#it was years later one of my parents was recounting this story and I was like..........pardon :)?

[vimbry]

sometimes I'm like, I think as far as kids go I was a fairly normal one, honestly. kids can be quirky like that. and then I remember the fact that my school once had a child psychologist who'd been brought in for some other boy watch me one day without my parents' knowledge or permission. I guess he was already in the class and they were like, "actually can we get a twofer deal on this one as well".

[arcane-vagabond]

By Its Cover: Prologue

By Its Cover: Prologue

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Reader (Last Name: Sinclair)

Summary: The frivolity of high society has never much interested in you. You preferred to spend your time reading, something your sisters couldn't fathom as they spent their time shopping the latest dress styles. The youngest of five children and the fourth daughter, not much was expected of you. You knew you might be married one day, but you hoped beyond hope that it would be to someone that might understand your intellectual pursuits. You begin exchanging letters with a mysterious stranger, and what's more, your older brother's rakish best friend seems to find himself in your path more and more as the season goes on. What's a girl to do? (Regency!AU)

Content Warning: Historical inaccuracies, Regency period, Period related drama, Talks of judgement, Period typical sexism, Talks of marriage, Death of a parent, Talks of making a debut, Reader's feelings are hurt, light angst, some fluff. I think that's it, but let me know if I missed something!

Word Count: 1.6k

Series Masterlist || Moodboard

Winter gave way to spring as quickly as one rumor gave way to another. Public opinion changed as quickly as the seasons, as far as you were concerned. Your whole life was spent in the thralls of high society, your entire life scrutinized by the judgmental lords and ladies of the Island before you could even walk or talk.

You had earned your reputation as a rather odd girl fairly young not quite seven years. Where the other girls were interested in dolls and hair ribbons, you found yourself enraptured by the world around you. On more than one occasion, you received a tongue lashing from your nanny as you tracked mud through the house after one of your many excursions into the garden, your mother heaving a tired sigh as you argued the merits of fresh air and stimulating your endless supply of curiosity.

“My darling,” she’d say pointedly, giving you one of her signature looks that reeked of motherly disapproval and exasperation, “while I find the fresh air and time in the garden as stimulating as the next person, it is unbecoming of a lady, dearest.”

You had recounted the tale to your father later that evening, the older man sitting at his desk with his feet propped up on the top of the wooden surface as he thumbed through a page of one of his many novels.

“I just don’t understand, Papa,” you muttered, your hair hanging from where you sat upside down on the chaise. “Why can Will go about doing as he pleases while I am to be tied down by all of these ridiculous rules?”

Your father had merely chuckled, marking his page before setting his book down to look at you.

“My darling Bug,” he smiled, taking his feet down and opening his arms wide to you. “Come here.”

You obeyed, righting yourself on the couch before standing to walk over to him. Bug had been bestowed upon you as your moniker well before you could remember. Your father had said that you earned the nickname once you were old enough to crawl all over the place, getting into things that you most decidedly shouldn’t. Your siblings had said it was because you were a pest.

Your father grasped your upper arms gently, the smile on his face as affectionate as always.

“William doesn’t get to do as he pleases,” he explained, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as you pouted at him. “He will one day be lord earl of this estate, and as such he will take on many duties that will prevent him from doing a great deal of things. Indeed, he will take on many things that will see him as constrained as you.”

“I don’t believe you,” you grumbled, scowling up at him. Your father tilted his head back with a booming laugh, patting your head before placing a gentle kiss to your forehead.

“Nevermind all of that now, my little Lady Bug,” he hummed. “I’ve found a new story for you, would you like to read it?”

Your father was a fixture in your life, encouraging your love of learning perhaps more than he should have given the expectations set forth by society for you. Your mother saw no problem with your need for intellectual pursuits, but often grew exasperated at your clear lack of regard for decorum and stereotypical ladylike hobbies. Your elder sisters were the pinnacle of what proper ladies should look like in society, and you often found yourself being compared to them, much to your chagrin.

North Island, or the Island for short, was the nickname given to the group of nobles and upperclass that made up the elite, wealthy families that dictated the standards of polite society - the society you had the misfortune of being born into along with your elder siblings.

Your brother, William, was the pride of your family. He was a handsome, strong man that commanded the room with his very presence. He was jovial, charismatic, and intelligent by all accounts, and very popular amongst the other ladies of the Island.

Lydia was the second eldest after William, and was the the spitting image of your mother, with beautiful features that left all the men on the Island giving her longing looks. It was the Earl Reuben Fitch that won her hand in the end only seven seasons ago, and now they visited once in a while with their three children in tow.

Theodosia, or Theo for short, was the second eldest daughter, having entered into society only one year after Lydia, she was the prize to be won with her charming and elegant demeanor. Not quite as beautiful as Lydia, she made up for it with her wit, having won the affection of a viscount that same year.

Georgiana, or Georgie as your family was prone to call her, was only a year older than you and had made her debut the year prior. She had not settled for any of the men of the Island the year prior, setting her sights high and determining that the best had yet to come.

You rounded out the lot as the youngest, the strange, little sister that no one knew what to do with more often than not. The ladies of the Island often remarked that your head was too full of ideals, unsuitable for a lady of your noble family, and they lamented how your mother and father must have grown lax in their child rearing when it came to you. Or perhaps you were a hopeless cause. The reason varied day to day it seemed.

