorts, who have both passed out cold. (“Couple-a lightweights,” Mae as Kitty sneers. “Yeah, flat tires,” Joan as Mamie agrees.) They switch on come-hither smiles when they spot Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, but while Mamie jumps up and makes a bee-line for Matt, the more retiring Kitty stays at the table, and looks genuinely shocked by whatever Tom whispers in her ear. The next time we see her is at the breakfast table. Though installed as his mistress she’s clearly nervous around Tom, not happy but doing her best to please him. Clarke insightfully described Kitty as “just an I-hope-this-turns-out-all-right dumbbell.” There’s no clue why Tom is so sick of her, which makes his assault all the more shocking. The camera lingers on Kitty as she buries her face in her hands, hurt and ashamed; that’s the last we see of her.

The scene itself is neither gratuitous nor misogynistic. It’s not about Kitty at all, it’s about Tom Powers: a revealing and realistic glimpse of the kind of man he is. What’s troubling is the kick people get out of it, and what seems to have been behind it. There are a number of conflicting stories about how and why it was filmed, but the most convincing is William Wellman’s explanation that he had fantasized about smashing a grapefruit into his wife’s face and satisfied the urge by staging the scene on film. Clarke’s ex-husband Lew Brice is also reported to have reveled in the scene, coming into the theater repeatedly just to watch it and gloat. These anecdotes make the popularity of the scene more disturbing. If Kitty were a lousy dame, like Mary in Fast Workers, we might be expected to enjoy seeing her humiliated, but because we know nothing about her, she’s just a woman.

In Lady Killer at least she earns her ill-treatment. She’s a grifter again, dropping her purse in public places as a way to lure men to card games where they’ll be fleeced. Her gang soon ascends to robberies, and when its newest member, Cagney, objects because they accidentally killed someone, Mae scoffs at his scruples: “Every time someone gets a tap on the head, you wanna play Red Cross Nurse.” When he winds up in jail, she runs out on him with his bail money, and later when he’s become a Hollywood star she re-appears lounging in his bed in satin pajamas, determined to muscle in on his success. That’s when he drags her across the room by the hair and sends her flying into the hallway with a kick in the rear.

Despite all this, there are moments of warmth and fun between Clarke and Cagney, friends in real life. He gives her one of his most lascivious greetings, sweeping his eyes up and down her with what appears, from his reaction, to be X-ray vision. In another scene, while the gang is busy arguing with a fence over some stolen jewels, Clarke stands while Cagney sits with his arms around her, nestling his head against her bosom, and the camera catches him kissing her breast—perhaps a small, mischievous apology for all the manhandling? Later, in a train station, they peruse travel brochures, and Clarke reads to Cagney about the wonders of California, with its “Sun-kissed oranges, lemons, grapefruit—” They both stop dead and look sharply at each other. Unethical though she may be (and she does in the end redeem herself, tipping Cagney off that he’s to be taken for a ride), she makes a much more convincing partner for him than the nondescript nice girl, Margaret Lindsay. They made one more film together, Great Guy (1936), in which they finally got to be on friendly terms.

Like a lot of pre-Code stars, Mae Clarke was somehow diminished when the Code came in, sliding into B movies. Off-screen, meanwhile, she had even more hard luck than she did on it. Her career was derailed in 1932 by a nervous breakdown (caused largely by overwork), resulting in stays in sanitariums where, by her own account, the “treatments” were more likely to kill than cure. She bounced back but then suffered a disfiguring car accident in 1933. By 1937 she’d had enough and decided to retire, moving to Rio de Janeiro with her second husband Stevens Bancroft. That marriage, like her other two, failed, and she returned to Hollywood in 1940. She may as well have been a ghost, and she scraped through the decades doing uncredited bit parts and some TV roles, making her final appearance in 1970. She spent her last years as the feisty grande dame of the Motion Picture Country House & Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, recording her memoirs (rather depressingly titled Featured Player) while dying of cancer. Though cantankerous, she wasn’t bitter about her disappointing career. At the end of the book, she says that she would like to be remembered by something she got from Jimmy Cagney—his respectful description of her as “a very professional actress, who knew what was required of her and did her job excellently.”

Well, it beats a grapefruit in the face.

by Imogen Sara Smith

#imogen sara smith #Mae Clarke #The Chiseler #Waterloo Bridge #James Cagney #pre-Code

7 notes · View notes

lykezoinks · 8 years ago

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[ a/n: alright, this is my last entry for @klangst-week. thanks everybody for all the likes and reblogs! it keeps me writing, and it’s just nice to see people enjoying what i’m putting out! also, the works everyone’s created have just been amazing, so keep it up, y’all! ]

title: impulse control words: 3,547 prompt: secrets/betrayal rating/genre: T for language, modern au, college au, angst & hurt/comfort with a tinge of humor trigger warning(s): mental illness (implied depression and anxiety), depersonalization, mentions of injury (bruises and blood) extra notes: keith and shiro are adoptive brothers (it’s mentioned very briefly), klance is established

Yes, he works in the most hipster coffee shop within a twenty mile radius of campus. And yes, he loves it. Sure, The Underground sounds more like a sketchy bar you’d find in an alleyway that may or may not host fight clubs every other night, and yeah, it kinda smells like pencil shavings even after he mops the floors three times at opening, but at least it has character. Most people would roll their eyes at the always pretentious shop-goer in their thrift store clothing and knit hats, but Lance can’t help but find them interesting. Not that it surprises anyone.

Lance became famous around campus after only one year of being a— totally amazing, if he may say so himself— residence hall assistant. Almost anyone who lived in Levine Hall found a friend in Lance McClain. Eager to please and even more eager to befriend, it’s no secret that he falls in love with almost every social interaction he can muster up.

