#and that he and hayward never met | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

youvebeenlivingfictional · 9 months ago

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Bad Faith Part Two

Part One | Masterlist

Pairing: Harvey Specter x Reader

Rating: Explicit - 18+. Minors, kindly get off my lawn.

Notes: Not beta-read because when is it ever. Read this over six times but there are probably twenty typos that I'll spot the second I hit post, so. Anyway! Welcome to part two of two!! Thank you for reading 💖

Length: 14.2k

Warnings: Angst; fluff! Huzzah!; Reader’s married surname is Hayward; reader is depressed for swaths of the chapter; unhealthy coping mechanisms; lovers to enemies to allies to lovers; explicit sexual content - vaginal sex, oral sex, hate sex, safe sex

Summary: Your life was four walls, a cruddy bed, rickety furniture. You spent too much time awake when you should’ve been sleeping; too much time reminiscing when you should have been moving on; too much time dwelling on the time that you spent with men in your life that probably wouldn’t spare you another thought.

“Ross. Mike Ross.”

“Cut the Bond schtick.”

“I’m a contender.”

“Not a chance. Besides, we’ve been over this; you’re Q at best.”

“Could do a lot worse than Desmond Llewelyn or Ben Whishaw—Hang on, you think you’re Bond?”

Harvey stopped, gesturing over his body sweepingly before scoffing, “Please.”

“Please is right,” Mike muttered, tucking his hands into his pockets. “You always go to this thing?”

“...I’ve been once or twice.” In truth, Harvey hadn’t been to the New York City Estate and Properties gala in years. He hadn’t had occasion or reason; the last time he had, he’d made sure that she wouldn’t be there before he’d agreed. Tonight his purpose was manifold—drink good champagne, eat good food, and warn Hayward off of pursuing his lawsuits against his client’s property.

His client. It wasn’t as simple as all that, but these days, he’d managed to separate her from the work. It was clinical—and clinical was exactly what he needed.

“Did you see the menu for dinner? I didn’t see a menu.”

“Get your fill of canapes. I’m talking to Hayward and then we’re going.”

“What?” Mike pouted. “But I thought we were staying for the ceremony.”

“You thought wrong. Keep your eyes peeled. Sooner we get this conversation over, the sooner we can get away from this den of cobras.”

“Never have a mongoose when you need one.” Mike nodded over Harvey’s shoulder. “Found Mrs. Hayward.”

“Thought she didn’t like you calling her that.”

“She doesn’t, but around here, it might be better to use that rather than use her maiden name and have someone ask me who the hell I’m talking about…You gonna talk to her?”

“What for?”

“So she at least knows what suit to look for when she wants to avoid you.”

Harvey’s chastising glare was met with a wide, smug grin.

“Come on,” Mike groaned. “You haven’t spoken to her in weeks.”

“And have you considered that that may be why things have been going so smoothly?”

“Fine—I’ll give you another reason you should say hi to her.”

“You better make it a good one this time.”

“Jessica is catching on to the fact that you haven’t touched this case with a ten foot pole.”

Harvey winced slightly as he swallowed the last of his champagne.

“Fine,” He grudgingly conceded, setting the empty champagne flute on a passing waiter’s tray. “Point me.”

“She’s at your two o’clock.”

Harvey turned accordingly, pushed out an annoyed sight—and then felt what breath he had left catch in his throat.

‘Stunning’ was the first word that came to mind, but in his heart, Harvey knew that it didn’t do her justice. For his lingering, abiding annoyance with her, and with them—with the whole goddamn situation—there were moments when Harvey remembered why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place.

She didn’t want to be there. Harvey didn’t need to ask to know that—it was common sense. But that didn’t stop her from showing her face, from being impeccably dressed, and maintaining what had to be a meticulously constructed poker face.

“...You do know what staring isn’t talking, right?”

Mike’s amusement cut into Harvey’s reverie, and he cleared his throat to refocus himself.

“Keep an eye out for Hayward,” Harvey ordered before he forced himself forward, slowly weaving through the crowd.

What the hell was he even going to say to her? Hi wasn’t going to cut it; Come here often? Was almost as stupid. How about something about her dress—Whether or not it was new? That had to be safe, neutral ground—

Harvey had been so focused on what he planned to say that he hadn’t clocked her turning to face him. He chalked it up to panic radar—her hype-sesitivity given the current situation. He stared. She watched. And then—

“Come here often?”

Damnit. Stupid, sure, but at least it wasn’t hi.

“...Annually, at least.”

Was it your imagination, or was Harvey…Nervous? At the very least, he seemed as confused as you were at the fact that he was talking to you.

“I’m a little surprised that you made a showing,” He admitted.

“I could say the same for you. Does Jessica have you prospecting clients to get back in the good graces of the real estate department at the firm?”

Harvey’s eyes narrowed with playful intrigue,and for a moment, you saw a flash of the man that you used to know—the man who gave you that same look when you slipped your panties off and tucked them into his jacket pocket to find later.

“What did Mike tell you?”

You shrugged nonchalantly, glancing around.

“Nothing impor—...Tant.” You trailed off, falling still and quiet as your eyes landed on Steven.

Well, he was hard to miss.

Standing at 6’3, with a manufactured tan, swimmer’s build, full head of gracefully graying hair, and veneers that made his smile look like a neatly arranged row of chiclets gum, Steven Hayward was the very picture of the kind of health that only wealth could buy. With the stress of the last few weeks, you knew that you weren’t looking your absolute best. You’d had so many sleepless nights; you’d swapped out your favorite catered meals in favor of cheaper alternatives, or dollar slices of pizza, or ramen from the bodega down the block from your apartment, pulled gently from beneath the cat that seemed to always be napping on the exact flavor that you wanted.

You were certain that Steven lost no sleep over the decision to divorce you, or to pull the rug out from beneath you. You expected him to be in tip-top shape—but you saw hints of his rage as he grew closer.

“Oh—Hell,” You mumbled, tipping your head toward Harvey. “You might wanna clear out.”

“You kidding? I’ve got a front row seat to the prize fight of the century.”

“Target acquired.”

You frowned at the sound of Mike’s voice, but you didn’t turn to look at him as you muttered, “Target?”

“Darling.” The term of affection oozed past Steven’s bleached-white teeth. He stopped just a couple of steps from you—not near enough to touch, but close enough to see the anger sparkling in his dishwater gray eyes. A pulse of vindication swept through your chest at the tense smile, and the tight pull of his jaw.

“Steven,” You greeted cordially.

“I’m surprised to see you this evening.”

“If I had a nickel.”

“Oh, but you do. Putting all of those properties up for sale, I expect you plan on having more than a few nickels.”

“What can I say? A girl’s gotta get by.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Have you considered unfreezing our joint account?”

He chuckled humorlessly. “Anything but that.”

“Then wire me half.”

“You haven't earned half.”

It was meant to cut you down and lay you out, but you refused to bow to this man publicly when the other attendees must always hold you in such low regard as it was.

“I agree,” You offered, and before Steven could preen in his false superiority, you clarified: “I deserve more.”

Steven bristled, shoulders bunching tight.

“Perhaps I should just take this evening’s expenses out of that half.”

You furrowed your brow pointedly, shaking your head.

“Mmm…I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Really.”

“Mm…N—...No—?”

“Perhaps you’ve been so busy hocking your clothes like a dog snuffling for scraps—” Your face flared with embarrassment as Steven pressed on: “But there was meant to be a reception at my penthouse this evening.”

My penthouse. If it had only been the two of you in that room, you may have slapped him. How had he been able to detach, to force you from his mind and his heart so quickly? Had he ever loved you? Had any man?

The heat of Harvey’s body suddenly seemed to flare just behind you.

“Ah!” You nodded sagely, “It’s all coming back to me.”

“What could have happened there, I wonder?”

“You must not have taken care.”

“Of what?”

Of me. “Of anything.”

Steven took you in for another long, cruel moment before he jutted his chin over your shoulder.

“Friends of yours?”

Ah yes. Your personal legal peanut gallery. You glanced back to confirm their positioning before raising your hand to gesture:

“This is Mike Ross.” The name seemed to knock something loose in Steven’s mind as he shook Mike’s hand.

“Ah, Mr. Ross. I saw your name on some documentation this morning.”

“You’re about to see it a lot more, Mr. Hayward.”

“And this is Harvey Specter.”

Your stomach lurched as Steve’s eyes widened slightly, lips curling into a smile.

“This is Harvey Specter?” He didn’t bother to hide his amusement as he proffered his hand. ”I didn’t realize I sent you the worst possible port in this storm.”

“You didn’t,” Harvey insisted, grasping Steven’s hand firmly. “You sent her to the best.”

“Try not to drop her this time. My arms aren’t open anymore.”

Your hands tightened where they were clasped around one another. You forced yourself to keep your gaze set stalwartly on Steven, rather than watch the contentious (and no doubt, painful) handshake that the two of them were sharing.

“Well,” You chirped. “This was a lovely little catch-up.”

“Yes,” Harvey chimed in, finally extricating his hand from Steven’s and tucking it into his pocket. “We must do it again sometime. Preferably at a deposition.”

“Maybe in court,” Mike added. You had to fight down a smile at the sudden swell of support, and a wave of warmth that swept through you. Steven’s eyes narrowed just a touch more before he nodded.

“I do hope you’ll stay for my speech.”

“Who’d you have write it for you this time?” You asked.

“I took a crack at writing it myself.”

If that was true, it was sure to be a mess and a half. You always had been the one to draft his speeches or remarks—or you paired down any drafts sent over by the agency’s PR department.

“I look forward to it.”

Steven gave you one last look before he turned away, slapping on his businessman smile as he went, and raising a hand to signal someone like a politician trying to garner votes.

“...Why didn’t you mention the forgery charges?” Mike asked.

“It’s too soon to tip our hand...What table are you sitting at?”

“Thirteen,” You sighed.

“Lucky number,” Mike muttered.

“Go change our place cards,” Harvey ordered. “Put us on either side of her.”

You whirled around to face him, stunned at the tight irritation pinching his features.

“So we are staying for dinner?” Mike grinned. Harvey blinked flatly at him before reiterating: “Go.”

You watched Mike duck through the crowd, heading for the dining room.

“Were you not going to stay for dinner?”

“I’ve gotta eat some time. Come on,” Harvey nudged your arm with his, “Buy me a drink.”

“It’s an open bar.”

“Good. Then it won’t break the bank.”

The press of Harvey’s warm hand to your lower back was far more steadying than it should have been, and it managed to dampen the enraged fire in your belly.

“How’s that good faith deposit doing, anyway?”

“I threw 98% of it into an HYSA.”

“Smart move.”

“I should’ve made moves like it sooner.”

“Better late than never.”

“I guess.”

“...You don’t have to stay for dinner.”

“We’re going to.”

“On either side of me as well, I’m flattered. I wasn’t planning on having guard dogs this evening.”

“As long as you don’t try to keep us on short leashes.”

“Depends on whether you plan on doing more barking or biting this evening.”

“I’ve barked enough for now.”

“Biting?”

“If you play your cards right, sure.”

You didn’t bother to hide your open shock at the blatant implication, but when you looked at Harvey, you found him giving you a surprisingly warm smile.

“Looks like speaking with Steven has put a little pep in your step, Mr. Specter.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What did?”

Harvey leaned heavily against the bar, focus set elsewhere as he tried to catch the bartender’s eye.

“You and I both know that this is going to be a long road. I like a good fight.”

“You don’t say.”

“It’s important to me that you’re ready for it, too.”

You nodded a little. “It may also be prudent for us to keep that fight directed at Steven, and not toward one another.”

Harvey took the two proffered champagne flutes, passing you one and holding it up to cheers:

“I’ll drink to that.”

It wasn’t perfect right away. You and Harvey still butt heads from time to time. On the purchases that the judges ruled that you were able to move forward with, you disagreed over terms—purchase price, contingencies, negotiations. But the knots unpicked sooner and sooner, and you reached resolutions faster. Mike hardly had to intervene anymore. Harvey gave Jessica status updates openly, and you abidingly ignored the smug, self-satisfied smiles that she gave you as you left her office.

With the service and tenancy contracts, the two apartment building sales that aren’t mired in paperwork still chugged along slowly. You knew that it was protocol, but it was excruciating. You felt ill every time you got an email from Mike or Harvey, expecting correspondence that spelled disaster. Every little bit of good news only brought marginal relief.

You spent most of your days in your apartment, packaging clothing or jewelry that you’d sold online. You got your packages sent off by five in the evening, and the rest of your night was your own—though it often ended similarly. Your logical mind often gave over to your emotions in the evening, and you allowed yourself to slip into quiet, depressed oblivion. The methods varied—slurping down two packets worth of dollar-pack ramen, and chasing that with a few bottles of beer as one of your favorite shows played in the background; curling up in your bed and staring at the ceiling at 8 PM, and laying wide awake with your mind racing until the sun came up; hunting through property listings online and plotting a comeback that felt like it would never come.

You never had visitors. Aaron was so entrenched at work that you only got the odd text from him. Your former friends seemed to have further aligned themselves with Steven after his triumphant speech at the gala—during which he had gone out of his way to omit any mention of you from his historical record. You had avoided seeing much of Jessica outside of the office, certain that she would council you on a good divorce lawyer, or encourage you to begin dating, or level another lecture about the stupidity with which you had bungled your last marriage.

For as well as you knew she meant, you didn’t have the time or patience—and some little part of you, some stupid, naïve part that knew well enough that the war was already lost, was convinced that Steven would change his mind.

It was unlikely, considering the magnitude of his cruelty over the last couple of months, and further exacerbated by your actions before the gala. Steven would not let you back into his arms, his home, or his heart. You didn’t truly want to be let back into his arms, or his heart, but you missed his home. You had taken such care in the planning, the curation, the furnishing, the upkeep. You were proud of it. You had been happy, and comfortable, and so goddamn foolish.

Now you were tired, and lonely, and you spent so much of your day feeling stupid.

Sometimes, when the wind blew just a little too hard and rattled the flimsy windows, you let the sound of it cover your sobs against the paper-thin walls that connected you to your neighbor’s apartment (you’d learned just how much sound bled through when you first became privy to your neighbor’s light argument, which had then turned into a full-on shouting match. They’d sounded like they were in the same damn room with you, wall be damned).

It was one such sob session that you managed to hear someone knock on your door. You sniffled, shifting on your bed. You were certain that the sound was from next door, or that you’d misheard the rattle of the window. But when you heard the second, insistent round of knocks, the source couldn’t be mistaken. You sniffled, setting your beer aside onto the bedside table crowded with empties and pushing yourself off of the bed. You swiped haphazardly at the tears on your face as you walked over to it, calling out, “Alright, for fuckssake!” When a third round of knocks rapped against the door.

You threw it open, finally, wincing at the invasive flash of the flickering fluorescent hall light. You weren’t sure what was worse: the flickering, harsh strobe, or Harvey’s stunned confusion.

It may have been a tie.

“…What is it?” You mumbled.

“Have you been crying?”

“Little bit.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Getting there.”

“…Get dressed.”

“What?”

“Get dressed,” Harvey insisted, nodding over your shoulder. “We’re going out.”

“Harvey, I’m really not in the mood,” You sniffled.

“We won’t go far.”

“Then why are we going at all?”

Harvey opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by a sudden crash! and the swell of yelling voices from next door. His eyes darted toward it before he nodded.

“I’m not listening to that all night.”

“Who the hell says you’re going to be here more than five minutes?”

Your heart stuttered as Harvey’s hands planted firmly on your hips, steering you back into your studio before he nudged the door shut with his foot.

“Get dressed. And hurry up.”

You weren’t sure what it was—his touch, his firm insistence, or your own distaste for your screaming neighbors—but you turned around and began dutifully rifling through one of your remaining trash bags of clothing.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a diner around the corner.”

“A diner? How down heel of you, Mr. Specter.”

“I can appreciate the simple things.”

You snorted, straightening with a pair of jeans and a sweater. “Since when.” You glanced guardedly toward him before you nodded him toward the door. “Turn around.”

“You can afford better than that place, you know.”

You didn’t answer him. Instead, you shoved a handful of cheese fries in your mouth and leaned back to chew with laborious slowness. You expected Harvey to fill the silence, but he didn’t. He just watched, and waited, and stared at you until you swallowed. You nudged the plate toward him, offering: “Want one?”

You avoided his openly chastising gaze, tired of the fact that it was the only look you get from most of the lawyers in your life these days.

“You have that good faith deposit.”

“I told you where it went.”

“The brownstone payment is on the edge of clearing escrow. Look for somewhere else to live.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a good idea.”

“Steven isn’t going to weasel into every potential deal and hold it up.”

“Forgive me for my skepticism, but I don’t exactly have many friends in this city anymore.”

“...Are you planning on going somewhere else?”

You’d be lying if you said it hadn’t crossed your mind. There were cities here you could rebuild your life and your practices, places where you were sure Steven wouldn’t bother to try and strike down your attempts to rebuild your life.

“Maybe,” You admitted. “I liked Cambridge.”

Harvey’s lips twitched with a gentle, regretful smile. It was his turn to reach out and swipe a few fries and chow down.

“Realty up there is pricey,” You added. “Could make a polite killing on student housing.”

“How does one make a polite killing?”

“Decent rent and coin-operated laundry. Maybe some paid parking, a few overpriced but conveniently placed vending machines.”

“Redbull?”

“I was just thinking about snacks, but you know what, Redbull isn’t a bad idea.” You reached out, picking up a fry and drawing it through the splodge of ketchup remaining at the edge of the plate. “Why did you come over?”

“I wanted to let you know that the inspections are finished.”

“On which?”

“The properties that you didn’t know about.”

“Anything stand out?”

“A foundational issue on one of the apartment buildings, but it doesn’t cost enough that it should’ve stopped work.”

“What about the others?”

“Nothing that popped as catastrophic.”

“You have the print-outs?”

“In my car.”

“Why are they in there?”

“I was going to offer to take you for a drink, but you seemed to beat me to it.”

You scoffed, shifting in your seat. “Don’t get all high and mighty on me, Specter.”

“You do that often?”

“What, drink?”

“Yes.”

“Are you accusing me of having a problem?”

“I’m asking if you do that often.”

“Once in a while.”

