#industrial designer los angeles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 month ago

Text

A Curse [Chapter 4: Beverly Hills]

Series summary: You are an aspiring actress. Aegon is a washed-up and disenchanted agent…at least until he sees something special in you. But within paradisical seaside Los Angeles you find terrible dangers and temptations, secrets and lies. Maybe Aegon’s right; maybe the City of Angels really is a curse.

Chapter warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), age-gap relationship, entertainment industry misogyny, lowkey sexual harassment, emotional distress/panic attack, Maroon 5, some shouting, minor injury, Sunshine and Aegon share an apple.

Word count: 5.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Tagging: @lauraneedstochill @mrs-starkgaryen @chattylurker @neithriddle @ecstaticactus, more in comments! 🥰

🏝️ Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🏝️

Baela has made you breakfast. On the kitchen counter is a plate holding a single slice of wheat toast with a transparently thin smear of peanut butter. You’re already nauseous; the smell of toast in the air is enough to make your stomach lurch and the caustic burn of acid rise in your throat. In their vase, the sunflowers are perky and radiant, like the nuggets of gold that beckoned settlers to the West Coast in the mid-1800s, the hope, the possibility, the indomitable dream.

“I don’t think I can eat anything,” you say.

“Try,” Baela insists, pushing the plate towards you. Jace isn’t shuffling around lackadaisically or sprawled across the orange couch; he must still be asleep. “You aren’t going to make a good impression if you’re all woozy and retching everywhere. You don’t want to look half-dead when you meet Maroon 5, do you?”

“Oh my God.” You chuckle languidly, rubbing your forehead. Your eyes ache; you’ve barely slept. “I completely forgot they’re going to be there.”

Baela grabs a can of La Croix out of the refrigerator and sets it down beside your toast. “You’re that freaked out about the bathtub thing?”

“I guess so.”

“You wanted to be an actress. You’re getting your wish. It’s a blessing.”

And a curse, you think before you can stop yourself. You nibble at your peanut butter toast reluctantly. “I shouldn’t complain.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Baela says.

You crack open the La Croix and take a sip: icy, sharp, oddly dry, Strawberry Peach, pretty awful. “It could be a lot worse.”

“Yeah, it’s not like it’s a Harvey Weinstein situation.” And in her tone is a quiet condemnation: you don’t belong here, you don’t have what it takes.

“What are you doing today?” you ask to distract yourself.

“Gym, the farmers’ market, practicing French.” Because Baela is leaving for Paris in a few weeks, and her agent didn’t even have to forge her a resume to get her the part. “Maybe you’ll meet a guy on the music video set, like a camera dude or a boom operator or something, and then you can finally have a real boyfriend and stop fantasizing about your elderly engaged agent!”

I doubt it. Nonetheless, you smirk weakly as you nurse your La Croix. “Let’s hope he’s not a hobosexual like Jace. We’re running out of room.”

“Hey,” Baela says as she admires your sunflowers with a soft, fond smile. “Jace isn’t so bad.”

“No,” you agree. “No, he’s not.”

You are standing on the sidewalk outside your apartment building when Aegon rolls up in his white Chrysler Sebring convertible, just a few minutes shy of 8 a.m. Hair stylists, makeup artists, and costume designers will reinvent you when you get to set, so you are dressed for comfort: an olive green floral sundress with large buttons down the front, your trusty TOMS wedges, just a blur of eyeshadow swept across your lids with a fingertip so you don’t feel naked, sparkly gold Bold Moves by Huda Beauty. Aegon is already blaring Lose Yourself and rapping along loudly, wearing his aviator sunglasses and flashing gang signs, his sandy blonde hair brutalized from the wind:

“I’ve got to formulate a plot, or end up in jail or shot,

Success is my only motherfuckin’ option, failure’s not,

Mom, I love you, but this trailer’s got to go,

I cannot grow old in Salem’s Lot,

So here I go, it’s my shot,

Feet, fail me not,

This may be the only opportunity that I got…”

“I told my dad you drive one of these,” you say as you climb into the Sebring. “He said they’re super unreliable.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Aegon replies. “But I have lots of money and very few responsibilities, so repairs aren’t a problem. And it cruises so smooth.” When he passes you a venti-sized iced vanilla latte, his right hand is shaking.

“You okay?”

Aegon flashes a grin. “Too much caffeine.” He whips away from the curb and drives towards the interchange of the 405, five chaotic lanes that fly northwest towards Beverly Hills. He is wearing his haphazard suit again, his jacket too big and his tie too skinny, reminding you of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who used to come proselytizing to your parents’ house until one day Tripp got fed up and told them you were Satanists. That is apparently sufficient to get a family on some kind of blacklist. Mom was mortified.

You are slurping your vanilla latte—very slowly, so your queasy stomach will not rebel—and trying to think of how to bring up the new scene situation when Aegon gets a call. Eminem vanishes from the Sebring’s speakers, and Aegon unplugs his phone from the aux and lifts it to his ear.

“Hello?” Aegon is merging onto the 405, crossing dotted white lines until he reaches the High Occupancy Vehicle lane along the concrete barrier. “Hey, Brando. What’s up?” A pause. “Why, what’s on Monday?”

You look over at Aegon: one hand on the steering wheel, hair whipping in the wind, black sunglasses that the early light glints off of, thoughtful creases etching into his forehead and around his eyes as he listens, endless blue sky above and miles passing anonymously below. It’s the morning of Thursday, July 3rd, and you have known him for three weeks, and you—who once made Mason wait months to do anything more than kiss you—think that if Aegon laid his palm on your thigh right now, only a whisper-thin layer of cotton between you and the warmth of his palm, it would feel not just good but right, safe, destined, and your drumming heartbeat would turn calm like the sea after a storm, and you would believe you were capable of anything he asked for.

I don’t want him to think I’m weak. I don’t want him to be disappointed in me.

“Right, yeah, I have to go to that,” Aegon says. There’s a lull as Brandon asks him something. “Because they keep trying to get Steve to do his own stunts and I don’t want him to end up with a broken back like Brendan Fraser. Uh huh. Sure. Oh, and remind Steve that he’s invited to the charity gala thing. Yeah. I don’t know, call Aemond and ask. No, I don’t want to call him, that’s why I’m telling you to do it. Okay. Cool, thanks. Hey, I have no idea when we’ll be done with the Maroon 5 thing so no need to wait at the office, you can take off at three or four or whenever. Sounds good. See ya.” Aegon hangs up and glances at you. “You’re invited too, by the way.”

You startle; your thoughts had been drifting. “Invited to what?”

“The gala in a few weeks. It’s to raise money for UNICEF. All my clients are invited.”

Just like they’re invited to his wedding in Turks and Caicos, you think, and you are hit by another pang of nausea so strong you put your latte down in the cup holder next to Aegon’s drink, something topped with whipped cream and a swirl of chocolate syrup. “I’d love to go! It’s like grown-up prom!”

Aegon shakes his head, but he’s smiling. Again, you are mulling over if and how to mention the new scene—does he already know? will he think I’m complaining?—but now traffic is thick and a Tesla cuts Aegon off, and he is focused on driving and reading the directions on the screen of the GPS mounted on the Sebring’s windshield, and you don’t want to distract him, and when he plugs his phone back into the aux there is a Red Hot Chili Peppers song that comes plucking out of the speakers as the mid-70s breeze ghosts across your skin like feather-light fingerprints: She Looks To Me.

The mansion is perched on the cliffside of Bendict Canyon, red-gold earth that glows under the rising sun, gnarled trees and shrubs twisting skyward from arid soil. The circular driveway is already crowded with trucks and vans, along with a few BMWs and Range Rovers. Aegon parks his convertible near the end of the driveway and then walks with you into the building: mid-century modern, glass walls and sand-colored marble floors to match the accents of amber and warm teak wood, jewel-tone velvet furniture and shag area rugs, statues that pretend to be gold and plants made of plastic. There are attendants brushing exotic cats, Ragdolls and Himalayans. There are people picking over trays of fruit and sandwiches, and others setting up light fixtures and placing marks on the floor with tiny Xs of white tape. You imagine yourself standing on them, and your knees and ankles feel weak as you toddle in your wedges.

Dan is here, and he parts a sea of assistants and sound technicians to cross the living room to greet you and Aegon, beaming and energetic and showing no indications of deception or malpractice. You watch as he and Aegon chat and laugh at each other’s jokes, tales of their most disastrous filming experiences, and you think: If Aegon trusts him, shouldn’t I?

Dan waves Maroon 5 over, and you meet the band but even as it’s happening you can feel yourself not committing it to memory, your skull too full of rattling anxiety, fog-like doubt. They are here to tour the set, but they seem halfhearted about it, and soon they find an excuse to leave; the band is filming their scenes on a different day and presumably have more interesting things to do. If I had millions of dollars, you think distractedly, I would want to be on a film set every day of my life. You are also introduced to the male actor, and he is very attractive in a tan, gym rat, California sort of way, and he seems perfectly polite as well. Aegon hovers nearby until the actor casually mentions his husband, then Aegon slides his sunglasses into his suit jacket and wanders off to pet the long-haired and ill-tempered exotic cats.

A copy of the script is placed in your hands and an assistant leads you upstairs to a small bedroom filled with racks of clothing and a station set up for hair and makeup. The costume designer and stylists work on you, and you make small talk so you won’t think too much about what’s about to happen and start hyperventilating. The first scene, blessedly, is fully-clothed: blush pink Prada ballgown, four-inch heels, your updo gracefully falling loose, dramatic fake eyelashes and inky mascara tears snaking down your cheeks, a screaming match with your supposed soon-to-be-ex lover. You and one of the makeup artists chatter about favorite eyeshadow palettes as she paints your skin like a canvas: a base of matte pink Love Letter by Anastasia Beverly Hills, the sheen of dusk-colored Brink by Natasha Denona.

When you’re ready, the costume designer says: “I don’t think they need you quite yet. You can stay in here, if you’d like.” She smiles, believing she is doing you a favor. “I know you actors need your space to get into character.” And then before you can think of how to protest, she herds the stylists out of the bedroom and you are left alone with the poltergeist of the near-future, cold pockets that make you shiver and the racket of furniture being rearranged in other rooms. You leaf through the script and then, when your hands start shaking, leave it on the low platform bed with a geometric print blanket.

