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hookedonapirate · 3 years

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Book Update

If anyone is wondering when Hard To Handle will be coming out, I have some news! So, for those who don't know, Hard To Handle is an original A Helping Hand rewrite featuring Harper and Owen (Killian and Emma) and will be part 2 of the series. And if you haven't guessed yet, part 1 features Audrey and Brady (Elsa and Liam from A Helping Hand) with a Harper and Brady friendship. For those interested in their story, I have a little treat for you below. However, this Sneak peek doesn't show Audrey and Brady meeting yet because I haven't gotten that far.

This is sort of an enemies to lovers story (I say sort of because their "enemy" status in the beginning is too complicated to slap a label on it) that starts off with Harper and Audrey butting heads with their new neighbor, Brady, and him and Audrey exchanging love hate letters. 😉 Then Brady and Audrey form an alliance and break up Harper and Bryce. I promise it's not evil like it sounds because Brady discovers Bryce is cheating on Harper. Remember, Bryce is the Neal of AHH.

This book is a bit darker than book 2 because of the toxic nature of Harper's relationship with Bryce, and because Audrey often pays the price for his shenanigans, but there's still humor and fun in this one.

Anyway, here are the first few chapters. I may post more if anyone's interested ❤️

Chapter One

Brady

There are strange sounds coming from the unit next door.

Laughter maybe?

Yes, definitely laughter.

More like Cackling. From one—make that two—females.

Two loud, annoying females.

Just great.

I take pride in being a fairly simple man who doesn’t need much to be happy. A few things like fishing, enjoying an ice-cold beer and having a few moments of quiet time usually does the trick. Even the sound the can makes whenever I crack open the pull tab of Coors Light is music to my ears. I finally have time to relax after sweating my ass off from all the unpacking I did. I just moved in today and couldn’t stand the idea of tripping over boxes or searching through them every time I needed to use something. I was unable to stop unpacking until every single item in those boxes had a home.

Now I’m able to sit back in my patio chair, prop my feet up on the plastic stool and breathe in the pleasantly cool evening air, enjoy a refreshing, ice-cold beer and some quiet time.

Or at least I was able to until my air of tranquil serenity was so rudely disturbed by my cackling neighbors.

They could at least close their balcony doors, so the entire building doesn’t have to hear them.

I’m already in a foul mood, and the two laughing hyenas aren’t helping. If anything, my mood is worse than it was when I was packing.

They, however, sound like they’re having a grand old time. Doing what exactly, I’m not sure, but it sounds like one of them needed a break from studying and the other one is encouraging her to get drunk and let loose. Which means they’re college students.

Just fucking perfect.

This is exactly why I moved off campus, even though it meant paying rent and enduring a much longer commute to work.

It’s just my luck to get stuck living next to two loud teenagers or early twenty-something-year-olds. I’m around college students all the time, considering I’m an instructor; I don't need to live next to them, too. I learned that very quickly.

Young adults, my ass. More like impudent children.

I feel like the property management should’ve included that minor detail in the apartment listing. Or that not everyone is required to follow their uniform policies.

A peaceful, friendly community? Ha!

The management will definitely be hearing from me about their false advertising.

“Dude, I’m sorry to tell you this, Harp, but your boyfriend’s a fucking loser! Even Elisa said so!”

“He’s just misunderstood!”

“Misunderstood?! Bryce is such a creep!”

“Is not!”

I take a swig of my beer through gritted teeth. I really wish I had a TV right now.

It won’t be delivered until tomorrow, though. Which is very unfortunate and inconvenient at the moment because I need a distraction from reality. Listening to their conversation makes me furious and sad at the same time because it reminds me of me and my brother arguing about his girlfriend. I kept trying to tell Owen she was no good for him, but he wouldn’t listen. I bet this Bryce guy isn’t married, though.

Or maybe he is; I really don’t know.

I need something to take my mind off the overwhelming urge I feel to hop on a plane, fly to Chicago and kick my brother’s ass for being the fucking moron he is. And let me tell you, the urge is very strong right now. Earlier today, Owen told me the woman he’s been seeing is married. They’ve been dating for six months, during which she was lying to him the entire time. I already didn’t like her very much to begin with because she was a controlling bitch—I’m the only one who’s allowed to be a controlling bitch to my brother—and because ever since he started seeing her, I haven't been able to hang out with him very much. Whenever we made plans, he canceled them because Naomi wanted to spend time with him instead. And he was my best friend. Now he tells me she’s married and that he’s still staying with her.

What the actual fuck?

He’s so brainwashed by her, I couldn’t talk a lick sense into that goddamn head of his. Now he wants me to be okay with them staying together while she’s still with her husband?

Fuck that shit.

“Okay listen, if you’re going to talk shit about my boyfriend, we’re going to need more wine.”

“Agreed.”

It becomes silent next door for a few minutes, which makes me sigh in relief. Soon I hear, “Son of a fucking bitch!”

There’s a litany of curses and then, “We need a new corkscrew!”

“But we’re too drunk to drive anywhere!”

Damn, if only I had a corkscrew so they could drink more wine, get drunker and become even louder and more annoying than they already are.

That’s actually not a bad idea, though. If they’re anything like my ex-girlfriend, the quicker they get drunk, the quicker they’ll be ready to sleep. The quicker I’ll finally have my peace and quiet.

I contemplate driving down to the corner store, but what would I even say if I showed up at their door with a corkscrew they didn’t ask for? Oh, hi, I was eavesdropping on your conversation and took it upon myself to go to the store and buy you this corkscrew so you could both drink yourselves into an alcohol-induced coma and I could finally have some peace and quiet?

Nope, I definitely can’t say that.

Chapter Two

Audrey

“Son of a fucking bitch!”

When I rush into the kitchen to see why my roommate’s cussing up a storm, I’m expecting the counter and floor to be covered in wine and shattered glass, even though I didn’t hear any glass break, but Harper’s just holding the corkscrew and staring at the top of the bottle.

“What’s wrong?”

“We need a new corkscrew!” Harper grabs the bottle of wine and points the top of it at me. The cork is still jammed into the neck of the bottle, and the worm of the corkscrew is stuck inside it.

Which is very unfortunate.

She’s been studying her ass off, except for the occasional interruptions from her asshat of a boyfriend, Bryce. She had a really tough time getting him to finally leave so she could study, and she had to literally push him out the door. So I thought Harper could use a break and I could feel saner again by indulging in some wine. But one bottle of wine quickly turned into two. Or rather, it would’ve if not for the end of the corkscrew inside the cork.

Fuck.

“But we can’t drive anywhere,” I point out, considering how tipsy we both are, even though we only went through one bottle between us. But we’re both lightweights.

“Hold on,” she says, picking up her phone from the counter.

I cock my brow. “You do realize Amazon Prime takes two days to ship, right?”

“Yeah, I know, Aud. I’m not that drunk.” After looking at something on her phone for a minute, she leaves the kitchen, returns with one of her tennis shoes and sets the phone down to pick up the wine bottle. She places the bottom of the bottle inside the heel of the shoe, raises her hands above her head and goes to one of the walls in a striking pose.

I rush over and put my hand on her arm to stop her. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“This will push the cork out.”

“But won’t the wine spill all over?”

“Not if I can only push the cork part of the way out and then pull it off the rest of the way.” She hits the shoe against the wall a few times, but the cork doesn’t budge.

“Why don’t we see if any of the neighbors have a corkscrew,” I suggest. “This method doesn’t seem to be working.”

She sighs and drops her arms. “Who do you think would have one?”

“What about Mandy? She’s a wine drinker.”

Harper shakes her head. “She doesn’t get home from the office until late on Mondays. And there’s no way I’m trying mister grumpy pants across the hall. It always seems like he’ll snap at any moment. Plus, once his dog starts yapping, she never shuts up.”

“What about the new guy who just moved in next door?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if he’s an ax murderer?”

“I saw him earlier when he was moving in. He seems harmless enough, and is kind of cute, actually.”

“Yeah, well so was Ted Bundy. And I’d like to stay alive with my head intact, thank you very much.” I haven’t seen the new neighbor yet, but I don’t think going over to a stranger's place while we’re both a little tipsy is the best idea, for several reasons.

She flicks her hand. “Well, you don’t have to go. I will.” She grabs her keys, removes her pepper spray from the attached chain and throws her keys back on the counter before heading toward the door.

“Harp, wait…”

Ignoring my pleas as I follow behind her, she slips into her Nike slides. “I’ll be fine. I got my handy dandy pepper spray,” she says, holding it up.

Before I can talk some sense into her, she’s already dashing out the door and calling out over her shoulder, “If I’m not back in five minutes, call 911!”

I sigh and lean against the door, pressing my ear against it so I can listen for Harper’s screams or any signs of a struggle.

Chapter Three

Brady

When I head inside from the balcony, there’s a knock on the front door. I scratch my head and stride over to answer it, wondering who it could be. I just moved into this apartment today, so I literally don’t know any of my neighbors yet.

I open the door to a skinny blonde with green eyes, long, shimmering hair and soft pink lips. She’s easy on the eyes, but I have a feeling she’s one of the laughing hyenas next door. She’s not as young as I thought she’d be, though. She looks to be around my brother’s age. When I give her a once-over, I notice the pepper spray she’s trying to hide in her fist.

I wince at the sight of it. She doesn’t even have the safety lock on.

I offer a tight-lipped smile. “Hello.”

“HiI’myournextdoorneighbor,” she mumbles, her words slurred together. She’s a little tipsy and has to lean against the doorframe so she doesn’t fall over.

“How can I help you, next-door neighbor?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the pepper spray. The sight of it brings back too many painful memories. Memories I’d rather keep locked away.

“I was wondering if you had a corkscrew my roommate and I could borrow?”

On the balcony, I wanted to strangle the two neighbors who were interrupting my quiet time, but now I feel very protective. She’s obviously drunk, yet stumbling over to a neighbor she doesn’t even know. I mean, I like to consider myself an overall decent human being, or as I’ve been called before, “one of the good guys,” but this woman doesn’t know that. She knows nothing about me, yet she’s over here asking to borrow a corkscrew. And yes, she’s carrying a weapon, but I doubt she knows how to use it properly, and with how tipsy she is, I doubt she’d even be fast enough to use it.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

Her smile fades, but she looks determined, so I’m hoping she doesn’t go knocking on all her neighbors' doors asking for a corkscrew.

“I could buy you one,” I offer, trying to sound as polite as possible. Which is difficult when I’m irritated.

Her eyes widen in surprise. “Really? You’d do that?”

I cross my arms and give her a stern look. “On one condition.”

She nods excitedly. “Of course, anything.”

I’m so glad I’m a nice guy because this woman seems far too trusting, and I’m afraid of what would’ve happened if I were anything less than a decent human being. “I’ll go and get you a corkscrew if you return to your apartment and keep the noise down for the rest of the night. And maybe close your balcony doors so the entire building can’t overhear your childish conversation.”

I’m thinking this is a very reasonable request. I’m willing to leave the comfort of my apartment to get in my car and go to the corner store to get some women I don’t know a corkscrew, and all they have to do is put a cap on the noise.

But the scowl on her face tells me she doesn’t agree. “First of all,” she raises her index finger, “ruu-uuuuuuude!” She raises another finger. “Secondly, my roommate and I aren’t children. We’re having a stressful week and were finally able to relax and drink some wine when the corkscrew broke. But that’s okay, we’ll figure out how to get the cork off ourselves!” She turns on her heels and starts to head toward her apartment, but spins around again and gets in my space, jabbing a finger at my chest. “And thirdly, we weren’t being that loud!”

I clench my jaw as she storms away and slams the door shut after disappearing inside her apartment. I throw my own door shut, huffing in frustration.

Why couldn’t my neighbors all be sweet old ladies?

So much for having a relaxing evening!

I head back to my balcony when there’s another knock on the door.

“Son of bitch,” I curse under my breath as I march over to the door and yank it open. “What, now?” I ask angrily when I see her standing at my door again.

“I need to borrow a dress shoe.”

I furrow my brows, growing more agitated. “A what?”

She sighs as though I’m the one inconveniencing her. “A dress shoe,” she says impatiently. “Surely you’ve been to a wedding or funeral. You must have one.”

“I do, but why do you—” Before I get the chance to answer, she shoves past me and heads toward my bedroom.

I follow her in there and cross my arms over my chest in the doorway as I watch her go to my closet. “What in the ever-loving hell are you doing?”

“I told you, I need to borrow a dress shoe.”

Seriously?!

The audacity of this woman waltzing into my apartment and taking one of my shoes! “That’s funny because I never said you could borrow one.”

“Wow, your closet is super organized,” she comments as she looks around, easily finding one of my brown dress shoes and grabbing it from the shoe rack.

I’m still standing in the bedroom doorway when she tries to get through. I reach for my shoe, but she steps back and aims her pepper spray at me. I instinctively duck out of the line of fire and lunge forward, grabbing the pepper spray from her hand and twisting the safety lock.

“Wait, please don’t kill me! My roommate’s calling 911 if I’m not back in two minutes!” she cries, shielding herself with her hands.

I sigh in exasperation and extend the pepper spray to her. “I’m not trying to murder you, I was trying to get my shoe back.”

She slowly drops her arms and narrows her eyes as she snatches the spray from my hand. “Then why did you take away my weapon?”

I scoff. “It was a reflex so I didn’t get sprayed in the face since I wasn’t actually attacking you. Do you know how many times I’ve been pepper-sprayed in the face?”

“Why, because you’re a rapist?!” she accuses, stepping away from me and aiming her pepper spray at me again, even though the safety is still on. She probably doesn’t even know that, though.

I sigh in exasperation and raise my hands in surrender. “No, because I was in the Marines. Getting pepper-sprayed was part of my training. It taught me how to use my weapons and equipment.”

She lowers the spray, guilt etched in her features. “Oh, sorry. My roommate said you might be another Ted Bundy, and I don’t want to be raped and murdered.”

“Yeah, because breaking into your neighbor’s apartment and stealing their shoe is a good way to prevent that from happening,” I say, my words laden with sarcasm.

“Well, no, but that’s what the pepper spray was for.”

“It won’t do you any good if you don’t use it properly. You need to have a firm grip and use your thumb to activate it so it can’t be taken out of your hand like I just took it out of yours.”

“Thanks for the tip.” She raises the pepper spray at me again and presses the button to activate it. But it’s still disarmed. Once she realizes her mistake, her eyes widen.

I cock my head to the side and plant my hands on my hips. “Really?”

She offers an apologetic smile, then scurries toward me, ducks under my arm and squeezes past me, darting for the front door. “I’ll bring it right back, I promise!”

I let her go and exhale another deep sigh. What could she possibly need my shoe for anyway? To squash a spider or something? Can’t she use her own Goddamn shoe for that?

Right, she probably doesn’t want to get her precious shoe all gross, so she’s using mine instead. Which means my shoe will be returned with spider guts on the bottom.

Just great.

I go to the balcony and curtly grab my beer so I can head inside and not have to hear every goddamn word of their conversation again.

Pound, pound, pound.

What the hell?

It sounds like they’re banging something against the wall.

My shoe, perhaps?

Pound, pound, pound.

Then I hear a loud pop!

“Yessssss!”

They got the cork out.

“Holy shit, you made a mess!”

“Sorry, but at least we can keep drinking!”

“Woohoo!”

I head inside and close the sliding doors, hoping to go to bed and get some rest. But then there’s another knock on the front door.

“Fucking hell,” I groan as I go over to answer it. It’s probably the blonde neighbor with my shoe, but I’m not sure I want it back.

Sure enough, it’s her.

“Thanks for letting me borrow it.” She hands over my shoe with a small smile and heads back to her apartment.

“You didn’t borrow it, you stole it!” I call after her. But she completely ignores me.

“And sorry I tried to spray you...twice!” Before I can respond, she’s already inside her unit.

I bring the shoe to my nose to get a closer whiff of it. I noticed the smell as soon as she handed it to me. “Hey, why does my shoe smell like wine?!”

But I’m talking to the door at this point.

I shake my head and go back inside, trying to decide if I should try to get the smell out or just toss the pair into the trash. For now, I set it aside and go to the bathroom to get ready for bed, hoping my neighbors will down the bottle, get tired and pass out so I can have a quiet evening.

No such luck.

They turn on the music, and I can hear the pounding bass through the wall and also, “Yeeeeesssss, this is my jam!”

The walls are actually shaking.

Why do the other neighbors put up with this! It’s absurd, really.

They should be evicted.

I contemplate calling the police to make a complaint, but this is New York City; the police have better things to do than respond to non-emergency noise complaints. So I return to my bedroom, strip down to my boxers and toss my clothes into the hamper before slipping into bed. I can still hear the noises coming from the unit next door, but thankfully, I’m a patient man. I’m sure they’ll get tired soon and go to bed. Or at least I hope so.

But an hour passes, and the music still doesn’t cease. I groan and roll over on my stomach, pulling the pillow over my head, wishing I had noise-canceling headphones right now. I’m normally against the idea of something that cancels all sounds, because it also cancels sounds that alert danger. Like if a burglar broke into the apartment or there’s an explosion or gunshot. But right now, I’d do anything to get a good night’s sleep. Between arguing with my brother over the phone into the wee hours of the night yesterday and spending all day moving into my new place and unpacking, I’m completely exhausted. Not to mention I always start my day at five in the morning. My classes don’t start until eight a.m., but I like to get an early start to my day. I got up that early when I was in the Marines, and some habits just never die.

I’m about to get up and go down the hall to ask them to turn down the noise, but I’ve already asked her once and she got offended, so I doubt it will do any good.

Chapter Four

Audrey

I’m immediately regretting the two bottles of Barefoot Harper and imbibed last night. My head is pounding, I’m dehydrated, and I have to be at work in an hour. I take some aspirin, drink a full glass of water before jumping into the shower.

When I leave my bedroom, dressed and ready to go, Harper is shuffling out of her room.

“Morning,” she says groggily, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

“Morning, Harp.” I head to the kitchen to make her some coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker myself, I prefer tea, but I know Harper can’t function in the morning without a fresh cup of hot Folgers.

“Why did we drink on a weeknight again?” she groans, taking a seat at the table.

“That’s an excellent question.” I pour water into the pot and place it in the coffeemaker, turning it on.

Harper buries her face in the cradle of her arms on the table as I grab some aspirin and a tall glass, filling it with water. She doesn’t have to work today, but she does have classes. She’s already a registered nurse like me, but she’s going for her master’s degree to open up more job opportunities. And also because she’s an overachiever, when it comes to her career at least. I just wish she were an overachiever when it came to other aspects of her life, like the kind of men she dates. Or maybe Harper was purposefully aiming for Class-A levels of douchebaggery when she started dating Bryce. If that’s the case, then she definitely went above and beyond expectations. And while she is my best friend and roommate, there’s only so much sense I can talk into her. And I'm not willing to let some lowlife scumbag get in between our friendship.

“Here, these will help.”

Harper lifts her head and takes the aspirin and glass. When she pops the pills in her mouth, swallowing them down with a big gulp of water, she already appears to be more human again.

I grab my keys and strap my purse over my shoulder, heading toward the front door.

“Speaking of drinking, are you going to be here Friday night?”

I snort-laugh and turn to look at her, placing my free hand on my hip, knowing exactly where this is going. She’s still recovering from her hangover and already has booze on the brain. “That depends. Is Bryce going to be here?”

When she takes a slow sip of her water, I know what her answer is before she says it out loud. “Well, considering he’s the one who invited a few people over, yes, he’ll be here.”

“Then no, I definitely won’t.” I head for the door, trying to leave again.

“That’s a shame because Bryce has a good-looking friend who thinks you’re gorgeous.”

I spin around, cocking a brow. “Which friend?”

“Treyton. You haven’t met him before, but he saw your pics on Instagram.”

I walk to the table, placing my hands on top of the chair, my key ring dangling from my finger. “How did he find my Instagram account if we’ve never met?”

“Bryce showed it to him.”

What the fuck?

I furrow my brows in confusion. “Okay, why is Bryce showing his friends my Instagram account?”

She smirks. “Because Treyton was asking him if I had any cute, single friends.”

I sigh, not liking the idea of Bryce trying to set his friends up with me. I’ve met some of his guy friends, and neither is one I’d kiss if he were the last man on earth. “Sorry, not interested.”

I remove my hand from the chair and try to leave again.

“Oh, come on, Aud. Give the guy a chance. I mean, I don’t know him that well, but he’s fucking hot.” She picks up her phone from the table and pulls up something before handing it to me across the table. “See for yourself.”

I reluctantly take the device, a heavy sigh leaving my lips. I highly doubt his looks will sway me. Even if is hot, he’s still Bryce’s—

Holy crap.

He’s got those smokey grey eyes, a chiseled jaw and a little smirk on his beautiful face that makes me melt.

Well, fuck.

“So, what do you think?” Harper asks curiously, trying to stifle a smirk as she perches her chin on the back of her joined hands, her elbows resting on the table.

I try not to show how attracted I am to a freaking photo of a guy I’ve never met before, but damn, those eyes are spellbinding, and I’m pretty sure I’m blushing. “Okay, he’s a little cute.”

“A little? Honey, you and I have similar tastes in men, so I know you don’t think he’s just cute.”

“Yeah, that’s true. We usually do, which is why I have no idea how Bryce got your attention. He must have a big dick or something.” I narrow my eyes. “Does he have a big dick? Because that would explain a lot.”

Harper bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, Aud, you know it’s not all about the size! And no, he doesn’t, he’s average, but as much as you hate him, you can’t deny he’s good-looking.”

“Yes, maybe on the outside he’s cute but personality-wise he’s ugly as fuck.”

She sighs in defeat as I hand over her phone. This is just an argument neither of us will ever be able to agree on. Well, until she finally decides to take off those damn rose-colored glasses and sees Bryce as he truly is. But I know it would make Harper happy if I agreed to stay for the party. I know that sometimes she feels out of place considering most of Bryce’s friends are college kids. Normally, she’s the oldest one there, but you could never tell, because she has a baby face and looks at least five years younger than she actually is, so to the other college kids, she's one of them.

“Fine, I’ll be here for the party.”

Harper’s eyes widen in surprise. “Really?”

“Yes, but if any of his friends grab my ass, I’m leaving.”

She laughs. “Okay.”

The coffee machine beeps, so she gets up from her seat, grabs a mug and creamer and pours the steaming, hot liquid into her cup. She returns to her seat and sips her coffee as I once again try to leave. “Thanks for starting the coffee, Aud.”

“No problem. See you tonight.” I unlock the door, and when I pull it open, I notice a folded up crisp piece of copy paper taped to the outside. I cock my brow and peel it off, unfolding it. I’m expecting it to be from the building management.

But then I read the first line...

To the two hoity-toity princesses,

I immediately suspect it’s from mister grumpy pants across the hall, but the letter is in fancy cursive writing. Who even writes in cursive anymore? Maybe an old lady or mister grumpy pants, I suppose. But he normally doesn’t leave letters. He’ll just knock on the door with his cane and chew us out in person. Harper said the first time he knocked on her door to complain about the noise, he made her cry.

When he tries that shit with me, I give it right back to him and threaten to call the cops on his dog and have her taken to the pound. He tends to leave us alone now. So, I’m surprised he’s resorted to leaving us notes.

Can you kindly tone down your loud music and obnoxious woohooing, laughter and overall commotion that kept me up until 2 a.m.? Some people actually have to work on a Tuesday morning. I, myself, wake at 5 a.m. every single day and am now forced to go to work on three hours of sleep. Luckily the students I teach possess much more class and are at maturity levels you both obviously could never achieve if you actually tried. I know neither of you could possibly understand waking up early for a job or getting your hands dirty, as you’re city girls who probably live on mommy and daddy’s income and never worked a day in your lives, but some people actually have responsibilities and obligations, not just classes they can skip whenever they feel like it. So have a little respect and lower the volume a few notches.

This time you get a warning, but if the noise persists, I will be forced to contact law enforcement. Have a lovely day drinking your Starbucks lattes and trying to get rid of what I hope are nasty hangovers.

Sincerely,

The tired and cranky guy from 8C, thanks to his loud, annoying neighbors

P.S. The blonde who took my brown dress shoe owes me a new pair seeing as it now reeks of Pinot Grigio, thank you very much.

My nostrils flare before I even finish reading the letter. The audacity of this asshole! He doesn’t even know us, hell he hasn’t even met me in person, yet he makes all kinds of false assumptions about us.

I know neither of you could possibly understand waking up early for a job or getting your hands dirty.

What the actual fuck?! Harper and I both wake up at the crack of dawn to go to work at the hospital, and we’re constantly on our feet for at least twelve hours. We only work three days a week, but our jobs are emotionally and physically draining; I mostly use the other four days to sleep, recover, clean the apartment and run errands. So, for someone to say we don’t work or ever get our hands dirty is a blow to the gut. We’re nurses for crying out loud! Getting our hands dirty is part of the job!