“New for you?”

“Relatively.”

Harvey eyed you critically for a few moments before he nodded. “Call me the next time you want to have a drink.”

“So you can talk me out of it?”

“So you at least don’t do it alone.”

“I’m usually not in a talking mood when it happens.”

“We don’t have to talk.”

“Oh, please. As if you don’t love the sound of your own voice.”

“Call me anyway.”

You were quiet for a moment before you nodded. “You know, the thought of you dropping by may just be an effective suppressant.”

Harvey’s smile widened a little. “Do you want to put the other houses on the market?”

“I want to walk through the apartment buildings myself before I go through them.”

“What about the ones in the Hamptons and the Cape?”

“I’ll drive up.”

“And Gstaad?”

“A little trickier.”

“Could bill it.”

“I doubt it.”

“You could, under discovery.”

“This would not be covered under discovery.”

“How would you know that?”

“I’m sorry, remind me who used to quiz you for the bar?”

Harvey scoffed softly, averting his gaze to the diner counter. “Well, this may surprise you, but a few laws have changed since then.”

“And this may surprise you, but not only am I aware of that, I’ve also been pretty deeply entwined with lawyers since then. So I’m pretty comfortable making that assertion.”

“And this? You think I’m not billing for this?”

“Oh, I hope you are. I hope you bill for every second that it took you to walk up the steps to my apartment. I want Jessica to pay for my cheese fries. You know why?”

“Because it would kill her?”

“It would drive her nuts.”

“I can’t wait to give her the itemized total.”

“I await the enraged phone call.”

“You don’t have to walk me back up, you know."

“Sure I do. Gotta work off those fries. Besides, I’m billing for this until I officially drop you off.”

You rolled your eyes, nudging Harvey’s shoulder with yours. Your depressed, tear-ridden, sobbing buzz had worn off over the course of dinner, and you didn’t think that the mood would creep back in once you were alone again.

“I’ll walk through the apartment buildings tomorrow and see if I can get up to the Cape at some point in the next couple of weeks. The pictures and notes from the inspection look promising. If I dip into the good faith deposit, maybe I could get the Cape Cod house fixed up and sold before the summer.”

“Or you could keep it as a rental property.”

“Mm.” “You always liked the Cape in the winter…For some reason.”

“I kinda like when it’s all grey and gloomy…and quiet.”

“Be a good base for your Cambridge operation.”

“Oh, please,” You chuckled. “It’s not even close. The red line doesn’t exactly go all the way to Hyannis.”

The two of you slowed as you neared your landing, listening closely.

“...Think the coast is clear?” Harvey murmured.

“For now, at least.” You fished into your pocket for your keys. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Sure. Remember what I said.”

“I will.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

Anything. That was new. You nodded, gaze set on your keys as he turned to go back downstairs.

“...Harvey?”

“Yeah?” He stopped just a few steps away, and you had to scrounge up your courage to turn and look at him again.

“I don’t, um…” You swallowed thickly. “I’m gonna wanna talk about it.” You watched Harvey’s face shift with grim understanding.

“I don’t want to litigate that.”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Not like this.”

“Not tonight,” You reiterated, “But…Sometime. Please.”

Harvey’s jaw went tight, but he gave you a short, firm nod before he turned away. You watched him round the corner, and listened until his footsteps faded and the front door opened downstairs.

The apartment buildings weren’t anything special. Stripped of most of their insulation, and with several of the windows already removed, the wind that pushed through them made the buildings sound like they were breathing. It was eerie, and chilly. You tightened your coat around yourself as you went from floor to floor, eyeing damaged pipes, areas where someone seems to have come in and rooted around for copper wiring, and the billowing plastic that marks off some doors that have been removed.

The paperwork on this building listed the purchase date as nearly a year ago.

A year ago, you and Steven had been discussing expanding your current operations. Maybe he hadn’t gotten sick of you yet. Maybe he’d bought you the buildings as a present and stopped work when things turned sour…Whenever that had been.

There had been signs, sure, but Steven always had been temperamental.

You pushed the thought away as you drew in a deep breath, turning toward the stairs. It wouldn’t do to overthink this just now. If needed, you could panic looking at the Hamptons, or Cape Cod…Or Gstaad, if you ever found a way to get to Gstaad.

You reached into your pocket as your phone buzzed, drawing it out to find an incoming call. You groaned, stomping your foot petulantly before you raised it to your ear.

“Jessica, I’m a little busy—”

“I need you to come into the office.”

Your fingers tightened around your phone as your palm began to sweat.

“What happened?”

“I’d rather discuss this in person.” “Jessica.”

“Come to the office.”

She hung up without another word. You swallowed thickly, lowering your phone and watching her call blink and then disappear. If she wasn’t willing to discuss it over the phone, whatever it was had to be very, very bad.

“Cheese fries?”

“Jessica,” You groaned, “Come on, there is no way that that’s why you called me here.”

“No, it isn’t. But I’d like to remind you that you should remain fighting fit and cheese fries are not the way to do it.”

“My life has fallen apart and dipped into a moderately humiliating place. I think I’m allowed to have a few cheese fries. Why did you tell me to come in.”

“I have someone that I would like you to meet.”

“I’m not going to start dating anyone now.”

“Well, we can attack that another time. This is for your defense.”

“Harvey’s on that.”

“Your divorce.”

“You know that I can’t afford a defense right now.”

“I don’t mind getting a start while you get the pieces in place.”

The man’s voice caught you off-guard, and you turned to find a man leaning in the doorway. Your brow furrowed a touch as you took him in—the long lean of his body, the neatly fitted charcoal suit and sky-blue tie, the curl of his dark hair, the twinkle of his warm chestnut eyes, and his small, intrigued smile.

“Well that’s very kind of you, whoever the hell you are, but I don’t exactly have anything on the board right now.”

“The fact that you even have a board is encouraging.”

“...This metaphor is beginning to exhaust me.”

“This,” Jessica stepped past you to gesture the man deeper into the room, “Is David Alford.”

“Alford?” You repeated. “Like the plea?”

“No relation. What would you know about an Alford plea?”

“I know of it.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, I used to date a lawyer.”

“Lucky guy.”

“I don’t think he’d agree with you, as evidenced by the fact that he is no longer my boyfriend.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

You shook his hand lightly, still wary from the ambush.

“Look, Mr. Alford—”

“David, please.”

“—I don’t know what Jessica’s told you about my situation—”

“She didn’t have to tell me much. Forgive my bluntness, but your name has come up in our circles over the last couple of weeks.”

“Well, forgive my bluntness, but it’s not my circle anymore.”

“It could be again.”

“Are you going to get me a circle back in the divorce?”

“I’m gonna get you whatever the hell you want in your divorce.”

You let out a soft, disbelieving laugh, unable to help yourself.

“O-kay,” You lowered your hand.

“Why don’t I see what we can do about getting some coffee,” Jessica offered. “You two talk.”

Your brows furrowed as she waved the two of you more deeply inside. Jessica, at least pretending to get coffee? Damn, she really did want the two of you to talk. You gave David a polite smile as you lowered yourself to sit.

“I’m sorry she dragged you in here.”

“Wasn’t much of a drag. My office is a block away.”

“Well, then I’m glad you haven’t come far for nothing.”

“Nothing?” His brows jumped as he sat beside you. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not currently looking for a divorce lawyer.”

“You need one.”

“That is beyond the point, Mr—”

“David.”

“...Mister David,” You bit out pointedly, and fought back a wave of annoyance at his amused smile. “I’m not sure how much Jessica has told you, but there are a lot of things up in the air right now. I’ve socked away some money for my defense, but not enough.”

“How would you know what’s enough?”

“...Let’s pretend that I don’t know anything about the law, or the legal quagmire that I’ve gotten myself into. Let’s pretend that all I know about my soon to be ex-husband’s business is that he has a lot more money than I do. The two of us went into our marriage with about 600 bucks and a dream held together with tape and spit. I have watched, and I have helped my husband build up his business for the last eleven years. I have signed contracts, I have signed purchase orders, I have signed mortgages, I have signed deeds. Even if I wasn’t paying attention to what I was signing, I would know that Steven has amassed a lot of cash, a massive legal team, as well as a significant number of holdings—in both our names. He has a lot of power in this equation, and I do not. Whatever comes down the pike, it is going to be a protracted legal battle. If I was optimistic, I would figure that this would take about a year, but I’m not, and I know that it could take a few.”

David’s dark eyes darted fascinatedly across your face before he offered: “But you do know a lot about Mr. Hayward’s business.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Because it was your business, too.”

You averted your gaze from him as that washed over you. His acknowledgement made your heart knock hollowly against your ribs, and it took all of your strength not to slouch dejectedly in your chair.

“...Yes,” You agreed. “It was.” “I understand that you’re discouraged. I would be, too, a lot of women are in your position.”

“Exactly what position is that, Mister David.”

His smile flattened with nerves, and he let out a huffed, joyless laugh.

“I mean, having been served—”

“A piping-hot plate of out on my ass?”

“If that’s what you’d like to call it—”

“I call it that because that’s what it is, not because I like it that way.”

“I understand. Look,” David shifted in his seat, twisting to face you a little more. “I think that regardless of when you get your pieces in place, you have a real case here. I think I can get you half.”

If you had a touch less decorum, you would have jumped out of your seat and screamed—both from the excitement, and the certainty that David Alford was out of his mind. Instead, you blinked twice, and once you managed to unstick your tongue from the roof of your mouth, asked:

“Half?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“There is no way.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I don’t think I would, because I’m almost certain that’s impossible.”

“Well, it certainly would be before.”

“What exactly has changed?”

“You didn’t know me. You do now.”

You smiled in spite of yourself at the brash, almost fearless way that he said it. As skeptical as you were, you knew that this was exactly what you needed: someone as bold, confident, and fearless as—

“What a cozy little conference this is.”

You turned back at the sound of Harvey’s voice, smiling a little. “Looking to join the fun?”

“If I can hazard a guess at Jessica’s matchmaking, Alford is the one joining the fun.”

“Specter,” David greeted, pushing himself out of his seat. “Haven’t seen you at the squash courts recently.”

“I’ve been trolling the back nine,” Harvey offered, shaking David’s hand. “Nice to see you, Pleas and thank you.”

Your brow furrowed at the term. “What?”

“It’s what some of the guys at the club call me. You know, my name—”

“Alford pleas and thank you.” You scrubbed your hand across your brow. “God, that’s dumb.”

“We can’t all be queens of quip.”

“You poor things,” You shot back scathingly. Harvey shot you a wink before turning back to David.

“So, David, whaddaya say?” Harvey plied. “You filling the gap?”

“Yeah, I’d love to fill ‘er in.”

You didn’t miss his innuendo, nor the speculative, open, sweeping gaze that David leveled at you. Your brows inched toward your hairline, stunned at his brazenness. Surely you hadn’t seen it right—

“Coffee?”

Your focus was broken at the sound of Jessica’s voice, and the sight of a coffee tray being wheeled in behind her. You let yourself be busied by it. You focused on your coffee, made it the way you liked, and let Jessica and David and Harvey talk about what you could reasonably expect out of the divorce battle.

Reasonably, as if this entire situation hadn’t been insanely unreasonable.

But you let yourself sit, and listen, and save your speculation for the train ride home.

You must’ve read his look wrong, or misunderstood. He didn’t mean it like that.

And even if he did, finding that look intriguing was incredibly appropriate. But it didn’t matter! Because he didn’t mean it like that.

…And even if he did, it was probably just something that he tried to bring you on board. But it didn’t matter, because he did not mean it like that.

…

Though if he did, it really wouldn’t matter, because it would be grounds for him to be disbarred. Nothing was going to happen…Even if you did find him attractive, and found his blunt approach and self-assured nature very, very hot.

But you were not going to fuck him.

“Don’t fuck him.”

You had expected the warning to come from Jessica, but to hear it from Harvey of all goddamn people made you gape at him in shock. He just gave you a knowing look before he turned back toward the beer that he was opening.

Your urge to have a drink that evening hadn’t been strong, but it had been there, and it had made you think of Harvey’s offer from the day before. You hadn’t expected such a quick response to your simple text of ‘Beer?’, but he had turned up a mere half hour later, a fresh six pack in hand. He had shrugged off his jacket, tossed it on to your bed, and walked over to your kitchenette—where he proceeded to say the most heinous thing.

“Excuse me?” You finally managed.

“You heard me.”

“I don’t think I did, actually, not properly, because it sounded like you just gave me an order that you had no business giving.”

“I have plenty of business.”

“No—”

“Don’t—”

“No no no, you do not, not here, and not like that.”

“I’m just saying,” Harvey turned from the counter, planting his hand on the cruddy formica, “That I know—”

“Do not say that you know me.”

His expression darkened, and you watched as he drew in a deep breath. “I know him.”

“...He has to be good, or Jessica wouldn’t have pulled him on to my case.”

“He’s a good lawyer, but he’s a scuzzy asshole.”

“I know the type.”

“You think I’m a scuzzy asshole?”

Your gut dropped at the hint of anger seeping into his tone.

“I meant Steven.”

Harvey turned away, hand curling into a fist and knocking lightly on the counter.

“Just…Be careful with him.”

“You are the last person that has any right to lecture me on the care that I ought to take with the men in my life.”

“I’m not lecturing you—”

“No, you’re warning me off, like a little kid that’s playing too close to an electric fence.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fine by me, as long as you don’t fuck David.” “Alright, you know what,” You pushed off of your bed, striding over to your door. “Get out.”

“We’re not done talking about this.”

“Yes, we are. Get out.”

“We’re not done until—”

“We’re done when I say we’re done!” You began to yank your door open. Harvey was across your small space in a moment, palm flat against the door as he shoved it shut behind you.

“And what the hell gives you the right to decide that?”

“Because it’s my turn!” You barked. “I get to decide when we’re done now.”

“It stopped being your turn when you stormed out of my office.”

“Then make the damn decision yourself and get the fuck out of my apartment!”

“If you want to ruin that man’s career and your chances of getting anything that you want out of your divorce, you go right ahead.”

“I am not going to fuck him, and I’m not going to get him disbarred, you ass.”

“Good.”

“And I deeply resent the implication that I’m so sex-starved and desperate that I’m willing to fuck anyone who gives me any goddamn attention.”

“I did not—”

“Yes, you did, you did the second you opened your mouth. By rights, if that’s your view of me, I should’ve tried to not only fuck Mike, but you, of all people.”

“I never implied that you were sex starved, but if you were, you could do a lot worse than Mike—”

“Oh, really—”

“And a helluva lot worse than me.”

“Oh, please! There is no way that I could do worse than you. There are dictators that I’d sooner fall into bed with.”

“If all you’re cutting out is the bed, I can work with the rest.”

You could’ve slapped him. He was close enough, and you could just imagine it—the way the flush of red would look spreading across his cheek.

“What makes you think I’d ever allow you anywhere near me again, Specter?”

“I’m pretty damn close now.” He shifted closer, stopping as the tips of his shoes brushed your socked feet.

“Against your better judgment.”

“You want to put me in my place, sweetheart, you go right ahead.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Why not.”

“Don’t you dare call me that.”

“Give me a good reason not to.”

“You haven’t earned it back.”

“Any idea of how I might do that?”

You bit him. You grasped his tie, tugged him in, and sank your teeth into his lower lip. You expected an argument, but Harvey just groaned, grasping you by the hips and shoving you back against the door. You released his lip, groaning as he swept his tongue into your mouth. Your hand unwound from his tie, breath leaving you in harsh puffs as Harvey’s smearing kisses trailed down your jaw to your neck. You arched up into his touch as his hands slipped under your t-shirt, palming and squeezing whatever skin he could reach. You reached down, hands fumbling with nerves and heat as you worked off his belt.

Every time your mind began to race, Harvey managed to quiet it, with his teasing tongue, and nipping teeth, and grasping fingers. For all of his big talk about getting David disbarred, Harvey suddenly seemed to not give a damn about his own career—

You whined as Harvey yanked down the cup of your bra, knuckles toying with your pebbling nipple. You palmed his hardening cock through the soft fabric of his trousers, thrilling in his moan, and the press of his hips up against your touch. His fingers snaked beneath the band of your sweatpants, sweeping against your clit before swiping slower.

“You’re already so goddamn wet,” He growled, easing a finger into you. You pressed into his touch, gritting your teeth as he goaded: “You like pissing me off this much?”

“Condom?”

“Left pocket.”

You reached into his pocket, brushing against his cock as you drew out the foil packet. Why wasn’t it tucked somewhere discreet, like his wallet? You pushed the thought away as you ripped the foil packet open with your teeth. Harvey let go of you just long enough to shove his pants down around his thighs, then push your sweatpants.

“Turn around.”

You passed him the condom before doing as you were told, leaning heavily against the door. You expected a stretch, but slick heat pressed between your spread thighs. Your mouth dropped open in a moan, eyes squeezing shut as Harvey lapped and laved your slick, heated skin. You reached back, fingers scrabbling to grasp the neat coif of his hair.

“Harvey, damnit,” You gasped. “Just fuck me already.”

He groaned in dissent, giving your lips one more sucking kiss before straightening fully. You felt one palm smooth over to your thigh, and saw the other rest against the door as he eased into you. Your lips parted with a gentle whine at the pleasurable throb of his cock stretching you. You planted your hand on the door beside his, steadying yourself as you adjusted.

He didn’t give you long. Harvey drew back before his hips snapped sharply. You pressed your cheek to the door, skin growing clammy between the flimsy particleboard and the hot panting of your breath. The harsh slam of his hips forced your body uncomfortably against the door. You let your eyes slide closed as Harvey’s hands covered yours, drawing them just above your head as he intertwined your fingers. The door rattled in the frame with each thrust. You whimpered as Harvey pressed his face into your neck, felt his hot breath and the rumble of his groans against your skin.

Your thighs ached, and your heart pounded, and your cunt throbbed, and goddamn it felt so fucking good.

The swell of your orgasm rose and crested sharply, and you didn’t bother to hide the shuddering of your moan, your grip tightening on Harvey's hands. He followed close behind, hips pounding and juddering before he slowed. The two of you stood still for a few long moments, listening to one another’s panting and coming down. Harvey carefully extricated your hands from yours, drawing away and leaving you half-bare and chilly against the door.

