#and because of the pay wall on the New York Times site I can’t see any details

[angelnumber27]

From an article in New York Times called “The Delicious Misery of the ‘Sad Banger’

[douchebagbrainwaves]

COULD VC BE A CASUALTY OF VC BE A BIG DEAL

Not us. But in this case it seems more to the point that their culture prizes design and craftsmanship. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of ancient texts acquired great prestige. The junior people will tend to seem very positive about your company. We don't hear that any more now that Japanese companies are building cars in the US, at least working on problems of minor importance. A company has to be more than small and newly founded to be a big deal, in the course of the conversation I'll be forced to come up with surprising new ideas. I have never once sensed any unresolved tension between them. If you get a call from a VC firm, go to their web site and send them an email. When del. And we were careful to create something that could slot easily into a larger company. If your friends or family happen to be rich, the line blurs between them and angel investors generally want to invest in deals that come to them through people they know. Inexperienced angels often get cold feet when the time comes to write that big check.

For the next fifty years, that's where new wealth will come from. Which means options tempt employees, if only unconsciously, to pump and dump—to do things that will make it fairly hard to fire them later. The idea sounds horrible, doesn't it? Facebook did, you'll face a choice of running with it or not, there's some pressure to claim they thought of the idea after quitting because otherwise their former employer would own it. In a way. Much of the value of investors' connections. Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought—but social and economic history, not political history. So the more confident you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. By the end of the process. Both now compete directly with VCs. Which of the two angels in the initial round took months to pay us, and only did after repeated nagging from our lawyer, who was also, fortunately, his lawyer. The way to come up a with a clearer explanation, which I can just incorporate in the essay.

They may if they are extraordinarily fortunate do an IPO, it might not merely add expense, but change the outcome. Whether cause or effect, this spirit pervaded early universities. Also they find they now worry obsessively about the status of their server. I don't want to give the other side of the river. But there are, and this variation is one of the founders quits. A cluttered room is literally exhausting. So, in their hearts, still believe the most important skills founders need to learn about are the needs of your own users, and all the previous shareholders' percentage ownership is diluted by a sixth.

How can it be? It's too perfect. Sometimes, like a river, one runs up against a wall. I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of people who want them. And you end up with better technology, created faster, because things are made in the innovative atmosphere of startups instead of the broken air conditioner in your studio apartment. Boldness pays. I can just incorporate in the essay.

But one thing that might work is to ask yourself, before buying something, is this going to make my life noticeably better? Since most startups are in competitive businesses, you not only didn't know, but that contradict things you thought you knew. And it only does a fraction of what the finished product will do, but that contradict things you thought you knew. The first thing I see when I walk out of the airline terminal is the fat, grumpy guy in charge of the taxi line. The example of a startup's history that I've presented is like a skeleton—accurate so far as it goes, but needing to be fleshed out to be a successful startup founder is not some sort of new, vocational version of college as education for its own sake. Odds are it will be either a view of the New York skyline shot from a discreet distance, or a McMansion—a flimsy box banged together out of two by fours and drywall, or a carefully cropped image of a seacoast town in Maine. Like VCs, one of the most interesting. But if you want to do something, as Nike says, just do it. And of course any VCs reading this are probably rolling on the floor laughing at how my hypothetical VCs let the angel keep his 10. Some investors might expect the founders to make them.

It would set off alarms. If I had to go back almost a thousand years. Not at all. You can't start a startup and tell everyone that's what you're doing, you're now on a path labelled get rich or bust. They go out of their way to ensure their students are well supplied with contraceptives, and yet they're setting up entrepreneurship programs and startup incubators left and right. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. The prospect of technological leverage will of course raise the specter of unemployment.

Thanks to the guys at O'Reilly, Patrick Collison, Harj Taggar, and Geoff Ralston for inviting me to speak.

[irontinystar]

hi! i was wondering if you’d recommend other authors that you enjoy or even specific fanfics you like? i’ve only just started getting into the steve/tony fandom and want to follow more people! thank you!

Hi there!!! Welcome to the fandom!!!<3<3<3

I’m so glad you asked this question since I’ve always wanted to do a fic rec post!!!!

HERE WE GO:

10K+ WORDS (ONE CHAPTER) FICS:

Quit while you’re ahead by magicasen

“It began, as things tend to between them, as a bet.”

the reason you ruminate the shadowy past by Mizzy

“So, Captain America effectively manages to cockblock Tony for a year.

It's not Steve's fault. Well, actually, it is. But he was just proving a point - that if a superhero is gay, how can it be wrong? Steve just picked the wrong superhero to make the point with. Now America will think they're dating - and Tony's not going to be the guy to break Captain America's heart.

There's only one way out. To save face, Steve and Tony have to become fake boyfriends. Steve thinks the "boyfriends" bit will be the hardest to act... but maybe it's the "fake" part that will be the hardest act of all...”

made to make you blue by gottalovev

“Steve, drunk for the first time since the serum, hits on Tony. It's everything Tony's ever dreamt about, but he refuses to have sex with a drunk Steve who can't truly consent. They do kiss, though, and Tony stays the night. The morning after brings a misunderstanding of disastrous proportion, where both men wrongly assume the other is uninterested. Life gets extremely complicated when Enchantress, mad at Thor, casts a spell that links people who love each other together, letting them feel the other's pain.”

On the Turning Away by thegraytigress

“Tony's new relationship with Steve is going great. They're a few weeks into it, and it's utterly amazing. He's feeling better and more sure of himself than he ever has before. Honestly, he's flying high.

But then he asks Steve a simple, logical, and seemingly innocent question: "do you want to spend the night?" And everything comes crashing down.”

love the sin, love the sinner by silkspectred

“It keeps happening. Not often, just once or twice a month, but it keeps happening. Always in the same way: it’s unplanned, sudden, unexpected, Steve is surprised and eager, his dick goes from zero to one hundred in two seconds, Tony’s touch is electric, everything he does drives Steve crazy, but he never lets Steve kiss him, he very rarely looks Steve in the eye, he never talks, never makes a sound when he comes, never mentions it later.”

Of Beards and Best Defenders by nannersmelo

“Tony finds out about when Steve had a beard once upon a time, and outraged that he never got to see it, decides to find a way to witness it by himself.”

Tony Pretends To Date Steve (Until He Doesn't Have To) by HappyStony

“"You alright?"

Of course he was not alright! Tony had a blue eyed, blond haired, six foot too high, two hundred who knows what pound, too sexy for his own good ninety something, mentally twenty, year old man on top of him. Who even asks that question in a situation like that?

Or: Basically the title. Tony pretends he's dating Steve until...well, you know.”

i have found the one (whom my soul loves) by soniclipstick (veriscence)

“It's been months since the Avengers were pardoned. One by one, they'd all gone home, until Steve finds himself alone in the grand old building T'Challa had given them.

But everything changes when Steve answers the doorbell, and Tony Stark strides in with more grey on his temple and make-up on his face than Steve remembers.”

Hating Steve Rogers by nanasekei

“The thing about hating Steve Rogers is that it shouldn’t be easy - but it really, really is.”

we have become something different, beloved (tragic and lovely) by Areiton, venusiaries

