#i’VE TRIED TO WATCH THIS SO MANY TIMES AND EVERY TIME I HIT DYLAN COULD MAKE A GOOD MAN GO BACK ON THE BERTUZZI TRADE MEDIA AND LOSE IT!!!

[bobohunn]

Title : Big Chance

Genre : fluff(?), angst

Pair : baekhyun x reader

Warnings : language, cheating (not between the pair), and mentions of alcohol

Word count : 1.3k

xx

You gulped the last drop of your vodka and slammed your hands on the counter as you stood up from the stool on which you have been sitting for about 2 hours. When you finally decided to turn and move away from the cold surface of the bar, a warm hand snaked around and rested on your waist.

”Don’t,” the owner of the hand whispered to your ear over the loud music playing somewhere in the living room, his voice all too familiar for you to spend even a second to turn and confirm who he is.

As if showing no interest, despite him looking like an entire sumptuous meal, you returned his gaze with half-lidded eyes. ”Then what should I do? Just watch them rub themselves to each other until his dick is finally fucking her vagina?” you scoffed.

Baekhyun only smirked at your words. He lowered himself and pressed his lips against the shell of your ear as he shifted his gaze towards the crowd of drunkards in the living room. His hand left your waist to move to the dip of your lower back. ”You won’t be watching them if you keep your eyes on me, sweetheart.”

You raised a brow in amusement, ”Oh my, what is this, I sense? Some alcohol-induced confidence?”

”We can give them a show tonight, baby. One that would rile someone the fuck up,” Baekhyun whispered to your ear once more before standing up straight again. He pushed his brown hair back and placed a hand in his pocket, ”only if you’re interested, though.”

The edges of your lips rose to your cheeks as you let out a small laugh at his idea. You stared at him for a while and asked for the second time but in a different context, this time, ”Then what should I do?”

He took one of your small hands and kissed the back of it before saying, ”Just relax and go with the flow.”

Baekhyun then pulled you gently to the dance floor, making sure that you were somewhere along the vision span of your apparently cheating boyfriend who was taking the time of his life feeling up the body of one of your best— now fake, friends. He moved so that your back was directly against his chest as he once again brought his lips to your ear, ”Dance for me, baby.”

You swayed your body to the music as if there were no tomorrow. You didn’t care about how your skimpy dress was riding up your thighs or how awful the smell of people’s breaths around you were. You just let your body move how it wanted to, wild and free. You just didn't give a fuck. Not anymore. Certainly not about your almost 1-year relationship with your now ex-boyfriend nor your 5-year friendship with your best friend, that was about to go down the drain tonight. It’s so easy to stop giving two shits when you know they’re wrong, after all.

All that mattered at the moment was how Baekhyun’s hands were roaming around your body as he rolled his hips to the melody of the song; how he stared down at you with his bottom lip trapped between his teeth, sweat trickling down his temples; and how he made you feel so good about yourself. Oh, what you would do just to be this way every day. You were enjoying yourself a little bit too much that you didn’t even notice your boyfriend coming up to you.

“What the fuck is this?” Dylan shouted over the loud music as he pulled you out of Baekhyun’s personal space. You clicked your tongue and turned your head to the side, a grin growing on your lips.

You started to laugh sarcastically at your boyfriend’s face, clutching your stomach in your hands to emphasize how fake it was. Your voice was so loud that the people around stopped dancing, confused at the scene right in front of them.

Mina, who reeked of sex and your ex-boyfriend’s body spray, grabbed your wrist as she said, “[Y/N], stop people are watching. It’s embarrassing.” You abruptly stopped laughing and yanked your wrist from Mina’s hold, all while staring at her bloodshot eyes.

”I was watching you both basically having sex with clothes on,” you paused to look at your boyfriend. ”Honestly, it was embarrassing how you cheating sluts couldn’t even get a room. But did I tell you to stop?”

You weren’t very sure how it happened, but a hand landed on your right cheek.

Only after a few seconds did you realize that Mina slapped you. She hit you with all her might. She slapped you as if her life depended on how prominent the red mark on your face would be. She slapped you so hard that you would have ended up on the floor if it wasn’t for Baekhyun’s reflexes. She slapped you like you were wrong.

Your blood rushed to your face, and your nails dug into the soft skin of your palm.

You wanted to scream, to shout, and to curse the hell out of your burning chest. It was so unfair. You got cheated on by both your boyfriend and your best friend together, the two people you poured your love and time to. But why did you have to get slapped in front of many people? Why did you have to lose more of your non-existent dignity? Why did it suddenly feel like it was your fault? Why?

The next thing you knew was that Baekhyun was dragging you past the crowd towards the front door.

You were sure you heard your name with a couple of ’wait’ and ’please’ from behind you, but you didn’t bother turning around anymore. It’s not that you didn’t want to, though. You wanted to know their side. You wanted to hear their explanations and give them the benefit of the doubt, but you just ran out of energy. It sounds dumb—of course, it is, because it was what your heart wanted.

The heart always makes dumb decisions. Always.

Which is the main reason why you are now kissing Baekhyun inside his black Audi. You both know that you aren’t ready for this yet, considering that it hasn’t even been 3 hours since you broke up with your boyfriend, but here you were savoring each other’s mouths as if you starved on tongue and saliva.

The kiss was bitter, like a mixture of all the alcoholic drinks you can find at the liquor section of the supermarket as if mocking the painful situation you were in. However, it felt good. With his teeth constantly tugging at your lower lips and occasionally biting your tongue, you couldn’t help but let out soft moans. He made you feel so good, as always, and you returned the favor by reaching all the corners of his mouth.

After a few good minutes of making out, you finally pulled away and caught your breath. He kissed the tip of your nose before leaning back.

Baekhyun rested his head on the headrest, showcasing the smooth and very tempting skin of his neck. You look back up at him again, taking in his facial features like it was food for the eyes. Though this is not the first time that you studied his face like this, your heart still skipped a beat at first glance. You have seen his face too many times before that you could point where every single one of his moles rested with your eyes closed. And if you tried harder, you would probably be able to tell precisely how many lashes h frame his brown orbs. You can’t help but smile at the sight.

“Look, I don’t want to be a rebound,” he said without looking at you.

You slowly nod your head, already prepared for when this would happen, “Sorry for bringing you into this, Baek. Just drop me at the next bus stop. I’ll hail a cab there,” you fumbled with the slit of your dress, avoiding his eyes.

“But baby,” your heart fluttered at the nickname, “if that’s the only way to make you realize that I’ve been here the whole time, I’ll do it for you.”

[grigori77]

2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)

20.  ONWARD – Disney and Pixar’s best digitally animated family feature of 2020 (beating the admittedly impressive Soul to the punch) clearly has a love of fantasy roleplay games like Dungeons & Dragons, its quirky modern-day AU take populated by fantastical races and creatures seemingly tailor-made for the geek crowd … needless to say, me and many of my friends absolutely loved it.  That doesn’t mean that the classic Disney ideals of love, family and believing in yourself have been side-lined in favour of fan-service – this is as heartfelt, affecting and tearful as their previous standouts, albeit with plenty of literal magic added to the metaphorical kind.  The central premise is a clever one – once upon a time, magic was commonplace, but over the years technology came along to make life easier, so that in the present day the various races (elves, centaurs, fauns, pixies, goblins and trolls among others) get along fine without it. Then timid elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) receives a wizard’s staff for his sixteenth birthday, a bequeathed gift from his father, who died before he was born, with instructions for a spell that could bring him back to life for one whole day.  Encouraged by his brash, over-confident wannabe adventurer elder brother Barley (Chris Pratt), Ian tries it out, only for the spell to backfire, leaving them with the animated bottom half of their father and just 24 hours to find a means to restore the rest of him before time runs out.  Cue an “epic quest” … needless to say, this is another top-notch offering from the original masters of the craft, a fun, affecting and thoroughly infectious family-friendly romp with a winning sense of humour and inspired, flawless world-building.  Holland and Pratt are both fantastic, their instantly believable, ill-at-ease little/big brother chemistry effortlessly driving the story through its ingenious paces, and the ensuing emotional fireworks are hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, while there’s typically excellent support from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine from Seinfeld) as Ian and Barley’s put-upon but supportive mum, Laurel, Octavia Spencer as once-mighty adventurer-turned-restaurateur “Corey” the Manticore and Mel Rodriguez (Getting On, The Last Man On Earth) as overbearing centaur cop (and Laurel’s new boyfriend) Colt Bronco.  The film marks the sophomore feature gig for Dan Scanlon, who debuted with 2013’s sequel Monsters University, and while that was enjoyable enough I ultimately found it non-essential – no such verdict can be levelled against THIS film, the writer-director delivering magnificently in all categories, while the animation team have outdone themselves in every scene, from the exquisite environments and character/creature designs to some fantastic (and frequently delightfully bonkers) set-pieces, while there’s a veritable riot of brilliant RPG in-jokes to delight geekier viewers (gelatinous cube! XD).  Massive, unadulterated fun, frequently hilarious and absolutely BURSTING with Disney’s trademark heart, this was ALMOST my animated feature of the year.  More on that later …

19.  THE GENTLEMEN – Guy Ritchie’s been having a rough time with his last few movies (The Man From UNCLE didn’t do too bad but it wasn’t exactly a hit and was largely overlooked or simply ignored, while intended franchise-starter King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was largely derided and suffered badly on release, dying a quick death financially – it’s a shame on both counts, because I really liked them), so it’s nice to see him having some proper success with his latest, even if he has basically reverted to type to do it.  Still, when his newest London gangster flick is THIS GOOD it seems churlish to quibble – this really is what he does best, bringing together a collection of colourful geezers and shaking up their status quo, then standing back and letting us enjoy the bloody, expletive-riddled results. This particularly motley crew is another winning selection, led by Matthew McConaughey as ruthlessly successful cannabis baron Mickey Pearson, who’s looking to retire from the game by selling off his massive and highly lucrative enterprise for a most tidy sum (some $400,000,000 to be precise) to up-and-coming fellow American ex-pat Matthew Berger (Succession’s Jeremy Strong, oozing sleazy charm), only for local Chinese triad Dry Eye (Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding, chewing the scenery with enthusiasm) to start throwing spanners into the works with the intention of nabbing the deal for himself for a significant discount.  Needless to say Mickey’s not about to let that happen … McConaughey is ON FIRE here, the best he’s been since Dallas Buyers Club in my opinion, clearly having great fun sinking his teeth into this rich character and Ritchie’s typically sparkling, razor-witted dialogue, and he’s ably supported by a quality ensemble cast, particularly co-star Charlie Hunnam as Mickey’s ice-cold, steel-nerved right-hand-man Raymond Smith, Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery as his classy, strong-willed wife Rosalind, Colin Farrell as a wise-cracking, quietly exasperated MMA trainer and small-time hood simply known as the Coach (who gets many of the film’s best lines), and, most notably, Hugh Grant as the film’s nominal narrator, thoroughly morally bankrupt private investigator Fletcher, who consistently steals the film.  This is Guy Ritchie at his very best – a twisty rug-puller of a plot that constantly leaves you guessing, brilliantly observed and richly drawn characters you can’t help loving in spite of the fact there’s not a single hero among them, a deliciously unapologetic, politically incorrect sense of humour and a killer soundtrack.  Getting the cinematic year off to a phenomenal start, it’s EASILY Ritchie’s best film since Sherlock Holmes, and a strong call-back to the heady days of Snatch (STILL my favourite) and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.  Here’s hoping he’s on a roll again, eh?

18.  SPONTANEOUS – one of the year’s biggest under-the-radar surprise hits for me was one which I actually might not have caught if things had been a little more normal and ordered.  Thankfully with all the lockdown and cinematic shutdown bollocks going on, this fantastically subversive and deeply satirical indie teen comedy horror came along at the perfect time, and I completely flipped out over it.  Now those who know me know I don’t tend to gravitate towards teen cinema, but like all those other exceptions I’ve loved over the years, this one had a brilliantly compulsive hook I just couldn’t turn down – small-town high-schooler Mara (Knives Out and Netflix’ Cursed’s Katherine Langford) is your typical cool outsider kid, smart, snarky and just putting up with the scene until she can graduate and get as far away as possible … until one day in her senior year one of her classmates just inexplicably explodes. Like her peers, she’s shocked and she mourns, then starts to move on … until it happens again.  As the death toll among the senior class begins to mount, it becomes clear something weird is going on, but Mara has other things on her mind because the crisis has, for her, had an unexpected benefit – without it she wouldn’t have fallen in love with like-minded oddball new kid Dylan (Lean On Pete and Words On Bathroom Walls’ Charlie Plummer). The future’s looking bright, but only if they can both live to see it … this is a wickedly intelligent film, powered by a skilfully executed script and a wonderfully likeable young cast who consistently steer their characters around the potential cliched pitfalls of this kind of cinema, while debuting writer-director Brian Duffield (already a rising star thanks to scripts for Underwater, The Babysitter and blacklist darling Jane Got a Gun among others) show he’s got as much talent and flair for crafting truly inspired cinema as he has for thinking it up in the first place, delivering some impressively offbeat set-pieces and several neat twists you frequently don’t see coming ahead of time.  Langford and Plummer as a sassy, spicy pair who are easy to root for without ever getting cloying or sweet, while there’s glowing support from the likes of Hayley Law (Rioverdale, Altered Carbon, The New Romantic) as Mara’s best friend Tess, Piper Perabo and Transparent’s Rob Huebel as her increasingly concerned parents, and Insecure’s Yvonne Orji as Agent Rosetti, the beleaguered government employee sent to spearhead the investigation into exactly what’s happening to these kids.  Quirky, offbeat and endlessly inventive, this is one of those interesting instances where I’m glad they pushed the horror elements into the background so we could concentrate on the comedy, but more importantly these wonderfully well-realised and vital characters – there are some skilfully executed shocks, but far more deep belly laughs, and there’s bucketloads of heart to eclipse the gore.  Another winning debut from a talent I intend to watch with great interest in the future.

17.  HAMILTON – arriving just as Black Lives Matter reached fever-pitch levels, this feature presentation of the runaway Broadway musical smash-hit could not have been better timed. Shot over three nights during the show’s 2016 run with the original cast and cut together with specially created “setup shots”, it’s an immersive experience that at once puts you right in amongst the audience (at times almost a character themselves, never seen but DEFINITELY heard) but also lets you experience the action up close.  And what action – it’s an incredible show, a thoroughly fascinating piece of work that reads like something very staid and proper on paper (an all-encompassing biographical account of the life and times of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton) but, in execution, becomes something very different and EXTREMELY vital.  The execution certainly couldn’t be further from the usual period biopic fare this kind of historical subject matter usually gets (although in the face of recent high quality revisionist takes like Marie Antoinette, The Great and Tesla it’s not SO surprising), while the cast is not at all what you’d expect – with very few notable exceptions the cast is almost entirely people of colour, despite the fact that the real life individuals they’re playing were all very white indeed.  Every single one of them is also an absolute revelation – the show’s writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (already riding high on the success of In the Heights) carries the central role of Hamilton with effortless charm and raw star power, Leslie Odom Jr. (Smash, Murder On the Orient Express) is duplicitously complex as his constant nemesis Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson (In the Heights, Moana, Bull) oozes integrity and nobility as his mentor and friend George Washington, Phillipa Soo is sweet and classy as his wife Eliza while Renée Elise Goldsberry (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Jacks, Altered Carbon) is fiery and statuesque as her sister Angelica Schuyler (the one who got away), and Jonathan Groff (Mindhunter) consistently steals every scene he’s in as fiendish yet childish fan favourite King George III, but the show (and the film) ultimately belongs to veritable powerhouse Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting, The Good Lord Bird) in a spectacular duel role, starting subtly but gaining scene-stealing momentum as French Revolutionary Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, before EXPLODING onto the stage in the second half as indomitable third American President Thomas Jefferson.  Not having seen the stage show, I was taken completely by surprise by this, revelling in its revisionist genius and offbeat, quirky hip-hop charm, spellbound by the skilful ease with which is takes the sometimes quite dull historical fact and skews it into something consistently entertaining and absorbing, transported by the catchy earworm musical numbers and thoroughly tickled by the delightfully cheeky sense of humour strung throughout (at least when I wasn’t having my heart broken by moments of raw dramatic power). Altogether it’s a pretty unique cinematic experience I wish I could have actually gotten to see on the big screen, and one I’ve consistently recommended to all my friends, even the ones who don’t usually like musicals.  As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t need a proper Les Misérables style screen adaptation – this is about as perfect a presentation as the show could possibly hope for.

16.  SPUTNIK – summer’s horror highlight (despite SERIOUSLY tough competition) was a guaranteed sleeper hit that I almost missed entirely, stumbling across the trailer one day on YouTube and getting bowled over by its potential, prompting me to hunt it down by any means necessary.  The feature debut of Russian director Egor Abramenko, this first contact sci-fi chiller is about as far from E.T. as it’s possible to get, sharing some of the same DNA as Carpenter’s The Thing but proudly carving its own path with consummate skill and definitely signalling great things to come from its brand new helmer and relative unknown screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev.  Oksana Akinshina (probably best known in the West for her powerful climactic cameo in The Bourne Supremacy) is the beating heart of the film as neurophysiologist Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova, brought in to aid in the investigation in the Russian wilderness circa 1983 after an orbital research mission goes horribly wrong.  One of the cosmonauts dies horribly, while the other, Konstantin (The Duelist’s Pyotr Fyodorov) seems unharmed, but it quickly becomes clear that he’s now the host for something decidedly extraterrestrial and potentially terrifying, and as Tatyana becomes more deeply embroiled in her assignment she comes to realise that her superiors, particularly mysterious Red Army project leader Colonel Semiradov (The PyraMMMid’s Fyodor Bondarchuk), have far more insidious plans for Konstantin and his new “friend” than she could ever imagine. This is about as dark, intense and nightmarish as this particular sub-genre gets, a magnificently icky body horror that slowly builds its tension as we’re gradually exposed to the various truths and the awful gravity of the situation slowly reveals itself, punctuated by skilfully executed shocks and some particularly horrifying moments when the evils inflicted by the humans in charge prove far worse than anything the alien can do, while the ridiculously talented writers have a field day pulling the rug out from under us again and again, never going for the obvious twist and keeping us guessing right to the devastating ending, while the beautifully crafted digital creature effects are nothing short of astonishing and thoroughly creepy.  Akinshina dominates the film with her unbridled grace, vulnerability and integrity, the relationship that develops between Tatyana and Konstantin (Fyodorov delivering a beautifully understated turn belying deep inner turmoil) feeling realistically earned as it goes from tentatively wary to tragically bittersweet, while Bondarchuk invests the Colonel with a nuanced air of tarnished authority and restrained brutality that made him one of my top screen villains for the year.  One of 2020’s great sleeper hits, I can’t speak of this film highly enough – it’s a genuine revelation, an instant classic for whom I’ll sing its praises for years to come, and I wish enormous future success to all the creative talents involved.

15.  THE INVISIBLE MAN – looks like third time’s a charm for Leigh Whannell, writer-director of my ALMOST horror movie of the year (more on that later) – while he’s had immense success as a horror writer over the years (co-creator of both the Saw and Insidious franchises), as a director his first two features haven’t exactly set the world alight, with debut Insidious: Chapter III garnering similar takes to the rest of the series but ultimately turning out to be a bit of a damp squib quality-wise, while his second feature Upgrade was a stone-cold masterpiece that was (rightly) EXTREMELY well received critically, but ultimately snuck in under the radar and has remained a stubbornly hidden gem since. No such problems with his third feature, though – his latest collaboration with producer Jason Blum and the insanely lucrative Blumhouse Pictures has proven a massive hit both financially AND with reviewers, and deservedly so.  Having given up on trying to create a shared cinematic universe inhabited by their classic monsters, Universal resolved to concentrate on standalones to showcase their elite properties, and their first try is a rousing success, Whannell bringing HG Wells’ dark and devious human monster smack into the 21st Century as only he can.  The result is a surprisingly subtle piece of work, much more a lethally precise exercise in cinematic sleight of hand and extraordinary acting than flashy visual effects, strictly adhering to the Blumhouse credo of maximum returns for minimum bucks as the story is stripped down to its bare essentials and allowed to play out without any unnecessary weight.  The Handmaid’s Tale’s Elizabeth Moss once again confirms what a masterful actress she is as she brings all her performing weapons to bear in the role of Cecelia “Cee” Kass, the cloistered wife of affluent but monstrously abusive optics pioneer Aidan Griffin (Netflix’ The Haunting of Hill House’s Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who escapes his clutches in the furiously tense opening sequence and goes to ground with the help of her closest childhood friend, San Francisco cop James Lanier (Leverage’s Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter Sydney (A Wrinkle in Time’s Storm Reid).  Two weeks later, Aidan commits suicide, leaving Cee with a fortune to start her life over (with the proviso that she’s never ruled mentally incompetent), but as she tries to find her way in the world again little things start going wrong for her, and she begins to question if there might be something insidious going on.  As her nerves start to unravel, she begins to suspect that Aidan is still alive, still very much in her life, fiendishly toying with her and her friends, but no-one can see him.  Whannell plays her paranoia up for all it’s worth, skilfully teasing out the scares so that, just like her friends, we begin to wonder if it might all be in her head after all, before a spectacular mid-movie reveal throws the switch into high gear and the true threat becomes clear.  The lion’s share of the film’s immense success must of course go to Moss – her performance is BEYOND a revelation, a blistering career best that totally powers the whole enterprise, and it goes without saying that she’s the best thing in this.  Even so, she has sterling support from Hodge and Reid, as well as Love Child’s Harriet Dyer as Cee’s estranged big sister Emily and Wonderland’s Michael Dorman as Adrian’s slimy, spineless lawyer brother Tom, and, while he doesn’t have much actual (ahem) “screen time”, Jackson-Cohen delivers a fantastically icy, subtly malevolent turn which casts a large “shadow” over the film.  This is one of my very favourite Blumhouse films, a pitch-perfect psychological chiller that keeps the tension cranked up unbearably tight and never lets go, Whannell once again displaying uncanny skill with expert jump-scares, knuckle-whitening chills and a truly astounding standout set-piece that easily goes down as one of the top action sequences of 2020. Undoubtedly the best version of Wells’ story to date, this goes a long way in repairing the damage of Universal’s abortive “Dark Universe” efforts, as well as showcasing a filmmaking master at the very height of his talents.

14.  EXTRACTION – the Coronavirus certainly has threw a massive spanner in the works of the year’s cinematic calendar – among many other casualties to the blockbuster shunt, the latest (and most long-awaited) MCU movie, Black Widow, should have opened to further record-breaking box office success at the end of spring, but instead the theatres were all closed and virtually all the heavyweights were pushed back or shelved indefinitely.  Thank God, then, for the streaming services, particularly Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, the latter of which provided a perfect movie for us to see through the key transition into the summer blockbuster season, an explosively flashy big budget action thriller ushered in by MCU alumni the Russo Brothers (who produced and co-wrote this adaptation of Ciudad, a graphic novel that Joe Russo co-created with Ande Parks and Fernando Leon Gonzalez) and barely able to contain the sheer star-power wattage of its lead, Thor himself.  Chris Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, a former Australian SAS operative who hires out his services to an extraction operation under the command of mercenary Nik Khan (The Patience Stone’s Golshifteh Farahani), brought in to liberate Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal in his first major role), the pre-teen son of incarcerated Indian crime lord Ovi Sr. (Pankaj Tripathi), who has been abducted by Bangladeshi rival Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli).  The rescue itself goes perfectly, but when the time comes for the hand-off the team is double-crossed and Tyler is left stranded in the middle of Dhaka with no choice but to keep Ovi alive as every corrupt cop and street gang in the city closes in around them.  This is the feature debut of Sam Hargrave, the latest stuntman to try his hand at directing, so he certainly knows his way around an action set-piece, and the result is a thoroughly breathless adrenaline rush of a film, bursting at the seams with spectacular fights, gun battles and car chases, dominated by a stunning sustained sequence that plays out in one long shot, guaranteed to leave jaws lying on the floor.  Not that there should be any surprise – Hargrave cut his teeth as a stunt coordinator for the Russos on Captain America: Civil War and their Avengers films.  That said, he displays strong talent for the quieter disciplines of filmmaking too, delivering quality character development and drawing out consistently noteworthy performances from his cast.  Of course, Hemsworth can do the action stuff in his sleep, but there’s a lot more to Tyler than just his muscle, the MCU veteran investing him with real wounded vulnerability and a tragic fatalism which colours every scene, while Jaiswal is exceptional throughout, showing plenty of promise for the future, and there’s strong support from Farahani and Painyuli, as well as Stranger Things’ David Harbour as world-weary retired merc Gaspard, and a particularly impressive, muscular turn from Randeep Hooda (Once Upon a Time in Mumbai) as Saju, a former Para and Ovi’s bodyguard, who’s determined to take possession of the boy himself, even if he has to go through Tyler to get him.  This is action cinema that really deserves to be seen on the big screen – I watched it twice in a week and would happily have paid for two trips to the cinema for it if I could have.  As we looked down the barrel of a summer season largely devoid of blockbuster fare, I couldn’t recommend this enough.  Thank the gods for Netflix …