So he really doesn’t mind if a customer wants to discuss their latest film project, and he’s always happy to adhere to any non-dairy milk preference. Though he doesn’t have a septum ring to match his coworkers’ and he’s a bit too smiley for the spoken poetry nights they host on the stage in the back, that doesn’t stop anyone from placing a dollar in the tip jar after he compliments their tattoos or ends a pleasant conversation with a smile and a wink.

The night shift is easy enough to work. People stop entering the cafe sometime after ten, staying their welcome to study on the couches and leaving before closing. Lance’s manager insists Lance work the front while Floyd takes on the side work. So the remainder of Lance’s shift is spent leaning his elbow against the counter and letting his fingers fall one-by-one against his cheek. He tells leaving customers to enjoy the rest of their night as they leave behind a buzz of idle chatter and a ding of the door. Once the cafe clears out, all that’s left is the sounds of Floyd sweeping the floors and an acoustic song from some band that Lance thinks should have never left their basement.

“Am I free to go, bossman?” Lance asks, drumming his hands against the counter, wiggling his hips in time with the beat as his eyes dart between Floyd and the analog clock on the wall.

“You’re good to go,” Floyd nods, sliding Lance’s wallet across the countertop.

With a happy sigh, Lance punches a few buttons on the register, pulling the drawer out and placing it in the office in the back before clocking himself out and grabbing his keys from the hook. The second he does, his phone rings from its spot in his jacket pocket. Slipping it into his palm, he drags his thumb across the screen and cradles it between his ear and his shoulder. “Perfect timing! How’s it hangin’, Pidgeotto?”

“Lance! Hey, um…” The way Pidge says ‘Lance’, high pitched and cracking, tells him he’s about to get bad news. Before he can stop her, Pidge is already stringing together a plethora of subject changers that just seem ridiculous given that the two of them weren’t on a particular subject to begin with.

“Pidge,” Lance interrupts partway through some bullshit commentary having to do with the ‘crazy weather we’ve been having.’ Lance knows that no one has to explain climate change to Pidge, given its something she rants about at least twice a day. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, okay… Um, we’re at Black Spot… And, uh— Hunk… Hunk, would you— No, grab him! Jesus… “

“What happened?” His sigh is heavy as he closes the door behind him after giving Floyd a curt wave, already headed toward his car. The Black Spot never means anything good, ever. Why his boyfriend so loves the town’s shadiest bar is beyond Lance; he doesn’t exactly find peeling paint and stained floor boards charming. And the muscled biker guys that do nothing but take up space at the bar to glower at the assorted whiskeys along the wall and ramble about their Navy days— or something like that— don’t exactly put Lance in the partying mood.

“Lotor happened.”

“Oh, God…” Lance drags a hand down his face before pinching the bridge of his nose.

He doesn’t need context. Any instance in which Lance’s current boyfriend and Lance’s ex-boyfriend are in the same room usually results in disaster. And a night in the E.R. And, lo and behold, by some cruel twist of fate, these disasters are becoming more and more frequent in recent months. Lance is half convinced that they’re destined to kill each other, like Lotor is Tybalt and Keith is a far less flamboyant Mercutio. Lance refuses to be the Benvolio in this situation. “Just stay put. I’ll be there in a sec.”

A near collision and a half-assed parallel parking job later, Lance walks himself outside the bar, feeling exceptionally underdressed as the Winter weather dusts over his arms. He has to push himself through a crowd of people waiting to be let in by the bouncer before he sees a head of familiar wild hair. In her NASA sweatshirt and minimalist alien hat, Pidge looks like she belongs at a performance art showcase rather than a night out on the town, but Lance is too exhausted to comment on his friends’ poor fashion decisions. Even if that Hawaiian shirt is so not Hunk’s color.

Instead, his focus shifts onto his leather-clad boyfriend, and rather than point out the fact he looks like a Danny Zuko knock-off with a red beanie and black baby gauges in his ears, he steps forward with his arms crossed instead.

“Hey, Lance,” Pidge sighs, sounding somewhat relieved. Hunk is a bit busy grabbing at Keith’s shoulder every time he tries to take a step toward the street. Handling a Drunk Keith is like— as Keith would say in True Texan Spirit— herding cats.

“Hey,” Lance says briskly, marching passed Pidge to strap a hand on the collar of Keith’s jacket. “Lemme see.”

Keith huffs and turns his head, looking utterly indifferent as Lance’s eyes widen.

“Shit, Keith…” He squints a little, scanning over his boyfriend’s busted lip and the fresh patch of bruises, purples, blues, and reds bleeding from underneath one eye, across the bridge of his nose, and all the way under his other eye.

“It’s not that bad,” Keith slurs, holding up a wavering hand.

“Not that—!” Lance has to close his eyes and suck in a breath through his nose, counting to ten just like Mama McClain taught him, before he can open his eyes again. But his glare doesn’t disappear.

“Sorry, man,” Hunk all but mewls beside him, rubbing at the back of his neck in a flustered fashion. “I tried to pull them off of each other as soon as I could.”

“It’s not your fault, big guy,” Lance assures, turning to his best friend with a soft smile before glaring right back at his boyfriend. “It’s yours.”

“Why is it that all of a sudden—” Keith starts, but Lance knows better than to let him divert Lance’s attention.

“There’s no way Lotor with his pretty boy hands was the only culprit. Who the hell were you picking a fight with this time?”

Keith chews at the inside of his cheek, opting to take out his pent up anger on the ground as he fixes it with a fiery glare.

Pidge steps in for him then, pushing her circle glasses further up her nose. “The usual suspects.”

“Great,” Lance grumbles, never breaking his staring contest with Keith’s profile. “So now you wanna take on Lotor and his frat buddies. All of whom are very rich… And can hire very. Good. Attorneys.”

“Lance.” Hunk sets a hand on Lance’s back, offering a sympathetic look that makes Lance’s hunched shoulders deflate. “I know you’re mad, but do you really wanna do this out here?”

