#his grandparents could share stories of their school days which would go on to their kids which would reach xehanort

[tiramisuwithmascarpone]

Hello! I'm a 15-year-old devotee of both Lord Hermes and Lady Aphrodite who is raised in an extremely Orthodox Christian household, and I would like to share my story with you ⋆˚ʚɞ

Hi! for safety reasons I will not use the name I usually use online for this account, but you can call me Jellyfish. I live in Eastern Europe, more exactly Romania, a country whose population is 98% devoted to Christianity at the time of speaking. My mother is a perfect example. She wholeheartedly believes in God, I grew up with pictures of him and the Holy Mary all over the walls, which I wouldn't escape even at my grandparent's houses. My house always smelled of myrrh, I would carry a picture of God everywhere I went, I would pray to him before bed, go to church on every holiday, but I never felt fulfilled or connected to him in any way. I didn't truly know what I believed in. My mother was telling me all about how should I praise God, but I don't think I ever did it because I wanted to or felt connected to what she was telling me or felt like it was the life I wanted to live. When she would fight with my father, even now, she would threaten that she would run away to a monastery and become a nun. She thinks you cannot change your religion and you can not be Christian if you were born with Christian parents and raised in that environment. I did not have faith in God because I wanted to and felt connected to his message and wanted to worship his divine being, I did it because my mother felt that way. And that destroyed me.

As I grew older, I started believing less and less in God. I was struggling with going through teenagehood, fighting my own inner battles, and dealing with friendship that slowly felt like they were taking away my lifespan, and it wasn't just that I didn't have faith in a divine being (which is completely alright. Please do not believe this monologue is Anti-Christian, I believe everyone is allowed to believe and worship the one who they feel most connected and inclined towards.) I didn't have faith in anything anymore. When my brother reached 15, he hated my parents for their beliefs. I will not get much I detail since his story is not mine to tell, but he had battled with alcohol and substance abuse. And I was his only shoulder for him and my parents to lean and cry on. My mother told me to pray for our family, she would pray to god every day, light up myrrh, take me to churches, and I would feel miserable. I felt like an imposter in that church. I truly wanted to have faith in a god, anyone, but I felt like my only choice was God since that's what my mother taught me. Both my parents trust God so I cannot be different, can I?

How foolish I was. I can only look back to my past self and wish to embrace and hold her till she cries all her sorrow out. She was so confused.

Back in 2022, I had first heard of Aphrodite. My brother was sent to a mental hospital for his substance abuse when they caught him on the verge of overdosing. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder after a suicide attempt, autism and ADHD, but my father (who already couldn't accept the fact that my brother has ADHD) fought with them saying they ,,don't know me well enough" and,,there's nothing wrong with me". And he's right, there's nothing wrong with me. Not even If I am neurodivergent. I was at my lowest, I felt disgusting, I fought with my parents and was their therapist every single day, I stopped going to school, I was a mess. But, I was heavily active on social media because I had tons of online friends. While scrolling on tiktok, I found a video of an Aphrodite devotee. My interest was piqued. I heard about Greek Mythology before but never actually researched it. I liked the video and commented, talking about how gorgeous their faith sounds, and that's when it all started. I started getting more info about Aphrodite, the swans swum by me every time I would go to the lake with my family so we could ,,get some fresh air". I started getting lots of pins on Pinterest with her. I always had a desire for water and the beach was my safe place, where I felt fulfilled and free from all I'm feeling. I had a Dove make itself a nest on a tree next to the window of my classroom which I would always sit by while having lunch (on the rare occasions I would drop by to school). I started researching more about Lady Aphrodite, loving her story, beliefs, ways of worshipping, how it felt like silence was washing over me when I would make a non-physical offering to her. Her tales. The way it felt like she was always there to give me a warm hug and squeeze me while I was crying. I also felt a boost in my confidence! I started loving my features, taking care of myself again, etc. It wasn't always just sun and rainbows, I would still have breakdowns and wish it would all just end and all that, but it was more bearable with her. She made my life more bearable. I love, worship, and adore Lady Aphrodite for that. I worshipped her till this year when I officially felt strong enough to devote myself to her.

This year, actually, I started noticing my strong connection to Hermes. I was always attracted to the kind-hearted, mischievous, kind-hearted, highly intelligent and funny thieves. I always idolized them and wished to be like them. That's how I feel about Lord Hermes. I feel like he was reaching out to me all my life. Everything he is associated with I had an inexplicable obsession with for pretty much all my life. Turtles, golden or silver, travel, learning new languages, astronomy, astrology, everything you could think of. I have been devoted to him since last month, that's when I officially started labeling myself as a Hellenic Pagan, but I am still a beginner, and I need to hide all of this from my mother since I am afraid of what she would do if she were to find out I have another belief since she reacted super badly back when I was an atheist :( I set up the first altar for Lady Aphrodite, and the second one for Lord Hermes. I always had been an artistic soul and loved making my room all pretty randomly so I told my mother this is one of those cases and she believed it. She does not know english and is not at all cultured about any beliefs besides Christians, Muslims, and Jews. They are both hidden in my closet. I feel very bad for not being able to make them a bigger and more obvious altar, I hope I'll have that chance when I move out from my parent's house..

I wanted to ask if Lord Hermes would be mad if my mom kept setting random things on his altar? she even put a picture of the Holy Mary. I moved it to the other side of the closet and made a DIY necklace for him out of orange garnet or beads to apologize to him, and he didn't seem mad, but I'm not sure...I sketched drawings of both of them and rested them on their altars. Everything you see are either offerings I heard they may like or things that reminded me of them! the little notebook on Hermes's altar is specifically made for learning new languages and thought he would enjoy it. Do you guys think any of my offerings are disrespectful? or should be removed? I'm open to any advice! Thank you for listening to my story <3

[xas24]

I saw this on Tiktok and instantly thought of santiago and pedri, please write something short and fluffy on this 😭

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeRcB7cm/

solace ~ pedri

summary: in an eight hour road trip with her little brother and her boyfriend, y/n seems to find some solace where many would find frustration.

when y/ns parents suggested going on a road trip to granada to meet her grandparents for the weekend, y/n couldn’t be anymore excited. she loved her grandparents, as cheerful and kind as they could be. they treated her and santiago with the utmost love and affection and the two returned that with immense respect.

pedri had yet to meet y/ns grandparents. she just knew that they would wholeheartedly adore pedri as much as she and santiago did, which is why she thought of bringing him along. pedri didn’t mind as he didn’t have much planned for the weekend other than training, which he was able to take off with much convincing.

the thought of an eight hour drive sounded extremely boring but the three in the back seemed to make it all the more fun - y/n sat in the middle as santiago and pedri sat on each side of her.

their trip started off well - the all conversed with each other and talked about anything that came to mind. y/ns father had also joined the conversation, occasionally cracking a few jokes here and there. santiago was telling a few of his weird school stories again, which his family had no choice but to laugh along and ignore how the little boy loved telling the same stories over and over, without realisation.

pedri found that extremely humorous and adorable - the smile on the ten year olds face made it all the more worthy.

when the second hour hit, the excitement in the atmosphere in the car had started to die down. pedri and y/n shared a pair of airpods as they both watched videos on her phone, his head on her shoulder and his arm resting around her back. y/ns parents were in their own world whilst santiago played around on his ipad.

the low hum of the radio played in the background, filling the car with its usual play of spanish songs. the beating sun filtered through the tinted windows, splashing itself onto everyone. the warm heat of it was comforting and y/n could feel the tiredness starting to spark within her.

it was hour three and the sun had finally started to settle for the day. its dying embers painted the sky in a mixture of pink and yellow, y/n took a few pictures of the beautiful sunset view over pedris body before relaxing further into her seat. his hand returned to intertwine with hers as her head rested itself on his shoulder.

she bent her leg up onto the seat to be more comfortable but the feeling of pedris warm hands on her arms and waist was enough to lull her off into sleep. she could still hear the faint play of the radio and the partial silence in the car was comforting accompanied with the sound of santiago silently praising himself every ten seconds whilst playing his game.

“go to sleep.” pedri had whispered in her ear, kissing her temple as he watched her eyes start to flutter.

she fell asleep in her boyfriends hold, her one hand curled around his bicep whilst the other one held his hand, fingers intertwined and heart content.

it was around two hours later when y/n had woken up. it was hour five of the road trip and also completely dark outside. her head slightly hurt as she lifted it off the headrest of the seat, and felt a cramp starting to form from sleeping in that one position for so long.

her body slightly ached but she felt so much more refreshed from the fatigue that had circulated her body all day. one of the small blankets was draped over her body and when she moved, the cold instantly slapped against her skin.

she reached for the hoodie that pedri had given her before the trip, wanting nothing more than to cuddle into the warmth and familiarity that his clothing engulfed her with. she sighed in satisfaction when his scent invaded her senses.

“you’re awake.” santiago said with a tired smile on his face.

it was evident that he’d been playing on his ipad the whole time she was asleep, from the darkness under his eyes where he’d been rubbing them to the ruffle of his hair.

“yes and now you should sleep. you look tired, santi.” she raised her brows at him and the little boy nodded as he finished the fruit snack he was having.

y/n then looked over at her other boy to see him on his phone, or rather attempting to be. she chuckled as she saw his head drooping where it rested on his palm, his eyes were shut, and she knew he was just ‘resting’ them.

she also knew that he was refusing to sleep just because her sleeping body was laying against his, and her heart warmed at the thought.

y/n slightly shook her boyfriend, who instantly opened his eyes and turned to her with a questioning look before he relaxed.

“you’re awake.” he smiled at her, leaning forward to press a kiss to her cheek. y/n kept his face there, letting him rest it on her shoulder as she tapped his cheek with her fingers.

“sleep, baby. we still have three hours and i know you’re tired.” she muttered so only he could hear.

“you sure?” he mumbled, already starting to get comfy.

“mhm, go to sleep cariño, ill be here.” pressing a kiss to his head, she reassured him with a little smile on her lips.

santiago had moved to the absolute corner of the seats and rested his head on his palm against the window before he decided that wasn’t comfortable at all, so he moved to rest against his older sister instead.

y/n didn’t mind as his head lay against her arm. she slightly moved pedri so that his head was in her lap instead, and his legs were comfortable on the seat.

they both engulfed her body, practically using it as a human pillow as they fell into a comforting sleep. she was wide awake now, with nothing to do but let the two next to her fall into slumber. a smile graced her lips whilst her fingers combed themselves through pedris dark hair, playing with the soft strands and delicately scratching against his scalp just the way she knew he liked.

her mother and father were silently chatting in the front, and she had about two and a half hours left until they’d be with her grandparents. the ecstatic feeling returned.

they would finally get to meet the boy that had practically swept her off her feet, the boy that slept in her lap right now looking all too innocent and peaceful, the boy that loved her baby brother more than anyone did. they would get to see the reason behind her smile everyday, and santiago’s.

her body was squished between her two boys, but all she could think about was how grateful she was to have them in her life.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

Hey I just wanted to ask you, what do you think of the fact that in ToA the fact that Apollo bullied Harpocrates was basically made up and has no basis in myths? I'm kinda conflicted, because I can get behind holding the deities accountable for the stuff they have done, but that one think was made up.

Hellooo <3

I have seen this as a common complaint about ToA. And yes, I see the view - it has no basis in the actual myths, and therefore shouldn't reflect on what actual mythological Apollo has done.

Buckle up. I've got some thoughts to share here.

There are a couple things to consider here:

The Camp Half-Blood Chronicles are not meant to be 100% accurate to the myths. Nor did Rick really intend to do so when he first created the series - after all, PJO started out as Haley's new bedtime story, and to give him a character he could relate to. That was the main goal of Rick's.

Does Rick do his best to stay true to the myths? I do think so. Sure, he trips up at times (details of the myths [ie, Midas was not the judge of the Apollo V Pan contest], characterizations of the gods [ie, Aphrodite & Ares), ect.) but all in all he does do his best to give us a well-rounded story that has Greek Mythology as its influence.

Because also remember - PJO started out as a story about the demigods, not the gods. If the gods had originally been Rick's focus instead, I think we would have a bit of a different tale.

So a bit of creative liberty can be taken here, especially since Rick basically decided 'all myths are true!' with his Kane Chronicles and Magnus Chase books - it makes sense, from a storytelling perspective, that (ToA) Apollo would have crossed paths with Harpocrates at some point.

With all honesty, the CHB Chronicles shouldn't even be taken as fact about the myths - about the gods. Because no mythological series is ever 100% accurate, and to assume they are is disrespectful to the culture these myths come from.

And continuing with the storytelling perspective...honestly I think it was a pretty interesting choice on Rick's end. It's not myth-accurate, but I think it does add more to the story Rick is telling us.

He's not using these gods to make them look bad, after all. He's using them to tell a story. To give us a message.

And ToA's mainly centers around abuse.

Zeus isn't an abuser in mythology, but Rick made him one in his books to show us how abuse works. How it can be difficult to accept that you have been abused.

How hard it can be to acknowledge the fact that you have caused pain yourself.

Because while it seems like Harpocrates would cause Apollo's whole character to take a bit of a dive (after all, nobody likes a bully, right? Who would!), I...disagree.

I think Harpocrates deepens Apollo's character.

Stick with me.

I have been bullied in school. Fourth grade and seventh grade in particular were Dreadful for me and in seventh grade I would come home in tears about 95% of the time. I would even skip track practice because I was so emotionally unbalanced from the day I just couldn't take another minute.

There was something that my parents, grandparents, the parish deacon, ect all told me. There is probably a reason why bullies picked on me;

They were jealous.

There was something wrong with them; or, connecting to this point;

They were hurting.

They were hurting.

Anybody else's brains go "Bingo!"?

Because think about it. By the time Harpocrates comes around, Apollo's already spent a lot of time under Zeus's thumb - under his abuse.

And personally, I don't think Zeus likes the other pantheons. And I bet he really doesn't like it when pantheons...mix.

Which is something Harpocrates is. A mix between his original Egyptian self, and what Ptolemy made him to be.

So imagine this: You are Apollo. You have been dealing with your father's abuse for centuries. You are hurting - physically, emotionally, and mentally. You come across this god who's a mix between Egypt and Greece. He is the opposite of you - silence where you are sound.

Wouldn't he be the perfect target to lash out at, without repercussions? After all...I doubt Zeus would care if Apollo was kicking around a mixed deity. Perhaps...he would even encourage it...

But I hear you - "But Apollo barely remembers Harpocrates!" And yes, he does barely remember him and it takes him a bit to acknowledge the fact that he did bully him.

So here's the kicker; I think Apollo lashed out at Harpocrates only a few times. He tried to transfer the pain he felt onto another, on the hope it would make him feel better.

But it didn't. Nothing made him feel better about himself.

And what's something we know about Apollo?

It's how much guilt he keeps bottled up. And I bet that after a few times, Apollo just...stopped going after Harpocrates. I think Apollo started feeling guilty about it, but quickly stamped it down and tried to forget about such feelings by forgetting about Harpocrates.

What you don't know can't hurt you, after all, right?

[stnaf-vn]

Hello! I just finished playing Friend and it was a very good experience, I wish a could erase my memory and play it again lol I wanted to know if you had share Friend's backstory or past, if so, I'm interested in knowing about him and the other characters in your blog so please tell me where I can read it🙏🏻😩 I'm currently playing A Cry for Help and I look forward to your next project <3

I have! Back before I like knew how tumblr worked, so the comics and stuff I made may have gotten lost....

I'll make a short list here and add them to the FAQ!

TW: CHILD ABUSE, MANIPULATION, FAMILIAL DEATH, DRUG AND ALCOHOL USAGE

Just A Dream

Friend going to Therapy? Friend....crying? High School Friend Friend comes from a wealthy family Friend's Sexuality Friend wears makeup And feminine clothes How Far Would He Go to Have You? Keagan's Opinion on Friend Keagan Talking about....that night.... Aftermath: The 'Accident' Friend's Side of the Story Friend Falling out of Love?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm gonna make a small recap of what Friend's childhood was like behind closed doors, as well as what the 'accident' mentioned before was....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Friend's Childhood:

Friend grew up in a wealthy home. His mother was a strict and shrewd woman, and his father was also strict. They were both very serious people. Friend's mother wanted to have an heir for the family company that they inherited through their parents (Friend's grandparents). They birthed Friend, and they decided that they wanted to wait to give him a name until they can see what he is capable of, so he didn't receive his birth name until he was old enough to read and write. Because of their lineage of inventors and businessmen and women, Friend's parents expected him to be good at everything he touches as soon as possible. But he wasn't. And so, he was practically cast out of the family. He'd get hit often if he messed up and his mother was very homophobic and hated how "girly" he'd act when he sewed or sung or get in her makeup. Then, he met you. Elementary School. He uh....he was pretty rude to you as kids, and he'd always get annoyed when you'd call out to him.... but, he liked the name Friend. So, he wanted you to just call him Friend. He slowly started getting used to you being around, and he even started being nicer. Although....he was covered in bandages a lot.