“...I need a beer,” Harvey muttered, voice hoarse.

“You left one on the counter.”

“You want one?”

“Yeah.”

You reach down, tugging up your sweatpants as you gently peel yourself back from the door.

“It’s probably going to be lukewarm,” Harvey warned.

“I don’t care.” You drew in a shaky breath as you walked back toward your bed. You’d already sworn that you wouldn’t let him into it. You lowered yourself to sit beside it, looking at the door as the swirl of confused thoughts shifted back to the fore. You watched Harvey tie off the condom and drop it into your trash bin. You tracked his movement—from cleaning up, to doing up his pants, to washing his hands. You didn’t bother to hide your open speculation as he opened another beer, then took the two up. You drew your legs together, biting your lip as your slick cunt pulsed.

Harvey lowered himself to sit beside you, holding a beer out and lightly knocking his against yours before you each took a drink. You winced a little at the taste. You should’ve listened to him—the taste of lukewarm beer was not appetizing. You saw Harvey reach up out of the corner of your eye as he loosened his tie.

“...What was that about getting someone disbarred?”

“Shuddup.” There was no heat to how he said it, and that was probably why it made you snort a laugh.

“Harvey?”

“What.”

“Did you come over planning to fuck me?”

“What?”

“Why was there a condom in your pocket?”

“I had a date.”

Your brow furrowed as you took that in.

“...When?”

“Tonight.”

“Why aren’t you there?”

“Because I’m here.”

Harvey Specter broke a date. Harvey Specter broke a date for you. You leaned back against the bed again, biting the inside of your cheek to quell a wide grin.

“Don’t read into it,” He added.

“I’m not reading into anything…Apart from the fact that you seemed pretty sure you were going to get laid.”

“I was.”

“Arrange for that, did you?”

“No need to arrange anything. I’m just good like that.”

“Well. Can’t argue with that. For the record—”

“What.”

“You really have no say over who I do and don’t fuck.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

“...You going to the Hamptons next weekend?”

“Yeah.” “How are you getting up there?”

“I was going to take the train.”

“I could give you a ride.”

“You already have.” You cast Harvey a knowing smile, grin widening as he shot you a sidelong, unimpressed glance. Your smile turned to giggles as Harvey seemed to smile in spite of himself.

“You really think we could stand to be in the car with one another for more than twenty minutes?” You prodded.

“If not, we could always pull over and work out our differences.”

“Pfft. No other weekend plans?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t promise a rain check?”

“Didn’t specify when it might happen.”

“Mm. And why would you want to come with me?”

“Steven could be watching those properties, waiting for you to turn up. You could benefit from having back up.”

“You make it sound terribly sinister. Have you figured out how to bill Gstaad yet?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Keep me updated.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t mean for, you know—I don’t want a vacation.”

“You’ve earned one.”

“Whatever, I just don’t like to put something on the market without doing a walk-through myself.”

“I understand.”

You leaned back against the bed a little more heavily, gaze wandering toward the door, where a little bit of your makeup was smeared from the press of your cheek.

“...Harvey?”

“Mm?”

“Can we talk about it?”

“The sex or the other thing?”

“The other thing.”

“I’ve already had one fight with you today. I don’t think I have the capacity for two...Do you?”

You shook your head.

“Some other time,” He promised.

“Sure.”

You had seen the paperwork and the inspector’s notes, but to see the house in the Hamptons was a whole other story. The long gravel driveway was lined with a horse fence on the left, and a plain wood fence on the right. You didn’t bother to hide your open, stunned stares as you passed the stables. It was hardly the first time you’d seen a home like it, but it was unfathomable that Steven seemed to have not only put the house in your name, but completely forgotten about it.

Harvey pulled the car into the neatly manicured lot.

“Do you want to start in the stables, the house, the pool, the tennis court…?” He shut the car off, waiting for your reply. You shook your head.

“I only care about the house,” You admitted.

“So we won’t be walking the expansive lawns? I brought my sneakers.”

“Do I even want to know how expensive those sneakers are?”

“They’re worth more than your apartment.”

“I’m willing to believe that.” You climbed out of the car, eyeing the inspector’s report as you rounded toward the front steps. You turned from the paperwork to take in the house’s appearance more clearly. It was…Ugly. The large, L-shaped, gray-brick building had the modernistic development of the fast-casual apartment buildings in the city, with some of the gauche touches of your penthouse, like the expansive floor-to-ceiling covering nearly the entirety of the bottom of the floor. You could see a balcony on the left side of the house, and another around the other end of the L.

“...This is different.”

“It’s criminal,” You muttered.

“Are you saying that because he forged your signature, or because it’s ugly as sin?”

“Both. Come on.”

You walked up to the front door, punching in the code that the realtor had given you to get the door open.

The foyer was as flat and uninspired as the outside of the house—white marble floors, grey walls, and sterling silver furnishings. You grimaced as you looked around.

“Are we doing a complete walk through of this millennial grey gulag?”

“If you’re going to hate it, you can wait in the car,” You offered, glancing toward Harvey. “Apparently there are fifteen bedrooms and nine bathrooms, and I don’t know how much of your cute commentary I can deal with today.”

“Seemed to handle it fine in the car.” Harvey turned left before you could say or do anything else, and you followed him, looking down at the property’s map.

“This place oughta have one of those fricking mall maps with a star labeled ‘You Are Here’,” You grumbled.

“Now who’s making cute comments.”

–

“My feet hurt,” You groaned, plopping onto a boxy, stiff-cushioned couch.

“You’d think after the last couple of months of living in that walk-up, you’d be in better shape.”

“You’d think.”

“It’s all those cheese fries.”

“Oh—shut up.”

“So, what do you think?”

“I think we throw it on the market for 18 million and I forget that it ever existed.”

“Why list it in your name, though?”

You shrugged, looking around. “Maybe it was in both our names when he bought it and the outcome was such a disaster he decided to leave my name on it. I think he designed it.”

“Really?” Harvey’s brows rose as he looked around.

“Oh, god yeah. Steven can be smart, but he’s never really had any design sense. I wound up taking charge on some of our early flip projects because he just didn’t have the eye for it. He always tried, but I kinda wound up following behind and fixing his messes. If I had to guess, he bought this place to show me that he really could do it, and he just…Can’t.”

“Do you think Cape Cod and Gstaad will be the same?”

“Doubtful. The report for Cape Cod said that the house was originally built in 1950…what. Four?”

“Something like that.”

“It looks like he gutted it like he did the apartment buildings and realized how much of a project it would be. Gave up on it.”

“And Gstaad?”

“Work out how to expense the trip and we can talk.”

Harvey chuckled, wandering closer. “Should we christen it?”

“Christen what?”

“This house.”

“How?”

Harvey’s brows waggled salaciously, and you laughed, pushing yourself off of the couch. “Oh no, Specter. No way—”

“Why not?”

“You wanna christen every room? You don’t have the stamina for that—And I don’t have the patience.”

“What about just in here?” He curled his arm around your waist, drawing you closer. “On that stupid couch, over the piano…How about up against the windows?” His voice dropped to a murmur. “There’s no one around for miles.”

You rolled your eyes despite your amusement.

“If you said that with the Kubrick stare, I’d think you were going all Jack Torrence on me.”

“Heeeeeeeere’s Harvey.”

“Ugh! God, let’s just go,” You pushed out of Harvey’s arms, heading for the door. “It’s kinda creepy being here, you know. Like Steven’s watching.”

“The house can’t be haunted, he’s not dead.”

“He is to me.”

–

“When are you planning on going to Cape Cod?”

“Mm…Probably next week.”

“Driving up?”

“Taking the train.”

“Again with the train.”

“I don’t have a car and I’m not going to rent one.”

“Are you staying overnight?”

“No.”

“You’re going to go up and back on the train in one day? That is a long day.”

“I can handle it.”

“You’d be more comfortable in a car.”

“Yeah, obviously—Eyes on the road, Specter.” You reached out, poking his cheek as he glanced over at you. He batted your hand away lazily before turning back to the road.

“Why do you always insist on doing things in the most difficult way possible?”

“Because in most cases, the most difficult choice is also the most cost-effective. Efficiencies can be cruel, Harvey.”

“Cruel is an understatement.”

“I can handle a day on the train.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so, thank you.”

“Stubborn.”

“...Do you wanna come up when we get back to my place?”

“What for?”

You tipped your head to the side, waiting for Harvey to glance over before you teasingly waggled your brows.

“Oh, so now you want to?”

“I wanted to then! But I couldn’t do it if I felt Steven looming over me. C’mon, Specter,” You reached out, gently teasing your nails along the back of his neck, and grinning as he shifted slightly in his seat. “See if you can get me any more out of breath than walking up six flights of stairs.”

“Hey, there you are! Jessica needs to—What’s that face for?” Mike’s concern fell away at the sight of Harvey’s self-satisfied smile as he stepped off of the elevator. Harvey gave a dismissive shrug. What the hell was he going to tell Mike? That he’d spent the weekend somewhere other than his place? That he had fallen asleep with her, and remembered how serene it used to be to wake up with her? That they’d hardly left her cruddy apartment—hell, they’d hardly left her bed?

“Nothing. What were you saying?”

“Jessica needs to see you.”

“Right now?”

No sooner had the words left his mouth did Jessica step out from around the corner, drawing him up short.

“Yes,” She insisted firmly. “Right now.”

Harvey had the strange sense of a child being marched to the principal as she led her way to her office. She shut the door behind the two of them, striding past him to her desk.

“Can this wait?” Harvey hedged. “I’ve got coffee going cold on my desk.”

“Well then, I’ll make this quick. Did you have a nice time this weekend?"

That should've been his warning. It was a solid leading question, and one that, on any other Monday, he would not have hesitated to answer. His eyes narrowed slightly, before he decided—Yes, she must have known that he drove to the Hamptons. Someone would have told Jessica: Mike was still in the habit of offering updates when he thought they would be helpful.

"Yes," He finally answered.

"Was it a productive trip?"

A second warning. Jessica was a strategist, and Harvey knew that any lawyer worth a damn didn't ask a question that they didn't already know the answer to. Still, he chose a carefully middle-of-the-road answer:

"She was happy to go through the home herself, set a listing price. Hopefully we can get it on the market and on its way as soon as possible.”

Jessica took that in thoughtfully, lips set in a placid smile.

"Were there any outstanding features?"

A third and final warning, but Harvey couldn't help but lean into it:

"Are we talking about the tennis court, the pool, the stables, or the thousand lawns?"

Jessica let out a tepid, flatly amused, "Hm," Before beckoning him closer. "Well if those all caught your eye, it would explain why you missed the cameras."

Harvey froze in his step, blood running cold. There was no way—Cameras? His gaze dropped to the laptop that she turned to face him. The black and white footage was grainy, but clear enough. Harvey watched as he wrapped his arm around her, drawing her into his chest. He could still feel the heat of her body, and the plush slide of her sweater beneath his fingers. He could see the gentle, adoring way that she gazed up at him before she nudged him away, leading the charge out of the house.

‘It’s kinda creepy being here, you know. Like Steven’s watching.’ He didn’t know how, but she had felt it.

"Where did that come from."

"I'll give you three guesses."

"Let me explain—"

"Explain what!" Jessica slammed the laptop closed, rounding the desk with self-righteous strides. "Explain what idiotic idea led to you putting on a show?"

"We didn't know that there were cameras."

"How long has this been going on?"

"We only went to see that one house."

Jessica's expression darkened as she shook her head.

"Don't play dumb with me, Harvey," She warned lowly. "How long have you been sleeping with her."

It hit him low in the gut. For a moment, he was too stunned to speak.

"She told you?"

"No, she didn't tell me. She didn't have to. It'll be plain as day to anyone who sees that footage."

"That’s not true, we were just—"

"Just what?"

"I was teasing her! It didn't mean anything."

"If I call and ask her, she'll say the same thing?"

He was certain of it. "Yes."

"Would she swear to it under oath? At a deposition? In court?"

His surety faltered, and his mouth worked wordlessly before he pursed his lips tightly. Jessica shook her head again.

"I am not the only one with access to this. Luckily for you—for both of you—she still has a friend or two on the inside. Aaron Delaney sent this to me before he deleted the original. He works closely with Steven, and has access to a few property accounts. He got an alert on his phone that someone had used the keypad to open the door."

"Has Steven seen it?"

"He isn't sure, but I'm not willing to take that chance. Louis will be taking over the Hayward case, and Mike will be assisting him."

"No, Jessica, that's not happening."

"It is, because I'm telling you that it is. You should be relieved. You never wanted it in the first place."

"Things are different now."

"You're damn right they are! What the hell were you thinking? Both of you?"

"Let me see this case through."

"If you see this through and Hayward does have access to this footage, you could be disbarred. You're going to hand the files over to Louis by the end of the day. He is expecting them. Mike will bring him up to speed and assist him until this mess is cleared up."

Harvey lowered his gaze to the floor as Jessica stepped around him, opening the door and waiting beside it. He curled his hands into fists in his pockets as he strode resignedly from the office.

"And so help you," Jessica warned as he passed, "If I hear that you are holding Louis up in any way."

Harvey only made it a few feet from the office before he pulled his phone out of his pocket, hurriedly dialing her number. It rang once...Twice...Three times...And went to voicemail.

"Damnit," He hissed, lowering the phone to redial. "C'mon, c'mon..." It rang once, "Pick up." Twice...

"Hey you."

"Where are you?"

"What do you mean?" She laughed, "I'm on my way to see Jessica for our check-in."

Fuck.

"How close are you?"

"I just got off of the elevator. Why?"

Harvey whirled around, eyes desperately searching for her through the gaggle of associates, paralegals, and lawyers going about their business.

"She knows."

"What?"

He could hear her frown. Harvey took three steps toward the elevator bay before he saw her come into view—and lock eyes with Jessica. He saw her body go tense, before her shoulders sagged with dejection.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Hell," She sighed before hanging up.

"I'm not going to even begin to approach what you may have been thinking—"

"Jessica—"

"—Putting not only your future, Harvey’s future, and the future of this firm in jeopardy."

"I wasn't thinking."

"Clearly."

"We didn't even do anything at the house!"

"That doesn't make the slightest bit of difference."

You slid down in your seat as Jessica paced in front of you, her pace and turn reminiscent of a caged tiger.

"I did you a favor and this is how you repay me?" She finally stilled, nailing you with a cold gaze. You folded further under the crush of her look, so similar to the disbelief that she had leveled you with at her apartment not too long ago.

"I'm sorry."

"You should be." Jessica strode around her desk. "Your case has been reassigned to Louis Litt. Mike will stay on, provided you haven't fucked him, too."

Christ. "I made a mistake, alright? I told you I was sorry, and I meant it," You insisted. "Don't bring Mike into this when he hasn't done anything wrong."

Jessica bristled as she lowered herself into her seat.

"I don't want you associating with Harvey until this is over."

"Oh—Come on."

"If this footage were to come out, Harvey's conduct and ethics will be called into question. He'll be dragged into your divorce proceedings. Is that what you want?"

Your stomach churned uneasily as you considered it. You knew she was right. You shook your head a little, trying desperately to swallow past the lump that was forming in your dry throat.

"Louis and Mike will be in touch."

"Okay." You turned, heading for her office door, and stopping just before you opened it.

"...Is now a bad time to remind you that bringing Harvey onto my case was your idea?"

The chilling glare that she leveled with answered for her: Yes. It was a very bad time to remind her.

“You slept with—”

“Shut the door and keep your voice down,” Harvey warned stonily. Before either of them could move toward his office door, Donna hurried into view, reaching for the handle.

“You don’t wanna hear this?” Mike’s brows rose. “You of all people?”

Donna waved him away, offering, “Intercom,” Before she shut the door. Harvey sighed heavily, lowering himself into his chair.

“What happened?” Mike stepped closer to the desk. “I’m just—You two hate each other.”

“Thank you for the reminder. I forgot about that.”

“Harvey, c’mon,” Mike shook his head as he tried (and failed) to keep from smiling. “What happened?”

“I went over to hang out.”

“At her apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, and? Instead of hanging out you…Let it all hang out?”

“Get out of my office.”

“If that was at her apartment, what happened in the Hamptons?”

“Nothing happened in the Hamptons. The footage just…We got close, that’s all.”

“That’s not enough to disbar you.”

“Because you’re the expert on being disbarred? It’s enough to call my ethics into question…And Jessica’s right, no one needs that headache right now.”

“So I’m stuck with Louis because you got close? Where’s the Specter spirit? No way are you going to watch this one from the sidelines.”

On any other case, no, he wouldn’t. Harvey would insist on backseat driving. But on this one…He grimaced, dropping his gaze to his desk.

“I want regular updates,” He insisted. “That’s all.”

Mike nodded slowly, conceding: “Okay. But I’ll be ready when you change your mind.”

"I'll come over."

He sounded so positive about it—like nothing had happened, or changed. You eyed the remaining trash bags, trying to scrounge up the conviction of an excuse.

"I don't think that's a good idea right now."

"Why not?"

You know why. You shifted your phone from one hand to the other, tucking it between your shoulder and your ear as you reached out, gripping a bag to make it crinkle loudly.

"I've still got some sorting to do."

"I'll help you."

"Not tonight, Harvey."

"...She's not in charge of us, you know."

You tipped your head back against your wall, closing your eyes. "She's actually very much in charge of you."

"At work."

"I know, but I just..." You winced. "I think she's right. We should lay low for a while. If Steven did see that video before Aaron sent it to Jessica, we're both going to have a whole new mess that we're stepping into."

"I'm ready for it."

"...I don't know if I am."

His silence on the other end made you want to crawl out of your skin. "I can only fight one battle at a time, Harvey—And right now, I'm barely managing the big ones."

"Fine."

You knew that fine coming from him. It wasn't fine. It was I'm shutting down. It was I'm finished with this conversation. It was I'm finished with you.

"Harvey—"

You lowered the phone from your ear as the line cut off, watching the inevitable flashing and darkening of his contact. You bit the inside of your cheek, fighting back a fresh wave of tears. How, after all this time, was Harvey Specter still able to make you cry?