Another remark of his that irks me: We’re city girls who probably live on mommy and daddy’s income. My parents would actually laugh out loud if they read this comment. They always tell me how independent I am. Hell, I wouldn’t even allow them to pay for my schooling even though they wanted to; I wanted to do it all on my own, so I had two jobs while I went to college. They also weren’t too happy when I took a job in New York, but they told me if anyone could handle herself in a big city, it was me. Not to mention, Harper had it way worse than me, growing up.

But the fact that this douchebag is so ridiculously wrong about us makes me smile a little. It will feel so goddamn good to make him see the error of his ways.

I’m still carrying the letter with me as I go to my bedroom closet and grab my stationary from the top shelf. I take out a sheet of paper and a pen from the box, replace it on the shelf and return to the kitchen. I hate the idea of using my good paper on this asshole, but if I’m going to stoop to his level and leave a note on his door, I might as well do it with class.

“What’s the note about?” Harper asks with furrowed brows. “I paid the rent just in the nick of time.”

“It’s not from management.” I take the pen and paper to the table and start writing out a letter. “It’s from our friendly neighbor in 8C,” I say sarcastically.

Her eyes widen as she reaches for the letter. “What did he say?”

I look up and hand it to her.

When she reads it over, the sleepiness in her eyes morphs into anger. “What the hell?! Who does he think he is? He doesn’t even know us!”

“Exactly.” I look down again at the paper and continue the sentence I was working on.

I can feel her staring at me as I write. “What are you doing?”

“Replying to him,” I say without taking my eyes off the page.

“What, are we in elementary school?”

“According to him, we are.”

“He’s just a douchebag, you can’t take anything he says seriously.”

I almost laugh. Normally she’s the one wanting revenge when someone wrongs her, and I’m the one having to talk her out of it. “Maybe, but this will teach him not to make assumptions about people.”

After I’m finished, I let her read it before I tape it to his door. I head to work with a smile on my face. This should teach him not to be such a dickhead.