His mother thought of him as nothing but a disgrace, so she birthed his sisters: the triplets. After that, his mother gave up on having children as they are "wastes of space" and "can't do anything right." So, she neglected them. Their father, even though he was also pretty stoic himself, was frightened of his wife. Friend practically raised his sisters from elementary to when he was just going into middle school. Which is when the first accident of STNAF happened.... His entire immediate family died in a car crash on their way to a corporate meeting. All Friend has left of them is the amount of wealth given to him and the hair clips his sisters wore. He moved in with his grandparents after that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Accident Two: Electric Boogaloo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In high school, you and Friend were always together 24/7. At the time, he didn't realize he had feelings for you and he was just an average delinquent. His grandparents, although they are nice people, never really got involved in raising him. They just let him do what he wanted. If it wasn't for you, Friend would have probably not passed high school. And there, you met Keagan, an athlete of the school. One day, he suddenly asked you out, and you said yes. Keagan didn't like Friend very much due to the weird "serial killer" aura he gave out (in Keagan's terms), and you and Friend eventually started drifting apart. One night, Keagan started taking you and his friends home. You were the only sober one in the car. And his friend and Keagan thought it'd be funny if they left you in the middle of town, at like 3 AM. So, that's what they did. They drove off without you, leaving you stranded. As this was happening, Friend was also high at a different party. He started getting annoyed because other people kept hitting on him, so he went outside and was desperately wanting you to talk to him Then he got a message from you with your location in it. And he high tailed it to you. (This is where Aftermath: The 'Accident' comes in) That's where the...obsession started. At first, he wasn't sure what to call it. He never felt something like this before, but now.... he just can't imagine his life without you in it. And having you away from him for so long....what if you leave him again? But, he knew what it was when you two graduated and you asked him what his plans are for after high school. He wanted to be with you everywhere you go, do everything you wanted to do together. So, he cleaned himself up, cut his hair, cut back on the weed and alcohol (Although he does indulge from time to time). And, he started studying on how to be the perfect partner. He has mastered every domestic skill needed to have a happy fulfilling relationship. He started working out, and he started actually paying attention to his appearance. He has, and still is, learning how to be the best partner for you. How to be patient, how to make your heart skip a beat, how to be confident but not too confident..... he wants to be perfect for you.

[moondal514]

writerly ephemera

✨ share some little bits of you, easter eggs, memories, etc. you have left scattered in your fics or art. if you fancy it, tag a pal. ✨

thanks @seasy33 for the tag and thank you @decaflondonfog for this fun game! i love any opportunity to yap about my writing

🎻 “Neil being concertmaster this year means that he now has a clear vision of Andrew in his principal cellist spot. Today he has chosen to abuse this. Over the drone of Wymack giving an obligatory basic music theory lecture he stares at Andrew, blue eyes digging daggers into him. Andrew decides he is not going to look at him and pointedly stares down at his music stand”

there are quite a lot of moonie-isms in and we could be forever future bound. i was a cellist in my high school orchestra like andrew, though i was nowhere near as good as andrew in this fic 😂. all of the classical music pieces i mention or have the characters play are all pieces i’ve either (attempted) to play myself or pieces i enjoy listening to. andrew’s college app experience and existential angst about the future is based on a combo of what my poor little sister is going through right now with her college apps and what i myself felt in my senior year (of both high school and college, rip). this bit i chose to highlight is based on actual shenanigans i used to get up to during orchestra class with my friends in the violin section, which included our concertmaster. i was 2nd chair cellist, which meant i was sitting in the front row and had an extremely clear view of the violin section, so there was a lot of silent communications done during class 😂

🌾 “Chengling exclaims over the scenery they pass like a rich city boy that’s never seen a rice paddy before, oohing and aahing over the rice stalks and the animals he sees in the distance”

it’s me, i’m the city girl that likes to ooh and aah over fields and animals like i’ve never seen them before 😂. the vibe i was going for in i try to live in black and white, but i’m so blue is what summer break in an asian household would be like, which i based on weeks of summer breaks spent with my own asian grandparents. this included refusing to use air conditioning even though it’s really hot, going on long drives, and eating bingsoo, or baobing as is in the case of this fic

🌸 “Hyacinthus was a beautiful boy fought over like a child’s playtoy by two forces of nature. He was an unintended victim of the petty squabbles of immortals, those of vast power he could not ever hope to stand before, forever immortalized by blossom”

kevin is such a good character to write greek mythology references into his pov cuz it’s totally plausible he would be very familiar with them as a history major (speaking as a history major myself..though i'm also a greek mythology lover so i'm biased 😂). as soon as i saw the prompt of “kevin day with hanahaki” i knew i wanted to reference the hyacinthus myth cuz it’s such a good framing device for kevin and how he views his position with riko in this fic: a mortal subject to the whims of the careless god that has taken him as his companion. the title, in your sad wound (my own guilt), is even taken from the part of ovid’s Metamorphoses that contains the hyacinthus myth

☀️ “There is a child in a tree and he is burning with a fever. He is all that is left of what your beloved destroyed himself to protect, your beloved who burnt himself out in a blaze of his own glory. The suns have been shot, systematically plucked from the sky and destroyed. This one is the last one left, glowing weakly in your arms”

this passage from i am a wreck is a reference to the story of hou yi shooting down the suns, which was actually one of the earliest chinese myths i can remember learning in my childhood. iirc it’s even confirmed that the sunshot campaign in mdzs is named so as a reference to this myth cuz of the wen clan using suns as their symbol

🖊️ “That evening, you lie on the floor belly down and write a letter. You write slowly and carefully, your neatest writing yet. You feel like those girls in your school that write in curvy bubble letters, and for a moment you’re embarrassed”

idk if this is a thing girls still do or not but when i was in middle school, it felt like suddenly all of the girls i knew were writing in super neat bubble letters. when i was trying to portray the middle school aaron vibe for the beginning of now i'm third in the lineup (to your lord and your savior), this part of my own middle school experience slipped in

🍲 “Tonight Renee chops tofu and vegetables to be sautéed in teriyaki sauce, whisks together egg and a mirin and soy sauce mixture to make tamago, and boils miso soup on the stove. The rice cooker beeps merrily as she puts in the finishing touches: crunchy sunomono, small cut squares of kim, and potato salad bought at the Japanese market”

Prayers for Belonging is my renee projection ficlet series where i have granted renee the high honor of bearing the weight of my multicultural angst 😂. there are fun and not so fun bits of my life i’ve written into this series. this one i wanted to highlight since it’s based on an actual meal my family eats regularly and here i have renee make it for all of the foxes

tagging: @orionauriga @ataratah @awildtei and anyone else who wants to do this!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Leaning against Scott Monument in a park, view of the castle, passing time before Mark Watson starts. Some good performer could probably create a routine about my thought on this is "It's like Google Earth come to life" is indicative of a certain relationship to technology. Of course, the fact that I thought of an observation about the meaning of my own thoughts, and my idea for how to convey it was by saying: this is how it would be described by a performer in a show, might be indicative of my relationship to live entertainment at the moment.

Anyway the Olympics are on right now, which is so weird. All week I keep coming out of shows to find 100 or more new messages after not checking my phone for an hour, because all my group chats are going. Coaches, larger team chat, my old university team, my old coach group chat with people who've moved away.

This is the first year since 2004 when the Olympics have happened and I haven't spent the whole time glued to the wrestling livestreams and results. Usually with my teammates, though not always. In 2016, my old high school teammate won a gold medal, and I was out of town visiting my grandparents. I watched her win her semi-finals on the stream, realized the biggest moment in the career of anyone I know might be happening that night and I can't be alone to experience that, so I called an old university friend who lives 2 hours from my grandparents and drove to spend the night with her. We drank a bunch of whiskey while I told too many stories of hanging out with this athlete at old high school tournaments (many of those stories involved me playing Pokemon in a hotel lobby until whatever guy from some other team she'd met vacated our hotel room, it was always just her and I sharing rooms because we were the only girls on the team) and how I couldn't believe where she was. I called into the watch party that my team was having back home and watched the finals on the phone with them, when she won I heard my best friend's living room burst into loud screaming cheers from the 30 people he'd crammed in there, I burst into tears and hugged my one friend who was with me, my best friend back back home took his phone into another room for a bit so we could just remember stuff together.

I remember saying to him, on the phone, that maybe she'd done enough finally. Whenever anyone does anything, everyone in the community says "Well it's not like they did [other bigger thing]." The silver wasn't a gold, the gold wasn't in a tough year, the national win wasn't international, the international tournament wasn't that great. But this was it, gold medal at the Olympics. Maybe she, for the first time of anyone I know, gets to be good enough, and gets to be done trying to meet ever-increasing expectations. It's a gold medal at the Olympics. You can't move the goalposts any higher.

When she came home frpm Rio I was part of a whole crowd greeting her at the airport, she pushed past people to give me a hug and tell me she remembered training with me in the early days and that big high school tournament that I won and she didn't and she let me be the first person to hold her medal.

Of course it didn't work the way I imagined it would. For the next 4 years, every time she lost a match, which was rarely but sometimes, everyone in the community said she was overrated and her Olympic win was a fluke. At the 2021 Olympics, she competed again, my best friend and I snuck out of a friend's birthday party to watch the stream on his phone. She made one big mistake and lost her first match, and then everyone we knew said "Sure she won it once, but she couldn't defend her title." Fuck off.

That's not the only person I've known whom I've watched compete at the Olympics, of course. In 2016, I also had a chat going with my old university roommates, as we watched our old university teammate get beaten up in Rio. I mean, all the group chats were going about him, but we had a private chat just for making fun of all the press that made him sound so great. Calling him a warrior, a man with the grit and determination to fight his way to the top. When in fact we knew he was a man with the word "tits" tattooed on his foot and an alcohol problem, who liked to sexually harass 17-year-olds and cheat on his wife at tournaments (everyone does that but most at least do it in hotel rooms, he frequently did it in venue bathrooms).

Anyway I don't think I've made my point very well, which was just trying to illustrate that the Olympics are normally when everyone I know gets together to watch and talk shit and make bets and get back in touch. None of my old teammates are competing there this year, but some people I know are. Some I like and some I don't. Everyone I know is talking about it. And I couldn't give a fuck.

If I were back home, I'd be probably feeling quite depressed about that, watching while not being part of the community anymore. But instead I'm swiping the notifications of 100+ messages away as I run between Edinburgh shows. I don't have time to worry about how many upsets there have been. I haven't even stopped to think about it at all, until I sat down in a park and had an hour to do nothing before Mark Watson. And then did start thinking about it, started feeling vaguely depressed about that, wrote it down in a Tumblr post, and that actually helped me feel quite a bit better.

Okay, I'm now off to see a man who does have an alcohol problem and has cheated on his wife on trips, but probably doesn't have the word "tits" tattooed on his foot, and I hope to God has never sexually harassed any 17-year-olds. Let me believe in something.

[rocknrollsalad]

👴 characters/pairings: steddie, clarkson, and a whole mess of randomly created munsons

🐟 Fishing is Wayne's favorite pastime. This is a life lived through fishing. Inspired by this post

🐠 content/trigger warnings: abusive childhoods, parental abandonment, military, war, period typical homophobia, major character death, pregnancy, generational trauma, ptsd

🎣 word count: 4967

Wayne’s four years old the first time his granddad took him fishing.

For one short weekend, they camp in a tent and live off the land. Wayne doesn’t remember a bit of it but his grandparents loved to recount the events. Telling the same tales the way grandparents do and everything getting bigger, funnier, and better with each retelling like all good fishing stories.

The only thing Wayne caught himself was a poison oak rash. Even though he tested the patience of a man who had so little to begin with, his granddad let him carry in the smallest fish to his waiting grandma and mom with the pride of something he’d done himself.

His mom fixed it for dinner last night and Wayne cried the whole meal long. They weren’t supposed to eat the thing. Of course, his granddad made him finish every bite on his plate.

At seven years old, Wayne catches his first fish.

He baited the line, cast the rod, and reeled it in. His granddad took him every year after that first trip and with each outing, Wayne learned a little more. He started out baiting all of granddad’s lines. The live bait was the best, he collected everything he could for days before going, carefully keeping them alive in a coffee can. A job all his own which his granddad praised him for. Especially when one attracted a fish so big they didn’t have to lie about it.

This year he could do it all without a bit of help and he brought in two fish big enough to feed himself for a meal. If there was a way to hang them on the mantel, Wayne would have.

It changed the trip from education to comradery. Sitting in silence with his granddad, staring at the water and waiting for the line to pull. No longer a child but a man in training. He didn’t even cry when he had to eat his catches.

Al joins the trip when Wayne is eleven.

Every part of Wayne hates sharing the trip with his terrible and needy little brother. He knows he’s supposed to love and care for the boy but he gets all the attention and got away with things that Wayne would have gotten in trouble for if he just thought them.

Al is unruly and loud, easily distracted, and spent his time collecting rocks. It was an absolute waste to bring him, he wasn’t suited for this. It was the worst haul they had. Not to mention, Al got to bring in the large bass granddad fought with for ten minutes. Mom and grandma fussed over it like it was made of gold. They were so excited to cook it up. Al didn’t have to take a single bite.

When Wayne is fifteen, he takes his first solo fishing trip.

Granddad passed away a few months before and Al doesn’t have any interest in going. Wayne takes himself to the woods, carrying the same tent they always used and the bait he’d dug out of the ground the night before.

He contemplates finishing high school and what to do about the boy in his room whom he wished he could kiss instead of Elise Fielding. The silence is different, not something shared but something suffered. He drags a log over to where his granddad would have sat and props his pole up against it.

Wayne comes home empty-handed. No trophy, no special dinner, just the somber realization that life can change in big, big ways and everyone goes on like nothing happened.

He doesn’t go the following year.

At twenty-two he postponed the trip to go on his honeymoon.

She’s a sweet girl and she deserves better than Wayne, he knows that much for certain. He’s far too happy to get away. They married quickly, though there was no child on the way, and the newlywed life was more than Wayne wanted to deal with.

Like his mother and grandmother before her, she fries up the fish Wayne brings home. Burns the hell out of it too. They both eat in awkward silence, pretending it doesn’t taste awful but everything about this has a bitter taste. It’s not quite right but it’ll do.

For three more years, she sends Wayne off on a long weekend to fish and taste a bit of freedom before he comes back to sour casseroles and bridge with the neighbors. The trip becomes a lifeline, a way to forget and hide from his mistakes. Wayne’s usually not one for hiding but this is different.

The rest of his twenties go by without a single fishing trip.

Unlike the mourning, these years were taken from Wayne. Forcibly and never-ending. He still spent plenty of time in silent contemplation alongside others and ate meals while crying but he served his country.

When he finally returns the lake isn’t the same. Sleeping in a tent is no longer a piece of home but something he accidentally destroyed on the first night reacting to a twig snapping in the distance. Whatever wild animal walked by obviously wasn’t a threat, still, Wayne packed up and got out there. He hadn’t even put the line in the water before calling it quits.

Before the next trip, Wayne’s a divorcee. She found someone better while he was in the jungles being shot at. He tried to hate her for it but he buys her a cookbook and wishes them the best. Alone is better. He’ll live his days out by himself but happier.

At thirty five Al shows up and says they should spend the day fishing, for old times' sake.

Naturally, Wayne indulges him. He gets a day of fishing out of this and he wants to believe that there’s a glimmer of hope in him still. That somewhere among the trees and birdsong he’ll find a way to think this is Al turning over a new leaf. Something got through that thick skull and he’s ready to…do better.

Somehow it’s worse. He married a girl and now she’s pregnant. It’s a celebration, not a fishing trip. Al even brought cigars. He was intelligent enough to know there was no other Wayne was going to sit around and listen to the news.

He should be happier to be an uncle instead of terrified. Still, the next time he makes a trip to the sports shop for his fishing weekend, Wayne can’t resist buying the tiny pole on display. It’ll be a while before his new niece or nephew needs it but, at least Wayne will be ready.

Eddie is four the first time he comes to stay with Wayne.

Al landed himself in jail and Elizabeth can’t seem to carry on. She drops Eddie off with all the diapers she has, some clothes, and a bit of food. Her tear-stained shirt and day-old makeup speak more than her words.

Wayne doesn’t know what to do with the kid. He’s four and uninterested in the few toy trucks Wayne has. Climbing all the furniture seems to hold the boy’s interest but that’s likely not safe. Not that putting him by a large body of water is any better but Wayne hopes the trip of it all will make it seem less like his parents kicked him out and more like a fun weekend with his uncle.

But Eddie is too much his father’s son. He’s not able to sit still, he talks incessantly, and every time Wayne gets the line in the water Eddie has something he shouldn’t. A lighter, a knife, and one time a bird. Wayne still can’t figure that last one out.

Still, they catch a couple of fish. Or Wayne does it while Eddie is sleeping. He doesn’t want to go home empty-handed in case the boy takes it personally. Back at Wayne’s trailer, he bakes the fish. A favorite preparation but a simple one. Eddie hates the idea that the cute little fish he saw take its last breath is now this thing in front of him. So Wayne made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

They try again when Eddie turns six.

With a backpack full of coloring books and crayons, they trek out to the fishing spot. Wayne let Eddie help make the campfire correctly and tried to give him tasks he’d be good at. It’s not as hard as their first trip but far from easy.

Eddie talks and talks, tells Wayne everything about his life at home and how much he hates kindergarten. He recounts several episodes of a cartoon word for word. Wayne thinks even if he were good with kids, he wouldn’t be good with this one.

That night Wayne sits out to watch the fire die before bed and wonders if maybe he wasn’t meant for a family. His own dad left before Wayne could commit his look to memory. Al and him never bonded, they could barely stand to be in the same room together. Eddie was shaping up to be the same. Of course, Wayne would take him out here as many times as he’d come along but they’d be little more than two people existing in the same space.

A heartbreaking realization but one meant for the woods. Out here Wayne was insignificant and an intruder. Just like he was in the Munson family.

When Eddie moves in for good, he’s thirteen.

Skittish and angry, he’s old enough to understand what cards he’s been dealt but not how to play them. Wayne skips his fishing trip this year because the last thing his nephew needs is someone leaving him again. Even for a weekend.

When the next trip rolls around, they’ve settled into a good thing. They’re coexisting in the same space but not like strangers, like roommates or friends. Eddie helps with the chores and even tried a paper route to help with money. They pick out meals together to sit and eat together. It’s coming along and though things are still new, Wayne feels a bit proud of himself. Maybe he’s not completely hopeless.

