#because she deserves it and nobody else is gonna do it

[starbuck]

i have so much love in my heart it’s unreal

[sexynetra]

Ohhhh I'm curious about number 14 and rawnsyf

14. Is there anything I want the readers to learn from reading this fic?

Hmmmmm uhhhhh if you have a hot gay roommate, don’t terrorize her? Accept my Marcia is a brat gospel? Hopefully patience with this god damn slow burn and how long I take between updates 😅

Mostly the bratty Marcia gospel though. And that Anetra should always be written with red hair and the nickname Neech <3

[rockandromancee]

hm-hmm-hm

[myfandomrealitea]

I know there's a lot of advice for handling things like depression and its so fucking easy for people to say "just do this and you'll feel better!" and I hate that, I fucking despise it, but I'm also gonna throw in my two cents about what is personally helping me get out of bed some days and genuinely, not kill myself.

Its taking care of nature.

Seriously. It sounds stupid and some days it feels stupid, but I put up bird feeders because I live in a semi-rural area where human activity is decimating the local bird population and options for safe feeding. So I put up bird feeders. And now I have like 83 different birds flocking to my garden on the daily and screaming at my window if the feeders are empty. And I've seen generations of baby birds brought to my garden by their parents because this is where the food is.

And I researched what plants and flowers were native to my area and I spent like $5 on a few different seed packets and sprinkled them around the grass and the sad empty flowerbeds and the lawn because the bees have nothing to eat and that's awful and it turns out wildflowers will fucking GROW the moment you look away, but now every spring and summer my lawn is a pretty little multi-colored bug haven.

And I've even gotten the chance to save a few little bug lives because of it. I've taken in cold-shocked bees and given them a warm little tupperware to recover in. I've fed bugs sugar water to get their energy back to take their food home. I've given dying bugs a sheltered, safe place to spend their last moments.

I planted a veggie garden. And I know I'm very lucky in that I have the space to do that, but also, you can grow a lot of things indoors. My friend has literally the smallest apartment you can imagine but she grows chives in her bathroom and grows five radishes at a time in a pot in the kitchen. Literally five. But it makes her so happy every single time she pulls them up or trots off to the bathroom to snip some chives.

I pick trash up every two weeks. The pick stick was like $4 online and I just put the bag out with my bi-weekly trash pick-up and its disgusting but but nobody else is gonna do it and I've only got finite time on this earth. If nobody else is going to pick up that can, I will. Because some innocent wild animal doesn't deserve to get hurt by human ignorance, and I deserve to walk home and see pretty flourishing nature instead of depressing discarded trash like I feel like most days.

I've left water out for the wildlife and watched hedgehogs, local dogs on their walks, squirrels and all sorts stop by to take a drink, because humans are fucking selfish and we're making something as basic as water so hard to access for anyone but ourselves, but I can fix a little bit of that just by putting out a bowl. Sometimes I don't even have to remember to fill it because the rain will fill it for me, and its kind of like nature's way of saying "you're helping me so I'm going to help you out too." Which is neat.

Like most days I do not want to be living on this earth but my god earth did not get a choice about us living here, and we're ruining it, and it actually feels so good to help stop and un-do a little bit of that destruction.

And you don't even have to try everything I do. If the only thing you've got the spoons to do is buy one bird feeder and you only remember to fill it once a month, its still something. That once a month could mean the difference between starvation and a full belly to a bird.

Again, none of this is obligatory and I'm not saying at all this is some magical cure for depression, but personally these things are things which are helping me slowly find things to keep getting out of bed for and things to feel a sense of self worth and satisfaction over. I feel better both in and about myself when I feed the birds, when I see the bugs in the garden, when I pick up the trash.

If its something you haven't considered yet, it might be worth a try.

[httpsserene]

can you do a smau if you want where the reader is a driver and makes music on the side (music like sza or Megan thee stallion and kaliii) and she makes a music video for area codes and all her other music and it has the drivers in it

���𝐢𝐫����𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 (𝐟𝟏) - 𝐲𝐧. 𝟎

summary: you make hit songs when you’re not driving a formula one car. your fellow drivers love to feature in your music videos. content warning: driver!reader makes music. toxic internet culture. profanity. hateful comments. attempt at humor. fluffy. light angst ig. there's no specific face claim, just pretty black women! ex-haas driver, current aston martin driver!reader. reader is american. seb retires in 2021, fernando is on the grid just not with aston martin. nikita mazepin mention lol. lando norris and george russell get bullied (humor). light british slander. no plot just vibes. pairing: platonic f1 grid x fem!black!driver!reader genre: smau.

from serene: i have a disease and it's called "being unable to make a normal length smau." it's a sickness, idk if i'll ever be abl to fulfill a request without the plot running away from me. anyways, enjoy loves xxx

⌕ join taglist | requests & feedback | table of contents ↻

yn ln signs multi-year contract with aston martin • espn f1 • 2021 post-season

ESPN F1 yn ln has signed a multi-year contract with Aston Martin! The American driver completes the team’s lineup with Lance Stroll. Even though she was an F4, F3, and GP3 Champion, and she won the F2 Championship on her first try with Prema; her F1 career began with unexpected opportunities and last-minute substitutions—becoming a reserve driver for Haas and filling in for Romain Grosjean after his accident in 2020, and then replacing Nikita Mazepin halfway through the 2021 F1 season—an official seat of her own in Formula One was a long time coming and well deserved. Congratulations to yn ln, the first Black woman to race in Formula One!

instagram • yn0 • 2022 pre-season

liked by astonmartinf1, lewishamilton, maxverstappen, sza, and 3,451,967 others

yn0: i have always believed that being an f1 driver would become my reality. it was a never a dream to me because i KNEW i was going to make it here. i’m incredibly thankful to haas for giving my first chance to race in the big league and i will miss all the incredible people who helped me grow and improve while i was there. however, i am extremely grateful and excited to have a seat of my own at aston martin in 2022 and onward. some critics have called me "conceited" to bet on myself, so i made a song just for them < 3

tagged astonmartinf1

view comments

yn0 on sundays, we wear green 💚

➥ user1 you're an inspiration to all women in motorsport, especially women of color 💚💚💚

➥ user2 praying that your aston is quicker than your haas! prove the haters wrong 😤

astonmartinf1: we'll bet on you every race! can't wait to play this in the garage 💚

haasf1team: take care of our songbird 🥲

➥ haasf1team: and keep the tea and honey STOCKED for her vocal cords

➥ user3: i’m gonna cry :(

user4: yeah who paid for her seat? no way she got it off skill. she's never been above p12. f1 has changed for the worse now that a woman's out there. she's a hazard.

➥ user5: incel mindset 😒

➥ user6: bro she was in a haas. reaching p12 in that car is enough of an achievement. better than mazepin ever did, even with his daddy's money 🤷‍♂️

lewishamilton: LFG 💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽 can't wait to see you in the paddock

➥ yn0: lfgggggg 🤸🏾‍♀️🤸🏾‍♀️🤸🏾‍♀️

➥ yn0: i wouldn't be racing at all if i didn't see you do it first :)

sebastianvettel: prove them all wrong and never apologize for it.

➥ yn0: i learned from the best 🥹 happy retirement, seb!

mickschumacher: "no reason to make friends, i'm cool"??? is that line about somebody else or should i be worried 🤨

➥ maxverstappen: yeah let us know 🙄 your seat on the jet can be revoked

➥ yn0: bros...we all know who it's really about

➥ user8: you can say it's about mazepin nobody will be mad at that 🤗🤗🤗

landonorris: wish it was papaya, but i can't wait to see you in green!

➥ yn0: you know what?i think I CAN wait

➥ yn0: i'm actually going to quit f1 rn i think 😐

➥ user9: lando stop, get some help

lancestroll: hi teammate!

➥ yn0: hi teammate!

➥ user6: oh,,, this is awkward

charlesleclerc: finally 🙌🏻 i thought you would never drop this song

➥ yn0: the music is more important than my f1 seat to you 🙂

➥ charlesleclerc: encore encore encore 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

georgerussell: i would be happy for you if i didn't know this meant you'll be bullying me every race weekend

➥ alexalbon: she smells your fear which makes you an easy target

➥ alexalbon: CONGRATSSS 🥳🥳🥳🥳

➥ yn0: 🤭

instagram • yn0 • 2022

liked by charlesleclerc, lewishamilton, megantheestallion, and 2,191,042 others

yn0: thee "cognac queen" learns how to celebrate their FIRST EVER f1 points in italy with their honorary prince 🇮🇹 im in my gacccc, i wanna danceeee, come get yo man, come getcho maaaannnnn 🍾🍾🍾

tagged charlesleclerc

view comments

user10: WOOOOOAH WHATS ABOUT TO PLAY 😳

➥ user11: she PUT IT ON HIM last night apparently 🫣

➥ user12: he calling her BACK TO BACK????

astonmartinf1: you only win first points once but you only have one liver. please show up to the paddock next week 🥴

➥ yn0: don't worry admin i'll be there bright and early!

➥ user13: drink responsibly kids alcohol poisoning is not fun

➥ user14: aston martin shouldn't stress. it sounds like charles took very good care of her 😏😏😏

user15: i feel like i shouldn't be allowed to watch that video (i'm 23)

➥ user16: they were having a tiiiiiiiiime out in italy 🫦

➥ user17: if she was all over me like she was on charles i would be asking about marriage. he's so much stronger than i am 🙂‍↔️

charlesleclerc: went courvoisier crazyyyy

➥ charlesleclerc: je suis très fière de toi (i'm very proud of you) ❤️

➥ yn0: thank you charlieee (for the mv too x) 😚

➥ user18: oh so she really got charles thinking that he's her man???

➥ user19: you were DOGGING it? i didn’t know charles had it in him 🐶🐶🐶

user20: ew this is gross. charles is in a happy relationship and we're all going to pretend like yn isn't a homewrecker???

➥ user21: i was waiting to see this comment! this is like proof she used her body to get on the grid 👀

mickschumacher: no way you put charles in a video before me...i thought we were locked in 😞

➥ yn0: mick be so for real. you hate cognac :(

➥ user22: mick said we suffered through haas together and you already forgot about me

landonorris: are you looking for a cognac king?

➥ alexalbon: boys point and laugh 🫵🏼🤣

➥ charlesleclerc: 🫵🏻🤣

➥ maxverstappen: 🫵🏻🤣

➥ georgerussell: 🫵🏻🤣

➥ mickschumacher: 🫵🏻🤣🤣🤣💀

➥ user23: 🫵🏾🤣

lewishamilton: xnda feature when you make it on the podium

➥ yn0: i'll be up there next week.

➥ user24: bring back xnda girl !!! for all of us 🙇🏽‍♀️

instagram • yn0 • 2022

liked by alexalbon, astonmartinf1, maxverstappen, sza, and 4,233,761 others

yn0: my girl is my girl, is your girl, heard that's his girl too...he's like 9 to 5, i'm "the weekend"

tagged alexalbon, lilymhe

view comments

astonmartinf1: highest race finish of your career can you drop a fire song to celebrate 🥵

➥ lancestroll: team karaoke when????

➥ yn0: make it happen and i will show out for y'all 💯

user25: this video was funny af! my favorite song from you so far 😁

➥ user26: yessss i was not expecting her to flip the song in the video like that 🤌🏻💋

➥ user27: the premise of her and alex fighting over lily was perfect 👌🏽

lilymhe: make me lose my mind every weekend 😮‍💨

➥ alexalbon: you take wednesday thurday 🧎🏼‍♂️‍➡️

➥ yn0: then just send her my wayyyyy 🤤

➥ user28: think i got it covered for the weekend 🎤🎶

landonorris: i'm available any day of the week with no other commitments blocking my schedule ☺️

➥ georgerussell: mate this is embarrasing

➥ mickschumacer: lando no wins & no rizz what a shame 😒

➥ user29: MICK CHILLLLL ⁉️⁉️

➥ user30: whatdidhedo to deserve that calm downnnn

➥ charlesleclerc: lando please just listen to the song like everybody else this is painful to see 😣

maxverstappen: you laced this song with something addictive

➥ schecoperez: i hear it on repeat through the wall he is not lying

➥ user31: yn ln gives you wings 🤪

user32: just because lily was in the video and yn made the focus of the song about her doesn't mean that the orginal song is okay? it's not like she stopped singing about being a side chick.

➥ user33: no, it literally IS okay. because lily and alex both said they made the song with her and were happy to be in the video 🙂

➥ user34: i don't know, lily agreeing to the video makes me dislike her

➥ user35: yeah this song was a miss not a good message at all

instagram • danica patrick • 2022

liked by 10,764 others

danicapatrick: “This past weekend the Aston Martin F1 crew celebrated yn’s P5 finish track side and, honestly, that was unnecessary. It’s not like she managed to reach the podium and personally, I feel like she doesn’t take F1 seriously. I mean, it seems like she spends more time making explicit songs than she does preparing for a race weekend. Her little songs are a distraction to the men on the grid and she appears as a promiscuous, immature, and unfocused girl. She’s not the formula one standard, in my opinion.”

I discuss yn ln’s career in the new episode of my podcast, Pretty Intense! Click the link in my bio to hear it all!

tagged prettyintensebydanica

view comments

user36: ms. patrick are you familiar with the idea of having a hobby 🤔

nicorosberg: how are you qualified to be an expert on sky sports?

user37: woman who's never raced in f1 gives her unsolicited opinion on the only black woman to race in f1 😂

user38: danica this screams jealousy girl

user39: nothing is worse than hearing a fellow girl hate like a man smh

user40: "her little songs" disrespectful as hell don't forget one of them charted on billboard's top 10 😤

user41: SHE GOT P5 IN AN ASTON MARTIN how is that not taking f1 seriously????

user42: if her songs were a distraction to the men on the grid aren't they the ones who should be described as unfocused🤫

➥ user42: anyways, yn would be doing us a favor. maybe max wouldn't win as many races if that were the case

instagram • yn0 • 2022 post-season

liked by dominicfike, keithpowers, tchalamet, summerwalker, and 7,988,531 others

yn0: "girls need love," too.

view comments

user43: OH MY GOD the drought is over 😭😭😭

➥ user44: i thought we'd never get another song after the hate she was getting for it 😫

michaelbjordan: are you interested in a private studio session?

➥ landonorris: she don't want u lil bro 🤣

➥ user45: yn's pulling with three photo's and a song,,,teach me your ways

astonmartinf1: the spine tattoo 😍 good choice to get it during the off-season 💚

➥ user46: i misjudged you aston... i thought y'all told her to stop making music glad to see the support is still there :)

mickschumacher: let’s go get some gelato?

➥ yn0: as long as you don’t snitch to my trainer 😚

➥ mickschumacher: i’ll pick you up 😇

➥ landonorris: imma bout to crash TF out ong 💢💢

patriciooward: there's a spot on my side of the garage whenever you want to watch an indycar race

➥ landonorris: oh wow is this really what we're doing pato 😐

➥ user47: the tension in this comment section scares me

jjetas2: if you're near minnesota one day fall through

➥ landonorris: win a superbowl first 🥱😴

➥ user48: LANDO you haven't won a race or a championship either 😭

judebellingham: have you gotten any better at football since the last time we spoke?

➥ landonorris: knew i supported man united for a reason 😒

lore_musetti: call me if you want a real italian to give you a tour of italy x

➥ landonorris: didn't know an italian could disrespect charles like that honestly 🤨

➥ user49: 💀💀💀

instagram • yn0 • 2023

liked by georgerussell, mickschumacher, megantheestallion, and 4,178,063 others

yn0: japanese nightlife captured in my new music video “mamushi” !!! thank uuu yuki-san for being my tour guide 💋💋💋💋💋💋

tagged yukitsunoda

view comments

georgerussell: i quite enjoy this song 😌

➥ alexalbon: bro what

➥ yn0: tEa aND cRuMPets SConEs AnD biScUIts 💂🇬🇧

charlesleclerc: triple platinum in my house rn ⭐️⭐️⭐️

➥ alexandrasaintmleux: i'm responsible for at least a million views on my own 🥱

➥ yn0: 💚💚💚💚💚

user50: at least we know that yn and yuki can qualify for formula drift if they ever lose their f1 seat

➥ user51: 95% of the driving they were doing in that video looked illegal (but fun asl i'm not a buzzkill)

➥ user52: she's a bad influence on yuki 🙄

➥ user53: i don't think you're familiar with yuki tsunoda at all @/user52

maxverstappen: yeah the song is catchy; where's mine 🥱

➥ yn0: damn you're gonna win a third championship this year and you want a song too 😱

➥ yn0: just big and greedy fr 😒

➥ user54: big back attitude

➥ user55: like sheesh leave something for the rest of us 🤯

user50: gets p3 in suzuka driving an aston 🗿-> shrugs when asked how she did it 🗿 -> makes a banger mv in japan with yuki 🗿 -> refuses to elaborate 🗿

pierregasly: yuki explain your behavior in this video

➥ yukitsunoda: no 🤗

➥ user56: maybe he would've told you if you stayed at alphatauri

➥ user57: now you're in an alpine 🫵🏻😭

instagram • yn0 • 2023 post-season

liked by charlesleclerc, logansargeant, glorillathepimp, and 9,337,272 others

yn0: he don't "wanna be" saved don't save him 🤫

tagged maxverstappen

view comments

yn0: i don't need insurance cause a bitch CAN'T WRECK ME

➥ user58: no like she's never been in a crash her entire f1 career 🤓

➥ user59: she's untouchable srs

logansargeant: WHITE BOY WASTED CHANNING TATUM

➥ yn0: hoes love me like justin bieber 👅👅👅

user60: omg an old picture from yn's haas era when max's redbull wasn't a rocket ship 😩

➥ haasf1team: good times

➥ astonmartinf1: 💚💚💚

maxverstappen: you graduated from the max verstappen school of being unstoppable 😼

➥ charlesleclerc: austria 2022

➥ georgerussell: brazil 2022

➥ mickschumacher: my dad’s 7 championships

➥ alexalbon: i have nothing to add (literally)

➥ maxverstappen: out of the five of us we have three total world championships and they're all mine 😐

glorillathepimp: go yn 🥵

➥ yn0: get it glo 👅

➥ user61: i am no better than a man

➥ user62: i want this video tattooed on my eyelids

mickschumacher: i don't wanna be saved don't save me

➥ yn0: on gang 🤞🏾🔒🙅🏾‍♀️

kellypiquet: twenty missed calls...