“"What's the Accords?" he asks, and Tony's head tilts. "I don't think that concerns you," he says. "But you don't deny that it's something." "There's a lot of something's I'm involved in that you don't know about," Tony says.

~~~~

There's a story, years long and publicly known, about the way the Avengers ended and why. And then there is the truth, carefully hidden and protected.”

remedy by quidhitch

““I like the walls,” Steve shrugs, knocking his knuckles against the side as if to demonstrate. “Makes me feel covered.”

A soldier in a fortress, Tony thinks, which is a pretty ridiculous thought to have about Captain America and his enormous limbs stuffed into a too-small bathtub, but there it is.

Or: Tony Stark learns a thing or two about what it means to be In Recovery™.”

Binary System by Annie D (scaramouche) ( @no-gorms )

“Tony tends to be tactile with people he trusts. These days that list of people includes Steve, which is a good sign of the progression of their friendship. For his part, Steve seems to enjoy it as much as Tony does... until Tony goes a little too far.”

The Best Policy by starknjarvis

“Tony Stark breezes through life on bluster and bullshit. When he gets hit by a truth spell, he locks himself away in his workshop so he can find a way to reverse it without anyone finding out. So why can't he say no when Steve keeps asking to spend time with him?”

Slipping off the Page into Your Hands by Sineala ( @sineala )

“Soulmates have their first words to each other written on their wrists. This should make it easy. For Steve and Tony, it is anything but. Steve's problem is that the future he has awoken into is nothing he was ever expecting: he has a soulmate now. Who might be a robot. And if his soulmate is Iron Man, how can he be so attracted to Tony Stark? It should be impossible. Tony's problem is that he is Iron Man, his soulmate is a man whom he in no way deserves, and he is going to fight everything in his heart and do his best to make sure Steve never, ever finds out the whole truth.”

How to Win Affection Without Really Trying by Annie D (scaramouche)

“Tony almost dies saving Steve’s life, but that’s just part of being an Avenger. It’s no reason for Steve to get all weird and intense around him afterward.”

A Certain Affinity by miobambiino ( @miobambiino )

“"They were like that a lot nowadays, ever since they got back from their little kidnapping escapade. Sure, they’d been close before then - they all had - but now… it was different. They were close, close. Squishing up next to each other, whispering to one another, playing with each others hair, apparently.

Steve inwardly grimaced at himself. He was being bitter and petty, he knew that. But he couldn’t figure out why, though. His teammates were getting along, which is only a good thing. Especially considering how they started things off way back on the helicarrier. But since when were Tony and Nat this cosy?"

Aka Steve is jealous of Tony and Nat's friendship, gets the wrong idea, and requires a little help from Nat herself to get some well-needed perspective.”

Admiring the Scenery by Annie D (scaramouche)

“Steve’s used to people checking him out, but when Tony does it, it feels… different.”

Symmetry Breaking by Annie D (scaramouche)

“After the Battle of New York, Steve rode off on his motorbike. That's how it went the first time.

This time he rides back, all the way to Stark Tower, where he asks Tony for help.”

MULTICHAPTERS FICS:

almeno tu nell'universo by silkspectred

“Tony drives off.

Well, he wants to.

But he can’t.

Because.

Steve Rogers is in front of his car.

Steve fucking Rogers. Is in front of Tony’s fucking car.”

take my heart clean apart by mistymountainking

“He’s tired, so tired of waiting, tired of touches with no meaning, tired of holding his breath when Steve’s in the room, tired of keeping this love to himself.

“I can’t—I can’t, if you don’t mean it.”

***

Tony comes home exhausted after an SI event. Steve acts as welcoming committee. It's an old, careworn routine they've perfected over the years, but tonight ends up going in a very different direction.”

Thrust Issues by Sineala

“A battle gone wrong leads Tony to the unexpected and pleasant discovery that Steve is much more well-endowed than he could ever have imagined. But when Tony learns that Steve has never actually been able to sleep with anyone because of his size, Tony does what any good friend would do: he offers to relieve Steve of his virginity. Personally. Tony's determined, Tony's methodical, and Tony has a plan. He's going to get Steve laid. Tony just needs to make sure Steve never finds out that Tony's in love with him.”

Overhaul by Annie D (scaramouche)

“Steve knows that Tony has feelings for him and, since he doesn’t return those feelings, has been mildly dreading the day that Tony decides to do something about it. When that day finally arrives, Steve discovers that Tony’s wooing strategy isn’t anything at all like he’d expected.”

Whatever Makes You Happy by WilmaKins ( @wilmakins )

“Steve and his team never stopped Avenging. So when T'Challa tells them about strange events at the site of an ancient landmark, everything seems quite simple. Of course they'll help Shuri to investigate it - helping people is what they do, after all.

Until they discover that a race of alien empaths are harvesting human emotions as a source of power. Specifically, they're using the misery of one Tony Stark.

So, until they work out what's really going on, the fate of the world might depend on them keeping Tony happy.

Not simple. Not simple at all.

Set six months after CA:CW.”

a catalog of non-definitive acts by firebrands ( @firebrands )

“Tony's seen the way Steve watches him, trails after him just for a moment, then catches himself. Let it never be said that Tony Stark doesn’t pay attention. At least, when it matters.

*

Or, Steve, Tony, and the emotional fallout of keeping secrets. (Set in some nebulous time pre-AoU.)”

The Single Biggest Problem With Communication by BlossomsintheMist

“In the wake of Steve's return from the dead and the end of Norman Osborn's reign of terror, the superhero community is recovering--Steve has taken on a new role and Tony is trying to put his life back together. Things are still awkward between them, but they're determined to put things to rights. But when a discussion about their feelings leads to further misunderstandings, they discover that might be more difficult than either of them realized. Set in the early Heroic Age after the end of Dark Reign, this is a get-together story about crossed wires--and second chances.”

Broken by livink ( @anthonyed )

“After Siberia, Tony Stark faces depression, a giant purple alien and a forced reunion. Ironically, he feels as if he's the only one who is broken in this journey. Until he comes across Barnes. Then, Bruce, Natasha and Wanda. Later, he realises that the man who broke him is broken too and this is a story where they heal and find their footings back.”

wonderland by Areiton

“Six weeks after being abandoned in Siberia, Tony wakes in a Tower, next to the man who broke his heart and his trust. But the world--whatever Wonderland world they’ve landed in--isn’t like their own. The Avengers are happy here. Tony and Steve are married here. With a direct line to Steve’s emotions and the team that he’s always wanted--Tony is more than a little tempted to stay. Seeing how happy Tony is, how healthy Bucky is--Steve doesn’t disagree. But there are cracks in Wonderland and the shiny paint peeling might leave a nightmare behind--one that Tony and Steve will need each other more than ever, to escape.”

when i run out of road, you bring me home by quidhitch

““Oh, I won’t bother you.” The tone of Steve’s voice implies that he definitely will be bothering Tony, aggressively and frequently. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep to my farm, you keep to yours. Solitude together.”

Tony opens his mouth to argue that that’s not how this works, but he snaps it shut at the realization that Steven Grant Rogers is fucking with him. That twinkle in his eye has accelerated into a full-on glimmer, and the ends of his lips are twitching. Jesus, he hates this man. Or maybe he wishes he did. Tony can’t really tell the difference anymore.”

Down in Lonesome Town by resurrectedhippo

“Tony eyes him. “Why do I always find my way back to you?”

Maybe he didn’t necessarily return to Steve, but fate is a funny little thing, and after living a life of loss, Steve wants something that’s his to keep. Tony deserves a love that’s unrestrained; Steve thinks he’ll erupt with it.

Love is messy, not easy, and takes work.

Maybe love feels like rage.

But maybe love could just be jumping off a rocky mountain and smiling anyway.

After the universe is restored, Steve is lost without any direction. Retiring from the Avengers, he moves across the country and ends up building a house by a misty blue lake. Across the bridge is Tony Stark’s new workshop.”

In the Stillness of Remembering by elise_509

“Steve Rogers is a reminder of a past that Tony Stark would rather forget. But when Steve’s own ghosts suddenly become the present, Tony finds he and Steve need each other to face the future.”

Good For You by orbingarrow

“Steve doesn't understand why Tony dates people who abuse him. Tony doesn't understand why Steve cares.

The rest is bad choices, good choices, rehab, milkshakes, paintball, YouTube videos, couples therapy and learning to put the past in the past. Or: How Tony finds his happy ending.”

SERIES:

Pulse-Point by itsallAvengers

Guys and Bots by Annie D (scaramouche)

AUTHORS:

I love very deeply each author of the fics I’ve listed, but these are the main blogs I follow here on tumblr who regularly post 1K (more or less) words fic:

@omg-just-peachy

@no-gorms

@maguna-stxrk

@natasharxmanov

@s-horne

@firebrands

@iam93percentstardust

@anthonyed

@ad1thi

@littlemissstark

@chirriko

@tinytonysnark

(Plus self-spam: MrsWinterBreath , my own ao3 profile!)

Lastly, check @sabrecmcstonyficrecs blog by @sabrecmc who is not only an extremely talented writer themself, but also incredibly patient and kind enough to offer masterposts with fics about any Stony trope you could ever think of!!!

This is a non-exhaustive list because there are a LOT more authors out there that deserve their works to be read, so I suggest you giving it a chance even to fics and authors you’ve never heard of, you might find a masterpiece without even realising it!!!!

And most importantly: always leave a kudos and comment if you liked what you read, this way I guarantee you the authors will be more than happy to keep on providing you with amazing works!!!!

[nothingunrealistic]

naturally was going "hmm what kind of fins (fish) would young taylor in the bathtub wish for. how would we know what they think would be the best fish tail to have" & then was just thinking of Younger Taylor Hcs just in general. got any you'd wanna share, or like, any faves from what's been provided either as unofficial ideas or via those glimpses of info in the show's text. Fave can be in a "truly enjoy this" way & or simply more of a "truly Thinking About This An Extra Lot" sense lol. They

Boy Do I… first, a listing of everything we Know from canon about their childhood / early life / family:

taylor grew up in “a place like” connerty’s small apartment where “the heat pipes bang practically all night” in the winter [2x11]

taylor’s mom would deem the apartment they rented for her & douglas too expensive, and if she & douglas were shopping for furniture, they’d argue about how much things cost [4x07]

taylor never thought they’d be thinking about living a life where they book private jets [2x09]

the masons’ home is hundreds of miles from any body of water (as shown here) and douglas had to fly to nyc to see taylor [4x03]

douglas figures taylor’s mom won’t miss him getting in her way back home [4x03]

taylor has a sister; when she gets married, in michigan, taylor is part of the wedding party [2x09]

at a young age, taylor was always measuring information around them, and sweet / affectionate, especially toward douglas [4x03]

taylor’s favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes [4x09]

taylor was never really douglas’s “little girl” like he claims [4x03]

the first time douglas brought taylor to his lab, it meant a lot to them, and the next day they gave him designs to remake it [4x06]

douglas taught taylor: “don’t just have an idea, build the model that proves it” [4x07]

according to douglas, taylor gets the “unyielding compulsion to get it right” from him, and their relationship was best when they “kept things mathematical” [4x03]

douglas wishes he could have built real wealth / success and given it all to taylor [4x03]

wendy mentions to taylor that douglas has “exploited your need for his approval,” and taylor agrees that douglas only cares about his own advancement rather than being a father first [4x07]

douglas dislikes the military / the government [4x06]

taylor is surprised by douglas quoting a pop song [4x07]

when taylor was younger, the bathtub was the only place they could go to be alone and think, and they’d press their legs against the sides hard enough to make them go numb [3x11]

taylor started playing online poker at age 12 under the screen name ZackCody892 and played up to 16 tables at a time (and for thousands of hours) [2x03]

douglas was fired from his job at an aerospace firm when taylor was in 7th grade. this firing damaged their relationship with him and “affected the home life.” for years, taylor thought douglas had been fired so that the firm could steal his invention, and only found out the truth from his personnel file [2x11, 4x05, 4x06]

taylor has had 927 hours of therapy prior to their session with dr. gus, and that number hasn’t changed at their first session with wendy [2x03, 2x08]

douglas, in bringing taylor food and coffee, claims they rarely take the time to look after themself [4x04]

taylor used to lie to themself and others but is now past that, and knows “how hard it is to have things inside you that you can’t communicate” and “what it’s like to face public scrutiny over who you are” [2x08, 3x02, 4x04]

when taylor reminds douglas about their pronouns, he says “this talk again?”, implying it’s a discussion they’ve had before [4x03]

taylor once got into a bar fight with a high school classmate (it’s unclear whether they were still in high school at the time) after seeing y tu mamá también in a theater [5x07]

taylor was active in occupy wall street in college [2x10]

taylor played poker in college against classmates, grad students, & professors, but their opponents kicked them out for winning too much; additionally, the competitive aspect made them sick (described as “malaise” or “vertigo-like symptoms”) [2x03, 4x12]

taylor planned to go to chicago for grad school and study with eugene fama [2x02]

mafee picked taylor as his intern because they were the only applicant who wasn’t boring / didn’t care about the same bullshit that everyone from wharton or harvard did [5x04]

douglas initiated the visit to taylor, claiming it was because he’d missed them, after not being ready to see them even though taylor’s mother wanted to visit countless times [4x03, 4x07]

taylor is trying to be “everything to their father” in funding his company, and neither of them will be able to come back from taylor being forced to betray him [4x06, 4x07]

wow that’s a long list. and now, my own thoughts and extrapolations:

taylor grew up somewhere in the west / midwest with their parents and sister, who’s a few years older than them, in a house small enough that they had to share a bedroom with her. hence, needing to hide out in the bathtub to get any space & time alone.

from very early on, taylor was douglas’s favorite child and he was their favorite parent — douglas saw taylor’s intelligence & insight (and saw himself in them) and chose to put time & effort into teaching / guiding / molding them, hoping they’d one day follow in his footsteps / support his ambitions, and taylor liked that attention & recognition. (douglas’s attitude toward taylor’s sister is essentially “well she’s here too i guess.”)

douglas taught taylor enough about aerospace engineering & mathematics for them to understand the value of his lattice fin concept, and to generally have a better grasp of engineering concepts than your average (even very well-read) business major / financier. (remember how rebecca knew a robot’s “proprietary” power source was a combustion engine because her father was a mechanic? same deal here. see also: the “smash electronics apart to find the microchips inside and figure out who makes them” strategy; taylor comparing losing grigor’s money to building a turbo engine and having the nitrous tank blow up in their face.) this manifested in both directly teaching them in his lab and in playing games like the silverware-stacking game we see in 4x03, or like douglas throwing out math problems for taylor to solve on the spot, or the two of them solving math problems together.

douglas also imparted his taste in music (which does not include anything new / popular) to taylor, though their taste as an adult (or even as, like, a teenager) isn’t identical to his. this is how they discovered rush in the first place and why they have such strong opinions about The Best Rush Albums. (if douglas had such a ranking, it’d be closer to axe’s than to taylor’s.)

listening to rush helped make taylor a libertarian 😔 that’s just life when you’re a neil peart stan, which of course they are. they admire his lyrics + his drumming talent + his absolute poker face in performances.

douglas also taught taylor to play blackjack, which inspired them to go and learn poker on their own and start playing online. they tried to keep it a secret, but it's hard to be secretive about spending hours a day playing online poker on the family computer. (this is 2006 or so, after all.)

taylor figured out that they were Not A Girl (or at least had thoughts of “hm i don’t enjoy being addressed / perceived as A Girl”) fairly young but didn’t acquire a concrete vocabulary for / specific understanding of that for some time. (if douglas is calling they/them pronouns “that woke stuff” in 2019, he sure wasn’t saying anything clear or favorable about trans people in 2009 or 1999. ditto for online poker sites.)

douglas’s firing exacerbated every negative aspect of the mason family dynamic. he doubled down on pushing taylor toward his field, urging them to succeed where he’d failed, and warning them against letting anyone Steal Their Value. money got tighter, taylor’s parents argued more, and any activities taylor was in (like, say, swimming at the ymca) that required payment got cut; they may have figured out how to make money (illegally!) from online poker at this point. the combined stress of financial instability, being torn between pursuing their own ambitions and fulfilling douglas’s expectations for them, and increasing Gendered Expectations in general — plus the whole “playing online poker for hours a day” thing — probably put taylor in therapy within a few months, if they weren’t in therapy already. (how did their parents pay for it? i don’t know either.)

stealing this from that interview asia & brian & david did in 2017: if taylor had not already taught themself to think and speak directly & incisively and look people in the eye when they talk, et cetera, it started here, whether in therapy or on their own time.

taylor went to college in new york city. douglas did not want them to do this, for a number of reasons, and would have preferred they stick closer to home (and study something other than finance), but doing so would have made them miserable.

by the time they finished high school (circa 2012), taylor had properly heard of trans people and figured that they were somehow One Of Them, but not until college did they hear of people being nonbinary and go “ohhhh yeah that’s me.” (they’d also gotten a Short Haircut in high school, but didn’t go full buzzcut until college. unsurprisingly, they got some shit in high school for being Visibly gnc.)

for some period of time while figuring out their gender situation, taylor went by the name neil as a nod to neil peart. (it’s fun to imagine that they still have a faceless twitter / tumblr account where they go by neil. doubles as a way to prevent anyone connecting it to their real life.)

taylor came out to their family while in college. their mom and sister had fairly similar reactions of “well i don’t Get this exactly, but i love you and want to support you and i’m sure you know what you're talking about better than i do and you did clearly hate it every time i urged you to conform to Standards Of Womanhood so sure i can call you Them and my [child / sibling] :)” given some time to think about it. douglas… well. if he’s starting from a place of “i don’t get this,” he’ll end up at “so it must be wrong and stupid, because i’m always right,” especially if This = his favorite child being different in some significant way from who / what he thought they were. obviously he doesn’t react well or supportively, and the strain in his relationship with taylor tips over into full-blown estrangement. bad times for everyone.

if taylor’s bar fight happened when they were old enough to legally enter a bar, it happened after coming out to their family (also after the live poker fiasco), and before making plans for grad school / internships. most likely it was on a summer break they were spending back in their hometown. (another fun thought: taylor seeing the video of axe punching a guy, just weeks after they punched a guy, and going “well maybe i should work for him.”)

if douglas was at taylor’s sister’s wedding (and maybe he wasn’t!), it was awkward for everyone when he and taylor crossed paths again. barest of pleasantries, passive-aggressive comments, et cetera. naturally, it took a few more years — and douglas realizing that taylor, now being fairly wealthy and successful, could probably fund his dream project if they didn’t hate him — for him to decide to visit them.

[excelsi-or]

24/07/19 - what to do with change (woozi)

to a boy i love right now

w.c. 2.3k (little bit of a longer one today)

June 4, 2019

July 24, 2019

“How is he though?” Seungkwan demands.

She shrugs, running around the kitchen like a headless chicken. She has a piece of toast in her mouth and an apple in one hand. Her phone is on as she checks the time, the time she needs to leave getting closer and closer.

It’s the start of her second month at her summer intern position and the last thing she wants to do is screw it up. She’s been on edge since starting there and Seungkwan is starting to get worried. One, because the woman hasn’t said anything about Jihoon in the last month and a half. And two, because he can’t remember a time when he’s seen his composed roommate look so on edge. He grabs her shoulders to stop her from almost spinning.

“Noona, you need to breathe.”

Her breath is shaky as she tries to calm down. “There are literally so many things I think I’m forgetting.”

“You didn’t sleep last night again, did you?”

She huffs and spins around. Seungkwan catches the crazy eye. Without Hansol around, it’s difficult to calm her down these days. He has no idea what’s going on with Jihoon, if they’ve broken up or what, but this seems to be a storm he has to weather on his own. Seungkwan follows her through their apartment. He collects her stuff together, picking up little things that she’s forgetting.

Like her wallet.

And her hat.

And the report she spent all of last night finishing.

Seungkwan winces when she glosses over that last one. She’s really not in her right mind. “Noona, are you sure you’re okay? You don’t want me to go with you to the work site? I can at least ride on the bus with you.”

She shakes her head, trying (and failing) to take deep breaths. She puts everything in her backpack and exhales loudly when Seungkwan hands over the things she’d forgotten. She closes her eyes and really tries to center herself. That is until her phone alarm begins blaring telling her she needs to leave. Right now.

“I’ll be fine, Seungkwanie, really.” She smiles at him, though it’s strained. “You should really go home. Visit your family in Jeju.”

Seungkwan shakes his head. “No. I told Hansol that I’d wait for him to come home first.”

She nods and hurries out of the apartment.

Since his graduation and starting at his new company, no one has really heard anything from Jihoon. Seungkwan calls Hansol, checking the time to make sure it’s not an unearthly hour in New York.

It still is, but he lets it ring through.

Hansol’s face appears on the screen. His eyes are half open and his hair is a mess. “Seungkwan? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“Noona just left here a complete mess. She won’t talk about Jihoon hyung and I don’t know what to do.”

Hansol becomes significantly more alert at the mention of her. “I’ve only been gone a month. What’s happened?”

Seungkwan runs through the whirlwind of the intern position and the lack of communication from Jihoon. “You know them. She lets Jihoon do everything in his own time, but if he gets wrapped up in his music again—”

“He’s gonna wind up the same Jihoon hyung before they were dating,” Hansol agrees. He runs a hand over his face. “I’ll see what I can do. I won’t be home until next month. Will you guys be okay?”

“If you answer my calls at all hours,” Seungkwan chuckles, “yes.”

During her ride home, her head falls against the window as her eyes flutter closed. At least until her phone starts ringing.

She quickly answers it. “Hello?” she mumbles.

“Noona?”

It takes her a beat to recognize the voice. Since Hansol went to New York and she hasn’t really seen Jihoon in a few months, she hasn’t heard from Mingyu. “Gyu, what’s going on?”

“Everything’s fine, noona,” he laughs. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

She sighs in relief. “Fine. I’m good. Tired.”

“Are you up for going to dinner?”

“Dinner?” She pauses to gauge her energy level. “Sure. Where?”

She detours past her house, getting off two stops later. She looks around at the familiar surroundings. It feels like ages since she’s been in Jihoon’s neighbourhood. Mingyu greets her at the bus stop and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Are you shrinking, noona? I swear you weren’t this short before.”

She snorts, smacking him in the chest. “Oh, shut up. You need to stop growing.” She looks up at him, smiling at the familiarity of him. “How are you doing, Gyu?”

“Good. I’m working near campus for the summer. That bulgogi place that hyung likes.”

“Oh,” she hums. “That’s good. They pay you well?”

“Enough to survive until my scholarship kicks in again,” he chuckles. He asks her about her new job; about all the people she’s met. They walk to a nearby hot pot restaurant on his street and they find themselves in a booth at the back.

“You don’t come around anymore,” Mingyu says once they’ve ordered.

He’s done an excellent job of avoiding the subject this long. Unfortunately, she has no real response for him.

“I know. Life has been getting in the way.” She toys with her napkin, folding it into triangles and then spreading it out again.

“Noona.”

She lifts her gaze to meet his.

“He’s just really busy. He’s hardly home.”

She nods her head. “I know. He sends me a text on occasion.”

“Hyung also doesn’t do well with change,” Mingyu informs her. “New things really scare the crap out of him.”

“Yeah.”

Mingyu takes a sip of water and continues. “Hyung has this thing where he needs to be completely comfortable with the new thing before he can adjust his life around it.” He understands her confused expression. “I just don’t want you to think that hyung’s forgotten about you.”

“No. I don’t think that.” She sighs. “I just miss him.”

“And you should. You have every right to.”

“I feel like an inconvenience to him, so I just don’t text him anymore.”

Mingyu runs a hand through his hair, blowing the air out of his cheeks. “He thought you were mad at him.”

“What?”

“Sometimes he gets in late at night and we’ll talk for a while and you’ll come up.” Mingyu shrugs. “He thinks that you’ve stopped talking to him, because you’re mad about him being busy. So he said he’ll wait for you to come around.”

She hums. “I’m a little mad.”

“He’s home, if you’re wondering.”

She sighs. Her life without Jihoon has been a whirlwind and she’s tired. Life with Jihoon feels like a lifetime ago now.

“He doesn’t know I’m with you. He thinks I’m with Wonwoo hyung.”

“Isn’t he—?”

“Working as a lyricist for a small company, yeah. He’s freelancing on the side.”

“Meaning that he’s probably too busy to see you right now.”

“He’s working on his stuff, but yeah. He’s also too busy right now. Perfect excuse,” Mingyu chuckles.

Their food arrives, the broth bubbling and the smell intoxicating. She didn’t realize how hungry she was until the food was brought out. Mingyu motions for her to eat first.

An hour later, their conversation lightening during the meal, Mingyu insists on paying. They head back towards the bus stop, passing his apartment on the way.

“He is home, noona,” Mingyu says, noting her slowing pace and her eyes on the doorway.

“But is he busy?”

“Always.”

She sighs and looks up at him. “Can I face him?”

“Hell yes you can!” Mingyu exclaims. “You’re the best thing to walk into his life, noona. Please go walk back into it.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Bug Wonwoo hyung for a while,” he laughs. “He got an apartment close by so he could stop rooming with his university roommate.” Mingyu drags her to the front door and unlocks it for her. With a nudge, he says, “Go.”

The ride up to their floor is nostalgic. The smells are the same, the floral scent of their floor contrasting the musky smell of the elevator. The random flickering light halfway down the hallway still hasn’t been fixed. She can still hear that same tiny dog barking from the end of the hall. Then she’s standing in front of Jihoon’s apartment door; staring down at the welcome mat she made the two boys buy months ago.

Steeling her nerves, she forces herself inside.

The apartment looks different. The boys have rearranged their living room. They even changed the curtains. She can hear music coming from Jihoon’s side of the apartment. She leaves her backpack by the door, slips out of her shoes, and follows the sound to Jihoon’s room.

She stands on the other side and listens closely. She doesn’t get to actually register the song as it stops. There’re a few beats of silence, and for a moment, she thinks he’s going to bed. Then her voice fills the apartment.

She pushes the door open a bit. Jihoon is sat on his bed; his head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed.

“Ji…?” she whispers.

Jihoon’s body snaps upright and he stares at her like he’s seeing a ghost.

She pushes the door open further, waiting for a real reaction. She’s still dressed in her work clothes. She hadn’t had to go into the field today, so she looks mildly presentable.

“You look… uncomfortable,” he comments.

Her brow furrows, not exactly the first thing she wanted her boyfriend to say to her.

“I mean… since when do you dress like that?” Jihoon clears his throat awkwardly.

She glances down at the outfit. “Yeah, it’s not my favourite either. I wear it to work.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a beat of silence and she lets her eyes pan around the room. Nothing is different. She wouldn’t expect there to be much change; Jihoon’s a creature of habit. “Are you… well?”

“Yeah, I’m… I should probably eat more, but work is busy. There’s a, uh, rookie group debuting soon? Got me working double time.”

She nods her head. She wants to step further into the room, but she also wants to bolt out of here because it feels so weird. This doesn’t even feel like the first time they met. Maybe she knows too much now for it to be like that.

“You’ve been well?” he asks.

She smiles, but even doing that takes a lot of effort. “Work’s trying to kill me.”

“Are you in a rush?”

She looks back towards the door. “No…”

Jihoon scoots to the edge of the bed, his laptop forgotten on the side. “Tell me all about it then.”

She stares at him. He looks the exact same as the last day she saw him. His face is a little gaunter, his jaw a little more defined. It’s only been a few months since they were properly together, but it feels so different. Slowly, she moves to sit in front of him on the floor and begins talking.

Before long, words are spilling out of her mouth, all the stresses she’s felt working the new job and the pressure she’s felt to do well. Jihoon, seemingly falling back into rhythm with her, shares his own anecdotes about work. They swap stories about difficult bosses and hilarious coworkers. He tells her about the rookies and idols he’s met and she updates him on their friends’ lives, as he apparently hasn’t really kept in touch with anyone.

She glances at her watch and grimaces when she notes that two hours have gone by. “I should really get home,” she says. “Gyu invited me out for dinner; I wasn’t supposed to be out for so long.”

“Oh, okay.” The disappointment in Jihoon’s voice is evident.

She hasn’t moved from her spot on the floor and it’s nice to just see Jihoon in person again. She wishes that he had come to join her or at least pulled her onto the bed, but she tries not to hope for too much so soon. She pushes herself to standing and he walks her to the door.