So they try a fishing trip. Wayne explains that this is for him, he goes every year but Eddie’s come five or six times now, it’d be a compliment to add to that number. Saying Eddie doesn’t have to fish, he doesn’t have to eat the catch, for all Wayne cares he can bring fifty books and walkman. It’s just good for them to get out in nature.

Eddie agreed, he’s not happy about it but what fourteen-year-old is happy about anything? Wayne remembers the age, he knows the feeling. While he talks less, he still complains about school and fills Wayne in on the week’s TV shows. Eddie’s fishing pole is never picked up but he takes small pleasure in stabbing hooks through worms and lighting the campfire.

Even though it’s a lie, Wayne says the hook Eddie baited caught a fish so he gets half of the credit. Wayne’s no expert in this kid stuff but he thought it earned him a smile. They head back with a few fish to toss in the freezer. On the way to the trailer, they grab a pizza for dinner and no one cries into it.

Wayne goes alone after Eddie turns sixteen.

He’s a licensed driver with friends to cart around. They’re all playing some game and he’s finally settled into a band. There's nothing worse than taking a lame fishing trip into the woods. Wayne doesn’t mind the peace and quiet. He has a funny feeling there’ll be a lot less of it in the coming months.

While out there, he happens upon a fellow camper nearby. A familiar face…almost. Wayne could place him to a school, though he’d picked the wrong one, he’d had a meeting or two with this man over grades.

Armed with the strangest survival kit Wayne had ever seen, talking about magnetic fields and the stars, it was familiar in that Wayne was lost for most of the conversation. What wasn’t familiar was the rush of excitement that came from listening. Something Wayne hadn’t felt for a long, long time.

Wayne saved him from the expired MREs he’d foolishly purchased from the War Zone. He saved Wayne from a night alone. They parted ways the next morning with a promise to get dinner, leaving Wayne feeling sixteen himself. Not the mess he should be getting in at his age but maybe it was time to live a little more. Eddie would graduate soon and be on to adventures of his own. What better time?

He finished out the trip alone, daydreaming and entertaining thoughts he’d never allow himself to back home. Eddie was missed but it was for the best he hadn’t tagged along on this one.

He was happy to return to tradition after Eddie’s senior year.

They go again after the second one.

Wayne was planning a big trip to Lake Tippecanoe for the summer because he knew this was the time it was going to stick. Eddie deserved a celebration for all his hard work. More than the usual trip, Wayne was pouring all his money into this vacation. This family vacation.

Eddie graduated. From his hospital bed. They didn’t go to any lake, Tippecanoe, or the usual. The hospital served fish sticks and that was as close as they were going to get. If either of them had any tears left, they’d shed them over the pathetic celebration but with everything they’d been through the wells were dry.

Hawkins had tried to run Eddie out of town and now stuff was happening beyond Wayne’s comprehension. For the first time in his life, he thought about moving away. At least for now, he’d stay. As long as Eddie needed these doctors who were more than willing to help, they’d stay in Hawkins.

That choice had Wayne enlisted in another war. Like the first time, he fought like hell. The victory felt real this time, something changed, an era had ended. Whatever they were up against, it lost.

And brought the government to every corner of the destroyed town. They “moved” Hawkins, giving homes to those who stayed. Wayne was put up in something that felt like a mansion in comparison to everything else he’d ever lived in. As much as he didn’t want to trust the agency that was duplicating a town like no one would notice, it was nice to have enough bedrooms and bathrooms for everyone. A garage to park the car and phone that was no doubt bugged, who could complain?

Especially once the place was filled with that god-awful music Eddie listened to (and played). He added the happy sounds of friends, something Wayne wasn’t used to but welcomed. Seeing Eddie among friends, and having a good time, after knowing the road to get here was worth losing sleep or the chance to watch the game.

It took another year before they went fishing again.

A true return to everything they’d known before. Wayne and Eddie tossed bags and gear into the back of Wayne’s truck with the same abandon as always, yet keeping the snacks safe in the cab. They argued about what to listen to and ignored that air mattresses had been added to the gear. Neither of them were fit for sleeping on the rocks and dirty these days. While Eddie was too young to make that claim, he’d more than earned it.

Eddie fought for the passenger seat, his seat. Instead, Scott Clarke climbed in. Smug and comfortable all while looking ready for a safari, he shrugged his shoulders. Nothing he could do for Eddie, this seat was his.

Behind him sat Steve Harrington, rolling his eyes and telling Eddie he wasn’t going to share the back seat with Scott. They quietly bickered and mocked Wayne and Scott for most of the ride. Leaving Wayne worried about the amount of fishing he’d get done. However, they did provide Wayne the opportunity to say some of the most important words in fatherhood “if you two don’t knock it off, I will turn this car around”.

In something better measured in decades than with the humble years, Wayne gave up the dream of a family fishing trip. He’d resigned himself to solitude and claimed it, perhaps held it a little too tight. Yet here he sat, sharing the bench seat with a science teacher he’d managed to not scare away. Their courtship was long, it was slow and a bit bizarre but they were together now. Something that’d be written off as roommates but was so much more.

Behind them sat two kids, neither were Wayne’s in the biological sense but no one was splitting hairs here. A nephew and a nephew-in-law, just as good as a car full of sons and daughters. They fought, begged to stop, and punched each other at the thought of a Volkswagen. They ate too much candy, worked Wayne’s last nerve, and refused to help in any manual labor. Though Steve tried hard to impress, he was easily led astray.

Seeing them around the fire, hot dogs on sticks, and laughing loudly with Scott healed Wayne in a way fish never could. Maybe he didn’t need peaceful solitude. The woods had been a great escape all these years but he’d have a blast at the DMV in this company.

Poles never made it in the water but trails were hiked, sunsets were watched, and two newish couples grew closer. A little family found itself and settled into something real on that trip. If Wayne shed a few tears into the burger he ate on the dark drive home, they were the happy sort.

The next year they took a real vacation.

Graceland, the Grand Ole Opry, and far too much Jack Daniels. Sure, they couldn’t be as close as they could in the middle of nowhere with only squirrels and deer as witnesses but they had separate rooms. The hotel had a pool though Wayne and Scott preferred the hot tub.

For five days they wore smiles. Ear to ear, make their cheeks tired smiles. They learned Scott burns even when not in direct sunlight and Steve sings a lot when drunk. Not one of them could handle spicy food but only Eddie was willing to push through the pain, torturing himself for nothing.

With enough photos next to tourist traps to fill multiple albums, they drove how talking about needing a vacation to recover from their vacation. Sharing complaints and exhaustion showed Eddie and Steve had left their teenage years behind them. They were both too young to be complaining about being tired but Wayne was proud of the men they were so he wasn’t going to stop them.

Two years later, they loaded up the truck again.

This time with everything Eddie and Steve owned. It was cheaper than a Uhaul and Steve and Eddie’s rigs were already weighed down. Scott came along for moral support on the long drive to Chicago.

Steve decided to try his hand at college and he and Eddie were the city type anyway. It was a matter of time. They were bigger than Hawkins, new or old. For Wayne, it was home. For them, a stepping stone.

Wayne didn’t speak the entire way back to Hawkins. Despite the empty bed, the truck felt heavier. Life was changing in big ways and there was nothing in any of the wisdom parents tried to impart when Wayne took Eddie in that helped this moment go down any easier.

Once home, Wayne went to bed. He left Scott to find his own supper. The day was exhausting in a way Wayne didn’t know how to cope with. Rather than drown the thoughts, he slept.

Six months later Scott surprised him with a trip to a lakeside cabin.

Except it didn’t feel the same anymore. Who could catch fish without two shitheads behind them seeing which brand of liquor makes the biggest flame or pelting each other with pinecones? It seemed appropriate that despite all his efforts, Wayne didn’t catch a thing.

He enjoyed the time with Scott and wished it could be something bigger, something more suited to his interests. No matter how much the man insisted he loved the trips, Wayne always felt a bit of guilt that they weren’t going to a museum or some kind of lecture.

It was cruel to find family only a few short years before it was gone but Wayne wasn’t alone. Steve and Eddie still came to visit, they called weekly and sometimes begged them to come to Chicago. They were still family, just spread out a little further.

At sixty-five, Wayne bought the cabin on the lake.

Retirement came later than he wanted given he didn’t need to work, it was had to figure out what would fill his nights if not a job. Wayne clung to routine but his body said it was time to give it rest. Scott finished the school year and four months later the cabin was theirs.

Eddie came out to celebrate the loss of job and the housewarming. Steve sent his love but he’d nabbed his first teaching job and didn’t want to request time off so soon into the year. Plus his best friend was dangerously close to her due date. He didn’t want to be too far when his daughter came into the world.

It meant Eddie wasn’t staying for long and kept himself near a phone, ready to leave at a moment's notice. Still, he dragged Wayne out to the end of their boat dock with a six-pack and two fishing poles. Before the line hit the water, Eddie spewed every worry in his head. Begging for advice, desperate to be half the parent Wayne was.

They talked for hours, watching the moon swap places with the sun. Scott brought them jackets, blankets, and coffee but otherwise left them be. This was something for the two of them. Wayne offered all the advice he had but admitted he didn’t have a clue how to raise a kid. He didn’t when Eddie showed up and he was just as confused now.

Wayne’s “granddaughter” was kind enough to give them the planned weekend. No fish were caught and Wayne hugged Eddie a little tighter when he left, their family was getting bigger. Scott promised they’d be up as soon as Eddie and Steve were ready to have visitors. Everyone cried a little but the weekend had been emotional.

When his granddaughter was three, she came fishing for the first time.

She was about to become a big sister and Steve and Eddie thought it was best she had something cool just for her. Life was about to be shared now and it was going to be tough for everyone. These moments became that much more important.

With a tiny rod from some big box store two towns over and a tiny life jacket, Wayne took his granddaughter out on the lake in the morning and at dusk. She was quiet and patient and just watched the water lap against the boat for the first day.

By the third day, she was on the dock waiting for Wayne. He didn’t move as fast as he used to and watching her endless energy made him miss youth a bit. With a lot of help from Wayne, she “caught” a small little fish. Just enough to bother cooking, which Scott did with the force of a gourmet chef.

He served her the fresh catch (they were both on diets for cholesterol and their heart) and watched as she excitedly dug into the thing. Eating every bite with pride, talking about how delicious it was. A word that had to be new with how much she was using it. When she was done she went and grabbed her fishing pole so she could get seconds.

The time was precious but brief. Scott and Wayne made the trip to Chicago to take her home, together they all met her new sister. They took a family picture in the living room which Steve developed in an 8x10 and sent it along with a few regular-sized ones. Eddie’s hair was graying and Wayne started to see the resemblance Scott always talked about.

Steve wore glasses and didn’t have much in the way of hearing but neither was his age. They looked exhausted and happy in a way only new parents are afforded. Scott and Wayne looked far too grandparent for Wayne’s liking. Reality hit him hard with one picture. Which was framed and hung over the mantel. Who needs to brag about their fishing, this was what Wayne was proud of.

Two years later Eddie and Scott sat together on the dock.

The silence at the cabin was impossible to bear but there was nothing to say out here either. The urn between Scott and Eddie said everything they couldn’t right now. Both of them sat there, a hand placed on the cold metal. Working up the courage to really say goodbye.

Scott hadn’t said a word since the call no one wanted to get. Come now, it won’t be long. It was the last time Eddie heard him say anything. He even cried in silence. This destroyed Scott in a way that Eddie hoped to never experience. Far too many things had become painfully real in the last few months for Eddie. This was the hammer dropping all the way.

He was going to have to carry on for the rest of his life without Wayne. There was his own family, which was going to expand again, but their son wouldn’t even get to know Wayne. Only through stories and pictures. Eddie didn’t know how he was going to keep going. No amount of knowing the day was coming made it any easier or allowed him to feel any less lost. He still had Scott, for which he was thankful, but they both knew it wouldn’t be the same.

When Steve showed up a couple of days later, wanting to give Eddie some much-needed time, he convinced Scott to move to Chicago. He’d be closer to the kids and they could help him if needed. Thanks to the government hush money, they could keep the cabin and Steve promised they’d spend every summer out there. He wanted his kids to experience this place and he didn’t want to let Wayne’s memory die. This was his house. His memory lived on here.

Eddie almost couldn’t pull out of the driveway when it came time to leave. Once that cabin was out of view things became final in a way he didn’t want to let them. Eventually, Steve had to push into the driver’s seat and take over. Eddie cried the whole way back to Chicago.

When their son was four years old, Eddie took him to grandpa Wayne’s cabin.

No one else, just him and his youngest child. He and Steve wanted a couple more but Robin tapped out. Eddie couldn’t blame her, it didn’t seem the least bit fun. They were thankful for every one they had. Eternally thankful they were given a chance.

He’d taken this trip with all his kids. A special outing with no one else. Steve took them to baseball games. Truthfully, both seemed insufferable but this wasn’t about fun. It was undivided attention and tradition. Generations of Munsons had done this and Eddie wasn’t about to let that stop with him.

One of their last times out here, Wayne talked about fishing with his granddad and how those were his favorite moments with the man. Eddie couldn’t say the same but his trips with Wayne were important. Never the best moments but the big moments. There was something about the woods that let them say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise.

Whatever it was for his children, Eddie hoped they got something out of it. At worst, it was a connection to their roots. It was around that fire pit that the oral history of the Munson family was kept alive. They’d have to suffer through the same stories just like Eddie did. Because one day Eddie wasn’t going to be here anymore and they were going to cling to those stories and that fire pit and some smelly old jacket.

His song had about as much interest in fishing as he did. It was their oldest who truly loved it. When they came as a family she tried to teach the little ones and Eddie knew he had a few years before she was yelling at him for his form and impatience.

Eddie didn’t fuss too much about the actual fishing though. They splashed the water and laughed about farts, they had their fun and ate all the food Steve told them they couldn’t. All the fish were safe but they did break the swing in the front yard.

It was hard not to think about having grandchildren and wanting to see them out on this lake. Decked out in life jackets and water wings while Steve whines about the quality of the water making the fish taste funny.

Some things change but Eddie hoped this was something that stayed the same for generations further out than he could think of. If there was anything they should strive to be, Wayne Munson was it. Whatever magic he thought was imparted through this hobby, Eddie wasn’t going to argue with. There was never any use arguing with Wayne. He was the reason Eddie was who he was, the reason he was able to be the parent he was. So it was worth pretending to fish for a weekend. For Wayne.

[sweater-daddiesdumbdork]

Embracing them with a hug from behind and whispering I love you for Curtis and Honey please.

Soft Yearn Requests

A/N- this is later in the series since currently, they haven't used the "I love you" on each other yet.

Life Is Short So Make It Sweet Masterlist

Today was beautiful, although this was a day of remembrance for Curtis and one to honor for you which these things always create a bit of sadness, it was all blue skies, fluffy clouds, and warm breezes ruffling your skirt as you walked away for a few moments, allowing Curtis to squat next to his grandparent's gravesites and have a few moments alone to honor his memories of them.

Ella had been sure to send you a message this morning, reminding you that it was the day Wilford passed years before you met Curtis. But you already remembered as you had joined him last summer for this trip. Last year you were unprepared, but this year you loaded up the back of his truck with flowers that you had dug out of his grandmother's garden in the backyard and worked with Curtis planting them, bringing life and color to their site. A way to show that they were still loved although no longer a part of this world, at least in a way that none of them could see them.

You were convinced that they still lived in the old house that now belonged to Curtis.

You were quiet as you stepped away, but never going too far. You watched Curtis from behind, his head bowed forward, the tension he always carried in his shoulders a little more prominent today. You counted yourself incredibly lucky to be with someone so passionate about his loved ones, all the stories he shared about the people who raised him, you just knew that it was passed down. That Curtis had been greatly loved by these people. And it was something you valued and appreciated so much because Curtis was one of the best men you've gotten to be with.

You felt all the emotions of that moment sneaking up on you, filling your senses with pride and compassion, with endless love for your person, you really couldn't continue to contain it. Wandering back closer, you ran your hands down his slightly sweaty back and wrapped around his middle, pressing your equally sweaty body against him. You let the side of your face press in between his shoulders, the slight thump of his heart could be heard, a part that made you always smile. It was always so steady and strong.

"You okay Curtis?" You asked quietly and felt him take a big sigh with a lift of his shoulders and an equally big exhale as if letting all his feelings and unsaid words back out.

"Yes... This feels good, they would have loved this. Knowing we grew these flowers in their old flower beds." That too made you smile, if he was happy with it, so were you.

"I love you." You had to spill next, tightening your hold and his calloused hand settled over yours resting against his belly, tugging you slightly to slide around to his side. You tucked up against him, feeling his lips press against the crown of your head.

"I love you too Honey, thank you for being here with me today."

Curtis eased into the school cafeteria unnoticed. Not that he was trying to sneak around or anything, but he didn't want to disturb your students practicing on stage while you wandered through them on the stage, redirecting them and joking around with them before you eased your way down the steps and clapped your hands.

"Okay that one scene we all seem to improvise through, let's do that one. And get crazy with it guys. No holding back, but please keep it PG at least." You warned. Curtis let his heavy steel-toe boots thump up behind you, letting you know he was there. You glanced over your shoulder, flashing one of your grins that let him know you were happy right now.

And he loved that you almost always reserved that look for when you saw him, the way your sensuous mouth would curve, giving a slight pout to your lips as your eyes seemed to light up. He pressed up behind you, leaving no space between the two of you while his arms wrapped around you. Curtis did remind himself to also keep it PG since they were in the school and a bunch of middle schoolers were half paying attention to them.

His sweet Honey seemed to know though cause you pressed back into him, humming happily as your head tilted back to rest against his chest, swaying slightly in his hold. "Mmh, how was work?"

"Mmh, it was pretty laid back today so I got out early and grabbed a shower and change of clothes before coming over here." He said quietly to you while letting his lips skim your forehead and down the bridge of your nose before both of you turned your attention back to the stage to watch the kids goof around doing the scene.