Knowing you shouldn’t, you go to the racks of clothing and paw through garments until you find the lingerie for the bathtub scene: all black lace, all semi-transparent, and while clever camera angles and post-production editing will conceal anything elicit from the audience, there will be no such discretion here. And even if only the essential crew is present for the scene—though there’s no indication it will be a closed set—that’s still a cinematographer, a key grip, a camera operator, a sound technician…and Dan the director, of course.

Your family’s words come rushing back to you, a chorus of skepticism and caution and an underlying conviction that no one could want you for the right reasons:

If she wants to embarrass herself, let her.

Well, be careful, darling.

Who knows what his intentions are.

Men can be so creepy.

You walk towards the bed in a daze and then sink to the floor, backing up until you hit the mattress, hiding there in the small shadow, a sanctuary from the daylight that is flooding in through the glass walls. You feel like you can’t breathe, like your vision is going dark, like the chambers of your heart are splitting open, and yet you know from all your father’s stories of people showing up at the ER erroneously believing they are dying that this is all in your head, and you force yourself to take deep, slow breaths so you won’t pass out.

I can’t do this.

But you have to.

Everyone’s right. I’m not the kind of girl who makes it in Hollywood. Not exceptional enough, not bold enough, not beautiful enough, not willing to do what it takes.

But you’re not ready to give up yet.

There is a knock at the door. “Hey, you camera-ready, sunshine?” Aegon says from outside.

You press your curled index fingers just beneath your eyes to try to stop them from watering. “Yeah. Two minutes.” But your voice cracks, and now he knows something is wrong.

“Are you naked?”

You sniffle. “No.”

Aegon opens the door, and then he has crossed the room and is kneeling down on the floor beside you in his black suit, and he’s completely mystified because he’s never seen you this way before, and he’s half-reaching for you but he’s also hesitating, not knowing if you want to be touched. “What happened? What’s wrong with you?”

“I think…um…” Another sniffle. “I guess I’m just a little freaked out about the scene they added.”

Aegon is confounded. “What scene?”

You reach up onto the bed behind you and fumble around until your fingers grasp the script. You give it to Aegon and he hurriedly skims through the pages. When he stumbles across the scene in question, he goes entirely still and his murky blue eyes turn dark and hard and focused in a way you’ve learned is rare for him.

He asks without lifting his gaze from the paper: “When did you find out about this?”

“Yesterday night. Dan brought the script to my apartment.”

Aegon looks at you. “He showed up at your house?”

“Yeah,” you whimper pathetically.

“Did he touch you?”

“What? No, nothing like that. He stayed in the hallway.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry. I kind of assumed you knew.” A pause. “And I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Aegon, still clutching the script, stands and bolts for the bedroom door.

“No!” you beg in a whisper, lunging after him and grabbing his empty hand. “Aegon, no, I can do it. I don’t want to lose the job. I’ll do whatever they want. Aegon? Aegon, please, I don’t want to give up, I don’t want to go home a failure—”

“Don’t talk,” Aegon says, low and violent. “Let me handle it.” And before you can reply, he has ripped away from you and is through the doorway, down the staircase, into the living room where people are gathered under bright lights and making last-minute adjustments to furniture, décor, equipment. Exotic cats lounge on the velvet sofas. Your faux lover paces in a flawlessly-tailored white suit; he smiles when he sees you, then it swiftly dies.

Dan is chortling with two other men and leaning against a wall. Aegon rages to him, shoves him so hard Dan stumbles, strikes the wall two inches from his face. Aegon’s knuckles come away bloody; there is now a dent in the wall marred with a stain of crimson. An assistant screams; everyone in the room is gawking.

Dan is not just stunned by irate. “What the fuck, man?! That’s coming out of her paycheck!”

“How about we take it from your life insurance policy?”

“What is your problem?!”

“No, you know what you did!” Aegon shouts, and Dan is bigger than him but Aegon is seething, fearless, unrelenting, giving him no space. He balls up the script and pitches it at Dan; it bounces off his temple. “You knew any changes to the script were supposed to go through me and you hid this, and that’s fucked up, and it’s not happening. Take the scene out.”

Dan throws his arms wide in disbelief. “You said no nudity and no sex scenes, and this is neither. I didn’t con you, man.”

“Don’t act stupid. You went to her house and you sprung this on her and you thought you could get away with breaking the rules, and maybe you’ve done this before and no one stopped you because it’s just innocuous enough for you to have plausible deniability. But you’re not going to do it to me, and you’re not going to do it to my girl.”

“You think I need her?!” Dan yells, as if it’s preposterous. “She’s a nobody, she’s nothing special! She should be down on her knees thanking Baby Jesus that she’s on this set right now. You think I don’t have ten other actresses I could call?”

“So call them,” Aegon says. “But you’ll have to reschedule the shoot, and I know you’re paying a thousand bucks an hour for this place.”

“Hey dumbass, I spent over a thousand dollars on wine last night—”

“And I will never work with you again. And neither will Aemond, or Helaena, or Daeron, or any of our people.”

For the first time, Dan looks uncertain, stymied, wary. He studies Aegon as his crew avert their eyes awkwardly. On the sofas, the Ragdolls and Himalayans lick themselves and swish their fluffy tails. Aegon glances back at you. Your eyes are wide, glossy pools of pleading.

I don’t want to lose the job. Please, please, don’t make me give up on the dream yet.

“Look,” Aegon tells Dan, now level and diplomatic. “Do the right thing. You fucked up, you own it. Take the scene out and we’re cool. You get your music video shot on schedule. We get the originally agreed-upon terms. Everyone goes home happy. You’re a very talented director and I’ve only ever heard great things about you. I’d hate to have to start correcting people when they’re singing your praises.”

There is a long stretch of silence, and then Dan chuckles and holds up his hands as if surrendering. “Fine, no problem, we’ll axe the scene. It was just an idea, and maybe I got carried away. That was my bad. I had no idea you’d be so touchy about it.”

Aegon smiles, thin and tight and ingenuine. “I’ve been known to be sensitive.” He holds out his right hand; blood drips from his knuckles. An assistant drops to the marble floor and scrambles around wiping up the mess, viscous and scarlet. “No hard feelings?”

Dan shakes Aegon’s wounded hand. “No hard feelings.” Then he marvels at the blood in his palm and an assistant descends to disinfect him. Another moves an abstract painting so it covers the damage to the wall.

Aegon returns to you, and your pulse is slow and hushed, and your breathing is effortless, and you are transfixed; you cannot look away from him, you cannot believe he’s real. “So, uh,” he says, quietly so the rest of the room won’t hear. “No need to worry about that anymore. You want to take ten minutes to chill and get in the zone, and then we’ll get started?”

“No, I can go right now,” you tell him.

“Okay.” Aegon turns to Dan. “She’s ready.” Then he points at the male actor. Aegon probably doesn’t mean it to, but it comes out sounding like a threat. “You ready?”

The actor nods frenetically. “I’m ready!”

“Great,” Aegon says, and he steps out of the shot, and you step into it, and by the time the camera rolls you aren’t you anymore. You are a woman who desperately loves the man in front of her—instantly transformed from a stranger to a soulmate—and you are betrayal and jealousy and loss and wrath, and while your pink Prada dress is formal and wondrous your body is ever-contorting to be weak, vulnerable, breaking as you realize he is leaving.

Then you are clawing your way up the staircase in a heavy fur coat that seems to swallow you, then you are in a bedroom making unanswered phone calls in a lavender silk nightgown, then you are in the kitchen shattering plates and glasses in a neon green mini-dress, then you are in a leopard-print robe petting the exotic cats in the living room, then you are drowning in the swimming pool in a black empire-waist evening gown. Aegon follows you around the mansion and stands wordlessly in corners, chomping on his Juicy Fruit gum, holding the towels that assistants bring him against his knuckles; during every wardrobe change, he waits just outside the bedroom door.

The shoot isn’t done until after sunset, and you thank everyone profusely before you leave: the crew, the male actor, and especially Dan. You still need him to promote and release the music video, and assuming he doesn’t hate you after Aegon’s outburst, he’ll be a valuable reference.

When Aegon speeds his Sebring out of the mansion’s circular driveway and onto winding cliffside roads presided over by the towering shadows of palm trees, the first thing he says to you is: “You are never working with that man again.”

“Okay,” you agree immediately. And before you can say anything else he has put his phone to his ear. Faintly, you can hear ringing, and then a voice that you think you recognize as Brandon’s.

“Hi,” Aegon snaps. “What do I pay you for?”

“Aegon, please don’t be mad at him,” you say quietly. He’s driving very, very fast. The streetlights race by in a blur, the night wind tears like talons through your hair.

Aegon ignores you. “Why was her address on the stuff we sent to the Maroon 5 video people?” A moment passes. “No, it clearly wasn’t redacted because Dan Sacco showed up at her apartment last night. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Well, open your email and find out.”

“Aegon, he’s supposed to be off work right now. He’s at home, I’m fine, it’s not important.”

“Shh.” And then, after a long pause, Aegon says to Brandon: “Oh. I get it. Okay, yeah, my mistake. Sorry about that. Enjoy the 4th tomorrow, I’ll pay you extra for this conversation. Alright. You too. Bye.” Aegon sighs and looks over at you, as if he’s asking for forgiveness. “I mislabeled the PDFs. Brando thought he sent them the redacted one but he actually sent the original. He should have double-checked anyway, he usually does, but I was rushing him to get it out because I was trying to make sure you got the job. So…it’s my fault and I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine, Aegon,” you say softly.

“It’s not fine.” And you don’t have the opportunity to correct him because Aegon is scrolling through his contacts, and despite his earlier aversion to calling his brother Aemond, soon Aegon is recounting what happened and warning Aemond to never work with Dan, never recommend him to actors, never sell him a script, that Dan is dead to all of them as soon as the music video is officially released.