13.  THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 – although it’s definitely a film that really benefitted enormously from releasing on Netflix during the various lockdowns, this was one of the blessed few I actually got to see during one of the UK’s frustratingly rare lulls when cinemas were actually OPEN.  Rather perversely it therefore became one of my favourite cinematic experiences of 2020, but then I’m just as much a fan of well-made cerebral films as I am of the big, immersive blockbuster EXPERIENCES, so this probably still would have been a standout in a normal year. Certainly if this was a purely CRITICAL list for the year this probably would have placed high in the Top Ten … Aaron Sorkin is a writer whose work I have ardently admired ever since he went from esteemed playwright to in-demand talent for both the big screen AND the small with A Few Good Men, and TTOTC7 is just another in a long line of consistently impressive, flawlessly written works rife with addictive quickfire dialogue, beautifully observed characters and rewardingly propulsive narrative storytelling (therefore resting comfortably amongst the well-respected likes of The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War, Moneyball and The Social Network).  It also marks his second feature as a director (after fascinating and incendiary debut Molly’s Game), and once again he’s gone for true story over fiction, tackling the still controversial subject of the infamous 1968 trial of the “ringleaders” of the infamous riots which marred Chicago’s Diplomatic National Convention five months earlier, in which thousands of hippies and college students protesting the Vietnam War clashed with police.  Spurred on by the newly-instated Presidential Administration of Richard Nixon to make some examples, hungry up-and-coming prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is confident in his case, while the Seven – who include respected and astute student activist Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and confrontational counterculture firebrands Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Succession’s Jeremy Strong) – are the clear underdogs.  They’re a divided bunch (particularly Hayden and Hoffman, who never mince their words about what little regard they hold for each other), and they’re up against the combined might of the U.S. Government, while all they have on their side is pro-bono lawyer and civil rights activist William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), who’s sharp, driven and thoroughly committed to the cause but clearly massively outmatched … not to mention the fact that the judge presiding over the case is Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a fierce and uncompromising conservative who’s clearly 100% on the Administration’s side, and who might in fact be stark raving mad (he also frequently goes to great lengths to make it clear to all concerned that he is NOT related to Abbie).  Much as we’ve come to expect from Sorkin, this is cinema of grand ideals and strong characters, not big spectacle and hard action, and all the better for it – he’s proved time and again that he’s one of the very best creative minds in Hollywood when it comes to intelligent, thought-provoking and engrossing thinking-man’s entertainment, and this is pure par for the course, keeping us glued to the screen from the skilfully-executed whirlwind introductory montage to the powerfully cathartic climax, and every varied and brilliant scene in-between.  This is heady stuff, focusing on what’s still an extremely thorny issue made all the more urgently relevant and timely given what was (and still is) going on in American politics at the time, and everyone involved here was clearly fully committed to making the film as palpable, powerful and resonant as possible for the viewer, no matter their nationality or political inclination.  Also typical for a Sorkin film, the cast are exceptional, everyone clearly having the wildest time getting their teeth into their finely-drawn characters and that magnificent dialogue – Redmayne and Baron Cohen are compellingly complimentary intellectual antagonists given their radically different approaches and their roles’ polar opposite energies, while Rylance delivers another pitch-perfect, simply ASTOUNDING performance that once again marks him as one of the very best actors of his generation, and there are particularly meaty turns from Strong, Langella, Aquaman’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (as besieged Black Panther Bobby Seale) and a potent late appearance from Michael Keaton that sear themselves into the memory long after viewing. Altogether then, this is a phenomenal film which deserves to be seen no matter the format, a thought-provoking and undeniably IMPORTANT masterwork from a master cinematic storyteller that says as much about the world we live in now as the decidedly turbulent times it portrays …

12.  GREYHOUND – when the cinemas closed back in March, the fate of many of the major summer blockbusters we’d been looking forward to was thrown into terrible doubt. Some were pushed back to more amenable dates in the autumn or winter (which even then ultimately proved frustratingly ambitious), others knocked back a whole year to fill summer slots for 2021, but more than a few simply dropped off the radar entirely with the terrible words “postponed until further notice” stamped on them, and I lamented them all, this one in particular.  It hung in there longer than some, stubbornly holding onto its June release slot for as long as possible, but eventually it gave up the ghost too … but thanks to Apple TV+, not for long, ultimately releasing less than a month later than intended.  Thankfully the film itself was worth the fuss, a taut World War II suspense thriller that’s all killer, no filler – set during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic, it portrays the constant life-or-death struggle faced by the Allied warships assigned to escort the transport convoys as they crossed the ocean, defending their charges from German U-boats.  Adapted from C.S. Forester’s famous 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by Tom Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider (Get Low), the narrative focuses on the crew of the escort leader, American destroyer USS Fletcher, codenamed “Greyhound”, and in particular its captain, Commander Ernest Krause (Hanks), a career sailor serving his first command.  As they cross “the Pit”, the most dangerous middle stretch of the journey where they spend days without air-cover, they find themselves shadowed by “the Wolf Pack”, a particularly cunning group of German submarines that begin to pick away at the convoy’s stragglers.  Faced with daunting odds, a dwindling supply of vital depth-charges and a ruthless, persistent enemy, Krause must make hard choices to bring his ships home safe … jumping into the thick of the action within the first ten minutes and maintaining its tension for the remainder of the trim 90-minute run, this is screen suspense par excellence, a sleek textbook example of how to craft a compelling big screen knuckle-whitener with zero fat and maximum reward, delivering a series of desperate naval scraps packed with hide-and-seek intensity, heart-in-mouth near-misses and fist-in-air cathartic payoffs by the bucket-load.  Hanks is subtly magnificent, the calm centre of the narrative storm as a supposed newcomer to this battle arena who could have been BORN for it, bringing to mind his similarly unflappable in Captain Phillips and certainly not suffering by comparison; by and large he’s the focus point, but other crew members make strong (if sometimes quite brief) impressions, particularly Stephen Graham as Krause’s reliably seasoned XO, Lt. Commander Charlie Cole, The Magnificent Seven’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Just Mercy’s Rob Morgan, while Elisabeth Shue does a lot with a very small part in brief flashbacks as Krause’s fiancée Evelyn. Relentless, exhilarating and thoroughly unforgettable, this was one of the true action highlights of the summer, and one hell of a war flick.  I’m so glad it made the cut for the summer …

11.  PROJECT POWER – with Marvel and DC pushing their tent-pole titles back in the face of COVID, the usual superhero antics we’ve come to expect for the summer were pretty thin on the ground in 2020, leading us to find our geeky fan thrills elsewhere. Unfortunately, pickings were frustratingly slim – Korean comic book actioner Gundala was entertaining but workmanlike, while Thor AU Mortal was underwhelming despite strong direction from Troll Hunter’s André Øvredal, and The New Mutants just got shat on by the studio and its distributors and no mistake – thank the Gods, then, for Netflix, once again riding to the rescue with this enjoyably offbeat super-thriller, which takes an intriguing central premise and really runs with it.  New designer drug Power has hit the streets of New Orleans, able to give anyone who takes it a superpower for five minutes … the only problem is, until you try it, you don’t know what your own unique talent is – for some, it could mean five minutes of invisibility, or insane levels of super-strength, but other powers can be potentially lethal, the really unlucky buggers just blowing up on the spot.  Robin (The Hate U Give’s Dominique Fishback) is a teenage Power-pusher with dreams of becoming a rap star, dealing the pills so she can help her diabetic mum; Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of her customers, a police detective who uses his power of near invulnerability to even the playing field when supercharged crims cause a disturbance.  Their lives are turned upside down when Art (Jamie Foxx) arrives in town – he’s a seriously badass ex-soldier determined to hunt down the source of Power by any means necessary, and he’s not above tearing the Big Easy apart to do it. This is a fun, gleefully infectious rollercoaster that doesn’t take itself too seriously, revelling in the anarchic potential of its premise and crafting some suitably OTT effects-driven chaos brought to pleasingly visceral fruition by its skilfully inventive director, Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Nerve, Viral), while Mattson Tomlin (the screenwriter of the DCEU’s oft-delayed, incendiary headline act The Batman) takes the story in some very interesting directions and poses fascinating questions about what Power’s TRULY capable of.  Gordon-Levitt and Fishback are both brilliant, the latter particularly impressing in what’s sure to be a major breakthrough role for her, and the friendship their characters share is pretty adorable, while Foxx really is a force to be reckoned with, pretty chill even when he’s in deep shit but fully capable of turning into a bona fide killing machine at the flip of a switch, and there’s strong support from Westworld’s Rodrigo Santoro as Biggie, Power’s delightfully oily kingpin, Courtney B. Vance as Frank’s by-the-book superior, Captain Crane, Amy Landecker as Gardner, the morally bankrupt CIA spook responsible for the drug’s production, and Machine Gun Kelly as Newt, a Power dealer whose pyrotechnic “gift” really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Exciting, inventive, frequently amusing and infectiously likeable, this was some of the most uncomplicated cinematic fun I had all summer.  Not bad for something which I’m sure was originally destined to become one of the season’s B-list features …

[kyber-kisses]

I, Alone (Part 6)

Dean Winchester x Reader

wanna start from the beginning? Here is the masterlist!

Warnings: more of that fine ass yearning. . . And more angst.

Summary: Music brings back more memories for Dean as he continues to search for the person he lost, while the reader begins to give up her hold on life.

A/n: I honestly have no idea how i feel about this chapter, so please tell me what you thought! Feedback is greatly appreciated!

“9:30? Are you kidding me Sam?” Dean grumbled to himself, glancing down at his watch as he slid the rest of the groceries into the back seat. “You asked me to go on a supply run at 9:30 in the morning?”

He should be in bed right now still sleeping. . . Or better yet: trying to figure out who this mystery person was that he was searching for.

But no. His brother sent him out for groceries because it was “his turn”or whatever.

Shaking his head Dean flipped the keys in his hand before sliding into the front seat of Baby and jamming the keys into the ignition. The vehicle roaring to life along with the radio. Dean grimaced at the tune as he reversed out of the parking spot and turned towards home.

“Alright, who the fuck was messing with the dials-“ he sighed, taking one hand off the wheel to direct the radio back to its usual station. . . Before he paused, suddenly caught up in the tune.

Ain't no use in calling out my name, boy

I can't hear for you any more

He didn’t understand why the tune suddenly pulled at him, but it did. His hand dropping from the radio dial as he glanced at it in confusion. He wasn’t particularly fond of this music normally but he couldn’t bring himself to change it. It felt familiar.and he had no clue as to why.

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

Look out your window and I'll be gone

You're the reason I'm traveling on

Shaking his head Dean turned his attention towards the road once more, tapping his fingers to the tune as he drove towards home. Maybe it would come to him if he left it on. Sam was probably gonna think he was crazy when he tried to explain this later. Eventually he found himself humming along, finding the song more familiar as it continued. He had a connection to this song, he could feel it in his bones.

It ain't no use in calling out my name

I can't hear you any more

I'm a-thinking and a-wond'rin' walking down the road

And before Dean could even realized it he was finishing the lyrics, his brain going into auto pilot. “I once loved a woman, a chi-”

The second the lyrics left his mouth he froze, mouth snapping shut as he looked back to the radio with wide eyes.

“I once loved a woman.” He repeated, taking a big gulp of air as it finally hit him. “Holy shit.” And like a switch being flicked he suddenly pressed his foot to the gas and tore off down the dirt road towards home, paying no mind to the speed limit.

The next few minutes when by like a blur as Deans mind raced and then suddenly he was throwing the impala in park and racing towards the bunker door, swinging it open with such force that it made the younger Winchester jump from his seat in the library.

“Dean, what the hell?!”

“It’s a woman!”

“What?”

“I said-“ Dean paused, taking his time as he raced down the metal steps and into the war room. “It’s a woman. The missing pictures. The missing person.” Panting he placed his hands on his knees, gulping in air.

Closing his book, Sam slowly slid from his seat, working his way down the steps towards his brother. “And how did you figure that out?”

“Bob Dylan.”

“What?”

“It- never mind. Just pay attention to the fact that I’m slowly figuring this all out.” Dean waved a hand before falling back into one of the vacant seats. Sam pulling out his own chair so he could sit besides him.

It had taken a few days, but Sam had slowly begun to believe Dean about his missing person, doing his best to help in whatever way possible. But as he waited for Dean to catch his breath he could also see his face beginning to fall, his excitement slowly being taken over by worry.

“Dean?”

Apart from his bouncing knee, Dean remained still. He could feel his heart threatening to break out from the confines of his chest as he took a deep breath, ignoring his brother besides him. He had been fine a second ago. Why did he suddenly feel so scared?

“I’m scared Sam.”

“Why?”

“Because what if she’s dead? What if she been dead for a long time and I’m only now just remembering her?”

“Hey, don’t say that-“

“Or what if she’s alive but she’s hurt? What if she’s been scared and alone and all I’ve been doing is sitting here forgetting she even existed?”

“Dean-“

Dean could feel the burn of oncoming tears as he continued to bounce his knee, eyes focusing on some point in the distance. “I fear for her Sam. What if shes trying to come home but she can’t? What if she alone?” He repeated, dragging a shaky hand through his hair. “She should be here with us. She should be home where it’s safe.”

Sam let out a sigh as he squeezed his brothers shoulder, Dean whipping around to look at him with glossy eyes. “We’re gonna figure this out.”

“I love her Sam. I don’t know her name or who she is, but I love her. I know I do. I can feel it in my bones.”

“I believe you.” Sam nodded, his heart breaking at the sight of his older brother. Dean looked scared. . . And so very, very frightened.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Have you heard anything from Cas lately? He might’ve found something on his Heaven business?”

“No. I haven’t.” Dean let out a sigh, his head hanging as he raked his hands through his hair once more.

“Well then in the mean time I’ll help you figure this out, okay?”

“Okay.”

*. *. *. *. *. *.

Three days. That how long you had been locked in that cellar. At least that is what it felt like. You had been trapped in the dark for what felt like forever, the cold and musty air of the root cellar being your only companion.

Why you weren’t dead you didn’t understand. You were sure the second that poltergeist wrapped it’s icy fingers around you that you were about to meet you end. . . But instead you ended up here, with a temple crusted in dried blood and what felt like bruises around your neck. Your pack was gone along with your head lamp so you had no way of patching yourself up.in other words, the situation you were in was not a good one. At all.

Most people in this situation would be scared shitless at this point. . . But not you. You were just tired. You had tried getting out for awhile but eventually gave up, too weak to even attempt to break down the massive wooden door of the cellar. If you died here so be it. Nobody would miss you. You would just be another one of the many unfortunate victims of the poltergeist. Sure you weren’t very fond of dying alone in the dark, but what else were you supposed to do?

Sliding back down the hard stone wall, you let your butt hit the dirt, pulling your knees into your chest. The only noise coming from the rumble of your stomach. You couldn’t remember the last time you had eaten, but clearly it hadn’t been in awhile.

During the first several hours you weren’t that bothered by it all. You only found it to be a mild inconvenience. . . And then you realized how quiet it was. And you hated it. From the moment you left the bunker you tried to fill every moment with noise, whether it be the radio or staying in the noisiest part of whatever town or city you were staying in.

Silence was your enemy because it only allowed you to hear everything going on inside your head. When it was silent you thought of home. You thought of Sam and Dean.

And that was a whole other type of pain that you could not take. They were the past and you couldn’t go back.

But sometimes when the silence got really bad, like now for instance, you talked to yourself. . . Sometimes even pretending Dean was sitting there besides you, listening. He was always good at that. It gave you a small dose of comfort.

“My mama used to tell me that when you dream about someone it’s because they miss you.” You spoke softly, trying to fill the quiet air around you. “A few weeks ago I dreamt you and I were walking through downtown Lebanon, your hand on the small of my back. I can’t remember what I said but you laughed so hard you threw your head back with a smile that out shined the sun. I told you how beautiful your soul was and you kissed me on the mouth with so much passion my bones shook.” Feeling the tears begin to track down your dirt smeared face you paused.

That dream had been both nice and horrible at the same time. It was nice to momentarily live in a world were Dean loved you back in the same way you loved him, but that just made waking up that much crueler. He didn’t love you like that. He never had. Never would.

“When I woke up my eyes were filled with tears because I never got to tell you what being in love with you really felt like. I never got to hold you the way I wanted to so badly.” At the sound of your voice breaking you paused once more, using the heel of your hand to rub at your eye. God, you were so tired. “I wish I still believed my mom. That me dreaming of you meant you missed me. But I know it’s too good to be true. That’s not how this thing works.”

You wanted to cry more,let it all out,  but you were so dehydrated that your tears had already come and gone. You were too weak to do anything, so instead you slid further to the ground, curling up in hopes of finding some warmth in the cold cellar.

If this was where you were going to die you wanted Death to take you quickly and painlessly. No one was coming to save you, you were childish to think that your little trick would work when you were being attacked.

Humming a familiar tune to yourself you closed your eyes, exhaustion taking over.

It ain't no use in turning on your light, babe

That light Id never known

And it ain't no use in turning on your light, babe

I'm on the dark side of the road

And that’s when you felt the pain and hunger drag you under, reality slipping through your fingers like sand as you lost yourself to a heavy and dreamless sleep, drowning in darkness.

You were unconscious by the time the old wooden door was blown open, the silhouette of an old friend taking up the threshold and blocking the full moon just beyond.

So maybe your small trick had worked. . . But you didn’t know that.

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[natromanxoff]

Queen live at Capital Centre in Landover, MD, USA - November 29, 1977

(x)

A fan filmed the first couple minutes of the show on a silent Super 8 camera, but he was caught by a security guard and the film was confiscated.

Another fan recalls the band took a 30 minute break in the middle of the show, and started the second half of the show with Tie Your Mother Down. He also says they performed both Spread Your Wings and It's Late.

Here is a review of the show from the next day's Washington Post. It reveals that the band have swapped Keep Yourself Alive with Now I'm Here. The former now follows Bohemian Rhapsody in the setlist, as it had earlier in the year.

There is a great story on Brian May's website by Tracy Chevalier, who attended the show as a youngster:

It started with a champagne toast and ended with a limo pulling away into the night. In between these two gestures symbolising glamour and sophistication, I lost my virginity. Not in the technical sense (that would take another few years), but in other ways. At my first ever rock concert — going with four friends to see Queen at the Capital Centre in November 1977 — I got an eye-opening peek at elements of the adult world, with its power and its limitations, its glittering artifice and dirty reality, and it demonstrated how little I knew and how much I had yet to learn about life.

I was ripe for it; overdue, really. I had turned 15 the month before the concert, and though people thought I looked older than I was, I was remarkably naive and unworldly at that age. Despite a few character-building events in my childhood — the death of my mother when I was almost 8, the experience of being a minority in DC public schools — I was so unsophisticated, so unaware of the world, that I didn’t even realise Queen was an English band until the lead singer Freddie Mercury appeared in a tight white catsuit on stage at the Capital Centre, raised a glass of champagne at 18,000 screaming fans, and toasted us with “Good evening, Washington” in a fruity English accent. I was stunned. Then I started screaming.

I had been a Queen fan for a couple of years by then. A Night at the Opera was the first LP I bought, and I could sing every word of every song. I don’t remember how I was introduced to Queen — though I do remember hearing their biggest hit, Bohemian Rhapsody, on the radio and being impressed by its audacity. It sure beat the hell out of the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, which had been my older sister’s staple music diet. By 14, I was writing Queen lyrics on the desk where I sat for algebra class, swapping them back and forth with a boy I had a crush on, and daydreaming of guitarist Brian May kissing me.

The concert was part of Queen’s News of the World tour. While not a great album, especially after the double whammy of A Night at the Opera and its follow-up, A Day at the Races, it did produce two of their best-known songs, We Will Rock You and We are the Champions, which drop-kicked them firmly into stadium anthem territory. Appropriately, the concert began with the lights going down and the primitive, effective, impossible-not-to-join-in-with BOOM- BOOM-CHI, BOOM-BOOM-CHI, BOOM-BOOM-CHI intro to We Will Rock You rolling over the audience. Everyone immediately jumped up out of their seats and began to stomp and clap along. I, too, stood and stomped and clapped, watching in awe as people began flicking their Bic lighters, a gesture I had never seen before. What, were they going to set light to something? I had tried not to act surprised earlier when people nearby started smoking grass in public, but now was there going to be a riot? What other illegal things would go on that night? Then a spotlight picked out Freddie Mercury, who began to sing, “Buddy you’re a boy, make a big noise, playin’ in the street, gonna be a big man someday . . .” and I thought, “Jesus H. Christ, that is the loudest noise I’ve ever heard! Is that legal?” The wall of sound terrified me, and I wanted to cover my ears, but I didn’t dare, as it would have been a very uncool thing to do. I think I looked around for the exit, wondering how many people I would have to climb over to escape the sound. It was just so goddamned loud — exhilarating, yes, but painful, too, dangerous and overwhelming. I wavered between loving it and hating it, but knew it would be uncool to hate it, so I’d better try to love it.

Towards the end of the song the single note of an electric guitar began to hum louder and louder under the chorus we were all singing and shouting, and Brian May stepped into the light to add his distinctive sound, ending We Will Rock You with low, long-sustain, three-part harmony chords, overlaid with a high melody he made fuzzy and metallic by using a coin as a guitar pick. I adored Brian May. He was the reserved, straight guy (literally) to Freddie Mercury’s camp high jinks — tall, dark, good-looking, with long curly hair and a melancholy pensiveness that made every teenage girl want to comfort him. At this concert he was wearing a silvery white jacket with long, pleated wing sleeves; that combined with his mop of curls should have made him look effeminate, but instead he was deeply sexy.

I loved Freddie, too, for his outrageous antics, his riskiness, his joy at performing and glorious indifference to how ridiculous he looked wearing glittery leotard jumpsuits, eyeliner and a mullet, prancing and strutting and posing, twitching his hips, smacking his lips and otherwise hamming it up. But even without being conscious of Freddie’s sexual preference — I hadn’t yet met anyone who was openly gay — I instinctively sensed he was not to be lusted after. For all his extrovert, welcoming stage presence, he was clearly playing a part, which served to hold us at arm’s length; whereas Brian May’s taciturn moodiness was clearly himself served up raw.

Thank God for Freddie, though. Without him, no one would have moved on stage: Brian May was not a dancer, John Deacon, in time-honoured bassist tradition, stood solidly in one place throughout, and Roger Taylor was trapped by his drum kit.

To set us at our ease, after We Will Rock You Freddie toasted us with a glass of champagne — “Moët et Chandon, of course,” after the reference in the hit Killer Queen. My friends and I heard this and screamed and clutched one another. He mentioned Moët et Chandon! That was our champagne! He was acknowledging us! I swear he made eye contact with me, 200 yards away and over the heads of thousands.

For we had done what we thought was the most original and extravagant gesture (for 15-year-olds) a fan could make: we had sent a bottle of champagne backstage. We’d pooled our money and gotten an older sister to buy it for us — the same sister who had been obliged to drive us all the way to the Capital Centre, smirking at our overexcited fandom. We’d even made our way to the stage door down a loading dock at the back of the arena and reluctantly handed over the precious bottle to a bored roadie, who said he would take it to the band. We’d had our doubts about his reliability, and his jadedness had dampened our enthusiasm a bit: had we really blown all that money — $20, which in those days meant 20 hours of babysitting — to have some unshaven jerk with a beer belly swill the precious liquid? But clearly the roadie had pulled through for us, for there was our champagne in Freddie Mercury’s hand, and he was referring to Moët et Chandon in his pretty cabinet, the lyrics we had so cleverly quoted in the note we sent along with the bottle. We were sure we — among the many thousands — had managed to get through to the band.

If we had bothered to look around rather than feast our eyes on Brian and Freddie (I’m afraid John Deacon and Roger Taylor never got a look-in from me), we probably would have seen other clusters of fans also screaming and clutching one another during Freddie’s toast. But we didn’t look around or harbour doubts, or we ignored them. It was only much later that I allowed myself to consider the veritable champagne lake that must have existed backstage at every Queen concert. Tip to rock stars: want a free truckload of champagne wherever you go? Sing a song that mentions some — preferably name-checking a more expensive brand to ensure better quality — and watch it pour in backstage every night from adoring fans. There must have been a hundred bottles from fans back there, not counting the stash the band may well have brought with them in case Portland or Houston or Detroit weren’t so generous. No wonder that roadie looked so bored — he’d probably been put on champagne duty that night.

Freddie’s toast worked its magic, though, giving me the connection I needed to negotiate a place within the strangeness of the concertgoing experience itself: the weird, scary power of a crowd; the mixture of exhilaration and embarrassment at collective participation; the physical discomfort of standing for two hours when there’s a perfectly comfortable seat behind you. It is one of those tricky, unresolved tensions at concerts: are we there to listen to the music or actively respond to it, participate as a group or answer our needs as individuals? It’s an issue I’ve never entirely resolved — from Queen onwards I have spent concerts going in and out of myself, losing myself to the music and spectacle one minute, the next minute overly conscious of myself clapping or singing or screaming, and wondering why concerts have to be such an uncomfortable physical ordeal.

I was taken aback by the sound of Queen’s music live: not just the volume, but the familiarity and also the strange rawness of the songs. Studio albums have all the mistakes airbrushed out, the layers added in, the balance between players carefully calibrated, like clever dialogue in a play without the awkward pauses and unfinished conversations you get in real life. Queen albums were highly produced, multi-layered affairs. Live, the music was necessarily stripped of a lot of the choral mixing, more raucous, simpler and much messier.

The band wisely didn’t dare attempt to reproduce in its entirety the long, baroque confection that is Bohemian Rhapsody. For the infamous operatic middle section, the band members left the stage as the studio recording played. Freddie and Brian then changed costume, and, at the word “Beelzebub”, all four men popped out of a door in the stage floor and joined live again for the heavy metal section, fireworks going off, dry ice pouring out, everyone going berserk, me in tears of excitement. It was one of the best live moments I’ve ever witnessed. Indeed, I was spoiled by seeing Queen play live before anyone else; for sheer exuberant theatricality, no one else has come close.

The concert ended with an instrumental version of God Save the Queen and once more the flicking of the Bics, which, no longer the virgin concertgoer, I understood now as a gesture of tribute. My friends and I weren’t finished, though. Emboldened by Freddie’s toast, we decided to go to the stage entrance again and say hello. I still choke with embarrassment when I think of it. When we got there, a black limousine was pulling away, our heroes and their entourage inside, and we were left with the detritus: older, dolled-up, hard-bitten groupies who had followed the band around and not made this night’s cut. I stared at one, at her long, bleach-blond hair, her miniskirt, her bright red lipstick. She glared at me briefly; then her face went slack as she dismissed the idea of me being any sort of competition. In fact, I had not really taken in that there was a competition, that the girls (and I?) were here to spread our wares and catch the attention of one of the men, and then . . . And then? I hadn’t thought it through at all. I wouldn’t have known what to do with such a man as Brian May if he even so much as looked at me. All I knew was that I was way, way out of my depth, that even if I had eluded the roadie minding the door, there was no way I was ever going to get past a woman like this.

The contrast between the sparkling theatricality of the concert and the gritty reality of the backstage, with its dirty concrete, anonymous faces and unfulfilled dreams turned my stomach, and almost ruined the night. I wished I hadn’t seen it, because it reminded me that the show was a fantasy, while it was my aching feet and the roadies’ boredom and the groupies’ hard desperation that constituted real life. As I stood watching the limo pull away and the unsexy women stand about, licking their wounds, looking for a ride to the next city and another chance, I felt as if a door had been kicked open a crack on to a world I knew nothing about: the seamy underbelly of the concertgoing experience, a mix of sex and power and exploitation, of cigarettes and poorly applied make-up and long, cold nights waiting to be noticed and defining yourself by someone else’s attention. If that was grown-up life, I didn’t want to know about it. I wanted the champagne toast, but not the limo. Not yet.