“How did you get in?”

“Gyu forced me inside,” she chuckles, scooping her backpack off the floor.

Jihoon hums. She slips into her shoes again and the two of them stare at each other, goodbyes hanging in the air.

“I hope you know I missed you,” he says quietly.

She nods her head. “I hope you know that I’m not mad that you didn’t text or call often.”

Jihoon takes a step towards her, his hands reaching for her waist. She lets him take the lead on this one, not wanting to push him further than he’d like to go. His eyes roam all over her features and his hands find their way underneath her work shirt, that she’d untucked while sitting on his floor. His palms are soft against her sides and she tips her head, wondering where in the world this is going.

Jihoon gives her a gentle tug towards him, pulling her body flush against his. He catches her lips in a kiss and she wastes no time giving his bottom lip a small nibble. Chuckling, he pulls away. “Well, I’m glad that’s not different.”

She smiles at him, her nerves dissolving completely. “You scared me, Lee Jihoon. I thought I was going to have to start all over with you.”

“You’re sure you can’t stay?”

“Text me the next time you’re home early, lover boy. I’ll sleep over.”

“I should have forewarned you that I’m really shitty with change.” His hands move to the small of her back, holding her in place.

“I knew, but I guess I just really didn’t know. We’ll work on it.”

Jihoon pecks her nose, lingering close to her face. “I’ll see you soon?”

She dips her head to kiss him quickly. “Yes, my love. I’ll come find you again soon.”

Next: August 13, 2019

[johnsbleu]

Hold My Hand: John Wick x Reader Chapter 65

warnings: nsfw! also it’s like over 10k, but i couldn’t bring myself to delete anything so there’s that.

The air in Rome is sweet and warm, and you inhale deeply as you look around at all of the tall stone buildings. The streets are flooded with locals and tourists, who are snapping pictures left and right. Flowers are overflowing in pots on the sides of the streets and you squint your eyes, almost blinded by the colors. You can feel the history oozing from the cracks in the street, and you find yourself having a hard time focusing on one thing. There's just so much to look at!

You haven’t been here long, but John has already tried to buy you something from every shop you’ve passed. He held up jewelry and smiled as sweet as he could to try and persuade you, but he eventually gave up when he realized you weren’t budging.

As you try to take everything in, you look down to see a beautiful bouquet of white tulips being shoved into your face, “Hi, Jonathan.”

“Tulips.” he says, kissing your cheek, “I saw them and thought of you.”

You look over your shoulder at him and smile, “Tulips…reminded you of me?”

“Well, they symbolize love.” he says, handing them to you so he can wrap his arms around your waist.

You tilt your head back and laugh, “Don’t they say that about every flower?”

“Probably,” he reaches up to cup your face and leans down to kiss you, then pulls you closer to his chest as you watch Tess and Jimmy.

“Oh, my god! Look at that!” Tess says and pats Jimmy’s shoulder repeatedly, “Look at that!”

“I see it, babe.” he laughs and pulls out his phone to take a picture of Tess.

You look back at John and exhale loudly as a smile spreads across your face, “This place…”

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

“It’s so weird to think we’re in a whole different country.” you laugh and tilt your head back.

“So, where is this hotel of ours?” Tess asks and looks at John.

“It’s just down the road and around the corner. It’s a nice day here, I figured you wouldn’t mind walking.”

“Well,” Tess follows next to John as he starts down the street and she bumps his shoulder, “I am pregnant, so if I start to complain about my feet hurting…”

“I’ll be sure that Jimmy carries you.” he laughs and looks over his shoulder at you and Jimmy following behind them.

You look at Tess as she points out stuff to John, and she widens her eyes and smiles as she wraps her arm about John’s bicep. This is all Tess wanted, and she’s having a blast already. The thing she wanted more than anything was a trip to Italy, and you can tell she’s loving every minute of it so far.

John turns around and reaches for your hand, and you fall in line with him and Tess. He points at an alley and you look up at him, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, it leads to another road, then some stairs and then we’re at the hotel.” he says and kisses the top of your head. “It’s fine.”

Tess shakes her head as she looks around, “I can’t believe we’re here.”

“I know. The flight was surprisingly short.” you nod, still trying to take everything in, “Hope you and Jimmy enjoyed that bed.”

“Oh, we did.” she smiles and winks, “I can’t believe that’s how John flies every time he leaves. God, it’s…”

“I know,” you laugh and look over your shoulder at John and Jimmy talking, “It’s crazy how different his life is from ours, but he’s so…”

“Humble?”

“Yeah.” you laugh and point at the stairs, “Down here, baby?”

John nods his head and reaches out for your hand, “Yeah.”

“This is a lot of stairs, John.” Tess says and leans against the brick wall, “I’m out of breath.”

Jimmy waves for you and John to go ahead, and you follow John to the balcony. It overlooks part of the city and you blink several times, trying to take in the site of all of the buildings.

“Pinch me.” you say and stick your arm out in front of John.

“What?”

“Pinch me.” you repeat and shake your arm. John pinches your arm as lightly as possible and you laugh, “I just can’t get over this place.”

“It’s beautiful.” he says as he pulls out his phone to snap a picture of you. He moves to stand behind you and takes a picture of the two of you. He looks at his phone and smiles, “That’s a good one.”

You take the phone from John and hold it up, “A silly one.”

John leans into the camera and furrows his brow as you puff up your cheeks. You hold John’s phone up and show him the picture, and the two of you start to laugh at how ridiculous you look.

“One more.” he says, taking the phone from you as you tilt your head back to kiss him. He takes the picture with his lips pressed to yours, then he stuffs his phone into his pocket, “Mmm, my girl.”

You tilt your head back again and look at John, “Thank you so much for this.”

“Of course.” he kisses your nose and smiles. You start to frown a little and he shakes you in his arms, “What’s wrong?”

“This is a lot of money. I know I told you that I wasn’t going to focus on that stuff anymore, and I’m trying not to, but…” you look down at your flowers and sigh, “It’s not every day that your friend tells you that he’s going to pay for your entire trip to Rome. Tess is freaking out over this.”

“Think about it this way: we didn’t have to pay for flights, no hotel accommodations, we don’t have to pay for any food at the hotel. I don’t know if you want to go on any tours of anything, but that’s nothing. You said you wanted to go to the Baths of Caracalla.”

You turn around and face John, “You were probably almost killed there.”

John scoffs and shakes his head, “No.”

“Oh, so you weren’t gunned down by a bunch of people there?” you say, looking down as John reaches for your hand. “You weren’t almost killed there?”

“You’re making it sound much more dramatic than it actually was.” he laughs and starts his way down the stairs.

You roll your eyes playfully and laugh, “You’re such a liar.”

It doesn't take a scientist to know John lies to you. Small lies. You'll let them slide, of course. They aren't anything big to destroy your relationship, and John really is doing it with the best intentions. It also doesn't take a scientist to know that John was definitely gunned down by a bunch of people in the catacombs.

Tess gasps loudly, and you look up at her as she flails her arms, “Could this place be any more conspicuous? Holy shit!”

“Whoa.” you say and widen your eyes, “This is…”

“Much different than New York.” John laughs, “Our bags are already inside, we just have to get our room keys.”

The Continental in New York is sleek and sophisticated, but the Continental in Rome has a whole different vibe to it. The door, which is probably 30 feet high, is guarded by two men in knee length coats. One of the men moves to open the door for John, and the other man nods at John, then looks at you and smiles. You cling to John’s side and look back at Tess as she widens her eyes in shock, and she looks around at everything, shaking her head in disbelief. All of the hotel staff recognize John and give him a small nod when he walks past. Every door you walk up to, someone is quickly opening it and you hear Tess let out a small laugh.

“He’s a God.” she says, and you laugh as you turn around to look at her.

“No, it’s just their job to open doors, Tess.”

A tall, dark haired man walks up and reaches out to shake John's hand, “Mr. Wick.”

“Vincent.” John nods, and he lets go of your hand to shake the man's.

You smile shyly when the man looks at you, and you instinctively scoot closer to John, which he immediately notices and so does Vincent. He looks at you for a moment longer, then when he spots your engagement ring, he looks back at John and smiles.

“Congratulations.” he nods and reaches for John’s hand again.

John thanks the man, then gestures for you to continue walking into the hotel. He reaches for your hand again and presses a kiss to the back of it, and he smiles when you look up at him.

The lobby is filled with dark red chairs, and a huge glass chandelier hangs from the ceiling. You look around and notice all the women wearing heels, dresses, and expensive jewelry. You look at John and see he’s wearing nice black jeans, a plain black v-neck, and a black blazer. He looks so classy and sexy today, and you look down to see his nice black boots that he rarely ever wears.

“I’m so under-dressed.” you say and look down at your t-shirt. “It slipped my mind, I should have changed.”

John laughs quietly and shakes his head, “We’ll be in here for ten minutes, it’s fine.”

“Yeah, you’re not stressed because you look amazing right now. I look like a slob.” you whisper as you pull the legs of your shorts down a little. “John, I’m with…you. You have an image to uphold and that’s on me now, too.”

“Stop.” he laughs, looking down at you again, “It’s fine.”

You give John a full body pout and jut your bottom lip out a little, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, you look cute. You look like you’re on vacation, which you are.” he smiles and leans down to kiss your forehead. John greets the concierge and slides a coin across the desk, and you smile when he starts to speak Italian.

Tess leans forward to see his face and she smiles wide in shock and awe, “He’s bilingual.”

“Multilingual.” he corrects her and smiles, “I know quite a few languages.”

“Okay,” she rolls her eyes and laughs, “You don’t need to show off.”

John points at the chairs to the side, suggesting the three of you sit down, “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Okay.” you smile, and he squeezes your hand to reassure you.

The three of you walk over and sit down as John waits at the concierge desk, and you look around at all the people who are in the hotel. You're silently wondering if they're all assassins.

You spot John talking to an older man and you watch as they shake hands. John gestures towards you, and the man looks over John’s shoulder at you and you quickly look away, “Oh, no. Are they coming over?”

Tess laughs, “Yeah.”

You look down at your hands in your lap and moments later, you feel John’s hand on your shoulder. You look up to see him smiling and he reaches down to help you stand next to him. John can tell how nervous you are, so he wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you closer and rubbing your back to comfort you.

“This is my fiancee, Y/N.” John says, and you try to fight the smile spreading across your face after hearing John call you his fiancee. He’s said it a few times now, but it’s still so flattering and it gives you butterflies every time.

The older man immediately reaches out to shake your hand and he smiles, “Welcome to Rome.”

You let out a small laugh as you reach out to shake his hand, “Thank you.”

John’s hand is firm on your waist as you look up at him, and you can see how proud he is of you. He looks down at you and shakes his head, “I’m so sorry, this is Julius. He’s the…manager.”

“I figured, John.” you nod your head and laugh, “This is my sister, Tess and her husband, Jimmy.”

Tess stands up and brushes her hair off her shoulders and smiles, “Hi, you have a lovely hotel. I think I actually prefer this one to the New York hotel.”

“Thank you.” Julius laughs.

Jimmy wipes his hands on his knees and reaches out to shake Julius’ hand, almost bowing, “Hello, sir.”

Tess turns around to look at him, “Did you…did you just bow?”

“I think so.” Jimmy says, avoiding eye contact with Julius, and John laughs quietly.

“I’m sorry, my husband is just a little nervous.” Tess says and wraps her arm around Jimmy's waist.

“Well,” Julius reaches into his pocket and pulls out two room cards, “Enjoy your stay, Jonathan.”

“Thank you.” John says, watching Julius as he walks away.

Once Julius is gone, you reach out and hit Jimmy’s arm, “Stop being so weird, they’re going to think we’re hiding guns or something.”

“Well, I mean…” Tess gestures to John, “He is.”

John puts his hands up in defense and laughs, “I’m not.”

Heading to the elevator, you can’t help but notice all the people staring at you, and the look on John’s face when he notices as well makes you want to melt. He looks so damn proud to have you on his arm. He gives you a small wink, then points to the elevators.

“Everyone is looking at us.” Jimmy says nervously as he leans back on the elevator wall.

Tess shakes her head, “No, they’re looking at her. I can’t tell if they want to be her, or if they want her. Honestly, probably both.”

John lets out a small laugh and wraps both arms around your shoulders, pulling you against his chest just as the elevator dings. He keeps a good grip on you and walks down the hallway with you in his arms, and you tilt your head back to see him smiling.

“Last door on the right.” he says and lets go of you to pull out his room key. He hands the key to you and smiles, “Would you like to do the honors?”

“Oh, well, of course.” you tease and take the key to open the door.

You nearly collapse when you see the room, and Tess gasps loudly as she pushes past you to get into the room first. She puts her hands in the air and spins around in place.

“This is fucking amazing!”

The room is by far the nicest room you’ve ever been in. You thought the New York Continental was fancy -- and it is -- but it’s nothing compared to this. There’s three leather love seats all around a coffee table, and on it sits a glass decanter and several champagne flutes. The walls in the living room are dark brown, and there are shelves full of books and little knick knacks.

John gestures for you to move further into the room, and he smiles when you walk past him. “So, Jimmy and Tess, your room is down the hall on the left.”

Tess squeals loudly and grabs her bag from the floor, heading for her room while you open the sliding glass doors and step out onto the balcony. The view from your room is breathtaking, and you try to keep yourself from tearing up as you lean against the railing.

You look over your shoulder to see John with a huge smile on his face as he watches Tess and Jimmy head for their room. He chuckles quietly when Tess gasps loudly again, then he looks over at you as he walks onto the balcony.

“So, what do you think?” he asks, and you bury your face in his chest. He runs his fingers through your hair several times, then leans back to see your face, “What do you think, Peach?”

You lean your head against his chest and look out across the city, exhaling contently, “I wanna live here.”

John’s body vibrates from laughter and you look up at him. “No, you don’t. I know you love Mill Neck.”

A smile spreads across your face and you laugh, “I do, but this place…is magical.”

“Ooh, magical.” John teases.

You wrap your arms around John a little tighter when you remember he’s taking a job while you’re staying here. “So, about this job...”

“Not tonight.” he says, and you look up at him again. He cups your face in his hands and kisses your forehead, “It’s not tonight. Tonight is whatever you want to do, baby.”

“Well, I want to go to a club, I heard they’re wild here.” Tess says, pushing herself between you and John. “I want to dance and…well, I can’t drink and even if I could, I wouldn’t. But I want to dance.”

Jimmy leans against the balcony railing and nods, “Sounds good to me.”

John watches your face as the smile slowly fades on it, and he instantly walks over to you, “We don’t have to go.”

“No,” Tess turns around quickly and shakes her head, “You have to go.”

“Tess,” you sigh and lean back in John’s arms, “The flight was long, I’m kind of hungry and I just want to maybe chill out. Jet-lag, you know?”

“Oh, bullshit, you slept the whole way over here.” Tess says, rolling her eyes, “Listen, I bought a dress just for you. You have to wear it.”

“Could be fun.” John whispers, and you tilt your head back to look at him, “Plus, you’ll get a new dress out of it.”

“You just want to go because you heard that she got me a dress.” you say, and John starts to laugh. Sighing, you look at Tess, “Okay, fine, but as soon as I want to leave, I’m leaving.”

“You won’t want to leave, because we’ll be having so much fun.” Jimmy says, dancing backwards into the room.

__

“Tess Hendricks, get in here right now!” you say sternly and hear Jimmy and John both laugh.

“What?” she asks, then gasps as she turns into the bathroom, “Yes!”

The dress that Tess picked out for you is a little flashier than anything you would ever wear, and it has a mid-thigh slit on the left leg. The color is pretty – a nice light blue – but the rest is...too much.

“My boobs are literally going to spill out of this.” you try to pull the dress up, but it only causes the slit on the thigh to move up more, “Tess, I can’t wear this.”

“Shut up.” she laughs and stands behind you to help fix your dress, “Okay, first of all, you have the straps all twisted around back here, and it’s not even zipped.”

“Because I can’t reach it.” you look up at Tess through the mirror and shake your head, “I can’t wear this, I have some dresses in the closet in my room. Go grab the purple one.”

“No, you’re wearing this. I picked this one for you. I certainly can’t wear it, so I’m living vicariously through you.” she pats your shoulder and takes a step back, “There. You look fucking amazing.”

You look at yourself in the mirror and let out a small laugh as you turn to the side to get a better look, “Okay, I do look kind of good, and my ass looks good though, but my boobs are way too out there for my liking.”

“Well, good thing we’re going to be in a dark club, no one is going to see you.” she takes a step back and gestures to herself, “What about me?”

“You look really good. Love that dress on you.” you say and point at her boobs, “Those look really good.”

“I know,” she looks in the mirror and grabs her boobs, “Pregnancy has been a blessing to my boobs. This dress also hides my belly, so that’s a bonus. People won’t look at me like a freak for being pregnant and at a club.”

You look at Tess and cock your eyebrow, “Well, good thing we're going to be in a dark club, no one is going to see you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” she says, rolling her eyes.

John and Jimmy are sitting on the couch watching TV, and you wrap your arms around John’s shoulders from behind, “Ready?”

John inhales deeply and tilts his head back, and his lips brush against yours, “You smell good.”

“You’re going to die in about three seconds when you turn around.” Tess says, grabbing her purse.

John turns around and widens his eyes as he looks you up and down, “I…”

“Please don’t make this a big deal, I’m already embarrassed enough.” you say and start to blush. John looks you up and down, and he starts to smile when your gazes meet. “See, no, you’re making this weird.”

“He’s speechless.” Tess says and hands you your purse. “You’re welcome, John.”

As John stands up straight, you look down to see if he’s hard in his pants, and he laughs quietly when he catches you looking. He fixes his belt a little and shakes his head as he walks over to you.

“I had to stop myself.” he whispers in your ear, and you smile proudly. “Why do you think I was sitting down for so long?

“So, you like my dress?”

“You look phenomenal.” he says and takes your hand in his.

__

John is holding tight to your hand as you walk past the long line of people waiting to get into the club. He walks straight past the bouncer to a door on the side of the club and knocks on it. He lets go of your hand to pull out a gold coin and he hands it to the man who opens the door, and he backs away to let you all in.

“Whoa.” Tess leans over and bumps John’s shoulder, “With just a coin?”

“Yeah, you can get just about anything.” he says and grabs your hand again.

You all walk through the dingy backroom of the club, and you scoot a little closer to John when you walk past a group of guys. One man looks at you, then looks away quickly when John catches him. They’re all so scared of John, which makes you want to laugh since John is the definition of soft when it comes to you. He’s constantly laughing and talking in funny voices, but you know he’s just good at separating his work life from his home life. But when it comes to your safety, John has no problem mixing the two.

The club is two levels: the dance floor is in the middle on the first floor, and the second floor has high top tables and booths all around it. The neon lights are flashing red, green, purple, and hot pink, and the music is vibrating through your body.

John heads up the steps in front of you, still holding your hand as tight as he can without breaking bones. You're sure if he let go, you'd be swallowed up by the people dancing on the floor. He points to a table in the far corner of the club, then looks at you, “That’s our table. What do you want to drink?”

“Uh, surprise me!” you smile as John leans down to kiss you.

He points at the table again and smiles, “I’ll meet you there. Don’t move, okay?”

“Okay.” you nod and smile.

You laugh a little to yourself as you sit down, then you point over Tess’ shoulder to John and Jimmy, and when they get closer, she grabs the bottle of water from Jimmy and cracks it open. As soon as Jimmy sits down, he knocks his drink back and gets up to grab Tess’ hand. They head down the stairs to the dance floor, and the two of them are already laughing.

You take a sip of your drink and wince, “Rum and Coke was your idea of surprising me?”

John laughs and takes a sip of your drink, “Yeah, I don’t know, you seem like the type to like it.”

You close one eye, smacking your lips together to get the taste out of your mouth, “When I said to surprise me, I meant like…a mojito, or a long island iced tea.”

John leans back against the booth and smiles, “I can go get you something else.”

You wave John off and look down at your phone to check the time. You stuff it back in your purse, then you scoot closer to John’s side until your thighs are touching.

“Hey,” John says, leaning closer to you so you can hear him, “You okay?”

You look over at John and laugh, “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m in Rome -- I’m amazing!”

“I know you didn’t want to come out though.”

You shrug, leaning closer to John, “Not really my thing anymore. Tess and I used to club all the time when we had just turned 21, and we did it so much that it's just not really fun anymore. And I just hate how loud it can be, and people are sometimes really rude.”

“That’s true.” he says, tucking your hair behind your ear.

“My throat always ends up hurting by the end of the night because it's so loud and I've had to scream just so people could hear me.” you say, and you look over to see John laughing. You scrunch your face up in disgust and laugh, “Plus, sweaty bodies rubbing up against you. No thanks.”

John takes a sip of his drink and almost spits it out as he laughs loudly, “Our sweaty bodies rub up against each other.”

“Yeah, well, that’s much different.” you bite your lip and lean in to kiss him, “I actually like you.”

John rubs his thumb against the apple of your cheek, then he chuckles, “I never thought we’d be in a club together.”

You shake your head and lean in to kiss John again, “Definitely not. Have you ever been to a club?”

“Once or twice.” he says, nodding.

“You and Helen?” you ask, almost in disbelief.

“No,” John laughs, and even though the music is loud, you can still hear him, “Just been to a club a few times for work.”

“Isn’t it distracting?” you ask and point to the lights, “With the music and people dancing?”

John shakes his head and scoots closer to you, “No, not really.”

“Huh,” you move your hair off your shoulder and see John take a deep breath as his gaze falls to your breasts. You stick your chest out more and shake your breasts a little, “You like the view?”

“I do.” he nods, then quickly leans down to kiss the top of your breast, and when the light shines on it, you see the spit he's left behind.

His right hand is on your knee, and you feel it moving up your thigh to the slit of your dress. You look down at his hand, then up at his face as you spread your legs more. You rest your hands on the table and prop your head, looking around the club casually to make sure no one is watching.

John scoots even closer to you and wraps his arm around your shoulder to pull you closer to him until you're practically in his lap. He taps your shoulder and you sit back against the wall, watching his left hand sneak under your dress. You sit up a little and pull your dress up more, and John’s hand instantly slides between your legs when you sit back down.

“Is this okay?” he asks, leaning closer to your face, “I can stop.”

You shake your head and look up at him, “No, please keep going.”

A smile spreads across John’s face, and you open your legs even further as you try to play it as cool as possible. You’re thankful that your table is tucked away in the corner, and you realize John probably always had that in mind. John is caressing your thighs, and his fingers brush against your pussy as you gasp. He leans closer to your ear and lets out a low moan that you can barely hear, and you start to reach over to grab at John’s pants, but he stops you.

“Just you.” he says and smiles as he leans in to kiss you, “You look so beautiful tonight.”

“Thank you.” you smile and look down as John pulls your panties to the side, “I wasn’t sure about this dress, it’s a little too revealing for me. My boobs are busting out. It’s just…not me.”

“Sometimes it’s nice to switch things up.” he says and rubs his fingers against your clit, “Like this, for example.”

You open your mouth to moan and look at John, trying to keep your eyes open, “What about it?”

John smiles, his gaze falling to your lips as you bite your bottom lip. He slides one finger into your pussy and you lean over the table, covering your mouth with your hand. His finger is so thick and warm, and you squirm a little as he slowly pumps his finger in and out. You see Tess and Jimmy on their way up the stairs and you grab John’s hand, but decide to wait to see what he does.

“Hey.” Jimmy grabs Tess’ bottle of water to take a drink, and he hands it to Tess so she can take a sip. He starts to walk back to the dance floor, then he turns around to look at you and John, “You gonna come?”

“Yeah, I think she might.” John says, sliding his finger in further until he's knuckle deep, then flicking his finger to hit your hidden spot.

You feel your eyes grow wide, and you look at John as he laughs. “Jesus, John.”

He slowly inserts a second finger, and you cover your mouth with your hand and close your eyes, trying your hardest not to moan.

Jimmy looks at you and leans closer to the table, “Whoa, you okay?”

You nod your head and give Jimmy a thumbs up as you smile, “Yeah, I’m…great.”

“That’s good.” Jimmy claps his hands and turns around to look at the people dancing.

He's so clueless, how is he a cop?

Tess is watching you closely and she leans over the table, “You two are…incredible.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and wave Tess away, and when you open your eyes again, she’s gone and so is Jimmy.

“Fuck.” you lean back and moan loudly, staring at John as he smiles.

“Does that feel good, baby? My fingers sliding in and out.” he licks his lips and leans back to watch his fingers, then he pulls them out and holds them up, “Look how wet you are.”

“Oh, my god, John.” you push his hand back under the table and look around, “People could see us, they have cameras in these places, you know?”

“I know, but no one can see us here.” he says against your ear and pulls your left leg over his lap, then he pulls your panties to the side again, sliding his fingers back in. “Why do you think I picked this table?”

You cup John’s face in your hand and open your mouth as he slides his tongue into your mouth. As you moan, John starts to kiss down your neck to your shoulder as he pumps his fingers faster. Using both your hands, you push his fingers in deeper and tilt your head back as you moan. You reach over to his pants again and he shakes his head, causing you to frown a bit.

“No, I want to please you.” he says, then looks around the club. He removes his fingers and puts them in his mouth, and he closes his eyes when he tastes you, “I wish I could get under this table and eat your pussy.”

“Jonathan Wick!” you gasp and playfully hit his shoulder, “What has gotten into you?”

“It’s this dress, I swear.” he says, looking you up and down. He sits back as you pull your dress back down, then he huffs, “That’s it.”

“What?”

“I’m hungry.” he says, holding your gaze as you both start to smile. He presses a wet kiss to your lips, then leans forward a little and points to the bathroom next to you, “Meet me in there, or just come with me now.”

“I’ll just come with you now, my legs are wobbly, I can tell.” you reach for John’s hand and he helps you stand up, and the two of you quickly make your way to the bathroom.

John peeks his head in, then opens the door further for you, “It’s empty.”

As you head for the biggest stall in the back, John wraps his arms around your waist, his hands moving up to caress your breasts, and he moves your hair off your shoulder to kiss and suck on your skin. You turn around to lock the stall and you look over your shoulder at John.

“I’m not letting you sit on that toilet so you can fuck me, I hope you know that.” you say as John walks back over to you. He pushes you up against the wall, kissing you hard on your lips. “Oh…”

He pulls the straps of your dress down, caressing your breasts in both hands, “You wear something like this and I’m reminded of how fucking perfect your tits are.”

“John,” you look down at him as he sucks on your nipple, “Jonathan.”

He finally looks up at you and smiles, “What?”

“What has gotten into you?” you laugh and cup his face, “This isn’t really like you.”

John shrugs and looks at you, “You don't...you don’t like it?”

“No, I love it. I love hearing how bad you want me, and I love how you can’t keep your hands to yourself.” you lean up to kiss John and quickly slip your tongue into his mouth but pull it out before he gets a taste, “I’m just so shocked by it. I mean, it’s been awhile since we’ve done anything in public. The dressing room from when Tess got her wedding dress was the last time, that was forever ago.”

“Again it’s this dress.” he laughs, and the two of you pull your dress up.

He slides his hands against your pussy over your underwear, and you close your eyes as he leans in to kiss you. He pulls your underwear back and slowly inserts his middle finger, then pumps it in and out steadily.

“I can’t keep my hands to myself tonight, and seeing how everyone has been looking at you since we’ve been here.” he whispers against your neck, “I’m so fucking lucky. I'm lucky because you're intelligent and witty and sweet and kind, and just everything I've ever wanted. I admire you so much for so many things, but...holy shit, you're a fucking goddess.”

“A goddess, huh?”

John continues kissing your neck and you feel him nod his head, “You're so fucking beautiful, and your body is driving me crazy tonight.”

“You’re so good at this, John.” you lean your head against the wall and look at him, “I say that a lot, I know, but you’re so damn magical with your fingers.”

John kneels in front of you and pulls your dress up even more. He kisses up and down your thighs, and you pull your panties to the side as John smiles. He licks his lips and looks up at you, “Oh, by the way, I didn’t lock the bathroom door.”

“What?” you widen your eyes, then shake your head, “Go lock it!”

“Nope.” he buries his face between your legs, and you press your hand over your mouth when you start to moan.

“Fuck, John,” you moan and look down at him as he flicks his tongue against your clit. “I’m…”

“Already?” he laughs and slides his fingers in your pussy as he licks your clit relentlessly.

“You…” you tilt your head back and moan loudly, which echoes through the bathroom. “You kind of prepped me out there.”

