#but I'm excited to scour through the episode

[if-whats-new]

Meet the Team!

Who are we?

Just a few Interactive Fiction enthusiasts who love sharing their interests with the rest of the internet!

But we're also:

-=-

Heyo! I'm Aj (she/her)

I got into IF through the app called Choices way back in 2017 and since then there was no turning back. It wasn't until last year when I got into text-based IFs. A friend on tumblr reblogged 'Defiled hearts', it caught my interest and here I am deep down in the trenches of IFs.

Listing my favourites isn't an easy thing cause there are so many I love. So I will list some that have been on my mind for a while: Infamous, Press Play, College Tennis: Origin Story, Drink your Villain Juice, Golden, The Golden Rose, Our Life Now and Forever, We Wretched Creatures, TWC , The Lonely Shore, Blood Choke and Midnight Sun.

I mostly help out with finding IF news and game updates in the wild.

-=-

How you doing?!? I'm Bex (she/her) *on hiatus

I started my journey with Voltage (now Love365) and dating sims or Otome games on my PSP Vita *sheds a tear*. I honestly don't know how I came upon IF, but I fell in love with ​Our Life: Beginnings & Always around 2021?

My favourites? Hmm, currently it would be: Love and Leases, Adoriel's Tears, The Abyssal Song, Keyframes, Our Life 2 and a bunch of Kickstarters that I can't wait for!

Personally, I'm married with no kids! And I work full-time as an administrator. Boring, I know.

In regards to the Zine, I normally do the formatting. Basically taking everything the peeps have found and putting it all into the Zine. I try and write some of the Highlights and try to dabble in the Editorial (if my work doesn't get edited).

-=-

Hello!!! This is Briar! (she/her)

I am one of the interviewers!

I got into IFs this year, and boy, my eyes were opened, and I got so obsessed that I decided to write my own (The Mighty Shifter). My personal favourites are TWC, Infamous, God-Cursed, and Viatica.

I am a uni student who is studying English literature. What else...? Have an amazing day/night!

-=-

Hey, hi and hello! I'm Dion (they/he)

I started my journey into IF through Episode, but due to poor non-female MC representation, I soon began to look for something else. My friend then introduced me to text-based games through The Wayhaven Chronicles and Mind Blind. I've been going deeper down the rabbit hole since!

I'm literally majoring in interactive media. IF is my life now, send help. (/j)

Some of my favourites would be: Mind Blind, Shepherds of Haven, Reanimated Heart, Seven days in purgatory, Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder, seekL, LLLLL (aka LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST) and a lot of the stuff DOMINO CLUB does. (There isn't only IF, but that's what I usually go for. Definitely check them out if you're into creepy indie stuff!)

I'd call myself the jack of all trades concerning the zine. As of now, my main job is to be the social media guy and to do the different exports (playable Zine, Tumblr, PDF/.txt). But I also help out with news-searching and compiling + editing stuff for the editorial, column, highlight, letter and thanks portions.

-=-

Hey all, this is Jenn (she/her) *on hiatus

I am a youth sports coach (fútbol, softball, basketball) based in Los Angeles. I am in the process of applying for a master’s program (Sports psychology).

I did write and code a couple of IF games but never finished. I am a perfectionist and I couldn’t publish something not up to my standards. I started reading IF a couple years ago and I couldn’t possibly name my favorite. Some of the most memorable IFs are: The Exile, TWC, Crown of Ashes and Flames, Infamous, WWC, Zombie Exodus: SH, The Golden Rose, The Fernweh Saga, and Crown of Exile. I can definitely add more…

Basic responsibilities: Scouring the internet for IF news and frequently updating our existing database. I honestly enjoy the challenge. On a good day I can find upcoming IF titles and newly released demos. It’s so exciting to find new IF because I know someone will eventually see the same potential I do in that new IF.

-=-

Ssuuuupppp, I’m Sir tuskhany (He/Him)

I am one of the lovely interviewers who’ll be asking questions, you know grilling fellow authors on their IF, WIPS and favourite characters. The usual. As to why or how I started, I gotta say its cause of books and great authors like Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. And their respective series wheel of time and basically the whole Comsere universe. I tried following in their footsteps writing a few books of my own. But like every writer most of these ended up being WIPs I either abandoned or stopped. Still I didn’t let that stop me and started posting some of them, I am the writer of Borne of the sands a static webnovel with a few chapters and Dusk and Dawn my current ongoing project(Still a work in progress so forgive the grammatical errors. T-T).

My favourite series are the Keeper of the Day and Night, Infamous, Wayhaven Chronicles and Blood Moon.

The current story I’m working on was inspired by these however most of my inspiration came from static or interactive cyoas like the Slayers v4, Supernatural Investigator, Demigod v4, A Traveller!s Tale and Universal War. If you haven’t heard of them please give them a go they are amazing.

Have fun and stay posted!

-=-            

[tuxedoferret]

Arcane finale was good....but

Spoilers for the finale of Arcane season 2, Arc 3 in general.

I'm probably screaming into the void but I wanted to get these thoughts out and see what other people think.

In general, I liked the endings for most of the characters. Their arcs make sense.

Vi, Caitlyn, Ekko, Jayce, Mel, Singed, and Viktor's story conclusions, I think were ended beautifully! (And Jinx too but I'll circle back to her in a second). Their endings made sense and were executed very well! I'm content with how their stories end!

And MOST of the deaths make sense... most of them.

Of course most of the minor characters are dead, no surprise since a majority of them we don't even know the NAMES of unless you scour the credits in the VA section.

Ambessa's death was well done, with Mel finally getting her mothers approval through breaking free of her control and finally being able to decide her own life and Caitlyn becoming a true leader.

The only thing that really bothers me, is the deaths of Heimerdinger and Warwick/Vander. Out of all of the champions in the game they're the only non-humanoid ones that made it into the show. They're also the only (game first) champions to actually die and they barely get to do anything. (I am one of the believers that Jinx is alive because there's no fucking way they would kill off one of their chief money makers, also based on evidence in the show).

With Heimerdinger in season 1 we see him serve as an oppositional force against Jayce, and then a mentor working with him. He gets kicked off of the council as a result of his conservative viewpoint. And he reflects on this, he leaves to go help the Zaunites however he can but gets shunned away. Then the goes and helps Ekko with repairing his board and getting home. In season 2 this continues with Heimerdinger helping Ekko get into Jayce's lab and them having the discussion about wild runes before getting sucked up into the anomaly. His last episode is him in the alternate universe with helping Ekko build the Z-Drive to return to his own universe. He puts it in the amplifier, is about to go with Ekko, then runs out and puts a few more things together and just... dies. Thats it for him. MAYBE he'll come back since he's a Yordle but this is new canon and the man had flesh and blood squished out of him. But in general his death feels cheap and unnecessary. What was the point of his death? How did it impact the narrative and what did the story gain from it as a result? Not fucking much really. He's never mentioned again afterwards. I feel like his death had no impact on the story whatsoever. I honestly think it would've been better if he had survived and returned with Ekko to fight in the battle against Noxus and Viktor. I would've liked to see him, either returning to the council or not, atoning for his mistakes by trying to make things better in Zaun with his inventions.

With Vander/Warwick there was so much hype around the theory that Vander would be returning as Warwick. And we were all super excited when that came true! We love it when the narrative rewards us for paying attention! But we get like... 3 episodes with him before he becomes a Viktor automaton. He was also still very much alive even after Singed drained his blood, so Viktor was wrong about how that would kill him. Warwick's role in the end felt very lackluster, and it felt redundant to just, kill him off AGAIN. Maybe I'm just a little mad because I have read up on Warwick and I feel like he had more potential for the narrative than just... make Vi watch her dad die all over again. The fight scene with Warwick could've been replaced with any big evil bruiser really (coughBlitzcrankcough). In general Warwick felt more like a Vi and Jinx accessory than his own potential character. Which kind of sucks. And maybe I'm a bit salty that we didn't get a full wolf Warwick. I think the whole his mind was reset/erased bit could've still been done if the explosion damaged his head and it healed back wrong/if singed replaced his head with one of the wolves' heads to make him fully Warwick in the end.

Isha's death kind of feels... not impactful at all to the story afterwards aside from Jinx's spiral. I would've liked it if her death did more than just that (Like I said, permanently damaging Warwick/Vander would've been nice)

This is about the league of LEGENDS and you'd think that Warwick and Heimerdinger would have bigger roles than just being killed off to further another characters story after barely impacting the narrative.

Also I feel like Sevika being on the council is like... stupid. I think she wasn't handled well at all after episode 4. She just completely disappears after running away with Isha. Why do we never see her hanging with Jinx and Isha again? I would have LOVED to see how Sevika reacted to Vander not being as dead as previously thought, the man she betrayed and ultimately ended up mirroring in the end with her refusing to give up Jinx to Piltover. I think it would've been fun if Sevika was the one to tell Vi when she woke up that Jinx gave herself up, despite all of Sevika's protests, an inversion of what happened with Vi and Vander. Putting Sevika on the council in the end is just kind of weird for her character. I understand it's like, the idea of Zaun finally getting representation on the council, Sevika getting a say in what happens in the undercity. But I feel like that could've just as easily been accomplished with finally letting Zaun have its own independence with Sevika being the "Baron" of Zaun, being the new leader. Because we've seen she's a genuinely good leader! She has a good head on her shoulders. It would've been fun to see how she'd struggle with being the new leader of Zaun, struggling against the Chem Barons if future series ever decided to look into Zaun again.

In general I'm fine with the ending of Arcane. But I feel like the endings could've been written a different way for those 3 characters. I honestly feel like it would've been better if the show ended off where the game picks up, and I don't even play League, I just like the lore from what little I've been reading.

[atlitudes]

I'm Cataloging Every Occurrence of the Piano in Malevolent in a Spreadsheet for Leitmotif Analysis. No, I'm Not Kidding.

As the title of this post reads, I've spent the last few weeks listening to every episode of Malevolent and logging every time the piano is heard (both within the story and as background score), to analyze the data for leitmotif/music based theory-crafting. I originally was planning on getting through the entire series before posting anything, but I am very quickly realizing that this is going to take me a while, and I start a new semester in two weeks, so there is a high likelihood I will not finish before I get too busy to chug through as many episodes a day as I am now. I'm on episode 16/44 and I've already logged 137 instances of piano music. I'm not even halfway done. And this is all I've been doing for the past multiple days. For this reason, I've decided to post the link to the spreadsheet before finishing.

If you're familiar with Malevolent, and just how much music is in it, you might be asking, "OP, are you utterly fucking insane?" And well, dear reader, the answer to that is probably yes, but while you might call it madness, I call it love. So, before getting into the meat of things, I wanted to explain why I even decided to do this. Spoilers ahead for Malevolent (obvious, but yeah). If you don't give a single shit about why I did this and want to get straight to the sheet, scroll to the bottom for the link.

So. About 2 weeks ago I finished my first listen-through of Malevolent. One thing about the most recent episodes struck me as very very significant: John and Arthur's "collective force" being titled as the Dies Irae.

Now, a full-bodied explanation of why I find this so important and the possible implications will come at a later date, but long story short, the Dies Irae is a very significant piece of musical literature-- it is, perhaps, the most commonly quoted leitmotif of the past 800 years, and it symbolizes death. So, understandably, the Themes of this kinda sent me down a spiral.

But the Dies Irae being mentioned in such a way also got me thinking: music is a pretty integral part of Malevolent. So, is the Dies Irae quoted anywhere in its soundtrack? I suddenly got very very excited at this prospect, particularly if it might be in Faroe's Song, because well... god that would hurt lol. I scoured the available songs on the bandcamp aaaaand... no luck (as far as I can tell). Regardless, even if the Dies Irae wasn't a part of the soundtrack, I became curious about what kind of leitmotifs were in the podcast, and what they might mean. And so, the spreadsheet was born.

I explain this in the User Guide part of the sheet (please read it before going through the rest btw), but I only track the piano parts of the podcast. The reason for this is two-fold:

First, score wise, piano is very easy for me to pick apart, and I don't see a lot of significance in the suspenseful string music for horror moments (though I don't deny there might be something to it, I simply won't be able to find it.) To me, the piano is also significantly more important than the strings because it's a notable part of the story-- Arthur and his relation to the instrument is a key part of the plot, and multiple of the piano compositions are made by him. For this reason, I found tracking the piano in the podcast worthwhile.

Second, I also don't touch any of the non-original radio tracks in the podcast (i.e. You Call It Madness (I Call It Love)) because this video by The Final Fantasmagorie already does an excellent job of covering them (please check it out!!), and I felt it would be redundant, especially considering the astronomical amount of ground I already have to cover. If these tracks start being featured as leitmotifs in the piano music then... well, I might change my mind, but so far, no dice.

If I noticed a non-piano piece of music (such as the wraith humming in Ep3) that I haven't found any analysis of whatsoever, I also noted it just so there was some record. Other than that, just piano tracks.

Explanations and disclaimers out of the way, here is the link to the spreadsheet. I might open it up to comments and/or editors at some point, but for now, it's just available to viewers. Once again, please read the disclaimer and user guide before the rest of the sheets.

Thanks for reading, I know this was a very long post, and I appreciate it if you've beared with me! Enjoy!

[foreveralwaysanauthor]

Same Trailer, Different Park

(Season 1, Episode 1 - A Slice of Life)

May 14, 2024

Notes - This took a lot longer than I anticipated, but I had a lot going on with work and Mother's Day, so I'm not surprised it took me a bit longer than it normally would have. Anyway, it's here now, it’s 40-something pages long, and I'll be starting on the next one tonight, if everything goes well at work this afternoon!

Waves crashed along the shore, lapping calmly against the sand as emerald eyes scoured for shells along the water’s edge. Salty ocean air mingled with the distant smell of grilled foods as Vivien walked along the beach. Hours had passed since her arrival in St. Pete Beach, but the crowded restaurant everyone seemed to love just wasn’t her scene. Crowded places, in general, weren’t something Vivien cared for - bar the occasional mall trip, that was - but after being shuffled around for what felt like forever, listening to people sing and being shown off like a shiny trophy, she grew tired of the crowds and excused herself.

Royce and Bentley had been eager to show her off to, well, everyone they knew in Big Momma’s, but after a while, Vivien had found it hard to keep track of all the names and faces she’d been introduced to. By the time they were done showing her off, it was time for Royce to return to work, so Bentley was quick to pull her over to the booth where they were eating. That did nothing to stop the crowd from gathering at their table, making Vivien’s chest tighten as they herded around the end of the table. Claustrophobia settled in, pinning her to the booth like a wall of concrete had fallen on her from above, but it wasn’t until Carrie said something about ordering her something to eat that people began moving away.

Unable to even think of food without feeling nauseous, Vivien excused herself and ducked out through the kitchen, ducking as she scooted past the restaurant’s windows and made her way around the building to the beach. Although it didn’t take long for her to finally relax once she was away from the chaos, Vivien found herself incapable of forcing herself back inside. The thought of admitting her fears and potentially facing the swarm of people not only interested in her but also in her relationship with Royce made her breath catch in her throat, and she ultimately decided to continue along the water’s edge, keeping her distance from any rogue sun tanners or volleyball players as she went.

Her sneakers had been abandoned at some point and were tied by their laces around the belt Lela had loaned her, the Converse tapping her thigh and cascading sand down her legs with every step she took. She made sure not to stray too far from the restaurant in case anyone went searching for her, but as the collection of tiny shells in her hand began to grow, she wondered if they had chosen to let her come back when she wanted to. Examining another moon snail shell and finding it still had a little critter living inside, Vivien waited for a wave to roll in by her feet and released it back to the ocean before choosing to turn around and venture back toward the restaurant.

In the back of her mind, she wondered if anybody owned a metal detector. Her dad had taught her how to use one during their annual road trip to Hampton Beach back when her parents were still married. Though it felt like forever ago, she could distinctly recall the excitement she felt when the machine started beeping and her subsequent disappointment when they found it was just a dirty quarter that had fallen from someone’s pocket. Despite her initial dissatisfaction at the discovery, Vivien had refused to leave until she found something else, and when she later discovered someone’s watch buried in the sand on their way to their hotel for the night, her excitement returned. Nowadays, their trips to the beach were few and far between, but Vivien’s memories of happier days with her family still lived on. 

As a group of people left Big Momma’s, laughing and chattering loudly as they grabbed their surfboards and took off for the waves, Vivien took in a deep breath and wondered how many people still crowded the restaurant. Checking the cell phone she had tucked into her back pocket, Vivien sighed - it was just barely two in the afternoon. The lunch rush would soon be replaced with the dinner rush, and she would be bombarded by yet another crowd of rowdy surfers and boisterous bikers, all clamoring for a chance to speak with the new girl who had somehow managed to be the object of Royce’s affection.

They meant well - Vivien knew they did - but it was all too much, too quickly. She could handle being the drummer at the back of the stage that hardly anyone conversed with after performances, letting Riven do all the talking in interviews whenever they won a competition, and being the last one to talk during group presentations, but being the main focus of everyone’s attention - be it a big or small crowd - had never been easy for her. Honestly, it was a miracle she didn’t pass out in the booth right then and there. If it hadn’t been for Carrie stepping up and gently pushing people away with her signature, beaming smile and a thinly veiled promise for autographs if they left them alone long enough to have a meal, Vivien was sure she would have been on the floor, surrounded by worried patrons.

The idea of that crowd surrounding her and being the first thing she’d see when she came to, sent a shiver down Vivien’s spine despite the Florida heat. Yeah, that would have only made things worse. Bentley had tried to help her while the crowds cornered them, holding her hand and offering her a small smile that appeared apologetic as he tried to combat as many questions for her as the people allowed. In a way, Vivien knew he must have dealt with a similar situation upon his arrival in the small town. She could only imagine him and Royce standing in the center of Big Momma’s, being fawned over by anyone who even minutely considered Miles a friend. They probably handled it far better than she had.

They probably had warnings ahead of time. Bentley most likely handled them with ease, spouting off answers to every question with a cheerful smile and the enthusiasm of a child who still believed in Santa Claus. Royce, on the other hand, probably wasn’t much better than Vivien. As ambiverted as he was, he most likely only began to enjoy the sudden popularity once he realized it was both temporary and commonplace in the small community. Vivien’s reaction to the whole thing probably felt a bit overboard to the people in the restaurant, but being thrust into the spotlight and surrounded by total strangers in a small booth with no easy way to escape made it feel as though the world was closing in around her.

Vivien sighed to herself as she stared out at the surfers gliding over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe she should have gone back to the restaurant. Maybe she was just overreacting. Swallowing thickly, Vivien hoped nobody thought she was being rude for just up and leaving once she had a way out. In a way, she knew she was, but her quick departure had nothing to do with the people and everything to do with the little person in her head pressing the panic button every time someone aimed another question at her. How on earth celebrities could handle the constant spotlight and pressing questions, she would never know.

Wandering down the beach, Vivien let out a noise as she tripped over a beach bag she was sure hadn’t been there a moment ago, stumbling through the sand with an apology tumbling out of her mouth as she righted herself. The beach-goer simply waved her off and returned to the book they were reading, and with a sigh, Vivien continued her trek, only stopping as a voice called out to her, “You alright, kid?”

Squinting as the person jogged over to her, Vivien shrugged, toying with the handful of shells in her hand as she said, “I’m fine, Miles.”

The taller brunette sighed, his hands placed firmly on his hips in what Vivien could only consider to be a “dad pose” as he said, “You’re not.”

“It’s nothing,” Vivien offered, hoping to brush the whole situation under the rug. “Did the food come yet?”

“First of all,” Miles began with a somewhat disappointed look in his gaze, “you didn’t even order. Second, don’t change the subject on me. I’ve known you for long enough to know when you’re not alright.” Placing a hand on Vivien’s arm, he asked, “You know you can talk to me, right, Viv?”

Not wanting to upset the boy who was only trying to help, Vivien admitted, “I don’t like people.”

Miles chuckled, “Tell me how you really feel.”

Vivien looked up at Miles, ready to argue, before rolling her eyes as she took in the genuine humor in his eyes, “You know what I mean.” Huffing a sigh as she began walking again, Vivien admitted, “Crowds, crowded people, being the center of attention - that kind of thing. I get all claustrophobic and shit.”

Humming in understanding, Miles followed alongside the younger girl and brought an arm around her shoulders as he asked, “What happens?”

“I can’t breathe, I can’t think,” Vivien shrugged. “I remember this one time that we were at a competition, and a bunch of people with cameras came around, and I ended up passing out.”

“Damn,” Miles breathed. “Was it that bad in there for you?”

“Getting there,” Vivien sighed, leaning her head against Miles as he guided her back toward the restaurant. “I went out through the kitchen the first chance I got.”

Miles glanced around at the beach, taking in a slow breath that encouraged Vivien to do the same, “Did the fresh air help?”

“Mhm,” she nodded against his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Miles said firmly as he guided Vivien toward an empty table on the front porch of the restaurant. “I, of all people, understand how hard it is to be the new kid in town. Why don’t you sit out here for a bit? I’ll get the others, and we can eat out here.”

Vivien was quick to shake her head, “I don’t want to make them drop everything and come out just because of me. I can handle it.”

“But you don’t have to,” Miles argued sincerely. “And, for the record, nobody’s going to mind moving out here if it means we don’t have to call an ambulance for you on your first day here. Besides, if anything, it gives Royce an excuse to be our waiter.”

At that, Vivien paused, her argument dying in her throat. The idea of going back into the crowded restaurant just to sit there, hoping no people crowded their table while they ate, was mildly overwhelming. Whilst she didn’t care for the notion of making everyone abandon their usual places in their favorite hangout spot, she knew it would be easier to sit outside. And, to top it all off, Miles’ suggestion that Royce would be coming to their table more frequently made her answer seem even more obvious. Finding the courage to meet Miles’ concerned blue eyes, Vivien allowed herself to nod, muttering a soft thanks as he smiled back at her.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he chuckled, patting her on the shoulder before making his way toward the front door. “You had Carrie thinking you somehow climbed out the bathroom window and ran away.”

