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trippinsorrows · 6 months ago

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looking through your eyes + ten

authors note: i think ya'll will be pleased with majority of this chapter. as far as the ending scene, let me know what ya'll think roman should do. i have it already planned, but i'm always so curious reading other perspectives. btw, they've been married almost four months, for context.

also, to those who want to know about the subplot of solana's bitch ass daddy plotting to kill roman....it's still a subplot. stay tuned.

passages from 'the courage to heal' do not belong to me.

if any cw/tw’s are missed, please let me know, and i will add them!

cw/tw: violence against women, references to csa, character briefly discussing csa, fluff, angst, language, and suggestive themes

song inspo: ‘looking through your eyes’ by leann rimes

masterlist

words: 10k (no comment)

Learning to be intimate is rewarding, but it is not always comfortable. As one woman said, “I kept myself safe, but I also kept myself alone.” Becoming intimate means peeling back the layers of protection to let someone in. It means going to the place where you’re comfortable and then taking one step more. One step, not twenty.

Solana must read the passage at least half a dozen times, sitting with the words, meditating with them and doing her best to cope with the discomfort she’s experienced at various points while working her way through the book that’s brought an equal amount of questions as it has answers.

She knew right away going into this section, Healthy Intimacy, that it would most likely be the hardest chapter for her. But not even for the reasons that she initially thought, reasons that would have been the case before a certain Roman Reigns entered her life.

Every day that passes with him seems to bring about a new level of comfort, a new slice of happiness, a new type of contentment.

She enjoys talking with him and being around him. She looks forward to his meeting her at the end of work and struggles with endless worry when he doesn’t make it back home until the wee hours of the night.

His touch, whether that’s his hand on her back or both hands on her waist as he holds her against him, no longer triggers an automatic tense, uncomfortable feeling. Somewhere along the way, the need to identify his touch as ‘safe’ waned and was replaced with an automatic knowing. Like she knows that it’s okay for him to touch her, because she’s safe. Because she’s safe with him.

That, along with her continued and also growing attraction, has caused her to think more and more what it could be like to be with someone in that way. The thoughts have been fleeting, far and few over the years, typically followed up with abject horror. But lately….lately she’s been less and less scared and more and more hopeful.

Optimistic that maybe….just maybe, she could one day know what that’s like. To have that experience in a healthy and non-traumatic way with a safe person. With someone who truly desires her in said healthy way.

Someone….someone like Roman.

It’s scary and terrifying and exciting and nerve racking and moving and every other emotion to exist, but on top of all that, for the first time in her life, it’s a possibility for Solana.

And she wants to take that chance, even if doesn’t work out, even if it’s not what she thought it would be. To be able to say she at least tried, to say that she overcame her fears…it would be monumental.

It would feel like the breaking of mental and emotional chains.

And it starts today.

Closing up the book, Solana untangles her legs and marks her spot in her book. She gives Dulce a light pat on the head and walks into the bathroom. Opening up the drawer, her eyes land on the pair of scissors. Nothing fancy. Just a pair of regular scissors.

Solana takes a deep breath and grabs them.

Using one hand to let down her hair from the messy, half-effort bun, she gives her head a good shake. Once, twice, and then a third time. For a brief second, she hesitates, her father’s constant belittling returning to the surface.

“You don’t need short hair. You’ll look even fatter with it.”

Solana shuts her eyes as she thinks of all the times Roman has called her beautiful, has made her feel beautiful. The endless support from Bayley and Naomi. The borderline inappropriate comments form the twins almost every time she sees them.

It all brings an emotional smile to her face as she takes another deep breath.

One step, not twenty.

And she cuts.

________

Samantha can count on one hand in all of the years that she’s known Roman Reigns the times that he’s surprised her with a visit.

Zero.

He’s always always given her a heads up for his arrival or plans to visit, solely for the mere fact that Roman is a man who doesn’t like to wait. When he wants pussy, he wants it then and now. And she’s never been one to deny the Head of the Table anything he’s ever asked for.

So when she finds him sitting at her desk, feet propped up with an unreadable expression, it takes her off guard.

Only for a minute.

“I knew it was only a matter of time.” Samantha is quick to kick the door shut behind her, locking it right as she tosses her purse on the nearby chair. “You can’t go too long without me.” This fact alone is enough to make her cum right then and there. The fact that even with his roster of women he rotates through, she remains number one.

Roman knows where it’s at.

And him coming to her, at her job of all places, just proves it.

Eye dropping to his crotch, she licks her lips at the thought of that thick, beautiful dick in her mouth. Fuck, she’s salivating at just the thought. “You want me on my knees, daddy?”

Samantha starts to kick her shoes off when he finally breaks the silence.

“I want to know what you said to my wife.”

Samantha’s smile drops in under a millisecond. Instantly, she’s scowling. “What?”

Roman doesn’t hesitate to repeat himself, every word perfectly enunciated with his heavy, baritone voice. “What did you say to my wife, Samantha?”

This….this isn’t how she was expecting this to play out, and it shows in the sudden stuttering, “I—I don’t—”

“She came back from that bathroom upset, and I don’t like seeing her upset, so I’m only gonna ask you one more time—” Samantha nearly jumps back into the door when he suddenly bangs his fist on her wooden desk and growls, “what did you say to her!”

Stammering, she answers with a combination of fear and desperation, “I just—I told her the truth.”

It seems to be the wrong answer, as Roman looks 5x angrier. “And what the fuck is that?”

Samantha gathers herself a little better, voice more even as she answers with misplaced confidence. “That she could never please you. Not how I can.” And with foolish bravery, Samantha steps toward him. “That you’ll always come back to me.”

“You fucking bitch.”

That makes her still with her movements. He’s called her all kinds of names when they’ve fucked, and she’s loved it, loves being fucked hard and rough, his preference. But there’s something about this that she doesn’t love.

It’s because he sounds legitimately upset with her.

And that, in turn, upsets her, because he cannot seriously be upset that she said some shit to that little girl.

“Why does it matter? It’s not like she means anything to you.” Samantha has to actually laugh. In no universe can she see someone as strong and powerful as Roman caring about a girl like that. But, it’s when he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t voice some type of agreement that her confidence dwindles a bit. “R–right?” Still, nothing. And it’s with that nothing she realizes with all of the anger and shock in the world why he’s so upset.

“Oh my god. Are you serious right now? Her? You really have feelings for her?” Even saying it aloud sounds ludicrous. “What the fuck, Roman? What the hell is so great about her?”

There is absolutely nothing that girl brings to the table for her to have someone like Roman Reigns interested in her. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. What the hell is attractive about a scarred, sliced up, fat bitch?

He finally speaks, warning her in an almost menacing tone. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

“That girl is weak, Roman. You can’t be the head of the Bloodline and have someone like her at your side. She doesn’t deserve it.” By now, Samantha has moved over to him, her hands planted on his chest, his eyes closed. “You need….someone strong at your side. Look at what you’ve done just by yourself. Imagine…imagine having a queen to rule with you.” She licks her lips, going in for the kill. “I can be that for you. I can give you an heir. Look at how long it’s been and still nothing, no baby. She’s broken, Roman. That bitch—”

Samantha is silenced by him jumping up from his chair as he shoves her against the wall, hand on her neck. It’s not the first time they’ve been in a similar position. She loves to be choked during sex, and he’s adept at doing just enough to get her off without her passing out.

But this time, there’s no pressure, no sexual aspect, no foreplay.

This….this is different.

Because this is the first time she’s ever actually been afraid of him.

“If you ever in your fucking life speak on her again, I’ll kill you.” Samantha’s eyes are wide, hand grasping at his. He’s still not actually applying any sort of pressure, probably more so placement to evoke a level of fear. A reminder that he could end her life in a matter of seconds if that’s what he wanted. “If you ever speak to her again, I’ll kill you. Fucking look at her, and you’re a dead bitch.”

Samantha barely has time to process his threats when he says something in Samoan and steps back, releasing her as she dubs over and gasps loudly from the shock of it all.

Seconds later, she’s on the floor, laying on her side after fucking Nia has landed her big ass foot in Samantha’s head.

Nia is looking down with a wicked smile that promises a level of pain. “You talk too fucking much.” She can’t tell if it’s directed to herself or Roman, regardless, he looks unbothered, outside of staring down at her with disgust.

Samantha has no idea where the hell that bitch came from, but her unexpected blow nearly has her seeing stars. She’s writhing on the floor, on her side, cradling her head when Nia yanks her up by her extensions.

“Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.” Nia kicks her a second time, in her side, and Samantha is almost certain she heard the subsequent cracking of her rib from the impact. Tears fill her eyes. “I’ve wanted to kick your ass since we were kids.”

Helpless and feeling so confused as to how he could do this to her, Samantha sets her teary gaze onto him. She does her best to generate as many tears as she can. “Roman, please—”

“You’re fucking delusional if you really thought I would ever make you anything more than what you were to me.” Samantha sniffles, vision blurred and stomach aching from both the physical and emotional impact of his words. “Nothing.”

A sudden anger fills her, meshing with the growing physical pain. She did this. That fucking bitch has taken Roman from her, her Roman.

“You wanna know what she is to me?” He crouches down and reaches for a lock of her hair, answering just as icily as the disgusted look in his light brown eyes. “Everything you’re not.”

Samantha snarls almost, not even angry at his words as much as her mind is trying to navigate any and all ways to make that little troll pay for this. Pay for stealing her man.

But it’s as Roman is walking out, that he barks his last order to Nia. Not necessarily a necessity given the fact that he’s certain she’s dreamed exactly of how this very moment could and should go down. Granted, this is the one symbolic thing he needs to ensure takes place.

“Break her fucking jaw.”

________

Handling the Samantha situation is just one of many things to be checked off of Roman’s to-do list for today. He’s got meetings, contracts to review, spreadsheets to update, shipments to see sent off, and a million and one other things. Most of which he’s far from thrilled about but also know needs to be done, regardless if he’d rather say fuck it all just for today. For just a couple hours, even.

Delegate, perhaps. But these are things that can’t be delegated. He, as the Head of the Table, needs to put his signature on to make it official.

And he’s got his Wise Man fresh on his heel to remind him of such responsibilities.

“And if my Tribal Chief can find it in him, we should also review Nick Aldis' proposal.” Roman’s instantly scowling. He fucking hates Aldis. The bastard is smug and thinks himself more important than he is. That Roman won’t end his fucking life with one snap of his finger.

Roman is halfway listening to Paul when he walks past Alicia who stands up from her desk. “Sir—”

His dismissal is swift and brusque. “Leave me alone.”

“But—”

One murderous look, and Alicia is back in her seat. Roman briefly overhears Paul chastising his secretary for her insubordination when he opens his door and immediately realizes why Alicia was most likely trying to speak to him.

Roman sees Solo standing almost awkwardly in the corner out of his peripheral vision, but his attention is solely on the other unexpected guest.

Focused on the way her almost flesh toned dress hugs every curve that drives him fucking insane sometimes, the way she bites down on her bottom lip in that way he’s learned she does when she’s unsure of something. And he’s especially focused on her hair that’s chopped down to where it lightly grazes her shoulder.

“I tell you, good help is so hard to find—” Paul is silenced as he finally walks in and sees Solana. “Oh, it’s you.” Roman shoots him a look that would absolutely kill if it had any sort of physical impact. “I mean, Solana, what a surprise—”

Roman easily moves back to focusing on his wife who looks absolutely fucking stunning. He directs his command though to Solo and Paul. “You two, out.”

Solo doesn’t need to be told twice, but Paul seems to meander, even as Roman walks over to Solana. And it’s when Roman has his hands on Solana’s hips and the room is still not cleared, he repeats in a calm voice that’s solely because of Solana’s presence.

If not for her, he’d be screaming at his Wise Man.

“I said get out.”

Roman can practically hear the nervous gulp. “But, sir, we have work—”

Solana frowning pisses Roman off in a way he has to keep from showing. But it’s when she finally speaks and it’s an offer to leave that he really has to reel in his rage. “I can go—”

“No.” That’s the fucking last thing he wants. “Paul is leaving.”

It’s not a suggestion, not a request, not a preferred action.

It’s a fucking demand.

And his Wise Man must realize this, because he’s quickly following in line with Solo and finally leaving Roman alone with Solana who seems still unsure about her presence.

“You have work to do—”

“You really expect me to get anything done when you come in my office looking like this?” He motions to her outfit and sees the way her cheeks tinge reddish as she bites back a smile. “Not happening, sweetheart.”

“I thought it looked nice.” The bashful way she says as such, as if she’s unsure it was an accurate assessment blows his mind. She looks down at the dress as if it’s not the woman wearing said dress that has him pushing back unholy thoughts.

“It doesn’t look nice. You look nice, Solana.” Another one over of her curvy body, and he mutters, “more than nice.” He brings his hand to her hair, brushing his fingers against the ends. “You cut your hair.”

She nods, an almost look of determination in her soft expression. “It was time,” is all she says, and Roman doesn’t need to ask for clarification. This meant something to her. Cutting her hair has a deeper meaning than just wanting something new, and whatever the reason, he’s proud she found it in her to follow through.

He hates when she asks him, still unsure, “does it…does it look bad?”

He’s not sure he could ever use Solana and ‘bad’ in the same sentence. Ever. “You could never look bad.”

She smiles, clearly pleased by his compliment. Good. He likes seeing her smile.

“Come here.” Roman takes her hand and leads her over to his desk where he sits down in his chair and doesn’t think twice about guiding her onto his lap. Roman feels her tense for only a couple seconds before she relaxes against him.

“As pleasant a surprise it is to find your fine ass in my office, I know you came for a reason.”

Roman is extremely perceptive. Always has been. He’s noticed the increased comfort Solana has developed and continued to develop with him. The way her discomfort at being looked at too long or even touched in any sort of capacity has shifted into bashful smiles and an almost light in her eyes at being complimented. At someone finding her to be anything but every lie she’s ever been fed.

Her confidence is growing, slowly but surely. And he likes that shit.

So he’ll do whatever he needs to do to keep it growing.

“It’s nothing serious.” It doesn’t have to be. She could come to his office every day if that’s what she wanted. He’d have zero complaints. “I just…I was baking Sopaipillas, and I know you like them and I felt bad because I’m bringing Jimmy and Jey some—”

It’s not until that moment he sees the Tupperware container on his desk. Her thoughtfulness is so unfamiliar but very much appreciated. He chuckles as his fingers carefully tap against her hip. “Thank you, but you know if you keep feeding they asses, they gon’ keep coming over.”

She’s smiling almost, defending them to a certain extent. “They’re really not that bad.” And she’s not entirely wrong. His cousins can be entertaining at times, but beyond that, he likes seeing her comfort level with them increasing as well.

For her to be as comfortable around them as she’s become, especially with them being men, is extremely significant given her trauma.

He’s proud of her for that just as well.

Still,Roman shrugs and calmly points out. “I spend most of my day with them.” Her other hand lays on his chest as he admits, “I don’t want to come home and see them. I just want to see you.”

Solana gives an expected almost shocked expression followed up with a slight confession of her own. Her voice is soft, like she’s unsure about what she’s about to say but is going with it regardless. “That’s why I wait up for you to get home…because I want to see you too.”

He believes this to be true, but he also knows there’s something else to it. “You worry about me.”

She nods, nervously licking her lips. “I’m trying to work on it though.” She’s been working on a lot of things, a lot of difficult, most likely mentally taxing things. And as proud of her as he is, Roman also recognizes the importance of pacing oneself.

He gently grazes the back of his fingers over her cheek. “Just focus on you, alright?”

The corner of her lips lift into an almost playful grin as she asks innocently, “what if I can do both?” Roman studies her, sees and hears the playfulness. It’s unlike her, but he fucking loves it. She squeals and almost giggles against him as he brings her closer to his chest, her hand squeezing his shoulder as he remains mindful of the placement of his hand on her hip.

Growing comfort or not, he still wants to be respectful of her boundaries.

Still wants to maintain her trust.

“I got me. Always.” Her gaze is on him, softening by the second as he adds on almost quietly. “Just need you to be okay too.”

Okay is such a big word, so layered. She’s not sure she’ll ever be fully okay. Too much trauma. Never enough healing. But there may be some level of okayness she can achieve, and it does feel like that’s something that’s in progress. “I’m getting there.”

And a large part of her healing journey is largely due to the man underneath her, staring at her with almost a sense of fascination, like he’s so enraptured by her. Like he’s smitten with her. The person she once believed no one could ever want has a handsome, powerful man like Roman Reigns holding her, looking at her, wanting her.

A line from the book resurfaces to the front of her mind.

One step, not twenty.

With that as a motivating and supportive mantra, she slowly moves her hand from his shoulder to his face, his beard prickling against her skin.

“Solana…..” She’s not sure she’s ever heard him sound so pained. “Baby, you can’t touch me like this and expect me to not want to kiss you.”

The butterflies in her stomach grow exponentially. Baby. She’s not entirely certain, but she feels like he’s called her this before, that he’s referred to her as such on a different occasion. So, it’s not a mistake, not a one time thing. It’s yet another sign that there wasn’t a dishonest bone in his body when he said he wanted her.

That he wants her.

Her heart is beating a mile a minute as she pools together all of the courage in her body and again chips away another tiny section of her wall of protection. “So kiss me.”

It’s not until this moment that Solana sees Roman actually appear genuinely surprised at something. He asks, maybe as if he needs to make sure he heard correctly, but Solana would bet it’s less that and more him ensuring consent. “Are you sure?”

He’s been so good at that. Consent. And it’s meant the world to her. His patience with all of her baggage.

Nodding, she quickly remembers his preference for verbal acknowledgements. “Yes.”

Solana doesn’t really remember her kiss with Roman at their wedding. She doesn’t really remember much from the actual wedding at all, to be honest. It was….it was more traumatic than anything, which is why she does her best to keep it stored away with the other too difficult to sit on memories.

But this….this she is certain she will never forget.

There’s an almost hesitancy when his lips touch hers, a space he’s leaving open in the event that she changes her mind. She’s grateful for that, but it’s not necessary. Her ‘yes’ was as genuine as his apparent interest in her.

And when he picks this up, picks up the fact that she truly wants this, he deepens the kiss, his hand moving up to her lower back as he pulls her closer to him. Roman’s full lips are soft and warm, and the way he moves his mouth against hers is both reserved and hungry, a strange but well balanced thing only he can manage. Like only he can achieve. He kisses her with a passion that she feels is only a fraction of everything he feels toward and for her.

Solana’s hand slides to the back of his neck, her fingers brushing up and across the skin, teasing the strings of hair that refused to mold down. She’s not sure if this was the right move because he makes a sound against her mouth, an almost mixture of a moan and groan, and pulls away. The separation and her subsequent light panting makes her suddenly aware that they’d been kissing longer than she realized. That she’d gotten so plunged in the experience that time seemed a nonfactor.

Her eyes flutter close when Roman brings his lips back onto her, this time peppering kisses along her jawline. Her head tilts back, an unconscious thing that grants him full access to the nape of her neck, which he easily makes his way down to. It’s a different, pleasant sensation that has her nails scraping against him.

“Roman….”

“So fuckin’ beautiful….” He says something else, something she can’t understand because it’s said in Samoan, but it unintentionally triggers something for her. A new level of bravery, an ability to ask something that makes her insides light afire and heart rate exceed what’s probably safe and healthy. But, it’s a hill she wants to eventually be able to get up and over.

And he’s made her feel safe enough to be the one to do it with.

“Roman.” Her voice must give away her need to say something because he pulls away from her and is focused directly on her. She licks her slightly swollen lips. “I want….I want to try—”

“Whatchu mean he busy? Man, you trippin. Uce always got time for family.” Jimmy’s loud unexpected voice is enough of a disruption and mood killer that Solana quickly jumps off Roman’s lap and moves away just enough to adjust her hair and dress. “Soso!”

Solana brings herself to look at her husband’s cousin as he finally walks in the office after dismissing Alicia’s warning. The first thing she notices is the tupperware bowl in his hand and white substance on his fingers. “I hope you don’t mind. When I saw your driver, I figured you had these little sugar things in the back so I just grabbed em’ all.”

If not for the fact that Solana is still trying to settle herself, she’d point out how the other bowl was supposed to be for Jey. But that seems irrelevant at the moment.

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Jimmy seems completely unbothered by Roman’s threat as he plops down on the sofa, kicking his feet up on the glass coffee table and asks with all the obliviousness in the world. “So what ya’ll doing?”

When Roman shoots up from his desk and starts toward his cousin, Solana places herself in front of him, hands on his chest. His attention is immediately down, focused once again on her.

“It’s okay. I—I’ve got training with Bay and Naomi anyway.” Swallowing her nerves and pushing back thoughts of how….how nice it felt kissing him, she quietly offers a hopefully acceptable alternative. “We can talk tonight.”

This doesn’t seem like Roman’s preference but something he can live with. “Fine.”

She knows he’s obviously annoyed at being interrupted, and she is too, to a certain extent. But, Jimmy meant no harm, and she hopes Roman can at least recognize as much. Solana says bye to Jimmy and is near the door where she sees Solo waiting for her when an idea, more an urge, becomes too prominent to push away.

She turns back around and leans up, pulling Roman down by his shoulders and kisses his cheek. He gives her a look that tells her he’d be pulling her back for more if not for her cousin, and it makes her stomach somersault all over again.

But, she doesn’t give him the opportunity, just a small smile as she walks out for good this time.

And it’s after she’s gone, the Wise Man back in the room to help minimize the chances of his Tribal Chief killing one of his cousins that Jimmy uses the distraction to pull out his phone and send a text in the group chat.

Group Chat: Operation RoSo

Jimmy: Ya’ll! Code red! Code fucking red!

Jey:?????????

Bayley: Is Solana okay?!

Naomi: ^^^^^^

Jimmy: Man, I just got to Uce office, and good thing I walked in when I did. They acting all weird and shit. Soso just ran out of here but not after telling him they’ll ‘talk’ tonight!!!!

Jey: I’m too high for this shit right now.

Naomi: Babe, how exactly is that a code red???

Jimmy: They was obviously arguing before I got here! And ‘talking’ tonight??? That ain’t nothing but part two!

Bayley: Jimmy, that seems like a bit of a stretch.

Jey: A big ass stretch. Man, leave them two alone.

Jimmy: Naw. We gotta expedite this plan. I can see the writing on the wall. If we don’t move fast, they never gon fall in love. They might even be starting to hate each other now!

Bayley: Now you’re just being dramatic.

Jey: Agreed. How I get out this chat?

Jimmy: I don’t wanna hear it! I’m the master strategist so let me do my thing!

Jimmy: Babe. You and Bayley have SoSo all done up and nice this evening. Make her think ya’ll are going out or something.

Naomi: Why?

Jimmy: Damnit woman, because I said so!

Naomi: 🫤

Naomi: I’m trying to figure out who the fuck you think you talking to. Don’t get your ass beat.

Jey: I’m muting this shit. Ya’ll not gon get me killed. Roman don’t like people in his business.

Jimmy: Just have her ready, and I’ll text you the location and the time she needs to be there.

Jimmy: We gotta save RoSo from themselves!

________

Solana misses the blow from Naomi by only a fraction of a second, but before she has time to think about it, another one is coming, forcing Solana to quickly jump to the side.

“Nice,” Naomi compliments. “Try more offensive positions though. Try to hit me.”

Solana knew that was coming, knew that Naomi would be pushing her today, as she has the last couple times. It only makes sense. Solana recognizes that she’s improving, that she has improved a lot since she started. It seems only natural that Naomi would continue to push her to further the progression of her skills.

“Don’t be afraid, Solana! Naomi can take it,” Bayley encourages from the sidelines, drinking some of her Gatorade.

Solana does her best to not get too distracted, knowing that can be quite literally fatal if this was a real situation.

Naomi lunges at her again, and Solana manages to block it with her forearm but also lifts her foot, managing to kick Naomi away.

“Nice!” It’s such a weird thing to be applauded for. “But remember to retract your foot faster next time. I could have twisted it and grounded you.”

Solana commits that to memory just as Naomi steps back and Bayley walks back over. She then compliments, “I know I said it already, but the haircut looks amazing on you.” She quickly adds in a manner that’s more telling than asking. “Just have to even some areas off.”

Solana half smiles. She expected Bayley to need to go in with actual shears to shape up some areas given the fact that Solana’s impromptu haircut was literally just her taking some regular scissors and chopping at least five inches off.

But before Solana can say anything else, she sees why Bayley ended her break to get back into the training.

It’s evident by the knife in her outstretched hand.

“This is a Benchmade Bailout. It’s a folding knife. A little bigger than what we’d like you to carry on you, but a good place to start.”

Carrying….Solana hadn’t even allowed herself to think about that part. Of course they’d want her to start keeping a knife on her once teaching her how to use one.

Naomi then advises, “we’re not gonna do any fight training with it today, but we do want you to get used to the feel and weight of it.”

Solana can feel her heartbeat increasing. She can’t remember the last time, if ever, she’s held a knife of this nature. Her left hand is against her shorts, tapping against the spandex, a continued nervous habit.

Bayley sees this and offers assurance. “It’s okay. We just want to go over the basics.”

Solana does her best to focus not on the past, but the present. The here and now. Another recommendation from her book. She also strangely remembers the countless times Roman has asserted he won’t let anything happen to her.

“I’ve got you.”

The safe feeling she has when he’s around. He’s not physically present, but the recollection of his words anchor her.

Taking a deep breath, Solana takes the knife from Bayley, its coolness taking her by surprise. She never takes her eyes off the blade.

Meanwhile, Naomi goes into basic tips and information. “Right off the bat, if you ever need to use it to defend yourself, go for the major arteries.” She then begins pointing to the various body parts as she lists them off. “The neck, stomach, chest area namely. It’s your best bet at getting someone almost entirely immobilized.”

“And this might be graphic, but don’t be afraid to go for it twice. Sometimes people can still be standing with just one hit.” Solana is grateful for the fact that Bayley is trying to be careful with her words, vague to a certain extent but clear enough so she can understand.

“If you just wanna get them away and not potentially kill them, maybe go for the hand or foot, depending on how they’ve got you pinned.”

“But by the time we finish your training, no one will get the chance to pin you.” Naomi gives a comforting smile and squeeze of her shoulder. “Not to mention Roman would never let you be in that position in the first place.”

Solana doesn’t doubt that one bit.

Bayley suddenly clears her throat, almost awkwardly.

Solana frowns, looking lost by the otherwise random in interjection. “What?”

“We’re not supposed to tell you, but Roman is taking you out to dinner tonight.” Naomi’s answer is appreciated, but it doesn’t make sense.

“He what?” Solana is confused because she literally just saw Roman this morning and came straight from his office to the Warehouse to train without him mentioning a word of this. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

“It’s supposed to be a surprise,” Bayley adds, but there’s something almost unsure about her answer. “So, I’ll take you to my salon afterwards to touch up your hair now, and then we can also figure out glam while you’re there.”

“Yes.” Naomi claps and carefully removes the knife from Solana. The knife she completely forgot she was holding. Naomi comments on that. “See? You forgot about it for a minute, didn’t you?” Solana nods. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you there.”

The encouragement means the world to Solana as she offers a quiet but meaningful, “thank you.” They’ll never know how much their support means to her.

Ever.

Bayley comes and stands beside Solana, sliding her arm around her with that infamous sly smile.”You never have to thank us for being your friends, Solana.” Words have never hit so deeply, Solana having to hold back tears. Friends. “Now let’s figure out what the slay is gonna be for tonight.”

________

The minute Solana walks into the restaurant, she realizes that something is off.

And not even in a dangerous sort of way, more so, there’s something she’s not being told sort of way.

It’s a beautiful upscale restaurant that has decor that probably costs more than some people’s mortgage payment.

But it’s barren. Not a customer in sight.

Walking up the three steps that lead to a higher level, she looks around, confused as to the fact that a restaurant that probably requires reservations six months in advance is vacant.

Digging in her small purse, she pulls out her phone to text Roman. Bayley and Naomi encouraged her to continue to play dumb, but this isn’t right.

She needs to talk to him.

“Solana?”

Her head snaps up to see Roman who also just walked up the same steps she did minutes prior.

“Roman?”

He seems surprised to see her, an unexpected expression for someone who allegedly planned this dinner. “I—I don’t know what’s going on.” He walks over to her as she explains. “I was told—”

“Probably the same thing I was told,” he finishes for her and takes in her appearance, Solana’s hands smoothing over her dress. Looking just as captivated as he’d looked at her this morning in his office, Roman ghosts the back of his hand against her cheek. “Sei uno splendore….”

She hasn’t a clue what he’s said, but something tells her it’s a compliment of some sort. Still, Solana asks with that same bashful smile that seems to always fall on her face when she’s around him, “are you gonna tell me what you just said?”

Roman winks and answers, plain and simple, “naw.”

Smiling even harder, before she can say anything else, another voice enters the conversation.

“Soso, girl, what you doing here?”

Both Solana and Roman turn to a smiling Jimmy who's wearing a poorly feigned look of surprise.

“Jimmy?” Solana is genuinely confused while Roman looks like he’s genuinely considering murdering his cousin for the second time today. “What—what are you doing here?”

Roman is completely uninterested in the why and more so on the how he’s going to end the other man. “I’m going to fucking kill him, Solana. I don’t care anymore.”

Jimmy completely ignores Roman and answers her question with an answer that makes no sense. “Ahh, you know, I was in the neighborhood.”

He gives Solana a side hug as she answers his question as well, hoping to avoid witnessing a familial crime. “Bayley and Naomi told me—”

“You know what, it don’t even matter. You here. Big Dog here.” He gestures around them. “Looks like this nice ass restaurant has been rented out by some coincidence. Might as well enjoy a nice dinner.”

Roman closes his eyes, seemingly trying to count off. “I’m literally going to snap your fucking neck if you don’t get lost. Now.”

Solana moves over to Roman just enough for him to reach and gently tug her into him. He doesn’t need to be getting this upset. She naturally lays her head against his chest, fingers grasping the sides of his shirt.

Jimmy lifts his hands in a surrender manner. “Hey. I can tell when I’m not wanted.” Solana smiles at the look she can imagine on Roman’s face at that. “Ya’ll be safe now. Soso, I’ll be at the crib in the morning for breakfast.”