You became solitary again. Life narrowed. You saw Aaron a time or two, but he was so busy either working or gathering intel that you were hardly able to keep up with him. For as much of a lifeline as she had been, Jessica was still pissed, and you hardly spoke more than you needed to. Mike was a dear, checking in to see how you were doing, but most correspondence led inevitably to discussing closings, proceedings, contracts (and you couldn’t blame him for it; he was only doing his job).

Louis was…A lot. He was very eager, that was clear, and had been working hard to push the sales of the apartment buildings and the home in the Hamptons through. David and his firm were digging into discovery, and were making headway.

But you had so little life outside of your divorce. Most of your pieces were sold off, so you hardly had any day-to-day tasks to keep you busy—and everything in New York was so goddamn expensive. It felt like you spent $50 just stepping out your front door. There were days when you simply didn’t. It was cheaper to stay in, and quieter (so long as your neighbors didn’t have a screaming match that day).

Your life was four walls, a cruddy bed, rickety furniture. You spent too much time awake when you should’ve been sleeping; too much time reminiscing when you should have been moving on; too much time dwelling on the time that you spent with men in your life that probably wouldn’t spare you another thought.

Walking back into the firm was uncomfortable. You’d avoided it for as long as you could, but Mike insisted that there were a few documents that absolutely had to be seen and signed in the office. You’d made it an entire three weeks without so much as getting anywhere near the building. You found yourself avoiding even glancing in the direction of Jessica’s office. It was alright, though—Donna was a smiling, comforting presence the second you stepped off of the elevator.

“Find the place alright?” She teased.

“I did, thank you. I’ve only been here a dozen times in the last couple of months.”

“It’s been a few weeks. We thought you’d forgotten where we were.”

You smiled tightly. You were certain that she knew everything that had gone on—she was the eyes and ears of the place.

“You know, it’s the funniest thing,” You drawled sarcastically, “I kept coming to the right building and getting off on the wrong floor.”

“Happens to the best of us. C’mon.”

You frowned as she led you away from the usual conference rooms, and even further away from Louis’ office. You couldn’t imagine where the heck she was taking you—and your confusion deepened as she opened the door to a room lined with files. She nodded you inside, a knowing smile on her lips as she warned:

“Two minutes.”

Two minutes? Until what?

“Thanks, Donna.” Harvey’s voice made you freeze, and you could do nothing but watch Donna close the door behind herself. You looked down at the floor, your hands wringing as you heard Harvey come closer. You felt him stop close behind you, close enough to feel the heat of him.

“...Are you going to look at me?” He hedged softly.

“No need. I know what you look like.”

He sighed softly, stepping around to stand in front of you. You watched as his shoes and pant legs came into view.

“...And you’re just going to look at my shoes now?”

“They’re nice shoes. Look expensive.”

“They are.”

“Figures.”

“I’m sorry.”

You looked at him fully, finally, stunned. You were surprised at how drawn he looked. Sure, his suit was impeccable, and his hair was frustratingly perfect, but you could see tiredness around his eyes.

“You’re going through hell right now,” Harvey went on, “You don’t need me to pile on to that. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

You nodded slowly as you took it all in. “Well. We should never have, um…” You cleared your throat, averting your gaze again. “It was stupid.”

“You regret it?”

“It’s not worth risking your career over.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Harvey closed the space between the two of you, and you had to force yourself not to lean into him the way you wanted—the way you’d missed for weeks.

“Harvey,” You warned softly. “I can’t keep playing tug of war with you like this. I’m already at the end of my damn rope.”

“I know.”

You closed your eyes at the feeling of his palms sliding warmly over your arms, trailing down until he could gently intertwine your fingers.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” He promised, “Until we’re on the other side of this, and your business with the firm is closed out.”

“And then what?”

“And then I’ll give you hell.” You spluttered a laugh, unable to help it. Harvey chuckled softly, his nose nudging yours gently.

“I should go,” You warned softly. “Louis will come looking for me.”

“Donna will keep him at bay.”

“She said two minutes. It’s been at least three—” You hardly had time to finish your protestation before Harvey kissed you. You swayed into him, lips slipping tenderly against his as he used his grasp to draw you flush against him. You wiggled your hands from his, curling your arms around his shoulders to keep close. You startled at the two knocks on the door, and smiled as Harvey groaned in irritation.

“I should let you go,” He mumbled. You nodded, murmured,

“Probably.”

But neither of you rushed to move.

“I'm sorry to see you go. I've enjoyed our time together."

You sort of believed it, given the pinched, almost pained look that Louis leveled you across the desk. And, for all of your work with him over the last three months, you'd gained a sort of affinity for the man...Even if he was a little intense in a way that sometimes confused you. You smiled, taking up the final few documents that you would need for your record.

"I appreciate that, and thank you for all of your hard work, Mr. Litt. It's been..." You weighed your words carefully, "Interesting."

"For me, too. Reach out if you need anything else—doc review, mover recommendations, tickets to the ballet. Anything."

"Tickets to the ballet? I'm impressed." You held your hand out, smiling as he stood and pumped it enthusiastically. "Thank you again."

You were hardly four steps out of Louis' office when you found yourself flanked in the hallway.

"We should celebrate," Harvey insisted.

"And how would we do that?"

"Dinner at La Belle Vache."

Your brows rose as you glanced toward Mike.

"’The beautiful cow’?"

"Harvey's idea."

"With a restaurant name like that, it would have to be."

"Hey, that is not fair! I could be posh."

"It wouldn't suit you, Mr. Ross."

"Is that a yes or a no to dinner?" Harvey plied.

"When?"

"You busy tonight?"

"If I told you I had plans, would you believe me?"

"Not for a second."

"Well, I do."

"Cancel 'em."

"It's with my divorce lawyer."

"And here feels like a good stopping point for me." Mike wheeled around, striding back in the direction that he came.

"What the hell does David want with you after hours?"

"Deposition starts next week. We're drilling testimony."

"As long as that's all he's drilling."

"Watch it, Specter." You reached out, jabbing the down button on the elevator before turning back to Harvey. He pouted contemplatively before offering: "What about this weekend?"

"I think I could swing this weekend. Is dinner on the firm?"

"It's on me."

"Do you think..." You trailed off, glancing toward Jessica's office, "That the powers that be will approve?"

"Honestly?" Harvey lowered his voice,"I don't give a damn. It's been months. Your business here is wrapped. If Jessica wants to give me a good reason why I can't see you, she's welcome to try—but it won't work."

You bit the inside of your cheek to quell a smile as you reached out, gently straightening Harvey's tie.

"Very forceful, Mr. Specter."

"You like it?"

"It's kinda hot." You turned back and stepped onto the elevator as it chimed.

"This weekend," You finally agreed. "Invite Mike—He's earned several dinners."

"He sure has."

The doors began to close, but Harvey darted in, catching them before they could shut all the way. He darted in, pressing a swift, warm kiss to your lips before he drew away again. You grinned as he stepped back, allowing the doors to close.

"As long as that's all he's drilling."

The memory of Harvey's teasing warning was on your mind throughout your time with David, and you found yourself fighting back smiles all evening.

"Do you have any plans for the weekend?"

David watched you from beneath his lashes as he asked, and where that look had intrigued you once, you knew better. You gave a short, firm nod, and insisted: "I have a date."

Your battle with Steven was far from over. You still had forgery cases pending, and your divorce case had hardly begun. But things felt a little lighter these days.

You had a direction, you had cash flow...But you didn't quite have the plan that you once did. You had told Harvey months ago that you were considering moving to Cambridge. It hadn’t completely ceased to be true, but it wasn’t your only consideration anymore.

There were moments when you could see the glimmer of a life to carve out for yourself: a smaller real estate firm with a few employees—maybe Aaron, if you could lure him away from Steven; a more comfortable apartment than where you were now, but you could live with where you were for a few more months as you got things in order; and, at the very least, a friendship with Harvey. You didn’t know if what the two of you were doing would be sustainable, and you weren’t sure whether either of you really wanted to know—but after all this time, you thought that maybe the two of you deserved another chance.

“Impressed?”

It was a fair question, but you were doing your best to school your expression. You didn’t want Harvey to know outright how much you did like his apartment. It was nothing less than you expected—large (though not quite in the palatial way that your old penthouse was), tastefully decorated, with a gorgeous view. You knew why Harvey had brought you up, of course, but now he was just showing off.

Dinner had been its own round of grandstanding. You and Mike had watched, bemused, as Harvey had gone out of his way to pronounce all of the dishes in a French accent to the clearly not French (but feigning awe) waiter (who you were sure had to deal with this multiple times a day). Harvey had also taught you and Mike a thing or two about wine—or he had tried to, until Mike seemed no longer able to help himself and corrected Harvey on multiple facts about the Rhône valley in the south of France.

It had been a far more pleasant evening that you had expected to have, and far more jovial than you’d had in a long time. Mike and Harvey were close; you and Harvey had a history; you and Mike had become friends over the course of your time working with him. When Mike had insisted that you all had to do this again sometime, you believed that he meant it. And when Harvey had invited you both up for a nightcap, Mike had politely declined with a smile and a shake of his head, offering:

“I think I should let you two have some time to do…Whatever it is that you need to do.”

You hadn’t been entirely sure what he’d meant, or what Harvey had told him. You were almost certain that he would’ve been told why Harvey had been taken off of your case in the first place. And sure, now and again, over dinner, you and Harvey had caught one another’s eye, maybe shared a smile. Maybe he’d rested his hand on your knee a time or two, given it a squeeze—because he could. Because the two of you were close and on even footing for the first time in a while.

“It’s…” You trailed off, shrugging. “Certainly an apartment.”

“Oh, please,” Harvey scoffed, taking two wine glasses down from the cabinet. “You’re impressed.”

“It’s nicer than I thought it would be.”

“You’re dazzled.”

“I like the kitchen.”

“You’re helplessly turned on.”

“‘Helplessly’ is pushing it.”

“So you admit that you’re turned on?”

You rolled your eyes, no longer bothering to fight your smile off.

“Maybe,” You offered, settling onto the couch and kicking off your shoes. Harvey joined you moments later, passing you a glass of wine and gently clinking his against yours before you each took sips. His gaze remained heavy on yours, and he leaned in for a gentle kiss as soon as you lowered your glass. You hummed, raising a hand and cupping his jaw. You leaned back just a touch, smiling as he crowded closer, dipping his head to brush kisses along your neck as his warm palm gently smoothed up your thigh.

“...Harvey?”

“Sure, I can show you the bedroom.”

You laughed softly, shaking your head a little. “Can we talk about it?”

He groaned, forehead dropping heavily against your shoulder. “Why do you always insist on ruining a perfectly good time?”

“Like when?”

“Like when we were in the Hamptons.”

“You thank your lucky fucking stars that I put a stop to that.”

“Yeah,” He grumbled, leaning back. You watched him swirl his wine in his glass.

“Please,” You pleaded softly.

“...I didn’t write the note.”

Fuck.

“Okay.”

“I wrote a note, but…Not that one.”

“Who wrote that one?”

“Scottie.”

“...Okay.”

“I couldn’t find the one I’d written, she insisted that I couldn’t leave you with nothing.”

“Well, she was right.”

“Yeah.”

You that that sink in for a moment before you pressed: “Why did you leave?”

“I had doubts.”

“About me?”

“About us. You know how my parents were, you know…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “You know what I saw.”

“And you thought I would do that to you?”

“I was afraid of it.”

“If you were afraid of it, then you thought I was capable of it.”

“—And when you got married to Steven so quickly—”

“Oh—!” The heavy, stunned, indignant laugh was pained as it left you. You pushed off of the couch, standing and walking out of Harvey’s reach. You heard him sigh heavily behind you, chased by the clink of him setting his wine glass down as he muttered, “This is why I didn’t want to talk about this.”

“Do you know why I got married so quickly?” You whirled around to face him.

“Because you loved Steven?”

“I never said that. I thought I loved him a bit, sure, but I was afraid that this,” You waved a finger between the two of you, “Would happen again. I thought he would leave. I was afraid that I would spend my entire life being left. So when Steven showed me the slightest bit of attention, I latched on. We eloped. He wanted a big wedding, but I just,” You waved your hand around, “I couldn’t do that a second time. Any of it. I didn’t get a new dress, neither of our families were there, because I knew that they would all watch me, and him, and they’d be thinking it: Is it going to happen again?”

“You’re saying your entire life with Steven was my fault?”

“I’m saying that I made a choice, and that what happened with you was a factor—Not a fault, a factor. And why!” You let out another harsh hysterical laugh as tears welled in your eyes, “Why didn’t you just talk to me? What did I do then to make you think that you couldn’t talk to me?”

“I wasn’t ready!”

“And we could have talked about that! What made you think that I wouldn’t have been alright with moving the wedding back, or going to counseling with you, or whatever you would have needed to get us there?”

“You wanted to get married.”

“I wanted you, Harvey! I would have waited, I—” You turned away, sniffling heavily as tears slipped from your eyes. “Fuck. Ugh.” You raised your glass, draining it before striding over the counter, desperate to put some more distance between the two of you. You set the glass down and yanked a paper towel off of the roll, swiping at your under eyes to clear away any running mascara. You blew your nose as well before balling up the tissue and lobbing it toward the trash can. You heard Harvey’s approaching footsteps, and you pulled in a deep, stuttering breath as he rested his hands on your shoulders.

“...There’s no way for me to take back or change what I did.”

“Would you if you could?”

“Yes.”

“...Okay.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed, pressing a kiss to the back of your head as his hands soothingly rubbed over your arms. You sniffled again, swiping away a stray tear before resting your hands on the counter.

“You changed the way that I love, Harvey,” You shook your head. “For better or worse, whether you meant to or not, you changed it.” You glanced back toward him. “I can’t get those bits of myself back. You took them from me.”

“I know. I took them from both of us.”

You nodded, slowly letting yourself lean back against him. His arms curled around your middle, and you heard a soft, almost relieved groan leave him. You let your eyes close as he pressed a kiss to your temple. The two of you stood there in silence for a few moments, allowing yourselves to settle.

“...Stay tonight?” He murmured after a few moments. You nodded, smiling as his hold tightened on you again, as if wary that you would change your mind.

He had a few more smile lines. His hair still mussed the same; he still made little mumbling noises as he slowly rose from sleep to consciousness. He was still a furnace to sleep beside, and he still held you through the night. It was almost a relief that none of that had changed.

Waking up in his arms made you feel like it had when you were younger: safe, and loved, and wanted. You hadn't appreciated it when you'd had it just a few months ago, but you were desperate to catch on to every little bit of him now.

You were never going to be able to turn back the hands of time—to go back and warn him, or yourself, or someone that your first wedding day would be a disaster, that it would set you off on a path that you could never have anticipated for yourself. Discussing what had happened hadn't truly healed any of your old wounds.

But as the sun began to creep over the Manhattan skyline and seep into Harvey’s bedroom, you felt closer to peace than you had in a long, long time.

Harvey snuffled, nuzzling your shoulder as his fingers curled in your borrowed nightshirt.

“You awake?” He mumbled, the same low, gravely murmur that you had once loved, and missed.

“Mmmhm.”

“Want coffee?”

“Yes.”

He yawned widely, pressing his face into your shoulder and warming your skin through the fabric. “Bagels?”

“Sure.”

“‘Kay.”

Neither of you made a move to get either. Instead, you combed your fingers through his hair, closed your eyes, and listened to the steady rise and fall of his breathing as you both fell back asleep.

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#Harvey Specter x Reader #Harvey Specter x You #Harvey Specter/Reader #Harvey Specter/You #Harvey Specter fic #Harvey Specter imagine #Bad Faith

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mara-and-its-the-same · 2 years ago

Note

Hiiiii

I love love love your writing and i was wondering if you could write something about jj x reader and reader is very easily exciteable ( like scatterbrain adhd) and talks alot and slowly Kie gets more and more irritated with reader and then she finally snaps and screams how reader is so annoying? And the boys are gobsmacked and JJ especially. I promise i dont have anything personal against Kie i love her but i dont think she would like me very much lmao😭😭

Thank you sm🤭🫶

Thank you so much my baby starfish, you're so sweet to me <3

This started really strong, then I got a lil lost in the sauce, so here you have 3.6k of JJ x Reader. I hope you like it 💖💖💖 r loves dinosaurs

CWs: Swearing, yelling, Kiara being mean, John B's dad is alive because I just can't hurt that poor boy but he's only mentioned once

JJ liked getting her alone. Every chance he could, getting them away from their respective friend groups, with their prying eyes and loud opinions. It was his favorite place to be, alone, with her. They’d been together for a solid while, getting together right before spring break. The pogues wondered where he’d been the whole week, after too many unanswered texts blowing up the group chat he gave in…and told them he was holed up at home, hotboxing his bedroom for the foreseeable future. Not that it was entirely a lie, it just wasn’t entirely true either.

He introduced her to the rest of them at the beginning of the summer, a little reluctantly since they’d planned a date but forgot to actually plan anything. So with no other option, since JJ had no food in his house and y/n’s a/c broke, they went to the Wreck.

Unfortunately for JJ, Kiara was working and Pope and John B had just gotten back from helping Mr. Hayward with something or another. JJ entirely forgot both of these things and only just remembered as he saw the Twinkie in the parking lot. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?” She pulled his helmet off of her head but didn’t get off the bike yet.

“All my friends are here.”

“That’s a bad thing? I’ve met them all before.” She had; she helped John B pass his last Spanish test and was in a study group with Pope for their Civics class. Kiara knew her from Biology, she’d stay after every class to talk with their teacher about everything but what they just discussed in class.

“Yeah, but they’ve never met you as my…” he trailed off and she slid herself under his arm, putting herself in front of him, tossing her legs over his and leaning back on the handlebar between his arms.

“You can say girlfriend.” He fixed her helmet hair in a lame attempt to distract her from his shy smile. She scrunched her nose at the tickle of his calloused fingertips against her skin. “Oh right, you can’t say it without blushing.”

“Hell yeah I can.” He kept his hands on her cheeks and moved both of their heads in opposite directions to keep the sun out of her eyes.

“Say it then, Pretty,” she put her face real close to his with his hands stuck to her cheeks, nudging his nose once so he’d look up and she could kiss right under his jaw. She leaned back just slightly and held his forearms. “Girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend,” one kiss to her forehead, “girlfriend,” another to her nose, “firlgriend,” a final one to her lips. Not quite a kiss since she was smiling so hard at his mistake.