"Thank you again for agreeing to spend your next few evenings building stage props with us." You cleared your throat sharply, a stark reminder to the kids starting to act inappropriately to knock it off. "I promise I will make it worth your while afterward. You know that thing you like doing... yeah later tonight."

Curtis had to stifle a laugh against your shoulder since honestly, there were so many things that you did for him that he could never get enough of so it was still a surprise what you were going to do. He did know that he was going to love every second of it, even though he didn't need any special thank you, which he was sure to remind you that he wanted to do this and was more than happy to help support the local program for kids. After all both Timmy and Sophia were involved in them in some way.

"I love you Honey." He pressed a kiss to your temple, skimming his chin against your neck, causing you to shiver in his hold. You could never get enough of feeling his beard on your skin and it was his perfect way of teasing you through the day.

"I know you do Curtis, you show me every day in all sorts of ways." You turned into him, hugging him back and letting your face press in against his neck, nuzzling him affectionately. "I love you too."

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[whileiamdying]

Remembering a childhood in the South Bronx.

As an aspiring actor, Pacino, seen here in 1972, would practice Shakespeare monologues while wandering the city streets.Photograph by Jerry Schatzberg / Trunk Archive

By Al Pacino August 26, 2024

My mother began taking me to the movies when I was a little boy of three or four. She worked at factory and other menial jobs during the day, and when she came home I was the only company she had. Afterward, I’d go through the characters in my head and bring them to life, one by one, in our apartment.

The movies were a place where my single mother could hide in the dark and not have to share her Sonny Boy with anyone else. That was her nickname for me. She had picked it up from the popular song by Al Jolson, which she often sang to me.

When I was born, in 1940, my father, Salvatore Pacino, was all of eighteen, and my mother, Rose Gerardi Pacino, was just a few years older. Suffice it to say that they were young parents, even for the time. I probably hadn’t even turned two when they split up. My mother and I lived in a series of furnished rooms in Harlem and then moved into her parents’ apartment, in the South Bronx. We hardly got any financial support from my father. Eventually, we were allotted five dollars a month by a court, just enough to cover our expenses at my grandparents’ place.

The earliest memory I have of being with both my parents is of watching a movie with my mother in the balcony of the Dover Theatre when I was around four. It was some sort of melodrama for adults, and my mother was transfixed. My attention wandered, and I looked down from the balcony. I saw a man walking around below, looking for something. He was wearing the dress uniform of an M.P.—my father served as a military-police soldier during the Second World War. He must have seemed familiar, because I instinctively shouted out, “Dada!” My mother shushed me. I shouted for him again: “Dada!” She kept whispering, “Shh—quiet!” She didn’t want him to find her.

He did, though. When the film was over, I remember the three of us walking down a dark street, the Dover marquee receding behind us. Each parent held one of my hands. Out of my right eye, I saw a holster on my father’s waist, a huge gun with a pearl-white handle sticking out of it. Years later, I played a cop in the film “Heat,” and my character carried a gun with a handle like that. Even as a child, I understood: That’s dangerous. And then my father was gone, off to the war. He eventually came back, but not to us.

My mother’s parents lived in a six‐story tenement on Bryant Avenue, in a three-room apartment on the top floor, where the rents were cheapest. Sometimes we would have as many as six or seven people living there at once. I slept between my grandparents or in a daybed in the living room, where I never knew who might end up camped out next to me—a relative passing through town, maybe my mother’s brother, back from his own stint in the war. He had been in the Pacific and would take wooden matchsticks and put them in his ears to drown out the explosions he couldn’t stop hearing.

My mother’s father was born Vincenzo Giovanni Gerardi, and he came from an old Sicilian town whose name, I would later learn, was Corleone. When he was four years old, he came to America, possibly illegally, where he became James Gerardi. By then, he had already lost his mother; his father, who was a bit of a dictator, had remarried and moved with his children and new wife to Harlem. My grandfather didn’t get along with his stepmother, so at nine he quit school and ran away to work on a coal truck. He didn’t come back until he was fifteen. He wandered around upper Manhattan and the Bronx—this was in the early nineteen-hundreds, when it was still largely farmland—doing apprentice jobs or working in the fields. He was the first real father figure I had.

When I was six, I came home from my first day of school and found him shaving in our bathroom. He was in front of the mirror, in a BVD shirt with his suspenders down at his sides. I was standing in the open doorway.

“Granddad, this kid in school did a very bad thing. So I went and told the teacher, and she punished that kid.”

Without missing a stroke, my grandfather said, “So you’re a rat, huh?” It was a casual observation, as if he were saying, “You like the piano? I didn’t know that.” His words hit me right in the solar plexus. I never ratted on anybody in my life again. (Although right now, as I write this, I guess I’m ratting on myself.)

His wife—my grandmother Kate—had blond hair and blue eyes, like Mae West, which was a rarity among Italians. We were the only Italians in our neighborhood, and she was known for her kitchen. When I’d be going out the door, she would stop me with a wet cloth, which always seemed to be in one of her hands, to say, “Wipe the gravy off your face. People will think you’re Italian.” America had just spent four years fighting Italy, and though many Italian Americans had gone overseas to help, others were labelled enemy aliens and put in internment camps. There was still a stigma against us.

Our little stretch between Longfellow Avenue and Bryant Avenue, from 171st Street up to 174th Street, was a mixture of nationalities and ethnicities. In the summertime, when we went on the roof of our tenement to cool off because there was no air-conditioning, you’d hear all kinds of languages and dialects. The farther north you went, the more prosperous the families were. We were not prosperous. We were getting by. My grandfather was a plasterer who worked during the week. Plasterers were highly sought after at the time. He had developed an expertise and was appreciated for what he did. He built the wall that separated our alleyway from the alleyway of the building next door for our landlord, who loved it so much that he kept our family’s rent at thirty-eight dollars and eighty cents a month for as long as we lived there.

I was an only child, and until I was six I wasn’t allowed out of the tenement by myself—the neighborhood was somewhat unsafe. My only companions, aside from my grandparents, my mother, and a little dog named Trixie, were the characters I brought to life from the movies. I had a little silent routine I did for my relatives from “The Lost Weekend”—starring Ray Milland as a self‐destructive alcoholic—in which I pretended to ransack an apartment, looking for booze. The grownups seemed to find it amusing. Even at five years old, I would think, What are they laughing at? This man is fighting for his life.

My mother was a beautiful woman, but she was emotionally fragile. She would occasionally visit a psychiatrist when Granddad had the money to pay for her sessions. I wasn’t aware that my mother was having problems until one day when I was six years old and getting ready to go out and play. I was sitting in a chair in the kitchen while my mother laced up my shoes and put a sweater on me to keep me warm, and I noticed that she was crying. I wondered what the matter was, but I didn’t know how to ask. She was kissing me all over, and right before I left she gave me a great big hug. It was unusual, but I was eager to get downstairs and meet up with the other kids, and I gave it no more thought.

We had been outside for about an hour when we saw a commotion in the street. People were running toward my grandparents’ tenement. Someone said to me, “I think it’s your mother.” I didn’t believe it, but I started running with them. There was an ambulance in front of the building, and there, coming out the front doors, carried on a stretcher, was my mother. She had attempted suicide.

This was not explained to me; I had to piece together what had happened. I knew that she had left a note and that she was sent to recover at Bellevue Hospital. That period is kind of a blank to me, but I do remember sitting around the kitchen table, where the grownups were discussing what to do. Years later, I made the film “Dog Day Afternoon,” and one of its final images, showing the actor John Cazale’s character, already dead, being taken away on a stretcher, made me think of the moment I saw my mother brought out to that ambulance. But I don’t think she wanted to die then, not yet. She came back to our household alive, and I went out into the streets.

As a kid, I ran with a crew that included my three best friends: Cliffy, Bruce, and Petey. We were on the prowl, hungry for life. To this day, one of my favorite memories is coming down the stairs and out onto the street in front of my tenement building on a bright Saturday morning in the spring. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. I remember looking down the block, and there was Bruce, about fifty yards away. He turned and smiled, and I smiled, too, because we knew the day was full of potential.

Every few blocks were vacant lots where victory gardens had been planted at the height of the war. By then, they were wrecked and full of debris. Once in a while, when you looked down at the sidewalk along the lots, you’d see a blade of grass growing up out of the concrete. That’s what my friend, the acting teacher Lee Strasberg, once called talent: a blade of grass growing up out of a block of concrete.

One winter day, I was skating on the ice over the Bronx River. We didn’t have ice skates, so I was wearing a pair of sneakers, doing pirouettes, showing off for my friend Jesus Diaz, who was standing at the shore. One moment I was laughing and he was cheering me on, then suddenly I broke through the surface and plunged into the freezing water below. Every time I tried to crawl out, the ice broke further and I kept falling back in. I think I would have drowned if it wasn’t for Jesus Diaz. He found a stick twice his size, spread himself out as far as he could from the shore, and pulled me to safety.

Another day, I was walking on top of a thin, iron fence, doing my tightrope dance. It had been raining all morning, and, sure enough, I slipped and fell, and the iron bar hit me directly between my legs. I was in such pain that I could hardly walk. An older guy saw me groaning in the street, picked me up, and carried me to my aunt Marie’s apartment. She was my mother’s younger sister, and she lived on the third floor in the same building as my grandparents. The Samaritan threw me on a bed and said, “Take care, man.”

It was customary for doctors to go to people’s houses in those days. While my family waited for Dr. Tanenbaum to come, I lay there on the bed, with my pants down around my ankles as the three women in my life—my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother—poked and prodded at my penis in a semi-panic. I thought, God, please take me now.

Our South Bronx neighborhood was full of characters. There was a guy in his late thirties or early forties who wore a suit and a collared shirt with a loose, tattered tie. He looked like he had gone to a Sunday service and got ashes spilled all over him. He would quietly walk the streets by himself; when he spoke, the only thing he said was “You don’t kill time—time kills you.” That was it. Our instincts told us he was different than we were, but we just accepted him. There was more privacy back then, a certain propriety and distance that people gave one another.

When Cliffy, Bruce, Petey, and I got a little older, eleven or twelve, we spent hours lying flat on our stomachs as we fished through sewer gratings for lost coins. This was not an idle pursuit—fifty cents was a game changer. On Saturday nights, we would see guys just a few years older than us who had started to date, taking girls out to the movies or on the subway, and we’d get up on the storefront roofs and pelt them with trash. Sometimes we’d split up a head of lettuce and toss it at them. A string bean thrown from twenty feet away could really sting.

In the summer, we opened up the hydrants, which made us heroes to all the young mothers who let their small children play in the water. We hitched ourselves to the backs of buses, jumped over turnstiles in the subway. If we wanted food, we’d steal it. We never paid for anything.

We played the old street games, like kick the can, stickball, and ring-a-levio, which involved splitting up into two teams. If you could stick one foot in the circle that was the other team’s jail and shout “Free all!,” your whole gang would get sprung. Kids were known to jump off buildings just to get a foot in that circle.

We were always either chasing someone or being chased. When we’d see cops, we’d yell out, “Hey, what’s a penny made out of?” And then we’d all answer, “Dirty copper!” The cops would yawn or laugh or take off after us, depending on their mood. But we all knew the neighborhood cop on our beat; he kept an eye on us. I don’t know how much violence he stopped, but we grew to love him, and he got a kick out of us. I always thought the guy had a crush on my mother. He’d ask me questions about her, and even at age eleven I sort of knew why.

There were a few others in our little gang—Jesus Diaz, Bibby, Johnny Rivera, Smoky, Salty, and Kenny Lipper, who would go on to become the deputy mayor of New York City under Ed Koch. (I later did a film called “City Hall,” directed by Harold Becker, which was based on his experience.) But Cliffy, Bruce, Petey, and me were the top bananas. They called me Sonny, and Pacchi, their nickname for “Pacino.” They also called me Pistachio, because I liked pistachio ice cream. If we had to choose someone as our leader, it would be Cliffy or Petey. Petey was a tough Irish kid. Cliffy was a true original. Even at thirteen, he was never without a copy of Dostoyevsky in his back pocket. He had talent. He had looks. And he had four older brothers who beat the shit out of him every day. He was full of trickery. You never had to ask him, “What are we going to do today?” He always had a scheme.

Often, when I looked down from my apartment window, I would see my friends—a pack of wild, pubescent wolves with sly smiles—looking up at me from the alley, calling out, “Come on down, Sonny Boy! We got something for ya!” One morning, Cliffy showed up with a huge German shepherd. He yelled up, “Hey, Sonny, wanna look at my dog? He’s my new friend, and his name is Hans!” He had got it from somewhere. Cliffy wasn’t known for taking dogs. Cars were more his thing. Once, he stole a garbage truck. He also used to burglarize houses—at a certain point, he could no longer go to New Jersey because he was wanted by the police there. He would tease me because I never did any of the drugs that he was into. He’d say, “Sonny doesn’t need drugs—he’s high on himself!”

There was one thing that divided me from the rest of the gang. My grandfather had instilled a love of sports in me: he was a lifelong baseball and boxing fan. He grew up rooting for the New York Yankees before they were even the Yankees—as a poor kid, he would watch their games through holes in the fence at Hilltop Park. Later, the Yankees got their own stadium, known as the House That Ruth Built, after Babe Ruth. That stadium is in the background of a scene in “Serpico”—shot by Sidney Lumet with such beauty—in which my character, Serpico, meets with a crew of corrupt cops. It was filmed the same day the actress Tuesday Weld and I broke up, and, if you notice the look on my face, you can tell I was pretty sad.

My grandfather would sometimes take me to baseball games, and we’d sit way up in the grandstand—the cheap seats. I didn’t think of myself as being disadvantaged—the more expensive box seats were just another block in the neighborhood, another tribe. The difference between Cliffy and me was that Cliffy would see those same box seats and want to go down there. If there was a line to get into a movie, he’d cut in front of someone and just go right in. It was like nobody existed but him.

I played baseball for the Police Athletic League team in my neighborhood. Sports were of no interest to Cliffy and the other guys, so it was almost like I lived two lives: my life with the gang, and my life with my pal teammates. One day, as I was coming back from a game in a bad neighborhood, a group of four or five guys not much older than I was got the jump on me; they had knives and God knows what else, and they said, “Give us the glove.” They knew I had no money, and I knew I was losing my glove, which my grandfather had bought for me. I went home in tears. If only I’d had Cliffy, Petey, and Bruce with me. It wasn’t just comfortable for us to be together in our group—it was necessary.

At the edge of the Bronx River, about four blocks from our homes, sat the Dutch houses, or the Dutchies. Built by Dutch settlers, they were ancient buildings, now dilapidated but not quite abandoned. Herman Wouk wrote about them in his novel “City Boy,” describing the surrounding territory as an area of “odorous heaps.” When we felt really daring, we would venture out to those ruins, which were populated by wayward kids and runaways—Boonies, we called them, because they lived on Boone Avenue. Wild plants grew along the riverbanks, including bamboo that kids would cut down and carve into knives, bows, and arrows. The Boonies lived in shacks, and the lore was that they had poison on the ends of their homemade weapons.

One day, I was on Bryant Avenue and saw the rest of the gang limping back from the Dutchies, looking defeated. Cliffy was covered in blood. He noticed the expression on my face and shouted, “It’s not me! It’s Petey’s blood!” Behind him was Petey, blood gushing from his wrist. They had been making their way down a hill when Cliffy suddenly screamed, “Look out, there’s a Boony there!” He shouted out a name that was notorious in the area at the time. Even now I can’t bring myself to say it. Cliffy had only been kidding, but the other kids scrambled in every direction. Unfortunately, Petey stumbled and fell, landing hard on something sharp and jagged that sliced through his left wrist. The cut was so deep that it went all the way down to the nerves. It was horrible, all because of a dumb prank.

The doctors eventually stitched Petey up, but in a botched way, so he couldn’t move his hand correctly. Cliffy always blamed himself for what happened.

I’m taking a bath in my grandparents’ apartment when I hear a rumbling in the alleyway downstairs. From five stories below, the voices reach up to my bathroom window:

“Sonny!”

“Hey, Pacchi!”

“Sonn‐ayyyyyyyy! ”

These are my friends calling to me. But something is preventing me from leaping out of the tub, throwing on my clothes, and joining them. I don’t mean my conscience; I mean my mother. She is telling me I am not allowed. She says it’s late and tomorrow is a school day and any boys who come to shout in the alley at that time of night aren’t the sort of boys I should be spending my time with, and, anyway, the answer is no.

I hate her for this. These friends are everything in my life that means something to me. And then one day I’m fifty‐two, looking in the vanity mirror at my face, fat with shaving cream, wondering whom I should thank in an acceptance speech for an award I’m about to receive. I think back to that moment in the bath, and I realize that I’m still here because of my mother. Of course, that’s who I have to thank. She’s the one who parried me away from a path that led to delinquency and violence, to the heroin that eventually killed Petey, Cliffy, and Bruce. I lost all three that way. I was not exactly under strict surveillance, but my mother paid attention to where I was. I believe she saved my life.

Pacino’s nicknames as a kid included Sonny, Pacchi, and Pistachio, because he liked pistachio ice cream.Photograph courtesy the author / Mark Scarola

I was lucky that I had people who were looking out for me, even if I didn’t always appreciate it at the time. One of those people was my junior-high teacher Blanche Rothstein, who selected me to read passages from the Bible at our student assemblies. I didn’t come from a particularly religious family. My mother had sent me to catechism class, and I wore a little white suit for my first Holy Communion, and that was it. But when I read from the Book of Psalms in a big booming voice—“He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart”—I could feel how powerful the words were.