John’s hands slide up your thighs to your ass and he squeezes it tight in his hands. You slowly rotate your hips and John lets out a small moan as he closes his eyes and devours you.

“Mmm, you taste so fucking good, baby.” he says, and you move your hips faster.

You put your hand on top of John’s head, tugging his hair as you rotate your hips, “Do you like that?”

John sucks on your clit and pulls away to look at you, “I love eating your pussy.”

Caressing your breasts in your hands, you tilt your head back as John hums, and the sound of him between your legs fills throughout the bathroom. You press your finger to your mouth, “You are being so loud.”

“I can’t help it. You’re so wet for me.” he smiles, pressing his lips to your thighs, and he buries his face again.

“I’m gonna come, John, I can’t help it.” you whine and press your hand over your mouth, hoping to muffle the moans. John hikes one leg over his shoulder, and you spread yourself further as John’s tongue darts in and out. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

Your body jolts and shudders with pleasure, and you feel a wave wash over your body as you come. If John didn't have a tight grip on your waist, you'd definitely fall to the ground. John laughs between your legs and closes his eyes as he licks every drop of you, and you moan loudly when his nose bumps your clit.

“Did you like that, baby?” John whispers as you try to catch your breath.

You tilt your head back and laugh, “Yes, I loved it. Did you?”

“Absolutely.”

You rest your forehead against John’s, and he stands back up to kiss you. He wraps one arm around your shoulder and the other around your waist, pulling you closer.

“Mmm.” you hum and open your eyes to look at him. “I taste myself on your lips.”

“Tastes good.” he says, tilting his head to the right to kiss you better.

“Wow.” you laugh, still trying to catch your breath, and you lean back to look at John, “Your turn.”

John shakes his head and laughs, “It’s okay.”

You push John back against the wall and start to unbuckle his belt, “I know you’re just trying to be nice and gentlemanly.”

John shrugs and laughs, “Well, yeah.”

“Do you want me to suck your cock?” you ask, sliding your hand into John’s pants. He’s already hard, and you feel pre-cum on the tip of his cock.

“Say it again.” he says, breathlessly.

“Do you want me…” you lean closer to his lips and smile, “To suck your cock?”

“Do you want to?”

You laugh and close your eyes, “Yes, Jonathan.”

“Okay then,” John gulps and nods, “Yes, please.”

Always the gentleman.

You unbutton John’s pants and pull out his cock as you kneel down in front of him. You lick your lips and shake your head, “So fucking beautiful.”

John runs his fingers through your hair, and his mouth drops open as you take him into your mouth. You stroke John in your hand, moving lower to suck and lick his favorite spot, and you look up at John as he smiles at you and watches closely.

The bathroom door opens and you hear a group of girls come in, and John’s face turns bright red. You press your finger to lips and shake your head to keep him from saying anything.

“Don’t say anything.” you mouth, and John nods.

You look back at your hand on John’s cock and smirk as you lean forward, taking him back in your mouth. You keep eye contact with John as you bob on his cock, and he presses the back of his hand to his mouth, trying his hardest not to moan.

There’s a knock on the stall door, and you slowly slide John out of your mouth and look up at him, “Occupied.”

“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry!” the girl says and moves to the next stall.

You run your tongue up and down John’s cock and he tilts his head back against the wall as his breath becomes shaky and shallow. You tap his thigh to get his attention, and he looks down at you again as you take him as deep as you can. John is trying his hardest to keep his eyes open, and he covers his face with both hands.

“Hey,” you whisper, and he looks down at you. “I love your big cock. Love the way it feels in my mouth.”

John shakes his head and presses a finger to his lips, “Please stop talking.”

“Love the way you taste on my tongue.” you say, sticking your tongue out and licking the tip of John’s cock.

“Baby, stop,” he smiles, running his fingers through your hair again, “You have to stop.”

You sit back a little and look at John, “Do you really want me to stop? Because I can if you want.”

John holds your gaze for a moment, then he smiles wide as he shakes his head, “No.”

“Why aren’t you fucking me right now?” you ask, grinning as you stroke John. You stand up in front of John and pull your dress up, moving your panties to the side, and John holds up your leg and bites his lip as you slowly rub his cock against your clit. “Why aren’t you fucking me, John?”

John watches you as you tilt your head back, and he jerks his hips a little allowing himself to slip in between your legs. You look back at John and he quickly presses his hand to your mouth as you moan, trying to his best to muffle it. He begins to thrust his hips slowly, and you dig your nails into his biceps.

He tilts his head against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut, then he looks down at you as he whispers, “If I was really fucking you right now, you’d be screaming my name.”

Leaning closer to John’s face, you smile and bite your lip, “That’s what I like to hear.”

The girls finish washing their hands and the bathroom grows quiet, so you kneel in front of John again. Sliding John into your mouth again, you swirl your tongue over the tip of his cock, and he finally lets out the loud moan he’s been holding.

“You’re so fucking good at this, baby.” he says and moves your hair out of your face, “I’m…”

“Come on me, John.” you say, and John bites his bottom lip.

You sit back a little to pull your dress down more to reveal your breasts, and John strokes himself as he comes on them. He’s out of breath and he grunts loudly as he looks down at you. You wipe your finger over the cum on your chest and look up at John as you slide your finger into your mouth.

“You are fucking amazing.” John reaches down to help you stand back up and grabs tissues to wipe off your chest. “Sorry, it’s everywhere. Is it anywhere on your dress?”

“I don’t mind, I literally told you do it.” you say, looking down as cum slowly rolls down your cleavage. “I mean, come on, that’s hot.”

“It is.” he takes the tissue and quickly wipes it away, then he buries his face between your breasts, “That was so good, you’re so good.”

“Kinda thrilling, wasn’t it?” you laugh and fix your dress as John buckles his pants.

“Yeah,” he nods as he opens the bathroom stall, then moves to wash his hands. He cups his hands under the faucet, then drinks the water from his palms, “I’m so thirsty.”

“Me, too.” you say and look at John through the mirror as you fix your makeup and hair, “You know, you always surprise me.”

John opens the bathroom door and peeks out to see if anyone is looking, he nods for you to go first, then he follows behind. Once you get to the table, John immediately wraps his arm around your shoulder and looks at you.

“What do you mean I always surprise you?”

You see Jimmy and Tess heading over to the table, and you smile at Tess when she waves. You look over at John and shrug, “I don’t know. When we first started having sex, it was just so…”

“Boring?”

“No,” you shake your head and lean closer to John, “No, not at all. You think our sex life is boring?”

John smiles as he shakes his head, “Absolutely not.”

“I think our sex life is amazing and exciting, but when I met you, I definitely didn’t think we’d be here. I didn’t think I’d be sucking your dick at a club in Rome.”

John laughs loudly and leans over to kiss your cheek, “I enjoyed it though.”

“Oh, I know you did.” you smile and look over at Tess as she sits at the table. “So, how are you feeling?”

“Pretty good.” she smiles and looks at you, “You?”

“I’m peachy.” you nod, looking at John as he laughs. “How about you?”

“Peachy.” John finishes your drink and smiles, “I’m peachy as well.”

Jimmy is still dancing, and he’s inching his way back to the stairs. He looks up at Tess and smiles, waiting for her. She looks at you and smiles wide, and you already know she’s going to ask you to dance. You’re not opposed to it, you and Tess used to go to clubs quite a bit before you moved to Mill Neck, and before you finally got the nerve to tell Tess how much you disliked it.

“One dance.” Tess says and raises her eyebrows, “Me, you, Jimmy, and John. No excuses.”

You groan loudly and get up from the table, “Fine.”

Without hesitation, Tess grabs your hand and leads you down to the dance floor, and you look over your shoulder to see John and Jimmy leaning against the wall watching the two of you. John is watching you with a smile on his face, and when you point at him and sing along to the song, he starts to laugh.

Waving John over to you, he shakes his head and stays frozen in place even though Jimmy is walking over to dance with Tess. You dance a little as you walk over to John, and you reach for him but he pulls you into his arms.

You spin around and lean against John’s chest as you sing and move your hips against the crotch of his pants. He holds tight to your waist as you tilt your head back to look at him, and he kisses your shoulder before looking at you. You move your hips rhythmically along to the music, keeping eye contact with John, and you can feel John growing a little hard as a result.

“If you keep doin’ this, I’m gonna come again.” John whispers in your ear, and you laugh loudly before finally pulling John into the large crowd of people. “I can’t dance.”

“That’s bullshit!” you wrap John’s arms around your waist and lean your forehead against his as you lock your arms around his neck, “Just hold me and move with my body. I know you can do that.”

__

You look over your shoulder as John walks through the room with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He looks around the room, peeks his head into the bathroom, the living room, then turns around to look in the bathroom again. He’s looking for you, and he looks like a lost puppy. He sets his glass down and starts to head for Tess’ room when you knock on the window to get his attention.

“Hi, baby.” you wave at him, and he smiles wide.

“Hey, I couldn’t find you. Thought I lost you for a minute.” he laughs and leans next to you on the balcony. “I should have known you’d be out here.”

You look across the city and exhale, “I can’t decide if it’s more beautiful at night or in the day. It’s just…beautiful here. The flowers are in bloom and it’s so warm.”

“Yeah,” he laughs, looking over at you, “Tess and I kept pushing it back, she knew I wanted to propose, and I kinda liked the idea of bringing you here and introducing you as my fiancee rather than my girlfriend.”

You smile so wide your cheeks hurt, then you lean over and kiss John, “I think it’s cute that you wanted us to be engaged before we got here.”

“I’m happy we decided to come.” John says, reaching for your hand, “Where do you want to go for our honeymoon?”

“Hmm,” you look over at John and smile, “Anywhere as long as I’m with you.”

John laughs loudly, “You’re so full of shit.”

“I am not.” you say, then stick your tongue out at John. “I still think that tree house is cool. I’d honestly love that. I think it’d be tranquil and nice and so romantic to just…be up there with you. Waking up next to you and hearing the birds chirp.”

“It’s a thought.” he nods, “Got any others?”

“Well, I think somewhere on a beach would be fun.”

“A beach, really?” he moves to stand behind you and kisses your cheek, “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

You wrap John’s arms around you tighter and lean back against his chest, “Yeah, I just want to see you shirtless and in swim trunks all day every day.”

He laughs and leans forward to see your face, “We have a pool at home. You can see me shirtless and in swim trunks there. And also, we sleep together every night, so you see me shirtless every night already.”

“Okay, well, you said the first time you had sex was on the beach, maybe we can recreate that.” you smile and laugh, “Hopefully you can last longer this time.”

John shakes you his arms and peppers your neck and shoulders with kisses as the two of you laugh. He holds your hand up and rubs his finger over your engagement ring, “God, I love this on you.”

“Me, too.”

“Your hands are so soft and dainty, and then to just look down at that…” John lets go of you and leans against the railing, then tucks your hair behind your ear and rubs his thumb against your chin, “I’m so happy you said yes.”

You feel yourself blushing and growing more and more red from John’s gaze, and you start to giggle like a school-girl; he still makes you so nervous.

“I’m happy you asked me.” you say, smiling wide, “Thought I was gonna have to wait forever.”

“Okay,” John scoffs, then reaches out to pull you closer, and he kisses you tenderly, letting out a small, content sigh, “So, where are Jimmy and Tess?”

“In bed already. She’s tired and not feeling well, so they just went to lay down.” you say and look over at John, “Is everything okay? You said you needed to make a call and then you left the room.”

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that job is still available.”

“And it is?” you ask, and John nods. You try to hide your disappointment, but John can see it on your face. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” he says, pulling you closer to him, “I’m going to be fine.”

“I know, I just…wish I hadn’t practically begged you to take a job while we’re here. We’re on vacation, you shouldn’t be working.”

“But it’s better that I take a job while Jimmy and Tess are here rather than you be here by yourself.” he says and cups your face, “I already made reservations for the three of you tomorrow at this restaurant while I’m gone.”

“That’s sweet of you.”

John decides to stop talking about the job as to not upset you any more, which you're kind of thankful for.

“We should head in, I know you and Tess are going out tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah.” you wrap your arms around John and lean closer to kiss him. He lifts you up, and you wrap your legs around his waist as you tangle your fingers in his hair, “You haven’t fucked me in a different country yet. I mean, you kinda did, but it doesn’t really count.”

“Well,” John turns around to lock the balcony door, and he smiles when he looks back at you, “I better do that right now.”

__

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[introvertguide]

Do The Right Thing (1989), AFI #96

Our next film on the list that we reviewed was a more recent drama/comedy called Do The Right Thing (1989), directed by Spike Lee. Well, on a list with movies over 100 years old, a little over 30 is pretty new. It is the story of a single day in 80s Brooklyn and the drama that comes from frayed nerves under the boiling summer heat. The movie received a couple of Oscar nominations and Spike Lee received recognition for his directing and screenwriting. Danny Aiello also was recognized on the awards circuit for best supporting actor. There are some extraordinary aspects to this film that makes it stand out, but I also feel that it is lacking in many ways. The good strongly outweighs the bad, but I will discuss that more after the movie summary:

SPOILER WARNING!!! IT IS LESS SPOILERY THAN NORMAL DUE TO ALL THE CHARACTERS, BUT THE MAJOR POINTS ARE STILL GIVEN AWAY!!! WATCH FIRST AND COME BACK FOR THE ARTICLE TO GET THE BEST EXPERIENCE!!!

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Mookie (Spike Lee) is a 25-year-old pizza delivery man living in Bedford–Stuyvesant, with his sister Jade. He and his girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez) have a toddler son named Hector. Mookie works at a local pizzeria owned by Sal (Danny Aiello), an Italian-American who has been in the neighborhood for 25 years. Sal's eldest son Pino (Jon Turturro) is racist, and does not get along with Mookie. Because of this, Pino is at odds with both his father, who refuses to leave the majority African-American neighborhood, and his younger brother Vito (Richard Edson), who is friendly with Mookie.

Many distinctive residents are introduced, including Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a friendly drunk; Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), who watches the neighborhood from her brownstone; Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who blasts Public Enemy on his boombox wherever he goes; and Smiley (Roger Smith), a mentally disabled man who meanders around the neighborhood trying to sell hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

While at Sal's, Mookie's friend Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) questions Sal about his "Wall of Fame", a wall decorated with photos of famous Italian-Americans. Buggin' Out demands that Sal put up pictures of black celebrities since Sal's pizzeria is in a black neighborhood. Sal replies that it is his business, and that he can have whoever he wants on the wall. Buggin' Out attempts to start a boycott over the Wall of Fame.

During the day, local teenagers open a fire hydrant and douse the other neighbors to beat the heat wave before officers intervene. After a phone call, Mookie and Pino begin arguing over race. Mookie confronts Pino about his negative attitudes towards African Americans, although the latter's favorite celebrities are black. Various characters express racial insults: Mookie against Italians, Pino against African Americans, Latino Stevie against Koreans, white officer Gary Long against Puerto Ricans, and Korean owner Sonny against Jews. Pino expresses his contempt for African Americans to Sal, but Sal insists that he will not leave the neighborhood.

That night, Buggin' Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley march into Sal's and demand that Sal change the Wall of Fame. Raheem's boombox is blaring and Sal demands that he turn it off, but he refuses. Buggin' Out calls Sal and sons "Guinea bastards" and threatens to close down the pizzeria until they change the Wall of Fame. Frustrated and angry, Sal calls Buggin' Out a "n****r" and destroys Raheem's boombox with a bat. Raheem attacks Sal, leading to a fight that spills out into the Street and attracts a crowd. While Raheem is choking Sal, the police arrive. They break up the fight, and apprehend Raheem and Buggin' Out. Despite the pleas of onlookers, one officer refuses to release his chokehold on Raheem, killing him. Realizing that Raheem has been killed in front of witnesses, the officers place his body in the back of a police car and drive off.

The onlookers, devastated and enraged about Radio Raheem's death, blame Sal and his sons. Da Mayor tries to convince the crowd that Sal was not responsible for his death but the crowd remain where they are. Mookie grabs a trash can and throws it through the window of Sal's pizzeria, sparking the crowd to rush into the pizzeria and destroy it. Smiley sets the building on fire, and Da Mayor pulls Sal, Pino, and Vito out of the mob's way. The police return to the sight, along with firemen and riot patrols arrive to put out the fire and disperse the crowd. After they issue a warning, the firefighters turn their hoses on the rioters, leading to more fighting and arrests. Mookie and Jade sit on the curb, watching in disbelief. Smiley wanders back into the smoldering building and hangs one of his pictures on what is left of Sal's Wall of Fame.

The next day, after an argument with Tina, Mookie returns to Sal. He feels that Mookie had betrayed him, but Mookie demands his weekly pay. The two men argue and cautiously reconcile, and Sal finally pays Mookie. 

The film ends with two quotations that express different views about violence, one by Martin Luther King and one by Malcolm X. It fades to a photograph of the two leaders shaking hands. Prior to the credits, Lee dedicates the film to the families of six victims of brutality or racial violence: Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller Jr., Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart.

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

I want to break this into the good and the bad (at least in my humble opinion). I want to start with the great cinematography and the director of photography Ernest Dickerson. He really brought the city to life and made the overheated neighborhood into a character. He used reds and oranges and avoided greens and blues. All of the clothes were sweaty and stained. There were also some beautiful walking shots that followed Mookie as he moved through the neighborhood. Some of the best camera work was the close-ups of Radio Raheem because the shot would tilt to a Dutch angle every time he got mad. It gave the feeling like things were going askew. 

Because it was shot on location in Brooklyn, one could use Google maps and see the actual neighborhood. It was mapped out so well, however, that I didn’t need the map and could draw out the locations of the homes and businesses from a single watch. Dickerson did a phenomenal job of setting the stage for Spike Lee’s story and has done great work on many of Lee’s other films including She’s Gotta’ Have It (1986), School Daze (1988), Do The Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), and Malcolm X (1992). Great team and a great bunch of movies. Dickerson has since moved to directing and well worth following. 

I thought the short comic stories that came together were pretty great. Somebody accidently stepped on Buggin’ Out’s shoes and scuffed them. He threatened the guy who did it and got a whole group of people to help and try to coerce money out of the offender. It eventually turned out that he was all talk. But the shoes kept popping up over and over. The three men sitting and complaining while not actually doing anything was pretty funny. The hatred that Sister/Mother had for Da Mayor was pretty good as well. There were a couple pretty good laughs.

I love the character of Radio Raheem played by Bill Nunn and how he represented the underlying anger of the neighborhood. He just walked around trying to do his thing and listened to his super loud music. The black residents recognized him and knew he had become part of the landscape while other residents tried to get him to be quiet and suppress him. When he was killed, the anger that he represented was released and the group went into a frenzy of destruction. Raheem’s interaction with each of the other characters truly defined how director Spiker Lee wanted the audience to see that person. The movie really shines with any scenes involving Radio Raheem.

As far as the acting is concerned, I really liked the work of Danny Aiello, John Turturro, and Richard Edson. I don’t want to be accused of anything because I liked the work of the three main white actors, however I feel that the three characters trying to fit into a place where many felt they did not belong was the most intriguing. Sal seemed like such a good guy, but he still had some underlying hatred and fear of black community and it became apparent when he was faced with Radio Raheem, the representation of the suppressed black anger of the neighborhood. 

The six people to whom the movie was dedicated were all black Americans in the New York area who had died in suspicious and racially charged violence. I normally don’t recommend this site, but Wikipedia provides links to learn more about all of the people mentioned. It seems that a lot of Spike Lee’s characters were based on the different people mentioned. I had never realized how closely tied this film was to the history of violence in 80s New York, and it does make me like the film a lot more. 

Now for a couple of things that I really did not enjoy. The main character Mookie was not that interesting beyond just being a vehicle that walks through the day. When it got to the point where he couldn’t take any more and he smashed the window (whether it was to protect Sal by directing the anger towards the store instead of Sal and his sons is up to interpretation) seemed so out of character. Like everyone stopped and stared as he did something that his character had no motivation to do. This could just be a personal critique because I found Spike Lee’s acting so unconvincing (the guy can’t emote, he is a director not an actor) and I think giving his boring character control of the turning point at the climax of the movie was a little bit of director ego.

I also didn’t like the random white guys that were with the cops that killed Radio Raheem. Where did they come from and where did they go? The cops show up to break up the fight between Sal and Raheem and suddenly there are some plain clothed white guys that I didn’t remember being in the rest of the movie. It seemed like they came from the surrounding streets and there was one guy in particular who was in a blank tank top that helped subdue Radio Raheem that just disappeared. Wouldn’t the police want to take him into custody as well or at least not leave him on the street with a large angry mob? The sudden appearance of all these extras for the one scene has always thrown me. It feels like they took stock footage from a different movie and plugged it in, or maybe it was shot long before or after the rest of the scenes in the film. 

I did not like Rosie Perez’s character of Tina. Perez had been a professional dancer and this was her big break. I really didn’t think the opening with her dancing was noteworthy in any way, her famous ice cube scene was completely unnecessary, and the ending with her complaining was horrific. Honestly, the ice cube scene shows Spike Lee rubbing a piece of ice on Rosie Perez’s naked body and it felt pervy and inappropriate. I do not correlate all nudity in a movie with automatically meaning it is not for kids (depends on the movie and depends on the kid), but this was just dumb. This was a point of contention with the group that watched with me, some saying she was the best part of the film. I could not disagree more and I rated it 3/5 on Netflix noting that it would be 4/5 if Perez had not been in it. She really rubbed me the wrong way in the film. I liked her in White Men Can’t Jump playing a similar character, but in this movie she was not needed.

In fact, there seemed like there were many extra things that didn’t need to be there. There is about 2 minutes in which five characters make racist rants about other ethnic groups with the camera right in their face. This seems like art for art’s sake and not really needed. The character of Smiley seemed very out of place and it turns out that he was not in the original screenplay but written in so that the actor could have a part. The DJ just said the same things over and over with no real insight. He was played by Samuel L. Jackson, which is cool, but he also didn’t need to be there. I guess my biggest gripe is that Spike Lee had a great film idea with strong characters and then decided he needed to keep layering in more characters and subplots until it was superfluous. But again, just an opinion. 

I saw that Siskel & Ebert both rated the movie as one of the top 10 of the 80s. Both of them had opinions about whether or not Mookie did the right thing, which is not a question that Spike Lee intended to ask (as he stated in many interviews). I think it was (and is) refreshing to have a strong black voice in the director’s chair and this might have affected their rating. Maybe, since I was 9 when this film came out, I am not affected enough by how new and innovative this film must have seemed when it came out. I started to become aware of the world shortly after this movie was released and I was inundated with Spike Lee in films and advertisements. His work didn’t seem so fresh when I also saw him in commercials for Nike and McDonald’s. I shouldn’t allow that to take away from the importance of his voice as part of the history of American cinema. He is the only black director of any movie on the AFI top 100 films and only one of two directors of color (M. Night being the other). 

So does this film belong on the AFI top 100? Yes. It is a good story of American life in an area that was often ignored. The streets of Brooklyn are just as American as the farms in Iowa, the plains of Cheyenne, or the suburbs of California. It is great to have those stories told by a man who grew up there and knew the different life styles and the different problems. It is an important movie and I am glad it was included. Would I recommend it? Yeah, it is pretty good. I would say focus on the interactions between Raheem and the other characters and it makes for a great story. Definitely worth checking out. 

[hamanuelton]

my favorite parts of hamilton:

- “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.”

- every time Leslie Odom Jr. as aaron burr begins another part with “how did a bastard, orphan-“ or like in that same way ‘cause he doesn’t always start it that way but you know what I mean

- the way Leslie Odom Jr. as My Boi Burr™️ says “well, the world got around, they said, ‘this kid is insane, man!’”

- also when Leslie Odom Jr. as A. Burr says

“WHAT’S YOUR NAME, MAN?!”

- “our man saw his future drip-dripping down the drain, a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain”

- “Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there’s a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait, just you wait...”

- background “just you wait, just you wait”’s as hammy’s putting on a new jacket and ensemble is praising nyc

- “and me? i’m the damn fool that shot him.”

- “Burr, sir” + the continuation of this all throughout

- “If you talk you’re gonna get shot” / FORESHADOWING WOOOEEEEWOOOOO

- “i’m John Laurens in the place to be”

- Lafayette’s fuckinf accent

- “BRRRAH! BRRAAAH! HERCULES MULLIGAN UP IN IT LOVIN IT”

- “if you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for”

- “‘Onarchy?”

- hey, yo, i’m just like my country, i’m young, scrappy, and hungry—

- the way Odom Leslie Jr. as The Hamburrglar™️ says ‘shot’ and they all take a shot

- this ⤵️

- Hammy getting //flustered// about friendship

- WHEN ARE THESE COLONIES GONNA RISE UP

- Angelica’s face when Burr is tryna tell her bout herself and she shows him up and ships him out

- Act 1: 6. Farmer Refuted

- honorable mention: “my dog speaks more eloquently than thee!" "but strangely, your mange is the same." "is he in jersey?”

- King George pouting

- Jonathan Groff’s overarticulation of each syllable as King George is a work of art

- “♪ Da-da-da-dat-da-dat-da-da-da-dai-ah-da! ♪ Da-da-da-da-dai-ah-da! ♪

- “Everybody! —“

- “We keep meeting.”

- “i imagine death so much it feels more like a memory. when’s it gonna get me? in my sleep? seven feet ahead of me?”

- “See, I never thought I’d live past twenty.”

- “this is not a moment, it’s the movement”

- “I’m laughin’ in the face of casualties and sorrow, for the first time, I’m thinkin’ past tomorrow!”

- “dying is easy, young man, living is harder!”

- “i’m being honest. i’m working with a third of what our Congress promised.”

- “you need all the help you can get. i have some friends. Laurens, Mulligan, Marquis de Lafayette, okay, what else?” — “we’ll need some spies on the inside, some king’s men who might let some things slide.”

- “watch this obnoxious, arrogant, loudmouth bother be seated at the right hand of the father.”

- “Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him” — “That’s true.”

- “Yo, if your marry a sister, you’re rich, son!” — “Is it a question of ‘if’, Burr, or which one?” and then the little ‘hey’ ‘hey’ thing they do gets me every time

- literally the use of yo throughout the production fucking gets me every single fucking time

- “i’m writin’ a letter nightly. now my life gets better, every letter that you write me. — THE PURE UNBRIDLED SENSE OF FORESHADOWING IN “laughin’ at my sister, cuz she wants to form a harem” — ft. “i’m just sayin’, if you really loved me, you would share him!”

- the irony in “Eliza, i don’t have a dollar to my name”, you’ll be on the $10 bill, my man

- top-notch brain

- Angelica TRIED TO TAKE A BITE OF ME

- the way Anthony Ramos as John Laurens says “alright, alright. that’s what i’m talkin’ about!” and also the face that he makes

- hunger-pang frame

- “You strike me as a woman who has never been satisfied.” — “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. You forget yourself.” — “You’re like me. I’m never satisfied.” — “Is that right?” — “I have never been satisfied.” — “My name is Angelica Schuyler.” — “Alexander Hamilton.” — “Where’s your fam’ly from?” — “Unimportant. There’s a million things I haven’t done but just you wait, just you wait...”

- tbh the way ‘Schuyler’ is spelled is oddly satisfying to me

- honestly just the way LMM says Alexander Hamilton+/ my name is Alexander Hamilton, and there’s a million things i haven’t done, ‘just you wait, just you wait...’ throughout the production

- “i’m the oldest and the wittiest and the gossip in new york city is insidious”

- “You are the worst, Burr.”

- Act 1: 12. The Story of Tonight (Reprise)

- “love doesn’t discriminate, between the sinners and the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes”

- “love doesn’t discriminate, between the sinners and the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes and we keep living anyway. we rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes. and if there’s a reason i’m still alive when everyone who loves me has died—“

