#and Matt had gotten made fun of for interacting with me and I didn't like anyone else so of COURSE I wouldn't date them

[ballsballsbowls]

I lied and I'm making a new thread for this because I was going to keep it brief and I am not succeeding.

I think it's actually a sign that Katie was a fundamentally good person because she was not particularly good at harassing me (either that or I was simply not a very good mark. Or both.) The fact that I, again, knew we were not friends and knew there was no benign reason she was interacting with me probably did not make her life any easier.

The first one, she caught me in a big group of people before Choir class and said, loudly, "I just wanted to know if you're okay with me dating Matt. Since you're, you know, obsessed with him."

I wish I could say that I had a snappy comeback, but I was more confused than anything. I sputtered something once I realized what she was on about, but she got people talking about it, people outside of our class, and that was what mattered.

I suspect, for all her bluster, that she knew that I wasn't wrong about Matt, because she deliberately chose to approach me in a class that we didn't share with Matt and didn't include any of his immediate friends.

She did that one a few more times, asking me loudly how I felt about it in classes with bigger groups of students, and she would go stand and be so lovey-dovey (within the bounds of acceptable PDA) while standing in front of my locker, because Matt's locker was inexplicably 5 lockers down from mine for two consecutive years in spite of our names not being anywhere near each other alphabetically (I never did figure out how that happened).

The most memorable one, though, was she came into Honors English with a folded-up note and gave it to me, and she and two of her buds wanted me to read it while they sat and watched. I opened it up and glanced at it to see...a note allegedly from a secret admirer asking me to wait around after school so we could talk. I still can't tell you what the intention was if I stayed after school.

Now like...so even if this WAS real, I cannot overstate how incredibly burned out by school I was at this point. I think my first thought was, "if this IS real somehow, I cannot believe someone would think I would be impressed by a Secret Admirer right now. I HAVE a secret admirer and it's not really all that great. I desperately want someone who isn't afraid to loudly say that they want to be seen with me and like me for who I am. A Secret Admirer doesn't mean dick to me." And genuinely was like, disgusted by the cowardice this would have required. But I knew it wasn't real.

I glanced at it, looked back up at 3 sets of expectant eyes going, "WELL? What do you think? What are you going to say?"

I looked her dead in the eye and went, "...don't you think he's got awfully girly handwriting? Pretty weird, if you ask me."

This shut all of them pretty fast, and I'm, to this day, unsure how they thought someone in Honors classes with them would fall for something like that? I was a year younger than them but honestly?

I threw the note away immediately after class, which I sort of regret. Not because I thought it would bring back any good memories, but because I wish I could see it the way it actually looked, not the way I remember it my head from 2 decades out, a poor mental copy of a poor mental copy of a poor mental copy.

This was also extremely frustrating for me because there'd very much been a detente on people bullying me since 10th grade, because everyone who'd been a dick to me had either graduated, been expelled, or had Matt say or do SOMETHING to them that it stopped.

Matt's besties did see this happen, but I am unsure if he ever found out about it or if the three of them just chalked it up to Girls Being Girls.

So, I told you all of this to tell you about prom, which I'll do the next day or so.

[collapsedglasshouses]

An Angel for Noah || Noah Sebastian x OC [Part 5]

DIVIDER ART WORK BY @cafekitsune

MASTERPOST

PAIRING: Noah Sebastian x Jules [she/her]

SUMMARY: Noah can't get this girl from his dreams out of his thoughts and goes to extreme lengths to clear his head... With no success.

WARNINGS: alcohol consumption, reckless behavior, near-death experiences, emotional distress, ...

A/N: Hello! ♡ Here is the next chapter of An Angel For Noah and we finally have something to work with. I'm so excited for your reactions. Just to let you know, I almost broke my brain while writing this. Also thanks to my boyfriend for being my co-writer. Credit goes out to collapsedboyfriend or whatever lmao. Have fun reading this chapter and let me know your thoughts! ♡

TAGLIST: @trvshdxddy @blackveilomens @crimson-calligraphyx @measuredingold @cncohshit @signs-of-ill-portent

If you wanna be added to the taglist of this story, please DM me or let me know in the comments!