Chapter Five

Brady

Dear self-righteous butthole in 8C,

~~~

Stay tuned for more...

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#my book #sneak peek #self-promotion #hannah writs

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the59er · 3 years

Text

10 Jan 22

10th January 2022, Monday - Happy Birthday to Me 😂🎂

Listening: I Dont Know How to Love - The Drums

Woke up with a pounding headache, funny stummy and general discomfort which I THINK is because I had 2 slices of that sourdough pizza yesterday. So Im guessing 2 slices is too much wheat content for my system?

Mom made me a really cute card which she re-purposed from an old card. My Mom is TOO CUTE I love her so much!! 💘💘💘💘💘

Afterwards I went out for a haircut which I immediately regret.....

....but hair will grow. (I don’t even take care of my hair in the first place so why do I even care so much???)

Balik rumah continued office work, still with a pounding headache. I wish I could take the whole day off but...sigh.

For dinner we had Hadramawt. I love those garlic sauce that comes with nasi arab. Lamb Mandy forever 💘 and of courseeee ice cream cake for dessert! My brother chose me a baby duck cake 😂

Every year I try to gain more self-confidence. Sometimes I like how I look, but MOST times I feel fugly and refuse to see people. On good days, I take pictures. On bad days, I delete everything. Seems like the older I age, the lower my self-esteem gets.

#rubyjan2022

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i-like-5sos · 4 years

Text

No Idea [Malum Fic]

PAIRING: Calum Hood x Michael Clifford

WORD COUNT: 6428

WARNINGS: Drinking, swearing, and just some angst

SUMMARY: After moving across the country to escape the heartache that high school brings and to begin his first year at University, Michael finds himself face to face with the very person that caused his heartbreak: Calum Hood.

A/N: This was made specifically for Mandie for The Club Fic Gift Exchange ! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written any mxm BUT I’ve missed it and can’t wait to start writing more (if you have any suggestions on how to improve please send them my way, I’ll take all the help I can get).

Fifteen minutes late. I’m fifteen minutes late to my first class as a University student. Great.

I burst out through the doors of the residency building, almost crashing into some blonde girl who’s face leaves my memory as quickly as it entered, and run as fast as I can across the campus to The Arts building. Thankfully I listened to Mom’s advice and looked up a map of the school last night or I’d be fucked right now. Musical Theory. Monday, 8AM. Room 102: Arts Building. I check the room number on my schedule twice before taking a deep breath and opening the door to my classroom.

The door opens to the back of the room and multiple heads spin around to face me. I can feel my face getting hot as I try to disappear into myself and search for a place to sit down. As to be expected, almost every table in the room is full and there’s nowhere to sit… Unless I want to join one of the tables of three and converse in small talk with a group of people that obviously don’t want me to sit with them- and let’s be clear; I don’t want to do that.

I almost settle for a table with two girls seated at it, but then notice the table in the front of the room with only one person there. Thank god. I head toward the dark-haired boy at the table and quietly sit across from him. He doesn’t react as I sit down, his head buried in his folded arms on the table.

I would normally never be caught dead at the front of the room, but here I am, sitting so close to the professor that I can smell his cheap cologne, having to share a table with some random guy who is probably going to hate me for ruining his table of solitude.

As the class continues, I do my best to follow along with the PowerPoint slides on my screen while also trying to focus on what the professor is saying at the front of the room, but I can’t help but glance over to the brunette across from me every chance I get. His head hasn’t left his arms since I’ve sat down, and I’m pretty sure he’s asleep… Maybe I should wake him up. Maybe he’s dead. I begin to picture what would happen if my classmate had died sitting across from me. Would I have to talk to the police? Would I be a suspect? Am I obligated to go to his funeral and give a speech? What would I even say? What if-

“You will have two months to complete this project and it will be worth thirty percent of your final grade. Get to work.”

I turn to face the Professor, and I realize that I may have zoned out for the entire explanation of a project that’s worth almost a third of my final grade… awesome.

Letting out a sigh, I turn back to read through the notes on my screen and, of course, none of them have anything to do with a huge project. There is no way I am going to ask the professor to repeat everything he’d just said.

As my classmates begin to talk amongst themselves about the project that I know nothing about, I glance over to the boy across from me that may or may not be dead and decide that now’s a good a time as any to find out.

“Hey” I say quietly.

No response.

I repeat myself a little louder, “Hey… Uh, my name’s Michael.”

No response again.

“Dude, seriously?” I huff, before picking up my biggest textbook and dropping it onto the table.

It worked! His head shoots up and I notice the headphones in his ears. That explains a lot. I also notice that the boy I’ve been watching all morning sitting across from me is the same boy I’d spent the majority of my high school years watching from across the room. Calum Hood. I haven’t seen him since our high school graduation last June, but he looks about the same. Same dark hair, same brown eyes, same three moles on his cheek, same annoyed and confused look on his face- oh no wait that’s new.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” He glares at me as he rips the headphones out of his ears.

“I thought you were dead or asleep or something.” I shrug before changing the topic, “I didn’t know you got accepted here.”

“Well, obviously I’m not dead, and if I was sleeping, that was a cruel way to get me to wake up... Remind me never to have you actually wake me up.” He places his headphones into his backpack before continuing. “And um, yeah, I was torn between a few different universities but settled on the one farthest from home… Looks like you did the same?”

I nod and chuckle softly. “Yeah. Fuck that place.”

“How pop punk of you.” He laughs, and it brings me back to being fifteen and pathetically swooning over that very sound, never being the one to have caused it. If only fifteen-year-old me could see me now.

Grounding myself, I quickly try to think of something that isn’t completely embarrassing, and remember the mysterious project that I know mothing about.

“So… did you catch anything the prof was saying about this project worth thirty percent of our grade… cause I might have zoned out the whole time...”

He looks confused for a moment, before directing his attention to his laptop.

“I can’t blame you for not paying attention. Five minutes into his lecture I stopped listening to him and started listing to my music instead. Figured I could just read the Power Point later tonight.” He types something before continuing, “I looked through the material on the class page before the lecture started and I think I saw something about a group project that was worth thirty percent… let me just… Okay yeah, here it is.” He turns his laptop to face me, pointing at the assignment on the screen and showing me how her got there.

I quickly follow his instructions to the page and begin reading about the assignment. It’s a group project for 2-3 people about how emotions and feelings are portrayed through song. We’re all supposed to draw an emotion from the professor -that explains why people keep getting up to talk to him- and write an essay about a song that has made us feel this way. Once we finish our essays, we’re supposed to go back to our partners and make a playlist of 25 songs that combines each the emotions we were individually assigned and talk about how easily these emotions can be portrayed in music. Seems simple enough… Except for the whole partner part.

I look up from my computer screen, and before I can talk myself out of it, I ask Calum if he’d like to partner up for the project. To my surprise, he agrees and before I know it, I’m looking down at the paper I had pulled out of the tin can on my professor’s desk. Longing. What kind of lame-ass emotion is longing? I sit back down at our table and show Calum my paper.

“Longing? That’s going to be so easy to write about! And it’ll go great with love. This is going to be a piece of cake.” He enthusiastically, typing away on his laptop.

“You got love? Are you kidding me? That’s such bullshit. Every song is about love… or sex… or drugs, and I don’t think sex or drugs are emotions… so like that’s not fair.” I look back at my small slip of paper, “How am I even supposed to write about longing?”

He breaks away from his typing long enough to look at me, “Longing is so easy to write about. Haven’t you ever wanted something you couldn’t have? Or missed someone or something like that?”

“I don’t know… maybe.” I pause for a moment, “I don’t know.”

He looks back to his screen and continues to type. “Okay, I looked up the word longing and it says here that ‘Longing is mainly a blend of the primary emotions of love or happiness and sadness or depression’. So there. You can focus on one of those four. It’s not that hard, Michael.”

Hearing Calum say my name takes me back for another brief moment. Even though we went to the same school for four years, I never really knew if he had known my name or not… we never really talked or hung out in the same crowds, so I figured it was safe to assume he didn’t even know I existed.

He shakes his head and looks at his screen again as I try to avoid the thoughts of how smooth my name rolled off his tongue that are currently running wild in my head, to focus on what he had said about the different ways longing could be portrayed and experienced.

Just as I begin to reflect on the last few years of my life for a moment that could stand out as ‘experiencing longing’, I’m interrupted by the sounds of my classmates packing up their belongings. I look to my left and notice Calum suddenly standing next to me.

“Here,” he says, handing me a sticky note with a phone number on it. “text me so we can meet up to work on the project.”

“I uh- thanks.” I stumble over my words as I take the paper from him and stick it to the inside of my laptop.

When I turn back to Calum, he’s already on his way to the door. I quickly pack up my books and pause for a moment to look at the sticky note before shutting my laptop, ignoring the heat on my face and the feeling in my stomach.

. . .

I feel like I may have stepped into an alternate dimension when I entered that classroom two weeks ago, because I’ve somehow found myself in the Calum Hood’s dorm room. By choice. His choice. Who would have thought?

To be honest, I’m kind of surprised at how easily we get along. We both have the same taste in music, the same sense of humor, and the same hobbies. Who knew we were so similar? Had we actually spoken to one another in high school, there would have been no stopping a friendship from forming.

Since texting him the day after our class, we’ve pretty much been inseparable. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m hanging out with Calum in his dorm room… but I kind of am.

“Okay seriously, Calum. How do you already have four pages written out for your essay?” I ask, scrolling through the Word document open on his laptop.

“It’s like you said, love is easy to write about… You know what else is easy to write about?” He spins around on his desk chair, taking a break from his game to face me. “Longing. Have you even started your essay, or were you just planning on taking me down with you when you flunk out?”

I set the laptop down next to me on his bed. “The only one flunking out here is your team in Fifa.”

“That was a shit insult and you know it.”

“You’re a shit insult.”

He shakes his head and laughs. “Mate, for real. Do you need help writing your part?”

“No. I told you, I’ll be fine. I just need some inspiration… Which is what I should have gotten from your essay but the whole damn thing is about your family. It is so boring! Where’s the drama? Weren’t you a ladies’ man in high school? Where’s that Calum?”

With his eyebrows raised he looks taken aback for a moment and bursts out laughing.

“Did you seriously just call fourteen-year-old me a ‘ladies’ man’?” He asks, making air quotes at the last part.

I shrug and he continues laughing.

“Okay fine, you have a point. But like... what even is longing?”

His laughter softens and he rolls his eyes, smiling at me.

“Do you need me to pull up the definition again?”

“Fuck off.” I huff.

“Okay, fine… What about like, leaving town to come here. Didn’t you miss your girlfriend? Or your friends? Or maybe your family?”

“Girlfriend?” I laugh loudly. There’s no way he’s serious right now… “No. Absolutely no girlfriend. As for my family? I honestly couldn’t be happier to be on my own and out of the house... Also, it’s kind of hard to miss your friends when facetime exists.” I lay back on his bed and prop myself up with my elbow. “What else ya got?”

“Okay lone wolf… what about uh… okay I’ve got it. What about longing for like… touch, or affection, or love, or… fucking I don’t know, food?”

“Yeah, cause I’ll definitely get an A writing my essay about craving a Big Mac. Maybe I can get extra credit if I bring one in.”

He glares at me and rolls his eyes again before shaking his head and turning around to focus his attention back to his game. I drop my head onto his pillow and sigh. Watching him play, my mind wanders as I being to think about his words. Touch. Affection. Love. My heart aches for the poor fifteen-year-old boy I once was, longing for those exact things for over a year and never getting them. I remember the emotional shut down I forced myself to do to move on from the brown-eyed boy that occupied my mind daily. I sigh deeply, taking in the musky scent of the room around me, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, I finally know what I’ll be writing about.

. . .

“Are you sure you know where this party is? I’m pretty sure we’re lost.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure they said it’s in this neighborhood… there should be a street coming up soon that starts with an S… or maybe it was a B. Whatever. We’ll start to see people on the street sooner or later and follow the noise to the right house.”

Calum and I continue to walk aimlessly down the suburban streets with houses that all look the same, in search for a party that I’m not even sure exists at this point.

“You’d think, for someone that probably went to every high school party, you’d know to write down an address when it’s given to you.” I grumble as my feet begin to ache.

“You know, you make a lot of assumptions about what I was like in high school. Weren’t you ever told not to assume?” He says, bumping his shoulder against mine.

“You’re really going to tell me that you never went to any parties in high school? I seriously doubt that.”

“Okay… Well, yeah I went to some parties. Didn’t everyone though?”

“What? No.” I scoff. “Dude, not everyone was invited to parties like Mr. Cool Guy over here.”

“Am I supposed to be Mr. Cool Guy? That’s a laugh.”

“Mate. Just admit it. You were one of the cool kids and you know it.” I bump my shoulder back against his.

“Was not.”

“You were to! Everyone knew who you were. Everyone wanted to either date you or be you. You can’t be that oblivious.” I kick a small pebble as we cross yet another unidentifiable street.

“Date me or be me huh? Did you want to be me?”

Fucking hell. Why am I still allowed to have the ability to speak without a filter?

“No.” I focus my gaze on the cracks in the sidewalk, making sure to avoid any possible eye contact.

It’s quiet for a moment as a car drives past us, filling the silence before Calum speaks again.

“Well, you obviously didn’t want to date me. So, your theory is clearly wrong.”

I walk beside him silently as I debate whether to admitting to the fact that I had the biggest crush on him for over a year when we were younger.

“See, I’m right.”

“I did though.” I choke out before I’m able to stop myself. Fuck.

“What?” He stops walking.

Well, this was fun while it lasted… I wonder if our professor will still let me join another group, seeing as Calum isn’t going to want to talk to me ever again.

May as well finish the job then.

“I did want to date you.” I confess softly as I stop in front of him, keeping my eyes on the ground.

“You’re not... gay though.”

I- What? He’s got to be kidding me right now. I’m pretty sure everyone in high school knew I was gay. Hell, I came out to my parents in the fifth grade.

“Are you fucking with me? Calum.” I finally gain the courage to meet my eyes with his and see him shaking his head. “I’m gay as fuck. Always have been.”

“No way. What about Jessica Hunter?”

We’re awkwardly standing in the middle of the sidewalk and I’m completely over-aware of the man walking his dog across the street as Calum continues to stare at me with a dumbstruck look on his face. Well, at least he hasn’t left yet.

“What about Jessica? She and I hang out from time to time and listen to music together. We’re friends.” Oh god. “Wait- are you thinking that her and I? Oh god. Never.” I shake my head to try and get that image out of it.

“No no... She was in love with you! The way she always talked about you, hung around you, and hung off you… You went to Prom together! You were the reason I never even had a chance with her. I spent so many hours thinking about you and why she chose you over me and I…” he tampers off and continues to look utterly confused.

Am I being Punked right now? There must be a hidden camera somewhere. This can’t be real.

“No Calum. Oh my god. Mate. Jessica and I were always together talking about you. She didn’t want me. She wanted you… We both did. We only went to Prom together cause she was still hung up on you and didn’t have the guts to ask you herself. Plus, you did that whole stag Prom thing with Timothy Anderson anyway.”

He continues to stand there, trying to piece together the story he had so wrongly created around himself.

“So… You’re gay.”

“Yup.”

“And you actually used to … like me?”

“Yup”

“And Jessica-“

“Never had a chance with me. Because I’m gay and she had the hots for you anyway… Are we all caught up? Can we please keep walking? I’m getting cold.”

“Man, did I have this whole thing wrong or what…” He shakes his head and starts walking again.

We continue heading to the party that totally doesn’t exist and get about half a block away from where we had previously stopped before Calum stops walking again.

“Dude! Seriously?” I sigh deeply and stop a few feet in front of him.

“You don’t uh… still have feeling for me or anything. Do you?”

“Yes Calum. I’m completely head over heels for you and plan to propose to you when we get to the party in front of everyone.” His mouth drops and I roll my eyes. “Fuck off. No. Cal, I don’t still have feelings for you. That was years ago. Now can we please keep walking? I’m going to fucking die of hypothermia.”

“Okay… you’re right. Sorry.” He mutters, clearly embarrassed and continues to walk again.

At least I’m not the only one that’s embarrassed.

We walk silently for a few minutes and I feel his fingertips brush against mine and my heart flutters softly. Shit.

. . .

“Are you even listening to me Mike?”

I look up from my phone to see Calum glaring at me. He burst into my dorm room about 45 minutes ago insisting we practice our presentation for the millionth time since he finished his essay. Of course, mine’s not finished yet, but at least I have something to write about now. But, without mine to practice, he’s just been reading his on a loop – I personally think he’s trying to annoy me to death. Jokes on him though, he’s got a nice voice.

“I can only hear your essay so many times before my brain starts to block it out to preserve my sanity.”

“You wouldn’t have to hear it so much if we had something else to practice… like, I don’t know- maybe your easy perhaps?”

How subtle. Ever since he finished his essay (overachiever much?), he’s been on my ass about mine. Even if I actually had it finished, there’s no way in Hell I’ll be letting him see this – let alone hear me read it out loud – until I have to.

“Dude. I’ve told you like eighty times now. I hate presenting stuff. I’m not doing it any more than I have to. Being in front of everyone, having them all stare at me- judging me? Fuck that. Once is enough. I don’t need you judging me too.”

“You honestly think I’m going to judge you? I don’t buy it. You’re Michael Clifford. You don’t give a shit about what other people think about you.”

I can’t help but laugh out loud. If only he knew.

“Well, when I’m putting myself out there in front of a whole room of people then yeah, I’m going to give a shit about what they think.”

“Putting yourself out there? Mate, it’s an essay. You sure you’re not just making up excuses to cover up the fact that you haven’t started writing it yet?”

Calum runs his finger through his hair, and I try not to stare. Why did he have to come to my school again, be in my class again, make my heart ache again. I feel like this time is worse. Being this close, not being able to touch him in the ways I want. Is this some horrible karma for complaining about longing? I shake my head at the joke that I call my love life and push past it like I always do.

“Maybe, but I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

He throws a pillow at me and tells me to shut up before beginning to read his presentation yet again.

. . .

As I approach Calum’s door, I look down at the folded mess of papers in my hands and decide to quickly shove them into my backpack to make sure he doesn’t try to take them and read my shitty essay beforehand.

I pull my bag off my back and drop to my knees to put the papers away. I finish zipping it up and throw it over my shoulder as I hear the door open in front of me. I look up and see an eye full of Calum’s junk. My eyes widen and I can feel my cheeks heat up as I quickly look away and stand up. I try not to look at his face and pray that my cheeks aren’t as red as they feel.

“At least buy me dinner first. Damn.” He laughs. The sound melts my worries away. Mostly.

“Fuck off. We’re going to be late.” I give him a shove and begin walking to the exit.

Walking with one another to our classes has become a part of our daily routine. Calum decided so about a month ago when he found out that I tripped and scrapped my elbow and knee open like a child while running to make it on time for one of my 8AM classes. So now he seems to think that I can’t manage walking to class by myself. I mean, I’m not complaining. I’ll take any time that I can get with him until inevitably ruin the best friendship I’ve ever had.

As we walk, Calum is -of course- rehearsing his presentation again. I sigh and think about the essay sitting in my bag and how he’s going to react to hearing it. Maybe he’ll just drop the class and ghost me. God that will hurt... Maybe I should just fake sick, or say I never finished my part of the project, or-

My spiraling thoughts are cut short by Calum opening the classroom door and I admit defeat. The two of us sit at our table still -sadly- located at the front of the room. As we sit down, I watch Calum pull out his papers and read them over as if he didn’t just prove that he’s got it memorized by reciting it on our walk over. I set up my laptop and shove my papers under it, quickly checking back to Calum to make sure he hasn’t noticed. I exhale softly and wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans before opening our Spotify playlist, preparing it for our presentation.

A dread-filed hour and a half passes as I listen to the other groups make their presentations and read through their playlists to try and distract myself.

“Group seven, you’re up.”

My blood goes cold and I feel like I can’t move. I feel Calum swiftly kick my shin under the table.

“That’s us. Get up.” He whispers

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I want to be back at home in my bed. I don’t want this. I don’t want to lose my friend. Why did I have to take this class? Why couldn’t I have been assigned anger. Why didn’t I just sit with those two girls that first day?

“Mike, it’ll be okay. I’ll be up there with you the whole time.” That’s half the problem, Calum.

I sigh deeply and open my eyes. They stay glued to the table as I pick up my laptop and the messy pile of papers underneath it. I walk slowly behind Calum to the front of the room and stop at the podium. I quickly plug my laptop into the screen behind us as he introduces the both of us to the class and begins to talk about the emotions we were assigned before launching into how they relate to one another and briefly talking about our playlist. I feel slightly reassured as he begins to recite the speech that I pretty much have memorized myself at this point. I allow myself to zone out to the sound of his voice as I wait for my cue.

“… and to me that is what love is to me. Family.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I rub my sweaty palms on my jeans again and pick up my papers with trembling hands. Closing my eyes again, I take another deep breath and open them once finished. Here goes everything.

“I- um- I’m Michael and I uh… I was assigned the emotion longing. When I first read the small paper and saw I had longing, I was confused and upset that my partner had such an easy emotion to talk about and I um… I had something as complex as longing…” I look over to Calum and he gives me a reassuring smile and my heart skips a beat. “Until he helped me realize that longing is pretty much the universal emotion. It branches into every emotion you can think of. It powers them and really brings the depth to them. Once I had realized this, the only issue I had was choosing which emotional experience to talk about. This itself seemed to be an impossible choice, so I’ve decided to talk about an experience that, like longing, incorporates every emotion. Heartbreak. My chosen song for this was No Idea by All Time Low. Song number…” I quickly look over at our playlist and count the sounds out to make sure I’m right before continuing, “seven on our playlist.”

I press play and I continue over the quiet music, telling the story of a young Michael who was in love with a boy that never knew he existed. A boy who broke his heart without ever even speaking to him. A boy who he was still desperately in love with, years later. A never-ending tale of longing.

Once the longest five minutes of my life had passed, I quickly unplug my laptop and hurry back to our table, avoiding eye contact with Calum the entire way back. I grab my books and shove them along with my laptop and essay into my bag. I damage my papers even more by doing so, but I could care less.

Throwing my backpack over my shoulder, I leave the room as I hear Calum call out after me. There’s no way he’ll catch up to me. Besides, my Sound Tech class was cancelled today, so even if he does manage to catch up, I won’t be there.

I finally make it back to my room without encountering Calum and I toss my bag onto my chair and dive face first into my bed to wait out the impending consequences for ambushing my best friend in the middle of a room full of people. Why did I do that. Fuck me.

. . .

Calum had been planning a party over the last few weeks to celebrate us finishing our project. I had told him time and time again that ‘finishing a project’ is the lamest reason to throw a party. But yet, here I am, in my room surrounded by the pulsating beats of music blasting down the dorm hall.

I’ve managed to avoid Calum for the past four days since the most embarrassing moment of my life. He’s tried texting and calling me too many times to count, and he even showed up to my dorm room twice. I, of course, pretended to be asleep both times.

So, I know it has to be Calum banging repeatedly on my door, throwing off the steady beats of music.

“Mike, it’s Calum. Can I come in?” I hear him shout through the door over the music.

I get up and turn the light off before returning to my desk to continue trying to focus on the game on my computer and pretending I’m not here.

“Mate! I saw you turn your light off! Michael! Open the door!”

The banging persists and my head sinks lower and lower into my shoulders. Go away. Please. I don’t want to hurt. Not tonight. Please.

“I’m not leaving! Maybe I’ll just ask one of those art kids for a sculpting knife and cut your door down! HA! You couldn’t avoid me if I did that! You wouldn’t even have a door to lock!” He slurs half of his words and it’s becoming clear that he’s drunk, and drunk Calum doesn’t quit.

I drop my head onto the desk and breathe deeply for a minute, listening to him yell at me through the door, before getting up and walking over to the sound. I pause there for a moment and prepare for the worst.

As soon as I open the door, Calum falls backwards onto my floor. How in the Hell…

“What do you want Calum? I’m busy.”

He stumbles back to his feet, swaying softly while he regains his balance in the centre of my dark room.

“You’re busy? You’re busy. That’s why you’ve been avoiding me for a week? Cause you’re busy?! Fuck off Michael.”

I say nothing as I lean against my open door, waiting for him to get this over with, so I can shut it behind him and go back to my self-loathing.

“Answer me!”

Clearly the silent treatment isn’t working here. I glance at the hallway full of people, some who have begun to stare at the two of us. I grit my teeth and shut the door, letting the darkness engulf my room, leaving only the light of my computer screen allowing us to see one another as we stand together in the center of the room.

“What the Hell do you want me to say?!”

“Well for starters, how about you tell me why the fuck you’ve been avoiding me?”

“I haven’t been-“

“Fuck off. You have, and you know it. Now tell me why.”

I shake my head and adjust my weight from foot to foot, shrugging to come up with an excuse.

“Oh. My. God. You’re impossible!” He pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath before I watch his posture soften. “Is this about what you said in your essay?”

I go stiff and remind myself to breathe.

“I knew it! At first, I didn’t think that was it, but it fucking was! Why are you avoiding me? Do you think I’m against your sexuality or some shit? Is that why you won’t talk to me? Cause that’s not true! You never even asked me about what I thought about it. About your feelings for me. How I would feel. About my feelings for- about your sexuality. Your sexuality, yeah... You just never asked me.” His face reddens at the last part, probably from lack of air after that speech.

I listen as he drunkenly rambles at me and try to think of something to say. How can he be right? He can’t be. I shouldn’t have to explain myself or my sexuality to him. Why would it matter what he thought about my sexuality?

“Your opinion of my sexuality isn’t needed Calum.” I say, shaking my head.

He sighs harshly and rubs his temples before stomping his foot. Did he actually just stop his foot? Is he five?

“Michael. That’s not what I’m saying! Listen to me! You’re so busy thinking about yourself and your feelings that you’re missing the bigger picture! You’re not the only person in this situation!”

“Oh, I’m sorry Calum. I’m so sorry my feelings were an inconvenience for you! You wanna talk about it? Let’s talk about it! Have my feelings for you ruined your college experience? Have my feelings for you kept you up every night? Have my feelings for you broken your heart?!”

He is silent for a moment before closing his eyes. His body sways softly as he runs his hands through his hair.

“No-” He sighs deeply before replying quietly, “your feelings for me didn’t do any of those things to me. Mine did.”

He opens his eyes and the light of the computer screen highlights the beautiful features of his skin as his words sink into mine.

I stand there with my jaw dropped, staring at the man in front of me. Did he just say… No. No. This is a sick joke. I feel a lump form in my throat begin to form.

“That’s not funny Calum.” I choke out softly.

“I’m not joking.”

“You’re straight.”

“I’m not! I’m Bisexual.” His cheeks redden softly in the pale blue light.

I stare at him in disbelief. He’s got to be drunk out of his mind to lie like this.

“You’re straight.” I repeat in an attempt to both reassure myself and convince him to stop the lies.

He runs his hands through his hair again and lets out an exasperated groan.

“Michael! Fuck! Why won’t you ever listen! I like you! I’ve been trying to tell you ever since you came out to me on the way to that shitty party. I only stopped myself cause you said you didn’t have feelings for me anymore. I’m bisexual Michael! Why do you think I went to Prom with Timothy?”

“That- that was just a stag thing…”

“I wasn’t ready to come out yet. Neither was he.”

He takes a step closer to me, making me overly aware of how small my dorm room actually is. I can smell his cologne and the alcohol -tequila? Yeah, tequila- wafting off him as the space between our bodies lessens.

“So, you’re… bisexual?”

The relief is visible as it washes over him. He smiles softly and takes another step towards me.

“And you… uh… you like me?”

“You wanna talk about it?” He whispers as his eyes drop to my lips.

“Calum, I-”