Aegon merges onto the 10 and heads east towards his office in Elysian Park. You don’t wonder why he’s not taking you south to Harbor Gateway, because you don’t want to go home yet. It’s well after 9 p.m., and the freeway is vast and open, silhouettes of skyscrapers and palm trees, reflective green signs indicating routes to Pasadena, San Bernadino, Santa Ana, San Pedro. Under the streetlights that arch overhead, you can see that the knuckles on Aegon’s right hand have turned violet and maroon, bruises down to the bone. When he reaches Downtown, Aegon’s Sebring takes the 110 north, and you are reminded of the route you drove to Elysian Park on the day you first met him, a girl with no prospects that he believed in anyway.

Aegon doesn’t hang up the phone until he’s at the curb outside the half-duplex he rents, a blinking blue neon sign that reads Targ Talent Agency in one window. He rests his wounded hand on the back of your seat when he twists around to look as he’s parallel parking. In the lobby, he goes to the minifridge behind Brandon’s desk and gets two green glass bottles of Perrier, passes you one of them, continues to his office and collapses into his chair, staring up at you as he swigs his Perrier and drops of condensation fall down onto his suit. He thumps his shoes up onto his desk, characteristically littered with gum wrappers and manilla folders and loose papers, framed photographs and his recently-acquired ceramic bowl of Honeycrisp apples. You are still standing.

“That happens sometimes,” Aegon says after a while. “Just so you know going forward, because I failed to make it clear before, script changes always go through me. I negotiate with the other party and if any modifications are approved I tell you about them, not the other way around. And unless you’ve cultivated some kind of working relationship with them, directors and producers should not be reaching out to you personally.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

You aren’t really sure. “I guess I should have known better.”

Aegon smirks, tired and cynical. “I told you this place is a curse.”

“You tried to warn me,” you concede.

“Do you believe me now?”

“No. I still want to be in Los Angeles.” I still want to be here with you.

He considers you, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side. “You did a really good job today, sunshine. Despite everything.”

“I hope so.”

He gives you a wry half-smile and takes another gulp of his Perrier. You haven’t opened yours yet. You are wearing your street clothes from this morning, TOMS wedges, unceremonious olive green sundress. Your hair is still damp from the scene in the pool and smells like chlorine. Aegon sighs deeply and kneads the area just above his right eye with his fingertips, as if he has a headache.

“Aegon?” you say, and he looks up at you. “Thank you for what you did for me.”

“I’d do it for anyone.”

“You’d almost break your knuckles?”

He glances at the back of his hand as if he had forgotten about the damage incurred there: clotted blood, subterranean bruises. “No, that was just for you.”

You set your unopened bottle of Perrier and your purse on his desk. Then you step out of your wedges, reach beneath your sundress, hook your thumbs under the waistband of your panties and pull them down to your ankles. You kick them away and leave them on the scuffed wood floor with your wedges. Aegon is watching you, his lips parted and his dark blue eyes amazed, as you walk to his desk and sit on the edge, pluck a Honeycrisp apple out of the bowl there, and take a large, famished bite. When saccharine juice spills down your lips, you don’t wipe it away.

Slowly, Aegon’s own mouth blooms into a smile. “I was wondering if it was mutual.”

He stands, harvests the apple from your hand, buries his teeth in the wet yielding flesh in the same place where you bit it. Then he lets the apple tumble to the floor as his hands rise to your face and he kisses you, and if you once discovered that this was easy with Mason then here it is instinctive, necessary, sheltering, and you have never felt so safe, and you have never been so sure of anything. You are unfastening the large buttons that run down the front of your sundress. Aegon is shrugging off his suit jacket and opening his shirt, his chest and belly soft and warm, no distance between you as you lie back across the desk and Aegon climbs on top of you, tasting like apples and Juicy Fruit and night air. Folders and papers cascade in a flurry. The bowl of apples is shoved off the ledge and shatters. Photographs are knocked to the floor, their glass panes splintering.

You are afraid only once, when Aegon unclasps your bra and tosses it away, but then he’s touching and kissing you there, lips and tongue and teeth, and his need is so palpable, and you can’t believe you ever considered scalpels and stitches. “I knew you were perfect,” he whispers against your throat, and when his war-torn hand travels between your legs you are already slick and starving, and you tell him you can’t wait.

You glance down as he rummages around in a drawer of his desk and eventually—seconds that feel like an eternity—finds a few condoms in silvery wrappers. “I’m sorry you have to use one,” you say, breathing heavily as you lie beneath him, not wanting to ruin this. “I’m sorry I’m not on the pill or—”

“I’d wrap up anyway. I’m serious about the no kids thing.”

And then he’s easing himself into you, and it’s better than it’s ever been because you’ve never wanted it more, and you’re trying not to moan too loudly because you don’t know if there’s anyone home in the other half of the rundown little duplex, and when your eyes flutter open you see flashes of the mint green walls, beams of headlights raking across the windows, gleaming emerald shards of your Perrier bottle that has tumbled to the floor and broken there, hemorrhaging a sea of carbonated water. It’s not a climax but a plateau so high you can’t think, can’t speak, your fingers in Aegon’s hair and your hips moving with his, your legs linked around him and his voice in your ear, is this okay for you, is this good, and you are nodding and gasping and letting him take you to a place where you can have everything, magic that usually only exists on pages and screens.

Aegon finishes—too soon, with some embarrassment—then pulls back and is alarmed to find tears on your cheeks. He wipes them away with his hands, bewildered, concerned. “What are you doing? Don’t cry, sunshine.”

You laugh shakily. “I’m fine, I swear, it’ll go away. I just get emotional.”

“Always?”

“When it’s good.”

Aegon kisses you, sweet and slow, and then he climbs off the desk and flings the condom somewhere, grabs your hips, drags you towards to him. You sit up when you realize what he’s doing.

“Oh no,” you say. “Wait, no, you don’t have to. Don’t worry about it.”

Aegon furrows his brow at you impatiently. “Do you want to come or not?”

“Well yeah, but it can take a while. So I’ll just do it myself later.”

“Shut up and put your legs over my shoulders.” He yanks you closer and you fall back onto the desk, now damp and slippery with perspiration, and you are grinning up at the ceiling, astonished and euphoric and a little sheepish, not expecting it to work but then being overwhelmed by him, coaxed into it like tumbling down the crumbling wall of a canyon, plummeting into inevitable and effortless gravity, the earth disintegrating beneath your clawing fingers when you try to catch yourself. Then Aegon takes your hand and shows you that he is hard again.

“More,” you plead in a whisper, and you go with him down to the floor, careful to avoid jagged flecks of glass and fragments of the shattered ceramic bowl, and you are helping him roll a new condom on because he’s taking too long and you can’t wait, and you’re both laughing as you straddle him, and then it becomes something quiet and slow and indelibly heavy, imprints in sand that eons of waves could not wash away, and afterwards you lie together on the floor for a long time, not saying anything, not tethered to reality, drifting in a bone-weary mirage of nightscape chemicals until the sun will rise and paint the world in color again.

You get up and start looking for your wedges. You have to shake them to get pebbles of green glass out. Aegon, still lying on the wood floor, watches you; you smirk guiltily. “I should probably go home soon. I have to be at Cold Stone tomorrow morning.”

Aegon seems surprised. “You’re working on the 4th of July?”

“Only until 6:30. Then Baela and I are going to see the fireworks.”

“And you’re driving to work, right? Not walking?”

“Right,” you promise.

Aegon groans as he drags himself to his feet, pulls on his suit and misbuttons his shirt, surveys the damage done to his office and runs his hands through his disheveled blonde hair. He shakes his head and looks a little sad, vacant, meditative. Does he regret it? you worry; but then Aegon turns to you and smiles. “Let’s get going.”

The long-gone daylight has been replaced by streetlights and headlights and coils of neon, glowing through the darkness like manmade stars, young synthetic constellations. As the Sebring sails down the ghost town of the 110 at midnight, Aegon passes you his phone. “Listen to whatever you want.”

You scroll through his Spotify playlist; there are five hundred songs, lots of Alanis Morissette and Pearl Jam and Third Eye Blind and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You remember listening to one of their songs on the way to the mansion in Beverly Hills this morning; Aegon must really like them. You choose another Red Hot Chili Peppers song at random, one you’ve never heard of before, Hard To Concentrate. The hypnotic guitar chords spill from the speakers, and as you gaze dreamily over six abandoned southbound lanes, you can see on the periphery of your vision that Aegon keeps glancing over at you, his hair flying in the wind and his bruised right hand resting on the steering wheel.

Aegon parks illegally in a fire lane on the curb outside your apartment. “Hey,” he says when you open the passenger’s door, and you stop and return to him. “I’ll see you soon, alright?”

You check the analog clock on the dashboard, a black box of green numbers. It’s just after midnight on July 4th. You murmur as you kiss Aegon one last time, your lips curled into a smile: “Happy Independence Day.”

Then you float up the concrete steps and into your apartment building, higher than the sun at noon.

#aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen ii #aegon ii targaryen #aegon x reader #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x reader #aegon ii targaryen x female reader #aegon ii x y/n #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen ii x you

156 notes · View notes

shiftingwithjaidyn · 9 months ago

Text

🎞️ ⋮ writer/fame dr

★┊ BASICS .ᐟ

timeline:

this dr takes place around late august of 2022 due to the fact i intend to be part of one of the films i work on right from its beginning

locations:

los angeles, california (main)

vancouver, canada

new york, new york

san antonio, texas

london, england

notes:

i scripted out a lot of things that occur in this reality (due to the fact i scripted the timeline of everything somewhat similar)

some movies in my filmography are book adaptations that do not exist in this reality however exist in mine and most tv-shows in my filmography are cancelled shows in this reality so i decided to make them continued in my dr (just incase of some confusion hehe)

★┊ ABOUT ME .ᐟ

name: lilian maricel villaécija

nicknames: lily, lia, celia, mary/mari

gender & pronouns: demigirl || she/they

birthday: august 11th, 1980

height: 5’6”/167 cm

zodiac sign: leo

mbti: enfp

nationality & ethnicity: american || filipino-chinese

occupations:

screenwriter

script supervisor

production designer

director of photography

make-up artist

storyboard artist

aesthetic:

★┊ CAREER .ᐟ

movies:

center stage (2000)

in the mood for love (2000)

uptown girls (2003)

eternal sunshine of a spotless mind (2004)

pride & prejudice (2005)

the devil wears prada (2006)

black swan (2010)

if i stay (2014)

la la land (2016)

lady bird (2017)

the glass castle (2017)

to the bone (2017)

the greatest showman (2017)

oceans 8 (2018)

crazy rich asians (2018)

always be my maybe (2019)

little women (2019)

all the bright places (2020)

pieces of a woman (2020)

last night in soho (2021)

everything everywhere all at once (2022)

one last stop (2023) [film adaptation of the book by casey mcquinston]

tv shows:

grey's anatomy (s2-s13) || 2005-2016)

rupaul's drag race (s5-s14 || 2013-2022)

rupaul's drag race: all stars (s2-s5 || 2016-2020)

anne with an e (s1- || 2017-present/ongoing)

the marvelous mrs. maisel (s1-s5 || 2017-2023)

pose (s1-s3 || 2018-2021)

instinct (s1-s3) (2018-2023)

the umbrella academy (s1-s4 || 2019-2024)

the haunting of bly manor (s1 || 2020)

bridgerton (s1- || 2020-present/ongoing)

yellowjackets (s2- || 2023-present/ongoing)

★┊ RELATIONSHIPS .ᐟ

╰┈➤ FRIENDS

(i have a lot of friends due to the fact i've been in the industry for quite a while now, but these are just my closest)

trixie mattel

shea couleé

katya zamolodchikova

kate walsh

emmy raver-lampman

sandra oh

nicola coughlan

gemma chan

simone kessell

a huge special mention as well to @ixzotica a.k.a. aaliyah sinclair in my dr!! the one and only best friend, neighbor, sister, and platonic soulmate of mine in every single universe <3

╰┈➤ PET

name: mari-pusa (Mariposa)

nicknames: mari, choco butternut,

gender & pronouns: female || she/her

birthday: january 15

zodiac sign: capricorn

mbti: istj

breed: tortoiseshell

╰┈➤ S/O

gonna keep him a redacted for now as i am not yet comfortable sharing much about my dr but i just wanted to let u guys know he's an actor, he's a libra, and that he exists HSHJSHDSHKJHL

★┊ EXTRAS .ᐟ

links:

patter banner || gradient divider || star divider || heart divider

note:

feel free to ask me about this dr or any shifting related thing in general!! i'd really appreciate it! : ]

247 notes · View notes

dollsinvogue · 20 days ago

Text

Women’s history month via dolls: Lily Martinez

Lily Martinez is a Mexican immigrant from Durango, Mexico who now lives in Los Angeles. She worked at Mattel from 1998-2015 as a designer for significant brands such as Barbie and MyScene.

Most notably, she did the prototype designs and the sculpts for the original Monster High dolls Frankie, Draculaura, Clawdeen, Lagoona, and Cleo.

Lily also says that Lagoona was the doll that she designed from head to toe, the company likely not changing her design from lily’s prototype.

Lily does not claim Monster High as her own and she says it was a collaborative effort, but no doubt she made a massive contribution to the entire doll industry and very specifically Monster High. Her sculpt designs are still being used nearly 20 years later.

Lily Martinez’s website

Lily Martinez’s TikTok

Lily Martinez’s Instagram

#women’s history month via dolls #lily Martinez #dollblr #doll collector #monster high #I had to add the Catrina pictures of her they’re so beautiful

103 notes · View notes

williamemmersonusa · 19 days ago

Text

Refine Interiors Custom Industrial Design Services in Los Angeles

If you're ready to transform your home, office, or business with custom industrial design in Los Angeles, let's connect! Whether you have a fully formed idea or need inspiration, we’re here to craft something exceptional just for you. Reach out today and let's create something amazing together!

#Custom Industrial Design Services in Los Angeles #William Emmerson

0 notes

vintagehomecollection · 9 months ago

Text

The Los Angeles House: Decoration and Design in America's 20th-Century City, 1995

1K notes · View notes

odinsblog · 1 year ago

Text

DURING THE CYBERTRUCK'S unveiling in 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the electric vehicle's “ultra-hard stainless steel” body might be “literally bulletproof.” However, the Tesla truck's exterior panels appear to be defenseless against water pistols. They apparently rust, as some owners claim.

Posting on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, a user named Raxar risked the wrath of the Tesla faithful—already exercised by the Cybertruck's numerous alleged design flaws—by stating that when they collected the $61,000 truck, “the advisor specifically mentioned the Cybertrucks develop orange rust marks in the rain.”

In a separate thread, the user vertigo3pc reported that “corrosion was forming on the metal” of his Cybertruck after it spent 11 days in the rain in Los Angeles.

Raxar, who also lives in California, posted what appeared to be close-up, rust-flecked images of his truck after driving it for two days in rain.

The Cybertruck does not ship with clear coat, that outermost layer of transparent paint that comes as standard on almost every new motor vehicle on the planet. Instead, each Cybertruck owner has the option to purchase a $5,000 urethane-based film to “wrap your Cybertruck in our premium satin clear paint films. Only available through Tesla.”

Who knew untreated stainless steel might not be such a good idea for the exterior of a motor vehicle, especially considering that cars typically get left sitting outside in all weather for 95 percent of their lives? The whole automotive industry, that's who.

Aside from the 1980s DMC DeLorean and a shiny 1960s Porsche, car companies have long steered clear of stainless steel panels. The material is heavy, relatively expensive, and hard to work with. It's also stiff, which makes it potentially more lethal to anybody unlucky enough to be struck by a vehicle built with the stuff.

(continue reading)

#cybertruck #elon musk #tesla #rust #cyberturd #rust buckets

511 notes · View notes

nexility-sims · 6 days ago

Text

𝐍𝐎. 𝟒 ❛ 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐬 ❜ | RIVA DORATA, TARTOSA, MAY 1998

For a time, Renzo maintained a strict division between the life he shared with Leonor and the professional existence that adjoined it. This was the only thing he was strict about—at least, in theory, for a transient moment, until he devolved into a more comfortable, equivocal laxity about that, too.

[narrative continued, long as hell, below ↓]

𝟭𝟵𝟵𝟰 🅐🅤 ‣ start \ prev \ next

big thank you to the cameos in this one which apparently ended up being a glimpse everyone except siri's ?? sorry girl ! apologies there isn't more screen time or dialogue in this post, but stay tuned ♥️

@armoricaroyalty @theroyalsofcorrilea @earthmoonz @crvptydgaming @houseofrenaldi @simsishh @nilonne @crownsofesha

lastly: i am way too tired to do a proper Author's Note and will surely edit this when i am fully conscious and embarrassed by it BUT in the meantime, well, enjoy and let me know what you think! channeling the energy of jfk jr & carolyn public quarrel pics meets 90 day fiance meets every industry couple ever complaining about work travel … this is only a slice of the diversity of careful research that went into this nonsense … astonishing, amusing, bizarre findings. & i arbitrarily chose 1998 but feel like it should be earlier ...'96-97' perhaps … lastly 2x, hilarious to me that all of this drama is because Leonor Learned Creating Nepo Babies Is Hard Work, Actually—

CONTINUED:

Their departure from Uspana wasn’t a calculated decision so much as an abrupt flight with no thought spared as to what it meant for his career. It had, after all, panned out in the past. Dropping everything was a convenient reset button he could and did smash at will: Petunia to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Nakawe, Nakawe to New York. This was just another chapter—a third act. How and when it took shape didn’t matter. Money wasn’t an issue. Even if it were, the demands and specifications of Leonor’s lifestyle were so extravagant that the shape of this new life slipped into her hands, or her purse, as it were. They learned that the hard way, but it was for the best. Renzo could return calls from agents and producers and photographers and journalists and designers and everyone else eager for a piece of him when he felt like it. They wouldn’t stop calling, and he wouldn’t care if they ever did.

As a passenger on this journey, Leonor watched how he moved with bewilderment. His lackadaisical disposition wasn’t new to her. Everyone theorized about him for good reason. Was it a persona—the coolness that kept his celebrity star on the rise? Or, if he was like that, how to account for the many incidents where he patently was not? Was he the unruly partier, the defiant miscreant, the reflective artist, the bashful everyman he seemed to be? He was all of it, Leonor knew: apathetic, easygoing, impetuous, and temperamental; motivated by hardheaded opinions, reckless disregard, and a pernicious yet constantly frustrated need to go unnoticed. It was a compelling archetype for someone like him. Aloof actors with turbulent insides were a Hollywood favorite. So, her concern ebbed and flowed. She had chosen to follow him on the conviction that they needed nothing except the other’s attention and affection. It was a romantic fantasy, but it was also an effective guard against meddling. It wasn’t her business because she didn’t have business anymore, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. It was good, in fact. It was exactly what she wanted. More than a want, it had been a necessity.

Yet, as time passed, she itched to pounce on the crumbs of information he left scattered. She heard snippets of calls he took. She listened to him mull over opportunities, grumbling to himself about considerations she didn’t understand. His money was less orderly than hers—not tied up in property and investments, except for the house he maintained for his parents—but she could see how it came and went. What exactly he did once he agreed to a job and humbled himself to be bound by legalese, she wasn’t sure. Although he talked about it in opaque ways, and she asked fumbling if earnest questions, her technical understanding came from overheard conversations with his peers. She met them on occasion, the many colleagues with whom he shared projects or just a profession. They all passed whatever test he required to access his leisure time and all possessed eccentricities that, for her, put his own in perspective. They were strange people. Nonetheless, the full picture remained far from complete, refusing to cohere, just beyond her grasp.

Leonor did know more than she had at the beginning, when they made a hotel suite home for three weeks and insulated themselves from the realities waiting beyond its walls. They needed a house. They needed something to do. They needed more money, probably. They needed more drugs and definitely needed more of the greasy takeout noodles they gleefully devoured in the plush hotel bed when they remembered to eat. As details of their new life finally began to solidify, she ventured a question, wondering aloud, “I thought you were going to do that film?” Renzo had been lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, scratching his fingertips against the thick rug fibers beneath his hands. As she sat down and lifted his head into her lap, he replied, “Pulled out.” They had snickered, and that was it.