➥ yn0: i would like to initiate a trade! i offer: max :) in return i receive: my twin p 🤲🏾

➥ kellypiquet: i will have a bag packed for her TONIGHT

➥ user63: kelly definitely won in that trade agreement! a childfree night??? sign me the fuck up ‼️

user64: i didn't think it was possible but this song is the worst thing she's ever made 😂

➥ user65: it's weird. max is in a committed relationship with a woman and has bonded with her kid. yn's getting involved with him when she shouldn't be 🤷‍♀️

➥ user66: girl she's been around since wayyyy before kelly as max's friend.

➥ user67: she forced max into friendship when they were karting back when he thought he couldn't have racing friends🥺

➥ user66: trauma bonded besties fr

sky sports f1 • 2024 testing

instagram • yn0 • 2024

liked by natalie_pinkham, danielricciardo, laybankz and 5,438,023 others

yn0: (my honest reaction when the internet can't stop talking shit about me) can't i make fun music videos without being called a homewrecker or a whore? sometimes "girls just wanna" f1 !

view comments

user68: no bc she makes hot girl music and y'all dont appreciate it 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

➥ user69: if you don't like her music you're not a baddie i don't make the rules 🙅🏻‍♀️

user70: did she just make the song of the summer 😱😵‍💫☠️

➥ user71: song of the YEAR !!! and people calling her a whore smh

landonorris: what if you make an mv with me and instead of being called a whore i call you my girlfriend?

➥ mickschumacher: corny. delete your account 🚮

➥ user72: i disagree with mick, he ate that up imo 👀

➥ user73: isn't he messing around with that model/actress though…

➥ user74: you mean m*gui lol

➥ yn0: who's that

➥ user74: lando's recent sneaky link or gf i thought

➥ yn0: oh

charlesleclerc: if i were to call you one thing it would not be homewrecker or whore ✊🏻

➥ charlesleclerc: it would be hit-maker because you DO NOT MISS 😩

➥ alexalbon: one could even call her the 🐐

➥ georgerussell: grammy caliber artist

➥ maxverstappen: they compare her to lebron and simone biles in discussion of being the greatest of all time 😌

➥ yn0: just yesterday y'all said i give slut energy (affectionately) 😕

➥ maxverstappen: many things can be true at the same time

➥ charlesleclerc: false ‼️ accusations

sabrinacarpenter: girls just wanna have fun 😋

➥ user75: OMG sabrina what are you doing here

➥ user76: what in the disney channel crossover episode is going on

imessage • yn -> lando

instagram • yn0 • 2024

liked by mclaren, mickschumacher, lewishamilton, laybankz, and 8,765,392 others

yn0: dropping the "tell ur girlfriend" video tonight as celebration for lando's first win (me next please!) i DO NOT codone cheating but the song is too hard for me to pretend like it's not a banger 🤪

tagged landonorris

view comments

landonorris: you look good in papaya 🧡🧡🧡

➥ astonmartinf1: it's a little too much for our tastes 🤢

➥ yn0: i look good in any color but i do happen to prefer green 💚

➥ user77: i think lando's on to smth w the orange tho 🤔

landonorris: that's my girlfriend !!!!

➥ yn0: NO I AM NOT ❌❌❌

➥ yn0: WE WERE ACTING IN THIS MUSIC VIDEO

➥ yn0: LANDO I WILL SUE YOU FOR DEFAMATION 🤬

➥ landonorris: i'll wait for you 😔

➥ mickschumacher: she's so uninterested in you mate 🙃

user78: he gets his first win and a yn ln music video i know he's on cloud nine 😭😭😭

➥ user79: lando how does it feel to be living my dream 😩

oscarpiastri: oh thank god maybe he'll stop talking about you nonstop now that he got a video 🙏🏻

➥ landonorris: bro delete this comment

➥ user80: i screenshotted it too late 🫡

user81: she doesn't condone cheating but makes a song promoting it anyways 😑

➥ user82: she doesn't condone cheating but messes with lando even though she knows he's taken by magui 😑

➥ user83: she doesn't condone cheating but makes a song about it because it sounds fucking fire 🫦👅🔥🔥🔥

alexalbon: great video too much lando for me 😪

➥ georgerussell: he really just ruined the vibe

➥ charlesleclerc: y'all just mad you haven't been in one of her videos yet 🙂‍↔️

➥ maxverstappen: i don't see how you can hate from outside of the club 🤷🏼‍♂️

➥ landonorris: you can't even get in 🫵🏻🤣

twitter • yn0

instagram • yn -> the day ones

instagram • yn0 • 2024 post-season

liked by maxverstappen, fernandoalonso, zhouguanyu24, kaliii and 12,779,436 others

yn0: hoes mad about my roster being INTERNATIONAL smh stay mad and watch the music video for "area codes" it features all the men (my FRIENDS ✨) you'll never have a chance with 😇😚🤗🤭🤤💚💚💚

tagged f1

view comments

user84: no xnda feature but she got lewis in the fucking video

user85: i just wannna know hwo the fuck she got checo to be in the video 💀

user86: idc what the haters say: she just said y'all have no motion, no aura, no bitches and what are you gonna do about it 😳😳😱

user89: she got lando and mick in a photo together??? how they've been beefing in her comments for years 😧

➥ user90: can't believe im saying this but esteban did not deserve to be punished like that 😬

georgerussell: i am the one feeding her pasta and lobster btw

➥ yn0: you don't send me money tho :(

➥ georgerussell: you are an f1 driver too you don't need my money 🧐

charlesleclerc: can you leave some talent for the rest of us 😒

➥ yn0: bro u are mozart on your days off be serious

lilymhe: cause why are u never in town 😞

➥ alexalbon: cause she'll steal you from me 😭😫

➥ yn0: i'm pulling up rn lils 🫦

lewishamilton: you want a mercedes or a xnda feature?

➥ yn0: im tryna take the mercedes seat you left behind 👀

➥ user91: omfg toto sign herrrrrrrr ✍️

maxverstappen: anything for my favorite lady 🙇🏼🧎🏼‍♂️

➥ yn0: i gotta go they just lmk that i could pick up my mercedes 🏃🏾‍♀️💨

user92: lando in two photos? sus

➥ landonorris: you said it not me 🤫

➥ mickschumacher: bro you acted like her shadow the entire night don't let it go to your head 😠

fernandoalonso: very fun song!

➥ user93: you too old to be doin all that fernando :/

➥ user94: literally choked when i saw him in the video

logansargeant: hey you did manage to get me in "one of your little music videos" 🤭

➥ yn0: if only they knew that you agreed with a bribe of two zebra cakes

➥ user95: they couldn't fathom the delicacy that is a zebra cake 🤤

yn0: stop pretending to dislike my songs and realize that the boys are my homies. you'll be a lot happier when you come to terms with that 🥱

© httpsserene 2024

[jillianallen14]

Dear Baby Bats - Goth Band Recommendations

As a middle sibling goth (I’ve been in the subculture for 10 years now, so not a baby bat but not an elder goth either), let me turn you on to some bands because we do not gatekeep in this house!! Also, if you want consistently good lesser-known & brand new goth band recs, go follow Awfully Sinister on TikTok and Instagram. He’s a DJ & has great recs. I've found so much music through him because it's really hard to keep up with all the new bands cropping up every year. You want to avoid the goth subreddit because they are extremely gatekeeper-y and argue over labels constantly. It’ll just confuse you, and they are not nice over there.

If you’re very new to the subculture, and you haven’t yet listened to all of Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Christian Death, Cocteau Twins, Clan of Xymox, Joy Division, and Depeche Mode, go do so now. You'll want to know which of them you really enjoy the most because it will help you know which sub-subgenre(s) of goth you want to watch out for, and it'll tell you what to look for to find it. For example, Sisters of Mercy is the gothic rock subgenre, Christian Death is deathrock, Cocteau Twins is ethereal wave, Clan of Xymox is like the original darkwave, Joy Division is classic post-punk, etc. I haven’t included industrial, despite its proximity to the goth subculture, just because I actually don’t really know that many industrial bands beyond Skippy Puppy, Ministry, and Throbbing Gristle. Some other goth/goth-adjacent staple bands (that are very popular and very influential) that you should listen to if you haven’t already are The Damned, Killing Joke, The Cult, and Adam and the Ants/Adam Ant). I didn't know where to put She Wants Revenge or London After Midnight either, but they're also great.

I’ve bolded some of my absolute must-listen to goth bands, and I've put monthly Spotify listeners for each band so you know which ones deserve WAY more love. And in my pre-list ramblings for each OG band, I've given you some key terms to look up so you can more easily find music that's similar to what you enjoy. Okay, here we go:

If you like Bauhaus:

Bauhaus is a hard one because honestly, nobody really sounds like them, and they aren't really that closely associated with a specific sub-subgenre of goth. They were post-punk, they were art rock, they were experimental, they were sometimes very punk and at other times very gothic rock. They liked to call themselves “dark glam rock” (all four members are massive Bowie, T-Rex, and Iggy Pop fans), but you’re gonna have a hard time finding bands that sound like them if you look that term up. They probably have one of the most unique sounds of all-time. They’re my favorite band (I even have a tattoo for them, like I am devoted lol), but even I have a difficult time finding other bands that scratch their particular itch for me. These bands I’ve listed are as close as you’re gonna get to Bauhaus’ general vibe imo.

Virgin Prunes (80’s band that is technically deathrock but has the same absolutely unhinged, danceable sound that Bauhaus has, so they’re going here; one of my favorites; no one else does it like them and no one else ever will; I would actually give my left foot to see them live); 13.2k monthly listeners (this is actually physically painful to me, how is it this low!!! don't walk, RUN to go listen to them)

Alien Sex Fiend (80’s classic unhinged goth); 77k monthly listeners

Sextile (modern band that has some very Bauhaus-sounding guitar work at times but with heavy industrial influences); 147k listeners

The Danse Society (80’s unhinged goth; has similar experimental vibes to Bauhaus imo; one of my fave goth groups); 36k listeners

Sex Beat (80’s); not even really on Spotify

Ritual Howls (modern band; I don’t know why it gives Bauhaus, but it does; one of the few modern bands that scratches that particular itch for me); 45k listeners

The Agnes Circle (modern band; one of my favorites; they have the right Bauhaus-like atmosphere for me); 52k listeners

Traitrs (I can’t explain why they remind me of Bauhaus, but they do; another one of my fave modern bands; they make me want to start levitating and doing the Ian Curtis dance in the same way Bauhaus does lol); 239k listeners

Paralisis Permanente (underrated 80’s; they have a lot in common with Bauhaus’s sound actually, def give them a try!); 54k monthly listeners

The Birthday Party (80s band, totally unhinged; they’re less dark and atmospheric than Bauhaus, but if you take one listen to their album Junkyard, you’ll know exactly why I put them under this category haha; Nick Cave is the vocalist, which is amazing); 54k listeners

Tones on Tail (80s; Daniel Ash & Kevin Haskins of Bauhaus formed this group; I’d put Love and Rockets as well, which is all of Bauhaus’s members except Peter Murphy, but Love and Rockets weirdly bears little resemblance to Bauhaus’s music; but if you just generally want more of Bauhaus members' work, Love and Rockets is great, too); 81k listeners

Dalis Car (80s; collaboration between Peter Murphy and Japan's bassist; their music is extremely weird, so only listen if you really love the batshit insane Bauhaus songs or if you really live and breathe Peter Murphy like I do lol; their description on Spotify is so fucking funny); 7k listeners

I'd also recommend listening to Daniel Ash, David J, and Peter Murphy's solo work. They're all great!! Peter also did some amazing collaborations with Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails); the version of Reptile that they did together is better than Nine Inch Nail's original version imo, and you can find that entire session on Youtube!

If you like Siouxsie and the Banshees:

Siouxsie is another one that's hard to pin down sound-wise because again, they don't really fit into one specific sub-subgenre, so all of these recs are just goth bands with female vocalists who have the same kind of powerful vocals that Siouxsie does.

Second Still (modern band, one of my faves; singer sounds a lot like Siouxsie to me at times); 69k listeners

Skeletal Family (80’s band; has the same “women in punk” vibes that Siouxsie has); 55k listeners

Xmal Deutschland (80’s band; has the same powerful vocals that Siouxsie has; makes you wanna go stupid go crazy the way the Banshees do); 73k listeners

Secret Shame (modern band w/ woman singer; has the same rage that Siouxsie songs have to me, especially early Siouxsie); 6k listeners (let's get those numbers up, folks!!!)

Rosegarden Funeral Party (modern band w/ a woman vocalist); 57k listeners

Mephisto Walz (90s & 2000s; sounds so much like the Banshees at times); 56k listeners

The Creatures (80s; a Siouxsie Sioux & Budgie side project); 34k listeners

Madhouse (listen to Repulsion! 80s group that’s technically deathrock, but I put them under this category because the singer has Siouxsie-like qualities); not really on Spotify

Strange Boutique (90s; vocalist is Monica Richards of Faith and the Muse & Madhouse; this is probably my favorite project of hers); 112k listeners

If you like Depeche Mode:

For Depeche Mode enjoyers (which DM is kind of on the fringes of what’s considered “goth,” but they’re so entrenched in the subculture that I included them anyway), you’re gonna want to delve into goth playlists and modern goth that leans towards synthpop/synthwave. So those are the kinds of playlists you’ll want to search up for similar sounds to DM.

Nuovo Testamento (modern band; combines post-punk and pop elements in a way that’s very similar to Depeche Mode; lots of fun live, and they have a good sound); 25k listeners

Boy Harsher (modern band; relies heavily on synth; feels like it should be playing at every goth club); 558k listeners

ULTRA SUNN (modern band; singer sounds like Dave Gahan); 217k listeners (they just blew up on tiktok recently, which explains why this just skyrocketed since the last time I was on their Spotify page lol; good for them, good for them, they deserve it)

Ministry's first album (called With Sympathy), which was synthwave/synthpop before they went industrial (this is one of my all-time favorite albums)

French Police (modern band); 252k listeners

Closed Tear (modern band); 152k listeners

Night Sins (modern band); 33k listeners

Panic Priest (modern band; vocals sound decently similar to Dave Gahan & there is a lot of reliance on synth; In All Severity is a gorgeous song); 5k listeners

Fad Gadget (underrated 80’s; I just feel like if you like DM, you’re also gonna like Fad Gadget); 58k listeners

Martin Dupont (underrated 80s cold wave/synth pop; Inside Out is one of my favorite 80s songs); 26k listeners

If you like The Cure:

You'll be hard-pressed to find a goth band that wasn't influenced by The Cure, so I really can't give you any key terms for what to look up lol. They also changed their sound so frequently that it entirely depends on what era of The Cure's music you're looking to find similar music for.

Vision Video (modern band; combines post-punk and pop elements like The Cure does; one of my fave modern goth bands; they are INCREDIBLE live); 52k listeners (I'm gonna need y'all to get a song or two of theirs to blow up on tiktok expeditiously lol)

Urban Heat (modern band; great live); 36k listeners

The Chameleons (80’s band; very underrated; they are also very good live); 167k listeners

House of Harm (modern band, very new; also very good live; has pop elements); 44k listeners

Deceits (modern band, another very new one); 28k listeners (it's crazy how much this number has grown the past two months because it was in the single thousands not that long ago; everyone say thank you, tiktok)

Drab Majesty (modern band; their instrumentals remind me of The Cure); 172k listeners

Double Echo (modern band, one of my faves; their instrumentals also remind me of The Cure); 15k listeners (let's get these numbers up!!!)

The Bolshoi (underrated 80’s band that combines new wave and goth elements in a similar way to The Cure); 114k listeners

The Essence (underrated 80s band that sounds so much like The Cure it’s actually insane, but they’ve got their own sound too; they’re like a perfect blend of all of The Cure’s different sounds); 25k monthly listeners

The Glove (80s; a Robert Smith side project with Steven Severin from Siouxsie and the Banshees); 25k listeners

Crimson Ivy (80s band; singer sounds so a lot like a more yelly version of Robert Smith sometimes); not on Spotify

Miss Teen America (brand new band from NYC! They only have one single out right now, and it’s well worth listening to); 940 monthly listeners (y’all know what to do!!! Let’s get those numbers up, up, up!) link to their single: https://open.spotify.com/album/4nvdZeUVLLrMv3tEziCqm7?si=2WVS7-eYQLGR7Id3wLiKhg

If you like Clan of Xymox:

Most of these bands will be modern ones because Clan of Xymox was honestly way ahead of their time. (They are also amazing live, so go see them before they eventually call it quits!) For playlists that are full of their vibe, you’re gonna want to look up “darkwave” playlists. Clan of Xymox pioneered darkwave, so any darkwave band you listen to is gonna be influenced by their sound in some way or another.

Harsh Symmetry (modern, very new; very heavily relies on synth); 29k listeners

Ssleeping Desiress (modern band; instrumentals similar to Xymox); 55k listeners

Twin Tribes (probably my favorite modern goth band; they are fucking incredible and so good live!); 276k listeners

ACTORS (modern band; heavily relies on synth); 86k listeners

Mareux (modern; heavily relies on synth); 4.8 million listeners (this is wild!!!! everyone say thank you, tiktok)

Sixth June (modern); 23k listeners

Plastique Noir (modern); 40k listeners

Rendez Vous (modern); 160k listeners

Minuit Machine (modern); 97k listeners

The Frozen Autumn (90s & 2000s); 31k listeners

If you like Christian Death:

All of these recs will be deathrock recs or goth bands that heavily leaned on punk sounds. So if CD is the OG goth band you’re most fond of, you’re gonna want to delve into deathrock playlists for similar sounds.