Keep in mind, this takes place in an alternative universe. Even though I write about real people, the way I write them has nothing to do with how they are in real life.

“Jules.”

Noah’s simple exclaim still lingered in her ears, even days later.

Her heart had sunk when she heard him audibly sigh out her name. Her mind instantly had started to race. Why did he say her name? What was going on?

It wasn’t like she hadn’t realised how shifty Noah had gotten over the past few weeks, it all coming to a peak when she saved him from almost crashing his car, but nothing that happened made her come to the conclusion why he would know her name.

When the tour had finally kicked off, Jules nerves were on edge. Noah on the other hand seemed to finally have some rest from his thoughts. There was hardly a moment where he could reflect on the strange events that had occurred in the days leading up to the tour.

What Jules didn’t expect, was, actually liking to be on the road. When she was still alive she had been a homebody. She had loved being alone and found it rather difficult to bear the idea of ​​being away for long periods of time. But watching Noah do what he loved had impacted her somehow.

He seemed to blossom more and more with each day leading up to the tour and Jules couldn’t help but adore it. It almost felt like his feelings were washing over her.

The morning of the first tour date had arrived. The whole crew already arrived yesterday, so they had the full day to prepare everything to their liking. Jules watched Noah as he was woken up by his phone ringing.

The small hotel they stayed in was far from luxurious but it did what it was supposed to and did not blow their budget.

"Yes?" Noah rasped into his phone and ran a hand through his hair. Jules slightly tilted her head and watched him stretch his neck. If she hadn't been in the midst of a full on crisis about him stuttering her name in his sleep, she would have addressed how she couldn't deny how attractive she found him certain things he did throughout the day. One of them being his morning stretches.

"Yes, I'm wide awake, Matt. In fact, I'm about to step out of my room and get a ride to the venue." Noah lied and set on the edge of his bed. Jules rolled her eyes at him while slightly smiling. He definitely had overslept but there wasn't anything she could do but watch him hectically start his day.

When he later arrived at the venue, he was greeted by his band mates and shortly after he was completely in his element.

Until late afternoon, Jules didn't leave his side. Even stopped him from hitting his head too hard for a couple of times. Even though she would consider that day as her first constantly stressful one since becoming his guardian angel, she also couldn't stop herself from smiling all the time, when she saw how happy Noah was.

Noah's band mates were a constant source of support. Jules observed their interactions, noting the unbreakable bond that had formed over countless tours and late-night jam sessions. Their music was their lifeline, and they embraced it with a fervor that had carried them through countless challenges.

As they gathered at early evening for the soundcheck, Jules overheard their animated conversations. Ruffilo, the bassist, couldn't contain his excitement. "This is it, guys! The start of the tour! Let's give 'em a show they won't forget!"

Jolly, the guitarist, added with a grin, "And let's party like rock stars afterward!"

The concert itself had been a whirlwind of energy and emotions. Jules had watched as Noah took the stage, his powerful voice resonating through the venue. The crowd's adoration was heartwarming, their voices merging with his like it was a match made in heaven.

As the final chords of the concert had echoed through the air, Jules had seen the sweat-soaked euphoria on Noah's face. The connection he forged with the audience was a testament to the raw power of his music, a force that transcended the boundaries of the stage.

Much to Jules' dismay, Noah had taken the "party like rock stars" statement, from Jolly earlier, a tad too serious.

Around two hours later the whole crew found themselves at a party in a nearby bar, celebrating another electrifying performance. The room was filled with loud laughter, music and the clinking of glasses.

Noah and the boys, still riding the high of the concert, were at the center of it all. Noah moved through the crowd with charisma and charm, the embodiment of the rock star lifestyle, trying to hide his insecurities. His deepest inner self wanted him to retreat to his hotel room, but knowing that this was not proper, he chose rather to drown his sorrows in alcohol, among the fans and partygoers. As the night wore on, he slowly but surely felt the effect of his drinks.