Before I can finish whatever stupid thing I was going to say, I feel his hands grab my face and his lips crash into mine. I close my eyes and return the kiss. My hands find their way into his hair as he pushes his body against mine. His hand leaves my cheek and finds its way up the back of my shirt, pulling my body impossibly closer to his.

This is more than I’ve ever dreamt of. Calum Hood. Calum Hood kissing me. His hair is softer than I could have ever imagined. I can taste the tequila on his tongue as it slips ever so slightly in between my lips and I suddenly remember how drunk he is. It takes every part of me to pull away and break the kiss.

“Calum. You’re drunk. I can’t.”

“I can.” He steps towards me with a slightly needy expression in his eyes.

“Calum.” I repeat sternly and step away, my back pressing against the door.

He lets out a defeated sigh as he turns around and walks over to the drawer where I keep my snacks.

“Do you have any bread?”

“I- uh… what?... Maybe, why?”

“I want to sober up so you’ll kiss me again.”

I laugh softly and walk over to help him look.

. . .

I wake up to the feeling of something heavy laying across my face. As I open my eyes and adjust my sights to the room around me, I realize the heavy thing on my face is actually Calum’s arm. The events of last night come back to me like a hurricane. Calum arriving at my dorm room drunk, Calum coming out to me as bisexual and confessing his feelings for me… Calum kissing me, and finally, Calum falling asleep beside me while waiting to sober up… I would say it was a dream, but I now have a red, arm-shaped mark on my face to prove otherwise.

I peel his arm off my head and his eyes shoot open, making me jump a little. I watch as he looks around the room and stops once his eyes meet mine. He smiles sweetly at me.

“Hi.” He says, his voice deep and raspy from just waking up.

“Hey there.” I whisper back.

“Guess what.”

“What.”

He smirks at me as his hand finds its way to my cheek and his body shifts towards mine.

“I think I’m finally sober.”

I exhale as my body relaxes from the tension and worry I didn’t realize I had about last night. I chew on my bottom lip as I wait for him to do something.

His eyes explore my face before slowing down at my lips just as they did last night. He blinks slowly and as his eyes open, I find them looking into mine again. He smiles softly as he closes them once more and leans forward, connecting his lips to mine. His pillowy lips kiss mine softly for the best minute of my life, and when he pulls away, he takes my breath with him. I am utterly awestruck by his beauty and the feeling of his lips on mine.

“How about you and I go on to dinner later and get to know the real us? No more assumptions and no more secrets.”

I nod and smile widely.

“I thought you’d never ask.” I agree as he grins before kissing me again.

#malum #the club gift exchange #for mandie #malum fic rec #soft malum #calum x michael #malum fic #malum one shot #5sos fic #5sos one shot #writings #mine

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theresidentnews · 4 years

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FOX ANNOUNCES WINTER PREMIERE DATES FOR NEW AND RETURNING SERIES

NEW COMEDY SERIES "CALL ME KAT," STARRING EMMY AWARD NOMINEE MAYIM BIALIK, AND EXECUTIVE-PRODUCED BY JIM PARSONS, AND THE FINAL SEASON OF HIT COMEDY "LAST MAN STANDING," STARRING TIM ALLEN, TO DEBUT FOLLOWING "NFL ON FOX" DOUBLEHEADER, SUNDAY, JANUARY 3, BEFORE THEIR TIME PERIOD PREMIERES ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 7

NEW UNSCRIPTED GUESSING-GAME SERIES "THE MASKED DANCER" TO PREMIERE SUNDAY, DECEMBER 27, FOLLOWING "NFL ON FOX" DOUBLEHEADER; TIME PERIOD PREMIERE SET FOR WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6

"THE RESIDENT" AND "PRODIGAL SON" BEGIN NEW SEASONS TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, FOR A NIGHT OF SAVING LIVES AND SOLVING MURDERS

MONDAYS COME TO THE RESCUE, AS "9-1-1" AND "9-1-1: LONE STAR" SPRING INTO ACTION, AIRING BACK-TO BACK FOR THE FIRST TIME, BEGINNING MONDAY, JANUARY 18

All-New Season of Gordon Ramsay's HELL'S KITCHEN to Premiere Thursday, January 7

FOX is announcing premiere dates for THE MASKED DANCER (Dec. 27), CALL ME KAT (Jan. 3), LAST MAN STANDING (Jan. 3), HELL'S KITCHEN (Jan. 7), THE RESIDENT (Jan. 12), PRODIGAL SON (Jan. 12), 9-1-1 (Jan. 18), and 9-1-1: LONE STAR (Jan. 18).

This December, FOX takes TV's #1 show and adds a little twist. Based on the smash hit FOX series THE MASKED SINGER and inspired by a popular segment featured on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," all-new celebrity competition series THE MASKED DANCER will have a special premiere Sunday, Dec. 27 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/5:00-6:00 PM PT, Live to all Time Zones), before having its time period premiere Wednesday, Jan. 6 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT). Hosted by comedian/actor Craig Robinson ("Ghosted," "The Office") and featuring celebrity panelists Ken Jeong (THE MASKED SINGER, I CAN SEE YOUR VOICE), world-famous choreographer and singer Paula Abdul, actor and the former "Giraffe" Mask on THE MASKED SINGER Brian Austin Green and actress and singer Ashley Tisdale, THE MASKED DANCER will feature celebrity contestants shaking their tail feathers, while covered from head-to-toe in elaborate costumes and face masks, leaving audiences to guess their identities. Costumed celebrities will be joined on stage by masked partners and back-up dancers, as they perform a series of dances together; spanning from hip-hop to salsa, jazz to tap dancing and more. When it comes to dance styles, the sky is the limit. Each week, a series of clues will be sprinkled throughout packages, costumes and routines, leading the panelists one step closer to figuring out which famous faces are freestyling behind the masks. Between all of the celebrity competitors on the show, they've amassed more than 38 million albums sold worldwide, 20 Emmy(R) Award wins, 20 Grammy(R) Award nominations, 10 World Dancing titles, five New York Times Best-Selling Author titles, four Olympic gold medals and three Broadway show appearances. THE MASKED DANCER is produced by FOX Alternative Entertainment and Warner Bros. Unscripted & Alternative Television and is based on the South Korean format, THE MASKED SINGER, created by Mun Hwa Broadcasting Corp and distributed by MBC America. James Breen, Craig Plestis, Daniel Martin and Ellen DeGeneres are executive producers of the series. Breen will serve as showrunner.

New comedy CALL ME KAT, starring Emmy Award nominee Mayim Bialik ("The Big Bang Theory"), and executive-produced by Bialik, Emmy Award-nominated producer Jim Parsons ("The Big Bang Theory," "The Boys in the Band") and Darlene Hunt ("The Big C"), will have a special series premiere Sunday, Jan. 3 (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT), following the NFL ON FOX doubleheader. The series then makes its time period premiere Thursday, Jan. 7 (9:00-9:30 PM ET/PT). Based on the BBC UK original series "Miranda," CALL ME KAT stars Bialik as a woman who struggles every day against society and her mother to prove that she can still live a happy and fulfilling life despite still being single at 39. Which is why she recently spent her entire savings to open a cat café in Louisville, Kentucky. It was expected of KAT (Bialik) to be married with kids by now, but for many reasons, she's still single - and totally fine with it. Of course, Kat's mother, SHEILA (Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee Swoosie Kurtz, "Mike & Molly," "Sisters"), views her daughter's single-hood as her own personal failure, but Kat remains determined to live a fulfilling life, and charts her own course to happiness. Working alongside Kat at the café are RANDI (Kyla Pratt, "One on One"), a confident millennial and self-proclaimed "non" cat person; and PHIL (Emmy Award winner Leslie Jordan, "The Cool Kids," "Will & Grace"), who recently broke up with his longtime partner. Although Kat celebrates her independence, her single-forever plans may begin to veer off-course, when her former crush and good friend, MAX (Cheyenne Jackson, "American Horror Story," "30 Rock"), returns to town and takes a job as a bartender at the piano bar across the street, working with his friend, CARTER (Julian Gant, "Good Girls"). CALL ME KAT is produced by That's Wonderful Productions!, Sad Clown Productions and BBC Studios' Los Angeles production arm in association with Warner Bros. Television and FOX Entertainment. Darlene Hunt is the executive producer and showrunner. Additionally, Jim Parsons, Todd Spiewak (That's Wonderful Productions!), Mayim Bialik (Sad Clown Productions), Miranda Hart, Angie Stephenson (BBC Studios) and Beth McCarthy-Miller also serve as executive producers. McCarthy-Miller directed the series premiere.

Entering its ninth and final season, hit comedy LAST MAN STANDING will have a special season premiere Sunday, Jan. 3 (8:30-9:00 PM ET/PT), following the series premiere of CALL ME KAT. LAST MAN STANDING makes its time period premiere Thursday, Jan. 7 (9:30-10:00 PM ET/PT). The series stars Tim Allen as MIKE BAXTER, a happily married father of three daughters, who finds himself the odd man out in a home dominated by women. The series also stars Nancy Travis, Amanda Fuller, Molly McCook, Christoph Sanders, Jordan Masterson, Jonathan Adams, Krista Marie Yu and Hector Elizondo. After the events of the eighth season finale, during which Kristin (Fuller) went into labor with her baby daughter, while Mandy (McCook) was pregnant with her first child, the series will jump ahead into the near future, when Mike and his wife, Vanessa (Travis), will contemplate their own future, including Mike's imminent retirement from his lifelong job at Outdoor Man - and who could be his successor. LAST MAN STANDING is produced by 20th Television. The series was created by Jack Burditt. Kevin Abbott, Matt Berry, Kevin Hench, Ed Yeager, Tim Allen, Marty Adelstein, Shawn Levy, Becky Clements, Richard Baker, Rick Messina, Pat Bullard, Mike Teverbaugh, Linda Teverbaugh and John Amodeo are executive producers. Abbott serves as the series' showrunner.

Also on Thursday, Jan. 7 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT), hit culinary competition series HELL'S KITCHEN returns for its 19th season in a flashy new setting, as Chef Gordon Ramsay takes the show to Las Vegas, the city that's home to the world's first Gordon Ramsay HELL'S KITCHEN restaurant at Caesars Palace. For the first time ever, 16 aspiring chefs from around the country will roll the dice and head to Sin City in the hopes of winning big. Each week, the competition will get hotter as the chefs are put through rigorous culinary challenges - reaping high stakes rewards and punishments, all with a Sin City flare. But only those who possess the right combination of ingredients will continue in the competition, until one is named winner. At stake is a life-changing grand prize, including a Head Chef position at Gordon Ramsay HELL'S KITCHEN Lake Tahoe at Harvey's Hotel and Casino, and the title of HELL'S KITCHEN winner. HELL'S KITCHEN is produced by ITV Entertainment in association with A. Smith & Co. Productions, Inc. Gordon Ramsay, Arthur Smith, Kent Weed, Kenny Rosen and Bernie Schaeffer serve as executive producers.

Season Four of THE RESIDENT, premiering Tuesday, Jan. 12 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT), continues to shine a light on the daily heroism of today's health care workers. The provocative medical drama follows the doctors and nurses at Chastain Memorial Hospital, as they face personal and professional challenges and fight for their patients' health. The new season picks up as DR. CONRAD HAWKINS (Matt Czuchry) and NURSE PRACTIONER NICOLETTE NEVIN (Emily VanCamp) tie the knot in an intimate and beautiful wedding, strengthening their already powerful bond. Meanwhile, Chastain is transitioning from private to public hospital, causing the hero doctors to fight to fix the broken machine from the inside. DR. RANDOLPH BELL (Bruce Greenwood) finds himself mining his own past to find his estranged former stepson, elite plastic surgeon DR. JAKE WONG (guest star Conrad Ricamora). Bell attempts to bring Dr. Wong to Chastain to increase the number of world-class surgeries at the hospital and to repair their complicated past. Additionally, as star surgical resident DR. MINA OKAFOR (Shaunette Renée Wilson) and her brilliant mentor, DR. AJ AUSTIN (Emmy Award nominee Malcolm-Jamal Warner), grow closer than ever, they must learn to maintain a professional relationship within the walls of the hospital. The series also stars Manish Dayal, Jane Leeves and Morris Chestnut. THE RESIDENT is produced by 20th Television. Todd Harthan, Andrew Chapman, Peter Elkoff, Amy Holden Jones, Rob Corn, Antoine Fuqua and Oly Obst are executive producers.

From executive producer Greg Berlanti, Season Two of PRODIGAL SON premieres on Tuesday, Jan. 12 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT). PRODIGAL SON follows MALCOLM BRIGHT (Tom Payne), a criminal profiler with a rare talent for getting inside the minds of killers. He learned how they think because his father, DR. MARTIN WHITLY (Michael Sheen), was a notorious serial killer known as "The Surgeon." Now he's using his twisted genius to help the NYPD solve their most puzzling murders. Bright's team, led by his longtime mentor, NYPD Lieutenant GIL ARROYO (Lou Diamond Phillips), includes Detectives DANI POWELL (Aurora Perrineau), JT TARMEL (Frank Harts) and medical examiner DR. EDRISA TANAKA (Keiko Agena). Season Two picks up with Bright's personal life in disarray after the shocking actions of his sister, AINSLEY (Halston Sage), in the Season One finale. Now, he must "take care" of her and protect his mother, JESSICA WHITLY (Bellamy Young), from a secret that could tear the family apart all over again. Further complicating matters, Martin seeks to deepen his relationship with Bright, his "prodigal son," but forging this bond leads to shocking twists and revelations. PRODIGAL SON is produced by Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television and FOX Entertainment. Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver created the series, and are executive producers, showrunners and writers on the show. Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter also serve as executive producers.

FOX's #1 drama, 9-1-1, and last season's #1 new scripted series, 9-1-1: LONE STAR, will have their back-to-back season premieres on Monday, Jan. 18. Creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear reenergize the procedural drama with 9-1-1 and the first extension of its universe, 9-1-1: LONE STAR, set in Austin, TX. Both series explore the high-pressure experiences of police officers, firefighters and dispatchers who are thrust into the most frightening, shocking and heart-stopping situations. These emergency responders must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in their own lives. The fourth season premiere of 9-1-1 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) kicks off with another jaw-dropping signature disaster that only Los Angeles' finest and fearless first responders can handle. After a devastating 8.0 earthquake and coastal tsunami wreaked havoc in the city, what could possibly be next? Meanwhile, among the chaos, Athena (Angela Bassett) is determined to put her physical and emotional injuries behind her and jump back into the job, as Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) prepare for the birth of their baby, and Buck (Oliver Stark) delves into his past to help deal with his present. The series also stars Peter Krause, Aisha Hinds, Ryan Guzman, Rockmund Dunbar, John Harlan Kim, Corinne Massiah, Marcanthonee Reis and Gavin McHugh. 9-1-1 is produced by 20th Television in association with Ryan Murphy Television and Brad Falchuk Teley-Vision. Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear are creators and executive producers. Alexis Martin Woodall, Bradley Buecker, John J. Gray, Kristen Reidel, Angela Bassett and Peter Krause are executive producers. Minear and Reidel serve as co-showrunners on the series. Buecker directed the series premiere and continues to direct episodes of the series.

Actress Gina Torres ("Suits," "Pearson," "Firefly") joins Season Two of 9-1-1: LONE STAR (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) as Captain TOMMY VEGA. But even as CPT. OWEN STRAND (Rob Lowe) welcomes Vega to the 126, he must face the unexpected arrival of his ex-wife, Gwyneth (recurring guest star Lisa Edelstein, "House"), who visits Austin to check on their firefighter son, T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein), following the injuries he sustained at the end of last season. All of this occurs as the rescue squad must deal with an emergency that the Texas capital has never encountered before. The series also stars Jim Parrack, Sierra McClain, Natacha Karam, Brian Michael Smith, Rafael Silva and Julian Works. 9-1-1: LONE STAR is produced by 20th Television in association with Ryan Murphy Television and Brad Falchuk Teley-Vision. Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear are creators and executive producers. Alexis Martin Woodall, Bradley Buecker, Rashad Raisani, John J. Gray, Angela Bassett and Rob Lowe are executive producers. Minear and Raisani serve as co-showrunners on the series. Buecker directed the series premiere and continues to direct episodes of the series.

Catch up on all shows with On Demand, FOX NOW and Hulu. Episodes are available to watch On Demand for customers of AT&T TV, Cox, DIRECTV, DISH, Spectrum, Sling TV, Verizon FiOS, XFINITY, YouTube TV and many more. Fans also can stream episodes on FOX NOW and Hulu.

FOX WINTER 2020-2021 PREMIERE DATES RECAP (Times for All-New Episodes are ET/PT Except as Noted)

Sunday, Dec. 27: 8:00-9:00 PM ET/5:00-6:00 PM PT Live to all time zones THE MASKED DANCER (Series Premiere)

Sunday, Jan. 3: 8:00-8:30 PM CALL ME KAT (Series Premiere) 8:30-9:00 PM LAST MAN STANDING (Final Season Premiere) 9:00-9:30 PM THE SIMPSONS (Special Time) 9:30-10:00 PM BLESS THE HARTS (Special Time)

Wednesday, Jan. 6 8:00-9:00 PM THE MASKED DANCER (Time Period Premiere)

Thursdays, beginning Jan. 7: 8:00-9:00 PM HELL'S KITCHEN (Season Premiere) 9:00-9:30 PM CALL ME KAT (Time Period Premiere) 9:30-10:00 PM LAST MAN STANDING (Time Period Premiere)

Tuesdays, beginning Jan. 12: 8:00-9:00 PM THE RESIDENT (Season Premiere) 9:00-10:00 PM PRODIGAL SON (Season Premiere)

Mondays, beginning Jan. 18: 8:00-9:00 PM 9-1-1 (Season Premiere) 9:00-10:00 PM 9-1-1: LONE STAR (Season Premiere)

[EDITOR'S NOTE 1: Additional schedule details to be announced.]

#the resident #the resident on fox #theresidentnews #the resident season 4 #the resident press releases

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suicidalcatz · 5 years

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DOG DAYS ARE OVER : CHAP 15

Pairing : Jake Kiszka x Reader

Genre : College AU

Previous parts : Prologue ; Chap 1 ; Chap 2 ; Chap 3 ; Chap 4 ; Chap 5 ; Chap 6 ; Chap 7 ; Chap 8 ; Chap 9 ; Chap 10 ; Chap 11 ; Chap 12 ; Chap 13 ; Chap 14

Masterlist : here

AN : Hi ! How are you? In this chapter, you go on a date with Jake. Well it’s not really a date... Unless... The end is near friends, few more chapters now and I’ll wrap it up! I’m LATE on my chapters, because I’m starting to grow tired, I have lots of other fic ideas that I want to write and it requires EXTRA patience for me to not rush this ending. Let’s say, 2 to 5 more chapters! Enjoy and thanks for the love and support! Feel free to share your thoughts or message me, I’m always happy to make friends!

Chapitre 15 : What's on your mind ?

My New Year's resolution about getting over my crush on Jake was a total fiasco so far. Our kiss kept replaying on my mind, at all times. The soft touch of his delicate lips against mine, the caress of his hair on my cheeks, his calloused fingertips slithering down my neck... The butterflies were unstoppable now, and my face was so used to redden that people just assumed it was my new skintone. Jake and I didn't cross paths since that night. Didn't text either. Only a few days had passed since Josh's party though, so it wasn't like we were avoiding each other. Although it became clear on Monday that what should've just been a little smooch between friends had made us really awkward around each other.

Since the Mina Situation now belonged in the past, Josh and Mandy were doing everything in their power to bring Jake and I closer. And of course sitting together during lectures was now an obvious move. Not the most discreet one, if I may had, given that Josh had sent his brother packing when he asked two weeks ago. Jake now looked positively lost, but couldn't refuse, so Mandy and I took a seat between the Kiszkas, already witnessing the menacing glare the teacher was giving us, probably not surprised in the slightest by the peculiar sandwich the lot of us formed in front of her. Mandy and Josh were playing Draw and Guess, purposefully leaving me and Jake out of it probably so we could talk. And if in the past month I had fantasies about the exact moment where I'll be sitting next to him, now that I was, all the pros and cons were slowing surfacing the ocean of my mind, like a beautiful blue sea at first glance who'd turn out to be full of plastic garbage. His mere presence was making me giddy and jittery. His smell of pine, incense and soap filled my lungs, his knee kept brushing mine, and I couldn't look at his face like I used to, just his hand making the pen dance on his sheet. I hadn't noticed I was vigorously tapping mine on the table until his warm hand covered mine, making the motion stop. Slowly, we exchanged a glance.

- Sorry, I murmured.

Jake's eyes seemed to observe mine a moment before going South and settling on my lips. Quickly, as if realizing what he was doing, the boy turned away, withdrawing his hand and resting his cheek on his other one.

- S'alright...

During the two hours, he looked rather bummed, there was no way to phrase it differently. His face showed a mix of thoughtful and troubled, and I was by now used to him being mentally elsewhere but at some point a ball of paper had landed on his forehead and Josh had to call him four times to get it back before he finally shook out of it. Man, I was starting to get concerned. Maybe he wasn't as over his breakup as he had pretended to be... I couldn't help feeling a bit guilty. It had not been a good idea to kiss each other under the mistletoe, Jake had personal stuff to sort out, and the same went for me. We both should've known better but the moment had been perfect... We'd been laughing, exchanging gifts, slowly dancing under the dim light... Anybody could've felt the romantic tension, and I was certain we both saw it in each other's gaze that night. Nothing mattered but us and this moment. But at what price, I thought bitterly. We couldn't undo the kiss we shared even with significant efforts, and I had no wish to do so. Now that I had a taste of his lips, I was becoming greedy. Like every other human in existence, my instincts were screaming they wanted more. Of that, of everything that was him. Like Janet in the Rocky Horror, I wanted him to touch me. Thoughts I shouldn't have about a friend, but the voice that took over my conscience since that night kept telling me nothing was new. I always had romantic feelings and fantasies about Jake. And while sometimes it bugged me to be a dishonnest friend, most of the time I told myself my mind was my own property, free of any laws except mine. But me arboring those kind of feelings towards Jake didn't mean I had the right to be a shitty friend either. So when we reached the end of the week and Jake's mood didn't improve at all, I took the matter into my own hands.

« Are you free this weekend ? »

Pacing in the kitchen, tugging at my thumb's fingernail with my teeth, my eyes wouldn't leave my phone, waiting for the moment it'll finally buzz. Mandy came into the kitchen to pour herself a coffee.

- Oh, don't tell me !, she exclaimed with false excitement. Rehearsing for The Shining ? You'd be a great Jack Torrance.

- Fuck you dude I'm stressed out !

A small smile tugged at the corner of my lips, but seeing as I was serious, Mandy paused, delicately putting her mug on the kitchen table.

- Oh my God. You asked him out.

- It's not a date-

- Bullshit, dude, you finally asked Jake on a date, I can't believe it.

- Jesus Christ..., I muttered under my breath.

Hand on my face, pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to remain calm. She wouldn't believe me and she was already sitting and babbling about how it took me so long but I finally made the first move and so on...

- I usually ask someone on a date like, three days after we met, my roommie explained while sipping her coffee.

- 3 DAYS but you don't even know them !

- But if you wait longer you're in the friendzone, doll.

It was my time to take a seat. That never crossed my mind before. Why had I never consider it ? Am I dumb ? Will he start calling me bro and fist bump me on the shoulder ? Oh no.

- Do you think I'm in the friendzone ?, I hurriedly whispered.

Mandy loudly snorted into her mug, splashing some coffee on her cheeks.

- After that kiss ? No way.

- What do you m-

That was the exact moment my phone chose to vibrate, making the wood table tremble under it, and myself drop the subject to grab it. It was Jake. Mandy saw it in my eyes and couldn't hide her smile. But now that his name was appearing on the screen, I suddenly got scared of rejection. I knew he wouldn't be harsh nor rude with me, probably saying something like « Sorry I have something to do. Next time ? », sending me packing in the nicest way possible. But when being rejected, even like that, I couldn't help thinking it was just the tip of the iceberg and people weren't being honest with me. Maybe they were lying, they didn't want to hang out with me. You never know. And if this text was about not being able to go out then... I'd never know either.

- For God's sake would you stop overthinking and read the damn text.

« I'm free right now, what do you have in mind ? »

Jake always had that way with words that made my cheeks instantly color. Either he was being cheeky, or I was the dirty minded one. As I was typing an answer, I remembered what Mandy had told me the other day, and tapped the backspace key. Be bold.

« Not telling you. Bring a coat and your wallet, we're going to town. »

I had a precise idea of where I wanted to take him, convinced it will improve his mood or at least make him think about something else.

The grey sky devoid of all sunshine was just a big cloud hovering above our heads, giving the streets a gloomy vibe. Not exactly what I had planned for my first « date » with Jake, but at least he was here with me. When he texted me he was downstairs, I saw him through the window standing in front of the door, cigarette in hand, looking at his phone with the other, waiting for a reply. A sheepish smile spread on my face as I took my phone out of my pocket. It was amusing to watch his reaction to my message, all smiles and chuckles as he was texting me to hurry up before he starts freezing to death.

- C'mon, said Jake while we were sitting in the cab. At least give me a clue.

- Well, let me see... No.

Jake let his back dramatically fall on the leather seat, raising his hands in disbelief.

- If we're going shopping then you should've ask Josh to join us because-

- No !, I panicked when I thought I saw his hand reach his phone. No, just us today. You said you missed spending time together.

My voice was a whisper while I kept my eyes on the streets we were passing by, too embarrassed to meet his gaze. The window's reflection, however, betrayed me, showing me Jake's figure nod slightly, as if he understood. He wouldn't have to wait much longer anyway because the cab was pulling over already, telling me the course's price. Jake's impatient self didn't let me any chance to react however, paying for us and getting out of the car in an instant, while I sat there with my wallet in hand asking myself what had just happened. The moment I stepped out the freezing air hugging me tightly made me regret not bringing gloves, or a scarf, or even a beanie. I wanted to punch myself for being an airhead but I sucked it in because we couldn't go back now, and complaining was out of the question. This day was about Jake, not me. Letting my sleeves cover my hands as much as they could, we started walking, the long haired boy by my side becoming more and more confused as time passed.

- Oh now I know, he said as the first cabins were in sight.

As we slowly approached, fragrances emanating the small Christmas market in front of us came caressing our nostrils, filling our lungs with savoury scents such as cinnamon and sugar. A few people were there, whether with their significant other or their family, all looking as joyous as the merchants.

- It's probably not as big as it is in your hometown, but it's still decent.

Jake called my name, making me stop on my tracks to turn my head at him.

- It's perfect, he reassured me.

We shared a smile, entering the miniature city were wooden cabins were neatly aligned next to each other and facing themselves, selling anything from homemade winter food to handcrafted toys and jewelry. Even if Christmas was over already, the market was a bit of an event for passerbys, whether they were inhabitants or foreign tourists. It looked charming, didn't seem like it cost the city a lot, and it made profit, so win-win situation in every way, which was the reason why they kept it going for a little bit longer than needed. And I understood why when I saw Jake's face, completely in awe with every thing he noticed, even though he was the one who was used to it. It was a cute sight, he kept calling my name every once in a while to excitedly show me home decoration he never saw before, or miniature handcrafted guitar replicas resting in their tiny stands, telling me which one was Hendrix's and which one was Clapton's. For the whole time since we got here, Jake genuinely looked like nothing was on his mind except fun. A wave of relief came through me, making me sigh in happiness. We were together, just the two of us, having a blast, and he wasn't thinking about his breakup. So far, things were going so well. Except for the (not so much) insignificant memories of our kiss that kept flashing on the blank screen of my mind like subliminal images. It was like a movie was playing in my head, only as background noise, while the other parts of my brain kept doing their work, barely noticing it. Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did. This was the absolute worst time for acting all awkward. If Jake realized I was, he will put one and one together and he'll be the uneasy one. I needed a distraction. And I just found the perfect one.

- Hey, Jake, I called without looking, what do you think ?

Raising his head from the rings stand he was focusing on, the boy briefly searched me through the small groups of people, coming closer and glancing in the direction I was looking.

- Have you ever done it before ?, he said without glancing away.

- Have you ?

We turned to face each other, exchanging a challenging look.

- Come on ! Try to reach my hand at least !

- I'm trying !

Shaky on his feet, Jake stubbornly kept on gripping the hem of the wooden hoop delimiting the track. So it turned out it was his first time ice skating after all. Who would have thought ? The boy was the one telling Mandy and I his hometown was basically a giant Christmas market but he apparently never learned how to ice skate. And it was hilarious to watch. Now I wasn't a professionnal myself so I initially planned on not making fun of him but for once he looked so ridiculous I couldn't help it. Jake was usually that guy who knew how to do absolutely anything, and in addition to it, excelled on it. There was no way I was going to let this golden opportunity pass. While I was waiting for him leaning on the wooden barrier, his handsome self was taking baby steps, bending over so much he was almost completely folded in half, pulling himself with the help of the barrier to move forward.

- You look constipated.

- Just wait until I get there and I'll kick your ass !

- Yeah, I'll come back in a week or so to check on you.

His laugh got the last of his energy and he let himself fall on the ice, defeated, throwing his arms in the air in surrender. I understood it was my cue to go help him out. With wobbly legs, I slid his way, trying to keep my balance because overwise Jake would make a show of poking fun at me for falling too. Having made sure my position was bringing me enough support, I offered Jake my hand to help him on his feet. And boy it wasn't an easy task. We almost tripped over, one of his legs was sliding away on the ice, and the guitarist was heavier than it seemed, but we got it eventually. Not confident in the slightest, Jake got my hand firmly in his, letting me lead the way, eyes going from my face to his feet, looking somewhat proud he was at least going somewhere. His undying enthusiasm was so endearing, it never failed to make me smile. Wanting to make the most of this experience, I turned on my heels to face him, taking his other hand in mine, skating backwards, a little faster now. Even though his legs were still stiff, the firm grasp he had on my fingers relaxed a bit, and he was standing almost straight now, trusting me to pull him around the track. The few people around weren't bothered by us at all wading around, circling us and not paying attention, which helped putting us at ease.

- Alright I'll let you slide alone now, try to come to me.