Fan Stories

“I had just turned 16 a few weeks earlier. I was absolutely 100% in love with Queen (since age 13 when first hearing Killer Queen on the radio) and therefore could hardly believe my sister's friend, who worked with her at the Roy Rogers restaurant at the mall, who said she knew Freddie Mercury's girlfriend, Mary, and that she was going to get a backstage pass and would try to get one for us as well. Well, just before the concert she met my sister at a pre-arranged point (inside the venue) and said that she was unable to get us the backstage passes. You can imagine my disappointment and my thinking at this point that this girl was not telling the truth about knowing Freddie's girlfriend (it seemed too good to be true to me to begin with). Then after the concert, which was great of course, we were depressed (my sister and I - but especially me) at not getting to meet them, so we decided to wait for their limo to come out of the underground parking area at the Capital Centre. When it emerged we got so excited we decided to sprint to our big blue station wagon and follow them. With my learner's permit only, I followed them at probably over 80 miles per hour - I remember it being the fastest I had ever driven but I was determined not to lose them - to a restaurant somewhere in DC. At that age, I didn't have my bearings around the city. We didn't want to freak them out so I think we just watched them go inside from our car. Then we ended up waiting outside in the cold air for I think around 2 hours - anyway - enough to turn my nose red and make my lips and toes numb. We weren't allowed in the restaurant - and there was a bouncer from Liverpool out front that prevented us from even going in the lobby to warm up. At one point Roger came down the stairs into the lobby and I smiled at him and he smiled back and started over to the door - but was stopped by another man who grabbed his arm. So then he just continued downstairs to the bathroom, and ignored us when he went back up the stairs. When they finally emerged from the restaurant, I was frozen in more ways than just the temp. Brian said, "It's a bit cold out here". One of them (I don't know who because I think I was in shock) said, "So, were you at the concert?" And we said yes. My friend who was hardly a Queen fan grabbed the attention for herself by shouting "That was the best concert I've ever seen!" or some such thing. I was so embarrassed not being able to think of anything to say in my stunned condition. Freddie looked at me briefly then looked over at my sister. He nodded at my sister but he never stopped walking to the limo. Brian walked over to me and said something like, "Did you enjoy the concert?" and I think I mumbled something like, "Yes. It was fantastic." Then all I could think to say was "Can I have your autograph?" He said "Sure" and ended up giving me the autograph and his pen. So I had to tap him on the arm to get his attention to give him his pen back. "Here's your pen." Can you imagine - here I am meeting my idols and all I can say is this? This all happened within about 20 or 30 seconds it seemed, and they all got into the limo quickly - they seemed pretty tired. I can't remember if they had one or two limos. All four of the members were there and I think a couple of other men - probably manager and driver(s). Freddie didn't say anything, just acknowledged us without a smile and got into the limo. John did the same. I remember thinking Brian was pretty tall. I stood very close to him. I am almost 5 foot 9 and he towered above me it seemed. Of course the hair probably added several inches! The best part of the story I guess is that my sister's friend, the one who knew Mary, said that when the band got back to the hotel they said there were some "nice working girls" waiting outside the restaurant. I guess they thought we were older - we were only 16 and 17 and still in high school of course. We were dressed very conservatively and with long coats.

My sister's co-worker said that she was good friends with Mary, because their families had been neighbors, and so was happy to get to visit with her. Also she said she thought that Freddie was the nicest member of the group, but very shy.” - Donna13

[loudsuitlover]

Doctor Harry XVI. La vereda de la puerta de atrás

A/N: Finally we know what happened to Harry! I’m excited for you guys to read this, let me know what you think :)

INDIE’S POV

I can barely make it to my room. It surprises me how many tears we can make without drying ourselves. I started crying the second I got away from Harry’s house and I cried all the way to my house in the taxi and still I’m not done.

I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know why in the world I thought it would be okay if I just talked about that but the fact that Harry’s friend collaborated on the association and the way he said “it was their son, right?”

It wasn’t just their son. It was Dylan and Dylan was everything. Dylan made me play piano every day, Dylan would come over to my house just to see me for 5 minutes even if he lived 40 minutes away, Dylan showed me the best sunset I have yet seen. And Dylan was also a musician and he was a friend and, yes, he was a son, and a boyfriend and a grandson.

He was my first love and I swore he would be the last because there’s just no other way. He was half of me, it’s as simple as that. We were connected and we still are and we will always be because that’s just what it is when you find the one. I know most people don’t even find them, most people search their entire lives to find what I had with Dylan and still never find it so I should be thankful because it’s better to have loved and lost than to haven’t loved at all; but it’s just so hard…

I lie on my side on my bed and let the tears soak my pillow. I can’t push the memories away now. I opened the dam and now everything is coming out and choking me. I remember my Mum knocking on my bedroom door, the way she looked, I’ll always remember the way she looked. And my screams, tearing my throat up, and her small arms trying to hold me as I yelled and fought. I remember the sirens and then the hospital and Dylan’s mother’s face and how my hands trembled.

I don’t even know how in the midst of all the horror I’ve fallen asleep but the vibration of my phone against the mattress wakes me up. I bring it to my ear without checking the caller ID.

“Indie, thank God!” Harry’s loud voice pierces my ear.

“What is it?” My voice is hoarse after the sleep and the crying.

“What happened?” He asked. “The doorman told me you were crying. It’s the first time he tells me something like that.”

“Well it must have shocked him, I’m sure the rest of Med students that leave your apartment leave with a big smile and freshly fucked.” I regret my words as soon as I say them. “Sorry, that is none of my business.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“What happened, Indie? Were you crying for something I said or didn’t say or-”

“No” I cut him off before he keeps messing up “it has nothing to do with you. It’s just… I cry every time I talk about him. I don’t like talking about what happened.”

Harry sighs.

“Yeah, I understand…” He doesn’t. “It’s the same for me…”

“What?”

“Listen, baby, I gotta go but… Uh… I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

Tomorrow night? He’s crazy.

“I can’t.” I lie.

“Tomorrow is Sunday, baby…”

“I have plans.”

He sighs.

“Indie, I-”

“It’s true.” I lie. “I’m not like you, I do have a life.”

“Wow.”

My eyes fill with tears again. I am a horrible person. I don’t even know why I said that to him but I can’t even speak now, my throat is completely closed. How could I throw that in his face after what he told me? I deserve all the bad things that could happen to me.

“Call me when you’re not mad anymore so we can talk.”

He hangs up. The distress hits me harder, it wraps around my chest and presses down and I feel like it’s going to collapse but I don’t even care if I stopped breathing.

Whenever I think of him, it’s like it’s happening all over again, like I never did all that progress, like I never went to therapy or like it’s the first time this is hitting me. But it’s not; and I know what I have to do. I can’t be alone or I would go down the same old dark road again and I don’t want that. I can’t endure that same old story.

Jason appears on my door not half an hour later. This reminds me so much of those months too but somehow instead of a trigger is comforting because he was there for me then and he’s here for me now and he’ll be here if I need him tomorrow and his hug always feels like the world can’t touch me if his arms are around me. I start crying again.

It's not as catastrophic as it was before but the quietness only makes it even harder. My heart is breaking all over again and now it’s doing it silently. Frustration is added to the pain because I don’t want to stay always stuck here. I want to move on and be able to talk about Dylan without wanting to die myself and instead here I am, on a cocoon on Jason’s arms as I silently cry on the couch.

I tilt my neck when I wake up for the third time today and find Jason with a deep frown and lips on a thin line. I look away from him and pout like a little girl. Of course he’s still mad at me. This doesn’t change what I said to him.

“How did he find out?” He asks instead. “Did you tell him?”

I nod and feel his hand on the low of my back as he shifts closer to me.

“A friend of his collaborates with Dylan’s organisation and… He asked about him.”

“Harry did?”

“No, his friend. Harry didn’t know anything until this morning…”

Jason hums. His hand keeps drawing figures on my back so I dare to look at him again.

“Are you still mad at me?” I whisper as if I was afraid he would hear me and then say yes.

His eyes bore into mine.

“Do you really want to talk about this now?”

“So yes.” I look ahead but from the corner of my eye I can still feel his eyes fixed on me. “You can leave if you want.”

“I also didn’t have to come if I didn’t want to.” He points out. “But I still came because I love you.” He sighs. “Listen, I wish you would keep your opinion about my relationship to yourself but I talked to Marie and I know where you’re coming from. I know you mean well, Indie, and that you’re just worried about me but I respect you and the only thing I ask is for you to do the same.”

Oh, God, I don’t want to cry again.

“You’re right, J. I’m a terrible person and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you or disrespect you. I love you so much.” The tears win the battle as they roll down my cheeks. “You’re… You’re still one of the few people that actually put up with me and… I know I’m… Not making it easy for anyone but�� I sob “I really do need you all. I feel so alone, J.”

His muscled arms wrap around me as he pulls me to him.

“You’re not alone, Indie.” His voice cracks. “You’ve got us, we’ll always be here for you, and you’ve got your family. You’ll never be alone, Indie-pixie. And about me putting up with you, I never want to hear you say that bullshit again, do you hear me? I’m fucking lucky to have you. Anyone who has you in their life is.” He presses a kiss on my hair line. “You take care of me and I know no matter what I can always count on you and I fucking love you, okay? We all do.”

“I love you too.”

“Good.” He puff a laugh. “Now let’s go eat something, I’m starving.”

I’m not but I go with him to my kitchen and watch him cook pasta for the two of us. If Dylan was here he’d force me to eat. He always did that but I always dismissed him. I’ve never had any eating problem, it’s just that Dylan thought I ate so little because he ate like some hungry lion all the time and for some reason he thought I should eat like him. He loved my mum’s cooking.

I remember back in Capitol in my house, which now is my dad’s house, we had this huge kitchen with huge glass windows that looked at my mum’s garden and I remember right before we started dating we would do our homework on the kitchen while she cooked and Dylan would be the taster of everything.

I imagine I would try to cook Spanish food for him now. He would like that I took up cooking, that’s for sure, and I’m sure he’d like everything I made too. But I’ll never know because he’s gone and he’ll never come back.

It was so hard to be in that kitchen or in that dining room or even in my room. I can barely sleep there. Everything at Capitol reminds me of him and that’s why it’s just so hard to visit my dad.

Jason sets a plate of pasta in front of me and I grab the fork even if I couldn’t eat if I tried.

“What did you guys do last night?” I try to divert my thoughts from Dylan to literally anywhere else.

“We had dinner at my place and then we went to Loft 39.”

“Did you have fun?”

“Yes, but it would have been better with you.”

I smile even though I doubt it.

“How’s Ollie?”

“Lost.” Jason shrugs. “She told me what she did to Mario and you’re right, it is nasty.”

“I talked to him last night, he was at Elvis Buchanan’s birthday and I think he’s falling for her…”

“Who the hell is Elvis Buchanan?” He frowns and I chuckle.

“He’s a guy.” I shrug. “He’s nice.”

His eyes look up from his plate to mine.

“How are things with Harry?”

I shrug. Well, the other night he cried on my bed and last night he told me to get my own blanket if I was cold but after that we spooned and he ate me out this morning. So I have no idea.

“What do you think?” I ask him instead “You know, about Harry and me?”

“What’s there to think?”

I shrug.

“I don’t know… I mean… Do you think he’s using me?”

“Do you?”

I shrug.

“Where is this coming from, Indie?”

“It’s just… This morning he talked to this friend and when he asked him who I was he said I was a Med student.”

Jason’s eyes narrow.

“And you are.”

“Yes, but… Is that what I am to him? A Med student?”

“Well, what is he to you?”

I’m struck dumb.

“A friend.” I tell him.

He nods.

“Well, I’m guessing he was just trying to establish you, I guess. I mean what else could he say? It’s how you met after all.”

I don’t want to keep talking about it, especially having Dylan’s smile on my mind so I look away from him and nibble some on my past at the risk of throwing up.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” He asks.

I guess that’s a way of taking my mind off. We play Failure to Launch but I fall asleep soon after Sarah Jessica Parker shows up. Grieving is really exhausting.

“Indie”

Warm hands lightly shake my arms and I blink.

“Dylan?”

“No, it’s Jason.”

I rub my eyes and see Jason looking at me with sorrowful eyes.

I feel my heart crashing on my chest. I haven’t seen a single photo of Dylan since his funeral. I can’t. But it’s heart-breaking to realize how hard it is for me to remember his face now. I know the colour of his eyes, and I can fantasize about his smile but if I close my eyes and try to see his entire face, I just… It’s not like a picture.

“Come on, let’s go to bed.”

Jason walks me to bed and lies down next to me before he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me to him.

Had I been with Harry, he wouldn’t have woken me up to take me to bed. Instead, he would have picked me up like a kid and take me to bed himself. I don’t know why I just thought about that.

Jason’s fast asleep but I lie wide awake on the mattress. Of course I would do that, I’d fall asleep at any random moment and then stay up for the rest of the night. As much as I try to fall asleep it’s impossible and I wonder if this is how Harry feels when he can’t sleep too. No wonder he was harsh to me, this is terrible.

I haven’t gotten anything from him all day after our talk on the phone. Not that it surprises me after what I told him, but I still wonder how he’s doing. I wish I could talk to my therapist right now. Well, I don’t, because I know what she’s going to say and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to fight her again, but I guess I want to know what I’m thinking and I know it sounds silly to say that but I need help figuring that out.

I remember when Dylan passed away I had this feeling in my chest and my belly and I thought I had asthma but it was none of that, it was just anguish and the thing was I couldn’t put my finger on it to the point where I just thought I was sick on my lungs and not on my mind. Even after therapy though, sometimes it’s hard for me to kind of know what I’m feeling.

I need to get out of bed. I’m driving myself crazy and, since Harry’s not around, the only other thing that manages to take my mind off, is downstairs so I try not to wake Jason up as I make my way to the reading room. When I slide the door opened, I entertain my eyes with the moonlight hitting the piano and without thinking, I sit on the stool and lift up the black lid so the keys are exposed to me.

I run my fingers through them, I haven’t played in three years. I’m not even sure I’m going to remember how to play but my fingers seem to remember Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata even before my mind does.

I’m not me anymore, I’m a part of a bigger thing, I’m a part of what’s playing and it surprises me to realize before I met Harry, I had resigned from feeling this way, from not thinking and just being but after I met Harry or since I know Harry, this is how he makes me feel. He makes me feel like music does.

It scares me because I know everything would be less painful if he was here now, if he was sitting down on one of the reading chairs listening to my sonata before he stood up and took me bare. But he is not and he won’t be here because it’s just sex between us.

I look ahead when I finish the piece and find a flabbergasted Jason staring at me with his lips parted. I look down, embarrassed.

“That was beautiful, Indie.”

“It wasn’t.” I complain. “It was sad.”

“It was sad and beautiful.”

I don’t understand how something can be sad and beautiful but I’ll let it go. I know Jason’s tired and I should try to get some sleep too.

“That was the first time I played since Dylan died.” I say. “Do you think I’m betraying him?”

Jason’s eyes hold mine for the longest minute. I don’t expect what he says.

“He’d like him.”

HARRY’S POV

It’s been a chill Monday. I’ve only had two surgeries and two hours of office so I’ve been able to work on my patients’ record a lot but it’s been hard to focus.

Family weekends always drain me, especially when it’s not my plan so I didn’t have time to prepare, not that I prepare very well anyway and to make things worse, Indie hasn’t contacted me yet.

I know I should give her time and space and all that shit but I’m tired of this back and forth with her. I don’t even know why but I have this need to make sure she’s okay and I just don’t want her to be in pain. It’s as simple as that. And knowing she’s gone through that… I guess it just explains a lot of things.

And I know I don’t deserve her, I don’t deserve any of this but… I’m starting to think maybe I don’t have to… Be alone all the time. She doesn’t want anything other than the physical relationship we have from me and that’s good, that’s safe; but it doesn’t mean I don’t worry about her. I never thought someone like her was going to show up and just change everything but for the first time since it happened, I actually want to tell somebody about it. I want to tell her. Yet I don’t know how… Because for all I know she might just storm out of the room- the girl has a temper- or tell me she’s not an ONG or something like that but… I just think if I can get her understanding I might forgive myself and I’m starting to think she might need me too.

Harry: Are you at uni?

I know she is because she was driving herself crazy when she had to miss lectures because she was sick so I don’t think she’d skip a lecture for any other reason. I think it’s cute that she’s such a psycho. She gives me a hard time over the amount of hours I work but I’m pretty sure I won’t see her face at all during finals.  

Indie: Yes.

Harry: At the lectures hall?

Indie: Yes

Indie: What do you want?

Harry: I’m picking you up

Indie: What?

Indie: No!

Harry: Why not?

Indie: I’m going shopping with Marie.

Harry: Well, go some other day.

Indie: No, I’ll see you some other day.

Harry: Please, love.

Indie: I said no but don’t worry I’m sure you can find some other Med student to fuck.

I hate it when she says that. It’s none of her business like she keeps saying but she really does get on my nerves when she acts like that. The only reason I was seeing other people is because she said we were “just sex”.

Anyway, I’m picking her up. I’ll drive her and Marie to the shops if that’s what I need to do to be able to talk to her. She can’t just act as if she cared and then shut me out and push me away whenever she feels like it.

I am leaning against the bars where the students lock their bikes when I see her walking out of the lectures hall holding a folder against her chest. She frowns and pouts like a mad little girl when she spots me and I know it shouldn’t be funny to me but I just think it’s so cute that her face is so giving. She stops in front of me and doesn’t stop frowning but I’m grinning at her. She’s hilarious.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“You gave me no other choice.” I shrug.

“Yes, you could have waited for tomorrow.” She whispers through clenched teeth.

“You would have given me another excuse.” We both know that.

“Why are you smiling? Do you think this is funny?”

“Sort of.” I admit. “I mean, I’m not fully sure why you’re mad.”

“Anyone could see you here.” She looks at both her flanks.

“Indie, I work here. It’s not strange for anyone to see me here.”

“Yes, but talking to me?”

Her words sting but I don’t let her see that.

“I told you I can’t meet you today.”

“Yes, because you were going shopping with Marie who is nowhere to be found.”

“We’re meeting at the shops.”

“Okay, well, I’ll drive you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I just want to talk.”

She studies my face. Her hair is tied up on a long braid that falls on her back but some thin locks have fallen out of it and dance over her face. I want to tuck them behind her ear but I don’t. I need to stop doing that sort of things. She sighes, she’s going to say yes.

“Okay.”

I smile and walk towards my car and she adjust her bag on her shoulder before she starts walking next to me. She is texting someone and my hands seem to have a mind of their own because they hold her waist as we walk down the kerb towards the parking lot, afraid that she might not see it and stumble. Her body tenses up, she’s just as surprised as I am.

The drive is silence because she’s still texting whoever it is she’s talking to and I take the time to arrange my thoughts. I’ve never actually told anyone about this. Those who know know because they’re a part of the story one way or another but I’ve never sat in front of a third person and told them about the accident.

When I pull over at the shops parking lot, Indie unfastens her seat belt but waits for me to say something. She’s nervous and she’s probably uncomfortable too but I don’t want to do this here.

“Should we have a cup of coffee?” I offer.

She weighs her options. I don’t think she knows I’d do whatever she asks me to but she nods. I wait for her in order to walk side by side to the nearest café we can find and I dare to place a hand on her lower back as I gently guide her to one of the tables. She’s scolded me before about me not touching her in public and even though she just fought me for showing up at the lectures hall, I think she doesn’t mind the contact when we’re not in the hospital.

We take a seat on one of the tables near the far window. Through the window we can see the road, there’s a narrow pavement between the café and the road, but not many people pass by. It’s too cold for walks already so all we see is cars driving by. When a person walks by though, I see the fog coming out of their mouths as they breathe. It makes our spot cosier since warmth is not something you can see, but; likewise everything, it’s something you can feel better when you’re face to face with its absence.

Indie looks incredible, as usual. I love how pink looks on her and how cosy she looks on her winter clothes. Her hazel eyes bore into mine like she was a deer and I was the spotlight and I don’t know why all of a sudden she’s giving me that look. That’s the look she gives me on the bedroom too.

“How are you?” I start.

“Good.” She shakes.

Am I making her this nervous? I’m the one who’s nervous… Maybe I’m passing it on her. But she just looks so good and soft and fragile… I don’t want to say something that would somehow hurt her. I feel my heart beating fast and hard against my ribs. I’ve never been more afraid of anything on my life but I don’t want her to blame me and I’m afraid she will.

“Are you nervous?”

“No” she shakes her head “I’m just cold.”

“Do you want my jacket?”

I start taking it off before she can answer but she stops me by lifting her hands in the air.

“No, I’ve got my own coat. You’ll freeze.”

“I’m not cold, baby.”

I lend her my jacket and she covers her shoulders with it before she tucks her hands between her thighs trying to warm up. I order two cups of coffee and stare at her.

“You’re always cold.”

It’s true. She always shakes when she ends up alone in the bed because she moves around a lot and unlike me, her hands and her arms are always cold too. She nods and gives me a knowing smile.

“Are you still mad at me?”

She shakes her head. Good. I won’t ask why she was mad in case that makes her mad again. Plus, I’m about to tell her a very intimate part of me. I need her to be on my side.

“And sad?”

Her big eyes look down to the table. The waiter places our two cups on the table and her fingers break the wrapper of a sugar package before she adds some sugar to her coffee.

“I know you are, Indie.” She stirs the coffee. “And I understand.”

The repetitive movement of her hand stops and my heart follows suit when she looks up at me. I’ve never seen her like this before and I wish I could take her pain away but for the first time I don’t feel like she’s better than me. I don’t see her like this girl who takes care of everyone, drinks gin and doesn’t let you get too close. She’s vulnerable and she needs me too.

“I didn’t like that you dropped that bomb like that and just left as if we were strangers but that was not about me, I take it. And after the way you talked to me on the phone, I understood you didn’t want to see me or talk to me and I’ve respected that but-”

“Why did you say you understand?” Her eyes bore into mine and my breath catches on my throat. “You said that that day and you’ve said that now.”

I take a deep breath. Here we go…

“My sister had a car accident when she was twenty-two years old. I know it’s not the same, because she didn’t die, but… She almost did.” My voice croaks but the way she’s looking at me, with brown eyes wide opened and her full lips shut makes me go on. “Uh, she was in a coma for 5 days and… We didn’t know if she was… Going to make it. She did but… Uh… She can’t walk.”

Indie places her hand over mine and only then I realize I’m shaking. She intertwines our fingers and I stare at out hands. Her skin is so much tanner than mine and so much softer too.

“I’m very sorry, Harry.”

How can she be sorry? Her boyfriend died on a car accident. This is not the same… Yet it’s still hard.

“She was pregnant.”

Indie’s eyes sadden further and her grip on my hand tightens. I can’t tell her.

“The baby died on her womb and it teared in the accident so they had to remove it in surgery so… Uh, she can’t carry babies now.”

“Shit.”

“I didn’t help her or anyone at all. I just… I couldn’t. Even now I can’t even look at her without feeling so terrible.” I confess. “And I know she doesn’t want that, she doesn’t need that; but I just… Can’t overcome that, I guess. So… It’s always very hard for me to see her and that obviously has driven me away from my family.”

Indie nods. I guess she doesn’t know what to say to me.

“Is that why you started working so hard?” Her voice comes out in a thin whisper. “You told me you kind of buried yourself in work… Is that why? So that you wouldn’t think about it?”

I nod.

“I was eighteen when that happened and I think that’s the reason why I decided to become a doctor. My sister spent the entire summer in the hospital, you know, learning how to… Be, I guess and after I went to uni and… Everyone was like going out and having fun and meeting new people and falling in love but I just… Was not in that point in my life so I didn’t really make many friends, also because I wouldn’t let many people in and… Yeah, I guess I just started studying a lot and afterwards working a lot.”

“Do you not see your family at all anymore?”

“No, I do.” I nod. “I visit them every once in a while. They were here yesterday and the day before, that’s why I didn’t, uh, I don’t know contact you to try to comfort you even though I don’t think I would have been successful.”

I give her a sad smile that she reciprocates.  

“Is that why you can’t sleep?”

Kind of. I nod. I lick my lips before I bring my cup to my lips and take a sip.

“You didn’t have to tell me about this so thank you.” She gives me a sad smile.

“I wanted to.” I confess. “I wanted you to know that you’re not alone and that you can talk to me if you ever… I don’t know.” I smile at her.

“Thank you.” She has a sip of her coffee before she takes a deep breath. “I never really talk about it or him.” Her dark eyebrows lower on her forehead. “I… I… I don’t like how it makes me feel.”

I hold her hand and bring it to my mouth, kissing her skin as she stares at me with a surprised expression. I’m surprised too. I don’t know what I’m doing.

“You don’t have to.” I shrug, trying to dismiss how I just crossed the line. “I just want you to know that if you ever want to or need to, you can tell me.”

“Okay.” She smiles. “But I’m better now anyway.”

“Good.” I rub my hands together as I give her a smile. “Then what do you feel like doing now?”

She chuckles.

“Going shopping with Marie like I told you.”

Oh, so she wasn’t lying.

“Can I go with you and give you girls my opinion on the changing room?”

“Of course not.”

I click my tongue and make a grimace of disappointment that has her chuckling again.

“It was worth a shot.” She agrees making me laugh.

But now I can’t take the image of her perfect body trying on lingerie out of my head. I imagine the way the soft lace would rest on top of her skin because she always wears clothes that fit her perfectly without being tight and that always drives me mad. How easy it is to just slip her panties down her soft legs…

“Don’t go shopping, Indie.”

She frowns. This is insane, how she unwillingly and unknowingly controls my emotions giving me the mood swings of a pregnant woman. She’s driving me crazy for real.

“Don’t you want to show me the underwear you’re wearing now?”

Her eyes widen but don’t leave mine so I smile mischievously. I know her better than she’d like and I know she likes it when I talk dirty to her. It’s like everything we’ve talked about before this, as serious as it was, is not on our minds anymore. It’s hard to think of anything other than her when she’s right in front of me, giving me her attention like she is now, looking at me and listening to me and just being here. I want to be closer to her.

“Do you not want my mouth on you, baby?” I lick my lips and watch her cheeks tinging pink. “Do you want to know what I want?”

Her lips part but instead of answering she takes air in. I don’t need her to say yes for me to know she does want to. She always does.

“I want to put your perfect ass against my kitchen counter and eat you out like you deserve, love.”

Her juicy mouth parts and I feel my dick hardening. She’s so easy, she’s as horny as I am.

“And then I’d fuck you onto the counter until your ass goes numb. Look at you, you’re blushing.” I grin. “It never fails to surprise me how shy you seem to be out of bed and how dirty you are in it.”

“Maybe I’m the perfect example of a lady out and a slut in.”

If she had said that any other way, I would have played along but the way she lifted her chin and clenched her jaw gives her away.

“Indie, you’re not a slut.” She rolls her eyes. “Why? Because you like sex? That doesn’t make you a slut, baby, it makes you a human.”

My hand reaches for her braid and I twirl a finger around it before I grip it between my fingers and gently pull from it bringing her face closer to mine until our lips are inches away.

“I like it” I tell her “that you’re free and you know what you want, it’s fucking sexy, baby.”

I press my lips against hers before she can reprimand me for the PDA and I feel her breath against my mouth as she takes the kiss. It takes her a few seconds to reciprocate but I smile when she bites my bottom lip. I bet she’s shutting her thighs together but before I can check that with my own hand underneath the table, her phone rings and she pulls apart.