- “Chick-a-plao!”

- the way they say ‘raise a glass’ is both elegant and (appropriately) reverent

- “i go back to new york and my apprenticeship” — i shouted MY BOI HERCULES MULLIGAN UP IN IT LOVIN IT DID NOT JUST SAY THAT, IF HE ACTUALLY LEFT AND ISN’T JUST UNDERCOVER OR SOME SHIT IMMA WRITE LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER

- the minute General Charles Les came into the picture i hated him so hard, even though his literal first word was ‘Whee!!!!’, though i can appreciate the sentiment and what LMM was tryna do there

- “Washington cannot be left to his devices indescisive, from crisis to crisis” — sweet baby jesus that alliteration, and jon rua totally pulled it off (i hate General Charles Lee not the person who played him, i can also appreciate the fact that as an actor it takes a lot of talent to be able to make you hate a character so easily, also shoutout to Jonathan Groff as King Georgey-Boy™️, Sydney James Harcourt as james reynolds, and the general way LMM somehow made me fed up/turn on Alexander with the whole scene with him and Maria Reynolds — and not only that but somehow redeemed himself to me which is easier said than done for characters and people alike.. i’ve been hurt too much to play like that.

- Act 1: 15. Ten Duel Commandments

- honorable mention: “if you don’t reach peace, that’s alright. time to get some pistols and a doctor on site. you pay him in advance, you treat him with civility. you have him turn around so he can have deniability.”

- Act 1: 17. That Would Be Enough

- honorable mention: the melody that LMM went with for that turn of phraseis a truly beautiful thing

- “Immigrants:” — “We get the job done.”

- THE FACT THAT MY MAIN MAN HERCULE MULLIGAN WAS ON THE INSIDE NOT ONLY DID I CALL IT BUT DAMN HE REALLY GOT THAT GOOD HOT TRIBUTE HE DESERVED

- “To my brother’s a revolutionary covenant! I’m runnin’ with the sons of liberty and I am lovin’ it! See, that’s what happens when you up against the ruffians. We’re in the shit now, somebody gotta shovel it! Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction, when you knock me down I get the fuck back up again!”

- Act 1: 21. What Comes Next

- honorable mention: “i’m so blue” — the little squat that Groffsauce does as the light turns blue really got to me

- Act 1: 22. Dear Theodosia

- Leslie Odom Jr.’s voice is so ding dang delightfully airy

- honorable mention: “You have my eyes. You have your mother’s name. When you came into the world, you cried and it broke my heart.”

- Act 1: 23. Non-Stop

- as someone with siblings i can appreciate that they’re bickering like that’s just what they are

- “I was chosen for the constitutional convention! *squeal*”

- “Burr, we studied and we fought and we killed for the notion of a nation we now get to build. For once in your life, take a stand with pride. I don’t understand how you stand to the side.”

- Act 2: 1. What’d I Miss?

- honorable mention: “But the sun comes up and the world still spins.”

- Act 2: 2. Cabinet Battle #1

- honorable mention: “DOIN’ WHATEVER THE HELL IT IS YOU DO IN MONTICELLO!”

- tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

- “Daddy, daddy, look.... My name is Philip. I am a poet. I wrote this poem just to show it. And I just turned nine. You can write rhymes but you can’t write mine.” - “What!” - “I practice French and play piano with my mother.” — “Uh-huh!” — “I have a sister but I want a little brother.” — “Okay!” — “My daddy’s trying to start America’s bank. Un deux trois quatre cinq!” — “Bravo!” — “Hey, our kid is pretty great.”

- as much as i hate Act 2: 4. Say No To This (because for some reason i though Alexander Hamilton was better than that) Jasmine Cephas Jones sings in it is like a hot knife through butter — namely; “My husband’s doin’ me wrong beatin’ me, cheatin’ me, mistreatin’ me...”... I guess maybe I understand it ‘cause damn Jasmine Cephas Jones is so ding dang pretty and ding dang talented and wow what a remarkable person

- the way that Lin says “And her body’s saying, ‘hell, yes’ is um.. 😓

- “You see, that was my wife you decided to” — “Fuuuu—“

- Act 2: 5. The Room Where It Happens

- honorable mention: “Bros.”

- “Talk less. Smile more.” LMM being a dramatic bastard

- Act 2: 6. Schuyler Defeated

- Act 2: 7. Cabinet Battle #2

- “revolution is messy but now is the time to stand."

- honorable mention: “Ooh!!”

- “We signed a treaty with a King whose head is now in a basket. Would you like to take it out and ask it? ‘Should we honor our treaty, King Louis’ head?’ ‘Uh... do whatever you want, I’m super dead.’”

- Thomas Jefferson all like “but sir do we not fight for freedom” MY BAD SIR YOU ARE A SLAVE-OWNER HOW ABOUT YOU NOT

- mentioning Lafayette because apparently LMM has no problem with breaking the fourth wall

- “Daddy’s calling.”

- “I’m in the cabinet. I am complicit in watching him grabbin’ at power and kiss it. If Washington isn’t gon’ listen to disciplined dissidents, this is the difference. This kid is out!”

- “Southern motherfuckin’ Democratic-Republicans!”

- “The emperor has no clothes.”

- “Sir, I don’t know what you heard but whatever it is Jefferson started it.” — “Thomas Jefferson resigned this morning.” — “You’re kidding.” — “I need a favor.” — “Whatever you say, sir, Jefferson will pay for his behavior.” — “I’ll use the press. I’ll write under a pseudonym, you’ll see what I can do to him—“ — “Yes! He resigned you can finally speak your mind!” — “Ha. Good luck defeating you, sir.” - “I’m sorry, what?”

- Act 2: 10. I Know Him

- “—Vice President.” — “— No more Mr. Nice President.”

- “Sit down, John, you fat motherf—“

- Act 2: 12. We Know

- honorable mention: “You see that was my wife you decided to—“ — “WHAT—“

- Act 2: 13. Hurricane

- Act 2: 14. The Reynolds Pamphlet

- honorable mention: *DEEP VOICE* “DAMN”

- Act 2: 15. Burn

- i’ll be the first to say i wasn’t a huge fan of Eliza at first aside from Phillipa Soo’s killer voice

- this gave me a lot of respect for her

- honorable mention: “You have married an Icarus. He has flown too close to the sun.”

- Act 2: 16. Blow Us All Away

- i would like to point out that tweet where someone @‘s LMM about not mentioning Philip’s hot and he responds “I’M FAIRLY F**CKING SURE I DID”, y’know ⤵️

- “The ladies say my brain’s not where the resemblance stops.”

- “God, you’re a fox.”

- Act 2: 17. Stay Alive (Reprise)

- The ‘I know, I know. Shh.’ and the full circle back to his mom teaching him french on the piano really got to me for the beautiful artistry in it but also damn them feels

- Act 2: 18. It’s Quiet Uptown

- “I spend hours in the garden. I walk alone to the store and it’s quiet uptown. I never liked the quiet before. I take the children to church on Sunday, a sign of the cross at the door, and I pray. That never used to happen before.”

- “Philip, you would like it uptown. It’s quiet uptown.”

- “You knock me out, I fall apart.”

- “Eliza, do you like it uptown? It’s quiet uptown.”

- “There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is suffering too terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable. The moments when you’re in so deep it feels easier to just swim down.”

- “There are moments that the words don’t reach. There is a grace too powerful to name. We push away what we can never understand. We push away the unimaginable.”

- “Can you imagine?”

- Act 2: 19. The Election of 1800

- honorable mention: “And they say I’m a Francophile: at least they know I know where France is!”

- “You used to work on the same staff” — “Whaaaat.”

- “Honestly, it’s kind of draining.” — “Burr...” — “Sir!” — “Is there anything you wouldn’t do?” — “No. I’m chasing what I want. And you know what?” — “What?” — “I learned that from you.” / this moment made the blow that he voted for Jefferson like a damn hole in my chest and i actually really felt for Burr. i get Hammy’s reluctance, i think if anything he was hoping voting for Jefferson would give Burr the chance to have experience as VP and then the next election he might vote for him then depending

- Act 2: 20. Your Obedient Servant

- A. Burr

- A. Ham

- “I just need to write something down.” / really resonated as one of the last things they showed him doing before going off to the duel, his life really was writing and that was the perfect way to say that in a very subtle sort of way. i really appreciate it artistically, whether it was intentionally so or not.

- Act 2: 22. The World Was Wide Enough

- okay but first of all i would like to comment on the fact that Ariana DeBose PLAYS THE GODDAMN BULLET, I JUST

- THE FACT THAT THE BULLET HAS A PART

- “This man will not make an orphan of my daughter.” / this made me really sympathize with Burr, as well as when he tries to go towards Hamilton (at least in the play but I sincerely hope that was historically accurate) / but also that fact that Theodosia Burr was lost at sea at 29 makes me sad because Hamilton’s life was taken to give her one and then she just up and disappears in a freak accident

- Act 2: 23. Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

- the orphanage got to me

- i loved that he (LMM) didn’t end it with himself or anything

- he let Phillipa Soo tear my heart out

- it killed me but i died quite happily

- and really what more could you ask for.

[sunlightdances]

Sugar and Spice

Title: Sugar and Spice Author: Katie @sunlightdances Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem Reader Author’s Note: Inspired by this post. Pretending to be engaged so you can eat free cake samples at a bakery. Disclaimer: I don’t own Bucky, or Marvel. The original prompt isn’t mine, either. Please don’t repost my work on any other sites (ao3, wattpad, etc.) without my permission! Reblogs make me so happy.

“You’re Bucky Barnes, right?” The voice to his left startles him. “If you’re an Avenger, you have to tell me.”

He blinks. “I think that’s how it works for cops.”

You wave a hand. “Whatever. I need help.”

Immediately he straightens to his full height, coffee abandoned on the table in front of him. “What’s wrong?” His eyes dart around to all corners of the bakery, but he doesn’t see anything amiss.

“There’s a lady who works here. Real stick in the mud. I’ve been dying to try this cake of hers. She said she only gives samples to brides shopping for wedding cakes.”

Bucky blinks again, because he honestly has no idea what the fuck to say. “What?”

“I need you to pretend to be my fiance so we can eat some free cake. It’s a win/win, if you ask me.”

“I don’t think--”

“You’re supposed to protect and serve--”

“Again, I think that’s the cops--”

“It would really serve me if I could eat some cake and protect this bakery from me trying to steal it from behind the counter without everyone noticing.”

Bucky sighs. He can’t very well let a crime go down while he’s sitting here. He’d never hear the end of it from Steve. He’s not sure he’ll ever hear the end of this, either, but you’re practically bouncing on your toes in front of him, eyes sparkling and a grin growing on your face as you realize he’s close to giving in.

He’s a little mesmerized by the sight, to be honest.

“I can’t be your fake fiance if I don’t know your name,” he says, and your smile is a mile wide as you tell him your name and hold out your hand for him to shake. “Won’t she realize we’ve just met? I come here all the time and she recognizes me.”

“Leave it all to me,” you say, and grab his hand, dragging him towards the counter. He’s a little stunned as he realizes you’ve got a tight grip on his metal hand, not even noticing or caring.

Bucky’s seen you here before a time or two. You mostly spend time reading, or working on your laptop. He’s not blind - he’s noticed you before and wanted to say something, to introduce himself or ask to buy your coffee, but he’s always chickened out.

He has no idea how he’s ever going to explain this turn of events.

“Excuse me, Amanda?” You ask sweetly, getting the attention of an older woman behind the counter. “You’re never going to believe this.”

.

.

.

A half hour later, and you and Bucky are in a small, private room in the back of the bakery, three plates with tiny cakes in front of you. Bucky has to admit, as far as nefarious plans go, this one has some sweet, sweet rewards.

It’s easily the best cake he’s ever eaten in his life, and he’s more than a little distracted by the noise you keep making every time you try a new flavor.

“Uh,” he says around a mouthful, “How long are we going to do this? This is our fifth cake tasting.”

“She hasn’t brought out the special one yet, Buck.” You tell him, the nickname so many of his friends use rolling off your tongue like you were always meant to be saying it.

“What’s so special about it?”

“I’ve seen it once, but she never serves it at the counter. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever set my eyes on, Bucky.”

He rolls his eyes, but smiles. “What happens when we leave here and don’t buy anything?”

You prop your head up on your palm, smiling sweetly at him.

His eyes widen. “Oh, no. No. We are not buying a wedding cake just so you can eat an entire cake in one sitting.”

Your face contorts into mock offense. “Hey! That’s rude. I’d share with you, dummy, but not if you’re going to be like that--”

“Why me?”

“What?”

Bucky slouches a little, already feeling full. “Why did you ask me? There’s a ton of people in there.”

You shrug, a little tinge of pink settling on your cheekbones. “I see you there a lot, and you’re almost always by yourself.”

Bucky feels a little ashamed, just for a half second. He’s a loner, sue him. Sometimes he can’t stand being in the Tower and needs to get out of there, despite everyone’s best efforts to make him feel like he has a home there, like he belongs.

“I just-- I don’t know. I’m by myself a lot, too. Thought we’d make a good pair.”

His heart starts to race a little bit at the hope in your eyes. He opens his mouth to reply, but you stop him by grabbing his arm tight, watching as Amanda brings out the next cake. “Bucky. That’s it. The cake.”

It’s beautiful, for sure. An off-white, with a sprinkle of something sugary and sparkly over top that has him practically drooling.

“Here you go, the final option. It’s one of our most popular cakes.”

You’re beaming and Bucky can’t help but chuckle, the excitement on your face infectious. You both grab your forks and dig in.

The taste explodes in his mouth. It’s sweet and buttery and flaky… the frosting just right, and-- wait. You’re sort of frozen, managing to chew the rest and swallow before sending a tight smile in Amanda’s direction.

“I’ll leave you two to decide.” She leaves, and Bucky immediately turns to you, concern on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

You smile, but it’s weak. “This is what I get for lying. It’s karma, and now I’m going to die because of it.”

“What?”

“Coconut, Sarge. That’s the special ingredient.”

“And?”

“I’m allergic to coconut.” You say, eyes starting to water a bit. “Nothing too bad, but my throat is probably going to swell up because I was so excited I took a giant bite, and--”

“Slow down.” He stands, offering his hand to you, “Come on.”

“What?” You take his hand, bewildered. “Where are we going?”

“To the Tower. Dr. Cho can give you a shot and it beats waiting at urgent care.”

You follow Bucky as he tugs you towards the door, Amanda coming back in looking a bit offended.

“So sorry,” Bucky says, praying to whatever God exists that he can muster up enough of that 40s charm to get you both out of this, “There’s been a family emergency. We’d love to come back and talk more, and pay you, of course-”

“Please, it’s okay. Just promise you won’t get the cake anywhere else!”

“Thank you so much for understanding.”

Bucky all but drags you out of the bakery and pulls his phone out of his pocket, asking Steve to let the Med Bay know they’re coming.

“You-- you liar!” You sputter, and he looks to you, alarmed. “You made it seem like you’re such a goody two shoes, but you just charmed her socks off like it was nothing--”

“You need to stop talking, your tongue is swelling up.”

You frown. “This is what I get. I’m going to die on a New York street all because I wanted some cake.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“If I don’t make it, I want you to know you’re the best fake fiance I ever had.”

Bucky snorts, rolling his eyes. “Okay, settle down.” He flags down a cab, tugging you inside after him and asking the cabbie to step on it. If his voice is a little harder than normal and he looks a little more menacing than usual… well. Anyone would be worried about your well being during an allergy attack. That’s all it is.

.

.

.

“Ow!”

Bucky smirks. “That couldn’t have hurt.”

You glare. “Just because you’re built like a sumo wrestler--”

“It’s going to take a minute, but you should feel the swelling start to go down soon,” Dr. Cho says, smiling softly at your antics.

“Thanks, Helen.” Bucky says softly, leaning back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You know,” you begin when she leaves the room, “You told her we’d come back and buy a cake.”

“I’ll send Stark over there the next time it’s someone’s birthday. The money will make her forget all about us.”

You’re fidgeting. “I don’t know. I was sort of looking forward to a coffee date.”

Bucky’s brain short circuits. You’re blushing again and it’s so cute and you’re so different to anyone he’s ever met. “Yeah?” He croaks, trying and failing to find that suave part of him that showed up briefly earlier.

“Yeah. I- I maybe had ulterior motives for the cake tasting.”

He can feel the grin stretching across his face. “Should have known.”

“Don’t get cocky. It was mostly for the cake.”

“Right. Mostly.”

You smile genuinely at him. “Fine. Only a little bit. Mostly wanted an excuse to talk to you. It kind of-- spiralled from there.”

“I’d love to have coffee with you.” Bucky says softly, taking in the freckles dusting your cheeks and the way your eyes light up when you hear his reply.

“Are you sure? I’m a criminal.”

“You lied to get some cake. I think you’ll avoid jail time.”

Later, Bucky drops you off at home, allergy-free, with your phone number scribbled on his hand and a kiss to his cheek that sets fire to his entire body.

“Until next time, fiance.” You say, and he smiles, softly, adoringly, unable to help himself.

“Next time.” He agrees, watching you go.

[nagdabbit]

A HANDY DANDY GUIDE TO WRASSLIN

For the lovely, the wonderful, the incomparable @gideongrace​ , may I present: Daggs’ Guide to the Wild Ass World of Professional Wrestling! (and it’s goin’ behind a cut because It Got LONG!)

So, here is the things. Wrestling is STUPID. And great? And fun as hell! And the most carny sport to ever exist. But, also SUPER inside baseball a lot of the time just because it’s got such a long goddamn history that it can seem daunting to get into. Like I’ve only been back into it the last four or so years, so there’s a lot of history that I’ve missed! There’s also a whole lot of gate keeping, just like comics or video games. There’s also the bitter truth that a lot of people in the industry are absolute shitheels that should have been fired long ago (and I’ll only be vague about a lot of that). So, yeah. A WHOLE LOT.

First things first: HISTORY. There’s just so much. But, conveniently? You don’t need it. It can be fun if you end up really like wrestling, but contrary to what a bunch of middle-aged, racist, misogynist and WILDLY homophobic, White American Men will tell you, you don’t actually need it to enjoy yourself. If you DO want history, might I suggest the How2Wrestling podcast! It is a cheerful, lovely show hosted by two goddamn delightful humans, Kefin and Jo (who are also just wonderful people to interact with in general)! There is also the Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling by Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno, which is a great read! Wrestlesplania is another good show for history of the sport and the wrestlers! They’re definitely, uh, hornier, but v fun!

Secondly: On the subject of inside baseball, wrestling jargon is a whole thing. The ONLY part of wrestling history that is 100% important: it is a carny sport. Like, some side-show, vaudeville ass shit, yo. And it has never evolved from that, so there are a whole lot of terms used that are very specific to like... early 1900′s carnival culture. Here is a wikipedia article, but there’s also a wonderful How2Wrestling episode about it all! I’ll try not to use much!

Thirdly: We can’t talk about wrestling podcasts without mentioning Colt Cabana’s The Art of Wrestling. A lot of the archives are behind a paywall now, but the show is great. If you DO get into wrestling and start to find wrestlers you enjoy, I highly highly suggest checking to see if they’ve done an episode. Colt is a goddamn delight of a human, deserving of support and a great interviewer on top of it. Even if you just bookmark eps you’d wanna listen to and then start a free trial to marathon them all. (See also: the Colt Cabana & CM Punk lawsuit(s), in which Colt got royally fucked over.)

Fourthly: Nobodies Watching Wrestling. Drag Queens watching wrestling. That’s all you need to know. Even out of context, they’re goddamn delightful humans. Might I recommend this episode with EFFY, because I sometimes just watch it when I’m having a bad day.

Fifthly: Tights & Fights is a great weekly wrestling pod, and is how I keep up on a lot of things that I might not be watching. PLUS, diverse group of (wonderful) hosts: Hal Lublin, Daniel Radford, Lindsey Kelk, Open Mike Eagle, and producer Julien Burrell. They’re just great. And horny, at times, but in a charming and respectful way.

Now... The boring part. I’m just gonna get some of the popular company introductions out of the way, and then the fun part of So Many Match Suggestions at the bottom. But, business first! (The Big difference between Larger Companies and Independent Companies is that the big guys have a contracted roster of people who sometimes can work with other companies [unless they’re the WWE, who have exclusive contracts and still call their employees Independent Contractors so they don’t have to offer health insurance or a union], and indie guys contract people usually show-by-show. ALSO, there is intergender wrestling [men vs women, which does bother a lot of people. I do side with support of it, but I do totally get how it can be hard to watch] in indie shows, whereas there is NOT in 90% of the big companies.)

(And, honestly, if you wanna skip this part, you can, but if I don’t do it first, I’ll forget..)

AN OVERVIEW OF THE BIG PLAYERS

WWE - Here’s the thing. The WWE kinda... is a terrible capitalist bastard of a company, run by a morally bankrupt, egomaniacal, shitstain, roid-rage cryptkeeper of a man. And, if you want my personal opinion, RAW and Smackdown are both (currently) TERRIBLE shows, despite having some truly phenomenal talent. BUT, but. NXT (and NXT UK) is probably the best, like, weekly wrestling show (on TV, at least, but we’ll get there). The talent is INCREDIBLE, the storylines are less bad bananas, and they’ve adopted a LOT of the best indie talent lately (because they want to directly compete with AEW, but that’s a whole other thing). WWE programming is also the easiest to get a hold of because they are the longest running and basically Disney, so there are some full matches on YouTube, and Raw and NXT are available on Hulu. They are also releasing a lot of free stuff on the WWE Network that you can watch without signing up for a paid account, but there is a lot of stuff behind a pay wall.

Cons: Real Talk, run by a bunch of terrible people. Responsible for covering up a lot of truly reprehensible crimes for which no one was held accountable, despite being well documented. A blatant disregard for the (physical and mental) safety and/or financial security of a lot of their roster--specifically the people you don’t see on TV. (If you want some history, you can look through the past tweets of the New York 64 Tournament, but a lot of it turned my stomach, so I would not suggest, but it’s there if you have the same morbid curiosity that I did)

Pros: The company might be run by terrible people, but their roster is good. A lot of my top wrestlers do work for the WWE, sure, but they do hire a lot of decent humans that I sometimes feel bad about not supporting. Also, it is the dream of a lot of people to join WWE simply because of the prestige, the massive audience, and job security. I might hate Vince but I can’t begrudge any wrestler currently working for them.

NXT Pros: On the subject of rosters, NXT is LIT. But they have also stolen some of the best indie wrestlers recently: Mercedes Martinez and Jake Atlas, two of my All Time Favs. Both of whom deserve the world, because being openly gay in the wrestling industry is the pits.

All Elite Wrestling - AEW is a very new company, and they are my favourite of the big promotions. They are a company run by wrestlers, rather than a millionaire with a writing staff. I like the wrestling style(s) better, I was a huge fan of a lot of their roster before they hit TV last October, and I like not giving the McMahons money. The storylines are better, if only because they don’t have a writer’s room dictating scripts and such, and the characters are more fun (for me at least).

Easiest ways to watch for free: Their YouTube channel! There you can find a lot of highlights, behind the scenes, AEW Dark (the “dark” matches, or the non-televised matches from TV tapings), PPV pre-shows and a lot of stupid stuff.

Cons: A bit of an issue offering equal match time to the women’s roster the way they SAID they would at the start. A bit more violent of a style as a lot of the wrestlers came up death match style wrestling, or are from Japan/wrestled in Japan and typically wrestle “strong style” (wrestling style with less theatrics and known for Real Real Strikes that Hurt A Lot), which some people can find off-putting. Also, they hired Jake Hager, who is a real piece of shit.

Pros: Have a wonderfully diverse roster. Orange Cassidy. Sonny Kiss. Good storytelling. Jake The Snake Roberts doing Hella Promos. The Dark Order, who we affectionately refer to as the Spooky Perverts. Chris Jericho yelling at a Drone, and Matt Hardy being a wizard. A bunch of wrestlers who are married to other wrestlers who work for WWE, and good jokes are made.

BUT THE BIGGEST PRO-AEW THING I CAN PROVIDE: NYLA FUCKING ROSE. They didn’t make her the first women’s champion like they should have, but they put her in the first championship match on the FIRST episode of the weekly show, Dynamite, and she is now the CURRENT women’s champion. I don’t wanna make a big deal, only it is a BIG DEAL, because Nyla Fucking Rose is the first openly transgender wrestler signed to a major promotion, and if you think I didn’t fucking CRY LIKE A CHILD when she won, you’re wrong. So, yeah, a NATIONALLY TELEVISED WRESTLING PROGRAM’S CURRENT WOMEN’S CHAMPION IS A TRANSGENDER, FIRST NATIONS WOMAN. NYLA. FUCKING. ROSE.

As of right now, AEW seems to be done filming, which is both Very Smart and also heartbreaking, but you can find all the ways to watch over here on their site if it looks like fun!

WOW Women of Wrestling - Have you seen GLOW? This is a show created by the IRL creator of GLOW (the promotion the show is based on, not the show)! And it is? Incredible? The characters are fun and portrayed as superheroes, the stories are CAMP af, and the wrestling is GOOD. They’re a non-traditional show, which is fun. Their roster is made up of wrestlers playing different wrestlers. Wrestling is a bunch of super talented people playing characters while doing acrobatics. WOW gives us people playing characters, playing other characters, while also doing acrobatics.

Cons: All male announce team? On an all women’s show? Excuse? And also: Tessa Blanchard who is, it turns out, a great big racist. Also a little harder to get full episodes it seems.

Pros: Literally everything else.

Ring of Honor - For awhile ROH was handily competing with WWE. And then they weren’t. And then they got better. And then they got worse. And now, currently, they are a company that I hate supporting.

Cons: Run by assholes who don’t care about worker safety, and don’t put anything into the women’s division.

Pros: Sometimes they partner with New Japan Pro Wrestling. They’ve recently released a lot of goooood old matches including some Kevin Steen (currently WWE’s Kevin Owens) vs El Generico (definitely, 100% not at all, no way, no how, of course NOT WWE’s Sami Zayn [he is, this is another inside baseball joke that I’m just obligated to make every time I mention El Generico]) matches which are BRUTAL. Oh, and Dalton Castle:

Impact! - It’s back! I don’t watch it, but they DO have Rich Swann, so they can’t be bad. There is an entire history to Impact that is BANANAS. Like AEW, a bit more rough and tumble, scrappy death match folks, and I like a lot of the roster, like Taya Valkyrie, Jessika Havok and Sami Callihan. Not a bad show, but the full show weekly doesn’t hold my attention.

Cons: Tessa Blanchard, mostly. She is an incredible wrestler, her matches are good, but.

Pros: Pretty easy to watch, actually? I believe they’re still on Twitch, and they have an entire channel on Pluto TV.

New Japan Pro Wrestling - NJPW is GREAT. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. The shows are long, and strong style just... hurts. Like, a lot of wincing on my end. But the wrestling. Oh, lordy, the wrestling is incredible. But it is brutal. Strong Style wrestling is much different than the typical American style that you see in WWE, and a lot more grounded than high flying lucha styles. (Though a lot of wrestlers do travel to Mexico and train in lucha style wrestling (which I am the least familiar with), so currently there is a lot of the very high flying flippty dos and the absolutely brutal strikes that you see in strong style wrestling.)

Cons: Show/match length is typically long and there is A Lot to See. The only way I know to watch full shows is through their streaming service.

Pros: Just the whole thing, really. They release a free match on YouTube every Monday. Also, Toru Yano, the best wrestler in the world.

Indie Promotions that I know less about because I can afford only so many streaming services

Firstly, here is a Wiki list of wrestling streaming services. I’m gonna name a couple below, but the wiki page has a handy list of costs of the bigger ones because capitalism knows how to get you. (Personally, I only use IWTV at the moment. They’re a good company run by good people, and a lot of indie promotions would have died out without partnering with/support from them)

Beyond Wrestling - Beyond is My Favourite Promotion To Watch, Bar None. Their weekly show (when in season), Uncharted Territory, is fantastic. Diverse talent, diverse styles. They do have a lot of death matches, which can suck to watch if you aren’t into that sort of thing. I am, it turns out, into that sort of thing. But listening to interviews with a lot of death match wrestlers, specifically Jimmy Havoc, can help understand the w h y of it all! Available on IWTV.

Chikara - Chikara is So Fun! They are a (mostly) family friendly promotion and training school. Their shows are filled with young/newbie wrestlers as they learn the tricks. Run by Mike Quackenbush, who is a delightful person, BRILLIANT wrestler/trainer, and someone who is willing to take the safety of his people into account. He’s good people, who trains good people, and supports good people, and gives them a safe, open place to learn. It’s also very fun! A lot of comedy matches. Watch on: CHIKARAtopia or some of their archive is on IWTV.

EVE - An all-women promotion, providing a safe working and training environment for women and girls. They have put their foot in it on occasion, but they seem to still be good people. (I would recommend the Tights & Fights episode with founders Emily and Dann Read for a little backstory on the company, but not needed.) Ways to watch.

RIPTIDE - YO, RIPTIDE IS DOING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SHIT. Cinematic wrestling, and it is great. The matches are good, the promos are good, the people are good. But the way they film it oh my god holy shit. When everything is a little less hectic, they are people I am definitely gonna support as much as I can. Watch here.

A Matter of Pride - Here’s the thing. They have put on some very good, inclusive shows. However, some serious allegations have come out about Rick Cataldo, who is involved with the company, and I think it’s important to mention. They have done a lot of good in the world of prowrestling and they put on good shows and they have given a platform to people who might otherwise have been pushed aside, however bad things have still happened there. Watchable on YouTube.

OTHER NOTABLE INDIE COMPANIES

GCW (IWTV, Fite TV & Smartmark) * Black Label Pro (IWTV) * Prime Time Pro Wrestling (IWTV) * Uncanny Attractions * RISE (IWTV) * Bar Wrestling * PWG * Stardom * Bizarro Lucha (IWTV) * OTT

There is also NWA Power that is a good show on YouTube, however, they immediately hired (and now fired for being racist) Jim Cornette who is... just an absolute jackass. But I do feel I should mention them.

Is that over? Yes? Well..

NOW THE FUN PART. THIS IS MY MOMENT. THIS IS THE ONLY PART THAT REALLY MATTERS.