It’s then that Lance realizes he’s making a scene, the crowd of people on the street gawking in their direction. And he also realizes that it’s making Keith antsy. That’s apparent in the way he starts shifting his shoulders in every which way and pales a little in the face.

“We’re the ones who let your boyfriend off his leash,” Pidge admits, saying “your boyfriend” like he’s now completely Lance’s responsibility. Saying it like she hasn’t been Keith’s best friend since the fifth grade.

Lance fishes his car keys from his back pocket, still trying to cool off from the anger burning something fierce in his chest. “You guys enjoy the rest of your night, okay? I’m gonna take Keith back to the apartment.”

“Are you sure? We can come with you,” Hunk offers, the concern never leaving his eyes for a moment.

“No, seriously, it’s fine. Besides, I thought I saw a familiar little curly girly named Shay head into that other bar a couple blocks from here.”

Hunk reddens just a little, but nods in agreement as Pidge makes some complaint about being a third wheel. In a mess of goodbyes and repeatedly reaching for Keith’s hand— his opposition to PDA is counterproductive given that he can’t walk by himself without stumbling— Lance finally gets the chance to unlock his car and slide into the driver’s seat. Keith flops down into the passenger’s seat next to him, pulling one leg up to rest his foot on the polyester as he plays absently with the laces on his high tops.

The drive home is silent, mostly because Lance can’t think of a decent lecture that won’t end in a two-way silent treatment, something that’s proven to be agonizing given they’re the only two living in a one-bedroom apartment. After Lance parks, helps Keith climb the stairs, and fumbles with the key in the lock, Keith finds a spot in their too small kitchen, sliding down the lower cabinets to sit cross-legged on the floor. Because apparently he’s a household pet.

Lance rifles through the freezer, snagging a bag of whatever’s packaged and frozen before all but chucking it onto one of Keith’s thighs. Keith seems to get the message, picking it up and hesitantly pressing it to his multi-colored face. Lance finds the place on the floor across from his boyfriend and sits back on his thighs, staring. For a long while, the only sounds in the room are the hum of the refrigerator and their neighbor’s dog yipping through the walls.

“Are we gonna talk about this?” Lance says it more rhetorically than anything.

Keith swallows hard, trying to cover up half of his face with vegetable medley. His voice is muffled by the plastic when he says, “About what?”

Lance rolls his eyes, shaking his head. He has half the mind to storm off into the bedroom and leave Keith to tend to his own wounds. But being a middle sibling of six has taught him patience if nothing else, so he counts to ten again. “About why your face looks like a Goya painting,” he deadpans.

Keith fidgets under Lance’s gaze. His knuckles would be white if they weren’t bruised too. “You know how your asshole ex is.”

“Keith, you have got to pull your head out of the Middle Ages! I’m not some damsel in distress whose honor you have to defend.” Though Lance would admit it was hot the first time… But seeing Keith beat up with dried blood caked all over his features every other weekend is starting to look less suave and James Deany and more thoughtless.

Keith drops the bag of frozen vegetables. Then his nose twitches. To the untrained eye, it would go unnoticed, but Lance has been dating him for two years and three months. And a nose twitch means that Keith’s hiding something.

“But this has nothing to do with that, does it?”

“Lance, would you just let it go—”

“Okay, fine. You want me to let this one go? Then we can talk about last week. Or the week before that. Or the week before that.”

Keith tries for a glare then, a practiced stare that looks like flames are licking at his irises, but Lance is immune from prolonged exposure.

“And I know you’re not that drunk, so let’s not act like this was impulse alone.”

When Keith shrugs off his jacket and tosses it across the room, Lance sees that the bruises aren’t just on his face. His heart jumps up to his throat as the sound of the ice machine crunches in the background.

“Would you just tell me why you’re being more of a brooding edgelord than usual? Why do you have to be so emotionally constipated?” He places either hand on Keith’s shoulders, looking him dead in the eye. “Let me be your laxative.”

“You really have a knack for making up the world’s most disgusting metaphors.”

“It’s a gift. I’m thinking of turning it into a career path.”

“Stick to astrophysics.”

“Stop changing the subject.” It’s clear that neither of them is budging, so Lance just arches a brow and asks, “Do I have to call Shiro?”

Keith slams his back further into the cabinets with a groan. The older brother card is always the trump card. “Do not tell Shiro about this, please. I’m still getting lectures about my stupid cafeteria fights in high school.”

“Then tell me what’s going on! I thought when we said we were gonna be more open with each other, it was gonna be a two-way street. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“Nothing’s going on, Lance, okay? I hate your ex-boyfriend and his stupid frat bro sidekicks, and I shouldn’t have had that last shot of moonshine, alright?”

While it is incredibly tempting to comment on the moonshine bit, Lance holds off. Because something else catches his eye. Crossing his arms over his chest, he refuses to break eye contact, giving Keith just a few more moments to tell him the truth. The clock ticks away, and there’s nothing. “You’re biting your lip,” he says finally.

“So?”

“So, one, stop it; it’s busted and you’re gonna hurt yourself. And two, that means you’re not telling me something.”

“Would you quit psychoanalyzing me!?”

Patience be damned. Something in Lance snaps then, something that makes his teeth grind and heat bubble in his chest. His fists tremble a little before he throws his hands out to his sides and starts getting to his feet. “Fine, you know what? Fine. Forget I asked. God forbid someone try to care about you, Keith, damn.”

He steps to leave, but as soon as he does, Keith clasps a hand onto his wrist and pulls just a little. The moment Lance turns his head, eyes sharp with ice and prickling rage, he feels his heart jump. The anger slowly trickles out of his system, sending a shiver down his spine. Keith looks a little broken, shoulders squared and eyes pleading in a way that’s so unlike him it makes something in the back of Lance’s head scream.

“I’m sorry, okay? I just… You’re gonna think I’m bat-shit.”

Lance exhales low and deep, turning fully and sitting back down across from Keith. He sets a gentle hand on Keith’s knee, trying to get him to make eye contact. “Try me.”