Reluctantly, Jake let go of my fingers, trying to find a stability by himself, while I stayed at a safe distance to prevent him from falling against the hard surface. The boy wiggled a bit but eventually found his balance, slowly skating my way with an arm reaching to me, a proud and boyish smile on his face. However, impatient to get here, he caught my hand too fast and too abruptly, pulling me close to him, making our bodies collide into one another, legs tangling and sliding awkwardly together as we both tried to stay on our feet, grabbing onto one another. We paused, making sure we weren't slipping anymore, and Jake was the first to let out a sigh.

- Man I didn't realize it was so hard. You alright doll ?

His warm breath caressed my cheek, and his rough voice my ears. It's only when I raised my head to look at him that I noticed how close we were. My hands were still tightly holding his coat around the shoulders, while his arms had wrapped themselves on the small of my back, keeping me safe in his embrace. Just a look at his warm brown eyes and his blushed cheeks and I already forgot what was the question. I just studied his flushed face, from his cute beauty mark to his plump lips... There was no mistake that he caught me doing it, but instead of speaking up to lighten the mood, Jake stood still, the only moving thing his eyes, observing me through dark eyelashes, leisurely settling his gaze on my lips... And in this moment more than any other, I really wanted to kiss him. To hell with being friends, to hell with everything, my only wish was to feel his lips against mine once again. Jake didn't let me the time to give it much more thought however, because one of his hands left my back to reach my face, making me instinctively close my eyes.

Gently, his clothed digits brushed my hair, then the tip of my nose.

- There was a snowflake..., Jake muttered.

Feeling bashful that my naive self betrayed my thoughts, I glanced at him through my eyelashes, biting the inside of my cheek. That's when I saw it. A tiny, tiny snowflake, carefully landing on one of Jake's brown locks. We raised our heads, witnessing the first snow of the year after a long and dry Winter, smiles adorning our rosy visages. The boy took my hand, leading the way the best he could.

- Come, let's resume our tour before the snow starts settling.

Walking around with my arms crossed over my chest in order to keep me warm didn't go unnoticed by Jake, who started being concerned about me before I even got to answer his question. And not only did he rubbed my sides in order to provide heat, he also removed his beanie to put it on my head, shoving it up to my eyebrows and making sure it covered my ears. It felt good, being pampered like this. I must've looked so small, face all red from the cold with Jake stroking my back. He even had the idea to get us hot chocolate, which was the best we had all day. We quietly sat on a bench, watching the snow fall, blowing on our hot beverage to cool it down. The moment the carton cup got in contact with my numb hands, all my body woke up, heat circulating everywhere inside. There was nothing like hot chocolate in Winter, it was so comforting. And having this moment shared with Jake made everything better. Stealing a glance, I observed his lean frame quietly sipping on his drink, before he noticed me and lifted his head, eyebrows raised with a quizzical look on his face, chocolate mustache all over his upper lip. That made me snicker, while the idiot still pretended he didn't know what was going on.

- Why are you laughing ? Is snow that funny ? Do you know how people will have to work hard to shovel the roads tomorrow ?

- Stop it, I breathed between loud chuckles.

- Stop what ?

With the only purpose of making me laugh some more, he got closer, big proud smile on his lips, shoving his new mustache to my face.

- Oh my god Jake wipe your mouth, I can't-

- Is there something on my face ?

Gulping down some of my hot beverage, it was my time looking silly, abruptly turning to him for dramatic effect, already feeling the chocolate on my upper lip drip lower. Now it was Jake who was calling my name, while we cackled like two idiots. A couple of old folks passed us by, seemingly amused by our childish behaviour, like everytime we were together.

- It looks so gross, he commented.

- How dare you talk about my mustache like that, sir.

- Your « mustache » is smeared all over the place, doll.

That made us come to the agreement that it was time for both our respective mustaches to go. And like a child, I didn't have a say in Jake's decision to wipe my mouth himself. We continued our tour, feeling warmer and more energetic now, pointing at everything and closely examining each Christmas light or clothes we found in our way. Sellers were all in a genuinely good mood, happiness communicating from one another, proudly offering us a taste of their food, or explaining how they carved wooden sculptures and what paint they used. Some of them even called us, asking if we wanted to come have a look at their stand and we obliged, even without buying anything, just to have a small chat with the men and women standing in their cabins wrapped in big comfy sweaters, sticking to the heater.

- Hello there !, one of them called, Looking for anything in particular ? I have beautiful scarves for your girlfriend.

Oh, I figured it might happen. It wasn't the first time, nor wouldn't be the last that someone had or will mistake a friend and I for a couple. So of course, the rule applied to Jake too. And given the romantic feelings I arbored for him, some people must have felt it. Things like these showed. It wasn't something one could explain, it was just... in the air. In the soft gestures, the smiles, and the languid looks. Not wanting to make Jake feel embarrassed, I tried to clear the misunderstanding.

- We're not-

- Do you have this one in purple ?

Much to my surprise, the boy didn't care at all. Or most likely he didn't even seem to catch it. He just went nearer to the stand, perfectly unperturbated by the fact that the man believed we were an item. As my sheepiness was reaching another level, I shyly took a step forward to stand next to Jake, trying to focus on his next purchase without asking myself if we both looked like a real, credible couple. The seller who had took a step back to look at the model Jake had asked returned with the scarf, handing it to him to feel the material, adressing me a polite smile while he took off his wallet to pay. We had just said our goodbyes and wished him a nice day when Jake wrapped my neck with a soft, fluffy purple scarf, tying it at the front to make sure I stayed warm.

- Remember when I told you I'll find a way to repay you for the flyers ? I hope this'll do.

My hands took his, preventing him from whatever he was doing with the scarf.

- Jake I... This is too much, I didn't invite you to buy me things. To be honest it was supposed to make you feel better, but...

Stuttering, trying to find a way to express what I wanted to do and fumbling with my words, they finally died on my throat, leaving me in front of a very confused Jake, brows furrowed. I let out a small sigh through my nose, now fearing to have fucked up somewhere without exactly knowing where. Is he upset ? And if so, why, he looked depressed, I wanted to help, and he was smiling all day so why be upset ? Or was there something I missed ?

- To make me feel better ?, he parroted.

Much to my relief, he didn't sound mad, just genuinely confused about the whole situation, like my mind was a code he was trying to crack. Still not knowing how to formulate my thoughts without him taking it the wrong way (for some reason, you never know), I stayed silent, until he spoke up.

- About Mina ? Listen doll, if this is about that, I'm not sad. I was, but as I told you, I'm over it already. Maybe it sounds fast, I don't know, I had a lot of time to think about it, and I'm good. Honesrly.

What ?

- You are ?

- Yeah, he chuckled. Why ? What went through your head ?

Oh no, it was so embarrassing. I could hear all the little persons making my brain work screaming and setting everything on fire, giving in to panic, letting me in my awkward mode to face Jake.

- You uhm... You looked elsewhere, so I figured...

Surprisingly, it was Jake's turn to look perfectly uncomfortable, cheeks turning a darker shade of pink than they already were, refusing to meet me in the eye, shifting awkwardly on his feet. The long haired boy cleared his throat.

- Yeah, there's something on my mind actually, but it's... a pleasant something. Don't worry about it. I appreciate your concern, anyway. Thanks. It was a really good idea.

The change of topic was sudden but effective, his bright smile too, and even if I noticed, I didn't push the matter. What was going on in his mind wasn't any of my business. Glad that we cleared that misunderstanding, we continued walking, taking our time to leave the Christmas market to call an Uber to ride us home. It was quiet, only the sound of our feet mashing the snow accompanied us, yet it wasn't unpleasant. On the contrary, it was a comfortable silence, the one when you just enjoy the other's company, and where no words were needed. My red and shaky fingers kept grabbing the hem of my sleeves to cover them, which Jake managed to notice. Without saying anything, he took my hand.

- You must be freezing, he muttered. Here, let's share.

Before I knew what was going on, Jake had removed one of his gloves for me to borrow, and warmth instantly tickled my skin.

- Give me your other hand.

Raising an arm to him, the boy took it in his bare one, carefully putting them deep into his jacket pocket, sheltering them from the cold air. We stayed close to one another like that, resuming our walking, fingers tangled into his pocket, hidden from the outside world like they were in their own little hideway. My thumping heart accelerating my pulse must've resonating through my fingers, but I didn't dare to move an inch, relishing each second our skin touched like it was the last one.

#greta van fleet #gvf #greta van fleet fic #greta van fleet imagine #greta van fleet fanfic #gvf fic #gvf imagine #gvf fanfic #jake kiszka #jake kiszka x reader #gvf x reader #jake kiszka fic #jake kiszka fanfic

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justlookfrightened · 5 years

Text

Houston Chronicles, Part 20

Read the beginning here. Read the last installment here.

Jack really should be a creature of the night, Bitty thought, with his pale skin and dark hair. The moon was about half-full and they were in a major city, but Jack still looked silver and ethereal in its light.

Good thing Bitty had spent enough time staring at Jack to not get distracted by his looks. Much.

So far, Jack had agreed with everything he said, but not offered any real explanation for his silence.

So when Jack agreed that it would have been better to stay until Bitty woke up, maybe had a second round, and then defined the relationship over omelets and whole wheat toast, Bitty called him on it.

“Then why didn’t you do it that way?” he asked. “Why not even wake me up and tell me you had to go? Or leave a note on the table? Or, I don’t know, text me back when I said I was worried about you?”

“Why did you have condoms?” Jack blurted. “Fuck. Sorry. It’s none of my business. But I got to wondering, and then I realized I didn’t know really anything about the last five years, and we never even talked about it.”

Bitty wanted to say, “I had condoms because I’m an adult man with a healthy sex drive.”

What he did say was, “I bought them before you came over the first time. Just in case. I’ve dated a couple of guys, but nothing too serious, and nothing in the last year or so.”

He did not add, “Because I kept comparing them to you.”

“Me either,” Jack said. “I mean, nothing serious. The guys hooked me up with a couple of people, but I’m not much for casual relationships.”

“I know,” Bitty said. “That’s why I was so worried when you skipped out.”

“You weren’t worried enough to check again after one text,” Jack said. “You went out with your friends like two hours later.”

“First, you’re a grown man,” Bitty said. “I don’t see what another text would have done, other than prove my devotion, I guess. Is that what you wanted? And how did you know I went out?”

“I went to your apartment to talk to you,” Jack said. “I saw you leaving.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Bitty said. “Never mind. I know Jeni and Mandy can be a bit much. But you still could have texted. Even then. Just said, ‘I came to talk to you but I saw you going out.’ I could have come right home.”

“Would you?”

“Spent the evening talking to you instead of rehashing the situation with my next door agony aunts? Of course.”

“After you fell asleep, I just got anxious,” Jack said. “You said we should talk about things, do it right this time, and we didn’t, and I thought you might be angry and blame me.”

“Jack, sweet pea, I was every bit as much a willing participant as you were,” Bitty said. “As I recall, you listened when I asked you take your clothes off and you listened when I asked you to stay, at least for a while. If I was mad at anyone, it would be me for letting my heart and my body overrule my brain on this one.”

“But before, you were upset enough to start a whole new life without me,” Jack said. “And I didn’t know. And I didn’t want to ruin everything this time by making you upset.”

“So you left and ignored me and made me upset?” Bitty said. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“I know,” Jack said. “Shitty told me.”

“Shitty?” Bitty asked, suddenly mystified. “Where does he come into this? I haven’t talked to him in weeks.”

“I know,” Jack said. “He wants you to call him. He said he was giving us privacy. But he said that after you … went to Philadelphia, you didn’t call me because you were scared I’d be angry with you.”

“I was right, though, wasn’t I?” Bitty said. “He had permission to tell you about me if you asked, at least where I was. I figured it was only fair since I had the Hockey News to tell me about you, but he said you never asked.”

“I should have, I know,” Jack said. “It was like when things ended between me and Kent -- he called and texted a few times, but I never responded. I was just done with that part of my life. I mean, literally. The whole no-heartbeat-for-two-minutes seemed like a clean break, and Kenny was part of the old life, with the partying and the poorly supervised meds and everything. I couldn’t be the person I was before, and that was the person who was with Kenny.”

“Okay, first, Kent’s pissiness makes so much more sense to me now,” Bitty said.

“Yeah, it kind of made more sense to me after you left,” Jack said. “There was just this … hole … in my life, and you weren’t there to fill it, and I resented it. And I didn’t get why being with me wasn’t enough. But being my boyfriend -- that wasn’t your dream for your life. I was living my dream, and you weren’t living yours.”

“Jack, I loved being your boyfriend,” Bitty said.

“But it wasn’t enough,” Jack said.

“No,” Bitty said. “Maybe it could have been, if I could have gotten any kind of traction in trying to start a career. I was maybe hoping that I could make a name somewhere else and then come back, if you’d have me, but that kind of blew up.”

“You never said,” Jack said.

“Yeah, well, it seemed like you thought you should be enough,” Bitty said. “Without anything else.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “I think I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“How happy you are now,” Jack said. “With your career and your life. People look up to you. They admire you, and they should.”

“So where does that leave us?” Bitty said. “I was going to suggest we try again, but after this … I need for you treat me as an equal.”

“I know,” Jack said. “And I don’t think we can get back to where we were fast. But maybe we can date?”

“I don’t think we can get back to where we were at all,” Bitty said. “That wasn’t a good place to be, even if it seemed like it at first. But maybe we can get somewhere new.”

“Then can I take you out to dinner? Tomorrow?” Jack said. “You don’t usually work Mondays, right?”

“Not usually,” Bitty said. “Want me to find a place?”

“No,” Jack said. “I want to take you on a proper date. I can ask Fox and Marcus for a recommendation -- they’ll be thrilled.”

**************************

Read the next installment

#omgcheckplease #omg check please #zimbits #omg houston chronicles #my fic

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jedifighterpilot2727 · 6 years

Note

So when I write, I always have like 6381862 bajillion variations of each plot point, or Jessy so many different directions it could go. My outlines look like chose-your-own-adventure stories! I was wondering: did you have any other first kiss stories for taylington? Or anything else you really liked but you just decided to use something different as canon?

Okay so first of all, super sneaky way to try and get a first kiss chapter, so kudos! This one got me thinking!! Hope you enjoy!

Daydreams

Later, when she’s asked, she’ll say that the first time she thought about kissing Taylor was when Mandy steps aside to reveal Taylor all decked out for their first date.

(That’s a lie. The first time she thought about kissing Taylor, was when she was walking into physics class, and stopped to admire the girl a few rows back from the front who was doodling in her notebook - before their first date is just the first time Lexi almost follows through.)

The first actual time is one that she keeps to herself - that time when she spotted Taylor doodling. Most notebook scribbles that Lexi is familiar with are crappy caricatures or geometric shapes. But this, this is art - so much so that even an inexperienced eye like hers can tell.

It’s a scenery picture, the viewpoint from behind the counter at a coffee shop, but before Lexi can decipher which one, the person behind her is clearing their throat and she’s forced to move forward.

Only the person doodling looks up at the sound, and Lexi finds herself staring into the most beautiful pair of brown eyes she’s ever seen. The girl smiles, those same brown eyes crinkling at the edges as she scoots her backpack away from the aisle, and Lexi finds her breath catching in her throat.

Beautiful girls have always been her Kryptonite, and she probably would have stood there stuttering for days if not for the pressof eager students at her back. Instead, she stumbles forward, mutteringan apology to the pretty girl and vowing to pay attention to her name when roll is called.

Taylor.

That’s the pretty girl’s name.

And she may barely know Taylor’s name, but she’s already planned out their wedding by the end of the class period.

(They’ll have two children - Jaime and Taylor Jr., and their house will be decorated with Taylor’s artwork.)

She’slucky she’s already familiar with the coursework, because otherwise she would be screwed - all of her attention focused on her newfound crush.

It isn’t fair, really, for anyone to be that beautiful.

Taylor should be a model of some sort, not doodling masterpieces in Lexi’s physics class.

Bythe time she finishes talking to Dr. Camberio after class, Taylor is long gone, and Lexi’s shoulders deflate as she’s left to pine all the way to her next class.

* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Unfortunately, her run in with Taylor happened on Friday, so she has all weekend to second guess their interaction.

Cadeis skeptical that such a beautiful woman would exist - much less that such a pretty girl would be in Lexi’s Intro to Physics class.

It’s enough to make Lexi wonder if she simply imagined the whole thing, (or at least imagined Taylor’s beauty).

Sowhen she returns to class on Monday, she’s entirely too early; showing up before anyone else and completely ruining her chances of running into Taylor before class.

(She definitely doesn’t keep twisting in her seat to see if Taylor has made it yet.)

Lexidoesn’t see Taylor come in, but when Dr. Camberio calls roll, she’s there, looking just as breathtakingly beautiful as Lexi remembers.

Seems she hadn’t just imagined it - take that, Cade.

Unfortunately,Taylor is gone by the time Lexi leaves, and so it goes for the next week and half - like two ships passing in the night - she explains poetically to Cade, who simply rolls their eyes.

There are glimpses, here and there, where she thinks that maybe Taylor might be looking for her too; but it’s fleeting, and self-doubt quickly convincesher that there’s no way Taylor is looking at her.

Of course not.

Theydon’t actually exchange words again until Taylor startles her one day after class - it’s beyond embarrassing, her books and papers go everywhere, and she’s left feeling like an idiot as she tries to make eye contact.

Somehow, she stutters through, and manages to agree to be Taylor’s tutor for physics.

(It’s a stupid idea, she doesn’t know how she’ll ever get over her nerves enough to be coherent.)

But still, she says yes, and Taylor looks so happy that she can’t take it back - even though she knows she’s doomed.

* - - - -

Shesomehow makes it through the study session without imagining grocery shopping with Taylor on Sunday afternoons, but it all flies out the window when Taylor’s lips make contact with her cheek.

She certainly doesn’t stay up all night wondering what would have happened if Taylor’s lips had landed a few inches to the left.

(Shetries to convince herself that friends kiss friends on the cheek all the time, and Taylor kissing her means absolutely nothing- but she can’t stop the tiny spark of hope that flares.)

Once Taylor accepts her offer of an actual date, the tiny spark transforms into a bonfire, but again, Lexi’s too caught up in not stuttering or fumbling to think about kissing her.

She has to say though, once she finally gets up the courage to kiss Taylor? Totally better than any daydream she’s ever even thought about having.

And trust her, she’s had a lot of daydreams.

#taylington #lexington luthor danvers #the lexington chronicles #taylor mitchell #supercorp kid fic

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expensiveminimalist · 6 years

Text

It Took One Night - William Nylander (Part 9)

A/N: Hello my lovelies! Here’s Part 9! Please give Tinkerbell feedback so she can live lol

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: Pregnancy, Swearing

Masterlist

Despite what was clearly going on between you and William, the two of you avoided talking about anything relating to relationships or labels. You didn’t exactly know what this was but every part of it felt right and familiar, like he was the safe space you’d been craving for, for so long. Within hours of him finding out you were pregnant, he had made you a priority in his life and you didn’t know if you’d ever be able to thank him enough for everything he’d done for you so far. You almost felt like you didn’t deserve it, since you’d not only turned your life upside down but also his. Only for him to remind you that it takes two to make a baby, and that you were in this together. And, truthfully, you wouldn’t want to be in this situation with anybody else.

After William had dropped you back at your apartment the next morning, you sat down to go through the short-list of OB/GYNs the doctor in New York had emailed you. It was about time you chose one and booked in for your first ultrasound.

While you were at it, you decided that it would probably be a good idea to buy a few pregnancy books so you understood more about what was happening with your body. There was only so much high school sex-ed had taught you.

Eventually you decided on getting yourself one book, not wanting to overwhelm yourself, Pregnancy for First Time Moms: What They Don’t Tell You. After reading the reviews, you realised this was probably the guide for you since it would tell you everything without any chance of sugar-coating. The honest truth was what you needed and you were determined to get it one way or another.

You also finally found an OB/GYN that you felt suited you and, after talking to William about it, you called and made your first appointment. You’d always hated talking to people on the phone, let alone people that you didn’t know, so you were surprised the receptionist was able to understand what you were asking. She was patient with you and made you feel comfortable, which helped a lot considering you’d never rang to book an ultrasound before.

As soon as you’d successfully booked an appointment, you rang William so you could let out a little bit of nervous excitement.

“Hey babe”

“Guess who just booked their first ultrasound?’ you said, glad he couldn’t see you smiling like an idiot.

“Awesome! When is it?”

“Tuesday, as soon as I’ve finished work. Even though that’s only a few days away, it already feels like forever”

“Someone’s a little excited” William teased.

“What and you aren’t!?”

“Course I am. Is it alright if I come with you?”

“Why are you even asking? Of course it is. I want you there”

“Great, cause that makes two of us” he said, chuckling.

“I’m a bit nervous though” you admitted, letting the excitement subside for a moment.

“You’re allowed to be. You just have to think positively, and try not to stress ok? It’s all going to be fine”

“But what if it’s not”

“It will be. And if it’s not, we’ll deal with it. Together, ok?”

“Ok”

“Good, because I love seeing you happy and the only tears that I want to see at that ultrasound are happy ones”

You laughed, “I’m starting to think I’d lose my marble if it weren’t for you”

“I’m a man of many talents aren’t I?”

“Oh shut up”

“You know you love it” he chirped.

“A little bit”.

You did love it. You were just starting to think that ‘it’ might be William.

---

The next couple of days, specially the weekend, dragged on and Monday felt worse than usual. Just for one day you wanted control over a fast-forward button so you could be at your ultrasound now, instead of replaying scenarios of it over and over again in your head.

Work had been a great distraction though, and you were finally starting to be able to stomach being around assortments of fried food again – although you still had your moments. You’d also found yourself having a different reaction to the kids that came into the café that normally made you want to tear your hair out. Instead of fighting back a poke of your tongue, you were smiling at them now, caught up imagining what your own child was going to be like when they were that age. Obviously, you convinced yourself they’d be much better behaved but you hadn’t exactly been an angel yourself.

By the time Tuesday evening rolled around, about half an hour before your shift finished, you were an absolute mess. You weren’t sure if you were shaking out of nervousness or anticipation, but what you did know was that you’d spilt three coffees and dropped a bottle of milk on Mandy’s foot.

“When did you get so clumsy?” Mandy had asked you through gritted teeth, keeping back several swear words you knew she really wanted to say.

You’d tried to pass it off that you were just really tired but Mandy wasn’t buying your excuses anymore. You decided that after you’d had your ultrasound you’d tell her the truth, you were closer to the twelve week mark now so you felt slightly more comfortable telling her.

William had already told you he was driving you to the appointment, so you weren’t surprised when he walked through the doors five minutes before your shift was over.

“You ready?” he said, walking behind the counter to give you a hug and leave a kiss on your cheek.

“Yeah just let me grab my bag” you said, trying to dodge Mandy’s eyebrows that had been raised since the second William’s lips touched your skin.

Mandy followed closely behind as you went to get your stuff, so close she was practically standing on your ankles.

“I thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend?”

“He’s not!” you said, trying to hide the smirk on your face.

“Oh really? Because guys that weren’t my boyfriend never came up and did that to me in public”

“He’s just a really, really good friend”

“A really good friend that made your cheeks turn brighter than the red velvet cupcakes I baked this morning” she chirped, folding her arms over her chest.

“They weren’t that red” you said, swinging your bag over your shoulder.

“And the sky isn’t blue”

“What?”

“If he isn’t your boyfriend, you’re definitely screwing him”

“Mandy!”

“Tell me I’m wrong!”

“I- look it’s complicated”

“I knew it” she said, with a victorious smile on her face.

“Do I berate you about your sex life?”

“No because I don’t have one, so what fun would that be?” Mandy said laughing.

“I don’t want to rush you but we’ve got to get going if we don’t want to be late!” you heard William shout.

“Coming!”

“Hang on this conversation isn’t over!” Mandy protested.

“There’s always tomorrow” you sung as you snuck past her, grabbing William’s hand on the way and headed out the door.

---

“How long has it been?”

“Thirty seconds since you last asked” William said, smirking at you.

“Sorry, I’m just nervous”

“Really? I never would’ve guessed by your bouncing leg or the fact that you’re cutting the circulation off in my hand”

“Shit, sorry”

“Don’t worry about it”

Despite the fact that William had rushed you away from work because he didn’t want to be late, you showed up to the OB/GYN’s fifteen minutes early. So, you were both sitting there like a pair of jack-in-the-boxes about to burst.

“Can’t we just go in there and say that we’re ready?”

“William you can’t do that”

“It’s worth a shot”

“No it’s not you egg” you giggled, squeezing his hand tighter so he couldn’t make a break for it unless he dragged you along too.

Thankfully, the nurse called out your name after a few more minutes and you and William were able to go into the exam room. The nurse told you that the doctor wouldn’t be long, so you both waited not-so patiently for her to arrive.

When she came in, she introduced herself as Dr Manning and the warm smile she gave you made you feel slightly more at ease. She asked similar questions to what Dr Mason did in New York, if you’ve had morning sickness etc., however they weren’t as in depth since your patient notes from New York had been sent over in advance.

It was news to William however, and he seemed surprised how badly you’d previously described your morning sickness since you hadn’t explained it anywhere near as horrific to him.

“Ok, so we’ll do the ultrasound now and I’ll just pop out for a minute to let you get undressed. When you’re finished, just make yourself comfortable on the bed” she said, before going into another room which you assumed was her office.

William smirked at you, “so did you want me to wait outside?”

“No, I mean you can just turn around if you want but it’s not like you haven’t seen it before”

“I like your confidence”

“Would you shut up” you said, blushing as you unbuttoned your pants and pulled them down so you were just standing in your underwear.

“I think you have to take those off as well”

“You’re so funny” you said sarcastically, trying not to look at his face otherwise you’d probably end up on the floor laughing.

“I can help if you’re having trouble?” he said, walking forward and lightly tapping you on the ass.

You jumped and looked at the door, hoping that Dr Manning hadn’t decided to walk in early.

“You can help by passing me the sheet please” you said, playfully squirming away from his hands.

As William reluctantly picked up the paper sheet and handed it over to you, you held it around your waist and dropped your underwear.

“Hey that’s cheating” William teased.

“Well you can hold these” you said, thrusting him your folded up pants and your underwear.

“It’s an honour”

You poked your tongue out at him and lay down on the bed, “sit in the chair up here, cause I’m not spreading my legs until your head is next to mine”

“Yes boss” William said, moving the chair up so he couldn’t see anything beyond the sheet.

Dr Manning knocked on the door and you told her to come in, swatting at William as he jokingly went to peak over the sheet.

“Stop it” you hissed, trying to hide your smile as you saw the cheeky grin on his face.

You pulled your shirt up so the doctor could put the gel on your stomach. As she did so you flinched, not expecting it to be as cold as it was.

“You alright?” William whispered.

You nodded your head at him, “Yeah I’m fine”.

Dr Manning started placed the wand on your stomach and started spreading it around, searching for the tiny human inside of you.

You didn’t know how long it was supposed to take for her to find the baby, but after 1 second you were ridiculously nervous.

William, noticing the expression on your face, grabbed your hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. You turned your head to look at him and he smiled at you, trying to convince you to stay calm and give the doctor some time.

And then you heard it.

Your eyes shot to the screen and for a brief second, before your eyes welled with tears, you saw your baby.

“Oh my god” you whispered, holding William’s hand tighter.

“There’s your baby, looking for comfortable in there” Dr Manning said, “And that was its heartbeat that you heard, nice and strong”.

“I didn’t know if you could hear it this early?”

“It does depend on the baby’s position, and you are just over ten weeks along now. Clearly, someone wanted to say hello to mum and dad” she said, handing you a tissue so you could wipe your eyes.

You looked over at William and saw his eyes locked on the monitor. The look in his eyes and the smile on his face just brought more tears to your eyes, as he said “that’s our baby”.

“Yeah, that’s our baby” you said, watching the screen and smiling as you spotted a few tiny fingers and toes, and the cutest nose you’d ever seen in your life.