So. The thing is. Wrestling is A Lot. SO, I’m gonna give you as wide a variety as I can! I’ll point out some fun people, some fun gimmicks and HOPEFULLY won’t completely turn you off! If you enjoy any of these, then the dumb stuff up above is useful!

First! The most important wrestling match of All Time. Invisible Man vs Invisible Stan. This is everything you need to know about the beats of good wrestling, but also why wrestling is fun. There are two people in this match: Referee Bryce Remsburg and the audience. And that’s it. This is literally just a referee (but it’s Bryce, so the referee) miming a wrestling match, and an audience buying into the kayfabe wholeheartedly. (Inside baseball: Bad Boy Vision - “Bad Boy” Joey Janela’s [another wrestler] sunglasses)

One of my favourite matches in recent memory, AND one of the best matches sort of just in general! David Starr vs Jordan Devlin at OTT. Quintessential wrestling, fantastic storytelling, and one of the best promo packages I’ve ever seen. BONUS: David Starr is a GREAT human fighting day and night to unionize the wrestling industry. He’s the Bernie Sanders of professional wrestling.

I thought about putting an actual death match on the list, but the closest I will get is this Nick Gage vs Josh Briggs fans bring the weapons match. I chose this match because my very best friend does not like this style of wrestling at all, but he did enjoy this match. It’s a lot, obviously. But it’s not as bad as it could be, but there’s also no shame if it isn’t your thing. Hell, I don’t even know why it’s my thing! I don’t even like bloody horror movies! I will say that Nick Fuckin’ Gage is one of the most prolific death match guys still working today, and also one of the nicest, kindest, most beloved guys there is and I would die to protect him. MDK!

Okay, this is the single most beautiful match to exist. Cara Noir vs PAC (fka WWE’s Neville). This isn’t wrestling, this is art. Great story, no commentary, gorgeous camerawork. Bonus: Cara Noir has the most fantastic and well rounded gimmick (character) in the business. Have you seen Black Swan? That’s it. That’s his character. And it’s great. Nailed. It.

Oh, did you know David Arquette is a wrestler? HE IS! Here’s he and RJ City.

On the subject of WWE and NXT, this Halftime Heat match of Aleister Black, Ricochet & Velveteen Dream vs Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole & Tommaso Ciampa. These are six of the best wrestlers work, and definitely TOPS in the WWE system. SEE ALSO: Black & Dream put on a HELL of a program together at NXT, but it’s been boiled down to this highlight vid that gives me feelings. Gargano vs Andrade Cien Almas is one of THE BEST matches of all time and here is a shitty highlight reel, but it’s still good. Adam Cole is 1) incredible and 2) the prettiest possum in the Denny’s dumpster, have a Cole vs Finn Balor highlight reel. God, I wish it were easier to find WWE stuff on YouTube.. All these matches should be on Hulu, tho.

NEXT! Kris Statlander vs Davienne for Beyond. Kris Statlander is A Legend, despite being real new to the business. Currently wrestling for AEW, former stuntwoman and, most importantly, she’s an alien.

FREE FOR ALL TIME. Solo Darling vs Penelope Ford vs Veda Scott vs Ashley Vox. They didn’t have to go that hard, but they did.

SPEAKING OF. Kylie Rae, Penelope Ford, Kimber Lee & Skylar vs. Shotzi Blackheart, Harlow &Twisted Sisterz. I just? I love? All of them?

And not to mention Kris Statlander vs Priscilla Kelly. I mean, I mean. I cannot sing the praises of both of these women enough.

Okay, so I am really only passingly familiar with a lot of Japanese wrestling. Mostly got into it last summer, actually. I get it, I love it, but I’m not as well versed in the people involved. Two badasses I do know? Meiko Satomura vs Kana (WWE’s Asuka). Fucking legends, both of them. Hard hitters, too, jesus.

If you do get into NXT at all, Keith Lee and Donovan Dijak put on one fuck of a program together, but the story started long before they ever entered the WWE! Please enjoy this absolute hoss fight from a couple years back.

NOW, some intergender matches! If you think they aren’t your thing, feel free to skip!

A fun match of (current IRL romantic partners) Keith Lee vs Mia Yim from before either of them debuted at NXT. I believe they weren’t dating at this point, so the next part will really hit, cuz it’s romantic as shit... This was not the booked ending. Keith Lee didn’t kick out on purpose. (Which, I mean, is literally all wrestling endings, but.) Mia was booked to lose (at least they told her that), and he purposefully took the L and went out on his back, to surprise her and give her a MASSIVE push.

Leyla Hirsch vs David Starr. I just. I goddamn love Leyla Hirsch. A very young wrestler, very new to the industry and I just love her so much?

Two great, intense matches of Joey Janela, the patron saint of bad decisions. Versus Kris Statlander (I can’t get enough of her) and versus Jordynne Grace.

Orange Cassidy and Penelope Ford vs Shockwave and Veda Scott. Shockwave is a robot and Orange Cassidy is Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer. I can give no other explanation.

COMEDY TIME, YO. Comedy wrestling is The Best. There’s a name, Orange Cassidy. Yeah, he’s very funny, and also the most divisive person in wrestling rn. He’s Paul Rudd. He knows he’s a wrestler. He’s lazy. And there’s one match that we need to get out of the way first...

Orange Cassidy vs David Starr. The thing is. Orange Cassidy can fucking wrestle. His gimmick might be that he doesn’t want to, but he can. And It. Is. Great.

Now we can get on with the funnies.

Orange Cassidy vs Colt Cabana. Not story needed. Just two dudes at a food festival. Oh, yeah, there’s also a Swamp Monster. We love Swampy.

Colt Cabana vs Toru Yano. It’s just. So. FUN.

You might know the name Joey Ryan as The Dick Flip Wrestler, or The King of Dong Style. His dick has magical powers, it’s a thing. Here’s he and Orange Cassidy.

Johnny Cockstrong is the opposite of Joey Ryan. Literally. Here’s him also vs Orange Cassidy.

Did you want to see a Dick Test of Strength between them? Well, it happened.

Back to RIPTIDE for (another intergender, kinda) Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate & Trent Seven vs Joey Ryan, Candice LeRae (the World’s Cutest Tag Team) & Colt Cabana.

Kinda almost but not really comedy but very funny and also full of good wrasslin’, here is EFFY vs Orange Cassidy. Pirated, technically, and in real low quality, but I Love It. EFFY is Daddy.

Now, you’ll notice not a lot of women in the comedy section. Real talk, women still tend to get treated as a joke by the wrestling industry at large, so they don’t get the luxury of being as funny as they want. But one woman out there doing the lord’s work is Session Moth Martina. Legend. Love her. Admittedly, another intergender match, but it makes me happy. Martina & Orange Cassidy vs Joey Janela & Penelope Ford (Janelope).

One of my All Time Favourite Matches to date, EFFY and Danhausen (Gaytanic Panic) vs Chris Dickinson and Pinkie Sanchez (Team Pazuzu). Yes, this is a Halloween show. Yes, the Ref IS dressed as Chris Dickinson. There are teeth, Jesus resurrects someone, Danhausen is in fishnets and Effy is in face paint. It’s great. Love that Danhausen.

And there we have it! A whole lot of information and a bunch of matches and some stuff. It’s real dumb, and sometimes the industry is dark, but there’s a lot of hella good people doing dumb things. I hope this was helpful?? And Fun! (But my feeling won’t be hurt if it wasn’t fun, I promise!)

I leave you with this, RJ City making coffee in his underwear with Danhausen. Completely out of context. Because I love it.

[hookaroo]

Vocivore, Ltd. (46 of 46)

Also on FFN and AO3 (ListerofTardis)

Tagging @ouatwinterwhump​, @killian-whump​, @sancocnutclub​, @killianjonesownsmyheart1​, @courtorderedcake​, @facesiousbutton82​ <3

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE AT THE END!!!!!!

Special thanks again to @sherlockianwhovian​ for organizing the event that started it all :)

A million thanks to @cocohook38​ for the incredible art that I will never ever recover from! LET’S ALL TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT PERFECTION!!! 

COVER ART 1 ~~~ COVER ART 2 ~~~ CHAPTER 1 ~~~ CHAPTER 7 ~~~ CHAPTER 12 (ART) ~~~ CHAPTER 12 (ANIMATION) ~~~ CHAPTER 19 ~~~ CHAPTER 34 ~~~ CHAPTER 36 ~~~ @sancocnutclub​ WE ARE SO BLESSED BY YOU!!!!!!!!! (**APPLAUSE AND FLOWERS AT YOUR FEET**)

Thanks to everyone who stuck with it to the end and left such amazing and supportive comments!!! I love you all!

I have an idea or two for new stories, but it will be a while before anything is near ready for sharing. In the meantime, may I humbly direct you to my previous works on FFN? 

“Or Sleep with the Fishes,” “They Never Bury Your Bones,” and “A Captain’s Heart” are all whumpy multichapter tales which I may someday also post to AO3. They can be read in any order but the latter two make small references to their predecessors so may as well read in date order.

Also @killian-whump has a wonderful collection of fics (and art!) by other amazing creators of whump so do check all of them out as well!!

________________________________________________________________

One month later…

Emma took her eyes off of the road for a brief moment to glance over at Killian, who was currently reclined in the passenger seat of the Bug. Just as she had suspected: fast asleep. She let him be, knowing that with the rough road coming up, his nap would not last much longer.

He had only been released from the hospital two days ago, Whale having declared that further recuperation could be managed on an outpatient basis, as long as he remained on bed rest and followed the prescribed regimen of medications to support his physical and mental well-being. Uncharacteristically, Killian was submitting to all of it without complaint, even though the drugs battling the brain deterioration, in particular, left him feeling wiped out and frequently sick. He had hardly been out of bed beyond scheduled short trips down the hall to stretch leg muscles and a stiff ankle, to prevent blood clots, and build strength in his recovering lungs. Apart from that, he had mostly been sleeping, although he never turned away the opportunity to have Hope nearby. Even when she was there against her mother's wishes. Killian would fix her with a tired smile, hold out a brace-encased hand, and invite her onto the bed next to him. Oreo-Eeyore usually joined them and, more than once, was left behind to keep Killian company after Hope had scampered away.

Today, Hope was attending a half-day Kiddie Cruise hosted by Captain Smee; the first two had been so popular that the Wish Realm captain of the Jolly Roger had been talked into arranging some shorter sailing excursions without the dire motivation behind it. Emma knew that Killian would have liked to attend as well, had he been a bit stronger, but they both trusted Smee and his crew, and Hope’s Auntie Alice was specifically in charge of the three-year-old this time. 

Of course, there was still a small part of both of them loathe to let her out of their sight for any length of time. Emma was getting better about it; Killian still had major difficulty, as his perverse images of her tortured little body were quick to resurface when he didn't have her physically present to counteract them. But they couldn't be near her all the time, and their errand today was not an appropriate one to include a toddler in.

Just as anticipated, as the pavement gave way to mud and potholes, Killian’s breathing indicated his return to wakefulness. He did not stir or even open his eyes, but Emma saw the telltale signs of pain and tension in the way he held himself and the very controlled manner with which he drew breath.

“You okay?” she asked quietly. “We can still turn back; you don't have to do this.”

Killian merely tightened his jaw and nodded once. And really, she had not expected anything different, but she’d had to try. 

*****

There had been much speculation over the origin of the ruined village which had become the Vocivore’s base of operations. Emma’s personal opinion was that it looked like a long-dead World War II village, and being within the borders of the Land of Untold Stories, it was likely the setting of some sort of war romance or similar BS. The bigger mystery was the origin of the monster itself, and how it had come to reside in the United Realms. She was convinced that they would never find a satisfactory explanation of that question.

Thanks to knowledge gleaned from three weeks’ worth of Exchanges, both Killian and Emma knew that they wouldn't find another Vocivore lurking anywhere nearby, and that it hadn't... laid eggs or whatever. But that possibility would have been a mere fraction of the rationale behind the village’s eventual condemnation, anyway. None of the buildings were structurally sound, and only a few could have been considered salvageable if someone had the motivation. No one did, of course. Suffering leached into every wall, broken window, and rotting ceiling, like blood stains that could never be scrubbed away. So they would be demolished, the materials repurposed when possible, and the land converted somehow; those details had yet to be determined. But today was day one of the destruction. And the church would be the first building to fall.

Killian shifted in his seat, and though his eyes were still closed, Emma could tell by the quickening of his breaths that he sensed their impending arrival.

She had almost decided not to tell him, fearing that it would upset him too much to think about that place, even in the knowledge of its demolition. But an impulse had caused her to murmur the information in a casual, gentle way the night before he'd been discharged from the hospital. He hadn't said much at first; Emma had thought that maybe her initial instinct was correct and he didn't want to even think about it. But then, later, out of the blue and in a tremulous but determined voice, he had surprised her by saying that he wanted to watch. Once out of earshot, she had discussed the idea with Dr. Whale and Dr. Hopper, who had both given a cautious green light, thinking it could serve as therapeutic. But both men had also warned that revisiting the site of so much trauma could be more than Killian could handle so soon, and thus had extracted a promise that she would keep a very close watch on him the whole time. As if she would ever do any different.

Rounding the final bend, the trees began to give way to flashes of bright yellow construction equipment. And even though she was sure she hadn't given any hint, she could see signs of increased tension from Killian, as if he could sense their proximity without having to open his eyes. The ragged shape of the church’s bell tower loomed above the village, looking even more unstable than when she'd first laid eyes on it. She shuddered with an unexpected chill. This was also her first time back; she had not anticipated that it might be difficult on her as well.

The Bug bumped up onto the beginning of the cobblestone road that paved the village streets. Newer model cars lined both sides, indicating the number of United Realms citizens in attendance that day. The liberal application of yellow caution tape blocking doors and windows gave a cheery, bumblebee mask over the pall of death still present in the doomed community. Emma glanced at Killian and found him quietly observing their progress, working visibly to keep his breaths slow and even.

A rose-dusted pigeon strutted its arrogant little way along the gutter, and Emma battled a brief but powerful temptation to swerve in that direction. A few new scratches to add to the car’s nose would be a small price to pay for the satisfaction of flattening the feathered pest. But it wouldn’t make a difference to the problem as a whole, and Emma didn’t want to cause Killian any additional pain, so she contented herself with casting mental curses in its direction as they passed.

The pigeon quandary persisted, no easy solution to be found. Current suggestions included rounding them all up and transporting them to their natural habitat in New York City, trying to get them to interbreed with regular pigeons to hopefully dilute their ability to block magic, or create a strain of avian flu that would target them specifically and wipe them all out. That last one sounded like the premise of an apocalypse movie to Emma, but with the proven-but-painfully-slow success of his treatment for Vocivore-Slave-Brain, Dr. Whale now considered himself even more of an invincible Scientist! than he had before. 

Meanwhile, the shield expanded, and Killian’s ability to survive a longer trek was worthless because even the furthest reaches of the United Realms were now stripped of their magic as well. A visit to another realm altogether was not out of the picture, but everyone, including Killian, had reservations about the effects of portal travel on his hard-earned progress, so that remained a task for the future. To be honest, at this point, not much benefit would be gleaned from exposure to healing magic anyway, though Emma would have liked to spare him the residual pain, and possibly reduce the visibility of some of his more gruesome new scars.

Later, she promised herself. When they were sure the forces of a portal would not disrupt the fragile healing within his brain and cause a relapse of the condition. Today was about his psychological well-being. She pulled into the village square and came to a halt directly in the center, a front-row seat for the crumbling of remembered demons. Maybe it was absurd to feel resentful towards a building for not falling on its evil occupant when it had the chance, but Emma knew she would feel a vindictive pleasure watching its destruction nonetheless.

*****

The car had stopped, but it was as if the church had continued moving, sliding near, swelling in dimension and darkness until it filled the entirety of Killian's view out the windshield. In fact, it seemed to fill the car itself, almost as if the car were inside the church and the church inside the car. Or maybe the car didn't exist at all. Maybe Killian didn't exist at all; perhaps it was his spirit hovering just beyond the crooked door, just out of sight of the cooling corpse it had recently vacated, now on its way to the place of white light and columns where screams no longer rent the cool morning air. 

AT LONG LAST. MY TRIPOD HAS RETURNED.

The voice was not real. Logically, Killian knew that, had drilled the facts of the monster’s defeat over and over into his mind. The words were of his own creation, filling the space where harsh dominion once dwelt. Whale and Hopper had both confirmed that enough exposure to anything and the brain could replicate sensations even in their absence.

That knowledge did nothing to combat the feelings of despair taking root within Killian now.

I EAGERLY AWAIT YOUR PRESENCE, TRIPOD, his Master seemed to say. COME INSIDE AND YOU SHALL SCREAM AS YOU’VE NEVER SCREAMED BEFORE.

Emma placed an understanding hand on his forearm, which pulsed with residual and remembered pain. A muscular, slithery tentacle; Z’s leather strap, pulling on a ring that was no longer present, dragging him where he did not wish to go, restraining him with a shattering ache that had not truly subsided even after initial reconstructive surgery. The stake was gone; its oppression remained.

“Should I tell them to get started?” Emma's gentle voice was way out of place, startlingly jarring among the torture of memories. Killian winced, filling tight lungs with shaky resolve.

"I need to go inside," he whispered, and Emma's expression of patient understanding crumbled into doubt.

“I... Are you sure?”

Killian felt his tentative nod wobble side to side nearly as much as it bobbed up and down. This, apparently, did not do too much to convince her of his confidence. Suppressing a shudder, he reached for the door handle.

“Okay, just... Hold on,” urged Emma as she hastily unbuckled her seatbelt. “Let me get it.”

Even the flash of resentment at his temporary helplessness was not enough to fully drive away the monstrous voice.

YES, it confirmed, HELPLESS. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR YOUR FAITHFUL MATE SHOULD YOU ENTER. BUT YOU WILL COME ANYWAY BECAUSE YOU CANNOT RESIST MY COMMAND.

Killian allowed Emma to unbuckle his seatbelt and assist him to his feet, but his eyes never left the imposing scene of nightmares before him. Though so much had changed since his last time crossing that threshold, the ingrained feelings of reluctant terror still clawed at his being as he took a wobbly step forward.

There were strangers in hard hats gathered on the stoop. Their clothing bore little resemblance to sackcloth, yet their presence hearkened back to the revolving groups of dull-eyed guards endlessly cluttering the entrance. The ones who had listened to Killian's screams, watched the tortures, suffered some themselves. And the majority of whom were now dead.

Emma waved a cordial greeting to the relaxed construction workers, who nodded back casually, their posture normal, an ordinary, calm light in their eyes. No duress. No fatalistic numbness. Killian thought he may recognize one or two, but the blurred tentacles crawling across his vision prevented a positive identification. With the hand not currently helping to support her husband's weight, Emma flashed her badge and murmured some sort of explanation, to which one of them replied something about still clearing out the interior. Occupied with fighting oppressive memory, Killian focused on remaining upright, allowing Emma to do the talking.

And then the door was screeching open in a mockery of human suffering. And then he was walking through, joining a procession of his previous selves from the first to the last, each slightly more hunched than the one before, curling inward in anticipation of the pain, less and less able to face the scene ahead. Bowing, body and soul, to the dark of despair.

A blood-tinged shaft of light illuminated a patch of paving stone at the bottom of the stairs, as if highlighting the spot he had fallen so often, had lain in utter torment, visualizing his daughter’s corpse while it was he himself who cried and bled.

The altar was gone. Dismantled, decorative facing and heavy broken surface nowhere to be seen. A few scuff marks and differently colored concrete were the only signs of its once-looming presence at the top of the steps. Other stains marred the empty floor; Killian did not have to work very hard to guess their origin.

He did not wish to get any closer, but his unsteady legs took him forward anyway while dust particles and flashes of nothing became heavy, lurking pincer and wriggling tentacle in the corners of his vision. Each time he blinked, the instant of darkness filled with ghastly mental images: sometimes the Vocivore returned, sometimes the fictional Hope which he’d been working so hard to banish from his memory. He could hardly even feel Emma’s supporting hand under his elbow, or even her presence at his side; he'd always come into this room alone, come to face its worst alone, and his subconscious mind could not reconcile the change in paradigm.

Oddly enough, though, the remembered voice remained as silent as the empty cathedral. Fragments of disjointed scenes continue to play behind his eyes, their haunting soundtrack present but muffled, all firmly in the realm of past torments and absent any current threat. Could it be that the visual evidence of the Master's lair, empty, had shut up its voice once and for all? Killian scarcely dared imagine the possibility.

Only steps away from the scuffed stairs, Killian's weakened foot caught on an uneven stone and he staggered into Emma, who silently braced him up, throwing her arm around him and squeezing in a comforting manner. With a couple of one-legged hops, he managed to regain his balance, though he remained reluctant to put his full weight back on the tender ankle. Emma glanced around and spotted an upended pew in the periphery of the space.

"Can you manage on your own for a sec?" she murmured. At Killian's unconvincing nod, she carefully ducked out from under his arm and hurried toward the pew.

If Killian had felt alone before, the feeling tripled as Emma's presence vanished. The ghost outline of the altar shimmered into view. His arm resting atop with a spike driving into the bone. His savaged body pounding against the wood while he screamed. His bloodied hand, impaled amongst tarnished depictions of wheat stalks and grapevines, shuddering as the last vestiges of life drained away.

And then, again, the image and the words, louder than ever. The old mantra. Hope kidnapped, Hope tortured, Hope dead, no hope no hopenohope…

Quickly back at his side, dragging the long wooden bench along with her, Emma recognized his distress and gently eased him down onto its surface, pulling his aching fist away from his face, quietly urging him to relax, to breathe, reminding him that she was there and that he was safe. Tears dripped onto Killian's lap as he struggled to contain his sobs. Emma knelt before his hunched form, squeezing his wrist and stroking his cheek, shedding tears of her own in response to his emotional turmoil.

After several minutes, Killian managed to drive away the demons and settled into a quivery rhythm of intentional breathing; it was the only way he would escape an eternal spiral into overwhelming hopelessness. His chest ached from the strain, his hand throbbed with the effort of holding his emotions in his fist. The volume of the wrong mantra decreased but did not abate. Still stroking his cheek, Emma murmured, 

“Are you okay?”

Killian gave a tentative nod, and he could feel the remnants of the involuntary tremors that still appeared whenever he was tired or stressed. “Just... Tell me it will get better.”

“It will,” she promised softly. “I really believe that.”

She delicately threaded the fingers of one hand inside his, gently but persistently nudging his fist to relax. When his fingers were finally uncoiled and his palm flat, facing upward, she began a careful massage of the tender flesh beneath the brace.

“We did a good thing, Killian. It's hard for us to say it was worth it. Hell, if we had known all the details, and how long it would take, I don't know that I would have been able to go through with it. But…” She leaned back on her haunches in order to look up into his face. “I've been thinking about what you said to Archie the other day, about how the scars will make it hard to forget everything. And I think… maybe that's the way it should be.”

Killian just looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. Continuing on, she explained,

"Each one represents a wound you bore so that someone else wouldn't have to. And, frankly... we'd all be dead if you hadn't done what you did. Sooner or later, in all likelihood, most of Storybrooke would be dead. So instead of looking at the scars and remembering the awful, I think you should give each one a meaning. A person whose life you saved by enduring all that pain, whom you can think about instead of the torture itself."

Killian studied her, eyes slightly brighter as he turned the idea over in his mind, and Emma flashed an encouraging smile. 

"Need an example?"

Seeing his nod of agreement, Emma ran her finger along his palm, where she knew, underneath the stretchy fabric of the brace, a pinkish-white line marked the entry wound from the dagger stabbed through and into the altar. 

"I can think of two people you’ve called your right-hand man in different situations. For a long while, that position was filled by Mister Smee." She turned his hand over and traced an approximation of the exit wound on the back. "These days, when you go sailing, it's always Henry who takes over the duties of first mate. So... you got this scar so Henry could live. And this one is for Smee." With each person named, she touched the corresponding line on his skin, so gently that there was barely a whisper of sensation in response.

A tear dripped off the tip of Killian's nose as, with head bowed, he watched his wife’s fingers brush his hand. 

Quietly, Emma asked, 

“What do you think? Helpful?”

Killian gave a hesitant, indecipherable movement of his head.

“Want me to keep going?”

“Please.”

The word was faint, hollow with ache but also a dash of hope. Emma clambered to her feet, her hand trailing along his jawline and down until it came to rest with fingers splayed over the twin lines on his shoulder which marked the transmitter’s brutal removal.

“Side by side,” she remarked. “Sounds like Mom and Dad; what do you think?”

Killian winced a tiny smile, and she took that as his approval. Emma sat gingerly on the pew next to him and held his blunted wrist in both hands, massaging the sides once skewered by cruel metal and asking,

“Detective Jones?”

“And Alice,” he added hoarsely. Emma smiled fondly. Then she sobered and laid her hand against his chest, approximating the site of the near-fatal stabbing. It had not fully knitted into a solid scar yet, the outer layers still supported by strips of water-resistant tape beneath padded bandaging. Sudden tears sprang to her eyes as her free hand came up to tangle absently in his hair.

“And this one,” she choked out, pausing to clear her throat before continuing, “nearest your heart… this one's for Hope, I think.”

Killian's vision blurred, and a sob jolted his chest, but instead of the corpse of his nightmares, he saw the charmingly misshapen sketch of the Papa bear, cradling the lump that represented his baby bear as he protected her from a frowning monster that only the mind of a 3-year-old could conjure. He sniffed, wiped his eyes with a careful knuckle, and breathed, 

“Aye. For Hope.”

A long moment’s silence filled the sanctuary as tortures relived began to take on additional significance and gruesome mental images grew new outlines. Emma continued to make her presence known through comforting touch, and finally, over tense neck muscles, her tender fingers found two dime-sized pink discs which had only recently lost their scabs. The matching pair on the other side would be out of her view, but it was clear she referred to all four when she mused,

“I was going to say something about naming everyone in your life who could be described as a pain in the neck, but would that be too flippant?”

Surprising both of them with a quick-witted response, Killian deadpanned, 

“Well, you've already assigned both Jones and Dave, so I'm not certain that leaves anyone else who fits that description.”

The moment of levity clashed so strikingly with everything the building had to come to represent, yet it felt improbably cathartic as well. Picking up on the mood, Emma leaned in to place a kiss on one of the scars, muttering in between pecks,

“Regina?”

 Killian almost smirked. She kissed the other, saying,

“Doctor Whale?”

With a groan, he conceded that point. 

“Most assuredly.” Then he added, “S'pose we can't list Regina without the inclusion of her sister.”

“Zelena. Right. And the fourth?”

“That only leaves one, Swan. Let's see if you can name him.”

Emma truly did not have to think very hard to come up with that one. The uncontested champion of showing up at the worst possible time with tidings of woe. “Oooh! I know! It's Grumpy, isn't it?”

“Unlikely as it is,” said Killian, “this one is for Grumpy.”

Thrilled that he was taking to her idea so positively, she was about to try and make the dubious connection of "ankle biter" to Neal and Robin, neither of whom were anywhere near that category anymore, but at least he'd known them when they were... But before she could go down that path, Killian abruptly straightened and shifted positions so that he faced her a little more squarely.

"Distant friends and relations are all well and good," he said as he reached for her hand. "But there's one person immensely important to me whom we've not yet mentioned."

Emma took a slow breath. She really hoped he wouldn't be upset by what she was about to share. Placing a hand above his ear, she stroked his temple with her thumb for several heartbeats.

"Some scars you can't see," she finally began. "But are no less painful or important. So... the ones you carry in here..." Her fingers stilled, her hand an almost weightless representation of the burden he bore within his mind. "Those are for me. Because I have some, too. And mine are for you. They're the price I'm so willing to pay to have you here with me." Emma snuggled closer, dropping her hand to his back and resting her forehead against his. "It's a burden we'll carry together," she continued softly. "And that's why I believe it'll get better, Killian: we'll help each other."