Soon I was performing in school plays like “The Melting Pot,” a pageant celebrating the many nations whose people had contributed to the greatness of America. I was there to represent Italy, along with a ten‐year‐old girl with dark hair and olive skin. Our class put on “The King and I,” and I was cast as Louis, the son of the heroine, Anna. I sang a song with the kid who played the young Prince of Siam, about being puzzled by how grownups behaved. I didn’t take acting very seriously at that point—it was just a way to get out my energy, and especially to get out of classes. But I somehow became the guy that you simply had to have in these school productions.

In eighth grade, we put on “Home Sweet Homicide,” and I was cast as a kid who helps his widowed mother solve a murder at the house next door. Before I went onstage, someone told me that both my parents were in the audience. It threw me off. To this day, I don’t want to know who’s in the audience on opening night.

Still, I felt at home onstage. I liked that people were paying attention to me. Right after the show, my mother and my father, who was now an accountant living in East Harlem with a new wife and child, took me out to Howard Johnson’s, and we all toasted my success. A feeling of warmth and belonging came over me. It was probably the first time in my entire life that I saw my parents talking to each other pleasantly, not arguing about anything. At one point, my father even touched my mother’s hand with his own—was he flirting with her? It all felt so easy and natural.

When I was fifteen, a troupe of actors, as if out of some bygone century, came to the Bronx’s old Elsmere Theatre, on Crotona Parkway, to put on a production of “The Seagull,” by Anton Chekhov. The ornate theatre seated more than fifteen hundred people, and an audience of about fifteen came to see the play. Two of those audience members were my friend Bruce and me.

I don’t know how much of the play I really understood, with all its unrequited romances and the tragic character of Konstantin, but I was riveted by the performances. I saw myself in the lives of those fictional characters.

From then on, I started carrying Chekhov’s works around with me, amazed at the idea that I could have access to his writing whenever I wanted. I had just got into the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, and so had Cliffy, who had also acted in middle school and was very good. In the mornings, we’d ride the train together from the Bronx and emerge at Forty‐second Street and Broadway. For the four blocks we walked up to P.A., we were mesmerized by the tourists and gawkers. One day, as we turned a corner, I saw Paul Newman, the movie star, walk by with someone, and I thought to myself, Wow, he’s a real person, with real friends he talks to when there are no cameras around.

On one train ride, Cliffy’s thoughts were focussed on the teacher of our voice-and-speech class. She was an intelligent and sophisticated woman whose claim to fame was that she had dated Marlon Brando. Cliffy said to me, “I’m going to feel her breasts.” From the way he said it, it was clear this was something he had been thinking about for a while. I said, “What?” He said, “Watch. You’ll see.”

The class began that morning as it normally did, with the teacher giving us our lesson in her deep, resonant voice. Before long, Cliffy got up. He said something to her, I don’t know what, and suddenly the two of them were tussling. Then Cliffy reached his arms around her from the back, turned her around to face the class, and there he was, behind her, with both hands on her breasts. He looked at me and smiled.

This was the act of someone with no propriety, no limitations, and no conscience. Most of the students were silent. I broke into laughter, as did a classmate named John. It was just an involuntary reaction to the shock of what Cliffy had done. I loved Cliffy, but I was genuinely horrified by this trespass. John and I got tossed out of the classroom for the day, which I spent in the principal’s office until my mother arrived and apologized on my behalf. Cliffy was thrown out of school, and then thrown out of his house. After that, he disappeared from my life for a while.

One afternoon, I went out for lunch at a coffee shop near school, and there, taking orders behind the counter, was one of the actors from the performance of “The Seagull” that I had seen in the Bronx. I was a little bit starstruck, and I said, “I saw you the other night! Oh, my God, you were so great!” I couldn’t believe I was talking to him. He seemed pleased to have a doting fan.

By day, he wore a waiter’s outfit, and by night he performed in a play. One was a job, and the other was his artistic calling. He was an actor moving from role to role and theatre to theatre, like actors have done for hundreds of years. This was how I came to understand acting as a profession. You did whatever work paid you so you could keep acting, and, if you could find a way to actually get paid for acting someday, all the better.

Just before I turned sixteen, my mother started seeing someone new. She would say to me, “You know, we may live in Texas or Florida,” meaning her and her husband‐to‐be. I was relieved in a way, but I didn’t see how I belonged in this arrangement. This man was around fifty; I thought, This guy probably doesn’t want me around, plus I wanted the apartment to myself. By now, my grandparents had moved farther uptown, to an apartment on 233rd Street, so it was just me and my mother living on Bryant Avenue.

Then their engagement was abruptly cancelled. The guy didn’t even have the decency to tell her in person. He sent her a telegram saying that he couldn’t go through with it. When she received it, she was sitting at our kitchen table, and I was leaning against the arch of our hallway. Four feet away was the door, which I was always aiming for.

When she told me the engagement was off, I actually said to her, “I knew that was too good to be true.” It was one of the most terrible things I ever said to her. How could I have? It bothered me that she was hurt. But it also bothered me that she wasn’t leaving.

My mother did not react well to the breakup. She was diagnosed with what the doctors called anxiety neurosis. She needed electroshock treatment and barbiturates. These were costly things that we didn’t have the money for. She encouraged me to quit school and go to work.

I stayed in school until I was sixteen, when I was legally old enough to quit. I was O.K. with it—I had never seen school as my place. At one point, P.A. had picked me to represent the student body in a photo accompanying an article in the New York Herald Tribune. At the last minute, I was replaced with another student, who was a dancer. She was tall and had red hair; I had my dark complexion and my Italian name. It crossed my mind that she represented a more mainstream version of beauty than I did; you didn’t see people like me in detergent commercials or on soap operas. But I didn’t think the school was being biased. Performing Arts was just trying to draw in more students, and this was the status quo at the time.

After I left, I went through various jobs, all short-lived. I spent a summer as a bicycle messenger. At seventeen, I had a successful stretch working for the American Jewish Committee and their magazine, Commentary. I said to the woman who interviewed me for the job, “I love sitting around offices. I love the sound of typewriters. I love switchboards.” I’m sure she saw right through my bullshit, but she hired me anyway. The people who worked there—people like Susan Sontag and Norman Podhoretz—were intellectual heavyweights, and, though they were very welcoming toward me, I never felt like I fit in. But, at an office party with a drink in my hand, I’d be able to talk to almost anyone.

At eighteen, I was nursing a fifteen‐cent beer at Martin’s Bar and Grill, on Twenty‐third Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. It was a place where I’d sometimes go and have ketchup sandwiches: two saltine crackers with ketchup in the middle. The bar had a big picture window that looked across Sixth Avenue, where I could see the Herbert Berghof Studio, an acting school I was trying to get into. A friend had told me about the school, and a great teacher there named Charlie Laughton. I said, “The actor Charles Laughton?” He said, “No, no, different guy—his name is Charlie Laughton. He teaches sensory work.” I thought, I’m lost already.

I was pondering this when suddenly the bartender, who went by Cookie, got an angry look on his face. He got out from behind the bar and banged on the door of the men’s room. The next thing you know, he had hold of two scruffy young women by the collars of their leather jackets, and he was throwing them out. Cookie returned to his post at the bar, where seven or eight working stiffs were lined up, and the two women stood in front of that big, wide window in broad daylight and began passionately kissing. They were doing it so that everybody in the bar could see them. There was a rift I was witnessing right there between two separate worlds: the brazen young women outside who were the very essence of liberation, and the guys at the bar who were shell‐shocked by something they’d never seen in their lives. The sixties were coming.

I was introduced to Charlie Laughton at that same bar sometime later. The moment I set eyes on him, I thought, This guy is my kind of guy. He was about ten years older than me. He loved the poetry of William Carlos Williams, who came from Paterson, New Jersey, like he did. I enrolled at the Herbert Berghof Studio. I had no money, so I cleaned the hallways and the rooms where they had dance classes, and they gave me a scholarship.

By then, my mother had moved up to 233rd Street to live with her parents, and I had our apartment to myself. The rent was still thirty-eight dollars and eighty cents a month. But I had lost the Commentary job and I was broke. Charlie, who was married to an actress named Penny Allen, was broke, too, so he and I worked together as moving men. We moved office furniture and a lot of books. Our friend Matt Clark, who was in Charlie’s acting class, ran the moving operation. How does an actor prepare? He carries a refrigerator up the stairs.

In my free time, I became a voracious reader. Charlie turned me on to many novelists and poets I didn’t know. He would suggest various writers to check out and places to go, like the Forty‐second Street library for warmth and the Automat for sustenance. At the Automat, I could make a single cup of coffee last all morning, sitting there for five hours while I read my little books by the great authors. I would be reading “A Moveable Feast” and thinking, I don’t want to finish the pages, I like it here too much.

If the hour was late and you heard someone in your alleyway with a bombastic voice shouting iambic pentameter into the night, that was probably me, training myself on the famous Shakespeare soliloquies. I would bellow out monologues as I rambled through the streets of Manhattan. I’d do it by the factories, at the edges of town, places where no one was around. On those side streets, I didn’t need anyone’s permission to play Prospero, Falstaff, Shylock, or Macbeth. I grew to love Hamlet’s rogue-and-peasant-slave monologue so much that I started to use it at auditions. I would say to the director, “I know you have your pages that you want me to perform, but I have a little something that I’ve already prepared, if you don’t mind.” Usually they would give me a look that told me they were already finished with me.

Another young actor in Charlie’s class was a guy by the name of Martin Sheen. In one session, Marty did a monologue from “The Iceman Cometh,” and he blew the roof off. He was the next James Dean, as far as I was concerned. I got to be friends with him, and one day he said, “You know what my real name is, don’t you? Estevez.” He was half Spanish, and he came from Ohio, where he had a tough upbringing. He was one of ten kids in a working‐class family that was always struggling for money. He had tenacity and grit, and I could tell he was one of the best people I’d ever know.

Marty moved in with me in the South Bronx so we could split the rent. We worked together at the Living Theatre in Greenwich Village, where we cleaned toilets and laid down rugs for sets. The Living Theatre had been founded by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, two actors who started it in their living room in the nineteen-forties and eventually moved it to Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. They did the kind of shows that made you go home afterward and lock yourself in your room and cry for two days, staring at the ceiling. They helped forge Off Broadway theatre, whose success paved the way for Off Off Broadway, which made possible some of the shows I was doing Off Off Off Off Broadway. When I appeared in “Hello Out There,” by William Saroyan, we would put on sixteen performances a week at Caffe Cino on Cornelia Street, and then we’d pass the hat to what little audience was there, hoping to come away with a few dollars for a meal. It was our Paris in the early nineteen-hundreds, our Berlin in the nineteen-twenties. That was the spirit of the scene.

The author, far right, with family in the South Bronx, including his grandfather, James Gerardi, far left, and his mother, Rose Gerardi Pacino, second from right.Photograph courtesy the author / Mark Scarola

Sometimes one of Marty’s brothers would stay over at the Bronx apartment, or this guy Sal Russo from acting class who was going with a woman named Sandra. Her best friend was a musician with long dark hair and piercing eyes named Joan Baez, who would occasionally drop in, sit cross‐legged in a corner, and play her guitar. She hadn’t linked up with Bob Dylan yet, but we knew Joan was going places. I don’t believe she and I even exchanged hellos.

I heard that Cliffy was back in the neighborhood again. Both he and Bruce had enlisted in the Army. Bruce made it as far as his induction ceremony, when he got second thoughts and threatened to jump out a window, so they let him go. Cliffy, on the other hand, served for a few months, but of course he got in trouble and was thrown into the brig before being discharged. I knew there was no risk that I’d be drafted myself, because I was supporting my mother. Anyway, could you imagine me, that boy I was, going around saying, “Hup‐two‐three‐four”? I can do it in a play.

Cliffy had come out of the Army in even worse shape than he went in. He was on the needle and doing and saying all kinds of crazy stuff. He said he had been in the same platoon as Elvis Presley, and it turned out he actually had. He said he went to Canada, got a Catholic girl pregnant, and converted from Judaism so that he could marry her. Every time he stopped by my apartment, he would go into the bathroom to shoot up, sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of other people he’d brought. Eventually I had to tell Cliffy he couldn’t come around anymore.

It was no surprise to anyone when he overdosed and died. It made me think of a story that he had told me. When he was in the brig, Cliffy said, he was watched by a guard, a Southerner who carried a .45 pistol. The guard would hold his pistol up just so and start saying ominous things about “the Jews.” In his Southern drawl, he would tell Cliffy, who was still Jewish at the time, “You know, I could just blow your head off and tell people you tried to escape. Would that be something to do?” He kept repeating it, day after day, until Cliffy finally turned to the guy and said, “Hey, man, you know what? You better kill me. Because if you don’t, when I get out of here, I’m gonna come back and kill you.” Cliffy may not have been the toughest guy I ever met, but he certainly was the most fearless.

It was Bruce who told me that my mother had overdosed. I came back to my apartment late one night to find a note on my door, saying that he had an urgent message for me. I went to his place; he lived with his parents in the building next door, and he took me into their kitchen and said, “Your mom’s in a lot of trouble. She’s really sick. You better go, man.” I jumped in a cab to 233rd Street.

Arriving at the building, I looked up and saw the lights on in my grandparents’ apartment. I went up the stairs, walked in the door, and there were my grandmother and grandfather, their eyes wet with tears. I was too late. My mother had died like Tennessee Williams would, choking while taking her own pills.

Some people thought that she had committed suicide, as she had tried to almost fifteen years earlier. But she left no note this time, nothing. She was just gone. That’s why I have always kept a question mark next to her death.

I’ll never forget the image of my grandfather the next morning, sitting in a folding chair in the middle of the room, nothing around him, crouched over with his head in his hands, almost between his legs. He just kept banging a foot on the floor. I’d never seen him that way. He didn’t speak, but I knew what he was saying. No.

I thought that maybe somehow I could have stopped it from happening. Therapy, financial security—these things could have helped my mother. I had known that one day I was going to be able to supply her with all that and more. It sounds like an Odets play, but it’s true.

here. Come with me.” I was stunned. But I didn’t go. I had moved out of the Bronx by that time and found a low‐rent rooming house in Chelsea for eight bucks a week. Something was driving me. I had to make it, because that was the only way I would survive this world. ♦

This is drawn from “Sonny Boy: A Memoir.”Published in the print edition of the September 2, 2024, issue, with the headline “Early Scenes.”

[lightdragon789]

Other inserts backstory/facts Pt 4

Harper Weston

Okay yes, I know there’s only one episode of helping your Werewolf friend and who knows if it will get a part two. But I like making ocs and I loved the story. Plus Konrad is best boy and you can’t convince me otherwise!

So here we go with Harper!

Backstory:

Starting with Harper’s parents. She never knew her mother but it was due to her grandparents and their classist views on her father. He worked as an at home-mechanic while her mom was going to inherit her family’s business. They did love each other a lot but when he got her pregnant, they knew it would make her parents upset. They were saying that she either give the baby up for adoption or for Harper’s father to take her and go no contact.

Which she chose the latter, as she was young and needed to stay in her family’s business. Harper’s father gladly took Harper and raised her as best he could. He had to homeschool as he searched for another job to take on. As he didn’t have enough money to properly send her to school. But he taught her well and taught her somethings about being a mechanic and once she grew older. Taught her how to assemble her own bike. As he states it helps build character. Harper was happy to do so as she looked up to her father and wanted to be a mechanic like him.

They lived in the country side and one day while working on her bike, a neighbor’s Labrador attacked Harper. Her father managed to grab it and knock it away but Harper’s cheek was bleeding badly. He took her to the hospital but the wound left a bad scar on her face, which made her very fearful of big dogs. After this, her father started working harder in order for them to move elsewhere. He even got a license to get a gun in case another animal came to attack her. Harper managed to finish her bike (indoors) and she was very proud of her hard work and so was her dad.

They soon moved to a town, Harper went to middle and high school and worked hard just like her dad. Once she was old enough, she helped her dad in a mechanic store he worked in. She still went to collage to get a degree even if her dad said he would vouch to get her a job. Harper wanted to prove her hard work and still have a degree.

She graduated and started working at her dad’s shop and got another job as she wanted to save up to get her own home. Also, to pay her dad’s retirement as he did a lot for her.

Harper was on her bike, to go home and she noticed a man struggling with his bike. When she went over and asked if he needed help. He was a bit shy in stating his bike chain broke and he needed to get home quickly. Harper offered to help fix it at her dad’s shop. Which after a back and forth, he agreed and the two walked with their bikes. She learned his name is Konrad and he lived in the area but was a bit new to it. Once at the shop, she helped to fix the chain as well as oil the breaks. The two talking and sharing a laugh while she was fixing it.

Once asked what the price is, Harper half-jokingly said, being her friend cause she enjoyed his company. The two exchanged numbers and Konrad rode off and so did Harper. The two mostly stayed in contact on phone as Harper was busy with work. But he would visit her shop sometimes to chat, which she enjoyed and her dad liked Konrad too.

It wasn’t until one night, the two were hanging out and Harper had noticed a pattern with him. That being he’d always bike towards the forest and not towards the town on the nights of the first quarter moon. Which always confused her, so she decided to follow him to see what he was doing. This turned out going a bit wrong as Konrad shifted into his werewolf form, which made Harper scared. But her presence was noticed by Konrad and he was nervous that Harper would hate him.

But Harper took a moment to calm down before calling out Konrad’s name and once it was shown he was in control. She got closer and Konrad apologizes a lot if he scared her but was confused why she was here. To which she explained his odd pattern on this moon phase and now she knows why and apologizes for following him. The two talk more in a cave as Konrad feared hunters might be nearby. They accept each other’s apologies and Harper explains she was mostly scared cause of her fear of dogs, explaining her scar.

Konrad explained he’d never hurt her or anyone, stating he was happy Harper was giving him a chance. He then goes onto explain his side, why he left his pack, knowing his father and brother see him as the weakling of the pack and how it’s getting harder to hide from hunters. Harper flinches at times when Konrad growls but she brushes it off. She does say his secret is safe with her and that if he needed any help with the hunters she wouldn’t mind helping him. Which he looked grateful for and promises to keep her safe for the night.