Things changed fast. Their aspiration had been to rent a cool house for storing art and entertaining friends, not to build a nest for a family. At first, Leonor’s concern bubbled over. She envisioned another day-long flight back to Uspana, much of it to be spent in the tiny closet that passed for a restroom. That wasn’t what she wanted. Yet, her first reaction was a sudden, overwhelming desire for home. It didn’t take very long to sour that longing with hard truths. What she wanted didn’t exist anymore. There had been a world where she might have rushed home and into her mother’s waiting arms. Safya would know what to say as she stroked Leonor’s hair, and she would share memories of her own that Leonor had never heard before. She would insist it was natural to be terrified and, worse, distressed by a small seed of secret joy. Safya had a way of speaking with such sunny yet serious warmth that made the harshness of one’s troubles easier to face. ‘Just wrap your arms around it,’ she often murmured. ‘No worry is bigger than you.’ And that—that would provide an ideal break for Leonor to anguish over the inevitability of becoming even bigger. It wouldn’t be a joke, not really, but they would laugh together, and then Safya would hide her rueful understanding behind the comforting lie that everything would be okay.

Leonor never questioned how important their family was to him, but she did question even now whether he understood what it meant to have one. Neither of his parents had been the doting type. That seemed to motivate him as much as it hindered him. He took an enthusiastic yet solemn approach to the best and worst of parenting, and she delighted in those moments when something Gael or Liliana did left him wonderstruck. It was the small, unremarkable things: Gael’s insistent, matter-of-fact babbling while they played; Liliana’s drowsy, bemused blinking as she awoke from an unplanned nap in an unexpected location; the intoxicating scent they each had as newborns, one best inhaled while nuzzling their soft spots. Before Gael arrived, he spent many evenings chewing cigarillos with a pregnancy book in one hand while the other rubbed circles into her back. She would see his furrowed brow cast in lamplight when she invariably rolled over and back again, uncomfortable in her body but at least soothed by the sight.

While her mother’s hands-on parenting meant she had tender memories of her infant brothers, Renzo was an only child. ‘My experience with babies starts when you pop that out,’ was his frank summary. She had assured him then that they would figure it out together and, now, she had become increasingly aware of what figuring remained. Leonor wasn’t quite naive enough to believe everyone had a personal banker responsible for managing their sprawling, complex maze of bequeathed family wealth. Yet, having her own children alerted her to how unnatural that was. Even her own trustee offered what was perhaps his first unsatisfying response when she asked him to help. ‘My hands are tied, my princess. I was appointed by your mother, with the Crown’s permission, and your son, well …’ Leonor had cleared her throat to stop him from stumbling through the words. She knew well enough. Like an organ removed from its body, she was weakened, enfeebled, isolated and drained by the separation.

Renzo, of course, laughed at the situation. ‘You want a trust fund for him? Okay, sure. Fine. Paperwork for a baby. Don’t cry over it! Jesus. Some kids don’t have fucking food to eat, you know.’ She did know that, but she had wanted to shout at him, so she said something provocative. It wasn’t hard to devolve into personal attacks; how could she be blamed for not having a “real job” when he was a “failed musician” who “played pretend” for a living? Why was this “piddling princessy bullshit” his problem when she spent thousands monthly on “dumb shit” no one cared about? When one didn’t understand something said, they took a break to mock each other’s accents. Those were the light fights that ended in better-natured laughter.

On the worst occasion, they had stomped upstairs together, Leonor nearly knocking him down on the way, to begin an inventory of ‘useless junk no one cares about.’ Later, they both wept when she returned to the scene and started fretting over his broken records and the gaping holes in her canvases. They exchanged apologies and made promises, including the charming ‘pinky swears’ whose foreign absurdity easily cracked her scowl with laughter. If nothing else, their hard and fast reconciliations almost made it all worthwhile—or, that was the delirious conclusion Leonor’s mind would drift toward before she heard a familiar echo in her memory. Renzo had his own unpleasant cacophony of recollections. They locked their fingers, stifled any leftover giggles, and promised, among other things, to remember that their innocent, curious, impressionable child deserved better memories.

His hiatus didn’t drag on forever, and it was Leonor who called Sharon Greenwater—with Renzo’s blessing—to ensure it had an end in sight. She had never met Sharon, even though she had helped her land this job. The onslaught of attention that associating with a princess on her home turf heaped onto his already high profile necessitated it. He thought otherwise but, not for the first time, took a leap of faith. It had flattered her that he accepted her advice. On paper and in her immature mind, that was the only smart move. There were entire worlds he knew better than she ever would, and he had packed more experience into the near-decade he had on her than most people did in a lifetime. But this? ‘This is what I know,’ she had insisted. He listened better when they were eye to eye, skin to skin. He was less wise than she was, less of a professional, but more emotional. If she used the same tone and touched him the same way sometime later, saying, ‘Remember? You promised me,’ then he melted and caved.

This strategy worked well after another blockbuster argument and the marathon reconciliation that followed. Renzo had shot down her proposal to let the clan mothers back home rename their baby. Even as she pitched the idea, explaining in a prim and credible way that it could unlock a portfolio of “lucrative coffee estates” in a “scenic provincial sector” of Uspana for Gael to inherit “as a start,” she watched his expression slide from curiosity to revulsion to a look of amusement that riled her up faster than any words could. ‘Are you fucking crazy? Are you out of your goddamn mind?’ They talked over one another and lowered themselves, this time slinging mud in the form of class-based insults. Leonor called him something vile, a niche derogation about going barefoot whose heft back home she promptly prayed he wouldn’t understand. But, he did—enough to insist she had effectively “tarred her own kid” with the same stain, which was why her “family of leeches” thought inheriting “nothing but poverty” would suit him just fine. ‘He’s not even a Reyes. You made damn sure of that, didn’t you? You did that! Boo-fucking-hoo.’ What could she say to that? She picked up her cup from the coffee table and threw its contents at him, letting it hit the ground after the satisfying split-second splash. She left him soaked and, standing there with his bare feet, surrounded by thick chunks of broken crystal glassware.

He later found her upstairs in bed on the telephone with her brother. She was already speaking in a hushed tone but hurried to end the call as the wooden steps finished their tell-tale creaking. Renzo lingered, waiting until she returned the receiver to its cradle and beckoned him over. She murmured the regards Mateo sent him, patted the bed, and didn’t resist when he pulled her closer, over one outstretched leg, squarely into his lap. It worked for her. After all, she didn’t look at him until after he had begun to talk.

He offered an apology, an earnest explanation, and his own proposal. The answer was to return Sharon Greenwater’s calls, but his resistance to that wasn’t altogether dissimilar from his resistance to submitting, infant-first, to the harsh glare of Uspana’s spotlight and her family’s scrutiny. Unlike his colleagues and peers and unwanted fans, they wouldn’t be generous. The sensitive little boy inside of him was well-used to insults that attacked those flaws and deformities he couldn’t change. That little boy felt just as protective of the one they now shared, too—felt empathetic, having learned the bittersweet lesson that too much attention could hurt just as much as too little.

Leonor chose to look at him as he began to weave these concerns together for her. Did she know how often he still felt fright and panic living within himself like a parasite? He could numb it or run from what fed it, but he couldn’t kill it. Interviews and critiques, Hollywood or the House of Tecuani, fame or family, it was the same. ‘I don’t do this for my health,’ he’d chuckled, gesturing in the direction of his own bedside where bottles and bags and an overflowing ashtray sat. He kept tapes there: live shows of discordant, frenetic jazz and blues rock that she could hear through his headphones when he laid there, still and serene, at peace like the dead.

When he initially told her about his first major film premier, he’d only said he didn’t watch it. He left after one scene, he claimed, to go chain smoke on a stoop outside one of the service doors instead. Only, it sounded like sly proof of nonchalance back then. She had been too busy picturing what he looked like in those days, harboring a newfound desire to make him watch his cheesy romantic comedy with her, and taking note of the fact that she could have fit in seamlessly with those “teenybopper” crowds he had so disdained. Now, she understood. Her response sounded soft but solemn as she assured him, ‘You don’t have to worry about that. I want to be there with you. It’s the one thing in the world I know how to do. Just let me.’

So, Sharon Greenwater, a jack-of-all-trades agent with a wide network and a bullish demeanor, reentered his life. He liked her for some reasons he had liked Leonor: she was mean and honest, she never let herself be wrong, and she let him believe his choices were indeed his own. Though, there were exceptions. She found The Last Con for him around the same time that he finished reading Yuling Zhao’s latest script. Leonor, observing from the outside, wasn’t surprised that his agent begged him to sign onto a guaranteed money-maker helmed by a certified industry darling while he drifted toward an artsy period drama penned by a friend. Sharon wasn’t surprised either. She tried the “veggies-and-dessert” approach. If he gravitated toward soulful projects, she reminded him those “empty safes” required a big deposit. ‘Come on. You know the drill. Buck the fuck up, buttercup, right?’ He scrawled his name on contracts for high-concept advertisements and low-commitment television cameos when the bargaining was done. This time, what did surprise Leonor was his quick compromise. He was on the phone with Sharon for a follow-up to discuss the two options when he heaved a heavy sigh and exclaimed, ‘Fuck it, let’s do both.’ That gave Sharon pause, too, apparently. After a few beats, he told her he was sure. He said he missed feature lengths. He said the workload would be fine. ‘Baptism by fire,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fucking born again, baby. These dumbass dimwits love that.’

Having been eavesdropping, Leonor experienced a pang of trepidation on the heels of her initial excitement. She was relieved but suspected his success would not be so simple for herself and, even more, their family. That pang became recurrent, and her unease reached a crescendo when his looming absence cast a dark shadow over unexpected news of a second baby. That shock felt different this time—not wholly unpleasant, not wrapped far too tightly in fear and uncertainty—but still inspired mixed feelings in them both. For her part, Leonor didn’t harbor those original worries about his reaction and their relationship. It wasn’t hard to see how another child would fit into a life that was already molding around an infant. What was hard to envision was spending so much of that months-long wait alone. She had acquired her own local art scene connections, ingratiated herself with Renzo’s long-standing friends in the city, returned ignored voicemails from his mother, and never hesitated to rack up telephone bills for international calls.

None of it would be enough.