Feeling embarrassment flood her face again, Vivien sat so that she could see the beach and began tapping her feet on the wooden deck as she distantly examined the menu before her. Though the thought of making everyone eat outside rather than inside, where the overhead fans kept everyone as cool as a cucumber, made her disappointed in herself for not being able to pull herself together in a new environment, Vivien knew Miles’ encouragement for her to choose the safest option for herself, would ultimately be the best decision in the end. It wasn’t long before Mack and Brady emerged from the restaurant, scanning the area before finding Vivien and dragging another table and handful of chairs over to meet hers.

As Mack pushed a chair in, she said, “You know, you’re not the first person to find this whole place a bit much.”

“I’m not?” Vivien asked, setting the menu down as she glanced up at the woman.

Mack laughed, shaking her head, “My first time here, I was thrown head-first into a musical number and made to dance in the center of the room with all of the other surfers and bikers. If you think I wasn’t ready to run the second it started, you’re dead wrong.”

Vivien let out a soft chuckle but, after taking a deep breath, decided to ask, “Is it always like that in there? Chaos?”

“Not all the time,” Brady offered. “Once they get used to you, you’ll meld into one group or another, and they’ll leave you alone.”

“From the sound of it, though,” Mack began with a grin, “they’re more interested in how you ended up with Royce.”

Vivien scoffed, fighting the urge to roll her eyes as she asked, “Is it really that big of a deal?”

“To them, yeah,” Brady claimed. “Since he got here, Royce hasn’t shown a deep interest in anyone. When he came back from Christmas vacation and claimed he had a girlfriend, not a lot of people believed him.”

Mack hummed, nodding in agreement as she spoke, “I think that seeing you show up all of a sudden made everyone want to know what was so special about you that he pushed aside any offers from other girls at school.”

Vivien nodded, but as the others began to pour out of the building, her mind drifted to the thought of random girls at Royce’s school asking him out. Was it just something Mack had said to ease her mind, or was it a fact that others had tried asking him out? Vivien knew he had gone on a date before, but that he and the girl - Samantha, Serenity, something with an S - only went on one relatively awful date a few months before he even met Vivien. They had talked about their previous relationships - or lack thereof - but Royce had never mentioned anything about girls asking him out at school. Vivien could understand if girls had been asking him out - hell, that’s how she ended up with him - but to think that he had been turning them away without a second thought brought a smile to Vivien’s face. 

She had to wonder, though, if it was true. Royce was the kind to get on the phone with her, listen to her blabber on and on about her day, and then do the same while she listened intently. Never had he mentioned letting down girls from his school. If it was true, he had no reason to keep it from her; she wasn’t a jealous person, after all, and they both knew that. Shaking her head with a smile as Bentley raised an eyebrow curiously at her, Vivien brushed off the thought and focused on asking everyone what they thought would be the best thing for her to order.

When Royce made his first appearance at the table, he stepped around Bentley’s chair at the end of the table and stepped up behind Vivien, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and asking if she was alright before beginning to write out their orders. Tipping her head to the side to watch as Royce scribbled out Bentley’s presumably habitual order of chicken tenders and fries, Vivien smiled up at her boyfriend as she watched him fondly. Her staring became evident as it became her turn to order, but as she’d been more focused on him than on the menu before her, Vivien stumbled over her words and hastily scanned the page in search of something to eat.

With a chuckle, Royce lowered himself to the floor beside her and softly said, “You don’t have to rush. The longer you take to order, the longer I’m able to stay out here with you.”

Vivien glanced back at him, ready to argue that it wasn’t right for him to ignore his other tables just to spend time with her, but found the words trapped in her throat as she nodded dumbly. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Well, what do you think I should get? You know this place more than I do.”

Tawny eyes scanned over the menu with ease, and Vivien found herself following his finger as he pointed at a few different things. “You like mac and cheese, so the mac and cheese bites are right up your alley, but they’re only in small portions, so if you get them with a burger, hot dog, or maybe some fish and get a cup of nacho cheese on the side, it would be good, but that’s just what I think. You don’t have to get it.”

Eyeing the small image of a basket of fried balls of mac and cheese, Vivien smiled and nodded, “Actually, I think that’s just what I’ll get. Haddock with mac and cheese bites, please.”

Royce smiled as he wrote her order on his notepad and asked, “Baked or fried fish?”

Confused by the question, Vivien softly asked, “There’s more than one way to get fish?”

“Yeah,” Royce nodded, a small laugh passing his lips. “How do you usually get yours?”

Opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water, Vivien muttered, “I don’t know. My dad usually orders it when we eat out because I always go up to get stuff from the salad bar with Mom.” Hurriedly turning and leaning over so that she could see the Birches at the other side of the joined tables, she asked, “Do any of you know what I usually get?”

Brady held in a laugh and nodded knowingly, “Your dad always jokes about baked fish being healthier for you, so when your mom leaves to get her salad, he orders you guys…”

As the older man gestured toward her, the lightbulb inside her head flickered on, and Vivien turned back to her boyfriend with a smile, “Fried!” At the glowing amusement in Royce’s eyes, Vivien cleared her throat and toned down her voice as her face warmed, “I, uh, I mean, fried, please.”

Patting Vivien’s arm as she rested it on the armrest of her chair, Royce smiled and stood, “Alright. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Vivien nodded, smiling up at her boyfriend until he disappeared into the restaurant once more, and she was free to let out an uncomfortable groan as she placed her hands over her face. “I feel like a complete moron.”

Entertained by the girl’s mortification, Bentley shrugged and set his bottle of soda back on the table as he teased, “If the shoe fits.”

Miles choked on his drink, fighting to swallow his soda before coughing, “Bentley!”

Vivien was quick to brush off the remark, her smile evidence that she didn’t take the comment to heart in the slightest. “Miles, it’s fine. I thought it was funny,” she claimed with a small laugh. Turning her attention onto the blonde to her right, she asked, “So, do you have anything fun in mind that we can do while I’m here?”

Bentley was quick to nod, “I’ve already been thinking of places we should take you to and things we should do.”

“I’m not surprised,” Vivien commented with a grin. “Care to fill me in, or is it all a surprise?”

“Not all of it,” Bentley shrugged. “We can go to the record shop, and you can meet some of our friends from school and all of that stuff, but first, I have a question.”

Vivien let out a soft snort, “I might have an answer.”

Eager, Bentley beamed as he asked, “Are you gonna be staying with us while you’re here?”

“Benny,” Miles sighed, “where are we going to put her?”

“We have an extra room,” Bentley said as though it should have occurred to Miles.

Glancing at the blond boy, Carrie asked, “I thought you were going to move into that room once Miles got it cleaned out?”

“But Viv’s here now. I can wait,” Bentley brushed off with a wave of his hand. “And, for your information, I like sharing a room with Royce.”

“I never said you didn’t,” Carrie said with a shrug, brushing off the boy’s faintly snippy tone with a sigh.

Choosing to ignore the blonde, Bentley turned his pleading blue eyes onto Miles and said, “Anyway, my point is, we have a whole spare room she can use if we clean it out.”

Weakened by his brother’s powerful puppy dog eyes, Miles took in a breath and sighed, “Baby, I don’t even know where we’re going to put all of that stuff. It’s not like the cabin or our old place. We don’t have a basement to shove stuff in.”

“You don’t?” Vivien wondered, bewildered by the idea of any home not having a basement. As Miles shook his head, Bentley looked ready to whine his way to victory, but Vivien quickly jumped in, “Well, if it’s any help, I like organizing things.”

Mick let out a snort from her seat beside Vivien, “Yeah, except your closet.”

Vivien discretely flipped the older girl the bird before directing her attention back to Miles, “What I mean is that I can help put everything wherever you need it, if that’s any help to you.”

“See?” Bentley asked with a smile. “She’s even willing to help us! Can she stay with us now?”

Spotting the look of worry on Miles’ face at potentially having another mouth to feed with his already tight budget, Butchy piped up, “Actually, bud, Viv was supposed to stay with Mickie, Lela, and I.”

Bentley’s head tipped to the side, his confusion evident as he simply asked, “Where?”

“What do you mean?” Lela asked.

“With Aunt Mack and Uncle Brady in Miles’ old room, where is she going to sleep?” Bentley rephrased. “The couch?”

Miles evaded Bentley’s curiosity, glancing pleadingly toward his friends and silently asking them for help with the situation. However, it was Carrie who tried next, “When we went to Mick’s house for that Valentine’s party, Vivi and I talked on that video call thing about her staying in my apartment for a while if she ever came to visit.”

Butchy scoffed, and Vivien could almost hear him roll his eyes at the blonde from across the table as he said, “I can’t imagine anyone, especially Vivien, willingly staying under the same roof as you for any amount of time.”

Vivien made an attempt to cut in, hoping to keep the energy around the table calm before Royce returned with the food, but she was quickly interrupted as Carrie said, “Vivi and I are friends, dipshit. Right, Vivi?”

Again, Vivien opened her mouth to reply, but Butchy spoke up, “Just because you two have talked all of - what? - two times since she found out about this world, doesn’t make you friends.”

“Actually-” Vivien began, ready to defend the blonde as gently as possible, only to be cut off.

“Says the asshole who won’t even let her talk!” Carrie exclaimed.

Determined to stop things before they could escalate, Vivien tried again, “Guys, I-“

“You’re one to talk,” Butchy scoffed. “Look, just because your head’s so far up your own ass that your idea of friendship is a few little chit-chats here and there, Cole, doesn’t mean it has to be that way for the rest of us.”

As the argument continued, Vivien looked around the table. Although nobody seemed keen on stopping the pair from fighting, Bentley had pushed himself back in his chair, his eyes glued to his lap while Miles held his hand on the table, Mack and Brady appeared exasperated by the argument, though neither seemed ready to step in as both offending parties were still arguing at a relatively normal volume, and Mick and Lela just sat quietly, both seeming tired of the pair’s fights occurring so often. Tired of being spoken over, angered by the conversation spiraling out of control, and upset that nobody else seemed half as bothered as she was, Vivien took in a deep breath and thumped her fist on the table, causing those around her to jump at the noise as she turned toward the arguing pair, and snapped, “Enough! Can both of you just stop?”

Silence fell over the table as Vivien’s gaze flickered between the pair, the group watching as the usually argumentative pair fell silent. Whether it was due to the girl’s tone or the pleading look in her eyes, neither Carrie nor Butchy could be sure, but regardless, they felt their quarrel die in the silence as Vivien’s piercing emerald eyes flickered between them, effectively staring them down. With the table sitting in silence and the verbal smackdown extinguished, Vivien felt herself growing uncomfortable as she began to feel the various pairs of eyes flitting between her and the others. Sucking in a breath, she softly apologized and sunk back in her chair, hoping the cushion behind her would swallow her embarrassment.

“Viv?” Bentley asked softly, placing a hand atop the girl’s closed fist.

Letting out the rest of her breath in a sigh, Vivien opened her hand to hold Bentley’s, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have raised my voice like that, especially in public.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Brady said with a shake of his head. “Are you okay?” 

Not willing to look up from an old scratch she has found on the table as her leg began bouncing again under it, Vivien shrugged, “I’m fine, it’s just-” she cut herself off with a huff, taking a moment to think about what she wanted to say. Glancing at the older couple at the end of the table, she admitted, “My parents have been arguing a lot the last week or so because Dad told Oliver he could join his boyfriend’s family on a trip during summer break, but they never asked her what she thought about it before agreeing, and I’ve had to step in to stop them a few times so Mom wouldn’t cancel all of the trips we had planned for this week. I guess I just… I wanted to stop their fight before it got worse like my parents’ have been.”

Before the others could think of something to say, Bentley grinned and squeezed Vivien’s hand, gaining her attention as he spoke, “Butchy and Carrie don’t get much worse than that. They insult each other and play tetherball with nasty remarks until someone stops them, or they get sick of each other.”

“Or one shoves the other into the town pool,” Royce commented as he stepped outside with a wide tray of food in plastic baskets with pieces of wax paper preventing anything from spilling.

Vivien attempted a small chuckle as her boyfriend placed her basket of fish before her, looking up at him as she asked, “And how often does that happen?”

As Carrie opened her mouth to respond, Bentley took his food from his brother and beamed, “Butchy’s only shoved Carrie into the pool once so far, but their fighting is pretty much an everyday thing.”

Glancing away from the brothers, who both seemed to enjoy the memory of Carrie getting pushed into the pool by the metaphorical guard dog of their mismatched, makeshift family, Vivien looked around the table and asked, “Why don’t you just lock them in a room until they work things out?”

Without allowing Butchy the chance to voice his opinion, Mick gave Vivien a look and answered, “Because they’d both come out of it in body bags if we did.”

Snorting a laugh, Vivien allowed her gaze to drift back onto her boyfriend, watching as he circled the table before coming to a stop behind her and tucking his tray under his arm. With her head tipped back, she smiled up at him and mouthed a greeting as he chuckled at her. With his free hand, Royce tapped the tip of her nose before asking if she was alright.

Incapable of wiping the smile from her face now that he was present, Vivien, in turn, asked, “What time do you get off of work?”

Out of habit, Royce shrugged, “I get out in about an hour, so two o’clock. Why?”

“That’s when I’ll be alright,” Vivien decided. “I’ll be fine in the meantime, but the moment you get to clock out and join the rest of us wherever they choose to take me, is when I’ll actually be alright.”

A deep shade of pink began to flush Royce’s cheeks, peeking through the tan the Floridian sun had graced him with over his time living in the state, but he chose to ignore the burn under his skin as he grinned at the brunette seated before him. “Well, in that case, I might just go inside and start putting all the clocks ahead an hour.”

Vivien smirked, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Deal,” Royce smiled. As though he had only just remembered the others sitting around the table, Royce glanced around and quickly said, “I’ll check on you guys in a few. I have to clear some tables.”

Grinning at the blush still evident on her boyfriend’s face, Vivien teased, “Hurry back.”

Before his older brother could respond in kind, Bentley looked up at Royce and batted his eyes at him as he repeated Vivien, “Yeah, Royce, hurry back!”

Batting the back of his brother’s head with his serving tray, Royce rolled his eyes, “Keep it up and I’ll stop buying you ice cream after school.”

“Nooo,” Bentley whined, grabbing Royce’s wrist and tugging him back to the table. Pressing the back of his free hand to his forehead, he complained, “Whatever will I do without my daily dose of crack?”

“Bentley,” Miles chided as he glanced around to make sure nobody apart from their tables had heard the boy. “You’ve got to stop with the crack thing.”

The young blond snickered, “Says the guy who has some every morning.”

Looking pleadingly at his youngest brother, Miles took in a breath and spoke in a hushed voice, “I don’t do crack.”

“Sure, you do,” Bentley teased, leaning back in his chair and beginning to count on his fingers. “You have some when you wake up, you always take some to work, and sometimes you even have some when you get home. You can’t go a day without it.”

“Ben,” Miles sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose exasperatedly as he realized exactly what Bentley meant. “How on earth does coffee equal crack to you?”

Vivien grinned, nudging Bentley’s arm as she joined the blond’s efforts and asked Miles, “Are you sure you didn’t do crack this morning?”

Looking across the table with wide eyes, Miles shook his head, “What? No.”

“In the bathroom when you got here?”

“No, I-”

“Are you doing some right now?”

“No!” Miles exclaimed with a shake of his head. “Vivien-”

“Then when?” Vivien pressed.

“Never!” Miles barked. “I have never - nor will I ever - do crack!”

“Are you sure?” Bentley questioned.

Beaming from behind Bentley’s chair, Royce spoke up before Miles could, “Are you lying?” 

“Yes,” Miles said in response to Bentley before realizing Royce’s question and backpedaling. “Wait, no! Look, you-”

“See how angry you are?” Vivien asked somewhat rhetorically. “It’s the crack.”

“Just admit it,” Bentley said with a sigh, shaking his head at his older brother. “Royce is your faithful crack dealer just as much as he is mine.”

Miles looked between the trio, beginning to wonder if he would regret offering to house the girl if this was what he would be getting himself into. Taking in a breath, he slowly turned to the others sitting around the table and breathed, “I’m going to have an aneurysm with them all together under one roof, aren’t I?”

Mack chuckled as she placed her drink back down on the table, “And you wonder what it’s like for us everytime we take you kids up to the cabin.”

“Does that mean Viv is staying with us while she’s here?” Royce asked, hope glimmering in his caramel eyes.

Hoping to finally get an answer to his earlier question, Bentley’s pale blue irises searched Miles’ face as he pleaded, “Yeah, Miley, does it?”

For a moment, Miles seemed to hesitate, momentarily thrown off by the boys’ complete one-eighty turn from taunting him to begging him for permission to house Vivien. He began to weigh his options - on one hand, the extra room had a bed and a somewhat functional closet for Vivien to put her belongings in until they got the rest of the room cleared out, but on the other, the savings he had been squirreling away to be able to buy better quality gifts for his brothers and Carrie would end up taking a hit if he had another mouth to feed. Ultimately, it was the look of hope in the trio's eyes that sealed his fate, resulting in a somewhat tentative nod from the eldest of the Murphy brothers.

“Yeah, alright,” he allowed, taking a moment to enjoy the simultaneous burst of excitement the three reveled in. With a smile, he then added, “Viv can stay with us, but you guys are going to have your work cut out for you with that bedroom.”

While the three teens began talking about how they would handle everything, Miles felt a hand on his arm, making him turn to the blonde beside him as she softly asked, “Are you sure? I don’t mind taking her back to my place.”

Miles returned her offer with a smile and a shake of his head, “It’s alright. I’ll figure something out for now and we’ll work it all out later on.”

Although he was sure that the subject was far from dropped by anyone around the table apart from the children, Miles tried to relax as the table’s occupants resumed their meal while Royce returned to his duties inside the restaurant. However, despite appearing interested in the conversations that flitted around the table and flowed from topic to topic, a mental jungle gym had already begun construction in Miles’ head. He worked hard all the time to provide for his brothers and still have a small fund set aside for dates with Carrie and days off with the boys - would having the girl stay with them be as difficult as he was making it out to be?

Since he had met her a few years back, Miles knew all too well that Vivien was far from a difficult child. She would eat pretty much anything handed to her, and he had seen her fall asleep practically anywhere she could - she wouldn’t be hard to house. However, Vivien was used to modern things that he didn’t have access to - televisions with more than a few select channels, computers that could find anything in the blink of an eye, internet, social media, and so on - and he could only provide so much. Would she be okay with the severe lack of technology in his fixer-upper of a home?

To top it all off, he knew firsthand how hard it was to stretch meals four ways. When they lived with their father, Miles would make meals every day for the four of them, taking whatever he could find in the fridge or pantry and making up a random recipe that he practically pulled out of his ass. With just his brothers, it was easy enough as they weren’t picky eaters - Pop-Tarts or toast for breakfast, discounted meals at school or work for lunch, and something more fulfilling for supper so that they had at least one meal together where they didn’t have to feel like cheapskates living paycheck to paycheck. Miles could manage that well enough. However, with Vivien not having a job or school to give her something for lunch, he’d have to take her shopping for things to eat throughout the day.

By the time the meal was over, Miles realized he hadn’t followed any of the conversation, his mind too preoccupied with his finances - or lack thereof - to bother listening to anything he wasn’t actively a part of. Once the table was cleared, they broke onto the beach, but Miles chose to sit on the front steps of the restaurant so that he was there when Royce clocked out. Carrie had sat with him for a few minutes before Vivien came over and begged them to join her in building a sandcastle. Miles had smiled and politely declined after explaining his desire to talk with Royce, but he nudged Carrie to join the group, watching the brunette pull his girlfriend away by the hand with a smile.

After discarding his apron and saying a quick farewell to some of his coworkers, Royce made his way out of the restaurant with a sigh, ready to start his three-day break from the place as the sun greeted him. Spotting his brother on the steps, Royce grinned and stepped down next to him, sitting beside Miles and leaning his head on the elder’s shoulder. “I forgot to thank you earlier.”

Glancing down at Royce’s tangled curls, Miles allowed a smirk to tug at his lips as he rested his cheek atop Royce’s head. “Oh yeah? What for?��

“Letting Viv stay with us,” Royce spoke softly as he listened to the waves crash against the shore. Lifting his head from its resting place, Royce found Miles’ baby blue eyes and said, “I’ll help however you need me to. If we need money or anything-”

“No,” Miles breathed, shaking his head lightly. Taking Royce’s hand in his, Miles squeezed it reassuringly. “We already talked about this, baby. I’m not letting you pay for anything.”

Royce’s expression contorted into one of exasperated understanding, “Miley-”

“RJ,” Miles interrupted with a smile, stopping his brother’s argument in its tracks. “I’ve got this. We’ll be alright. The only things you should focus on are work, school, and cleaning that disaster area you and Ben call a bedroom.”

Royce let out a scoff, “That’s more his disaster than it is mine.”

“Tell that to the pretty girl you’ve got staying with us,” Miles chuckled. As he glanced over at the group who were mourning the loss of a sand tower that had crumbled due to lack of moisture, Royce followed his gaze and smiled at the brunette who seemed to glow in the warmth of the Florida sun. Miles grinned at his brother’s expression and watched the group as he said, “The minute she walks in the door, you’ll see every little thing you forgot to clean and wish like hell it would all disappear before she saw anything.”

Royce’s smile seemed to falter as he recalled just how many dishes he’d left in the sink that morning that he was supposed to do after dinner that night, the basket full of freshly done laundry on the floor in his room that he’d neglected to put away and had just been pulling clothes out of for the last few days, and the multitude of books and paperwork strewn about the living room where his and Bentley’s friend groups congregated to work on homework and assignments together. As his gaze landed on Vivien once more, her infectious smile beaming proudly as she carried a snail back to the group alongside her bucket of wet sand, Royce couldn’t help but breathe, “I’m so screwed.”

Miles let out a soft chuckle and patted Royce’s knee as he stood, “Welcome to the club.”

Tearing his gaze away from his girlfriend of nearly four months to peer up at his brother, Royce’s eyebrow lifted and his head tipped to the side ever so slightly as he cautiously asked, “What club?”

Miles grinned, “The Whipped Idiots Committee. Butchy started it, I joined later on, and now, you’re here; congrats. If you’re anything like us, you’ll be here for a while.”