“Hi, Marie.” She gives me a death glare as she wipes my saliva from her lips. “I’m having a cup of coffee on” she tilts her neck searching for the name of the cafeteria “on Sionpa, it’s right next to the- oh, right, yeah, yeah, that’s the one but don’t” she all but yells “worry, I can, I’ll go out. There’s no need for you to come all the way here. See you in a second.”

The things she would say not to have her friends see me. I smile as she leaves a bill on the table.

“Here, I’ve got your coffee too.” She says.

“Thank you.”

Her eyes narrow. I know she was expecting a bit of resistance on my part but I know she doesn’t like it when I don’t let her pay so she won’t have it. I grin.

“Oh, Harry!”

Indie turns around and Adam grins at us.

INDIE’S POV

“Indie!” Adam’s face lightens up as he leans in to give me a light hug. “I hadn’t recognized you! It’s very nice to see you! How are you?”

This guy is so well-mannered and friendly. It even surprises me that he’s that close to Harry.

“Hi, Adam. I’m good, thank you, how are you?”

“Good. What a coincidence, hey?”

“Yeah, what are you doing here?” Harry asks him.

He’s stood up from his chair and is now standing next to me with his hand on my low back.

“I need to get my mother a present. It’s not going well.” He smiles.

Harry chuckles.

“Just get her a book.”

“That’s like the least personal thing you could get her.” I complain.

“I don’t think so.” Harry argues back. “A scarf is less personal.”

“You are the king of presents.”  

Harry shrugs and Adam chuckles at our interaction.

“Is this what you were having?” Marie points at Harry with raised eyebrows and an annoyed expression.

Oh, shit.

“Marie!”

Adam laughs and my friend her eyes roam up and down his body. He grins at her. Alright, what is going on?

I look at Harry but he seems as lost as I am. He gives me a confused look as if he was waiting for me to solve this but I don’t know what we’re supposed to do either.

“Hi, I’m Adam. I’m a friend of Harry’s.”

“I’m Marie, a friend of Indie’s.”

Adam shakes Marie’s hand and I think everyone can see how she turned into the heart eyed emoji. Oh, Marie, don’t be so obvious… But he hasn’t taken his eyes off her either. She smiles nervously.

“Do you guys want to have a cuppa?”

“Well, we-”

“We’d love one.” Marie smiles.

“Sure.” Harry surprises me.

What are they doing?! I give Harry a death glare but he looks away so I focus on the other little devil.

“What was that? The shops are gonna close.”

“Well” she shrugs “the shops are there every other day.”

I stand there like a fool as Harry brings two more chairs to our table and takes a seat himself. Marie does the same and that’s when my head goes into a short-circuit. I would have never thought I would be having coffee with Harry at some random cafeteria, much less with Marie in what looks like a double date. Harry licks his lips inside his mouth amused and taps the empty chair next to him but I sit down next to Marie.

“Did you call him?” Marie asks me the second I sit down. She’s back. “Or did you follow her around?”

I feel my cheeks heating up but Harry grins as he looks at her.

“Second option.”

“And why do you do that?”

My eyes widen. Did timid Marie just ask that? She’s frowning at him as if she was a cop confronting a criminal and my breath catches on my throat. Harry looks at me before he looks back at my friend.

“Because I like her company.”

“Just because of that?” She challenges.

“Marie, dear Lord, shut it.”

“No” She frowns at me. “This is bad. She’s a lot younger than you, mister, and you’re her mentor, what if-”

“This is half the cuppas.” Adam says as he places a cup of tea before me and the other one before Marie. “I’ll be back with the rest.”

“What’s your game?” She resumes her accusations as soon as Adam walks away. “What do you want from her?”

“Marie, seriously, you’re embarrassing me.”

“Why? If you don’t ask the questions, somebody has to.”

“I’m not a-”

“I’m not playing with Indie.” Harry answers cutting my words short.

He’s studying Marie’s face with a stern expression. I wouldn’t be able to tell what’s going through his mind.

“I never have and what I want from her, she knows perfectly fine since the very first day.”

He doesn’t seem mad or annoyed at my friend’s rude behaviour but I’m beyond embarrassed. Thankfully, Adam arrives with his coffee and Harry’s and takes a seat next to his friend before another word can be spoken.

“Were you guys on a date?”

What is going on today? What sort of question is that? Harry chuckles and only then I realize he’s looking at me. My face must be a technicolour poem.

“No” I answer before Harry can embarrass me any further “we don’t go on dates.”

“I beg to differ.” Harry challenges with a smug smile.

I’m going to kill him. Adam and Marie look at each other trying to see if any of them know what’s going on but I mean neither do I.

“So how long for have you guys known each other?” He asks Marie.

Thank God, I need a break. Harry’s still smiling at me, he’s clearly loving this.

“Four years. We go to uni together.”

“Oh, so you study Medicine too?”

“Yes.” Marie nods.

“Oh, gosh, three nerds and me.” Adam jokes and my friend laughs.

“What did you study?” She asks. “If you studied at all.” She panics. “Because it’s fine if you didn’t. I mean you don’t have to, you know, it’s a valid choice not to and it’s also a valid choice to study. Please somebody stop me.”

Adam throws his head back and laugh and Harry fights against his smile but fails. Marie is adorable.

“I studied Journalism.”

“Oh.” Marie nods. “It sounds interesting.”

“Well” he shrugs “I’m currently working at this big cosmetics firm. I’m the crisis management responsible.” He nods. “I get all these free products that I don’t even know how to use.”

I chuckle. He’s great, what a subtle way of letting my friend know he doesn’t have a girlfriend. I almost bow at him.

“Really?” Marie chuckles. “That’s so cool!”

He chuckles and frowns.

“I mean, you can have them even though you don’t need them.”

I try to control my chuckle because he’s not laughing but I catch Harry rolling his eyes from the corner of mine. He then looks at me and smiles. My phone screen lightens up and Harry’s eyes drop on it too. He’s the nosiest person I’ve ever met. It’s an Instagram notificacion.

@gemmastyles liked your picture.

[purplesurveys]

1161

 survey by pichu4850

What color do you think of when I say...

Anger? Red, or a really bright red-orange.

Confusion? Gray.

Inspiration? Sky blue. Both word and color give off calming vibes to me.

Shy? Something like an off-white shade, and maybe even pastel pink.

Agony? Olive green was the first color to come to mind, though I have no idea why.

Sleep? Dark blue, like the night sky.

Chipper? Yellow.

Beautiful? Red, the way roses are.

Morning? Light blue or yellow.

Would you rather be named...

Andrea or Aimee? Andrea.

Emily or Erica? Emily. I know an Erycka that I’m not too fond of, so this is an easy pass.

Kelsey or Casey? Casey, though I’d mix up my name a bit and have it be pronounced and spelled as Cassie.

Madeleine or Marina? Eh, not really a fan of either but I’d mos likely go for Madeleine.

Alec or Aaron? Alec.

Ryan or Ross? Not a fan of both names as well though I’d probably go with Ryan, but only as a feminine name.

Dylan or Daniel? Dylan.

Jack or Jordan? I guess Jack, if I have to pick.

Gabriel or Gavin? Gabriel.

How often do you...

Brush your teeth? Once or twice a day.

Eat breakfast? Twice a week, during weekends; though sometimes I’ll end up skipping it for an entire week altogether.

Check your email? I literally never check my personal email anymore after having gotten hired, but I know I should quit that habit and check it every once in a while just in case an intriguing opportunity might come my way. My work email is a different story; I have to use it everyday. I open my emails even during weekends so that when I report to my shift on Monday, my Gmail won’t look as clogged.

Go to the mall? When quarantine protocols loosened up a bit I used to go either on Saturdays or Sundays for some me time as well as some much-needed time away from the house, for the sake of my mental health and sanity. But now that we’re going through another surge in cases, no one’s allowed to go out again and malls are back to just keeping the essential stores open.

Go to the beach? A few times a year, at least before the pandemic. I haven’t been to the beach since 2019.

Play card games? Only happens once in a blue moon, when I get together with friends and someone happens to bring a deck of cards. This isn’t a usual occurrence with any of my friend groups, though.

Have at least 20 minute phone calls? Never. I have 20-minute Google Meet and Zoom calls instead.

Paint your nails? They are never painted.

Wish you were happier? Every now and then.

Did you ever want to be...

A veterinarian? Yes, when I was younger. I once stumbled upon an interview with a horse vet on one of my kid’s almanacs and thought what they did was so cool.

An astronaut? Yup, definitely became a big obsession of mine at one point in my childhood. I still think it would be cool to go to outer space and should the opportunity ever become accessible in my lifetime, I wouldn’t want to miss out on it.

An artist? Not really. I knew from the get go I wasn’t meant to be one.

A school teacher? I would guess yes, but I definitely wasn’t as interested in teaching compared to being an astronaut or like a firefighter.

A housewife? Lmfao yeah. This was the answer I would give when I was like 8 up until I was probably 10 and I knew it stressed out my Asian mother big time. My grandpa got a kick out of it, though.

A firefighter? Yes. This was up there with astronaut.

A princess? Not so much.

A lawyer? I definitely considered law for a brief period, but it was already during my latter college years. There wasn’t enough time to mull over it. But hearing all the law school horror stories from my friends kind of made me relieved I didn’t push through with it; I knew I wasn’t passionate enough about law to want to go through all the hardships that come with law school, so I was fine letting that dream go, and still am.

A doctor? This was never a dream of mine.

Would you consider yourself...

Materialistic? Yes.

Pessimistic? It comes out occasionally, but I don’t think it’s a main trait of mine that people would generally see me as.

Avoidant? Not so much. I can be shy and anxious sometimes but I get over it at some point.

Sarcastic? Only occasionally. I wouldn’t say I speak the language.

Talkative? Definitely not. I hate being in the spotlight, and whenever it’s my turn to share a story or talk in a group I usually have the tendency to rush through it or make it as short as possible so as to return the spotlight on someone else. I’ve always been more of a listener.

Strange? Maybe not strange but weird to an extent?

Intelligent? I guess in some ways.

Lucky? In some ways I am, but I also got handed the short end of the stick in other contexts.

In the next twenty-four hours, will you...

Talk to someone you care about? Probably. I talk to at least one friend a day.

Go to work? Yep, I’ll finally be going back to work since the Holy Week break is over. My workaholic self felt kinda unsettled with all the free time, so I’m actually kinda relieved.

Go to school? I’m not in school anymore.

Be in a different city? Nope, it’ll be working from home for me like usual. We were initially allowed to book visits to the office if we really needed to go there to pack some goodies and stuff, but because of re-heightened Covid protocols our admin has once again prohibited anyone to go there for the meantime.

Read a book? I highly doubt it. I haven’t read any in months.

Watch a movie? Nope. It’ll be a Monday coming from a 4-day break, so it will be incredibly busy tomorrow as there would be a lot to catch up on.

Go to a dentist/orthodontist appointment? No, I won’t.

Do your laundry? My parents probably will seeing as our hamper was nearly full the last time I checked.

True or False: Family...

I have two brothers or more. I only have one brother.

My mom lives with me. This is technically true but isn’t phrased right in my case. I’m currently living with my parents.

My grandparent(s) live with me. No, we moved out of our duplex (where I did use to live with my grandparents) well over a decade ago.

I have half-siblings. Don’t have any.

I am the oldest in my family. Eldest child, that is.

I am an only child. I have two other siblings.

I have 15 cousins I can name off the top of my head. Easily. My first cousins are less than 15 in total, but I know a good number of my second and third cousins as well so this is a cakewalk.

The nearest Aunt or Uncle lives less than an hour away from me. The aforementioned duplex we moved out of is just at the next village; we didn’t move too far so that we can continue visiting them.

True or False: Food...

I am allergic to chocolate. I’m not, fortunately. I’m not crazy about chocolate but I’d be pretty miserable if I could never have it either.

I like vegetables more than fruit. Infinitely more, hahaha. I hate fruits.

I have tried pizza dipped in ranch sauce. Ranch isn’t a very common dressing where I’m from, so it’s not usually offered in restaurants. Given the chance, though, I’d definitely try my pizza with ranch at least once.

I've never eaten kiwi fruit. True, but then again I’ve never eaten most fruits and don’t plan to.

I love junk food.

I love to try new food.

Ketchup goes best with fries (chips). I don’t like ketchup and barely put it on anything.

I like fried rice. I haven’t met an Asian who doesn’t like fried rice.

I can prepare dinner for myself (using a stove or oven).

I hate sushi.

How many...

Pairs of shoes do you have? A little over 10, maybe? I don’t feel like counting in my head rn.

Songs do you have on your music player? I don’t have a music player anymore.

Hours of sleep did you get last night? Around 4.

Times have you had alcohol? Like, ever since I started drinking when I was 18? I never kept track lmao but if I would guess, maybe around 50-60 times? I’m not a regular drinker; I drink probably once or twice a month at most.

Books have you read/started reading in the past month? None.

Windows in your house/apartment are open? I know my parents and sister have their windows open at the moment, so that’s 2. Mine are usually open as well, but I’ve turned on my aircon so I’ve closed them for the night.

Pets do you have? 2.

Kids do you have/want to have? I’d cut it off a a maximum of 3 kids, but having just 1 would already be so nice.

Minutes does it take to get from your home to school or work? I work from home, but in the two times I went to the actual office it took anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour.

Have you ever...

Spilled a cup of grape juice on the carpet? I don’t think I’ve ever even encountered grape juice in my entire life.

Played spin the bottle? I don’t think I’ve ever played this. My friends and I usually resort to truth or dare.

Played Twister? Yes, and there are many fond memories that come with it as well. So when I was 7 years old I befriended Katreen, and her mom and mine hit it off instantly so they started this arrangement where every Friday, her mom picked me and my sister up from school along with Katreen and her sisters, and we’d stay for several hours at their place until my mom would pick us up. Her mom was an amazing host and every week we’d play Twister, watch Pokemon, read books together, etc; anything to keep us comfortable and entertained.

Been caught doing something you weren't supposed to be doing? It’s bound to happen every now and then.

Walked out of a movie because it was horrible? I’ve gotten this feeling a few times but I always stayed in my seat because I paid for the damn ticket.

Given the finger to someone on the street? Oh most definitely, as well as drivers passing by. And it’s always been towards men that are being disgusting pigs.

Been so sad/angry that you started laughing? Sure.

Been in a wedding? Yes, but I only got invited as a kid since I was usually picked to be one of the flower girls. I haven’t been to a family wedding since 2007.

Been in a situation where you almost died? Probably not died but almost substantially injured, sure.

Misc...

Are you stressing out about anything right now? Just worried about the deluge of tasks that will inevitably come at me tomorrow but knowing how easygoing my bosses are, I know I’ll be able to ease up soon enough.

Do you think before acting or act before thinking? I used to be the latter but I now see the importance of first considering possible consequences of or how others would be affected by my actions.

Do you act upon your emotions and instinct, or logic and reasoning? Again, I used to be one of these, this time the former. Now that I’m at a much more stable and peaceful place in my life I try not to let my emotions get the best of me.

What are some personality traits you find appealing in a potential partner? I had a number of negative experiences in my last relationship so forgive me for scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to my expectations lmaaaao – I’d love for someone to be sensitive to my needs and feelings, and for them to be able to own up to their mistakes or hurtful habits and know how to apologize and be open to changing if it’s for their self-improvement.

How have you changed as a person in the last 5 years? I tolerate less bullshit now. I think I’ve also grown to be happier and a lot more stable, emotionally. I also have a better sense of what I want out of life and where I want to be, and I’ve also learned to be more sociable and open up to people.

If you could do anything you wanted right this moment, what would it be? Order sushi :(

Is there anyone you can totally relax and be yourself around? Yes, that’s what my friends are for. If I can’t feel comfortable around my friends, I’d view that as a problem.

Did you ever wanted to say something to someone, didn't, and regretted it? No.

Are you scared about the future? I’m scared of the idea of not meeting some of my goals, like having a family; but I’m also excited about what the future could bring me.

[horansqueen]

You & Me : chapter 12

A Niall Horan fanfiction ; rated MA

Sequel to AM CONVERSATIONS

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10 || CHAPTER 11

NOTES:

-one chapter is her pov, the next is his. -4.9k -im sorry, i never proofread, i hate it. -there WILL be smut. but not only smut. -this is a romance, comedy, smut story. -for the summary, check my MASTERLIST.

- notes: i hope it sorta hit a bit? does it sting? it had to happen sorry! i cant wait to write the next chapter 😭

if you want to be on the list of blogs i notify when this is updated, just message me :)

requests! : i didnt add the “never have i ever” suggestions that i used but THANK YOU if you sent some, i used a few! also, i had other requests and ideas from people and i may use them a bit later, in a future chapter. actually i know when ill use them lol youll see :)

Chapter 12 : Her chapter

OLIVIA

"Shit, I don't know what to wear!" I exclaimed to myself as i put clothes in front of me, standing next to to mirror. "Horrible."

I threw the shirt away, aiming for the bed but it fell next to it and I didn't even send it a glance as I took an other one.placing it on my chest and tilting my head at my reflection. I glanced up when I saw Louis walk by and stop immediately, holding himself on the door frame with a smirk.

"Put a skirt on." he let out, making me raise my eyebrows. "It'll be easier for him to fuck you against the wall."

My eyes got smaller and I reached out for my tissue box before throwing it his way. He moved right on time and it hit the wall in a thug, making him laugh.

"Don't be so violent!" he smirked, walking in my room and leaning on the wall. "I'm just saying out loud what you think about late at night, if you know what I mean."

I turned to him, opening my eyes wide and shaking my head. I couldn't believe Louis was talking about me masturbating to the thought of my ex boyfriend like it was nothing.

"Oh my god, shut up!" I let out with a chuckle. "You're so annoying!"

"Look, I woke up and he was getting out of your room." Louis pointed out. "He spent the night with you. In your bed. Wearing nothing but BOXERS!"

"We just slept." I argued with a shrug, trying not to show him that the thought of Niall almost naked in bed with me was actually doing something to me. "I was sick, remember?"

"Yea, you were 'sick'" he repeated, pronouncing the last word louder and adding fake quotation marks with his fingers.

"I was! A few of your sushis weren't good, Lou." I explained, throwing an other shirt away and grabbing a new pair of jeans. "You know it's true, I heard you vomit in the middle of the night, too."

"That's not the point." he explained, getting suddenly a lot more serious than he normally is. "Olivia, you should break up with Dylan." I stopped dead in my track and even stopped breathing. My heart, though, was beating extremely hard against my rib cage and it's all I could hear. "Did you even think about him recently? He's not here and you don't even seem to miss him, especially not when Niall is around."

I did think about Dylan, though, but I didn't talk about my thoughts, mostly because I felt fucking guilty about almost everything that came to my mind. I felt like shit towards my boyfriend but I didn't have the guts to tell him that I was getting closer and closer to Niall. I didn't know how to tell him that spending time with Niall had been some sort of relief in my life, that being able to be around Niall again was making me generally happier, that when I was near him, I felt more alive. There was no good way to tell that to the man you were about to marry, not without hurting him.

"I love Dylan and I miss him, you know that damn well, Louis." I argued, feeling tears coming to my eyes. "But Niall is... Niall is Niall. Niall is the love of my life."

Louis uncrossed his arms and walked closer as I closed my eyes. I didn't want to look at him. I didn't want to face reality at all. I wanted to spend time with Niall and pretend I would be able to resist him the next time he'd try to kiss me. I wanted to pretend that I was going totally okay with watching Niall and Heidi get married and have kids at some point in the future while i'd do the same with Dylan. I wanted to believe I didn't have to break an incredible man’s heart because of my own disgusting selfishness... that everything was fine and that what was happening between Niall and I was perfectly normal.

"I know he is." Louis said gently, placing his hands on my upper arms from behind. "I see you two interact and it's so obvious, Olivia. The way you two connect it's... it's probably terrifying for Dylan and Heidi, you know?"

I opened my eyes and sniffed before swallowing the lump in my throat. I was not going to cry. There was no fucking way I was going to cry now and ruin my make up. We didn't connect, and we wouldn't connect on that night, I was going to make sure of it.

"Don't worry, I'll be okay. I'll prove to you and everyone else that Niall and I are only friends, you'll see."

I was mostly trying to convince myself of that but I just reached out to my wardrobe and grabbed a skirt, like Louis had proposed. I was going to have fun tonight and nothing else.

"Liv, don't be like that."

I turned to Louis and shook my head slightly.

"I'm not losing Dylan, okay? I can't. Do you know what are the chances for me to find an other man like him? Kind, sweet, smart, funny and who truly loves me? I've risked my relationship enough, don't you think?"

"So last night, when Niall joined you in your bed, you didn't feel anything?" he asked a bit harshly, raising his eyebrows at me. "I saw him take care of you when you were puking your guts out, you know?"

"You don't base a romantic relationship on lust, Louis. You should know that." I shook my head, searching my drawers for a shirt. "Niall always took care of me, since we were kids. It's nothing new. And it means nothing."

Louis stayed there, motionless and quiet as I picked my clothes and when he realized I wouldn't look at him again, he sighed.

"We're leaving in 10 minutes." he turned around and walked to the door as I swallowed my tears again. "And Liv? I love you. I want what's best for you. My opinion is just that, an opinion but... I don't think you'll ever be happy if you're not with Niall. I don't think he'll ever be happy without you either."

                                                       ---

The bar was crowded but we reached a quiet spot on the second floor, in the back of the room. Everyone was arrived and I couldn't stop glancing at Niall, who ended up sitting next to me. Now that he was close, all the bullshit I had told Louis earlier didn't seem so important anymore. Nothing ever seemed more important than Niall, and it was a problem.

Louis came back with a pitcher and sat on the other side of me with Eleanor while Harry, Liam and Julie sat on the other side of the table. I didn't know where Harry's girlfriend was, or if he even was with her anymore. We had told each other we would remain friends but things change and we drifted apart. I sighed low, a bit nostalgic of that friendship before we all started drinking. I was getting drunk and from the way Niall's eyes sparkled, I felt like he was getting there, too. Or maybe it was just that I was so drunk I was starting to imagine things.

I could feel the skin of his arm brush against mine and I cleared my throat, trying to stop thinking about it before turning around to send him a smile.

"So where's your girlfriend?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"Oh she'll be here soon."

I didn't expect this answer and raised my eyebrows as my lips parted. I didn't want to see her, and it was not only because we didn't get along. Most of all, I didn't want to see her all over Niall the way she had been when they invited us for dinner. Why was I so ready to prove everyone that I was able to resist my ex boyfriend but as soon as he was near, I couldn't handle myself?

"Okay, let's play a game!" Liam said, tapping the table a few times with his palm. "Truth or Dare?"

"No no, 'never have I ever'!" Louis argued, making me raise my nose up in a grimace.

These games never ended well, at least most of the time, except that one time where I decided to just kiss Harry, but a few minutes later, Niall had kissed a girl too and that was not a good ending, at least not to me.

"Okay, I found questions online!" Eleanor let out with a chuckle. "If you've done it, you take a sip, and no one lies!"

"Yea, I'll call you out if I see one of you lie!" Louis agreed, making my heart skip a beat.

I was screwed.

"Never have I ever... drunk-dialed an ex!"

I held my breath and started nibbling on my bottom lip. So many times, I had wanted to call Niall when I was drunk but every time, Louis was there to snatch the phone out of my hands. I glanced when I saw Niall drink and I wondered who he had tried to call. I had never received a phone call or a text message from him after we broke up, so I knew it was not me, and somehow, it made me jealous. He missed an ex so much that he called her... did that mean he never really missed me?

"Never have I ever... stolen someone's food!"

"Louis! You drink!" I let out, my eyebrows raised. "You always eat all my fucking left-overs!"

"What? Nah."

"He does!" Eleanor agreed with me with a chuckle, hitting him gently with her elbow.

He groaned but finally took a long sip of his beer, making me smile more.

"Okay, never have I ever... called a partner the wrong name during sex!"

I chuckled but felt my heart jump in my chest when I noticed Niall taking a long sip of his drink. We all looked at him and started laughing and he simply shrugged.

"I was drunk, I didn't know the girl's name!" he argued, laughing too.

I let my eyes roam on his face, wondering who exactly was that girl and if she had been someone he had sex with after he left me but I didn't dare to ask.

"Never have I ever.... lied to a law enforcement officer."

I laughed when I saw Louis drink and Liam started laughing, his eyebrows raised.

"Wait what? What was the lie?" he asked curiously, leaning slightly against the table.

"He lied to get out of a ticket." I replied, rolling my eyes.

"Why? Because he was going too slow?"

Everyone started laughing and Louis grimaced before flipping Liam off, making everyone laugh even more. I leaned closer to Louis and kissed his cheek gently before he wiped my kiss vigorously from his skin.

"Traitor!" he whispered as I chuckled, blowing him an other kiss.

"Never have I ever... sent nudes."

Without thinking, my eyes found Harry immediately and his did too. We stared at each other for a few seconds before our lips curled. I grabbed my drink and took a sip as he did the same, just like Julie, Liam and Louis.

"Did you send nudes to your boyfriend or your ex boyfriend, Olivia?"

I sent a mean glance at Louis and he smirked, making me know he was getting back at me for the last question.

"One time, Harry, Niall and I played 'truth or dare' and Harry asked me if I had ever taken nudes. I guess we continued that conversation a bit later and.. shared.. selfies..."

Louis' eyes got bigger and he pressed his lips together, knowing he had made things a bit awkward but finding it funny anyway. I glanced at Niall, noticing he was staring at me, and finally cleared my throat, asking El for the next question.

"Never have I ever.... hooked up with someone of the same sex or gender."

My eyes once again found Harry. I knew we were pretty much the only one who didn't want to label ourselves around the table and I brought my drink closer to him. He smiled and clinked his glass against mine before we both took a sip.

"You guys have no idea what you're missing." he let out after swallowing, making us laugh.

"Oh my god, Liv, you're gonna love this one. Never have I ever had food poisoning."

I laughed and took a sip, pushing the side of my body against Louis'. He groaned and took a sip and when I turned around, I noticed Niall frowned. I moved closer, holding my breath to make sure I wouldn't smell his incredible scent, and smiled a bit.

"Last night, Louis got sick because of his sushis, too."

I saw an emotion pass on Niall's face and his lips finally curled before he chuckled. Was that relief? I nibbled on my bottom lip when I remembered what he had asked me in the middle of the night and the right corner of my lips raised. I didn't know why he didn't want me to be pregnant with Dylan's baby but I liked it.

"Never have I ever been the subject of a rumor that wasn’t true." Eleanor read with a big smile. "Oh god, I think we can all drink!"