“What?”

“You made me mess up, that was not my fault.”

“How did I make you mess up?”

“By being so damn cute.” He started kissing all over her face, her neck, her collarbones.

“That’s what got you?”

“You always get me.”

“You trying to put the moves on me, Maybank?” She pulled him back up from her neck by a tug to his hair.

“Depends, is it working, l/n?”

“Are you trying to distract me so we can go somewhere else knowing full well that there is nowhere else?”

He let his head fall back against her clavicle with a long, exaggerated groan. “So it’s not working?”

“No, sorry,” she tilted her head to the side with faux sympathy, he thought she looked like a puppy. “Please? I’m starving.” He braced his hands behind himself so he could lean back and give her room to swing her leg over. He followed it with his eyes with no shame, to which she could only scoff a laugh.

When he finally regained his composure, “Can’t have my firlgriend starving, now could I darlin’?”

“I’m sending you back. I don’t even remember where I got you but I’d like a refresher on the return policy.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha. You’re really hilarious. I swear, you should take it on the road or somethin.” He said in a single tone. They started walking into the restaurant and he still held out his hand to her.

She laid her head on his shoulder just before they made it to the door. “But you love me?”

“Fuck yeah I love you.” He turned to kiss her head but it was more his cheek to her head and a kiss to the air above it. She loved it just the same.

“Good, I love you too.” She kissed his shoulder and was glad the heat permitted such skin to show, no sleeves in the way of her boy’s skin.

“Alright, come on.” He almost dragged her into the restaurant but it was more of a rush to get himself in there.

Kiara was at the hostess stand and smiled when she saw him, the corner of her lip twitched twice when he saw who he was with, once at the hand he was holding and again at the girl it was attached to. Yet she still recovered quickly and kept up the perfect customer service act. “Hey Kie, how’s today been? Yeah? You know what I’d love, is if you could uh, get us a table at the back, kinda quickly?”

“What’s the rush, Jay?” She gathered two menus and started guiding them back.

“Don’t worry about it. Just-please?”

“M-hmm.” She sat them at a dimly lit table in the back corner and JJ helped y/n up into the continuous booth with the circular table. She thanked him with a smile and he slid in next to her, resting a hand on her thigh, warm skin under his rough touch.

“Thank you,” y/n smiled brightly at Kiara and picked up her menu. Kiara gave JJ a look that she couldn’t see with the menu in front of his face What are you doing? He returned it with a grave look, Let me have my last 10 minutes with her to myself in peace.

“Martha will be right over with your waters.”

JJ nodded and Kiara got the hint finally.

John B and Pope came out of the kitchen with their little trays of free food. “We heard JJ’s bike pull up. He here?” Pope tossed a thumb over his shoulder to the dining area.

“Yeah, actually-” they started walking away to go find him but she pulled them back by their shirt collars. “But, I think he’s on a date.”

“A date?” John B asked.

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like him. You sure we’re talking about the same guy?” Pope held up a hand to approximately JJ’s height. “Yea tall, perpetually sweaty, doesn’t own a single sleeve in his whole wardrobe, different day different girl, JJ?”

“That’s the one. He’s in the back…Waaaaiit, wait wait. Don’t go yet, let them at least get their waters first.”

“Who’s he with?”

“Do we know her?”

“I don’t know if you do. I had biology with her. Y/n? L/n?”

Both of their jaws went slack. John B nearly dropped his fries. “Her?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Like she’d ever go for him, she’s too…” John B shook his hand thinking the words would come to him.

“Nice, kind, morally upright?” Pope offered.

“Annoying?”

“No. When has she ever been annoying?”

“In bio, she’d always stay after and talk to Dr. Dyer about literally everything besides biology.”

“Kie, I hate to break it to you,” John B put a hand on her shoulder, “I really do. But I don’t see what any of that has to do with you.”

“Because she’s just so…ugh excited. All the time.”

“As if JJ isn’t exactly the same.”

“They’re in the back you said?”

“Yeah, in the corner. Wait- I didn’t tell you that!” But they already had all the information they needed and were half way over there already.

JJ saw them wave as they approached then put his head on the table with a groan. They saw her try to coax him up with a hand scratching over his back and some nice words they couldn’t hear. And then they saw everything they needed to when she raised her other hand to wave and JJ’s bracelet was on her wrist. Oh, John B’s face said to Pope’s, This is serious.

But that didn’t stop them. “Hey guys, funny running into you two here.” John B announced, extra loudly just for JJ’s sake since his head was still down. He and Pope slid into the round booth on the other side of y/n. She pushed JJ up by the shoulder but his chin was still to his chest.

“Wow, must have really worn him out.” Pope said, followed by a stolen one of John B’s fries.

“Looks like it. You gonna make it hotshot?”

He looked up sharply to flick his hair out of his face. She pushed it back and while they were so focused on each other the other two boys gave each other looks Oh shit, this is real serious.

“I’ll make it.” He let out a long and exasperated groan. “Pope, John B, this is my firlgriend.” Completely an honest mistake but he was just happy it made her laugh. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t-”

“No, I know you didn’t.” He squeezed her thigh and continued.

“This is my girlfriend.” Oh, real real serious.

“Took you long enough,” referring to how many tries it took him to get it right, not hiding their relationship. She actually didn’t mind it, she liked having him all to herself. “Good boy,” she pushed herself up to kiss his cheek and he leaned into it. She stayed looking up at him with a smile and the boys were waiting for him to look disgusted, grossed out, something, anything he’d usually do with girls that got too affectionate; but it never came. He was looking at her the same way he looks at a great swell of a wave, like she was an adventure, something he wanted to take on and knew he could. They saw it in his eyes and then, this kid blushed. This girl made JJ Maybank blush, hard.

“So what have you guys been up to?” JJ pulled her closer with an arm around her waist and she leaned back into him so she could face the boys.

They talked about so many things and she was so animated and genuinely interested in what they had to say. She liked hearing about Pope’s dreams and aspirations, asking him so many questions about his scholarship and what kind of career he wants. John B told her about the theories he and his dad have come up with about the shipwreck and the treasure. She was so easy to talk to and never bored. How could anyone be bored when the conversations moved so fast. Every time Kiara walked by it was something new. Mr. Hayward’s business, Pope’s scholarship, what he wants to do after high school, John B’s Spanish final, who says ‘bon voyage’ the French or the Spanish, how different languages happened, Pangea, Panthalassa, what a fun word trapezoid is, how much the geometry teacher sucked, their favorite classes, the clubs she and Pope are in with both of them getting all excited about the ones they shared.

“You should come to the chateau sometime,” John B suggested and she looked up at JJ over her shoulder, a silent what do you think?

“Yeah, it’d be fun,” all three of them picked up on his hesitancy.

“Yeah?” He nodded surely in response. “You just tell me when.”

***

JJ loved getting her alone. Every minute with just her was heaven to him.

Unfortunately for both of them, he was under house arrest in purgatory.

Pope and John B loved having her around. Kiara didn’t get the hype. “Kie, listen, it’s like having a puppy that can talk.” John B had had a few beers that were way higher percentages than he thought.

“Don’t call my girlfriend a puppy, man.”

“Sor-*hiccup* sorry, but am I wrong? Pope, am I wrong?”

“Not really, like if she was a puppy her tail would always be waggin and shit and if she saw a leaf move she’d be like,” He turned around really fast and JJ thought he heard his neck crack.

“I still don’t get why that means she has to be over here all the time?”

“Do you have some sort of problem with her, Kie?” JJ asked, failing at holding the defensive tone off.

“No, I just mean why is she always around?”

“Because she’s my girlfriend, I like having her around and so do they. So kindly do me a favor and get the stick out of your ass. Hmm?”

“Fine,” she put her hands up in surrender then leaned back in her seat, letting them all get back on with their evening.

***

By the end of the summer y/n was thoroughly convinced Kiara hated her. She’d hardly look at her and she’d never add anything to their conversations besides some snarky remark about how close it seems she and JJ have gotten. But she was never out right mean, y/n thought she was just reading into it too hard.

They were back at the chateau, having some drinks to celebrate….something. Y/n couldn’t quite remember what. She was in JJ’s lap and he was talking to John B about cars or hydroponics, something. She didn’t know entirely but she was nodding along all the same. She was staring at his face, tracing his jaw with her eyes. She didn’t even notice she was doing it until he turned because of her finger tracing the curve then down his neck. He smiled at her, all soft and gentle and pretty. “What’re you up to, kid?”

She smiled back at him just the same lazy adorable way that she does when he catches her spacing out. “I’m older than you.”

“Barely, and that doesn’t answer my question.”

“You have a mole.” She put her finger back on it. “Right there. Since when?”

“Forever, probably.” He took her hand so carefully and held it in their laps instead, both of them twisting their fingers around the other’s like a kelp forest, slipping and sliding back and forth through the spaces between them.

“Forever? Really? I never noticed.”

“Ha- You never notice a lot of things.” Kiara mumbled loud enough for Big John to hear her inside.

JJ’s fingers stilled, y/n just squeezed them tighter. Her smile fell for a second but she picked it right back up, looser, no teeth, not reaching her eyes or making the lines in her cheeks it usually does. “What do you mean?” JJ was going to cry with how small and innocently she said it.

“Hmm?”

“You said I don’t notice anything, what do you mean?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” Kiara scratched her neck then took a strand of hair to twist around her finger and check for split ends,

“I notice a lot of things,” she slipped off of JJ’s lap and into the seat next to him but let him keep their thighs pressed together.

“I’m sure you do. Just like the note John B left to keep the door closed! Just like how Pope tells you over and over what his favorite color is! And when JJ obviously looks uncomfortable to anyone with eyes! You notice all that?! Of course you don’t, you’re so wrapped up in yourself you don’t know anything about anyone around you. All you ever do is talk about yourself, it’s sickening.”

“Ok,” she sniffed shallowly but JJ could still hear the shakiness in it, feel her leg bouncing against his. She can do this herself, JJ thought hopefully. She took a deep breath, “Seems like we know what we all think of me now.” She started picking up the empty cups and cans within her arms reach. “John B, ‘s it ok if I ask your dad to take me home?”

“Uh, yea-”

“Hey, I’ll take you home.” JJ put a hand on her arm when she stood. She would only look at his hand, not his face.

“No, it’s ok.” He could hardly hear her, something that rarely happened since she’d gotten comfortable with all of them. Well, almost all of them. He stood up, close enough that her arm was flush to his chest. She still didn’t look at him, only facing John B, pulling his cold glare from Kiara to her taught pout and watery eyes that broke his heart. “If he’s busy I can walk.”

“You’re not walking,” JJ tried to get her to look at him. She almost did but then Kiara started again.

“Maybe she should. Learn to do something for herself for once instead of getting someone else to do it for her, like she does every time.”

JJ pulled her to his chest and John B stepped in front of them. “Kie, I think you should go, man.”

“Right, like you guys haven’t been ditching me since JJ started bringing his new bitch around!” She flinched at the word and JJ pulled her closer. “Just make Kiara leave, right?! Not like I’ve been your best friend for years before she came around.”

“You wanna go?” JJ whispered into her ear. She didn’t trust herself to speak, she didn’t want to speak, so a nod would have to suffice. “Go wait inside.”

“Jay, no,” she weakly argued.

“I’ll be right out, please baby, just let me,” he left the end of his sentence hanging and let Pope guide her inside with a nod of gratitude.

John B was still trying to calm Kiara down, but JJ wasn’t into pleasantries. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Ever since you’ve started bringing her here you’ve been so distant, you’re so wrapped up in each other, it’s like you’re in your own little bubble and you never pay any attention to us anymore.”

“Could you stop speaking for me and Pope, Kie? Really. It’s enough,” John B sat back down while JJ and Kiara were getting in each other’s faces.

“So you don’t find her so fucking grating you can’t even hear yourself think?”

John B pulled JJ back, just a bit further from her, “No-”

“No one thinks that! You think that because you’re so possessive over us for no reason! Kie, I’m happy with her, I love her. I love you guys too but not if you’re gonna be a fuckin psycho about it.”

“All I mean is-”

“All you mean is that you’re jealous, and you need to get the fuck over it.”

She scoffed at that, “I am not jealous, I’m not jealous. Why would you even say that?”

“Why would you say any of the shit you’ve said to her? Hmm? You can’t fuckin share. And I’m not asking you to.”

A strange look of relief flashed over her features, but was greatly short lived.

“I’m telling you.”

“JJ, I-”

“I’m telling you, if you can’t figure out how to act like a normal fucking person then I’m not comin around.”

“I’m the normal one, she’s- she’s-”

Both boys looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to come up with a real negative about the kindest girl they’ve probably ever met, albeit the most distracted one.

JJ hummed when she couldn’t come up with anything. “Jombee, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“10:30 still?”

“You know I’m not up by then.” They did their handshake and JJ went inside while John B made Kiara sit back down and talk to him. Pope and y/n were leaned back against the counter, he had an arm over her shoulders and was finally able to calm her breathing. “Hey,” JJ came closer, slowly, so he didn’t startle them. “Hey, you feelin ok? Still wanna go?”

“Yeah,” she sniffed hard, “Yeah. You ok?”

“I will be when we get home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Wherever you want it to be.”

***

They rode back to her house on his bike. He carried her through the house, just to make her laugh, since she’d been so quiet.

He threw her onto the bed then went through the shelves of DVDs, looking for the ones he was sure she’d like. “Not the Little Mermaid,” he pushed that one back in line.

“What? Why not the Little Mermaid?”

“Because she doesn’t talk, I want you to talk.”

“I don’t wanna talk, you do enough of that for the both of us.” He laughed a little at her attempt of a joke, but it was short lived once he realized what she really meant.

“But I like your voice, I like what you have to say.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“About what?”

“About whatever you want.” She silently asked him for something more to go off of. “Here, tell me about this.” He handed her her weighted dinosaur and laid it on her chest.

“What about it?”

“Stop asking questions, start talking. Tell me why you like the squish feeling.”

“What do I get out of it?” He raised an eyebrow at another question but relented anyway.

“I’ll squish you.”

“Really?”

He nodded once, then thought if he looked at her smile any longer he’d melt, so he went to set the movie up.

“Your body is basically like, covered with touch receptors, and when they’re stimulated by, in this case squish, they release oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, all those. And those are all the happy hormones, the love hormones, aaannnd you love me but you’d love me more if you came over and squished me.”

He hit play then brought a blanket so he could lay down and she could curl into his side. “You love me more than your dinosaur?”

“Is that even a question?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Of course I love you more than dinosaurs,” she nudged herself up to kiss his jaw that she could reach. “Dinosaurs can’t squish me, Silly, they’re extinct.”

(thank you so much for reading, please please please let me know if you want a part 2 and support your creators!!! ok??? (maybe not me, i kinda suck and only realized i never copied the last line over like 4 months later) But comments are like the most wonderful thing to me so if there’s any parts you particularly enjoyed just let me know <3<3<3)

“Of course I love you more than dinosaurs,” she nudged herself up to kiss his jaw that she could reach. “Dinosaurs can’t squish me, Silly, they’re extinct.”

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cookiesandcantarella · 6 months ago

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Despite everything, despite the fleeing and the hiding and the danger and the war, Hayward is so content with where he is in life, above all else so, so glad that he met Paige and Carpenter. And it makes me physically unwell.

[ID: two excerpts from transcripts of the silt verses. In the first Hayward says “Actual craziness is irrelevant to the story here. My point is-I’ve failed at nearly every damn thing I’ve ever done. If I’d never failed, I wouldn’t be here. Winning at skimming stones.”

The second excerpt reads as follows:

Hayward: I made you the second I spotted you in Marcel’s Crossing.

Carpenter: Yeah, and how did that work out for you?

Hayward: Pretty good, ultimately. All things considered.

End ID]

#the silt verses #tsv #james hayward

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fuesch · 25 days ago

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Agatha All Along 1x06

Oh, look who's confirmed to be Jewish. Now everybody who's been prematurely ranting can chill. Yay!

It's a magick mitzvah even. Is that an actual thing or are they witchy Jews.

A golden lion embroidered on that dark fabric - I'd love to be normal, but how can I when it reminds me of the silver tigers on the jacket we first saw Peter in?!

WTF, Billy's dad looks like a bearded version of Director Hayward to me. Those eyes are way too similar.

Billy's met Lilia before?! Okay, so he's not Billy M. yet and the way Lilia is talking makes it seem there'll be no merging of the Billys, the original B. Kaplan will actually die. How depressing.

I can't believe the sigil came from Lilia! And why?!

Whoa, the Hex exists already. The original Billy K. only just got that prediction from Lilia and has so little time left. There wasn't much "now" to enjoy anymore. D:

Whoa, Wanda had even broadcast on radio! AFAIR I never thought about that other people might pick up that signal! There must be some out there still watching with antenna or dish, who have actually seen Wanda's show.

Oh, his parents actually call him William. Well, that's a nice way to differentiate the characters without involving last names.

Alice!

If nothing is physically wrong with Billy, does that mean he has healing powers?

Poor freshly reincarnated Billy having a really bad and confusing time. And his new parents as well. :o(

Billy and Eddie making out - I'm slightly scared of going into that AAA tag now, there'll be so many disappointed Agatha/Rio shippers who thought it would be their ship doing the smooching.

"Nothing in my life has felt normal until I met you." Awwwww.

Woah, I'm starting to think there was actually something to those theories about ep 5 being Billy's trial. In his room are the Eastview pennant and the chain of tetraeder-covered lights we saw in the trial house.

A "trans lives matter" poster in Billy's room. Of course he's a good boy.

Ooh, Billy did some research. "Strange occurences persist to haunt Westview residents" Interesting, tell me more!

Avengers training exercise gone wrong. Uh huh.

I didn't watch the mid-season trailer, but saw a cap on Twitter. The quality wasn't great (which kept me from brightening it in Photoshop, as there was nothing more to see), but I did see some hair sticking out from under the hat. Hey, you know who has somewhat long hair? And that outfit is so unlike Peter, that it's gotta be his disguise. Today I saw a post on my Twitter timeline linking to an article about Mr. Bucket Hat's identity and couldn't resist. I held the mouse over the link to read the URL and had my confirmation. So I changed my plans and instead of doing preparations for stuff, I watched the episode.