Though, as Miles walked off to join the others, Royce’s first instinct was to tiredly roll his eyes in disgust at the thought of Miles - of all people - feeling “whipped” over someone like Carrie, he found himself stopping to think for a moment. He knew from the relatively short amount of time he knew the man that Butchy was truly, inescapably attached to Mick’s hip; she could ask him anything and he would do it at the drop of a hat for her. And though it disgusted Royce to think about Carrie having Miles wrapped around her manicured little claws, he knew for a fact that if she told him to jump, he’d ask “how high”. Was he really any different from either of them? 

If Vivien needed Royce for anything, he would be there in an instant and they both knew it. Hell, everyone who knew about their relationship, knew it. And he knew from experience she would do the same for him. Well… him, his brothers, their collective friend group, and even people he couldn’t stand someone like Carrie. Vivien was a naturally selfless person, but Royce knew that she cared about him and he’d be damned if she didn’t know he was crazy about her. He would do anything she wanted or needed him to do; even when they were just friends, he would have done anything for her, and they both knew it.

Thinking for a moment as he watched Vivien help build a castle in the sand, Royce smiled as he realized Miles was right. He was unconditionally, irrevocably, head-over-heels whipped for the brunette girl he was fortunate enough to call his girlfriend. Was that a problem? If you asked Royce, he would say no, no it wasn’t. Not in the slightest. If anything, he was proud. You could’ve put a plastic cap on his head and shoved him into one of the refrigerators at the grocery store alongside the cans of whipped cream for all he cared. He adored Vivien with all he had, and heaven help anyone who said otherwise.

Pushing himself from the steps with a goofy grin that just wouldn’t go away despite his efforts, Royce tucked his hands into the pockets of his shorts and made his way across the sand to where Vivien had begun decorating a lopsided, half-crumbling sandcastle with the shells she had pocketed on her earlier walk. The way her tongue poked out between her lips in concentration made his grin split into a smile, but as he watched her eyes sparkle as she turned her attention toward him, he felt as though he could have melted into the sand under his feet and he would have died happy right then and there.

Vivien patted the sand on her right, an invitation of sorts that Royce eagerly accepted, his hands immediately filled with a pile of shells as Bentley continued to spout off ideas about things they could do in the area. Although Vivien’s attention was split between the brothers and the castle before her, Royce found himself listening intently as his gaze drifted onto the eldest of his siblings, finding Miles smirking knowingly at him. Royce rolled his eyes, a soft sigh passing his lips as he relented with a shrug. Yeah, Miles was right, but did he have to act like he knew he was right?

Focusing on the task at hand, Royce slid a seashell into one of the sand walls and listened as Bentley began rattling off about places he enjoyed, “There’s a nature preserve that my whole grade went to and we got to feed the alligators, but I don’t know if we would be allowed to since we’re not with the school.”

“It still sounds cool,” Vivien said with a smile. “Is that your favorite place around here?”

Bentley was quick to shake his head, but Miles began teasing him before he could speak, “No, he prefers hanging out with his little girlfriend at the art museum.”

As soon as the words left Miles’ mouth, Bentley’s face scrunched up as a look nobody could quite decipher filled his face and he shook his head, “Kona and I are just friends.”

“Whatever you say, bud,” Butchy chuckled as he and Mick worked on sculpting a moat.

“Kona?” Vivien repeated with a grin. “Like my car?”

“It’s spelled the same,” Royce shrugged. “She moved here from Hawaii not long after we got here and is in the same grade as Bentley.”

Bentley’s smile returned as he explained, “Her parents own this really cool record shop near where Miles works. Her dad runs a radio station out of it and they live upstairs. You’ve gotta meet her; you would love her.”

Vivien smiled in kind, but couldn’t help teasing the boy as she elbowed his arm, “Not nearly as much as you do, apparently.”

Choosing to simply ignore the girl’s teasing, Bentley said, “She’s got two cats who roam around the store and beg for treats.”

With a nod, Vivien sighed, “I’m not a big cat person, but I bet they’re cute.”

As though snapped from a trance, Royce looked up and found Miles’ gaze already on him, concern filling their locked eyes as Bentley asked, “You don’t like cats?”

Vivien shrugged, “It’s not that I don’t like them - I do and I think they’re adorable - I’ve just never had one around, so I prefer dogs. My mom claims that she’s allergic to cats, so we’ve always had dogs. Personally, I think she just doesn’t like cats because she’s always calling them prissy and aggressive.”

Tentatively, Royce swallowed thickly and turned toward his girlfriend with a hopeful grin, “Would you mind living with one?”

Confused, Vivien shook her head, “No, why? Do you want one?”

“We already have one,” Miles explained. “A black cat we got around Halloween a while back.”

“His name is Binx - like the Hocus Pocus cat,” Bentley added with a proud smile as he stuck a stick into the top of a sand tower. “He likes Cheetos, long baths, and he sits on our shoulders like a parrot sometimes.”

Vivien giggled, while the concept of the boys having a pet had crossed her mind, she just assumed Miles would have a German shepherd or something for protection - if not a breed with enough energy to entertain Bentley’s golden retriever mannerisms. If anything, the only person in that house who she could imagine owning a cat was her boyfriend. Royce was, for all intents and purposes, the embodiment of a Chartreux - quiet, inquisitive, and gentle, yet playful when he wanted to be. He seemed to be the oddball of the group - Vivien’s spirit animal of sorts being the same outgoing, yet calm and perceptive hound who always fell asleep somewhere on her bed back home.

Shaking her head, Vivien grinned, “If you guys don’t have Cheetos at home, we need to pick some up for him.”

Carrie beamed, “They keep a bag just for him.”

“Aww!” Vivien cooed, her smile growing so big it began pushing her eyes closed. Lightly smacking Royce’s arm with the back of her hand, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”

“I thought I had,” Royce admitted shyly.

Vivien shook her head, “I would’ve remembered his name! Hocus Pocus is one of my favorite movies of all time.”

“Sorry,” Royce chuckled, a hand coming up to the back of his neck as Vivien smiled in his direction.

Nudging Royce’s arm with an elbow, Vivien grinned, “That just means you’ll have to formally introduce us later.”

Feeling himself smile as warmth crawled up his neck and spread across his cheeks, Royce nodded and breathed, “Yeah, okay.”

Giggling at her boyfriend’s reaction, Vivien turned to the others and asked, “So, what should we do first? Should we take the day to clean, and then you guys can show me around tomorrow, or…?”

“Well, today’s Saturday, so Kona should be busy helping her dad with his broadcast,” Bentley commented thoughtfully. “And the museums will be packed.”

“Sadly, so will that new mall I told you about on the phone,” Carrie mentioned as Vivien glanced her way. “Saturdays are when everyone and their mother try to get good deals.”

Royce looked ready to argue that he knew all too well that the blonde had already wasted enough money at the shiny new building, but Vivien spoke before he got the chance, effectively shutting down any snide remarks he planned on making as she smiled in Carrie’s direction. “I guess some things never change. My bandmates, Erica and Jade, work at the Mall of New Hampshire and say that they only work weekends so they get to watch the chaos from the food court on their breaks.”

Realizing, to his dismay, that his girlfriend would probably be just as enamored with the new shopping center as Carrie was, Royce asked, “Do you go there often?”

“All the time!” Vivien exclaimed. “It’s not a huge mall or anything, but they have some of the best clothes and stuff. I got my first pair of skates at that mall when I was little.”

“They sell figure skates at the mall?” Bentley asked.

“Yeah,” Vivien nodded. Glancing over at the unsuspecting Butchy, she smirked and added, “We went to Dick’s.”

Butchy looked up, an eyebrow raised at the younger girl as she grinned in his direction. Although he looked ready to speak up and ask the girl how on earth that could be the name of a store, Bentley beat him to the punch as his blue eyes sparkled with glee, “Dick’s?”

Vivien nodded, glad to finally have found a way to evade Butchy’s tax on swearing, but Royce let out a snort as he asked, “Is there seriously a store named Dick’s?”

“Dick’s Sporting Goods,” Mick nodded, fighting back a laugh as Butchy’s head practically snapped toward her, an incredulous look in his eyes. “What? It’s true!”

“You’ve got to be screwing with me,” Butchy muttered. 

Carrie scoffed a laugh, her oversized sunglasses lifting as she smirked at Butchy, “What? Can’t handle a few Dick’s being thrown around here and there?”

“Yeah, it’s just a sports shop, big guy.” Vivien smirked, glancing around the group as she thoughtfully said, “I bet you would’ve had a heart attack if you had been with us on that trip my school took to the Hoover Dam.”

Bentley’s eyes sparkled as the third Percy Jackson book dragged to the front of his mind, and he asked, “Did you have to ride the dam elevator?”

Ignoring Butchy’s startled call of her friend’s name, Vivien beamed, “We did, but a few of us had to stop to use the dam bathroom first.”

Having read the books with his brother and girlfriend, Royce grinned as he questioned, “Did you get any dam snacks from the dam snack bar?”

“I bet those dam t-shirts were expensive.” An almost maniacal giggle bubbled up from Vivien’s chest as Mick spoke, her nonchalance causing a ripple of laughter to course through the group as Butchy sighed.

“This is the part where I admit defeat,” he muttered, pushing himself to his feet.

“I’d tell you to give up while you’re ahead, but you’re definitely not ahead of them by any means,” Miles chuckled, following his friend’s lead before reaching down and offering a hand to his girlfriend. As the kids scrambled to their feet, proud smiles on their faces as Butchy and Mick began the walk to Mick’s bus, Miles asked, “So, kiddies, where to first?”

Vivien took in a breath as both Royce and Bentley turned toward her expectantly, but her first thought wasn’t of adventure; it was of genuine confusion as Miles and Carrie followed the others toward Mick’s Volkswagen. “I thought we were going with you guys. Where’s your car?”

“We walked,” Bentley said with a shrug. “Our house is close enough that we walk or ride our bikes everywhere almost every day.”

“And I left my car at their house,” Carrie added, nudging her sunglasses further up her nose with a smile at the brunette.

Ignoring the blonde’s addition to the conversation with ease despite his girlfriend’s nod of understanding, Royce added, “And Miles’ piece of crap Jeep needs new spark plugs.”

“It’s not a piece of crap if it gets you two to school on time,” Miles sighed, the mere thought of having to put more work into the rust bucket exhausting him.

“What do you need to have done to it?” Vivien asked. “My Grandpa George lets me help him with his old truck all the time; maybe I can help.”

Miles shook his head, “You’re our guest; you shouldn’t be helping me with stuff like that. Besides, it’s mostly simple fixes - new spark plugs, an oil change, that kind of thing. The only thing I need to check on other than that is the clutch.”

“You drive a stick?” Vivien asked, her eyes sparkling at the thought. “Can you teach me how?”

Smiling at the girl, Miles chuckled and nodded, “Maybe one of these days, sure. Now, where do you need to go?”

Sighing as Miles turned the topic back onto her, Vivien shrugged as she replied, “Can we stop at a gas station or something so I can pick up some snacks before we get to cleaning?”

“Then what?” Carrie asked before Miles could ask her what she wanted.

“I don’t know, really,” Vivien admitted as Bentley tucked his arm into the crook of her elbow, her other arm already looped around Royce’s. “I’m just happy to be here with you guys. It doesn’t feel real.”

“I know the feeling,” Royce chuckled, offering his girlfriend a smile. “Having you here is so surreal.”

“Just wait until you meet everyone,” Bentley said, hopping off of a concrete parking block as Vivien laughed.

“You mean I haven’t already?” she asked. “I think I met everyone in town.”

“Not everyone,” Royce claimed, “but there aren’t a lot of people you haven’t met yet.”

“Kona, Zack, and August,” Bentley began.

“Benny’s friends from school,” Royce explained, to which Vivien nodded.

“Don’t forget Sandy, Lake, and Kit,” Miles tacked on.

“Cassandra Wheaton, and Laken and Katrina Dubois,” Bentley explained, tugging Vivien’s hand as he spoke. “Those are Royce’s friends.”

“Sandy is this red-head girl in my grade who constantly picks fights with the teachers if she thinks they’re wrong,” Royce explained. “She’s related to Butchy’s friend, Larry.”

“Lugnut,” Miles stated, holding the door open for the kids to climb in. “That’s what we call him. And, for the record, they’re cousins.”

“Why on earth do you call him that?” Vivien asked with a grin, pausing by the doorway. “Because he’s got bolts for brains?”

Butchy snorted from the front seat, turning to grin at the kids, “That’s one reason.”

As Bentley followed Vivien into the VW bus, Royce said, “She and her family are on vacation this week, though. Lake and Kit, on the other hand, are Lela's boyfriend’s best friend’s younger brother and sister - they’re twins.”

“Lake is usually the one getting into trouble at school, but he gets good enough grades that nobody really says anything,” Royce explained. “Kit, on the other hand, is the only sane one. She’s the polar opposite of her brother in school, but we’re all pretty sure she’s got some kind of rebellious side under her good-girl exterior.”

As Vivien pieced together the web that linked the group together as friends, she smiled curiously, “And they’re your friends from school?” Royce nodded, and Vivien shook her head with a chuckle. “Sounds like my friends - a mismatched abomination that works, for whatever reason.”

Royce smiled, but it was Bentley who spoke up, “You know, Lake’s the only reason Royce didn’t get in much trouble for punching that kid in the face back in February.”

“Really?” Vivien asked. When Bentley nodded proudly, still clearly relishing in how protective his typically calm older brother had gotten, Vivien turned to Royce and said, “I have to say, when I first found out about that, I didn’t believe it, but now that I know it’s true, I’m proud of you.”

Royce looked away as he heaved a sigh, “I could have handled it better.”

“You could,” Vivien shrugged, “but I would have done the same.”

“You would have?” Royce asked softly as the door slid shut behind Miles.

Vivien hummed, nodding in confirmation before smiling at her boyfriend, “Nobody messes with our siblings.”

Royce smiled, a breath of a laugh escaping him as he nodded, “I still feel kind of bad about breaking his nose and tripping the other one down the stairs.”

“You shouldn’t,” Vivien claimed calmly. Leaning her head on Royce’s shoulder, she smirked as she added, “Besides, I kind of like the thought of seeing you get all protective over the people you care about.”

One of Royce’s eyebrows raised as he looked down at the top of Vivien’s head. “Yeah?”

Instead of replying outright, she nodded against his shoulder, tipping her head back so that she could see his face as she muttered, “I would have paid big bucks to watch it go down.”

“I watched it in real time,” Bentley claimed, heaving a laugh as he recalled the day he watched his ever-calm older brother rail his fist into an upperclassman’s face. “It was a wonder Royce didn’t break his fist in Darren’s face.”

“Or get into any more trouble than I did,” Royce sighed as he leaned over to look at Bentley. “It was honestly a miracle I wasn’t suspended.”

Bentley rolled his eyes before grinning at Vivien and explaining, “Lake went with us to the principal and explained that he saw the whole thing. If he hadn’t, we would’ve gone back and forth until the bell rang.”

“Instead,” Royce continued, “they took his word and called Miles to come and pick us up.”

Turning enough to see the kids, Miles mused, “Most terrifying call of my life.”

“How come?” Vivien asked.

“All they told me was that there was a fight and I needed to get the boys,” Miles recalled. With a sigh, he said, “Since neither of them start fights, I figured I’d be dealing with broken teeth and blood everywhere. Instead, I get to the office, find some kid being called into the principal’s office with an icepack on his face, and these two sitting with the nurse, looking relatively unharmed.”

Royce glanced down at the knuckles on his right hand, flexing and clenching his fist as he examined the leftover marks from his first-ever fistfight. Though it wasn’t his dominant hand, his punch to the older boy’s face had certainly made a mark on both him and the older boy - breaking Darren’s nose for the second time that school year. The quarterback was a caricature of the stereotypical jock - obnoxiously loud, rude, and always vying for access to some poor girl’s skirt. Although Royce doubted he had much success with women in general, Darren acted like he had been crowned King of the school anytime he had a girl under his arm, pushing underclassmen out of his way and picking out random things to taunt them with at least once a day. He was rude, uncouth, and, quite frankly, had the punch coming.

“It’s just a miracle his parent’s didn’t press charges,” Miles mused. “Lawyer fees wouldn’t be cheap if we went against the town’s darling little quarterback.”

“It would have been sooo worth it to take them all down a peg, though,” Carrie sighed. 

“Why do you even care?” Royce asked with a roll of his eyes. “Just because you would’ve had the money to handle it doesn’t mean all of us peasants could’ve.”

Though Carrie looked ready to fire back something about how money had little to do with the situation or how she cared because Miles cared, she bit her tongue and instead sighed, “I’ve heard enough shit about that family. They’re dicks to everyone.”

“Oh, joy,” Vivien sighed with a roll of her eyes. “I get away from one asshole family at my school only to meet another asshole family at this one.”

“Swear jar,” Butchy muttered from the front, echoed in near unison by his younger sister and Miles.

“Good thing I’m not staying at your place tonight,” Vivien snickered.

Lela glanced at the girl and sighed, “Don’t be surprised if he nails you for it later.”

“That’s not fair,” Vivien huffed.

“Neither is the swear jar,” Miles laughed.

“College fund,” Butchy corrected.

“More like the bullshit fund,” Carrie claimed with a roll of her eyes as she looked out the window at the passing scenery.

“Wait, how come she gets to cuss, but I don’t?” Vivien scoffed in disbelief, gesturing to Carrie.

Twisting in his seat to look back at the teenager in the backseat, Butchy grinned, “Because I don’t care what she does. You, on the other hand, are one of my responsibilities while you’re here.”

Crossing her arms over her chest and preparing her fiercest glare, Vivien smirked, but Miles caught on quickly, smirking as he attempted to placate the girl before she could push Butchy’s buttons any more than he was sure she had already planned to, “I wouldn’t.”

Choosing to ignore Miles’ tame warning, Vivien giggled, “If Butchy can’t handle the heat, maybe he shouldn’t be such a colossal dickhead.” 

“Vivien,” Mack cautioned, “be nice.”

“I just want to see where the line is so that I can play jump rope with it,” Vivien claimed somewhat innocently, making Butchy roll his eyes as he turned back toward the road ahead. “Have I crossed it yet?”

“Wouldn’t be the first or the last time you did,” Butchy shrugged.

Vivien’s smile only seemed to grow as she contemplated her next course of action. Tapping her chin thoughtfully, she hummed, “How about prick; is that okay, Corporal Shithead?”

“I mean, under certain circumstances, I guess, but-”

“Shit? Damn?” Vivien continued. “How about Dick’s? The sporting goods place, not the anatomy.”

“I don’t have a written list of acceptable swears,” Butchy claimed with a chuckle. “And, yeah, store names are fine. Why do you-”

“How about fuck-nuggets?” Vivien pressed, her eyes practically glistening with joy. “I reserve that one for special people, you know, Señor Fu-”

“We’re here!” Mick exclaimed, cutting off Vivien’s fun as she pulled into the parking lot of a red and white convenience store, rolling up to the side of a gas pump before putting the oversized vehicle in park.

As she jumped out of the van, Vivien stared up at the building’s name with a look of scrutiny, encouraging a snort from Butchy as he smirked at her. “What’s with your face, piccola?”

Without batting an eye, Vivien stared up at the sign and asked, “The fuck is Wawa - some baby store bullshit?”

“It’s a gas station,” Bentley laughed as he followed Miles toward the store, digging into his pocket for some money. “You wanted snacks.”

Nudging the girl with his arm, Butchy grinned, “They have some of the best mac and cheese you will ever try.”

Slowly tearing her gaze from the store, Vivien looked up at Butchy and inspected his expression before softly asking him, “Better than Chick-fil-A?”

Dutifully, Butchy nodded as he brought an arm around the brunette’s shoulders, “By far.”

Eyes widening at the idea of anything being better than Chick-fil-A’s mac and cheese, Vivien swallowed and allowed Butchy to guide her toward the store. “I swear,” she began as he pulled the door open for her, “if you’re lying to me, I’ll strangle you.”

With a chuckle and a shake of his head, Butchy asked, “And if I was right?”

Vivien thought for a moment before shrugging, “I don’t know - I’ll tell Mick to kiss you or something.”

Butchy’s flat stare landed on Vivien as he asked, “She and I have been together for years now; why wouldn’t she kiss me?”

After thinking for a second, she shuddered and made a face at the taller man, “Well, I’m certainly not kissing you.”

Though Butchy pretended to gag at the thought, Vivien giggled, shoving him with her elbow as he guided her toward the wall of buffet-style foods across from the door. Chuckling, Butchy said, “Go check out the food, child. I’m going to pry Lela away from the Slurpee machine before she brings home another abomination that makes her sick.”

“Good luck with that,” Vivien snickered, watching him saunter off with a grin before turning to the food before her. The typical gas station foods - cheap hotdogs, sketchy burritos, and some half-empty trays of pizza - were on full display, but Vivien passed them with ease as her gaze narrowed in on a heated section of deep metal bowls of soups and steaming mac and cheese. Taking in a slow breath, Vivien paused as the smell of the food filled her. Why did it smell good? Gas station food never smelled good.

As a hand landed on her shoulder, Vivien jumped, turning toward Mack with wide eyes. Curious, the woman examined the food before asking, “Looks a hell of a lot better than the stuff we’d get at Cumby’s, doesn’t it?”

Cumberland Farms, a convenience store chain most commonly found in the New England region that Vivien proudly hailed from, was known amongst locals for their terrible, grow-hair-on-your-chest type coffee and shitty selection of “hot foods” that workers would hastily throw into the microwave before selling. Despite their food being sub-par, Vivien almost always stopped there for gas and a snack between school and skate practice. This Wawa place was putting her favorite gas station to shame with their fancy displays of food and varied selection of decent-looking snacks! 

Nodding at the older woman, she asked, “Why does it smell so good?” 

Mack smiled, “Because, believe it or not, it’s good food.”

“You’ve had some?” Vivien asked. When the graying woman nodded, she looked at the array of food and asked, “What do you recommend?”

“Just about anything,” Mack shrugged. “It’s all a lot cheaper than the stuff back home.”