Normally he would already be fully into the party action with his thoughts, but this night was different. He kept catching himself thinking about this girl. The whole day he had pushed her out of his mind but now she was more present than before. Jules. His memories of that dream lingered at the edge of his consciousness, like a whisper in the dark.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted when an attractive woman joined him. It wasn't long before Noah recognized her face as one of the girls from front row. In fact, the crew had become very careful about who they invited to the after show parties, but every now and then people, often times girls with clear intentions, would sneak in. None of the guys were the kind who slept with fans, but Noah still allowed himself to flirt with one or the other from time to time. So when the woman asked him to join her for a drink, he gladly accepted, trying to get Jules of his mind.

When they set down at the bar, his gaze wandered. He glanced around, seeing his band mates and crew immersed in their own celebrations. The weight of his fame, the constant adoration of fans, and the relentless tour schedule weighed on him, and right at this moment, the temptation to escape it all was irresistible.

Drinks started to flow freely, and Noah lost track of time, the moments slipping away in a haze of laughter and intoxication. But as the night deepened, so did the weight of his choices. The memory of the girl in his dream resurfaced, like a distant melody that tugged at his heart.

Suddenly he felt like he wasn't getting enough oxygen anymore. Absently, he excused himself from the woman's company, not even remembering her name, as he navigated his way through the crowd and out of the building.

He was a little dizzy when he finally breathed in some fresh air and only now did he realize how drunk he really was.

He needed to get to the hotel. When Jules saw him like that, her neck hair began to stand up. She felt like a predator carefully watching her prey as she followed the stumbling figure through the streets.

In his intoxicated state, Noah paid little attention to the world around him. As he stumbled along the dimly lit street, the traffic light ahead of him turned red. Oblivious to the rules of the road, he continued walking, the sound of his own footsteps drowned out by the sounds of the city at night.

Jules, on the other hand, saw it all unfold.

A car, its headlights glaring, raced toward Noah with terrifying speed.

Panic started to creep up her skin as she realized what disaster was about to happen. She had no time to think and with a burst of adrenaline, Jules materialized and began to run towards Noah. With full force she crashed into him and therefore got him out of the car's path.

A muffled thud was heard as the two fell to the concrete floor, Jules' arms wrapped tightly around Noah. Out of reflex she had closed her eyes and now she couldn't bear to open them, hearing Noah's heartbeat against her ear, while her ears were ringing from adrenaline.

Noah, on the other hand, felt the same way. His heart had never beaten as fast as it had right now. She had saved him. He would have run straight into a car, but the girl that clung to him like there was no tomorrow had saved him from his sure death.

As they lay sprawled on the pavement, Jules, her heart pounding, breathed a sigh of relief as tears streamed down her face. "Are you okay?" she asked, concern etched on her face. She hadn't even realised how she began to cry.

Noah's shock was deep as he stared at her, struggling to find his voice. Despite his near-death experience and the adrenaline rushing through his body, he suddenly felt this calmness coursing through his body, as if the world had paused in this extraordinary moment.

"Never do that again, I swear to god. I'll run you over myself." Jules admonished, her voice trembling with a mix of relief and anger, as she tried to contain her cries. The realisation that she was about to loose her person, made her weep with even more force.

Noah was far too perplexed to respond, his gaze locked on her face, unwilling to let go of the security that enveloped him, when he looked at her.

Eventually, Jules pulled herself away from him, helping Noah to his feet. "Are you hurt?" she inquired, her eyes still filled with concern and tears.

Noah stared into her eyes that looked so familiar and felt almost like home to him and than slowly began to shake his head, his mind a whirlwind of emotions. As he began to regain his composure, he whispered his gratitude and scanned his surroundings. The car was gone. "Thank you for..."

But when he turned back to Jules, she had vanished into the night, leaving him standing alone on the quiet street. His confusion deepened, and he couldn't shake the feeling that his life had taken a surreal and inexplicable turn.

As he continued on his way to the hotel, the events of that night haunted him. He didn't feel a drop of alcohol in his system anymore, his ears still slightly ringing from the adrenaline. The girl who had saved him felt strangely familiar, yet he couldn't place where he had seen her before. Doubt and uncertainty gnawed at him, and he couldn't shake his confusion.

When he finally reached his hotel room, it hit him. He knew why she felt so familiar.

"Jules." he breathed out again.

Jules had saved him.