After a few months, Harper bought her dream house and moved out of her dad’s place. He was very proud of her and reminded her to take breaks as he can see how tired she looked from working so much. Harper brushes it off, saying working hard got her to her goal and now she can work on her next phase. She was tired though after unpacking and giving her new address to Konrad and other friends. A few days later was the night of the first quarter and as Harper was getting ready for bed. Her phone blows up with calls from Konrad.

Looks like sleep would have to wait…

Facts.

Harper is 23 years old, 5’2, and is Unlabed, heteromantic and Gender-fluid. (Goes mostly with she/her tho)

Harper is okay with small dogs but not the best with medium/large dogs.

She hopes that maybe being around Konrad (mostly when he shifts) can help her overcome her fears.

She’s very much a workaholic, as she views hard work is the only way to lead a successful life.

Harper despite being short, always acts tough. As she tried to prevent Klay was wandering her home for Konrad.

She accepts Konrad as a werewolf due to being very open minded thanks to her father and giving people chances to explain themselves.

She tried to get Klay to leave as she thought he was a hunter at first but after seeing him sniff the air to find Konrad she knew he was his brother.

She hopes to one day have a pet parrot.

That’s all I have on Harper, this was a lot to write for a character with one video to work with. But I hope you guys like her!

Next time, I’ll do Louie!

[4townie]

Backstory #1: Rivals to Lovers Done Right

- this is the story of Aaron Z’s parents, Bo Zhao and Ciara Williams, and how their relationship came to be

- they went to the same private highschool on scholarships because they were both really good students, and during their sophomore year they simultaneously decided they needed to do more for their college résumé and that led to them actually interacting a lot

- the rivalry had begun

- they were constantly battling each other for top honors and academic awards and whatnot, if they were in the same class they would compete for the top grade every semester

- eventually they ended up running against each other for student body president which led to them working on a lot of the same school projects like organizing for fundraisers and being on committees for school events and whatnot

- which is when they actually started talking and getting to know each other and kinda becoming friends (except if anyone looked in their general direction they'd be at each other's throats in no time)

- Bo’s younger sister Qi was witness to all of their awkward flirting and put the pieces together way before either of them did

- Qi pretty much called her brother a dumbass and made him realize he had a fat crush on her all this time

- of course Bo tried to deny it but Qi just started listing how their body language had changed with each other, how he constantly talks about her when she's not around, the way he looks at her and his whole world just came to a full stop

- after he realized, Bo just stopped knowing how to act around Ciara. She’d make a witty comment or even a childish gesture like sticking her tongue out and he wouldn’t be able to function and respond

- finally on the day the election votes were being counted, Ciara asked what's up with him and why’s been so weird and distant lately and he admitted he liked her literally seconds before a total underdog third party was announced the new student body president

- obviously they were a little distracted by that for a second but they laughed it off and Bo kinda brought the conversation back to his feelings and Ciara gets super awkward when she admitted she liked him back

- then when their senior prom came around, Bo’s parents started asking him about finding a date and offering the names of some nice girls they knew the parents of that he could ask (and hopefully start a relationship with) and Bo is just like 😶

- when they meet Ciara on their prom night they’re really nice to her and whatnot (albeit extremely awkward due to hiding their shock at their son’s date but whatever)

- and when he gets home that night they sit him down and talk to him about how Ciara’s a nice girl but they don’t think she’s a right fit for him and how he would be much happier with someone who shared his culture and experiences

- it was kinda long and drawn out because they were trying to be gentle about it at first but eventually they realized their pushing wasn’t going anywhere and they gave him an ultimatum: break off his relationship with Ciara or never speak to them again

- obviously Bo chose Ciara, but he tried to give them multiple opportunities to come back into his life

- he tried calling and inviting them to their wedding, but they refused to show even after finding out they had a grandchild on the way

- luckily Bo is still close with Qi though so at least the kids still see some relatives from his side of the family, but they really never hear from their grandparents

- and honestly Bo doesn't look back a whole lot cuz he has no regrets (as he said to his son when he came out)

[xtrablak674]

A Delayed Gift from My Father

You may not know but my father died in September of nineteen ninety-three, found dead and rotting in his apartment by his parents, an event that would haunt his mom until the day she died, well at least her memory of the event did. But this isn't a story about his death, this is the story about the kind of dad he was in the context of something he did for me, before I could even speak.

When you're an orphan you don't have a point of reference to get clarity on details about your life before your recorded memory, you have to do your best to be a detective and piece together the piece left behind to figure out the story, meaning and significance.

As a part of my Monday binge-watching I was partaking in the second half of the first season of Smallville, finally watching this early aught series about Kal-El, better known as Superman before he donned a cape and blue tights. In the episode in question the character Whitney's dad has just died and he had found his father's metals who like my dad was a Vietnam veteran.

Whitney was sharing the metals with his girlfriend Lana Lang. I actually had to pause the video because clearly the property team did an amazing job with accuracy, and one of the metals staring at me from the screen was the exact same metal that had been mysteriously returned to me a couple of years ago by a former co-worker of mines. We aren't going to get into why this friend had my father's medal, but it was odd enough to be noteworthy.

I was taken aback because I remembered this small corduroy yellow change purse with a bronze-coloured zipper from my childhood. I didn't recall the medal as much as I did the large liberty dollar coin from 1924, I think for a child a coin was more familiar than a trinket from a war no one really wanted. But the maize colored purse with the green stripes and the coin were indelible etched on my recollection.

Now this is where my age betrays me, because if my mom told me more about the strange trinkets I don't remember, and since she proceeded her alleged husband (I have yet to see an actual marriage certificate) by nine years its not like I can ask her to corroborate my piece-mail memory. I recollect she showed me the pieces near the closet to the front door of our apartment at 1101 Brown Street, yes where I lived, and my last name were the same, there were so many jokes I got about this in elementary school.

Memory is funny, I remember exactly where I was, to even the position in the room. I remember the colors, the weight of the coin because mom let me handle it, but the sounds of her voice and the words that she attached to these moments elude me. There was one thing that was undeniable to me now as an adult putting this together, this was a gift a loving father gave to his first born son probably as a baby, and left in care of the mother of his child to be given at a future date. Something out of a television movie or a book, and the kind of parental love you usually see given to whyte children. Black fathers loving their children wasn't something that was a regular part of my diet growing up as a dark-skinned child in America.

My father as I keep referring to him, because he had an odd relationship to the role, and never embraced it in any traditional way. I don't recollect a moment of calling him either dad or father. It was B.R. (his initials) or Khule (nickname) but usually nothing more than 'hey you'. This awkward dynamic spilled over into my relationship with his parents, not by their fault, but unintentionally by his. In formal conversations I would refer to his mom as my grandmother and his dad as my grandfather and together as my grandparents, but unlike calling my mom, well mom. I never used either honorific to refer to my father's parents.

He died with us being estranged, for reasons I don't want to taint this particular story with, which is a moment of me directly feeling his love for me, something I sometimes had trouble resolving because of his unforgettable words to me as a young teenager, he loved me but didn't like me!

I realize that my father's sardonic sense of humor was reflected in my own humor, but at this age I took these words as more hurtful than humorous. And this intensifies my judgement of him not always making the best parenting choices. During those years of puberty when so many things are changing in your body the one thing you want more than anything is to be liked, why doesn't my father like me? #RhetoricalQuestion

But at least one mystery has been solved this mysterious pouch and its metallic contents were an attempt at a new dad to show how proud he was of having progeny and his attempts to endow them with something of meaning and significance.

This was momentous as I would learn later about my dad, was that he loathed his service in the Vietnam war and the war itself and I don't recall ever seeing one memento of his service. His saving this sole medal and giving it to his first-born was a very loud and clear declaration of his love that took thirty years to be delivered.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[sleepy-achilles]

Leon's Nightmare 2- All Grown Up

Round two here we go!!!

(Yes the beginning is rambles but im tryna fill in the last few years for them)

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Sure, everyone was shaken up after the whole Ministry thing, but no one worried about him anymore.

Well, not everyone.

Drew would always get a pit of dred whenever Leon's photo was taken or he'd appear on TV. Before knowing the truth, drew never noticed it, but as soon as he knew, he'd see him everywhere. Hidden in the crowds, a shadow behind Leon, in a reflection. And yeah, when Leon did the deed, it erased ministry from nearly everything. Nearly. There was always one photo of just Leon as a toddler. He's sat on the hill with the tree on top, ministry reaching for him from behind the tree.

It was the only photo not to change and Leon hated it and asked drew to get rid of it. Drew didn't. He couldn't. He almost lost his husband and he couldn't get rid of the reason why.

Drew felt stupid about it until Shawn showed him a photo of taker. It was a teenager taker, apparently it was taken a day before the fire. The looming figure had a hand on his shoulder, and taker? He was clueless with a big smile.

It troubles drew that in none of the photos or videos, ministry never touched Leon. And then he thinks about the day it all went to shit. The day Leon's neck would bruise. Something happened that day to completely let ministry in, and drew would never know what.

But years have passed now and drew and Leon have their own family to worry about. Five beautiful children, Beau Athena, Ophelia, Hunter and Caspian. They all have their own wild personalities, which both dad's were greatful for. But athena? Athena was different. She was too much like Leon, which scared Leon. It took them going to see Taker for Leon to calm down. She was a normal little girl. A human. Nothing to worry about.

Which drew can't lie, he was concerned aswell. See, Athena was a child of two Valley Children. Leon and Valentina. They both agreed that Leon would help Valentina and her so called husband to conceive, especially as Matthew was off on tour and couldn't. But after the child was born, her husband walked out. So Leon and Valentina just agreed to share custody and because of Valentinas job, Leon and Drew became Athenas main guardian. Which worked out well for all parties.

Oh, how can drew forget? Hunter, was the boy they adopted. He was from Korea, his name is Kang Hyun-Woo but when he moved in with Leon and drew he asked to change to go by Hunter Kang. They didn't tell him no. He's the same age as Caspian and Leon has worked hard to teach him English. They were only supposed to have him for a few months until his parents could sort thing out, but they never did. Never even bothered. So Hunter asked if they'd adopt him, even asked to change his name to Michaels. Which they did, atleast for public things like school and that. They explained how his history will always be more important than fitting in, but also respected his wishes for none legal things.

Hunter loves him on the fact that they share a name. And that's pretty much it. Despite the fact the small boy goes by H, especially when it comes to family events.

Ophelia and Caspian looked the most alike. Both had bright blonde hair and piercing blue eyes with pale skin. Whilst Athena had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and tan skin. But that didn't matter. She is their kid. She is Drews eldest daughter. When he first met H and Athena he fully understood how Taker felt when he took John in.

Beau was their first born. His dark hair and two toned eyes gave that away. According to his grandparents and everyone else, he's Leon if Leon could talk as a teenager and wasn't brutally traumatised. In other words, he's cocky, knows he's hot and confident. A trouble maker at that. Unfortunately, he's on a school trip at the time of our story.

But me and drew are getting side tracked.

Drew would find himself staring at their family photos, a slight fear in his gut that things weren't okay. That something had happened. But he didn't want to scare Leon. Leon was at the top, he was a hall of famer. He got given the title after Hunter brought back the demon title and Leon won it. Leon hasn't lost it since. He was doing amazing and he didn't need drews paranoia ruining that for him. Leon still was iffy about having his photo taken, drew knows that, but he also knows life long habits are hard to knock.

"Dad!" Drews eyes dart from the photo to his eldest child. "Yes Athena?" Drew asks. "Are we gonna see the others tonight?" She asks. Drew pauses and then he remembers. Halloween. Leon's birthday. John and Cassie always went all out for it, despite Leon telling them to just celebrate Halloween.

A holiday that was always a big part of the Michaels celebrations.

"Dad!" Athena snaps. "Yes, once your Pa gets home we will be heading to the valley" drew nods. "Cool! I'll tell the others to pack!" Athena smiles running off. Drew huffs and places the photo on the fireplace. Drew was supposed to be wrestling tonight, but Hunter didn't want Leon having two matches. He didn't want him defending the tag belts and his belt on the same night, fear of the fans calling it unfair if he lost one.

Not that it mattered. Drew smiles to himself at the sound of the tv. The kids were watching anyways. They always did.

-

"Somethings wrong with dad." Athena mutters. Ophelia, the middle child, glances at her. "What do you mean?" She asks. "Hes staring at photos of Pa again." Athena states as she watches her other dad kick Uncle Balor straight in the jaw. "Its because they are so madly in love!" Caspian gags. Hunter frowns and nudges him. "Dont be so...gross" H still took time to find his words. It always reminded everyone of Leon. "Its true" Cas smirks, eyes fixed to the tv.

"We need to pack, we are leaving for grandpa's house tonight. That means costumes and gifts" athena tells them. "What costumes did you end up getting the twins?" Ophelia asks. Obviously, Caspian and H were not twins. One was a blonde boy texas and the other was a black haired boy from Korea. Their birthdays ended up on the same day, they just didnt share a single ounce of dna, but they liked telling people they were twins. Unlike Cassie and rhea who ended up with actual twin boys, drew and Leon had fake twin boys.

"They wanted to be the outsiders, so I talked to uncle Goldust and he sorted it for them" athena admits. "Of course they did" Ophelia huffs. "You managed to sort yourself out?" Athena asks watching as her Pa gets the pin. "Yep, gonna be Cheryl Mason from silent Hill, what about you?" She asks. "Gonna be Lorraine from the conjuring films" athena states with a knowing smirk. Ophelia giggles. "Of course, I'm sure pa and grandad takes will love that" athena just smiles and turns the tv off. "Hey!" "We were watching pa!" Cas protests. "And he won, now go pack or don't come with us." Athena orders. The boys huff but make a move. "So bossy" Ophelia teases before pulling her upstairs.

Drew can't take his eyes off Leon's face. Something is wrong. Really really wrong.

------

Leon was tired. He finally understood his father's and uncles struggles. Even being immortal had its downsides.

He pushes the door open and kicks his boots off as the sound of small feet begin rushing towards him. "PAPA!" They all scream. Leon chuckles, dropping his bag as he's bombarded by arms. "Woah" Leon huffs as the kids practically start climbing him. Leon lifts H up onto his shoulders and Ophelia and Caspian immediately hang off his arms. Leon glances at Athena who's stood back. "Alright lil miss, what's wrong?" Leon asks lifting his arms and the kids attached to them. "Dad's been acting weird. Staring at a photo of you all day" athena states. "Of course, have you met me? I'm a stud! I'd stare at myself all day too" Leon jokes. "Told ya!" Cas calls. Leon chuckles at his youngest son. "So stupid. Cmon! Let's put the bags in the truck" athena claps.

The other kids groan. "You truly are like your dad" Leon states. Athena raises an eyebrow. "And the more I look, the more I realise you are truly like your mother aswell" Leon mutters letting the kids down. "Listen to your sister kids. Make all our lives peaceful" Leon tells them as he walks off to find drew.

He finds him in the living room, bags by his feet, eyes on a photo. Leon pauses in the doorway. "You know, you don't have to stare at a photo, I do last forever" Leon speaks up. He doesn't know what to do when drew doesn't react. "Drew?" Leon asks moving closer. Drew glances at him. "I didnt hear you come in" drew admits. Leon raises an eyebrow. "No, I wouldn't hear the screaming kids either." Leon jokes, eyes glancing at the photo before drew. "You know, he's not bloody Mary. You can't summon him in a reflection or a photo." Leon mutters reaching for the photo. Drew grabs his wrist.

Leon watches him. "Somethings wrong." Drew whispers. "Everything is fine drew. You need to let him go." Leon sighs using his other hand to push the photo over. "Leon.." "im serious drew. This? This gives him power." Leon snaps pulling his hand away from the other. Drew watches him. "You need to stop it. It's not healthy. Let him go or else." Leon growls, grabbing the bags and walking out.

Drew swallows and looks at the down photo. Maybe Leon was right. But the last time drew felt this way, he ended up burning Leon alive.

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Leon leans against the big tree as John approaches him. "Any reason your avoiding your husband?" John asks watching as Leon lights a fag up. Leon blows out smoke before chuckling. "Hes become obsessed with ministry. Again." Leon huffs. John turns to look at drew who's talking to their parents. "Seriously?" John asks. "Yeah, keeps staring at photo of me. It's starting to freak the kids out" Leon states.

"You spoke to dad? I mean, it has to be happening for a reason" John mutters as the kids run past. "Cas stop chasing Jesse with that bat!" Leon barks. John glances at his nephews. Cas frowns and drops the bat as Jesse smirks and runs off to find his twin. "I can't sense anything, so nothings wrong." Leon mutters. "And yet you couldn't sense anything with Athena and yet you were still worried sick." John points out. "Thats different. You don't understand, the idea one of my kids could end up with the same damn curse as me pains me" Leon mutters. "Look, it's Halloween, your birthday. You can't ignore him forever. Just hear him out alright?" John sighs sensing he's getting no where with Leon. Leon just continues to smoke. "Im going to save my daughter from your kids" John hums before walking off.

Leon keeps his eyes on his father, watching him closely.

Taker glances at shawn who's talking with the kliq members before looking back at drew. "That bad huh?" Taker asks quietly. "He doesn't.. believe me..but I swear Taker....the shadow in that photo is getting darker. Bigger. I'm not crazy.." Drew whispers. "I believe you." Taker nods, ignoring as cassie takes a photo of them. Drew watches Taker. He doesn't flinch. Leon flinches. "How did you stop being so scared?" Drew asks. Taker straightens up. "Because he was no longer interested in my body. And Leon killed any connection we had that day." Taker admits. "My photos became clean. Brighter. I have nothing to fear anymore." Taker adds.