Asylum Party (80’s band); not on spotify

45 Grave (80’s band); 47k listeners

Voodoo Church (80’s band; probably my favorite out of this bunch; I actually like them more than Christian Death); 7k listeners (let's get these numbers up immediately!!!!)

Ausgang (80’s band); 2k listeners (WHAT; they deserve so much more, damn)

Corpus Delicti (90’s band; they are very good; they sound the least like Christian Death on this list imo); 26k listeners

13th Chime (80’s band; very underrated); 6k listeners

UK Decay (you know, I actually don’t know what era they’re from; unhinged sound); 1k listeners (omg)

Super Heroines (underrated 80’s band; Eva O formed it); 2k listeners (you see what I meant about underrated?)

Specimen (80s band; this one could have just as easily gone under Bauhaus tbh, but the vocals are generally higher pitched than Peter Murphy’s, so I put them under this category); 102k listeners

Sex Gang Children (80’s band; just so unhinged & I love them for it); 27k listeners

Suspiria (90s, I think? I don’t actually know); barely on Spotify but 27k listeners

Theatre of Hate (80s); 7k listeners

Bloody Dead and Sexy (2000s, I think); 44k listeners

Mescaline Babies (2000s); 3k listeners

Acid Bats (2000s; Mexican band with Spanish lyrics); 2k listeners

Altar de Fey (80s band; formed in San Francisco!!); 23k listeners

Twisted Nerve (80s band; classified as “gothic punk,” so I felt this was the best category for them; they’re great; their sound also reminds me of early Siouxsie and the Banshees and Killing Joke); 2.5k listeners

Play Dead (80s); 8k listeners

Limbo (underrated 80s; if you like Bauhaus & Virgin Prunes as well, you’re gonna like this band); 413 listeners

If you like Cocteau Twins:

Cocteau Twins’ early sound is usually categorized as “ethereal wave” goth, so those are the playlists you’ll want to look up if you enjoy their early sound. If you like their later sound, you’re gonna want to lean more towards shoegaze for similar vibes. Admittedly, ethereal wave is one of the goth subgenres that I know the least about, so I’m not gonna be much help here.

Dead Can Dance (80’s band; NO one, and I mean NO ONE, was doing it like Dead Can Dance; so fun to dance to in the goth club); 332k listeners

Lycia (90’s band; their music is very transcendent); 20k listeners

Linea Aspera (modern band; gorgeous woman vocals; honestly, their music is just very beautiful); 67k listeners

This Mortal Coil (formed in the 80s; some songs feature Elizabeth Fraser & Robin Guthrie from Cocteau Twins, but even the ones that don’t still have an ethereal vibe similar to CT; Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust is just like the best song ever); 310k listeners

Autumn's Grey Solace (2000s); 62k listeners

Faith and the Muse; (90s); 22k listeners

This Ascension (90s); 4k listeners

Strawberry Switchblade (80s); 400k listeners

If you like Joy Division:

All of these bands will be ones that sound very classically post-punk, so those are the playlists to search out; emphasis on "classic" because post-punk is a very broad term that gets applied to a lot of music. I would argue that Joy Division has had the most influence out of all the OG goth bands on the current goth sound/goth renaissance we're going through right now, so there are a LOT of bands out there for you if you’re a JD fan.

Molchat Doma (modern band); 2.5 million listeners (wow lol, they've grown so much over the past two years, it's actually insane; good for them)

Soviet Soviet (modern band); 152k listeners

Fearing (modern band; very good live); 30k listeners

Ploho (modern band); 146k listeners

Pink Turns Blue (criminally underrated 80’s band; they are SO good live); 98k listeners (this is an actual travesty, this band is way too good to not even be in the hundred thousands)

The Sound (another incredibly underrated 80’s band); 119k listeners

This Cold Night (modern; has the deep vocals of Joy Division and the driving bass but more stripped back than JD); 150k listeners

Bleib Modern (modern; has very similar vocals to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, which is a band listed under the Sisters of Mercy section of this post, so if you end up liking this band, you should also listen to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry & vice versa); 36k listeners

Lebanon Hanover (modern; has the existential angst that Joy Division always ignites in me but more stripped back); 936k listeners (this is crazy, holy shit!!!!!! go, Lebanon Hanover, go!!)

She Past Away (modern; deep vocals); 226k listeners

Belgrado (modern; woman vocals!); 18k listeners (they deserve better than this!!)

Leonora Post Punk (modern; Mexican goth band w/ Spanish vocals! They’re amazing! They have those deep vocals you want when you’re looking for a similar sound to Joy Division); 56k listeners

O. Children (modern; has the deep vocals & interesting bass lines that Joy Division was known for; great band); 29k listeners

If you like Sisters of Mercy:

This is one of my least favorite goth subcategories, which is odd because I actually love Sisters. But if you’re looking for a lot of music that sounds like SoM, I’d suggest delving into the 90’s and early 2000’s goth music scene. Search out those playlists. A lot of the 90s and 2000s goth bands were very derivative of Sisters of Mercy.

Rosetta Stone (90’s band); 54k listeners

Miazma (modern); 10k listeners

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry (another criminally underrated 80’s band; one of my fave goth bands); 40k listeners (THEY!! DESERVE!! BETTER!!)

Dreamtime (modern); 65 listeners (ouch lol, please go show them some love)

Fields of the Nephilim (80’s, I think; if you’re a metalhead, you’ll probably appreciate this band); 95k listeners

The Merry Thoughts (80s); 19k listeners

The March Violets (underrated 80s; might be a controversial opinion to put them under SoM, but I’m standing by it); 69k listeners

Horror Vacui (modern; it’s kind of a stretch putting them here tbh, but I couldn’t figure out what other category to put them under); 44k listeners

The Sisterhood (spin-off Sisters of Mercy group that was formed by goth king Andrew Eldritch himself); 3k listeners

The Mission (formed by former Sisters of Mercy members; Wasteland by them was actually one of the first songs to get me into goth music); 180k listeners

Eyes of the Nightmare Jungle (late 80s & 90s; every time a song by them comes on, I’m convinced it’s a Sisters song until the singer starts singing lol); 13k listeners

Ex-Voto (formed in 1982, but most of their albums on Spotify came out in the 2000s; this band is like if Fields of Nephilim had a baby with Clan of Xymox & then sprinkled some industrial techniques in); 6k listeners

Also, if you want a 1500-song, 105-hour goth playlist that’s constantly growing, here you go. The name of it is a dig at my ex lol: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jCV530pMmOEmDHj4CLNka?si=cEVKiyAwQpaieGiV2pMyqw

[a-hazbin-reader]

it's valentines day tommorrow- what's alastor gonna do for reader?

I totally forgot about Valentine's Day-

Alastor X Reader Headcanons

✅️Romantic

❌️Platonic

TW: Alastor being a cannibal, Alastor scaring people off

Description: 👆⬆️

Alastor 100% forgets that it's Valentine's Day no matter how hard everyone tries to remind him

He can remember everything else important like birthdays, anniversaries, and other key events in your lives

But somehow, he manages to always forget Valentine's Day

He is so fucking smart but somehow so dumb at the same time, Rosie is the one who saves his ass every year

She literally plans it now, inviting him over the day before Valentine's Day

"So Alastor~ How are you going to spend Valentine's Day with Y/N tomorrow~?"

"How kind of you to ask-What was that now?"

"You forgot again. Didn't you."

Long awkward sip of tea

"You hopeless man, here's what you need to do..."

If it were anyone else then Alastor would be fucked but luckily he's tHe RaDiO dEmOn so he's able to scramble together something impressive

You'll never know he forgot

You wake up to your favorite flowers in your bed and all over the hotel, Niffty having a breakdown because she can't clean them up

Not Alastor standing in the kitchen with an apron on, cooking breakfast for the two of you

Kiss the cook? Don't mind if I do~

He won't accept any gifts from you until he's finished giving you the Valentine's Day you deserve

Mostly out of guilt over forgetting tho

After the most delicious breakfast you've had in awhile, he invites you out for a walk

He's shamelessly checking you out the entire morning, visibly approving of your outfit for the day

He takes you to one of the most beautiful and lush places in the pride ring that he can find, adoring the amazed look on your face

You almost feel like the two of you are a normal couple enjoying the day together, not two sinners in hell who are walking through faux earth scenery

If there's anybody else around then he scares them away so that you two can be alone and unbothered

Keeps an arm wrapped around you the entire walk, resting his head on yours because if he looks at you then he'll lose his mind

You just look so fucking cute rn

While it might just seem like a romantic walk, it's all a ruse to get you to a planetarium

Again, there's nobody there because Alastor wants privacy with his S/O

Because there's nobody there, Alastor took the liberty of decorating it in romantic lighting and getting more comfortable seating for the two of you

Seating might be the wrong word

The two of you end up snuggled together in a hammock, gazing up at stars that used to be familiar to you both

If you can name the stars and constellations then Alastor will happily listen while pulling you to his chest

Maybe you two feed each other snacks

"No, I'm not feeding you a finger, I love you, but I'm not touching that."

"You love me? How embarrassing that must be for you~"

"Still not feeding you that."

"Maybe I should eat you instead~"

KEEP IT PG YOU TWO

If you fall asleep then maybe he'll smooch your face a little bit until you wake back up

Maybe you're only pretending to be asleep

But the gifts don't stop there!

When you two leave, he takes you to the radio tower for a romantic dinner, and that shit is CANDLELIT

🕯 🍝 🕯

It is legitimately a lady and the tramp style dinner date with him doting on you the entire time

He's been a suave gentleman the entire day so far, doing everything he can to make you blush and swoon

But when you finally get the chance to give him your Valentine's Day gift, no matter what it is, he's genuinely flustered

Stares at it while blushing in silence for what feels like the longest time

"You got me this..? For me?"

"Who else would it be for?"

Not his tail wagging

Once he composes himself then he invites you to slow dance with him, holding you inappropriately close to him

Good thing you two are alone

Alastor is a fantastic dancer and a handsome man so that alone is enough to make you flustered

But slow dancing with him while he stares at you with that rare soft expression, with love in his eyes???

You're just a blushing puddle in his arms which is totally what he's going for, cooing at you sweetly

And he only makes it worse once he starts whispering sweet nothings in your ear throughout the entire dance, confessing everything he loves about you

Alastor legitimately has his breath taken away when he looks at your face afterward

You look so grateful for all that he's done for you today, but he still feels guilty for forgetting in the first place

When he thinks of your gift then he only feels worse, cupping your cheek gently

"Y/N...I have something to confess to you..."

"This is all last minute because you forgot about Valentine's Day?"

*shocked Pikachu face*

"...how did you know? Did Rosie tell you?"

"Alastor...darling...baby..."

Not your hand pulling on his cheek before giving it a few condescending pats

"You forget every year~"

Oh yeah

"But you always make it the perfect day~"

Brags about what you said to him the next day with Rosie, not at all noticing how done she looks with him

Hnnnng!! I love this man

[missberrycake]

So, I know we all love the headcanon that Eddie moved in with Wayne when he was a teen or a pre-teen, be it because one or both parents died, chucked him out, are in prison, etc. But! I’ve been thinking about another option.

What if Wayne has been looking after Eddie since he was a toddler?

It all comes as a bit of a shock to Wayne who, in his early forties, had pretty much assumed he’d missed the boat on the whole ‘kids’ thing. And yet, here he is, taking in his baby nephew when his brother turns up on his doorstep one day.

When it starts, it’s only supposed to be for a short while. His brother’s wife is newly out of the picture (it’s a crying shame, Wayne had liked her, she’d stayed a gentle soul throughout) and he just needs some time to get himself sorted, right? But then a week turns into a month, turns into two months, turns into half a year and Wayne? Well, he gets attached to the kid, so sue him. 

Because little Eddie is a rambunctious boy. He’s full of gummy smiles and bubbling laughter and Wayne runs himself in circles trying to stop him from toddling into sharp corners and sockets and yards of rope. The two of them are well suited, it seems, and Wayne takes to settling Eddie on his knee in the evenings and going through the races for the next day in the paper.

Eddie chooses a winner more than once. 

Every day, when Wayne comes to pick him up from Julia’s two trailers over (he’s still got to work, something his brother hadn’t considered before he left, or maybe he didn’t care), Eddie greets him with his arms out, already chatting away with the handful of phrases that he knows. 

The boy’s hair is soft and his cheeks smooth and if Wayne gets a little sentimental when he tucks him into bed at night, then nobody else needs to know, do they?

He’s a sweet boy. He deserves someone to care for him. 

So when his brother turns up again with vague mutterings about there being some work for him down in Florida, Wayne’s chest aches. 

“What’s your plan for the littl'un?” he asks.

“Ed? Whad’ya mean?”

“I mean, have you got a place to stay lined up? Who’s gonna look after him while you’re working?”

“I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

He shrugs and Wayne feels something close to panic bubbling in his veins. When he suggests that perhaps his brother should travel ahead, get himself settled first before sending for Eddie, he doesn’t expect him to agree so readily. He can’t say he’s much surprised though. 

The entire exchange doesn’t take more than ten minutes and his brother doesn’t ask after Eddie once, doesn’t show any desire to see him, doesn’t even step inside the trailer—not one jot of fatherly affection shines through. 

It only occurs to Wayne that evening that perhaps this was the outcome his brother wanted. But, hell, it’s fine with him—he’ll let him think he’s winning. Wayne knows who’s got the real prize here. 

He doesn’t mention the visit to Eddie, the kid doesn’t need to know, too busy digging holes and collecting bugs. 

Just like he expected, his brother never sends for the boy. They get letters for the first few years, poorly wrapped and ill-thought through trinkets for the kid’s birthday and Christmas, but it’s not long until they fall by the wayside too. 

Once Eddie’s older, they have a conversation about it. Have to, really, when Eddie comes home from preschool and is full to the brim of questions, because apparently Peter Gillespie says that everyone has to have a mom and a dad, “and I know I have a mom because you’ve told me about her and I said that she’s not around and Mrs. Lang told Peter to be quiet but then I thought about it, but I don’t know, ‘cause you’re my dad, right? I know I don’t call you dad, but that’s what you are, isn’t it? Because what else would you be and Peter says I have to have one.”

It floors Wayne for a moment, but he recovers quickly. He leads Eddie to the couch where he sets him on his lap. For the next while the two of them look through all the pictures that Wayne can find of Eddie’s mom and Wayne’s brother. Wayne makes sure to hold him close and tells him it doesn’t matter that he’s ‘just’ his uncle, that he loves him as much as he would a kid of his own, that he’ll always be around to take care of him. And Eddie takes it all in his stride, in the way only children can. 

“So I can’t call you dad?” he asks.

Wayne lets out a long breath, rubs at his jaw. 

“It’s not that you can’t, kiddo, it’s just that I ain’t.“ 

Because it feels a little like stealing. What would happen, if one day his brother came back and found his kid calling Wayne ‘Dad’. If the boot were on the other foot, Wayne would be angry as all heck. And there was still time, wasn’t there? For his brother to see the error of his ways? Who was Wayne to keep all of that from Eddie? 

“Okay,” Eddie says quietly. “Uncle Wayne is still good.”

“Oh, it’s still good, is it?” Wayne crows and squeezes Eddie tight. “I’m sure glad I meet your high standards, your majesty.”

Eddie just giggles at that. He always giggles when Wayne puts on his voices. 

“And what would the esteemed gentleman like for dinner tonight, huh? The options are spaghetti hoops, spaghetti hoops, or - now let me think. Oh! Spaghetti hoops.”

The nail in the coffin comes one day in the summer of 1978, just before Eddie’s twelfth birthday. It’s been over eight years since his brother dropped him off in search of better things and sure, there have been some days where Wayne has been tearing his hair out, but through all of it he knows he made the right decision that day in the doorway of the trailer. He wouldn’t change Eddie for the world, and he knows by now that there are some out there that would, who would only see the difficult or the different in him, but isn’t that what being a parent is? Loving your kid no matter what? Seeing the good in them and helping them see it themselves?

When his brother slams the door shut on some car so shiny that Wayne wonders if it’s fresh out of the packet, he knows they’re in for some trouble. 

“Nice car, man,” Eddie whistles from where he’d been lounging on the plastic chairs out the front of the trailer. Clearly the sight of something so drenched in luxury in their neighbourhood makes it so that he just can’t help himself.

Wayne’s brother grunts in that way that he always did when they were younger, like he’d gotten away with something. 

Wayne just watches, then, as his brother nods at the book in Eddie’s hands. “A reader, are you?” he says, a joke in his voice. “What’s this? Always knew there were brains in the family somewhere.”

“It’s ‘Lord of the Rings’,” Eddie replies, uncertain. His gaze flicks to Wayne, who nods. Funny, that the kid was quiet now, he’d been ranting and raving to Wayne about that goddamn book every spare second of the week. “It’s got orcs and wizards and elves in and stuff.”

“Fairytales?” his brother scoffs. It grates on Wayne like a physical thing. “What you been doing to the boy, Wayne? Here.” He turns back to Eddie. “You know me, kid?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“I’m your old man! So you like cars, do you? Want to go for a spin in her?”

“You don’t have to Eddie. Not if you don’t want,” Wayne pipes up then. He knows his boy well enough that he can see the internal war going on behind his eyes. And, hell, it is a nice car. Eddie bites his lip and stares at Wayne, eyes wide, asking permission.

“‘Course he wants to.” And his brother is already walking back to the driver’s side door. He winks at Eddie. “Gotta lot of catching up to do, ain’t we?”

“Hold this for me?” Eddie asks and hands Wayne his book before jogging away.

There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach when Wayne watches the dust trail behind the car as it leaves the trailer park. He sits out on the porch all afternoon, eyes flashing towards the road every few minutes. It isn’t until almost dusk that it careens into the park once more. 

The passenger door slams violently and Eddie stomps towards him.

“He’s not my dad,” he splutters as he pushes his face against Wayne’s shoulder. Wayne can feel where his cheeks are hot and flushed.