“Why the fuc—”

Solana reaches up and redirects his focus onto her. “It’s okay.” Solana looks over at the table that’s beautifully decorated with a stunning centerpiece. “It’s….it’s sweet.” Her diversion also, thankfully, a long enough distraction for Jimmy to depart, leaving the two of them alone.

Her preference.

Roman’s as well, clearly.

Solana then takes in the situation, a little relieved to finally know what’s going on. It’s obvious she was set up. Roman too. But regardless of the deception, it’s deeply appreciated. Her friends going to such lengths to set up something nice like this.

Roman, calming down a bit, doesn’t necessarily disagree with her, but instead asserts, “they’re interfering, and I don’t like that shit.”

Her smile dims a bit as she offers, “we can leave—”

“No.” He shoots it down immediately, hands on her hips. “Just hate that I finally get time alone with you, and it’s because of fucking Jimmy.” Her eyes shut when he kisses her forehead and murmurs, “been thinking’ bout you all day…”

And the smile is back as she takes his hand and leads him toward the table, Roman pulling her chair out for her.

Having the restaurant entirely rented out is a luxury she’s not used to but appreciates, especially with how catered the service is as well as the fact that they don’t have to wait long for the food. Conversation flows easy between them, more Roman asking questions about how she’s doing, if she needs anything.

He’s always so attentive, and she’s so grateful for that.

Grateful for him.

It’s the same type of attentiveness that causes her to comment after the waiter comes and takes their plates, clearing the table. “You seem stressed.”

And not just because of the date setup.

He shrugs, partially dismissing but not outright denying. “Just a long day.”

It seems to be a recurring theme with him. Solana has noticed for a while now how his early days always bleed into late evenings that sometimes spill over to the next day. It doesn’t seem sustainable to her. “You have a lot of those.”

“I’m the Tribal Chief.” He says it with pride, as he should, but there’s something else there. Something she can’t outright identify. “Comes with the territory.”

And Solana recognizes as such, but as large of a man Roman is—in many different ways—he’s still just a man. “Is it ever too much?” She crosses her arms across the table, leaning forward almost. There may be no other attendees present, but there are still workers, so she’s mindful of her volume. “I mean….”

“Do I ever get exhausted?” She nods. “Sure.” That wasn’t the answer she was expecting. Roman does such an excellent job always wearing that mask of calm, cool, and collected. Outside of his obvious temper, he’s always so well put together. It’s something she envies, to a certain extent. “But someone’s gotta do it, and as it’s my birthright, the responsibility falls on me.”

She sits on his words, understanding where he’s coming from but also wondering just how he manages such a weight. She knows he’d headed the Bloodline for some time now, since he was 18 years old. That’s a large burden to carry at such a young age and for him to do it so long and as well as he has, it’s impressive.

He certainly lives up to his reputation.

Solana nods and does her best to ease into what she’d really like to tell him, to have him know even if he never in life takes her up on it. “You always say that I can talk to you…”

Roman doesn’t hesitate to reaffirm it too. “You can.”

She knows this. He’s….he’s made it abundantly clear that he wants to speak with her, to know what’s on her mind. “That goes both ways.” Something speedily flashes in his eyes, briefly affecting his otherwise neutral expression. “You can talk to me too.”

For a second, she regrets saying anything, regrets second guessing his abilities to handle things. The last thing she wants is to insinuate he’s somehow incapable of taking care of business. But, if he’s insulted by her offer, he doesn’t show it, just says a simple, “thank you.” She offers a small nod when he seemingly changes the subject. “How’s training?”

There’s a bit of a sting at what feels like a slight form of rejection, but she understands better than anyone that opening up can be hard, so she respects his wishes.

“Good. I….I think I like it.” It’s the truth. While initially terrified of being put into such a foreign situation, Solana has found herself growing increasingly content with this new part of her weekly routine. Training has assisted, to a great extent, in her growing confidence and surety with herself. There’s something comforting about learning how to defend herself, how to keep herself safe. “Today was a little hard though. They’re teaching me how to fight with knives. It’s…..uncomfortable, but that’s how I know I need to do it.”

If there’s anything she’s learned in the past couple months, it’s that nothing about working to overcome trauma is easy. That doesn’t, however, make it any less important.

Or beneficial.

“Not if you absolutely don’t want to.” To be fair, Roman wasn’t even informed that this was something the girls were starting with Solana. He makes a mental note to remind them that while they handle her training, the specifics of what she’s taught needs to be run by him at all times. He probably would have shot down the knife training.

Solana was literally present and witnessed her mother be stabbed to death. Solana herself was also stabbed.

That seems almost cruel to make her learn how to wield the very weapon that took so much from her.

“Wes used to use knives to hurt me.” It comes out more quiet than she intended, a natural effect of sharing something so painful. She points to a small scar on her neck, the exact date and nature of how it happened, something she’ll never forget but has little desire to elaborate on.

“And I know….I know you won’t let him hurt me anymore, but….I don’t want him to have that power over me anymore either. He knows I’m scared of them, and he’s always taken advantage of that fact. I don’t….I don’t want him to have that anymore.”

“Then he won’t,” Roman agrees. He can understand her logic, and he respects the hell out of her wanting to take back that power. He supports the hell out of it too. “Not if you don’t let him.”

She gives a sad smile, shaking her head. “As strange as it is, I think….Wes and I are both victims.” Before Roman can press her for clarification, she explains, “my father always kept his contact limited with my mom. He said she would make him weak like she made me.” Just saying it takes Solana back to countless times and occasions where her father would talk down on her mother, talk down on Solana. It’s a weighty memory. “Having my mom…having her love for the time that I did made a big difference for me. Wes never got that, so I always wonder how things could have been different if he did.”

Solana has a big heart. Pure. A mind-boggling phenomena to Roman considering everything she’s been through. “It still doesn’t make what he’s done to you right.” Kind heart or not, it’s imperative she knows there’s never a good enough reason or excuse for anyone to do what he’s done to her.

She nods, “I know.” It’s still a work in progress, Solana learning to unlearn the victim blaming she’s placed on herself for so many years. But, that much, she’s come to accept.

She never deserved any of Wes or her father's abuse.

Roman can see the way memories might be coming back to the front of her mind and moves to redirect again. “You wanted to talk to me about something earlier.”

Oh.

For a second, she wants to lie. To make up something. To come up with a story that’s hopefully believable enough for him to not poke holes through. And then another line from her book resurfaces.

Calculated risks are different—you weigh your chances and step out onto the ice only when you’re relatively sure it’s solid.

Solana is certain she’s never met a more solid person than Roman.

Scooting back in her chair, she feels his watchful gaze around her as she moves around the table and is only inches away from him when he realizes what she's doing and beats her to it, gently pulling her onto his lap. He’s always so careful around her.

Solana moves her arms around his neck as he rests one hand on her hip.

She takes a deep breath. “I was...I was working out of my book this morning, and it was the chapter on…on intimacy and—” She has to pace herself, knowing that if she doesn’t, she won’t get through the conversation. And she has to do this. She almost feels like she needs to do this. “I think I always thought I couldn’t have that because of what happened to me, but…..but I think I can.”

And this has been such a powerful and moving revelation to walk into. For so long, Solana has lived in fear and trauma, haunted by the horrific memories of her sexual assault. It’s inaccurately painted her views of what should and could be something beautiful and special with the right person. She never thought that could be possible for her though, believed that her chance had been destroyed by two sick individuals.

But if the past few months have taught her anything, it’s that there are decent people in the world. Decent men in the world. Jimmy. Jey. Solo.

Roman

She’s still very much nervous, and even talking about it has her pushing back a level of anxiety, but the desire to overcome that trauma, to be able to experience that as a woman, to not be held down by the shackles of her past, is stronger than it’s ever been before.

“And I want to try.” She licks her lips, nervously adding on and explaining as best she can, “but, I can’t do it right away. I need….I need to build up to it, and I know—that has to be frustrating for you—”

“Solana.” His interruption is quiet but firm. “We’ll go as slow as you want.” His finger is moving in slow circles on her hip, an action that provides her a strange sense of comfort. “Whatever you need is what we’ll do.”

Solana releases a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding in. Him agreeing isn’t something she necessarily didn’t see coming, she just didn’t realize it’d come so easy.

She almost feels it’s too good to be true.

Suddenly unsure, Solana double checks. “You’re….you’re okay with that?”

He doesn’t miss a beat with his answer. “Only if you’re sure this is what you want.”

It’s a profound statement. There’s a lot of things she’s not sure of that she’s been making herself do, regardless.

But this……

This is something she wants.

Something she maybe even needs.

Solana is careful with her answer. “I’m gonna be 29 this year, and the only sexual experience I’ve had is being raped as a child.” There’s an equal combination of emotion and conviction as she affirms, “I don’t want that to be my story anymore.”

And it won’t.

Because she won’t let it.

Not anymore.

“Then we’ll do this.” She nods, still nervous but also comforted by his support. “You know I won’t make you do anything you’re not ready for, but I also need you to be good about communicating with me.” His eyes move up and down over her, resting slightly longer on her chest, which is understandable given the revealing nature of her dress. “And you also know how attracted I am to you, to all of you, so I need you to stay clear with me on what you are and aren’t comfortable with, okay?”

It’s fair and completely understandable. Roman is still a man. A man with needs, and he strikes her as being an otherwise handsy man, so him wanting and needing to know where her red zones are is important.

“I understand.” And she’ll make an active, concerted effort to be on top of that. To practice saying no and cutting things off when she needs to. “What—what about you?” He gives her a look. “Is there….is there anything you’re not comfortable with?”

Again, he takes her in, head to toe. His tongue leaves his mouth to slowly gloss over his bottom lip. “Baby, you can do whatever you want with me.”

Her smile is bashful as she looks away. Him being so….outspoken about his attraction and desire for her is still a new thing she’s trying to navigate, but it’s not unwanted. Nor does it feel bad to have a man like him want her so badly.

Not at all.

Deciding to continue to stay on the ledge she’s already started to trail, Solana brings her hand to his chest. “So….so if I asked you to kiss me again….”

He chuckles, Solana’s eyes shutting as he brings his mouth to her jawline, “whenever,” her nails claw against his chest as he moves his lips to her nose, “however,” finally he’s teasing the corner of her mouth. “Wherever you want.”

And it’s at the exact moment their lips connect again that a phone ringing once again steals away another groundbreaking moment.

Solana can feel the irritation in his muscular body and smiles against his lips.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.” She doesn’t necessarily doubt it as he kisses her cheek before pulling his phone out and answering as she lays her head in his neck. He barks out an unkind, “what?”

It doesn’t deter her as he keeps his grip on her hip, Solana enjoying the feeling of being in his arms. She’s starting to realize being this close to him makes her feel safe. His presence alone gives her that feeling, but this is something different, something almost…deeper.

She doesn’t try to listen in on his phone call, but it’s made virtually impossible not to, given the fact that she’s literally on his lap. However, that’s ended when he switches to speaking in Samoan. Still, it’s not hard to pick up on the fact that he’s growing more annoyed with every second that passes.

He then gives a heavy sigh, switching to English, “I’ll be there in a bit.”

Her stomach drops, a frown appearing that she does her best to quickly push away. She had a feeling the call would end that way.

Before he can explain to her the obvious, she lifts her head and assures, “it’s okay. I should probably get back to Dulce anyway.”

“Damn dog is so needy.” Solana smiles at the scowl on his handsome face. For someone who doesn’t care for dogs, she’s noticed he seems to interact with her puppy more and more as the days pass. He brings his hand to her chin, ensuring she keeps her gaze on him. “Don’t wait up, alright?”

It’s an expected request, one he should already know she’ll do her best to, but most likely won’t, abide by.

“I make no promises...”

________

Having such a small dog means that he or she can be in the most random of places and blend in seamlessly because of said smallness. It’s why in looking for Dulce after getting out the shower, Solana damn near searches every corner and crevice of the first and second floors of the mansion. Outside of a room that’s been locked and closed off the past two weeks, Roman not really giving her a reason why nor has she pushed.

She’d never been in it anyway.

It is, however, out of the norm though for Dulce to not be nearby. She typically likes to stay close to Solana.

Or even Roman.

So for a moment, Solana starts to get concerned. But after searching her room, the kitchen, the dining room, and even the backyard a second time, Solana is finally able to locate Dulce in the least expected place.

Roman’s room.

She didn’t even realize Dulce’s bed was still in there, still in the original spot on the side of his bed.

The side she had slept on that one night.

“Dulce, you can’t stay in here.” Solana knows Roman isn’t a huge dog person, and Dulce being in his room is probably the last thing he’ll want to see when he gets back. But it’s in reaching over to pick up her puppy that something unexpected happens.

Dulce nips at her.

Solana gasps, momentarily taken off guard. That’s the first time Dulce has done that. “Dulce, no.” Again, Solana goes for the grab only for the puppy to plant her bottom and back legs into the bed. Now Solana is just straight up confused. “What is wrong with you?”

Thinking maybe she can lure the puppy with a toy, Solana turns to leave, almost to the door when Dulce’s whimpering and the patter of her little feet stops her. Solana turns around and moves to grab her when Dulce scampers right back over to her bed, plopping her little body down.

It’s when she does that, Solana starts to catch on.

“You want to stay in here?” Dulce’s reply is a bark followed by the wag of her tail. Solana frowns. “We can’t…..this is Roman’s room.”

And yet even as the words leave her mouth, she thinks about that. Thinks about the fact that a part of working up to being intimate with Roman includes being close to him, touching him, in his bed perhaps. And though she still doesn’t remember everything from the night she got drunk, she remembers waking up in his bed and falling asleep again in the same bed with zero issues.

She felt….she felt comfortable.

She felt safe.

“We can stay for a little while.” Deep down, Solana knows Roman won’t be upset with her. If anything, he’ll be more annoyed that she didn’t listen and decided to wait up, but her laying in his bed for a few minutes won’t generate anger.

Solana puts her phone on the nightstand, making sure the ringer is still on. The likelihood of him texting or even calling her is slim to none, but still….she doesn’t want to miss it if he does.

Laying on his bed is the initial plan, but there’s a chill in his room that has her moving under the covers just to provide her that slight warmth. It’s not intended to increase her comfort and definitely not intended to lead to her falling asleep.

But that’s exactly what happens.

It’s also the last thing Roman expects to find when he makes it back home a couple hours later.

Solana asleep in his bed.

He knew she would try to stay up, knew she would end up falling asleep in trying to stay up, but he didn’t know she would end up doing all of that in his room, in his bed.

It’s unexpected but far from unwanted, a strange sense of satisfaction at seeing her sleeping so comfortably, so peacefully in his space of all places.

He’s careful in his movements around the room, gathering clothes to change into post shower. Roman doesn’t want to disturb her, to wake her up, especially since he has a good guess that she didn’t intend to end up in his bed and would be unnecessarily apologetic.

Apologetic for something he’s halfway considering asking her to make a permanent thing.

Roman manages to finish his shower without Solana so much as moving an inch. If only her damn dog was the same, because he’s barely able to open the bathroom door when Dulce is at his feet, whimpering.

Small ass dog with an even smaller ass bladder.

Before she can progress to barking, he’s got her up in his arms, guiding her out the room, down the stairs and into the backyard where she thankfully wastes zero time in doing her business. Roman is grateful, not wanting a second to pass where Solana could wake up, freak the fuck out, and leave.

He wants her to stay right where she is.

And it’s in sliding into the bed with her, moving his arm over her body and gently pulling her into him, he realizes another reason why he doesn’t want her to leave. There’s an unfamiliar almost instant peace he has at the feel of her next to him, like this is how it should be, like she should be with him.

Like she’s supposed to be with him.

But he clearly wasn’t thinking straight when he moved her, because she’s suddenly stirring in her sleep, eyes slowly blinking open.

Fuck. He didn’t mean to wake her up.

Roman’s half expecting her to freak out, to panic at being this close to him, at being in bed this close to him. But she again surprises him with a quiet murmur that’s more an acknowledgment than anything. “You’re back….” He watches as she frowns almost, an indication of worry, asking in a voice full of sleep. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He brings his hand to her cheek, recognizing that even though she’s talking, she’s very much still half-sleep. “Go back to sleep.”

Solana gives a little nod and the moment he pulls his hand away, she inches closer to him. He shifts their positions, so he’s on his back, and she’s tucked safely into his side. In what feels like seconds, she’s fast asleep.

Yeah….

A discussion about her moving into his room is definitely on the table, preferably sooner rather than later. It makes sense to him for a lot of reasons, namely the fact that she’s clearly comfortable sleeping with him in this way but also the fact that she’s expressed a desire to work up to being intimate.

Roman’s had sex in a lot of different places, but there’s no way in fucking hell he could ever have his first time with Solana be anywhere but a bed.

His bed.

He plays around with a few different ideas on how to broach the subject before sleep prevails over him too.

It’s the fastest he’s fallen asleep in years.

And he’s certain it has nothing to do with the long ass day he had but everything to do with the woman besides him.

But his sleep is short lived by the vibrating of his phone on the nightstand. Irritated at the interruption of his sleep, he’s not surprised. Roman’s always been a light sleeper.

He peers down to make sure Solana remains undisturbed in her slumber, and seeing that she’s still sleeping as peacefully as before with her body somehow more over his than he remembered, he grabs his phone.

Paul: Sorry to disturb you so late, sir, but I got the files you requested for Miller. Emailed. As we already know, he’s almost a million in the hole. Has been in debt over the past twenty years. Never in the green. The bulk of it was accumulated in 2005. 500K. Summer 2005. Strangely, in that same month, it was cut in half to 250K. Then mysteriously zeroed out in late 07.

Roman sits on the brief summary provided by his Wise Man. It doesn’t add up. He already knew Miller was in the hole. The man is a fucking idiot when it comes to finances, so him being that deeply in debt isn’t surprising, but him somehow getting rid of a quarter million debt is. The fucker isn’t smart enough to pull that off.

Roman: Who was the creditor?

Paul: Still looking into that.

Roman: Anything significant about 07’?

Paul: Not that I can see. Still digging though.

Roman doesn’t like mysteries. Can’t stand unanswered questions. They’ve always driven him fucking insane. It’s why he finds himself unable to fall back asleep, an inconvenient thing given the fact that he’ll need to be up and out of bed in a little under three hours. Still, he can’t get the dates and information out of his head.

How the fuck did a dumbass like Miller clear his ledger to that extent? It’s not unheard of. Roman could have done it. Easily. But, he’s also significantly smarter than his wife’s dumbass father.

Even more, what the hell did Miller need or have done for fucking half a million dollars?

Was he moving product? Weapons, maybe? Human trafficking? Just the thought of that last one makes Roman want to place his fist through the nearest wall.

But it’s Solana stirring on top of him that serves as the unintended trigger that helps him fill in the rest of the gaps.

He’s quick with the text to the Wise Man.

Roman: When was Solana’s mother killed?

Paul: Sir?

Roman: Answer the fucking question.

There’s a brief delay followed by those three dots and an answer.

Paul: 2005. August.

Wheels start turning as Roman begins putting the harrowing pieces together. Miller went into half a million dollar debt in August of 2005 that somehow got slashed in half at the end of the same month. The same month that Solana and her mother were attacked, and only one of them made it out alive.

Half…..

2007….

Roman does some mental math. Solana was born in 95. She’ll be 29 this year. That puts her at age 12 back in 07’.

12.

The same age she was when she was raped.

The same year the largest chunk of her father’s debt suddenly zeroed out and disappeared like it never happened in the first place.

And just like the night he found out Solana was a survivor of childhood sexual assault, the unbridled horror and disgust that filled him in knowing the truth, Roman is starting to wish he wasn’t so good at connecting the dots. That he wasn’t able to put two and two together.

Because the picture is more fucking horrifying than anything he’s encountered in some time. If ever.

Because he’s now faced with the dilemma of just how in the hell he’s supposed to tell Solana that her father is responsible for her mother’s murder but also her being raped.

Because now he’s faced with the dilemma of if he should tell her at all.

Roman closes his eyes.

Shit just got infinitely more complicated.

#roman reigns fic #roman reigns x black!reader #roman reigns x black!oc #roman reigns #arisnotebook

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shadowed-dancer · 6 months ago

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Villains and Their Fates - A Tragedy Would Have Been Fine By Me

I've seen a lot of people who try to write off frustration with the league's fates by saying "you just wanted them to survive" or "you're just upset your favourite character died". And while that may be true for a few people, I know that it's at least not true for myself (which must mean there are others who feel the same way). So today I'm here to share my thoughts. Despite liking the villains and wanting them to be redeemed, I was also willing to accept a well written ending if they died. I just wanted to ramble a bit about the three main villains (mostly Toga) and how I felt a tragic ending could have been improved.

The only villain I felt should have lived is Dabi, but that's more because of the awkwardness his unconfirmed death caused for Shoto (read this beautifully written analysis for more). If Dabi had to die, he should have died on the battle field OR in the hospital surrounded by family where he gets a few last words in. Leaving his fate unconfirmed leads to the ruined Shoto arc, but is also just weird for a character who has existed for so long. You're telling me that even Overhaul gets a confirmed ending but DABI doesn't?

I've also talked a bit about how Endeavor's survival ruins the subplot, and in 426 he continues by making Touya's final appearance about him (rather than the two brothers) but that's something I've talked about too much. If Endeavor has to be alive and hogging screen time, the least Hori could do is imply Touya will survive rather than die, so at least Enji isn't literally stealing time from his other family members to have some interaction with Touya.

If Touya has to end up in that machine, an ideal ending would have been the doctor saying "it will be a gruelling and near-impossible uphill climb to recovery" and then Shoto can smile and say "he's done it before". Boom. Simple as that. Leave it open, but at least on a positive note so we can assume that the family will have plenty of time to reconcile, as opposed to an unknown (but limited) amount of time that Enji vows to use to talk to him (yeah I know it's supposed to be a sweet gesture but even Touya calls bullshit on it). Let Shoto and Touya eat their soba, damn it!

For Shigaraki, my grievances extend to the writing of the entire final battle between him and Deku. As such, I don't have much to say aside from that because it really is just a product of poor writing. Neither were really allowed to talk before the big moment (hell, the vestiges were narrating Deku's emotions half the time like "he must be upset, this quirk meant so much to him". Why not let him tell us???) and the back-and-forth of Shigaraki being destroyed and then not only to be destroyed again was too much. It felt sloppy and hard to follow, and once you figured it out it just felt dumb. It's as if each chapter needed some massive reveal, but the story had done it so much at this point that it just felt tired and like it was happening "because Hori said so", and that should never be what drives a story.

Speaking of "because Hori said so"...

Oh Toga. Out of all the villains, I actually liked her confrontation the most. (Lies. If Dabi vs Shoto was the end of Dabi's fight, THAT would have been the best. But the Endeavor fight ruins it). Despite having limited screen time, Toga and Uraraka had a surprisingly well-built dynamic. Their few interactions were actually meaningful and created a strong foundation for a fight, and at the very least they had more of a personal connection than Deku and Shigaraki ever did. I think that Toga giving her blood to someone she loves (as opposed to drinking/taking their blood like she had said the whole series) is a beautifully tragic end to her character, but still something that could have fit.

To me, the problem comes with how she died. Let me replay the scene for you: Toga stabs Uraraka in the stomach and Uraraka bleeds too much because she keeps moving around. Toga then realizes she doesn't want Uraraka to die. To save her life, Toga has to do a blood transfusion with herself as a donor and she dies because she has to give ALL her blood.

Now... sure. Ok. Fine. Yeah. Maybe by real-world logic this makes sense. I guess. Whatever. But within the world of MHA, this setup is laughable.

Here's a list of things characters survived (or at least, they survived LONG ENOUGH to get to a hospital rather than dying on the battlefield): Deku shattering his bones with 1 million percent, whatever happened to Best Jeanist when AFO attacked him, Nighteye getting a massive spike through the torso, All Might with "his entrails strewn across the ground", Bakugo becoming Swiss cheese, Grand Torino being punched so hard a crater forms beneath him, Touya being a literal flaming skeleton, Bakugo's heart exploding, Edgeshot becoming a worm. Mirko getting a limb ripped off and then running full speed at Shigaraki. That's just off the top of my head, I know there's probably more.

But you want to tell me that Uraraka getting stabbed and then moving was a fatal wound that required ALL TOGA'S BLOOD? ALL OF IT? The reason Toga's death bothers me is that the setup cheapens the actual moment of sacrifice. It feels preventable, so when she tells us that Uraraka is going to die without her blood, all I could do is roll my eyes because I'm not allowed to use critical thinking skills, I have to just accept what Hori says and take it at face value.

If the author wants you to live as Edgeworm despite saying you were gonna die, you can. But if the author needs a stab wound to be fatal and require ALL of someone's blood? Well tough luck bud, that's just how it goes. Mirko can run and move all she wants after having a limb ripped off, but moving a bit after one stab wound is fatal. Why? Because I say so.

If Uraraka's wound was actually serious then this ending would have been a beautiful tragedy. But as it stands now, the ridiculousness of her wound makes it all feel preventable.

Oh, there's also the fact that Toga switching blood types when she transforms was never established, but I've rambled enough.

That's it. Thanks for reading!

#bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha 430 #bnha meta #toga himiko #shigaraki tomura #touya todoroki #dabi

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starlight-bread-blog · 9 months ago

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The Fortune in The Fortune Teller

This is an isolated look into this specific episode.

The Fortune Teller is the 14th episode of book 1 of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is famous for supposedly developping the show's romantic subplot between Katara and A\ang. The episode does two things: A\ang attempts to flirt with Katara, and Katara is finally willing to consider him as more than just a friend.

However, I believe that this episode could have masterfully foreshadowed the pair not getting together in the end. In this essay I will detail how each step the episode takes towards a Kat@ang endgame is actually foreshadowing the opposite.

1. Katara and the Nature of Destiny

In the beginning, the Gaang meets a person getting attacked by a bear. He is acting incredibly passive, simply dodging the bear's attemps at his life. Then, A\ang and Appa interfere to help the man. When the Gaang questions him on why he was so passive, he says it's because the Fortune Teller told him he'd have a safe journey. They then have the following exchange:

The man's logic is obviously flawed. If the Gaang didn't interfere, if the man continued to passivaly dodge, the bear would have attacked him. Fortune and destiny come from agency – from actively shaping them.

However, Katara is delaited at the prospect of seeing the future. Her and the Gaang go to meet the Fortune Teller, Aunt Wu. Aunt Wu tells her she'll marry a very powerful bender. Later, she comes back asking more details about her future husband. Remember her excitment, fantacising about her future husband:

After that, Katara becomes somewhat reliant on Aunt Wu's prophecies. She goes as far as to ask her what she should eat.

And she obeys her "prophecy", despite not wanting to. She became like the man from the beginning. She knowingly follows the fortune even though it doesn't make sense. She had given up on forging her own destiny.

Although by the end of the episode, she is no longer in this state of reliance, she still believes in the prophecies. Then, Sokka says that A\ang is a very powerful bender. This reminds her of what Aunt Wu said about her future husband. I don't want to cherry pick, so I took 4 different pictures of her face when she realizes A\ang might be the powerful bender she is to marry:

With the look in her eyes, with her mouth tilted down and with the ominous music, this could easily be read as disappointment. Especially when remembering how she fantacized about the powerful bender earlier in the episode. She doesn't smile, but looks concerned. As if she doesn't want this. Earlier in the episode, she says this:

A\ang is like the papaya. The fortune says he's right for her, but Katara doesn't want him. Now, she isn't like the man, passively dodging the bear attacking her. She shouldn't sit and wait for the prophecy to come true point blank. She has the agency to shape her own destiny and not to choose A\ang as her future husband.

2. A\ang, Meng, and First Crushes

In this episode we're introduced to a girl named Meng. Aunt Wu told her she'd end up with someone like A\ang, and so she developped a one sided crush on him. Throughout the episode she attempts to talk to him, all to no avail. Because A\ang is not interested in her.

Interestingly, her one sided crush is directly paralleled to A\ang's crush on Katara.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Please note that in exhibits B and C in particular, there is an emphasis on the other party not reciprocating their feelings.

In this parallel the show draws, A\ang is Meng, the younger, shorter one the one who is in love; and Katara is A\ang, the older, taller one who... *checks notes*... doesn't reciprocate.

But in the end, A\ang and Meng have a heart-to-heart.

Sometimes you'll like someone, and they aren't going to feel the same way, and even though it's hard, it's okay. They're young, just kids having a crush. A\ang responds to this with "I know what you mean". Because he, just like the audience that watched the parallels, knows that Katara likely doesn't return his feelings.

———————

In conclusion, The Fortuneteller could have been brilliant foreshadowing to Kata\ang not being the endgame couple, and it would have done so through beautiful, mature lessons about first loves and destiny. Thank you for reading.

#anti kataang #zutara #atla critical #anti anti zutara #pro zutara #zutara analysis #zutara evidence #zutara forever #zutara meta #zutara nation #zutara should have been canon #zutar #zutara supremacy #zuko x katara #katara x zuko #katara #meng

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annabelle--cane · 1 year ago

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it's fascinating to me the way that different social media platforms result in different types of fandom behavior. while s5 of tma was airing, I spent a good amount of time on tma tiktok (I log back in about once every two months now, going back to in-person school after a year a half of lockdown seem to re-blanace my brain and made me once again not really enjoy the format) while still using tumblr as my main socmed, and while there was a lot of overlap in the fan culture, some things were notably different.

tumblr tma fans had near-encyclopedic knowledge of the source material, but it was kind of an ongoing joke for tiktok tma fans that everyone binged the whole show in a week-long fugue state and lost memory of about 35% of it. tumblr has virtually no character limit and allows posts to be passed around by users indefinitely, which lends itself to fairly in-depth meta analysis being made and shared until most any fan could say "the time and space discrepancies at hill top road? psh yeah, I know all about them, I've read seven scrupulously cited posts that lay out all the details." for the entire time that s5 was airing, tiktok videos could still only be a minute long, and I know from a lot of personal effort that there's only so much you can fit into a one minute script that you also have to memorize and record (and cc manually with tiktok text stickers, as they didn't add the caption feature until april 2021) if you want the process to take less than four hours of your one mortal human life. and then you only see the video if your following or fyp algorithm shows it to you. there were a few tma meta-ish videos that got popular because other people would make their own videos referencing them and tag the account so their followers could see what they were talking about, but it's much harder to circulate content you like there. several times I saw people post videos saying "I got into cosplay to film some [agnes or annabelle or gerry or another secondary character] and I just realized I have no idea what their deal actually is 💀".

a thing that tiktok tma fandom was definitely better at than tumblr tma fandom was accurately remembering certain pieces of characterization and the flow of certain scenes. I've seen a bunch of posts on here where someone is trying to argue a point with excerpts from the text ("x character is nicer than you all give them credit for" "x character is so mean to y character in this scene" "z theory can't be true because y character said a line that disproves it") where the argument only holds up because the poster has gotten these excerpts from a transcript dive and hasn't listened to the episodes they're from recently, because while the text alone can be construed to mean one thing, the way it's delivered on-podcast clearly intends another. tiktok, being an audio and video based medium, allows audio clips to be shared around a lot, and cosplayers would often all make videos acting along to the same show clips of juicy interpersonal drama, and so tiktok fans, though they may have had less overall memory of what characters said, always had a better grasp on how they said it. an average tiktok tma fan might not have remembered melanie's subplot about war ghosts, but they would know the nuances of how the way she talks to jon changes between mag 28 and mag 155.