We all laughed and ended up finishing our glasses, handing each other the pitchers to fill them back again. I almost choked on the sip I was taking when Heidi arrived and she quickly sat next to Niall, making something stir in my stomach. I closed my eyes tight when she kissed him and I felt Louis' hand on my arm.

"It's okay to be hurt, love." he whispered. "If it matters, she's got nothing on you. She's also doing that to get to you."

I breathed in and out slowly before opening my eyes again. I noticed Heidi looking at me and sending me a sly smile that really bothered me.

"I'll get shots!"

Harry left with Liam and the whole time they were gone, I played with my fingers nervously. I felt like the whole evening was ruined because of her but I couldn't let that get to me, right? As soon as the guys put the shots in the middle of the table, I grabbed one and swallowed it quickly, followed by Louis.

"Wait, guys! This is for the game!" Harry explained. "And it's a surprise, you don't know what you drink!"

That's when I noticed the huge amount of shots on the table and raised my eyebrows just as Eleanor read the next question.

"Never have I ever... caught someone masturbating."

I held my breath and my eyes got bigger. I didn't want to turn to Niall but it was stronger than me. He was already looking at me and he chuckled.

"One time, when I was 13, Liv caught me masturbating. She just walked in my room without knocking!"

I smiled and pressed my lips together but my smile faltered when I realized he had no idea that I had caught him masturbating last time I actually slept at his place. The sight of him jerking off flashed in my mind and I gripped my glass tighter until I heard his voice again.

"Oh and remember at the lodge?" he asked with a smirk. "I came back in the room the first day we got there and-”

"Nooo! Shut up!"

I moved closer to him, trying to press my hand over his mouth but he dodged me and ended up just holding my wrist as he finished his sentence.

"And I caught Olivia masturbating in the dark, in our room!"

"Oh my god I hate you." I groaned, leaning my forehead on the table as I heard laughter. "That was a secret!"

"Was it though?" Niall asked, his lips dangerously close to my ear.

I held my breath and waited a few seconds to look up, noticing Louis had given a shot to Niall and was now handing me one. I drank it quickly, turning the glass around and putting it on the table. Tequila, ouch.

"Never have I ever... tried anal sex."

Once again, I closed my eyes and groaned, bringing one of my hands on my face as Niall laughed next to me. I was really going to get drunk. I reached for two shots and handed one to Niall who just chuckled and drank it fast. I did it took and raised my nose up. Sambuca. I hated that.

"Wow, who the hell are you?" Louis asked, raising his eyebrows while looking at me. "Little wild thing. Can't believe you let him!"

It was not my first time trying anal but I decided not to mention it. The truth was, when I was dating Niall, I would have done anything for him. There was no limit, as long as he stayed with me and was happy, it was all that mattered to me. I suddenly felt the urge to kiss him and held my breath as I stared at him. My heart was hitting so hard against my rib cage I thought it was just going to escape. Literally. It was ridiculous. I was not ready to do anything for anyone anymore, except myself. That's how things should be.

"Never have I ever... hooked up with an ex’s friend."

Once again, I knew I had to drink. Not everyone in the room knew that I had slept with Louis and I thought maybe it would be better if I didn't drink at all but the worst would be if I hesitated. If I just drank, they could believe it was an other ex than Niall but if I didn't seem sure, they'd know I was not at ease and it would be suspicious. I rolled my eyes, realizing I was going a bit too far in my thoughts and just grabbed an other shot, swallowing it quickly. I felt Louis' hand squeeze my thigh and my lips curled slightly. He knew and it was enough for me.

"Never have I ever... tried to make an ex jealous."

I sighed and took an other shot, shaking my head.

"We need to find questions that won't force me to get so drunk I won't be able to walk in half an hour!" I argued with a chuckle, watching as Niall grabbed a shot too.

I was starting to hate this game, if only for the fact that all I did was drink and check if Niall would drink too and if he did, I'd just spend a few minutes wondering who it was about and what exactly it meant. I glanced at Heidi, thinking she should probably drink but didn't and I rolled my eyes.

I never really had tried to make Niall jealous but I had hoped for it. I was not getting married to make him regret leaving me, but when I noticed his reaction when he found out and stormed out of the cafe, I couldn't pretend it didn't do anything to me. It did. I liked it. It gave me hope. Hope for what? I was not sure.

"Never have I ever... second-guessed a relationship."

I was getting pissed at myself for letting all his simple gestures and actions get to me. I loved him, I loved him so fucking bad it was driving me insane, but there was no way I was going back to being the 'no-back-bone-and-fucking-blind' girl I used to be when we were dating. I didn't want that. I reached for a shot and placed it in front of Niall a bit roughly, spilling a few drops of what I believed was rum, or at least, it smelled like it.

"Do you need only one?"

Somehow, everyone stopped talking and although I should feel guilty, I really couldn't. I was past the tipsy stage and a few memories were coming back to my mind. I also didn't enjoy Heidi's presence and the way she was so close to him. Niall looked down and licked his lips, waiting a few seconds before drinking the shot and pushing the glass away. Eleanor cleared her throat and I just shook my head with a sigh.

"Uhm, never have I ever cheated on a partner."

I closed my eyes again but this time for a complete different reason. I thought about the first time Niall touched me. I could almost still feel his fingertips brush on my skin before he had pushed them inside me. I can't remember being this excited ever in my whole life. This time, I didn't have to say anything. Niall just reached out to grab a shot and swallowed it.

"Not on Liv, right?"

Niall turned to Louis and shook his head.

"No. With her." My eyes moved to Heidi's hand who gripped Niall's arm tighter sinking her nails in his skin. I couldn't help but think she did that when they fucked, too.  "It was back when I was with Maya."

I noticed Harry was looking at me with a frown and I just shook my head slightly, answering his silent question. He nodded and his lips curled a bit as I answered his smile. No, I had no cheated on Harry. I wouldn't have done that, not even for Niall... right?

"It was... unplanned." Niall added, making me press my lips together.

The memory was so vivid, probably due to the alcohol and mixed with the proximity of Niall's body, that I had to get up and go to the bathroom. As I got up, I realized how drunk I was and tried to walk straight. I didn't like to show I was drunk and I was not sure why but when I got out of the bathroom, Louis was leaning against the wall, waiting for me.

"El and I are leaving, we've got a brunch in her family tomorrow morning, so I'll sleep at her place." he explained with a frown. "Are you okay? We can give you a ride home if you want."

"No, thank you." I shook my head. "I'll just take a cab."

"No, no cab by yourself. One of those fuckers will bring you home when you'll be ready. I'll make sure of it. And if anything happens, you call me."

I nodded and he pulled me into a hug, making me close my eyes. I wanted to tell him that I missed him, and that I missed having sex with him, but it was a lie. What I actually missed was to be close to someone, and I sort of felt like I was losing him, somehow. Soon, we were not going to live together anymore and I had no idea if I was okay with that.

"Sorry for that game, although it went better than you thought, right?"

I chuckled and pulled away before nodding. He sent me a wink and told me goodnight and I watched him leave before sighing and walking back to the table with difficulty. Liam and Julie were getting up too and I frowned, tilting my head when I got closer.

"Are you guys leaving too?"

"Yea, we're both a bit tired." Julie explained.

They said their goodbyes to everyone and I ended up sitting next to Harry and in front of Niall. I watched as Heidi talked in his ear with a smirk and I glanced down to watch her arm disappear, realizing she probably had her hand on his thigh, or even somewhere else. I looked away and swallowed at the intense feeling of jealousy invading me.

"Oh, Olivia, I know you'll be alone tonight, would you rather sleep home?"

I frowned at Heidi, a bit surprised about her proposition and licked my lips, trying to find a reason why she would actually want me to be with both of them at his place. To show me he belonged to her, perhaps? To keep on being all over him in front of me?

"No it's okay, she can come home." Harry just said, getting up and grabbing his phone. "I'm alone tonight, too."

"It's cool, Harry. She'll sleep at mine." Niall quickly replied, getting up to. "Plus, it's closer."

They looked at each other and Harry finally sighed before bending down and whispering to me.

"Are you okay with that?" I just nodded and he did the same. "Okay, darling."

Heidi drove us back home since she had barely drank and I noticed Niall kept glancing at me in the mirror but I didn't acknowledge him. I knew he was a bit mad at me for some of the things I had said and if I wanted to be honest, I really thought I was over all of that, but the thought of him breaking my heart and not being sure of the relationship we had made something burn inside me... I was not mad. I was still hurt. I probably always would be.

Niall let me borrow a pair of his sweatpants and a shirt and none of us really talked at all. We just went to bed and before I knew it, I was laying on my back, under the covers, in the dark, just staring at the ceiling. Normally, I would have a conversation with Niall until we'd both fall asleep but that night, it was impossible. He was going to cuddle her all night, and not me. The thought made me swallow hard and I tried to keep my tears in. I was intoxicated and just closing my eyes made me dizzy.

That's when I heard it. It made my heart jump so hard in my chest I was near throwing up. A moan. Just a low moan disturbing the silence of the night and then, an other one. I got up slowly, my heart beating harder, making my whole body throb and when I opened the door, I held my breath. I stepped out of the room and It was clear, now. A bunch of moans reached my ears and I leaned my back against the wall, shutting my eyes tight.

"Oh, fuck, Niall!"

I felt tears invade my eyes and I let myself slide on the wall until my ass hit the floor. I heard noise, like the annoying sounds of a mattress moving, and I brought my hand to my mouth, trying to keep in the sobs that wanted to escape. This is exactly why Heidi wanted me to sleep at their place but the one I really blamed was Niall. How could he do that to me? Wasn't breaking my heart once enough? What the hell was he thinking?

I was sitting down alone in the hall, now as sober as possible in these circumstances, listening to my ex boyfriend, the man I was in love with, having sex with his girlfriend. It was so pathetic I didn't even take the time to wipe the tears that fell on my cheeks, I just accepted my fate, motionless, like it was something I actually deserved. I tried to think about my boyfriend, filming a movie in an other country, but it couldn't distract me from the noises coming from his room. All these images of Heidi riding him as he touched her and told her how much he loved her invaded my brain and I felt suddenly nauseous. It made me realize one thing. It was not so much that they had sex, that really bothered me, although it did hurt me to some extent. What was really hard to accept was that he may have feelings for her, stronger feelings than he had for me. I also couldn't really believe he cared so little about me that he'd literally do it while I was in the same house, in the room literally next to mine.

I cried more, feeling like this moment would never fucking end. It's only when I heard his voice for the first time that something inside me seemed to click. He had groaned and I hated it. It was a low and simple grunt but it made me want to literally die on the spot. I don't know where I found the strength but I quickly got up, walked back to the guest room and grabbed my purse before rushing to the front door and stepping out of the house into the dark night. The door closed roughly behind me and I realized they may have heard. I quickly left and ran across the street, my shoes hitting the ground being the only sound around. It was only when I was totally out of breath that I decided to call a cab. I just wanted to erase that whole evening from my mind. I just wanted to erase all my feelings and be happy again but I couldn't lie to myself. The only time I was truly happy was when I was with Niall... and that was over. There was no hope left inside me.

[idgaf-what-you-call-me]

This is the first time, outside of therapy, that I am opening up fully my past, I ask that you remain respectful.

Trigger warnings: Suicide, torture, neglect, alcoholism, … a lot listen you’ve got to be well resourced before you read this. 

I know Dean, because I was Dean. I was raised to be “perfect”, I am so much like my dad, I didn’t have a childhood, I was tortured, I have lost time (dissociation not possession by an arc angel), I am fairly closeted, and I’m finally starting to get better. 

Ever since a very young child, I was raised to be perfect. To look at a 99 and learn what I got wrong before I brought the grade home, otherwise, I was sent to study. I was raised to not be heard and taught to stay in my room. I was raised to not show emotion because anything more than stoic meant that I was an inconvenience. I had “fend for yourself nights” where I had to sort out what I would eat for dinner, and at inexcusably young ages, 5-6 years old. I learned to shoot at 8, and was taken fishing anytime my dad went. I was brought to the construction sites, learned how to use power tools, and eventually had my own set at home. While I wasn’t trained to hunt demons or other things that go bump in the night, I was molded to be just like my dad. My mom wasn’t around much when I was a kid, so I idolized my father. He was like a god to me. As I got older (legal), I even would drink things that my dad approved of like scotch and I smoked cigars. Often praised, “that’s my girl! Look guys, my daughter drinking scotch and smoking a cigar! Where are your kids?” The validation was like a high to me. I was desperate for his approval. Just like Dean. Talked like his dad, walked like his dad, drank like his dad, I get it. 

I was blatantly ignored including being told that I was invisible by siblings. They would hold up a remote to me and say, “you’re invisible” and ignore me. I could leave the house and they would not come look for me. With my mom and dad often gone (usually working or partying we were quite poor), I didn’t have anyone looking after me since I was 4 so when my dad was around, much like Dean, all I wanted to do was make him happy and proud of me.

I was a closeted bisexual, who made so many gay jokes towards my cishet brother that I feel quite a bit of shame as an adult. I repressed every facet of desire I had for the opposite gender because being bisexual really meant that I must be gay. At least that is what Will and Grace told me, and I did not want to be gay. Things were bad enough, I didn’t need to add to my shit pile. By the time I was 12, I had no idea how to feel emotions and I had no idea how to love myself. Most days, now at 29, I still don’t know how to love myself. I am not out to everyone in my family. I don’t feel safe with everyone. All the gay jokes between the brothers, all the Dean is bi subtext, I lived a lot of it.

Torture can take the shape of many different forms but they fall under two umbrellas: physical and psychological. I was subjected to sound torture and sleep deprivation forms of physical torture that have lasting psychological effects. When you live through something like that, you don’t “rebound” in the traditional sense, and I would dissociate. My consciousness would retreat back into itself until it was safe enough to come back.

I dreaded Thursday nights as that is when it would begin. My father would bring home several cases of Michelob Ultra, from the store, and then he would start drinking. My dad didn’t measure his consumption in beers, instead he measured by the case. A form of extreme binge drinking that to this day I still don’t completely understand. While he would drink, his music would get progressively louder and louder until the whole house vibrated with noise. 

There are some songs and artists that I cannot listen to anymore. They’re not songs by Metallica or Black Sabbath, instead they’re by Credence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and the like. Songs that people dance to at their weddings, sing at funerals, and enjoy on a road trip with the entire family. They are generally described as lively yet not heavy, yet this music was the conduit of 5 years of actual torture for me. I used to say that these were my favorite songs, but it was a way to cope with hearing them at home, and then hearing them play in the car on the way to school the next morning. In my house, the music was played so loudly that walls and floors shook and overwhelmed my senses and ability to sleep, think, do anything but have a heartbeat and breathe. It would last all night. I never learned to “fall asleep” I would pass out. To this day, I can be desperately tired, and able to drive for several hours without being a dangerous driver. Like my body learned to ignore fatigue. “I just need like 4 hours every couple of days,” yeah Deano, I’ve been there.

I would freeze mentally. Almost like a zone out but on steroids. Then I’d look around and things wouldn’t feel real to me. I would look in the mirror and see a stranger. Now I understand that I had developed dpdr as a way to cope. I don’t wish it on anyone.

My mother? She would leave the house and go clubbing. My siblings were 8 years older than me and lived on their own a great distance from where I lived. Besides, I had school to go to on Fridays. So I cooked, I monitored myself, I had to become an adult. I didn’t get to be a kid. My catharsis was angsty and fluffy Harry Potter fan fiction. You can find it on FF.net, RandHrFan I no longer post with that handle. Dean’s were movies, movies that my dad, and I’d wager his dad watched. I also love westerns just like my dad and my grandfather, there is something about them.

When Dean cries and opens up to Sam about his hell experiences, I get it. I’m so proud of him for telling Sam. To some it seems like he’s closed off but he’s not. He’s opening up as much as he mentally can. And Sam listens. Just like my sister eventually did. When Dean gets mad and yells at John and Mary, I’m proud of him, because he is fighting for himself. He knew he deserved better and he didn’t let it go. Just like I have done in my not so distant past.

All the while my parent’s marriage was fracturing and I was mentally declining. My mom began sleeping in my room and in my bed, and I was basically left to sleep on the couch. On days when my dad would drink, and my mom would go out, I could get to be in my room again. I could be on the computer (laptops weren’t a thing yet) which lived in my room. I could connect with the two other friends on AIM, but the reality of my situation I couldn’t escape. I was isolated, didn’t trust my family and I didn’t know how to ask for help.

One day I attempted to take my life. I saw no value in it. What was I doing with my life. I was a broken human who didn’t deserve love, who didn’t deserve safety, who didn’t deserve well anything. So I downed a bottle of pills. I had an iron clad stomach, I wasn’t too worried about not being successful. Except, I sent a goodbye message to a friend, and that friend saved my life. He got a hold of my sister who got to me in enough time to make me throw up. (She was a champ at that, having suffered from bulimia and taught to throw up from no other than my dad.)

I didn’t receive help afterwards. I signed a paper saying that I wouldn’t attempt again and was taken home. (I hope this isn’t how hospitals roll anymore.) I left my house, I went to school out of state and found stability, created stability for myself. But my past still haunted me whenever I went home. So when Dean has a death wish, and gets discharged from hospitals before he’s stable, I get it.

My parents eventually divorced, and I came home to a place where I couldn’t live anymore for a solid couple of months, I couch surfed, and again my mental health took a nosedive, but nevertheless, I persisted. I got my head back in the game, and finished my degree. Chemistry. I couldn’t go back home, because if I did I’d be working for my dad. I couldn’t do that, it was too painful. So I went to grad school. I got my Ph.D. I began to chart my own path. But there was a rage in me that I couldn’t escape. I lashed out at anyone and everyone to hide the pain that I felt all the time. People were afraid of me. I was great at what I did but I couldn’t make lasting connections with others.

When I was 27 suicidal ideations became dangerous, and I got about as dark. I tried to harm myself, and wanted my world to burn. It didn’t matter that I was married, with pets, and owned a home. Nothing mattered. I finally had to decide between life and death, I couldn’t continue in that state. I can say confidently that I would be dead if I didn’t get help that day. I wish Dean had this chance. He gets close to this in moments with Cas when he is honest about his feelings and experiences, he cries, he gets angry, lashes out, but Cas is there for him. From someone like Dean, I’ll tell you Cas being present holds more weight than gold for Dean.

I have been in intense therapy for a year. By intense I do mean more than once a week, regular check ins with her, and the occasional group session. She sends me articles to read, homework, and we do EMDR work, emotional integration therapy, mindfulness, etc. 

It was then that I began to learn that all the rage that I had built inside me was hiding intense fear, loss, and disappointment. The rage gave way to tears, and the tears gave way to a new anger that I could make peace with. That anger comes from the person I am today. The person who fights for herself. Who doesn’t take shit from anyone. The person who says, humans don’t break, vases break, and I am a human. I see a lot of that in late season Dean. He is a fighter. 

But I am still the person who receives a compliment and shuts down, there is still a side of me that doesn’t believe that I deserve nice things, good things to happen to me, but that person is getting smaller. My therapist likes to hit me with compliments when I am vulnerable as I am more likely to believe them. I still react like a dead fish when she says them, and then after the session sob for hours over it. One day my head and my heart will believe the same things about myself. I would have reacted the same way as Dean to that confession. 

When the cards fall, I still know that I can depend on myself before anyone else because I had to. My life as an impoverished, unstable, depressed, neglected, and abused kid says I should be dead or amounting to nothing, but hear I am. I’ve now closely mentored about 20 undergraduate students, a handful of graduate students, and have helped them find their paths in life. I have taught nearly 1000 students. I made a difference with the life that I tried to throw away. 

I have come to a place where I can love my dad. He is sober again, and yes, my love for him does depend on his sobriety. When he is drinking he is not the same person. I wouldn’t call him an A+ dad by a long shot, and hell I am so much like him that at times it makes me sick, but I do love him. I have been able to forgive him. Forgive in the sense that I can make peace with what happened. It doesn’t change what happened or how much it affected me, and I certainly don’t forget, but that isn’t what forgiveness is. I don’t hold the rage anymore. The fact that Dean is able to is personal for Dean, as it is for me, and it isn’t some “family that is what you do” type reason.

I do experience flashbacks when there are fireworks, I can’t go to a movie theatre because of the volume, when people play really loud music in their cars I typically have to peel off into a parking lot and meditate for 20 minutes to be able to drive again. There are some stores that I don’t shop at because their music triggers me. So when Dean experiences those flashbacks, I get it.

There is a belief in the psychology that monster shows help us become comfortable with our dark sides. My dark side saved me over and over again. My dark side told me to be better than them. My dark side told me to fight for me, to adopt a survivor mindset. (If you can’t tell I am a green veined Slytherin and have never been sorted into any other house even by random house generators.) The things I delight in are a bit off color. I cultivate a poison garden, consume way too much true crime, to gore I say give me s’more and so on. Dean gets to experience his dark side, and he has to make peace with it. He makes inappropriate jokes, laughs at it, but he also does talk about it. 

This is the hard part: Just like Dean, I am also light. I love people (vomit), seriously though, they are more precious to me than any earthly possession. Plants bring me serenity. Animals are a comfort and companion in the worst of times. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to protect living things. My motivations come from a place of love and a need to protect others from what I have been through. I know I can survive, but I don’t know if that is true for everyone else.

I know Dean. I was Dean. I see that every episode. Moments when he yells and screams for himself, I cheer him on. Moments where he tries to waste his life away, I understand, and am crying right with him. The purgatory apology guts me, I’ve had to make that apology more than once. The dead fish reaction, hell that is me at the end of a therapy session. I am here to say: Dean is not broken. Dean is strong. Dean is resilient. Dean doesn’t just fight for himself, he fights for the whole of creation. Dean is not a vase. He is a human. 

Oh and John’s taste in beer, much like my fathers, is crap. Don’t drink shitty beer. Also, I don’t drink scotch anymore. I'm a gin girl and I drink *okay* beer. 

I’m the same blogger who does drunk blogging regarding Supernatural on Saturdays. It is a lovely bit of comfort and joy for me and I won’t be stopping any time soon. We will get back to the lovely and light “Dean is Bi he he” commentary this weekend. 

[antonradke-music]

DJ’s: YOU AREN’T PRODUCERS. TAKE THAT WORD OUT OF YOUR SOCIAL BIOS.

Possibly controversial opinion:

TLDR: DJ's: If you're not posting original music, edits, remixes, or anything of the sort. Please don't put "producer" in your SoundCloud bio. It's alot like that guy in High School who would say "Yea man I play guitar, I shred like, all the time" then you hand him a guitar and he just starts goin ham with a poorly executed and under-practiced "Smoke on the Water" or "Enter Sandman" opening riff. On repeat. The entire time he plays. Except with DJ/Producers you can't just hand someone a laptop to "hear them shred on a DAW" so its alot easier to get away with in our EDM world.

FULL RANT: There is a huge difference between "DJ" and "Producer" and there isn't a single thing wrong with just being a "DJ" and not both. People still need and want DJ mixes. There's zero shame in admitting that you don't, or don't know how to, produce music.

  It only bugs me (and to be clear, it doesn't even bug me all that much) coz producers like myself and my friends spend countless hours learning and mastering our craft, so that title of "producer" is somewhat earned in my opinion. You can't just download a DAW and say "I'm a producer" if you've never once truly used it.

  Producers create. DJ's mix. If your SC page is only mixes, you're a DJ. If your SC page contains original content/music you created yourself, then there's nothing wrong with adding that "producer" bit in your bio. Even if what you're posting is ID's, WIPs, ideas, bootlegs, etc. It doesn't need to be fully finished and mastered music.  If you created it, you produced it, you are a producer on some level (beginner/intermediate/TUNE GOD, etc)

If you're a DJ now, and are just now learning to produce, just wait until you start posting/uploading your tunes. THEN add that fabled "producer" title to your socials.

  I'm also not alone. Myself and several of my producer friends have expressed at least some frustration towards the DJ's that both call themselves a producer in their socials and even (sometimes) out in public. It can definitely be a "wtf" moment (and this has literally happened to me before) when you are talking to someone, be it an Entertainment/Booking manager or a bigger DJ, telling them about your music and your work. Then another DJ shows up and starts doing the same. But you know that person, and you're aware of the fact that they've never made a tune or have even tried to start learning.

  Now there's the possibility that someone who's never worked on tunes in their life could get the credit or booking that you were working so hard for, and they didn't spend a minute doing the same. They just happen to be VERY good at talking to promoters, knowing what they want to hear, and manipulating the truth to fit a narrative that will get them hired or booked. And this has happened to me. They ended up getting a better time slot than me as they grossly exaggerated their SoundCloud stats, and played a song to the promoter by an underground artist claiming that it was their own. I kept my mouth shut. I should have spoken up, but I didn't think his ploy would work and I was new to that particular local scene, I wanted to avoid burning bridges or looking salty/bad. His set ended up being really rough, he'd lied about knowing CDJ gear (he didn't), spent an hour trainwrecking almost every transition, the dance floor was empty by the end of his set, he left the venue in a hurry afterwards and I've never seen him since.

Unfortunately it's not like many local event managers actually care. They just want a good DJ, and they'll often believe you if you tell them you're more than just a DJ. They likely don't have a reason to doubt you, and often don't care enough to check the validity of those claims. Or maybe they don't even know the difference between "DJ" and "Producer"

So in in summary: DJ's. You're not producers. Not unless you make your own music/Unless you are a creator. And just for the record, opening a DAW, playing with Serum for a few minutes, and tossing a few loops into a bus/channel doesn't count. Take the time to learn properly how to write progressions/melodies, program sequences, mix-down your track elements, structure your tune and bonus points for doing it all without presets (learn sound design) and without loops (learn drum & pattern sequencing) If you have that DAW installed, you're already sooo much farther ahead than tons of others in your position. Hit up YouTube for some tutorials and you're on your way! 

In Conclusion: Please. Please. PLEASE don't take credit for the kind of work producers spend up to 10-15 hours a track doing (my average time to finish a song entirely). You could cost a talented soul a gig or time slot they've been busting their asses for for years. There really isn't anything wrong with being JUST a DJ. Its a good thing, and still a valid and useful skillset with tons of work/gig opportunities. I played plenty of gigs before I really started calling myself a "producer". You may not get the best timeslots as compared to producers. But be honest with yourself, you could be a fantastic DJ, but who most deserves good timeslots at events? The guys with something to promote. A product to offer. And that product is their creative content/music/whatever. And that guy could be you, you just need to take the time to learn and work hard at honing your craft and skillsets.

  Soooo take "producer" out of your bio if all you're posting is mixes and mashups. And if your bio says it, or you identify as a Producer, you better expect me to fuckin test you on it cause I will. Immediately. And if you don’t pull a home made, non-plagiarizing, ORIGINAL piece of creative expression/content out of your ass in that very moment then I swear to Cthulhu I will perform a social/career crucifixion (alot like “social/career suicide” except I do it to you) on you. Your ‘music career’ ends right there on the spot, ESPECIALLY if you play some underground artist and act like its your music and take credit for it. That’s just so far from ok. And I WILL notice. I was an underground non commercial radio DJ for over 2 years. and a lifelong enthusiast all around. Trust me. I will know. So just be honest with yourself, and others. Please, and thank you.