Keith’s mental illness has been the elephant in the room, always noticed but never talked about. Because Keith refused to talk about it. It took a full year’s convincing, mostly on Shiro’s end, just to get him to start seeing help. Some days he was a mess of the emotions he never learned how to process, and Lance would try his best to be there for him. Other days were better. Other days he was just silent and spacey and tried not to cry.

“No one knows this, okay? Not even Shiro, not even my goddamn shrink, so you can’t…” He trails off, and Lance tries to squeeze his knee in support.

“Keith… Keith, look at me…” When Keith looks up, his eyes are growing misty, pink rings already apparent on the brims of his eyes. “You know you can tell me anything.”

Offering a weak nod, Keith takes a deep breath, closing his eyes as he forces himself to speak. “I just… I thought that maybe… Y’know how sometimes people… I don’t know, I thought if I was… Fuck.” He holds up his hands before Lance can say anything, blinking away whatever tears form in his eyes before he lets out a breath and continues. “I thought if I could feel, I don’t know, pain… If I could feel anything I’d stop feeling like…” Keith clamps his teeth down on his lower lip again. Whatever tears he blinks away only come back.

Lance sighs, reaching out his thumb to slip Keith’s lip from his teeth’s grasp. “Keith, you can cry—”

“No, I can’t,” Keith starts, though his voice trembles despite himself. “Because if I start I won’t stop. And I just— Fuck, I just need to say it.” Lance can practically feel the frustration radiating off of the other in waves. With a steady breath, he takes a hand in Keith’s, holding it to his chest and letting Keith know he has Lance’s full attention. Keith hisses in another breath and tries again. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me… Lately, it’s just like, like nothing is fucking real, and I can talk and hear and touch things, but it’s like I’m not really there. Like I’m in some weird dream world, and I’m just watching myself or something. Or like everything’s not really there, or maybe it is, and I’m just not a part of it… I don’t know, it feels like I’m going insane.”

“Keith…” Lance doesn’t know where to go from there, watching his boyfriend struggle around his words with a pain sinking into Lance’s chest.

“Sometimes I don’t think I even sound like me… Like when I talk, it’s some kind of automated computer message, y’know? And I went home for Christmas. And I thought… I don’t know, I thought being home and in my own bed might make me feel normal again. But it didn’t. And nothing feels normal, nothing feels… Damn it, I’m going insane.” That’s when Keith’s face twists, twists into something that’s a punch to Lance’s gut. And Keith is squinting his eyes closed, sniffling loudly before a sob emits from his throat.

“You know… You don’t have to be so strong all the time…” Lance says in a whisper, tucking a strand of Keith’s hair behind his ear.

Keith looks up at him, eyes watery as he sobs again, pressing his face into Lance’s chest. Lance wraps his arms around him instinctively, feeling Keith shake, choking and whimpering against him. Lance can only hold him closer, shushing him tenderly as Keith claws at the back of Lance’s shirt, gripping onto the fabric like he’ll disappear if he doesn’t. Each broken little noise that leaves Keith is another twist in Lance’s heart, and he doesn’t dare let go.

“It’s okay, you’re okay…” Lance coos, pressing tender kisses on the top of Keith’s hair. “You’re okay, baby… You’re okay…”

Keith doesn’t stop weeping, not until his throat is raw and all he can do is let silent tears roll down his cheeks as he snivels and tries to breathe normally again.

By the time he leans back, sniffling and rubbing under his eyes with the back of his palm, there’s a wet patch on Lance’s T-shirt. Lance doesn’t mind, too busy trying to read Keith’s expression, setting a hand on the back of his neck.

“Do you feel any better?” Lance asks softly, ducking his head into Keith’s line of sight.

Keith nods his head slowly, wiping his nose with the white cotton of his T-shirt with another wet snivel. “Sorry about your shirt.”

Lance snorts, rolling his eyes just a little. “I have other shirts.”

“Yeah.” Keith’s breath shudders once more as he collects himself and blinks the wetness from his puffy eyes, tears caught on his eyelashes. “I’m just sorry I—”

“No. No… We agreed no more apologizing about this.”

“No, you said ‘Keith, stop apologizing every time you cry.’”

“Okay, smartass.” Lance rises to his feet, offering his hands and pulling Keith up along with him. With a steady breath, he places a gentle kiss on the corner of Keith’s lips, mindful to avoid the forming scab. “Thank you… For sharing that with me.”

Keith nods solemnly, probably thinking something snarky about how Lance is talking like his therapist. So Lance goes for a subject change, placing his hands at the base of Keith’s neck.

“How about you wash your face and pick out a movie, alright?”

They spend the rest of the night tangled up in each other, Lance refusing to move his arms from Keith’s waist even as Keith awkwardly holds an icepack to his face. Eventually, they drift to sleep, heart beats pumping in time while Lance tries his best to whisper words of comfort.

“I love you… And you’re here. Even if your mind’s playing tricks on you. You’re here, and you’re with me. And I love you…”

#klangstweek2017 #mental illness tw #depersonalisation tw #klangst #klance #voltron #my writing #look at me not abusing italics this time!!

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sarazanmai · 8 years ago

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Thoughts on the MP100 English dub. Episode five.

so excited for this episode to fucking bury me

seriously I credit this episode for really making me realize just how special the series is and that yes it is better than OPM

I mean I was liking it up until now, but this took it to the next level

also some time after last week’s episode I did find out who voices Tenga, his name is Ray Chase

anyway the episode

you know I had forgotten what Dimple sounds like

“what’s that creepy looking ball of energy next to you? are you that thing’s master?” this always gets a chuckle out of me

also I can totally tell Teru’s actor voiced Blue in that “Pokemon Generations” episode

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack a lot lately and the music is just amazing

“if he doesn’t establish his superiority right away, there will always be a struggle for power between them” is this an anime or a National Geographic special?