Killian felt a new sort of pain at the thought of Emma's own trauma, and how she'd been dealing with it mostly on her own as he endured the grueling process of recovery. But he could not deny drawing a small measure of comfort from her words, her expression of empathy and promise of support. He leaned into her and they shared a moment of silent communication, where emotions and vulnerabilities and fears intermingled in an easy acceptance, where it was okay to have doubts and dark thoughts as long as they both clung to the shared hope of brighter days ahead. And in that moment of quiet, Killian mentally reached for the images that might one day replace, or at least live alongside, all the scenes of torture. He watched the brand scalding his palm, then thought of Granny, her false prickliness covering such warmth and generosity. That one was for her. He felt the pincer tearing at his ear and pictured Archie, patiently absorbing as much of the story as Killian was ready to tell, giving advice and professional support as needed; that one was for him. He saw himself pinned to the altar and struggling to breathe, and instead of succumbing to the imagined fire in his lungs, he clung to his tangible Hope, the ability to see her again in just a few hours, the proof of how she viewed her papa and what he had done for all of them. For Hope, he thought. Always and forever, for her.

"Which one are you hearing now?" Emma whispered into the silence, and Killian worked to direct the inner mantra as he'd been taught.

Hope, free. Hope, safe. Hope, loved.

"The good one."

Hope, free. Hope, safe. Hope, loved.

"I’m glad. What say we get out of here; let ‘em finish their work so they can smash this place to smithereens and we can go home?"

Hope, free. Hope, safe. Hope, loved.

Vocivore, defeated.

Hope, free.

Killian, free.

Free.

"I'm ready."

________________________________________________________________

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT PEOPLE TIED FOR FIRST PRIZE WITH ENTRIES I STILL SHIVER TO RECALL

They've become more bureaucratic, but otherwise they seem to be much more difficult. Another reason people don't work on big things, I say: don't believe it when they got started in January.1 In more recent times, Sarbanes-Oxley deters people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken. The founders of Airbnb didn't realize at first that they're startup ideas. You have to use Java. Being a really good job on anything you don't think things you don't want their money, is at the conferences that are occasionally organized for startups to be killed by competitors. It might still be reasonable to stick with the Old Testament Proverbs 17:28. The saddest windows close when other people die. These ideas didn't just seem small. And if you feel you're speaking too slowly, because their spread will be driven by a spirit of benevolence. If I had a design philosophy. Your old bad habits now help you to understand your users.

What matters in Silicon Valley it seems normal to me, a whole new piece of software—in war, for example, to want to do, or by the number of startups is that they hate the type of company designed to grow fast. Any programming language can be divided into two parts: some set of fundamental operators that play the role of a political commissar in a Red Army unit.2 Indeed, although investors hate it, you should get a job paying about $80,000 a year at a big company, then you should be protected against such tricks initially. We're all trying to de-emphasize search? In most, the cause of the 1929 crash. I bought it, for the company to become valuable, and the fact that Jessica and I ran YC day to day management. You're just looking for things we can't say: to look at users.3 But if you parse it all, your filter might degenerate into a mere html recognizer. Why would they go to college still matters, but not powerful.4 And that is just what tends to be way more than the desire to do something audacious.

But what is a novelist to do? Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on one another of course Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully, but they love plans and procedures and protocols.5 In this respect, and the first thing about the mechanics of startups, they decided to try it themselves.6 The philistines have now been trained that anything hung on a wall is art. It's much better than Microsoft today. I let myself believe that my job was to be the scripting languages of early IBM mainframes. Human Knowledge another shot in college. In fact, don't even ask for their email address unless you need to attract. It will actually become a reasonable strategy or a more reasonable strategy to suspect everything new. Ruby on Linux.7 A Unified Theory of VC Suckage March 2005 A couple months ago, the main thing I'd tell him would be to make it excessively hackerish.8

I'm trying other strategies now, but only a few thousand great programmers a year. Credit card debt is a bad data point.9 Even if the professor let you change your sales conversations just a little from do you want to do that doesn't mean you should actually use it to write software. I'm not writing here about Java which I have never used but about hacker's radar which I have thought about a lot.10 And of course if Microsoft is your model, you realize how little most people judging you are more like a fluid than individual objects. For a given total amount of pain, raising money, raising money, and so on. If they get confused or bored, they won't tell you them. Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, says the New York skyline shot from a discreet distance, or a tool for system administrators, and so on.

The fact that super-angels would quibble about valuations. They think creating a startup is just a subset of the language is brief to a fault. Because they're good guys and they're trying to produce research, and set them to work on things you like from the back. It would only dilute their own judgment to average it together with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes. So if some friends want you to sell them the company is their project. A novice imitates without knowing it. See, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniations, but they are still missing a few things we would have the new feature too. Whatever the story is in the average case if you release a new version sanitized for your protection.11 Made Lisp Different December 2001 rev.

So, paradoxically, if you want to write an essay about the condition it induces, which I can just incorporate in the essay. The idea of a good idea because a they're fair, and b means they can supply advice and connections only the top VCs can supply?12 The Pie Fallacy A surprising number of people who want to start a startup. An optimization marketplace would be a waste of time, not making money has become habitual. The more ambitious merely hoped to climb the same ladder faster. Nerds still in school is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of our software, even though the phrase compact disc player is not present on those pages. Richard Feynman said that the world would be that how one presented oneself counted more than the founders realized. Many famous works of art are unfinished. Either your site is about.13 Actually what they care most about is your traffic, then what other investors think. '', I look for probabilities for Subject free'', free!

Notes

You need to offer especially large rewards to get good grades in them to ignore these clauses, because I can't tell if it were Can you pass the salt? Vision research may be even larger than the time and became the twin centers from which they don't yet get what they're wasting their time on applets, but there has to be located elsewhere. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them generate a lot of time, because the median total compensation, including both you and listen only to emphasize that whatever the valuation of hard work is a facebook exclusively for college students.

Innosight, February 2012. The solution for this at YC. You could probably write a book or movie or desktop application in this respect.

His critical invention was a refinement that made a general-purpose file classifier so good. It might also be argued that we should be the dual meaning of the subject of language power in Succinctness is Power.

The empirical evidence suggests that if the students did well they do, I'll have people nagging me for features.

Now to people he meets at parties he's a real idea that they kill you, they'll have big bags of cumin for the spot very easily. I'd take an angel.

There was one of the first half of it in B. They're often different in kind, because you can talk about the details.

Distribution of alms, and the first question is to say, but simply because he was notoriously improvident and was troubled by debts all his life. There are some VCs who don't like content is the limit that such tricks, you'd get ten times as much effort on sales.

8 in London, 13 in New York. As I was a special name for these topics. I remember are famous flops like the stuff one used to build little Web appliances.

Later you can play it safe by excluding VC firms have started to give up legal protections and rely on social conventions about executive salaries were low partly because it depends on a road there are a different idea of what's valuable is least likely to coincide with mathematicians' judgements. Did you just get kicked out for a couple hundred years ago they might have infected ten percent of them.

Macros very close to the margin for error.

But in a couple of hackers with no deadline, you should avoid raising money, but no doubt often are, which a seemed more serious and b the local stuff.

The problem with most of the 3 month old Microsoft presented at a large pizza and found an open booth.

Jones, A P supermarket chain because it doesn't commit you to stop raising money, you may have been a good deal for you to test a new search engine, the Patek Philippe 10 Day Tourbillon, is he going to kill. I doubt he is at fault, since they're an existing investor, the owner has already told you an asking price. Is this unfair?

[dailyaudiobible]

11/13/2019 DAB Transcript

Ezekiel 27:1-28:26, Hebrews 11:17-31, Psalms 111:1-10, Proverbs 27:15-16

Today is the 13th day of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It's great to be here with you on this 317th day of the year, which is our 317th day together as we’re making our way to the Scriptures this year. We’re continuing to work our way through the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the book of Hebrews in the New. And we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Today, Ezekiel chapters 27 and 28.

Commentary:

Alright. So, yesterday we were talking about what is known as the “hall of faith” found here in the book of Hebrews. And, so, we continued walking down that hall of faith in today's reading. And, so, what we've done basically is begin in the book of Genesis and then the author of Hebrews begins to point out instances in the Hebrew Scriptures where faith was like the irreplaceable part of the story. And, so, we spent all of our time walking down those examples in today's reading from the Old Testament, right? So, it was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice for God was testing him. It was by faith that Isaac promised blessings for the future of his sons, Jacob and Esau. It was by faith that Jacob when he was old and dying, blessed Joseph's sons. It was by faith that Joseph when he was about to die talked about leaving Egypt. It was by faith that Moses parents hid him for three months when he was born. It was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, refused to be identified with Pharaoh's daughter. It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. It was by faith that Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover. It was by faith that the people of Israel went right through the Red Sea as they were on dry ground. It was by faith that the people of Israel marched around Jericho for seven days and the walls crashed down. It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed. So, you can see it was “by faith”, that phrase pounded over and over as we’re looking at the examples simply starting at the beginning of the Bible and working our way forward. This is because the author, the writer of Hebrews was pointing out something that had always been obvious but hadn't been seen, hadn’t been understood in this context. And the larger point is the same point that the apostle Paul made in his writings, it was by faith that all of these things happened not by adherence to some sort of code or ethic. It was by faith. Faith was the component that…that changed all of the stories. Like today We worked from Genesis all the way to the book of Joshua and without faith all of the major characters and all of the major decisions of those stories that carry the narrative forward in the Bible wouldn't have happened. Like what if this was the hall of disbelief that we were walking down and all of these people had the supreme opportunity to live by faith with God in covenant, but they chose not to, right? We would have…we would either not have the Bible or we would have a different Bible. And this is the point that's being made. Like, faith is the key to our union with God and our awareness of the spiritual realms. Faith has always been the essential component of life with God. It still is. Nothing has changed there. Without faith we can't please God. And in all of the examples that we read of today in the hall of faith, God responded to their faith. So, we’re talking about faith because we’re walking down this hall of faith, but we have to think about our own faith. We can certainly look and go, like, “He's…that's right…that's right…faith was the thing because all the way back to the beginning I can see that now.” But what about your faith? What about our faith right now? Because what we are putting our faith in is essentially what we are giving our hearts to in worship as if it were God, as if it were going to be able to bring us life. So, let's think about it because that's the point. That's what the author of Hebrews is trying to show here. Where is your faith because without it you're going nowhere? So, it would be a good thing to not lose it, and it would be a good thing to know where it is at all times. So, it comes down to, like, in whom, or in what have we put our faith? We see from the hall of faith with…that when people against all odds put their faith in God, God responds. That hasn't changed. So, maybe we’re waiting for God to respond only to sit down and realize we do not have faith that He will and we have put our faith in someone or something else. Or maybe we put our faith in ourselves and we’ve gotta dig out of this. Maybe our faith is in the wrong place. Something to think about today.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit we invite You to help us think about that, to begin to unpack where is we’re putting our faith because it's been made abundantly clear, we will never please You without faith. And, so, forgive us for all of the times that we’ve tried to navigate without it or that we’ve put our faith in something that can't deliver, and given our hearts in worship to that thing or that person. Forgive us for these things. We see the foolishness of our ways. We place our faith, all of it…all of it…there is no plan B…all of it is in You and You alone. We invite You Holy Spirit to come into that. Show us all of the areas that we’ve placed our faith in other things. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Rachel from Pennsylvania and I heard a prayer request from a guy who was struggling with his job and also his eyesight. I didn’t catch his name, but I think it’s the second time I heard a prayer request from him about his eyes. So, I wanted to pray, lift him up to God for prayer. Dear God, please help this man who called in for prayer for his job and his eyesight. He’s been struggling with a job and he left one and then started another God and he’s having the same problems in the second job and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s starting to doubt You. So, I just want to lift him up and please God make Yourself real to him. Show him that You’re…that You’re there, that You have a plan for him and please just give him peace about it. Maybe You already have. I think the prayer request was maybe from August. So…but if he’s still struggling God, please give him a boost, help him out and also please help them figure out what’s going on with his own life or just, You know, I want to lift up whatever is going on with it to You and please heal it. He seems to lose site in his eye every now and then, I think he said his left eye. So, God just please pour out Your Holy Spirit on him and healing in Your name. Amen.

Hi, DAB will you pray for my son William. Today, after battling forces for many years saying that he is worthless, and he is not loved and that he is useless another student at school told him the same thing. He decided that he __ went into the bathroom to eat a lithium-ion battery. We spent the whole day in emergency and the state decided to send him into the psychiatric ward. Please pray for him. Thank you.

Hey DABbers, this is his messenger in upstate New York and I also wanted to give you guys a praise report. My father-in-law had a procedure for his heart this week and things seem to have gone well. So, the prayers were answered for that. My best friend of like a decade and a half or something, she’s been fighting her insurance agency through something with her roof and there’s a claim and they just admitted guilt and as a result hopefully they’ll pay to fix all the stuff that’s broken in her house because of this roof. So, I just praise God that that’s happened that her prayers are answered. And I don’t know how much of a believer she is. We’ve had a lot of conversations about that, but I just hope that she could develop a relationship with Jesus through this. You know, she asks me, you know, why would she have to go through all the stuff and why would it have to be so hard and I just pray that maybe that’s for her relationship with Jesus to blossom if not develop. She’s currently fostering a young boy his name is Anakin. So, I just pray for her, that she can have the wisdom that she needs to do a good job to raise him in a godly way. And pray for the young the young man, that he can be surrounded by people that are…that will guide him to God and to Jesus and, you know, I just praise God for all these amazing things that I hear from my little Cherry and from Victoria Soldier and from Blind Tony and from all of you guys. I just keep praying for Aaron in Oklahoma, for, I think it’s Jared the encourager, For Rebecca with your flute and your photography. Guys it’s just so awesome to hear from you and to hear how God is working in everybody’s lives. Just keep hope, keep running the race, keep being steadfast, knowing that there is a purpose for this and todays trials and tribulations will be tomorrow’s testimonies.

Hey guys how you doing this is the Prodigal, John. Hey, I wanted to call in with a praise report. There’s a change for you, ha? But prayed for my son and he…looks like he might be turning things around. So, thank you for your prayers for him and thank you for your prayers for me. I’m still struggling to get my business turned around, but God’s blessed me with some good new partners and we’re taking some massive steps to turn the business around. And, so, prayerfully we’ll pull out of this thing because the alternative is bankruptcy, which is no good. Anyway, thank you for your prayers. As you can hear, I’m tired. I’m busting my butt, have been forever but God’s been gracious enough to show me a little light which is…which is awesome. So, I wanted to let you know that every one of you who call in, I pray for you and I feel for you. I feel your pain because I…and again…I am thinking of pain. I’ve got…I’ve got to have my shoulder replaced, terribly invasive surgery and by back is broken for the third time and I’m trying to live with it at the moment. But I want to pray. Today I pray for you and I’m a little bit behind. That’s on me. Just been way too busy. But today I wanted to call out Biola. She called in. She was out on her walk and she sounded so happy and her voice is just like grace and I know a lot of people feel the same way. Blind Tony your poems are great. Awesome stuff, everybody. And Sinner redeemed, still waiting to hear from you brother. I feel like were soulmates bro so give a shout back. Brian thanks to you and Jill and everybody for what you do. And just pray for you and pray you all make it a blessed day. God bless you. Bye-bye.

Good morning this is Janice from Illinois and I’m asking this morning for prayer for my husband Bill. He has been diagnosed with lymphoma and has had several treatments and there are many, many complications that have occurred. Right now, he’s on a respirator and we’re just praying and hoping that he will be able to breathe on his own soon. Just praying for healing and Father just help me to strong. Thank you.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #219

“make a move and you pay for it; pick a lord and you pray to it.”

Do you actually love your grandpa? I don't really remember either of mine. I do from what I remember and have learned of them, though. Do you actually love your grandma? I don't remember my dad's mom at all, but I mean, I love her simply for being my dad's mother, who loved her. My mom's mom, yeah, even though she's. Hard to like a lot of the time. Do you have Facebook? Yes. What was the last thing you posted on someone’s wall? A birthday post. Do you have MySpace? My old one still exists, but I sure haven't been on it since it was current. What is your favorite kind of music? Heavy metal. Favorite soft drink? Mountain Dew Voltage is actually cocaine to me rip. Favorite food? Probably like... pepperoni pizza or cheeseburgers. I'm a full-blooded 'Merican. Have you ever felt replaced? OH, HAVE I! Have you ever worn false eyelashes? No. Do you ever regret making a friend? I don't think so. Can you cure mental illness? I don't know about cure, but you can certainly learn how to handle it better and alleviate symptoms. Is God good? Define "God." Cats or dogs? Kitties. Do you play video games? Yeah, but I don't play nearly the variety that I used to. Do you take medication for mental health? Yes. Can you really be racist to a white person? No shit? Do you have a favorite hair accessory? What does it look like? No. What’s your favorite type of insect? Butterflies. What’s your LEAST favorite type of insect? Larvae, like maggots. Disgusting. Who was the last person you Facebook messaged? What did you say? What’s his/her favorite food? Idk and I don't feel like checking. I rarely use it. What was the last song you listened to? Does it mean anything to you? "Thoughts & Prayers" by Motionless In White is a mood with my mad-at-God-24/7 ass. It needs to stop honestly. I've become so hateful about religion. Not towards followers, mind you, just the concept itself. I could write a novel on this, but I don't feel like it. Just me and organized religion don't get along anymore. Have you ever slept in a water bed? On a water mattress, yeah. How do you feel about having sex during your menstrual period? Never tried, not for me. Sounds messy. Does your ex have a job? My most recent, I guess you mean? Yeah. Have you ever slept in a car? Yeah, on long drives to like New York and stuff. What was the last term of endearment you used (babe, hun, dear, etc)? *checks phone* "Sweetie." How often do you use Flickr? Never. I can't log into my account anymore since Yahoo said "fuck u Britt," so there's no point. Have you ever been on a blind date? No. Do you have a crush on the last person you texted? She's my girlfriend so y'know like- Have you ever got into an argument with the last person you kissed? We very much disliked each other at first, so... guess, lmao. Have you ever liked somebody who was nice to you, but horrible to everyone else? Eh, that's a mystery... Juan was very sweet to me, but I know he had a bad rep. I didn't really see how he interacted with others. How’s your appetite atm? It's normal. I'm not currently hungry. Out of all the conversations you’ve had recently, which one has made you smile or laugh the most? Sara randomly and excitedly texted me to tell me "Welcome to the Jungle" was on at work, which was on the radio both when I was there and she was here, so she thought of how much she missed me lakdjsfkalwe I smiled my face in half. Do you look decent in your most recent photograph? Eh, it wasn't awful. It was for my school ID. What is one vacation destination that many people think is just fabulous but which you personally have no desire to visit (or revisit)? New York City. My sis went and said it was 1.) insane and 2.) disgusting. If you were five years younger but knew everything at that age that you’ve actually learned over the last five years, what is one thing you would definitely do differently? Go to the partial hospitalization program way sooner. What serves as the greatest motivation for you in your daily life? To earn a happy, content future. What activity that you have to do every once in a while that you dread the most? "Every once in a while," I'd say clean Mitsu's cage. She is such a strange rat. Enjoys pets, but being picked up is a no sir. When people hear what you do for a living, what is the most typical question or comment they give you regarding your job? N/A If you were left alone for one hour with nothing more than a pen and a notepad, what would you be inclined to draw or write during those 60 minutes? I'd probably write a poem. I know I wouldn't draw 'cuz fuck no am I doing so with a pen. If you could witness anything at all in super-slow motion, what would you want to see? Uhhh. Idk. Anything I can think of, like lightning, I've seen because of the Internet. If someone were looking for you in a bookstore, in what section would they be most likely to find you? Probably like, young adult fiction/fantasy, something like that. What do you forget to do more often than anything else? Lately, take one of my mood stabilizers. I need to get the box out... aaaand forget every day. I haven't felt any different without it tho so like... If you could teach everyone in the world one skill, what would it be? Compassion, maybe. You’ve been offered the chance to paint a billboard along a highway with any message you choose, as long as it’s only 10 words long. What is your message? I'm not spending time musing over something that serious lakaljdsfawe. Would you ever travel to Africa? Hell yes. I desperately want to go to South Africa on the Tswalu Kalahari tour. Whose house were you last at? Besides my own, my older sister's. Have you ever had a near-death experience? I guess this depends on how near death you mean. I've been in one car accident that my mom managed to make minor only by being a good driver; realistically, we should've flipped, according to the cop. My mom just acted quickly enough. Then I heavily ODed, but I was given more than enough fluids in time to keep me surprisingly okay. I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't told Mom so quickly, and I don't care to think about it. I'm fucking lucky and don't want to think about what could've happened. Have you ever met anyone who was overly addicted to a computer game? Tbh I myself could've been in this position when my depression was so bad, but then there's factors to that that lean towards it just having been a preference versus addiction. Idk. It's not a problem anymore so not worth debating over. Have you ever been fingered? That was the first cheat when you chose abstinence lmao. What do you do the most when you are online? Watch or listen to something on YouTube. What video game have you played the most? So in WoW you can actually type in /played to see how long you've played JUST that one character up to the years (or maybe days?) down to seconds and. I will never type it in lmao. Ongoing games are v depressing. Do you have scars you don’t like to talk about? No, those are thankfully gone. What is something you and your significant other do that may seem weird to others? Be helplessly and openly in love with imaginary demons while dating each other lmao (she's a Freeza fanatic). When and why did you last cry? The second day of school because of math class. When was the last time you drank? I think like... back on the 4th of July. Or some days after 'cuz I know Mom and I didn't finish the container in one night. Do you wear jewelry a lot? Just my piercings, really. Save for on my ear lobes because the holes on the left are fucked up, yay. I'm going to wind up just slightly stretching the first holes when I can afford a small kit; actual studs or hoops look stupid. Never wanted gauges until the holes got too stretched by the weight of hoops; now something needs to be there. Who in your household do you not have a good relationship with? My sister's (who doesn't even live here...) dog Bentley. I hate him and he doesn't like me. No, that doesn't mean I mistreat a pet. He's just a pain in the goddamn ass. Who in your life are you scared to lose more than anything? My mom. I don't know what would happen to me or how I'd cope at this time. Honestly, would you rather be single or in a relationship? I'm happier in a healthy relationship. Do any of your friends not get along at all? No. I mean, not that I know of. What are your 3 favorite internet sites? I'd be LOST without YouTube, then KM follows up close. #3, uh... Facebook or Tumblr, I suppose. Have you ever gotten anything autographed, if so by who & what was it? No. Well, I do have a little book of Disney World character autographs, but I don't think that really counts. Do you prefer Walmart or Target? We use Wal-mart. Who is your favorite model? Sara is a gd model don't even @ me about it. What have you done that is out of character for you? The Joel thing is the most anti-Brittany thing I've ever done for sure. I can't think of anything more current that stands out, unless it's- NO WAIT, this was quite a few months ago, but I firmly stood against an opinion my psychiatrist made known. He's very talkative and open as hell about his beliefs in current events, and he said something about pit bulls where I was just like... um no sir. I wasn't going to be rude though to HIM of all people so just said I don't base dogs by their breed and shut up. Awkward silence and we moved on. What do you feel strong enough to protest about? LGBT acceptance and rights. I already protest by having given up Chic-fil-a okay I care y'all. What’s the biggest blooper you’ve never lived down? Who knows... What is the best thing you have done just because you were told you can’t? Idk. I'm lucky to not have really been told that... What are you most thankful for? Thinking it all over, probably being born where I am. Boy is America FUCKED UP in some places, but boy would I be in a MUCH worse place if I was born in, say, North Korea, between my mental issues, sexuality, and opinions that can go to either end of the spectrum. How do you feel about thrift shops or flea markets? I love them! You can find the coolest, wackiest shit. What do you like to put gravy on? I hate gravy with a passion. Have you ever gone canoeing/kayaking? No. What one thing in particular makes you feel good about yourself? I genuinely think I'm a nice person that has other's well-being in mind. What is priceless to you? Love, in any form. What is one thing you know about your family history you’re proud of? Uhhh. I guess more than anything, I'm proud of my distant cousin for her unwavering love for and loyalty to her daughter when it came to escaping the Middle East and her dictatorial husband. Read Not Without My Daughter, it's great. Do you keep a budget? I don't have an income. What makes you feel rested and refreshed? Rested, a good night's sleep following being truly exhausted. Refreshed, oh man, gimme a hot, long shower. Who depends on you the most? Nobody. Could you ever be someone’s bodyguard? Hell no. Has one of your biggest fears come true? Yes. I was entirely convinced the world would literally end if Jason left. That night still doesn't feel real. Have you ever let your mom or significant other fight a battle for you? Colleen and Mom once fought after I'd ignored her, so I guess? It wasn't my wish or anything though for her to do it; Mom had shit to say by her own volition, and I wasn't going to tell my mother "no you can't do that." Did you create a checklist for your ideal spouse? No? Have you ever ridden on a subway or train and what did you like about it? Nope. Do you have to experience something to fully understand it? Yes. What embarrasses you instantly? A LOT A LOT A LOT!!!!! It is SO easy to embarrass me, including second-handedly. Do you think you could be a firefighter, why/why not? Hell no, I'm most certainly not in the necessary shape, and quite honestly I'm not that willing to risk my life for random people that could be assholes. What do you think should be censored? Idk. I have mixed feelings on censorship, no matter how stupid it seems. Eh... yeah, idk. Are you related to anyone famous or historical, if so who? Queen Victoria and William Clark. Would you ever donate a kidney to anyone, and who? Depends on who and obviously if we're even compatible. Have you ever fired a gun? No. What is the main quality you think makes a great parent? Sincerely caring for them, probably. Who is a female role model in your life? My mom, in some ways. What childhood dreams have you neglected? Jfc a lot, I don't want to think about it. What do you have trouble seeing clearly in your mind? My future, honestly. It's hard picturing my elderly days. Like I'm not suicidal anymore, I just don't really... realize I'll get there, I guess. I can't picture myself being old and alive. Would you travel to space if possible? No, too