#prompted by Absolutely nothing #tma #marina marvels at life

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literaryvein-reblogs · 4 months ago

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Writing Notes: Plotting Your Novel

Plotting your novel is a multi-step process.

There are a few different approaches and mindsets when it comes to plotting a novel.

The following is a step-by-step guide to plotting a novel.

Generate ideas.

The first step in writing a novel is generating story ideas.

Some writers like to freewrite and brainstorm.

Others prefer working with writing prompts.

Whichever approach you take, it’s important to spend time coming up with a variety of ideas and choosing a strong premise that lends itself to an effective plot.

Start with a simple, compelling premise.

Once you have a basic idea, it’s time to develop a story premise.

One way to develop a small idea into a basic story is called the snowflake method.

The snowflake method involves starting with a core premise or theme upon which you build every other aspect of narrative and character as you flesh out the big picture.

Have a clear central conflict.

Creating a clear central conflict will anchor your plot and give your narrative focus.

If you’re a first-time novelist or new writer, look to thrillers, fantasy or adventure stories for examples of clear good guy vs. bad guy conflict.

Choose your structure.

There are many different models upon which you can base your plot structure. The most common is a three act structure.

Learning the basics of how a three-act story structure can help you start to piece together your plot and structure your narrative.

Trace out general story arcs.

Start to lay out a storyline.

You don’t have to worry about building the whole thing at once.

Rather you can focus on an act length story arc or even scene descriptions and piece these together as you build out a full-length narrative.

Build subplots.

Once you have a good sense for your main plot it’s time to layer in subplots.

Subplots can often be character specific, so this is a good time to think a bit about the characters you’ve populated your world with and how each individual backstory might come into play.

Good subplots will weave seamlessly through your main arc and help advance your action rather than distract from it.

Think about cause and effect.

Good stories involve a logical series of events that progress one into the next.

Make sure that your scenes are each motivated by something that preceded them.

A good driving narrative should feel dynamic.

A plot should progress forward because of tangible story elements like a character’s motivation or actions that propel your narrative.

If you look at your story arc as a sequence of events, there should be a logical progression where one scene triggers the next and pushes the action forward.

Write a detailed outline.

Before you start writing, you should have a detailed plot outline.

This should catalog the main story and individual plot points.

It should be comprehensive enough that someone who has no knowledge of your story could look at the outline and piece together the narrative of events, identifying your inciting incident, rising action, and climax.

Tie up loose ends.

Once you have a detailed outline, tie up loose ends and fill any plot holes.

Editing is a very important part of creative writing.

One misconception about writing is that editing comes at the end of the process.

Editing is something you should return to throughout your writing process and it’s important to edit your plot and outline before you start writing in earnest.

Don’t neglect character development.

Character is an incredibly important part of a story and helps to balance out plot-based narratives.

Before you start writing you should make sure that you have detailed character arcs and main characters with clear motivations and backstories.

Part of building a good character is building a strong and nuanced point of view.

Balance out the plot portion of your writing process by taking some time to analyze your characters and make sure they are strong, realistic, and nuanced.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References Writing References: Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Worldbuilding

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great-kung-lao · 4 months ago

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KazuKaoru: Everlasting - An Essay

(This art belongs to amamaiiya, please go and follow, like, reblog her magnificent works)

What defines a good relationship? What makes fictional couple a good one? Each of these questions can have a different answer depending on the person asked, because it is often that in fiction people prefer something they would never allow themselves in real life. You know how they say, the forbidden fruit is sweet. But personally, I have equal preferences for both. In my honest opinion a good relationship has to be, above everything else, a healthy one and consist of trust, mutual understanding and support, where both partners have things in common, respect one another and don't hold back each other. This is what I saw and liked in a dynamic of Kiryu Kazuma and Sayama Kaoru from Like a Dragon (aka Yakuza) series.

Some might say they had a rough start, with them being on opposite sides of the law in a world where people are labeled and treated with prejudice. But that is the whole theme of their love story throughout Like a Dragon 2. It is a relationship that defies what people assume as normal, where characters are developing to see through the superficial and realize that despite their surface level differences, there is much more in common on a deeper level.

They are both humans, shackled by outside perception of them and because of it they might feel they have to act a certain way instead of being themselves. But being themselves is exactly what they manage to achieve around each other, which is something that even Haruka notices about her Uncle Kaz. Isn't that the best kind of thing that can be in a relationship? To be yourself without hiding it and be loved for it? KazuKaoru is that kind of pairing.

Isn't it ironic that he turned to be that someone? Interesting camera work here is that while he says this, it zooms at him. Not very subtle, but nice foreshadowing nonetheless.

Often I come across an assumption that KazuKaoru is rushed. Not one bit. We are talking about two grown up people with experiences, who know or at least feel what they want from life and their partner. It is hard to determine when exactly Kiryu fell for Kaoru, but Kaoru definitely starting falling for Kiryu at the rooftop scene after date. But that scene leaves us with an impression that her feelings are unrequited. She wants to stay with him to watch the stars, but he politely refuses and asks her to rest. There is a moment of hurt and disappointment.

Potential of denial is followed up by a scene at New Serena. After Kaoru suffered through shocking discovery and family member loss, she is a mess and her actual real self with all that baggage might not be loveable at all. She confessed to Kiryu about her insecurities and the truth ended up more harmful than she was prepared for. She started crying after saying this line:

I always read it as her implying something along the lines "you don't need me anymore". With her heart on disaply she is met with silence. But whoever was responsible for this subplot of Yakuza 2 liked to live in a happy land, so we've got this beautiful response from Kiryu that finally showed his true colors and feelings towards Kaoru:

"I would never think less of you" meaning that he accepts her entirely, with whatever may come her way. He loves Kaoru for the person she is and might be. This is pure, kind and tender form of love that is so easy to enjoy. He makes sure she knows that he doesn't want her away, so he asks her a very important thing to do later:

Yakuza and a police officer. Two people on the opposite sides. But both are warriors for justice, upholding same ideals of helping and protecting those in need. They both have power, but use it for good. This is the kind of common ground that can lead to something special and beautiful if they are ever allowed to reunite in later games.

Thankfully Like a Dragon 8 left us with hope. We have a confirmation that Kiryu Kazuma and Sayama Kaoru still have feelings for each other even after 17 years of being apart. This is why I call this essay as Everlasting. Because this is the kind of love they hold for each other, still waiting for a moment where they can be together again.

There is actually a lot more I would have liked to put into words about them. This is my all time favorite video game couple and maybe even my all time favorite OTP. Both characters are outstanding individually and together they are unstoppable. Ultimate power couple whose love story is there to each us a very important lesson in life that we all can take to heart and follow through with it:

#KazuKaoru #Kiryu Kazuma #Sayama Kaoru #Like a Dragon #Ryu Ga Gotoku #Yakuza

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genericpuff · 1 year ago

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Can you call Tina Belcher driving through a parking lot at an anxious snail's pace a driving "style"? So why do we try to use "style" as a defense for LO's pacing problems?

There's something about how Lore Olympus engrosses people within its weekly doses of H x P content and cliffhangers that makes people not realize just how long Lore Olympus takes to get to the point of, well, anything. Many plotlines are setup, and then go untouched for weeks, sometimes months at a time, before seeing any sort of progress, much less a resolution. In this, I'm going to actually give you time ranges on some of the more egregious payoffs and continuations of plotlines that were setup - some that are now resolved, others that have yet to see the light of day.

CONTENT WARNING: I will be discussing the SA plotline, and there will be spoilers for Episode 265. I will also be showing pictures of some rancid ass tattoos, I know that sounds random for what we're discussing, but trust me on this one, I have a point to make. Also there's a Junji Ito panel from The Enigma of Amigara Fault... yeah, that one.

LEUCE

Let's start with an easy one that's not exactly tied to the main plot. The Leuce plotline. She was first introduced in Episode 201 as a 'bargaining chip' from Zeus to Hades, in a misfired attempt to get Hades to call a truce over the embargo between the Underworld and Olympus.

At the time of this episode's release, by all accounts this seemed to be a cut and dry reference to Hades' first wife, Leuce, unfortunately reduced to a mail-order bride who Hades, of course, turns down, because he doesn't want the "I can't believe it's not butter" Persephone, he wants overpriced, tastes-the-same-but-costs-more-because-of-the-brand-name Persephone.

But then she came back, 36 episodes later - in real time, this was roughly 38 weeks for free-to-read users as the series went on a 2 week hiatus near the start of S3 - only to be used as a cliffhanger leading into a recycled Minthe plotline, in which she attempted to seduce Hades in Episode 238, only to be shot down for the second time.

If you're having a tough time wrapping your head around how long 36 weeks really is, that's nine months. If you got pregnant when Leuce was first revealed, you'd be entering the final window of pregnancy by the time she returned, assuming the baby didn't come pre-term.

Another 7 weeks later, enough time to actually get pregnant again following that first baby, we got the sudden continuation of that plot, with Persephone invading her home and filling it with barn animals, with a not-so-subtle threat to Leuce to stay away from her husband.

"But what about the text messages? Were they really from Hades?" Well, if you were someone reading this comic in real time, you wouldn't have this question answered for another SIX EPISODES - that's a month and a half in real time - and the answer would ultimately be "she made it up, she was 'manifesting', none of it's real, they should call her Deleuceional!" Six weeks for a nothingburger answer to wrap up a nothingburger sideplot, all in the pursuit to 'prove' for the 1275903729 time that Hades and Persephone are truly meant to be together.

EROS AND PSYCHE

This is a big one. The Eros x Psyche plotline was one of the most popular romance subplots, second only to Hades and Persephone, throughout the comic. And yet, despite people holding their breath to see what would become of the star-crossed lovers, a mortal and a god-

-readers in September 2021 would not find out how their recent skirmish with Apollo in Episode 171 would resolve itself until Episode 218, A YEAR AND TWO MONTHS - ROUGHLY 60 WEEKS AND A MIDSEASON HIATUS - LATER, and even then it would only show us Eros, who quickly summarizes what happened to him during the entire trial and Kronos arc that his anticipated romance storyline got sidelined for - he got married and now he has a child.

And it wouldn't be for ANOTHER six weeks that his wife and the mother of his child would actually show up, not alongside Eros, but Aphrodite and Hephaestus, in Episode 224.

What happened to her after finally having her 'true form' revealed to Eros? Well, that's not shown for another three weeks in Episode 227. During this a bunch of info about how Psyche got out of that sticky Apollo situation is dumped on us and we just have to go along with it as she becomes a goddess, not because she earned a place among the Olympians, but because Zeus needs her to spy on Apollo, which was actually shown one episode prior in 226.

So let's say you got knocked up again after that Leuce baby, when Eros and Psyche were shot out of the sky. Welp, in the time it took for Rachel to get around explaining what happened to the both of them, now you just had your second baby and for all we know, you could have gone for a third and already be well into or near the end of your first trimester, if you really wanted to get busy. You'd have a Dionysus, a Melinoe, and maybe even a Demophoon. Congratulations.

And speaking of Melinoe-

MELINOE

Turns out the interloper and the child in Tartarus were one and the same, or at least that's what I'm assuming, because otherwise that would mean there's some whole ass other baby to worry about that we haven't even been introduced to yet.

Melinoe, or "the child deity", was first established in Episode 218.

But as per LO tradition, the child would only mentioned in passing every now and then until finally being revealed as Melinoe in Episode 252, a whopping... THIRTY EIGHT FUCKING WEEKS LATER.

And that waiting is still ongoing as Melinoe is, of course, still trapped in Tartarus, with no end in sight. Since then, Hades and Persephone have gotten married, kidnapped a child, Persephone has terrorized a nymph and caused yet ANOTHER genocide, and they've resurrected a child that was suddenly revealed to be Demeter's. Thirty eight weeks and counting of dragging on a plotline that we're supposed to believe is dire while the characters do sweet fuck all.

What was the name of that other dream baby that Rachel referenced from some obscure non-legitimate source?

Riiiight, Brimos. Congrats, there's pregnancy number 4. But can we find a way to make a fifth happen?

KASSANDRA

We're first introduced to Kassandra, another implied victim of Apollo's, in Episode 226 when a photo of her is found on Apollo's pen drive which was conveniently left on the ground for Psyche to swipe.

In Episode 227, they theorize on how they could track down this mystery woman, using either Eros or Aphrodite's abilities to find her through the power of

✨love✨

How will that actually work though? Has anyone ever been in love with Kassandra, or has she ever been in love with anyone else?

Any bets on how long it would be until we'd get our answer?

Episode 251. The same episode where we're finally told about Leuce's delusions, we suddenly skip to the reveal of Kassandra being Apollo's personal oracle.

And it still doesn't end up answering our question as to how Kassandra was tracked down, by the way. Eros and Psyche sorta just conveniently find her at the same time Apollo happens to be there when he's getting her to deliver her big prophecy to him.

That's twenty four weeks, meaning you're now near the end of your second trimester with child #4. Whoever the child is remains to be seen but I'm sure Rachel will find a way to shoehorn another helpless baby into the plot for Hades and Persephone to rescue who we can use for this metaphor.

But none of these come close to the greatest unresolved plotline of them all, the one plotline that has outlasted even the main H x P plotline of Lore Olympus' story-

APOLLO

Or more specifically, the SA. Rachel has tried so hard to twist Apollo into a villain of Disney proportions, through his sudden involvement with Ouranos, while also using him as a mouthpiece for her own critics by having him literally dish out word-for-word the criticisms that have been made towards Rachel's writing of Persephone-

But the core foundation of his plotline goes all the way back to 2018, when he assaulted Persephone, a plotline that has yet to resolve itself or show any progression beyond Rachel's half-baked attempts at speedrunning Persephone's healing process, while Apollo is still at large and hasn't been brought to justice.

We've seen her in very poorly-written therapy where her assault was addressed once. We've seen her grapple with the potential consequences of the SA through a gynecologist scene that, as I've discussed before, does more harm than good in helping the discussion around women's sexual health. And of course, Rachel will pepper in vague references to the SA every now and then when she's bothered to remember that it's a plotline she wrote and still hasn't resolved:

And judging by how the story has been progressing, Rachel seems far more intent on simply using Apollo as a mouthpiece for criticism and a puppet for Ouranos rather than focusing on the bigger issues, all while Persephone has helped more people cope with the assault that happened to her rather than receiving help herself.

What's really telling is that despite half of the Olympians at this point knowing what Apollo did, not one of them even tries to convince Persephone to come forward, or say something themselves. Daphne has more than enough reason to come forward. Artemis, Hera, Eros, Hermes, and Hephaestus all know what he did, and yet none of them say a thing, even when those of them who haven't been conveniently shoehorned out of the plot are still in the same room as him-

The assault scene happened in August 2018. It's been five and a half years since it was established, and while there have been small efforts made to resolve it - from Hera and Hephaestus having the photos deleted to Persephone seeking therapy - there's less reason now than ever for it to not be addressed, especially with so much at stake. I could side with Persephone not wanting to say anything in the beginning, when he was blackmailing her with the photos and her TGOEM scholarship was on the line, but now that she's a Queen, rich, and married to Hades, living in the Underworld where he can't get to her, without any schooling or scholarship or job to worry about or the photos hanging over her head, it comes across as flat out irresponsible that not a single person thinks it's worth mentioning. Even the narrative itself seems to be trying to undo the SA entirely.

At this point, I'm not confident it will be mentioned at all, and that Apollo will be conveniently dealt with as a pawn of Ouranos rather than as a perpetrator of violence towards women.

A FINAL ANALYSIS OF LO'S PACING

There are certainly far more examples of this weekly edging happening throughout LO, but I hope the ones I provided get across the point I'm trying to make about its pacing.

Of course, none of these gaps in time are happening back-to-back-to-back. This is Lore Olympus' writing "style", if you can call it that - constantly bombard the reader with separate plot points so that they'll either not remember the ones that were left behind, or so that Rachel can buy herself time to get herself out of the corner she wrote herself into. It's the equivalent of clickbait, constantly grabbing your attention with shiny new things that will replace whatever you just saw in your brain, on a constantly repeating cycle. It's the writing process of inexperienced amateurs, like what you'd see in short stories written by fifth graders - "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened", with no theme or overarching meaning tying them together; and if you were to ask them why a certain thing happens, especially if it logically doesn't make sense, the answer is just, "well, because it does." There's no rhyme or reason, they just thought it was cool.

And I say "style" because while fans of LO have definitely defended the story's pacing as just a writing style, the actual execution of what they're implying is painful to watch and not what any experienced writer would call a legitimate style. It's not uncommon at all in long-running series like this to jump from plotline to plotline, often times longform stories like these have to balance multiple side plots at once to keep things engaging and to bulk up the plot with more actual content.

But in most cases, the reader will expect the speed of a plot's resolution to be relative to its urgency. If a casual B plot with low stakes is introduced, it's not necessarily doing any harm if it just sits there for a bit before finally being resolved. After all, it's low stakes and no one is being hurt by it existing on the sidelines. It might feel a bit like pointless fluff, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with fluff and it can offer fun and relaxed reprieves from the overarching narrative, assuming you integrate them well so they're not drawing attention away from those more urgent plotlines at the worst possible times (looking at you, Stranger Things S2 Episode 7-)

But when even the high stakes plots are being hung out to dry and treated like distractions and fluff, it comes across less like a decisive writing "style" and more just directionless pantsing from an inexperienced writer who's gotten themselves in way too deep.

And that's what really separates Rachel's writing problems from "style". Style is decisive. Style is the act of referencing over a set period of time, crafting what you like and what you've learned into something new, with rounds and rounds of fine-tuning. Style is experience put into action.

And, while I don't typically like using my own work as a comparison, LORE | REKINDLED is meant to try and recapture the original magic of Lore Olympus' art style and writing foundations - and even then, you can still see the clear difference between Episodes 14 and 44, which use the same panel from the same scene, but look vastly different due to the improvement and refinement that's happened over time.

Same style, but different levels of experience and skill, which is to be expected after weeks and weeks of fine-tuning and deliberate practice.

If you're lacking in your fundamentals, whether in art or writing, you can't equate that lack of skill to "style" because you're not choosing to be inexperienced, you just are. And that's okay! But to try and pass it off as 'style' implies that you're choosing to be inexperienced - when in reality, if you tried to put out anything beyond your skill level, you simply wouldn't be able to, because you haven't gained those skills yet. Like fifth graders writing short stories with the "and then this happened" model, "it's just my style" is often used as an excuse by young artists and writers who don't understand that style is not exclusively an end result of inexperience.

I'm gonna go on a tangent here, but there's this controversial but trendy style in tattooing called 'ignorant', and it's best defined as "tattooing badly on purpose".

These tattoos are regularly praised for their simplistic ingenuity and visual aesthetic but equally criticized for being the opposite of what many artists have worked to overcome - being "bad at art". After all, who would willingly pay for a bad-looking tattoo? It's because it's the style that's in demand. I would argue that it takes a lot of confidence and mastery of the craft to be purposefully bad at it and make it look good, as contradictory as that sounds.

As much as the lines may be wobbly and the anatomy poor, ignorant style tattoos are done purposefully by experienced artists who still know how to properly tattoo. As much as they may look like they were drawn by a middle schooler, they will still heal properly, the lines will hold up, and the client will not (or at least, should not) experience any excessive scarring or unhygienic practices as one would experience from an actual inexperienced artist-

In a genuinely poorly-done tattoo, the evidence of the inexperience is literally written all over the body. The skin swells, the ink bleeds out, the lines are inconsistent in their depth, and there's clear signs of trauma to the skin that will undoubtedly result in a poorly-healed tattoo (and that's not even getting into the larger health risks such as contracting blood diseases due to a poorly kept space). It's not hard to see the difference between a bad tattoo and a tattoo that's intentionally bad.

It's the age old saying in a different medium - only once you learn the rules can you properly break them.

Rachel never learned these rules in her writing and it's evident to anyone who knows these rules and is viewing LO through a critical lens - or in my case, experiencing it on a week to week basis. It's a regularly occurring problem in the medium of webcomics as a whole - thinking that knowing how to draw is enough, and that writing comes dead last, if at all. When in reality, comics are a marriage of art and writing, you can't simply do one really well and allow the other to drag behind. That's not to say there aren't comics that succeed at having bad art and good writing, if anything a well-written comic can save bad art-

But if you have a comic with good art and bad writing, that's when a comic opens itself up to harsher criticism. As much as art may be the visual forefront of comics, if you want to keep your audience along for the long road that stretches ahead, you need to have a strong foundation in writing, or at least, enough of a plan to ensure you're not driving in the dark. The art can be as gorgeous as you want it to be, but if the plot is weak, then no one will have any reason to check back in week to week.

And such is Lore Olympus' biggest weakness. Much of what we praise LO for back in its first season was simply its foundation. It's very easy to praise a story's writing when it hasn't had to payoff what it's setup. Having ideas is easy, and early LO is rife with good ideas - but many of those ideas have since fallen flat, even the ones you wouldn't expect.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, but actually executing them in a way that can be engaging from start to finish and resolve itself in a way that's satisfying is a whole other challenge that many creators, including Rachel, find themselves unable to tackle; and nothing is a greater example of that than LO's third season, which is now fumbling its plotlines that have failed to resolve themselves properly after 5 years, while introducing new ones that serve as mere distractions, as if they were a laser pointer aimed at a cat.

I hear the argument, "LO is a better story if you binge read it" a lot, which - while I can certainly understand in today's culture of content that's churned out to be binged - I still fail to see how it actually makes LO a better story. Binge-reading LO doesn't remove the pointless plotlines. It doesn't fix its blatant timeline problems, its retcons, or its inability to stay focused on one topic for more than 5 panels. All it really fixes is the waiting, the ritualistic toiling over each and every cliffhanger that caps off the weekly episodes just for them to either be resolved in the next week or left behind with no in-between. And while having all that waiting removed certainly makes the reading experience a lot smoother, it doesn't make the story or its writing better.

The relationship between a story's writing and how the audience experiences it shouldn't be overlooked. Many stories depend on how the audience experiences it within the mind to succeed and leave an impression.

Junji Ito utilizes the dreaded page turn to scare his audience, an effect that can only be truly gained and appreciated if you read his books in traditional print.

Marvel spent years meticulously building up its Avengers franchise, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic event through Avengers: Endgame, which is truly the epitome of "you had to be there", because if you watch Avengers: Endgame in 2024 in your living room, you're likely not going to experience the same level of hype as audiences experiencing it in the theater in 2019.

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The same can be said for James' Cameron's Avatar, which entranced audiences with its innovative motion capture CGI and immersive 3D effects, an experience that could only be lived to the fullest if you saw it in 3D in IMAX theaters back in 2009. Without that experience, most people in 2024 find the movie to be pretty generic and uninteresting, a reverse Pocahontas with blue people in space, but when it first released in IMAX theaters in 2009, it was a cultural and technological phenomenon due to how advanced it was in its VFX. I can't even share with you clips of it, because obviously it would just be proving my point to try and show you how groundbreaking Avatar was in theaters through a bad shaky cam Youtube upload of its IMAX release on Youtube, but let's just say that it wasn't uncommon for people to brag about how many times they'd gone back to watch the same movie just to feel what they felt from the first showing all over again.

All that's to say that while Lore Olympus may offer a 'better' reading experience when binge-read - regardless of whether or not it actually helps the story's pacing problems - the reality is that LO is still being written exclusively with the weekly format in mind, and its been very much to its detriment, both in the short-term and in the long-term. Readers are often left in the dark on plotlines for weeks at a time, Rachel loses track of what she has and hasn't addressed, and the extended waiting times trick readers into believing that weeks have passed in the comic's story, when in reality it's only been a day or two, sometimes as little as hours depending on the sequence; meanwhile, if you binge episodes that had those problems in hindsight, you'll likely be a lot more quick to notice how many plot beats are either retconned or abandoned entirely, because you don't have the weekly waiting times artificially inflating the pacing of the story and causing you to forget what was established weeks before, because when binged, those weeks are reduced to hours and minutes.

And worst of all, with the assumption that you're reading on a weekly basis - as it wants you to do - Rachel tries to pull clever stunts by matching up LO's episodes with real life dates and holidays, which often just makes the story beats feel rushed or random in their execution - because to the vast majority of readers who haven't caught on to this or are reading the episodes through the physical books, they are rushed and random, and they can't exactly explain why.

Binging these episodes doesn't solve the problem, if anything it exemplifies them because, as a shining example, Hades and Persephone suddenly get married right in the middle of an ongoing issue, which isn't exactly the best time to wrap up the story's main plotline. Since then readers have become less and less interested in their story, and can you blame them? By all accounts their story is over. Everything now just feels tacked on to give them something to do in a story they no longer fit into.

There's an episode behind the FastPass lock right now, Episode 265. It unlocks for free on February 17th, three days after Valentine's Day. Guess what episode it is?

Ah yes, the episode where Hades' initiates sex without consent with his wife who's suffering from panic attacks, who also happens to be a rape victim. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

I actually made this particular discovery while writing this essay, so that was a very unwelcome surprise, but it explains the sudden random shift from Persephone being so stressed over the ongoing situation that she's passed out to Hades just deciding for the both of them that now's the time to have sex. As much as the fans will defend this as a husband and wife's last chance at intimacy before diving into a dangerous situation, they'll also still conveniently forget - just like the narrative and Rachel herself - that Persephone is a rape victim, and Hades initiating sex with her after nearly having a panic attack isn't exactly a good look.

This is why our theories as to when LO ends are so firmly cemented in one specific time range, because the story's pacing and distractions seem only intent in one thing - getting the story to last until spring, when the series will most likely conclude. It's basically been all but confirmed by Rachel, from her stating the series would be ending in early 2024, to Inklore - an imprint that seems designed specifically for Rachel and LO - launching officially in spring of this year, undoubtedly just in time for Rachel to wrap up LO for good.

(and boy, do I have some words about Inklore and its plans for "Rachel Smythe Presents", but that's another essay entirely.)

At the end of the day, LO's pacing is equivalent to paint drying on the wall, but it relentlessly convinces us to keep watching because the paint is blue and pink and maybe, maybe it'll turn into a piece of art. But as is evident in the comment sections of the newest episodes, even the fans are starting to realize that paint will not magically turn into the final piece of art they've been waiting to see if the hand that wields it doesn't know what it's doing.

Though style may be gained as an accidental side effect of one's influences and experiences, what Lore Olympus' intent is remains to be seen, and the longer the story goes on, the blurrier whatever intent it could have becomes. Unless it somehow manages to pull off a twist of Attack on Titan proportions that thoroughly explains and ties together the plotlines that have been left in the rearview mirror, the vehicle that is LO will continue to trudge along at a snail's pace, until it inevitably either crosses the finish line or crashes - but by that point, anyone waiting for it could very well be gone, their good faith left behind at the starting line when there was still plenty of time to change its trajectory or stop.

Such a time is long, long gone.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical

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hayatheauthor · 2 years ago

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How to Develop a Memorable Antagonist

Antagonists are one of the most important characters in your book. Without an antagonist, writers wouldn’t have a story to write in the first place. They bring the action, drama, trauma and many other factors that are often the reason for a book’s success. However, their pivotal role in the book is often why antagonists can come across as poorly-written one-dimensional characters.

From stereotypical backstories to a lack of humanisation, authors often make simple mistakes that can result in a cliche or boring antagonist. Are you struggling to create a compelling antagonist for your WIP? Here are some tips to help you get started.

Give Your Antagonist A Clear Motive

People don’t just wake up one day and decide they want to fundamentally alter society and possibly end the world. Or, maybe they do, but their idealogy starts somewhere. Voldemort wanted to change the wizarding world because he loathed muggles due to his parents, Hannibal’s tragic past triggered his cannibalistic tendencies.

Every antagonist has a reason for their crimes, and it's important to understand your antagonist’s motives and goals in order to create a compelling villain. Start with your antagonist’s backstory.

Did they have a tragic childhood? Did they desperately want to achieve a certain goal but failed and were driven insane? Are they following someone? Are they being manipulated? There is an endless list of possible reasons you can choose from in order to create a compelling motive for your antagonist.

Make Your Antagonist Multi-Dimensional

Once you have established their initial reasoning it’s time to go into more detail. I would start by taking their dynamic with the other characters into consideration. Why do they despise the protagonist? Do they want to simply remove the obstacles in their way or do they have a personal vendetta?

It’s also important to consider the other characters. Is there a mentor figure in your book who the antagonist has a personal vendetta against? What about their allies and henchmen? How did they meet them? Did the antagonist start off alone or have they worked with the same group of people since the start?

Your readers don’t necessarily need to know every single detail of your antagonist’s past, but having a clear understanding of their motives and dynamics can help you create a clear image of the antagonist. For example, they could be particularly spiteful towards the protagonist’s best friend because she is the daughter of the antagonist’s ex-ally. This could make for an easy subplot or come in handy if you need to distract the antagonist in a fight scene.

Make Your Readers Empathise With Them

When developing a motive authors should always look for a way to make their readers empathise with the antagonist. Show us why we should feel sorry for them, tell us they could have had a promising future if it weren’t for an unjust moment in their lives. When you make your readers feel conflicted about your antagonist they become more than just a character on the page.