I love the way Mob says “nah makes me nauseous”

REIGEEEEEEENNNNNNNN

he is such a good mother to Mob

I’ve always liked the knife metaphor he used

“not to mention, I started working out.” I always liked how Mob just throws that in there

also this episode’s a really prime example of how good the animation is

like I tell myself not to get invested in internet polls, but while you can please vote in Crunchyroll’s poll because I want MP100 to get the credit it deserves

“Shigeo is someone who could become a god” given recent events in the manga this takes on a whole new meaning

as does Teru’s attempt at erasing Dimple....

I’ve always liked how Mob just sees right through Teru’s bullshit

the scenes where they fight inside the school were so intense

“I have no intention of killing him, I just want him to fight back” local egomaniacal teenager threatens autistic boy with kitchen knives because he wouldn’t retaliate on the playground

RIP Teru’s hair....so sad...so young....

“I won’t forgive you, no matter what you say” yeah about that...

“you think I look like some middle aged pencil pusher now, don’t you?”

also gotta love dat mixed medium animation the series has going on

I mean...you really expect me to believe something else last year was this creative?

I just realized that it took this long for them to exchange names

“oh hi, nice to meet you Teruki” Mob plz

Teru might mock Mob’s pacifism, but the narrative sure doesn’t

also gotta give this series credit for taking the “you and I are the same” argument and actually having it work

I like how Teru’s actor shouted “no” just then

“from my perspective, you’re just an average person” Mob is savage

the choking scene...

yeah the choking scene is really uncomfortable, but the music going on in the background is fantastic

“what the hell was that? how many times are you going to reject me?” I could be remembering wrong, but in the official subs I’m pretty sure Teru asks why he’s mocking him which I think is a more appropriate word for this context though this could very well be a mouth flap situation where they had to use something else

I like how we still don’t have a lot of info on this flashback, in fact I think we only have what we’re shown in this episode but that works in its favor because it makes the situation all the more mysterious and chilling

and here it is, ???%

the animation for the entire time this goes on is perfect

“I WON’T USE MY PSYCHIC POWERS AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE!” tell that to that one guy at Claw that you set on fire

“it was then that Mob realized he failed to change as he had promised himself, he caused another accident because of his psychic powers” okay....the Japanese narrator handled this way better because he didn’t sound so matter of fact about it

100% Sadness is still one of the best moments in the series though

“there’s nothing I can say, I completely lost” yeah you did

“that one time? you mean when you got super car sick and threw up into the hood of my jacket?” Ritsu plz

“back then...that wasn’t him...that wasn’t my brother” would you believe that when I first saw this I seriously thought it meant Ritsu was going to become the big villain?

so despite the narrator being inappropriately Extra I think this episode was well done, especially regarding Teru’s actor

please vote MP100 for Best Animation in Crunchyroll’s poll while its still open

tune in next week where Ritsu actually starts doing stuff

#angelina watches MP100

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3one3 · 7 years ago

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The Sequel - 855

Day(bed) Dreams

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

“This is the first time I’ve actually sat in here.”

“It’s very nice with the fan.”

“The puppies certainly seem to enjoy napping here. I wonder why they waited for humans to use it before trying it themselves.”

“They like to be near you.”

“I wish Lukas were here.”

“Why did you schedule a playdate for him last night then?”

“Because dumb.”

In honor of Juan’s visit, and because it was really too hot out anyway, Christina postponed her Thursday riding and penciled “lay by the pool” into her schedule in its place. She and Juan made use of the little cabana on the front of the pool shed. There was a huge and comfortable wicker daybed in there with thick canvas cushions, and a ceiling fan that offered even more respite from the temperature than the shading from the sun obviously provided. The side curtains were decorative and remained tied to their posts for maximum fresh air anyway. Both humans and both Toy Fox Terriers had soft baby blue towels to relax on, and the latter snoozed stretched out on their sides for maximum cooling. The humans were right next to each other, with some pillows to recline on.

“I think I’m getting dumber, actually. A side effect of doing nothing but showing and vacationing is developing a serious deficit of other things to even talk about. I have nothing to say that isn’t about horses, horse shows, the Olympics, bikinis, food, or children’s toys. I can’t even read interesting books because I just fall asleep.” Christina inhaled deeply through her nose and let the air out slowly. The first part pushed her chest into the player’s left arm and the second drew it away again, but did blow warm breath on him. She could see it move some hair around. The short sleeve of his adidas logo tee was a little caught up on the towel, so it exposed more bicep than it should. The rider leaned forward just enough to smooch him there.

“You did at least an hour on Donald Trump this morning,” the Spaniard countered. Preseason was hard work for him and he relished the day off to relax with his feet up. His girlfriend’s yard was a pretty nice place to do that. The water pumps in the pool moved the surface water just enough to make a little ambient noise with the whoosh of the fan to back up the music playing over on the patio at low volume. Christina chose an alt-rock radio station on Apple Music, which was as inoffensive as it was uninteresting. Occasionally a song she knew and liked came on and she hummed along with it. More than occasionally a song she knew and didn’t like came on, and she hummed those too. Juan talking to her about the summer tour, in the kind of voice dictated by their proximity to one another, was all she really cared to hear. Sometimes Lucky’s snoring surpassed the collective volume of all of those things, and the player rubbed his head with his toes to interrupt the funny sound without ruining the puppy nap.

“So those things and Donald Trump. That’s it.”

“What do you want to have on your mind? You’re living your big dream in a few days. Better to think about it as much as you can before it’s over and you can’t get this time back,” Juan suggested.

“I don’t know. I just want to feel like an interesting person,” the new Olympian chuckled.

“Have you started reading the zoo book yet?”

“No. You said I should take it to Tokyo, so I’m saving it for Tokyo.”

“Have you talked to Aidan lately?”