That was what she lamented on the eve of his departure to San Francisco, which sounded ridiculous even to her ears. Her plaintive tone did bother him. That she sounded so forlorn while she sat rubbing yet another coat of body butters and oils into her belly didn’t help. She lacked the energy to argue. Doing so might have given her a jolt of agitation that could dispel the distress for a few wasted minutes. Instead, they fell quiet. It was tension, not peace, that filled the room as he continued tossing random items into his suitcase. ‘Don’t bring that! You can buy more when you get there,’ she thought of complaining. ‘Do you need to smoke that right now?’ she could have asked or, better yet, accused. Worse, it occurred to her that she could have stabbed him directly: ‘You didn’t even ask me to come with you. I know why—a hundred reasons, probably, skinny little brunettes and blondes and those ugly red hairs—’ While she stewed, he crammed in clothes that were already wrinkled alongside dirty boots and dog-eared paperbacks. She gritted her teeth as he threw in a handful of her candy. His thoughts boiled down to a simple kind of refrain: ‘This is what you wanted, Leonor.’

Instead, once the bag was closed, he returned to her with a resolute look on his face. Sinking to his knees at the bedside, he took over the gentle massaging that made their hands slick and sweetly scented. She could tell he had something to say, and she had picked out several of her own opening lines. In theory, she would swallow her apprehension and offer him one like a blooming flower or a white flag. He saved her the trouble. ‘If it’s too hard, just come, okay? Bring Gael, whatever. If you can’t, I’ll come to you. It’s easy. If it’s not, I don’t give a shit. Doesn’t work for them? Maybe the stars are just aligned wrong, or whatever the fuck, this time, and we try again.’ Leonor couldn’t suppress her grin, and she didn’t try to suppress her excited follow-up, one whose harmless absurdity made him laugh. ‘No, no, no! You behave, and I’ll be brave,’ she replied. ‘Because I really, really, really want to go to Tartosa with you next year!’

TRANSCRIPT:

[Chatter, cameras shuttering]

[Photographers shouting]

TYLER | Here comes another big one! Renzo Ledford is no stranger to Tartosa’s biggest event, but he is doing double duty this year. It’s the first time for Leonor Reyes. How exciting!

TYLER | —and this is the first time we’ve seen you right here, isn’t it? RENZO | Here? Well, yeah, here.

TYLER | Right, on this landing, where the cameras are. You’ve attended the festival some over the years, but you sure do a great job of dodging us. I’d love to know how we missed you last time! RENZO | Fishing boats.

[Seagull calls, indistinct conversations, clattering, splashing water, miscellaneous overlapping market sounds]

TYLER | Oh! [Chuckles] Um, I see, you mean—? RENZO | She wanted the grand entry—Right? Come on, you did. Don’t be bashful—but me? What you do is hitch a ride on the fishing boats.

[Loud, snorting laughter]

RENZO | See? Great guys, to a man, honestly. Fascinating work. And I could sorta blend in, you know? Incognito. But this one? TYLER | [Laughs] Not as fit for a princess as the luxury speedboats?

LEONOR | I just thought he should have the full experience for once. TYLER | Film week in Tartosa is a special experience! Lots of traditions, lots of attractions, lots of locals and fans, lots of— RENZO | Lots of horsesh—Marketing. Not a natural-born salesman. I just say my lines, but they tell me that doesn’t cut it anymore.

TYLER | [Laughs] I’d say I’m sorry I made you share your secret, but RENZO | Yeah, uh uh, alright, it happens. Let’s go. Thanks.

RENZO | What? Are you upset? LEONOR | No. I feel like I should apologize. RENZO | For that? Hey, look, Sharon’ll handle it— LEONOR | Will she? Should she?

You’re not listening! Do you walk your ass in here to piss me off? Is that your goal, because I swear to—You! It’s you. You get off my ass! No, you! You aren’t even lazy, but you are screwed up in the head, and I—SHARON! RENZO! You. Have. Contractual. Obligations. Do you want me to spell it out for you? Say it slower? Smack some sense into you? Fuck them. And you. No, no, not on the table. We can’t even ask nicely. They’ll say no second date. Fuck ‘em! Tear them up. You’re on the hook. So what! Bill me! Jesus. Bill you? Why, I ought to—Cancel. Make something up. There are contracts. Contracts! So, get me out of ‘em. Are you deaf and stupid? We will be sued! Yeah, okay! What the everloving fuck do I pay you for? To bitch at me? I got a mother, alright? Here we go. Get rid of the goddamn contracts. What in the hell do I look like? A prostitute? I’m not wasting my time eye-fucking some camera on a foreign beach to sell, what, wristwatches or boat shoes or whatever overpriced yuppie shit—Cologne. What? Cologne and wine. Underwear, maybe, but—SHARON!

You keep your nose clean when you come in here. Oh, you think—? [Laughs] All me! Stone cold. Work on that, okay? You are a menace. Are you crazy? Pretty does not work on me. Or everyone, you know. Oh, I know. You think I don’t know? I’m serious as a heart attack.

She thinks I’m pretty. Ain’t that sweet of her? Your … whatever he is to you, Leonor, he’s a fucking asshole. You damn right. Go take a lap. Bring me a coffee, hold the spit. Or something stronger. They sent gift bottles for us. Fucking nasty European frou-frou bullshit—[Sharon laughs] See, that’s why they want him. He’s such a talented actor. It’s so believable. Go on, talk your shit to her, Sharon—[Snickering] ‘Eye-fucking the camera.’ He knows good and well, doesn’t he, Miss Reyes? He knows what God put him on this earth to do. He‘s just a little pissy about it, that’s all. I don’t blame him. Maybe you have to be a son-of-a-bitch in those boots.

LEONOR | I get it. Or, actually: I, of all people, should know better. RENZO | No … No, fuck, you’re right. You are. We talked about this—more than once. ‘Behave and be brave.’

“Renzo laughed at the situation. ‘You want a trust fund for him? Okay, sure. Fine. Paperwork for a baby. Don’t cry over it! Jesus. Some kids don’t have fucking food to eat, you know.’ She did know, but she had wanted to shout at him, so she provoked him. It wasn’t hard to devolve into personal attacks; how could she be blamed for not having a ‘real job’ when he was a ‘failed musician’ who ‘played pretend’ for a living? Why was this ‘piddling princessy bullshit’ his problem when she ‘set piles of cash on fire’ every single month for ‘no damn good reason’? When one didn’t understand something said, they took a break to mock each other’s accents. Those were the light fights that ended in better-natured laughter.”

“On the worst occasion, they had stomped upstairs together, Leonor nearly knocking him down on the way, to begin an inventory of ‘useless junk no one cares about.’ Later, they both wept when she returned to the scene and started fretting over his broken records and the gaping holes in her canvases. They exchanged apologies and made promises, including the charming ‘pinky swears’ whose foreign absurdity easily cracked her scowl with laughter. If nothing else, their hard and fast reconciliations almost made it all worthwhile—or, that was the delirious conclusion Leonor’s mind would drift toward before she heard a familiar echo in her memory. Renzo had his own unpleasant cacophony of recollections. They locked their fingers, stifled any leftover giggles, and promised, among other things, to remember that their innocent, curious, impressionable child deserved better memories.”

He has so much, Nora. I wish you could see that. I do. But, I want him to have everything.

You don't think I do? I think … You know better than that. Hilarious. It’d sure as shit be easier if that was true.

—So, maybe, I’m being unrealistic. What? Why? I can’t have it only my way. If not “only,” then—No, I understand. I should adapt. I have a perfect life with everything I could want, but it’s not what I thought my life would be like, so I find reasons to be unhappy. With me? It’s not. It’s … What you represent. [Whistles] Really? Wow. Brutal. Not like that! Just … We would be so good, if we were one person. Yeah? Yes. But I want so much. I shouldn’t. And, I won’t give anything up. Neither will I. But, you have, though. And so have you.

Money problems destroy people—marriages, families, and—Yes, I know, so I—Shh. Let me finish. We do not have money problems, Leonor. You know when I realized that was behind me? No… When I had time to sit around and worry about my problems. If you are really, truly fucked in life, you can’t afford to whine and wallow. Wallow? Yeah. Like… You know, a pig. Oh, what? No, no. How disgusting. I wouldn’t ever—No, I meant—never mind. You get me? Yes. We have to be one person, in a way. I didn’t let you do anything, but I kinda did, so all of these growing pains are my responsibility. That’s funny. No, that can’t be true. I’m not the baby here. You’re not overreacting, I swear to God. You had a whole world at your beck and call. And now? Helluva a downgrade. Just me. No: us. Us.

So, what, I don’t have to make a budget now? No cuts? [Scoffs] No, you need to do some math—get a platinum calculator or something, for fuck’s sake. [Laughs] Really, do you know how much money you blow? So do you. Not like you. Oh, my things are silly and yours are good, practical purchases? Is that it? Do you know how many shoes you’ve gotten, just this month? Shoes are practical. You can’t play a dozen guitars differently; it’s just toys. What? What? The hell … Do we gotta rethink this “us” thing already? [Leonor chuckles]

RENZO | It was those fuckers. Parasites, a whole hive waiting on us. LEONOR | They’re doing their jobs. We do ours. Symbiotic, actually. RENZO | Uh huh. What I was saying is, I messed up. Simple as that. LEONOR | You did mess up. RENZO | [Chuckles] Ah—That’s a freebie. I’m all out of mea culpas now. LEONOR | You love to apologize to me. RENZO | We skip the handshake line, we can go do that instead.

RENZO | Would you believe that back there was being nice? LEONOR | [Snorts] No, of course not. RENZO | Good, since I wasn’t. I’ll try next time—play ball, all that shit.

LEONOR | You promise? A pinky swear? On Gael and Lili? RENZO | Hell no! [Laughter]

#your honor this kind of toxicity is healthful actually #like gwyneth paltrow or raw milk #so many thoughts #mainly that the black and blue is unexplained #but like. if that's how he talks to people he LIKES ...#lmao self explanatory actually #renzo canceled for the 3rd (?) time #at least it's not for saying Pussy (derogatory) this time #so much face-holding with them #in every post #what does it Mean ...

68 notes · View notes

typewritingyip · 3 months ago

Text

The Arcturus Missions

Part Twenty - Missions

Part Nineteen

———

Initially from an outside perspective, one might think that every country was rapidly ready to work together after the initial invasion of Earth. Those early days of 1984 certainly felt like the start of something changing. Dozens of events happened before September 17th that year.