           - Signed, bedroom producers the world over.

PS - I’m SERIOUS guys. I won't stay silent next time. If I see a DJ try to take credit for another artists work (especially while talking to promoters, and especially taking credit for underground artists work) I will shut that shit down instantly. I will ensure they're instacancelled on the spot and won't play a gig in that area ever again. Plagiarism is NOT COOL. Don't plagiarize. Seriously. You will never have a career in music if you make Plagiarism a part of your “strategy for success” in the music industry. And I will personally work towards ensuring that. (example: I still to this day convert people to the cancellation of DJ Bl3nd. That POS blatantly ripped off so many artists, and is a perfect PERFECT example of a DJ claiming to be a producer. But isn’t. AND he used plagiarism + ghost producers COMBINED to make it seem like he was a producer) I don’t care if you do end up learning to produce after the fact and start making decent tunes.. If you plagiarize and try to use it to advance your career, I will do everything I can to stop you. For ever. 

P.P.S. - For those of you DJ's who are learning to produce, don't take any offense to this rant its not directed at you guys, and please PLEASE don't get discouraged. You're likely not even applicable to this rant as you're actually working towards the title. So let me help you in that, below this text I'll be linking a few awesome YouTube producer channels who upload educational music/producer content. As well as some links to great sample/drum kits and more useful tools to help in your learning curve. I am also always available for producing tips and advice, just send me a direct message or comment on this post and I'll give you the best answer from my own experience/abilities/knowledge. Thanks for taking the time to read this ridiculous and stupidly long rant. I hope you can see where I’m coming from. And I’m sure many actual producers can agree with a lot of my points and reasoning. Have a good one. Peep my tunes if you have some time. Peace and deuces to all! -Anton Radke

www.soundcloud.com/antonradke www.facebook.com/antonradkemusic booking/collabs/commissions/general inquiries/demos: antonradkemusic@gmail.com

Resources and tools for learning producers: Some production education channels on YouTube that I highly recommend:

Dylan Tallchief has some fantastic tutorials for many different EDM genres which cover more than just production. He talks in depth about music theory, sound design. All of it. He shows how to use both Ableton and FL Studio. HIGHLY RECOMMMEND this channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIu2Fj4x_VMn2dgSB1bFyQA

For rap/hip-hop producers, I recommend watching videos made by these two gentlemen: 

Praxi Plays covers tons of genres/sub genres, and different styles of commercial, and less than commercial rap/hip hop music. He teaches using FL Studio:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAE7Doxo5WQRjLPz7JYa7Fw If you prefer darker, more underground rap music, or just less than commercial stuff in general, Based Gutta covers tons of styles of rap beats from the underground rap culture. He’s great, and also pretty hilarious. Also uses FL Studio. Oh and he does Lo-Fi stuff a whole lot as well:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTrrlfsv-5IBQ1SgPBawT3w

COMPOSERILY is also a good one. But a lot less serious. His videos are definitely more parody and satire than anything, but there’s still lots you can learn from watching him. Tons of useful stuff in his videos. He also does both Ableton and FL Studio depending on the song/artist he’s trying to sound like.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ujq8PBm0MWraaXd8MsIAQ

For drums and other samples, I highly recommend getting a Splice Account. Its incredible So many options! And you can download individual sounds. You don’t have to download an entire sample pack if you just want one kick drum that it happens to have which is great. A good brokeboi alternative would be Looperman. Its basically a discount/Wal-Mart level “Splice” style service but free.

www.Splice.com

www.looperman.com

Some useful sample kits I recommend getting for the sake of drum sequencing/programming:

XFER Pack by Steve Duda and deadmau5 (great for house and 4/4 edm genres) 

BIGHEAD Sample Pack by BigHead (available on Splice) [great for trap/rap/hiphop] 

literally ANY vengeance or cymatics sample pack will also be a great choice for practically any type of bass music. Face it. Bass music drums are boring and are all almost IDENTICAL from song to song (with the exception of the kick drum) so any Vengeance or Cymatics dubstep sample kit will do you justice here.

VSTs to consider: EDM: Sylenth1 (must have), Razor (underrated), Massive, Serum (must have), U-He Diva, Nexus (overrated but useful), Dblue Glitch, DBlue Tapestop, Engineers Filter (free, amazing Equalizer. deadmau5 approved), CamelCrusher, OTT (overrated but useful), Cthulhu (MIDI sequencer programmed by deadmau5, hella cool but confusing)

Rap Music VSTs to consider: Omnisphere. that’s it. I’m not kidding. A talented producer armed with Omnisphere, and a decent drum sample kit, who is very good at sampling and writing melody/progression can create THOUSANDS of Grammy worthy rap/trap beats without even once reusing an Omnisphere preset.  Its like Nexus. Except it truly doesn’t suck, and is worth the absurd price tag.

-Anton Radke  www.soundcloud.com/antonradke www.facebook.com/antonradkemusic booking/collabs/commissions/general inquiries/demos: antonradkemusic@gmail.com

[backtobackbakubabe]

Baby its Cold Outside (PART 9)

Bakugo x Reader 

Have you seen this man

**** Warning**** This chapter has a bit more graphic violence than the others. 

Words : 2810

PART 1 HERE, PART 2 HERE, PART 3 HERE PART 4 HERE PART 5 HERE , PART 6 HERE PART 7 HERE PART 8 HERE PART 9 HERE PART 10 HERE PART 11 HERE PART 12 HERE PART 13 HERE PART 14 HERE

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

You actually got pulled to duty today, so naturally you just had to be feeling under the weather. Any other day of the week you could sit at your desk or hell just lay on one of the many couches in the break room, but nope. Not today. Today you need to go assist in a bank robbery. It was a simple call. They just needed you to pop in and get the hostages out. Piece of cake. From what you understood there was only four hostages and only two villains. Walk in the park.

But because you were already having a bad day it would only make sense if it got worse from there. So you arrive on scene and guess who’s already there? Bakugo. And guess who is yelling like the mad man he is that you don't need to go in there? Again Bakugo. 

“Nope. No. I don’t think so! This feels all too familiar. Nope. Cant do it. Go home. I think I can hear Zuko crying from here. You should probably go check on him. I can take care of this...” He probably didn't even know he was doing a full on Deku rant but you weren’t about to point that out to him right now. 

“Ground Zero... I appreciate your concern but I was called here specifically. I assume because they knew you’d blow up the building. I’ll have them out in five minutes. Now you can either help me or pout. That part is totally up to you.”

He narrowed his eyes at you, probably not appreciating be called Ground Zero. But you were in pubic and trying to be professional. “Okay Adsum..” He threw a little extra sarcasm on your name. “What do you want me to do?” 

You gave him a victorious smile, “I’m glad you asked. I can do this a lot faster if the villains are distracted. So do what you do best. Yell at them, blow things up, get their attention. And once I’ve got them all out you can go Lord Explosion Murder all over the place... Sound good?” 

He ground his teeth, “Yeah whatever just hurry...” 

Before the accident Bakugo wouldn't have bated an eyelash at you doing something like this. Now it was like pulling teeth. 

You ended up pulling everything off flawlessly. Only minor damages but that’s only to be expected when Bakugo’s involved. 

You endured the strobes of flashing cameras as the press yelled praise and questions. But neither you nor Bakugo paid them any attention. In fact you wanted to get as far away as possible. You started to feel light headed and you thought you were going to vomit any second now. Once you were far enough away you bolted towards a trash can and emptied your breakfast. 

Bakugo was at you in an instant holding your hair and rubbing your back, “Oi... you okay? You pushing yourself too hard again? I don’t care how small she is, I’ll fucking fight Dylan.” 

You pulled a tissue out of your pocket and wiped your mouth. “I dont think it’s Dylan. I think I’m just sick. I wasn't feeling too hot before I even came in today. But now that I think of it, We did have a harder day yesterday than we usually do. She had me pushing myself to see how many times I could teleport in under a minute.” You gave him a proud smile, “I got all the way up to 30. Thats once every two seconds.” 

He brushed a few hairs out of your face, “As proud as I am of you, you need to take better care of yourself. I know you say she knows your limits and everything but I still dont think there’s a chance in hell she knows your limits better than you do.” You went to protest but he gave you a pointed look, “Can you please take the rest of the day off? Just go home and get some rest. You clearly need it. ” 

“Ugh, fine... but only if you bring home some ice cream later...”

He laughed, “You and your damn ice cream. Yes I will bring you ice cream. Cookies and cream or chocolate chip cookie dough?” 

You gave him puppy dog eyes, “Both?” 

He smirked, “How could I say no to that. Alright you got yourself a deal. Now get out of here before I throw you over my shoulder and drag you home myself.” 

You wagged your eyebrows, “Oh yeah?” 

He thumped you between the eyes, “Oi! We are at work women! Contain yourself.... you also just threw up...soooo I will give you a professional hand shake goodbye.” 

He held his hand out and you just rolled you eyes. You held your hand out as well but before it met his you popped behind him and smacked his ass. “Report me to HR... I dare you.” And then you popped away in the direction of your apartment before he could scold you. You ended up ditching the costume and packing it away in your backpack. You called a cab because you really were not feeling well. 

You didn't know if the cab driver was staring at you periodically because he recognized you or if he thought you might throw up in his cab. Either way he didn't make any attempts at conversation which you were thankful for. 

You quickly took a half ass shower and brushed your teeth before going straight to bed. You passed out a soon as your head hit the pillow. 

You woke up hours later to the loud ringing of your cell phone. You checked the time before you answered. It’s a little past midnight, Katsuki should have been home by now. 

The caller ID said Kiri and your heart sank. With shaky hands you clicked answer, “He..” You cleared your throat, “Hey Kiri? What’s with the late night phone call? You wouldn't happen to know where Bakugo is would you?”

“That’s actually why I’m calling! I’m on my way to get you. I’ll explain everything when I get there. Just get dressed and get ready to go. Zuko too! Dont answer the door for anyone who isn't me!” 

He hung up before you could ask what was going on. Truly panicking now you jumped out of bed and started digging around for clothes. You were pulling on your shoes while simultaneously trying to locate Zuko’s leash when a loud bang came from the other side of the door. 

“Hey Bitch! Open up the damn door! We know you’re in there! Dont make me break this shit down!” 

Zuko started growling as you looked through the peephole. You gasped, it was the cab driver from earlier. He did recognize you. And he brought a friend. 

“Your little boyfriend aint here to protect you now is he! Not like he was the night he killed my brother! My brothers dead because of you!” 

You had no idea what the mad man was talking about but it was enough to send chills down your spine. You didn't want to risk having to fight them one on one. You still felt too sick for that. You knew Kiri was on the way so you could wait util he got there... *CRACK*

They had started kicking at the door now. “Shit...” 

“We’re going to make you pay for what you did you little bitch!” 

*CRACK*

“Then when we’re done, we’ll take out that that little shit stain Ground Zero!” 

*CRACK*

“Then we’ll track down every girl you saved that night!”

*CRACK*

You ran to the kitchen and took one of Bakugo’s really expensive knives. Surely he’d forgive you for fucking it up. You returned to the door that was only about one hard push from coming off the hinges. You focused really hard as you squeezed the knife in your hand. Then there was a slight pop and the knife was gone. 

“WHAT THE FUCK!” You looked through the peephole again but this time the cab drivers buddy had a knife... Bakugo’s knife, the one you were just holding, lodged in his chest. You did it.... You had teleported the knife through the door.

Before you had a chance to back away from the door, the cab driver threw his shoulder into it, effectively taking it off its hinges and throwing you to the ground. “Fuck!” You tried to scramble to your feet but he caught your ankle. 

You kicked him in the face twice before he let go. You had barley gotten to your feet when Zuko lunged for him. Bakugo spent a lot of time training him... so it didn't surprise you when he went straight for the throat. But watching as your dogs teeth sank into another man’s throat... it was hard to watch. 

The man cried out in alarm but Zuko just dug deeper and growled. You eyes went wide, “Zuko! No! Get back here!” 

Zuko let go and ran back to you. The man’s blood was pooling around him now as his eyes began to droop close. 

You sat down in shock staring at the scene before you. Two dead men. Blood. so much blood. Your breathing was starting to get shallow.

“Holy shit! What happened to don’t open the door for anyone but me?! Y/N! Are you okay?” 

Your eyes slowly met Kirishima's, “Where’s Bakugo?” 

He grabbed your hand and started pulling you out of the apartment and down the hallway. “I’ll tell you in the car... Come on Zuko!” 

You sped off with Kirishima checking his rearview mirror periodically. He didn't ease up until he was almost to the agency you worked at. “Okay so here's the deal. So as you just discovered some quirkless cabdriver found out where you and Bakugo live. He sent a threat along with some pictures of you walking into the building to Bakugo.” 

You gasped but Kirishima wasn't done, “Yeah but what's worse is he also sent it to the league of villains. Told them you were the one who messed up their human trafficking deal and Bakugo was the one who blew up some of their best men. You both have pretty big targets on your back right now. And Bakugo being Bakugo... he....” 

Your hands gripped the leather armrest, “Kiri don’t tell me he went off on his own... KIRISHIMA WHERE IS HE?!” 

He gave you a sad look, “We don’t know. He called me and told me to get you out of the apartment and then hung up... That was an hour ago.” 

Your eyes welled with tears. He’s so stupid. always yelling at you for not waiting for back up and now he thinks he can just show up alone to fight the League of villains of all people! 

“Where are you taking me?”

“Technically I’m supposed to bring you to the agency while we wait this out... but...” 

You leaned forward, “But what?”

“But we’re going to meet up with Deku, Todoroki, and Denki and where going to go get him.” 

“I thought you said you didn't know where he was?”

He gave you a shit eating grin, “I dont. But we happen to know where all the League of Villain hideouts are. All we need now is for you to teleport to each one. Find him and report back. They’re all within a few miles of each other. I know it’s kind of pushing it but Bakugo told me you once teleported 15 miles.” 

You nodded, “By accident sure, but my range has gone up! Its almost to three miles now... He’ll kill you for this you know? He won't want me involved in this at all.”

He rubbed his neck, “Well that's a risk I’m willing to take to get his dumb ass home.” 

Half an hour later you along with the others were huddled around a map with all possible locations circled. Todoroki pointed to a spot almost exactly in the middle if the others, “That’s where we are right now. This spot is about 5 to 10 miles from all possible locations. Y/n. We need you to teleport to each of them until you find them. When you do, do not engage. Teleport back to us. You’ll take me first, then Midoriya, them Kaminari, and lastly Kirishima. Do you understand?”

You nodded, “I’m going to be honest.. I don’t know how efficient Ill be. I’ve only been working on this kind of thing for a month or so. I’ll likely have to teleport two or three times to get to each location. Do you have pictures?” 

He shook his head, “No I apologize we do not. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

You cracked your knuckles, “Which one first?” 

You popped in and out. Running into trees, and ponds, and whatever else was in your way. You had to stop to throw up nice or twice, but you never did it in front of the other heros. They didn't need to see you were sick. You were on to the fourth location when you made a mental note to thank Dylan profusely when this is all over. Without her intense training you don’t know if you could have done any of this.

This stretch only took you two teleports to get there. You were breathing heavy with a sweat soaked shirt when you heard it, the familiar sound of an explosion. “Katsuki?” You were hiding in a couple of trees that surrounded a barn. You teleported to the top of the closest tree and look down. Sure enough there he was. You were itching to go to him. To drag him out by his ear. But you had a job to do. You took one last look at his blonde head. Hoping he would still be here when you got back. 

In one long stretch that made your muscles scream in protest you teleported back to your friends, “I found him now lets go. We need to hurry!” 

Shouto stepped up and you spat a quick, “Hold your breath.” And you were off. You dropped him by the same tree you had just stood under and pointed in Bakugo’s direction, “Hes that way. Just listen for the yelling and the explosions.” 

Without waiting for a response you went back to get Midoriya. When you dropped him off you started to feel dizzy. Not good. You leaned on a tree and gripped your head. Through gritted teach you made it back for Kaminari.

When you came for Kiri you couldn’t help it. You threw up. 

“Shit Y’n are you okay?” 

“Yeah I just have the flue or something. Just give me a minute.” 

A minute turned to twenty and you could still hardly pick your head up. Kiri came and knelt next to you. “Hey they made it out okay. They took him kicking and screaming, but they got out. I just got off the phone with Midoriya. What do you say we get you to a hotel room and get you something to eat huh? My treat. It’s the least I can do after I basically volunteered you for this.” 

You wanted to protest but your stomach gave you away. You hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and you had thrown that up a long time ago. “Yeah I could really use some food. I’m fucking starving.” 

You called ahead and ordered a room as well as enough food for a small family. Kirishima got the room next to yours and told you to let him know if you needed anything. 

You opened the door and the smell of pizza, chicken nuggets, and mac and cheese hit you. You couldn't decide what you wanted so you had ordered it all. You needed a little comfort food. You deserved this. 

You had devoured the mac and cheese and was about to dig into the pizza when you heard the click of the door.

You grabbed your fork tightly as you stepped over to see who it was. 

“They didn't have cookie dough, so I could only get you cookies and cream.. I hope thats okay..”

You dropped your fork and flung yourself at him, “You’re so fucking stupid you know that! You cant do that to me. I was so scared!” 

He slowly wrapped his arms around you, nuzzling his nose through your hair, “I know. I’m sorry. I just.... I saw red. I couldn't let them get to you. The only thing on my mind was to protect you.  And then Kirishima told me they went to the apartment anyways. SHIT are you okay? I heard you stabbed a guy..?”

You flinched, “Well not exactly. I teleported the knife through the door... Zuko handled the other guy. Speaking of which he needs a bath... He has blood in his fur...”   

He cupped your face in his hands, “Later when were both not emotionally exhausted I’d like to talk about how badass and impressive you are. But nows not the time.” He looked to Zuko who was wagging his tail at his feet, “Thank you for looking out for our girl.” He gave him a quick pat on the head

You pulled away from his embrace and ran to the bathroom and threw up for probably the fifth time today. 

“Damn Y/n I’m sorry. I was the one who asked you to take the day off and then you had to go and work so fucking hard just so you guys could find me. I’m such a dumbass. I’m sorry.” 

You leaned against the tub, “You're not a complete dumbass. You still remembered the ice cream.” 

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Amphibia: Handy Anne and Fort in the Road

It’s finally here... the second time i’ve said that in three days but hey, Amphibia is back! After a years hiatus due to the show being shoved out in a month to get it on disney plus faster (Yet they STILL don’t have wonder over yonder so I can finally watch season 2. God damn. ), one of the best new shows of a year stuffed with them is back! I was excited about this one from the start. A great premise, a gravity falls pedegriee, and the wonderful Brenda Song, who I had a crush on when I was younger despite not really watching the first suite life that much, though I will admit what I saw was pretty decent and had a wonderful cast especially song and Phil Morris as Mr.Mosby.. it was just overshadowed by i’ts two leads being really sterotypical (the cool but dumb hustler and the stick in the mud nerd) and I was more of a nick middle schooler anyway so I barely touched it. Granted if I could go back in time and trade which shows I watched i’d trade it for Zoey 101 in a heartbeat, another show with awful leads but the rest of the main cast was really good concidentally. 

Anyways I did watch more of on deck to  kill time and absolutley hated it. Seroiulsy the show really sucks: Zack and Cody were turned into basically worse versions of Zack Morris and Ross Gellar, worse because while their just as douchey as those two, Mark  Paul Gossler and David Schiwmer can actually act and Cole Sprouse could not yet. I do say yet since Cole Sprouse has grown because he wasn’t half bad in the one season of riverdale I watched. Riverdale, what happens when you have the entire writers room snort a line of coke and then tell them to write the most insane archie fanfiction they can and stitch the results together. Just with Archie alone from what i’ve seen in read he’s started a vigilante posse ala homer simpson, nearly joined hte mafia, been framed form murder, had the local cheerleaders do a number for him while he played prison football, escaped prison to hide in canda from both his former mafia boss whose also his girlfriend’s dad and the cult based on a  DnD knockoff, got mauled by a bear and LIVED, and now is a superhero apparently. WHy I haven’t gone back to at the very least review this clusterfuck is a mystery.  But the point is the twins were really terrible at the time, and if the fact Dylan’s only major role recently is in the sequel to After, that film based on self insert one direction fanfiction, which somehow got a sequel while Birds of Prey probably won’t because god really does hate me. So it was bad and she deserved better, got better with the social network but hadn’t done much i’d seen, so a new cartoon starting her in her elment and in a great show for once had me pumped.  And.. my faith paid off. The show is beautifully animated, ahs a wonderfully morbid and fully fleshed out world, top notch voice acting (including BIll Farmer who is so unreconizable as hop pop I thought he was voiced by charlie addler), great jokes, action and storytelling. Just a slam dunk that left be jonesning for me. And now in one of the best weeks for animation in a while, more is here. I do mean that: 3/4 of disney’s major animated shows returning and close enough finally airing it’s a good time.  When we last left our heroes: Hop Pop buired the box that brought anne there and lied to her about it which even a year later I think is a terrible decision.. one made for understandable reasons as he clearly knows something more about it than she does, but one that’s bound ot backfire whens he finds out her new grandpa lied to her and betrayed her. The plantars also spent the season preparing to leave wartwood. Soon after, Anne was forced to finally stand up to her manipulative, if to my utter shock still caring about her and possibly being into her? I mean it’s not like I haven’t seen the “villian whose overcompensating for a terrible past and likes manipualting people redeemed and ending up smooching the somewhat reckless but good hearted heroine” before. 

Anyways Sasha ends up nearly falling off a giant tower, Anne tries to save her, with the rest of her new family pitching in, and Sasha, realizing just how terrible she’s been just.. let’s her self fall, only saved because Grime caught her. And just remembering that sequence god dman.. the fact they actually got the rights to lean on me for it really dosen’t help. But the day was saved and while Anne had a huge bundle of trauma, the family was ready to finally set out soon. And now a year later i’ts time. Now i’ve gotten all the personal stuff out of the way, let’s hop to it and see what the new season has to offer. Full review with spoilers under the cut!

Handy Anne

So the Plantars are finally setting off. We don’t touch on the Sasha thing much, just a quick bit at the begining to show that while Anne is insiting she’s fine it really traumatized her. I do like kids shows starting to show more that sometimes heroes just DON’T bounce back after something like this, especially young ones. While it’ isn’t nearly to the extent of Steven Universe spending an entire season having his lack of thearpy and unresolved issues slowly destroy him, it’s still nice to see. But the main thrust of the episode is it’s vacation time brother!

Yup after a few episodes of build up last season with the valley clear, Hop Pop has bought a suprisingly nice and affordable wagon (As Polly excitedly explains someone died in it) so they can finally set out to hopefully find Anne a way home. Their going to Oregon! I mean To newtopia, the beating heart of Amphibia: a bustling metroplis built on knowledge where they can hopefully find a way to get Anne and friends back home, while Anne hopes to find Marcy. The rest of the kids are also excited just to get out of the valley for the first time.  Everyone’s pumped.. but Anne starts to worry when she finds out Hop Pop has asked his friend Chuck, the “I grow tulips” guy from the bug ball episode last season who I forgot about but was reminded why I love him and am glad to have him back, to watch the house as given Amphibia is hard enough to surivive on a good day, let alone if your a stationary building. And Chuck dosen’t insprie confidence so Anne decides to fortify the house. And her reasoning.. is actually really sweet and shows how much she’s grown: Instead of like most times where her impulsivness is the reason shenanigans and life thretaning situations happen here.. she’s hit with the hard relization her new family is basically risking everything, their home, their farm, their chuck, to help her get home. 

So Anne decides to armor up the house, getting a fuck ton of shovels and a ton of suplies from the blacksmith guy who suprisngly for once DOES have what she needs for her veggies, to the point his not backtracking weirds anne out, and gives her a tub of goo. This can only end well! Meanwile the rest of the family pack. Polly having maybe 3 possesions gets done quick, Hop Pop is being anal reteitive as always with his ascots (hilariously done and Bill Farmer really is the MVP of this series), while Sprig’s gone half insane just picking out which slingshot to take as he never left, which polly of course exploits.  But things natrually go wrong as the goo creates veggie monsters the family fights (with sprig even calling fight time because this is normal to them at this point) the next mornign and then one colosus that destroys the house... and Anne’s anger and heartbreak over it .. awakens something. See something I hadn’t heard about and didn’t notice at the ebgining of the series was anne’s eyes flashing blue while fighting the mantis in the first episode. Many couldn’t tell if it was leading somewhere or just an animation error. Here though her eyes go bright blue in close up with it being clear this is part of her.. the question what is it and why? Just what power does she have now? And will it save the world or destroy it? Questions for later Anne saves the day, an admits she screwed up but Hop Pop is understanding: He’s touched by her actions but also explains their not just doing this for her: their with her all the way and any sacrifice is worth it. And I like that part of hop pop: while he can be overbearing, just see next episode.. he does genuinely mean well and has genuine wisdom, something they sometimes forget with grandparent characters in animation. He’s crotchety and a stick in the mud, but he’s still throughly nice and understanding and it shows here: He’s going to get his daughter back whatever it takes.. almost.  Hop Pop calls on chuck who in a whilrwind of tools and tulips fixes the place.. and proves to be every bit the legend I thought him. He sells tulips and he’s great. We’ll miss you chuck. But as they get ready to leave Anne brings up the box and Hop Pop, remembering what he did, hastily says it’s better with their contacts. WHich again just seems short sided: while he is trying to protect her, especially since next episode confirms there was some sort of apocalypse once so odds are her being connected to it might not be the best, he can’t dance around her connection to it forever, and hiding the fact some apolcaypse was caused by it is only going to backfire when some vilian reveals it or anne finds it out for herself. Taking her to a place full of infomration where he’ll now have to work to hide the truth is just asking for this to backfire. Not bringing it is one thing, dangerous people could still get the box and use it for their own ends.. we’ve seen female newt sabertooth in the promos and we’ve met Grime. But not telling her is just setitng himself up for a big and deeserved fall soon. But with that settled our heroes set out! 

Final Thoughts I:  Overall this was a good start to the season: my one real complaint is the town didn’t really see them off or anything, so the large and loveable supporting cast is just.. absent unless the series returns to wartwood at some point and it would’ve been nice to see them once last time. Even star vs, as bad as season 3 was, knew we wouldn’t be seeing most of the earth cast for a whie and had marco have a meaningful sendoff before he left. But.. given how tight the phacing seems to be this season judging by episode titles alone, and they only had 11 minutes here. I do think it could’ve been in hte next episode, but it dosen’t ruin a decent, fun start to the season really rooted in character stuff. Not the series finest 11 minutes, but still really good and a good way to start us off. 