Cradling the back of Eddie’s head with one hand, he mutters gently, “Yeah, son, I know.”

And how had he ever thought that man could be Eddie’s father? No, Eddie may still call him ‘Uncle Wayne’, but they’ve gone well beyond that and both of them know it.

Directing Eddie back inside the trailer, Wayne sends a small nod to his brother where the man is still lingering by his car door, looking faintly murderous. 

Let him try, he thinks. No one’s taking his boy from him now, come hell or high water.

[Yeah, I'm scouring the archives and trying to salvage as many headcanons as I can from my old deleted account, but let's just pretend this is brand new content.]

[ravensmadreads]

I am but a tinie creature made of pain....

Chapter 9 of Recovery Road

chapter rating: E (18+)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

word count: 11845

chapter summary: if you thought you knew the full story of natalie lorraine, you were myth-taken

chapter warnings/tags: non-consensual touching, implied sexual assault, emotionally abusive parents, drug/alcohol use, underaged drug/alcohol use, women existing in the male gaze, putting too much of myself into characters as per yooshg

a/n: Header comes from the “Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses” by John William Waterhouse. Song for this chapter is Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac – watch me make a fic playlist after the fact lmao. Bear with me while I wax embarrassingly poetic about my favorite oc blorbo. Remember this does end well!!!

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There are many different types of myth but, essentially, they can be grouped into three: etiological myths, historical myths, psychological myths. Etiological myths can offer explanations for why the world is the way it is. Historical myths retell an event from the past but elevate it with greater meaning than the actual event (if it even happened). [Lastly] psychological myths present one with a journey from the known to the unknown which, according to both Jung and Campbell, represents a psychological need to balance the external world with one's internal consciousness of it. – Mythology, Joshua Mark

“in front of my mother and my sisters, 

i pretend love is cheap and vulgar.

 i act like it’s a sin– 

i pretend that love is for women on a dark path. 

but at night i dream of a love so heavy 

it makes my spine throb–

i dream up a lover who makes love like he is 

separating salt from water.”

— Salma Deera, “salt” 

Natalie Lorraine is a myth.

And like in all the great myths, birth is a painful, violent emergence. 

Slowly, labored across years and many heartbeats, what remains is the inevitable conclusion of being fucked over, of being lazy and careless, of innocence taken too soon. Careless children grow up to be careless mothers, careless fathers. 

The titans of the world leave to make their mark on history and, in doing so, mark their children in a way more powerful, more regretful than any legend could possibly make them out to be. 

Medea is brutalized in legends and in verse for the most heinous a mother can commit.

Odysseys forgets what being a father means.

Oedipus Rex curses his children with an unforgivable sin by way of their mother, their grandmother, and that staggering failure is felt through to Antigone, a generation removed. Antigone dies. Haemon and Eurydice die too. Pain and grief are family heirlooms passed through pale fingers at the stroke of midnight. 

But despite all that. Before all that. 

Myths begin when the heroes are forced to make a choice, choose a direction in the way their lives end up. It might not always be obvious, and the gods might have things in store for them. But there is a choice and the fallen hero always chooses.

But they were all children once. You have to remember that. You have to believe that.

(Aetiologic)

I hate these socks, you think to yourself, they’re itchy and they hurt my toes. Every time you swing your legs over the edge of that leather couch, your legs too short to touch the ground, the toe of your shoe pinches you. You really, really want to take off your shoes, but Mom said you had to keep them on all day, especially in the office. In his office. You think your dress looks like one of your baby dolls and you don’t like it.

So you stop kicking, even though the sound of your heel against the leather made a funny noise. You can move too, and make the leather squeak, and that is pretty fun too. Grinning, you bounce like you aren’t supposed to on your bed back home, the cushions chirping – it sounds like they’re farting – you giggle, rocking back on your hands from left to right, squealing along with the leather as you made it –

“Enough!”

You freeze, tears immediately welling in your eyes, fear almost painful in your chest. 

But he’s not talking to you. Your father is still in his office, with the door barely shut, and he’s talking to someone on the phone. Yelling, actually. He’s been in there since the little hand was on the fifteen and now it’s on the thirty. He told you to wait there while he called your mom. You tried to sit still, but it was boring and all the toys were back in the other room. 

He never yelled at you, your dad, but he did yell at your mom. 

When you talked to the other kids in your preschool class, their mommies and daddies lived in the same house together, slept in the same bed, talked nicely to each other. Yours didn’t. 

“Well, what am I supposed to do with her, LeAnne? I told you I have a meeting at four today and she could be here for three hours. I told you! I can’t have her here! You need to come pick up your daughter!”

Your foot kicks up and down. You didn’t like it when they talked about you like you weren’t there. 

“Hey there.” A woman with blonde hair and big eyes sits down next to you. She was always around your dad, and always handled his papers and briefcase and sometimes his coffee. She is younger than your mom but way older than you are. You think she’s really, really pretty. None of her dresses look like baby doll dresses. “I’m sorry your dad is taking so long. Do you want something to eat, or drink?”

You shake your head. Your mom said not to talk to strangers, so you didn’t open your mouth. 

“Are you bored? Do you wanna watch some TV?”

TVs were everywhere in your dad’s office building. Down near the elevators, and then more when you got out. It always seemed like people were watching a tv and the actors on the tv. Actors were people whose job it was to be on the tv or in the movies, your dad told you. He told you he knew a lot of famous actors, but when you told the kids in your class about it, they said they didn’t know any of those people. 

“You’re just making things up!”

“You’re a liar!”

You really wanted your dad to introduce you to an actor, just to prove them wrong. You thought it was pretty cool how everyone was always watching them. Like they couldn’t look away. 

You nod at the pretty lady. She smiles and picks up the skinny black tv remote on the table in front of the couch. 

The tv in the corner of the room pops on. The size of it doesn’t take up the wall like some of the tvs in the office do, but it’s still bigger than the one you have at home. 

The nice lady taps the button a few times, the channels changing, until she comes to the kids channel. It’s a little old for you – all of the shows at preschool are cartoons and this one has real people in it – but you want this woman to like you. 

“Do you like this one? Friends in the Family? It’s so funny!” 

She turns and leans back against the couch with you. You hear people laughing on the screen, even though you don’t see anyone. There’s a young girl, older than you but younger than this nice lady, and she has a boy with her on her parents’ couch. The boy leans in and kisses her cheek and the invisible people go ‘oooooh’. 

“Ooooh!” You mimic and the nice woman laughs, grinning at you. Something warm and tight goes up your chest, and you pinch your lip with your teeth, toes curling in your stupid shoes. You liked making her laugh.

On the screen, a little girl – maybe the other girl’s sister – pushes through the kitchen door. You gasp in surprise. She looks like she could be in your preschool class. She’s all mad and she crosses her arms, pouting.

“Someone’s gonna get it!” 

The invisible people laugh and the nice lady giggles so hard she leans forward and you’re giggling too, even though you don’t quite get it. That warm feeling reminds you of when you drink soda too fast, but it’s good. 

You frown too, put your hands on your hips, parroting the little girl on tv, “someone’s gonna get it!”

Her pretty mouth opens in surprise, her eyes sparkling.

“Oh my God, that was so good! You sound just like her!” You giggle, your face hot. “Have you ever asked your dad about acting?”

You shake your head. You, an actor? On tv? No way!

“Well, you should! You could be really good!”

You don’t know what to say, you want to keep making the same faces that little girl is, when your dad’s door opens. The young woman next to you lurches forward and shuts off the tv. He comes out and you can’t tell if he’s angry or upset or if that’s just how he looks. You’re not around him enough to know. But he stands in front of you, thinking something.

“Judy, would you get us two juice boxes from the fridge downstairs?”

“Of course, Mr. Milken.”

The young woman leaves and you’re a little afraid. You don’t want him to yell at you for watching that show for older kids. You twist your little fingers. 

“That was your mom on the phone. She’s going to be a little late.” 

You nod. “Okay.” 

“Did you have fun today at my office? Did you like meeting all my friends?”

You nod, this time quicker. “Yes! I would like to meet an actor one day!”

At that, he smiles and you relax. People who are angry don’t smile. 

“While we wait for your mom, do you wanna play paper football?”

“What’s that?”

“C’mon. I’ll show you.”

So the myth begins. All it takes is a single idea. A single want. A single desire. An innately human desire. We build myths and we tell stories and we fill them with the things we want to hear.

You’re turning fourteen next month. It’s circled on your calendar in your bedroom. It’s not like it’s that big of a deal, but at least now you could start the emancipation process. If you wanted to. You laid awake at night, thinking about what you’d call yourself if you ever changed your name. Something vaguely French-sounding. European for sure. But they were just fantasies to get you through the day. 

It’s early in the morning. You haven’t heard anything from Mom’s room in a while so you figure it’s just the two of you in the house again. You totter out of your room, blinking sleep from your eyes – it was a very late night on set last night and probably would be again, given how the production of this made-for-tv movie was going and especially with the extra homework you’ve been doing to make up for the time off you’ve taken – as you wander across the small, sun-streaked living room, and around the corner to the kitchen. You hear something from the fridge and just as you are about to ask your mom if she’s cooking (which is never a good idea), a man stands up. He’s older than you but younger than your mom and he has the last piece of your sourdough bread in his mouth. He smirks and you unconsciously tug down the hem of your sleep shorts.

This has been happening more and more lately. The way men, older men, look at you, it’s different now. Has been for a while, but now there’s more of them, their gazes sit on your bare skin longer, the light in their eyes changing, the lines around their mouths tightening. You don’t really know what it is they want, but it’s baffling to you that they think looking at you like that will convince you to give anything to them. 

It's the way your mom’s new boyfriend is looking at you. Your cheeks heat up without your consent and you hate it. 

He’s hungry and he’s scrounging around in the fridge and now he’s looking at you. Still hungry.

“Hey, you must be LeAnne’s daughter,” he says, taking the bread slice out of his mouth and propping his hairy arm on the top of the refrigerator door, his gaze sweeping you from head to toe as if deciding whether or not to make a sandwich out of you. Who likes this kind of shit? Oh, that’s right. Your mom. 

You narrow your eyes at him. “Yeah. That’s me. Is she here?”

His eyes follow the backs of your thighs as you walk over to the coffee pot and take out week-old coffee grounds. They’ve turned blue, started to mold, but you dump them out into the trash with three good smacks.

“Uh, she’s still in bed. She said you could get to school on your own.” 

Behind you, the fridge door slams shut and you curl your toes, begging yourself not to flinch. There’s something inside of you demanding you to not show weakness. Steadying your own hand, you dig into the jar holding the coffee grounds. It’s halfway empty, you make a note to pick up some later, the thought pressed up against the swell of panic that’s growing at the edge of your awareness. 

“I’m Alan.” He leans up against the counter out of the corner of your eye. “I know we just met, but I could take you, to school . . . if you want.” 

His thick middle has nothing to do with age, only poor health. Evident further by his off-yellow teeth and bad breath. 

“I’m o-okay. Thank you.” 

There’s three minutes left on the coffee timer. His gaze is like open palms on your skin. You hate it. He sidles up closer and your nails dig half-moon crescents into your skin. The lovely smell of coffee brewing is overwhelmed by his cheap cologne. He’s big. Bigger than you. Bigger than any of the boys in your class, or any of the men on set. You’ve never really noticed the men on set, they’ve never been this close before, but you’re sure he’s bigger than all of them.

You’ve never felt quite so small. 

“You were in that movie, right? ‘Those ain’t your average space-invaders’, that was you right?” You nod, the back of your throat drying out. He chuckles. “You were good. Really good. You were so pretty.” 

“I was ten.” 

He shrugs. “Yeah. Ten outta ten.”

Your stomach clenches and it’s like he can tell. Alan reaches the two inches across the linoleum and gently strokes your forearm. A light, smelly panic sweat breaks out over your forehead, under your armpits. 

You want him away from you, want him gone, to run back to your room, but where would that get you? 

Roll over, play dead, show your under belly. You don’t know what else to do to make him go away.

“Well, if you see my mom,” you ease around him, your forearm sliding from his grasp just as his fingers tighten, making sure you don’t seem offended, “tell her I’ve got a ride to–,”

“Hey, wait, where ya going?” 

You all but run back to your room, the coffee pot beeping behind you. You throw open your bedroom door and leap inside, locking it behind you. You don’t realize you’re panting until you feel light-headed, dizzy – you feel sticky all of a sudden and rush into your bathroom. Steam pours from the scalding hot water, the red handle all the way to the right, as you stand over it, watching it rush down the drain. With your lips pinched between your teeth, you run your hands under it and muffle a scream. It hurts. It burns but it’s like his touch is evaporating off your skin and there’s relief in that. It’s the first time you realize that the pain you give yourself is different from the pain that they give you. 

Not all of them are like that. 

Some of them are actually kind of okay. 

You’re fifteen and dressed as a pumpkin for the Halloween party hosted by the studio, the suit baggy and oversized, and for once, your mom’s friends don’t stare at you. No one really has all night and it’s nice. You feel like you can ease into the wall and no one would notice. There’s a long black couch on the other side of a plant with glowing lights in the shape of ghosts wrapped around its trunk. You stepside around a few directors, one of your other actors, and head straight for the couch. 

You don’t realize Jim, your mom’s current boyfriend is already there until you sit down and groan. He laughs from the opposite end and you jump. 

He’s more her age, thankfully, and doesn’t really seem to notice if you’re at home or not. In fact, you can’t really remember another conversation with him that lasted longer than a few minutes.

“You liking the party?” He asks.

You shrug – never show your actual feelings. “It’s kinda late. I’ve got classes on Monday, so I’m hoping to make it an early night.”

He nods, slowly, distracted. There’s something about his eyes that isn’t right. Not in the way that he looks at you, but at everything, like he’s trying to look through a dense fog.

Your mother is nowhere to be found, which isn’t entirely out of the ordinary for this sort of thing. She’d either show up and be the life of the party or show up so trashed she had to be escorted out of the building. 

But it is odd for her to just leave one of her toys lying around. 

“Do you know where my mom is?” You ask Jim and he shakes his head, as though it takes a considerable amount of effort just to hold himself upright. There’s definitely something wrong with him.

And then you see the smoke coming from his fingers and you finally realize that skunky smell is coming from him. 

He sees your gaze fall. “You want a hit?” He asks, either not remembering your question or not wanting to answer.

You’d never tried it before, not really having time between shooting schedules and school and your mom wanting to take you out to meet new casting directors and writers. You sit there, staring and realize Jim is probably one of the only consistent people you see in your life, everyone else a revolving door of names and faces and elbows to rub. A tiredness breaks over you like the push of a wave and you sway, wanting nothing more than to be at home under the covers. You wish you’d brought your walkman, so you could have hid out on the soundstage until the party was over.

You’d grown skinny over the past year. Rewarded and praised for it by producers and studio execs, you saw that people listened to you more, looked you in the eye when you were beautiful, made more beautiful by the thinness of your cheeks, your narrow thighs. Your mother was convinced you were taking pills, but couldn’t find anything in the house. And yet, the real reason behind it all was sometimes you were just too tired to eat. Too tired to move. Happy to curl up wherever you found yourself and sleep until the next person needed something from you.

But this is what you wanted, after all. You asked for a life of movies and revolving doors and fake people and men staring at your ass. You are reminded of this all the time. 

You nod at Jim, curiosity getting the better of you and wondering if other girls did this sort of thing in basements or with their friends or boyfriends. You portray a teenage girl on television, but sometimes you don’t feel like one at all. 

He reaches out to you and you take it. You’d smoke a cigarette once, with a few of the kids from that one time you guest-starred on that sitcom, so you think this’ll be the same.

“What’s it going to feel like?” You ask, the white paper inches from your lips. Jim looked at you and his eyes sort of crinkled. 

“It’s good. Real good. Like there’s a cloud between you and the rest of the world.”

That did sound nice.

You put your lips and inhale – it burns in a way you weren’t expecting – and you cough. Jim laughs in a way that makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong, that you’re silly.

“You’ll get it,” he says, “you’ll get it.”

You try again and remember that he held his breath before exhaling. You do the same, but the scratch makes your eyes water, your chest tighten, but you hold on, until you feel smoke cauterizing the back of your throat close and you cough again, less this time.

Jim laughs again and takes back the skunky cigarette. “Hey, look at that, your first joint and you handled it like a champ.” 

He smokes more, losing interest in you, so he turns and watches the party. Your heart beats roughly in your chest, but that might be more of the nerves than anything else. You fidget on the couch, waiting for something to happen, but it never does.

“I think I need another h-hit. I don’t feel anything.”

Jim frowns at you, shaking his head. “Hell no. You took two giant puffs on your first go. I’m not babysitting you when you’re puking in the toilet with the spins.”

“The spins?”

“When you drink while you’re high. Can be a real bad mix.” 

You blush, wondering if he saw you take sips from the flask in your purse or he just assumes you’re always drinking because you’re LeAnne’s daughter. 

“Just sit back, relax, you’ll feel it. In a bit.”

So you try his approach, nonchalantly watching people dressed in devil costumes, in white vampire fangs and cloaks, little skimpy bunny outfits, as the party rages on. You watch, and slowly, the whole thing feels distant. Like you’re in the far back of a theater and everything in front of you is some sort of stage.

You find you like it in the back row, in the quiet and the darkness. It’s warm, sort of like you’re dizzy but you sway with the movement and you don’t get sick. You find that you are rolling your head back and forth and you giggle.

Jim smirks at you, that joint almost gone. “Yeah, there it is.”

You’d never been high like this before. Buzzed a little bit from the beer in your flask, but this was new. This was . . .

“It’s nice,” you smile widely to the ceiling. “Does it always feel this way?”

“Like I said, you can mix with alcohol and get really fucked up.” Jim shrugs. “And different strains do different things. This is gonna relax your brain, but there’s others that’ll give you a body high.”

Body, this thing you’re in that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you.

“But a mental high from weed and a mental high from glue are like two totally different things.”