As the brunette woman patted her shoulder and walked away, Vivien’s eyebrow raised, but as she slowly turned her attention back to the food before her, her curiosity was quickly replaced with surprise as she read the prices along the top of the heated cases. Thirty-five cents for a bowl of mac and cheese?! A box of uncooked mac and cheese - not even a good brand, just the generic, store-brand kind - back home was almost two dollars, and you still had to buy butter and milk to make it! Digging into the purse Lela had let her borrow, Vivien dug out her NASA-branded wallet and came to the realization that she had saved a load more money for the trip than she would probably ever need. Feeling a sense of wealth in a gas station - of all places - was surreal, but there she was, standing in front of the gas station’s array of mac and cheeses, feeling like the richest person in the world. Having saved all of her money from her band’s tip jar at their gigs, her allowances, and her part-time work at her family’s winery, she now had just shy of a thousand dollars saved for a trip that would, more likely than not, cost a whole lot less than she had anticipated.

“Are you good, kid?” a voice asked, making Vivien hastily zip her wallet shut as she turned toward Miles, her thoughts running wild at the thought of storming into the nearby mall and buying everything her heart desired without feeling bad for spending a ton on herself.

Vivien scrambled to find the words to say before stammering out, “I-I, uh, I just- I saved money for this trip.”

Miles smiled, a sense of pride filling him as he nodded, “Good job. Is it enough to buy what you want or do you need some change?”

Vivien’s eyes flickered to the sign, its two-digit number startling her once more as she half expected it to have changed since the last time she looked. With a vehement shake of her head, she began, “N-No, it’s not-!” She cut herself off and took in a breath, lowering her voice to a whisper and holding up her wallet with wide eyes, “I think I could buy a house with this.”

Miles glanced at the girl’s wallet and smirked, placing a hand over it and lowering it, “I highly doubt that, but isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yeah, I think so, but-”

“But nothing,” Miles interrupted, taking the girl’s arms in his hands and forcing her to focus on his words. “You’re here to have fun, not worry about finances.”

Vivien nodded dutifully, but as her gaze fell on her borrowed clothes, she found herself beginning to worry again as she muttered, “I don’t have any clothes.”

“What?” Miles asked, not having heard the girl’s simple statement.

Emerald eyes flickered up to meet Miles’, and he watched as worry filled them. “Mick told me to leave my clothes at her parent’s house and only take what I needed because I’d leave here with more clothes than I could fit in my suitcase. I borrowed all of this-” she gestured to herself, “from Lela. I don’t- I don’t have pajamas for tonight or clothes for tomorrow - o-or any day, for that matter. Miles, what am I going to do? I can’t just run around in the same outfit every day!”

“First of all, breathe,” Miles instructed, waiting until Vivien sucked in a breath before continuing, “and second, relax. You can borrow something for tonight, and I can take you clothes shopping tomorrow.”

Vivien took in the idea and slowly nodded. “Are you sure? I don’t want to get in the way of your plans.”

“You won’t,” Miles decided with a shake of his head. “We’ll worry about all of that tomorrow. Now, go pick out some snacks for tonight before the boys decide to buy half the store for you.”

Allowing Miles to nudge her toward the coolers full of drinks where Bentley and Royce were arguing over which drink they thought Vivien would want, she shoved her wallet back into her bag and allowed their voices to lure her in, glancing around at the myriad of snacks available as she closed the distance between them. “What’re you guys talking about?”

Glad to have someone there as a tie-breaker, Bentley beamed, “Oh, good! Viv, would you please tell your boyfriend that you’d like root beer more than Mountain Dew?”

Switching her gaze from the bottle of A&W in Bentley’s hand to the sloshing, radioactive green liquid in the glass bottle held by the brunet on her right, Vivien opened her mouth to speak, but Royce spoke first, “She’s been talking about having us bring her a bottle of this stuff since January, Ben.”

Choosing to speak up before the boys could argue more about her choice of drink, Vivien asked, “Why not just get both?” When the boys looked her way, she said, “I can have one tonight while we work and another in the morning with breakfast.”

“Soda with breakfast?” Bentley wondered aloud, glancing between Vivien and Royce. “Is that allowed?”

Vivien shrugged as she took the bottles from the boys, “Why not? If Miles can have his crackhead coffee in the morning, I can have a soda.”

Turning on her heel, Vivien headed for the chip aisle, examining the funky fonts with a smile as the boys fetched their own drinks from the coolers. As she picked up a tube of Pringles - the “newfangled” chip in a can, as the container claimed - Vivien tucked it into the crook of her elbow and waited for the boys to pick out their own snacks before following them to the cash register where a middle-aged man in a sweater vest began punching in the prices of their selection. Pulling out her wallet, Vivien began searching for her one-dollar bills, but Royce was quicker as he handed over a few bills and accepted the change from the cashier.

Taking the bag of items from the counter and thanking the man, Vivien allowed Royce to lead her outside before speaking, “I was going to pay for that, you know.”

“I know,” Royce said, a hint of a grin tugging at his lips as Bentley pulled his drink and snack from the bag in Vivien’s arms and took off for the van, “but I also know how expensive things are back in your world and how cheap everything seems here. You and I both know you’ll try paying for anything and everything if you get the chance, and I wanted to be able to say that I paid for at least one thing for you while you’re here.”

Vivien couldn’t argue with her boyfriend’s good intentions. She knew he meant well and, well, he wasn’t wrong. She liked being able to provide for the people she cared about. Taking in a breath and sighing, she relented, “Alright, you’ve got me there.”

“I know,” Royce smirked triumphantly. “I just hope you’ll let me pay for our anniversary dinner.”

“Anniversary dinner?” Vivien echoed. “We haven’t been together a year yet, Rolls.”

“No, but it’s almost our four-month anniversary, and we haven’t had the chance to really celebrate the last three,” Royce stated as they reached Mick’s bus, taking the bag from Vivien and stepping aside to allow her to climb in. “Why; do you not want to celebrate it?”

“I hadn’t thought about it, to be honest with you,” Vivien admitted. “My parents only really ever celebrated their yearly anniversary.” Pausing as she stepped into the bus, Vivien turned back to Royce and said, “But, I guess, if you think about it, they are divorced now. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to follow their lead.”

Royce let out a breathy laugh, “Yeah, maybe not.”

Once they were seated, Vivien leaned her head on Royce’s shoulder and asked, “So what did you have in mind for it?”

Royce chuckled somewhat nervously, “Honestly, I hadn’t really planned anything since I thought we would be on opposite sides of the country. My original plan was to see if we could have dinner over video chat or something, but now that you’re here, I don’t know what to do.”

Vivien hummed as she smiled up at her boyfriend, “Well, we have plenty of time to figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Royce nodded as he returned her smile, leaning closer to her with the intention of pressing the tip of his nose to hers in a sort of eskimo kiss. However, the van’s other occupant had another idea.

“Can you guys not be all lovey-dovey and gross when I’m trying to eat?” Bentley complained, interrupting the couple’s interaction and digging his hand back into his snack bag as the others began to return to the vehicle. 

Instead of resorting to sitting silently and putting up with the boy’s teasing, Vivien turned toward the blond and pursed her lips, smacking them in an effort to psych him out with her exaggerated kissing noises as she leaned toward him, acting as though she was going to kiss him. Bentley was quick to react, letting out a squeal as he pressed himself as far away from her as possible. As he tossed a handful of Corn Diggers at Vivien, pleading with her to stop, Vivien laughed triumphantly and returned to her seat, pulling a couple of the Bugles' predecessors from her ponytail and popping them into her mouth as Bentley let out a noise of complaint.

“You tossed ‘em, you lost ‘em,” Vivien taunted in a sing-song voice, handing one of the corn chips to Royce as he chuckled beside her.

Before Bentley could complain any further, Mick turned toward the others in the back of the bus and asked, “Everybody in?”

Once everyone gave some form of confirmation, Mick turned back to the wheel before her and twisted the key in the ignition, feeling the vehicle rumble to life before pulling away from the gas pump. As the bus pulled away from the gas station and began to roll down Gulf Boulevard, Bentley and Royce began showing Vivien their town through the windows, pointing out locations as they flew by. Although the glimpses of buildings and hang-out spots wouldn’t satiate Vivien’s desire to explore to small city to its fullest, the palpable excitement radiating off of the boys on either side of her as they rambled and raved about their favorite places made her feel as though she had explored the area alongside them. 

To Vivien’s great disappointment, the car ride didn’t last long, and they were pulling into the brick-lined driveway of Butchy and Lela’s Mediterranean-style home within minutes. The red shingles on the roof glistened in the afternoon sun, giving the structure a warm, comforting glow as Mick rolled to a stop in front of the garage. Climbing out of the bus, Vivien looked around at the neighborhood, a collection of one-floor, mid-century homes dotting the streets amidst the occasional larger home and making Vivien breath a sort of chuckle through her nose as she smirked. The pattern of large and small homes distantly reminded her of Morse Code - the larger building becoming dashes and the smaller ones turning into little dots in her head. However, before she could think too much on it, Lela took the girl by the hand and began leading her up the brick walkway to the front door, pushing her way inside before turning back toward the group and calling for Carrie to join them. Lela pulled Vivien inside before leaving to retrieve the girl’s suitcase from the kitchen where she had abandoned it earlier, allowing the younger teen to look around the living room for the first time as Carrie’s platform boots clunked against the hardwood floors. Though Vivien was only somewhat disappointed the home didn’t have a sunken conversation pit for a living room, the patterns and warm colors gave off an inherently sixties vibe that made her smile nonetheless. Turning to Carrie with a smile, Vivien watched as the blonde rolled her eyes, nudging her sunglasses atop her head with a sigh.

“This place feels like something out of I Dream of Jeannie,” Vivien commented with a smile, “or Bewitched or I Love Lucy.”

Carrie looked around and shrugged slightly, her head tipping to the side in a sort of “I guess so,” movement. Then, she beamed, “If you think this is nice, just wait until you see my place.”

“I thought you said you guys weren’t done rearranging your furniture again?” Lela wondered as she rolled Vivien’s suitcase into the living room.

“We’re not,” Carrie agreed, “but it still has one of the best ocean views anyone could ask for.”

“And looks like the inside of a Barbie Dreamhouse,” Butchy poked as he followed his wife into the house and headed for the kitchen with one of their bags from the convenience store.

The half-assed jab at her choice in decor did nothing to Carrie as she rolled her eyes and called after him, “At least I have taste. Your wallpaper is so bright it could blind the people on the moon.”

“Hey,” Mick whined in a mildly offended tone as she looked around her ecclectically decorated living quarters. “I thought you liked the wallpaper.”

As Carrie struggled to find something nice to say about the yellow, floral, somewhat kitschy wallpaper, Vivien quickly turned to the brunette and attempted to cover for the blonde, “I think it’s beautiful, Mickie. Loud and proud, but beautiful. Right, Carrie?”

“Yeah!” Carrie hurried to agree, plastering a smile on her face that only a skilled actress - such as herself - could have pulled off so flawlessly. “It matches the furniture and decor perfectly.”

Wiping her dismay from her face, Mick grinned, “I’m just screwing with you. It’s ugly as sin and we all know it.”

Letting out a sigh of relief, Carrie pressed a hand to her chest and breathed, “Oh, thank God.”

“It really is awful,” Vivien muttered as she looked around. Glancing at the coffee table in all of its wiry, metallic glory, Vivien winced at the rug. “I mean, come on, Mick! You’ve got a baby-poop-green rug, for crying out loud.”

Mick leaned against the back of the couch and laughed, “It’s atrocious, isn’t it? We’re going to be redecorating entire ground level soon.”

“Finally getting rid of the poop rug?” Bentley asked in a giggle as he perched himself on the armrest of a chair.

“If that thing’s not the first thing that gets thrown in the dumpster,” Butchy began as he came back into the room with a freshly opened box of popsicles and began handing them out, “I might just pitch myself off of the roof.”

“Promise?” Carrie asked with a smirk.

Digging into the box, Butchy produced a purple popsicle with a grin and held it out to the blonde with a smirk, watching as her expression soured once he pushed the clear plastic wrapper into her hand. “Just for that, here you go.”

“I’d rather drink sewer water,” Carrie claimed, letting the popsicle dangle from her fingers as she pinched the stick, her nose crinkling in disgust as she eyes the offensively purple ice pop.

With a giggle, Vivien pried the popsicle from Carrie’s hand and swapped it for the blue raspberry one she had been given, claiming, “I love the grape ones.”

“More power to ya,” Carrie shuddered. “They taste like these shitty throat drops I had to take before singing lessons.”

Butchy smiled as he slowly turned, ready to hit the blonde with a comment about how her singing lessons were clearly a waste of her family’s money, but Lela quickly intervened with a smile, stepping up to grab a pink-lemonade-flavored pop from the box in her brother’s hands before turning to Vivien and Carrie. “Are you girls ready?”

“For what?” Vivien asked as she unwrapped her purple pop.

“We need to make up a list of all the things you need so that we can go shopping,” Carrie explained.

Vivien shook her head with a small smile, “That’s alright, guys, Miles already said he’d take me shopping tomorrow.”

Not even a moment after the words left Vivien’s mouth, Miles felt the urge to run, hide, melt in to the floor - anything to get away before he felt the stares of the women around him sear holes into his skin. However, to his dismay, he felt rooted in place by an invisible force that he knew could only be described as fear - though he would never admit it. If it wasn’t bad enough that Lela’s mildly bewildered, somewhat upset blue eyes landed on him with an immediate “how dare you” glare befitting of her status as the self-proclaimed, spoiled youngest child, Miles tried not to wince as Carrie’s sharp gaze landed on him, her rarely used, angry girlfriend stare boring into his soul. Miles had hoped he would have the chance to tell at least Carrie about his short conversation with Vivien about taking the chance to shop on a day he and his brothers had nothing better to do. He knew Carrie would have understood and told the others - mainly the raven-haired girl starring daggers at him in the hopes he would croak where he stood - to let things go for the night.

Clearly, however, he hadn’t had the chance.

“You what?” Lela asked darkly, a thinly veiled threat latched onto her words. 

“Yeah,” Carrie nodded, her arms crossing over her chest as she watched her boyfriend’s expression flit as he fought the urge to speak up in defense of his actions. “We told you we wanted to take her shipping tonight while you guys worked on getting things set up for her in the spare room.”

Shrugging in a vain attempt to calm the girls’ fury, Miles admitted, “I told her she could just relax tonight and get used to our place a bit before we hound her with shopping trips and adventures. You guys can still take her, but I wanted her to feel comfortable first.”

“He’s right,” Vivien confirmed with a nod as she took a bite of her popsicle, watching in mild amusement as Carrie and Lela’s matching aquamarine gazes fell on her in near-perfect unison. “I wanted to help clean out the room I’m staying in tonight anyway. I like organizing, and, besides, I would’ve felt bad if the guys did all the work when I had already offered to help.”

Carrie hummed thoughtfully, accepting the teen’s statement with relative ease as Lela huffed, “Fine, but we’re taking you out tomorrow - no excuses.”

Raising her hands in surrender, Vivien nodded, “So long as I can crash in a nice, comfy bed tonight, I have no issue with going out tomorrow. You can drag me out of bed, for all I care.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Bentley said quickly, shaking his head emphatically at the brunette. “They take that stuff literally.”

Vivien smiled at the young blond, but found her amusement wiped off her face as she caught sight of Lela’s mischievously glittering eyes. She attempted a glance at Carrie, but found the blonde smiling knowingly in her direction, the actress’ excitement fueled by her eagerness to get the chance to spend time with Vivien and get to know the young figure skater better. Hoping she wouldn’t regret signing up for whatever day-long plans the girls had in store for her, Vivien swallowed and plastered a wary smile on her face as she asked, “Why do I have the feeling I'm going to regret agreeing to this?”

“Hanging out with Lela is fun, but you’re spending the day with Carrie too,” Royce stated before taking in the last bite of his popsicle. Quickly polishing it off, he grinned as he rhetorically asked, “Who wouldn’t regret that?”

Though Royce was quickly shut up by Miles elbowing his side and quietly telling him to quit it, Vivien latched onto his words and stared him down with a disappointed frown knitting her eyebrows together. With Vivien’s stare unwavering, Royce opened his mouth to speak before sighing and looking away, his small argument forgotten. Placing a hand on Carrie’s arm, Vivien turned her gaze onto the blonde and smiled, “I’m actually looking forward to spending more time with you.”

“You are?” Carrie asked, echoed bewilderedly by Butchy, Royce, and Bentley.

The smiling brunette nodded, ignoring the boys’ comments and grinning as she admitted, “We haven’t really gotten the chance to get to know each other other than our love of theatre and music, so I don’t doubt we’ll have a lot of fun tomorrow.”

Vivien could tell by her smile that Carrie was happy, but the actress’ eyes seemed to water at her words, tears she was determined not to shed making her eyes burn. Carrie pulled herself together as best she could before nodding, “Lela and I will make sure you have fun.”

“And,” Lela began, sidling up to the pair with a smile and bringing her arms around them, “maybe we can even make a detour to Sycamore Close to check out where Miles and Carrie work.”

Though confused at first, realization hit Vivien like a Mack truck speeding down the highway as she recalled just where Carrie worked. Beaming at the blonde, she asked, “Really? Can we check out the studio?”

Carrie shrugged, a teasing gleam in her eyes as she offered, “I guess we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”

As Carrie pivoted on her heel and began sauntering toward the door, Vivien balked and squawked, “You can’t just give me a ‘you’ll see’ and walk away!”

“I just did!” Carrie laughed as she stepped outside.

Vivien made a noise of disgruntled surprise and followed the actress, but was stopped at the doorway by Butchy’s arm. Looking up at the man, she found him smirking at her. Lifting an eyebrow curiously, Vivien followed his gaze to where Lela stood with a suitcase as he asked, “Forgetting something?”

Sighing, Vivien jogged back to Lela, thanking her with a hug as Miles led his brothers out of the house. Dragging her suitcase behind her, Vivien wrapped Mick in an embrace next, thanking her once more in a whisper. Running her hand up and down the younger brunette’s back, Mick grinned, “Anytime.” 

As they separated, Mack stepped up and said, “Next week, the boys will be back to school and Brady and I will be going back to California. The choice is yours whether or not you want to stay at their house or come stay here in the spare room, but you should probably talk it over with Miles and the boys before Monday.”

Vivien nodded, glancing toward the door as Miles told Bentley to stop chasing Carrie around the driveway with a worm he plucked from the bushes while Royce laughed. Turning back to her neighbor and friend, Vivien smiled, “I think I can handle that.”

“Good,” Brady spoke up. Patting his pseudo-daughter on the shoulder, he grinned, “Have fun, alright?”

“I will,” Vivien said, tucking herself into the couple’s open arms and squeezing them close before heading back to the doorway Butchy leaned against. She examined him for a moment, taking in his laid-back expression and his knowing smirk before asking, “You knew I was coming, didn’t you?”

Lifting a brow, Butchy asked, “What gave you that idea?”

“You weren’t surprised to see me, but Lela was,” Vivien claimed. “That means that either Mickie told you or you just seem to know things, which would mean I have to go all super spy mode while I’m around you.”

Leaning closer to the girl, Butchy lowered his voice and grinned as he said, “Mick’s great with secrets, but I think we both know that she’s pretty shit at keeping her excitement for surprises under wraps.”

Vivien snickered, a knowing nod following soon after. However, as she took in his words once again, she gasped dramatically, pointing up at him with wide, sparkling eyes, “You swore!”

Butchy rolled his eyes and placed his hands on his hips, “I have been known to, yeah.”

“But the swear jar-”

“Has been decommissioned until you go home,” Butchy interrupted. When Vivien’s accusatory gaze begged him to explain his decision, he simply shrugged, brushing off the matter with ease. “You’re on vacation, piccola - I’d rather you didn’t go broke just because you swear like a drunken sailor.”

Vivien’s expression shifted, a knowing smile taking over her face as she patted his arm, “Whatever you say, big guy.”

Sighing in some form of admittance - at least, that’s how it sounded to Vivien - Butchy shook his head and tugged the younger girl into a hug, smiling as her snake-like arms wound around him in a tight squeeze. “Have fun with the guys.”

“And Carrie,” Vivien tried, a part of her still hoping to mend the blonde’s relationships with both Butchy and Royce during her stay despite the reluctance from all parties.

“Yeah, sure,” Butchy scoffed as Vivien took a step back. Cocking his head in a sort of shrug, he chuckled, “Well, I’m sure you’ll have fun with that empty-headed plaything; the boys aren’t exactly the Barbie-doll type.”

“You’re such a dick,” Vivien retorted, thumping her fist against his chest as she took her suitcase by the handle once more.

“To her, absolutely.”

“That’s not a good thing.”

“Is to me.”

Vivien rolled her eyes and nudged her glasses further up her nose before scoffing and allowing the subject to drop. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow, right?”

“Maybe after you’re done with your girl’s day,” Mick said with a nod.

“Aren’t you joining us?” Vivien asked.

With a shake of her head and a smile, Mick admitted, “Butchy and I have to help some friends move into their new place tomorrow, but I’m sure you’ll have a blast.”

Although the thought of not having Mick there as a buffer between herself and the other girls made her nervous, Vivien masked her worries with a smile and a nod, and gave the group a final wave before leaving the house, jogging down the front steps and joining the others at the end of the driveway. Miles looked up from his conversation with Royce and smiled, “You ready, kid?”

Nodding more for herself than for Miles, Vivien smiled, “As I’ll ever be. Did you guys call a taxi or something to bring us to your place?”

“No,” Miles chuckled with a shake of his head, gently tugging the girl’s suitcase from her hand and pulling it behind him as he began leading the way down the street. “We can walk from here to our house. It’ll take us maybe five minutes.”

“Seriously?” Vivien asked as Bentley took up the hand Miles emptied and began swinging it between them as they walked down Bay Street. “I know you guys said you could ride your bikes everywhere, but I didn’t know you could get where you needed to go so quickly.”

“It must be odd to you,” Carrie offered the younger girl as she fell into step on Miles free side. “I remember when I came to your world that everything in New Hampshire was really spread out. It made everything feel so small.”

Before Royce could butt in with a snappy comment, Vivien hummed, “Yeah, well, most of New England is like that, I think. The area used to be a lot of big farming areas and stuff in colonial times, so when things progressed, the plots of land didn’t, and there are a ton of places where you have to walk a country mile to get to your neighbor’s house.”