Your readers begin to question whether their tragic past justifies their actions, some might root for them, others might dislike them more and regard them as apathetic. However, the goal is to make your readers view your antagonist as more than just the person causing issues for your protagonist.

Give Them Strengths And Weaknesses

Everyone hates a Mary Sue protagonist, but the same can be said for an antagonist. Think of it this way—if your antagonist is an all-powerful flawless villain who could destroy the world if they wanted to, then why haven’t they already won? Why do they have to fight the protagonist?

The good vs bad, protagonist vs antagonist dynamic only entices readers if they can’t tell who is going to come on top at the end of it all. This is why it’s essential to give your antagonist appropriate strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s an example of an antagonist with appropriate strengths and weaknesses: a main antagonist is an all-powerful witch who wants to destroy the protagonist’s home country but she lost most of her power in a fight against the mentor and can’t gain them back without a special artefact.

This example shows your readers how big of a threat the antagonist is while also providing her with appropriate strengths and shortcomings. This can look a little different depending on the genre you write for. Maybe the antagonist in a romcom wants to get the love interest married off to a side character and has the leverage to do so but the main character is introduced to the love interest’s family to try and sway the antagonist’s plans.

You don’t need to create a comprehensive list of all of your antagonist’s strengths and weaknesses, but it’s important to have a proper understanding of what puts them in a position to easily combat your protagonist and what stops them from outright winning.

Showcase Their (Negative) Impact On The Story

An antagonist can only be labelled as such if they actively do things to hinder or harm the protagonist. Simply saying your antagonist is a bad person isn’t enough, you need to show your readers this too.

When you start reading Harry Potter it is made clear that Voldemort was an all-powerful wizard who severely damaged the wizarding world during the first war, however, his bad deeds aren’t only reserved for the past. He was also just as evil in the present and was out to harm Harry from the first book itself.

From small confrontations with the protagonists to entire fights, it’s important to create a range of situations and chapters that can showcase your antagonist’s ‘true colours’.

Keep Their Personality Consistent

Just like every other character, it is important to ensure you have a consistent personality type for your antagonist. An antagonist regularly spotted in a suit known for their professional and calculative plans wouldn’t casually joke around with the protagonists during a showdown. The way they contradict the protagonist should also be reflective of their personality.

You should also take their personal history into consideration and how that could impact their dynamics with certain characters. For example, a character like Tom Riddle who despised both of his parents would likely be spiteful whenever they see the protagonist with their mentor figure and could even target the mentor out of spite.

The only time an antagonist’s personality should change is during a pivotal point in the book’s plot. Maybe the put-together antagonist shows off their frustrated side when the protagonist outwits them, maybe they let out maniacal laughter when the protagonist asks them about their motives.

It’s important to treat your antagonists like humans and consider how a person with that personality would realistically react to the situations they are in.

Avoid Creating A Stereotypical Antagonist

Nobody likes an overdone cliche. When writing your antagonist try to avoid creating stereotypical villains. Here are a few examples of stereotypical antagonists and how to avoid them:

The Evil Mastermind: Instead of making the antagonist an all-powerful villain with no weaknesses, give them flaws and limitations that can be exploited by the protagonist. Make the antagonist's motives more complex than just wanting to take over the world, and consider giving them a personal connection to the protagonist or a sympathetic backstory.

The Brainwashed Henchman: Rather than having the antagonist control their minions through brainwashing or mind control, make the henchman have agency and free will. Consider making the henchman conflicted about their role, or have them question the antagonist's motives and methods.

The Vengeful Ex-Lover: Instead of making the antagonist a scorned lover seeking revenge, consider giving them a different motivation for their actions. For example, the antagonist might be seeking revenge for a perceived betrayal, or they might be trying to protect someone they care about.

The Unfeeling Machine: Rather than making the antagonist a cold, calculating machine with no emotions, consider giving them a personal stake in the conflict. The antagonist might be acting out of fear or desperation, or they might be struggling with moral dilemmas related to their actions.

The Crazy Cult Leader: Instead of making the antagonist a stereotypical cult leader with a group of brainwashed followers, consider giving them a more nuanced personality. The antagonist might genuinely believe in their cause and be able to convince others to follow them, or they might be struggling with doubts and conflicts within their own ideology.

Avoid ‘One Man Armies’

Let’s be honest, one evil wizard cannot destroy your protagonist’s entire world by themselves. Just like protagonists have mentors, allies, coworkers, friends and sidekicks your antagonists need to have allies too. Voldemort didn’t conquer the entire wizarding world by himself right after graduating from Hogwarts, he instead built his troops and only fought Dumbledore once he was ready.

When worldbuilding for your novel it’s important to create some semblance of character development for background antagonists as well as the lead antagonists.

I hope this blog on how to develop a memorable antagonist will help you in your writing journey. Be sure to comment any tips of your own to help your fellow authors prosper, and follow my blog for new blog updates every Monday and Thursday.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?

Are you an author looking for writing tips and tricks to better your manuscript? Or do you want to learn about how to get a literary agent, get published and properly market your book? Consider checking out the rest of Haya’s book blog where I post writing and marketing tools for authors every Monday and Thursday

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arabellasleopardcoat · 1 year ago

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Foresight (Daemon Targaryen x Reader)

Summary: The only time modern reader actually uses her intuition and hits the nail right on the head.

Warnings: I barely know by now. Smut. Fingering. Oral sex (F receiving) Non-con/ Dub con. I mean, reader consents, but you have read this series. Pregnancy.

A/N: And… It’s a wrap, folks! My first series. Think of this as the epilogue. As always, you can shout at me in my asks.

Previous parts here.

There is a certain irony in this, you think. You were once someone of no importance in a world filled with millions of people. Then, you were a servant in the Middle Ages. Now, you are a Lady of a noble house, married to a Prince.

Yet, it’s the first time you are held in such a way. A slightly longer chain than the one for your wrists connects your ankles together. Despite being in one of the highest positions a woman could be in these times, you have never had less freedom.

Now it’s a new girl, delivering your food. No matter how hard you try, she never answers your questions about Mina or what is happening outside your rooms. You discover it is because she doesn’t have a tongue. And she is terrified of even looking at you, too. You wonder what Daemon has done to her.

Was she born like that? Did another Lord punish her? Or worse. Did Daemon take her tongue? Trying to guess what happened to her is good entertainment. Unfortunately, you soon realize it frightens her too much when you speak to her. You wouldn’t want to cause her a heart attack, and so, you have to quit it.

You feel like an asshole. But you are desperate for company, to get someone to speak to you. The hopelessness you first felt has started to feel much like realization. You are not leaving. You are stuck with Daemon.

To keep your mind occupied, you try to remember as many details of the time you are living in. You start with the cutting of tongues as your inspiration. Someone did something similar in the show. You didn’t pay as much attention to the story as you would have if you had known it was going to become your life.

But someone had. Surely. What was it, with Westeros, and the forceful taking of the organs? They cut hands, tongues, fingers, eyes. God.

If you remembered something else, it could be useful. Unfortunately for you, you had been too fixated on how hot some people looked to follow subplots. The exercise is useless, but you start writing what you can remember on parchments and hiding them from your captor.

You feel like you are going insane. The only thing you do is pace and read, pace and read, all day. Something is wrong with you. You feel strange, like you are wearing clothes a size too small. Uncomfortable. Cranky. Sensitive. Lonely.

You read once, that human beings have more needs than just eat, sleep and shelter. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People need to own things, they need friends and intimacy, they need purpose. Otherwise, bad things happen.

Oh, but what? Could all your symptoms be explained by it? If you had a phone, you could look it up. Hell, even if it was the sixties, you could search it in a book. Not in the Middle Ages. Or well, Westeros.

You long for Daemon’s company. He comes every afternoon and sits near the fireplace. You talk to him because there is nothing else to do. From time to time, you repeat that you are not a dreamer. He laughs.

“You wouldn’t be this perfect for me if you weren’t.”

He is very cultured, and interesting. It's something you are desperately attracted to. It’s not only that you are now in what it’s effectively solitary confinement, no. Deeper than that. Just like Rhea, Daemon is one of the few people in the Runestone that can read. His mind is more open, he is less superstitious. Talking to him makes you less lonely.

There is no way you can rationalize it, though. What you are doing is wrong. It’s a betrayal to Rhea, to someone you loved more than you could ever love him. But you are weak, too broken down by grief and fear to oppose him.

You need someone to tell you everything will be alright. And Daemon makes sure he is available for the job. He fights off your loneliness when you ask him to.

Sometimes, Daemon sits next to you on the bed and talks about Valyrian history or traditions. His tone is soft, and calming. His face lights up when you show an interest in the topic or ask questions that prove you are following his monologue. It’s like seeing an entirely different man.

Before, you would have resented being babied in the way you are. Daemon treats you as if you were a little girl, one he entertains with tales and praises when she is good. Now, you crave the comfort of it.

You still bathe together. Daemon never touches you, though. Not after the night you tried to escape. Sometimes, he just looks at you. You sit there, basking on the freedom of being able to move without the cuffs. You are no longer embarrassed of your nakedness.

The chains frightened you, at first. You are not stupid. You are married to him, in chains and in a room bare except for the bed. What else would you think, if not rape? But Daemon was smarter than that. Insidious. Slowly, he had been coaxing you to let him touch you. At first, you squirmed like your pants were on fire when his hands were on your skin. Then, you had slowly come to accept it as part of your routine. And lately, to crave it.

He had been conditioning into it, you are sure. First, the offers to tend to your wounds, then, massages to your sore ankles and wrists. It was a merely chemical thing, you tried reassuring yourself. Your brain had come to associate endorphins with his touch, and so, like an addict, you sought more.

But you knew, it was no long now before you weren’t able to resist him. It was not a thing of physical strength. He wasn’t going to grab you and force you down. No. It was more complex than that.

Daemon had acquired himself a dreamer, according to him. He was not keen on alienating you, but seducing you. He intended for you to be the one to come to him. Worst thing? You were so touch starved, and so lonely, it was working. Stockholm syndrome, surely.

The next chain would be a child. It was the obvious thing to do, to keep control over the Vale and you. You would never leave if you were pregnant. What would you do, in your world, with a child that could potentially tame dragons and whose legal existence you couldn’t prove? It would surely be too late for abortion, and most probably, time would have passed. How to explain your disappearance?

And of course, there is the fact that your body is rioting against your brain. No matter the phase of your cycle, you are perpetually horny. The smallest of touches or looks make your mind spiral, you daydream about sex and feel the urge to jump Daemon’s bones almost daily.

Maybe there is some truth to whatever they are serving you. The milk and wine are always laced with spices, to make you more agreeable to his advances. At first, you thought it was silly, but by your current state, they seem to be working. You are desperate to be able to masturbate. But bound hands are not particularly useful. Besides, you have an inkling that’s not really what you want.

Every night before bed, Daemon takes the cuffs off and lets you walk around your room. You make small laps around the room, sometimes he tries teaching you the dances people do at feasts. Then, he gets you ready for bed.

Daemon rubs salve into your wrists and ankles. You don't ask him, but you know it has to have some aphrodisiacs on it. When his hands touch your skin, it feels electric. You knew aphrodisiacs existed in your world, even if they were fickle and old wives tales. But in a world where there is magic and dragons? Why not?

Even if not, the whole thing is an assault on your senses. The room filled with incense and candles, the baths, the soft silky clothes. The silence. Usually, when people are not busy enough, they get horny, right?

Perhaps it's the mirror. There is one placed in your room for baths, once you are not on suicide watch. You see yourself for the first time in months, and nearly don’t recognize your reflection. Your hair is longer, falling messily down your back. The sheer shifts you wear, specially tailored for you, make you look put together and sensual.

Collarbones exposed, accentuated hips, bare arms. Botticelli’s Venus comes to life. The image arouses you. You feel naughty in all the right ways, sexy, desirable.

Each night, Daemon’s hands rub the salve slightly higher. You find yourself yearning for his touch, anticipating the moments you will get with him. He massages your calves. Your forearms. He kisses your shoulders. You mewl, desperate. But Daemon doesn't do anything.

You share secrets like they are oozing out of your pores. Aemond's birth. Criston Cole and Rhaenyra fucked. Lucerys. Joffrey. Harwin Strong. Alicent and the rat looking man. Daemon dutifully repeats them to Viserys.

Were you meant to feel this way? You had never expected it, not in a million years. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. Any second now, and you could plummet down. But what a fall it would be.

Tonight, he is on his knees. Despite being in a dominant position, sitting on the edge of the bed, you don't feel powerful. Daemon has a way of entering a room and just making anyone else fade into the background. He overpowers anyone easily, by sheer presence alone.

Daemon grabs your ankle and gently rubs at it, spreading the salve. He has said he doesn't want you to scar, or hurt. But your newest cuffs have padded interiors, making this whole act pointless. Neither of you voices it.

You shiver. His hands massage your calves.

“Daemon.” The first mistake. You have never, not once, called out his name before. It comes out soft and whiny, in a sweet whisper.

“Should I stop, dreamer?” He gives you a coy look, as his fingers go higher and higher. Ankle, calf, back of the knee. His hands are warm against your skin. Daemon seems to have a fascination with touching you. He cannot keep his hands to himself, no matter how hard he tries.

You say nothing. Daemon kisses your ankle, then your leg. He mouths along your knee. You feel so aroused, you think you are about to pass out. You shouldn’t give in, you know, you know. But it’s the sweetest torture.

He stops right above your knee, looking at you with mischievous eyes. You pant, looking at him like you are about to murder him if he dares deny you now.

“My poor little dreamer, have I neglected you so?” Daemon smirks, and parts your legs, making room for himself. “Don’t worry, we will fix this right away.”

“Stop it.” You mutter, but before you can start explaining to him why this is a bad idea, you feel a sharp sting on your thigh. You moan, feeling utterly confused. In your aroused state, the sting of the bite feels almost pleasant.

“It doesn’t sound like you want me to stop.” Daemon soothes the hurt with his tongue. He looks hungry, pupils blown and hair mussed just so. “Besides, I have been very patient with you, have I not?” His fingers dig in more harshly. He is right, of course. He could have fucked you already if he wanted to. It's not like anyone would come to your defense.

“You have.” You agree, shakily. His tongue draws little ribbons over your inner thigh. You cannot stop moaning, for some reason. And you are no stranger to sex, not as Daemon thinks. You were not a virgin when you got here. Despite knowing this screams of consent issues and that he is trying to manipulate you, you cannot help it.

You wonder how Rhaenyra and Laena ever stood a chance, being mere girls when they met him. If everyone told you this was wrong, but the first time he touched you felt this pleasurable, would you believe it?

No. You are more than enough proof of it.

“I will make it good for you, little one.” He kisses higher, this time. Along the juncture where your leg meets your hip. “It's a kindness most wives don't get.”

“I know, but…” You stop talking and melt into a sight when he rubs a finger over your labia, spreading the wetness there. You know if you keep talking, he will be able to hear exactly how much his touch is affecting you.

“I just want to look at you. And kiss you a little.” Daemon says, and his tone leaves no room for argument. His hands rub soothingly along the outside of your thigh. “I won’t take your maidenhead… Yet.”

Maidenhead. What’s that supposed to mean? You try to remember, certain that you have heard it before. Rhea mentioned it? Or was it the girls? Maidens. They called maidens women who were virgins. God. He thinks you are still a virgin.

He won’t fuck you, tonight. You hope that his plans for just touching and kissing include an orgasm because you feel like you will go mad if you don’t come tonight.

You could tell him the truth. But what would you gain? Daemon only believes what pleases him. You have told him time and time again that you are not a dreamer. You even tried telling him you were from the future. His words still ring in your ears.

“A world where men and women are equal? And there are no Kings? Oh, my poor confused little thing. You have been reading too much again.”

So telling him would be no use. He might believe it another attempt at getting him to let you go. Or he might actually believe you and try to eviscerate any previous lover of yours. Or gauge their eyes out. Perhaps cut a hand. That’s who Daemon is at his core.

No, it’s better this way. Playing along will get him to be gentler, and he won’t even be able to tell the difference.

“Won’t it hurt?” You ask, and it comes out just the right amount of shy to be believable. It’s easy, leaning on the lingering fear of the fact that this is Daemon you will be going to bed with. Your body reacts to him like it has never reacted to another lover before, yet you shouldn’t be doing this. He is skilled at it. Whoever he was fucking before, she has trained him well.

But now that you have allowed yourself to think, your hesitance takes hold. This is wrong, in so many ways. You shouldn’t be doing this. Yet, you want him so much, you feel like you might burst into flames if you don’t get him right now.

The lure of the forbidden, in all its glory.

“Not tonight.” He kisses your inner thigh, open-mouthed. You tense in anticipation. Daemon can be giving when he wants to be.

“I don’t want it to hurt.” You close your legs, trapping his hand between them. Your lower lip lightly sticks out, playing the part of the disgruntled little girl.

Daemon chuckles. One of his fingers rubs teasingly over your clit. Being a brat always seems to rile him up, and you feel smug at knowing him so well.

Oh, god. What are you even doing? Are you seriously contemplating ways of manipulating him during sex? You shouldn't even be thinking of fucking him. It's disgusting.

It’s not. Not when Daemon’s hands are on your thighs, not when his lips are on your skin. You are just too needy for it. Too many nights have passed since the last time you had been touched in such a way.

His hands knead into your thighs. The touch is greedy, possessive. He makes a tsking sound, and rubs a tight little circle over your clit.

“I’ll warm you up to it. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t… We really shouldn’t…” You plead, weakly. You are trying hard not to succumb to the pleasure.

“Why not?” He asks, pressing his finger over your hole and making you nearly sob in pure neediness. He is not entering, just threatening with it. Both holding you in place and feeling you flutter around him.

Daemon waits for your response, but when you don’t answer as quickly as he hoped, he starts sucking a bruise on your inner thigh.

“Because it’s wrong! You killed Rhea. You have no morals. And… Besides, it’s not me. I don’t want it.” You try to scramble away, suddenly regaining your senses. It must be the oils. Or the food. Or whatever he puts into your wine.

“Oh?” Daemon presses your hips down with an arm, and rubs around your clit again. He makes a show of taking his fingers away from you and admiring them in the light. Your arousal shines on them, sticky wet. “If you don’t want it, why are you dripping all over the bed? What is it, if not arousal?”

“The oils! The incense!” You complain. His hand, soaked in your juices, comes to cup your face.

“Oh, sweetling, no.” Daemon laughs. He presses his thumb on your lower lip. Despite your best judgment, you open up and taste yourself. “They are not meant to warm your blood. This is all you.”

Your whole body feels hot with embarrassment. He has to be lying. It can't be. You can’t be this… This… No. No. He has to be lying.

Daemon laughs even more at the face you make. He kisses your neck, then your collarbone. He pushes at the strands of your shift, kissing all over your breast. You feel too ashamed, still reeling at the realization that this is, in fact, all you, to push him off. You are the crazy woman who is begging to have sex with a killer.

He takes your nipple into his mouth, sucking slightly. You moan, arching your back to offer more skin to kiss. Daemon does so, greedily.

He kisses your sternum, then your belly. He bites at the curve of your waist, making you squeal. His lips go lower, kissing over your womb. Then, your mound. And finally, your labia.

Daemon pulls your lips apart and gently nips your clit, taking it between his teeth. Despite how gentle he is being, you jolt. It’s too much stimulation at once, and it’s bordering on the painful. Yet, he shows he can read your body well, because he quickly recovers and chooses to kiss your clitoral hood instead.

You moan again, all high-pitched. The vibrations of his laughter feel very pleasant against your sex.

“That's it. Melt into it, little dreamer.” Daemon says, before going back to eating you out. This time, he sucks slightly harder. You tense in his arms. You can feel the pleasure rising and rising. Never has a partner driven you this fast towards an orgasm.

It's too much and too little.

“I… More, please.” You plead, petting his hair.

He gets up, and kisses you, for the first time in months. You sigh into his mouth. It's then that he pushes his finger inside of you. Immediately, you tighten and tense around him, all sense of embarrassment gone.

“This was just what you needed, wasn’t it?” Daemon whispers in your ear, biting your earlobe before speaking again. You buck your hips, trying to get him to move his finger. He complies, making a come and hither motion. His other hand rubs circles on your clit. “Yes, you needed someone to show you who you really were. My needy little dragon.”

You try to swallow down your scream, muffling it with your hand. The praise, mixed in with the raspy, hungry tone it's delivered in, makes your head swim.

“Come on, don’t fight it.” Daemon encourages, and bends down to take your nipple inside his mouth. It's enough to send you over the edge. This time, you actually scream, tensing under him. White, hot, blinding pleasure. And he strokes you through it, making everything more intense.

As you pant there, coming down from your high, it occurs to you to return the favor. It had been one of the best orgasms of your life, you wouldn't mind pleasing him in exchange. Your mouth watered at the thought of what else he could do.

You place a shaky hand on his thigh, but Daemon pushes it away, gently.

“You will learn to please me too, Wife. In time. But not tonight.” Daemon kisses your cheek, sweetly.

“When?”

“We have the rest of our lives to figure it out.” It’s then when it sinks in. Daemon is never planning to let you go. You start to cry. What have you done?

Daemon sighs. He starts rubbing soothing circles on your back, as if you were a child. That night, he stays. You fall asleep in his arms, warm and relaxed. For the first time in weeks, you do not dream of Rhea.

A few months go by. The season changes, from warm summer to harsh winter. And just as the season changes, so do you.

You wake in your chambers, the bed next to you cold. Your ankles hurt.

You put on a light dress, and go in search for your husband. As you pass the servants and guards, they give you respectful nods and greetings.

Daemon sits on the Iron Throne. Viserys’s health has been worsening, lately. He looks up at you, taking his eyes from the parchment he is reading. His eyes greedily trace your figure.

“I swear you get more beautiful every day.” He says, as you let your dress pool at your ankles.

“Everyday I look rounder, more like it.” You complain. At the door, the guards discretely look away. If you want to parade around naked, so be it. It’s up to them to avert their eyes, if they don’t want to lose them, Daemon has instructed.

No one dares oppose him. Not anymore, with you by his side. Viserys’s reign might just go down as one of the bloodiest in history, with how hard the two of them have been working to rid the realm of any future enemy of Rhaenyra.

He laughs.

“You do not. You look like my dreamer.”

You roll your eyes at him, cradling your belly. His breathing hitches, minutely. There is arousal in his expression, once again. The more obvious your pregnancy becomes, the more he wants you. Daemon likes how your body has changed, how there are stretch marks on previously smooth skin, how your breasts are fuller.

“My ankles hurt. Make it better?”

What was life before him? You can barely remember how you functioned before, having to make all the decisions and thinking. Trusting him is easier. Daemon loves you. He wants the best for you.

You don't hate him as much as you thought. You might even love him back. No. You love the pleasure he gives you, you are hooked to it. You need him like a heroin addict needs her next fix.

Before, you used to be a good person. You cared about others. Now, you care about yourself, the baby and him. In that order.

You had plans. You had a future, a career. Now, you live the day. If you think too hard about tomorrow, you feel like you can't breathe. So you don't. It's easier, this way.

Daemon likes you more like this. Not a little girl anymore, but a woman. One he molded into his perfect partner. Strong, but never stronger than him. Smart, but not enough to escape him. And a little broken. Still with a bit of fire, still a little rebellious. But never trying to get away.

He says you are more of a goddess than a woman. Special. Holy. Before, your courses aligned with the moon, your pregnancy timed just right. The baby should be here just when spring turns to summer. What could you be, if not a little goddess?

The mysteries of womanhood fascinate him. It’s made even worse with your knowledge of the future. He seems to think all you know about pregnancy is part of your powers as a dreamer. Once, you made the mistake of telling him the baby could hear him. Daemon has never skipped a day of talking to them since.

You barely think of Rhea, these days. Daemon keeps you away from Runestone and occupied with other matters. Matters that are much more pleasurable to think about than your past.

“Come, Lady Wife.”

And you do.

You wear other kinds of chains now.

#daemon targaryen x reader #daemon x y/n #daemon targaryen #daemon smut #daemon targaryen smut #daemon targeryen x reader #daemon targeryan #daemon x reader #daemon x you #daemon x oc #daemon targaryen x oc #daemon targaryen x female reader #hotd #hotd fanfic #asoif fanfic #asoiaf #asoif/got #divine intuition series

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eliotquillon · 2 months ago

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I NEED a wilson and cameron meta/drabble, how did they meet? how are they on a first-name basis? why is wilson such a big hameron shipper?

anon i love you . thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about wilson and cameron!!!

speaking about them briefly as Characters, and not as ‘people’: the parallels between then both are really, really fascinating. by the end of the show, both of them have been married three times. she lost her first husband; he lost amber. wilson contracts thymus cancer, and cameron’s first husband had thyroid cancer before it metastasised—both are endocrine. they are both explicitly attracted to this idea of ‘neediness’; they have both fallen in love with someone else while still married (though only one of them acted on it); they’re both very concerned with…how do i put this, externality?? there’s a conflict in how they want to present themselves to the world versus how they really feel. cameron consistently has these high-brow morals that she struggles to follow through on, either because they conflict with each other or because it isn’t easy to act on. wilson wants to be seen as a good guy, wants to give all he can to people, and often does so—but is also itching, sometimes, for an excuse to act out, and he and house are drawn to each other as a result. i think really the best way to sum them up is that they’re puzzle pieces that look like they fit, but…don’t.

anyway. onto them as ‘people’, i guess:

truth be told i think wilson and cameron truly just met in the context of her showing up to work one day as one of house’s fellows. that said. i have NEVER been able to get to the bottom of why wilson randomly calls her ‘allison’ in maternity and at this point i don’t think i ever will. literally one of the first houseposts i did on main was about this because i was like ‘what’. but at a best guess i would say this was intended as shorthand/foreshadowing for the fact that, well, cameron is by far the fellow that wilson hangs out with the most. they get tons of scenes and subplots together in s1 and 2. and i think she’s probably the fellow he likes the most. she’s nice, she’s willing to stand up for herself, she cares about house—these are all qualities that wilson either has himself or seems to wish he had, and while foreman and chase each have some of these, cameron’s really the only one who starts off with all three. WHICH IS NOT TO SAY THAT CAMERON IS PERFECT or flawless because like. Lol no. but her good qualities are mostly things that wilson values, and i think that’s important; it’s probably why they appear to get along). (also, logistically speaking—cameron is a big focus of that episode, and the ones after it, because it’s the leadup to the dead husband reveal. it makes sense to reveal her first name to a casual watcher at this point, it just so happens that wilson being the one to do so feels…wonky, in retrospect. it probably would’ve made more sense for it to be foreman or chase to reveal her first name—she’s the one to repeatedly use theirs in her self help book era—but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

as to why wilson is such a huge hameron shipper: DESPITE EVERYTHING I HAVE SAID ABOVE, i think this is less about cameron and more about house. don’t get it twisted: wilson for sure ‘approves’ of cameron. she’s good at reading him—although she overplays it, in the end—she has all of the above listed qualities, and, y’know. nobody else is exactly throwing themselves at house at this point. she’s young and pretty, what’s not to like. but for all of this approval, all that he eggs house on…he still gives her a shovel talk. he warns her not to hurt house’s feelings, that she has the power to do so. he likes cameron, sure, but he’s obviously far, far more invested in house. and house is entertaining it, at least briefly! he buys a corsage and asks for tips on what to say. he’s willing to give it a go. this, i think, is why wilson wants house to go for it—not because cameron is particularly special, but because house is open to the idea and on paper it might be good for him. key words being on paper, lol. wilson is on board and he thinks house needs the extra push. note how wilson’s hameron shipping basically melts away entirely after stacy returns—he’s sure as hell not encouraging that relationship, but it’s funny how he never suggests house rebound with cameron instead. if house takes it off the table entirely, then wilson follows suit.

you did not ask for this, but: my own personal headcanon is that when cameron leaves for chicago, her and wilson stay on christmas card terms—but like. weirdly passive aggressive christmas card terms. on paper the friendliness is still there, she still helped him through the grief of amber, but—she severed ties with house. she believes him to be poison. wilson, though technically his own person…is still an extension. wilson i think probably has similarly cool feelings about her, too. but they’re both trapped in a kill-em-with-kindness-off wherein they keep promising to see each other if wilson ever ends up in chicago for a conference. he does not ever end up in chicago for a conference. lmao. ultimately i think it’s kind of a sad end to what seemed to be a genuine friendship, but…they both chose a side. i don’t think the friendship survives it.

#asks #house md #allison cameron #james wilson

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redux-iterum · 2 months ago

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Sometimes I just have to reread and reread and take in how you’ve written Fireheart because it’s just so…

He’s just so good. So genuinely and unceasingly good. He cares so much and more than that he’s wise. Sometimes a character will say something and I go ‘there’s no way to comfort someone about this’ and then five minutes after that Fireheart says something wise that makes me rethink some shit that I, a real life human, am doing. Which is hard! This is harder to write convincingly than a strong character, because a character like Fireheart whose greatest strength is his heart HAS to follow through. And he has to be genuinely emotionally intelligent in a way that can’t just be, like, told. It has to be shown. And you manage to show that to us flawlessly, constantly, and consistently.

Like, man. No wonder everyone loves this guy. I love this guy. Absolute favorite version of Fireheart that I have EVER read.

Also, follow-up, Cloudpaw’s situation. You managed to make it not kind of infuriating, you found a reason for what he was doing that honestly broke my heart, and you did it all so naturally I’m still reeling over it. And then you managed to have Fireheart make an argument so convincing without contradicting the beliefs that he already has (ie: he’s not a xenophobe) and it just. Man. I hadn’t even thought of come of that stuff. I’ll be honest, I remember reading the original series and thinking it was morally neutral for Cloudpaw to go eat kittypet food, and now I’m rethinking it!

It IS rude to steal food. It IS rude to feed yourself in a way you can’t share with the people you love who are in constant threat of starvation. I always thought of it as a practical way to feed himself that didn’t take from his clanmates but…it isn’t fair, is it? It’s not fair at all for him to do that. Most of the argument in the original series felt like ‘OTHER CULTURE BAD AND WRONG AND YOU WRONG FOR PART IN IT’ and it made me kind of side with Cloudpaw out of sheer spite. But this is so much better! Actual arguments! And REASONS! That make sense for why these kitty people are doing what they do and thinking how they think!