83 people were killed in a mine explosion in Japan, the Los Angeles Raiders won the Super Bowl, Apple launch the Macintosh computer, the first untethered spacewalk happens from the space shuttle, US troops pull out of Beirut, a national drinking age is set in the United States, the Olympic Games open in Los Angeles while the Soviet Union boycotts, multiple booms are set off in multiple airports during the year, and NASA space shuttle Discovery takes its maiden flight.

Even the days around the initial sightings the world still turns; Australia abolishes the death penalty on September 5th, genetic fingerprinting is developed on September 10th, Prince Harry is born September 15th, the US Embassy in Beirut is bombed September 20th, and October 12th has an assassination attempt on British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher.

Just because the world was under attack by an entirely foreign enemy didn’t mean that everyone was ready to work together.

Japan, the United States, the USSR, Ireland, and China were the first five countries to have mech suits ready for deployment and they all were entirely different. Japan had redesigned theirs from the base suit under production to resemble familiar animation from the country's entertainment industry, very colorful and reassuring to their public. The United States initially had very militaristic designs, using majority military contractors to build the suits but painted similarly to war planes of different eras. In the USSR, they also were very militaristic but unlike the US kept coloring to a minimum, they used the citizens of the outer parts of the USSR to build the suits. Ireland wanted to quickly join the game, they quickly started to repurpose the disrepaired oil rigs from the North Sea. Lastly, China effectively was able to contract certain works from other countries to assist them in their manufacturing of suits, mostly from the USSR.

The world kept spinning even while under attack, but for most of the first attacks it was remaining in either country sanctioned waters or off the coasts of major cities. With the Cold War going on, each country was on its own unless it had a major ally with suits.

—

Sunstreaker sat at the window, frowning out at the glowing city, fidgeting with his hands. Breakdown and Sideswipe were asleep but Jazz was pacing nearby, “Do you think the meeting would be this long?” Already shaking his head, Jazz sighed, “Not for Hound and a few others. Command will still be in the meeting but not one Hound could hear.” Sunny’s fist hit the window and he stood, “Then where the hell is he? Do you think he could have crashed already?” Jazz winced and absently rubbed at his implants, “I don’t think the crash would happen this soon, no.”

The Crash (verb): the overtaxing and overuse of a mech suit to the point of biological deterioration.

He looked back out the window, “Then where the hell is he?” Jazz sighed a bit, finally sitting down, “He’s probably talking with other mechs from the meeting. If half the people I know were there then it’s entirely possible the poor man is stuck in a conversation with Tracks.” The look Sunstreaker gave Jazz had the man lifting his hands, “We’d have gotten an alert if anything really bad happened. Sunny, Hound is fine. You don’t have to worry.” Raking his hands through his hair, the curls stand on ends and Sunstreaker shakes his head, “He’s the only one with experience commanding a group like us, I mean Jazz, if something were to happen to him it would either be you leading us or Breakdown and he’s down for two weeks with a concussion.” Nodding slowly, Jazz sighs, “I’m sure he’s just at command asking far to many questions, look, once Prowler gets back we’ll have an idea of what’s going on.” Sunstreaker turned back to the window, lightly scratching at his implants, Jazz scowled, “Don’t mess with your hardware so much, we don’t have a medic out here and it’s a pain to try and salvage.” Jazz’s own tech was older than Sunstreakers’ and betting integrated.

That was one thing about Sunstreaker, his tech matched his brothers exactly but it had taken him longer to integrate it, and the skin around the hardware was always a little red. Even after passing compatibility testing, the body preferred to reject the hardware whenever it could, a person who didn’t have the strongest bond with their tech would deal with a lot more of the compatability side-effects, such as nightmares. If it wasn’t for Sideswipe, Sunstreaker would have never been a pilot and would currently be sitting in a jail cell back on Earth probably still awaiting trial.

Jazz moves over and rests a hand on his shoulder, “Hound wont have crashed if he is just starting to experience overuse symptoms. And even if he did, the mechs here in Iacon wouldn’t have just left him on the street.” The door pinged behind them and Sunstreaker looked over, deflating at the sight of Prowl whose face was staring intently at a data-pad, but another mech came in behind him, staring around in bewilderment, “Wow,” Bluestreak’s hand reached out to touch one of the suits just as Prowl’s hand smacked his, “Don’t touch their suits, the humans are probably asleep.” He glances up and pauses, staring at Jazz and Sunstreaker, “Or not.” Jazz was grinning, but Sunstreaker dove for his helmet, cringing at the smell as he pulled it on and started to adjust settings. Waving an arm, Jazz is able to speak up first, “Hey, welcome home!” Bluestreak was grinning, walking over as Sunstreaker finally gets his helmet to pipe in the translations, sighing as they feed him both audio and captions on the visor.

Mecha are able to cross the room in only a few strides, generally Cybertronians’ are slightly smaller than the average suit but they move just as quickly, next thing Sunstreaker knew was he was back in Bluestreak’s palm stumbling against it, “Damnit!” Sunstreaker desperately grabs at one of Bluestreak’s servos before Prowl moves over just as quickly, “Bluestreak, do not pick up any humans.” Sunstreaker just manages to get the microphone in his helmet on, a small speaker opening up on the side, “Bluestreak, this isn’t funny!” It was as if the room stopped for a moment, Bluestreak was frowning at Sunstreaker and looked to Prowl, “But he is so small and hard to see from far away.” Jazz was struggling not to laugh as Sunstreaker flips him off, “I can understand you now, asshole.” The room shook slightly as Prowl walked over, resting a hand on Bluestreak’s shoulder, “I’d recommend putting the human down before he starts to pull at your plating.” The result was Sunstreaker hitting the window sill surface from a few feet up and groaning, rolling onto his side briefly.

Prowl sighed deeply, “And they are fragile without their armor, like if we were to walk around without our plating, having exposed protoform.” Bluestreak winced and tried to reach out again but stopped, “I, I…” Sunstreaker slowly got back up, rubbing his arm painfully, “I’m alright Blue, but fuck, please be careful.” Jazz had already climbed for the window to Prowl’s open palm, then up his arm to his shoulder, “These guys don’t have the magnets that I do Blue, especially Sunny and Sides, their suits are too new and didn’t need those parts.” He leans back against Prowl, smiling as the mech moves to sit, already pulling out a tablet, “The humans will have to sleep soon, so whatever you wish to talk about I’d recommend doing so now.” They stare a glance before Bluestreak turns to Sunstreaker, offering his hand, “I’ll be careful.” Slowly and carefully, Sunstreaker climbed onto Bluestreak’s palm, sparing a glance towards the window before looking at Blue.

They didn’t go anywhere, Bluestreak just held Sunstreaker a bit closer, “I can hardly see you down there, without your suit.” Sunstreaker rolls his eyes, “That is such bullshit Blue and you know it, you just want to be able to hold an organic.” “Maybe.” They shared a smile, but Bluestreak shook his head, “No, I just, I want to say I was sorry for what happened. I didn’t realize.” Nodding, Sunstreaker fixed his helmet slightly, “That is kind of the point. We know there are some of your kind that don’t particularly like organics like us and even only part organics are seemingly shunned.” He sighed slowly, rubbing at his implants briefly, “Us pilots are very much leaning towards that inbetween.” Bluestreak nodded, keeping his hand still, “Well, I’m glad you’re on our side in this fight, Sunny.” It almost made him feel better, almost.

Looking back out the window, Sunstreaker sighed, “Do you know how the meeting with Hound went?” Bluestreak shrugged and josulted Sunstreaker a bit, “No, not really. I wasn’t in the meeting, why? Has he not come back yet?” Shaking his head, Sunstreaker rubbed at his face, “No and now I’m starting to worry, Hound is the kind of guy to push himself to the limit to protect people, and those people probably would be us.” With a bit of a nod, Bluestreak slowly sets Sunstreaker down, “Why else are you worried?” Glancing back, Sunstreaker stared at Bluestreak, “Cause he’s the only one who can actually lead us, keep us alive, and on mission.” He pauses for a moment, glancing towards the other room, “If he’s not okay and we fail, then I’ll have doomed my own brother to death.” Sideswipe might have made sure Sunstreaker got a place in the pilot program, but Sunstreaker got them on Arcturus One, “Oh.” Blue nodded and crouched to be at eye level with Sunny, “You’ll have to explain that to me at some point, I, I know organics age faster than we do. Sure, we die but not as quickly as organics.” Smiling sadly, Sunny turns back to the window, “I’m a young pilot Blue, I’ve got at least another twenty years in me.” And that made Bluestreak’s spark clench painfully.

—

Everyone was asleep when Hound returned, headache back to a painful degree that even the dimmed visor and diminished audio could no longer help. Mirage had been nice enough to help him back to the building but Hound had insisted on going up himself so as to not disturb the others. The door was even painfully loud when he went in.

The living room was empty, the door to the bedroom shut and the door to their makeshift garden also closed, meaning everyone should be either in bed or at least asleep. Everyone had a preference for where their suit would sit through the night and Hound shuffled as quietly as he could over to his designated space, easing himself to the floor before turning off his assistance suit and visual feed, sighing as he removed the pieces attached to his implants. The areas of his implants throbbed painfully. It took a lot longer than normal to get out of the mobility suit, wincing at every pinched connection, Hound knew this was the signs of overuse but hadn’t expected them yet. Though to be fair with himself, he’d never piloted a mech this long and consistently, ever.

Easing himself out of the piloting chair, he doesn’t even bother with opening the suit, instead shuffling over to the cot he has for missions, pulling off the barrier clothes pilots wear with the assistance suit. It was sticking to his skin both from sweat and blood. It takes another long few minutes to pull on the clothes laid out on the cot before falling onto it face first, trying to relieve the stress on his implants, pressing his face into his pillow Hound moaned painfully. Headaches, body aches, implant irritation; were all the first stage of overuse symptoms and they’d only get worse until the body adapted to the amount of use. Adapt or die.

Hound was laying face first on the cot, hands resting over the implants on the back of his head and sighed slowly, it was dark and comfortably warm. His head was pounding and it felt like his body had been hit by a bus, he was stiff and just wanted to sleep. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to get to sleep.