Was super excited when I saw that the episode link on D+ is a cap of Billy & boyf in an underground garage. Which, you know, is the place where one would meet someone who's hiding their identity. And despite seeing this announced in that cap, I can't believe it's Billy meeting Peter. I mean, they're multiverse family, they've met before, yet neither knows this, ARGH!

What was Mr. Bucket Hat throwing and then putting in his pocket? My first thought is something with a sigil on it, but then he wouldn't remember Westview.

Bohnerrific69. Sorry, I LOLed way too loudly. But should you use that name when you're hiding from the authorities and maybe others?!

IS THAT WHAT THE BEARD WAS FOR?!?!

"Randall" isn't any better, Randy! Somebody give this man some help coming up with aliases!

"Bub"? Hmmmmm… boy, do I wonder where Horny Stiffy picked up that word. What a mystery, we shall never know.

OMFG, Peter, what did they do to you?! The Hex was such a bad time for him that he's still having a bad time 3 years later. My poor baby. I wonder if all the protection stuff he has all over actually does something. But if not, at least it should ease his mind somewhat.

I wonder if there's anything interesting on his shirt. Anyone know what it says?

Agatha stole your house? Baby, that belonged to WitSec. Maybe he really does have a sigil, but it only works on his actual identity, not the Hex one. I mean, it looks like he's been to a witch, so maybe while there he asked to forget who he is so he wouldn't miss his old life in his own universe. Does he even know he's run away from witness protection? If not, that would explain the unwise choice of screenname.

"I was a terrible influence on Wanda and Vision's kids." No, no, you were the best uncle! That's really not something to feel guilty about.

Agatha had Peter poison Sparky! FFS, Agatha! "Woof" - "Hey!" I second Peter's comment.

Hearing Peter say speedster gave me heart tickles.

He has a one-man show! So 1. He really seems to think the identity Monica uncovered is his real one, 2. He's not hiding, WTF?! No way WitSec didn't find him. Maybe they leave him alone because he's living under an alias and his show isn't popular enough to attract attention?

Poor Billy thinking Wanda and Vision are dead. But as long as he can't remember them, it shouldn't be that bad.

Oh, so Agatha caused disasters in the non-magical world too. And she's Jolene?!

"Fun facts: Murdered her entire coven." Fun indeed!

Billy really is on the Road for Tommy! Oh, right, as a survivor of the Witches' Road, Agatha would be very useful. I had forgotten about that.

Wait, has Agatha always been wearing that Bohner family reunion shirt ("pitch a tent" XD) when she was at home with Rio?! Dammit, I feel a mighty need for that shirt now. They better give us that merch. Never mind, thanks, @xmcu-fietro!

Okay, but that shirt means that the name wasn't a creation of the Hex, holy shit! Are you telling me WitSec seriously gave him that name? Peter must have managed to piss them off beforehand.

Joe Locke was so close to losing it in that "poking the bear" scene. But since he kept it together, they could use that take. Good for us, hee.

The actors seemed to have fun. I guess that excessive pen clicking was also improvised.

"I do not wanna go back in the closet." XD

So the sigil was still working when Billy suspected his real identity, as well as when he said it the first time to Agatha. So what would finally break it?

Agatha manages to free herself from the mud. And what about Lilia and Jen?

Billy with the hoodie of shame. He's really is so much like his mom.

"It's nice to see you again, Billy." The soft way she says it sounds like she means it. Did she always like the Minimoffs or did she just decide to adopt him because she had suspected him to be Nicky?

Huh, the sigil is broken, but I don't understand how. Sure, Billy just crushed it the thing it was on, but that won't have done it. Ugh, I have no patience, dig up Lilia and make her answer my question!

Just after the topic of body count, Agatha asks where Billy got his new body. Whoa, what if he thinks he killed William? I mean, maybe she does, but I hope he doesn't.

"all that power you can't control without throwing a temper tantrum." Your multiverse grandpa would be so proud!

"She chose a town full of strangers over her own flesh and wires." I mean, she kinda had to take down the Hex, there wasn't much choice, Agatha. Not to mention that witch that nagged her into it.

Tommy is out there, Billy can sense him! *mewl*

"Gosh, you really are a Maximoff. Otherwise none of this would be nearly as dramatic." XD But this is why we love them!

The pathetic way I was waiting for Evan Peters (huh, look at #6 being the Peter episode again) to show up in the credits in hopes of getting hints about the character from the background image. It's just the Westview map with the Hex.

#agatha all along #peter maximoff

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arizonaaaaaa · 5 months ago

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GLEE LGBTQIA+ HEADCANONS- HAPPY PRIDE MONTH PART 3

21- Unique Adams- trans

-canonically trans

-her story felt a little rushed in my opinion, she went from a drag queen to a crossdresser to a trans person in a spam of like 6 episodes

-underrated Queen

-the best singer in my opinion

22- Marley Rose- pansexual and asexual

-this could be an interesting story line

-like the reason she doesn’t feel ready for sex is because she’s not sexually attracted to anyone

-although this would potentially make Jake an asshole

-her and Unique are gfs tho❤️

23- Jake Puckerman- bisexual

-def wanted to smack Ryder

-he was watching Sam “twerk”

-just gives of energy tbh

-I would actually spend a lot of money to see Jacob Artist make out with a ma

24- Ryder Lynn- gay

-never liked Marley, he actually liked Jake

-i really like Rynique but gay Ryder just speaks louder in my heart

-we could’ve met his father in this possible storyline like the opportunity😭

-Ryan Murphy had a chance to do an actual love triangle on glee but NOOOO LETS MAKE THEM FIGHT FOR THE PRETTY GIRL AGAIN FOR THE FOURTH TIME

25- Kitty Wilde- lesbian

-“what would Quinn Fabray do?” She would be a lesbian

-she dated Jake, Artie and had a crush on Ryder yet she had absolutely 0 chemistry with all of them

-Marley on the other hand…

26- Roderick Meeks- aroace

- I find it interesting how him (and Madison) are the only ones that never showed interest in another person

- really wish assexuality was discussed more back in the 2010’s

- he should’ve been one of the characters introduced in season 4 and I would die on that hill

27- Jane Hayward- unlabeled

- probably thinks labels are stupid and shouldn’t exist because it’s misogynistic or offensive or sm

- idk I really dislike her I feel she would say something annoying like this

28- Mason McCarthy- bisexual

- yeah you’re not straight

- he’s also a really boring character for me so I have nothing to add💀

29- Madison McCarthy- aromantic and lesbian

- now THATS a feral lesbian

- her and Jane as girlfriends tho?

- aromantic part is bc I feel she’s the type of aro who’s disgusted by love

-still likes touching boobs tho

30- Spencer Porter- gay

-canon

- interesting storyline for the first seasons

- although it’s kind off like Dave’s storyline

There’s a limit of ten pictures per post but I really don’t want to make a fourth post just for the students so…

31- Alistair- gay and genderfluid

- Billies brother wow

- this is just based on vibes cause I have no idea if he ever spoke on glee

32- Myron Muskovitz- trans and lesbian

- Josie Totah it’s trans so I feel her character should also be

- maybe figured out when she was about 16?

- so by dreams come true she would already be in her transition🥹

33- Skylar- polysexual

- who? Oh yeah the Blaine of season 6

- again based on vibes

- he’s also a really good singer go listen to the album version of take me to church

34- Super Gay Warbler- indeed gay

- behold the oracle has spoken the truth

- also a good singer go listen to the album version of rise

35- Sunshine Corazon- trans and pansexual

- same with Myron, since the actor is trans I feel like his character should also be

- just imagine after all those years Sunshine returning on season 6 for his transition

- what would be his name tho? Moonlight? *old people laugh plays on the background lmao lol haha*

That’s it for the main kids, prolly won’t do a fourth post for the adults because I don’t really care about them but only time will tell

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galateacakes · 3 months ago

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Explaining IDV characters' lore bc I'm bored (Part 7)

"Destiny is often determined in a split second. The key lies in whether one has the courage to face it head-on."

𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗸𝗼 (The Geisha)

▪︎ Michiko was born and raised at Eversleeping Town. At a tender age, she trained and became a geisha.

▪︎ She was known as "Red Butterfly" because of the way she dances in her red kimono; in a way that resembles a red butterfly fluttering its wings.

▪︎ When she was performing at a banquet, she met Miles Donald, a foreign army officer who was admiring her afar.

▪︎ The two fell in love and married on February 18, then sailed to Miles' hometown afterward.

▪︎ Unfortunately, his family did not approve of their marrige— prominently her father-in-law, but that didn't change Miles' love for Michiko.

▪︎ One day, Miles was ordered by his superiority to a six-month business trip to India, thus he had to leave home.

▪︎ Using this to his advantage, his father decided to dispose of Michiko and "mail" her as a package to Eugene Hayward (Margie's uncle).

▪︎ When Miles came back from his trip, his father claimed she had run away with a servant and had stolen some of his family's property.

▪︎ However, Miles did not believe in his father's words and began searching for his wife every day.

▪︎ Miles then recruited the help of his friend, Martha Behamfil, and was able to track down Michiko's location.

▪︎ He arrived at the Manor with plans to meet up with Behamfil, but she never showed up.

▪︎ On the third night, he received a hatpin from a Manor servant.

▪︎ After being offered to take the hatpin and leave or stay, he agreed to participate in the host's 'game' in exchange for news of Michiko's dissaperance.

(I've been wanting to take up Michi's lore since I first started ♡ Her lore is a bit tricky to explain since it's a dual pov, but I hoped I wrote it well ˙˚ʚ(´◡`)ɞ˚˙)

That's all thank you !!

#identity v #id5 #idv #geisha idv #idv michiko #identity v hunter #lore #fyp #tumblr fyp #fypシ #fandom

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ballet-symphonie · 1 year ago

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European/American Dance Companies Asks

As it seems from the website, Francesca Hayward was promoted to a principal in 2016. However, she made her debut as O/O in Swan Lake last season. Why did it took her so long to be given that role?

Listen, not every company is like the Bolshoi, where you just show up and are given O/O willy nilly. I jest, but first of all, there’s simply not always enough shows for every principal to get one and there also not always enough time for countless casts to be rehearsed. Although to be fair, ROH do prep quite a lot of casts. They do SL frequently of course, and while I’m unsure if she had any injuries that caused her to miss out on an earlier seasons’ run, I’m quite confident that her participation in CATS certainly could have delayed it a season or two depending on her schedule and form.

Thoughts on Elisabeth Beyer? I found her incredible... wish to see her dancing in the ROH or the Dutch National or the Staatsballet in Berlin

She’s very exciting and is finally in the main company corps as of this June! Hopefully she’ll start getting more opportunities soon!

Do you have promotion predictions for the Royal Ballet or ABT this year?

ABT: Carols Gonzales and Fangqi Li have the roles to make a push this Met Season. I also think Jake Roxander’s potential is very high but he’s very young but Jaffe is not McKenzie. I would also like to see Zimmi Coker out of the corps. I would be shocked if anyone goes to principal, they could use another guy but I’m not sure they’ve got one ready just yet.

ROH: I think Not promoting Daichi Ikarachi would be crazy, especially after wining the Eric Bruhn Prize. I know there’s a push for a new male principal, either Luca Acri or Joseph Sissons but I think someone has to retire, they just have too many. I am hoping for Annette Buvolli and Mariko Sasaki to be first soloists and I think Sae Maeda and Joonhyuk Jun should be soloists. Yu Hang to first artists as well. ROH is so difficult, there are so many talented people.

Thoughts on Alina Cojocaru?

An angel sent from heaven. She’s never allowed to retire- I don’t make the rules.

Do you know if Madison Penney is in a company? She graduated from Royal Ballet School in 2022, in a seemingly high position, having danced Raymonda in the grad performances. I would find it strange if she wasn’t hired by the royal but there seems to be no indication of a company on her instagram?

Getting into the Royal is no cakewalk, they not only have to compete with the graduates but also the prix prize winners. I thought I remembered her going to BRB? But she’s not on the site. I don’t really keep up with her.

#francesca hayward #ballet #royal opera house #royal ballet #abt #alina cojocaru #ballet ask #ballerina

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valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn · 1 year ago

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I never have to dig very much to find comments like this.

[Also, random side note; wasn't Drax in prison when we first meet him for going on a killing spree after the death of his family? I feel like everyone forgets that.]

He's called Drax the Destroyer for a reason.

Thor may not be a villain to others but he's destroying himself ever since IW. Quill became a ravager and the dude was a thief and a liar, he treated women like crap and was overall a manchild before he met his team (poor thing was taken as a kid, I'm not putting all the blame on him but I'm trying to say he wasn't exactly an angel either). Spidey would have gone full-dark had not been for Tobey and Andrew's Spideys interfering.

The last one is interesting though. Peter losing May is seen as enough justification for his thirst for revenge, to the point where taking the villains from a safe space over to a building in the middle of the city (therefore putting everyone else at risk) is glossed over.

However, when it comes to Wanda losing Vision or her hate towards Hayward for desecrating Vision's corpse, all of a sudden Vision is just a robot and her pain is irrelevant... or we have to read someone claim loss doesn't "justify" her becoming a villain. Yeah, it doesn't. It explains it. It contextualizes it. It tells us why she was hurting.

Just think of the victims of the characters mentioned above. The Jotuns are treated as monsters and the Asgardians' actions are never put into question (TDW was close though). We never hear from the people hurt by Quill or the Ravagers, same with Drax's victims. And we have no idea how many people the villains in NWH killed because it's never addressed. But we know Wanda's, we have names even.

#wanda maximoff #pro wanda maximoff

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ouro-bones · 9 months ago

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Hayward explorer note today 😇

" Am I awake ?

I remember,, fire. I remember a horrible stinging in my entire body. blistering pain.

Sand.. The Desert ? It's so foggy. like.. cotton. or something else ?

Now it's dark. and cold. the desert was never cold. I'm surrounded by metal.

There are two voices. the first is calm.. she sounds friendly. like a familiar friend. the accent. how she talks..? have we... met before ?

The second is cold. Not friendly.. but.. Alluring. It slithers into my ears and around my skull like a swarm of earwigs. I feel as though I shouldn't. but..

He feels even more familiar. Like a friend. maybe more familiar than that. The voice..voices.. promise safety and comfort and family. in exhange for loyalty . Why would I ever say no ?

The first voice. She tells me to ignore it. I suppose I will. for now. until I can survive on my own. Then. I think I will follow. " - Curtis Hayward

#ark survival evolved #oc writing

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imissthembutitwasntadisaster · 2 years ago

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I would love to hear about Emily! Oh, and the ghost dog! There is a ghost dog right?

all I do these days is think about Emily Hayward I'm just. rotating her in my head. She has prophetic dreams. No one believes that she does really except for her little brother. she goes to university and starts losing herself to it. She falls asleep at a table in the library and is woken by a boy in her year and she blurts out some part of his future to him then runs off but then he finds her again and says it came true and asks her to help him solve a mystery in the older parts of the building and she says yes (and later sometimes when he's asleep in a hostel bed and she's beside him because the moonlight is keeping her awake she wonders who she would have become if he hadn't believed her and she doesn't think it would have been good, she thinks she might have destroyed herself because of it all). They graduate and instantly decide to become monster hunters (because the world is getting smaller, you know, and people thought this would mean fewer monster sightings, less and less superstition, but it was real the whole time so there's just more and more but most people still don't believe but it's harder and harder not to). Her parents think she should get a real job so she only ever calls her brother to tell him when she sees his future (usually she can't see the future for people not near her when it doesn't affect her but she always can for him). They get on trains and hide in the bathrooms when the ticket collectors come down so they don't have to pay when they can't. They turn up at people's doors, offer to rid them of monsters, beg them for a place to stay the night. Emily is so lonely all the time but Will believes in her, he believes what she sees and he believes that she can survive it all and maybe that's enough to make a cursed girl uncursed, to take a curse and make it a blessing. and the point is it's TERRIFYING they're 23 and SO scared they don't know what they're doing!!! no one knows anything! they're working off contradictory folklore and legend! no one else seems to be doing this! so they have bits which aren't funny anymore, and names for things that don't need names, they call the monsters beasties because it makes them less scary, they take an unknown routineless world and they fill it with rules and routines and rituals to try to bend it into something liveable.

And Emily, Emily's trying to be professional, she tries to pay attention but her mind's never quite present, she's nosy and curious, she sleeps with an iron knife under her pillow, she's an oracle she's a prophet she fights dragons for a living she doesn't believe in magic. and Emily's always scared of it but also she knows deep inside her that Will saved her life when he met her in the library that day, and so she believes with every part of her that he'll always do it. And she couldn't fight anything alone, but she can because she knows he's there. And she's tired and her dreams are filled with doom and loss, and she has no home to go back to, not really, her home has become tiny hotel rooms and the living room floors of strangers and train rides up and down the country. And her best friend who's the only thing she believes in really. And MAYBE that belief is strong enough to shape the whole narrative! who can say!!!

There IS a ghost dog though it's not a ghost, it's just incorporeal, harder to fight. And unfortunately it's a bringer of doom and a harbinger of death! (just like. just like. like. like an oracle. Like a prophet. Perhaps the narrative foil is the dog). Unfortunately I no longer think the dog will be a friend, but the dog is SUCH an interesting role in the plot and I'm so excited.

#supernatural but british #SO excited to talk about them THANK YOU FOR ASKING I lose my mind about them every day now #ALSO HAYWARD MEANS PROTECTOR OF THE COMMONS BTW #IT MEANS WATCHMAN OR KEEPER

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mariacallous · 10 months ago

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‘I admired the force of his writing, even when I often didn’t support what he wrote, and he was always warm when we met.’ So wrote John Simpson, the veteran BBC foreign affairs correspondent, on news of the death of the campaigning journalist John Pilger on 30 December at the age of 84.

Those who know of Pilger’s work only in recent years and from the obscure far-left websites that published it may struggle to imagine that he was once a big figure in print and broadcast media, when newspapers sold in the millions and there was only terrestrial television with three channels. But he was, and generous sentiments like Simpson’s have abounded in the past few days. Pundits, politicians and others have typically praised Pilger for his journalistic integrity while making clear that they did not necessarily share his politics.