We always say the Erins were two steps to the left of greatness with these battlecats. I think they were actually two miles away, because they have never provided the characterization they need. I think they were two miles away because the premise is great, sure, and they can handle plot but they are incapable of making these cats feel like the people they are. The Warriors Clans in the original never felt like a community because every individual never felt like a living person and I think that’s a problem much farther than two steps away from greatness.

Anyways, all of this is to say: You’re doing great work and thank you for this latest update! I’ve been trying to comment more lately :D Share thoughts and stuff.

I absolutely adore these long, analytical asks. Thank you for this, and for so many compliments!

Fireheart is such a fun little guy to write specifically for his goodness, and how everyone around him interacts with that. It's not often that I get to handle a character as dedicated to compassion and love as him. His entire being is based around "I care" - that's something even his mother doesn't have, and she's the matriarch. There are a couple unique challenges to this that'll come along in the future, so I won't say anything here, but I am very interested to see how you feel about one of the last chapters in this book.

As for Cloudpaw, thank GOD I avoided the annoying aspect of it. His behavior and subplot in the books aggravated me to no end for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here, so I put a lot of work into justifying why he would do that in this version. With Fireheart's explanation of why stealing kittypet food is wrong, as well, I remember sitting down for a long moment with myself and slowly knitting together exactly why Fireheart would not approve of humoring kittypet stuff like that, when he's got the most understanding of that life out of anyone in the Clans. The fairness struck me, and that was his reason. The Clans definitely refuse wet food out of pride and discrimination first and foremost, and don't bother explaining it to kits beyond that, but if someone overheard Fireheart talking to Cloudpaw, they'd snap their fingers, point at him and go, "Exactly! Yes! That!" He managed to put into words a concept that the Clans subconsciously understand but don't really analyze to themselves.

For the Erins: honestly, yes, I agree. I could go on for YEARS about the characterizations and lack thereof in the books (someone remind me to rant about that at some point), and how much of the story could be so much greater and more natural if everyone had a consistent, present personality. And, honestly, that's what was the most wrong about the original Redux - no personalities for anyone. I spend a LOT of time stewing over the characters of everyone written in Iterum to make up for that. It brings me great joy to hear that my work has paid off!

#ask #rufuslupislupis #i speak #charred legacy ask

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the-monkey-ruler · 6 months ago

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According to your opinion, what do you think would be SWK's best written romance or what would they be as for the adaptations? You know, not only does the romance appear and that's it, but does it develop or at least seem good to you?

Not to say there are bad romances, but I just wanted to ask.

Honestly, it depends on what you think is romantic.

There is a reason that the Chinese Odyssey is such a cult classic and it's not because they get together at the end, but rather because it explores the idea of self-expression and restricted freedom in the view of romance. Sun Wukong cannot exist unless Joker becomes him, and Joker cannot become Sun Wukong if he falls in love. He had the chance to love and he lost it, being forced to change who he is, knowing what he could have had. Chinese Odyssey became so popular because it explores what it means to sacrifice your own individuality and conform to societal expectations while still having slapstick humor.

And I won't lie and say that has also changed my view of romance with Wukong in that I do not think there can be a Retelling of Wukong where he gets with an SO. There can be great Reimangings or Alternative Universes (and there are) but if someone wants a faithful adaption of the story there can be additions such as adding a romantic subplot but in no circumstances can they end up together. And that could still be a good romantic story.

The quality of romance does not have to depend on a happy ending but one that relates to people and touches their hearts. I think the key to any romance is that connection to the audience, showing a level of genuine yearning and the struggle with that yearning that anyone can relate to when it comes to connecting to another person, romance or not.

Personally, I haven't seen a romance story done it better showing that desire for connection like Chinese Odessey since...

But I would say a close runner-up is the 1996 Journey to the West subplot within the show. As I think as far as relating to a character this is one that I found personally touched by.

In the 1996 Journey to the West is also not a one-to-one with the book as it follows more like a drama than an adventure story with deep character elements but still a wonderful adventure. This probably has the best tv live-action versions of the characters with just how in-depth they go with each character and we actively see them have their individual character arcs as they go from quarreling journeymates to a close-knit found family.

On one of these adventures they meet the Spider Sisters, but not all evil as one of the Sisters, Shishi, is trying to find her lost love from her past life. The gang helps her and Wukong RELUCTANTLY helps as well though he is distrustful of demons and sees no point in trying to find lost love. Shishi's sister, Enen, tags along as well and defends her sister's desire to find her lost love when to her, love is the most important thing in the world. But to Wukong he believes that learning Buddhism and teaching is what is most important. The more Enen and Wukong work together the more Enen falls in love with Wukong's compassion, heroism, and diligence, seeing him as someone to be admired and someone she wishes to impress as well.

The reason I adore this love story is that it is one-sided completely and I think that the narration does such a fantastic job of showing how much Wukong loves Enen has a friend and someone he cares about deeply but he just doesn't have romantic feelings for. I thought that the build-up of their relationship was fascinating in that Wukong comes to terms with seeing Enen as a good friend and someone who has changed his worldview that not all demons are after power, some are just living their lives, and just that knowing her platonically has made him a more compassionate person. But that is the issue in that Wukong's love for Enen is purely platonic and how he even refuses to compromise on his morals and lie to her that he feels the same when he loves her only as a friend.

Enen falls for Wukong because he is her friend and someone that she admires as well. She tries to become more like him by giving up meat and eating fruit and even trying to study Buddhism with him. She didn't do these acts because SHE wanted to, but rather so she could be closer to Wukong. But in the end (Enen loses her cultivation from a demon and asks Wukong to at least say 'I love you' before she turns back into her original form) she isn't able to make Wukong feel the same THOUGH NO FAULT OF HER OWN.

In my personal experience, I have felt this many times, when friends try to admit their feelings, and that soul-crushing burden of having to let them down gently. When you care about someone and are willing to support them or fight for them but the one thing you can't do is reciprocate their feelings. Wukong in this series is being hounded by both Bajie and Wujing to at least pretend for Enen's sake (she does uncultivated and returns to spider form but isn't dead) and when Wukong tells her that he does care for her but not in that way he is seen as the bad guy.

Enen did nothing wrong in falling for Wukong, but she wasn't able to accept that he just couldn't feel the same. And Wukong did nothing wrong in not feeling the same as he cares for his friend greatly but he cannot lie to himself or her how he feels because he respects her too much to lie. Bajie and Wujing both call him heartless but moreso that they feel so bad for Enen but Wukong is the one that has to carry the burden of her feelings for the rest of his life.

Some people might not see this as a love story at all but I think this is a type of love story that is very common and that people on both the receiving and the giving end can relate to. That dejection from rejection and opening your heart and thinking maybe if you change, or something is wrong with you, or that you are not good enough. That horrible feeling of guilt for things out of your control and not being able to give someone you deeply care about what they want and then feeling more guilt that there is something wrong with you for not feeling the same. I thought that the show has an advantage over movies as it gives the characters time and room to grow and change around each other. Wukong becomes more sympathetic to demons and even has a deeper understanding of the importance of love just by knowing Enen before she "died" and rather because she lived (and still lives) he still cares about her and wants her to live the best life she can.

Even in her spider form, even when she wouldn't be able to understand him, Wukong refuses to lie to her about his feelings but expresses that he wants her to live a good life, one that leads her to enlightenment and back to her human form. He cares so much about her but just not in the way that she wants. I think there is something very well done in how the show shows that it wasn't either of their faults and that while they can love one another you can't change people. People can only change if they want to change, and you can't force people to feel the same. There are different forms of love and each is important, and just because someone feels a different kind of love doesn't make it any less real.

To me, a love story is about connection and how the audience can feel themselves in the characters. Love can be scary and you're more often going to face rejection than anything but that doesn't mean it is anyone's fault. Sometimes people just don't feel the same, as much as they do care about you, and learning to accept that and let go is a part of growing up. As such I think that my favorite would be the 1996 subplot as I feel that is it both emotional and that it also still follows the Xiyouji format. Especially love Wukong going to the Red String of Fate guy (Yue Lao) and rewriting people's tragic love stories so they can live happily ever after!

I think that maybe I enjoyed this the most as I feel like it still captured Wukong's character wonderfully as someone who might not feel romantic feelings (following the book) but also someone who learns compassion and what it means to love another person. He knew what it was like for someone to love him and that is not something to be taken lightly. People being vulnerable and expressing their desire can be scary and something to be even admired but can still unavoidable cause pain. It wasn't his fault that he didn't like Enen back but he wanted her and even others to find that kind of love. He wants people to feel free to find comfort in connecting with another person even if it isn't himself.

That is to say, there aren't other romances that I did enjoy that are reciprocated love as well! Funny enough the ones that I really enjoy are all Japanese or based on the Saiyuki series.

Alakazam the Great (1960) 西遊記

Monkey Magic (1998) モンキーマジック

The New Legends of Monkey (2018) 新猴王传奇

I think the common factor of these is that Wukong in all these forms becomes a better person just by knowing their SO and take it upon themselves to become a better person, rather than the SO taking it upon themselves trying to 'fix' Wukong, I feel like that is an issue with a lot more modern romances of Wukong in that they are far too rushed, if Wukong does start off as a jerk then there is no real reason the SO should fall for him, and then Wukong doesn't stop being a jerk until the end when there is no proper resolution. It feels all very rushed and very forced.

I think that I enjoyed these versions mostly because they had the advantage of keeping the SO alive and they play on the trope of "changing for your loved ones" rather than "getting character development because of SO's death." We see Wukong in 1960 slowly relearn what it means to be humble and grateful to his SO Rinrin with her undying (literally) devotion and how this dedication leads to him wanting to be a better person deserving to be by her side. Monkey Magic 1998 is a surprising one but one that I found charming nonetheless as Goku is a hotheaded and impulsive person but everything he does is for his friends one being Fenya. They never confirmed their relationship but she is the only one who never treats Goku differently after he becomes the king and even when he demands her to call him as such she never lets him forget his humble roots which by the end he learns to return to. The last New Legends 2018 is also surprising as I really didn't enjoy the plot of this show and found the pacing painful, but that Monkey and Tripitaka's relationship was something that had a lot of potential. From Monkey's arrogant attitude and Tripitaka's deception of her true identity, I thought that the show handled them slowly but surely coming to trust and rely on each other. I feel like the show could do a lot more with their character development but I doubt we are getting a third season.

I will say a guilty pleasure of mine is Monkey King 2014 just cause it is more of an innocent childhood crush kind of feeling than anything else. I'm sad that she still dies but I feel like out of the Wukong romances I have seen (please note I haven't seen them all) I can see why the SO would fall for Wukong as he was nothing but sweet and kind to her and that I was sad to see her go.

#anon ask #sun wukong #anonymous #anon #jttw #journey to the west #xiyouji #ask #Alakazam the Great (1960) 西遊記 #Monkey Magic (1998) モンキーマジック #The New Legends of Monkey (2018) 新猴王传奇 #Chinese Odessey #journey to the west 1996 #jttw96

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larry-is-my-anchor1 · 2 months ago

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Hey Tim, how are you? This may be a bit forward of me, but whenever you decide to make Buddie canon can you consider the following title for the episode: “Do you feel the same? Too scared to say.”?

I just feel Buddie going cannon still may not be in the works for the second half of season eight. It shouldn’t certainly be a big aha reveal either with teaser commercials. It should be gradual and organic. Much like Bucks and Eddie’s relationship. I feel like so much care and respect have been given to them. I think for the most part for all of the characters.

But also there is still so-much work to be done with Eddie delving into his feelings. Show timeline is only three months since Christopher left. I gather much more time won’t have passed when the show returns in March. (😭). I would love to see Eddie work on himself more and repair his relationship with his son. Perhaps get him away from his stupid parents. Who truly are not helping.

I think Eddie still may realize his feelings before Buck though. But maybe Buck will realize before Ed’s. But Buck does not want to be a cliche of falling for his best friend so he won’t act on his feelings? Or maybe Buck in his own time does tell Eddie, but at first Eddie isn’t ready because although he’s finally out he’s scared. I don’t know. They both have abandonment issues, maybe neither of them won’t say anything for sometime?? Their dance is moving away from the point of you fools have always been in-love, to why aren’t you fools acting on your feelings? Buddie is clearly end game. Or should be.

We need scenes with Eddie admitting his attraction to men. Either when he was younger, maybe during his time in the army. Or maybe when he was in high school during the period when he and Shannon broke up. Perhaps the show could explore why Eddie stopped going to church. And his sexual identity was the reason. His faith has no room for homosexuality. But his family and church were still strong influences to stay with a girl. And Shannon was just the perfect person to hide with. Maybe that’s why he ran away at first to the army. He just didn’t know how he got to where he was. Marriage, a baby and being an adult. Whatever that means. They all were so overwhelming. Maybe his parents made him “behave” like the man of the house because they knew for sometime that Eddie was not heterosexual. We need to see his discovery lore and why he hid himself. The shame society and religion put on queer people. But also joy meant being selfish in most religions. To act out on joy brings negative consequences. Eddie isn’t there yet with not punishing himself.

Also been trying to figure out who would want to kidnap Maddie? The kidnapper appears female. Though again not sure. Is it a random distraught person? A serial killer? Someone out for vengeance? Why Maddie? Why does the show have to be all full throttle with drama and also torture us with, well we’re not sure yet how Buddie will go? Why though? After all the eye fucking they have done for the last seven seasons!

Season eight seems all over the place. After watching and rewatching the show a few times I’m having trouble seeing how main story lines and subplots are woven together.

Is it weird I kind of got used to Eddie’s mustache. I know it represents something negative but I like the look on Eddie. He’d actually make a good Magnum PI. Just incase Hollywood wanted a spinoff down the line.

The waiting is torture and it’s only the beginning.

#911 #911 abc #911 show #9 1 1 #buddie #tim minear

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locustonlioden-blog · 11 months ago

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Hazbin Hotel Episode Rewrites

Episode 1 (will be doing all of them)

Take out the “precious daughter” line. This makes no sense seeing how Lilith ditched the family and Lucifer is supposed to be super distant. We get 0 evidence these were involved, doting parents that put a bunch of effort into raising Charlie. Perhaps change it to “And now, its up to their precious daughter” meaning Charlie has taken it upon herself to mend things, instead of making it sound like she’s been coached all along for her role.

Adam and Lute are put off to find out its Charlie meeting with them, not Lucifer as usual. The meeting was arranged because of the very important matter of an exterminator angel being killed for the first time ever, and an important discussion was needed. Adam is much less a 1 dimensional comic relief dude bro.

“So, are you taking over extermination arrangements for now on?”

“Uh, no...actually, it was just kind of out of the blue that he told me about the meeting and asked me to come-”

(seriously, Lucifer supposedly didn’t know about the hotel, or at least he pretended not to, lets just assume he does but didn’t let on to Charlie that he’s watching her)

“Did he tell you why?”

“Ah, no-but, it was really convenient because you see, I have an idea that would actually END the need for exterminations-”

At this point Adam is seriously put off. They just found out demons can kill angels-this has to be a distressing revelation. Now of all times, the guy they have a serious deal with chooses to send someone who wants to talk about ENDING the exterminations? This would almost feel like a threat. So now they want out of the deal? No way! He would feel a need to reassert dominance and get things back under control. Who do these demons think they are? Cue their aggressive mocking and song, followed by throwing Charlie out as they do in the actual episode. He doesn’t even bother to explain why they are moving the extermination up. He’s not going to talk to Charlie. She has not established any sort of repertoire with him that makes him feel as though she is worth having an actual discussion with about a serious matter.

Commercial subplot: Alastor offers a deal to Vaggie in order to help make a successful commercial for Charlie.

“You’re insane, I’d never make any sort of deal with some shitlord

“Hm, such a pity, Charlie will be so let down to see how you fail to manage her project even a day without her. She has to do everything. Why are you even around? Do you really think the princess of hell needs physical protection from a sinner with a spear?”

*sighs* “You making the video for me isnt going to help that.”

“My dear, it wasnt raw power that bent all of Hells sinners to my will. You seem to know me quite well...(this is where we can reintroduce the Alastor lore Vaggie game to Angel Dust in the pilot, instead of waiting until the Mimzy episode to give anything) ...so you see, I have no problems getting things done, and I would be willing to teach you. Imagine what Charlie could achieve, and how much quicker, if she had a competent partner at her side…”

“I’m not making a deal! And you can have fun entertaining yourself with an empty hotel. Nobodys going to want to come to a place a powerful overlord like you so obviously takes as a joke”

“Well, I WILL make a worthy advertizement for the hotel, but I’m going to do it the RIGHT way, and do it for radio!”

She doesn’t make a deal here, but the seeds have now been sown. Her insecurity and feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness are gnawing. She has little feelings of self worth-would it be so bad to sacrifice herself in a deal with Alastor if it meant assuring Charlie achieves her dream? She is tempted.

Vaggie uses a little cunning here. While Alastor manipulates the inhabitants of the hotel to give fantastic line deliveries using a variety of amusing tactics, Vaggie secretly records with the video camera. At the end of the day, Alastor smugly announces that he has the radio ad all ready. When Charlie returns, Vaggie cuts in and says radio AND television ad! The ad then starts to play and is cut off by the news like in the actual episode. Alastor was initially amused she tried to make a tv ad anyway, but he sees enough to tell that she recorded him making the radio ad. His smile tightens, eyes narrow, and he fades off.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel thoughts #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin critical #vivziepop critical #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel rewrite

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lovelylogans · 3 months ago

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debutante

previous chapter / chapter five

part of the wyliwf verse.

warnings: mentions of transphobia, food mentions, alcohol, kissing, mentions of child abuse, but nothing actually happens (virgil suspects something and dee mentions parenting attitudes that aren’t healthy) also a mention of harassing women, but it’s more of an abstract than any actual harassment. please let me know if i’ve missed anything else!

pairings: logince, moxiety

words: 21,961

notes: fifth verse, same as the first: i hope this can serve as a distraction for some of you today—please go out and vote if you are in the united states!! i'm actually posting this as i'm in line for my ballot so i can vote before work! there are so many important issues on your local ballot (several states have potentially life-saving but certainly life-altering provisions on ballot this year for a lot of folks!) in addition to national-level stuff! and, in regards to why this took so long to get here,

⁂

janus looks at the jar skeptically, his arms folded across his chest.

“this. this is your favorite food?”

logan tries not to take the slight too personally, but he offers the spoonful of loganberry jam to him again.

“yes, it is,” logan says. “i said nothing when you said your favorite food.”

“because my favorite food is normal,” janus grumbles, but he takes the spoonful anyways. “but seriously. just straight up jam?”

“crofter’s loganberry jam,” logan corrects. “followed by the rest of the jams that crofter’s offers.”

janus sighs, but ingests the jam, presumably in the name of getting to know each other better.

with the introduction of a name, logan had thought to propose getting to know each other better; so now logan knows janus’ favorite color (yellow) his favorite book (the art of war) and his favorite food (he’d said mille feuille, then admitted it was really pretzel m&m’s, which perhaps was a more conventional choice than a specific type of jam.)

logan watches him, hawk-eyed.

“so?” he says when janus swallows.

“i mean,” janus says. “it’s a good jam, i guess?”

logan sighs, but accepts that janus’ education when it comes to jam is a work in progress. that’s fine. in the meantime, logan will prepare a jam sandwich as a midnight snack. he dearly anticipates the day when he is no longer a teenager and therefore no longer so hungry all the time.

⁂

janus waits a long time to change into his pajamas.

logan gets up, presumably to go to the bathroom, and comes downstairs with an overly large hoodie without preamble, or even mentioning it at all, really.

janus refuses to smile, but he does change into the pajama set his parents bought him, with a big hoodie advertising a sideshire save-the-bridge fundraiser.

⁂

“why are you making me watch this,” logan groans.

“because it’s a cultural touchstone, hush,” janus says dismissively, staring at the screen but really staring at logan out of the corner of his eyes, trying his very hardest not to start cackling.

“this sex scene has been going on for three minutes!”

“cultural. touchstone.”

“you’re doing this to make me suffer,” logan accuses.

“obviously,” janus says. “that’s the whole point of making someone watch the room for the first time.”

“i should have just lied when you asked if i understood that reference,” logan mumbles under his breath, pointedly avoiding looking at the screen.

janus, in deciding to go full obnoxious, croons, “yooou are my rose, you are my rose, you are my rooo-ooooo-ooooose—”

logan pulls a pillow over his face and declares, muffled, “i hate you.”

“save it,” janus says dismissively. “we haven’t even gotten to the flower shop scene yet.”

“the what?” logan says, peeking tentatively from behind the pillow.

or the other terrible subplots, janus thinks gleefully. he’s not a huge fan of the room, himself, it’s not like he’s proudly in the cult following for it, but being able to show it to logan for the first time is something he absolutely cannot miss out on.

⁂

“but it makes no sense,” logan practically howls at the screen as the credits roll, janus laughing so hard he can barely breathe.

⁂

“christ, isn’t your boyfriend a dancer?” janus complains, shuffling his feet out of the way.

“my boyfriend is the dancer,” logan says, scowling. “my boyfriend.”

“either way, he needs to bring you in for extra waltzing lessons,” janus says. “poppy is going to kill you if you step on her toes even once.”

logan goes a little pale at that.

⁂

“why this,” janus groans, tempted to do what logan did and put a pillow over his face.

“you picked a movie, now i get to pick a movie,” logan says smugly, and janus considers throwing the pillow at the screen. the only reason he doesn’t is because he somewhat respects ken burns, even if logan picked his most boring documentary ever.

⁂

“this is ridiculous,” logan says.

“it’s meant to be a traditional sleepover activity,” janus says dismissively, counting each curl of the spiral, tapping the paper with his pen. “the internet says so.”

“yes, famously lauded for accuracy, the internet,” logan says. janus ignores him and starts crossing off options, counting under his breath as he goes.

“okay,” janus says, straightening the paper with a great deal of fanfare. “you’ll graduate from princeton—”

“surprising.”

“—i know, quite, i’d had you pinned as an east coast man—after majoring in chemistry, that’s a bit of a departure, isn’t it? but after you graduate, you’ll marry bowman—”

“bowman?!” logan says, aghast. “bowman wasn’t one of the options!”

“i editorialized,” janus says dismissively, “and you’ll have a hundred and two beautiful children—”

“where did you get that number?!”

janus ignores him. “—but you’ll settle in los angeles and live in a cozy little shack—”

“well, i’ve done that before,” logan says fairly, and janus tries his hardest to hide his wince as he continues.

“—and, funnily enough, you’ll be an astronomer. the end.”

“this game is ridiculous,” logan says, snatching back the notepad, before he hesitates and looks at janus.

“all right, fine,” he sighs, and readies the pen. “mansion, house, apartment, shack, those are listed. marriage options?”

“jeff bezos, bill gates, and elon musk,” janus says briskly.

“those are all terrible options,” logan says, disgusted.

“those are all terribly rich options,” janus corrects. “if this is going to be my imaginary m.a.s.h. life, i will live lavishly due to the money my husband will provide. i don’t have morals, i’d gladly be a sugar baby.”

“you don’t get to pick all your spouses,” logan says. “you married me off to bowman.”

“i’d argue elon musk is worse than bowman,” janus points out.

“narrowly,” logan says under his breath.

⁂

tristan, janus reflects, has to go, of course.

if not for his being racist toward janus—which is, admittedly, a more self-preservational factor that has put janus into plotting more actively than he has in the aftermath of almost everything else tristan has done. this includes that tristan cheats poorly, lies without even being clever about it, peacocks about with absolutely no sense of swagger or charm, is generally obnoxious, and somehow manages to both virgin-shame and slut-shame girls at their school without imploding from the hypocrisy of it all—

wait. he’s getting distracted.

if not simply for everything else tristan has ever done, then certainly for the note that’s been smuggled into his pocket.

the question, of course, was which plot to pick: to go out with a bang, or to pick a piece of blackmail so heinous that he’d shipped off to military school, with absolutely no time to lose…

⁂

“—and that’s how you say where can i find a newspaper in french, creole, and portuguese,” janus says. “i mean, your next problem would be if you could read it or not, but.”

“i wish i knew another language,” logan says thoughtfully. “the closest i have is latin, and that’s not exactly something i can use to converse with people.”

they’re both lying on their backs, staring up at the artificial ceiling of the pillow fort.

“i mean,” logan amends. “i know some conversational spanish, but. certainly not fluent.”

“spanish?” janus asks sleepily.

“roman,” logan explains, and janus makes an ah noise. then, “portuguese?”

“childhood nanny,” janus says. “she’s from the dominican republic, not haiti, but. she did teach me some things about haitian culture.”

“i met her, didn’t i?” logan says. “at your grandmother’s.”

“yes, you did,” janus says.

“creole from haiti,” logan guesses, and janus mm-hms.

“and you mentioned your grandmother was french,” logan completes.

“yeah,” janus says, and even logan can pick up the edge in his voice. logan props himself up on an elbow, furrowing his eyebrows.

janus looks at him, arching his own eyebrows, and repeats, “haitian.”

logan flushes, a little bit, remembering the (very little) amount of haitian history they’d covered in their mutual world history class, and the (slightly more, but still not exactly a wealth of information) studying he’d done in his free time.

“right,” logan says quietly.

“i’ve got ideas,” janus says darkly, staring up at the blanket ceiling. “my adopted ancestors’ vast fortune? it’s going to go straight into a trans, black haitian’s pockets. they’re probably rolling in their graves.”

logan is quiet, for a couple moments, before he says, “good.”

janus’s grin unfurls as he stares up at the blanket, daydreaming about how best to squander that fortune.

⁂

they’re lying in the pillow fort, mostly quiet, logan on the edge of sleep. but then, tinny and muffled, as if from a phone speaker:

your touch, pullin' fire out of me your touch, like the wind crashing on the sea...

“i am going to kill you,” logan declares, even if he does start laughing when janus does.

⁂

patton staggers down the stairs, stifling a yawn with his hand, and he has to stifle a smile at the sight of a blanket fort in his living room, just big enough for two teenage boys.

he edges around it carefully, heading directly for his first stop every morning: the coffee maker.

by the time the coffee maker starts making those slightly alarming sputtering noises that always makes patton think he should probably get it looked at, the boys emerge from the fort, bleary-eyed and honed in on the scent of fresh coffee.

“mugs in there,” patton mumbles to dee, who grabs three at random and pushes them toward patton so patton can pour, the coffee steaming and diffusing its delectable scent all throughout patton’s tiny kitchen.

there’s a stretch of silence only broken by the sound of sugar shaken into coffee, the pouring of milk, the clattering of a spoon against ceramic, and sipping.

by the time patton’s three-quarters of the way through his mug, he feels much more like a human.

“hope you boys slept well,” patton says, his voice not quite at its usual level of perkiness—he’ll need another mug of coffee for that. “do you have any preferences for breakfast? dee, you’re the guest, you can pick—we could go to virgil’s, that’s got diner breakfast—”

a strange expression flashes over dee’s face. patton takes note of it but doesn’t mention it.

“—remy, he runs the café in town, he does some good breakfast sandwiches… or fran’s, she’s got danishes and little pies and things. she runs the bakery near town center, you might have seen it.”

“fran’s,” dee says decisively.

patton nods, drains his mug, and reaches for a travel thermos. “i’ll go ahead and get going for fran’s, then, it can get a bit busy on weekend mornings. logan, could you fish out a menu and show it to dee? either of you can text me with your orders.”

both boys make sounds of affirmation, mostly preoccupied with consuming as much coffee as possible.

patton can’t really talk; he’s busy trying starting to drink the coffee from his thermos while simultaneously hunting for his house keys.

⁂

is the taste of cinnamon rolls in these small-town bakeries the entire appeal of living in a small town with an entire store for christmas lights? janus can now slightly better understand the appeal of living in a small town, if so.

squidgy without being mushy, just enough cinnamon to keep it from being sickly sweet, just enough icing to keep the whole thing moist, paired with the unexpectedly spectacular coffee from remy’s café…

janus eats three in addition to the rest of the pastry selection patton had generously gotten for them, and is only slightly regretful when a food coma signals its impending arrival.

but, as all things do, his visit to bizzare-o-town comes to an end—he’s put on his clothes and returned the hoodie logan had lent him, he’s tucked patton’s phone number into a small, almost-hidden pocket in his duffel bag, and he stands on the sanders’ surprisingly roomy front porch with logan, patton waving them both out with his ever-cheerful air.

“where are you going again?”

“newsroom,” logan says, shouldering his own backpack. “at this point, i think rudy’s just coming up with new typos to make sure i come around at least once a week. it’s ridiculous. look at this.”

janus obligingly looks at a newspaper, grimacing at the blatant inconsistencies of the use or lack of an oxford comma scattered across the page.

“we use ap style,” logan says mournfully. “he knows about proper comma placement. i know he knows about proper comma placement.”

“well,” janus says, striving for something polite to say, only ending up with, “best of luck with that.”

logan sighs, tucking away the newspaper. “i will require it.”

he holds out his hand. janus shakes it. (he notices only during the drive home his absolute absence of any hesitation.)

“i’ll see you at school.”

“see you at school,” janus echoes.

it’s probably the absolute lack of tension that is serving to make janus feel strange. since the beginning of the school year, they’d been picking at each other over grades, and he’d been needling logan for so long, it feels odd to leave without some kind of academic repartee.

and, well. who is he to break from tradition, after all.

the entire reason for this gathering being to forcibly break tradition aside.

so he adds, “i bet my score on our science exam is higher than yours.”

“it will not,” logan says, looking affronted.

janus snorts, shaking his head and starting down the stairs, heading for his car. “whatever you say.”

“it won’t!”

“four point margin.”

“absolutely not! your score will be less than mine by two at most!”

“i’ll make it mine is six points above yours!” janus calls, sliding into the driver’s seat, and sees logan shaking his head and probably muttering to himself.

janus rolls his eyes, but his lip turns up at the corner a bit more than usual as he drives down a rinky-dink little residential street and is that an old couple walking a cat in a stroller?! who put drugs in this town’s water supply?!