“It’s definitely not like that here,” Royce chuckled as Bentley took his hand and began swinging their joined arms between them in time with the other hand the blond had captured along the way to their home. “There may not be a lot of sidewalks on back streets, but in cities and communities like ours, it’s easier to walk places.”

Vivien smiled, “That’ll take some getting used to.”

Bentley grinned, “Nah, you’ll be a city girl before you know it.”

Although Vivien agreed with a nod, allowing the boys to carry the conversation as she let her mind wander. Though she could definitely get used to spending her days lounging on the beach with the boys or shopping with her friends for clothes that would only cost her a fraction of what they would back home, would she truly be able to adjust to wandering a city without a care in the world? In a way, she supposed, there would be pros and cons as there would be anywhere, but safety was something she doubted she had the need to worry about. With them living in a sort of movie universe, Vivien doubted there would be much crime, if any existed in their world at all - a welcome difference from her world. 

Maybe staying In St. Pete Beach would be like the stories her grandparents had told her from their childhood - homes being left unlocked all day and night regardless of whether or not anyone was home and kids roaming the neighborhood until the street lights came on. Basically, things that would give her parents a literal heart attack if they knew where - or when - she really was. Would it really be so hard to adjust? Maybe it wouldn’t be half as hard as she was making it out to be. Regardless, as she listened to Bentley ramble about much he loved Florida more than their old hometown in South Carolina, Vivien came to the conclusion that she would try her hardest to feel at home in the small city.

As they turned right off of 64th Avenue and onto Gulf Winds Drive, Vivien found sandy, crack-riddled, cement driveways becoming more and more common than the clean-cut, brick driveways on the street Mick, Butchy, and Lela lived on. The larger, waterfront homes that lined the Boca Ciega Bay became nonexistent - replaced by a handful of one-floor, mid-century-style homes with cheerfully colored exteriors and neatly-kept gardens filled with palm trees, cacti, and other succulents. With a gentle tug on her sleeve and a somewhat apologetic smile, Royce led Vivien toward a pale turquoise house with a matching, topless Mustang parked out front, encouraging her to step over the edge of the driveway that the cement company hadn’t completely flattened out before allowing her to stop as she examined their home in full.

For a while now, Vivien had only seen glimpses of the building in pictures. She had practically memorized the peeled spot in the living room wallpaper from the background of where Bentley had opened his birthday presents the month before, the terracotta tiles of the back patio where everyone seemed to congregate on the weekends for cookouts, and the chipped, peeling paint of the front door that the trio of brothers had taken pictures in front of not long after Royce and Bentley had moved in with Miles. Now that she had their home in front of her and she was able to take in all of its haphazard glory, the idea of piecing together the rest of the puzzle pieces and seeing the rest of the house filled her with a sort of childlike wonder she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Nervously clearing his throat as his girlfriend stared at their house in silence, Royce admitted, “I know it’s nothing big or exciting like what you’re used to - and we’re still working on fixing up the walls and stuff - but it’s home.”

Vivien was quick to shake her head, wrapping her arm around Royce’s and squeezing it as she asked, “What are you talking about? I love it already.”

“Y-You do?” Royce asked in a breath.

“Yeah,” Vivien beamed. “I’ve only ever seen pictures of your house, so I’ve been looking forward to exploring it for months now.”

As Royce struggled to find something to say in response, Miles nudged Vivien and said, “If you’re that excited, the spare key is above the door frame. You can use it while you’re here.”

“Aren’t you guys coming inside?” Vivien asked, her eyebrow lifting in mild concern.

Miles nodded, smiling reassuringly at the younger brunette, “Carrie and I are just saying goodbye for the night. I’ll be in after she heads out.”

“I’ll pick you up around nine, if that’s alright?” Carrie offered as she tugged her car keys from her purse. “The mall opens at nine thirty, so that gives us plenty of time to pick Lela up and stop for coffee on the way.”

“Sounds good,” Vivien agreed with a smile.

“Good,” Miles grinned. “Now, go. I’m sure you’re dying to check out the dumpster fire that is our house.”

Carrie lightly smacked his chest with the back of her hand, scoffing that it wasn’t a dumpster fire now that they had started fixing everything up, but the comment went mostly ignored as the teenagers began making their way up the driveway. Although Vivien’s excitement was obvious and understandable as she began pulling Royce toward the door, Bentley jogged across the sandy grass to the door, his hand-painted key already glistening in the light as he tugged its chain over his head and slipped the key into the handle of the door. Stepping to the side as Royce took the key down from above the door frame and handed it to his girlfriend, Bentley pushed the door open and gestured for Vivien to enter first, “Ladies first.”

However, before she could take a step inside, Miles called out to Vivien from near Carrie’s Mustang, “Make sure the cat doesn’t get out!”

Vivien glanced back at Miles and nodded, but almost as though he had been summoned, a sleek black cat with golden eyes that shimmered in the sunlight trotted up to the door, sitting at the threshold as it observed the visitor before him with silent scrutiny. Without giving Vivien the chance to introduce herself to the cat, Bentley leaned down and scooped him up, cradling the onyx feline to his chest as he asked, “Did you come out to meet Vivien, Binx?”

Eyeing the girl, the cat’s golden eyes slid closed in a slow blink before peeling back open as he meowed softly. Reaching up a hand, Vivien allowed the cat to sniff her fingers with a grin, her smile growing as the cat’s head nuzzled into her hand, giving her permission to pet him. As Royce let out a breath of a chuckle, Vivien turned to him and said, “I think he likes me.”

Royce nodded, unable to wipe the smile from his face as he agreed, “I knew he would.”

Wriggling in Bentley’s grasp, the cat stretched out toward Vivien, forcing the girl to hold him as he climbed toward her shoulder and perched himself there. Smiling at the cat as his purrs filled her ear, Vivien chuckled, “He really is part parrot.”

“Told you,” Bentley grinned.

As the cat sprawled out, curling around the back of Vivien’s neck and resting his head on her left shoulder, she pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Watching his girlfriend as she nuzzled the top of the cat’s head and scratched between his ears, Royce smiled and spared a glance at the chaos they had left in the house that morning when they were rushing out the door. Miles was right; it was a dumpster fire. Although Royce was certain Vivien wouldn’t care that much about the art supplies littering the counters or the cat toys strewn across the floor, the urge to clean while she was distracted with the cat was strong. However, his time ran out as Vivien turned toward the door, stepping across the threshold and allowing the cat to jump onto the table by the door where Miles always ditched his keys. 

As she began looking around, drinking in the details of the house with a smile, Royce stepped up beside her and said, “If we had known you were coming, we would’ve cleaned before we left this morning.”

“No, we wouldn’t have,” Bentley retorted with a snort as he stepped into the house and closed the door. “Miles woke up late because his alarm clock is a piece of junk, Jules picked you up early for work, and I was half-asleep still since you weren’t there to keep me or Miles awake.”

Reaching behind Vivien to half-heartedly slap the back of Bentley’s head, Royce sent him a look that begged for him to shut up as Vivien laughed, “I don't care how clean your home is. It’s your home and it should look lived in, not like some house on Trulia that’s been staged to look good.”

“Well, that’s good,” Bentley said with a grin, pointedly giving Royce an ‘I told you so’ look before taking Vivien’s arm and dragging her into the kitchen, exclaiming something about having to show her the progress report card he had been sent home from school with on Friday.

Royce let out a sigh and turned his attention to Binx as the cat head-butted his arm, asking for attention. “I’m glad you like her, Binx,” he whispered as he picked up the cat, the feline’s golden eyes somewhat calming as Royce took in a breath. “Knowing her, you’ll be spoiled rotten by the time she has to go home.”

The cat’s soft meow encouraged Royce to smile as the front door opened behind him, allowing Miles to step inside as the roaring engine of Carrie’s Mustang faded outside. Petting the cat as he set Vivien’s suitcase by the wall, Miles greeted him before turning his attention to Royce, “Where did they go?”

“Kitchen,” Royce replied with a shrug. Glancing at the door, he asked, “Where did she run off to?”

Brushing off his brother’s snipped tone, Miles answered, “She’s going home to make up a list of everything she thinks Viv might want.”

Royce scoffed, rolling his eyes at the thought, “How could she possibly know what Viv wants?”

“Royce,” Miles sighed softly as he put his hands on his hips, “can we not do this while Vivien’s here? You know she likes Carrie.”

“I don’t see how she can,” Royce commented with a shake of his head. “But seriously, Carrie hardly knows Viv; what gives her the idea that she can make up a list for her without talking it over with her first?”

“All I know is that she’s calling Lela and Mick for ideas,” Miles admitted with a shrug. “Knowing them, they’ll be on the phone all night.”

Running his hand down Binx’s side, Royce refrained from rolling his eyes as he relented, “That’s good. At least they’d take Viv’s interests into account.”

Curious yet cautious as he knew how deep Royce’s distaste for Carrie went, Miles asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, Viv and Carrie are total opposites,” Royce stated as though his brother should have known that a long time ago. “The chances of Vivien liking anything Carrie picks out for her are slim to none.”

Hoping he didn’t appear nearly as happy to correct his younger brother as he felt, Miles grinned as he said, “Actually, Carrie was telling me that Vivien’s borrowed clothes from her a couple of times since they went to that show together; something about Mick being their delivery person.”

Though he didn’t want to believe his brother’s claim - or Carrie’s, for that matter - Royce sighed and chose to drop the subject, determined not to let his distaste for Carrie get in the way of him enjoying having his girlfriend around. Instead, he allowed Miles to bring an arm around his shoulders and guide him to the kitchen where Vivien was looking over a piece of paper. Bentley shifted a few magnets around on the fridge, nudging one from Miles’ work and one with their school’s mascot up to make room for the paper once Vivien was done with it.

As he caught sight of Vivien’s smile, Miles asked, “We’ve got a real genius on our hands, right, kid?”

Vivien nodded, glancing up from the paper briefly to tease the eldest of the brothers, “What does that make it, then; two out of three? That’s pretty good odds, all things considered.”

“Look here, you little shit,” Miles said, his grin still strong as he pointed at the brunette, “I happened to get good grades when I was in school.”

Waving Bentley’s progress report in the air, Vivien pointed at the teacher’s remarks and taunted, “I bet you weren’t this good, though. I mean, come on, Miles! How could you - of all people - possibly beat ‘has an inquisitive and engaged mind’?”

Miles shook his head, his smile beaming as Bentley’s face turned a soft pink at the praise from his friend, and the youngest of the family said, “It’s not that great. I’ve only got one A so far this year.”

“That’s because the American grading system is a pile of hot garbage,” Vivien scoffed, shoving the boy’s shoulder. “Besides, it’s still better than last time, if this is anything to go by. Last time, you had no A’s at all.”

“My art teacher liked me,” Bentley shrugged, hoping to brush off the praise. “This last trimester, I have French, and I just know it’s going to suck.”

“We can work on that,” Royce chimed in as Binx crawled out of his arms and perched himself on one of the kitchen counters. “Miles has been trying to teach me some more lately, so that won’t be a problem.”

Miles hummed, “And English should also be a breeze since Royce had Cushing last year too.”

“And I’m good with math and history, so those are covered,” Vivien added with a smile. Glancing down at the paper in her hands, she tried not to wince at the glaring D in the slot for Bentley’s science class as she said, “All we need to work on after that is science since everything else has a pretty good mark.”

“Science will be a bust,” Bentley huffed as he leaned against the fridge. “I think Mrs. Purington has it out for me.”

“She doesn’t have it out for you,” Royce claimed with a chuckle. “You just hate science.”

“I mean, yeah,” Bentley relented. “It makes no sense! The stuff she teaches doesn’t even come up on our tests, and half the class can’t stand her because of it. Most of our final grades this year will come from the science fair, and nobody knows what to do for it.”

As Miles hummed thoughtfully, a lightbulb flickered on in Vivien’s mind, snapping to life with a jolt as she thumped a fist on the counter and hissed, “Motherfucker!”

The three brothers and their cat jumped, watching as Vivien let out a frustrated sigh. Tentatively, Royce placed a hand on her shoulder and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just-” she let out a heavy sigh, “I just realized that I left all the stuff for my battle bot project at home. I was going to ask Mickie to work on it with me while I’m here, and I figured Ben could borrow it, but without the motors, the radio control system, and some of the stuff I literally picked up yesterday at school, it’s useless.”

“That’s alright,” Miles reassured as Bentley stepped up and graciously wrapped an arm around Vivien’s back. “We’ll find something to do for his project - and maybe help you with the rest of yours too… if we can find anything for whatever it is.”

Though Vivien looked ready to explain her project, Bentley piped up, “Besides, the science fair isn’t until the middle of next month.”

Vivien grinned at the boy as Royce asked, “The Friday before prom, right?”

Bentley nodded, but it was Vivien’s gaze that locked on the curly-haired boy almost instantly. “Prom?” Vivien asked, earning a nod from her boyfriend. “You have prom in May? My school’s prom isn’t until the beginning of June!”

Though Royce was pleased to know that he would be able to attend Vivien’s prom - if she was willing to have him by her side in front of her entire grade, that is - the thought of her potentially still being in the area for his prom sent a hurricane of rabid butterflies through his stomach as he turned to Miles, a silent question on his lips as he grinned curiously at his older brother. With a smirk and a subtle roll of his eyes, Miles suggested, “Maybe, if you’re still here, you can go to Royce’s prom.”

Though Vivien’s eyes sparkled at the idea of attending another prom, she grinned and shrugged, “Well, he’d have to ask me to go with him first, but I’m sure I could find a place in my schedule for it.”

Royce’s smile widened as Vivien’s eyes met his, a surge of emotions flooding his veins as she smiled back at him. Maybe Miles was right - he was wrapped around her finger like one of her rings. He would drop anything to be with her so long as she would have him. Then, Bentley’s voice cut through their moment like a dagger, “You just got here, Viv. How do you have a schedule already?”

Wrapping an arm around Bentley’s shoulders, Miles chuckled and ushered him out of the room, “Come on, Benny, let’s get to cleaning Viv’s room.”

“But what about her schedule?” Bentley wondered as Binx hopped down from the counter and began following them. “How are we going to take her places if she has a schedule already?”

“She was joking,” Miles chuckled, tugging Bentley into the hall to leave the young couple alone. 

“Oh,” Bentley breathed, a wave of understanding washing over his features as he turned back to Vivien, who nodded in confirmation. Beaming back at his brother’s girlfriend, Bentley wiggled his eyebrows at the pair and whistled comically before Miles slapped a hand over his mouth and pulled him away.

As his brothers left the room, Royce closed his eyes, turned to Vivien, and sighed, “I’m sorry about them.”

“Don’t be,” Vivien giggled, tucking Bentley’s report card back under a set of magnets on the refrigerator and turning toward Royce with a smile. “I’m used to their shenanigans by now.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” Royce breathed as Vivien stepped into his personal space and draped her arms around his shoulders. “They can get a bit wild.”

Vivien snorted, “What, like I can’t?”

“Touché,” Royce grinned, bringing his arms around Vivien’s back. Smiling as he breathed in the scent of her perfume - a light, fruity combination of pomegranates, strawberries, and apple juice that was so distinctly Vivien that it had his attention in an instant - Royce swallowed his apprehension and asked, “Are you thinking of staying here for my prom?”

“If you’ll have me,” Vivien agreed with a nod. After a brief moment of silence, she met his gaze and asked, “Is this your way of asking me to go to prom with you?”

Royce grinned, but shook his head, “Not yet; I want it to be special.”

Grinning so hard her cheeks began to burn, she teased, “So, me flying across the country and entering another world for you isn’t special enough?”

“You know what I mean,” Royce chuckled, his fingers absentmindedly toying with the ends of Vivien’s hair as his thumbs rubbed circles on her spine. “As special as all of this day has been, I want to do one of those prom-posal things that are popular in your world. I don’t want to look back at this moment when we’re all old and wrinkly, and regret that I hadn’t been some knight in shining armor for you; riding up to you on a horse and asking you to prom like it was some fantasy ball.”

Smiling as his words came to life in her mind, images of him in blinding silver armor, riding up to her on a Clydesdale with a single question on his mind flooding her overactive imagination, she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. “A knight in shining armor, huh?” she asked softly, running her fingers through his curls as she hummed thoughtfully. “I could see that.”

“You could?”

“Mhm,” she hummed, twirling a single curl around her index finger and allowing it to bounce back into place. “But, what I’m more interested in is the fact that you see the two of us growing old together.”

Freezing as his prior statement surged back to the front of his mind, Royce softly asked, “Can… Do you think we won’t?”

“I want us to - believe me, I do,” Vivien stated calmly, “but I guess I always sort of worry about the future. As much as I want a fairytale love like my grandparents’, my only other relationship crashed and burned so suddenly it made my head spin, and my parents’ relationship isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows.”

Royce hummed thoughtfully. Vivien had told him enough about her parents and their on-again-off-again relationship for him to know that their relationship wasn’t something worth aspiring for. With a small smile, he said, “Well, if it means anything, I have every intention of staying by your side until you tell me you no longer want me to.”

“That won’t happen,” Vivien said with a firm shake of her head.

“In that case,” Royce began with a small smile, “we’ll have that happily ever after someday.”

“You think so?”

Royce’s curls bounced as he nodded, “I know so.”

Though her fond smile was evident, Vivien couldn’t resist teasing her boyfriend as she smirked, “That was so damn cheesy.”

“You love it,” Royce chuckled, smiling as his gaze flickered between Vivien’s eyes.

“I love-” Vivien’s brain froze as she coughed to clear her throat, her mind struggling to reboot itself as she realized how close she had come to telling Royce she loved him. Pretending to have gotten a hair in her mouth, Vivien wiped at the corners of her lips and made a face before deciding how to respond to Royce’s jest. “I-I’ll always love your way with words, but that doesn’t make it any less cheesy.”

“Are you okay?” Royce asked, taking a step back as Vivien dragged her nails across her bottom lip.

Nodding eagerly in the hopes that Royce hadn’t taken notice of her near-confession, she smiled and breathed, “Yeah, I think I just had some cat hair in my mouth, that’s all.”

Glancing toward the hall Binx had followed his brothers into as he grabbed a bottle of water from the floor by the refrigerator and handed it to Vivien, Royce chuckled, “That happens a lot with Binx. I think he sheds enough to make a whole other cat out of his fur.”

Glad to have moved on from her moment of adoration-fueled dipshittery with relative ease, Vivien smiled and opened the bottle after thanking her boyfriend, “Where is Binx, anyway?”

“He’s a nosy little guy, so he’s probably bugging my brothers while they clean,” Royce shrugged, watching Vivien take in a gulp of water. Holding a hand out to her, he offered, “Want to help me look for him?”

“Sure,” she replied as she capped her new drink. Smiling, she reached out for his hand, her fingertips just barely grazing his as an electrifying jolt ran up her arm toward her chest, forcing her to reel her hand back with a gasp. Royce was quick to follow suit, a noise of surprise leaving him as he jumped, his hand flinching toward his chest as aftershocks fizzled up and down his arm. Laughing as Royce shook his hand to rid himself of the electric tingles, she wiggled her fingers and gasped, “You shocked me!”

“No,” Royce argued lightly with a smile, “you shocked me!”

“Bullshit!” she laughed, shaking the electricity from her hand. “I think you were rubbing your shoes on a rug or something, because that hurt.”

“I could say the same,” Royce taunted as Vivien stuck her tongue out at him in retaliation, which he quickly reciprocated.

Brushing off the zap and their playful banter with a fond giggle, Vivien took Royce’s hand and laced her fingers with his as the static-like tingles pulsed under her skin, “Lead the way, static boy.” Though Royce looked ready to continue their mock-argument and declare, once again, that it wasn’t him who had shocked her, but the other way around, he took in her victorious smile and resigned with a humored shake of his head before guiding Vivien out of the room. Watching with a fond smile as Royce showed her the rest of the house, Vivien’s mind flitted back to her almost confession and she began to wonder why it had come with such ease? 

They hadn’t even been dating for four months; how had she been so ready to tell him she loved him? She had dated Lexi for a lot longer and never once felt ready to tell her that. What was different with Royce? Well, actually, Vivien knew a lot of things that were different between the two. Really, there was no comparison. Royce was - in one way or another - a lot of things to her that Lexi never was. Despite their - quite literal - time difference, they never once had any issues with communication, and they had both been quite open with each other about what was going on in their lives, even before Vivien knew about his actual home. 

Royce stepped aside as he guided her into the bedroom she would be staying in, allowing her to get a look at where she would be staying for the foreseeable future. Vivien smiled at him as she realized that she now had a lot more questions to ponder than she ever thought she would have while on her little stay-cation. With her luck, she would be up all night, staring at the ceiling in the dark as her thoughts wandered to her relationship with Royce. Letting out a soft sigh as she examined the room before her, Vivien grinned. So long as her thoughts were full of Royce, she really didn’t care if they kept her up all night.

[darkladylumiya]

My thoughts on Tales of the Empire

I'll start with my overall thoughts - the animation is really good, though at this point the contrast between more standard Clone Wars-style models and the more realistic ones who look like they could be from a video game is a bit jarring (though this could easily be a just me thing, I've not seen anyone else talk about this), the Barriss arc was way better than the Morgan Elsbeth one, which I doubt was a surprise to anyone, though I still have some issues with both. My big thing is that, compared to Tales of the Jedi, where we get little excerpts and character moments to fill out the characters and their progression through time, here Tales of the Empire is more or less our only source for info on these characters at this point in time. We know what happens with Dooku and Ahsoka in between their episodes - we have no clue what happened to Morgan to get her from Dathomir to running a planet for example, or how Barriss went from inquisitor to hermit healer (though this example is much less extreme).

Anyway, into the arcs proper. Get excited everyone, other force witch clans are back! Like the... checks notes Mountain clan. Not Singing Mountain. Just... Mountain. Cool, thanks Filoni. A decade later you finally make other Dathomiri clans canon, but you just shave a word off a name and now it's totally your own original idea, right? And don't worry, we'll have more totally original ideas from Filoni later, but first. Okay, the first episode is kinda like... a nothing episode. We end the episode with Morgan in the same position as she was halfway through, with a strange plot where Morgan immediately tries to seduce people to the Dark Side because... I don't know, she can? And again, we have no clue how she made it off planet. Dathomir doesn't exactly get a lot of space traffic, and apparently there are droid gunships still scouring the planet looking to kill literally any Nightsister left. Surely the first episode should have dealt with her getting off-planet? And not her sowing some dissent in a clan we've never met before and never see again? Some dissent which immediately ends and goes nowhere because most of them are now dead.