PART SIX

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

For the ask game:

8. What I like most about your writing

I like how deep you get into creating characters. There is so much detail put into creating them, with how their living circumstances realistically are (Peter is canonically poor and Midtown tech looks way to fancy to be anything but a rich private school, which would really impact Peter but the marvel movies kinda ignore a lot of the details there, and you didn’t) to how they would interact with the world/other characters (it’s great how you show how Peter’s life impacts his relationship with Frank). I love it so much!!!!!

9. A fic I’m excited for you updating

The first step of kintsugi!

14. A fic I didn’t expect to like so much

Kintsugi and Therianthropy. I know very little about Frank Castle (his show is a little dark for me and I haven’t gotten to him in Daredevil yet) but I ran out of Matt mentors Peter fics so I thought I’d give kitsugi a try. Now I am attached to Frank and Lisa, characters I know little about outside of your writing

15. A question about your fic

We’ve gone over MJ and Peters living situation, but what about Ned? Does he have parents or live with just his grandma? Is he rich or one of the scholarship kids like Peter and MJ? When did Peter meet him?

poverty was such a fundamental thing to peter's character that i really wasn't willing to like, write a version of peter that didn't have that be a part of his person. like, it's such cornerstone of who he is and why he makes the decisions that he does that i couldn't really conceptualize him turning out into the same peter parker that became spiderman without it. the writers of the mcu sort of made light of it, talking about how may could sustain them and how nobody wants spiderman to have to remember the eggs for his struggling aunt or whatever, which i feel just. misunderstands why peter parker became spiderman or what spiderman represents. it was surprisingly easy to lean into what the mcu had and weave in peter parker's canonical origins. so much of it was just connecting the dots with natural consequences, like how that might affect him in a visibly rich school and his relationship with frank, who's shown to have been living in a pretty nice middle class set up before his family died.

i LOVE fics where matt mentors peter and i'm thrilled you gave me a shot. (if you haven't read the staying close to the ground or dumpster fires verses, i highly recommend them). frank there's a lot of outside of my writing, lisa i made up almost wholesale. there's nothing. she's the perfect daughter who died too young, and so i wanted to pull her off the ice and make her half feral. i love her so much. she is so unwell. like, i like to use isolated POVs to sort of "narrow" the story and influence its framing, because i think the voice of a story almost always makes it an entirely different story, and therianthropy necessarily had to come through matt and only matt, so she was sort of absent from the last installment, but she is So Unwell. like i know a lot of people are waiting for frank to show up but we need to Unpack some of the shit she's got going on mentally first.

And Ned! ned ned ned! i love ned! he's so fun and almost entirely absent from kintsugi so far, so, devastatingly, he has very little known about him. he's going to be way more present, we just have to get a few more things out of the way before he can come and join the rest of the main cast.

i'm going to keep the answers kind of vague because some of it is going to be discussed in depth later in the story, and i don't want to spoil it. but, generally speaking:

Just his grandma.