⁂

“hey, over here!”

the jolly bell fixed to the top of the door of this (admittedly quite cool) coffeeshop has barely rung before poppy’s attention is called to a corner lit by a big, dramatic brass lamp, where two fat, squashy buttery leather armchairs are framed on either side by bookshelves containing a boggling number of books in seemingly every genre and cool little bits of artsy decor.

poppy waves to lauren, before she points to the bar in a wordless offer. lauren, in answer, holds up her own to-go cup, waving her on to order.

poppy loves coffee.

poppy isn’t allowed to drink coffee.

well. decaf is fine. but the reason she isn’t allowed to drink caffeine “should be self-evident,” according to her mother. so this cuts down a bit on her café offerings.

the barista—who has the largest cup on offer in one hand, and his phone in the other—barely glances away from his phone to look at her over the frames of his sunglasses.

“what do you want?”

okay, blunt. poppy can appreciate blunt.

“the honey lavender latte. decaf,” she tacks on.

“size?”

“large.”

“hot or iced?”

“iced.”

“anything else?”

poppy shakes her head, nods when he recites the order back to her, taps her card when asked, and shuffles off to the pickup area to get her coffee, taking a moment to look around.

all of the machinery is sleek, decorated in white and black, down to the framed wall art beneath the menu. the barista is talking on his phone, now, gesticulating grandly with his truly enormous cup of iced—tea, she’s pretty sure?—behind the espresso machine, even as he’s pulling a shot for her drink. it’s frankly an impressive display of multitasking.

she looks around the room. there are other chilton people here, but not many, and most of them upperclassmen lingering in sideshire before they have to retreat back to the horrors of the workload of their junior and senior years.

there are a few of sideshire townsfolk, too, most of them chattering in polite undertones, lounging on the couches are the same buttery brown leather of the armchairs. there are also a couple of modern black rocking chairs cushioned in white, also under a couple of those big, brass lamps, all so similar in style; it all looks right out of a period film’s library mashed together with a sleek, black-and-white modernist look. poppy’s burgeoning designer brain can appreciate the adherence to an aesthetic, and this place has it in spades.

the entire place is very… cool.

poppy isn’t very well-versed in how to handle cool. her peers have made this very clear to her.

she scoops up her order when called with a quick “thanks,” and scoots her way over to the other armchair.

“hey!” lauren says, immediately shifting her laptop so poppy can see. “i’m just getting the most likely stuff features onto a flashdrive—what d’you think on this one?”

poppy examines it. it’s a good shot, ana and janey talking, heads leaned in close, fan angled just so to shield what they’re saying from their seat neighbor, but not enough to obscure their faces. ana smirking in perfect profile, janey’s laugh covered in dramatic shadow.

“that’s good,” poppy says, then, with much more honesty, “well, with a bit of color grading…”

lauren laughs ruefully. “yeah, i know. it’s juuuust cloudy enough to mess with my exposure settings with all the windows in there, let me tell you. i’ll chuck it into the folder of likely contenders and meet up with mel to whittle all the options down on monday. do you wanna help? if you don’t, i can just do it later. i’m procrastinating on an essay for mr. medina.”

mr. medina teaches sophomore and senior honors and ap english. poppy isn’t sure how she’ll handle it next year; he’s a fine enough teacher, sure, but he also doesn’t seem to be the sort to do things when poppy tells him to, like some other teachers at chilton. one compliment to mrs. caldicott, for example, and she’d probably eat out of the palm of poppy’s hand.

“sure, i can help sort photos,” poppy says, wondering if this is some kind of test. she doesn’t know lauren very well—should she just agree with everything she says? will lauren be the sort to get ruffled up if disagreed with, or would she think poppy a suck-up if she didn’t?

and photos, too! so prone to artistic disagreement. so prone to subjectivity! at least design tended to have some very classic rules. poppy knows less with photography; rule of thirds, and that was about it.

“cool, thanks—i don’t have many left, i don’t think, let me get it set up here…”

poppy takes a nervous sip of her beverage as lauren plugs her laptop in to charge, then angles the screen so they can both see it without too much glare.

the drink is good. very good. just sweet enough with the honey, just floral enough with the lavender, but the drink isn’t too sweet nor too floral nor too bitter from the coffee; all the flavors work in perfect concert with each other. it’s the sort of good that makes poppy very happy she’s taken a risk and gotten a large, and she’s already mentally plotting an excuse to come see logan just so she can swing by this coffeeshop again.

“okay!” lauren says brightly, enlarges the photo, and poppy can’t help but snort, then wince.

but—it’s, objectively, a bad photo. it’s an insanely blurry shot; it looks like lauren accidentally snapped a photo on its way into her camera bag, focused mostly on the ballet studio’s wooden floors.

“okay, yeah, immediate no,” lauren says, also laughing, which makes poppy’s shoulders relax, just a bit.

she also files the information away; lauren is, at least superficially, okay with laughing at herself. that’s useful intel.

there are very few other immediate nos in there; one where kai, lauren’s boyfriend (poppy thinks? she’s not up on the gossip. she has better ways to spend her time) has stolen lauren’s camera and attempted to take a selfie with it, missing most of his face and instead capturing a surprisingly steady photo of their own shoulder. there’s one where tristan dugray is obviously in the middle of sneezing. (her mother says that poppy ought to have a crush on a boy like tristan, who is objectively handsome, poppy can yield that, but he’s just… such a jackass.)

a few others pass in that nature; people who turned at the last second, awkward blinking, action stills that aren’t very photogenic, but the one five photos after that are, that kind of thing.

but the rest of them are remarkably well-composed, featuring a mixture of chilton students, not just those who are popular. there’s a mix of dynamics, of expressions, of poses; even as poppy tries to peruse them with a critical eye, as she gathers that lauren does actually want to know her opinion, it’s obvious that lauren has a talent.

she says as much as they wind down on the end of the photos, lauren detaching the memory card reader from her laptop and packing it away into a teeny tiny little case.

“aw, shucks,” lauren says, grinning, starting to dissemble her camera with swift, practiced motions, detaching the lens and reaching for a microfiber cloth. “i mean, i’ve been taking photos since i was a little kid, i’d hope some sort of talent would have rub off on me by now.”

“so you’ve always wanted to be a photographer?” poppy asks, immediately intrigued.

lauren hesitates, pausing from polishing the lens.

“...um,” lauren says, and laughs a little bit, awkward, and poppy immediately know she’s overstepped. she doesn’t know how—this is a frequent occurrence—she just knows that she has.

“sorry,” poppy says hastily, knowing that this is typically the smoothest path to resolution.

“no, no, it’s fine,” lauren says, waving her hand. poppy watches the cloth flutter like a flag in the wind. “um—i dunno, it always just gets a bit… you know how chilton is.”

“they do tend to prioritize STEM careers,” poppy agrees hastily. this is a boon for her, considering she intends on going into medicinal research, but she can see how this might be a bit of a struggle for someone more artistically inclined.

“yeah,” lauren says. “um. it’s more… i don’t know what i want to do. actually.”

poppy freezes.

the idea is such anathema to her that it’s boggling her mind. poppy knows her life and who she’s going to grow up to be ever since she had a concept of herself. high school at chilton, college at harvard, then staying at harvard for med school, then making a career in cancer research. that’s it. path plotted.

“like,” lauren says, “at all. i mean, i like photography a lot! i really enjoy mel’s class. but do i like it enough to stake my entire college experience on it? to make a career in that? i really like to bake, too, but i don’t want to be a baker. same with chemistry. same with—everything. i don’t even know which colleges i’ll apply for yet.”

that’s insane. objectively, poppy thinks.

(it’s not.)

even if lauren wasn’t also a chilton student—who famously set their students rigorous exercises and standards for the collegiate application experience—she doesn’t even know where she wants to go?!

“like,” poppy echoes, lost for words. “...at all?”

“like at all,” lauren agrees miserably. “i’m seventeen, anyways! who the hell has their life figured out at seventeen?!”

she does not give poppy an opportunity to answer—probably good, because poppy would have said something like well, i’ve had it figured out since i was four—before she says “no one! no one does! why is society set up like this?!”

“...historical precedent,” poppy decides to say, because that feels safer than offering any emotional input.

“historical precedent is stupid,” lauren grumbles. “all i know i want to do is keep spending time with my boyfriend, take pictures, bake things to bring into class, and probably be editor in chief next year, because i really like the idea of spending more time with mel and molding the paper into the best it can be, not because i know for a fact that i want to be editor in chief someday and i want to put it on my resume.”

wow. poppy and lauren really are different.

“is that too much to ask?!”

“no,” poppy says because, objective wildness of not planning your future since you’ve had a concept of time aside, it isn’t a lot to ask.

“thank you,” lauren sighs, flopping back into her armchair, then meets poppy’s eyes for the first time since she’s started this little tirade.

“oh, god, i’m sorry,” lauren says. “sorry. it’s just—my parents were getting on me about it right before we got here, they want me to buckle down, like, four years ago, and it’s… sorry. i shouldn’t have put all that on you.”

“no, it’s okay,” poppy says, once again relying on that old faithful of Societal Norms.

“here i am, freaking out, and here you are, with—” lauren gestures vaguely. “a painstakingly organized agenda and a straightforward trajectory and a—a purpose. a future, a plan. i mean, cancer research, wow!”

it is pretty wow, but poppy thinks it’d be pretty insensitive to bring that up at the moment, as lauren is currently burying her face in her hands.

“i’m all—mess, and you’ve got everything figured out,” lauren finishes.

“not everything,” flies out of poppy’s mouth before she can even consider a response.

lauren peeks through her fingers, arching an eyebrow.

“i know it sounds—silly,” poppy says, haltingly. “but—you’ve got things figured out that i definitely don’t. i mean—my mom would kill for me to have a boyfriend and do social things like you do.”

“your mom has her priorities a bit skewed.”

“i know that,” poppy tries not to snap, “but that’s—what it is. people like you, you get involved in things, and i can’t even figure out which stupid secret society to join because, even though i have all the family connections, neither of them really like me enough to invite me before now.”

welp. there it is.

poppy knows she’s an acquired taste; the trouble is, she’s never met anyone particularly patient enough to actually acquire it. dee has come close, she guesses, but he’s so hard to read that it’s genuinely difficult to tell, and even then, it’s because they’re “of a like mind,” according to him.

which—considering dee’s reputation within the chilton social stratosphere—is not particularly comforting.

“oh, poppy, that’s not—”

“i’m going to have to suck up to francie jarvis all year if i want to get into the puffs, she all but told me that outright,” poppy snaps. “help her with her homework, secure her a prime spot in the parking lot, organize her locker, scrunch up the plastic strands on her pom-poms to make them fluffy. i’d have to do everything except give her a manicure, if I had any talent with an orange stick.”

“but there’s the—”

“—clairs, i know, but no one’s even approached me about the clairs, even though i have cousins who graduated from both sororities! my family's name and reputation, not to mention my entire future, all depend on me getting into that group—”

“okay, first of all,” lauren says, “the entirety of your family’s name, reputation, and your incredibly bright future do not all depend on which clique you’re in in high school.”

“—my mother was a proud puff,” poppy continues as if she hasn’t spoken, because really, what a ridiculous notion that the world was not pinned on the minutiae of decisions you make in high school, “and my cousin maddie. the connections maddie made with the puffs got her an internship with the supreme court. but my father’s sister was a clair, and so was my cousin ruth. the connections ruth made with the clairs got her an incredible job managing celebrity pr, which sounds like hell to me but she’s thrilled as anything—”

“poppy—poppy!” lauren’s holding up her hands in supplication, and poppy promptly shuts her mouth.

did that guy behind the barista bar screw up and give her full caffeine?! she surreptitiously looks at the sharpie markings on her cup—no, marked off as decaf. hmph.

“okay,” lauren says, speaking in a soft, quiet tone, the way one might talk to an easily startled bunny or something of that nature. which is ridiculous, even if poppy’s shoulder’s relax a little at the sound of it. “first of all: i don’t know about the puffs, but clairs don’t recruit until the last month of your freshman year.”

poppy blinks.

“which wouldn’t be for a minute, for you,” she adds helpfully. “second, you could probably report francie for hazing—”

“it was mostly implied,” poppy mumbles.

“—still,” lauren says. “francie’s…”

poppy waits for lauren to finish that sentence, taking a sip of her drink.

“...francie,” lauren finishes delicately, as if unable to come up with any singular term that would do the work to encapsulate francie. “look. you’re smart, and driven, and you’d succeed in either sorority you wanted, or no sorority, even—”

poppy’s already shaking her head at that notion.

“—but, hey, part of why i asked you to coffee is to tell you about the clairs,” lauren says, settling back in her armchair.

“that would be great, thank you,” poppy says politely, trying to pack away their mutual spinouts into the distant past of thirty seconds ago, never to be thought of again. “maddie tells me all about the puffs, but ruth’s pretty quiet about the clairs. what are meetings like?”

“i mean, it’s kind of secret,” lauren says, warmly enough that it’s not entirely discounting the question, “but, i mean—you know how chilton tends to try to keep everything about the secret societies hush-hush and fails at it completely?”

poppy nods. there are ten secret societies worth cracking at chilton, and the puffs have been commonly regarded as number one for the last fifty years. a supreme court justice was once a puff. the ship to keeping secret societies hush-hush had sailed long ago for that reason alone.

“i can tell you the stuff i knew was in the public eye before i got initiated,” lauren says, “which—you probably know, but it’ll probably be good to clear up rumor-rumors from rumors based a little more in fact.”

also accurate. the jefferson has famously implied that the clairosophic society are the closest a modern girl could get to going into the woods and slaughtering chickens and drinking each other’s blood to enact witchcraft, like fabled salem witches of old.

the jefferson has also implied certain things about the puffs and their… well, poppy thinks its not too far of a stretch to mention the comparison to a cultish honeybee hive, complete absolute obeisance to their designated queen—highly likely to be francie for the next few years.

“this is different for every society—and for fraternities and sororities in college—but i can generally tell you that it’s not too different from a lot of club meetings. we have an agenda, we have questions and discussion, we do an occasional activity, we make a plan for what we’ll do between this meeting and the next one.”

vague, but poppy can appreciate mentions of agendas and plans. valuable intel. poppy is notoriously good with agendas and plans—she might be able to finagle this into a boon, regardless of which sorority she joins—

“usually, we talk about things going on at chilton, philanthropy events, any tweaks to the bylaws, social events that we’re all planning, voting for some of the more niche aspects of running a sorority… formal meetings are a lot of bureaucracy.”

poppy can do bureaucracy! poppy is great at bureaucracy!

wait.

“and… informal meetings?” poppy says.

“also a bit secret,” lauren says sheepishly. “more like… friend hangouts. don’t stress about it.”

hilarious. as if poppy has experience with informal hangouts. poppy will absolutely be stressing about it.

“you mentioned philanthropy?” poppy prompts, and lauren brightens.

“yes! we vote on a cause each year, and this year—for the past couple years, actually—we’re focusing our efforts on a children’s research hospital.”

poppy must visibly perk up at this, because lauren grins.

“i thought that might be up your alley.”

“what kind of things do you do?” poppy says, practically vibrating. depending on the puffs’ philanthropic efforts, this could absolutely tilt the scales—establishing connections at a hospital this early! poppy had previously planned on beginning to do volunteer work as soon as she was legally old enough to do some work of import at the hospital, but this was huge, this could advance her plans by years—

“a lot of fundraising—i need to pin down what i’m going to bake for a bake sale in two weeks, actually—helping out with their phone bank, some occasional office administration stuff, supporting their fundraising events. some girls—ana does it, i can give her your number if you have questions—help out in the playroom. ana’s there basically every weekend, she’s there probably the most of anyone. some of the girls on the cross-country and track teams are finagling the rest of them to join in the national 5k.”

poppy nods, absorbing this.

“we partner with a lot of their official events, mostly volunteering to do some of the grunt work. actually, wait, let me find a pamphlet for you from the hospital, i know i’ve got it here somewhere…”

lauren begins rummaging around in her backpack, and poppy takes a moment to drink her coffee and absorb this; a man in a cardigan opens a door that poppy had thought for staff only. the barista looks up, smiling for the first time that she’s seen, and passes the man a prepped to-go cup. the man in the cardigan beams, takes it, and uses his other hand to pull the barista in for a quick kiss.

poppy finds herself staring as the barista leans against the counter; they speak in quiet undertones, cautious not to let any of their words float to the rest of the café—poppy thinks she might be the only one watching, though. the locals don’t seem to care, as if this is a common enough occurrence, and the lingering chilton students are either deep in conversation with each other or scrolling on their phones or laptops with their airpods in.

what a town, where these people can kiss and no one even thinks to comment upon it.

poppy wonders if that’s what life is like outside of the mcmaster household. to be free of a world where every little thing is commented upon.

“here you go,” lauren says cheerfully, passing it over. “even if you don’t join the clairs, i hope you look into this. it’s a really great cause.”

“sure,” poppy says automatically, taking it and tucking it carefully into her bag, then, “do you really not care if i join the clairs or not?”

lauren blinks. “how do you mean?”

“like,” poppy says, gesturing vaguely. “this. this wasn’t some recruitment tactic?”

“oh!” lauren says. “i mean—not formally. i just invited you because…”

“because?” poppy prompts, eyes narrowing.

“because i really do think that we need to stick together,” lauren says. “both in terms of being journalism girls, sure, but also because i think women in general should stick together. i do want you in the clairs, but not because of the fact that you’re a mcmaster or i think you’re going to be really successful some day—which you will—but because i like you.”

poppy blinks. “you like me?”

“sure, i like you!” lauren says. “i think you’re really good at journalism and design. i like that you decided you wanted a feature and went after it. i like that you’re teaming up with logan and dee, even though dee’s kind of out there, because you recognize everyone’s talent, instead of only yours, which i think is way too common in a place like chilton. and i think you’re funny.”

poppy absorbs this for a moment. funny is not a word typically used to describe her. like is not a word typically used to describe her. she sets this aside—the words sure i like you! echoing in her mind nonetheless—and progresses.

“do you think i’d be a good clair?”

“i think you’d be a great member of any sorority,” lauren says. “but, yes—i think you’d be a great clair. you’re driven, you’re smart, you’re so focused on your own goals that i don’t think you’d care that any other clairs’ life path is a little unorthodox.”

“is that common?” poppy says, setting aside the errant thought that unorthodox might have been an invitation to pun. poppy does not pun, but enough people at her synagogue do that it feels near-instinctual to recognize the opportunity and let it float away. “unorthodox life paths, i mean.”

“very,” lauren says honestly. “i mean—my indecision aside. i know that a lot of us don’t fit the chilton mold. girls who are religious outside of christianity, girls who aren’t religious at all, girls who don’t want what society sets out for the path of a “good”—” here she uses air quotes, “chilton girl. like—liv is already setting up to be a professional bridesmaid starting in college, and that’s all she’s ever professed a desire to do, professionally speaking. bella’s thinking about going off the grid entirely and living off the land. soph leads ghost tours on the weekends with the intent of landing a rich eccentric to spouse up with. scarlet doesn’t want to go to college at all, she thinks chilton is scamming her parents.“

yes. those are certainly all off the path of approved post-chilton career paths, which mostly seem to split between “corporate,” “lawyer,” “doctor,” “professor,” or “otherwise professionally or academically outstanding so that we may brag upon our alumni.”

“yeah, you’d be a good clair.”

“oh,” poppy says. “that’s… good. but. i mean. do you think i’d… fit in, as a clair?”

“i think that’s the beauty of the clairs,” lauren says thoughtfully. “none of us fit in. but we manage to fit in with each other. if that makes any sense?”

it does, poppy thinks, stirring her drink with her straw, thinking of hattie, thinking of the barista, thinking of a future where she won’t have to bow to someone’s every whim, but one where she is instead offered mentorship and volunteer opportunities to further her future, without ulterior motive.

“it really does.”

⁂

seline: ALERT.

francie: You know how much I hate it when you start a text message with a vague message instead of getting right to the point.

seline: right, sorry.

francie: And learn punctuation.

seline: anyway i stuck around in the middle of nowhere right after the gathering to get some coffee, and i saw mcmaster coming into the café

francie: Poppy McMaster?

seline: she’s that really intense freshman right

francie: WAY too intense.

seline: and loud. and also i think she might be a robot, she never just. STOPS. ykwim

francie: She comes from a long line of us, though.

seline: ugh. i hate nepotism.

francie: Rich of you to say. It makes the world go ‘round.

francie: Anway, I should care about this, beyond McMaster being insanely intense and coming from a long line of Puffs because…?

seline: right! so i stuck around in the middle of nowhere right after the gathering to get some coffee, and i saw mcmaster coming into the café

francie: Get to a point, please.

seline: and she sat with lauren whatever her name is. seline: …and asking her a lot about the clairosophic society.

francie: What?! francie: But her family’s fully puffed!!!

seline: except her cousin.

francie: Who cares about her freaky cousin? A voluntary defector!!! There hasn’t been one in at least ten years, and even then, that was forgiven when she got suspended for troublemaking!!!

seline: maybe i heard her wrong, bc i was listening to that stupid video mr. gardiner keeps saying i should listen to to “improve my understanding of calculus,” but that’s what i think i heard her say.

francie: We absolutely cannot have this.

⁂

“if katy fincher’s mom tries to butt in on coaching the cheer squad one more time, i’m going to scream,” sasha says, her face buried in her arms where they rest on the desk of their mutual english class.

they currently have quiet time to work on their papers, which means everyone is talking in quiet voices and absolutely not working on their papers. most are instead online shopping on their laptops or texting other people on the sly.

“mood, retweet, same,” roman says, sticking a post-it in the latest poetry compendium he’s reading. he thinks logan will like this one, even if it is a bit more avant-garde that logan’s usual tastes.

“like, we get it, you were a cheerleader here fifty years ago or whatever, that doesn’t mean you get to just steamroller over our actual coach,” sasha continues, scowling. “it’s enough that she has somehow managed to nepotize katy into a flyer position, now she wants to choreograph routines to bring them back to how they were? no, thank you.”

“she wants to do what,” roman says, looking up from his poetry book. “since when?”

“i don’t even know, but joanna posner texted me that mrs. fincher has some suggestions for practice tomorrow, apparently.”

“the routines are great the way they are! we’re nearly done with the basketball season already, what’s the point of doing it now? is coach actually going to hear her out?”

sasha looks up just enough to shrug and give roman a look at her excellent cut-crease eyeshadow look today—all silvery sparkles and stark, dramatic gunmetal gray—before dropping her forehead back onto her arms.

“this means she’s probably going to put herkies in it,” sasha whines. “i hate herkies.”

“i also hate herkies,” roman says. it’s true, it’s probably his least-favorite cheer-specific jump, which is something, because he usually loves leaps and jumps. it’s like someone ferociously messed up an attitude leap and decided to just rename it instead of facing up to the fact that they did it wrong.

“if any parent should come in to choreograph a new routine, it’s your mom,” sasha says, rolling so her cheek is resting on her arms now, not her forehead. “your mom rules at teaching routines.”

roman smiles. it’s true. his mom does rule at teaching and also at everything else.

“it was really cool to see her teach and stuff last weekend,” sasha continues. “it makes me wish i actually went to a studio to do ballet instead of trying to teach myself from barbie movies.”

“barbie’s nutcracker and twelve dancing princesses are an integral part of my ballet dancer lore,” roman says, “but yeah, she’s the best. and you did, in fact, miss out on the best dance teacher of all time.”

“not that you’re biased.”

“of course not,” roman agrees, amused. “i’m the least biased in the world.”

the bell rings; there’s a great scraping of chairs and desks as everyone gets up to go to lunch, their teacher calling out reminders on the deadline for the paper maybe two of them were actually working on.

roman tucks his book into his backpack, slings it over his shoulder, and asks, “sit with me?”

“sure,” sasha says, and so they set off for the cafeteria, briefly interrupted by a conversation with brick davis about if either of them know anything about arranging carpool arrangements—they don’t, but roman gives brick logan’s phone number because he probably will know—before they find a decent table away from the herd of people who probably sprinted here to get to the microwaves first.

elliott finds them all not long after that, sitting down beside sasha.

“hi,” they say, before peeking curiously at the contents of sasha’s lunchbox. “that looks really good.”

“thanks!” sasha says brightly, already drizzling tzatziki over the innards of her wrap. “i’d heat it up if the lines weren’t so bad today, but souvlaki’s okay cold. even if might be blasphemous to my ancestors, whatever, they never had to deal with microwave lines.”

elliott sighs a little, glumly removing a ziplock bag with what looks like a very sad sandwich inside. they examine it for a minute.

“erm,” roman says, briefly glancing up from his chicken caesar salad. “what is that?”

“i… am not really sure,” elliott says. they open it, sniff a little, and hastily reseal it, but not before the scent of heavy mayonnaise reaches roman. “and i am not entirely sure i trust that this is vegetarian, so. what’s on the hot lunch menu today?”

“umm, i think it’s spaghetti? but don’t quote me on that.” sasha adds hastily.

“sold,” elliott says immediately, scooping up their sad, mayo-infused sandwich to dump in the nearest trash can. “be right back.”

sasha, likely reveling in the fact that one of her dad’s favorite hobbies is remaking and gently tweaking family recipes until they match his elusive childhood memories of summers spent in katerini, looks on sympathetically as elliott shuffles their way in line.

“i’d bring them a spare lunch if they ever asked,” she says with a shake of her head. “i think this is the third time in two weeks that elliott’s had to buy a hot lunch because they weren’t sure if their mom remembered to pack something vegetarian.”

“ditto,” roman says, unsuccessfully attempting to spear a crouton. “my mom’s pretty good about meal prep, and even then, i live, like, right next door to virgil. he’d pack them a lunch without a doubt.”

“it’s like they don’t know they’ve got prime food access just by virtue of us,” sasha says.

“we should hint that to them. delicately.”

“for sure,” sasha agrees. “if it’s not mayo, it’s ham. if it’s not ham, it’s, like, really sad pb&js that are half-smushed inside a ziploc bag.”

“you’d think it would get better once chad graduated,” he says, then, “right, right, you’re new. chad is elliott’s older brother.”

“mm,” sasha says, nose wrinkling. “is he, like, a nice chad, or—”

“no. quintessential chad. whatever you’re picturing, you’ve probably got it.”

sasha’s nose wrinkles further, and she and roman distract themselves with eating as much of their lunches as they can until elliott comes back.

lunch breaks aren’t exactly leisurely at sideshire high. ergo, the sprint to form lines at the microwave; the faster it’s warm, the faster you can eat, the faster you can get to talking to your friends, or visiting your favorite teacher, or stopping by your locker, or what have you.

roman’s pretty sure they aren’t leisurely at chilton, either, but roman bets the students there are a bit less social and a bit more studious with their spare time during lunch breaks.

after a few minutes, elliott drops down at their table and they, too, promptly begin inhaling their spaghetti with marinara sauce and garlic bread on the side.

“we ran into brick earlier, do you know anything about carpooling to the debutante ball?” sasha asks elliott.

they shake their head and make noise of denial.

“that’s a good idea, though,” they mumble.

“yeah, someone should get on that,” sasha says, then, “wait, duh, i know a quick way to get an answer on this.”

she pulls out her phone and sends a text; roman sees his phone screen light up from where he has it stashed in a backpack pocket, in the sideshire debutantes group chat.

“oh, obviously,” roman says. “why didn’t i think of that?”

“just say your brain’s fried from whatever amount of planning happened this weekend, we’d forgive you,” sasha advises. “it was a really big production, does your mom do that kind of thing a lot?”

“well, she hosts a lot of town meetings,” roman muses. “and, i mean, we teach a lot of classes, but—nothing like that.”

“no, this is a pretty unique situation,” elliott says between bites. “your mom’s still really scary, by the way, it did not get better just because i took a class with her like you said it would.”

“i know, isn’t she the best?” roman beams.

elliott makes a nervous mmmmm sound as sasha says “yes absolutely she is.”

“like, hey, look,” roman says, displaying his salad. “i said i was craving caesar, and look! caesar. with plenty to spare, if anyone ever asked me to bring any spare food to anywhere for any reason, plus, like, really close access to the best restaurant in town.”

“subtle,” sasha mouths at him, and roman just shrugs.

hey, he can be a lot of things—dramatic, ostentatious, confident—and none of those are exactly synonyms for subtle.

“yeah, speaking of virgil,” elliott says, digging out their phone. “look at my suit! dress? suit-dress?”

“swess,” sasha says, leaning over to peer at elliott’s phone screen.

“druit,” roman says, doing the same.

it looks, frankly, really cool; half perfect tux, half old-fashioned, regency-esque white dress.

“elliott, that’s gonna look so good,” sasha gushes happily.

roman says, delighted, “wow, elliott, it turned out great, i can’t wait to see it in person!”

“thanks,” elliott says, ducking their head. “i’m, um, i’m really happy with it, actually. i was really nervous.”

“what are you gonna do with shoes and stuff?” sasha says curiously. “oh, i could totally help you do a half-and-half look, just say the word!”

“would you really?” elliott says, looking surprised. “thanks, sasha, that would be really—really great, actually. i mostly just,” and gestures to their dark eyeshadow. “y’know. not exactly intricate stuff.”

sasha squeals happily, clapping her hands.

“i love having models to do makeup on!” she says. “my sisters are getting so tired of me bursting into their rooms when they’re trying to do homework, let me tell you. ooh, ellie, this is gonna be great! we should probably carpool then, right, if i’m your makeup artist?”

“sure!” elliott says. “we can text other people to see if there’s room in the car, or if you’ve got yours, or—”

“totally,” sasha says. “sorry, can i just take a picture of your face, real quick? i want to make sure i have a reference for foundation matching.”

“um, sure?” elliott says, and they try their best to offer a neutral expression to the camera.

quickly afterward, not even leaning over to peek at the picture sasha got, elliott turns to roman. “how about you? i don’t think i’ve seen your dress.”

roman grins. “it’s a surprise, darlings.”

“aw, not even one hint?” sasha teases.

roman, faux-thoughtfully, taps his finger against his chin.

“well,” he says with a smile at elliott, “you won’t be the only one doing an avant-garde makeup look, how about that?”

“oh, nice,” elliott says. “i mean—not that you won’t do a great job, sasha, it’s just also nice to know i won’t be the only one.”