Your bones feel like they weigh a thousand pounds and you could just melt into the leather. But you turn your head, dropping it against the back of the couch.

“You can get high from glue?”

“You can get high from just about anything.”

“Oh.”

The needle-like feeling that pricks your heart every time you come to one of these parties is gone. The sloshy oozy feeling in your stomach when you go into public with your mother is gone. There is nothing left inside of you except weight and heat and air that comes in through your nose and out through your mouth. 

You giggle again. What if this is how a pumpkin feels all the time?

“Will it always feel like this?”

He doesn’t understand your question, doesn’t care enough to think about it, so he answers the only way he can. “Nah, should only last for a few hours. Then you’re good. No hangover, which is a plus.” 

“But I always want it to feel this way.”

He grins again and pulls out a small plastic baggy with some fuzzy brussel-sprout-looking vegetable inside. 

“Got twenty bucks on you?” 

You’re sixteen and you’ve just started in your first major motion picture. Offers are rolling in, you no longer have to seek them out. The brand new telephone for your brand new house is constantly ringing. You have to unplug it to sleep at night. But that usually makes your mother yell at you. 

She wants to answer every call that comes through. As if this house was hers.

You sit cross-legged on your bed, grinding up the weed you bought off a sound-stage guy earlier today in your silver grinder, your headphones in to drown out the noises coming from the other side of the house as well as the ones in your head.

This boyfriend was not so nice and in a drunken stupor grabbed your ass in front of LeAnne. She raged and yelled and blamed you. 

Get out, she told you. Leave. Get out. We don’t want you here. Leave. 

This is my house, you old bitch.

Licking the paper gently, you finish rolling the joint and press pause on your walkman. Stevie Nicks pauses in her crooning, and is it over now, do you know how? pick up the pieces and go home, and you remind yourself to find a purply drape at the next flee market. Reaching to the end of the bed, you plug in your headphones to the hot pink tv and flip to the right station.

Henry had sent in a new tv for your birthday, and you had that promptly thrown out. You bought this with your first check from residuals. 

It’s almost eleven. It’s about to start. 

You light the joint, inhaling smoothly, as the credits for Twenty-Three and Fun start up. 

The joint quivers at the end of your knee, your toes curling. It wasn’t produced by your father’s company, but it was all anyone talked about at school, in the gossip mags. You thought about buying Tiger Beat just for the pictures . . . of one specific cast member.

You bite your nail as the theme song plays and the credits roll through all the gorgeous, young actors smiling as they go about their perfectly average lives in the big city. 

And then his name shows up and you inhale smoke quickly to stifle the thing expanding in your chest.

Dieter Bravo. 

His smooth soft hair, dark sweet eyes. God, he is so cute. 

Your hand clenches the sheets. You’ve never had a boyfriend, only been kissed once while at dance in between shooting schedules that you’d begged your mom to let you attend. It was bad, it tasted bad, his lips were rubbery and wet, and you didn’t feel anything. 

Not like when you imagine what it would be like to be kissed by him.

Twenty-Three and Fun is out of your demographic, but maybe you could convince someone to let you try out for the part of someone’s little sister who comes in for the weekend. You’d just love the chance to meet him. He makes you feel like nothing you’ve ever felt before, nothing you know what to do with, but you tingle all over with it.

You’re at the tail end of sixteen when the spiral starts. 

When you don’t know where to put this loneliness that’s been dragging you down. 

Men stare at you but not in the way you want. Girls your own age won’t look at you, and women glare at you while their husbands stare. And boys, God, boys your own age –

You wipe the tears from your eyes, the wind snarling through your hair, the heat of the summer night sinking into your skin like wet clay. You know you’re driving too fast, but you don’t care.

Every day you go to work and put on someone else’s skin. Their clothes. Their face. For a while, it’s been freeing, to pretend to have normal problems, a normal family, a normal life. Because you knew even if you had never chosen to go into your father’s industry – which was now just as much yours – you knew your life wasn’t ever going to be normal. Not in the way it mattered anyway. 

But there is something there when you step in front of a camera. A feeling that doesn’t come from a dark place, from feelings of abandonment and loneliness – it comes from a place inside of you that still feels like you own, still is yours to hold and keep safe, despite everyone taking things from you without asking. Instead of taking, it gives. It builds. It grows, despite the salted earth of your soul. 

You like becoming someone else for a while, thinking as they do. Dancing, laughing, eating, playing as someone other than yourself. You like to create. You crave it. You create life for someone else that doesn’t exist and you love it. It feels right, imagining something if not for you, for someone else. Someone who looks like you but isn’t you. It feels good to dream. 

But lately. 

Lately, this job is no longer an act of creation. It’s fake smiles and ad campaigns and commercials and it feels rotten. Hollow. Like you’re under the eyes of a thousand leering men instead of just one. It feels cheap. You feel cheap, for wanting it to be something more. This desire for life itself dies in your hands, choked out, aborted before it had the chance to breathe.

Your body, yourself, is being twisted, molded into something you don’t want it to become and the only time, the only time you feel as though you have even some slight control is when you have none at all. When you detach from your corporeal form, so high or drunk you can’t feel your fingers. 

It began with the beer your mom’s boyfriends left in the fridge, then the pills in her medicine cabinet. Then the mini bottles of Crown Royal and Jim Beam in the mini-fridges at your dad’s office. No one ever seemed to care when you swiped the whole row into your backpack. Maybe others had done the exact same thing. 

You didn’t know how or why these things made you feel better but they did. You didn’t care about the tears on your face, the hot flood of anger beating in your chest, and you didn’t care about the speed limit, not even when you saw the flashing red and blue lights.

But you started to care when they put you in lock up and then you definitely did when your father’s lawyer bailed you out. 

You went home and threw up for six hours. No one came to check on you, no one came to find you when you yanked the phone cord out of the wall. You clutched the porcelain basin of the toilet for what felt like days. Years. You aged decades that night.

When you woke up, you showered, ate, and called back your father’s lawyer.

You had decided on a name, a new name to put on the emancipation papers. 

You told the lawyer very clearly and seriously over the phone: “I want my name to be Natalie Lorraine.”

It was the emancipation that finally did it. The final chop from the parental vine. The day she kicked you out, you came home from school, in between shoots for a new film with Gerard Butler and in talks for something with Helen Miram, and you find your mother curled up on the kitchen table. At first, you legitimately thought she was dead; the top half of her body was crumpled against the wood, her feet tangled with the rungs of the chair. She faced away from you, her right hand curled around an empty crystal tumbler and a three-fourths empty bottle of Belvedere inches from her fingertips. 

You stare, dumb-founded, your heart so slow you could hear it pound like a drum in your ears. And then she twitches. 

And then she wails.

“How could you? How could you do this to me? I’m your mother. You owe me. You owe me you owe me you owe me.”

She heaves boneless to the floor, the glass and bottle slipping out of her hand and shattering like droplets of rain. You can’t move, transfixed, as your mother, hands split open, knees carving bloody trails across the tile, drags herself towards your feet, like a freshly dug-up corpse. 

She’s muttering, spitting, snarling – she’s a starved, beaten beast, ready to make its last stand. 

You were a mistake

You ruined me

You ruined your father for me

Her sentences are blurred, notched together, overlapping, and intertwining. The only thing you remember is the vitriol and hatred more palpable than her own breath. 

Someone older, someone more separated from their pink, flushed girlhood would have the callouses to ease the burn, dull the cut. But at sixteen, you didn’t. At sixteen, with a burgeoning substance abuse problem and at the mercy of the first of many instances where adulthood begins to rob you of the small pleasures of life, you watch your mother crumble and it scares you.

In that moment you want nothing more than to be taken care of, in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s asking too much but it clearly is. You want to be safe in a way that is primal, the animal fear of the dark and unknown. You’ve seen your mother drunk before but not this drunk, never heard the sounds she’s making — the wailing, the disappointment, the sorrow and rage. It scares you so badly you want to cry.

The gap between girlhood and womanhood is closed when you understand your mother is only human. Nothing less. And nothing more. 

She’s still muttering hateful, horrible things as you take her to her feet and ease her onto the couch. 

She’s silent when you throw a blanket over her. 

She’s pale, shaking, green. 

Go away. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you around me. Leave me alone.

Leave me.

Leave me.

Leave me. 

Go away. 

You leave her, not knowing if it's serious enough to call 911, if you can actually die from drinking too much, but that fear, that vice-grip around your chest, it’s squeezing your lungs so tightly, tears leak out of the corner of your eyes. But then it sinks. Sinks into your bones, your blood, your muscles. Watching your mother folded up like a broken doll, you experience fear like you’ve never felt before. 

Blink and you’re in your room.

Blink and you’re under your bed, curled up, knees to your chin, and you’re crying. You can’t stop crying. It’s the only thing that seems to appease the fear, the sense that nothing is real and everything is going to turn out badly and it makes your stomach twist. You gag on your own spit and you shake and you tremble and you experience your first panic attack without anyone to tell you what’s going on. How to survive something like that. You grow up thinking this is how everyone lives and you’re just too pathetic to take it. You let that shame and embarrassment fester and grow because it has no way of stopping. 

Your father is also served with the papers. 

Two weeks later, the production for your upcoming movie was suddenly put on hold. The role with Helen Miriam went to someone else.

He never helped you get ahead in the industry, but he absolutely blocked you from it. He never called you again.

Someone, someone else, might have been hurt by the fact that your father cut you off without so much as a goodbye. But it’s not like you could miss what you never had.

You take the hint and enroll in UC Santa Barbara under your new name.

The myth of your maidenhood ended in much of the same way it began: at the behest of someone else and exiled as an afterthought.

You tried the whole sleep-around-to-fill-a-need thing for the freshmen year of college. It didn’t take. You liked sex but you liked the chase more. You liked the hunt, the thrill, the unconscious desire to touch, when the desire to do something first emerges in their heads. You like to watch the basic urge emerge in their darkened eyes before the other shoe drops. Drops and splatters coherent and rational thought like a bug on a windshield. 

You liked sex, even if more often you had to get yourself off while your partner had fallen asleep, their needs met. But you liked being wanted more. The drugs helped bridge the gap and given that you had no idea how to make friends because you'd never had one your own age before, the puddles of bodies that dripped onto couches and floors at parties seemed to be as good a social circle as any. They all started to recognize you at parties, in lecture halls, at bars. They nodded, you nodded back, and you sat down. 

No longer alone.

But not entirely wanted either. 

It was enough though. 

By your third year, you were known more for your party provisions (with your old contacts from the industry) than your ex-boyfriends. 

You meet Heidi Morgan through one of your production management professors. 

You’d gone in to speak with your professor, a man notorious for sleeping with his students, and believed you to be next in line (men were so much better at doing what you asked when they thought you’d sleep with them), so you were hoping that you could convince him that it was actually your lab partner who stole the paper from you, not the other way around, when you see him with someone else. 

Blonde, small, feisty. 

Heidi Morgan takes one look at the grotesque ogling in his eyes and promptly introduces herself. 

In her own fire and take-no-shit attitude, you find kindred spirits. 

She later asks you out for drinks, you think it’s been too long since you went down on a girl, and you completely misread the situation. 

She clears things up and then asks you to read for a part. The whiplash makes your head spin, but given that she’s not calling you a giant slut, it’s probably good news.

She knows who you are. Suspected because you looked familiar and because she has friends in some truly weird places, she confirms her suspicions by the end of the day. So she gives you a call, you show up, flirt too much, and maybe end up with a job. 

She gives you the script. It’s good.

Really good.

Why me? You ask her. You graduate in two weeks. You’re turning twenty-two in a few days. There’s nothing you’ve done in recent years to make her have this kind of faith in you. All digital memories of you reflect a knobby-kneed, round-cheeked little girl then that same little girl with tits and a smirk well beyond her years. 

She didn’t think she might find her lead in a dingy auditorium, she says, but crazier things have happened. It’s not a guarantee, or a promise, just an offer. Try out, see what happens. 

Crazier things have happened.

The rest is less myth and more old history.

(Historic)

The day you meet him is not unlike any other. Except in the little things. Your bra strap breaks when you go to put it on. Your belt loop gets caught in a door handle and nearly shucks your pants to the floor. You somehow get lost on the way to the studio even though you have your phone mapping the route. It takes you around and around and around until you get out and ask a very confused gas station attendant where the fuck the sound stage is. 

It’s not momentous. Annoying, perhaps, so annoying that all these little things pester your brain like flies gorging on rotten fruit. You’re distracted, one eye always glancing over your shoulder. Trouble, trouble, trouble, your problems seem to whisper, you’re in trouble.

A PA comes to find you, saying Heidi specifically asked for your presence but she’s gone missing. He thinks he knows where to find her, if you’d come with him. You eye him up from the black leather couch you’re draped across, irritated at the day and at him for his shameless staring. You nod, and immediately he starts running his mouth about his own Hollywood dreams. He’s a writer, you know, maybe you’ve heard of some of his smaller indie work, it’s not very much, but folks who know say it's good so maybe he’ll be able to sell it if –

The door to the back of the lot opens and it’s like god snapped his fingers in your ear. It’s not momentous, or earth-shattering, but holy shit does it fuck you up.

He’s broad. Tall. Forearms, thick and veiny, stocky thumbs and tense fingers. His hair is just on the edge of being long, but combed back in some attempt to tame it, to fold it into submission. His right earlobe is puckered, pierced, but no earring. His beard and mustache are trimmed, clean shaven elsewhere. Despite how he’s built out adult male muscle from his days on Twenty-Three and Fun, he still has those boyish eyes, a dimple that would drive anyone up a wall, and eyelashes you’d pay a thousand dollars for. You knew this was coming but it still feels like a kick in the chest. 

That kick burns when you realize something.

He’s fucking pissed. He’s beautiful, carved from your very dreams of what the most gorgeous man on earth would look like, but he’s fucking pissed.

Surprisingly, at you. 

Well, that’s disappointing. 

He comes at you with his claws drawn and you’ve never, ever been one to back down. You swipe back and hope you draw blood.

You discover other things about Dieter Bravo, the boy who you used to have a heart-stopping crush on when you didn’t know anything better. Fantasy will always be better than reality, and this isn’t exactly how you’d thought your first meeting would go.

And yet, you discover something else, something very, very curious. Something soft and impressionable, bruised purple and green. Something you want to lean on with your entire weight until he chokes. It’s ugly, but it’s amusing. Maybe this is how you hoped your first meeting would go, albeit with some tricky obstacles and a ticking clock. 

You want to press and see what spills out. 

Dieter Bravo cannot and does not look away from you. 

The day you meet Dieter Bravo is also the day you meet The Sixers, the day you meet Marie. She’s small, mousy, but apparently a fucking rock star on the drums. You like the irony; quiet and unassuming until she bangs through your head with percussion. Where the rest of her bandmates are wide-eyed and eager and come with more drugs than a pharmacy, there’s something about Marie that you find so tenderly earnest you kind of wish you didn’t come dressed like you were going out to eat the fleshly hearts of men everywhere. You want to approach her on her level. You don’t want to scare her away. There’s something redemptive about a kind, sweet girl like Marie striking up a friendship with you. 

If you could ever figure out how to start one. 

“Excited for the filming to start?” You ask her after nearly everyone’s picked up their things and left after the reading. She glances at you, then over her shoulder, as if you were talking to someone else. You instantly feel insanely protective of her. 

She blinks a few times before distractedly shaking her head. “No. I’m actually terrified.” 

“About being in a movie?”

She cringes, as if it’s the most shameful thing in the world. 

“Yeah. I love playing in front of crowds, but something about being on camera scares me.” 

You make a note to find out the next time they’re playing live.

“It’s honestly not that bad. It feels a little weird, like some unblinking eye staring at you, but then it just kind of fades away.” 

She bites her lip, tucking that short brown hair over her ear. “Have you done this before?”

You’re not exactly hiding your childhood movie star past, but you don’t really want it broadcasted.

“Here and there.” 

The rest of her bandmates are chatting amongst themselves, perhaps not yet aware you’re trying to befriend one of them. You’re not quite sure how it’s going.

“If you ever want, we could talk and I could give you some pointers.”

Fuck, why did that sound like a line? It shouldn’t. You didn’t want it to. Where was the line between asking someone to be your friend and asking someone for a fuck?

If she notices your embarrassment, she doesn't show it. She grins brightly, unashamed. “Yes! Oh my god, yes, please. I’d love that!”

Normally, when giving someone your number, you’d grab their hand and write it in Sharpie, giving them a good wink. Now you tear off a corner of the call sheet and write down your number in shaking hands. It’s a small piece of paper, easily lost. That’s okay, if she does lose it. No need to freak out.

She’s grinning, smile expanding across that round face of hers as she takes your number when someone calls her name.

Roxie, the one with bright-red flaming hair and gorgeously thick eyebrows, takes a glance at the piece of paper in Marie’s fingers. One eyebrow arches, and she says nothing.

Roxie looks at you like she wants to devour you whole. You think you’ll let her. 

You decide to ignore him.

Whatever his problem with you is, it doesn’t have to be dealt with immediately. Maybe he’ll come around and if not, no skin off your nose. It’s none of your business what happens off camera, what he thinks about you as a person. All that matters is giving a good performance and you know you can do that. 

You just sort of wish you had known more about the role before Heidi offered it. You really sort of wish you had known Dieter was going to be your co-star. That night, after approaching him in the parking lot, you had two glasses of wine to settle your trembling nerves, and you flipped through the script.

He was so calm and collected at the table read today. Cool, relaxed, at ease with himself and the world. Everyone knew him, everyone talked about him, either directly to you or in snatches of conversation.

Dieter Bravo – you could not ask for a better scene partner!

Dieter Bravo – he’s so, so nice. He always stops for fans!

Dieter Bravo – this shoot is going to be so much fun with him!

You’d never been particularly star-struck, but for the first time in your life, the idea of working with your co-star was daunting. When you were up against Gerard Butler, you’d been in the game for a while, knew the industry, showed up in the trades. Now, you felt like any other Santa Barbara graduate stumbling out in front of the camera for the first time. Where was that all-knowing smirk you had perfected at fifteen? God, had you always been so transparent?