Anyway, next episode, she's in charge of a planet now because she has to be for The Mandalorian to still work - surely her getting to be in charge of a planet should have been an episode? Have the first one be her family getting killed and then her getting off-planet with some scavengers or pirates or whatever, the second episode is her rise to power over this planet and then the last is her meeting Thrawn? But sure, whatever, she's in charge already, cool. She's the designer of the TIE Defender, because they love beating my boy down. I'm not even going to ask how a Nightsister who has probably never even seen a starship before her clan got murdered figured out in the however many years it's been now knows how to design one of the best starfighters out there. Let's actually address that though - how many years has it been? The Battle of Dathomir was 20 BBY. The episode starts with a shot of Coruscant, where we see six Venators before finally an Imperial-class Star Destroyer appears. This implies to me that this has to be early on in the Empire, right? The first five years or so maybe? But then in Rebels season four there's an episode where they steal a TIE Defender prototype. So it took the Empire, or I guess Thrawn more specifically, at least seven years to go from design to a single test model? That's just strange to me, but who knows, it's been forever since I've seen that Rebels episode so maybe I'm just misremembering how they talked about it there. Anyway, the thing that truly got me was Pellaeon and Rukh. Fucking Rukh. But yeah, why was Eli Vanto not here but Pellaeon was? New canon more or less replaced Pellaeon's role with Vanto, so why is he not here now but Pellaeon is? My guess - because Filoni wanted to cover all the Thrawn bases. He read a brief summary of people and things associated with Thrawn in Legends and he put them all in one episode. We have Pellaeon, we have TIE Defenders, we have fUCKINg Rukh. I genuinely do not know why the FUCK Rukh is here.

Okay, let me explain. In the original Thrawn trilogy from the 90s, Rukh is Thrawn's personal bodyguard. Rukh is a Noghri, a species who regard Darth Vader as the savior of their people because their planet got nuked during the Clone Wars (it was an accident) and Vader came in and promised to help rebuild the planet, which he did. Very slowly, so the Noghri would always be indebted to him, because as it turns out they're very good assassins and commandos. But the important thing to note is that they're sworn to Vader, and serve him. Now in the books they work for Thrawn because they're more broadly sworn to the Empire, and after Vader is dead they end up working for Thrawn once he's in charge of the Empire. But Filoni doesn't care, the Noghri are associated with Thrawn and so here Rukh is as his bodyguard testing whether Morgan can fight. As soon as she got attacked, I immediately guessed it was going to be a Noghri, but once I saw the face of her attacker I was much less sure, because the head is completely wrong for a Noghri by the way, their head looks nothing like that. But anyway I lost it when Pellaeon said Rukh's name, because I knew I was fucking right. We're just pulling out all the sick Thrawn trilogy references, but not actually using these characters in any meaningful way - Rukh is here so his character page on Wookieepedia can have a canon tab now and so Filoni can show off his cred of pretending to have read a single book in his life. Oh yes, there is another thing Rukh is famous for by the way. KILLING THRAWN. I'm sure Filoni just forgot that little detail. Or who knows, maybe he'll just recreate it word for word at some point because he cannot do anything but steal from other people's work but do it in a worse and more amateurish way. I was so upset with Rukh being here with no explanation or justification I really did not care about anything else that happened in the rest of the arc. Thrawn shows up and recruits Elsbeth and then the third episode is just her killing a diplomat and burning a forest for no reason, yeah sure whatever who cares. I simply wish at some point there would be a notable character from Legends who is just... left there, and doesn't get dragged by cowboy hat man into whatever nostalgia bait ploy or attempt to pretend he has ever read a book, because the nostalgia bait doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't - it simply pisses me off. You're reminding me of better stories while I watch your lame shows, Filoni. Is that really what you want?

Ugh. Anyway, Barriss. I have a lot less to say because it's actually pretty good. I think it's way too short and she deserved way more screentime, or at the least not having to share an equal amount with Morgan Elsbeth (who I honestly forgot was even in the Mandalorian, I genuinely thought she was made up for the Ahsoka tv show for a while she's so forgettable). Anyway, the fundamental flaw is still that Barriss's massive heel-turn change of heart came out of nowhere and makes little sense with her character as established, so while this does a decent job at building upon that, it doesn't change that her arc in The Clone Wars makes no sense and was obviously chosen so that Ahsoka could be emotionally devastated by her best friend betraying her. A different complaint I then have is like... when did Barriss, woman who killed over a dozen people in a terrorist bombing, at least one of whom was someone she knew and liked, Barriss who murdered a woman in cold blood and purposefully framed her best friend so she could get away with this bombing, Barriss who convinces a wife to make her husband into a living bomb, Barriss who kills three clones with her friend's lightsabers to set her up even further and leads her purposefully where she has stashed more of the same bomb material, and indeed Barriss who kills someone who seemed to be her friend with the same technique she used to kill the woman who was about to rat her out - you want me to believe she suddenly has an issue with killing a village full of people? I'm sorry, but you have to actually explain how she sees this as different. Because you don't actually address at any point how she might feel about her terrorism now, or even what exactly her moral compass is. Killing innocents is good when she does it bad bad when it doesn't make the political statement she wants to make? I just don't get it. Anyway, final episode is the best of the series because it does the most to actually have a moral and message and actually does something pretty interesting? Whether she dies or not (I doubt she does personally), it's still an interesting setup for something else, either another season of this or a comic or book or whatever, to come back to and follow what the hell Lyn (and probably Barriss too) does now. I'm also glad Filoni finally remembered Barriss's specialty was healing actually, and not terrorism, even though we don't actually get to see her do any healing, with the Force or otherwise. Oh also, why does she look so old? It's like she aged 50 years over the course of 10? Like Lyn looks exactly the same but Barriss looks like she's 80. Idk, that was weird. Anyway I've rambled long enough, Filoni is still a hack who's never read a book in his life, but the Barriss stuff here was pretty good, at least somewhat enjoyable throughout. If you watch anything, watch that - all the Morgan Elsbeth stuff is terribly forgettable or outright frustrating.

5/6 edit: I’ve fixed Eli’s name (sorry Eli) and while it’s been pointed out to me that Rukh is in Rebels, a fact I was unaware of, I’m going to maintain the rant as it stands with this disclaimer here at the end - Rukh was in Rebels and was not originally added in this show. However, I still think his design sucks.

[chartmyfixations]

cris watches dr. who: s01e13 - "The Parting of the Ways"

"Time Lords have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death, except, it means I'm gonna change."

"Nul points!" The Doctor is a Eurovision fan? I wonder if he agrees with the rest of Europe that the UK should have tried harder the past ten years, or whether he's delusional too

More emo, self-hating dalek! Yay!

I keep thinking I recognize Lynda, but a quick IMDB-scour reveals that I don't

Keeping the TARDIS as an unremarkable funeral moment for the Doctor. Sad. :-(

Aw, Jack. You would have been better off without them, but the show would have been much lesser for it. (Don't think I didn't catch you kissing both of them!)

The Dalek didn't do the Bad Wolf-pattern? I thought it was the trap they sprung!

Flying space Dalek. Hee. Boyfriend thinks they're cute

Jesum Crow this soundtrack is going bonkers

Rose's mum's a menace, but she came through!

Aw, Lynda. God damn, this episode has all the cannon fodder

Jaaaack! Nooooooooo

Rose went all Phoenix on time's ass! Hell yeah

One thing I love about this finale is all the connective tissue: they really find ways to use plot points from every episode so far. V. well done!

So did Rose revive Jack, but nobody else? Was this Earth indeed exterminated? Is this the same Earth that is abandoned in the second episode, where they watch it explode from the space station? Questions, questions

So, the phrase "Bad Wolf" was sort of like something Rose wrote on her hand to remind herself she had to remember something later? Only ever so slightly more cosmic

Kiss! They're kissing! Kind of excited, even though I'm a little too old for the whole Will they or won't they

Bye, Dr. I will miss your big ears

OMG, she made him into a twink?!

7 out of 8 Tardes. Love the call-backs, love the stakes, sad about the Dr.

[youjusttryandstopme]

MAG 160 BABYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Review under the cut

YEAH OPEN THAT DOOR LET THEM IN WOOOOOOOO!!!!

Hell- Yeah I know what you where expecting. But I'm not gonna do it! Nope. Not at all. No way. Nah. But it's here in spirit. I'm just damn excited about having finished this season!

Elias... well, Magnus. damn he's such a fantastic villain. He's not (exactly) a twist villain, he was right there all along! I mean, I was well aware of his whole Magnus-ness beforehand because of the fact I knew a lot about what happened before I even started listening, and found out more a long the way through wiki scouring after each episode, but EXPERIENCING IT is a whole other thing agsgdgsgs-

Like, wow.

Loads of fantastic moments in the lead up to it, and honestly I really enjoyed listening to Peter Lukas's statement. I thought it would probably be overshadowed by my excitement for 160, but I was really bloody enchanted by the sound of the sea and the whole "I see you" GAH I KNEW THE LINE WAS IMPORTANT BUT AAAAA

Okay okay okay- back the story at hand. They're in a small village house! They're together! They talk to each other about cows! Eee! And then! It all goes wrong when MR SIMS OVER HERE JUST WANTS TO HAVE A NICE RELAXING LUNCH ON SOME STATEMENTS AHAHAHAGAVAGA-

Jon being the unwitting victim turned Anti-christ is such a fantastic thing, and his whole deal with "am I still human/am I a heartless monster/is my more monstrous behaviour my own or can I blame it on something and it that really better" was fantastic we love that sort of story.

Oh and special mention- the entire time that Admiral was audible during 157 I was barely listening to Jon, Georgie and Melanie and was just totally tuned into his Purring and audiblely cried out when I heard him meow beceause SOMEONE DISTURBED HIM HOW DARE THEY HE WAS HAPPY WHERE HE WAS SIT BACK DOWN-

Now at this point, I should probably say "Apologies for the deception." You may or may not have caught it, but you should maybe read this anagram style :) I did mean it when I said it was here in spirit. Just. Slightly hidden from your eyes.

[stellarred]

I remember the TNG episode Cause and Effect, and how every time they repeated the loop, they became a bit more aware of what had happened until the problem was fixed.

I am unfortunately struggling a bit today with that post-ending scene between Q and Jack. Why would Q only appear to Jack? What is Jack's role in Q's cosmic scheme? Why couldn't Q have reappeared to Picard?

Given the fact that Patrick Stewart, Terry Matalas, and Co may not do a fourth season of PIC, and that Jack has taken over JLP's place in Trekdom, I am upset and depressed to think Q won't come back to Picard onscreen again.

But, knowing the Qcard force is strong, and that Q will see JLP "out there", there's no convincing me that Picard and Q will never end up together in eternity. Q loves him too much to just let Picard go and die. They end up together no matter what happens, or who Picard marries along the way.

I hate myself for investing emotionally in character ships, because I hate what writers do to them. That's why I don't watch lots of television shows, or movie franchises because of that one special pair of characters.

But, Qcard is very, very special to me. It provided me with a valuable source of relief and served as a good distraction late at night for almost three years after I had gone through a very difficult time in my life. My heart had been horribly betrayed so badly by people that I moved to the other side of the world to get away and heal. I got a good job abroad and stayed active, but there were times when my heartache caught up with me. I struggled with frequent ruminations of what had happened, and this was especially true late at night. Then I found out that Qcard was being taken seriously by STP writers. It made me happy and excited enough that it gave my mind something to think about and enjoy when I began to feel stressed again. I'd shipped Qcard for many years before then, but now, my favorite couple was back with a vengeance!

According to canon in my house, Q "died" in S2, but not before sending himself into the future to S3 to work with Jack, so that he could eventually serve as a conduit to his father's heart. Perhaps if Jack could ascend eventually to be with he and Picard, they could be a family!

I have always believed that Q had created a time loop in case Picard was unable to ascend. For example, in S2's Fly Me to the Moon, Q told Soong about "In 17 seconds, you are going to take a seat. Right on the tick!"

My take is that Qcard goes through TNG, STP S1 and S2, and after Q dies, Picard's relationship with Laris crumbles, and alone in his chateau, he eventually feels haunted by Q's absence (dreams, hearing whispers in the dark...). Picard goes on to rescue Q from wherever he's been. They have a committed relationship, get married, and live years of adventures in the universe together.

But, through a series of circumstances, Q is devastated to learn that the Continuum won't allow Picard to ascend. His capitaine's not ready. Meanwhile, Picard is aging and going to die.

Q uses a time loop to take them back to Encounter at Farpoint, and like Cause and Effect, Q has to re-teach Picard his lessons, and Q has to woo Picard all over again. Q has only a vague memory of his previous journey to marriage with Picard, while Picard doesn't remember at all.

This is also why a few Tumblrs suggested that Q and Picard are like "exes", which I don't like because that implies they didn't get along.

But, with each loop from TNG to STP S2, and the years after during their marriage, Picard learns more and proves himself worthy to join Q in eternity at last at some point.

I know people have excitement about this Legacy series that Terry Matalas is so gung-ho for. But, as far as Qcard goes, we don't know where that is going. Patrick Stewart said that they'd left "a few doors open" after S3, but I am tired of speculation.

Therefore, until a Tumblr mutual tries to excite me with real Qcard upcoming news-- because I'm not scouring any more ST news sources to get my hopes up anymore, my multiseries time loop is my canon.

I was grateful that Terry Matalas didn't ignore Q altogether, but I refuse to pay attention to any new Q character arcs. I mean, knowing our luck, Q will then be romantically involved with Deanna Troi!

So, I'm done.

My onscreen Qcard story ends at S2's Farewell, but my personal story with Q has, I believe, a FAR richer continuation.

I will say though, that Q looks damn sexy in that red cape.

[aniharas]

𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘰𝘧𝘧

pairing: ceo!miguel o'hara x singer!fem!reader

summary: you, a famed singer living in a lavish penthouse, are preparing for an afterparty when you get distracted by your ceo neighbor, miguel, looking fine on his balcony across from yours. it would be stupid of you to not to strike up a conversation.

warnings: explicit language, sexual tension, use of cigarettes and alcohol (please let me know if i need to add more!)

wc: 8.7k+ oneshot

a/n: today i am dutifully fulfilling the wishes of @cantchoosejust1 with her lovely request: "glad u have ur inbox open cause boy howdy do I have ideas ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I like to picture more of a "normal au" like neighbors to lovers; He's some bum-looking CEO and we're, idk, a famous singer or something; Lyla's always over cause she's his assistant so she befriends us to relay that info to shy Miguel; we almost always see each other in the elevator or both chilling on our balconies coincidentally at the same time and not because he memorized our routine-- one late night, we both come back from separate parties tired as hell but sober (I'm not one to get drunk); each in our party getups, hair tussled, his tie undone and our dress straps hanging off our shoulders; this time we work up the courage to invite him over to chill and talk and maybe end up in a heated make out session" i changed up a few things but i think it still captures the concept pretty well! also inspired by my lovely miss ava's (justadmiringanakin) ceo!anakin concept. literally so obsessed. also s/o kimmy draws on twitter for miguel o'hara in a suit and tie. thank u, we need more. anyways, hope you all enjoy and as always inbox is open for prompts for drabbles or fics :)

Fresh out of the shower and wrapped up in your favorite silk robe, you stood in front of your spacious walk-in closet, sighing as you contemplated what expensive outfit you were to wear this time to yet another afterparty. You had just gotten home after, thankfully, receiving two awards for your most recent album, but you were more excited to lay in bed more than anything. Unfortunately, your PR team had blown up your phone about “keeping up appearances with the paps”, so there was a slight drag in your steps as you scoured your closet, the plush carpet feeling like rocks under your tired feet. Truthfully, you wish you were never invited, but with being such a high-profile singer and an award-winner, the invitation from a friend who was also hosting was inevitable.

As you finally sifted through what had seemed like thousands of possible outfits, you finally settled on one, a black and baby pink corset top with a matching mini skirt. After laying it out carefully on your bed, you texted your assistant a picture.

You: hi do u mind picking out some matching shoes for this number? 

You: [picture]

Julia: You have dozens of shoes, boots, and heels that match this color already.

You: yeah but none of them fit the vibe tho. Please?

Julia: As you wish. It’s not my fault if this makes you late.

Sitting down at the foot of your satin-covered king bed, you set down your phone, smiling to yourself. That was why you liked Julia as your assistant, she always did her best to keep you grounded…with varying degrees of success. But if your life was now this lavish, who were you to deny yourself the pleasure? 

As you waited for her return, you snatched the remote that had fallen off the side of your bed, about to rewatch an episode of your favorite dating reality show until you caught a glimpse of something through your windowed balcony. You could make out your neighbor’s shadow through the curtains of his balcony, pacing back and forth in his room.

There was no possible way that your neighbor was Miguel O’Hara. Maybe he had a twin.

To your knowledge, Miguel O’Hara was the renowned pretty boy Alchemax CEO, a geneticist who pioneered genetic splicing. He had hundreds upon thousands of employees who worked under him, and to say he was rolling in cash was an understatement. He was freestyle swimming in it. He lived in the penthouse-level apartment across from yours, and the glances that your assistant had managed to sneak from his apartment suggested he lived just as lavishly as you, if not, even more so. Crystal chandeliers, velvet chaises and loveseats, and an upgraded kitchen, the latter of which you were most envious of. 

If that was the case, why did he look like…that? 

It’s not that he wasn’t attractive, it was quite the opposite, actually. A built body, broad shoulders, chiseled features, and a face that screamed: “Try to resist me”. And best believe, you had been trying. You had nearly fainted when you caught a glimpse of a sweaty, shirtless Miguel on his balcony out for a smoke.

It was just the way that he seemed to carry himself. Every time you took a glance at him in the elevators, or at your building’s gym, he didn’t dress like he was the most successful CEO under 35. His style was more akin to a college student’s who had left their clothes in the dryer overnight and forgot to fold them. His dark, luscious locks were always ruffled from stress after what had seemed like a long day at work. While his magazine portraits always portrayed his face as clean-shaven, you don’t think you’ve ever seen him once without a 5 o’clock shadow.  

What shocked you the most was his demeanor. In the countless articles you and your assistants have flipped through concerning Miguel or Alchemax when you had first moved in (for your “research”), he exuded this undeniable aura of confidence. His quotes were always firm and concise, and no one dared to question his knowledge or any decision he made with the company. Above it all, he just seemed like your typical Ice King boss with little regard for things outside of his personal interest.

But much like his appearance, he couldn’t be any more different in person. He would hold the elevator door open for you, always politely avoiding eye contact with you during the ride until you expressed interest in talking to him. He’d give a shy wave whenever the both of you caught each other on your balconies, which you noted happened often the more thought you gave to it. There, you’d make some small talk, and he showed genuine interest in the big and little things in your life, from asking about your Grammy nomination to what color you wanted to paint your nails next. A man with good conversation was hard to come by nowadays.

The slightly bummy demeanor he carried wasn’t something you minded at all, it was just so different compared to how he carried himself publicly. After getting so used to reading about stone-cold corporation-titan CEO Miguel O’Hara, it nearly gave you whiplash when you settled in and met your handsome, gentlemanly, friendly neighbor, Miguel.

Lost in your own thoughts, you were caught by surprise as you found yourself still staring at his balcony, only noticing as the stillness of the night was interrupted by his balcony door swinging open. Obviously, it was Miguel, but there was something different about him that rocked you to your core. You sat up straight at the edge of your bed, leaning forward and squinting to further detail what had changed.

It was almost like he had transformed. Gone was the scruffy and casual look that he had usually adorned. Instead, he now wore a perfectly tailored white dress shirt with a black tie that accentuated every contour and crevice of his muscular build. You knew he was built, but you had never seen it in this amount of detail. His hair was now neatly styled, slicked back neatly yet still maintaining a casual look. And his face, god, his face, cleanly shaven, his skin glistening in the moonlight.

You never thought you would get the chance to see the Mr. O’Hara that was plastered all over newspapers and billboards, and now, you figured that those photographers could never do him justice. He was like a sculpture of a Greek deity, something you could only appreciate in person…and up close. Maybe that was the reason you stood from your bed, easily ditching the show you had turned on as you pushed open the doors to your balcony eagerly. You slightly regretted the decision as a gust of the winter breeze of New York immediately pierced through your silk robe and into your skin, chilling you to your bone. But you were intent on pushing through to get a chance to talk to Miguel, hastily wrapping the robe tighter around your body as you fought the urge to chatter your teeth.

As you continued to watch, you noticed that Miguel hadn’t noticed you yet, much to your chagrin. Your eyes carefully followed every movement of his, curious as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, the stick dangling from the corner of his mouth. Of course, you weren’t too large on smoking, having a renowned vocal prowess after all, but something about the sight of your hot, CEO neighbor carelessly blowing out smoke spurred something on inside of you.

“I thought you said you’d stop,” you called out with a smirk on your face, your voice barely louder than the hustle and bustle of the streets around your complex.

Miguel, startled, jumped slightly at the sound of your voice, head whipping towards you so fast that his cigarette nearly fell from his mouth. Getting over his initial shock, his face resigned to an amused expression, taking a drag before taking the stick from his mouth.

“I…did say that, huh?” he admitted as smoke emanated from his lips, shrugging once as he moved closer to the edge of the balcony. “Caught me on a bad night, I guess.”

You chuckled, the chilly breeze instantly forgotten upon the sound of his gruff, yet friendly voice. “Your secret’s safe with me, O’Hara. But you know it’s bad for you.”

Miguel leaned forward against the railing, eyes rolling once before they fixated on you. “I should’ve expected the world-star singer to lecture me on smoking,” he teased, resulting in your cheeks growing hot again; it seemed he always had that effect on you. Taking one more deep inhale from his cigarette, he tapped out the smolders and tossed it onto an ashtray on his balcony table. “But I’ll happily stop for you.”

Who knew such a simple statement could send shivers down your spine?