Drew sighs and rubs his jaw. "Im scared for him, taker. I'm really scared for him." Drew whispers.

Taker doesn't get to respond.

"PAPA!"

"Shit! LEE!"

Drew and taker turn towards Leon.

Leon's body has tensed, his eyes rolled back, his body starting to shake and seize.

Next thing, drew is up and running towards him and Leon is on the floor shaking, camera discarded on the floor nearby.

Shawn slowly picks it up and looks at the photo last taken. His heart stops.

"CALL THE AMBULANCE!"

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

"Come back to papa" Shawn whispers, his hands shaking as he gently cups and caresses baby Leon's face. John stands behind him nervously as his baby brother has a seizure. "Please, not you too" Shawn whispers.

"Not you aswell" he sobs.

---------------------------------------------------------------------Notes

Now, if there's one thing I'm a pro at, it's seizures.

Ha, epilepsy joke. Because yk, I got it.

Anyways.

I've always wanted to do a future au for the kids as they stare their own families. And I thought fuck it, Leon can't be happy.

I do have a wip in where the wwe stars spend a day with kids and that involves Leon. It's not done but its cute and I have no idea why I've mentioned it.

Hope you guys love the idea of part 2.

Also I will never mention the kids age because then I have to sort an actual timelines and I do not have the brain power for that.

[avocado-frog]

Dahlia. 5

Rating: T Warnings: child death, murder, human experimentation but only briefly referenced, implied child abuse, child abandonment Title: 6/7/2020 Word count: 5.5k Summary: The inside of the lab wasn't any better. Plain, white walls. Pristine, white, tiled floors. Thick, glass windows. A few books, a stack of paper and pencils, a toy or two, the only thing they got to pass the time before one of the people- white coats, blue masks, blue gloves- called one of them back.

Winter brought on hopelessness. Like it would never really end. They would never leave that place alive.

(12/3/2010)

Feet crunching in the frosted grass, book held protectively under his arm, with his camera wrapped around his wrist, Logan found a spot underneath the overhang, leaning against the glass wall.

He waited, knowing he wasn't going to get a lot of time to read before the kids came to bother him, but he didn't mind. The only thing he worried about was the cold. The uniforms didn't do much in way of heat preservation.

Logan thought it was ironic how much he hated the winter. He had ice magic, which was what Leo told him when he offhandedly mentioned his disliking of it. The other kids thought it was hilarious.

In truth, Logan missed normal winter. Before his eleventh birthday. When he shared a room with his older brother, when they stayed up late to watch holiday movies. Houses decorated with bright, colored lights, decorating his own house, staying home from school, the last day before break was always filled with paper snowflakes, loud music, baking cookies. Flying to China for a week to visit his grandparents on his father's side, and then to Japan for the rest of his family on his mother's side, then back to America. Three weeks in total. He remembered wishing that his family members would just visit them instead, but it was always fun to visit. He couldn't remember anything from when he lived there himself.

Logan was fourteen now, turning fifteen in January, and he didn't even know what month it was. He only knew his birthday and current age, because that's what the adults told him. Logan Kari, fourteen, January fifteenth, nineteen-ninety-six.

The other kids couldn't remember much from before. Before their kidnappings, before the lab, so Logan had to teach them. Every tradition he could remember, every detail. He told them lots of stories. He could only imagine the disappointment on Leo's face when she realized how truly underwhelming a microwave was. 

Winters were spent outside in the dreary weather. Logan couldn't feel the cold, but he knew that for the others- Leo especially- it got bad. For Logan, ice magic let him feel heat worse, yet be unaffected by the cold weather. Still, the sky was a light gray, snow drifting silently. The trees beyond the fence looked jagged and lifeless as their leaves were buried beneath white snow.

The inside of the lab wasn't any better. Plain, white walls. Pristine, white, tiled floors. Thick, glass windows. A few books, a stack of paper and pencils, a toy or two, the only thing they got to pass the time before one of the people- white coats, blue masks, blue gloves- called one of them back.

Winter brought on hopelessness. Like it would never really end. They would never leave that place alive.

-----

(5/12/2011)

"It's safer to go in groups," Logan tried to rationalize. The twins, ten years old, both nodded like they understood, but Logan could tell. They were scared. Scared Logan would leave them behind, scared that they would pay the price for what Logan was going to do, scared that Logan and Lily and Jasmine would all die.

"I'll come back for you in two months," Logan promised. Leo gave a firm nod, and Cass bit her lip, nodding along. "I promise."

"You'll be okay?" Leo looked up at him, and he smiled thinly, forced.

"Yeah, we'll be okay, Leo." Another nod. "You'll protect each other while we're gone, okay?"

Leo grinned, nodded again, and took her sister by the hand. "Promise."

Two months...

...He didn't see them again for six years.

-----

(5/13/2011)

A fifteen-year-old Logan, desperately clinging to the smaller hand of a nine-year-old Lily, with his younger sister, Jasmine, trailing close behind. Tunnel vision, as the exit came into sight. His peripheral vision faded to black, it was all he could see, all he could think about. He'd come back, in two months, for the twins.

He almost reached, he was so close. Gunshots fired in the distance, there was a thud, and Logan slowed to a stop, already tensing like a spring as he began to turn.

He was met with the sight of Lily, hands covering her mouth as she stared down at something with the most horrified face he'd ever seen on anybody that young, and his gaze snapped to where his eight-year-old sister should have been.

His sister laid on the white, tiled floor, in a white uniform, stained bright red, as blood created a shiny pool under her head and stomach. She was already dead. There was no use in moving to try to save her.

Logan pushed Lily behind him, as his heart rattled, pounded, threatened to explode, and suddenly, he was overcome, overwhelmed, every emotion began to flood his system.

Footsteps ran towards the group, and they were so close to being done. His breathing quickened, he couldn't control it. His head hurt, his vision spun. He wanted to vomit, only able to stare down at the sight of his sister. He couldn't breathe.

An almost-painful sense of cold ran through his veins, growing sharper, and sharper, until it felt like he was being stabbed, and he screamed.

Sharp pillars of ice shot around him, nearly hitting Lily, narrowly avoiding Jasmine, impaling the men with the guns. Three of them, Logan could count, fell through the ice spikes, leaving bloody trails behind. The ice blocked off any more from coming through. He did the only thing he could think to do, and grabbed Lily by the hand, trembling as the ice followed in much smaller spikes, out the exit.

Logan couldn't see. Alarms blared bright red, loud. Screams, gunfire. Logan didn't stop, on autopilot now.

Deep, deep into the woods was when he finally slowed down, hearing Lily struggling to breathe finally snapped him out of his panicked daze. She leaned against a tree, fighting to catch her breath. Logan fell down, palms digging into the sharp blades of grass, vision blurred.

Arms wrapped tightly around his chest, eyes pressed hard into his knees, shirt stained with blood, his veins turned ice-cold, lungs constricting, chest tightening, he couldn't breathe.

He screamed.

-----

(8/10/2013)

Getting out of the forest was a blur. He couldn't remember how he survived with Lily during those few months, but it was a lot harder than what he planned. He thought he could go back for the twins in two months, but he couldn't even leave the woods for five.

He felt sick. He promised he would go back for them... it just had to be put off momentarily. The weather grew hotter, and Logan was sure he was going to die for at least a week straight. Still, his timing was perfect. At least it wasn't winter. Lily wouldn't have made it.

The first thing that they had seen when they got out of the forest was a highway, and Logan barely reacted in time to save Lily from being hit by a car. He held her hand tightly as they found a way to safely get across, his heart racing as he finally stepped foot on something that wasn't grass. Solid asphalt.

Logan found himself immediately overwhelmed.

People ran past them, there were so many. Talking, yelling over the phone, racing each other down the sidewalks. Lily pressed herself into his side, and he was okay with that, terrified that she would get lost.

Maybe he was paranoid, but people shot them looks. Either disgust or pity, Logan couldn't tell. But he suspected that the two of them didn't look fantastic.

Mostly, they were stopped on the streets and asked where their parents were. Logan had no way of contacting his family, and was quite confused when it turned out that nobody knew his mother or father at all. The world outside of the lab was a lot bigger than he remembered.

A few states away, they managed to find a house. One that nobody lived in. The door creaked open with a careful push, and Logan didn't let go of Lily's hand, inching inside.

Dried blood stained the ground at the bottom of the staircase, trailing down from the steps. The fifth step down was cracked, the railing splintered. In front of one of the rooms, another puddle of dried blood. The furniture had a thin layer of dust, four of the eight bedrooms used to be occupied.

The first room was a kid's room. The one with the blood in front of the door. A small, wooden bed was pressed against the corner of one of the walls in the back, a blue comforter, yellow fish adorning the fabric, haphazardly twisted against the gray sheets, pillow tossed to the floor, stuffed animals- a yellow pufferfish, a pink starfish, a gray shark- strewn around the floor near the bed. As if the child had been in a rush to get out.

The boy who lived there must have really loved the ocean, Logan thought, as he continued to search through the room. Coloring books sat atop a desk, neatly arranged. Markers were tossed to the ground. A bookshelf filled with thin books, basic facts about different types of fish. A DVD sat on the floor, covered in dust. A cartoon mermaid sat on a rock with a crab and a yellow fish was on the cover. Coloring pages with that same cartoon mermaid laid underneath it, scribbled in red and purple and teal.

The boy signed his drawings in blue crayon. Ryan, with a backwards 'Y'.

The next room he found must have belonged to another boy of the same age. Logan liked to imagine that this one was supposed to have cleaned his room, but threw everything into his closet and under his bed like his parents wouldn't notice. In any case, his room was messier. Orange bedsheets, dinosaur stuffed animals. The room itself was painted bright orange.

Plastic dinosaurs, plastic bugs, plastic green army figures. Barely any effort was put into hiding the toys. By his TV was a handful of DVD cases, action movies for little kids, and a collection of episodes from a show about superheroes. ...Turtles wielding weapons and color-coded masks, something Logan didn't understand a single bit.

There was a wooden toy sword at the end of the hallway, coated in blood, and Logan thought it was safe to assume that it belonged to this one.

A deflated basketball sat underneath the desk, beside a bin of action figures. On the top of that desk, unfinished homework assignments for- Logan assumed preschool, maybe kindergarten. Signed with the name Sam, all capital letters, several exclamation marks at the end.

The third room, another boy's room. Glow stars stuck to the ceiling had all mostly died out, though they formed neat constellations on the walls. Foam planets hung from strings above the bed. This one was neatly made, unlike the other two, only slightly ruffled up.

Books about space laid scattered around the floor, coloring pages ripped out and taped to the wall, scribbled-in drawings of planets and astronauts and spaceships.

A big, plastic castle sat against the wall, plastic dragons sat on either side like guards. On the inside of the castle, a princess in a pink dress, and a prince in a red cape, with several knights gently laid in different rooms of the dollhouse.

This one took great care of the toys in his room, he noted, seeing how neatly arranged they all were, lined against the walls, organized perfectly. A small projector sat on the floor, displaying photos of the universe on the ceiling, while a narrator's voice told facts.

Elliot's name was written in overlapping, big handwriting on each drawing, some of the letters capitalized, some lowercase, varying in size. Always in purple marker. At least one of the letters was always backwards. They were all signed with what age they were done by, too. Two years old, three years old, four years old, and then five. It stopped at five years old.

The fourth room must've been the parent's room. A bed with red blankets, a desk against the wall, and a dresser on the other side. Above the desk was a photograph. Logan paused.

Leo and Cass told them that they had brothers. When Logan would ask what they wanted to do when they got out, it was always what they said. They wanted to go home, see their mom and dad, and their younger brothers.

They must've died earlier that year. If Elliot was five, at least, and Leo said that the last time they had seen them, they were two years old, doing the math, it made the three kids five years old.

So, Logan kept that photograph of the kids up on the wall, dusted them off, and cleaned the blood from the floor. He had to ask how to get a key made by the neighbors, got one for himself and for Lily, and cleaned each of the kid's rooms. He couldn't bring himself to get rid of anything, couldn't bring himself to throw the drawings away. Everything was kept in boxes in the attic.

Finally, he was finished. Finally, he could sleep. He took the room that was downstairs, the parent's room, so that if anybody broke in, he'd be the first to know. Lily took one of the last rooms down the hall, it didn't have anything in it. A guest room.

Logan locked the door to his room and didn't come out.

-----

(9/6/2013)

Logan could hardly make himself leave his bed. The door was locked, and he had no intention of letting Lily inside. Lily... Lily was self-reliant. She could take care of herself. She was almost ten years old. Logan was eleven when he had to start taking care of himself. Lily could do the same.

He closed his eyes. His sister bled out in front of him. Spikes of ice shot at guards, warm blood splattered on his face. He took off running. His parents found him with a girl they didn't know instead of the sister he was supposed to keep safe. He couldn't find his parents at all. Leo and Cass were probably dead. Their family was dead. He wondered what happened to the three kids. What happened to the parents.

Lily pounded on the door and screamed for him to get up. Logan ignored her, curling in on himself, staring at the wall, tired, afraid to sleep.

Lily was crying and Logan was restless. Eventually, he had to get up. Eventually, he had to go outside again.

When he did, it was because there wasn't anymore food, there hadn't been in almost two weeks, and they would starve to death if he didn't figure something out.

She would die.

She would die.

She would die.

His sister was dead.

During the year the kids had spent wandering around, looking for a place to live, people acted strange. They would ask if they needed help, try to call the police, offer a place to stay (those were good days) or give them food or money. Logan had... maybe twenty dollars saved up.

Twenty dollars didn't make them as rich as Logan thought it had. It bought them a box of rice, a can of beans, cabbage, carrots, juice, some apples, oranges, and a bag of candy. It was enough for the time being, but they would need to find a way to get more money at some point. He had to get creative with the cooking, making something Lily would eat every day, something different, or else she would get bored, and it was a good distraction.

Logan got the both of them in school, had to lie and say he was Lily's brother (it put a weird taste in his mouth) and that they had both been homeschooled up until that point. They both struggled in the grade they were put in, but school was a good distraction for them both, too.

 ...For Lily, at least. Logan was terrified every second Lily was out of his sight. 

-----

(11/1/2013)

He didn't expect the twins to be there when he came back, but he was still devastated when they weren't. Logically, he knew they were dead.

He told Lily, and she cried, and she didn't talk to him for five days. Logan retreated back to the safety of his bedroom.

He failed them, too.

-----

(12/18/2013)

Logan, against his better judgement, let Lily go to the park across the street. By herself. He was afraid, scared that she'd be caught and killed, but she turned ten two days before, and was convinced that she could do it.

Logan was proud of himself, actually. He managed to get a job, and was able to keep himself and Lily alive. He didn't have to pay for anything regarding the house given that he technically didn't own it. He didn't know how to buy a house. Lily came back home from the park, knocking on the door. Logan hummed to himself, thinking that he must've locked it by accident.

Lily stood with two other kids on the other side of the door.

Two other kids, one (nine years old) had a gash on their forehead, unconscious as they leaned against the second. Black hair fell over their face. The other kid, looked a lot younger, maybe six, had their hands covering bleeding ears.

Logan rushed them all inside, took the one with the bleeding forehead to one of the kid's rooms, (Ryan's, he thinks). The other one never left their side. They couldn't hear- jumped whenever anybody spoke, always had their hands covering their ears- and didn't like to talk, and couldn't read or write.

It took the first kid, the older one, a week to wake up, and they couldn't talk very well either. Logan suspected brain damage. They had trouble articulating words, had trouble walking without using the wall as support, always had a headache, couldn't concentrate, and had seizures once or twice. That was absolutely terrifying the first time it happened.

The other one, the six-year-old, nobody could talk to them. Nobody knew their name until the other one told them.

"Dylan," the older one- Jaxon- mumbled. They refused to tell Logan their name. They pointed at the other kid. "That's... what they said that- that they wanted- wanted to be called."

Dylan. Logan nodded. And that's what they called them. Dylan and the other one. Dylan spent most of their time trying to learn how to read, glaring at Logan if he tried to help. They figured it out after a while, eventually learned to write, and it made things easier.

Dylan was a little hard to read. They weren't fluent in sign language until they were around ten, but they learned to read at seven. Dylan and Logan could talk to each other, the thing was whether Dylan wanted to. They hardly ever initiated a conversation with anyone who wasn't Jaxon.

Dylan didn't trust them. They were six years old and had a backpack packed because at any second, Logan was going to kick them out. That's what they thought.

Logan picked up on sign the quickest, followed by Dylan, and then Lily, and finally, Jaxon. That one wasn't great at picking up on languages. They had to sign slowly for them and for Dylan. Logan didn't mind.

Dylan was scared of him. They hid behind a locked door with Jaxon, huddled in the corner of the room until it was time to eat. They would take the plate, and watch the other kids, would wait until they were all done, wait thirty minutes, and then they would start. Once they were sure Logan wasn't poisoning them.

They were six years old.

One day, Logan tried to figure out a way to make Dylan trust him a little more, so he told them about the toys up in the attic. The children they belonged to were only a year younger than Dylan was.

So, that was how the kids discovered that the attic door had an automatic lock function when it closed.

Nobody could find Dylan for hours, because Logan was out trying to get something from the store and didn't know about the attic, and left Lily in charge while he was gone. He returned to find Jaxon in tears, Lily absolutely frantic, and Dylan sobbing in a locked attic.

It took several more hours for Logan to convince them that nobody locked them in there on purpose.

Two years passed, and the two kids had both decided that they wanted to go to school, because it was where Lily and Logan both left during the day, and Logan worried about leaving them home alone much more than he did about having them in school.

Dylan was eight for their first day of school, putting them in second-grade. Like with the other two, Logan had to say that they were siblings. He didn't really mind it as much as he did before.

Dylan insisted that they would be fine on their own, since the other kids were obviously in different grades. But as much as Dylan didn't trust any of them, they hated being alone.