You felt like you had to prove yourself at that table read. You know you were going a bit overboard, but they watched you, transfixed, and it empowered you. Mark Bronson, Marie, the rest of The Sixers, they watched you like Taylor had possessed your body and you instantly became a rockstar. 

Only, he didn’t. He watched you and didn’t look away, but he looked so uninterested in your performance, the tears that filled your eyes were partially real.

And then he touched you and in that moment, you knew he was mocking you. Laughing at you, you fucking child. He was the legendary star here, not you, and to think you ever had a chance was laughable. The heat of disgust in his eyes hurt, more than you wanted to admit. 

It was day one and he hated you.

Things escalate. 

He caught you high on set and it felt like you were being scolded by your older brother. He didn’t get it. He never did. All that shit about how he knows what it’s like – bullshit. All fucking bullshit. He was somehow always in the corner of your eye, watching you, begging you to fuck up so he could expose you like the fraud you are. 

And a pathetic fraud you are at that. He touches you and it’s like algae, hot and dense, spreading across your skin. You fight the feeling that strokes your cunt and you grit your teeth. Stop touching me, go away, stay back – please. 

You’re twenty-two and still harboring that fucking crush you had when you were sixteen. It’s embarrassing. It’s pathetic. It’s so, so, so wrong.

You try to ignore him. Try to exorcize him from your every waking thought. It doesn’t take. You get drunk at the pool party and you want his eyes, anyone’s eyes, on you. 

Marie is shy, you try to sober up around her, but you’re too far gone and you don’t want her to see you like this.

So you find Roxie. And Samuel. They give you something that makes your pupils dilate to the size of quarters and you feel like you’re made of cosmic dust. When they touch you, beauty and awe and the atoms of the universe bloom across your skin. You like kissing them, you decide. The water dripping off you from the pool feels like bad lovers and broken kingdoms up for sale.

You end up at his door. You don’t mean to. You genuinely forgot what room you were in. 

Consciously, you know he’s married. Consciously, you know he hates you. But that doesn’t stop you from asking anyway. 

“You could join us, you know.” 

You want so badly to be his theatrical equal that it hurts, it burns hotter for a moment than your desire for him, and he just stares at you. Consciousness somewhere in a nearby galaxy, you can’t read the look on his face. And then it blurs, he closes the door, and the entire hallway grows thick, heavy leaves.

Disappointment is a physical object and it burrows into your chest. You think you can feel your ribs moving to make room.

Sam and Roxie fuck on your bed while you’re curled up on the futon. You don’t even change out of your suit. You kick them out as soon as they are done, not wanting their hungry gazes to turn to you. 

This is always the worst part. When the emotions and memories that you’ve managed to pry off you as you coat yourself in a protective layer of LSD, finally come back. They wrap around you like a vice and you can feel the beginnings of a panic attack start in the tremble of your fingers. You stay there in the armchair, damp and cold and shivering and trying not to choke on your own throat, until the early hours of the morning. You think you could die like this but you don’t. You never actually do.

He doesn’t bring it up and neither do you. You sort of wish he would, just for a chance to . . . no, that’s fucked up and, if not legally, morally wrong. You can’t wish for anything when it comes to him.

It’s easier to hate him. To pretend like he was some over-involved, self-obsessed diva who stepped on your lines on purpose and flat-out refused to run scenes with you. It was easier as a whole for a while.

Marie started talking to you on her own now and that made you forget Dieter for a bit. The rest of the group was hesitant in their welcome, despite what had almost happened between you, Sam, and Roxie. But they all came around when you gave them the cleanest Molly they’d had in years.

It was like college all over again, but the faces were consistent this time. Five of them. You smoked in their van, fuzzy orange carpet fibers tickling your ear as you looked up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the roof. 

“Why are you called The Sixers if there are five of you?” You ask suddenly. 

There’s a pause and then a collective chuckle. You watch it like lightning spark between them.

Nick finally speaks up: “Because it sounds like the sex-ers.”

“Sixty-nine n’ feeling fine.”

You laugh with them this time and you feel your breath mix with theirs. 

While meeting him wasn’t a particularly momentous occasion, the drive up to his AirBnB was. Maybe it was the lack of air this high up, but around every turn, your chest got a little tighter. The Sixers had shown you The Labyrinth with David Bowie last weekend (“how have you never seen that movie? Did you grow up under a rock?”) and you can’t help but think of the Goblin King coming to whisk you away. At the very least, the amount of rings they wore were the same. 

You try desperately to not look at his white-knuckles around the steering wheel and fail tremendously.

The thing is, you don’t really want to fight with him. You don’t want to have to interact with him through this hazy, distant, drugged out wall, but that seems like the only way he’ll talk to you. He’s always scowling at you, like you’d done something wrong, and you hadn’t. Sure, you thought about it and fucked yourself on the biggest dildo you had about it, but you hadn’t actually done anything. You hadn’t even made a move on him, not even bat an eyelash. But it seems like you just breathe in his direction and that sets him off. 

You still don’t understand why his past drug problem is now your problem too. In your absence from Hollywood, you’d somehow missed his ups-and-downs as he transitioned out of a teenage heartthrob into a fully adult hot mess. You’d certainly missed his marriage announcement until you googled it in the bathroom after lunch one day to see if what you’d heard the two techs talk about was true.

She’s so fucking hot.

Yeah, she was a model, right? Dude fucking scored big.

Fuck, she was a model. Even if she wasn’t, she certainly looked it, from all the red-carpet photos of the two of them. He looked at her with complete and total adoration.

Hollywood party boy settles down with recent marriage to cubist painter’s daughter

The headline was wordy but got the point across. He was off-limits. 

You didn’t know how to make someone like you if you couldn’t offer them sex or drugs. What the fuck were you supposed to do with the sober and married Dieter Bravo?

And yet, there were times. Moments. Fragments. Bursts of light in a mirror, where you thought he looked too long. How his eyes flickered black when you talked about your bra, or your tits, or your ass. But that’s all they were – fleeting instances of your own insanity bleeding into reality. He would never look at you like that. He hated you. 

It scared you, the way he expected you to act when you couldn’t hide behind being high, when you couldn’t flirt your way out of a particularly tense situation. He wanted you raw, exposed, your face revealed to the light you had spent years hiding from.

And then he did the darndest thing.

He was nice about it. In the kitchen, and then on the patio, he asked you questions about your start in the industry, what you’d like to do with your life, how you saw your career going. He cooked for you and made you laugh. He invoked the holy saint Sister Heidi as a bargaining chip and it was all the excuse you needed to drop the boxing gloves. You didn’t want to fight with him. You wanted to be his friend. You wanted him to like you.

Scratch that.

You wanted him to fuck you within an inch of your life and, sure, it was stupid to finger-fuck yourself to him, on the same couch as him, but maybe you wanted to get a little caught. Okay, a lot caught because then he’d tell you to fuck off and he’d draw the line in the goddamn sand and, sure, it’d be embarrassing and, sure, it’d hurt like hell but you’d get over it. You’d nurse your heart but you’d get back on that fucking bike because you really, really wanted this movie to work – but –

He fucking doesn’t. 

He doesn’t kiss you but he wants to. He looks at you like he wants to suck the marrow from your bones, drink the blood from your heart through your cunt.

Dieter Bravo wants to kiss you desperately, but because he is a good man, he doesn’t. And because you’re a shit person, you make it hard on him. You make it hurt because it hurts you and just for once, for a second, you want someone to understand how you feel. How you hurt. How you ache. 

That house in New Mexico changed everything. For you. For him.

Friends didn’t make time with each other because they were trying to plug up the moans in their head. Friends didn’t keep busy to keep their hands off each other. You weren’t friends with him, but you did get along. You learned a lot about him. You’d never had a real friend before but you sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to feel. 

Instead of a myth, your relationship is built in handprints. Red blotches on cave walls, their original meaning lost to time, a dead language no one speaks any more. Sometimes the prints overlap, sometimes they don’t. There are no words spoken, but the feeling is there all the same.

You think, if you could just take your aching heart out of your body, you could actually be Dieter Bravo’s friend. He fills in holes you didn’t realize were empty. Chasms for art, for acting, for food that didn’t come in a can or delivered on your front door. He knows about wine, and whiskey, and needs help dressing himself. He never made you feel like your asks were too much, your need to connect too great. He took your hand and told you what you wanted was normal. He’s funny, patient, and loves Shirley MaClaine movies. He did her entire monologue from The Apartment one night after hours of begging and it brought you to tears. You had a scene partner in Dieter Bravo, you had someone to challenge you, to rethink scenes and pull back deeper and deeper character layers. He’d taken a course online about psychology to have a new perspective on analyzing characters and you thought it was fucking genius. 

Marie filled certain relationship needs – a girl to talk about drama with, a fellow fan of live music, someone to make you look up to – but Dieter fulfilled more, if not all of them. Despite working in an artistic industry for years, you’d never once talked trade with someone and certainly not someone who knew it so well. You were awestruck by him. 

Call it infatuation, call it being horny, but there is a connection, a red through line that connects you both. And for a while, that’s enough. 

Until it isn’t. 

The mark of his blotchy handprints on your heart stop when you fuck some guy you barely know because Dieter hurt you. 

When he won’t look at you while he’s pretending to fuck you, you feel self-conscious again, like he’s going to think you’re some inexperienced little nepo baby. But he does his duty and you do yours and you’ve never felt so empty. 

Your handprint stays, while his blurs away. 

(Psychologic)

After production ends, you exist in the margins. No more mythologizing. No more cave drawings. 

And then Marie shows up.

She takes you to get your nails done like it's the most normal thing in the world. What is wrong with her? Doesn’t she know what you are?

You get smoothies and see some live music and she keeps you from spiraling. There is no possible way she knew about the lines of coke upstairs in your bedroom, but she takes you out into the light all the same. 

You go out to shows with The Sixers. They love having a groupie who’s a Hollywood star. Marie seems embarrassed when they show-case you, but you find you don’t mind waving a bit on stage and introducing the band. You think you see a pair of deep brown eyes in the crowd occasionally but you know it’s not. You have to accept your fate. He might not like you and he doesn’t hate you, but he certainly doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Not friends, not lovers, but something else. Something almost.

You and the Sixers swim in the ocean off the Santa Barbara coast. You go to parties and you play the bongo drums in a treehouse in South Los Angeles. You bring the good drugs and everyone loves you. 

You don’t want to go to the wrap party, but Marie insists. You think she likes being famous just for all the opportunities to get dressed up and do your make up. She told you once that you are the prettiest girl she’d ever seen without any motive behind it. She wasn’t trying to fuck you or fuck with your head. It was just the truth in her eyes and it made you nauseous.

You go to the wrap party because it’s something better to do than get high on shrooms for the fourth time this week and as a reward, Cooper shares his blunt with you in the car. You laugh easily and often and loudly and Cooper keeps you steady with a hand on your waist. You’re nervous, you want to drink more, but you already feel like you’re carrying too many cups and plates and the noise it’s going to make when you drop them all is going to be deafening. 

He’s here. He’s here with his fucking gorgeous wife and you stand behind Cooper so you have something blocking your line of sight.

Just as you are about to order your first vodka soda of the night, Dieter rushes back into the house. The weed and coke in you switch the plugs in your brain and suddenly you are very, very angry. 

But the Dieter you find is fragile, beaten down, vulnerable. He talks to you like he did in New Mexico and it dulls the edges around the hole in your chest. He looks at you like you’re his saving grace, his last hope. 

Myths lie. They blur the truth to make a better story. They build up a man larger than life, they make goddesses out of women, and they sanctify, canonize love. They make you ache with the wanting of the fantasy of it, and that’s on purpose. Myths are the human experience on fire.

Kissing him, you feel on fucking fire.

Meeting him didn’t feel momentous. But fucking him certainly was. 

The settlement of your mythology burns to the ground, flames licking the sky. He has crystalized in your veins and, in an instant, you’re hopelessly addicted.

With Dieter Bravo, you come to like sex. You come to love it actually. It’s an itch, a fluttering, warm feeling that makes you twitch and tense when his hands aren’t on you. There’s some part of you that knows the inherent danger of giving one man, much less this man, that much power over you, but fuck, you can’t help it. 

You’re too young, too inexperienced in the world to know the difference between when a man wants you for sex and when a man loves you. In your mind, the two are the same and cannot be separated. You know what it feels like to be wanted to be fucked, but in your nativity you assume that’s how a man looks at you when he wants to love you — and this time you’d welcome it. 

There isn’t much to say about New Orleans, except for three things:

One, you’ve successfully confused yourself into thinking this is what being in a relationship with him would be like.

Two, you’ve never felt safer and more wanted and more complete than you ever have when you take drugs with Dieter. (that primal animal fear is gone for the first time in what feels like years)

And three, you’re so fucking in love with him you’re sick with it.

In the sickness, you grow weak. You burn with fever. Your bones ache and your mind races. His touch is simultaneously a balm and a contagion. 

You love him. You love him. You love him.

You love him unlike anything or anyone. 

Marie is actually the only one who ventures a guess. Who catches you, wings pinned to the corkboard, and asks you point-blank, “are you fucking Dieter Bravo?” 

Maybe she’s braver because it’s over text, permanent traces of your infidelity, but you stare at her message for hours. You think about it in the hotel shower after the plane lands in Los Angeles. You haven’t seen her in weeks and you’ve stopped returning her phone calls. 

Your high falters at the idea that you might have (and probably did) lose a friend over him. But what did that matter, in the grand scheme of things, your sickness asks you, now that you have him?

Now that he’s the only thing that matters. Now that he is everything. 

He goes back to his wife. 

After everything. After what you did for him. After what you gave up. How you prostrated yourself for his love, for a moment of his time. He can’t see it, it’s eating you up. You think cancer has kinder teeth than his. 

The foundations of the core of your being are rocked. It doesn’t feel real because he’s still in this hotel with you, the same hotel where you fucked in the bathroom, where you flirted with him for the cameras to sell the movie, where he begged you to stay with him, you’re gonna stay, right? you’re gonna be with me, after this? And maybe it isn’t real because he only lasts being apart from you for twelve, maybe fourteen hours. Maybe he’s sick too. Maybe he’s fucked just as much as you are. 

In your dark, deep wretched heart, you hope he is. You hope he’d die without you. But you don’t know. You don’t know because he never says it. 

This time, it’s real, he promises. This time, he’s never going back. This time he’s going to say he loves you, his kisses pledge to you. 

This time he’s not going to leave you.

In the mornings after Chloe leaves and you kiss him E-tablets with your tongue and he fucks you in every way he knows how, he curls up next to you and you tell him. It doesn’t matter he doesn’t seem to hear you.

You tell him you love him, have always loved him. Dieter Bravo turned from an imaginary companion, to a friend you didn’t want, and now to a lover who makes you think you’re special. Something valuable, precious. Something that is worth keeping. 

Until you’re not.

Myths serve to answer questions about our place in the natural order of things. To ease tension. To provide guidance. 

Why does it rain?

Where do the seasons come from?

What is the sun, and why does it leave and return?

What is heartbreak?

What is grief? What is sorrow? How do we carry them with us?

How do we go on when the world is determined to break us?

When you’ve always had nothing, and now you still have nothing and no one – he doesn’t love you and he’s going back to his pregnant wife – you ask, what’s the fucking point?

Not even the myths can answer that one.

Later, when you wake up under the bright lights of a hospital room, your memory is cracked, broken into terracotta pieces on the ground. There are things missing from you.

You don’t remember calling Oliver, only that he was there and he was high out of his mind and he gave you whatever he had in his pockets. You don’t remember what you took, or if Oliver was kind to you when he watched you swallow pill after pill.

You don’t remember the shower, the ambulance ride, or being admitted.

You aren’t sure exactly what you’ve lost. But you feel the missing edges.

Dieter is missing from you.

If you close your eyes, still the movement of your body, block out the noises of the machines and the hospital around you, you think you remember hearing him say it.

You think he might have said it when he kissed your forehead, but it feels older than that. Like his words and his actions stem from two different memories but you’re so fucked up they blur together. You want to hold onto that new memory, as fabricated as it might be, for as long as you can.

But then sleep over takes you again and it flushes everything out. The next time you wake up, you don’t remember that he ever said, I love you. 

When you wake up, you know he’s gone. You don’t know how you know, or why, but it feels like a piece of you has been torn away in a bloody chunk. Like someone had taken pliers to your fingernails and tore them off until blood splattered onto the floor.

Like someone put a knee to your shoulder and wrenched white teeth out of your mouth. 

Until you are gummy and dripping.

You open your eyes not to Dieter, not Heidi, but Marie. Mousy, intelligent, thoughtful Marie curled up asleep in the chair next to you. 

The sound of your crying wakes her up. Wordless, judgement-less, she crawls into bed with you, takes you into her arms, and lets you sob like the heart-broken mess you’ve become. 

God, can you die from pain like this?

She strokes your forehead and tells you, no, you can’t. You might want to, but you can’t. 

For the first time in your life, you’re not a myth. 

You’re not a story of a little girl whose parents didn’t love her enough. 

You are not the story of an actress whose star burned too bright and hot and the cosmos punished her for her hubris. 

You’re not the story of a woman who fell in love too hard and too fast with drugs and a man much older than her and got shattered on the rocks. 

The book has closed, the final chapter has come. There are no more stories to tell, nothing left to make fantastic. 

You are a broken human body. 

Natalie Lorraine is a myth.

You were a child once. You have to remember that. 

[moonsaver]

Okay, honestly, I'm still reeling from the entire penacony quest, but here's my take on Sunday so far;

He's manipulative, obviously.

But like.. the type that's kind of hesitant from time to time because he's still sincere to a degree. At least, when it comes to his loved ones.

So, I guess that hesitance decreases a lot if you're just some nobody. Even then, Sunday does want the better for everyone, too. It just means that others may bear the brunt of it for the most part before being able to get ahold of it.