“Yes. He’s happy for me about Tokyo. He has a girlfriend. He can’t come to visit because school starts soon.”

“That’s too bad.”

“What are we going to do when football starts for real and you can’t come visit either?”

“You can still visit me.”

“I watched an MLS game the other night at the airport.”

“Why? You hate American soccer.”

“David Villa was on fire.”

“He’s loving it there.”

“He sounds exactly like you. I stopped paying attention when the match was over but I still had my laptop open and my earbuds in and he did the man of the match interview and I thought it was you for a second.”

“We grew up in the same place. This is normal, I think.”

“I looked at the nearest TV screen with departures on it to see if there was a flight to London. I wanted to see you. So bad. It was such a crazy weekend and I heard your voice, or what I thought was your voice, and I wished I was going home to you in London instead of coming back here.”

“You have the power any time you want to make “home” with me in London instead of here with him.”

“Don’t.”

“Why do you tell me this if you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I tried to nap a little yesterday before you got here. I was flip-flopping between putting music on for white noise or a podcast, and I picked neither. I fell asleep just thinking about you instead.”

“What about?”

“I had this vignette in my head about us in bed, having like really romantic sex with the instrumental version of this Damien Rice song I love. I do that a lot.”

“Which?”

“Fall asleep imagining scenarios with you, or with Schü. They’re always affectionate, or passionate, or...I don’t know. The other day I was like, “What does this mean? What does it say about me? Am I feeling starved for that kind of connection?” I couldn’t really decide. I probably fell asleep.”

“I don’t know what it means,” the Spanish midfielder replied somewhat absently as he lifted his arm to use it as a headrest. Christina didn’t read that gesture as one meant to make more space between then. On the contrary, she inched closer to him and moved her knee to his thigh and her hand to his stomach. There were lots of times when his ability to listen to her situation and then interpret it differently could really, really agitate and annoy her, like the night before. Most of the time she wanted the service. She wanted him to tell her why her imagination struggled as of late to embrace any genre but softcore porn and romantic comedies. All it wanted to do was think up sex scenes, and cuddling scenarios, and it provided the staging, the soundtrack, the dialogue, and the plot, but never the prior scene or the one that would come next- never the context. Sometimes her imagination directed the scenes in her dreams and sometimes when she was awake. “Maybe it’s your conscience trying to protect you from thinking too much about the Olympics? If you weren’t having romantic fantasies all the time, maybe you’d be having medal ceremony ones, or scary ones where you hit all the jumps.”

“Maybe, but my conscience has never shown signs of self-awareness or a desire for self-preservation. It’s usually totally suicidal,” the rider giggled.

“You’ve grown a lot. You could be done with the self-destructive instincts,” Juan said back teasingly. She could see and hear his smile. “What are the other vignettes? Is that what you called them?”

“Yes, like a tableau, or scene. There was one where I desperately wanted you to fuck me standing up, like from behind, and you were like, “No, you’re too short”, and I was like “hello, Schü is half a foot taller than you and he manages,” and you were like, “Kneel on the bed”. So you were standing up and I was sitting up on my knees, and it was amazing. You kept kissing my neck or resting your chin on my shoulder here.” Christina patted the front of her left shoulder and then left her hand there, sort of tucked inside the neck of her shirt so she could touch her collarbone. “And obvs you had great access to boobs and clit so I was in over-stimulated heaven.”

“What’s happening in the ones that aren’t about sex?”

“When I got on that plane I passed out thinking about us going to a beautiful library from one of those Buzzfeed lists of beautiful libraries, and you walking around picking out all the books with quotes you know by heart that make you think of me,” she explained, able to see the scene in her head as if it were a memory. “I used to have things like that in my head when I had crushes on people, or when I first met Schü. And when we were first together. Usually my daydreams and fall-asleep-dreams are like...the stuff we put into the Dirk videos. Training montages with great songs. Victory gallops.”

“I know I’ve said it before and I know you’ve said no before, but I bet you could learn more about why you fantasize about different things if you spoke with a therapist.”

“Still no.” Christina shook her head and then pressed it into the Chelsea man’s ribs. He sighed dramatically like her cause was hopeless, and moved his left arm around her. His thumb tucked into the back of her cotton shorts near her hip.

“What are the ones you have with André?”

“Same type things.”

“I have had a thousand of these scenes come to me over the years where you leave him and tell me you’re ready to be together. I used to imagine how it would play out when you gave in and wanted to sleep together. It freaked me out a little bit when it actually happened in such a dramatic way, because I never expected that it would really happen like that. All the ways I pictured it were like laughably over the top, either porn-fantasy-dirty or so epic. Then that night actually was like a great story. Once in a while I think maybe the over the top scenes I imagine you telling me you want to be with me could actually happen like that too.” Juan was wistful in his sharing, but also self-deprecating. He must think it’s not cool for guys to think about stuff like that- to plan it out, his girl concluded while listening. I think it’s okay. If they can picture every second of the play leading up to when they score the Champions League winner then why not when they get the girl they want?

“So in what over the top ways has this gone down?” she asked with a big smile he couldn’t see but could probably sense. “How have I come to you and told you it’s time for us?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to recreate any of them when it happens.”

“Why?”

“I want it to be better than anything I could have imagined.”

Fuck, this is one of those moments. This is one of those exchanges you can “fantasize” about but know it never happens in real life. Like meet-cutes in movies. Nobody actually meets their soulmate that way except me and Schü. It’s one of those moments. It’s exactly what he’s talking about, the German girl realized, her heart beating steady but extra loudly in her chest and ears. She thought Juan’s couple of lines were too good. They weren’t even cheesy. They were just exquisite. He timed and executed the setup exactly the way he would have done if she plotted it out in one of her idle daydreams. She wanted to know if he plotted his as well, or if they were silly or ridiculous. Perhaps she said witty things in his vignettes but did so dressed as a French maid or something- some thing indicative of male authorship- some thing she couldn’t even fathom because she was a girl and she was Christina and only had Christina’s experiences and knowledge to draw from to make up her plot. Her internal screenwriter shouted that in her script, Juan would be lovingly kissed for what he said, and that she needed to get on top of him to do it so that after, she could fold her arms on him as a chin rest and spend a while smiling and listening right up close to his face while he told her about his imaginary interactions. Far be it from her to defy the writer.