“i don’t think you were ever going to be the only one,” sasha says cheerfully. “it’s a ton of people smashing gender norms, interesting fashion and makeup kind of goes hand-in-hand with all of that.”

“interesting fashion seems like a theme with those chilton kids for sure,” elliott says. “i mean, wasn’t that friend of logan’s wearing a cape?”

roman scowls, more out of instinct than anything.

“uh-oh,” sasha says. “we don’t like logan’s friend? what’s their name?”

“dee,” roman grumbles, “and no, we do not like him. he’s competing with logan too hard for valedictorian, which should be logan’s in any sane world, he lied to me for the sake of his own amusement, he pokes his nose in everyone’s business, he—”

“okay, we don’t like him,” sasha says, cutting him off. “got it.”

elliott makes another mm noise.

“what?” roman says, lowering his fork.

elliott jerks their shoulders up and down in a shrug.

“no, really, what?”

“wellll,” elliott says, drawing out the word, dragging their fork through the pasta. “does he… really suck?”

“yes, he sucks,” roman says fervently. “he, for sure, really, absolutely sucks.”

“do i detect jealousy?” sasha says, a hint of intrigue on her voice.

“you absolutely do not,” roman says fervently. “no. no way. i am not jealous of that—that jason vorhees wannabe!”

elliott’s head tilts, and their mouth pulls to one side.

“what was that face?” roman says. “i’m not!”

“weeeeellllll,” elliott says in a high-pitched voice.

“oh, go on, elliott, you know i’m new,” sasha urges. “you know all this history, i’m at a disadvantage.”

elliott shrugs, lifting a noodle on their fork, letting it drop back down into the tray. “i mean, you and logan have practically been together since kindergarten.”

“not true,” roman mutters petulantly. “if we had been together that long, i could have saved myself a lot of longing staring and yearning angst throughout the years.”

“not necessarily romantically,” elliott adds to sasha, as if roman isn’t even there. “just, like. it was always roman-and-logan, logan-and-roman, you know?”

they say it very quickly, like they’re used to saying their names as all one word; romanandlogan, loganandroman. roman fights the urge to be sappy about that.

“if one was there, the other wasn’t far behind. they’ve always been,” elliott says, and twines their fingers together, using the gesture to finish their sentence.

“ohhh,” sasha says, in a great gusting sigh of realization. “i see. logan moved, met this guy, and now this is a whole another person might be becoming important to the person who’s important to me thing.”

“it is not that thing, okay, first of all,” roman says, “he’s evil.”

“evil?!” sasha says, on the edge of a laugh. “he’s a prep wearing a cape, roman, i don’t know if it’s that serious.”

“it is that serious,” roman says vehemently, “he manipulated someone into punching logan, so—!”

“wait, what?” elliott says, and so roman has to catch them all up on the dastardy of dee slange.

this takes the rest of lunch break; they split off for their respective lockers and afternoon classes, roman slightly vindicated by the looks on their faces as they realize that dee slange is heinous.

“but if he did all that—” sasha begins, then breaks it off, her brow furrowing.

“what?” roman says, distracted by the sound of their class bell, putting his phone back into the perfectly sized pocket of his backpack.

elliott and sasha exchange another look.

“well,” sasha says. “i guess i don’t know him as well as either of you do, but… logan seems like a really smart guy. if dee really did all of that—then why is logan bothering to hang out with him?”

roman sets his jaw, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

“that’s what i can’t figure out, either,” roman says, and he goes on his way to his next class before either of them can start brainstorming and come up answers that make dee even more abominable than he already is..

or, even worse—

answers that will make roman start to consider dee as logan’s misunderstood confidante.

⁂

“uh-huh. well, that’s good, at least.”

patton makes eye contact with virgil and nods as virgil speaks into the landline; virgil nods back with a little distracted smile on his face as he continues listening intently on the phone. patton contents himself with attempting to guess who’s on the phone based on the half of the conversation he’s walked into the middle of.

“yeah, it’s all going pretty well, we had a big get-together with a lot of the kids so they all know how it’s gonna go down… probably, yeah, i’m up to my armpits in tulle, but i think i’ve gotten all the last of the last-minute folks in, so i can at least narrow it down…”

okay, someone who is interested in how the debutante ball is going, which means not someone with a strict business relationship based mostly on virgil ordering ingredients and supplies.

“...bit longer, but shouldn’t be much. you know how things get with the seasons, i’ve got a bit more downtime here and there…”

hm. virgil’s tone makes it almost like he’s talking to his mom, which would fit, except virgil’s probably talked to meredith recently enough that she’d know about the timeline, and someone else who knows about how restaurant levels vary. which leaves…

“okay. yeah, see you soon… i will, i will, he’d probably like that… thanks. bye.”

virgil hangs up the landline; if there’s one thing about landlines patton misses, it’s probably that sense of concrete finality that comes from hanging up a phone. smartphones just mean pressing a screen. no theatricality of clicking buttons, no twirling the line around a finger.

lot more convenient to carry, though. and little smartphone games! patton loves little smartphone games.

“bud or maisie?” patton asks, as virgil, smiling, leans forward, elbows on the counter. “i’m guessing maisie.”

“maisie.”

“ha! i got it!” patton crows, before leaning forward; virgil, who he is maybe in the midst of accidentally pavlov’ing, leans the rest of the way to give patton a little greeting kiss.

“maisie wants me to bring my handsome young man back over pretty soon,” virgil says.

patton grins. he likes bud and maisie quite a bit; he’s pretty pleased that they like him back.

“she and bud say hello.”

“well, i say hello back,” patton declares, despite the fact that virgil would probably have to call them back to pass on this news. it’s in the spirit of the thing.

“how was work?”

“oh, same old, same old,” patton says vaguely, “except i think one of the kid guests is trying to smuggle one of our squirrels into the hotel so they can smuggle it back home in their luggage.”

virgil considers this. “i don’t know what to do with that.”

“yeah, me either,” patton agrees. “logan never really got into the let’s adopt this animal phase beyond, like, frogs.”

“ah, i remember reptile phase,” virgil says. “made it a lot easier that you lived by their natural habitat, though. i don’t think this girl can do that unless she convinces her parents to move here.”

“i don’t blame her, though. we’ve got a pretty good squirrel population. very fuzzy, very fat, very prone to posing for pictures.”

“true,” virgil says. “we have very handsome squirrels here. good representatives to stick on a wildlife brochure. i don’t know how taylor is behind this, but i think taylor is behind this.”

“you and logan think taylor’s behind everything.”

“he is, but continue.”

“well—i don’t think tipping off the parents that their child is planning to abduct the local wildlife is really in my job description, considering she’s been pretty vocal about our squirrels, but i told the landscapers to keep an eye out for it.”

“probably for the best,” virgil agrees.

“speaking of photogenic,” patton says, and he waggles his eyebrows. “do you have your fancy black tail outfit all sorted out?”

virgil groans—half joke, half real disdain for the stuffy uncomfortableness of it all—and rests his elbows on the counter, leaning forward. “do i have to?”

“probably not,” patton says, practical, “considering all the kids are flouting dress codes anyway.”

virgil freezes.

patton grins. “did i just now bring that to your attention?” this strikes patton as particularly ironic, considering virgil’s outfit today; a dark, silky purple button-down tucked into a breezy black maxi skirt, his eyes rimmed with black and his lips painted with burgundy to match.

virgil drops his forehead onto his arms, whining “i could have just not bought a fancy suit?!” into the counter.

“aw, poor virgil,” patton says, running his fingers through his impressively silky hair, then, “...how fancy?”

“very!” virgil grumbles, not moving. “i bought a tailored coat with and without tails because i couldn’t remember which i needed, patton! i have two fancy suit coats i don’t need now!”

“how many fancy suit coats did you have before?” patton says, curious; he thinks he’s only ever seen virgil in suits at weddings, exclusively. photographs of virgil’s siblings’ weddings—patton only ever attended one of the three, though wyatt’s triad is rapidly approaching common law marriage length of relationship had their home state allowed such—and weddings of the general townsfolk, who frequently invite him to fancy events like that since virgil’s the face and name of a town staple and all.

“one!” virgil wails. “i’ve tripled my fancy suit coat collection! how often am i going to be wearing fancy suits?!”

“well—”

“the dry cleaning is a nightmare, patton. i never remember to drop things off at dry cleaning, and then i never remember to pick them up.”

“that i know,” patton says, amused, carding his fingers this way and that through virgil’s hair. “i’m surprised you only had one suit.”

“you have to do business-y things more than me,” virgil says.

“that’s true,” patton says. in addition to weddings—the inn being a popular venue, and patton also being part of a town staple—patton also has much more frequent meetings, bank conferences, the occasional conference for inn owners that maria usually enthuses about, and general tasks that he has to do for his business degree (so close to finishing! patton really does not enjoy studying macro or microeconomics!)

virgil, on the other hand, usually only has bank meetings on the roster. suits in a diner kitchen kind of seemed like a nightmare waiting to happen.

“besides, you’ve got some fancy events coming up other than this, it’ll be nice to have spares,” patton points out—the boys’ graduation within the next couple of years, a fancy dinner or party that patton’s certain his parents will take them both to at one point or another, not to mention the Big Deal Life Events of virgil’s many nieces and nephews.

just off the top of his head, patton’s pretty sure both wes and mikey are approaching graduation from middle school, and little baby red has had murmurs of a formal christening (primarily moira’s side of the family; silas has never struck patton as particularly religious).

patton mentions this, and virgil only sighs.

“are we done sulking?” patton says, a little amused. “can i see that handsome face, partner of mine?”

“dunno,” virgil mumbles into his arms. “the scratching feels really nice. i could stay here all day.”

patton laughs, scratches a little firmer for emphasis, and says, “we could at least take this to a couch so that you can nod off while i’m doing this, i know you’ve been staying up late with dress alterations lately.”

virgil lets out a sigh of longing, which makes patton giggle, but virgil stands upright.

“there he is,” patton coos, and virgil ducks his head—not quite blushing, but certainly smiling in that shy, bashful way patton loves.

“do you have a suit?”

“oh, my mom referred me to a tailor way back when we first got the dress,” patton says with a little laugh. “i just have to pick it up.”

“probably should have guessed that,” virgil says. “of course your mom would have a tailor on speed dial.”

a tailor. with the way that his mother has her exacting specifications for anything and everything, but especially shopping and appearances in general, coupled with her tendency to immediately fire anyone who displeases her? virgil’s adorable.

“at least i only had to get the cummerbund and coat,” patton reasons, and virgil lets out a great big gust of air.

“can we revisit that whole i lay down on the couch while you scratch through my hair idea?” virgil says. “i’ll bring dinner and the hair. you’ve got couch and the hands.”

“well, how could anyone refuse that offer? it’s a date.” patton beams, and virgil leans over, pressing an imprint of burgundy lipstick into patton’s lips.

patton refuses to wipe it off.

⁂

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Design edits for debutante spread

I appreciate your very prompt response in getting your designs on the flashdrive and down to the journalism lab! I’ve have a few minor edits notated on the PDF attached—mostly to switch from HEX to RGB color codes and adjustments to the margin width to best fit printing standards.

Very well done on the infographic design work—especially for a freshman! I think you may be able to progress to a more advanced course under my tutelage in your sophomore year, considering I anticipate you won’t need much help figuring out Adobe programs. I might need to ask you for pointers!

Best,

Mel Kramschissel, PhD.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Story edits for debutante spread

I’ve attached the story edits from myself and James for your convenience after our meeting earlier today. Very compelling throughline—I would like the transcripts of your interviews as soon as you can get them to me, so that we can work on ensuring it’s fact- and quality-checked before it goes to print. I appreciate your work—I’m unsure if your future goals involve journalism, but I think you have a very bright future in storycraft regardless, no matter which form it takes.

Best,

Mel Kramschissel, PhD.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Column edits for debutante spread

From: [email protected]

I’ve attached the column edits from myself and James for your convenience after our meeting earlier today. They’re mostly line edits, though I wonder if you can fit in a graph about your or Dee’s personal connections to this project, to give the story a personalized “human” element. I appreciate the citation section of the report—very thorough!—and, barring the transcript, can tell you that your work’s fact- and quality-checking is about finished. Is this how things are done at the Courant? I must commend whichever editor has instilled this habit within you, as it’s saved a great deal of time.

Lauren’s told me some about the things she’s seen as she’s been photographer of the project, and her review of the way yourself and Dee work together has been glowing. I’ll admit I was a little hesitant about the prospect of the pair of you teaming up, given the debacle last semester, but I’m pleased to see such talented minds find common ground.

I hope to see more works that you accomplish together, in whatever capacity (though I certainly would appreciate if they were for the Franklin!)

Best,

Mel Kramschissel, PhD.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Subject: Re: Debutante Spread

Hi all!

Attached is a rough draft of Poppy’s design layout with the pictures Kram and I picked included. Comments and notes appreciated. I wanted to thank you three again for having me tag along—really fun photography opportunity AND a really interesting story for the paper! Definitely sign me up if you’ve got any more ideas.

—Lauren

To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Subject: Potential meeting for spread tweaks

I think all the individual aspects of what the spread is so far are very promising. Would the four of you be free to meet before or after school in the coming week so that we can coordinate on reviewing final edits and the plan to cover the event itself?

Please let me know what works best on timing. Color me impressed by what you all have put together so far! The Franklin has a very bright future ahead of it with all of you taking turns manning the helm.

Best,

Mel Kramschissel, PhD.

⁂

the day starts off simply enough: wake up, brush his teeth and comb his hair, get dressed, go to the diner with dad and virgil, get ahead on some of his daily readings on the bus, walk to his locker to swap out some of his heavy textbooks to the other, then swing by mel’s desk to see if there’s anything else needed for their spread.

at least, he intends to swing by mel’s desk.

instead, logan enters the lab hallway to chaos.

it does not seem to be an exaggeration to state such a thing. francie, of puff fame, nearly knocks him off the stairs at the speed at which she’s storming past him; as he’s rounding the corner on the landing, someone is hastily shoving a copy of the jefferson into his chest then continuing their run to the nearest person with an empty hand; as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, hattie has an arm around summer, also of puff fame, murmuring to her in soft, comforting tones as she cries loudly into hattie’s shoulder.

in the midst of the lab hallway that logan was originally intending to traverse to swing by mel’s desk. there is a crowd the likes of which logan only sees at pep rallies or mandatory assemblies, many of them clutching matching copies of the jefferson, many of them elbowing each other and craning their necks to try and get a look at what lies within the great crush of people.

logan, despite his better judgment, cannot resist his own curiosity; he does not keep walking and ignoring it all. instead, he lingers, because he’s fairly certain nothing will get done in the journalism lab; the crowd’s chatter is slightly subdued, but that is because, logan thinks, in the middle of it all, there is a great deal of yelling.

“—oh, now he’s a CAVEMAN! What were you planning to do, knock me on the back of a head with a club then drag me back to your porsche—?!”

“—BROKEN UP, do you hear me—?!”

“NEVER—in all my years as headmaster—!”

logan blinks, startled, then shuffles vaguely, integrating himself into the great cloud of his navy-plaid-and-gray clad peers, so he can get some impression of what’s going on, then—

“shame,” janus says in a casual, flat tone, appearing suddenly at logan’s side as though summoned by logan’s sheer confusion. logan refuses to jump or startle.

“what is—?”

but then, as the trio shuffles forward, a parting in the crowd, and—

there’s a car.

there’s a car. blue. a honda accord, if he isn’t mistaken. sensible. reliable.

one he’s usually accustomed to seeing in the parking lot, not in the middle of the lab hallway.

in the basement of the school. granted, logan doesn’t know much about cars, but he is 100% certain that the doorways are not wide enough to allow this, let alone the presence of stairs.

logan turns to janus. “how—?”

“why do you assume i know?” janus scoffs, adjusting his cape. logan still isn’t certain how he isn’t getting daily uniform infringements; logan finds himself touching the knot of his own tie, just to ensure he’s in dress code.

“you’ve been here longer than i have, i just got here,” logan points out. “wait—doesn’t the jefferson usually publish on mondays…?”

“both true,” janus says, then, “shh, charleston might go full thermobaric. he’s been due to blow his top for ages.”

logan barely even has time to mentally recall the meaning of thermobaric—containing a charge of fuel designed to ignite and combine with oxygen present in the atmosphere to produce a prolonged explosion—before charleston resumes his rant.

“—that is IT, that’s IT! I’VE HAD IT! RIGHT TO MY OFFICE, YOU THREE, AND YOU’D BETTER PRAY THAT YOUR PARENTS ARRIVE WITH SUFFICIENT EXPLANATIONS TO KEEP YOU FROM BEING EXPELLED!”

a gasp doesn’t quite suffuse its way through the crowd, but certainly a few of the more excitable members of the student population do, and—

“OUT OF MY WAY!”

a column of students shuffles awkwardly to part the navy sea, lest they get bowled over by the headmaster (and likely given a detention for it, given the foul mood he’s in), and logan beholds

ah. unsurprising.

of course it’s tristan, duncan, and bowman at the scene of the crime.

“and that’s military school for dugray,” janus murmurs into his ear. not quietly enough; tristan’s eyes dart right to janus, glaring, clearly about to say something before charleston’s “MOVE!” gets him into motion.

“military school?” logan repeats.

“oh, sure,” janus says. “ever since the three of them got caught breaking into a locked safe of bowman senior’s, mr. dugray’s been dying for any excuse. i guess he wanted to go out with a bang.”

janus’ comment is caught by the crowd, but not by many. logan isn’t unique, it seems, for turning to the nearest familiar face to discuss the whole affair. logan hears words like cheater and plagiarism and the jefferson said flying around like a murmuration of starlings, the allegations shifting and shape-changing as easily as any flock.

logan is almost certain that, with the proliferation of gossip, the involvement of the jefferson, and the sheer number of witnesses that the number of new rumors that will crop up over the course of the school week will be dizzying in both number and any lack of logic.

mel clears her throat, loudly, from where she’s located at the end of the hallway.

“all right, everyone, show’s over!” she declares. “get to your first period, the bell’s going to ring in five minutes.”

the crowd, very slowly, begins to disperse, breaking off into duos and trios, all of them with their heads bent together, all of them talking very intently.

well-timed, logan supposes, for this meltdown to happen on the same day that the national honors society meets before school; well-timed for charleston to catch word right as the flood of early birds (most of the chilton population) were sure to hear the fallout and come along to see the fuss themselves; well-timed that this all imploded the day that tristan and his posse decided to do something stupid.

yes, logan thinks, his eyes drifting to where janus is standing, staring, at the crying girl and the one comforting her. hattie glances up from where she’s smoothing back summer’s hair, as if feeling janus’ stare.

it’s all very well-timed indeed.

hattie and janus lock eyes.

for a moment, just a moment, but logan can’t help but think—

perhaps, there’s something more than a last-minute debutante escort assignment there.

and then hattie is earnestly making a case to mel, asking for a late pass so she can escort summer to the nurse—”she can’t pay attention to class in this condition, doctor kramschissel, look at her—” and the moment almost fades.

almost.

even as he awkwardly tells mel that he’ll come back at study hall, rushes to his locker, stuffing his copy of the jefferson inside for later perusal, and makes it to his desk just in the nick of time, logan can’t quite shake the feeling that there was a bit more happening than an extremely ostentatious prank carried out with no thought to consequences.

(deep into the witching hour, janus drums his fingers idly against his desk, eyes roving over the password-protected folder hidden in the depths of his laptop, scrolling through a list of transgressions with a deeply bored expression on his face, drag-and-dropping attachments. he examines the note again, written in hattie’s elegant, sloping script.)

(“way past time i did this,” janus mutters, and resumes narrowing down his list of infractions to the most infuriating offenders, dropping each into folders labeled for summer, beth, jessica, kate, claire, kathy, mary, mr. dugray, mr. charleston, mrs. fischer, olivia who is “rumored” to be the current editor of the jefferson, and, just for the hell of it, tristan’s grandfather’s business email, scheduling them all to send should his plan a fail.)

(it does not fail. it’s embarrassingly easy to plant plots into bowman and duncan’s thick skulls.)

(janus sends a number of them from various burner accounts anyway, aided by a world-class vpn and a lack of presence in the hallways at school as he slips forgeries into their lockers, knowing that either bowman or duncan would be eager to claim credit for chaos.)

⁂

hattie: Splashy.

Dee: i’m sure i don’t know what you mean.

hattie: I guess I don’t either. hattie: It’s good that Summer found out in cold, hard proof. hattie: Even if she maybe hasn’t been iron-clad in monogamy either.

dee: scandal!

hattie: Maybe. hattie: Old news now, anyway. hattie: You might tell your new freshie friend that she’s about to have a redhead hot on her tail.

dee: oh?

hattie: Tradition. You know how it gets.

dee: that i do.

hattie: Do you have a ride to the ball? Mother’s insisting I get there early to stake out the best spot in the dressing room.

dee: yes, that’s handled. do they know?

hattie: My parents? They know some. I already had a formal debut last year, I think they’re just pleased I’m not pulling a Libby Dotie.

dee: debut number five this year, isn’t it?

hattie: Poor thing went right after Pukey last time. Shame that Eileen couldn’t hold her booze.

dee: a real shame indeed. midori sour is a real choice for her first blackout.

hattie: Her chances of living that down are absolutely nonexistent.

dee: you can say that again

hattie: Any chance you’ll send me some of that interesting info that didn’t make the cut for some fun reading right before the escorting…? Since we’re talking about nonexistent.

dee: i’m sure i don’t know what you’re implying about nonexistence dee: how IS dear “beau” anyway?

hattie: See you thereeee

⁂

“oh, wow!”

“i guess they paid a mechanic to do it,” logan says, “which makes a great deal of sense—none of them strike me as the sort to gain any sort of practical knowledge.”

“yeah, i’d bet,” patton says, then, shaking his head, “wow. never in all my days at chilton did someone pull a prank that elaborate. so—did it ever come out what the punishment is?!”

“tristan’s dad pulled him out of school and put him into military school, effective immediately.”

“wow.”

“—i think duncan and bowman got away with suspension, which makes sense. they’re not exactly mastermind sorts. if you passed by charleston’s office at any point that morning, though, you could definitely hear a lot of parental yelling, so i’m sure that it’ll be an extended punishment. maybe another entry for military school—apparently the three of them already broke into a safe of mr. bowman’s, so he was very loudly angry.”

“gosh, i couldn’t imagine,” patton tsks, shaking his head. he glances to make sure no one is waiting on them at this stop sign—they aren’t—and reaches over to squeeze logan’s arm. “have i told you how lucky i am to have you as a kid lately?”

“yes,” logan mutters.

“well, i am,” patton says, pressing on the gas pedal and trundling along. “never has the thought of military school ever had to cross my mind. at least i know that whenever you get up to trouble, it’s good trouble that i can be proud of, like this deal with helping out dee—”

“dad,” logan complains, looking quietly, shyly pleased nonetheless.

“oh, wait!” patton realizes, half-turning to look at him. “all three of them were in the debutante deal, are they—?”

“all kicked out,” logan says firmly. “if not by the society, then probably by their parents, and definitely by dee and i. we’re hunting for last-minute debutantes for some of the escorts—we’re going to have to see how that goes, or maybe just scrap their involvement.”

“it’s a shame that three of the girls won’t be able to join in because their classmates were knuckleheads,” patton says, then, quickly, “don’t tell anyone i called them that.”

“knuckleheads?” logan says, arching an eyebrow. “i think we’re safe from any scandal there. there are several demonstrably worse things you could have said—they’d know, they probably got a lot of them screamed at them from a combination of parents, teachers, and girls tristan has apparently wronged.”

“still,” patton says, as he pulls into the driveway of the elder sanders’ manor. “gosh. poor mr. mccaffey.”

“he’s taken next week for vacation, dee says.”

“he deserves to—his car just got stolen, practically!—grandma might ask you about it, she’s bridge buddies with bitty charleston.”

“i’m sure it was the cause of a great deal of conversation,” logan agrees, unbuckling his seatbelt. “it certainly has been for the student body.”

“a car,” patton repeats. “how long did it take them to, y’know—?”

patton mimes unscrewing a bolt in the air.

“parts of it are still there.”

patton stifles his laughter as they approach the front door and knock.

the first words out of his mother’s mouth are “you simply must tell me this business about the car, logan!”

“told you,” patton says in an undertone, then, “hi, mom, it’s great to see you too!”

“oh, hush,” emily says dismissively, stepping aside and waving them in. “you’ve had three days to hear all the sordid details secondhand.”

“firsthand,” logan says quietly.

“what was that?” emily says, already leading them to the drink cart.

“firsthand,” logan says, slightly louder. “i missed the beginning of it, but i was there.”

“oh, excellent,” emily says gleefully, then, “richard, put down the paper, logan’s here and he saw the car!”

“what car?” richard says mildly, folding down a corner of the paper, then, “ah, logan, patton! wonderful to see you, won’t you sit?”

“hi, dad,” patton says, settling onto his usual spot on the couch. “how was frankfurt? any sightseeing?”

“i stayed in a conference room a mile from the airport the whole time,” richard says ruefully. “i could have been in new york or shanghai, and i wouldn't have known the difference.”

“wine, soda,” emily says, pushing a glass into patton’s hands (“oh!”) and then logan’s with a sort of fervor typically reserved for new collections from her favorite fashion designers, rushing to sit at her typical place and eagerly smoothing her skirt over her knees.

she leans forward, eyes bright with gossip she could use to lord over fellow chilton grandmothers. “now, logan, tell me everything, bitty was being quite coy with the details.”

“what details?” richard says, and emily scoffs.

“oh, richard, i told you this earlier! the situation with bertram’s boy—?”

“oh—a transfer to military school in north carolina, wasn’t it?” richard says with a general air of puzzlement.

“men,” emily tuts. “none of you remember the most pressing details. that trait’s certainly skipped a couple generations for our resident journalist—from the beginning now, logan, if you please.”

logan’s straightened up slightly at the mention of our resident journalist, and he clears his throat.

“i missed the beginning, of course,” he says, “though i’d imagine everyone except for bowman, duncan, tristan, and the mechanic they’d hired did too, considering they did most of it under the cover of night…”

even if patton didn’t have the general sense of this logan’s entire life since he’d learn to read and write, he reflects, it’s always wonderful to receive a reminder that logan was, first and foremost, a gifted storyteller, and two, that he was wholeheartedly chasing after a career that he loved—and three, that those things overlapped.

patton had gotten the general rundown over the past couple days, it was true, but it was one thing to hear the ebb and flow of various reports (procured primarily from dee, who had quite an ear for that kind of thing, it seemed) and another to hear it as one smooth, cohesive narrative with a rapt audience.

though patton and his parents have, obviously, had some difficulties, he can never find fault with how much they adore and treasure logan. this is all the more apparent in how they handle listening to logan’s tale: they gasp in all the right places; they come in with “no!”s and “well, i never!” at all the points that call for it; richard even digs for a pen and paper so he can jot down questions he has as logan talks, ticking them off as logan continues the story.

it carries them all the way through the salad course, logan seeming to enjoy his enthralled audience, painstakingly accurate, citing sources where he can, and even dipping into what is, perhaps, a real-life journalistic no-no but something patton has seen in countless tv shows and movies: “now, this is off the record, of course, and unconfirmed at that, but dee heard…”

this also means that some of the details that logan had either glazed over or patton must have missed take place in a new sort of limelight; the car, the breakups, the expulsion, all of it painted in lurid, scandalous detail (much to the delight of his mother who will, patton knows, be gossiping about this with her bridge group next week.)

and—though patton’s pretty sure most chilton parents aren’t supposed to know about its existence unless they, like him, are alums—logan doesn’t mention the coincidental social explosion ignited by the special edition of the jefferson’s publication to his grandparents, but he had mentioned it to patton.

coincidentally, all of this on the same day.

“wow,” patton says, casual, as he stabs at the endives with a fork. “seems like a pretty big blowout to happen all on coincidence, huh?”

logan glances up at him. patton twists his mouth to one side: you don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you? he tries to impart.

“no one knows for sure,” logan says, noncommittal in tone, but meeting patton’s eyes.

“seems like those boys weren’t very careful with not getting caught,” patton says, a lift of the shoulder, an even more significant look: unless someone tipped the scales against them?

“it seems like it, but. no one knows for sure,” logan repeats, with a slight twitch of his eyebrow that reads, to patton, as but i sure have my suspicions.

“huh,” patton says lightly, arching his eyebrows at logan in a way that he hopes imparts i certainly have some guesses too.

“regardless,” logan says swiftly, “rest assured, grandma, that if the dar doesn’t have them taken out of the debutante ball for their behavior, the rest of us will.”

“as you should,” his grandmother says with a firm nod in logan’s direction. “no room for hooliganism in the dar.”

patton hides a laugh as a cough into his napkin.

“the dar?” richard says mildly. “logan, what’s all this about the debutante ball? are you escorting a young lady?”

patton swivels to look at emily.

“oh, goodness, i did forget to tell you in all the excitement,” emily says. “richard, logan and dee slange have taken it upon themselves to do a demonstration at the debutante ball this year.”

“a young lady is escorting me,” logan clarifies, then, glancing between his grandparents, “i don’t suppose you know the mcmasters? their daughter poppy is my escort.”

“poppy, poppy…” richard says, frowning.

“coppelia,” logan elaborates.

“is it really?” emily says, blinking. “that’s… unique.”

“you see why she goes by poppy,” logan says. “she’s a freshman this year.”

“oh, yes,” emily says. “we certainly know the mcmasters. richard, you remember…”

“oh?” he says, then eyes widening, “oh. yes, i remember the mcmasters. their daughter is… ah…”

he looks to emily for help.

“poppy is very driven,” logan says diplomatically. “she’s already gunning for an editorial position at the paper. we’re all doing a feature spread in the franklin together for the event, as a matter of fact—myself, dee, and poppy, i mean, along with the help of a junior.”

“are you really!” emily says.

“dr. kramschissel said the franklin has a very bright future ahead of it with the three of them manning the helm,” patton says proudly, then, leaning forward, “you know, she’s implied that logan’s first in line for editor in chief senior year.”

“dad,” logan complains, a little smile on the face nonetheless.