While you and William sat there in silence, engrossed in the screen, and Dr Manning took some measurements, reassuring you that the baby was in the right percentiles for its growth and development.

“Can we have some copies of the scan?” William asked.

“Of course. I can give you a DVD of it as well if you like?”

“That’d be awesome thanks”

“I’ll sort that out now so you can get dressed and have some privacy. Won’t be long” she said, handing you some paper towels before she left the room.

You wiped the paper towels over your stomach, clearing all the gel off it and pulled your shirt down.

“I suppose you want these” William smirked.

“Unless you want me to talk out there half-naked, then yeah” you said, playfully snatching your underwear from him as you stood up.

You dropped the sheet and pulled your underwear on, ignoring the whistle from William as you did so, then quickly put your pants on and lightly smacked him on the ass.

“Feisty. I love it” he said, winking at you before pulling you in for a cuddle.

“That was pretty fucking amazing. Babe, we made that” he continued, speaking into your hair.

“I know. I can’t even believe that was real” you said resting your head in the crook of his neck.

You heard Dr Manning knock on the door and you gave her the all clear to come in, pulling away from William as she did so you could take the envelope containing your scan pictures and DVD.

“Thank you so much” you said, holding the envelope close against your heart.

“Not a problem. So, I’d expect to see you again in about 6-8 weeks but if you have any problems or worries please don’t hesitate to come in”

“I won’t, trust me. Thank you so much again” you said, leaning back into William’s chest as he thanked her also.

“See you next time”

---

“I don’t care if I already said it but that was pretty fucking incredible” William said.

“Yeah it was” you said, smiling over at him and rubbing your hand back and forth on his thigh.

“Watch where you’re putting that hand, you’ve got precious cargo on board and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything happen to the little guy or girl in there” he said, gripping the steering wheel harder for a moment.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” he continued.

“I don’t know”

“Well, what do you want it to be?”

“I don’t know. I feel like either will be just as exciting” you replied, laughing as he let out a deep sigh at your less than helpful responses.

“I don’t know if I could handle a mini me, not that that would be a bad thing, but then I’m not sure if I could handle a mini you either” he said, winking at your unimpressed face.

“So what, you want it to be an alien?” you teased.

William glared at you, playfully, “Ha-ha. No I guess I don’t know either. I mean, like you said it’d be awesome either way”.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, anything”

“Aren’t you scared, even the tiniest bit?” you asked, watching his face closely so you read how he genuinely felt about it.

“Of course I am” he said, reaching over and entwining his fingers with yours, “Neither of us really have any idea what we’re doing and it’s not going to be easy, I know that, but I can’t help being excited after seeing that”

“I know we still have a few weeks to go until we’re in the clear but that was unreal. You can’t tell me that you aren’t excited seeing that?” he continued.

“I mean, I’m a little excited”

“A little?”

“Ok, I’m really fucking excited. I can’t believe that in just over six months we’re actually going to get to hold them and cuddle with them. He or she is actually going to be here, with us and it just blows my mind”

“Pretty insane right?” William said as he turned into your street.

“Pretty insane” you repeated.

William pulled up outside your apartment and the both of you just sat there for a few minutes.

“So, not that I want you to, but are you going to get out of the car?” he asked.

“I know that you just drove me all the way home but we could always go back to your house and watch the ultrasound DVD a few hundred times” you said, half smiling half pleading with him.

William started the car back up and pulled back onto the road.

“Want me to pick waffles up on the way?”

You looked over at him, smiling a big goofy grin, “please and thank you”.

#william nylander #william nylander imagine #william nylander fic #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #toronto maple leafs #nylander #willy nylander #it took one night #william nylander imagines #hockey imagines #nhl fic #hockey fic

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trippin-over-my-fandoms · 6 years

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(Late) WIP Week - Day who the frack cares anymore this is so late but I’m determined to finish this even if it’s out of order

Your Previously unpublished WIP

Nothing To Loose But You

Description: Oliver Queen doesn’t give up Slade Wilson and instead runs away, bringing Slade with him. None of his friends know where he’s gone and Oliver is determined to keep it that way.

Okay look I was’t gonna say anything about it on my main blog till I had way more done than this but it’s WIP week so...

NTLBU is a huge project of mine and if you’d like to know more go read about it on @sladiverhq

Anyway, here’s what I wrote last night. This is way longer than my Second Chances update but it also doesn’t have an end so read at your own risk. Also I did NOT proof read this so it’s probably filled with errors.

tags: @swingrlm

"I'm going out, you need anything?" Oliver shouts as he makes his way from the bedroom and down the hall. He stops midway to turn on the hall light. All the lights were off except the Christmas tree. It cast a comfortable glow but it wasn't bright enough for Oliver to be able to see what jacket he was pulling out of the coat closet.

He picks out a brown leather one he's fond of before switching off the light an heading into the living room.

"Slade? Did you hear me?" He asks, peering through the dim lights to find his lover.

This was technically their first real holiday together. He had guessed at least two Christmases pasted while they were on the island but back then they didn't celebrate thy kind of stuff. Even after Fyers was gone they tried not to think about holidays or birthdays, afraid it would make them too reminiscent about home.

He tried not to think about last year either. Granted it was before he knew Slade was alive but he spent most of the holidays distracted by the memory of how real his hallucination had felt when he was high on rat poison. Back when he was still telling himself to get over Slade. Back when he was still telling himself Slade never loved him.

Though, now he knew all that was wrong.

It didn't take him too long to spot Slade sitting on the couch facing away from the hall. He was slouching so that was probably why - other than how dark it was - he hadn't spotted him right away.

"Slade?" Oliver says his name again and puts a hand on his shoulder. The Mirakuru had been gone from his significant other's system for a while now but Oliver still worried. He thought too much and his mind went to dark and depressing places. Places that were home to the "what if"s like 'what if all the injuries he went through while on the Mirakuru catch up to him?' or 'what if something happens and the Mirakuru isn't there to prevent it?'

But that all went away when Slade responded with a heavy sigh and asked "What?" In that deep voice of his.

Normally Oliver would be distracted by that voice. The thick and rough Australian accent he loved so much. But the sigh and having not answered right away concern him. Oliver leans forward against the back of the couch to get a look at Slade's face. He looked tired and worn out.

A frown finds its way to the younger man's face. "You look tired," he says and an eye roll being the response, "it is kinda late, you should probably go ahead and go to bed without me."

But Slade ignores him. He did that a lot. Oliver cared a lot for him but Slade felt like he should be worrying about Oliver. Not the other way around.

"What did you want kid?" He asks, tone boarder line irritated.

Now it was Oliver's turn to roll his eyes. "I need to grab some things before tomorrow and I figured I'd just go out now than early in the morning. I was just wondering if you needed or wanted anything." He rests his elbows on the edge of the couch as he waits for a response.

Slade sits there quietly for moment, seeming to thing if there was anything he really needed and if there was anything he wanted. He can't think up anything so he just shakes his head.

"Alright," Oliver says, placing a quick kiss to the older man's cheek, "if you think of anything let me know." He heads to the door and unlocks it before taking his time to put on his coat.

He can hear the creaks of the couch as Slade gets comfortable again and tries his best to dismiss the worry. Quickly he feels his pants pocket to make sure his phone was there. Then he pulls it out and checks the battery life. If something were to happen or Slade really did need him he wanted to make sure he had a way of reaching him.

It was a little funny to think how much Slade had mother hened him on the island and now it seemed like the roles were reversed.

"Just go kid. I'll be fine. As usual." Slade's more awake tone bingos Oliver out of his thoughts a she proceeds out the door, making sure to lock it behind him. Slade could handle himself but it never hurt to lock the door. Especially in the neighborhood thy lived in.

Taking a deep breath, Oliver turns his attention to the beat up sedan sitting in the driveway. It was the only one he could afford with the money he made at the gas station but at least it was a car, that much he couldn't complain about.

Now he actually had to put aside his worry for Slade and actually focus on his self set task at hand - the store.

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

Cocoa

Marshmallows

Milk

Bread

trash bags

Was Oliver's mental shopping list. Most of it was household stuff they were in desperate need of but the cocoa and marshmallows was something had been planned for a while now. Well - he hadn't told Slade until the day or so before now but Oliver had been planning it.

Call it childish or cheesy but Oliver had been entertaining the idea of the two of them cuddled on the couch in warm clothes with cocoa. Either with tv or without. It went with the feel of Christmas and it brought some normality to their crazy lives. So he had decided that it was actually going to happen.

The store he had gone to was a small one. It was close to the apartment and had relatively good products at prices he could afford. And it was open late into the night. Not many people were out at those times. Perfect for the (laying low, low cover?) he was trying to keep up.

The bread he had gotten as soon as he had walked in. That kind of stuff was close to the front. So was the cocoa and marshmallows due to the season. Milk and trash bag on the other hand he had to walk all the way to the back of the store to get. The layout was weird for such a small place. It was strange too how it had everything from normal groceries to household items. Oliver wasn't really ashamed to say he had gotten a few of his knick knacks from this place.

Luckily it wasn't too much of struggle to get to it though. He'd been here a lot over the past several months so much so that he knew the entire layout and the owners knew him by name. Well... his fake name anyway.

Once he had everything he needed he began to head up to the front where the owners' teenage daughter managed the single register. One his way he passed by a small section of cheap picture frames. They had those pictures of the model families and he felt a pang in his heart. He missed his. His mother, his sister, Tommy, he missed his home. But he had to remind himself they were better off without him. That he was the one who had brought so much death and destruction to the city.

There were other fake pictures too. Ones of couples who seemed so happy in whatever setting they were in. Oliver told himself that they were cheap enough and that he could afford one. He grabbed a simple black frame and told himself he'd have to print out a picture of him and Slade at work when he went back that Monday.

No more distractions. He had been here long enough and wanted to get home and get to bed.

Checking out was quick. Mandie, the owners' daughter, hardly ever talked to him or any customer she checked out. She was pretty straight to the point and always focused on the task at hand so Oliver was out to his car (synonym for quickly).

When he reached the parking lot he immediately began looking for his car. The ugly paint job wasn't hard to spot but a car he hadn't remembered being there caught his attention. It could easily be blamed on another customer but he hadn't heard the front door chime like it always did when someone went in or out and there weren't any other open stores around.

He could hear Slade's voice in the back of his mind calling him paranoid so he unlocked his car with the keys as he approached it. The dark parking lot and the mysterious car were beginning to unnerve him so he made quick work of putting the bagged items into the trunk.

"Oliver?"

He almost bumps his head on the trunk lid. Not only had the sudden voice frightened him but it sounded familiar too.

It sounded like a woman and she seemed unsure she had the right person.

He turns around to tell whoever it was that that isn't his name and she's got the wrong guy but as soon as he does he wishes he hasn't.

Felicity Smoak.

And standing by the car from earlier is John Diggle.

His heart begins to thud in his chest. How had they found him? This wasn't supposed to happen.

"What are you-?" He says quietly but she cuts him off.

"Oliver we were so worried about you!" She looks like she wants to hug him but unsure how he'll react. "We thought Slade had killed you and gotten away! Or... or something else had happened. I've been trying to pink your phone but it said it was out of service and I didn't know what to do because nothing was coming back from your email or anything and I was so scared!" She was almost in tears as she rambles on and it was now that Oliver closed the space between them and hugged her.

He hadn't been too much of a hugger but she seemed to have needed it. She hold onto him tight and takes a deep breath.

Now Oliver is almost in tears himself. She had been worried about him. Maybe he did mean something to him after all.

Instead of feeling better, like he's wanted, he feels worse. He feels guilty. Guilty for leaving them. For leaving behind his family and friends for someone he wasn't sure even loves him back then.

Instead of entertaining his feelings he decides to ask, "How did you find me?"

She sniffs and he realizes she had been crying. "It was hard. You were pretty smart about it. Using a fake name, a new phone, new email. But apparently old habits die hard because reports of a 'hooded vigilante in Gotham' reached Starling City and I just knew.

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hazyheel · 5 years

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WWE Smackdown Live 6/11/19 Review

We started with a rendition of Miz TV. Miz had a new shirt of his dad having his fists up at Wrestlemania, and I guess he was being forced to host this edition. He was reading off of a literal script for Shane. He kept saying best in the world wrong for a laugh, but it wasn’t much of anything. Shane then came out with Drew McIntyre and Elias. Elias was the musical guest, and the crowd chanted you suck at him. Miz called out Shane for having only tainted wins, which Shane didn’t seem to care about. Mcintyre talked about how he would beat Roman at stomping ground. Miz pointed out that McIntyre is wasting his potential by being Shane’s lackey, which makes a lot of sense. Shane and Miz started to hurl insults at each other, and nearly came to blows. Shane challenged Miz to a gauntlet match. If he could beat both Elias and McIntyre, then he could fight Shane.

So, we went right into the matches, starting with Miz vs. Elias. This was the match where I noticed that Miz doesn’t do the corner dropkicks like Daniel Bryan anymore, but he does corner knees. Interesting way to make the move his own, and to transition into a face role. Miz quickly took care of Elias by dodging an elbow drop and hitting the skull crushing finale for three.

He then fought Drew McIntyre. Miz was actually brutally beating down McIntyre for a lot of this match, such as a super stiff baseball slide and a brawl on the outside. At one point, Miz went for the skull crushing finale, but Shane distracted him, so McIntyre could get the Glasgow kiss, and then a claymore for the win.

After that happened, Shane said that he would still fight Miz. There was actually a bit of back and forth until Shane locked in a triangle for the win.

Grade: B-. I wasn’t sure about putting this whole segment on the positive side, but I think the matches were mostly fine, and the heel work from Shane at the end there was really good. So yeah, I’ll give this a B-. I normally don’t like the style of heel that Shane is, smarmy but also not quite good enough at being smarmy. But this was probably his best work, challenging a beaten down Miz like that. I liked it, especially how happy he was that he is now 3-0 over Miz. That record is bullshit and shouldn’t exist, but at least it’s because Shane is being a dick.

Backstage, Ember Moon talked to Fire and Desire while she was playing on a switch. They told her to focus on a real life superhero like Mandy Rose, and then smacked the switch out of her hand and left. Moon was pissed and threw some stuff.

Then we had the Planets Tag Team Champions. Daniel Bryan said that there would be a title match, against a couple Jobbers holding cardboard titles. But before they got going, Heavy Machinery came out to interrupt. Heavy Machinery said that they were ducking the challenge for the belts. So, Daniel Bryan said that if they can beat the jobbers, they will get a title match. Heavy Machinery won quickly with the compactor.

Grade: C. Yeah this was an inoffensive squash match, but I’m also rewinding the grade a bit because Heavy Machinery was off TV for so long and are now just getting a title match. That is BS, but they are certainly the team that should get it.

Backstage, R-Truth and Carmella were talking about how terrible being the 24/7 champion was. He said that he pinned Jinder on a plane 49,000 feet celsius, that was funny. Carmella heard someone coming, so she told Truth to get in a box. It turned out only to be a production guy, but the case locked and Carmella had to leave for a match with Sonya Deville. So she left, and Jinder showed up and tried to open it, pretending to be Carmella as he did, So this was the 24/7 shenanigans of the evening, and I was into it.

So we came back to the match between Carmella and Sonya Deville. At one point, Carmella locked in the code of silence, but Rose put Deville’s foot on the rope to break things up. She chased Rose around, but Deville caught her with a brutal knee to the stomach for a near fall. Carmella then threw Deville out of the ring, and gave both women a suicide dive, hitting Rose with an extra superkick. As Carmella went back in, Deville hit a step up knee for the win.

Grade: C-. Lots of interference, and it was not wrestled the best. I really don’t care much for this feud, and it seems just to be a placeholder before fire and desire break up. So not a great match, and I think it’d be much better if Carmella was actually involved in the 24/7 championship picture.

So then we had Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross backstage. Bliss told Cross that a bunch of people were being mean to her on social media, and that Bayley liked one of them. She said that Bayley is the same as everyone who calls Cross names. She told Cross not to hold back during her match with Bayley. I like how Bliss is manipulating Cross here, it is good. I wish it was someone who wasn’t supposed to be a crazy person, but its fine.

Then we the return of Big E, ahead of the 6-man tag later on. New Day cut a promo and they joked about how if Big E had a title run for every time that he returned, he would be Charlotte Flair. Kofi said it was a booking joke, and Woods cut him off by talking about their match. They talked about how Kofi has beaten all of their opponents at one point or another. Ziggler interrupted, and talked about how Kofi cheated to beat him at super showdown. Kofi just said that it was revenge for Ziggler kicking Woods earlier in the match, but then Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn interrupted. Zayn and Owens said that it was injustice, and I found it was difficult to disagree with the heels here. Zayn said that the rules are more important than who the fans like. Zayn called the fans hypocrites, and I kinda get where he is coming from. Big E then put over Kingston and defended him, and Kofi told him that he won’t have any more excuses after the steel cage match.

Grade: C. Everyone could talk in this segment, but it was very filler, and the heels were being perfectly reasonable. A heel promo that really makes the good guys look like the bad guys are a problem. Ziggler has every right to be mad, Kofi did cheat. So it’s difficult to say he is in the wrong.

Then we had Bayley backstage, being asked about Bliss manipulating Cross, and Bayley just didn’t care.

Then we had Aleister Black continuing to offer an open challenge. He had someone open the door, and shout out of it, saying that the door is wide open. Black is so much better than this.

We went right into Bayley vs. Nikki Cross. They were brawling right at the bell. At one point, Bayley went for the dropkick under the corner on the outside, but Cross trapped her behind the apron and beat her down. Bliss did get involved minorly at one point, distracting her and allowing Cross to get a cradle for a near fall. Bayley got the win with the elbow drop, staring right at Bliss when she did.

Grade: C+. Match didn’t have much to it, but I did like how Bayley looked right at Bliss when she hit the finish. Other than that this was a nothing match.

Jinder went back to get Truth out of the box, but it was gone. Truth was still in the box, and he was getting shipped to LA in the box.

24/7 stuff: B-. Not nearly as funny as the stuff on Raw, but still good. I like this gag, and it’ll be resolved on monday.

Then we had Apollo Crews being interviewed about the attack from Andrade last week. Zelina Vega showed up to run him down, and told Crews to stay away from Andrade. Then randomly, Chad Gable was there taking notes. I-I don’t know why.

And into the main event, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and Dolph Ziggler vs. the New Day. A lot of fast paced action here, and oddly enough Kingston was normally the one on the backfoot. At one point, Woods went up for the limit breaker, but Ziggler crotched him on the top rope. On commentary, Graves emphasized the fact that the face commentators are always okay with the faces cheating, which I though was quite interesting. At one point, Kevin Owens hit a moonsault for a near fall, and I would love to see that move enter his arsenal more. Big E had a huge hot tag during the match, destroying Ziggler with suplexes and a splash. Ziggler blind tagged in Zayn, who held Kofi for a superkick. Kofi dodged so it hit Zayn, and Kofi nailed Ziggler with a trouble in paradise, followed by another one to Zayn for the win.

Grade: B-. Fast paced action and a good pickup for Kofi. I might’ve preferred to see Big E pick up the win, but I will never argue with making a champion strong. Good stuff here, and the match of the night.

Also, something I noticed that happened tonight was that on commentary, they keep mentioning how WWE is the only “cross cultural” sports entertainment company in the world. So that is them taking pot shots at AEW.

Overall Grade: C+

Pros: nothing overtly good, but i thought that Graves gave a good commentary performance.

Cons: Heavy Machinery hasn’t been on the show; carmella vs. deville; filler promo

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staytiny-angel · 7 years

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All I Want For Christmas is You

Pairing: Elias Sampson/Alana Richards (OC)

Rating: T

Authors Note: Yay! Mission Accomplished! I've been trying to branch out a bit so that I don't burn myself out by writing Seth all the time. So here's some cotton candy Christmas fluff starring the sexy Drifter himself Elias Sampson.

Summary: Elias has a crush on Alana but is having trouble expressing his feelings so he decides to just use the medium he knows best - music.

Tag List: @panda-girl1999 @panic-angel3314 @caramara3 @empress-with-the-crown @ringbrat @theworldiscolorful @eshia16 @omegaliciousss @hardcorewwetrash @lavitabella87 @castielscamander @gingertalksshit @thirstiswet @reigns420 @racingandreigns @soulsister101 @cam0flug3 @wweburnitdown @evilangel84

@wrestlingbabe

@crossfitjesusinskinnyjeans

Monday Night Raw - 2 weeks before Christmas.

Alana shook her head in disappointment as she limped backstage after her grueling match with Nia Jax. It seemed like no matter what she did she couldn't seem to pull off a victory against the much stronger woman. It was two weeks before Christmas and she was already sad about not being able to go home for the holiday since USA Network had demanded a live Raw on Christmas Day this year. Losing to Nia again had just been the icing on the cake.

"Ohhhh, come over here and help me trim the tree

I wanna wrap you up

Baby, then you’ll see you’re the only present I need

There’s so much more

Waiting for you in store

From this precious day

I can gladly say

There’s no place that I’d rather be

I know you are my everything, come a little closer

God must have sent you down from heaven”

Alana froze as she heard the sound of a beautiful husky voice accompanied by an acoustic guitar. She had been so lost in her own thoughts she hadn't noticed Elias Sampson sitting on an equipment box playing his guitar and singing.

Alana didn't know Elias that well, she knew that he didn't speak much unless he was in the ring and that he preferred finding a quiet place to sing and play his guitar rather than socializing with his fellow superstars.

"That was beautiful." She told him smiling at him despite how she was feeling. Actually, she thought to herself, she felt a bit better now. Elias's voice was very soothing...she wondered why she'd never noticed that before.

Elias didn't say anything, he just smiled at her gently, hopped down off the equipment box, put his guitar in its case and walked away.

"What an odd man." she said to herself as she headed toward the women's locker room humming the song Elias had been playing under her breath.

One week before Christmas

Alana felt like she was about to vibrate out of her skin as she practically flew backstage after Stephanie's announcement. A WOMEN'S ROYAL RUMBLE!!!!! This might be her chance to step out into the spotlight. A good showing in the match even if she didn't win could do wonders for her career.

Alana slid to a stop as she saw Elias leaning up against a wall, head down fiddling with his guitar but not playing it. Alana took this opportunity to really look at him. He really was much more attractive then people gave him credit for, Especially with his hair tied up in that bun. He wasn't pretty like Seth or Roman but he was definitely a very handsome man.

"Hi Elias!" she chirped happily. His head jerked up and for a second she thought she saw a blush flush the skin around his heavy beard. He seemed almost embarrassed that she'd caught him unaware.

"I'm sorry I bothered you, I'm just really happy and your song made me feel so much better last week, I guess I wanted to share my happiness with you but I can totally go away if I'm being annoying I'm probably being annoying." Alana babbled without taking a breath.

Elias shook his head rapidly manbun bobbing and instead of speaking strummed his guitar and sang

"I'd give anything to see

A little Christmas tree

And to hear,

Hear the laughter of children playing in the snow,

To kiss my baby under the mistletoe."

Alana grinned c

and clapped "I love that song!" Alana walked closer to him but Elias seemed to almost panic at her getting closer he grabbed his case and left quickly without even putting his guitar away.

"He's.....really odd," Alana said to herself continuing on her way "Really cute but really odd"

Christmas Day

Elias sat backstage, with Bo Dallas next to him. Elias didn't quite understand why The Miztourage had attached themselves to him like baby ducklings without a mama but it was nice to have roadies and Bo played harmonica decently.

"You gonna tell her, boss?" Bo asked him as Elias looked at him "Are you gonna tell Alana you like her?"

Alana, Elias sighed to himself. He'd had a crush on her since they'd been in NXT together though he'd gotten called up to the main roster only a few months after she'd arrived. He just couldn't seem to get the words 'I like you' to come out of his mouth in her presence. He'd been singing to most romantic Christmas songs he could think of to her for the last 2 weeks but she'd still hadn't realized that he was singing directly to her.

Last week had been a mess, he hadn't been really ready to see her and he'd freaked out when she'd come up to him. Her babbling was the cutest thing he'd ever seen. He'd chickened out when she'd come closer to him and bailed like his feet were on fire.

This week he was ready. He had the most blatant romantic Christmas song in the universe ready and then he was gonna ask Alana to be his date for WWE's New Years Ball.

No chickening out this time. Curt came walking toward them "Her match looks like its winding down, boss and everything is set up." Elias nodded, said thank you to both of them, grabbed his guitar and headed to the stage entrance. He peeked out into the arena just as Alana hit her finisher and defeated Mandy Rose.

Alana's P.O.V

"Yes!" Alana yelled out as the referee raised her hand. She won, she thought to herself. Another victory meant more momentum leading into the Rumble. She rolled out of the ring and headed up the ramp just as the arena lights went out "What the hell?!" A single spotlight shined down on Elias sitting in a chair on the stage guitar in his lap.

"Elias?!" She could hear the murmurs of the crowd who seemed to be just as confused as she was.

"I don’t want a lot for Christmas

There is just one thing I need

I don’t care about the presents

Underneath the Christmas tree

I just want you for my own

More than you could ever know

Make my wish come true

All I want for Christmas is you.”

Alana's mouth dropped open as Elias sang, was she understanding this correctly? He had a crush on her? Alana thought back to each song Elias had sung in her presence over the last few weeks. They had all been romantic Christmas songs...because of course, a man like Elias would use music to express his feelings. She walked up the ramp toward him as he finished singing and smiled at her hopefully. He cleared his throat and said

"I've liked you for a while, do you want to go to the New Years Ball with me?"

Alana nodded "I would like that." as she leaned down and gave him a small kiss.

Okay, so I know this ends kinda abruptly. but its because it's totally getting a second part for their first date. That part will probably be smutty.

Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘Let it Snow, I want to come home for Christmas and All I want for Christmas is you. their respective songwriters do

#shai writes #Elias Sampson fic #Elias/OC

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finding--cat · 7 years

Photo

To read the previous instalment, click here.

To read Part I, click here.

Part II: The Songbird 2.2

When Olive was four, she went through a princess phase where she refused to wear anything but dresses. Pants, shorts, skirts – none would do, none would she wear without a stage four meltdown drawing knocks on the door from neighbours asking “if everything’s okay in there?”

It went on for so many months that Z eventually donated the clothing she outgrew and they bought nothing new for her without frills or bows.

Her attention shifted gradually from Disney princesses to action heroines, and then one day, she asked to wear cargo pants to school and Z and Niall came up absolutely, shit-out-of-luck empty. And though Z managed to coax her into one of her favourite dresses, it was Niall who had to hold her hand and drag her wailing, furious self into the kindergarten classroom, and it was Niall who missed a deadline for a piece he was writing because he had to spend the next two hours driving out to the city and hitting up Wal-Mart and Target and thrift shops for every pair of discount children’s jeans, leggings, and shorts he could find in her size.

This particularly sunny Monday morning, when Olive wakes with a fresh idea of wearing a summer dress to camp like her friend Willa and Z looks up from where he’s standing over the toaster with wide, fear-rimmed eyes, Niall only has to wink at him and click his tongue. He learned his lesson from last year’s fashion fiasco, and he’ll be damned if he’s not prepared. Z thought he gave away all of Olive’s old dresses, but Niall managed to save a couple when his back was turned. Just in case.

Turns out Olive’s much taller than she was last year, and Niall is a smidge embarrassed to drop her off at camp with a denim dress that now falls above her mid-thigh with straps barely able to be buttoned in the last possible hole, but Olive insists and she rules the roost. He’ll call Trisha, Z’s mother, and ask her to take Olive to shop around at Goodwill on the weekend.