“Are you about to do it right now?” the player teased after he got his kiss and while she arranged herself atop his body.

“No. That was just an adorable thing to say. Now give me some examples.”

“I think of one scene over and over for a long time,” he smiled, reaching out to poke at the large and disorganized knot of hair on her head. He must be fond of it then, Christina thought about the reoccurring daydream, attributing the frequency to satisfaction rather than some kind of plague or lack of imagination. “We’re at my place, and you drop a gold lipstick on the floor and ask me to pick it up for you. I bend down to get it and I try to hand it to you before standing up straight again, so your hand is right in my face when I go to give it back. You have a different ring on from this one.” Juan pointed at her diamond and aquamarine engagement ring since it happened to be right in front of his face, not unlike the story. “You had your diamond- the one I gave you, on the necklace- put back into a ring just like the one I got for you originally. You said you were ready to wear it a new way. Since I was already down there, I went to my knee and asked you if you wanted to wear it as my wife.”

“Awwww! That’s so adorable. How am I supposed to beat that?”

“I don’t know!” He continued to smile, and delighted in her melting heart. She had no intention of giving any sort of comment that might color his thinking or belief on the likelihood or nearness of her opting to choose the unique 5-carat Asscher cut rock over the 1.5-carat princess cut. That wasn’t the point of the conversation. Christina wasn’t thinking about it either. The feeling of imminent or eventual end of her marriage that she carried around with her for the better part of a year had dissipated enough to be a less urgent weight on her, or it was simply overshadowed by everyday life.

André didn’t follow through with the wedding band idea for their anniversary. They celebrated the special occasion when she got home from Aachen Sunday night, by drinking champagne and making s’mores over the fire pit. As anniversaries go, it was pretty low key. That was perfect though. Christina loved that her partner made a casual plan like that and researched how to pair different types of chocolate with different kinds of bubbly. He had a whole smorgasbord of chocolates with special extras, like lavender or orange peel, her favorite. Her idea for the occasion was to pack a picnic and take it to Signal Iduna Park. She wanted to con someone from the club into letting her spread a blanket and eat a lovely lunch in the center circle, so that she and André could reflect on and celebrate their journey together but also talk about all the ways they looked forward to the future. Football was the best outline by which she could think of to navigate the past and the future, and a lot of the future happiness was intrinsically linked to how he’d perform on that pitch. She didn’t know about his campfire plan ahead of time, and ended up being really glad that they did that instead. When she thought over whether or not to tell him her idea and try to make it happen as a sort of second celebration of their anniversary, she feared that it would seem almost threatening to the player- as if she were trying to tell him that he had better get his act together in that stadium or they’d never be happily ever after.

“What are your non-romantic vignettes about?” she inquired of the midfielder who still played at Stamford Bridge. “Fucking my butt?”

“Yes.” He winked at her and she stuck her tongue out. So did Spencer. He licked at her bare foot since it ended up in his face. His little tongue tickled and caused wriggling and squirming, which caused confusion for Juan, who had no idea why the girl on him was having some kind of attack.

“Pupppppy, stahhhhhp,” she moan-laughed. She didn’t want to just kick her foot or yank it away and accidentally hurt him. It took a few seconds for her to be sure of where he was and then cross her leg over the other ankle, out of range of any terriers.

“What was he doing?”

“Licking my baby toe.”

“Are you going to be lying on me for long?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I want more of this.” Her friend reached for his glass sitting on the little ledge behind his head. It had melting ice in it. Christina made iced coffee with fancy cold brew from the gourmet market. It was delicious. “If you’re just visiting, I can wait until you get up. If you plan to be here for a while, let me go get more and then you can come back.”

“You can go get a refill if you bring me one too. Thanks.” She stretched forward to smooch the unsuspecting player on the lips, and then carefully removed herself from his person. She sat Indian-style by the dogs so that she could pet them and remind them how spoiled they were, and how lucky they were not to have to go to “work” at the barn yet.

Also on her mind was how lucky she was not to have to be working at almost noon either, and how surprising it was that she could feel pretty relaxed about that. Christina was being incredibly “good” about her training, both in and out of the tack. She was back to working diligently but intelligently, the way she was able to do before André’s transfer set off a bomb in her routine. It was so much easier to feel prepared and calm about her riding and her horses when she knew she was doing everything right for them and for herself. Her heart kept trying to spiral out of control with anticipation and anxiety about the Olympics, but her brain kept telling it to calm down and be reasonable, reminding her that she was doing everything she possibly could, and that if she went to Tokyo and totally blew it, it wouldn’t be because of something she did in the build-up. Recognizing how good a place she was in was somewhat bittersweet, however, because it meant that it took an entire year to get back to “right” and “good”, and to her that was a year wasted. The horses especially had limited time and jumps to waste, but so did she. Christina couldn’t see herself extending her prime riding into her 40’s or even later like some of her colleagues.

“As it turns out,” she told Spencer, mostly, since Lucky was reluctant to open his eyes and acknowledge her attention. “All I really need in life is special ponies and a nice place to ride them, special boys and nice environments in which to cuddle with them, and enough free time to do stuff with Lulu Schü, because he deserves his Mom and because he makes me wanna die from laughter, and happy-cry at how cute he is, and- Yes, and you guys too.” The rider rolled her eyes at the tricolor terrier, who reached out with a paw to tap her hand when she got caught up in her explanation and stopped petting his little head. “Don’t tell him I told you, but Juanin said he misses you guys sometimes. Everyone loves you.” The rider bent down to kiss her puppy, and then looked around for her phone. There were a lot of pillows on the daybed, and displaced towels bunched up or folded from her moving about.