Copying his stance, you leaned against your balcony railing, forearm resting atop it as you found yourself easing into conversation. “You fix up well. What’s the occasion? Who’s the lucky girl?” you interrogated, raising a teasing eyebrow. Although you were poking fun at him, you secretly hoped that this wasn’t him preparing for a date.

Miguel’s lips quirked into a half-smile. “Jeez, am I just sloppy around here? Is the change that noticeable?” he asked as he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Hard to miss,” you replied, suppressing a giggle. “Care to share what’s got you so dolled up?”

He exhaled a sigh, his breath turning into a misty cloud as he gazed off into the city. “No girls. Some stupid party I’m required to go to. Make connections, keep up appearances. Just some bullshit.”

You tilted your head in thought, a knowing expression lingering on your face. It was no surprise Miguel had to suffer the dreadful experiences of the media just like you did, and oddly, it seems to pull you closer to him. “I’m right there with you tonight, but you’ll be fine. I know for a fact you’re better at this…media circus stuff than me.”

One of Miguel’s brows perked up in intrigue, his posture straightening out as he finally took a good look at you, eyes raking over your figure. You suddenly felt a bit immodest, having come out in full glam, yet with only a silk robe that barely left anything about your curves to the imagination. You watched as his eyes snapped back up to yours after a few moments, seeming to be at a loss for words.

“Right, uh…” he began, swallowing deeply. “You look really…uh– pretty tonight.” He pushed his long, thick fingers through his hair, and you tried your best not to visibly react. “Where are you headed?”

You groaned at the thought of your obligations later that night, rolling your eyes as you rested your head against your hand. “Grammy’s afterparty. PR says it’s mandatory, you know the deal. So unfair,” you grumbled childishly, tracing along the intricate details of the metal railing with your free hand.

Though a brief laugh escaped his lips, you saw his eyes soften, a hint of sympathy glistening in them. “Red carpet’s not as glamorous as it seems, hm?”

You nodded eagerly in response, grateful that he understood. From all the fake friends, media outlets looking to make a quick buck, scummy record labels, to predatory men in the industry,  having to navigate through all of that and still retain your sanity was difficult. Sure, you had enough money to last you and your family 10 lifetimes over and the last thing you would do is complain, but you just wished that it would get easier over time. So far, it hasn’t.

“At least you look glamorous in your robe,” Miguel said after a while, grinning as he motioned to your robe. “Which, by the way, I hope you aren’t wearing to your party. It’s very cold.”

A fit of laughter erupted from your chest, causing you to cover your mouth as you smoothed out the silkiness of your robe. “God, Miguel, of course not. I have something way nicer that would make me way colder.”

“Hm, I don’t know…that getup of yours might be hard to beat.” Miguel’s eyes seemed to shift, shining with curiosity. Your thighs rubbed together at the beginnings of his playful smile. “Indulge me,” he implored.

You scoffed, although unable to fight the rush of excitement that filled your body. “Just you wait,” you called as you disappeared back into your apartment, swiftly shutting the doors and yanking the curtains closed. Your heart pounded as you fumbled with the ribbon of your silk robe, the texture caressing your skin as it fell to the floor.

Eagerly, you lunged for the outfit that laid across your bed, your fingers clutching onto the cold, black fabric as you hastily slid on the corset. You desperately tugged at the pink corset strings that cascaded down your back, but you could only tighten it so much. Impatient, you decided to ditch tying it up all the way, conceding that it accentuated your curves enough.

Putting on your matching skirt, you pulled it up just far enough to barely cover your behind, showing off your legs in a way that would most certainly get you kicked out from a church. You spared a glance at yourself in the middle, not quite satisfied yet as your eyes dropped to your chest. Your hands came up to readjust your cleavage in your top with a quick tug to the fabric barely covering it, and it was only then that you were satisfied. The way your outfit hugged and exposed all the right spots was sure to make this one of your sexier looks. 

But you knew that you didn’t need to do much to look jaw-dropping. You were a natural at the red carpet, and everything you wore seemed to kickstart trends across the country. Any style you could’ve chosen would have anyone fawning over you at the party.

Yet, all you wanted was to impress the guy smoking on his balcony across from you.

Taking a deep breath, you pushed the doors to your balcony back open. The fiery nature of your outfit somehow combatted the frosty air that nipped at where your skin was exposed, which was most of your body. Miguel was still leaning against his railing, distracted by the city lights from afar. His eyes darted in your direction as he heard the soft rustle of your movements, and it didn’t take long before they widened in shock.

“So? How’s it look?” you asked, holding your breath in anticipation.

You could practically feel his eyes traveling up and down your body, particularly your chest and your sleek legs. His jaw slackened just a bit before he caught himself, a wry smile forming as he fixed his gaze back onto yours.

“Damn,” he remarked, voice gravelly. “You weren’t kidding. Feeling inclined to accompany you to your party.”

For a moment, just a fleeting one, you imagined what it would be like to have your dreamy neighbor as your plus one. You, faithfully clinging to his arm as he’d effortlessly lead you through swarming crowds, the both of you dancing with little to no room for Jesus. You wondered what the mix of his sweat and cologne would smell like. Ambitious thinking, you conceded, but so addictive.

“By all means, Mr. O’Hara, you’re more than welcome to,” you offered hopefully.

Miguel’s eyes fixated on your bare shoulders, his gaze darkening briefly. Breaking himself out of his reverie, he let out a sigh. “Had it been any other night, I would’ve been all yours. But tonight is unfortunately an important one for me,” he explained apologetically, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt.

You weren’t aware of how dramatically your shoulders dropped in disappointment until Miguel snorted out of amusement.

“Don’t look so pouty, now,” he teased. “I’ll make it up to you, promise.”

I’ll make it up to you. Your disheartened feelings were quickly dispelled as his words hung the air. As the countless possibilities played in your mind, a soft giggle left your lips. “And how would you do that?”

“You name it, linda.”

You knew that he was bilingual, it was one of the first things you discovered about him; yet you had never heard him speak his other language until then. You hated how it rolled off his tongue so smoothly, nearly turning your legs into jelly. How could someone render you so helpless from a mere compliment? You knew you could have him if you asked. You weren’t necessarily a stranger to hookups, a mere bat of your eyelashes and a pout usually did the trick.

But something stopped you. Why was flirting with him so nerve-racking? You barely could stand in front of him now without feeling your heartbeat in your ears. Were you scared of being too forward?

“Well…” you began, fiddling with the strings of your corset. “My assistant’s gone out to get something for me. I might need help with my top here,” you suggested shyly, shifting your body so that Miguel could have a clear view of the partial doneness of your top.

Just out of your peripherals, you saw Miguel’s eyes lingering on the exposed skin, his neck tensing as he seemed to hesitate to answer. Or maybe he was holding himself back. A second passed, the silence broken by the abrupt sound of him clearing his throat.

“Sure, I got a bit of time before I go. No promises I’ll do a good job, though,” Miguel said as his gaze returned to yours, never once leaving it. His eyes seemed to shine in the most mischievous way under the moon, making it hard for you to keep looking back.

Flashing a sly smile, you began to retreat through the balcony doors. “Don’t keep me waiting!” you shouted before closing the doors behind you and drawing the curtains.

You couldn’t help but pace around your flat in your fuzzy slippers anxiously, each step leaving a thud that rang like a drum in your ears. Had you bitten off more than you could chew? Sure, it was one thing to flirt aimlessly, but to invite him over? What were you going to do after he tied up your corset? Did you even have some sort of plan?

The soft, custom chime of your doorbell cut through the whirlwind of your thoughts, causing you to nearly stumble over yourself as you rushed to your door. Just as you were about to place your hand on the doorknob, you took a moment to adjust your hair, smoothing your fingers through the ends to ensure not a single tuft or strand was out of place. 

Inhaling deeply, you braced yourself as you pulled open the door to reveal the eye candy that was your neighbor. If you had thought he had looked good from across your balconies, he was absolutely divine up close. You swore you felt your hand twitch as you resisted the urge to squeeze his bicep that was so tantalizingly covered by his sharp attire; you couldn’t help but feel jealous of his shirt. A glint of gold peeked out from just beneath his collar, something you hadn’t noticed before. The outlines of a golden chain poked out from under the expensive fabric of his dress shirt, not the large ones you found a bit too obnoxious for your taste, but a small, modest one that complimented his complexion and the outlines of his collarbone.

“Please– come in,” you managed to get out in your rather obvious ogling, stepping aside hurriedly as you ushered him inside. Miguel seemed to find your reaction rather amusing, a brief smile on his lips as he made his way into your home. 

“Your place feels a lot less suffocating than mine,” he remarked, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“How? We live in the same type of penthouse.”

Miguel shrugged, and it looked like he was a bit more shy to meet your eyes now that you were so close. “Maybe it’s just because it’s lonely.”

I could fix that, you were basically dying to say. You bit your lip, adjusting your hair to one shoulder so your backside was exposed. Seeing this, Miguel snapped out of whatever reverie he was in, mumbling “right” to himself before approaching you.

Moving to stand by one of your hand-crafted pillars that decorated your living room, you placed your palms up against them, fingers latching onto them tightly.

Standing behind you, Miguel seemed to falter slightly as he began to reach for the strings. “Hey. ¿Estás bien?”

Truthfully, you weren’t okay. The positions you were both in, despite being innocent in nature, felt so provocative. You were hoping that Miguel didn’t see it this way…but if he didn’t mind, you didn’t mind either. “Mhm. Why?”

“You losing your balance or something?”

Turning your head, you gave Miguel a pointed look. “I know you’re pretty strong, Miguel. I’m going to end up on my ass if I don’t do this,” you joked, although you knew it was likely.

“If you say so.”

And so, Miguel began to work with the strings. Despite being large, his fingers seemed to expertly weave each string to its designated grommet, and the way they just barely grazed against your skin left you breathless. The both of you were dead silent, and it wouldn’t have been awkward had it not been for the palpable tension rising between you. Miguel finally ended up speaking first after partially completing one section, leaning in.

“Let me know if it’s too tight,” he said, his low voice reverberating through your body as his breath brushed against your ear. You froze in place, and you could barely manage a nod.

As he yanked at the strings, there was barely any breath to knock out of you. You squirmed at the subtle cinch around your waist, though your uneasiness was quickly overshadowed by your awe of how strong he was. Once again, not another word was spoken between the both of you, the only sounds being the strings being woven and tightened and the groans of discomfort that involuntarily left your lips.

Eventually, Miguel secured the final knot, letting out a relieved sigh as if this was his most daunting task to date. You felt his warm hand on your shoulder, gently pulling at it to make you face him. Though his brows were furrowed in concern, there seemed to be another feeling hidden in his eyes, you just weren’t sure what it was.

“Does it feel okay?” he asked tenderly, his hand smoothing down your arm before letting go. You wished he didn’t let go.

“It’s as perfect as it can be,” you admitted, your hands coming up to feel around your waist. “Beauty is pain, I guess.”

Miguel then slowly out to take your hand in his. Bringing it up to his lips, he pressed his lips to the back of it gently, his eyes never once leaving yours. “Te ves muy bella esta noche.”

You felt your cheeks flush, your body heating up from how intensely your heart pounded in your chest. “And that means?”

He flashed his stupidly charming grin, his thumbs delicately tracing over your knuckles before returning your hand to your side and taking a step forward. “Let’s just say I hope that you have painkillers.”

How did your dorky neighbor know how to clean up and be such a smooth talker?

You couldn’t help but let out a scoff to ease your nerves and regain some of your composure, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “What, you think I’d need some Advil?”

“I was thinking more like morphine,” Miguel quipped with an unforgettable smirk.

You couldn’t help the shy smile that graced your lips. “I’m sure you could whip something up for me in your lab,” you replied, staring up at him through your mascara-coated lashes. Since when were the both of you so close? You could feel the heat radiating off of him, and it left you wondering how nice it would feel to have his warm skin against yours.

Just as it seemed he was about to give another one of his witty remarks, a small yet sharp ping emanated from the smartwatch that sat delicately on his wrist. He took a step back, glancing down at it. “Mierda– as much as I’d love to continue charming you with painkillers, I’ve gotta head out. Duty calls, unfortunately,” he said, a sigh shortly following the interruption.

You nodded, trying not to let your immediate disappointment show on your face as you also took a step back. As you began to escort Miguel towards the door, you placed your hand tentatively on his arm as you walked side by side. “Unfortunately indeed. I’m already late to mine, but I can’t leave yet,” you lamented.

Miguel raised a brow at you as he reached for your doorknob. “Why not?” he asked, swinging the door open gently.

You groaned, taking out your phone to check for any updates. None. “It’s because I’m waiting for my assistant to come back. She’s out looking for heels for me to wear tonight.”

He grinned, a playful look in his eyes. “And there’s no suitable ones in your walk-in closet?” he teased, leaning against your doorframe.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting something new! Let me live,” you retorted, giving him a roll of your eyes.

Miguel paused, his brows creased as he bit the inside of his cheek, staring off into the distance behind you. After taking a few moments to mull whatever it was over, he propped himself up against the frame with his arm, clearing his throat.

“So where do you think she’d be shopping at?” he asked.

You couldn’t help but think how strange of a question it was, not particularly expecting someone like Miguel to care about that sort of thing. But you were intrigued nonetheless. “Beats me. Rough guess is the Louboutin store closest to Central Park,” you shrugged.

Miguel, continuing his thoughtful demeanor, gave a nod as he pushed himself off the door. “Good luck with that. Customer service takes a long time over there,” he warned. “Can’t really get a move on unless you pull some strings.”

You huffed, taking your turn to lean against the frame, hesitant to see Miguel off. “I’ll manage, Mr. O’Hara. Promise.”

Giving that sickly sweet smile of his, he leaned in closer to you, a chastising but mischievous glint in his eye. Bringing his hands up level with your chest, he reached to adjust a pink bow sat just in the middle of the bust of your corset, having previously been knocked astray with the hurried commotion of putting it on. You involuntarily shivered at the contact, making you stand straight up. Any hope of saying anything in response was knocked out of you.

“Don’t keep them waiting. I better see pap photos of you plastered all over the internet in that getup first thing in the morning,” Miguel murmured, his lips so unbearably close to yours, you weren’t sure if you could resist. Just as you felt yourself gravitating forward, he pulled back, eyes lingering on your features. If his eyes seemed subtle before, they definitely weren’t now. They flickered with such intensity, and it had you thinking about how much he was holding back.

“But you could be seeing the real thing instead,” you managed to say, breathless as you tried to steady your voice. Your hands instinctively went to play with the hems of your skirt in your nervousness. God, did you really just say that?

A small smile graced his lips as he pulled back. “I might just hold you to that.”

With that, he turned, his strides calm and collected as he walked down your hallway. As you fixated on his figure growing smaller and smaller, you noticed that he brought up his watch close to his mouth, murmuring something under his breath. The faint sound of someone speaking back to him graced your ears, but it grew more incomprehensible as he turned a corner. Just CEO things, you presumed.

As you shut your door, you stood there, dazed with a heartbeat that still seemed to overtake your ears. Even though you and Miguel had done virtually nothing together, your encounter with him was more electrifying than any other date you’ve had. And more arousing than any other hookup.

You hoped that this wouldn’t be the last you saw of your enigmatic neighbor tonight.

–

An hour passed, and you were sitting in the plush cushions of your couch, occasionally letting out an impatient huff. Where the hell was Julia? At this point, you were so hilariously late to this party, you weren’t even sure you wanted to go anymore. Your PR team blowing up your messages didn’t necessarily help your enthusiasm either. 

Just as you were about to put your phone on “Do Not Disturb”, an incoming call from Julia overtook your phone, as if on cue. With a mix of relief and frustration, you answered.

“Julia! Where are you?” you complained, letting your phone rest in the crook of your neck.

“Almost there. Traffic is abhorrent at the moment, so that’s not helping,” Julia stated before taking a pause. “But that’s not even the beginning of why I’m late. You’ll never guess what happened.”

You perked up in surprise, your irritation dissipating. She was never really one for any gossip, always seeming to ignore or have a low tolerance for your nightly one-sided gossip sessions with her. So whatever she had to say had to be important. “Finally! Spill.”

“I had to sort out an issue with your bank while I was at Louboutin,” she began, the ambience of passing cars and honking horns in the background. “Someone’s been trying to hack into your account, so your card was locked.”

Your eyes widened, anxiety bubbling up in your stomach. But before you could say anything, Julia seemed to sense this, interjecting almost immediately.

“But we caught it early, thankfully. I changed all your passwords on my way back,” she explained.

Your mind raced, reminding yourself that Julia would never be late unless it was serious. You were forever grateful for her. But something nagged at the back of your mind. “On your way back? How’d you pay for the shoes?” you questioned. “Oh god, Julia, don’t tell me you paid-”

“Relax,” Julia cut in. You could hear the smile on your face. “As much as I enjoy helping you, you know how I feel about your luxury shoes.”

You sighed in relief. “Just making sure. Was it on the house?”

“Nope,” she replied. “This is the crazy part. Just when it seemed like I needed to just put the shoes back, Miss Lyla– you remember Lyla right? Miguel’s assistant?”

You tilted your head at the mention of Lyla, pleasantly surprised. You knew Julia had befriended Lyla after bumping into each other one too many times, so she occasionally dropped by your flat to say hi and chat while Miguel was away. She had a bubbly personality, a stark contrast to Julia, which you found ironic.

When Miguel had gone away on a business trip to São Paulo, she was basically over all the time, and she knew your routine just as well as Julia did. As you thought about this, it made you wonder if she relayed anything about you to her boss. The likelihood of him bumping into you so much didn’t seem so crazy anymore. Although it’s been a bit less than a year since you’ve seen Lyla, you remember her fondly. 

“Of course I remember her. My memory’s not that bad,” you said defensively.

“If it wasn’t that bad, then you wouldn’t have needed me,” Julia wittily quipped. As much as it hurt your ego to admit it, she was right. Per usual.

“Okay okay, whatever. Lyla. What was she doing there?” you asked.

“She just came bursting through the doors, sweaty, out-of-breath, the sort. I had a mind to think that she ran all the way there,” she continued. “Searching around until she saw me. She walked over to me and offered to pay for your shoes. Said Mr. O’Hara wouldn’t mind. She insisted on paying, saying it was a…’neighborly gesture’? I had already caused enough commotion, so I let her.”

Your jaw dropped as you struggled to process the information. Sure, you remembered Miguel asking about the store earlier, but you just chalked it up to small talk. Even though those shoes would be like pocket change to him, you were still shocked. “I didn’t think he’d actually act on it…” you murmured as you leaned back into the couch, mostly to yourself rather than Julia.

“Hm? What does that mean?” she asked, her turn to begin the onslaught of questions. “Did you run into him? Did something finally happen?”

“He just came over to–”

“Came over?!” Julia shrieked into the mic, causing you to wince and pull your phone away from your ear. It was quickly followed by the sound of her clearing her throat. “Apologies. But…what happened?” Once again, the smile was clear in the way that she spoke.

Unable to hide your giddiness, you kicked your feet up onto the coffee table, the apples of your cheeks aching from how much you were smiling. “Since you were out, this damn corset was giving me a hard time, so I had Miguel come over to…tighten it.”

Silence hung on the other end of the line for a moment, and then Julia erupted in laughter, an unfamiliar sound to you, but you noted that this rare side of her was fun. “I’m surprised he wasn’t trying to take it off you.”

Trying to stifle your own laughter, you feigned a frustrated demeanor as you shushed her to no avail, unable to quiet her giggles. “God, it’s not like that! Anyways, he came over to help and we talked for a bit. You know he cleans up really well?”

“Of course. We’ve seen him in the magazines,” she replied cheekily.

“Yeah, I know that! But seeing it in person is so different…th-that’s besides the point,” you stuttered out. “Before he left, I told him about the shoe problem and where you might be.”

“No kidding. Lyla just showed up and pulled out the most luxurious looking black card I’ve ever seen. Didn’t look like any bank I knew, but it swiped with no hitch,” she recounted, a sense of awe lacing her words. “So you’re telling me Miguel O’Hara bought you your ridiculously expensive shoes, and nothing happened?”

Rolling your eyes, you retold the story, not skimping out a single detail. This was the most enthusiastic you had ever heard your assistant being about your tea. “He was a bit shy at first, but it’s like he totally changed tonight. And when he whispered in my ear asking if the corset was too tight, swear to god I was gonna pass out.”

Julia whistled. “And are you just going to leave it at that? Why not accompany him to his party?”

You didn’t know when Julia had been such an advocate of you and Miguel, but when you thought about it, she did often mention stuff about him that Lyla told her. Were they working together? Co-conspirators in this attempt to bring you two together? “Julia, you know how PR would get if I missed this afterparty. Which I’m an hour and a half late to, by the way.”

“Alright, alright. I’m there in five,” she relented. “Make sure you’re ready so you can just get your shoes on and go. You’re going to love them, by the way.” And with that, she hung up.

She was right. The moment Julia stepped through your door, she didn’t hesitate to rush over to you and undo the fancy packaging of the Louboutin box. And there it was, the most beautiful pair of heels you had ever laid eyes on. It was like their signature red-bottoms, but instead of a red hue at the bottom, it was a sleek, baby pink. You had never seen this in your countless hours of online or window shopping, so this had to be rare. You were surprised that Julia had gotten her hands on this, and also how well it matched your outfit. Sliding them on made you feel like you were Cinderella getting ready for a ball instead of some trashy celebrity/influencer party. At least now with the addition of your shoes, you were going to be the belle of the ball. Or the belle of the trashy party.

As you left your penthouse, you couldn’t help but hug Julia gratefully, excited at this new addition to your closet. True to her nature, she gave a brief and unamused hug back, quickly standing you up straight and smoothing out the wrinkles of your coat. “Save that for Mr. O’Hara,” she commented.

“You know?” you began as you slid into the backseat of your chauffeur’s car, scooting over to give space for Julia. “I think I will,” you chirped giddily.

–

The party was in full swing by the time you arrived. Blaring music, bright strobe lights, the smell of sweat and alcohol already stenching the air. You knew you were (fashionably) late, but people getting drunk and coked out within the first hour was a new record for you. Julia, having successfully shielded you at the entrance of the club from paparazzi alongside your bodyguards, guided you through the crowd. You tried your best to greet everyone as you maneuvered your way through, though you really just wanted to reach the VIP space where your friend hosting was waiting for you.