But first, he might as well drop by Gram and Gramps’ place to see if Gram can do any digging for him. Gram keeps everything, from the pot roast recipe she cut out of the back pages of the Charleston Gazette in 1979 to her runaway daughter’s baby clothes. She probably has a few dresses kicking around, and so long as they’re not too outdated (not that Niall would really know), he’ll take them for Olive. Old clothes and trinkets are about all Mandy Horan’s been good for recently.

“These here are summer dresses,” Gram tells him matter-of-factly once she’s pulled an array of options out of Mandy’s old closet. She lays them over the peacock chair in the living room, making a point to separate them from the rest. “Now, the dresses with wide straps or sleeves can be worn as they are, but for these ones with thinner straps and lower necklines, I used to dress Mandy in a little t-shirt or bodysuit underneath.”

“Done.” Niall makes a move to gather them, but Gram bars him from passing by holding out her arm.

“Not yet, mister. Now, those are the summer options. You can also use some for fall, see? You’d pair ‘em with a long-sleeved tee and tights to keep her warm.”

“Think I could’ve figured that out for myself.”

“Or you could dress her in a little cardigan overtop. Do you need any of those? I’m sure I’ve got Mandy’s around here somewhere—”

“Gram!” He grabs hold of her wrist before she can escape. “It’s okay. The summer dresses are good.”

“Now, hold on.” She eyes him disapprovingly and tsks him with her tongue. “I brought out some winter dresses, too.” She gestures to another pile deposited neatly on the couch. “These ones are a bit thicker, a bit longer. See, this one here’s made of wool—”

“I’m gonna stick with just the summer dresses for now. By winter, Olive’ll probably be off dresses again and into morphsuits or something.”

“What’s a morphsuit?”

“It’s a—nevermind. Thanks for this, Gram. I should get going. I’ll say bye to Gramps on my way out.”

“He’s having a good day.” Niall gathers the dresses on their hangers in his arms as Gram grumbles behind him, “Which should make us all happy, but I think he wakes up hoping to feel lousy as a trainwreck so he gets a visit from you and your friend Ari.”

Niall laughs. “I’ll bring her ‘round any old time. She likes him, too.”

Gram lets out a sarcastic, “Ha!”, causing him to pause and slowly turn his head with a confused frown. Gram gives his shoulder a light push and, with a wry grin, elaborates, “I don’t think it’s the sickly old man she likes. Think she might have a soft spot for his grandson.”

Niall shrugs, hugging the dresses tighter to his chest. “Maybe, huh?”

“And you, Mr. I-Don’t-Date-In-Town?”

He rolls his eyes. “She’s not from town.”

“She’s in the damn thing.”

With a chuckle, he shakes his head and moves out of the room. “I don’t know. Maybe I have soft spot for her, too.”

“Mm hmm.” Gram’s hum affirms his claim with confidence. “I see you, boy. First time you’ve brought someone new ‘round these parts since you were in high school.”

“Just friends, Gram. She’s new to town, that’s all.”

“You just be careful. She’s a nice girl, but you know newbies only ever pass through here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She leans against the doorframe as Niall slips on his shoes at the entrance. “It means,” she sighs, “don’t go givin’ her your heart, because odds are she ain’t here to stay and she’ll take it with her when she leaves.”

Niall nods robotically and then hitches the dresses over one elbow. He uses his thumb to make a cross over his chest. “Heart’s safe,” he promises, leaning forward to kiss Gram on the cheek. “Trust me. She doesn’t even want it.”

He has a piece to pull together at home about the best mobile apps to create drum sequencer tracks, but he’s driving through town and there just happens to be an empty spot across the street from Kalene’s. It takes him a couple of minutes to parallel park, and he may or may not nudge the station wagon behind him, but with the truck tucked away on the side of the road, Niall hops out, looks for traffic, and slots his keys into his pocket as he confidently crosses the street.

If he gave it more thought, he might reason that he shouldn’t feel confident at all, but that’s not his way. Gram always said his boldness would kill him – it’s certainly caused some inconveniences so far. She says he never thinks enough about how things look to other people, and that’s where he gets himself in trouble. And maybe at this point he should think about how it looks to Ari, who explicitly stated she wasn’t looking for anything with anyone in this sleepy hollow town, when he shows up at her place of work less than twelve hours after they last saw one another. Maybe he should think about how that might put her off or cause her to pull back.

The problem is that Niall’s mind has never done much of his thinking for him. His heart is his compass and he always trusts north. His brain keeps his lips shut – it controls that much – but his heart is closer to his feet, and so when he puts one foot in front of the other, it’s because his heart told them it was the right way to go.

So he doesn’t think about how it might look to Ari when he opens the door to the shop and the little garden bells jingle above his head to announce his arrival. He doesn’t think she may find him overbearing or possessive, rude to stop by uninvited or too desperate and lonely to entertain himself for a few short hours. Because he’s not any of those things. He just likes her. He’ll keep his lips from making that explicitly clear, but he figures his feet will do the talking for him.

“Now here’s a face I haven’t seen before,” comes a calm, husky voice from a table surrounded in greenery.

Niall stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he approaches the cash desk. “Enough with the BS, Kalene,” he says, faking a scornful expression. “You saw this face every day from first to sixth grade. You had my milk order memorized.”

“One percent on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and on Wednesdays, you had chocolate,” she recites from memory.

Lips pressed together, Niall grins. “You mean Bon Jovi day.”

“What’s that?”

A beat passes in which he allows her to think it through. When she raises her brows, coming up empty, he elaborates, “Whoa, we’re halfway there?”

Kalene rounds the counter with a chuckle, arms outstretched. Niall returns the embrace, surprised to catch a whiff of fresh pine. When she was the milk lady at Tillson Elementary, just a teen herself, Niall recalls the familiar scent of vanilla to cover up sour milk stained into her apron.

“Here’s a face I haven’t seen before in my shop, is what I meant to say.” Kalene pulls back and arches an eyebrow as she takes Niall in. He can’t quite read her expression – though if he guessed, he’d colour her unimpressed – but his grin doesn’t falter under her scrutiny.

“That may be true,” he agrees, “but what’s a guy like me gonna do with flowers?”

“Plants, too, honey,” she corrects him, softly patting his cheek. “How about surprise your Gram with a thoughtful gift? Bring a plant to your Gramps when he’s in hospital? Decorate that home of yours with life and oxygen? And don’t even try to tell me you ain’t got a little girl at home who would’ve loved to wear a little corsage for her kindergarten graduation last spring.”

“Damn. All right,” he chuckles, “thanks for the guilt trip.”

“No guilt, just advice.” Kalene breezes past him to rearrange a ficus in the window, the fringes dangling from her long shawl grazing Niall’s arm and causing goosebumps. “Now tell me why you’re here today.”

“Uh…” he trails, removing one hand from his pocket to rub the back of his neck, “well, nothing against plants or anything, but I came by to say hi to a friend, that’s all.”

Lips pursed in scepticism, Kalene glances over her shoulder. “I know you don’t mean me.”

“Not that you’re not my friend,” he adds hastily. “You are, it’s just—”

“Ariana’s in the greenhouse,” Kalene interrupts, her slow smile curling towards dimples. She gestures vaguely toward the back of the shop.

“Right.” Niall gives her an awkward thumbs-up. “Okay. Thanks.”

“It’s her favourite place,” she continues as Niall wanders toward the plastic screen, too filmy with condensation to see through.

“Yeah?” he asks absently, squinting to see anything more than green beyond the plastic.

“You go in there, you make sure it stays sacred for her.”

He pauses, nearly tripping over his own feet as he comes to a halt. Refusing to look back, he says, “I’m just saying hi.”

“Not my business. All I’m saying is you keep her safe space the way it is, and not just in your mind – hers, too.”

Niall nods, though he’s sure Kalene’s still preoccupied fluffing up the leaves of her ficus. “Okay. I will.”

Pulling back the screen separating the shop from the greenhouse, he’s immediately hit with a wave of humidity. It’s like stepping off a plane in Florida summer after spending the winter in Wisconsin. Niall instantly wipes his brow, certain he’s already begun to perspire, but all in all, the room is nice. Once the screen closes behind him, the sound evaporates as if sucked out in a vaccuum. It’s like being in a bubble, able to see but unable to feel or hear what’s going on outside, only in tune with the rustle of the leaves.

If this is Ari’s favourite place, Niall might understand why. It’s a step inside her mind.

Subconsciously, Niall clears his throat. From where she stands next to a cluster of pink geraniums, Ari looks over. Though clearly taken aback by his presence, a smile crosses her face.

“Hey,” she greets him softly.

Tension steams from his shoulders at her calm tone. “Hey.”

Her hands fall away from the geraniums, snippers held blade-first. “Did you come to purchase a plant for your plant-less home?”

Niall hesitates. “Yeah,” he says with a grin. “Got any palm trees? I’m thinking Olive would like one right next to her bed, sleep under the fronds.”

“No palm trees,” Ari says, approaching him with a twinkle of humour in her eye. “No olive trees, either.”

“Damn. Guess I’ll just be on my way, then.”

“Sorry we couldn’t fulfill your needs.”

He pretends to walk away and then turns around with a laugh. “In all honesty, Z would probably kill me if I came home with anything bigger than a sprout.”

“How come?”

“Dunno.” He shrugs, slipping his hands into his pockets once again. “Plants, you know? Gotta water ‘em, make sure they’re warm, give ‘em lots of sunlight, replace the soil… it’s a lot of commitment.”

Ari waits for him to elaborate, but when silence lays between them, she raises her brows until there are creases lining her forehead. “You do remember that the two of you have successfully raised a child for five years, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” He slumps. “I guess kids require around the same level of care as plants.”

“Sort of.” She giggles. “So, if you’re not here for a leafy friend… what brings you?”

“Just, you know. In the area, so.” His demure shrug keeps her giggling.

“Mm hmm. Flower shop’s pretty irresistible when you’re already in town.”

“Exactly. I felt like submerging my entire body in the Amazon rainforest, so I thought to myself: go and check out Kalene’s greenhouse. Same effect.”

Ari grins again, taking her snippers out to continue her pruning. “The plants love it, though.”

“So do I. You kidding? Break a sweat every day, they say.”

“Yeah. Not sure this is quite what they meant.”

Unaffected, Niall leans against a wall of philodendrons and watches Ari at work. With her dark hair tied in a ponytail and her sleeves rolled to her elbows, she keeps her tongue poised at the corner of her mouth as she works, rooting through the leaves of the geraniums to shear their dead leaves.

“How was work last night?” she asks as she works, eyes on the plants.

“Good. Minimal heckling,” he replies.

“Are you usually heckled?”

“Occasionally. Depends on the crowd.”

“Like Luke’s crowd?”

She poses her question without much thought, so Niall tries not to be awkward in his response.

“Yeah. Those guys aren’t my biggest fans. Never expect tips when they show up for a few rounds.”

After snipping a few branches in succession, Ari tugs them out of the plant and casts them to a small bin beside her. “Why is there so much animosity between you?”

“Tffff.” Niall makes a sound upon an exhale that more of less reflects his loss of words. “It’s a small town. If someone pisses you off in high school, you hate ‘em forever.”

Ari pauses, looking upwards as a smile crosses her face. She gives Niall a curious glance. “What did you do to piss them off in high school?”

He’s not sure how she inferred correctly, but he can’t throw her off his scent now. So he ruffles his hand through his hair and brushes it off with, “Teenager stuff.”

“What’s teenager stuff?”

“It’s not just me,” he adds hastily. “They act the same towards Z if they see him in public. It’s a popular kids versus nerds situation. You never get over it in this town. You never outlive who you used to be. People remember forever, and they won’t let you forget, either.”

“You and Zayn weren’t nerds,” Ari says as if the idea is ridiculous.

“Sure we were. Not smart nerds – music nerds. Stoner nerds who didn’t play football and didn’t have a chance at getting laid. The nerds who sat at the back of the classroom and passed notes back and forth about how to sneak out of the house and get to the city for a concert on the weekend. The nerds who didn’t go to football games and tailgate parties on Friday nights because we were in my garage teaching ourselves shitty music at band practice.”

“So that’s worth them teasing you now – because you didn’t like sports in high school?”

Niall’s about to go along with it, to say yeah, it’s fucked up, but that’s how it is here, but he stops himself. “No. There’s more to it than that.”

She looks over, snippers held at bay.

He sighs. “Boondocks, West Virginia. You must know there’s some prejudice here. Misunderstandings. Hatred.”

“Of what?” she asks softly.

He folds his arms across his chest. “Z’s Muslim. One of two families in the whole town. People hate and fear what they don’t understand.” Ari’s eyes lower in sympathy while Niall hardens, gritting his teeth and emitting a cold chuckle. “Of all the people who dreamed of getting out of town after high school and never coming back, he deserved that reality the most. The shit he had to put up with growing up… real horror story, at times. That’s why it’s such a shame he’s still here. I know it kills him every day – of course, he’d never leave. Not now that Olive’s in school, got a life here.”

Ari nods, slow and sympathetic. Her lips form a narrow line as she searches for the right words, but there are none. Niall tried to find them when Z told him Mel was pregnant. He tried to find them when they moved back home. When she gave birth and left Z alone with a newborn at age nineteen. There were no words then just as there are none now. Sometimes there are no words – just dead air and numb silence.

“What about you?”

“Hmm?”

She licks her lips, the words tentative on her tongue. “What would they have against you?”

Niall gulps, holding her gaze. Something about the way she stares at him tells him she already knows the answer. His stare diverts to the plant, because even if it’s not something he’s ashamed of, it hurts to tell the story plainly.

“One day,” he begins slowly, “after football practice, they found me—”

A vibration in his back pocket is accompanied by a loud jingle. Niall jerks to the side, surprised by the sound of his phone.

“Jesus. Sorry,” he breathes, catching his breath as he fishes it from his pocket. Z’s name appears on the screen. He furrows his brows in apology to Ari as he answers. “What’s up?”

“Where are you?” is Z’s short reply.

“Downtown. Why?”

“You said you’d be here.”

“Where?”

“My dad’s. The lunch.”

“It’s not until noon—” Niall pulls the cell away from his face to check the time, eyes bugging out of his head. He draws it back to his ear. “Shit. That’s in two minutes. Okay, I’m coming.”

“You forgot?”

“No. I didn’t,” he promises. “Time got away from me. Just… save me a seat. Be there in ten.”

Z grumbles on the other end of the line, but Niall ends the conversation before he can say anything cutting.

“That was Z,” Niall explains, stuffing his phone into his pocket and gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I was supposed to meet him. I forgot. I gotta go.”

Ari blinks. “Oh. Okay?”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he says with a shake of his head. “We were in the middle of something, and I just—”

“It’s okay. We’ll talk later,” she assures him with a smile.

“Yeah. Yes!” he exclaims as he begins to back up. “Can we? Talk later, I mean?”

If Ari’s put off or taken aback, it doesn’t show. “Yeah,” she chuckles. “I’m off at two.”

He hisses through his teeth. “I gotta be at Elmwood Farms at two-thirty. Pick Olive up from camp.”

“Okay.” She shrugs. “Well, maybe tomorrow we can—”

“D’you wanna come?” he blurts out. “Sorry for interrupting. I saw where you were going and I wanted to get in ahead of you.”

An explosion of laughter racks from her gut, her teeth bared in an open, carefree smile. Even though he’s in a rush and stressed, Niall can’t help grinning back – God, her smile changes the very geography inside him. He can already feel the mountains in his heart shifting to make room for it.

“Um… yes.”

Though he’s already backed up to the plastic screen, Niall freezes to raise a sceptical eyebrow. “You don’t sound sure.”

“No, I…” She throws up an arm in surrender. “I had a thing with Rosen, but we can do it later. Wedding stuff, that’s all.”

“Okay.” He’d stay and gauge her certainty and willingness, but he hasn’t got the time for it anymore. He points at her and clicks his tongue with a confidence only his heart possesses, saying, “See you at two.”

He doesn’t stick around to hear a reply. The plastic screen closes behind him, sealing Ari in her safe place and him outside of it. He hollers a goodbye at Kalene, now with a customer, as he darts around a potted bonsai and jingles the bells above upon his rapid exit of the shop.

He slams the pedal to the floor on his drive across town, texting Z his estimated time of arrival while keeping his eyes on the road. The buckles in Olive’s carseat swing and clash every time he winds around a curve.

He’s ten minutes late by the time he parks sloppily in the last available spot in the lot. He nearly forgets his keys in the ignition, but swerves around on his heel before the door has shut and grabs them with a cry of frustration. Then he sprints across the lot at the same time he tucks his shirt into his shorts, only slowing to a calm and collected walk once he’s under the sign reading Taste of Mumbai.

Niall pauses at the entrance, leaning forward on the balls of his feet as he scans the tables in the restaurant. He didn’t confirm with Z that they were meeting here, he only assumed – Mr. Malik doesn’t believe in going out for meals, but when he does, he comes here because “they serve a decent tikka masala.”

He spots the two men not because of Z, but because he recognizes Mr. Malik’s flamboyant hand gestures even from the back of his head. Z, clearly in the midst of being lectured, glances up as Niall approaches. He doesn’t acknowledge him, eyes quickly returning to his father’s face, but he scoots over on the bench as he continues to nod. It leaves enough room for Niall to slide in beside him.

“Mr. Malik – good afternoon,” he says, holding out his hand to shake.

The man drags his tongue over his front teeth with a slurp, irritated to have been interrupted. Nonetheless, he takes Niall’s hand with a small smile. “Niall,” he returns. “Zayn mentioned you might be joining us.”

“Yeah. I go nuts over these samosas. I mean, they’re nothing like Trisha’s daal—” he eyes Z with a powerful nod as he references his mother “—but for a restaurant, they’re top notch.”

Z’s father watches him carefully as he unravels the napkin containing a fork and knife and spreads it across his lap, prepared to eat. Gram would be proud – those are the manners she taught him, after all – but Mr. Malik is less impressed.

Yaser Malik is not a simple man, and that’s not something one says often in these parts. People who call Tillson City home tend to like their beer in tall boys, their cornbread fresh out of the oven, and their men simple. Then again, Yaser never intended to call Tillson City home, and perhaps that’s the source of the complexity of his character.

Yaser’s parents – Z’s Daadi and Daada – emigrated from Pakistan in the mid-1960’s. They lived in a cockroach-infested cardboard box of an apartment in Manhattan for five years while they both worked long hours doing backbreaking manual labour in factories. They were careful with their money, tracking every cent and often skipping meals and living without heat, sometimes even water in order to save up and get the hell out of there. Farmers by birth and by trade, they desired nothing more than a quiet, safe place to live where they could provide for themselves. So, once Yaser and his brothers were born, Daadi and Daada quit their jobs and bought a modest plot of land in rural Arkansas with the intention of giving their boys a better life.

In many respects, they succeeded. All of the boys grew up, went to school, and secured employment for themselves. But their lives were not easy – food was always on their plates, but poverty affected them in other ways, and they were teased in school not just because they were of a different culture but because they couldn’t afford simple things: the shoes, the clothes, the accessories all the other kids had.

Yaser ached to get out. As the youngest child, he’d never been made to work around the farm as much as his brothers, and it wasn’t in his blood. Where his brothers looked over acres of green grass and saw potential – crops, livestock, sustenance – Yaser looked at a plot of land and saw nothing. To him, it was empty space.

As soon as he was grown and educated, he said goodbye to his family and set off to his birthplace: New York City, the land of opportunity. He saw himself in crisp blazers with holographic ties, carrying his briefcase down Wall Street to make more money in a day than his family had ever had in their account at one time. He didn’t feel he was betraying his family by abandoning the farm – after all, this was what they’d wanted for their sons, wasn’t it? This was why they came to America: to be something more than what they were in a country that could provide it. If anything, he felt he was fulfilling his destiny to be a businessman in the greatest city in the world. So one day at the end of the 80’s, he packed his second-hand car bought with his own money from working at the grocer’s in town and set off to the north to become who he was supposed to be.

He never made it there. Two days into his journey, he stopped at a diner for a quick bite to eat in a town whose name he couldn’t remember and in a state too similar to his home of Arkansas to care for. His server was a young Trisha Gilbert – beautiful, funny, and warm, a native of the town for generations – and that’s where the story either begins or ends, depending on the lens through which it’s examined. Yaser was born in New York City, but he wouldn’t set foot there again until his only son, Zayn, moved into an NYU dorm with his best friend Niall for college.

Yaser is not a simple man. And Niall understands – at least, he tries to, especially when Yaser and Z butt heads. At the core of it, Yaser wants more for his son, but more is a subjective term and one he’s defined internally and only in reference to himself. He went batshit crazy when Trisha enrolled Z in voice lessons in sixth grade. In high school, Trisha would only let them have band practice at their house when Yaser was out, because his own son pissing his potential away on song and verse was too much for him to stand. And he nearly lost every goddamn marble in his collection when Z announced his intention to study music in college.

With her even temper and coaxing manner and charm, Trisha won every battle, to Yaser’s flummoxed discontent. But she lost the last one. Maybe the most important one. Z enrolled in Economics at NYU, a decision he’d made with Yaser’s support. Play your music on the side, Yaser coached him, but secure a future for yourself.

Niall thinks Economics is the reason it was so easy for Z to leave after the first year and never go back. Mel’s pregnancy helped, of course. But had he pursued music? Maybe he’d still be in the city now, signed to a record label for his killer voice and doing photo shoots for his killer looks.

Instead, he’s firmly settled where he started in podunk West Virginia with a kid attached to his hip and an insurance broker’s licensing exam to study for.

Yaser loves his son, this Niall knows. But it’s a different kind of love than the love Gram and Gramps have for him, and a different kind of love than what Z has for Olive. Yaser has vested himself in Z. If Z succeeds in Yaser’s dreams for him, then Yaser’s personal failures become worthwhile. If Z fails, then Yaser’s life counts for nothing.

While Niall is dunking his third mini samosa in tamarind sauce and Z is in the process of gulping water to dull the burn of his unexpectedly spicy pyazi, Yaser launches his operation.

“You’re too smart for this administrative nonsense,” he says, wiping his chin with his napkin and then waving it behind him in a gesture. “Don’t you get bored?”

“It’s all right,” Z says with a shrug, though his thigh tenses against Niall’s. “While I’m finishing my coursework, it’s a good way to keep my foot in the door.”

“Keep your foot in the door,” Yaser scoffs. “What you should be doing is throwing that door open, stepping inside, and saying ‘I belong here. Carve out a space for me.’”

Niall shoves the entire samosa into his mouth, blinking hard as it sears his tongue. It’s the only way to keep himself from laughing at Yaser’s instruction – Z wouldn’t slam a door or demand to be heard in a room full of unknowns if it was his last hour on earth. He goes about life quietly, like a squirrel on a roof – he’d never dream of climbing through the window for warmth or a meal so long as he can find a few acorns up there.

“They like me in the office. My boss always gives me good performance reviews; she knows I’m taking classes outside of working hours to move up in the company.” Z’s voice is mellow and practiced, a far cry from the white knuckles with which he holds his fork. “For now, with Olive still in kindergarten, it’s the perfect situation.”

“Perfect situation? What perfect situation? She gets sick and has to go to the hospital, what do you do? How do you pay for that?” Yaser demands.

“Why would she get sick like that? She’s perfectly healthy,” Z argues.

“She’s up to date on all her vaccines,” Niall chips in. “Got her vaccination card at home as proof.”

Yaser sends a bored glance Niall’s way before returning his attention to Z. “She’s a child. Children get sick. What if she falls and breaks her arm? What then? Who pays for that? What if she chips a tooth? What if she goes through a growth spurt and you have to buy her a whole new wardrobe?”

With the barrage of questions showing no sign of stopping, Niall glances timidly at Z. With eyes fixed on his father, Z does not look back – but he gulps pointedly, his rigid jaw giving way to his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His knee jiggles rapidly under the table, his jitters transferring to Niall.

“Where I am now, I can get to her right away if there’s an emergency,” Z explains. “That’s the perfect situation. Her baba’s gonna be right by her side whenever she needs him, not an hour away at a desk in the city. Don’t you see?”

“But what can you do for her? What can you offer her when she’s sick and crying?”

Z huffs and sits back in his booth, his appetizer abandoned. “Comfort.”

Under the table, Niall grasps Z’s thigh and holds it in place, willing him to stop himself from getting worked up. Z struggles at first, his knee begging to jerk.

“Comfort.” Yaser snorts. “You gonna comfort her through seventy-two hours of a sickness when you could have a doctor cure her in two?”

Z’s eyes blacken and his cheeks flush as he struggles to answer the question and quells his rage at his father for asking it in the first place. Niall decides to take over – after all, Z wanted him here for a reason.

“We do okay for ourselves, Mr. Malik,” he says as cheerfully as he can. Almost instantly, a hand covers his own on Z’s thigh. “With the two of us working steady, we bring home enough to support Olive and give her everything she needs. Z’s working towards getting licensed, and when he is, we’ll go from there – but for now, we’re making it work. And Olive’s happy and healthy and safe.”

Z interlocks their fingers and holds on tight.

“Niall,” Yaser says, finally paying him a lick of attention, “you’ve always been a good friend to Zayn – the best friend he’s ever had. But let’s not pretend you don’t have plans of your own. A future to chase. You speak as though you and my son are husband and wife, but let’s be honest: you’re a temporary fixture. I don’t want Zayn or Olive to rely on you, especially not financially. When you leave, it will be hard enough for them.”

Z’s fingers go limp. Niall swallows the lump in his throat and says, with conviction, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Of course you will,” Yaser replies with a scoff. “What, this is your life? To live with my son and care for his child? This is what you dreamed for yourself?”

Niall blinks away the sting and briefly glances at Z. He’s cringing, tongue travelling between his teeth, eyes trained to the table and unmoving, not even when Niall gives him a nudge with his thigh.

So Niall is the one who stands his ground. Gramps always said he’d better learn to do it himself because he couldn’t expect anyone else to do it for him.

“I love Olive. I treat her like she’s my own kid.”

“But she’s not,” Yaser reminds him, his voice melting into something soft and patient. Niall is thrown off by his change of tone. “And deep down, your attachment to her knows that. It’s not biological; it’s not paternal. You have your own life to live, and one day, you’ll go out and live it.”

“But—”

Yaser reaches across the table to take hold of Niall’s forearm, effectively silencing his argument. “It doesn’t diminish what you’ve done for Zayn and for our family. But Niall, understand that when I think of my son’s future, and the future of my sweet poti, I must factor you out of the equation.”

Niall stares into Yaser’s eyes and finds them hard as rock. He’s not budging an inch. He stands on years of his own dreams left out in the cold and rain like yesterday’s laundry on the line, and Niall knows it’s futile to attempt to change his perspective.

Some people, like Yaser, want the sky to crack open and the stars to rain down on them, the world to turn because they make it turn. Other people, like Niall, are happy enough to look at the stars from afar, because their orbit revolves around just one on Earth, and he’s enough.

Z keeps his hand protectively over Niall’s, but he does not say a word.

“You do all the pick-ups?” Ari asks, her hand tentatively stroking the long nose of a coppery quarter horse over the fence.

“Pretty much. Z works nine-to-five and I work from home, so.” Niall shrugs, allowing her to infer the rest. With his back to the fence and his elbows resting on the top rung, he crosses one ankle over the other. “Even if he had the time, though, he wouldn’t do pick-ups from camp. Horses make him nervous.”

He and Ari wait near the small parking area of Elmwood Farms with a number of mothers and fathers here to pick up their kids from day camp. Horses graze in the pasture, with one particularly friendly gelding taking a liking to Ari’s soft voice and gentle hand. (Niall can’t really blame the damn horse).

Ari scrunches her nose at the horse as though it can read her facial expressions. “Really?”

“Yeah. Girl we went to school with lived at Naughton Stables just down the road. When we were in third grade, she got kicked in the face by a pony.”

Ari gasps. “Oh my God. How?”

“Just one of those things. It was pretty bad, though. She had to get airlifted to a hospital in Morgantown and have facial reconstruction surgery. There was a chance she’d be braindead. It cost her parents everything and they ended up having to sell the barn. It freaked all of us out, but Z the most. Even more now that he has Olive.”

“Why on earth would he sign her up for horse camp, then?!”

Niall shrugs again, closing his eyes briefly as the breeze rustles his hair. “Her little best friend Willa is enrolled, and Z likes to keep them together – he thinks that’s important. Plus, he feels bad leaving her with his mom all day, every day during the summer. She can’t get anything done, can’t visit his sisters out of state, and it sucks for Olive, too – she gets lonely and bored. He thought horse camp was the lesser of two evils, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. He’ll be breathing a huge sigh of relief come Friday night when this is all over.”

“Stuff like that really bothers him still?”

He nods, using one hand as a visor over his eyes when he suspects the kids are emerging from the barn like a pack, lunchboxes in their hands. “Z doesn’t forget stuff like that. He has anxiety, you know? He worries about stuff, all the hypotheticals of life. Bothers him a lot.”

“Oh.” Ari sits with that for a moment, trailing the back of her hand down the horse’s nose one last time. Then she turns with Niall to meet the kids racing towards their parents, softly adding, “Poor Zayn.”

Niall eyes her pointedly. “Poor Olive. But I work on him – we work on him together, me and her.”