Also, at the very least, even if some people suffer, at the end Sunday believes they will reach where they want to, after. In that case, however, Sunday suffers far more than them, without actually ever reaching his own destination or idea of paradise.

However, this view is a bit distorted. Sunday believes to be "sacrificing" himself, shouldering loneliness and burdens in order to uphold everyone else's "paradise". But to the others, he's simply a tyrant overruling everyone's will with his own idea of Order.

Sunday deeply cares. He cares too much. That's kind of the problem.

A bit of self-destructing tendencies when pushed too far, I guess.

Lets ignore logic established by the quest for a second (because i literally am still reeling from it)

Imagine Sunday first discovers this possibility. He's terrified of it, but at the same time, he truly thinks this is humanity's salvage – for everyone who has deeply suffered. He thinks of you.

You who have had your fair share of pain, who confides in him late at night in the quiet of your privacy, hushed voices like silenced by a thick blanket through the wall.

You deserve to live a sweeter life. He thinks. No. You deserve more. He knows.

The first person he ever wants to step into this paradise – you.

Now, although Sunday was defeated in the end, we all know that unfortunately, our ragtag team had to wake up again because defeating him first was a dream. This means at some point, Sunday did succeed.

And after everyone wakes, you don't. You continue sleeping soundly. So does Sunday.

The rest of the world can return to their miserable, bitter lives outside of this dream; but Sunday will be damned if he's letting you go. Perhaps.. it's not a selfless wish, anymore. Perhaps at this point, Sunday desperately, selfishly, grips onto you with the latches of a sweet, deep dream. One where he was fatally destined to never reach, only to control from the waking world. Now that everyone else has woken, he wants to return to the dream. He wants to return to you, who he has so lovingly entrenched deep into it.

Also, Robin. Im in SO much pain... PLEASW..

Do you guys think.. even if Robin was vehemently resistant against Sunday's ideas..

Even though Sunday knew she wouldn't stand for it..

Do you guys think.. he wanted her to also join him at the end and enjoy the "Paradise" he created aswell?

Do you think he would have wanted Robin to stop worrying about everything, to take rest, to finally come home, and sing to her heart's content inside the dream? The dream where they set the bird free? The dream where Sunday still has a sweet tooth? The dream where she never has to wear elaborate neck-pieces? The dream where neither of them was hurt? Where neither of them left each other?

Oh...ogh. . My heart.

Sunday would be such a scary lover, too.

I mean even normally, I don't think a relationship with him would be that healthy

Particularly because it seems so healthy

If reader was in a relationship with normal sunday, I mean.. it's gonna at least appear healthy and normal, even to them. It's probably just Sunday having to constantly burden himself with all the dirty strings he has to pull, the quiet rush of water when he washes his hands before caressing the side of your face, the tight, closed smile he would give if you ever asked him what was wrong.. he can't let you know.

I think he'll take a yandere route in an established relationship if you do happen to find out what's been going on behind the scenes. He'll have to calm you down, and you promise you won't peep about it. The build up is almost invisible, because things seem to go back to the way they were. Before Sunday starts acting a bit.. restless. That would be when his yan! Tendencies would start kicking in, for a variety of reasons.

I feel like y'know, out of all the hsr cast, he's one of the characters who is genuinely very close to becoming a yandere canonically. Control freak? Check. Twisted ideals? Check. Unchecked power? Check. Hypnotization/manipulation? Check.

Also, the slight difference of his color pallete as opposed to Robin's.

His is much more washes out than Robin's. It's more "duller" but also more professional, and the gold of his halo is more colder than the warmer tone of Robin's halo. They both still have white/grey as a major color in their palletes, but Sunday's is accompanied by deep navy blues, or washed out blues. Robin's is very vibrant and purple. The only blue segment of her pallete is her hair, and it's remarkably more vibrant than Sunday's.

Also.. Sunday's whole ideas on "weak" and "strong"

Of course, it wasn't all correct, but that doesn't mean they didn't hold some semblance of sense.

Regardless, this playing with yan! Tendencies..... HOOOOO boy

So many thoughts. Sunday manipulating his partner is quite possibly the most common theme in them.

[2knightt]

may u do the gang with a significant other who is in a popular band or actor? up to four preference of course. lots of love!

୧ ׅ𖥔 ۫ darling, can i be your favourite? ⋄ 𓍯

REQUESTED: reader’s the coolest person ever and the gang’s their biggest fan!

tags/warnings: headcanons, gn!reader, reader is a singer/popstar!reader, gang is obsessed, reader is big time famous, near the end they got shorter because my tumblr started lagging.

ೃauthor notes⁀➷ hey my love !!! seen this after i posted and knew i had to get to work 🙂‍↕️ also while i was working on this, i got a req for actor!reader..ur in luck🤭

—

johnny cade

╰┈➤ now playing. — espresso, y/n l/n

how he bagged you, the world may never know. like seriously.

YOU’RE ON THE BIG SCREEN AND YOU’RE IN THE RADIO AND YOU GO AFTER JOHNNY CADE??? everyone was shocked. lives were CHANGED.

“you’re dating who?”

“..y/n l/n?”

“in your dreams maybe???”

“fuck you?”

nobody believed him because you confessed to him over the phone when you were touring 😔! you realized you really liked johnny when you had to be away from him for so long.

so for like that period of time, it was just call after call of you two giggling back and forth.

the gang, swear to fucking god, knew he was talking to someone but they thought he was lying about who he was talking to

UNTIL YOU CAME BACK!!!!

Then they were all,

“what the fuck….”

“can i like—borrow a 20?”

“DAMN”

spoil him. take him with you. protect johnny cade with ur money or else. i find you.

but seriously, pleaseeee make sure johnny lives the life he deserves ☹️ since you’re a singer, you make a FUCK ton of money

put it to good use (spending it on johnny cade)

hey! you’re all he talks about!! HE DOESN’T STFU THAT HE’S DATING SOMEONE THAT’S FAMOUS.

“what ‘bout you, lil’ boy? you got someone?”

“hell yeah. y/n l/n.😇💯”

“..the singer?”

“damn right, ‘the singer’!”

listens to your music when he misses you!!

OH MU GOD WRITE A SONG ABOUT JOHNNY CADE PLEASEEEE AND WEAR HIS JEAN JACKRT ON STAGE PLEASEEEEEEE

i can’t stress how much he loves you

he has photos of you everywhere. and anywhere.

steals magazines you model for to promote your albums<3

dallas winston

╰┈➤ now playing — nonsense, y/n l/n.

why would you pick him.

shame on you. you have celebrities flocking to you and you pick some guy in tulsa who’s in jail every friday.

tsk tsk. whatever makes you happy!

ANYWAYS

also, never shuts the fuck up about you. like seriously, somehow, you’re always the topic of conversation.

“yeah, that’s crazy that she slashed your tires. my LOVELY Y/N would never tho. did you know they sing? you’ve probably heard of ‘em-“

MAKES YOU WEAR HIS RINGS WHEN YOU PERFORM!!! AND SOMETIMES HIS LEATHER JACKET!!! DALLAS DGAF IF IT’S DIRTY OR NOT

He needs those freaks in the crowd to know you’re HIS—not theirs just because you’re famous.

if you ever collab with a dude he’s gonna fucking lose his mind i’m not kidding

“YOU’RE GOING TO THE STUDIO WITH WHO???”

“i told you-“

“yeah, i know. lets go.”

dallas invited himself btw.

dedicate a song to him and he’s literally gonna make EVERYONE listen to it. when it comes on the radio, he’s IMMEDIATELY turning up the volume.

“looking at you got me thinkin’ nonsense.”

“that’s about me, by the way.”

“WE KNOW.”

“YOU TELL US THIS EVERY DAMN DAY”

“yeah. where’s your partner that write songs about you? huh? take that shit up with someone else.”

IN HIS ROOM HE HAS SOOO MANY POSTERS OF YOUUUUUU

cannot believe he got so lucky and bagged you

he used to pray for days like these😭😭🙏

ponyboy curtis

╰┈➤ now playing — work song, y/n l/n.

yes, i did make your song more poetic than the rest. that’s just what ponyboy is into and gets him crying.

did he get lucky? yeah. does he acknowledge that every waking moment of his life and devotes himself to making sure you never feel the burden of having to perform daily?

yeah

helps you write songs sometimes. ponyboy naturally has a poets soul so USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

GUVE HIM A FUCKING OEN AND PAPER AND HE’S WRITING A HIT SINGLE

omgomg if you credit him while at your concerts he might faint<3333

spoil him and his brothers.

his brothers are included because you see how much they’re struggling and it literally pains you to see the love of ur life get so frustrated over money

sneakily put money into darry’s wallet when he isn’t looking and ponyboy might just kiss u right then and there

it’ll take awhile for him to accept the help, but when he does—he’s so grateful to have an angel like u in his life😭😭💔💔💔

“i love you. did you know that?”

“of course i do, pony.”

“i should tell you that more often.”

uses a photo of you as a bookmark btw. it’s you in his favourite outfit you ever wore, performing the song you made for him.

ponyboy’s obsessed.

shoves ANYONE off the tv to watch you perform. he doesn’t care. and the gang lets him<3 cuz they know how much you mean to their little pony!!

not without teasing. never without teasing. ponyboy is never fucking free

“soda, it’s my turn on the tv.”

“what? you tryna watch your girlfriend?”

“…shut up.”

“look at you! what a loverboy, huh? you loveeeee her, don’t you?”

“man, just get off the tv!”

watches & listens to everything you’re in. wether it be interviews, music videos, etc—he can probably quote it. every part.

he’s so obsessed with you it’s not fucking funny

sodapop curtis

╰┈➤ now playing — that boy is mine, y/n l/n.

it couple. genuinely.

you got soda more publicity and modeling agencies have definitely hit him up LMFAO

he most definitely has modelled with you for covers :3c

BUT OTHER THAN THAT

oh u better fucking believe that the DX is always playing your music

SODA DOESNT CARE IF HE’S NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH THE RADIO

he will. and he will be playing the song you made about him to remind the girls that go to flirt with him that he’s yours.

HE HAS A NECKLACE WITH YOUR INITAL ON IT AND YOU HAVE A NECKLACE WITH HIS INITAL!!1!1!1!1!1

flash it when paparazzi takes photos and he WILL put that photo in his wallet to show people when they ask about his partner.

CANT STFU EVEN IF HE FUCKING TRIED

soda makes u his whole personality

“sigh😔 y/n would’ve loved this beat..”

“SHUT UP ABOUT Y/N😒”

“NO?? I LOVE THEM!!!???”

LOVES PRACTICING UR CHOREOGRAPHY WITH YOU LMFAOOO

it’s so cute☹️☹️😔😔 soda might trip over his feet every once and awhile but he’s always laughing so hard with you when he does<3

darry curtis

╰┈➤ now playing — say yes to heaven, y/n l/n.

tries SOOOO hard to act like he doesn’t gaf that you’re singer but it’s so tough to not brag about it

the boys at work could be talking about their partners but when they go ask darry, he hides his grin and blush by looking down, running his hands through his hair.

“what ‘boutchu, kid? how’s the lover?”

“ah, y’know. they’re busy touring or in the studio.”

“eh?”

“oh—y/n l/n. they’re-“

darry cannot be stopped now. he won’t shut up about how great of a person you are, never letting the fame get to you.

ERAHHH HE STAYS UP LATE AT NIGHT TO WATCH YOUR PERFORMANCES WHEN YOU’RE AWAY!!!!!!! HE LOVES WATCHING YOU SWAY ACROSS THE STAGE!!

hehehehehe slow dance with him in the kitchen to ur unreleased songs you made about him…. 😈😈

PLEAEE HELP HIM FINANCIALLY PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

im begging you to just sit darry curtis down and try to convince him that, you giving him money to help around, isn’t an issue.

i don’t see darry moving out of the curtis house unfortunately, i think he will always view it as his parents house and it’s too sentimental.

so, don’t even bother asking him to move. but—do give him money. or sneakily pay the bills. whatever you have to do to help darry relax, please do it!!!

loves it when you sing slower/more relaxing songs

darry thinks it’s so attractive to hear your like soothing, breathy, and smooth voice.

he has a photo framed of you bowing toward the crowd below you, tightly holding the microphone that you had his name engraved in.

it’s currently beside his bed on his nightstand.

he looks at it every night before bed and every morning before work. <3

steve randle

╰┈➤ now playing — art deco, y/n l/n.

he’s feral. he’s fucking crazy about you.

“PUT ON THAT NEW Y/N SHIT‼️”

“why??”

“CAUSE I SAID SO?!1”

number one supporter. nobody comes close to him

AHHHH HE HAS A TATTOO DEDICATED TO YOU!!!! IT’S DEFINITELY A SONG LYRIC YOU WROTE ABOUT HIM IN UR HAND WRITING

when steve’s nervous he traces over it :3c

steve always finds himself, unconsciously, humming your songs while he works on cars!

i like to think his favourite colour is blue, so plsplsplspls wear blue (even if it’s a small accessory) to your concerts just so steve knows you’re always thinking about him.

he keeps little gifts, or rather the accessories you leave at his house, in a little box. he thinks they’re so cute and he will burn a building down before he lets anyone find out

two-bit mathews

╰┈➤ now playing — melting, y/n l/n.

“DID YOU KNOW I’M DATING Y/N? THE FAMOUS SINGER? YEAH, BET YOU WISH THAT WAS YOU😭😂!”

that’s every other sentence from his stupid lips!!

KNOWS EVERY LYRIC TO YOUR SONGS AND WILL SCREAM HIS FUCKING LUNGS OUT TO THEM!!!

attach a mickey charm to ur mic while you sing on stage and he’ll start foaming at the mouth..

two-bit’s all, “that’s for me.:mickey….me….me…mickey….”

he literally begs you to sing him to sleep

STEALS YOUR RECORDS/VINYLS???!!! HE HANGS THEM UP ON HIS WALL WITH SUCH CARE IT’S SO ADORABLE ☹️☹️

teach his little sister some of your dance moves and he might marry you tbh.

two-bit dreams of you and i’m so fucking serious

[theemporium]

here's the second instalment! i know i made the poll but i decided i was doing both options because i am indecisive, and i love max and trouble too much to abandon them

series masterlist

.

Max tapped his foot against the wooden floor, his eyes focused on some random poster on the wall of the cramped dental office. 

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like any of this. He didn’t like the idea that he was going to be put under. He didn’t like he wouldn’t be in control of anything for the next few hours. He didn’t like the fact that when he woke up, he would be woozy and unable to control the words that passed his lips. 

He didn’t like the lack of control. 

But the pain had reached a point of unbearable and he knew if he didn’t get this done, his mother would fly over and drag him into the dental practice by his ear—and that was something he certainly didn’t want. He would never live it down if journalists caught pictures of the three time world champion being berated by his mother like a whiny child. 

He hated the fact his stupid wisdom teeth were causing this many problems in the first place.

“Did you know that thirty-five percent of humans are born without wisdom teeth?”

Max’s head turned to look at you, his brows furrowed together. “What?” 

“A third of the human population aren’t born with wisdom teeth,” you repeated as you leaned back in your chair next to him, your knees brushing when you did. “Isn’t that weird?” 

“I would say they are lucky,” he grumbled honestly.

“And in Korea, they call them love teeth,” you continued, ignoring the confused look Max shot you. “Because they start to come through around the age people typically experience their first love.” 

“Does that mean it’s your fault I’m in pain?” Max teased, a hint of a smile on his face for the first time since he woke up that morning.

“Love is pain, baby,” you grinned back at him. “And did you know that the oldest record of wisdom teeth being impacted goes back almost fifteen thousand years ago—”

“What’s with all these fun facts?” Max questioned. 

“It’s what keeps you calm, no?” You said, looking at him with a fond expression he was still learning to not instantly blush over. “You maxsplain all the time and it helps you relax. I thought maybe maxsplaining wisdom teeth would help ease your nerves.” 

“So you learn a load of facts for me?” He asked, a giddy smile fighting its way onto his face.

“I did,” you said as you reached over to gently squeeze his knee. “I know you’re not gonna say it but it’s okay to be nervous. I’ll be waiting for you.” 

He gulped, nodding his head slightly in thanks and you knew better than anyone else that the nod was his own way of thanking you.

…

“Trouble? Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, baby,” you grinned as you reached for his outstretched hand, trying not to snicker at the way he cuddled your palm to his chest. “How are you feeling?”

“They drugged me,” he mumbled out, his eyes blinking slowly as he ignored the dentist and nurses in the room and kept his focus on you. “Not the good drugs. The bad ones. I think they are trying to kill me.”

You snorted. “Nobody is gonna kill you while I’m around. Promise.”

“My hero!” He laughed, a little short lived as he seemed to realise the gauze in his mouth. “Baby, I don’t like this candy.”

“It’s not candy,” you said to the boy and watched as he instantly frowned. 

“I want candy,” he huffed out.

“Max—”

“Trouble, they tried to kill me! I’m a hostage!” He said, sounding exasperated and you had to lift your hand to cover your mouth in hopes he didn’t realise you were laughing. “I at least deserve some candy.”

“I’ll get you some on the way home,” you told the boy, unable to even pretend to act annoyed as he cheered in his seat as his head rolled back. 

“See, Janet!” He turned to the nurse who was standing on the other side of his chair and winked with both eyes. “Told you my good looks would work. She gave in.”

Janet laughed, shaking her head. “You were right, sweetie. You’ve got quite the catch there.”

Max sighed dreamily. “She’s the best.”

.

[merakiui]

SCARA WITH A MILF DARLING.... AND SPECIFICALLY **HIS** MILF.... wow...

He's gonna be so shameless about it too.... is he way way too old to cuddle in bed with "mama" ? Yes, of course. But he will anyway and his head will be on your chest. and he will cling for dear life, nobody's getting up until he says so.