Fort in the Road: 

First off your welcome for that episode screencap. Now this one’s also simple, but ends up having a rather sizeable revelation nestled inside. The Plantars are going down the road and while the kids want to you know explore, see places, actually enjoy the trip especailly since Sprig and Polly have never been anywhere else before, Hop Pop, being hop pop, instead just wants them to sit and be quite and follow his rules. I mean it is hte grind but you can at least make it FUN for htem; Just look at this guy. 

It took an episode longer than I thought to refrence the trail to oregon given this season is about a wagon trip, but I’m glad to do it .. and do it again. I will fit pays to be an animal in here somewhere I swear it. WE’ve got time left in the road trip.  Anyways this goes down terribly, though some rules like not posing dramatically as it smacks of hubris and never ends well. But understandably the kids are annoyed about it: Anne can’t even compallin because i’ts not in the rules.  So naturally as Hop Pop should’ve seen coming at the first opprotuunity Anne fakes being cart sick and they run off to see a weird looking ruin with Hop Pop chasing them and leaving the cart to polly because that can’t end well but he’s on a short time.  And this is where the season drops a 10 ton atomic bombshell. Anne being kinda magic in the last episode and it being fully part of things now is intresting and shocking.. but this is miles ahead of it and casts Hop Pop’s actions: Turns out whatever the clamamity box did set techniology in amphibia back to a little above the dark ages. I mean they have full light thanks to lightning bugs, but their still leagues behind.. but were once up to at least mid 2000′s levels of technology. The machine seen requires a disk to stop, but it’s still far beyond what I expcted from this world. Naturally Hop Pop shows up furious, then gets stuck on the assembly line with the kids deseprate to save him, with spirg ending up doing sow ith the rule book. Also we get Anne’s wonderful repsonse to Sprig asking what a disk is:  “I don’t know! i’m from another dimension not the 90s!”  They surivive, the factory blows up and the kids apologize and agree to go back to the boring way things have been going.. but Hop Pop thankfully realizes he’s been a bit overbearing and actually gives a good reason why: He’s never taken then out of the valley before and simply got overprotective. This is his family after all, all he has left of his kid and all he really has left beside Sylvia and the farm. It’s understandble he’d go a bit overboard. But Hop Pop decides to compromise a bit in a nice moment: while the impalment fields are obviously a non starter, he does get the kids ice cream (Anne even admits at this point she dosen’t pick the bugs out anymore), and they genuinely enjoy the trip while Sprig (in a hilarious bit of lampshadng as he does it repeadtly) wonders jsut what they were making.. and as I spoiled it was robots.. one of whom is now following them. Wether this means new doom or the plantars getting a new robot family member I don’t know i’m hoping for the latter. Everyone needs a vision in their life.   Final thoughts II: While having a bit of an obvious conflict with an obvious resolution the character work combined with the MASSIVE plot bombshell really make this enjoyable and I hope to find out more about just what the hell happened and what these robots are for. Just another good solid episode and an excellent duo to start the season.  Next week: Things take a turn for the western and Anne learns to hunt and more about the glow. And with the glow you need to grow to glow... until then i’ll likely have mor ereviews on this channel, I recently reveiwed all of season 1 of close enough if your curious, and until next time.. play us out Willie!

I love what i’ve seen of this throughly stupid movie. Bye ya’ll! 

[365days365movies]

March 18, 2021: The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) (Part One)

Look, it’s Woody Allen again! Why is this elephant here?

Ah, right. The documentary on HBO, which I have not watched since I last talked about Woody Allen? Why? Well, from what I’ve heard, it’s not the most accurate documentary, and has a bit of bias loaded into it. And again, I don’t know nearly enough about the whole situation, but...I’m also not interested in potentially biased accounts. So, I’ll take the time to educate myself.

Shame that I rarely have any time, then.

Yeah, I just made one of the oldest jokes on the internet ever. Sue me. SUE ME I DARE YOU

You may be asking, then, why am I doing the whole movie thing? Well, in truth, this is a form of escapism for me. I mean, who doesn’t like sitting down and watching a good movie, putting away your worldly cares for about 2 hours so that you can dive into another world entirely? I mean, the worlds that’ve been built by film over the last century never ceases to amaze me.

From Avatar’s Pandora to Mustafar in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, to the Great Barrier Reef in Finding Nemo, or the world of Monsters, Inc. There are so many unique worlds, not to mention the characters who inhabit them, and the directors and filmmakers who craft and show them. I just love movies, honestly. Which I could literally be in the world of some of them, even for just 2 hours.

But enough of that, what’s this film about? Eh, whatever, LET’S JUST GET INTO IT! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We’re brought in on “Cheek to Cheek”, as sung by Fred Astaire, which is, not gonna lie, a guilty pleasure song of mine that I find myself singing in quiet moments. This leads us to a movie poster for the film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, which is being admired by Cecilia (Mia...Farrow). Ohhhhh.

You may remember Mrs. Farrow from her eponymous voice role in The Last Unicorn, which was made a few years before this film. And she’s also known for Rosemary’s Baby, The Great Gatsby, and...her marriage to Woody Allen, which ended in divorce and a massive lawsuit. Said lawsuit involved Farrow’s accusation of sexual abuse to their adopted daughter, Dylan. And that’s what the HBO documentary is about!

WOW. AWKWARD. Apparently, the two got married in 1980, and made thirteen films together, this one included. Which seems both awkward, and like straight-up nepotism, but whatever. Tim Burton did the same thing with Helena Bonham Carter, so whatever; it’s not unprecedented, is what I’m saying. Back to the movie, though.

Cecilia is a waitress, along with her sister (played by Stephanie Farrow, Mia’s actual sister). She’s new at the job, and not great at it. But, her and her sister still have nice conversations about films, as Cecilia’s quite the cinephile. After work, Cecilia meets her husband Monk (Danny Aiello), an abusive gambler who’s unemployed and not doing much about it. It’s the middle of the Great Depression, and things are hard all over. Monk seems to handle this by playing dice, and not particularly well.

Cecilia unsuccessfully tries to get Monk to see the newest movie with her, so she goes to see it alone that night. The film itself is a comedy about a rich Manhattanite named Henry (Edward Herrmann), alongside his wife Rita (Deborah Rush) and friend Jason (John Wood). They take a trip to Cairo, where they meet a young archaeologist named Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), who’s there to seek the mythical Purple Rose of Cairo. They invite him back to New York with them, and he accepts. There, he falls in love with Kitty Haynes (Karen Ackers), a singer at the Copacabana.

Cecilia is head over heels in love with the movie itself, and dreams about it at work, before going to see it again with her sister. They go to an early showing, and when she comes home, Monk’s drunk and spending time with a woman named Olga. Understandably enraged by this, Cecilia packs up her belongings to move out. Monk tries to get her to stay, the abusive cheating douchebag that he is. She notes that he hits her, and he defends his actions. Monk’s a real piece of shit. And she leaves, despite his absolute shit. God, I hope she stays away.

Unfortunately, she’s essentially forced to come back to the apartment that night, and returns to work as well. But not for long, as she’s basically immediately fired. Now jobless and stuck in an extremely shitty marriage, she has nowhere to go...except for the movies. And she goes back over...and over...and over again, five times in a row that day.

But the seventh time she sees the movie...something happens. Something fascinatingly unusual. The film, specifically Tom Baxter himself, watches her back.

Holy shit, that’s awesome! Tom Baxter notices Cecilia in the audience, and before his “madcap Manhattan weekend” is set to begin, Tom notes that she must really love this movie, and also that he’s noticed her all 6 previous times she’s seen the film. And then...he leaves. He leaves the movie!

He turns to color, and he jumps out of the screen to sweep Cecilia off of her feet. And EVERYBODY sees this, including the people IN the movie and in the theatre. I also love the fact that as soon as he turns to color, a woman faints, which is super fucking funny to me for some reason. Tom runs off with Cecilia, free after 2,000 monotonous performances.

Now that Tom’s met Cecilia, he’s never going back. The audience and the film stars are in complete disarray, and without Tom present, the movie can’t go forward, and the film characters descend into arguments about whose movie this actually is. It’s uh...it’s fucking hilarious, actually.

The enthusiastic Tom Baxter goes with Cecilia to a closed amusement park, where Cecilia once again expresses confusion at the whole affair. He notes that she’s been looking at her with every one of his performances, although she doesn’t understand why. But he calls her fetching, and is clearly quite smitten with her. And she appears to be returning that affection.

When Tom tells her that Cecilia is in love with him, she notes that she’s married. Still, he asks her to meet him that night at the amusement park. After all, how many times does a movie character leave a movie to meet somebody? Not an everyday occurrence.

Meanwhile, the film characters continue to be freaking the fuck out. The Countess (Zoe Caldwell) and Larry Wilde (Van Johnson) show up as well. The audience appears to be enjoying this less than I am, and they start to backtalk the movie, calling it boring. The movie backtalks the audience right back, and it continues to be hilarious.

Eventually, this becomes an attraction in and of itself. They suggest turning the movie off, but that risks stranding Tom Baxter outside. It also means that the film characters wouldn’t exist, which Henry is EXTREMELY upset about. As the news arrives to cover the small theatre’s anomaly, the people in the film itself start to play pinochle, as a few people linger around to watch and interact with the characters. The theatre manager (Irving Metzman) calls the production company, RKO, and they get on the phone with a Gil Shepherd.

Meanwhile, Cecilia manages to get out of the house, despite Monk trying to keep her there to massage his back, the absolute douchebag. She goes and meets Tom, and they go dancing together. This is just as the actor who plays Tom, Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels) is called by RKO while he’s at a party. Gil seems like kind of a typical Hollywood jerk, but he’s interrupted by an agent, who tells him that they need to get control of...well, whatever the hell this is.

Apparently, RKO is telling Gil that if he can’t get “his creation” under control, then he’ll essentially be blacklisted, especially considering that there’s no telling what Tom’s doing out there. And what Tom is doing is attempting to pay for a meal with Cecilia, only to find that his money isn’t real money. The two dine-and-dash, and they escape in a car back to the amusement park. 

There, the two kiss, with Tom expecting the screen to fade out in preparation for them to make love. He’s surprised when it doesn’t happen, and it’s neat to see his adjustment to the world outside of films. He wants to continue with the lovemaking, but she’s still faithful to her husband. He stays at the park, and she returns home, where she still hasn’t told Monk about her new unemployment status.

The next morning, Gil and co. arrive at the small New Jersey town, and Gil ends up running into Cecilia, who confuses him for Tom. Gil realizes exactly what’s going on, and reveals who he is to her. The two start to talk, and Cecilia just fangirls EVERWHERE. She agrees to take him to meet his character.

Great place to pause, I think! See you in Part Two!

[connordavidscamera]

Falling in Love | Connor Brashier

A/n: this is a repost from my Shawn account!! This is my piece and is not stolen.

Summary: you just can’t believe how in love you are with your fiancé.

Warnings: fluff

Word count: 1.8k

***

Staring at my fiancé from across the room, I still can’t help but think I’m dreaming. Never in a million years did I think I would be able to keep this man interested long enough for him to even want to marry me. But here we are a month into our engagement, at our party with all our friends and family, and I still think I should wake up any second now.

I knew I was a goner the first time he kissed me - when the whole world stopped existing until we pulled away for the much needed oxygen to find its way back to our lungs. It was almost too perfect, the way his lips curved against mine, the way his hands cradled my face like that was its rightful place - since that day, it has been. I’d never understood what people meant when they said sparks flew when they kissed someone. But I understood that day.

Our relationship was never rushed. We took everything slow and steady (even though people had their opinions about how long it took us to go public on his insta, or how long it took for us to say I love you. Except, hi, that’s no one’s goddamn business, but go off, I guess.) And I’ll admit, it did take longer than expected for either of us to say those three words to each other - eight months, actually. But you could feel the love in the relationship even without them. It was in the way he always picked up the phone when I called, no matter the timezone. It showed when he would come back from tour and he’d come to my apartment just to fall asleep on my chest because my heart beat lulled him to sleep. And how his hands always found their way to lock with mine whether we’re walking to the car, or dancing in a crowded club, or eating dinner and we’re sitting on opposite ends of the table, so he reaches over and it’s like that cutesy couple thing you see in all the movies. We didn’t need the words to feel them.

And just looking at him and his nonchalant attitude, no one would think that he had a romantic side. And they definitely wouldn’t guess that for our first six dates, before he finally asked me to be his girlfriend, he sent me flowers the next day. And then when we started actually dating, little love notes would just pop up everywhere. Like when he slept over and would wake up before me, I’d find a sticky note on my bathroom mirror that would say something like “Your smile is the best part of my day.” And there have been a few instances where I wasn’t feeling my greatest and he just showed up hours later - seeing as these moments only seemed to happen when he was off on tour - and he’d cuddle me on the couch while we watched shitty rom-coms until I felt better. And it may not be a big deal to anyone else, but when he talks to me, or listens to me talk, his eyes are always trained on me, and I think it’s kinda cute.

And he’s the most caring person. Not just with me, either. He looks after his own. His brother got in a fight one time and Connor was there instantly to patch up his wounds and give him a place to stay so he wouldn’t have to face their mom. Another time Alessia fell coming off the stage and he sprinted to get her ice for her swollen ankle. He made sure to check on her every thirty minutes or so, even though he was working and couldn’t do much for her then. And he is always, always there when I’m sick to my stomach, or sick of life. He’s there drawing hearts and smiley faces over the problem area with his finger, whether it be my stomach, or back, or my mind. He takes care of his own and that to me says everything about our future.

And this boy, Jesus Christ, he is so creative. I’ve never known anyone whose mind works like his. He can see a plain brick wall and immediately his brain clicks and it’s suddenly turned into an aesthetic Shawn’s next shoot. And he doesn’t just focus on faces, he goes and he gets the beads of sweat on Shawn’s hairline, and the rings on his fingers. And he edits his videos in such a way that you can’t possibly watch it only once and feel like you’ve seen everything. It’s fast paced and beautiful and I could watch him edit for hours on end and never get bored. The way he layers photos on top of videos and how he knows just  the right time to make the music swell in a scene. He’s talented and I hope he knows I think so.

He’s so random too. I never know what to expect with him. We can lay in bed while he’s stroking my hair, pulling me to sleep when he asks, “What if cows screamed when you milked them?” Or, “You know, Popeye ate a lot of spinach, but I don’t think that’s the real reason he was so strong. He had to be taking steroids.” One time he came into the room at 3 in the morning, woke me up and asked, “When you were a kid, did you have those suction cup ball things that you would throw at a wall or a window and they’d just stay there?”

“Connor, I’m trying to sleep.”

“I know, but this is important.”

“Why?”

“Because I just bought a dozen of those and a dozen of those sticky slappy hand things.”

And he’s spontaneous (not just in the things he buys off Amazon at 3 AM). There have been many occasions where he has called me up and told me to pack an overnight bag because he wanted to go to the beach or Disney or because he found this bookshop in Nevada that he thinks I’ll enjoy. And then of course there are the more “extravagant” trips he likes to take at random points in the year. We spent last Christmas in the Bahamas because he wanted to wear shorts on Christmas day and he couldn’t do that if we were going to a family Christmas party apparently. Another time we flew to New York because I said I was craving something from this one restaurant we went to last time we were there. He doesn’t wait a second. If I mention wanting something, we’re gone in hours, or it’s already ordered and on it’s way. There is no way to fully know what his next move is gonna be and that keeps the relationship exciting.

And he sees things so vividly, remembering them in soft light, sometimes though in overexposure. He tells stories- AMAZING stories - through the lens of his camera. He puts everything into perspective in such a way that you can’t picture it any other way. You can’t see Shawn on stage and not immediately think of the thousands of girls and women crying because they’re in the same room as him and he’s there and he’s beautiful. And you can’t see him running to hug his fans without seeing the pure elation from the ones he touches. Connor gives you the pieces to make one whole and leaves nothing out, not even once. He never strays from the real story he’s telling, although he might go into a few others while doing so,he always finds his way back.

And despite his resting scowl, he’s not a fighter. He puts off this “I dont give a fuck” type of vibe, but he’s a softy. Until someone says something they shouldn’t. It’s only happened twice. When we were out with friends and I was getting us a couple waters from the bar. This man, who was way too close to me, tried to buy me a drink, his hand playing with the straps of my dress. I was uncomfortable, but I couldn’t find Connor in the crowded space and I had nowhere to escape to when he started getting even more touchy. And then I heard it, the unmistakable sound of skin hitting skin. “Come on, we’re going home.” He said roughly into my ear and he pulled me away, out of the club. Only for him to be Connor again, my Connor. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? God, I oughta kill him. Can I get you something?” I just shook my head and wrapped my arms around him. He let me. Of course he did.

The other time was early on in the relationship. We were hanging out with his brother and some of his friends from school. I don’t really know what happened, but one of Dylan’s friends said something about me. Connor told me later it had to do with him having me in his bed while he did awfully dirty things to me. Con went off on the younger boy, his face red with anger. He looked like he would blow steam out of his ears at any second. Dylan and I had to pull him out of the room, and let’s just say, he and I don’t go anywhere near that guy anymore.

“You’ve been staring at me for a while now, sweetheart.” Connor said, suddenly at my side, his voice low in my ear. “You’re giving me bedroom eyes. Can’t take care of you with all these people here.”

I hum, finding his fingers to lace mine through. “Hmm… that’s never stopped you before.”

“No,” he presses a gentle kiss to the side of my neck. “But we are kind of hosting this party. So it would be rude to just disappear for 20 minutes.”

“Who said it would take that long?” I giggle, connecting our lips in a quick peck.

He hums into my skin, “Later, kid. When I have you all to myself and we can be as loud as we need to be.”

I nod, biting my lip. “We could always kick them out early.”

“Patience, y/n. Want me to take care of you?”

I nod desperately. “Please.”

“Then you gotta be good for me. Because the guys are staring at us right now and neither of us will hear the end of it if I take you right now.”

I whine. “Okay… but I want everyone out in an hour.”

He kisses my lips one more time before pulling away from me. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I love you,” I say just loud enough for him to hear. 

“I love you, sweetheart.” He throws me a wink before disappearing in the sea of people that fill our home.

***

I hope you enjoyed (again)! Please like, reblog, and leave feedback!!

[jessejostark]

10 Questions w/ Jesse Jo Stark About Cool Parents, the Awesomeness of Cher + Still Believing in Rock & Roll

Other than maybe Sean Lennon and Jakob Dylan, Jesse Jo Stark grew up with surely the most inspirational people a future musician could possibly hope for. Indeed, her parents Richard Stark and Laurie Lynn Stark are the founders of rock & roll jewelry studio-turned-empire Chrome Hearts—whose clientele includes the likes of Bono, Elton John and Slash. And her Godmother is none other than the goddess of stage, screen and song Cher, who has been a continuing influence on her very talented niece.

Not just that, but she was sort of mentored from the start of her music career by Sex Pistol Steve Jones, who hosts the now legendary radio show Jonesy’s Jukebox in Los Angeles, where Jesse Jo also resides. And most recently, she appeared in the video for Brit punker YUNGBLUD’s new single “Strawberry Lipstick,” while corona had stranded him in LA.

But for all they may have rubbed off on her, the young Ms. Stark makes music that surely comes from somewhere deep within herself. Each song seems a little piece of her that she allows out into the world, revealing the inner intensity and intimacy that belie a very public persona.

Her previous single, a cover of John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” was a languid, fuzzed-out country gem of a ballad. But new track “Tangerine” is a mini-masterpiece of sorts, exhibiting her ease with crossing genres and weaving them seamlessly together. The twangy guitars are back, but there’s a little Beatles, a little widescreen Britpop, and just a hint of retro Cali dreaming as well. With its lush strings, and Stark’s haunted voice so full of longing, it vividly evokes so many life memories of love’s powerful pull.

For the video, she reached out to fans to create their own vision for the visual accompaniment to the song, and they were then edited together—a way of crossing the quarantine divide via the power of art. She describes it thusly:

“What I’ve missed most in this new way of livin’ has been the live shows and hanging out with everyone every night. So along with the ‘Tangerine’ track release, we thought it would be super sweet to get everyone involved in the video, so it’s almost like we’re all having this one big party together, no matter where we are in the world, physically we are together in heart. i’ve been at home watching everyone’s videos in full tears with the biggest smile wrapped around my face. everyone’s creativity and love for this song has been overwhelming. It makes my heart beat knowing that they can take away a little piece of ‘Tangerine’ and make it their own. it’s fucking beautiful. it’s art.”

We hit Jesse Jo with ten questions about all of the above, and as it turned out, even her answers were uniquely stylish.

Your influences are distinctly 1960s + ’70s. Do you feel a bit out of place in the current musical zeitgeist of hip-hop preeminence and so much over-glossed pop? my influences are not only 60’s and 70’s

and the thing about the current state of music right now is that there is nothing out of place. hip hop artists pull samples from old soul, country, and r&b records and it’s all turning into a place you can do anything you want. the only thing that pisses me off is when people chase chart positions by making the same shit over and over.

there is a difference between being out of place and making a place for yourself. so to answer. no i do not feel out of place. i feel like i’m right where i should be

What was some of the music you grew up listening to? my dad was always my go-to with music. he always played the clash, merle, john lennon, brian eno, david bowie on the way to school. with the occasional britney n christina.

i remember this one time,i think i was about 7 years old, he picked me up at my friend sasha’s house and i was throwing a fit because i didn’t want to leave. as we pulled out of the drive way he turned on “should i stay or should i go” by the clash. i had never heard it before. he looked at me and smiled and i felt my bad mood melt away. i remember thinking, as i tried my best to keep scowling at him, “i wanna make something this cool” . n i’m still tryin

What was it like growing up with rocker parents? Did that imprint on your personal aesthetic? are they rocker !? i mean i know they are pretty damn cool. everything about them has left a huge beautiful mark all over me. they are my favorite legends and they inspire me completely and truly .

On “Tangerine,” one can detect references to the The Beatles, Oasis, Patsy Cline, Mazzy Star…what has been your musical state of mind of late? what a major line up i wanna go to that show.

my musical state of mind has been to make more.

Image by Laurie Lynn Stark

Your music is very raw and seemingly unfussed over. Does inspiration find you in a mostly spontaneous fashion? oh it’s fussed . i am fussy . music for me is never just one thing. sometimes a song comes easy like it was layin on my night stand when i woke up. other times i feel like i have to cut my body open, drown in my tears and claw at the floor just to get one word out. inspiration is endless when you show up for it.

How did you come to work with YUNGBLUD? he called me n asked for me to be in his video . he said there’d be lips n latex. and so…

Cher is your godmother – has she been a mentor and influence? in every single way. i am in awe of her.

As opposed to those with batteries of stylists, you seem to really own your sense of style. Who are your fashion inspirations? my brother n sister, the cramps, cher, audrey hepburn, hands, animal print, love n london. i want to dress up like my favorite singers voices.

just like in every medium, i have people i’ve worked with forever. they’re my family. we understand each other. challenge each other and force each other to be brutally honest in the things we make.

i also love fresh eyes and ears and people that find new ways to look at the same things.

Is a full Jesse Jo Stark album on the horizon? it is n soon

Rock & roll as we know it seems to be on life support. What do you think is left for it? only if you aren’t lookin. there are so many insane bands in the world. some of my favorite bands now are kids my age. it isn’t dead. you just gotta find it.

[mykpopwire]

interview: D-CRUNCH is back and ready to fly high with Across The Universe!

D-CRUNCH is back with a new mini album, 비상 (飛上) - “Across The Universe”.

Let’s have a look at what the members have to say about the album and more.

1. Please introduce your latest mini album, 비상 (飛上) - “Across The Universe”.

O.V: One year and five months after our last album, we are back with a new mini album which consist of powerful and energetic title track – Across The Universe, a ballad specially for our fans – Calyx, a song from D-CRUNCH’s heart – One Word and lastly a song where you can enjoy D-CRUNCH's cute charms – H.A.G.Y (Have A Good Young)

Hyunwook: This mini album is about how D-CRUNCH can fly off to anywhere whenever we are with Diana even when we are in difficult situations and an album where you can always listen to D-CRUNCH's various voices.

Hyunho: D-CRUNCH is taking a step further with this mini album. We worked hard to show you the more mature and cool side of us, so please look forward to it.

Hyunoh: We prepared many good songs for the album including the title track where we want to spread our wings and fly with our people who are going through a hard time and also a fan song with the lyrics written by ourselves. The members wrote the lyrics just as sincere as when we are writing our hand-written letters.

Minhyuk: Just like the title track of this mini album, 비상 (飛上) - “Across The Universe”, it means let’s fly, let’s go across the universe.

Chanyoung: This mini album is an album where we want to show D-CRUNCH's various charms! I think it's an album where we can fall in love with our better selves, better than before!

Jungseung: 비상 (飛上) - “Across The Universe” is an album with a title track where we will show a powerful performance and it also includes other songs with different charms! We worked really hard on it, so please listen to it a lot!

Dylan: The title track gives out the vibes of D-CRUNCH’s intense charm and energy. There’s also songs with sincere lyrics in this mini album.

2. Please introduce the title track, “Across The Universe”. Any special points Diana must pay attention to?

O.V: You need to pay attention to the powerful performance, but I also want you to focus more on the reason why we wrote this song! As you can understand from the lyrics of this song, no matter how hard and difficult it is, we can always fly if Diana is with us. It's a song made from the heart of being able to get across the universe, so I'd appreciate it if you could always be with us. ^_^

Hyunwook: There’s some really fancy dance moves for the title track. We put a lot of efforts and practiced hard to show you this! I hope when Diana see the special dance, they will think that we’re cool. Haha

Hyunho: The key point of this title track is the members' strong appearance and performances, and also the chorus part.

Hyunoh: It's a song about a dream of flying together with wings that my people have attached. It also contains D-CRUNCH’s earnestness to repay all the love that Diana has given to us.

Minhyuk: If I were to say the special point of this song, I think everything from start to finish is the special point!

Chanyoung: I think you can find D-CRUNCH’s sexiness in this title track and please pay attention to the powerful performance!!

Jungseung: The title track Across The Universe is a song that means let's fly away and get over all the difficult situations together! We practiced hard for the song, of course a song is yet another song but we practiced a lot, like a lot for the song performance. I hope you will watch the dance practice video a lot, too!

Dylan: The title track Across the Universe has a message that if D-CRUNCH is with Diana, we can fly high into the sky even in the difficult situations. 

3. Renowned producers and lyricist are involved in the production of 비상 (飛上) - “Across The Universe” album. How do you feel working with them?

O.V: I think I've learned more about the perspectives on composition and lyrics. I also learned a lot about expression and realized the differences. While working together, I can feel they were giving lots of consideration and I’m thankful for it and it was such a good experience.