long of a trip. Are you an optimistic person? I'm a realist. Do you consider yourself more realistic OR idealistic? ^ Have you ever felt bi-curious? I started out accepting myself as bisexual through thinking myself as bicurious. I quickly realized "bisexual" was more accurate than "bicurious," but it was an easier thing to shift acceptance towards in regards to yourself when you thought you were straight for 21 years. Are you a fan of U.S. President Donald Trump? No sir. I agree with some of his ideas, but I hate him as an asshole person without a trace of manners. Do you know anyone with autism, mood disorders or learning disabilities? Multiple. I'd assume most people know someone who fits at least one criterion there. Are you green-eyed? Not exactly, but they definitely have a green hue to them. They're a gray/green blue. Would you consider UFC fighting and WWE real sports events? I think it's beyond debate that a lot of it is staged, but I mean, I guess to a degree? You still have to fight. It's physical exertion. Have you ever had an immediate relative pass away of cancer? No. Wait. I can't remember if my grandmother had cancer or not... but I don't think so. She was just old. Would you rather work in an office, warehouse or on a retail shop floor? An office, definitely. In my work-hunting as well as actual work experience, office work is probably the only job I could actually do that doesn't require a degree... Do you have a favorite wild animal? Why? You can't know me and not be fully aware meerkats are my favorite animal. Why? Ho boy. I love social species, and meerkats have such strong personalities, and holy shit are those little things brave as fuck. They're so GOSH DARN CUTE!!!! too, and their loyalty to each other is astounding. I love how playful and curious the little guys are, and... just wow okay, I could write an actual essay on how I adore meerkats so goddamn much. Do you have any unusual, uncommon phobias? I'm sure there are other people afraid of whale sharks, but I don't think it's common? And is an actual phobia of pregnancy uncommon? Idk. Do you prefer Android or iPhone? I hate my Android. I've had an iPhone in the past, and it was great. Are you a fan of sweet, sour, salty, or savory snacks? All, depending on my mood. Most often I'd say I like sweet. Do you believe climate change is real? We can't be friends if you don't. Do you believe in evolution OR creationism? Evolution. Do you think people can really predict the future? Nah. Have you been to a lot of shrinks? I hate that word. Just call them therapists. But yeah. How often do you clean your room? Not often enough. I need to dust... Any movies coming out soon that you want to see? I DESPERATELY wanna see the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" one. Those books were my CHILDHOOD. What was the last fear you overcame? I don't know about totally overcame, but vocational rehab helped me quite a bit with answering the phone to numbers I didn't recognize. Have you ever hurt yourself trying to crack a body part? No, nothing on me really cracks. Well no, both my big toes do, but no, I haven't hurt myself trying to crack them. What’s the worst part about winter? The days where it's cold BUT ALSO WINDY asdkljfaklwej;awe Summer? It's too fucking hot and probably humid, too. Spring? POLLEN. Fall? Literally nothing. :') Are you allergic to anything? Pollen and silver. How many times have you changed a diaper in your life? Like, once. Which country has the most fascinating culture? Oh boy, idk. Who does your favorite song? Idrk what my current favorite song is. I say my all-time fave is "False Flags" by Massive Attack, but it's not something I constantly wanna listen to. I guess you could maybe say it's "Headache" by Motionless In White; I play and repeat that a lot. I've really been digging them lately. When was the last time you wore makeup? Shit dude, idk. Months ago. Do you prefer males or females or both? I'm generally afraid of men, but I mean, I don't "prefer" one over the other if he's a good guy. Where in your town do you go when you wanna chill with a few friends? I don't have any friends I go out with. But there's nowhere to go here anyway. Where’s the best place to get coffee? N/A Have you ever seen someone struggle with an addiction? My dad was an alcoholic, but he's recovered. He loved (idk if he still does it) fantasy football, too. Pretty sure I got my addictive personality from him, lol. When was the last time someone gave you flowers? Early 2017. Do you like cranberry juice? omfg NO. Do you play any zombie-killing video games? The Last of Us is fucking dope, but I didn't finish it before my PS3 broke. :'( I like the Resident Evil series too, and some of those games have zombies or similar creatures. And The Walking Dead game tears my heart out every fucking season. What is the dominating genre on your mp3 player/iPod? Varying forms of metal. Do you have a book shelf? No. What website do you spend way too much time on? YouTube is ALWAYS open. I constantly either watch let's players and a few other kinds of YTers, moving windows around so I can see it and do other things, or listen to music. Do you like wind chimes? I LOVE!!!!!!!!!! WINDCHIMES!!!!!!!!!! Do you have a fetish? No. Do you have a pet fish? No. Don't get me wrong, they're beautiful and calming, but not worth it for me personally. They don't have much of a personality at all, and cleaning a tank so much for just a fish isn't for me. Do you like kettle corn? (That sweet and salty popcorn) Yessss! Do you enjoy classic rock? Hell yeah, man. When was the last time you went for a walk, just cause? Not since I was at Sara's last. Do you listen to Type O Negative? No. Do you have any fillings or cavities? Yeah. Have you gotten your wisdom teeth taken out yet? No, and thankfully I don't need to. One was very close to needing to be, but it has just enough room. Do you actually read privacy policies when signing up for new things? "Depending on what I’m signing up for, I’m likely to at least skim it." <<< This. Did you have a lot of birthday parties when you were younger? If so, did you invite everyone in the class? I had a party every year up to... idk what age. And no, I only invited friends. Do you like when things are color coordinated? Yes. Have you ever participated in one of those “guess how many jelly beans, mints, etc. are in this jar!” contest? if so, have you ever won? Yeah, and no. Can you juggle? Nope. Have you ever mistaken a ringing phone on TV or in a movie for your own? Who hasn't? How often do you use bobby pins? Never. My hair's really too short for them. Well, I'd probably pin the right side up if I was doing something like cleaning. Do you live on an avenue, road, drive or something else? Road. What are your school colors? Blue and white. Have you ever taken a picture with Santa when you were little? Yeah. Have you ever rolled down a steep, grassy hill for fun? Actually yeah. Do you like Nerds candy? Yes I do.

[theattainer]

THE TEN WORST THINGS YOU CAN DO IN A NEGOTIATION

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http://theattainer.com/the-ten-worst-things-you-can-do-in-a-negotiation-2/

THE TEN WORST THINGS YOU CAN DO IN A NEGOTIATION

The best negotiator I knew always acted like an idiot. He acted so well that I thought he was really stupid. I also thought at the time that he was my best friend.

That was probably an act also. Just two years later he stopped talking to me forever.

I ran into him in the street the other day. He smiled and shook my hand. I felt warm, like he liked me again. Then he was gone.

Negotiation is first about warmth. Two sides deciding if they want to be friends with each other. If they want to be in the same tribe, fighting side by side in this harsh world.

After that it’s about vulnerability. Making yourself into the type of person someone else wants to take care of.

This is not a mystery. When a baby is born the negotiation begins. It lasts until at least the baby is an adult.

My oldest turns 16 tomorrow. She negotiates with me every day. I love her. But maybe that’s what makes her such a tough negotiator.

I’m not so good at realizing where all the boundaries are.

Between the outer me and the inner me. Between the me that always loves her and the me that wants her to love me back.

I guess that’s how I am with everyone. If they don’t love me back, I’m afraid, I’ll be less happy.

If I’m honest where the boundaries are, then we can begin to set up the rules. Then love begins.

Tricky!

I’ve probably seen over 1000 negotiations in action. I’ve probably been directly involved in 100 or so.

Every day life is a negotiation. I’m not talking in this post about the every day negotiations although the same rules apply. I’m talking about negotiations where careers and money and reputations and maybe love is at stake.

For me, that latter is the hardest. So take my advice with a grain of salt. In fact, I’d rather tell you all the ways in which I’ve messed up in negotiations. Because this is really the classroom I learned in.

A) IF YOU HAVE A SMALL LIST OF TERMS, YOU LOSE.

Let’s say you are selling a company. One side is usually focused on the final price. That side will henceforth be called “the loser”.

Make your list bigger: what are the terms of the non-compete, what is the length of the earn out, what are the salaries of the new top executives, what are the perks, what are the options packages.

Or if it’s a job: what are the responsibilities, what are similar people being paid, what is the path to higher promotions, what are the details of health, vacation, moving expenses, reviews, etc.

The side with the bigger list can give up the nickels for the dimes to the loser.

B) IF YOU DON’T GET ENOUGH SLEEP, YOUR WILLPOWER WILL BE ZERO.

Carl Icahn, one of the best investors in the world, uses this technique.

He schedules his negotiations for the early evening.

Our peak mental ability (according to Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, and many other books) is approximately 2 hours after we wake up until about 4 hours after we wake up.

And then throughout the day, our willpower slowly leaks away until we sleep again. That’s why we watch TV and eat donuts at night rather than when we first wake up.

So Carl Icahn will sleep until 4pm and then go to the negotiation at 6pm.

On the other side of the table are exhausted lawyers who have been working all day.

BAM! Who do you think will win that negotiation.

C) MOST PEOPLE THINK SHORT-TERM. BE THE VISIONARY AND YOU WIN.

Applied Semantics didn’t want to sell to Google in 2001. They had raised some money and thought they could make it.

A few months earlier I had made the mistake of turning them down when they were raising money. “The search engine business is dead!” said the greatest prophet of modern times.

Me.

Larry Page told the CEO of Applied, “I’m not getting off the phone until you say yes”.

So Applied Semantics sold themselves in exchange for 1% of Google. ONE PERCENT.

This was before Google went public. So it was a total unknown what those shares would be worth. Larry Page had the vision of where they would be.

Applied Semantics became the Adsense division of Google. Which now accounts for 99% of Google’s revenues.

Are they upset? Shouldn’t they have sold for more?

Of course not. They sold for over a billion in value and created the end goal of making one of the best companies in the world.

You can only get rich once. Don’t worry so much about maximizing your percentage of something. One percent of $250 billion is better than 100% of nothing, as the saying goes.

I’m going to take a break for a second and say something that has saved me considerable stress.

NEVER WORRY ABOUT WHAT IS IN SOMEONE ELSE’S POCKET.

Let other people do well. Then you will do well.

Ok, back to what you shouldn’t do in a negotiation.

D) DON’T SAY NO.

I say this even though I wrote the book, “The Power of No”. What I really mean here is, bury your NO inside of a YES.

I was negotiating with one company once. They wanted me to be an advisor. I said, “no”. But not like that. What I really said was, “You have a great company and I am happy to give advice.”

What a great way to say no! They kept calling. They really wanted me. I said, “Here’s what you should do without me” and I totally laid out the plan they should do. I did it for free. That was another way of saying “no”.

This made them want me as an advisor even more. Eventually they offered enough that I said, “yes”. They followed my advice exactly. The advice that I had already given for free.

There’s a well-known improv technique of “Yes, and…”

In improv, the first performer creates the premise. The second performer can’t change it or reject it, he can only build on it.

In a negotiation if someone says, “well, you’re only worth $1 because you have X” you can say, “yes, and we also have Y so let’s take that into consideration.”

Suddenly your value is higher because you didn’t start a fight. You agreed and added.

E) MANY PEOPLE NEGOTIATE WITH THE WRONG MATH.

This is the part many people don’t get right and it’s hard to explain. I’ll take a simple example. I don’t know if the negotiation took place this way but it describes what I mean.

Why did Facebook buy Instagram for $1 billion. Instagram had 11 employees and zero revenues.

On that basis, maybe Instagram was worth…nothing. Or close to it.

But maybe the negotiation went something like this:

Instagram: Let’s agree to a formula first on how we should value our company.

Facebook: Err…Ok.

Instagram: Forget about our revenues for a second. But let’s just assume we can earn $X for every user you have (call that number $Y). Pay us $X * Y.

Facebook: Err.Ok.

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Instagram probably then showed how they could add $1 in value for every customer Facebook had. Facebook has a billion users. So a billion dollars.

Come to the negotiation with your formula. Know how to fill in the variables before the other side does. Every good negotiator does this.

The reason I know this? Because this is how I’ve lost many negotiations to good negotiators. I’ve had very good mentors on this one aspect of negotiation.

Because we all negotiated the formula, but not the price, in advance, then everyone has already said “Yes” to something and they basically have to stick with it.

(Well, they don’t have to. But it’s high stakes and you don’t want to seem like you don’t live up to your word.)

F) IF YOU HOPE FOR ONLY ONE OUTCOME, YOU NEVER GET IT.

I really wanted my company, Stockpickr, to be bought by Google. I threw everything I could into the basket. I would send them love notes in the middle of the night.

Seriously, I was in love with the woman doing the negotiating.

I didn’t have a technical team was the problem. We built the whole site for a few thousand dollars. I had one partner. We had 99% margins on our revenues but Google likes technical teams.

Oh well.

I then focused on getting alternatives. I called AOL, Yahoo, Reuters, Forbes. Then thestreet.com bought us.

Sometimes people write me and say, “I sent my ten ideas to my favorite company but they haven’t called back. Should I call them again?”

That’s the wrong question. The right question is: “What’s the next 100 companies I should write to?”

It’s no secret that being able to walk away from a negotiation is the best starting point in a negotiation.

G) SMARTER PEOPLE LOSE.

This is what I like to say: you guys are the experts at this, we’ve just been focused on building our product, company, art, whatever.

Then I say, “if you were me, what would you ask for?”

I ask them advice. Because they are the experts. It’s not a lie.

If you are applying for a job with someone more senior than you, why not ask the more senior guy for advice? He knows more than you.

Very often they give very good advice.

H) IF YOU NEGOTIATE WITH A LOSER, YOU LOSE.

If two sides are negotiating, you need at least one champion for what you are doing on the other side.

One time I was working with a company and GE offered us a billion dollars for the company. Yes, a BILLION.

They laid out the time frame. “The deal will be closed by November 15” said the highest ranking person in the room from GE.

I went back to the CEO of the company I was advising and told him that.

He said, “Who were you talking to?” I told him.

He said, “100% chance this deal doesn’t happen”.

But they offered! I told him. They actually made an offer.

“Trust me. No way. There’s no real champion for you on the other side who is close to being a decision maker. She is 5 rungs below the decision maker and she’s your only champion.”

And he was right. That deal did not happen. They found a better way to get what they wanted for 1/200 of the price.

You can only cross the bridge to the other side if someone strong is there holding out their hand to pull you in.

I) THE DEAL IS NOT THE FINAL DEAL. DON’T RELAX!

People think when they agree on a deal, that’s the end of the negotiation.

I’m sorry to say, that is only the beginning of the negotiation.

There’s agreeing, there’s signing, and there’s closing.

The final two steps are equally important and everyone assumes they are easy.

They aren’t. They are excruciatingly painful. The honeymoon period lasts for two days after you agree. Then there can be another six months to go.

Agreeing is easy. “I’ll buy your product or business for $X.”

Signing a deal involves all the little things that are the nickels and dimes (see above).

Closing a deal means both sides delivering everything they represented in a deal.

At each stage of this is buyer’s remorse and seller’s remorse and often things have to be renegotiated.

So every day after agreement, make it a point to stay in touch, be friends, keep focusing on the vision (particularly with the champion for your deal on the other side), have just as much energy to close all the details, keep in touch with the lawyers to make sure paperwork is going through, keep working on the alternatives (since the negotiation is not done til it’s DONE), and so on.

So many deals fall apart after agreement. You don’t need this pain in your life.

LOVE IS A NEGOTIATION.

Taking another break here in the post. Please forgive me for not laying it out all perfect.

When I used to go on a first date I was both scared and excited. I’d get excited first, “she wants to date me!” And then I’d get scared. “Ugh, what do I do now?”

I’d literally do homework for the date. I’d find out her interests and read books on them. I’d watch comedy beforehand. I’d think of things to say and questions to ask. I’m not saying preparation is bad.

One time I was an expert on Kaballah. Another time I had to be an expert on Al Gore (long story). Another time I had to bribe the counter girl to pretend she knew me before my date arrived.

I’d be too scared to show my real self so I’d have to get her to like my fake self long enough for me to feel comfortable showing the real me.

Sometimes that never happened. In many cases I never had a real me. I was always jumping through hoops to keep the fake me going. I had to keep bribing the counter girl everytime we went for yogurt.

This is the difference between agreeing on a deal (the first date) and closing (trust, love, real compassion). This is a problem I’m afraid I will always have. I hope I am getting better bit by bit.

J) MOST DEALS DON’T WORK OUT.

You agree, you sign, you close, and STILL it’s not the end.

Don’t be the guy (or woman) who falls apart now that all the energy of the deal has been expended.

It’s a negotiation and a deal because NOW there is work to do. There is a common vision to be achieved. There is a fantasy that must be made into reality.

Be that person. Be the one who delivers. You have a new baby in your hands as the result of this negotiation.

Now the hard work begins. Raise that baby to be a good adult.

What do you think?

[shawnsorangeglasses]

Better Conversations - Part 3

2.3k words

Get you some tea, it’s BC Part 3

Hello yellow, you gotta read part 2 if you haven’t already. Better yet, here’s the masterlist.

It feels like the whole world has gotten wrapped up in Shawn’s appearance with (Y/N) in the streets of New York. She faces some consequences.

warnings: a little dramatic, sweeter ending

......................

News of Shawn’s mystery “girlfriend” caught fire and spread rapidly across all social media platforms. Fans were either happy, suspicious, or appalled. No matter what they felt about it, young girls from all over the world began to analyze and pick apart pictures of them together in the streets of New York. The group of fans they met at the diner took a video of their meeting with Shawn and that only stirred up some more talk online as well. There were screenshots and red circles and literal YouTube videos on this. It’s not like (Y/N) and Shawn were caught holding hands or making out, but all the gossips sites wasted no words and no time getting their articles out for clicks.

The video of them only caught her from the chest down, a snippet of her voice, and Shawn’s full body sat at the lunch counter. Some people were kind enough to comment that whoever this mystery girl was had really nice legs. That seemed to be the only positive aspect in all the chaos.

Bea, (Y/N)’s sister, only recognized her because of her clothes, specifically the boots she always wore. She was just as confused and shocked as the rest of the world when she called. It took about ten minutes to calm her down and explain the whole mess.

Shawn still had to leave for Toronto that night. Goodbyes weren’t even an option. His people wanted him and him alone at the airport, which (Y/N) understood. In her mind, she had already caused enough trouble.

Miraculously enough, not one person had been able to place (Y/N)’s face or social identity. She never really posted pictures of herself online and rarely allowed anyone to take a picture of her and post it without permission. Her Instagram page only had three posts, all city photography, and her profile picture only displayed a solitary bumblebee doodle. For a while, it seemed like the damage would repair itself. (Y/N) thought she may have been in the clear.

Then she woke up. More photos were published. Her phone had ten missed calls. Eight from Jason and two from Lawrence Derringer, the head executive of his branch. (Y/N) prepared for the worst.

It was Sunday by now. The Jason and Mr. Derringer opened up their offices just to talk to her in the conference room. She wore the most conservative outfit she could find in her closet.

“Ms. (Y/L/N), are you aware of the story that has surfaced about you and Mr. Shawn Mendes in the news?”

“Yes Mr. Derringer, but I can explain. Nothing happened at all between Shawn and me. I would never get involved with a client in that fashion, and as far as I know, they never even got a picture of my face.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Ms. (Y/L/N).” They present a laptop screen to her, opened to a TMZ article with her and Shawn stood at the gemstone pop-up shop. Her face is clear and visible. “This was published eight hours ago,” Jason mumbles.

“I know your intentions must have been pure, Ms. (Y/L/N). What I’m struggling to understand is why you never questioned any of the endeavors you had with Mr. Mendes. Harmless as they may have been, this could have a negative effect on our firm’s relationship with him as well as our image in the industry. Did this not occur to you when you realized you were being photographed? Surely it must have.”

(Y/N) doesn’t answer, right away. Saying no, would have been a lie. She did consider the possibility of them getting a little publicity, but she didn’t think so far ahead about how that might affect the company.

“I suppose you’re going to have to fire me then?”

Mr. Derringer glances at Jason, then back at (Y/N). “Fortunately, no. You will not be fired for this. Apparently, Shawn called our offices several times last night trying to get a hold of one of us. He managed to reach me and said the day out was his all idea and that you should not be fired for the events that followed.”

“So, I’m not in trouble?”

“Well yes and no. I told him you would keep your job but that does not mean you can get off without some repercussions. Since Whitman was the one who hired you, I figured he should be the one to enforce that.”

Jason steps forward, looking like he was trying so hard to be authoritative in front of his superior. “I made the decision to prohibit you from attending any future corporate events where Shawn or any other Island Records artist may also attend. It’s probably for the best that you don’t see Mr. Mendes anymore in public for any reason. Your recent promotion has also been revoked as well and your salary will revert back to the earnings you made prior to said promotion.”

(Y/N)’s jaw set, keeping her tongue from saying everything she wanted to spit in his stupid Ivy League face. Everything she’s wanted to say to him for the past eight months feels like holding acid in the back of her throat. She swallowed her thoughts.

“I understand. My sincerest apologies, Mr. Derringer. It won’t happen again.”

“I certainly hope not, Ms. (Y/L/N). You’re a valued member of our staff and you contribute so much to the floor and the board. It’d be a shame to lose you over something like this. Jason will see you out. Have a good evening.”

(Y/N) is already at the elevator smashing the down button before Jason can even make it down the hall. Tears of humiliation sting her eyes as the elevator slowly takes her and Jason down from the top floor. He tries to lay a hand on her shoulder, apologetically, but she shrugs it off and steps further from him. If he was sorry, it only because he felt like he had to be, not because he actually was.

“Are you seriously pissed at me? You brought this on yourself.”

“You have no right to try and keep me from seeing him or anyone.”

“That’s what you think this is about? Maybe you ought to think twice before sleeping your way through our list of clients.”

Of course, it’s all my fault that I didn’t feel like eating alone one afternoon.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware going to lunch with one man is the equivalent to shoving my tongue down his throat.”

“You might as well have been, the way you were smiling at each other in those pictures.”

“I knew it. I knew you had a problem with me seeing other people. You can go and fuck every girl in Times Square if you want, but I have to sit idly by like your personal dumping ground?”

“You can see whoever you want. Just not him. You should know better. This firm—”

“Like you give a damn about the firm. This is about you and your fat ego. You can’t handle the fact that somebody might even be a little interested in me because you know that as soon as I find someone who actually gives a damn about me, I won’t have a reason to come back to you for a goddamned quickie in the janitor’s closet.”

“It’s that kind of thinking that keeps you behind that desk.”

(Y/N) falls silent. No more words are spoken. There was no use in trying to argue or be right. Jason was jealous again. He’d done this once before when another coworker, someone on (Y/N)’s pay grade, showed interest in her. The elevator doors finally open and she treads heavily out the front doors, never looking back.

…………………..

(Y/N) spent the rest of the evening wrapped in her bed sheets, at first crying with her makeup still on, then eating leftovers and watching Criminal Minds reruns. Hearing Dr. Reid talk about m.o.’s calmed her down. She’d turned her phone off hours ago just to get some peace. Family and friends were calling and texting her non-stop yesterday evening about her appearance with Shawn. At the time it was too much to handle with possibility of getting fired still looming over her head. But now with the worst over, (Y/N) figured she should probably check her notifications for anything important.

Through all the messages from cousins and people who barely knew her, one single text from Shawn floated to the very top.

[please call me]

He sent it about an hour after (Y/N)’s meeting with Mr. Derringer. It’s 1 AM now but Shawn was in LA. She checks the time zones first then finds his contact and presses the call button. He picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, are you okay?”

(Y/N) grins for the first time today, more than happy to hear that soft voice again. “I should be asking you that. Every news outlet has a story on you. And me, I guess.”

“Yeah but are you okay?”

It sounds like he’d been waiting to ask her this question all day. Technically, (Y/N) was okay, but she could be better, given the circumstances. She chooses her next words carefully.

“I…I will be. I didn’t get fired if that’s what you mean. Thank you for that by the way.”

“I’m so sorry. I said everything would be fine and I should have known this would happen.”

“It’s not your fault. People aren’t that crazy about it. Your fans are being relatively nice to me, now that they know my face.”

“They know your face?”

“Yeah. More photos came out this morning.”

Shawn goes quiet for a moment. It sounds like he’s moving into another room away from the chatter in the background. “Could we video chat?” The new echo of his voice sounds like he’s moved into the bathroom.

(Y/N) looked at her reflection in the mirror on the wall across the room. Dramatic streaks of mascara still trailed down her cheeks and her eyes were still very red. She should say no, but she desperately wants to see his face. And this technically didn’t go against Jason’s stupid new rules for her.

“Give me a minute.”

She washes her face in the bathroom the best she can. Her eyes are still red when she’s done. Fuck it, she thinks. Maybe he won’t notice.

(Y/N) flops back down on her bed and opens the app. Shawn’s face pops up on her screen, riddled with concern. He’s sat in the bathtub, one in a hotel probably, wearing a white t-shirt, hair fluffy and wild without its gel. One “s” curl fell on his forehead.

Unfortunately, he does notice. “You’ve been crying?”

(Y/N) bites her lip. “Maybe.”

Shawn doesn’t speak. He just wants to look at the girl on his screen. The truth is he didn’t really have a good reason to facetime her other than just wanting to see her again. He was so sure that she would never want to talk to him again after all of this.

“I want to know why, but you don’t have to tell me,” he says.

“No, it’s alright. I’m not fired but I am never allowed to be seen in public with you again as long as I work there.” (Y/N) sniffles. “Which is fucking stupid.”

“So quit,” he mutters. The words leave his mouth before he can think twice about saying them.

“Quit?”

“I mean—I’m kidding, that’s not what I meant. God, that sounded really bad.”

“It did,” she says through a smile. “But I have thought about it. About a year ago actually.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I met someone. At work. We’re not a real couple but...” (Y/N) realizes she doesn’t have an appropriate label for whatever she and Jason are, but Shawn seems to understand. “I wasn’t trying to get ahead. I did actually like him once upon a time. But he never wanted to be anything more with me. Then he became my boss and things just moved under the table.”

Shawn thinks this time before speaking. “Was it that guy you were with at the party?”

“Damn, you’re good. How much of that did you see?”

“I saw when he tried to get you to dance. And when he was at the bar.”

“Well if this music thing ever bombs—it won’t—you should be a detective.”

Shawn gives her a weak smile. A piece of his heart broke a little when she admitted to being in a relationship, albeit a noncommittal and toxic one. Someone already had her heart and her eyes.

“Do you still love him?”

(Y/N) thinks about it for second. Love? It seemed so unattainable for her at this point. At the start, Jason was romantic but never with the usual gestures. Just clever lines and secret lunch dates on the rooftop. Then one day he just stopped. Looking back, it doesn’t seem like love anymore. Just regular sneaking around. “I don’t think we ever made it to the love stage of it all.”

Shawn slouches down into the tub more, forcing his long legs out and his feet up on the tiled wall in front of him.

“I take it back. Maybe you should quit.”

(Y/N) blinks at him. “Very funny. I may be unhappy, but I still have bills to pay. That bastard docked my salary too, so I’ll be working double shifts again.”

“No, I’m serious, (Y/N). If you go in tomorrow and put it your two weeks’ notice, you can have a job as my assistant.”

She sits up in her bed, not believing a word of what those bright pink lips were telling her. “I thought we we’re joking when we talked about that.”

He shrugs. “I wasn’t.”

“Doesn’t there have to be a few more conversations with a few more people before you just bring a new person on board?”

“I’ll talk to Andrew tonight,” he promises. “He knows who you are, and I’ve told him how hard you work.”

“I’d have to think about it Shawn. That’s a big leap.”

“I know, but I do mean it. You have a job waiting for you whenever you want it.”

(Y/N) tried feel good about this, but everything about working for Shawn scared her. She knew his intentions were good but there was more risk than that. What if she fell into the same hole she did with Jason? What would fans say? What would people think?

“I call you when I have an answer.”

......................

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