In the distance, he spots Olive and Willa hand-in-hand, Olive’s hairband askew and her black hair tangled and Willa’s frizzy curls even worse. Olive’s got a new bandage on her knee that Z will notice right away.

Willa goes to her mom, waiting next to the family van, and Niall and Ari approach the lot to meet Olive and a camp counselor, a girl in her late teens.

“How ya doin’, squidge?” Niall asks, crouching to her level. Olive smiles, her baby teeth jutting past her lower lip as she walks straight into his arms and rests her chin atop his shoulder where it fits comfortably. Niall rubs her back and presses a kiss to the side of her head before standing. Ari waves at Olive, who reaches out to take Ari’s hand.

“You’re Olive’s dad?” asks the camp counselor with thinly-veiled curiosity. Her eyes dart from Niall to Ari to Olive in utmost confusion.

“Guardian,” Niall corrects her. “Niall Horan – my name’s on Olive’s forms. I got my ID, if you want—”

“No, it’s okay.” She stops him as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, apologetic to have even suggested it. Niall’s not the least bit offended. On the contrary, he’s used to it. He and Olive look nothing alike and don’t share a surname. People have a right to be suspicious, he supposes. Better suspicious than apathetic. “Olive was great today. She rode a pony up to a trot – isn’t that right, Olive?”

“Yep. Her name’s Marigold,” Olive tells Ari pointedly.

“That’s pretty,” Ari replies. “Sounds like you had fun, Olive.”

“One thing, though,” the counselor says, cringing as if she regrets what she’s about to say. She leans forward, speaking only to Niall. “It’s a bit difficult for Olive to participate in all the activities when she’s wearing something so restrictive.”

“The dress?” Niall barely bats an eyelash. “I know. She insisted. We sent her off today with leggings, though – they’re in her bag.”

“No, of course. And she was happy to change into them when the time came. But there are only a few counselors, so if one of us has to go with her to change, that’s one less counselor watching a lot of kids. If she could come prepared tomorrow…” she trails off, hesitant to complete her sentence. She’s young and embarrassed, probably put up to this by her boss.

Niall can’t blame her, but he also can’t make any promises. “I’ll try,” he says with a sigh. He ruffles Olive’s hair and cradles her head against his hip, adding, “It’s not really up to me, though, is it Olive?”

Whether she’s been following the conversation or not, Olive confidently replies, “Nope!”

As Olive begins to drag Ari to the pickup, Niall gives the counselor an apologetic shrug. Then he pats himself down, finds his keys in the breast pocket of his t-shirt, and climbs into the truck, announcing, “Let’s rock and fu—let’s rock ‘n roll.”

Ari, as it turns out, has a few tricks up her sleeve when it comes to coercing Olive into eating her vegetables. Z, not a huge fan to begin with, doesn’t tend to include vegetables in his prepared meals. Niall, taking after Gram, relies on heavy doses of butter to add that warm southern heartiness. Neither are particularly healthy options for a five year-old. But as Niall pan-sears chicken and gets the rice simmering on the stove, Ari glazes cooked carrots in maple syrup and arranges the salad on Olive’s plate to resemble a bouquet of flowers, with sliced celery stalks as stems and cucumbers arranged as petals with a cherry tomato in the center.

Z and Niall can barely contain their shock as Olive sits at the dinner table and demolishes every last leaf and root on her plate, leaving only a few grains of rice in her wake.

“It’s the only way my sister ate veggies growing up, too,” Ari offers in explanation.

“What’s your sister’s name?” asks Olive, sucking the maple glaze off the tips of her index and middle fingers.

“Her name is Rosen,” Ari says with a smile. “My mom used to make her vegetable roses out of radishes or red cabbage.”

“Yuck,” says Olive.

“I’ll make one for you someday,” Ari tells her, unfazed. “They’re pretty – I think you’ll like them.”

Olive considers this for a moment before she changes her entire perspective, shrugging and saying, “Okay.”

Niall laughs, reaching over to pat her head and fix her hair band in the process.

After Z gives Olive a bath, he calls Niall upstairs for the bedtime ritual and doesn’t seem to mind that Ari trails after him and lingers in the doorway, arms folded across her chest and a patient smile on her face.

“The Mighty Jungle!” Olive exclaims as soon as she’s tucked into bed and propped up on her pillows.

Z looks to Niall, rolling his eyes. “How about the buttercup song instead? You like that one.”

“No, I want The Mighty Jungle!” Olive insists. “Please, Baba? Please, please, pleeeeease?”

Z sighs, collapsing on the end of Olive’s bed near her feet. Hunched over on his knees, he groans, “Niall, get me my keyboard.”

Niall’s happy to oblige, setting his guitar aside and squeezing past Ari in the doorway to fetch the keyboard from Z’s closet. He also takes the frame drum he stores in there for safekeeping, plastering a gleaming smile on his face as he blazes past Ari into the room.

Z huffs as he turns on the switch for his mini keyboard, warming up his fingers with a scale. Niall pulls forward the chair in the corner for Ari and, once she’s sitting, he perches against Olive’s dresser, a twinkle in his eye. He doesn’t mind repeating songs as much as Z does, even if they’re childish and annoying. After all, he makes a living out of playing the same songs over and over again. The thrill of performing to an audience is what makes every performance different, not necessarily the music itself.

“Ready?” Z asks, eyes locked on Niall’s.

Niall nods and counts down for him. “One, two, three—”

Z launches immediately into an unpretentious falsetto, clear and practiced. He doesn’t need more of a cue than that. They’ve played this song for Olive a hundred times, each time a rehearsal for the next. Niall laughs to himself when he thinks of how much it kills Z inside to know this performance is the one on which his daughter will most fondly reminisce when she’s older.

Once Z finishes the first bar, Niall comes in with his handheld drum, beating rhythmically and beginning to chant: “A-weem-a-way, a-weem-a-way, a-weem-a-way, a-weem-a-way…”

Olive sits upright in bed, a great big grin on her tiny face as she watches Niall’s movements in fascination. She mouths along with the chant, transfixed by the drum as she always is.

Until Z jumps in with the keyboard and the first verse. Then her eyes shift to him, and if he’s honest with himself, so do Niall’s. He doesn’t have to glance at Ari to know where her gaze falls – Z is spellbinding when he sings, captivating because of his transcendent calm and inner peace. There are no pinches between his brows as he reaches for high notes, no great gulps of breath to fill his lungs. To Z, and to Z alone, singing is as natural as breathing.

And it’s a beautiful thing to behold. Niall knows it, Ari knows it, and at five years old, Olive knows it, too. Niall likes the comfort of having two others in the room with him. The looks in their eyes cement what he’s known for so long: they’re in the presence of someone special, and Z is it.

Sometimes Z gets silly with the song, especially in the last verse, because Olive loves it and because he’s so mind-numbingly bored of it by now that he has to jazz it up one way or another. Niall knows he won’t dare be free with it tonight, not with Ari in the room, so Niall takes over, rolling his R’s like a cricket in the grass and slapping his thigh in replacement of the drum and harmonizing with Z’s crooning even though it’s a stretch for him to go that high. As always, Olive is delighted, clasping her hands together and falling back on her pillow to giggle. Z smiles as he holds a note, taking his fingers off the keyboard and reaching out to comb his fingers through her hair.

Niall manages to elongate the song by one chorus, which annoys Z enough that he promptly stops playing the keyboard when Niall dares to go for more. The song then ends abruptly in a laugh from Niall, applause from Ari, and an exuberant proclamation (“Again!”) from Olive.

“No way, jose,” Z denies her softly. “You’ll never get to sleep if we do it again.”

“Yes I will! I’ll close my eyes, see?” Olive squeezes her eyes shut tight. After exactly two seconds, she opens an eye for a peek.

“Uh-uh. How about I read you a story? That one you like about the mouse family living in a hole in the wall?”

Resolute, Olive shakes her head with a frown. “Noooo,” she whines, wounded by his suggestion. “Another song. Pleeeeease, Baba?”

Groaning, Z looks to Niall. Both of them are hopeless at putting their foot down when Olive pleads. The dangerous part is that Olive knows it and isn’t afraid to exploit it.

Niall shrugs and sets the drum on the dresser in favour of picking up his guitar. He ducks his head to swing the strap over his neck and then gets it comfortable in his lap. He strums a few chords before nodding at Z, who silently understands to follow Niall’s lead.

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”

A smile of recognition crosses Ari’s face. Niall sees it from the corner of his eye and grins at her, satisfied that after singing the first line, Z can take the lead. He’s right – Z launches comfortably into the rest of the first verse, smoothing back Olive’s hair as he sings that the answer is blowing in the wind. Z doesn’t really care for Bob Dylan, but Niall does, and over the years Z’s picked up enough.

They know each other like that.

It’s a quiet little song, and it serves the purpose of winding Olive down after a long day. She settles back against the pillows and takes her thumbnail between her teeth, eyes on her father as he croons.

He gets stuck on the third verse, humming along to signal he’s lost, and Niall picks up where Z left off. Olive’s stare stays fixed on Z as he tucks her in tighter alongside her favourite stuffed bear, and then he joins Niall in the final chorus.

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” Niall sings to Z. “The answer is blowin’ in the wind,” Z sings to Olive.

“Even I’m sleepy now,” Ari admits, stifling a yawn as the song comes to a close. She stands, waiting for Niall to bend down and peck Olive on the cheek before following him out the door. “Goodnight, Olive.”

“Goodnight, Ari!”

Z puts his finger to his lips to shush her, smiling warmly at his daughter as Niall and Ari leave the room.

With his guitar slung around his back like a knapsack, Niall trails Ari into the kitchen. She looms over the dishrack with all the clean dishes they washed just after dinner, gathering a few in her hands and humming Bob Dylan to herself as she opens a few kitchen cupboards to determine their proper place. The sight of it sets Niall’s heart on fire, stupidly. He’s embarrassed by how much it gets to him, a person he likes performing a domestic task in his own home. Because she doesn’t have to; she doesn’t live here. Maybe she just likes him.

His head tells him he shouldn’t, but his feet propel him forward until he’s crowding in behind her at the counter and she’s spinning around to face him, their chests allowing only enough space between them so that both are able to inhale. But Niall stops breathing, really, as he looks down at her – this smart, beautiful, interesting girl – and swallows a thick lump of desire in his throat when her eyes are trained to his chest. She looks down, her hair falling over her shoulders, but just when Niall’s brain finds a way to his feet and convinces them to back away, she looks up and meets his gaze, clear and bright.

She surges up to meet him before he’s ready and her lips drag up his chin before they meet in a kiss. Niall feels no instinct to recoil and instead his hands find her shoulders to steady her, letting her open up to him before he licks into her mouth and brings his palms to her cheeks. Ari’s head tips back, one of her hands locking lightly around Niall’s wrist, the other clutching the fabric of his t-shirt in a fist. She exhales steadily onto his cupid’s bow, heart not skipping so much as a beat when she pulls him closer.

Niall feels a change, though. He feels the tightness in his chest and the whirlwind in his gut and the clot in his throat, and maybe it’s because it’s been so long or he’s forgotten what to do, but he convinces himself it’s because it’s Ari, and maybe it’s not so strange that she can light a fire in someone else even if she can’t light one within herself.

Ari parts from him slowly, her eyes fluttering open before his can budge from dreamland. Her fist knocks gently against his side and his shirt loosens in her grasp. Niall follows her gaze over his shoulder, to where Z has hopped down the stairs only to freeze, wordless, on the bottom step. Niall opens his mouth to speak, but Z shakes his head quickly and murmurs an apology before he jogs back up.

Niall doesn’t know what that means.

He turns back to Ari, whose eyes are on his, peering at him while holding an anticipatory breath. He releases a breath of his own and smiles, pulling her into him again.

She stops him, a hand on his chest, and murmurs, “I don’t want to get in the middle of anything.”

“You’re not.” Z’s moody and hesitant of warming to anyone new, but he’s made it clear that there was never anything to get in the middle of.

“You sure of that?” She raises a brow, palm flattening over his heart.

He should tell her that hummingbird beat is for her, and not due to getting caught, but Niall’s never been eloquent when it comes to expressing how he feels. His actions do the talking for him, and so he nods, one hand falling to grip her hip as his thumb traces the outline of her bottom lip like it’s a soft fleece, foreign to his skin.

He presses the lightest kiss to her lips to gauge her reaction. She doesn’t startle or pull away, but instead relaxes into him, whispering, “I like it here.”

Niall smiles to himself as a warmth, like a light from within, starts in his chest and spreads down to his toes and up to the tips of his ears, flushing his cheeks like a nip in the wind.

“Then stay?”

He’s facetious with his inflection because he doesn’t mean it as a question.

“I wish,” she breathes. Her hand drags down his chest before she looks up. “Rosen’s coming to get me. I promised her I’d lend my handwriting to address save-the-date invitations tonight.”

“Well, hot damn,” Niall mumbles, taking a hold of her hand in both of his. “Why should she get all the fun to herself?”

“Exactly.” Ari grins, her teeth a perfect line of pearls that Niall thinks, very suddenly, he wouldn’t mind sinking into his neck. “I work tomorrow, but, um… I’m free Thursday? If you’re not busy.”

“Yeah.” Niall’s embarrassingly quick with his response, but he pays it no mind. “You wanna go camping?”

She blinks. “What?”

“Camping,” he repeats. “Going this weekend. Can you come?”

“Um, no,” she giggles. “I don’t even have… I don’t have a sleeping bag or a tent or—”

“I’ve got all that stuff. Gramps used to take me all the time when I was a kid. It’s,” he shakes his head and rubs the back of his neck, “sorry, I should explain. Every summer me and the gang – a few friends from high school – we go camping up north in the state park. We’re going this weekend and I just thought it’d be fun if you came.” He pauses. Unable to read her expression, he adds cheerfully, “You’d have fun. I’d make it my personal responsibility.”

“I… really?”

He nods like an eager puppy.

“Isn’t it… like… dirty?”

“Yeah!” He laughs. “Dirty and gross and hot and uncomfortable. Forget addressing wedding invitations – this is fucking fun, I’m telling ya.”

Ari’s terrible at suppressing a smile, and Niall couldn’t be happier for it. Dimples shine through her cheeks as she agrees, “Okay. You sold me on dirty and gross.”

He tips her chin up to meet her in another kiss, murmuring, “My kinda gal.”

Once he’s waved Ari off at the door barefoot, Rosen eyeing him sceptically from her Honda Civic – it’s not his fault Olive flung a teaspoon of maple glaze on his white shirt – Niall checks a voicemail he didn’t realize he had. It’s GuitarWeekly letting him know he missed a deadline at five and to please have his article in by six in the morning at the latest.

It’s not great news, considering he not only missed the deadline but forgot about it entirely and hasn’t started the piece at all. Any other day, he’d lock himself in his room and write frantically until he had to leave for the bar, but tonight he’s on a high and figures he might as well get a little higher.

So he joins Z on the front stoop, where he’s lazily fumbling to roll a spliff on his lap, and digs a lighter from the pocket of his jeans. When Z’s got the joint dangling from his lip, Niall scoots closer to light it, waiting until the ends begin to split and fizzle before pulling away.

Z takes a long, steady drag, parting his lips just a crack on the exhale and shutting his eyes to savour it. Without a word, he hands the joint to Niall. Niall pretends it’s wintertime, that the smoke billowing from his lips and nostrils is actually just his breath in the crisp evening air. If there weren’t mosquitoes nipping at his ankles and if his shirt wasn’t sticky against his back, he might believe it was true.

He passes the blunt to Z and asks, “Everything okay?”

Z doesn’t answer, instead choosing to take another drag. His legs stretch out across the steps, and he extends his neck, tilting his head back to blow upwards into the air. Niall observes the tendons in his forearms disappearing into his skin, the curve of his back and the release in his shoulders. Sometimes Z just needs a few hits to take the edge off. He’s always been that way, ever since they were twelve years old and giving weed a try for the first time. Z heard it would help with his anxiety, and Niall went along with it because Z was too scared to try it alone; too scared to go with Chase Mulder, a senior, around the back of the high school to the wooded area to take his first hit. No matter what Chase Mulder said afterward, Niall didn’t hold Z’s hand – he didn’t. Their fingertips brushed a few times, and maybe those brushes weren’t always accidental, but as far as Chase will ever know, both boys went together out of equal curiosity.

When Niall moved in to help with baby Olive, Z said he didn’t smoke anymore. He wouldn’t for Olive’s sake. It wasn’t long before he found Niall’s stash – just a small one, just for lazy Saturdays and frigid Januarys – inside his coffee mug in the cupboard, the one Gram gave him reading Best Son Ever that he never used, not even once, because he didn’t want the cursive wording to fade in the dishwasher. There was a blowout that night, with Niall on the precipice of being kicked out of the house with nowhere to go and nothing to do, having dropped out of NYU for Z and Olive. Somehow, with the two of them screaming at each other, it culminated in a big fat J, the two of them huddled near the kitchen window to blow the smoke outside rather than step out of the door into snow.

Now Niall keeps his stash nestled between War and Peace and Great Expectations on the bookshelf in the living room. He’s never read either of those books. If Z read them before Niall moved in, he certainly hasn’t re-read them since.

Niall refuses the next time Z offers him a hit, instead choosing to curl up against the pillar holding the veranda together. His head knocks against the darkwashed wood and then comes to rest there. His lips turn downward into a pout as he picks at his thumbnail.

“You given any thought to what he said today?”

“Hmm?” Z gives Niall his attention, eyes already hooded.

“Your baba. You been thinking about what he said over lunch?”

Z flicks the ash off the end of the joint and purses his lips, heaving a sigh. He stares longingly at his car in the driveway, his car that could take him anywhere he wants but instead remains faithfully here.

“Maybe he’s right,” Z concedes. “Better than working in the mines.”

“Olive needs you,” Niall says quietly, head dropping against the pillar. “You can’t get to her if you’re all the way in Charleston. Not if there’s traffic or bad weather.”

“You can,” Z points out. “But I wouldn’t put that on you.”

Niall’s eyes shift to Z, but of course he’s not looking back. “Whaddya mean?” His tongue darts out over his lips. “You don’t believe him about me, do you?”

If Z says anything at all, the crickets’ night song overpowers him.

Niall’s upper lip curls into a sneer that he has to fight to reign in. He pushes away from the pillar, gritting his teeth and clutching his knees. “I don’t run away,” he says firmly. “Not when the people I love need me. I’m not my mother. And fuck you if you think I am.”

He stays out there with Z a few minutes longer. Neither of them say a word, but Niall accepts two more hits just to give his hands something to do other than ball into fists. He shouldn’t be surprised that Z is quiet as a whisper in the wind. He hates himself for expecting something more, but he does. Reassurance that Z knows who Niall is: steadfast and reliable. A promise that Z will keep doing what’s best for Olive. Or maybe, in the closeted portions of his mind that Niall doesn’t dare visit, he expected Z to ask him to stop seeing her. Ari.

Z doesn’t ask that of him. It’s probably not even in his realm of thought.

But Niall still wonders if that thought ever passes him by, a hair’s width from his consciousness. Moreover, Niall wonders if he’d listen to Z if he asked.

#tls #my writing #1dff #niall horan fan fiction

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wrestlinghasmelike-blog · 7 years

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Monday Night Raw review- January 8th, 2017

Hey everyone! Happy Monday! I hope y’all are doing well, and that your 2018′s are getting off to a great start so far! I’ve been looking forward to Raw all day, let’s hope it’s a good show!

Please let me know what you thought of the show, as well as what you thought of this review! Any type of feedback and criticism is welcomed! Thanks so much for checking this out!

Opening segment- Roman Reigns

Last week we saw Roman and Joe for the IC title, and tonight we see him holding the title high. For those of you who didn’t see the match, I’d highly recommend checking it out because it was a phenomenal match that was put on by two really great performers.The crowd reaction seems mixed on Roman tonight, but overall he’s been getting more cheers than jeers lately.

Jason Jordan is now on his way to the ring, and I just don’t have anything positive to say about him. In the words of my father, “I just want him to get hurt, or something..” No one understands this kid, or why he’s getting this push that he is. His in-ring ability is pretty alright, but he just isn’t anything special to anyone.

Seth Rollins is now on his way down, and we have all 3 members of the “New Shield” joining us in the ring. Seth is definitely playing mentor/mentee with Jordan, and I wish I could pick Seth’s brain about how he feels about it.

OH BOY HOWDY IT’S FINN AND THE CLUB OH GOD I AM DEAD

God, I hope this elevates Finn’s status on Raw. He deserves a better chance, but it’s great to see Finn with Gallows and Anderson. Aaaaaand it’s great to see Finn so happy and smiling with some gggoooodddd boooyyyssss!

It was announced that the main event is going to be a 6-Man Tag match with the Balor Club against Roman, Seth, and Jordan! Get hyped!

Sasha Banks and Bayley vs. Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville

I have to say I’m a little exhausted with seeing this matchup. Let absolution wrestle other women, because that’s what I want to see.

The match started off with the pairing of Mandy and Bayley, and I loved seeing the display of power from Mandy. I don’t think we’ve really seen her ability in the ring, and I’m glad that we’re seeing a showcase of it now. I will say, I am tired of hearing Booker T bring up the fact that Mandy was on Tough Enough a few years back. We get it Booker, you’ve seen Mandy before.

Coming back from commercial, Mandy has control over Sasha, but not for long as Sasha rallies back. Michael Cole is screaming into the mic and saying IT’S BOSS TIME and god help us. Sonya has now been tagged into the match, and I can’t wait to watch her take out Sasha. I don’t like how Sonya does the “put your hair up” thing because it really stops the flow of the match. Once she puts her hair up, however, she does deliver some really fast strikes. Mandy and Sonya really dominated through most of the match, which is usually the match style for these guys now. With a quick roll up from Sasha that turned into the Bank Statement, this less-than-exciting match is over, and the good guys get the win.

WOKEN!Matt vs. Curt Hawkins

Oh man, I love Woken Matt. It’s so weird and silly and I’m just happy that Matt has found something to do with Jeff not being here. Everyone knows that Jeff is the money maker for the Hardys, but with Woken Matt, things are great for Matt. I can’t wait for Jeff to come back to see what the brothers do next.

In the past weeks, we’ve seen Bray Wyatt and Matt go back and forth with promos, but this is the first time we’ve seen Matt wrestle like this. His style isn’t too different, but he does seem to be slowly “transforming” into something else.

There wasn’t much to say on this match, but it does suck for Curt that he’s basically a jobber. I miss him as an Edgehead, but that was a long time ago. Bray came out after Matt won the match, and it turned into a crazy contest with these two just laughing in the middle of the ring. I guess we’ll see if anything happens with these two in the upcoming weeks, and hopefully it doesn’t diffuse after the rumble.

The Return of The Miz!

He’s back everyone! With a nice introduction and song from Elias, The Miz has welcomed us to MizTV! He changed his hair back to the OG spiked haircut, which I like a lot better. I’m glad that MY INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPION has come home. I can’t wait to see what The Miz brings us in 2018.

Miz’s guests for tonight were actually the Miztourage, which is a little bit of a letdown, but it was a good goofy segment because Dallas and Axel were giving Miz stupid gifts. But I think we all wanted to see Roman and Miz have a confrontation. As we all remember, Roman beat Miz for the IC title about 2 months ago, and while Roman is a good champ, The Miz is even better.

Miz began listing his accomplishments from 2017, and when you think about it, The Miz had a great year, and he really is one of Raw’s top talents. For 2018, he’s got a daughter on the way, a new movie or two, I think he and Maryse just got a new house?? He will most likely hold another title, and he promises to take back his title.

Cedric Alexander vs. Enzo Amore for the Cruiserweight Championship

I wish that this was a match that took place last week, but Enzo was out sick and could not compete, so we get this match tonight. Earlier in the show, we saw Goldust give Cedric some advice for the match, which is pretty sweet since Goldust is such a legend and to see him support the cruiserweight division is great.

Cedric got the opportunity to face Enzo for the title after a series of Fatal Four Way matches, which he first lost, but after Rich Swann was arrested for domestic violence, the WWE called for a new match which named Cedric as the number one contender.

Right before the commercial break, Cedric took a nasty fall from the top rope after Enzo used the ref as a distraction. For me, I think Cedric oversells and he’s a little too noisy in the ring. If he takes one forearm hit, he screams his head off, and it’s too much. Enzo was setting the pace for the match so far, but Cedric made contact with a dropkick to Enzo, and Cedric looks to make a comeback. With an amazing handspring kick to Enzo, the pin from Cedric leads to a near fall, and Cedric looks close to winning. After the kick from Cedric, it looks like Enzo has a cut above his eye, and from the words of Michael Cole, “Enzo’s face is a huge mess!” It’s hard to say whether or not Enzo is actually cut, or if he bladed, because once it got wiped off, it was like Enzo never got hurt at all.

With a suicide dive from Cedric to Enzo, Enzo got counted out, and with the champion's advantage, Enzo is still the champ. This match didn’t offer anything, and it sucks that Enzo is still holding the title.

The Bar vs. Titus O’Neil and Apollo Crews

Oh god, what even is this matchup? This is The Bar y’all, they don’t want to face these guys. I always think it’s great when guys who don’t normally get TV time are seen on TV and get a story, but no one wants to see this. The crowd is dead for this match, which is just a little upsetting.

It was announced before this match that The Bar would get their title rematch at the Rumble, so let’s just see this match as a warmup for The Bar. The crowd is now more into this match now that it is at its midway point. Titus got the crowd really hyped, but The Bar took control back, but not for long as Titus got the small package on Sheamus! I’m shocked! This is a huge win!

Brock Lesnar Responds

Last week, we saw Brock and Kane have a confrontation in the middle of the ring. Tonight, Brock is apparently responding to the attack? I am surprised that we are seeing Brock two weeks in a row. He took time out of his busy days to come and bless us two weeks in a row, what a hero. I am, of course, being an asshole and I want Brock to not be champion anymore. I don’t care who it is anymore, I just don’t want Brock as champion anymore.

I am not thrilled by the idea of this triple threat match for the title at all. It just sucks that Big Man vs. Big Man vs. Big Man sells tickets better than it should.

Kane eventually came out to attack Brock as he and Paul were leaving, and it has moved from the stage to the backstage area, where Braun was waiting to attack as well, and threw Brock and Kane into equipment. He then pulled a grappling hook out of nowhere and threw it to the top of a structure, which then toppled onto both Kane and Brock. We were led to commercial by Paul Heyman screaming his head off and questioning god why he would let this happen. Hilarious.

Samoa Joe vs. Rhyno

I’m sorry, but this match was made just to kill time, and that sucks. I think the stuff with Heath and Rhyno is overplayed at this point, but they’re just hanging onto whatever they can to stay relevant. I also think this is a step backwards for Joe, since he faced Roman last week for the IC title.

Rhyno landed the first few strikes to start the match off, but Joe is now dominating the match. Joe brought Rhyno down, and Rhyno tried to fight back with some chops to the chest, but it wasn’t enough as Joe immediately reversed and took back control. A coquina clutch brought Rhyno down to his knees, and Joe gets the win by submission. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a good spot for Joe after last week, but after Joe cut a promo, he apparently is in the mind set that he was the winner last week! If this is Joe being positive towards this spot, then I hope he keeps a smile on his face.

Asuka was supposed to have a match, but Nia Jax came out and attacked her from behind. I wish it was an actual match, but I guess we’ll see this happen next week!

6-Man Tag Match- Balor Club! vs. The “Champions Club”

Oh god, I’ve been waiting for this match the entire night! Finn being in the main event two weeks in a row is just amazing and I just love, love, love this so much. He’s finally getting some recognition again, he’s being put in a good storyline, and I’m incredibly happy for him, and Gallows and Anderson as well for that matter. Corey Graves brought up their time in Japan, and they showed us a bunch of pictures of baby Finn and the club. Corey even said Being the Elite!

It looks like Seth and Finn will start the match, and no one can forget their history, stemming all the way from Summerslam 2016. The two had a really fast-paced combo of moves that took my breath away, and now Karl comes into the match. Some fast tags in the match, and now the Champion Club has control leading into the commercial break. I don’t know what to call that team, so I guess that will stick for now.

After the break we find Seth and Finn going after each other again. Seth tags in Roman, and Finn looks to be in trouble. Roman went for the superman punch, but with a distraction from Luke, Finn hits a slingblade and tags in Karl. Luke is keeping Reigns down for now with a reverse crossface, but now Reigns is trying to fight back and take Luke down. I do like the fact that Jordan has been kept out of the match entirely so far.

Reigns ends up captializing on Anderson and hits a tilt a whirl, but Anderson is able to get a tag and Roman is not. After Gallows works on Roman, Roman finds a way to superman punch Gallows to tag in Rollins. It’s now Anderson and Rollins, and Rollins looks amazing. Rollins knew he had to fight back, and he really did. Rollins tried to pick up the win for his team, but couldn’t do it. The match got a little messy as both teams distracted the ref, and he couldn’t see the tag. Jordan completely screwed the match and got in the way, but the better team won and Finn hit the Coup de Grace for the win! Hooray for the Balor Club! My heroes!

I thought this was a pretty decent show. Unfortunately, it had a lot of spots that wasted time and could’ve had been better used. I, of course, loved the main event a lot, and Finn just looked so good and so happy. Big things are happening for RAW! The 25th anniversary is happening soon!

Check in tomorrow for my Smackdown Live review! Thanks so much!

#wwe #wwe monday night raw #monday night raw #roman reigns #finn balor #the miz #balor club #samoa joe #brock lesnar #bayley #sasha banks #paige #asuka #nia jax #wrestling #reviews

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