Hyunwook: Since we're still in the learning process, it was such a great opportunity to learn while working with these great people. I think we should continue to improve in the future.

Hyunho: They are very kind and I got to learn about lots of things, so it was a precious time.

Hyunoh: There’s certainly that sense of professionalism. I was able to see, feel and learn a lot while producing together with them. They were being considerate and gave a lot of advice and I’m happy we gained such good outcomes.

Minhyuk: We worked with really cool and famous producers this time. I learned a lot of things that I didn't know and received a lot of help too. I hope we can work together again next time!

Chanyoung: I'd like to thank everyone who participated in this album. I think I should work hard on this album and repay you with good results!

Jungseung: It was such a great honour and as great as the song they had made, I think we should achieve great result too.

Dylan: I was so glad they led me well and it was an honour to work with them and I was happy that I got to learn a lot.

4. G.I.G has been involved in D-CRUNCH album production since debut till now. Has your song writing style change or improve since then?

O.V: Since I’ve been working more systematically, I think my targets are definitely changed. I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to say and how I’m feeling about Diana and I think I need to improve more. Hahahaha

Hyunwook: We surely have improved a lot. When I debuted, I mostly worked using my senses and feelings rather than professional knowledge. But now I’m glad that I've grown more professionally by learning from many people. But I always think that I need to improve and learn more.

Hyunoh: In the past, the three of us used to brainstorm and come out with ideas together. These days, we only discuss once the certain topic or goal been given. We've seen a lot of improvements. There are pros and cons, but we always communicate with each other while trying to make up for the shortcomings.

5. Could you share a funny episode while preparing for 비상 (飛上) - “Across The Universe” album?

O.V: Rather than funny, I’d like to share a quite dangerous episode. In the ‘Across The Universe’ choreography, there is a move where Hyunwook do a lift. And when he was practicing the move in the beginning, he fell. All the members are nervous for that part. So, please keep an eye on us!

Hyunwook: I had a lot of difficulties preparing for this album. Among them, I think dancing in the sand during the music video shooting was the hardest. There's a part where I have to go on top of Minhyuk and there’s a lot of sand went onto him. Minhyuk had sands all over him, I'm sorry Minhyuk!

Hyunho: When we were shooting the music video, the location itself was a little scary because it was located in a place where there were only few people. We also had some horror experience. Haha.

Hyunoh: While preparing for this album, when I thought of the fans who are waiting for us, every moment was exciting and fun. There is another funny episode, during the jacket shooting, there is a shot where we must jump. A funny situation where we were photographed in the air with frighten looks on our faces.

Minhyuk: The interesting episode while preparing for the album reminds me of the scene where we dance in the sand during the music video shooting. The members fell because it was slippery and deep. But it was also cute and fun. Fortunately, we didn't get hurt!

Chanyoung: Interesting episode while preparing for the album! I think it was in the water-hit scene at the jacket shoot. We were all got hit by the water, so the pictures came out well, but we were all shaking in cold. Hahaha

Jungseung: Dylan and I got the vocal line for this title track and the note is higher than I thought. I remember having a hard time and my voice cracked while recording. Haha! I also remember I was sweating while working hard for the recording!

Dylan: I went into a building with O.V where all the lights were off to do horror experience at the music video shooting site. It was really scary but also fun.

6. Your favourite song from this album?

O.V: Hmm... I think it’s the song that I tried to be a vocalist for the first time, Calyx...? Please give it a lot of love, everyone ><

Hyunwook: I personally think One Word is perfectly matched for my preference.

Hyunho: Mine is Across The Universe. I like the addictive performance and chorus the most because they are impressive.

Hyunoh: I like all D-CRUNCH’s songs, but I think the best song in this album is the fan song, Calyx. I'll make lots of good songs so that my favourite song can always be updated.

Minhyuk: It’s Across The Universe. It also means let's fly! and when I listen to the song, my heart beats fast and I get excited!

Chanyoung: The title track in this album, Across The Universe is my favourite. This is because I like the magnificent sound of the chorus the most.

Jungseung: I like One Word the most. The reason is that there are many meaningful words in the lyrics. I like them because I can relate to them a lot. The song expresses my true feelings for the love that have been given by Diana.

Dylan: My favourite song in this album is a song called Calyx. I watch a lot of dramas and this song feels like a drama OST. It was a great song since I first heard it. I have this song on repeat in my playlist!

7. If you can go across the universe, where would you go? Why?

O.V: Everyone, do you know this?! It’s said that there is a planet in the universe that has the same environment as the Earth. We can't reach each other because it's too far away, but I want to go there!! I’m really curious. I wonder how the people there are like and if there's a parallel universe.

Hyunwook: I want to go to the planet Gliese 581, which is the most similar to Earth. I’m really curious how it’s like to live there!!

Hyunho: I want to go to black hole. I want to get sucked into a black hole and look around it!

Hyunoh: I will float in the universe freely and go to a place where I can see everyone who loves me.

Minhyuk: I want to go where Diana is! I want to go where D-CRUNCH can meet Diana and spend time together across the universe!

Chanyoung: If I were to go across the universe, I’d like to go across Diana’s heart~ Because no one knows what's on the other side of the universe, I think there's something beyond of what you think!

Jungseung: I want to go to the moon. Since it's close to the Earth, I really want to go and play there!

Dylan: If I could go across the universe, I’d like to go to the moon. I also want to go outside of the galaxy and see what’s around the galaxy.

8. Anything you would like to achieve or do for this comeback?

O.V: More than anything else, I hope D-CRUNCH will not get hurt, always be healthy and get to be known by more people! I also want to reach people through more contents!

Hyunwook: I’m sure it’s the same for every album, but I think our goal is to let the public know D-CRUNCH and to have good influence on our music.

Hyunho: I want to let more people know about D-CRUNCH.

Hyunoh: To let many people know about the group called D-CRUNCH and to listen to our songs. I hope those people will give a lot of love, receive a lot love and care for each other.

Minhyuk: Honestly, it's a big dream which is to win first place on music programs. I really want to achieve it!

Chanyoung: Through this comeback, I hope more people will notice that D-CRUNCH is this kind of group.

Jungseung: Of course, my big dream is to win first place in music programs! But I think it would be enough to show that we're better than our previous album without any members getting hurt!

Dylan: Through this comeback, I want to show Diana our mature and cool side through the stage performance. 

9. Because of COVID-19, you have not been able to meet Diana as often as you want to. Are there any activities that you surely want to do once the situation get better?

O.V: Definitely the concerts. I can feel a lot of energy from Diana whenever we performed. I hope to have happy concerts with Diana soon.

Hyunwook: I really want to have concerts with Diana. Being in the same space with Diana. Diana have been watching us through the online concerts, but Diana is not in front of me and I can’t see them. That’s definitely something I'm sad about. So, I really want to have face-to-face concerts!!

Hyunho: I want to have concerts the most. Because it’s where I can meet and get close to Diana!

Hyunoh: I want to do concerts and stage performances too, but I really want to have fansign events or fan meetings where I can communicate with Diana. I want to express my feelings to all my people who are still supporting us and waiting for us even when we can’t meet due to Corona.

Minhyuk: Urm… There are a lot of things I want to do together with Diana, but what I want to do first are fansign events, fan meetings and concerts.

Chanyoung: When Corona situation gets better, I want to do everything~ concerts, fansign events and fan meetings ㅜㅜ

Jungseung: I really want to perform in front of Diana when the Corona is over. I miss those cheering and screaming from Diana. ㅠㅠ

Dylan: When the situation gets better, I want to do various activities such as fansign events, fan meetings and performances with Diana!

10. You will never leave home without?

O.V: AirPods!!! Whenever I walk around, I always listen to music according to the weather or the atmosphere of the place.

Hyunwook: It's definitely handphone. I'm restless without it!

Hyunho: It's a hat. I like hats so I always carry them with me when I go out.

Hyunoh: I always take my handphone, earphones, wallet, perfume and also good attitude.

Minhyuk: Mask, handphone, earphones and also clutch, perfume and wallet!

Chanyoung: Every time I go out I must bring mask and handphone! It sounds like an obvious answer, but it's a must these days!

Jungseung: Mask, handphone, wallet and AirPods. I will definitely bring these four with me whenever I go out.

Dylan: Nowadays, I always take masks, AirPods, wallet and handphone. Even with just these four, I can do anything and go anywhere. Haha.

11. Any dish that you can cook well?

O.V: Fried rice! It's a dish that I recently cooked. I think it's delicious!! (Of course that’s my personal opinion.)

Hyunwook: Kimchi fried rice...? Haha. Actually, I'm not confident in making any dishes.

Hyunho: Actually, I'm not good at cooking. But since I like ramyeon a lot, I think I'm good at cooking it!

Hyunoh: There’s nothing that I can’t do, cooking too. I think I'm pretty good at everything~ Haha

Minhyuk: I’m not really good at cooking, but the dish that is approved by my family is ramyeon!

Chanyoung: The best dish that I can cook is ramyeon. I still don’t know how to cook well yet, so I want to learn a lot. Haha

Jungseung: Fried rice, fried eggs, etc. I'm not really good at cooking, but I like to cook so I do it often.

Dylan: The most confident dish to cook is kimchi fried rice. The reason is I once made kimchi fried rice for my younger cousin and I remember he liked it because he said it was very delicious!

12. What is your best and worst subject in school?

O.V: My best subject... English?? I think it’s English. My worst subject is science. Science is too difficult...

Hyunwook: I was good at liberal art’s subjects, such as Korean, history and society. On the other hand, I think I was really bad at natural science’s subjects, such as math and science. Math is still too difficult for me to study…

Hyunho: My best subject is physical education and the worst subject is art.

Hyunoh: I'm good at all arts and physical education classes! But I can't do math or science. Hehe...

Minhyuk: My best subject is physical education and my worst subject is English...!

Chanyoung: My best subjects are math and physical education and the worst subject is social study.

Jungseung: I think I was best at Korean language subject. I like Korean language because I think there is always the answer in the sentences. My worst subject is math. I think math is one of the subjects that I always got wrong answers because there are so many formulas to memorize and the answers vary depending on how I write them.

Dylan: The subject I’m best at is English and the subject I’m worst at these days is math.

13. Dylan is the youngest member but is there any members that always behave as the youngest instead?

O.V: It’s definitely Chanyoung. The youngest member in my heart is also Chanyoung. The reason is when I first joined as a trainee, Chanyoung is the youngest then. He did a lot of aegyo to me and he acted cute a lot as well.

Hyunwook: This member is Hyunoh isn’t it? He has a lot of aegyo and cute, so sometimes I think he’s the youngest.

Hyunho: It’s Chanyoung. He’s a very mischievous boy.

Hyunoh: I think Minhyuk has a baby-like charm. How should I say this? Like a baekchimi…? (someone who is ignorant but somehow charming)

Minhyuk: I think it's Hyunho. He looks quite scary and strong on the outside. But when we talk, he’s cute like a baby.

Chanyoung: I think it's Hyunho. Unlike his appearance, he’s soft-hearted and shy. So, I think Hyunho is very cute!

Jungseung: Chanyoung haha. He has lots of aegyo and sometimes he’s cute too.

Dylan: I think it’s Chanyoung. We share the same room and compared to me who is the youngest, he’s cuter and loves snacks so much like a kid!

14. Can you share other member’s hidden charms which would make Diana fall more in love with D-CRUNCH?

O.V: Minhyuk’s hidden charm that cannot be hidden is his cuteness. Once you fall for his charms, you will get lost in his cuteness. Diana~ please know that from now on

Hyunwook: I’m the same age with Hyunho, but I can learn a lot from him and he’s a reliable person. Whenever I asked something from him, he always do his best to help and you can trust him. We’re the same age but I really respect and like him.

Hyunho: Dylan is young and cute, but sometimes he can be more mature and manly than me. So, I’m surprised.

Hyunoh: He looks like a mischievous boy. But when he’s leading the team, his hidden charisma is very cool. He’s good at making songs, good at talking and exercise hard too. O.V is very charming, isn’t he?!

Minhyuk: Jungseung’s charm is that he usually looks like a Binggumi (silly but cute and lovely), but whenever he’s working he’ll change 180 degree and I think that is very attractive.

Chanyoung: Hyunwook sings very well and he's so handsome. He has a good heart. He's good at everything and he's good at taking care of the members. ❤️

Jungseung: When on stage, Chanyoung is very sexy and he looks so cool while dancing. But off stage, I think he has the same personality as me. I think Chanyoung’s hidden charm is that he looks a bit like a fool. Haha

Dylan: Hyunoh is very sexy when he’s on stage. But off stage, he’s a very warm and cute person.

15. If you had to pick just one D-CRUNCH’s song to introduce to others, which song would it be?

O.V: Urm… I want to introduce all of the songs but I can’t. So I’d choose I’m OK. Since everyone is going through hard time these days and wish to be comforted, I hope you can cheer up and find strength by listening to our songs!

Hyunwook: I want to introduce this album title track, Across The Universe. Haha

Hyunho: I want to introduce One Word. I hope this precious One Word will give you a lot of strength.

Hyunoh: Well, it depends on the person's preference. But if I had to introduce according to my preference, I’d like to recommend Calyx, the fan song in this album.

Minhyuk: A song in this album which called One Word. This song makes me feel comfortable and I've been listening to it all the time these days!

Chanyoung: I'd like to recommend a song called One Word. This is because it has a unique charm that you can't find in D-CRUNCH’s title track!

Jungseung: I think most of D-CRUNCH’s title tracks are strong and powerful and many of the non-title tracks are the opposite and good to listen to, so please listen to them a lot!

Dylan: I think I will introduce the title track, Across The Universe. I want to show them our stage performance video too. Ha ha.

16. Few months left for 2020. Anything you wish to accomplish before the year ends?

O.V: I'd like to read the book that my mother bought me. Hahahaha. I think I'll read a little bit more if I write it down like this!!

Hyunwook: It's a pity that 2020 went by so quickly, without many memories. For the remaining two months, I want to make happy and good memories with Diana.

Hyunho: I want to meet, communicate and make memories with Diana.

Hyunoh: With this album we will definitely fly~!!!

Minhyuk: I want to show you that D-CRUNCH is growing into a cooler side.

Chanyoung: I want to go on a trip with the members before the year ends. I hope more people will know about D-CRUNCH with this album.

Jungseung: I hope we can finish our promotion without any injuries until the end of this year. I want to make a big dream and be in the music program ranking!

Dylan: Before the year ends, I want to go to the amusement park and fly just like the name of this album.

17. What is your goal or wish for the year 2021?

O.V: Rather than looking forward to many things, the things that we’re doing now, this comeback! It's my wish that this life will continue smoothly and my goal is to do my best and be satisfied with the outcomes!

Hyunwook: I hope the bad situation ends. Once the situation gets better, I hope we can meet many overseas’ fans, communicate with them and do performances too. Through this, I realized how precious ordinary daily life is and I hope in 2021, it will be as what we wish to be!!

Hyunho: I want to meet with Diana from various countries!

Hyunoh: As always, my wish is to spend a healthy year while cherishing my people and love each other. Everyone, I love you >_<

Minhyuk: My goal for 2021 is to win first place on music shows, and my wish is to let the public know more about D-CRUNCH! Also, I hope all our members are always healthy and won't get hurt!

Chanyoung: My wish for 2021! D-CRUNCH to be number one on music shows!! 👍👍👍

Jungseung: My wish and goal for 2021 is that D-Crunch will grow more and be more mature.

Dylan: My goal for 2021, since it'll be the year that I become an adult, I want to do more activities and I want to be a broad-minded person like the broad world. I want to make more memories with Diana. Everyone, I love you and I Dylang you!!!

18. How do you want Diana to remember D-CRUNCH?

O.V: Cute idols who are chasing their dreams…? When I think about us, I think that is the closest!! All of us are the kids who are working hard to achieve success. Please give us a lot of love, Diana~~

Hyunwook: I want to be remembered as a group that works hard and also as a great group. I will put a lot of effort to achieve that. I also want to hear that we are a group that create something with our fans.

Hyunho: I hope you will always remember the passionate D-CRUNCH.

Hyunoh: Not only as a group who is good at singing and dancing, I hope we can be remembered as a group that cares and cherishes everyone. So, I will continue to work hard.

Minhyuk: Not only the good songs, but I hope you remember us as a team that is cool on every stage, has a distinct individual colour and has excellent teamwork.

Chanyoung: I hope you will remember us as a team that works hard in everything they do, always outgoing and bright, has great skills~ and great teamwork too! ^^

Jungseung: I hope whenever D-CRUNCH appears in Diana’s playlist, they will think, “Ah, I love their songs!”, “Oh, they are good at dancing!”. These kinds of thoughts.

Dylan: I’d be happy if you remember us as a team with good visual and performance, and good teamwork. ^_^

19. It has been one year and a half since your visit to Malaysia. Anything that you miss or something that you wish you had done back then?

O.V: I'm sure it's the same for any performances, but I really miss the way you cheered and sang along every time. It’s unfortunate that... I can't show you the current me...? Hahaha, I'm kidding. I can't wait to see you again!

Hyunwook: The sky walk in Penang was so memorable and I was so happy that Malaysian fans cheered and responded so much. So, I think I remember and miss every day I spent in Malaysia.

Hyunho: It would have been nice to make more memories with Malaysian Diana, but it was disappointing that time went by so quickly. I hope to see you longer next time.

Hyunoh: I miss everything. From the performances to the fan signing events, the fun corner and the anticipation of going to another country really made me excited and happy. What's sad is that I always feel sadder about the day I left, “Couldn't I have been nicer to the fans?”, “Couldn't I have shown a better side?” with that in mind, I wanted to go to Malaysia again.

Minhyuk: I think the time we spent together with our fans. I want to go to Malaysia again to meet and talk with my fans. ㅜㅜ!!

Chanyoung: Next time I go to Malaysia, I want to perform more! I want to look around the shopping malls too!

Jungseung: It has been a year and a half since I visited Malaysia, time flies... First, I want to meet with Diana! I also want to visit the shopping malls again! There are many things to see and lots of delicious food. So, I have good memories.

Dylan: I really miss Diana in Malaysia and the next time I go, I want to do a lot of performances and make lots of good memories with Diana.

20. Lastly, can you say a few words to Malaysian Diana?

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[oscar-piastri]

from afar [ben hardy]

summary: you're in love with ben, but he’s already dating someone else {2k words}

notes: this is messy and sad, so i’m sorry about that

2013. The year you met Ben. It might sound cliché and cheesy, but as soon as you saw him, you were lovestruck. You had a mutual friend, and she introduced you to him when she dragged you to his rugby game. He came to you at the end of his game, and it was obvious that you were gonna be weak. You drowned is his beautiful green eyes when you made eye contact, and you were dying to have your hands in his soft blond hair. It got worse when you heard him talk.

You quickly became great friends after that day. You found out that you had a few things in common and it made you fall even more with him. Of course you couldn’t tell if Ben was feeling the same thing for you, and to be honest, you were scared to know. You enjoyed those moments spent with him, talking about movies or new music he just discovered and you weren’t ready to mess that up by bringing your growing feelings into that beautiful friendship.

“You okay?” Ben asked you, waving his hands in front of your eyes, trying to get you back into the real world.

“Yeah, why?” you questioned, not really understanding with he would ask you that.

“I don’t know… You’ve been staring at me for a few minutes” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

“No.. Just lost in my thoughts. I’ve got a job interview, I’m thinking about that, that’s all” you lied, trying to cover the fact that you were thinking of him.

“Well I’m sure you’ll nail it. You’re the best! Well I’ve gotta run, can’t be late to practice” he said as he kissed your cheek. As you watched him walk away with his sport bag on his shoulder, you felt your cheeks getting red remembering his soft lips pressed against your cheeks.

2014. The year he introduced you to his girlfriend. Ben. It has been a year since you met him and of course you were still friends; even best friends. But you, you wanted more than that and the way he was acting, was making you believe that it could be mutual.

“Did you told him?” your friend asked you, before taking a sip of her warm tea.

“Told what to who?” you asked back, a little confused

“Told Ben that you have feelings for him” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Not yet…. But I’m seeing him later” you confessed, feeling your cheeks burning as you thought of Ben’s smile.

Ben started to be more flirty with you, he’d often complimented you, he’d try to spend more time with you. So of course, your mind took the message that he was interested in you. But you were wrong, you were so wrong. You realised your mistake when you met him at the coffee shop, just to find him holding hands with someone else, and it felt like someone just slapped you in the hand on repeat. You couldn’t take your eyes away from their hands as you felt a strong pain in your heart.

You remembered his face, his eyes full of sparks and his pure smile when he introduced you to her, his girlfriend. He was so shiny and it made your heart melt, even though you still felt a pinch to your heart, every time he would look at her, wishing he was looking at you. The fact that she was beautiful and perfect for him, made it even more painful.

Ben wanted you to spend time with her, get to know her because he wanted “his best friend and his love to be friends”. So you agreed, you went shopping with her, you had a lot of girls talk, trying to push away your strong feelings for Ben.

But it kept on slowly destroyed you heart each time you would see her wearing his jersey, see him running to hug her after his game. And everytime, you’re reminded of the many scenarios you created where it was you instead of her.

2015. The year he decided to play matchmaker. When he exposed his idea of finding a boyfriend for you, you knew that he would never be interested by you.

But he took his mission very seriously, but sadly it didn’t work. He organized a lot of couple dates, introducing you to someone else each time. Of course, they were lovely, smart and funny guys, but they weren’t Ben. And just like every time, you never called them back and give a dumb excuse to Ben “he was not mature enough”, “way too tall!!”, “i don’t know… we didn’t have much in common”

“God you’re so complicated” he joked, and you faked a laugh. “You really deserve to find your special someone, just like I did” he said, pulling you into a hug.

“Oh Ben, I already found him” you said to yourself, as you pulled him closer in the hug, not wanting to let him go.

But after Ben introduced you to the thousand guy, you decided to give the guy a chance. Who knew? Maybe you could forget about Ben and find love with someone else. And as you got to know him better, you realised that he was a match. Ben really paid attention to your taste, to the things you like because you guy he set you up with, was matching everything.

You decided to give it a shot, and you started going on a few dates with Dylan, Ben’s friend. He was a sweet boy, a funny guy who could be perfect for you

2016. The year he moved in with his girlfriend. You were wrong to think that you could forget Ben with someone else, and that let your relationship with Dylan to come to an end, after a few months of dating. You hated yourself because you weren’t able to get over Ben, he was always on your mind, everything was reminding you of him. And even though you tried to push those feelings away, they’d come back hitting you on the face just a few minutes later.

You called Ben and ask him if he was free to eat lunch with you, because you wanted to announce that you broke up with Dylan. You were surprised when Ben told you that he had something to tell you as well. You were secretly hoping that he’d tell you that he broke up with his girlfriend as well.

“You go first” you told Ben when he joined you for lunch.

“I asked Vanessa to move in with me, and she said yes!” he told you all excited. His smile was big and his eyes were full of life, happiness could be read on his face. Your smile quickly fade away and that raised Ben’s confusion.

“What’s wrong? You’re not happy?” he asked you, a little bit disappointed. He didn’t think you’d have this reaction and it made him a little bit sad.

“Not! This is great new! I’m happy for you!!” you lied, trying your best to reassure him. “It’s just that… I broke up with Dylan yesterday.” you explained. Ben was quick to apologize for bringing his happiness in front of you while you were probably at your worst because of the break up. It was true that Dylan was the perfect guy, but he wasn’t Ben.

“Don’t worry, Ben. I’m fine. It’s life, things happen” you said, shrugging your shoulders. Of course you weren’t really sad about the breakup, because you weren’t really attached to Dylan.

“I’m sorry he wasn’t the one for you” Ben apologized, giving you a sad look.

A few days later, you got a text from Ben, more like an invite to his flat to spend some time together. You were hoping to have a cool night, just like before, pizzas, a movie or maybe playing some games. But when you got there, you found his whole decoration changed, pictures of him and his girlfriend hanging pretty much everywhere, and you felt like someone was stabbing you in the heart. There was no pizzas, no movies playing, but there was a nice table dressed with three plates, some soft music playing in the background. Great, grown up dinner.

You realised right away that now that he was sharing his flat with his girlfriend, everything would be different. You would no longer spend the night just the two of you, talking. Now, she was in the picture, changing your habits.

She politely greeted you when she saw you but she quickly went back to be by Ben’s side, kissing his cheeks every now and then, and all you could do was watch them being so in love. They were perfect for each others, and it made it so much worse

2018. The year he proposed. Over the years, you managed to stay friends with Ben and accept his relationship.

Ben asked you to join him at a specific address, and when you got here you saw that it was a jewelry store, and you understood right away.

“Shit, Ben! You’re going to propose?!” you almost yelled, when you got to him. He nodded nervously

“I need your help for the ring” he shyly explained. You stay silent for a few seconds but you eventually agreed to help him.

In the store, you looked at every ring, and each time you found yourself thinking “I wish it was me”. You got interrupted by a woman. “How sweet is that, your boyfriend is offering you a beautiful gift” she said, pointing at Ben and you blushed like crazy.

“Oh no! We’re not dating! I’m his best friend. Only here to help him choose a engagement ring” you explained right away.

“Well, she’s a lucky girl!” she said before leaving you

“That, she is” you mumbled. “She’s very lucky”

You walked around in the store for a few more minutes, not really paying attention to the rings, when Ben called you.

“I found the perfect ring. She’s gonna love it!” he exclaimed, overjoyed. You looked at the ring he was showing you and he was right: it was the perfect ring. The ring you were dying to have but that you would never, because Ben would never have romantic feelings for you. His heart was already taken, by a beautiful and awesome woman.

2019. the year he got married. You attended the ceremony, of course you did! He was so excited when he invited you, you couldn’t say no to his beautiful face. And to be honest, you wished you never came: while everyone was cheering and smiling, you were forcing yourself to put on a fake smile, closing your eyes every time there was an important moment, such as the ring exchange. Ben was looking so handsome in his tux and it made everything more painful.

As the priest said those famous words “You may kiss the bride” you saw in your head Ben and Vanessa’s first dance as a married couple, the moment they’ll announce they’ll have a baby and the flashbacks of every moments you spent with Ben. You saw yourself in the wedding dress, you dreamt of that wedding. And you couldn’t take any more of this pain.

You got up and left the ceremony when Ben kissed his now wife. Everyone was whispering things, making the couple stop and they turned to face the crowd when they heard your heels on the ground, echoing in the church as you ran to the door.

You couldn’t believe what you had just did, left and probably ruined your best friend’s wedding. But you really couldn’t handle this situation anymore. The ceremony was too hard for you and your heart couldn’t take it anymore. You were madly in love with Ben, but he was in love with someone else. And all you can do is watch from afar, as he lives the life he always wanted while you’re drowning in your feelings.