“well, of course he is!” emily declares. “a very fine show of initiative. she’d be a fool not to pick you, given your long history. you probably have the most experience in a newsroom of anyone your age who’s gone through the chilton journalism system.”

“you’ll make sure we get a copy or two of that edition,” richard says firmly.

“of course,” logan says, smiling. “we put in final edits just today—i’ll bring it next week.”

“a demonstration, you said?” richard says.

“oh, sure,” logan says, in a very casual tone. “grandma’s very generously given me what was to be dad’s debutante dress. a great deal of us boys are going to be debuted into society.”

richard puts his fork down. patton waits with bated breath.

“debuted?”

“yes,” logan says.

“how many of you?” richard says.

“current count—well, it was 46 before the car debacle, but it might be 43 now. or 40, depending.”

“40 young men in fluffy white dresses are to descend on the dar?”

“well,” logan says, frankly, “about twenty young men. there are some nonbinary people too. and roughly the other half of them are girls in suits.”

richard stares. and stares.

logan tilts up his chin.

and then richard breaks into chuckles.

“a hostile takeover of the debutante!” he hoots. “oh, i wondered if a crop of mischief would pop up in you, young man! some of my fondest memories of my time at yale are banding together with my friends to cause some trouble. well, that and performing with the whiffenpoofs, of course. these things make your high school and collegiate experience, you know.”

“they do?” logan says blankly.

“you’re young and full of energy!” richard exclaims. “this is your time—it certainly was for me. every day was at yale an adventure, no challenge was too great. we wanted to change the world. i have some experience with clothes-based protest too, you know.”

patton’s never heard about this. “you have?”

“certainly,” richard says. “i, and a group of like-minded young men decided to protest the new dress code—oh, it was my sophomore year at yale. we wore silk ties and nothing else.”

patton squeaks, trying not to cover his ears with his hands like a child.

“we were written up by the dean of admissions and threatened with expulsion. we were also suddenly very popular with the ladies.”

patton has the sudden and horrifying realization that one of those ladies might have been either his almost-mother, pennilyn lott, or had an equal chance of being his actual mother.

“ah, yes.” emily huffs. “this is exactly the kind of conversation I had hoped we would have with our son and grandson. what a pleasant family dinner conversation!”

“i was naked for an entire month,” richard says to logan. “a night full of men in dresses does not come near as close, of course, but i’d argue the amount of red tape you had to cut and the number of participants might push you over the top of that particular stunt!”

“wow,” logan says, blinking.

patton understands how he feels. his business-loving father, whose grand excitements seemed to be traveling for work, reading the newspaper, and undertaking new deals, a prankster. would wonders never cease.

(there is a small part of him that wonders if maybe—just maybe—if he had been born a boy, if richard would have been much more forgiving for patton’s own wild teenaged transgressions.)

“this roommate of mine in sophomore year at yale—we absolutely hated him,” richard says, leaning back in his chair, clearly lost in memory. “he was a complete nincompoop. so one night, we tied him between two mattresses and threw him out the window.”

“dad!” patton says, horrified.

“oh, he was fine,” richard says dismissively. “he went to sleep, woke up in the morning, and picked up right where he left off.”

patton puts his face in his hands.

“we wound up throwing him out the window every night for a month, and then he transferred.”

“well, do you think you guys tossing him out the window on a regular basis had something to do with that decision?” patton says, incredulous.

“well, it crossed our minds, yes.”

“so you guys have tickets for entry to the event, yes?” logan intercedes, looking to emily.

“it’s one way to see my descendants debut,” emily says.

patton shrugs, not rising to any bait. “it’ll be nice to escort him.”

“not christopher?” emily asks, but she’s cut off as richard says “ah! you’re in on it?” at the same time.

“a lot of the parents are,” patton says, “then, well, a lot of the sideshire parents are. i’m not quite as close with the chilton parents, of course.”

“we wouldn’t miss it for the world,” richard declares, then, with a big, goofy smile, “my grandson, the mastermind!”

“co-mastermind, really,” logan says. “dee slange was involved too.”

richard blinks, this time setting down his fork. “julian is in on this?”

“well,” logan hedges, higher-pitched. “define ‘in on this.’”

“he fully knows what’s going on, and he agreed?” richard says.

“oh,” logan says. “erm—no.”

“definitely not as much as me, at the very least,” patton says.

“gutsy,” richard comments.

“maybe you could help talk him over,” patton says delicately. “from what i remember of julian, he wasn’t exactly… jokey.”

“no.”

“certainly not,” emily says, almost overlapping her husband.

“maybe you could intercede?” patton says. “point out all the good a bit of trouble does for a boy their age. uh—after the event, of course. don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“yes,” richard says thoughtfully. “yes, perhaps i will. it’s about time julian cut loose.”

that’s one way to put it, patton thinks.

“i can’t wait to see the looks on everyone’s faces,” richard says, perhaps the most excited that patton’s ever seen him for an event put on by the daughters of the american revolution.

well, patton thinks. this is probably the best way that richard could have taken it.

even if it does mean that logan, patton, and emily spend the rest of dinner hearing richard monologue about The Good Old Days back at yale, and patton learns a bit more about his father’s particular brand of young-adult mischief that he, perhaps, shouldn’t have ever heard in the first place.

⁂

roman’s elbow-deep into rearranging his travel makeup bag. it is, generally speaking, where he keeps a lot of his makeup storage, so it’s kind of a mess after spending a lot of time simply dumping the products back in there because he’s running late, only sparing time to remove and wash his brushes and sponges.

it is very much a mess.

he hears a gentle tap against the door.

he glances up; though it’s barely past eight, his mother is already dressed for bed. her hair is damp, still drying from the post-lessons shower she’d taken, free from its typical bun. she’s in an old, too-big t-shirt advertising the ballets russes (from dimitri, probably) and a pair of sweatpants cut into shorts. she completes the ensemble with a pair of fuzzy socks and her feet in a pair of orthopedic-friendly slippers (his mother is, understandably, very conscious of foot health).

his mother is deeply devoted to her rituals and routines; he knows what she’ll ask even before she says it.

“tea?”

“yes, please,” roman decides, setting aside two different bottles of foundation to be decided later, picking up a few press-on nails, his own pair of fuzzy socks, and a tub of aquaphor, and plods after his mother, heading for the kitchen.

his mother goes about filling up the kettle (an old-style bright red one, the kind you set on a stove, not like the sleek black electric one that virgil has) and turning the stove on as roman pulls out two mugs. he decides on a large, maroon stoneware mug for her, speckled with white, and an equally gigantic ceramic red mug for himself.

“which would you like?” his mother asks, accepting the mug that he hands to her. she’s already pulled out her favored loose leaf herbal chamomile, beginning to scoop it into a infuser; roman notes that it’s the one he got her for mother’s day a couple years ago. he scoots around her to peruse his options.

his mother’s tea supply surpasses remy’s café in terms of selection and variety; roman thinks tea might be the only thing he’s ever seen his mother spontaneously shop for in the same way roman shops for clothes, or makeup, or jewelry, or little treats, or—

“this one,” he decides, pulling out a blend that promotes good sleep—spearmint, lemongrass, chamomile.

roman hops onto one of the barstools, opening up his tub of aquaphor and doing as his mother almost certainly has: absolutely slathering his feet in healing ointment. he’s aggressively earned these dancer’s calluses, but dang it, he can lessen some of the effects; therefore, absorbing aquaphor overnight, with the aid of fuzzy socks.

“how are your hamstrings?” she asks. “less tight?”

“definitely,” roman says, shifting his barstool so he’s able to more easily multitask between keeping eye contact with his mother and caring for his feet. “typical cure—”

“stretch and hydrate,” they say simultaneously.

“very good,” his mother continues. “hot and cold therapy?”

“i used the heated blanket a little bit,” roman says. roman and his mother love those things; roman simply plugs it in and becomes the warmest burrito of his dreams. bigger than a traditional heating pad and more flexible, which means he can just wrap it around whatever body part that needs heat. roman’s pretty sure they have six between them. he could probably just mummify himself on a day where he was really achy.

“be sure to rest this weekend after the ball,” his mother says. “i don’t want you straining anything.”

“i will,” roman promises, pulling on one sock and setting about massaging ointment into the other foot. he should probably start making a dent in that english essay anyway; even though he’d definitely prefer to spend the rest of his weekend reading something that he’s interested in, not something assigned to him.

his mother nods.

“a lot of your classmates are going too,” she notes.

roman smiles a bit, despite himself. on the whole, his gaggle of classmates at the prince family studio were what he imagined it to be like to have a flock of sisters: chatty, hogging the bathroom, annoying and endearing in equal measure, occasionally awkward, but fierce and funny and beautiful, all of them clever in their own ways, all of them deeply capable dancers.

not that he’d know what it was like to have a sister, of course. roman had contented himself with being an only child long ago.

“it’ll be fun,” roman says. “at the very least, we know who’ll be hogging the dance floor all night.”

they share a smile. his mother had chaperoned the sideshire homecoming in the fall, and she’d spent a 33% of the night fielding hi, ms. prince!s from her students, 33% watching in vague bemusement as they danced to trends she’d lost track of long ago, 33% feeling proud as all of them had monopolized the innermost circle of the dance floor with the confidence she strove to teach them, and 1% fighting the urge to go over and correct their form.

roman gestures with his chin toward the three packs of press-on nails: a classic french manicure, white nails with a red floral design, and a bright blue chrome.

“help me pick? i’ve been driving myself nuts over it. all of them would work, but i just need to decide and go for it.”

his mother hums, examining them. “remind me of the makeup you settled on?”

“classic eighties, to match the dress,” he says. “bright blue eyeshadow, red lip, generally very sparkly and,” he makes a pow! i’m here! hand gesture.

“well, french manicures are very classic,” his mother says thoughtfully, “but—” the kettle begins to whistle. roman, hastily, pulls on his other sock and goes to wash the excess aquaphor off of his hands before he does anything else.

they are waylaid by the pouring of boiling, steaming water, the distribution of milk and/or honey, the procurement of snacks (his mother favors savory foods more often than not, so she puts together a plate of crackers, cheese, and deli meats; roman slices a couple apples with a ramekin of peanut butter for himself, with the intent to steal a bite or two from her plate) and relocating to the living room.

roman sits himself on the ground, setting his snacks on the coffee table; his mother does the same, folding her legs to butterfly position, pressing her hands down onto her knees to stretch.

he considers his options before he just decides to mimic his mother, feeling the familiar stretch through his hips. he settles his elbows on his knees, bending slightly forward and blowing on his tea.

his mother examines the nails again. “can you match these?” she asks, touching the blue chrome.

roman tilts his head, mentally calling up the exact shades of blue in his several eyeshadow palettes. “if not exactly, then close enough to look intentional.”

“i know red is your signature,” she says. roman looks at his fuzzy socks—cherry red—and hers—wine red. in the prince family, red is a neutral that goes with everything.

“but,” she continues, “they fit a certain level of garishness that matches your dress.”

roman nods, setting them aside; he’ll glue them on in the morning. honestly, he’s a bit pleased he can keep the floral red for another occasion. a fancy date with logan, maybe?

“is that the last detail handled?” his mother says.

“it should be,” he says. “well—i was sorting through my makeup bag, but it’s more of an organization thing than anything else.”

“dress packed?” his mother checks. “shoes, accessories, wig and hair supplies?”

“yes, yes, yes,” roman says dutifully.

“then—that’s your last of prep for tomorrow?”

“just about,” roman says.

“good,” she says. “i suppose many of the last-minute details shall be left to logan and dee.”

roman’s lip curls reflexively. the thought of logan and dee, working together, agreeing on things, brainstorming together and coordinating any last minute hiccups. as if they were a team.

“what was that face,” his mother says. her voice is flat, with no edge of scolding or reproach. just genuine curiosity.

roman’s lips twist as he removes the infuser out of his tea, deeming it well-enough steeped. he stirs his cup absently.

“i just…” roman gesticulates vaguely. “what did you think of dee?”

if his mother thinks that’s an odd response, she doesn’t let on. she stacks her makeshift charcuterie—club cracker, slice of cheddar, sliced chicken from the deli—and sets it aside before she goes about formulating other sandwiches. club cracker, mozzarella, turkey breast.

“i didn’t have much opportunity to speak to him,” she says. cracker, cheddar, turkey.

“yeah, but you guys had a look,” roman says. “i saw it.”

“i suppose he seemed… a touch stand-offish,” his mother says. cracker, mozzarella, chicken.

“yes,” roman says, his and??? going unspoken.

“and, perhaps,” his mother says, then, frowning, “well, i didn’t know. that’s the troubling part.”

“dee’s very good at that,” roman mutters resentfully. “presenting himself one way, when he’s really actually the other. the thing is, logan has seen that he’s really actually the other, and yet—here they are!”

“that’s very unlike him,” his mother says, frowning. “logan has a very sound sense of judgment.”

“he does.”

“but if logan’s deemed him appropriate to plan alongside—”

roman drops his forehead to the floor, groaning.

“oh,” his mother says, awkward. roman hears crunching.

“i don’t know why!” bursts out of him.

“why… what?”

“why logan’s teaming up with him!” roman says. he looks up in time to see his mother washing down her snack with a swallow of tea.

“...roman,” she begins. “it’s entirely understandable to… feel a certain way if your boyfriend is spending time with another—”

“oh my god, i’m not jealous!” roman snaps. “why does everyone think that?!”

his mother doesn’t lecture him about volume, which is nice.

“well,” his mother says, “what is it, then?”

this is also nice—his mother, ever straightforward, ever blunt.

roman rubs his hand wearily across his forehead. “did i tell you, last fall, about logan getting punched in the face?”

“yes,” his mother says, her expression darkening; some of that remnant of anger of someone laying hands on his boyfriend roars to life in his chest again.

“i know,” roman says.

“was it that boy?”

his mother isn’t a particularly expressive person, but even any given passerby would categorize that look on her face as thunderous. his mother is very fond of logan—she’d actually told logan so—and roman knows that, over the years, logan’s courtesy and good grades and general support of roman had endeared him to her time and time and time again.

which—obviously. roman’s of the opinion that his boyfriend is one of the best people in the world. of course everyone should recognize that—feel that same protective fire pop up in their chests at any sign of anything going wrong for him, because logan deserves the world.

roman scowls, looking away. “not—technically. but!” he says hastily, “but, he’s the one who started it all. he got a detention for it and everything! louise probably never would have hit logan if he hadn’t been there urging her on!”

“why on earth…?” his mother says, sounding baffled.

“i don’t know!” roman wails. “that’s what’s getting me—i don’t get it! one second, logan’s telling me all about this terrible boy at school, and then his grandmother invites him and his grandma to lunch and apparently that’s super awkward, and then there’s the punching, and then he’s at the stuffed up birthday party logan’s grandparents threw for him, and then logan’s confronting dee and making sure he doesn’t rain on our parade at the winter dance, the next, they’re teaming up together to say ‘screw you’ to the patriarchy! i don’t know why on earth!”

his mother considers this, then pushes the plate of apples toward him, then piles the empty space on the plate with three of the charcuterie sandwiches she’s concocted. roman, grumpily, dips an apple slice in peanut butter and crunches a bit more loudly than he would in any other circumstance.

mother—much like virgil—believed very heartily in proper nutrients fueling every activity. outbursts took energy, which meant that roman should eat carbs, fats, and proteins to replenish that energy, with bonus points for foods that were particularly vitamin- or fiber-rich. roman has been told this for most of his life, only with things like dance lessons or exams or being a pain, this does not mean you’re getting a second soda, pick something substantial swapped in for outbursts as applicable.

“that makes very little sense.”

“exactly!” roman says, gesticulating at her. “thank you!”

“chew your food with your mouth closed,” she says, some automatic motherly impulse, then, “well, what’s changed?”

before roman can answer, she says, “i know you don’t know. but something must have. logan’s a very intelligent young man, and he isn’t fickle—not him, not any of his parental figures that could have persuaded him.”

patton, virgil, and probably her, roman figures. he doesn’t know much about christopher, but his reasoning definitely wouldn’t override those three.

“do you think it could be on a needs-must basis?”

roman’s mouth twists as he swallows. “maybe,” he hedges.

“but you don’t think so.”

“no,” roman says. “if it was just unavoidable, some sort of grudging alliance, he would have complained about it.” to me, he thinks.

and logan hasn’t.

“could there have been some kind of change?”

roman narrows his eyes, setting aside his honey-sweet tea. “i’m not following.”

“logan’s always struck me as very pragmatic,” she says. “ergo, there could have been some kind of event that would put more weight in dee’s favor.”

“it would have to be a pretty big change,” roman says, mind churning. as it is, that’s the likeliest of answers outside of forced partnership.

“you could ask him.”

roman sighs. “i think the fact that he hasn’t mentioned it to me already…”

“could mean nothing,” his mother says, with a shrug of a shoulder.

“big change,” he reminds her. “big.”

they both consider this, sipping their tea and eating, silent in rumination.

“have you ever dealt with something like this?” roman says, despairing. “like—some dancing partner of yours teaming up with a rival? or—?”

dad, he almost says, but he discards it as soon as the idea comes to mind. no. all he’s heard of his father is that he could be prone to his own flights of whimsy, true, but he’d always been achingly steadfast in partnership with his mother and, to a slightly lesser extent, with virgil.

she seems to see the thought flash across his face, though. her eyes flit—almost unconsciously—to an old photo of the pair of them on the wall behind him.

roman knows the one without having to look: his mother, stunning and sharp in tutu and pointe-shoed glory, clearly in the middle of telling him off about something; his father, muddy for some reason and in ripped clothes, arm thrown around her shoulder, grinning and giving a thumbs up to the camera, a slight wince on his face the only sign of whatever lecture she’d given.

but, roman thinks. but. people hadn’t necessarily liked his father. even virgil had cautioned him at how strange his father had been, that he’d done things full of mischief and occasional rebellious wrong-doing, that he’d been acquired taste. a bit like…

no. roman shakes the thought without finishing it. no way.

his mother detects it anyway.

“how have you been sleeping?” she asks delicately.

“fine,” roman mutters. he knows what she’s about to ask without her asking it, too.

whatever mental illness his father had had, the only sign of odd or strange thoughts that has ever remotely recurred in roman have been odd, vivid dreams, veering into the occasional night terror.

he has been sleeping fine, though. fitful, sure, and maybe a bit less than his mother would like, but he’s been sleeping fine. no dreams at all to speak of.

“all right,” she says placatingly.

roman stirs his tea a bit more vigorously than necessary, the spoon clanking against his mug. his mother smiles a bit.

“you didn’t answer,” roman says. “have you had a situation like this?”

“you know i haven’t,” his mother says.

“well—i know, not exactly like this,” roman says. he’s known his mother’s aromantic and asexual since he was old enough to learn the words and absorb that that’s what those little flag barrettes she wore during pride meant. no significant romantic partner of his mother’s has ever caused her strife, because she’s never had a significant romantic partner. “but—dimitri teaming up with someone and he didn’t tell you why. or something.”

his mother pauses to think. then:

“no.”

roman sighs, perhaps a bit more loudly than necessary, and dips another apple slice.

“virgil might’ve,” she says thoughtfully.

roman pauses from where he’s trying to scoop extra peanut butter onto his apple.

“yeah?”

“yes,” his mother says. “you remember silas.”

ugh.

“don’t make that face,” she scolds gently. “but—as it happens, i wouldn’t be surprised if either of them didn’t have a moment exactly like this. virgil with some friends of his, silas with your father.”

“how did that go?” roman asks.

his mother smiles. “i believe they talked about it.”

“traitor,” roman grumbles, half-joking. “i can’t believe either of you invented mind-reading technology for me to use in this specific moment.”

“you could just ask.”

“you’ve said that already.” roman says. “does no one in this apartment appreciate the fine-tuning of the delicate art that is teenaged angst and overthinking?”

“you live here,” his mother points out. “you have sufficient appreciation for the both of us.”

roman huffs. his mother tilts his head.

roman scratches his thumb against the mug.

“dee’s very charming,” he mumbles. “i mean—he managed to charm me at logan’s fancy birthday party before i knew who he was. if he’d just started off with that, instead of leading straight into villainy then pulling a 180, then i guess i’d get it a bit more. but as it is—why him? why that guy? logan likes rule-following. he likes that kind of thing. is it a ‘keep your enemies close’ thing? no,” he answers himself, “logan wouldn’t do that, he has no patience for duplicity. which makes it even more confusing, because dee seems to love duplicity, exhibit a, him being charming at emily and richard’s party—erm, mr. and mrs. sanders’ party, i mean.”

his mother hums.

“and—i don’t know. he’s off at chilton, doing great, and i’m happy he’s making friends, i seriously am, i’m not jealous, but it just. suddenly, both of us in different schools means we spend less time together, and that’s making me think about college, and, unless miracle of miracles happens and i find the perfect ivy league that has a combo of the perfect dance program and the perfect journalism program that will accept both of us that’s close to new york, we’re going to spend even less time together, and that sucks.”

his mother nods sagely, placing her right foot against her left knee, stretching to grasp her own socked foot.

“and it’s, like. why that guy? if you’re going to hang out with someone outside of school out of preference and not obligation, why the one i’ve heard the most negative things about? why the one who’s in direct competition with you? why the one that would probably have sabotaged him, given the chance? why?”

his mother remains quiet.

“say something,” roman requests desperately. “i’m asking questions here, they’re not hypotheticals.”

his mother blinks. “you were doing a good job of talking it out to yourself.”

“well, sure, but,” he gestures between them, “input. it’s mother-son time.”

there’s a pause.

“this isn’t like you,” she decides.

“what?”

“this,” she gestures at him. “indecision about what to do. it’s unlike you.”

“it’s unlike logan to consort with ne’er-do-wells,” roman sniffs.

his mother simply arches an eyebrow. roman sighs, picking up his mug, savoring the warmth it seeps against his palms.

“i don’t know,” roman says quietly. “it just—it is different for logan, to… consort with someone like this. there’s some big reason why, and i don’t know what it is, and it’s just… it’s driving me a little crazy.”

his mother politely does not say anything along the lines of i can see that or obviously.

instead, she says, “does the concept of talking to logan about this make you nervous or anxious?”

“what? no.” roman scoffs.

“it’s all right if it does,” his mother says. “i won’t think less of you or logan. it’s very normal to be a bit worried about having a big conversation in any relationship, much less one that’s been weighing heavily on your mind.”

“i’m not—”

his mother arches her eyebrows at him, and yeah, okay, roman can see how saying i’m not worried when he’s dominated the conversation obsessing over why that guy would probably come off… not great.

roman sighs, slumping his shoulders.

“fine,” he mutters. “yeah, i’m worried.”

“perfectly natural,” she says. she switches positions, placing her left foot against right knee, stretching.

“i know,” he grumbles. “i just—i don’t want to come off as that kind of boyfriend, you know what i mean?”

“no.”

fair.

“like,” roman says, drawing himself up. “why are you hanging out with that guy? hang out with this person instead, not that guy. you’re not allowed to see him. you know? like—jealous. possessive. whatever. i mean—logan was so understanding with jess. so understanding! they didn’t have a ton in common, but logan was still polite and everything.

“and i don’t want to turn right around and be like, hey, i don’t like that guy, what’s up with that? or insult his intelligence—’cause he’s way book-smarter than me—by being like, i think that guy might be manipulating his way into your life. thoughts?”

“do you think—?”

“what other explanation is there?!” roman whines, drawing there into, like, five syllables.

“and we’re back to square one,” his mother says. “all right. i see.”

roman goes about polishing off the last of the snacks.

“i still think you should talk to him,” she says. “i know you’re worried—that’s understandable. but logan isn’t going to go into this thinking the worst of you. he ought to know that you only have his best interests at heart.”

roman sighs after swallowing a mouthful of charcuterie. “i guess.”

his mother smiles slightly.

“you’re so very much our son,” she says, and roman ducks his head, trying not to flush.

“remus got any sense of propriety or caution surgically removed, to hear some tell it. and i probably wouldn’t have figured out such a careful way to put it: i probably wouldn’t have said anything at all until it got pressing. it’s difficult, i know, but i’m proud of the middle ground that you walk.”

“yeah, yeah,” roman mumbles, still pleased. our son. he felt so divided, sometimes: the face of his father, the skill of his mother, the rest of anything else him, from nowhere at all.

“you don’t have to go into it unplanned, of course,” his mother says. “text him your thoughts if that’s easier. put a pen to paper to figure out what to say and how to say it.”

“true,” roman admits.

his mother drains the last of her tea and stands.

“well,” she says. “it’s probably best for you to talk to him tonight. or early tomorrow morning, if you care to sleep on it. may as well clear the air before the ball. i’ll leave you to your thoughts?”

“sure,” he says, slowly drinks the rest of his tea, thinking. then, quietly, “thanks, mom.”

he hears his mother placing the dishes in the dishwasher, shutting off the lights in the kitchen, ensuring everything is in its proper place, before she journeys back to the main room and shuts off all the lights except for the one closest to his room—he’ll turn that off when he goes to bed.

he watches her achieve the rest of the good night routine: she plugs her phone in to charge, she nudges her shoes so they’re in line with his at the door, and then…

she detours. she walks back to him, where he still sits on their rug.

she leans over to smooth her hand over his hair.

“goodnight, mijo. dulces sueños.”

“dulces sueños, mami,” he says.

and then she just… goes to her room.

she’s left the front door unlocked. she’d simply nodded to him, went to her room, and closed the door, almost like…

wait.

does she…?

no. there’s no way.

his curfew-issuing, sleep-adoring, routine-oriented-to-a-fault mother? roman would have gotten grounded, like, ten years ago for ten years if she actually knew how often he snuck out to the gazebo to talk to logan.

yeah. no way she knows that he sneaks out.

⁂

“hey.”

“hey! sorry if i responded late—we were squaring away escorts for the ladies. turns out some sideshire kids decided to join last-minute, so we should be all even. no idea what they’re doing for dresses, but it’s in their hands now, i suppose.”

“no, that’s all good—c’mere, it’s still a bit chilly out.”

“of course.”

…

“so, what did you want to talk about?”

“oh, right. um—may as well just come out and say it, i guess.”

“...sure?”

“what’s up with teaming up with dee?”

“...ah.”

“i mean—i guess i just don’t really get it? i’ve been trying to figure it out, and i can’t. like—one second, he’s getting someone to punch you in the face, the next, you guys are architecting this plot to go after the daughters of the american revolution.”

“no, i—i understand. it must seem jarring from the outside.”

“...so?”

“...”

“um. admittedly, i find your renewed and increased friendship with dee very confusing. the things i’ve heard about him have, generally, been pretty bad—for example, the punching incident, your birthday party at your grandparents’, and the winter formal. ”

“...are those notes…?”

“shh. you’ve never particularly struck me as the kind of person to simply be friends with someone for the sake of making life easier: my mom says you’ve always struck her as very pragmatic, and i agree. it makes me think that something in your relationship with dee has changed, because otherwise, i find myself… well, deeply confused and honestly a little worried that dee might be up to something again.”

“you talked about this with your mom?”

“well—i didn’t, like, set out to do that, but yeah. she suggested that i just talk to you about it, since you’d know that i have your best interests at heart, and that you have your reasons ‘cause you’re so smart, and also maybe write down what i wanted to say so i didn’t come off like a huge controlling jackass.”

“she said that?”

“not that last bit—i’m editorializing.”

“that’s—huh. okay… um. how do i phrase this.”

“…”

“i’m sorry, i’m walking an awkward line of secrecy here.”

“how secret? secret, like, jo posner’s first kiss, or secret, like, secret-secret.”

“secret-secret.”

“...oh.”

“but i still want to—communicate.”

“right. um… is there a little loophole you can thread here?”

“like what?”

“like… i dunno. i know they aren’t your strong suit, but a metaphor? or a comparison to something else that’s happened in our general lives?”

“like what?”

“well, i don’t know, logan. that’s kind of why we’re here.”

“right. yes. um… let me think.”

“sure. take your time. if it’s secret-secret, i promise i’ll keep it, but even then, i get not wanting to say anything. like—”

“oh! oh, i remember!”

“...remember…?”

“back in eighth grade, when you had elliott over to that sleepover, and elliott told you about how they were feeling regarding their identity, but to keep it secret double-pinky-promise even from me?”

“yeah, of course.”

“and they didn’t come out until the middle of last year?”

“right.”

“...i find a lot of parallels to then.”

“oh.”

“yeah.”

“oh—okay. i see.”

“it’s not one-to-one. as a matter of fact, there’s more to it. this is the part i feel most comfortable disclosing, since that part is generally a jo posner’s first kiss level of open secret at chilton.”

“sure.”

“but—”

“i get it. there’s more. okay. that… huh. okay.”

“right.”

“i guess i can see it. the cape should have tipped me off. have you told… anyone else? about the things outside the parallels?”

“no—no one. not even dad.”

“really?”

“really. well—he might know part of it, so maybe that doesn’t count, or dee might have told him more, but. really. not even dad.”

“...you said…. even more?”

“i’m very glad no one in our lives has parallelism to this that i can apply here.”

“...me too, i guess?”

“trust me—you are.”

“okay. i will. i do trust you. you know that, right?”

“of course i do. i trust you too.”

“okay. good. good. i didn’t want it to come off like i didn’t trust your judgment or something. you were so understanding with jess, i wanted to extend the same thing—”

“—we’re not—”

“—i know it’s not a one-to-one. trust me, we’d have a lot more to talk about if it was any kind of romantic scenario. there’d be yelling. i know it’s not. i’m just saying: you and jess didn’t have a lot in common, but you were still decent to him because you knew i wanted to… associate with him. i want to do the same for you.”

“right. of course. i—well, frankly, i hadn’t really considered your point of view. i can see how it would be strange from the outside perspective. i’m sorry i didn’t think of it.”

“you’ve had a lot going on.”

“sure, but still. i should have looped you in as much as i could.”

“well, i appreciate that. thank you.”

“and thank you for bringing it up.”

“this is very mature of us.”

“i know.”

“for teenagers, and all.”

“and for my first romantic relationship.”

“i’m more used to bickering. this is weird.”

“definitely.”

“...wanna make out?”

“say no more.”

find the next half of this chapter here!

#my fic #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #debutante #wyliwf!verse #the sideshire files

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