I need to know when Stef wants to do her lesson so I know how much time I have to do nothing, in case Juanin wants to do an actual thing. I’m fine not riding until like 7, and if she wants to ride late too then we can go into the city and...whatever. I dunno what he wants to see. Ooo, there it is. Her phone, setting a new record for single case usage, was close to falling off the side of the cushion, partially concealed by a towel.

“No response from Stef but Schü says his back is fucked up again,” Christina reported to her canine kids with a frown.

“Fucked up how? I hope it doesn’t hurt too much :(“ Way to make me immediately feel guilty about relaxing and reveling in how great everything is, she snorted inside.

“Here, for you, carina,” Juan said when he handed over a hard plastic cup with her coffee, milk, and ice. It was already sweating in the heat. He wiped his glass, sans milk, with one of the towels once he’d climbed over the dogs to get back to his spot.

“Did you want to see anything or go anywhere? Or is being a bum around the house all afternoon okay?” An extremely tan, sun-bleached, well-caffeinated and small sized human approached him much the way the dogs approached when they knew they were going to lay down and stay a while but didn’t yet know exactly where or in what fashion. Christina was debating in her head about how she could resume lying on him on her stomach and still be able to sip from her straw. “I didn’t really plan any activities because I was going to ride now and then maybe go out later. Later activities are different than midday activities.”

“Show me your favorite place to eat lunch- late lunch,” the Spaniard clarified. “In a few hours. For now, bum.”

“I like that you like being a bum.”

“I like your bum.” He sat up to swat her butt while she lingered on two knees and one hand, trying to figure out how to get comfortable.

“Can you sit up more actually and I sit between your legs? I promise not to sit on your balls.”

“You always end up sitting on my balls.”

“Well hold them out of the way then and it won’t happen.” The rider rolled her eyes and then quickly climbed over his left thigh to settle in front of him and use him like a backrest. This isn’t as good as staring at his handsome face, she rued. But at least I can drink my drink and operate my phone, and he can rub my tummy, she smiled to herself when she felt a familiar hand settle on her stomach.

“You have become very skilled at relaxing, baby girl,” the hand’s owner yawned.

“Uhhuh. You sound like you need a nap.”

“I always need a nap.”

“You’re an old man.”

“Thanks.”

“I was with Lukas in the store the other day and an old man like you thought I was his babysitter, like I didn’t look old enough to be his mom. I love that old man.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you falling asleep?”

“No.”

“What would you be thinking about if you were?”

“Reaching into your shorts.”

“Honestly, babe, how are you surviving celibacy between visits, or are you not still doing that?” By “that” I mean not sleeping with other people. I assume that’s still true, Christina thought with only a very small measure of certainty. I didn’t have sex on the brain right now, but I can see why he would if he’s really not having any with anyone else. Especially since we didn’t even do that last night.

“Pass.”

“What?”

“Pass. Next question.”

“Does that mean you’re not?” She instinctively went to turn around to see his face, but Juan saw that coming and distracted her by slipping his palm into her loose shorts and gently sliding his fingertips down between her legs. Still, he could probably feel that she was tense because of his words rather than his actions.

“It means I don’t want to talk about it,” he informed her with finality. She couldn’t read it though, so she persisted.

“But-“

“No, it doesn’t mean that,” he assured. The rider could feel him move around behind her and assumed it was to put his glass back on the ledge, as she soon found herself in the middle of both of his arms, not just his legs. His left hand replaced the right where it rested on her stomach before. She relaxed back against him a little, letting her head fall to one side. The Spanish player very quickly acknowledged that by pushing a small kiss into her neck. Christina closed her eyes.

“It would be okay if you weren’t,” she told him, hoping to sound ambivalent despite actually feeling the opposite. I would hate it, but it would be fair. It’s not like I’m faithful to him. “Do you want to?”

“Sleep with other girls?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“You know what sucks about this whole Olympic thing?”

“Figuring out how to find food in Japan that isn’t fish?”

“I never know if people are telling the truth or they’re just trying to protect my feelings until after, because they’re afraid the truth will upset me and ruin everything.”

“I’m not lying to you, baby girl.” Juan’s vow came with another distraction measure- he started moving his fingers back and forth across the narrowing fabric of her ultra-soft cotton underwear, slowly and delicate. His wrist was holding the waistband of the shorts out of the way and that other hand dragged the bottom of her shirt up some, so she could feel a breeze from the fan above.

“But how can you stand it?” His actions reminded her just how difficult it would be for her to live without regular sex. It was hard enough to live without those special fingers of his when he wasn’t around, despite frequent access to another player’s fingers.

“You can’t seem to go more than two weeks without seeing me, and then you use me like a sex toy so-“ The one who played in West London got an elbow to the gut. “Ow. Bad angel!” Christina sipped her coffee and then emitted a refreshed “ahhh”.

“But seriously, how do you stand it?”

“I don’t know. I was away anyway. I did miss being with you though...” Juan put his chin on her head and moved his hand back and forth over her navel. She had every intention of making up for any sex deficit, particularly oral sex, but wanted at least the time it would take to finish leisurely drinking her second coffee first. So she rotated her head and leaned all the way to the right so she could see him and offer a real kiss to hold him over.

“I always miss being with you,” she said quietly after that kiss and before a second, unplanned one. Both were sort of on the side of his mouth because it was hard to turn enough for a more conventional smooch. The player removed his hand from between her underwear and her shorts, and helped to hold her head where he could give her a kiss of his own, with soft, slightly sugar-sweetened lips and a bitter coffee tongue.

“Obviously, or you wouldn’t be picturing so many different ways you want me to fuck you.” He grinned a mischievous little smile at close range when he was finished checking to see if her mouth tasted any different thanks to the cream in her iced coffee.

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