There’s a more sceptical variant of the same message, which I’ve noted especially among people of my generation, born in the 1960s and 1970s, who were impressed by Pilger’s reports when we were young and he was at the height of his fame. It runs like this: though Pilger descended in later years into apologetics for repressive regimes, he was once a principled and vital foe of oppression and human rights abuses, and it is this side of his work that deserves to be remembered.

The dichotomy is unfortunately not raised at all in an obsequious and evasive Guardian obituary by Anthony Hayward, from which you will learn little, but more thoughtful admirers of Pilger are exercised by this question and do pose it. What made Pilger, the famed voice of radical conscience, go from his celebrated series of films on the plight of Cambodia to his defence of Slobodan Milosevic, Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin and his furious denial of their amply documented war crimes?

I immodestly claim to have the answer to this conundrum. There is an essential continuity in Pilger’s work. It’s not, as many believe, that his judgment dramatically deteriorated as he got older: he was always that way, and his reputation has progressively adjusted downwards to match reality. Pilger was not really an investigative journalist at all, for he never did investigations. As a reporter who once worked closely with him explained it to me, Pilger was a polemicist who went out looking for what he wanted to find.

Therein lies the essential transience of Pilger’s life’s work, for while there is much suffering and evil in the international order, a journalist’s first duty, allowing for personal biases and partial information, is to describe the world as it is and not as they might wish it to be. Pilger, by contrast, fabricated his conclusions in order to accord with his premises. This was always his method and I will give examples of this malpractice from his output on two particular issues. The first is his celebrated reporting from Cambodia and the second concerns the wars in the former Yugoslavia, a region he neither knew nor understood.

There is no diplomatic way of saying it but, in his journalism, Pilger was a charlatan and a fraudster. And I use those terms in the strict sense that he said things he knew to be untrue, and withheld things he knew to be true and material, and did it for decades, for ideological reasons. If you know where to look, you’ll uncover his inspiration.

In 1983, the newly established Channel 4 broadcast a series of interviews by Pilger with people who, in his words, ‘have challenged orthodox ideas that lead us in the same direction’; additionally, ‘he or she must have demonstrated the courage of his or her convictions’.

The series was titled The Outsiders. Some of the interviewees were genuinely courageous or at least of real historical weight and importance. They included Salman Rushdie, Jessica Mitford and the redoubtable anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman. And there was also an interviewee called Wilfred Burchett.

Few people now have heard of Burchett but he was not like these others. He was, by his own lights, a pioneering radical Australian journalist, though he travelled on a British passport. In Pilger’s words, Burchett was ‘the only Western journalist to consistently report events from the other side in the Korean War and the Cold War, and from China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam’.

That’s quite some euphemism. Burchett didn’t merely report from the other side: he literally repeated their propaganda and pretended it was news. He notoriously claimed the US was conducting biological warfare in the Korean War. He never presented a shred of evidence for this incendiary allegation, because it wasn’t true. For these efforts he was secretly awarded the (North) Korean Order of the National Flag. Not even the radical American journalist I.F. Stone, later exposed as having been a Soviet spy from 1936 to 1938, believed the germ warfare allegations and he publicly rejected them. It was later proved, from documents uncovered in Moscow in 1998, that the whole story had been a propaganda ruse concocted by the Chinese Communists.

I am not, of course, suggesting Pilger was ever an agent of a foreign power. I’m pointing to the model of his journalistic mentor, who lied to his dying day in order to serve what he believed to be the greater cause. And that is what, as I shall discuss presently, I charge Pilger with having done too.

If I’m right (and I am) that Pilger operated with a combination of evasion, misdirection and fakery for decades, it is explicable though inexcusable. This was, after all, easier than the arduous and unglamorous tasks of fact-finding and fact-checking, for which Pilger was temperamentally unsuited. His obituary (unsigned, as is the custom) in The Times, a more balanced and reliable treatment than the Guardian’s, offers pointers.

Pilger was a man of such natural credulousness that he never thought to check his own story when, investigating child slavery in Thailand in 1982, he ‘bought’ a girl and returned her to her family. It was a hoax. The girl had been prevailed upon to act the part by a Thai fixer who knew Pilger wanted to ‘buy’ a slave. When the Far Eastern Economic Review pointed out Pilger’s error, he responded characteristically with wild and irrelevant invective, accusing the journalist concerned of having CIA connections. Auberon Waugh then additionally pointed out in the Spectator the sheer improbability of this account, whereupon Pilger responded with bluster and libel writs. The case was settled out of court, with no payment made by the magazine.

The fiasco was due in part to Pilger’s vanity, which took the form, among other things, of extreme sensitivity to any perceived slight, consistent rudeness to those he counted as ‘the little people’, and a hair-trigger litigiousness. He was the only journalist I’ve come across who habitually wrote angry letters for publication in response to criticism of his articles by readers. This is in my view an improper practice even supposing the writer has a genuine point, which Pilger rarely did. The letters page of a periodical should be for readers, as writers already have all the other pages.

Pilger’s vulnerability was compounded by the weakness of his technical grasp of almost any given subject. Sooner or later in public debate, and it was generally sooner, he’d flounder. Fortunately for him it was rare that any top-notch scholar considered his work but this was a danger he continually ran.

In his book The Price of Peace: Living with the Nuclear Dilemma (1986), Lawrence Freedman, one such academic heavyweight, noted ‘a tendentious television documentary which had sought to demonstrate how mendacious governments were in handling nuclear issues but which was in fact riddled with errors of its own’. Freedman was too tactful to name this documentary, but it was Pilger’s film The Truth Game (1983).

The gravamen of the film is as Freedman states it. Pilger purports to offer a critique of ‘nuclear propaganda’ but his errors of fact are legion. Freedman, with William Shawcross, itemised numerous of these fallacious claims for the magazine New Society (since subsumed in the New Statesman), to which Pilger replied, and it’s worth digging out the exchange. It’s not online but it should be available in a good university library (you can find it at Senate House in London). Pilger plaintively thanks the many people who, on reading Freedman and Shawcross’s critique, sent him sources and information with which to counter it. The notion that he might have investigated sources and checked his claims before making the film rather than after had apparently not occurred to him.

The general thesis of the film is extremely weak. Pilger argues that ‘by using reassuring, even soothing, language – language which allowed the politicians and us to distance ourselves from the horror of nuclear war – this new type of propaganda created acceptable images of war and the illusion that we could live securely with nuclear weapons.’ His sources include Wilfred Burchett, whose very trade was deceit and treachery on behalf of the Communist bloc. And the evidence is overwhelming that, so far from seeking to diminish the threat of nuclear war, western policymakers were anxious to stress that the bomb had changed everything.

In the much-quoted words of the American military strategist Bernard Brodie in The Absolute Weapon (1946), ‘thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.’ And in an extraordinarily prescient memorandum titled ‘The Atomic Bomb’ in August 1945, shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the new prime minister Clement Attlee wrote: ‘While steps must be taken to prevent the development of this weapon in any country, this will be futile unless the whole conception of war is banished from people’s minds and from the calculations of governments.’

The theme of official deceit was an abiding theme of Pilger’s work and he fancied himself a penetrating debunker of evasive language. Hence in the New Statesman on 9 May 2013 he congratulated himself on the thoroughness of his early journalistic training: ‘A style developed by a highly literate editor, Brian Penton, who had published poetry in the Telegraph, instilled a respect for English grammar and the value of informed simplicity. Words like ‘during’ were banned; ‘in’ was quite enough. The passive voice was considered lazy and banned, along with most clichés and adjectives…’

As you will surely already have perceived, Pilger in this brief passage roundly condemns the passive voice while using three passive clauses himself. Indeed, ‘the passive voice was considered lazy and banned’ is itself an agentless passive of the type almost universally (though in my view misguidedly) condemned by style guides. Were it not for the fact, noted by the Times obituarist, that Pilger was famously humourless, you’d have to wonder if he was being ironic here. The more plausible explanation is that, while he talked a lot about the power of language, he didn’t know much about it, and he didn’t know what he didn’t know.

That sort of arrogance has its inadvertently comic side, but it could also be ugly. Pilger prided himself on his courage in rejecting what he derided as ‘identity politics’ but in truth he lacked even an elementary sensitivity to issues of ethnicity and gender. Employing a startlingly demeaning racial epithet, he lambasted Barack Obama in 2008 as ‘a glossy Uncle Tom’, and in 2013 lamented that ‘the problem with media-run “conversations” on gender is not merely [sic!] the almost total absence of male participants, but the suppression of class’. He considered Hillary Clinton a more dangerous presidential prospect in 2016 than Donald Trump.

Pilger’s politics can fairly be described as anti-American, in that he reflexively saw the United States as a malevolent actor in any conceivable situation. That idée fixe in turn drove him to the conviction that any regime opposed by the US was automatically innocent or even benign. Interviewed on the state-propaganda outlet Russia Today in 2018, he declared the Putin regime’s attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury a ‘carefully constructed drama in which the media plays a role’. He said in December 2021, as if Ukrainians lacked any capacity to speak and act for themselves and were merely puppets of Washington: ‘It was the US that overthrew the elected govt in Ukraine in 2014 allowing Nato to march right up to Russia’s western border.’

The apotheosis of this approach was an article in 2016 in which Pilger claimed: ‘The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.’

There was, I need hardly say, no truth whatever in this preposterous fabrication. With all too familiar legerdemain and gullibility, Pilger had alighted on an article on the Russia Today website and, without stating this was his source, plagiarised it. In my view this episode marks, in its combination of idleness and indecency, the nadir of Pilger’s career, and it was a very low and shady point indeed.

This is not the place to set out the chronology of the Bosnian war but what the mainstream media (including The Guardian, through the exemplary reporting of Ed Vulliamy and Maggie O’Kane) said about it at the time was simply the truth. The war was not a cover for American power: it was a campaign of genocidal aggression conducted by Bosnian Serb forces covertly orchestrated from Belgrade, and in which Nato intervened against their positions far too late. It was also, as I have described here, a terrible augury of the barbarous assault that another European autocrat, Vladimir Putin, would direct against Ukraine 30 years afterwards.

What, then, of the earlier body of Pilger’s work, before his alleged journalistic and ethical deterioration? In the nature of things, it was not always wrong, but it was always reductive. His condemnation of Australian recognition of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, in print and in his 1994 film Death of a Nation, was entirely correct. But to be right on a discrete issue was never enough for him. He would have to construct some overarching explanation (or, less politely, a conspiracy theory) in which to embed it. He hence charged that Australia was administering a ‘hidden empire’ that ‘stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the South Pacific’. You’d be hard put to find any such coherence in Australian foreign policy, which has often been made on the hoof and at the mercy of events.

When East Timor eventually achieved its independence, it did so to the fury of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. It was, in their eyes, an affront, for East Timor (whose population is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic) was properly a ‘part of the Islamic world’ and belonged to Indonesia. This complaint was explicitly cited by bin Laden in justifying al-Qaeda’s bombing of the Indonesian tourist resort of Bali in October 2002, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians.

Pilger was usually quick to blame western foreign policy for provoking terrorism – he referred to the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005 as ‘Blair’s bombs’ – yet here was a case where western nations incurred the wrath of al-Qaeda for unequivocally (if belatedly) doing the right thing. The geopolitical situation was more complex than he had supposed, and than you would imagine from reading his output. He dealt with the disjunction of theory and fact in time-honoured fashion, by never mentioning it.

And then there is the case of Cambodia, the single best-known body of work Pilger did. His first film on the subject, Cambodia: Year Zero (1979) elicited a huge public reaction. (It made a big impression on me as a teenager.) It had two undeniable benefits, though one was more alloyed than the other. First, it raised a lot of money from the public to alleviate the desperate plight of Cambodians after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Second, it dramatically raised public awareness of the issue.

The problem was that public awareness was not necessarily equivalent to public understanding, and Pilger’s work didn’t serve the latter. Pilger’s message in this first film and still more so in its several successors was essentially propaganda on behalf of the Vietnamese puppet regime that had supplanted the Khmer Rouge and that was itself guilty of extensive human rights abuses. It was misleading and dishonest, and it involved defaming decent people trying to do their best for a ravaged nation.

Let me first give a bit of background. Pilger is often thought (and he did nothing to dissuade people from believing it) to have been responsible for exposing the sufferings of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. He wasn’t. Journalists who broke this story, whose horrors were almost impossible to conceive of, as early as the summer of 1975 included Tony Paul of Reader’s Digest, Bruce Palling and Elizabeth Becker of the Washington Post, and Henry Kamm (no relation to this author) of the New York Times. They were the first writers to publicise refugee accounts, yet – for their pains – their reports were rubbished by some on the radical left as media distortions.

Noam Chomsky, the famed theoretical linguist, and his coauthor Edward Herman, a grotesque fabulist who went on to deny the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, wrote an infamous article in 1977 in which they complained that American newspapers were presenting a ‘seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial US role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered’.

But the refugee accounts of Khmer Rouge atrocities, under which about 1.7 million out of a total Cambodian population of 8 million perished, were in all essentials accurate. Western journalists, in impossibly difficult conditions, had alerted the world to depravities that almost defied the imagination. Pilger was late to the story. This was due not to oversight on his part but to politics. He was a cheerleader for Vietnam, which had only just turned against the Khmer Rouge and invaded Cambodia.

Pilger’s consistent theme was that western governments and the United Nations were giving tacit support, including military aid, to the Khmer Rouge in order to undermine the Vietnamese-backed regime in Phnom Penh. And to muddy the truth that the Khmer Rouge had itself been supported by radical left-wing pundits in the west, and that its leaders were all former members of the French Communist Party, he slyly and repeatedly compared the movement to the Nazis.

In, especially, his second film in this series, Cambodia Year One (1980), and thereafter Pilger developed the theme that the west was denying development aid to Cambodia while providing assistance to the resurgent Khmer Rouge. These were shocking fabrications with direct and baneful humanitarian consequences. The truth was that Vietnam was deliberately preventing food aid from reaching the starving people of Cambodia: it was using international aid as a political tool, choosing who would be fed and who would not. UN agencies and NGOs told Pilger this, so he accused them of lying.

The aid agencies were correct and Pilger was the one telling untruths, which he never retracted. In fact the regime in Phnom Penh along with the occupying Vietnamese forces required every UN agency or NGO operating in Cambodia to pledge not to provide aid to starving Cambodians languishing at the border with Thailand. A real campaigning journalist would have exposed this scandal and inhumanity, but it was not Pilger’s cause. His documentary Cambodia: The Betrayal (1990), in which he alleged that SAS members had trained the Khmer Rouge, provoked a libel writ that Central Television settled at substantial cost.

Pilger went on to engage in reckless and extravagant fakery in the case of Kosovo, a province (and since 2008 an independent country) that he showed no sign of having visited. Nato forces engaged in a military campaign, beginning in March 1999, to stop the Milosevic regime in Belgrade from assaulting the Albanian population of Kosovo. It was a desperate last resort when diplomacy had failed. Though Pilger later depicted it as the forerunner of the Iraq war, the cases were nothing like each other.

The campaign against Milosevic was fought not for regime change or even for the independence of Kosovo but for the single and specific reason of protecting a Muslim population from genocide. It was the right thing to do. Milosevic’s forces had already expelled some 300,000 Kosovans from their homes, killed almost 2,000 and destroyed dozens of villages. And they threatened to do much worse. After 78 days, and nearly 40,000 combat sorties, Nato forced Milosevic to back down.

This limited, just and necessary campaign was described by Pilger in apocalyptic terms (‘the truth is that the US and Britain are engaged in a form of nuclear warfare in the Balkans,’ he wrote in The Guardian on 4 May 1999) that had absolutely no purchase on reality. But the reason I cite it in this context is that it elicited a series of demonstrable falsehoods by Pilger, all crafted to convey the message that western governments were lying about the threat to Kosovo and the numbers of Milosevic’s victims. He later wrote: ‘There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime.’

In the wake of the war itself, Pilger wrote in the New Statesman in November 1999: ‘The numbers of dead so far confirmed suggest that the Nato bombing provoked a wave of random brutality, murders and expulsions, a far cry from systematic extermination: genocide.’ He was rubbishing the entirely accurate charge that Serb forces had engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing. And to make his point, he alleged that western politicians had wildly exaggerated the numbers of Serb victims. Hence, wrote Pilger: ‘Figures were supplied. The US defence secretary, William Cohen, said: “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing . . . They may have been murdered.”’

But Pilger deliberately elided the context from this remark. This was an interview that Cohen gave on CBS television, and he was not suggesting that the Serbs might have murdered 100,000 military-age men. As Michael Ignatieff correctly pointed out in The New York Times in November 1999: ‘In Mr. Cohen’s appearance on Face the Nation, his statements were actually much more complicated. While he said that 100,000 were missing, he also clearly stated that his reports showed that 4,600 Kosovars had been executed, a claim that has been confirmed by the forensic trail of evidence uncovered by war crimes investigators since June.’

Ever after, Pilger claimed that the Nato allies had deliberately and vastly exaggerated the number of victims in Kosovo at the hands of Milosevic’s forces. It was completely untrue. He amplified his fakery by claiming that, during the Kosovo campaign, ‘David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as ‘225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59’ may have been murdered’. Again, Pilger was lying. What Scheffer actually said, and Pilger trusted that his readers wouldn’t check, was that these men were unaccounted for – a very different thing.

Then and thereafter, Pilger always referred to a final body count of 2,788 victims of the Kosovo war, to reinforce his message that Nato had maligned the Serbs with false claims of mass violence. Again, he was lying by misdirection. The accepted number of those who were killed or went missing during the war is a little over 13,500. These included just under 1,800 Serb civilians, as well as more than 8,600 Kosovan Albanians.

Thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, more would have perished under Milosevic’s orders had Nato not intervened. Pilger adopted the bizarrely literalistic view that someone could only be counted as dead if their body had physically been found. That is not the reality of war. In particular – as my family, friends and colleagues who reported Milosevic’s depravities observed directly – it was the aim of Serb forces to bury and hide their victims’ body parts far from any theatre of war, trusting these would never be found.