—

Staying asleep however was not in the cards for him, as only a few hours later something was hitting the chest of his suit. Hound groaned and dragged his hands over his head before getting up, moving over to the suit release and opening the front of the suit. Squinting against the flood of light, Hound kept a hand on his head, “Morning,” his voice was gruff with sleep and Sunstreaker was glaring, “What the hell.” Sighing deeply, he comes out of the suit and nearly falls, “God, damnit..” he sighs and looks back to Sunstreaker, “Yes?” “Where were you? What the hell happened at that meeting? Prowl wouldn’t say anything.” Sighing deeply, Hound rubs his face, “There is a bar in Iacon that plays music from earth.” That quickly dropped Sunstreaker’s sour expression, shifting to one of shock, “What?” Nodding, Hound rubs at his implants next, his hands came away with dried blood and he scowled, “There is a bar somewhere in Iacon that picked up on radio signals from Earth, they put them through some sort of mechanism to clear up the audio.” Stepping around Sunstreaker, Hound starts towards the bathroom, rubbing his hands on his pants, “It’s from thirty years ago, but still.” Sunstreaker shakes his head a bit, “So it’s the best hits of the eighties?” Giving a so-so gesture, Hound shrugs, “Sort of.” He goes into the bathroom, the door closing and locking behind him.

Sunstreaker scowled again, “That doesn’t explain what happened at the meeting!” His fist collides with the door before he turns away, heading over to where Sideswipe was setting up breakfast, he glances up as his brother approaches, “That sounded like a fun conversation.” Huffing, Sunstreaker walked over and picked up one of the bowls, scowling down at the fluorescent contents, “What is this?” Sideswipe was heating the fluorescent noodle like substance and shrugs a bit, “Not a clue, but Jazz made it for me before the last mission and it’s pretty decent. Just kinda tastes like potatoes.” Nodding a bit, Sunstreaker sits and starts to eat, shaking his head a bit, “I can’t believe him, the guy looks half dead.” Sideswipe hums, “Let the old men be old men, come on Sunny, just relax about it.” Scowling, he starts to shake his head, “I can’t relax about it cause you don’t give a fuck.” Sideswipe was fast, but Sunstreaker was faster, just dodging the bowl full of hot food.

Hound came back out of the bathroom to chaos, which he didn’t appreciate. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were on the floor, shoving at each others faces, Prowl was standing to the side with Jazz perched on his shoulder like a pirate, Breakdown was frowning down at the twins from the table and Bluestreak had appeared from god knows where. Rubbing his face for a moment, Hound takes a breath, “What the hell are the two of you doing!” Both twins shot up and pointed at each other, “he started it!” They shouted in chorus and Hound started towards them, “I don’t care who the hell started it, it’s over now. Get your helmets on, we aren’t leaving anyone out of this conversation.” His head went back to pounding, the shower having relieved it for hardly a moment. Glancing towards Breakdown, he nodded slightly as he too was giving signs of a headache. It took a moment for them all to get to their suits and get their helmets on, Hound wincing as it connects and Breakdown doing the same.

It was likely that his signs of overuse would be exacerbated with the concussion, Hound hoped silently that he’d follow the two weeks of rest order.

“So, do you all need those helmets to understand us?” Bluestreak bends down towards Sunstreaker, offering a hand carefully even as Sideswipe kicked at his wrist, “Don’t fucking touch him.” “Stop arguing, now!” Hound’s voice was loud but slightly strained, climbing up to the table. Everyone fell silent, Bluestreak helping Sunstreaker to the table, Prowl lowering Jazz to the surface and helping Breakdown up before Sideswipe, stepping back slightly to take a seat. Sighing, Hound rubbed his face a bit, swearing, “Fuck, my head is killing me and your arguing is not helping.” Everyone stayed quiet as he slowly sat down, “Firstly, as I briefly mentioned to Sunstreaker earlier this morning. Yesterday, Mirage saw that I was struggling with a migraine and brought me somewhere quiet and dark to rest for a little while. After that, I found out that the specific bar he took me to clears up intergalactic radio waves for entertainment.” he sighs a bit, smiling some, “They were playing music from Earth.” The reaction all happened at the same time, Jazz shouted, Sunstreaker grins, Sideswipe practically jumped for joy and Breakdown smiled, “From when?” Breakdown’s voice was quiet but distinct, “From about thirty years ago, they were playing a radio station out of Los Angeles.” Sunstreaker paused and nodded slowly, “We really are thirty lightyears from home.” There was a weight that settled over them, Jazz nodded slowly, “But we're alive.”

Hound nodded, adjusting his visor for a second, “We are and were out here for a reason, so that does bring up what was discussed in my meeting with command yesterday.” Jazz shifted a bit, “Hound, are you sure now is the best time to discuss this?” Nodding a bit, he pushes off the ground, “You all deserve to know what plans have been made.” Sunstreaker reaches out and holds his arm a bit, “It can wait till after you’ve eaten and taken something for your headache.” Shaking his head, Hound holds up a hand, “We’ve all got new assignments, separate from each other.” The silence would have been welcoming were it not so compressing, “What?” Sideswipe was slack-jawed, “The hell do you mean?” “I mean, we all are getting new assignments with different commanders for our safety and for the sake of Cybertron.” Sighing slowly, Sunstreaker let go of Hound, “Is this the cause of the overuse or cause of me being caught?” Hound shook his head, “It’s neither, we need to be at our best and the five of us fighting together is not it.” “That’s such bullshit, you’re having us separated because of Sunny.” Sideswipe moves over and shoves Hound, who shoves his back, “This isn’t about that! This is about keeping all of us alive and from killing each other, damnit!” Hound almost tore off his helmet just to throw it.

Instead he kicked one of their empty bowls across the room before turning on Sideswipe, “We aren’t made for following one pilot's orders and I sure as hell wasn’t made to be a commander 24/7, yet that is where we were currently standing.” He spreads his arms wide, “It’s only for three months, to see which works better. Sides, you and Sunny won’t be far from each other, your commanders are deployed together.” He holds up a hand, turning, “Jazz, you will be returning to your previous post under Prowl, it was recommended.” Jazz glanced back to Prowl with a smirk, “I’m sure it was.” Hound’s face almost burned, that look was certainly more than just a friendly one before he turned to Breakdown, “You’re still on rest for two weeks, but once that’s done, you will be under Megatron’s command with me, technically but we won’t be stationed together.” The twins were both glaring and Breakdown nodded a bit, Jazz almost looked lost in thought, “It’s only three months. If this doesn’t work out then we return to what we’ve been doing.” Sideswipe scoffs, “Oh yeah, like that’s been so great. Bluestreak trying to kill Sunny, you suffering from overuse, and Breakdown down and out with a concussion. Face it, you're in over your head.” Hound looked at him, clenching his jaw before looking at Sunstreaker, “You will be working under Ironhide with Bluestreak and a few people from the Primesgaurd. I hope while you’re there you learn to be more intelligent than your brother.” Sunstreaker winced as Sideswipe turned to gawk at Hound and started towards him, “Hound,” “Sideswipe, you’ll be working under Elita-One, it’s about time you came to understand the chain of command cause this shit ain’t cute.” He steps forward, pointing at him, “If this doesn’t cool your head, then you’ll be grounded and your mech will join the Odyssey in storage. Am I clear?” Sides mouth open and closed silent before Hound nodded and turned away, heading for the ladder, “I am going to take the rest of the day off to get rest, I suggest you all do the same, overuse is coming for us all and it’s coming fast.” He slides down the ladder easily.

—

“What the hell did I do to deserve that?” Sideswipe was pouting, scowling towards Hound’s mech which had been closed off for hours now. Jazz had left to go into Iacon with Bluestreak and Prowl, Breakdown had returned to rest as well, leaving the twins sat together on the window sill, staring out at the shining city, “I don’t know Sides, what could you have done to deserve that? Be serious, you shoved and insulted our commander.” Sunstreaker sighed, eating a protein bar and frowning down at it, “Of course he’s not going to put a lot of trust into you now.” Sideswipe scoffed and went back to repainting his assistance suit, “Who asked you?” Sunstreaker gave him a look and leaned back, “I don’t know and honestly, you’re being a bit of a dick right now.” He moves over and starts down the ladder, “I’m going to get some rest, I’d suggest you do the same. It helps with the side effects of overuse.” “I’m not suffering from overuse. I’m not the old man.” Sunstreaker stared at Sideswipe, at his twin, “Sides, we all are showing symptoms, you might want to check your implants, your bleeding again.” His feet hit the floor and he starts walking towards the bedroom, “That and being a bigger asshole than after the Bermuda mission.” “Fuck you.” Shrugging slightly, Sunstreaker went into the bedroom to get some rest.

Sideswipe reached up and touched at his implants, which were sticky with fresh blood and he sighed deeply, heightening irritability and aggression, one of the many stages of overuse. It really was coming for them all and now they’d be spread thin at best, separated from each other. Sideswipe through the sealed paint can across the room. He needed a drink but the first batch wouldn’t be ready for ages. He swore and laid back, staring out at Iacon.

———

A/N

Wow, that took a while for me to actually be able to sit down and write this. I probably won’t post another part till the New Year but we will see.

I want to thank you all for all your support and love, it has meant a lot to me. I can’t believe that we’re 20 parts into this crazy journey and it’s only just starting.

Tags!

@lunarlei68 @whirlywhirlygig @loop-hole-319 @pixillandjester @alek-the-witch @not-a-moose-in-disguise @goddessofwind8water @neurologicalglitch @dersereblogger @pixel-transformers @mrcrayonofdoom @wireplaces @twilightfreefaller @original-blog-name-2 @devilangel657 @robbin-u @childofprimus @miniartistme @starwold @tea-enthusiasm @valeexpris606 @celticdoggo @bird599 @agentsquirrelsgotrobots @aquaioart @dimencreasatlas @thatwandercat @artdagz @seisha974 @starscreamloverfr @halenhusky309 @leethepiper @cat-cassette @blue-wrens @sirassban @astridkolch @cosmique-oddity @garbageenthusiast @osqindaxend @xervias @azulabutterfly @fryseem @spring-mc

And once again thank you to @keferon for this amazing AU! 💜

#transformers #tf mecha universe #mech pilot jazz au #the arcturus missions #maccadam #hound #breakdown #sunstreaker #sideswipe #prowl #jazz #bluestreak

100 notes · View notes