A spoiled brat too he will drink up all the affection and praise and do anything to get more.... A milf darling will save him but also make him worse in other aspects I think... I'm here for it 🙈

Even better if he gets to piss off Ei with his attitude 😭

YES OMG YOU SEE THE VISION!!!!!! A milf and a nursing handjob could fix him and make him worse all at once. He deserves a loving motherly figure in his life, especially if said figure is his stepmother who cherishes him far more than Ei ever did. >_< I still can't get over how he says "my mother" in his backstory cutscene........ THE ANGUISH. OHHHHH I AM ILL. T_T IT HURTS. Even more so when you realize Ei never viewed him as her child in the way he viewed her as a mother. She just saw a puppet she had created and then set free after she realized he was unfit for the Gnosis.

Ramblings aside, these mommy issues mean he is absolutely down bad for a milf. Not just any milf. His milf!!!!!! :D AAAAAAA OTL cuddling with you and clinging like a koala omg,,,, he's so spoiled and so hungry for your attention. Scara faking being in a bad mood just so you'll hug him and then he can bury his face in your tits.

Ei seeming so displeased with his attitude!!!!! But you tell her it's fine. You coddle him too much, but then of course you would because you've never had a child of your own. And your stepson is such an angel towards you (he's a scheming devil towards everyone else, but you don't need to know that hehe)... you don't need to know he steals your undergarments or looks through your personal things (that drawer of sex toys you think is a private thing between you and Ei? He knows about it and is determined to use all of them on you at one point). You only need to know that he loves you very much and is happy you're his stepmother. Although to Scara you're more of a mother than his biological mother, so don't think too deeply about it when he drops the "step" part and simply calls you Mother.

Also,,,,,, soft non-con somno............. waking up to him fucking into you and he just shushes you to sleep. Go back to your nice dream. Let him take care of you. <3 you have nothing to worry about. Waaaa he'd have such an obsession with your tits,,, everything about your body, actually. You're just so soft and warm,,, so sweet and pliable for him in bed!!!!

[yameoto]

Ghostface!Tara is a need, not a want. If you’re up for writing that I’d be stoked to see it

TARA CARPENTER GHOSTFACE HEADCANONS !

✗ warnings ; murder, general ghostface girlfriend toxicity. nsfw at bottom. possessiveness.

was terrified of you finding out and leaving her. you were never meant to find out. she did everything in her power to stop it (and if it meant a few extra deaths? well.. who‘s counting?)

but, you find out. of course you do. and she’s so so so scared of you leaving her. her eyes all wide and pupils all shaky as she tugs on the edge of your top in a death-grip, like you’re about to slip away.

pleading with you, cupping your cheeks as she tries to kiss you with all these words, cracking and trembling and spilling from her lips “please, baby, i did it for you—it’s all for you. you can’t leave— please don’t— please don’t go—“

not above getting to her knees and grovelling at your feet.

and the desperation is real. she loves you, oh how she loves you—but it doesn’t mean it’s not manipulation, either. she knows you’re as weak for her as she is for you. she knows the second she starts whimpering and tugging at you, tears making her eyes all glossy that you’ll cave for her. you always do.

intensely possessive, will get jealous at even the thought of you with someone else.

will be CHILDISH about it. lots of pouting and tugging you away by the wrist. seemingly innocuous, until she breaks away from you with a little beam on her face after you kiss her worries away, and proceeds to carve up whoever evoked her wrath—deserved or not. all messy and bloody and gorey.

she likes it when you coddle her—as if she’s the most precious little princess in the world and not a cold-blooded serial killer.

preens under your attention. needs it always. she’s like a cat, always clinging to your side; nuzzling into the crook of your neck or making sure you keep your arms slung around her.

“you’re not gonna carry me home?” tara pouts, arms wound around your neck as she leans up to kiss you, eyes sparkling impishly. “but ‘m gonna be scared. how’re you gonna protect me from all the psychos ‘nd killers stalking the streets, huh?”

“tara. you are the fucking pyscho.” you grumble, before hoisting her up in your arms anyways. it’s worth it, with the way she nudges into your neck with a delighted grin, snuggling against you like a goddamn kitten.

very much a ‘if i cant have you no one can’ type. if you don’t constantly reassure her.. even in the littlest ways— then, well..

she’s YOURS. okay? nobody else’s. tell her she’s yours. fucking tell her.

nsfw!

power bottom if you’ve ever seen one. knows exactly what she wants, and she’s gonna get it.

in her eyes she should be your absolute no.1 priority. including her libido. ergo meaning that no matter what you’re doing — if she’s horny, she‘s horny, and WILL make it your problem.

what starts as incessant pestering and whining and hands all over you devolve if you take too long. she’ll crawl into your lap regardless of what you’re doing and just start humping your thigh, taking matters into her own hands.

she’ll do this even during a work call or a hang out with your friends, if you’re not careful. and u have to be careful like.. a lot

definition of a pillow princess. always comes first, and the most. she takes priority, after all.

surprisingly doesn’t need much aftercare. is a big fan of snuggling after sex, though. mainly because she can slot your leg between hers and grind out another rut against your thigh as you doze off.

likes to play with your hands. a lot. often takes your knuckles and grinds them into her clothed cunt under the table .

likes provoking you in the sense that you’ll come home and she’ll be blatantly fucking herself on the couch. just.. legs splayed wide open, granting full view of the vibrator against her cunt. looking you dead in the eyes with a cheeky little grin as she throws her head back and mewls, loudly, shakily — and that’s your cue to give her something real to moan about.

[personasintro]

Mutual Help | #17

𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭: @kithtaehyung

↳ 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬; in order for you to pretend to be his girlfriend, he helps you with your sexual desires ⏤ he calls it mutual help

⇢ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: jungkook x reader

⇢ 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fake dating au, fluff, angst, smut, slow burn

⇢ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: explicit language

⇢ 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2.1k+

⇠ 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯. | 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐱 | 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 ⇢ 

"He just texted me 'screw y'all for going on a camping trip without me'." Jungkook chuckles at Jin's message while he reads it out loud.

"That's what he gets for being on a honeymoon in Greece." Jimin sassily remarks, knowing he's just joking and is extremely happy for Jin's happiness and fresh marriage.

The rest of the boys join, joking about it for a few minutes before you finally sit down and talk about today's plans. Hoseok is the one who seems to take a somewhat leader position as he starts to talk.

"Okay, as I mentioned before, there are four tents. One of them is bigger so three people can easily fit there." he explains, looking at each of you before Jimin speaks up.

"Me and Taehyungie can share a tent." he says, causing Taehyung to nod in agreement as they bump their fists like it wasn't expected. Those two are like twins.

"Okay, who's next?" Hoseok asks, looking around again.

"Me, Seulgi and Minjae can share the bigger tent." Kiko speaks up, smiling at her friends who nod and agree immediately.

It still feels weird to have her here, even though it might be a good thing. For all you know, Jungkook is still trying to win her back and this might help. No matter how many times you tell yourself she doesn't deserve him, you want what's best for him. And if his undying love for her isn't going anywhere, who are you to tell him otherwise. Jungkook is stubborn and you've never seen him being in love with someone so much before. Yes, he stopped talking about her like he used to, but him stealing glances her way whenever he thinks nobody is watching, just tells you otherwise. He still wants and loves her.

"Okay, Jungkook and Y/N are staying together. That's obvious, so me and Joon are gonna share a tent," Hoseok says to everyone, before he turns to Namjoon. "Please just don't snore that much." he whines, causing everyone to chuckle while Namjoon seems to fake offense.

"It's not like I can control it!" he exclaims, but still assures Hoseok he's better with snoring these days and even offers that he can sleep in his car if he's going to be snorting.

You kind of feel bad for him, but Hoseok assures him he was just joking and from what you've seen so far, Hoseok likes to joke around a lot but he really cares about his friends. Now that you think about it, him being so protective about Kiko just proves how much he loves his friends. You did the same thing with Jungkook. Still do. You're protective over him to the point you snapped at Kiko at Jin's wedding. You've never snapped at someone you barely know. Well, you know her but in a way, she's a complete stranger to you. She's just his ex that used to spend her time with him all the time, those two were inseparable. Just like you were with Jungkook, until he started to date her and they preferred to be alone rather than hang out with anyone else. The only difference between you is that you're Jungkook's best friend. Not a woman he fell in love with.

The more time you spend with everyone, you find yourself relax. Having Jimin and Taehyung here definitely helps, as those two fool around all the time. When Jungkook and Namjoon have successfully brought wood for the fireplace, two tents are already built thanks to Jimin and Taehyung because it seems like all the girls are pretty bad at it, including you.

"Weren't you saying you used to go camping with your uncle?" Jungkook jokes as he builds the tent like a pro. The grin that's plastered on his lips tells you that he's teasing you again and you take that time to slap his shoulder, causing him to laugh.

When all the tents are successfully built, thanks to none other than Jeon Jungkook himself, you finally eat some ramen that's the easiest to make. You gasp at the sight of the grill and all the other culinary equipment Hoseok brought, which makes everything easier. You can easily cook whatever you guys want. With stomachs full, you decide to go swimming in the lake since the heat starts to be unbearable.

Rummaging through your travel bags, you let out a set of curses while you feel Jungkook's body behind you.

"What's wrong?" he asks, setting his hands on your hips as he tries to look over your shoulder at what you're cursing about.

"I forgot my swimsuit, I thought I packed it. Fuck," you whine, tossing one of the crumpled shirts you manage to wrinkle in the process of your searching back in the bag.

"You packed your stuff into two huge bags and you still forgot your swimsuit?" he asks in bewilderment causing you to glare at him.

He's not helping. At all.

"Just put on whatever," he shrugs, and you glare at him again causing him to roll his eyes. "I don't think it matters. You brought some extra underwear, right?" he asks, causing you to nod.

"Yeah, I'll just leave on the one I'm wearing." you mutter, still disappointed that you managed to forget such an important item. Okay, maybe it's not that important but everyone's wearing a swimsuit and then you're going to be in your underwear.

"Well, I meant—"

"Okay, Jeon. Thanks!" you give him a thumbs up and get into his car to take off your clothes. Thank God for the tinted windows.

You hear him sigh at you, causing you to grin while you take off your clothes.

On the other side, there's Jungkook already wearing his black swimming shorts when Taehyung appears wearing similar ones, in yellow. "Where's Y/N?" he asks him, causing Jungkook to nod his head at his parked car.

"She's changing," he explains.

"Cool, meet us there." Taehyung tells him, already running to Jimin who's been calling him while everyone makes their way to the lake.

Jimin and Taehyung jump into the water, before Minjae and Seulgi do the same thing, squealing their hearts out at the temperature of the water. Jungkook leans against his car, arms plopped on the top of his car while he drums his fingers against the sleek black roof, waiting for you. It doesn't take you that long, door from the back opening as you step out of the car. Jungkook straightens his eyes widening at the sight of you.

"Are you kidding?" he asks straight away, eyeing your whole body as you look at yourself with a frown.

"This is the most decent underwear I packed." you reason, wondering if it's really that much.

It's not even lacy or too revealing. Okay, the bra could've been sport one and show less cleavage, but it looks like a bikini.

"You're not showing yourself in front of the guys like this." he tells you, mirroring your frown as he shakes his head.

"I'm not asking you," you tell him, earning a tough glare from him. "What the fuck am I suppose to wear?"

"Just put on my shirt over it." he suggests, already opening the truck before he pulls out a fresh white shirt. You know it's one of his own, considering the size and the fact you've seen him wearing it before.

He outstretches his arm to you, eyes daring you to say otherwise and you take the shirt but not before you whine.

"It's so hot! I'm gonna melt with this on!" you exclaim, grasping the soft material of his shirt in your hand.

He pats the top of your head, smiling down at you that makes you mentally curse at him. "No, you'll be fine."

Rolling your eyes at him, you put the shirt on knowing you might've felt uncomfortable in front of the guys if you just wore your underwear. Jungkook's got a point but you're not going to admit it in front of him, not when he's already grinning at you in triumph.

There's already a lot of squeals and splashing water when you get to the rest of the guys. Your eyes widen at the sight of so much skin, especially when you've never seen Hoseok and Namjoon topless.

"That's not fair. They get to be topless and I've to wear a shirt." you grumble at him silently, shifting your eyes off them before they can notice your prying eyes.

Jungkook's lack of response causes you to turn around, seeing him taking off his shirt as he tosses it on the floor. He's got the same grin plastered on his lips, his nose scrunching as he sees your scandalous expression.

"Really? You too?" you exclaim, eyes dropping down at the sight of his exposed abs and toned chest. Fuck, is he trying to kill you?

He walks up to you, picking you up with so much ease causing you to squeal in shock as you hold onto him tightly. "Life's not fair, Y/N." he comments jokingly, causing you to roll your eyes.

Legs wrapped around his frame and arms around his neck, you let him carry you. You don't think about it too much, that's until he's very careful while stepping into the water. And that's when you start to curse at him, trying to avoid contact with cold water.

"Jungkook, I swear to god! Don't drop me, don't you dare!" you start to scream at him, laughing when the cold water touches toes.

You hear the rest of the guys laughing at you, urging Jungkook to drop you which causes you to yell 'fuck all of you' before Jungkook gets even deeper. His low chuckle rustles in his chest, but he still holds you tightly. He's not dropping you, he even holds you tighter before all of your body is under the water, except your head. Surprisingly, the water isn't as cold as you expected it to be and you allow yourself to relax in his hold.

"Why would you do that?" you ask him quietly, admiring silently his face.

He's beautiful, the reflection of water sparkles his face that's so close to you. You can feel his warm breath on your face as he chuckles. "I knew you'd take a good hour to get into the water. So I helped." he smirks, causing you to snort.

"Oh, you helped? Is that it?" you laugh, splashing some water into his face. He gasps dramatically at that, causing you to laugh again. "You're such a good person, aren't you?" you tease him, splashing him once again.

He tries to dodge your attack by turning his head, but it still splashes the side of his face and he turns to you with a devilish smirk. "Y'know what? Suddenly, I don't feel like being a good person anymore." he says before he lets go of you, causing you to cling to him for your dear life.

He's laughing, putting his arms above his head so you can't reach him. You hold onto him, cursing at him. "Fuck you, Jeon. This is not funny."

You can swim, but you're more confident in your swimming when you can actually reach the bottom. Considering Jungkook barely reaches it, it means you wouldn't and you don't want to risk that.

"Maybe later, baby." he smirks, hands on your hips again before he walks closer to the shoal.

Heart beating at his words, you choose not to think too much about it. You can't let yourself get horny because of simple words. There are people around you, watching you.

You finally let him let go of you, legs meeting the bottom of the lake, but not before you splash him straight into the face. You hear Jimin's laughter at that, but it soon dies down when Jungkook jumps at you, diving both of your bodies underneath the water. You fool around for a few minutes, completely in your own worlds before you get out of the water to put some sunscreen on.

Your eyes find Kiko sitting on the towel with crossed legs as she stares at you. Surprisingly, she smiles at you and hands you her sunscreen which you take with a soft 'thanks'. The thought of her watching the both of you makes you somehow uncomfortable.

Was Jungkook fooling around because he knew she was watching? It certainly felt natural and just something both of you do. It's not the first time Jungkook has done that, fooling around with you or getting you into the water with you protesting and cursing him out. This trip is supposed to be fun. He didn't know she was coming as well but he's still trying to win her back. You both have to pretend to be dating here, but the question is...

Has he already started to pretend?

[jxsterr]

right i might be insane for this but something about zelink makes me feel like the usual acts of romantic affection are something a thousand times more meaningful and deep between them than those acts are normally. there’s something Religious about these two, like just a simple peck on the cheek is nice for the average couple but for them it’s something so much more. in fairness they are quite literally divine, zelda is the descendant of The goddess and link has the ungodly amount of strength and unwavering resolve to save the world a million times over. there’s nothing average about these two and it drives me insane

like yes they deserve just to be normal people after everything but i don’t think they ever will be, or at least not to each other. zelda might as well be her own goddess at this point, you’re telling me link isn’t going to look at her like she’s ethereal?? like she isn’t the sunshine that basks him in warmth every morning?? you’re also not gonna tell me that zelda wouldn’t have him on a pedestal of her own, like he isn’t her hero, like he hasn’t given his all and sacrificed everything just to save her countless times?? like his whole being doesn’t revolve around her, even when she’s expressed that he can do whatever he wants several times and yet he keeps coming back to her???

plus, there’s no way that all of the yearning that they would’ve had to go through pre calamity wouldn’t have them stuck in Forever Appreciative mode. we already know the link and zelda we see in the castle is Nothing like the link and zelda we see out in the world, exploring and having even the smallest amount of freedom in a world so restrictive. so just imagine all of the built up tension, maybe they released small amounts of it in their moments together outside of the castle but i don’t even think they’d have time to focus on one another when they were both so duty focused. zelda spent the entire pre calamity in a near constant state of anxiety over her powers, the most i could imagine them allowing themselves are hugs in moments of mental anguish, when they needed that love and support they couldn’t get from anyone else, when they were the only two who could understand the pressure they were under. just something to show they weren’t alone in this. then to reunite a century later without any restrictions, that first kiss would’ve been out of relief that they could finally focus on something else and that all that time of wishing for something more could finally come true

so then when zelda inevitably gets snatched up again and link has to go bumbling all over hyrule for her and he finally gets her back, there’s no way that every act of affection after that Isn’t done as if they could lose each other at any moment again. that every kiss isn’t slow and thoughtful and full of emotion just in case it’s their last. that every touch of zelda’s hand against his face isn’t something that whispers i love you i love you i love you. that every quiet touch they exchange isn’t a silent apology for what the other has had to endure just so they could be reunited again. it feels like link and zelda are the only couple who are immune to complacency because fate hasn’t been kind enough to let them get comfortable with the idea that they’re not going anywhere

to me it feels like their affection is something sacred, something special and something that they both cherish. their affection speaks for them when words are useless because fate has put them in such unique situations that nobody else could ever understand them as deeply as they do. everything they do is tender and calculated and full of love because god forbid they take a single moment for granted and GOD.

i’m currently writing something that i hope can portray my feelings about zelink affection because it feels like it is going to burst out of my chest……… or maybe that’s just the autism who knows