he's in between. Wealth at midtown tech is sort of on a sliding scale. you have students who are poor, and i think that midtown is prestigious enough that that sliding scale goes allllll the way up to families that are in the range of "CEO to tech conglomerate" levels of wealth. like, for the most part, those families go to super ritzy private schools, but midtown has churned out enough successfully scientists that it's not unheard of for majorly rich people to send their kids there too. that's rare enough that you really don't have a student that wealthy enrolled right now, but you do have people whose families have net worths that are easily in the several million dollar range. MJ and Peter are really the only ones in the school that can really be called poor. like, if you took a poll of their classmates, MJ and peter would really be the only ones who can remember having times where they aren't really certain if the heat can stay on or if there's enough to eat. and there's a lot of reasons why that is, but i think the biggest one is that this midtown science has a scholarship system entirely dependent on merit instead of need. like, not to get too deep in the weeds on the scholarship program for this fanfiction, but i think the only way to get a scholarship for midtown is to do so through an official testing program. there is no analysis of need for scholarships. there is a need-based grant program meant to support students with financial difficulties, but it's structured in a way that makes it incredibly difficult to use and requires a new application every single billing cycle, meaning that most of the students are students from families that can afford tuition. because scholarship is merit-based, it's become a huge status symbol at midtown science. it's also why this system gets perpetuated--parents pay out their nose for private tutors to make sure their kids place extremely high on the placement exams, not because they need a scholarship, but because having a kid that got most of their tuition waived means they're the cream of the crop. it's basically the school acknowledging that their kid is the best of the best from the get out. so it makes the actual ability to get into midtown science highly competition and skewed toward wealthier families, because they're the ones that can afford these tutors. if you get 100% of your tuition waived? It's basically the school saying you were the absolute best and brightest of everyone we interviewed for your year. in every other year except for peter and mj's, those are almost exclusively kids who had been privately tutored for the exam. peter and mj had a target on their back from the start, not just because they were poor, but because they were poor and still better than all these kids who had to go home to parents who paid for a year and a half of private tutoring only for top billing to go to a couple of kids who just sort of showed up to the test. may and ben visibly had no idea what it meant that peter got full scholarship past "oh we're so proud" and "that means we can afford to send him here." it's like the family of Miss America showing up to the award ceremony thinking their kid won a little contest, good on them. MJ's parents didn't even come to the parent mixer. a lot of the really aggressive parents took this attitude as an insult and a way to feed their inferiority complex, which they projected onto their kids, who then turned around and took it out on peter and mj, who they perceive as having taken from them something they deserved more. that being said, ned's definitely on scholarship--probably 75% or so of his tuition is waived, which is good, because tuition would have been a big burden on his family otherwise. ned's family is definitely a lot better off than mj or peter's, but tuition gets expensive. i'd say pretty solidly upper middle class. he's never had to worry about rent money, because his grandma owns their house. he's always had enough where he can have pretty expensive lego sets. but his family isn't exorbitantly rich, just comfortable.

a few years back. they're like, 14 now? I say around 11 or so. beginning of middle school, when they both joined the midtown science district/feeder school. at first, they were just generally in the same class and knew each other in a distant sort of way, but they became close friends later. we'll go into that and how exactly they became friends in wayyy more detail later.

[fourdollarwords]

Thoughts on Criminal Minds Evolution:

I'm still really sad Krystall is dead as I adored her in the show, but I knew it was coming the moment they said what Rossi's current state was gonna be in the show. That said, Rossi being so comfortable swearing is my new favorite thing. "I'm not naming this jagoff. Fuckhead! Okay? Call him that." had me absolutely cackling.

I had a feeling they were gonna reveal one of the characters was queer this season, but I will admit I was hoping it was going to be Prentiss as her character was originally written to be a lesbian and then it got cut. But I'll be happy with bi!Tara. As long as we get some more interaction with her and her girlfriend. Right now we've just gotten affectionate looks between the two. I would like something actually shown of them in a relationship.

And speaking of showing a relationship, let me get to the Luke/Garcia. Unlike a lot of the fandom, I never shipped Garcia/Morgan. I loved their relationship so much exactly as it was. Two friends that adore each other and flirt for fun. I flirt with all my friends, to the point a lot of my friends' wives and husbands have told me they were jealous of my relationship with their partner when they had first started dating. So I never shipped Garcia/Morgan because I never felt like it was missing anything. They were perfect as they were. I did not have that feeling with Luke/Garcia. Garcia's hostility and defensiveness around Luke made a lot of sense with how she's handling the change of losing Derek in the party. And Luke is intrigued and enchanted by her, like, his first episode. Which, Luke, same. Their banter doesn't have the "babe, I adore you" comfort that her and Derek have, it has almost this defensive "what if?" element. I squealed so loudly when he asked her out in the finale. My shipper heart was sad that was all we were gonna get, but I still had my Captain Holt "VINDICATIOOOOON" moment. But now we're gonna get more. And we BETTER get more. I hope we find out that the reason they only had one date was because of the pandemic and starting a new relationship when the world is going into isolation is damn impossible. And not because it was awkward dating and they didn't click that way. But I remain positive as Kristen Vangsness has said in interviews the two of them filmed a lot of scenes together. The cheek kiss was a good start, now gimme mooooore.

Lastly, just me being nickpicky, I understand the behind the scenes reason for "I can't discuss Reid and Simmons' assignment" but, like, what about Matt's family? Is he still in contact with them? Is Kristy handling all five kids by herself while he's on whatever secret mission they have him on? Your solution for not having the actors has consequences in universe writers!