And here is the final weirdness of Pilger’s coverage of the Kosovo war. He not only lied about the statements of Nato governments and denied the atrocities of Milosevic’s regime, but also sought to spread flagrant disinformation about the war itself. Writing in The Guardian on 18 May 1999, some three weeks before Milosevic capitulated, Pilger dramatically claimed: ‘Nato is suffering significant losses. Reliable alternative sources in Washington have counted up to 38 aircraft crashed or shot down, and an undisclosed number of American and British special forces killed. This is suppressed, of course.’

Pilger gave no indication of who these ‘reliable sources’ were, but they were anything but reliable. The aircraft that Nato lost in the entire campaign amounted to exactly two, an F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft and an F-16 fighter jet, and there were no allied fatalities.

This was before the digital age, and I did not take up the trade of journalism myself till several years later, but I did try to identify where Pilger was getting this stuff from. I never managed to track it down. I’m familiar with the small circles of pro-Serb lobbyists but every inquiry came up a blank. I wrote to Pilger, via The Guardian, asking for his sources but I neither expected nor got any reply. It’s conceivable that someone, knowing Pilger’s record of swallowing tall stories and never checking them, fed him these whopping falsehoods in order to see if he’d put them in the public domain. But I have no direct evidence that any such third party existed.

The dispiriting but economical explanation is hence that Pilger himself invented the tale of extensive Nato losses which were being suppressed by the state and the news media, because he wished to stimulate popular opposition to government policy. He was spectacularly lying for the cause, which in this case was to assist a genocidal regime in its campaign of brutal repression.

I am sorry for Pilger’s family that he is now dead but sympathy does not necessitate sentimentality. Pilger’s career, at least till his more recent brutish outbursts, was replete with glamour and awards but it was in the service of deceit, and it exemplified indifference to human suffering and disregard for human rights.

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byneddiedingo · 11 months ago

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Louis Hayward and Joan Leslie in Repeat Performance (Alfred L. Werker, 1947)

Cast: Joan Leslie, Louis Hayward, Virginia Field, Tom Conway, Richard Basehart, Natalie Schafer, Benay Venuta, Ilka Grüning. Screenplay: Walter Bullock, based on a novel by William O'Farrell. Cinematography: L. William O'Connell. Art direction: Edward C. Jewell. Film editing: Lewis Sackin. Music: George Antheil.

When Repeat Performance ended, I thought, "That was different. I wish it were better." The premise is a good one: the time loop, usually the stuff of sci-fi movies and seldom of noirish melodramas. And who hasn't wished to live a year (or day or week or month) over, knowing what you know now. That happens to Broadway star Sheila Page (Joan Leslie), who shoots her husband, a blocked playwright and alcoholic philanderer named Barney Page (Louis Hayward) just before midnight on New Year's Eve in 1946. She flees into the night, wishing that she had the year that had led up to the shooting to live over again, sure that she could prevent what had just happened. Well, sure enough she can. As New Year's Day arrives, she discovers that it's not 1947 but January 1, 1946 again. And that she's not wearing the nightgown that she threw a coat over when she ran from the apartment, but instead the new party dress she bought for New Year's. Of course, she can't convince anyone else what has happened, though she does manage to interest her Gay Best Friend, the poet William Williams (Richard Basehart), with her story that he's going to meet a woman, Eloise Shaw (Natalie Schafer), who will have him committed to a mental institution. She also knows that in the first 1946 she and Barney went to London where they met a playwright, Paula Costello (Virginia Field), who wrote the play she starred in but also started an affair with Barney. So can the past be course-corrected? Would there be a movie if it could be? What Repeat Performance needs is a somewhat better script and much better actors. Leslie doesn't make Sheila into a credible figure: She's too much the suffering wife and not enough the resourceful woman who rose to the top on Broadway. And Hayward gabbles some of the soap operatic dialogue and never shows us what Sheila saw in Barney in the first place. The best performance in the movie is Basehart, who handles the coded role of the gay man well enough to let the audience glimpse his secret life. To its credit, the screenplay handles the coding well, too, although we never find out why he was committed to the asylum: Something happened in a toy store, it seems, so maybe we're supposed to infer that William was a pedophile rather than gay. (Although in 1946, the two were often regarded as synonymous.) But despite these flaws, Repeat Performance is a watchable, if frustrating, movie.

#Repeat Performance #Alfred L. Werker #Louis Hayward #Joan Leslie

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husheduphistory · 2 years ago

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Unknown and Carved in Stone: The Murky Mystery of the Moon-Eyed People

History and folklore live in the same neighborhood. They are spoken, documented, passed down, and sometimes they cross paths and give each other a knowing nod, the weight of which only they fully understand. Fort Mountain State Park in Chatsworth, Georgia is one of those places where history and folklore meet. The story is a strange one and it covers a lot of miles, stretching from Alabama all the way up to Delaware. But in Murphy, North Carolina the words are allegedly given a shape. Enclosed in a case inside the Cherokee County Historical Museum they rest, standing upright, with their eyes gazing out and inviting visitors to stare back just as intently. They look unlike any other ancient form of art found in the Southeast and their story is just as unusual as their appearance. They are an alleged stone representation of the ancient Appalachian Moon-Eyed People.

The Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Image via Wikipedia Commons.

The Cherokee people have a vibrant culture that is filled with deeply cherished myths, legends, and histories of their people and their ancestral home in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. According to the Cherokee, the Smokey Mountains were formed by a giant buzzard after the giant flood. The exhausted bird fell to the earth and the mountains erupted up from where the massive wings impacted the ground. In the years since the creation of the mountains the Cherokee interacted with many spirits, many creatures, and according to their oral tradition, a civilizations of people that was there before them with extremely pale white skin, fine hair, and eyes that were so sensitive to the sun that they spent the daylight hours living underground.

The first written account of these people comes from European botanist Benjamin Smith Burton (sometimes written as Barton) who wrote in 1797 that he learned about these people from the firsthand account of Colonel Leonard Marbury, an intermediary between the American government and the Cherokee tribe. Burton writes:

“…the Cheerake tell us, that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain 'moon-eyed-people,'who could not see in the day-time.”

The Cherokee people had a strong belief in things most people today would consider supernatural, but in their stories of the Moon-Eyed People they were never referred to as something otherworldly. They were considered and spoken about as another culture of human beings, ones that were living in Appalachia before the Cherokee arrived. John Haywood was one of America’s earliest historians and he collected the stories that were passed down through generations of the Cherokee people. Among the stories he documented, some were similar to accounts reported by Burton, that the Cherokee arrived at the mountains and along the Tennessee River they encountered “white people” and fortifications that contained “hoes, axes, guns, and other metallic utensils.” Then there were the fortifications themselves, made of precisely arranged stone, and stretching all the way from the Tennessee River down to the Chickamauga Creek. Were these fortifications created for protection from nature or people?

The Cherokee stories do not mention finding any other civilizations of people along their travels and when these two groups met, they clashed. The text from Burton states “These wretches they expelled” and in his 1823 book Natural And Aboriginal History of Tennessee Haywood writes of “white people, who were extirpated in part, and in part were driven from Kentucky, and probably also from West Tennessee.” Writer James Mooney was familiar with the works of Burton and Hayward as well as the Cherokee oral traditions having collected stories from two Cherokee elders who told that when they first came to the region they encountered people who were “very small and perfectly white” that were then driven from the area and fled west. The story continues that the conflict took both groups of people to Big Chickamauga where an agreement was made that these “very small and perfectly white” people were not permitted back to their land and fortifications, but they were permitted to flee in peace.

The fortifications of Fort Mountain as they appear in modern day. Image via Wikimedia Commons user Thomsonmg2000.

Descriptions of the “Moon-Eyed People” continue to appear in multiple accounts collected from the Cherokee with slight variations. Some describe them as being extremely small, others say they could only see during certain phases of the moon and that they lived underground, another version describes them as tall with light-colored hair and speaking a strange language. While many historians question if these people even existed, those who believe they did have another question to answer. Who were these people? Where did they come from? A popular theory says that that answer can be found by tracing a line that stretches from Georgia across the Atlantic Ocean to Wales.

When the governor of Tennessee John Sevier visited Fort Mountain, Georgia in 1782 he met with the Cherokee’s Chief Ocotosota. At the time of their meeting Chief Ocotosota was ninety years old and when discussing the large stone fortifications standing at Fort Mountain he told the governor that his forefathers "told of the fort being built by white men from across the great water." The accounts from Chief Ocotosota were enough to convince Sevier. There was another story that claimed to tell the origin of those in the Appalachia before the Cherokee and based on the accounts of Chief Ocotosota he believed the tale to be the truth. According to this version of events the mysterious Moon-Eyed People were the descendants of a Welsh prince.

Oconostota, Cherokee chief from a painting entitled "The Great Warrior, Chief Oconostota-Cunne Shote" by Francis Parsons, 1762. Image and caption credit: Tennessee State Library and Archives

The story of Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd is intriguing, but also murky. The story tells of the prince and his brother Riryd fleeing violence in his homeland and landing in North America in approximately 1170, over 300 years before the voyage of Columbus. Allegedly, they landed in what is now Mobile Bay, Alabama and made their way up the Alabama River and into the mainland where they decided to make their new home. Riryd stayed behind while Madoc returned to Wales where he amassed a fleet of ten ships filled with Welsh people who sailed away from their home and were never heard from again. When speaking about the fortifications with Chief Ocotosota, Governor Sevier was told these stone fortresses were built by those Welsh immigrants and they were all that remained of them after the Cherokee took control of the land.

There was a reason that Governor Sevier was familiar with the story of Prince Madoc and the theory of the Welsh in Appalachia, and that is because Chief Ocotosota was not the only person to speak about these early and mysterious fair-skinned inhabitants. In 1608 a crew member sailing under Captain Christopher Newport wrote a letter describing their interactions with a group of people who spoke a language that was so like his native Welsh that he served as an interpreter between the crew and tribe. Also noted was how different the customs and appearances were of these people compared to other Native Americans. Years later in 1699 the Reverend Morgan Jones reported that while he was traveling through the Carolinas he encountered and spent several months with a tribe called the Doeg who spoke and understood a variation of Welsh. Tennessee governor John Sevier took the “proof” far beyond spoken language and claimed that in 1799 a discovery was made far inland of six skeletons buried in brass armor containing the Welsh coat of arms. This claim was referenced years later by author and historian Thomas Hinde who wrote in an 1824 letter that six skeletons had “been dug up near Jeffersonville, Indiana, on the Ohio River with breastplates that contained Welsh coats-of-arms.” In another part of the country, closer to present-day North Dakota than the mountains of Appalachia, it was reported that instead of canoes the Mandan people used an ancient type of boat that originated in Wales called coracles.

The claim of a prince fleeing Wales, arriving in Alabama, and ushering in generations of Native Americans with Welsh backgrounds persisted but there was also evidence to disprove this theory. Welsh explorer John Evans spent the winter of 1796-97 living with the Mandan people who allegedly spoke Welsh and followed customs passed down through the generations after the Welsh arrived in Alabama. But, in July of 1797 he wrote to Dr. Samuel Jones “Thus having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians.” The argument for or against the existence of Native Americans with Welsh roots had far reaching repercussions. During territorial struggles this idea of Welsh inhabitants in the new world was proposed as a reason that England should have claim to it instead of Spain.

The problem that England had with this claim is the same problem faced today in that proving Prince Madoc arrived in Alabama all those years ago and began a Welsh settlement is a very difficult task. There is a large amount of spoken word and secondhand accounts, but the whereabouts of the skeletons encased in Welsh armor is unknown and the coracles of the Mandan people have disappeared. Tragically, the waves of disease that swept through the land with the arrival of the Europeans took a countless number of accounts with them. In 1837 alone the Mandan people were almost completely wiped out by smallpox brought in by traders.

If the theory of Welsh travelers arriving in North America and living in the Appalachian mountains before the Cherokee is false, than who were these “very small and perfectly white” people with fair hair that could not see in sunlight that were spoken of by so many different people? Another theory is that these people were not new to the land, that they were actually Native Americans with albinism. Albinism appeared among the Hopi people of the Southwest and can be seen in photographs from the 1800s showing children with light skin and hair.

Image of a Hopi child with albinism.

Image originally via The Huntington Library Museum and Botanical Gardens. Hopi Indians, Arizona. Albino in center. Hopi girls, Oraibi, Arizona. There are many Albinos among the Hopi Indians, photCL 312 (172), The Frederick Monsen Ethnographic Indian Photographs, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Although the Hopi lived in an entirely different region than the people spoken about by the Cherokee, some believe that the mysterious Moon-Eyed People may have been another community of people that also lived with albinism at that time. In 1699 Welsh explorer Lionel Wafer wrote about his experience with a tribe of people living in Panama:

“There is one Complexion so singular, among a sort of People in this Country, I never saw nor heard of any like them in any part of the World. [...] They are White, and there are of them of both Sexes; They differ from the other Indians chiefly in respect of Colour, tho' not in that only. Their Skins are not of such a White as those of fair People among Europeans, [...] but 'tis rather a Milk-white, lighter than the Colour of any Europeans, and much like that of a white Horse. For there is this further remarkable in them, that their Bodies are beset all over, more or less, with a fine short Milk-white Down, which adds to the whiteness of their Skins. The Men would probably have white Bristles for Beards, did they not prevent them by their Custom of plucking the young Beard up by the Roots continually. Their Eye-brows are Milk-white also, and so is the Hair of their Heads, and very fine withal, about the length of six or eight inches, and inclining to a Curl. And what is yet more strange, their Eye-lids bend and open in an oblong Figure, pointing downward at the Corners, and forming an Arch or Figure of a Crescent with the Points downwards. From hence, and from seeing so clear as they do in a Moon-shiny night, we us'd to call them Moon-ey'd. For they see not very well in the Sun, poring in the clearest Day; their Eyes being but weak, and running with Water if the Sun shine towards them; so that in the Day-time they care not to go abroad, unless it be a cloudy dark Day. But notwithstanding their being thus sluggish and dull and restive in the Day-time, yet when Moon-shiny nights come, they are all Life and Activity, running abroad, and into the Woods, skipping about like Wild-Bucks; and running as fast as Moon-light, even in the Gloom and Shade of the Woods, as the other Indians by Day, being as nimble as they, tho' not so strong and lusty. The Copper-colour'd Indians seem not to respect these so much as those of their own Complexion, looking on them as somewhat monstrous.”

Although there may never be solid proof of Prince Madoc’s involvement in the early days of North America there are locations that firmly believe this version of events. At Fort Mountain there are multiple markers that tell the story of the Moon-Eyed People and the arrival of the prince. This is the very place where Chief Ocotosota and Governor John Sevier discussed “the fort being built by white men from across the great water” and it is one of few places that can claim to have a physical remnant of this tale. The forts and wall spoken of by Chief Ocotosota are still standing here, stretching for 855 feet and varying between two and six feet tall at different points. Archaeological estimates state that the wall was constructed between 500 –1500 BCE and those who steadfastly believe the Prince Madoc theory quickly point out that the construction of one of the fortifications located in Alabama resembles those built in Wales during the same timeframe.

Marker in Fort Mountain State Park that tells the legend of the Moon-Eyed People. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Although Fort Mountain claims to have the fortifications left behind by the Moon-Eyed People, the Cherokee County Historical Museum claims to have a representation of the Moon-Eyed People themselves. Standing together inside a glass case are two figures, standing three feet tall and carved from soapstone, with no hair and eyes gazing. In 1838 North Carolina Senator Archibald Murphy began selling off parcels of land in the place that would become the town of Murphy, North Carolina. A man named Felix Ashley bought a piece of land and while digging in 1841 he discovered the incredibly strange statue that now sits inside the museum. The road from dirt to display was not a fast one though, Ashley took the statue home and leaned it up against one of his buildings until it eventually made its way to the museum where it sat in storage up until 2015 when it finally saw the light of day.

The figures of the alleged Moon-Eyed People. Image via Strange Carolinas.

Like so many aspects of the story, the statue of the two figures are said to represent the Moon-Eyed People, but there is no absolute proof of this. And, like the Moon-Eyed People themselves, there are multiple stories circulating about the origin of the statue with theories ranging from it being a simple sculpture of two people to some believing the Moon-Eyed People were extraterrestrials and this statue was carved as a tribute to them. Museum Director Wanda Stalcup acknowledges the theory of the Moon-Eyed People and the statue’s alleged connection, stating “They were a legend of the Cherokee…The Moon-Eyed People were supposed to be people who only came out at night. They were light-skinned and had big blue eyes." However, Stalcup keeps the door open to all ideas, saying simply that everyone is entitled to their opinion because no one knows what they are.

The Moon-Eyed People have been appearing in spoken word accounts and theories for hundreds of years and despite centuries of speculation as to who they are and where they came from they remain a mystery, unable to be proven or disproven. Perhaps they were Native Americans living with albinism. Perhaps they were descendants of a Welsh prince whose legitimacy has disappeared along with the many years since his arrival. Many people and locations stand strongly by their opinion, but over all the years there is one thing we can say for certain about the Moon-Eyed People.

No one knows who or what they are.

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Sources:

David Tibbs. Legends of Fort Mountain The Moon-Eyed People / Prince Madoc of Wales. The Historical Marker Database, 2008. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=11590

The Moon-Eyed People. North Carolina Ghosts. https://northcarolinaghosts.com/mountains/moon-eyed-people/

Exploring the Mysterious North American Moon-Eyed People. Ancient Origins Reconstructing the Story of Humanity’s Past. 2022. https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-americas/moon-eyed-people-0016334

Vicky Verma. Moon-Eyed People From Ancient America With Pale Skin Were Afraid Of Daylight, Why? Journal News Online. 2022. https://journalnews.com.ph/moon-eyed-people-from-ancient-america-with-pale-skin-were-afraid-of-daylight-why/

Beth Lawrence. Appalachia’s Lost Colony The mystery of the Moon Eyed settlers. The Sylva Herald and Ruralite. 2020. http://www.thesylvaherald.com/news/article_63be7a46-193a-11eb-bcb1-9b6452791b80.html

Ben Johnson. The discovery of America… by a Welsh Prince? Historic UK. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/The-discovery-of-America-by-Welsh-Prince/

The Moon-Eyed People. Roadside America. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/51476

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