Once you reached the section, you immediately spotted Cassie, who was waving you over with a mischievous smile. She looked like she was already a couple shots in, but coherent enough. As you approached, she gave you the one-over, proudly nodding in approval.

“Girl, are those some pink-bottoms?!” she shouted over the music as she reached to take your hands in hers. “You look so good, I’m not going to even get mad that you’re super fucking late!”

You laughed at her antics, giving an excited squeeze to her hands. “You’re never gonna guess who got them for me!”

“Who?!”

You leaned to speak into her ear in a vain attempt to keep it discreet, though you ended up nearly screaming in her ear anyways. “Miguel!”

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up!” Cassie blurted out, letting go of your hands to grip you by the shoulders and shake you back and forth in his excitement. “That hot, filthy rich neighbor of yours?!” she asked incredulously, to which you nodded. After the both of you finished your squealing fit, you both sat down on a nearby sofa and recounted the story to her. You treated yourself to a shot of Don Julio and a simple cocktail, not wanting to go too far. You looked too good to be absolutely shitfaced. But it was enough to get you a bit more confident, sharing a couple dances with your friends. Maybe this party wasn’t so bad.

A few hours passed, and you were already a bit too sweaty for comfort. Although you wanted to keep your corset on in the name of fashion, you felt inclined to call it a night just so you could rip it off. It grew more and more suffocating the more you danced and let loose, and you took it as a sign, along with the other sign of your feet screaming out in pain from your heels. At least they were beautiful.

The fatigue began to wash over you all at once, the lively atmosphere growing more and more irritating by the second. You felt bad for wanting to leave early, but Cassie assured you she didn’t mind, knowing you were more of a homebody. After waving goodbye to everyone, you stepped outside with your entourage, greeted by the crisp air of a New York winter night.

As your car whisked you through the city, you just wanted to sleep, but instead, thoughts of Miguel lingered. You wondered how his party was going. Was he more of a party-goer? Were there girls at a business party? Was it called a mixer? Then you remembered him offering to accompany you, the images of the both of you dancing together floating across your mind again. Maybe you could join him, after a short touch-up at your place. Whipping out your phone from your purse, your fingers hovered over the screen, contemplating whether to send a message or not. Maybe you could thank him for the shoes. Upon seeing your last conversation with him, you silently giggled to yourself.

You: thx for setting up my sound system. sry lol i shouldve just waited for julia i feel bad for making u do it

Miguel O’Hara: Nonsense. Was happy to help 👍

You: you text like an old man

Miguel O’Hara: Don’t think it would help my image if I texted like you

You: LMAOOO i wont tell dw

Miguel O’Hara: I’ll consider it

It was only then that you caught a reflection of yourself in the car window, and you physically recoiled. The exhaustion and the remnants of the party were evident – your hair messy and worse for wear, your makeup slightly smudged on one side of your face, sweat and oil making your skin in an unflattering way. You had already partially undone the lacing of your corset to allow room to breathe. Joining him would be an insult in this state, so you let your chauffeur continue your journey back home.

–

It wasn’t long until you found yourself in your building’s lavish elevator, the hum nearly lulling you asleep as it ascended. It was very different from the atmosphere you were in a mere 30 minutes before, so you allowed yourself to enjoy the faint jazz music that played from the overhead speakers. Once the screen displayed your floor number, you took a moment to collect yourself, straightening your posture and doing your best to adjust your disheveled attire.

With a soft chime, the door slid open. You were about to take a tired step forward until someone caught your eye, leaning against the wall of the hallway.

“Partied too hard as well?”

Miguel’s pristine appearance from earlier bore the marks of a night gone wild. His hair was tousled, his necktie partially undone, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned. You smiled to yourself, glad that he allowed himself to have fun, knowing how hard he worked. Yet, just like you, he wasn’t overtly drunk.

“You could say that,” you giggled, the leftover buzz from the party giving you the confidence to look him straight in the eye. “Get any new partnerships?” you asked as you bit your lip.

“Every…single…one,” he drawled with a smirk, his voice as sweet as the cocktail you sipped on earlier. He sauntered towards you, stopping just outside the elevator. “Secured them all early, so I figured I’d just turn in. Got home a little while ago, so I was wondering if you were home too.”

“Well, here I am,” you said, gesturing to yourself. You couldn’t help but return his smirk, though you couldn’t help but feel touched that the first thing he did was try to find you. In return, Miguel bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes raking up and down your figure salaciously.

“And here you are.”

You shuddered at the sound of his rough, whisky-ridden voice taunting you, teasing you. Before you could even begin to think about how to retort, the elevator doors began to close. He swiftly reached out, placing his arm on them, causing them to retract.

“You gonna come with me, nena?” he cooed, reaching forward to take your wrist in his. Although you were silently screaming YES! in your head, you wanted to put up one last fight. Just to see how Miguel would navigate his way into your bedroom.

“Mm, and what makes you think you can take me home tonight?” you challenged, your eyes half-lidded as they traveled down from his face, tracing the muscles that continued to tense in his neck. They dropped to where his shirt was parted, revealing his chest. It glistened slightly with sweat; now you were able to answer what it would smell like with his cologne. It was just as heavenly as you imagined.

He leaned in, his voice just above a whisper. “Why else would you be bragging about me the whole night?” 

A blush crept onto your cheeks as you attempted to maintain your composure. “It’s just the shoes, you know. They’re gorgeous,” you hummed, your heels clicking satisfyingly as you exited the elevator. You elegantly strode past him, making your way toward your door.

“You could say thank you, you know,” he chided, his raspy voice echoing against the walls of the elevator lobby.

“I could. Or you could make me,” you challenged, not bothering to turn once to look at him. Although in reality, it was to hide the mischievous grin on your face.

You could hear a heavy sigh, then the sound of his heavy gait behind you growing near, and you could count 2 steps. It took him 2 steps to catch up to you, despite you having a bit of a lead on him. Feeling his rough, large hand on your shoulder, you were abruptly whipped around. could only catch a glimpse of his contagious smile before he leaned in, his hands coming up to cradle your face as his lips captured yours. 

They were soft, which you were glad about, since men you usually met didn’t seem to care about how gross their chapped lips felt; it urged you to reciprocate with no hesitation, utterly swept away by how good of a kisser he was. The scent of sweat that you had been dreaming about invaded your nostrils, so intoxicating that it melted you into him. You pressed your body up against him, and it was then you verified the very things you imagined about his physique in your head. The plush, soft nature of your dips and curves complimented the rock-like hardness of his abdomen, the firmness of his pecs. You couldn’t help but wrap your arms around him just so you could run your hands over his shoulders and back…you couldn’t decide what felt nicer.

Every single thing you did seemed to be to his liking, spurring him on the more you gave in. A groan rumbled in his throat as he angled his face to kiss you deeper, the vibrations making your lips tingle in just the right way. He’d bite at your bottom lip, poking and prodding at it with his tongue to see if you’d allow him entry, or if he’d get the same response from you. And it was so easy for him to get a reaction out of you, a soft whine at the feeling of his hand smoothing over the small of your back, so naturally, you allowed his tongue to explore you.

And his tongue tasted of such a strange but addictive mixture of cognac, honey, and cigarettes, it had you clawing onto his shoulders, craving to somehow get closer to him than you already were. It’s why you were taken aback when Miguel firmly held you and pulled away, though you could see his eyes gleam in a way that you wouldn’t expect a world-renowned CEO to have. Before you could protest, he scooped you up into his arms, his effortless strength never once failing to amaze you. You squealed at the feeling of being lifted into the air, your arms and legs wrapping around him so naturally. Your bodies seemed to slot together perfectly.

“Migueeeel,” you cooed in a sing-song matter, the distance between his face and yours mere inches away. “I thought I told you to quit smoking, y’know,” you scolded, your bottom lip sticking out as you gave him a fake pout.

He could only laugh in response, the deep and rich sound taking more of an effect on you as you felt it emerge from his chest and into your body. “Guilty as charged, but you shouldn’t worry.”

You managed to unhook your arms from his neck, crossing them over your chest. “Oh yeah? Why shouldn’t I?”

Miguel’s eyes began to crinkle with his amused smile, looking at you in such a way that made it look like he was desperate to drink in the image of you, as if he would never see you again after this night. He sighed, his breath warm against the tender skin of your neck. “I’ve found something better to get addicted to,” he admitted, the shivers it sent down your back quelled by the feeling of his fingertips rubbing warm circles into it.

You needed this man in your bed before the night ended. Wanting to waste no time with any more words, you brought your hands up to tangle your fingers into his hair, your manicured nails gently scraping over his scalp as you dove in. Your lips just barely grazed his when the soft “ding!” of the elevator shattered your privacy, causing the both of you to jerk back and whip your heads towards the golden elevator doors sliding open a couple of yards away. You both could make out voices, familiar voices before whoever it was walked out.

“-getting together?! You’d think him getting her shoes would guarantee at least a kiss,” an upbeat female voice gossiped.

“Gifting shoes is one thing. They’re both dressed up for a party, and he came over at such a late hour. Can you believe nothing happ– oh shit.”

You and Miguel were greeted with the sight of your faithful assistants walking out of the elevator, utterly frozen in place as their eyes widened, locked on you. Lyla’s jaw dropped, and Julia took a moment to compose herself from her initial shock before speaking again. “I take that back.”

You had squirmed yourself out of Miguel’s grip so quickly that you nearly fell to the floor in what would’ve been considered an unceremonious way, but he was sure to quickly ease you down to the floor. Guiltily standing beside him, you avoided the assistant’s gazes as you desperately waited for someone to break the silence. Miguel seemed to be doing the same.

“So!” Lyla shouted out, causing you and Miguel to jump slightly. “Need some privacy tonight, boss?”

“Please,” he grumbled through gritted teeth. As you glanced up, you saw him give Lyla such a nasty glare, it made you giggle.

“I take it that you need some as well?” Julia called your attention softly, making you turn towards her. Though her voice was calm, she had the most shit-eating grin on her face you had ever seen in your life.

You nodded, your eyes rolling so hard that you thought they would go back into your head. “You minxes,” you huffed. Without missing a beat, you took Miguel’s hand in yours as you whipped around and stomped off toward your door. As he caught up, the both of you couldn’t help but giggle somewhat nervously, and a similar one seemed to come from your assistant duo.

Once you heard them shuffle back into the elevator, you felt Miguel slither his arm comfortably around your waist. Looking up at him, you exchanged looks, flustered and amused ones alike.

“Lyla would always bug me about talking to you,” he admitted as you both reached your door, leaning against the wall as he patiently waited for you to punch the code in for your lock.

“Really?” you hummed with a raised brow, though the mental image of Lyla being his wingwoman brought a smile to your face. “I’m starting to think she and Julia were conspiring. They’d be cute together,” you mused, fluttering your lashes at him as the door unlocked with a click.

“Yeah?” Miguel laughed as the both of you shuffled into your home, reaching down to give a playful pat to your ass. “I think we’d have them beat.”

a/n: i really had fun w this prompt, again thank u to my lovely inbox and miss ava for the inspo and also being my lovely beta reader ;))) happy to add another miguel fic to my bag. inbox is open! likes n reblogs are appreciated!!

masterlist here.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Oh god there’s so much to unpack with the costumes and colours this episode...I might have to divide it into two separate posts, one for just the green stuff and one for all the other colours.

But for now, as an example, take these two scenes. It seems like Aof has tried to get some red and blue in a lot of scenes...as well as the dreaded green.

At the market, Pran is in a blue t-shirt, the seller has a blue shirt on, and Pat has blue on his shirt. There are two or three people in the background in red tops (this is just one), the seller has red pants, and Pat and Pran mess about with the red tomatoes. Pran also has a green shirt over his blue t-shirt, Pat has green palm leaves on his shirt and green trim on his bag (not seen here), and the seller has green (with a bit of red) on the headscarf...not to mention all the green vegetables.

With the journey to the market, Pat and Pran have the same as I’ve mentioned above but Junior also has a blue t-shirt on (maybe as a symbol of Pat reaching closer to Pran...or Pran slowly allowing him in) whereas Tong has a scarf with a lot of red as well as a bit of green.

And one thing on my green=bad theory... When I saw this scene below in the episode 7 preview I got confused...maybe my theory doesn’t stand, because Pat and Pran are looking very happy here even though Pat in in green...???

BUT then someone reminded me of this below in the trailer and I’m right back on my beware of green clothes soapbox. What has happened between the above and below? (of course, there’s no indication of order of events...or even if they are the same scene...but still...).

[concerningwolves]

podcast update:

i still don't want to say that i'm for certain going to release this thing (i might run out of creative oomph! i might get too busy! i might chicken out! life is unpredictable!), buuuuuut. well. when i've spent two and a half hours researching and scouring the web for a specific volume of a dense historical work because it contains one (1) reference to a folkloric creature in that volume's introduction, I think it's safe to say i'm pretty firmly invested in the project.

I've also figured out a structure for at least ten episodes, and decided to work my way down through the regions of England from north to south for.. reasons. idk, it feels intuitive to do it like that? anyway, that means i'm starting my research focusing on folklore from the places in the North East, and i didn't realise this before i started compiling topics but! the north east is home to my favourite cheeky folklore lad, the Hedley Kow!! and also the origin of one of my other favourite stories, the Lambton Worm!! I'm getting EXCITED

[carmelide]

started watching 'three lives, three worlds, the pillow book' and i won't lie, i like it far better than 'ten miles of peach blossom' so far, which some may find strange because most of the reviews i've seen for the show (pillow book) tend to greatly favour tmopb instead─ which i suppose i understand. it had all the makings of an excellent drama; familiar famous faces, gorgeous visuals, an amazing ost and soundtrack, beautiful aesthetics and so on. and, according to the reviews, this show was a great drama; i remember scouring viki prior to my watch of the show tryna find a bad review and i found absolutely nothing.

i also felt absolutely nothing when i watched it. i'm perhaps one of the very few people who didn't connect with tmopb at all. i found the characters to be either irritating, flat or plainly uninteresting─ the only characters i cared about were dong hua and bai fengjiu, which is what prompted me to eventually give pillow book a go (but more on that in a moment.) the romance of ye hua and bai qian was aggravating, in my opinion, and i found myself to be extremely apathetic to their plights (and i even disliked ye hua for a majority of the show.) i felt that the plot was messy (which is near unavoidable in costume dramas, i know), convoluted and that the writers/director were making very strange and weird decisions (i.e. having ye hua and bai qian's mentor be played by the same actor was so ODD to me.) i usually do skip through shows while watching, only a little bit as my attention span is short and the episodes are long, but i was skipping solid ten to thirty minute chunks constantly with this show─ it was less about watching it for fun, but moreso out of penance 😭

so i finished it. i disliked it. i haven't touched it with a ten foot pole since─ because of my tmopb trauma, i held off on watching pillow book for about a good year or too. but there aren't too many new, hq dramas out at the moment (aside from 'who rules the world', that looks good) and i was kind of missing dong hua and fengjiu─ so i caved.

now, i'm not done with the show, but i like it infinitely better than tmopb! i feel as if they put more care into the plot and dialogue as well as the fact that everything just seems to make more sense overall. i was somewhat put off by how they had completely ignored what had transpired between the main leads in tmopb, but it came to my attention that it was the result of legal technicalities such as rights to the original novel and other such things that i won't even attempt to understand─ anyways, i love pillow book! i'm currently on the arc of dong hua's mortal trial and i'm so here for it. someone in the comments said it was giving arthur + lancelot + guinevere vibes and i have to agree! additionally, where are seeing feng jiu's growth as a character and i love it! very excited for what's to come.

[thefloatingstone]

I've seen 2 videos about this Dr Membrane guy ("I'm 12 years old" and the environment excitement thing) and maybe 1 or 2 passing Invader Zim videos and posts, but nothing has made me want to watch it more than experiencing what's being said on your blog and it sounds amazing (punishing the fans for demanding that something become canon and getting away with it is amazing and I really admire the show's creator for it)

XDDD omg my dude. I HIGHLY recommend the movie. Even if you have not seen one IZ episode in yourlife, you can still watch the movie. I have this on good authority as I watched it the same day as my friend who has NEVER seen IZ did and we proceeded to shriek at each other through Discord with equal amounts of enthusiasm. Also, while scouring his twitter for his salty tweets, I noticed one or two sincere ones and JV mentioned he purposefully wrote the movie so that new fans with no knowledge of the show could just dive in and watch it.

100/10 highly recommend! It’s a really good time!

JV is and always has been a huge sort of benign troll. This was true when I was 19 and was told by other fans to “be careful because JV hates his fans” to now, when I suddenly realise JV does NOT “hate his fans”. He just doesn’t give a shit about what fans think “SHOULD” happen with his characters.

(also the actual animation is legit really lush and fluid and delicious to look at)

[ouranimeyeah]

IT'S ALL ON THE DETAILS: Crafting an incredible chase scene.

If there is one thing anyone can recognize about a Hayao Miyazaki work is that he is incredible at mapping a setting. While I had an understanding of this looking at a number of his concept art books I have to give credit to Digibro for making an outstanding video on how Miyazaki Maps a setting: (will link youtube video here).Hayao Miyazaki always makes sure that each and every environment where the characters are located has a clear sense of scale, direction, design and functionality. For example in Mononoke Home (Princess Mononoke), by having our main character ashitaka travel through the scene from the outside where they host the walls to when we go inside and we see the shops, spend time in the men's quarters where they eat and later we see him in the women's area where they work the bellows. Miyazaki has a knack for keeping the character walking in the same direction as a means to guide the audience through a location as we see in Spirited away with Chihiro and Haku running through the pig stys and whine cellars up to the entrance of the building. Eizouken shows in its first episode how much Masaaki Yuasa appreciates the elements that makes Miyazaki so well loved among Ghibli fans and fans of film in general.

In the very first segment of the episode we see Asakusa scouring the the apartment house where she moved into looking for things to draw. With her exciting imagination and the innovation of the staff at Science Saru we see a very clear map of the entire location of the complex making it feel lived in. One thing that they establish early on is how our main character often references real life in order to evolve their own imagination. This is a concept that I greatly appreciate and will be coming back to often for I feel that one of the major weaknesses of anime and alot of other media is when it tries way to hard to merely reference it's native medium and dosen t hope to branch out adding levels of complexity. While this first segment of the story truly cements in the viewer how much Yuasa appreciates these principles it isn't until 2 moments later on in the episode that we see it actually be applied.

In the scene where Mizusaki is being chased we see something that Miyazaki in alot of his earlier works is an absolute master of and that is the chase scene. One thing I remember growing up watching the likes of the Castle of Cagliostro, Laputa a Castle in the Sky and Sherlock Hound is that in all of Miyazaki's chase scenes he utilizes the mechanisms of the setting to sell the believability of the absurdity. Situations will be surprising and often hilarious but we buy it because the elements in the setting are so well crafted. In this scene Yuasa displays it when Kanamori and Asakusa basically steal Mizusaki away from her father's cronies and run away. First of all the position they all have is absolutely hilarious with one holding her legs and the other her arms as they hastily run into turning door that shuts close on the cronies chasing them. This is a simple gag but is still funny on levels I'm not sure I can explain now but bear with me. Then they run out and up a small flight of stairs and this is when the genius happens. As one of the cronies tries the pursue them up the stairs one of them pulls down one of the stage command ropes (if I forgot to mention the room were this is taking place is a stage). When Asakusa pulls it down a trap door opens and then the cronies evades it. She pulls another rope and the stage curtain comes down and right before he gets all the way up the stairs and she pulls that final rope the whole thing turns into a slide and he barrels down into the trap door. The thing that truly makes this incredible to me is how in the very beginning of the scene before anything I mentioned Kanamori and Asakusa entered the area through a lower level of the stage and you can see that there's an even lower level below them. And so our minds already register the layout and set up in the room! Also the small action of having Asakusa pull the second rope and it fails lends itself a level of believability and realism because there was no way she was going to know every single element of the stage. Just small details like that in conjunction of the later scene where the three enter the coin laundry and you randomly see an air conditioner on top of the entrance really garners this world a sense of being lived in because it displays the overall sort of weird nature of humans and how we tend to do weird things. YUASA IS EASILY ONE OF THE BEST DIRECTORS EPISODE I CANNOT WAIT TO WRITE MORE ON IT!

THOUGHTS ON keep your hands off EIZOUKEN SO FAR! Roughly (will write more detailed post later)

Episode 1- I love the setting and characters, the central idea of young people aspiring to be animators quickly grabs me. Seeing Asakusa (I think that's her name) watch anime as a kid watching future boy Conan a series done by Hayao Miyazaki (an all time favorite director of mine) really speaks to me on a personal level. I absolutely adore the fact that the different principles of animation that Asakusa explains during the segment when her and Kanamori are in the anime club and they are watching Conan are actually used in the episode to great effect to show how much the creators over at Science Saru understand these principles and their necessary practice. I absolutely adore how well animated each scene is and how the character designs work so well with the animation. Each of our three main characters (although they all wear school outfits) , are so distinguishable. Whether it be asakusa's explorer hat with her campflauge backpack, Kanamori's really nice double shoe backpack or Mizusaki's anime girl like face. I love how their faces are very distinct with Kanamori almost having a skull like face as well.

I love how Kanamori is a representation of greed but shown in a more complex light even positive. She essentially is a symbol for the positive attributes that can come from free market capitalism, with all its vices. She's only supporting Mizusaki and Asakusa for her own means but she's able to draw out their best attributes to make the group work. I love how asakusa's desire to draw concept art is deeply rooted in her adventurous nature and how Mizusaki has such a love for character design and depicting characterization through subtle movement. There are so many things in this single episode that grabs me and the scene were Kanamori said "you're young u have nothing to loose don't worry about the rules!" Really hit me in the feels. I loved the final segment when Asakusa and Mizusaki were creating that aircraft together and sketchlike the art style became and I loved how the composition of the scene was very much like an animator with some fluid animation on top of it. I adored how they made the aircraft have practical elements to it that made it a believable aircraft and all of this really got me inspired to draw again! I have a more detailed and comprehensive review of the first 3 episodes fully codifying my thoughts coming but after watching the first 3 episodes this show is giving me signs of being one of my favorite anime if not my favorite anime of all time! 10/10