Something happened that day. Dylan might have been overwhelmed, or something was said to them, or being alone was a lot harder than they thought.

Logan got off of work early to pick the kids up that day, and as he waited outside with the parents of other kids, Dylan was the first one out.

Dylan, fearfully looking around, chewing on their hand, crying, eyes snapping to meet Logan's gaze, making a beeline towards him, head burrowed in his stomach, sobbing. People turned to look, made little sympathetic noises, and Logan had to protect the poor kid from a few of the adults who brought it upon themselves to try to get them to stop crying.

Logan spent a lot of time trying to find the kid's families. But they never found Dylan's parents. Nobody knew where they were, and Dylan had only been three years old, they wouldn't have remembered anyways. Logan managed to find a file for Dylan somewhere, and found their parents through that. They learned from there that Dylan had been left on a dumpster in an alleyway nearby, and nobody could figure out a way to tell them. Logan was the one who ended up having to do it, when he was eighteen, and Dylan was nine. Dylan took the information about the abandonment, and simply left for the park across the street. 

Logan could tell that Dylan cried about it, face hidden with a hood pulled over their head when they came back. Neither of them talked about it, but Logan wanted to find Dylan's parents more by that point. He had a lot of words for them that he would never say in front of the kids.

They found the other kid's parents when they were eleven, a little while after they learned about Dylan. Logan expected them to leave, possibly for Dylan to go with them, because Dylan liked them the best.

The kid had looked uncomfortable- almost afraid- throughout the entire visit, and it only got worse when they started to argue. Logan had been out in the kitchen, he didn't know what it was about, and nobody spoke about it when it was done.

...When it was done, the kid had a broken wrist, Lily knocked out a grown man with a toy baseball bat, and their father was being arrested.

As Logan attempted a home-made cast around the kid's wrist, he decided that maybe those two were better off with him, anyway. They had said that they'd rather stay than let Logan try to find alternative family members for them.

Logan had six biological siblings that he never spoke to, and his parents, who he hadn't seen since he was eleven.

-----

(9/12/2016)

He always kept his door open. That was the rule, the first thing he told the kids. His door was open. Lily had nightmares, sometimes, and wanted to stay with him. Logan never minded. Jaxon joined every so often, and Dylan only once or twice.

One night, he recalled waking up to finding all three of the kids- Lily was thirteen, Jaxon was twelve, and Dylan was nine, he'd known the younger two for three years by that point- all asleep in the bathroom. Lily's hands were stained blue, Jaxon's hair was wet, also dyed blue, and Dylan was surprisingly unscathed. Jaxon's hair was sloppily cut to his ears, chopped poorly, done by the hands of three kids.

He woke up Jaxon, took Lily and Dylan back to their respective rooms, and gave him a proper hair cut. He already knew, if he was being honest. It hadn't been much of a shock when Jaxon whispered his name to him, when he cried after Logan smiled and said it was okay, when Jaxon did end up in his room for the rest of that night. Dylan came out maybe two weeks later, but Logan had never known them as anything but Dylan.

Lily was Lily, so she was accepting of them both (almost aggressively so) and Logan did as much research as he possibly could on the matter. Logan didn't care. As long as they were all happy. He was proud that either of them trusted him with that information at all.

-----

(10/13/2016)

The kids always faltered when introducing each other to people.

Logan referred to the kids as their names, like the rest of them did, and he would be asked one of three questions. If they were related, whether or not he was their adoptive father, (god forbid) or whether they were adoptive siblings. Logan always went with the siblings route, because he was not old enough to be their father at all and did not want to be referred to as such. But he never introduced them as siblings unless asked. 

He was hardly listening when Lily invited a friend over, and when she gestured to Logan, introducing him as her brother, and that'd been it. He didn't think anything of it, until a few hours later. He never mentioned it.

Later, she asked if it was okay if she did that, because she knew about his biological sister, and Logan decided that it was fine.

Jaxon was the second one, when he had to go home early from school, after falling from the monkey bars and hurting his arm, when the nurse opened the door for Logan.

"Your brother's here."

Jaxon stood up, followed Logan to the car, and fidgeted with his hands like he had a question that he didn't want to ask. Logan had to prompt him.

"Are we brothers?" Was Jaxon's question, and it caught Logan off guard. Jaxon's face immediately filled with regret. "Sorry. It's just that the- the teachers at school all say that we are, 'nd Lily calls you her brother, too. So I was just wondering..."

Logan shrugged. "You can call me whatever you like. I don't mind either way."

"...Okay." Jaxon played with the end of his hoodie string. "I think I'd like it."

And when Dylan used the sign for brother to get Logan's attention, that was the one that nearly made him cry. Dylan had just stood there, wondering why Logan was crying when they had simply wanted to inform him that they were out of apple juice.

-----

(11/12/2018)

Logan had found it mildly worrying that Dylan and Jaxon had both met a new person that day, named Cass and Leo respectively. Even more so when Jaxon told her that the Leo he met had been looking for a Logan. And when Dylan told him that the Cass had been looking for a Lily.

Dylan had invited the two over for dinner the next day. Logan said that was fine.

He accepted the twin's deaths ages ago. He made a mistake, a poor judgment in not taking them. He worried, though, that they would have ended up like Jasmine.

The two that Dylan invited over, had in fact ended up being the twins, looking so different from when they were ten. Logan guessed them to be sixteen now. They didn't look hurt, Cass had stayed relatively the same, now wearing black glasses, a brown cardigan sweater. She was polite, kind, she was the same as six years ago.

Leo was different, and painfully so. Sharp, angry, paranoid. Logan almost didn't recognize her. If she didn't share the same name as his supposedly-dead childhood friend, he wouldn't know it was the same one.

He let the twins stay. How couldn't he? He should've taken them with him from the beginning.

Two people turned to four with the addition of Jaxon and Dylan, and they stayed like that for five years, until the twins. Six people became nine, with the triplets that joined soon after.

Logan wouldn't change it for anything.

-----

(3/20/2019)

Logan's door was never locked. It was always open at night.

So the night that Logan woke up to frantic pounding on the door, to Sam screaming for him, when he shot up and scrambled for the doorknob, fumbling with the lock until it turned, it was worrying. Because he never locked or closed that door.

"...Sam?" Logan rubbed at his eye, and stared at him. His face had lost color, tears in his eyes, hands clenched into fists at his sides. "What's wrong? Is everything okay?"

Sam didn't speak, making some choked noise, gesturing to the kitchen, so Logan followed him, and slowed, and stopped.

His ears rang, he couldn't focus, he had to stay awake long enough to fix this. Blankly, he remembered Dylan telling him to hide the knives.

He told Sam to get Cass and to get Dylan, and the boy darted up the staircase, leaving Logan with Ryan and Elliot.

Ryan, eyes glazed over, pale, staring at his brother, blood flowing from a deep cut on his palm, dripping onto the tiled kitchen floor. Breathing shallow, he looked up at Logan, desperate.

He didn't say anything, and Logan didn't want him to. Moving carefully, he directed Ryan away from the scene, whispering for him to stop looking, as he led him to the countertops, sitting him down on the top, raising the bleeding hand into the air, searching for their first-aid kit.

Several footsteps ran down the stairs, and Logan couldn't even begin to imagine what the other's reactions would be.

Elliot, on his side in a pool of blood. Still alive, but barely. Dylan's magic was able to keep him alive, Cass's was able to fix the wound, and stop the bleeding, but it took both of them a long time, and Logan didn't want to think about Elliot at all so he didn't watch.

"It's really deep," Jaxon muttered, sitting near Ryan because he didn't want to see Elliot either. "If Cass doesn't... finish soon.. he might need stitches."

Logan knew that, but he appreciated Jaxon for filling the silence. Jaxon turned to Sam, asking a question.

"He won't like it," Sam cringed.

Logan hated giving stitches, and it turned out that Ryan shared their collective fear of needles. Every single one of them, besides the twins, were afraid of needles.

Logan never had stitches before, so when he told Ryan that they wouldn't hurt, he didn't actually know.

Whether Ryan was just afraid of needles, or in genuine pain, Logan didn't know, and it didn't matter, because either way, the minute his eyes locked on the needle in Logan's hand, he was screaming. Thrashing to get away, begging to be left alone, and it was a struggle, and Ryan didn't leave his room after that.

The aftermath of that, Logan didn't think anyone took it well.

Leo and Jaxon's fight was proof of that. 

Two months ago, they were inseparable. They contrasted each other so much, and yet complemented each other perfectly. Logan knew that on Saturdays, they would stay up either watching movies in Leo's room, or in Jaxon and Dylan's to play games until Dylan kicked them out. There was never one without the other, but Elliot was their third in that group. Elliot almost dying created a rift, and Leo took her anger out on Jaxon, and nobody found him until morning.

Leo and Ryan disappeared, and Cass left to stay with her cousins. Sam stayed with the others on the chance that his siblings would come back, and Logan left to finish college in-person. He hated to leave them, but this was something he couldn't fix.

Logan regretted leaving them so much. Sam called every day, updated him on everything that happened, and it was his favorite part of the day. Sam made new friends, Logan was happy for him, but sometimes, it was different. Sometimes, Sam was crying because of a bad nightmare, worrying that he would never see his siblings again, that Elliot would die, and Logan reassured him that it was going to be okay. He didn't know if that was the truth.

Mostly, he regretted leaving because of his siblings. Sam and Elliot were a whole separate thing entirely. Of course, he cared about them, he was worried about Elliot just as much as the others were, but the others, those were his main priority.

Dylan, especially, was upset that he left. Logan visited whenever he could, and Dylan always avoided him. Logan knew exactly why, and he hated that he was reminding Dylan of their parents.

Jaxon was just angry in general, called Logan an idiot for leaving, and yelled and screamed when he had to leave again. Lily had to hold him back from literally attacking him.

Lily said that she understood, that she wasn't mad, but Logan could see the undercurrents of anger hidden in her eyes. She denied it every time.

-----

(6/7/2020)

Logan finished packing the last of his things into his car a while ago, and had resorted to sitting on an empty mattress. Sighing, he stood up, knowing that it was better to get it over with.

He'd be home in two days.

[strangerthingfanfic]

New Story - please reblog and share and comment

High school Dilemma Part 1: Freshman

Ao3 Link:

Chapter 1: Welcome to Hawkins High

“You're not good enough”.

“They all hate you”.

“This will be the end”.

Aaron covered his ears like it would make the inner voices stop.

It was nerve-wracking being in a new town and at a new school.

He had moved to Hawkins to live with his grandparents to get away from his abusive homophobic mother.

He really hoped that it would turn out better.

He headed into the busy halls and headed for his first-class keeping his head down and eyes forward.

Eddie watched, his tongue slowly crossing his lips as he saw something he liked.

Then it happened.

His brother Daryl appeared out of nowhere and started flirting with the new kid.

Resting his arm on the locker Daryl smiled and said “Hey haven't seen you around before”.

Aaron blushed, making Eddie's insides burn brighter and his blood boil.

Daryl always did this but this time Eddie was going to push back.

Inhaling deeply Eddie grabbed Aaron by the arm and said as they sauntered down the hall “we have first period together and we don't want to be late”.

He looked back in time to see Daryl scowling and flipping him off.

“Not this time brother,” Eddie thought and guided the new kid to their first class.

“Thanks for that. I didn't know how to remove him from my path” Aaron said as they sat next to each other in the back.

Eddie's insides were doing a happy dance knowing that the new kid wanted to get away from his dipshit of a brother.

“My name is Aaron by the way,” Aaron said, offering his hand.

“Eddie, nice to meet you Aaron” Eddie said, shaking Aaron’s hand.

“How did you know we had our first period together?” Aaron asked inquisitively.

Eddie grinned which made Aarons heart beat a bit faster and said “I didn't but I couldn't let Daryl sweep you away”.

Aaron blushed. He was really being hit on in the open. It wasn't in a secret hallway or behind the school bit within its halls.

Both Eddie and Aaron we're stuck in their own heads when Aaron blurted out “I wonder if we have any other classes together”:

So to ease the awkwardness they compared schedules realizing their whole schedule was the same except for their last class of the day, Eddie was in physical education and Aaron had chosen a science class instead of gym.

“Maybe I will switch to the science class” Eddie said with a wink.

As soon as the lunch bell finally rang the two headed to the cafeteria and sat at a table across from where the kids with sports jackets were, including Eddie’s brother Daryl.

Eddie passed Aaron a paper and when he opened it he realized it was Eddie’s class schedule and he had actually switched to his science class.

The way Aaron’s cheeks became a soft red made Eddie smile out of pride that he made him happy.

As soon as Aaron got his bearings he noticed that the guys at the table all had shirts that said “Hellfire Club '' on them as well as the 6-sided dice associated with DnD and got excited.

“Do you happen to play Dungeons and Dragons?” Aaron said more enthusiastically than he meant to.

Eddie's heart did a backflip when he heard those words.

“Hell yeah. We formed the club at the end of our eighth-grade year and thankfully they let it continue this year at the high school” Eddie said, flashing his best smile.

“Can I join?” Aaron said as calmly and quietly as he could as the excitement built up inside.

Eddie grinned. “We meet today after classes, let's see what you bring to the table new kid,” Eddie said, his mind trying to overthrow other parts of his body.

Aaron nodded and started to eat

He hadn't had someone to actually have lunch with in a long time. The kids at his old school had treated him as differently as his mother did. Maybe Hawkins was just the change he needed.

The rest of the day went by pretty fast and the minute the bell rang Aaron followed Eddie to the activities to where they held their DnD meetings.

The first thing he noticed were kids who looked like they were in middle school and he was right.

He recognized Dustin Henderson since his grandparents lived next door to his mom.

“Hey Aaron, gonna play,” Dustin asked excitedly. Aaron nodded.

“Awesome. I want you to meet my friends, Will, Mike, and Lucas. That's Jane and Max over there but they don't play.

The two sitting on the small couch are Will's brother Jonathan and his boyfriend Steve and the two on the other couch the twins Billy and Jason, Max’s brothers” Dustin said excitedly.

Aaron said “hi” to everyone and laid down his character sheet and let everyone know he was a level 12 half elven half dwarven mage who practices arcane magic named Lord Krevish

Eddie smiled and said “Welcome Lord Krevish to The Hellfire Club” and with that, they started the game.

[justtluffythings]

HOME: Book 1 - CHAPTER ELEVEN

MASTERLIST

Veronica had never felt so free; the last five weeks had been better than she could have ever imagined. It was almost like she was back at Hogwarts, except without strict schedules, school work, and teachers telling her what to do. It was fantastic! 

Veronica had bought her owl on the first day that she arrived at the Leaky Cauldron and had been in constant communication with Charlie and Bill ever since, which helped ease the loneliness she had felt since seeing them drive away five weeks ago. She had also visited every shop in Diagon Alley and had become good friends with all the shopkeepers, but especially Florean Fortescue, who's ice cream she craved every second of the day. She would often make multiple visits a day to his parlor; she absolutely adored ice cream. That was something she got from her grandparents, and because of this shared love, some of her fondest memories with them involved the sweet treat. She could almost see them, walking along the winding roads of Diagon Alley when they were her age, enjoying their favorite flavors. It made her feel connected to them, especially after learning that Florean had known them back then, and the pair spent the last five weeks sharing funny stories and fond memories of her beloved grandparents.

Despite the connections she had managed to make in Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron, Veronica found herself missing Charlie a lot. She missed their conversations and the way he always made her laugh. She missed the comfortable silences when they could simply enjoy each other's company without feeling the need to fill the silence with talking. She just missed everything about him...

"Oouf-" Veronica's thoughts were interrupted by a sudden weight and pressure on her left shoulder that would have knocked her to the ground if she hadn't grabbed hold of the wall by her side. "Athena, you scared me half to death! But more importantly, you almost made me drop my ice cream!"

Athena almost seemed to roll her eyes at her as she shook her right leg in Veronica's face, showing off the letter she had brought for her. Immediately, Veronica knew who it was from.

"Alright, sweet girl. You've brought me a letter from Charlie, so I forgive you. Just be more careful next time, okay?"

Once the letter was off her leg, Athena rubbed her body against the side of Veronica's head and cooed in affection, before flying off to their room in the Leaky Cauldron to get some rest.

Veronica carefully opened Charlie's letter, careful not to get any ice cream on the delicate parchment. It read:

Veronica! Mum and dad are bringing us all to Diagon Alley tomorrow so me and Bill can buy our books and everything for school. You and your parents should--

Veronica's heart dropped as she shook her head at her ever persistent friend. 

--meet us there. I know it's short notice, but mum is dying to meet you, and so are the other kids. And it's not like I miss you or anything, but it would be cool to see you hehe. Especially because it's your BIRTHDAY tomorrow!! I bet you thought I forgot! Well, I didn't and neither did Bill, and we want to see you!! And fine, I miss you a lot okay! You don't need to twist my arm, I've said it :) Alright, well that's enough sappy emotions for one day. No need to write me back because I'll just see you tomorrow at noon. BYYEEE!  Charlie

Veronica didn't know what to do, but all she knew was she had to see Charlie tomorrow. She would go crazy if she didn't see him, knowing he was there within walking distance of her. Plus, she couldn't wait a whole month, no way. But what could she tell them to explain why her parents weren't there? It being a Saturday made things tricky, she couldn't just blame it on work. She'd have to figure something out before tomorrow at noon. The good thing was, she had time. And she was pretty clever, if she did say so herself. She'd think of something. 

Besides, that's the least of her concerns. If she didn't do some damage control at the Leaky Cauldron and with all the shopkeepers, her secret would be blown within seconds. Everyone knew her. Everyone liked her. They would greet her warmly and the jig would be up. There would be no explaining her way out of that one. Now, she also had to figure out what to tell all of them as to why her friends didn't know she was staying there. Great. Like she needed more to worry about.