You were quite content with how your life was playing out. You had your books, the garden, and your dearest friend, Natasha Trace. Natasha, or Nat, was about a year older than yourself, having made her debut the same year as Georgiana.

“I’ll be happy once you make your debut,” she had said to you one night. “I won’t feel so alone at all the balls then.”

You had frowned at her words, the very thought of entering society growing less and less appealing by the day.

“Why must I debut?” You had asked your mother not too long after. “I’m the fourth daughter of an earl. Surely it is not that important that I marry.”

“Dearest,” your mother had sighed, setting her needlework down to look at you, “marriage is not all work. As the fourth daughter, you have more freedom to marry whom you would like. Your father would have wanted you to marry.”

“Father would have wanted me to do what made me happy,” you had muttered, turning to leave the room before she could respond.

Your father had passed years prior when you were only eight, and his memory still haunted the halls of the manner. William had taken up his title as earl, seeing to the estate with the help of your mother until he was capable of doing things on his own. Ten years your senior, he had done his best to fill in the holes your father’s absence had left behind, though he still needed reminding that he was, in fact, not your father.

“You’ll be making your debut this year,” he reminded you, scribbling away in the family ledger, casting you a spare glance as you scowled down at him.

“Please don’t make that face,” he sighed, setting his quill down to give you his undivided attention. “And please don’t make this more difficult than need be. Every young lady makes her debut at some point or another.”

“Why must I debut?” You frowned, your lips quickly forming into a smirk as a thought struck you. “Can I not live out my days on my own with you to support me?”

“You may not,” Williams replied flatly. “Bug, I know it can be nerve wrecking-”

“You have no idea what it’s like,” you interjected.

“But, it’s a part of growing up. You’ll find a husband who will make you reasonably happy and live out your days with him,” he finished. You scoffed, rolling your eyes as you clasped your hands together.

“William,” you began, “who would want me? The whole Island has deemed me strange, the black sheep of our family. You would really put me through this embarrassment for the sake of tradition?”

“I think you’ll find yourself surprised at who may want you,” William countered. “Many men on the Island are in need of a wife, and some may be willing to settle for someone of your nature given the right circumstances.”

A beat passed between you two, your heart stalling in your chest at his words.

“Settle?” You laughed quietly, but there was no humor to be found in your tone. “I am something to be settled for then?”

You hated how small you sounded in that moment. Of course, you didn’t care for what others thought of you. No, you were above all of that. Still, the thought that your brother saw you as some secondhand prize, something no one would seek out, hurt, and you willed the stinging tears behind your eyes to go away as you schooled your features.

William cursed under his breath, moving to stand, his face apologetic as he rounded the desk.

“Bug, that’s not what I meant-”

“No,” you snapped, sniffly slightly as you fought to compose yourself. “You’ve said quite enough already, brother. You’ve made perfectly clear where I stand as it is.”

He moved to say something, but you waved him off, already turning to leave the study.

“You’re busy,” you said flatly, “I’ll leave you to your business.”

William called out your name, but you ignored him, walking briskly down the hall and to the solace of your family’s library.

If you were something to be settled for, then you would at least make the most of what little freedom you had left.

A/N: Ahhhh!! The long awaited, much requested Regency!AU is finally here! Here's our first taste of Bug and Jake, so what do we think? As always, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated. If you would like to receive updates on when I post, please go follow my sideblog (@arcanevagabond-library) and turn on post notifications! My work is cross posted on AO3 under the username sailor_aviator. Until next time!

[diorgirl444]

to all the greasers i’ve loved before - chapter 1.

warnings: bad writing (my first time writing a multiple part fic ), don’t let the picture of dallas fool you he barely features in this chapter i’m afraid, fem! curtis reader though it is never specified whether the reader is a bio daughter or adopted and so can be read as either, doesn’t follow book canon, 1060 words <3

you had always loved love. your parents were more than happy to recount stories of how you would wander around the house dressed in your nightdress with the lace curtain over your hair clutching onto a small posy of daisies and dandelions. you had called it playing weddings and it was your all-time favourite game.

this obsession with love trickled into other things with most of the cookies you baked being heart-shaped or being the only person to still give everyone, even the weird kids handmade valentines after it was deemed uncool at about thirteen. yes, you loved love but there was an important differentiation, you loved the idea of it. so you supposed it was natural that you began to write love letters the way some people wrote diary entries.

you kept them in a teal silk hatbox of your mothers which had long since lacked the hat intended to be in it. there was one letter for every boy you had liked at one time - five in total. Bryon from volunteering at the hospital, Johnny from freshman homecoming, Dallas from two summers ago, Randy from Model Un and Keith since forever. you supposed your letters were less i love you love letters and more goodbye love letters. they were a way of accepting the crush whilst also allowing yourself to let go and move on. that you could sing to the Ronettes and not be singing about him, that you could buy milkshakes at the diner and not wonder which flavour he’d choose. the letters set you free - at least they were supposed to…

Keith Jacobs was a friend of your brothers but you’d always been a bit in love with him. his mother moved to Tulsa all alone with one son and a baby girl just across the street from you and so your parents, lovely people that they were invited the Jacobs round for a fried chicken dinner. you made a peach cobbler for dessert and when Keith asked for seconds - you glowed with pride. by the time he’d finished his third helping you’d already decided what shade of white your wedding dress would be and from that day he was practically always at your house. there was time when it was the four of you, Daryl, Soda, Pony and Keith but then your parents died and it all changed.

Daryl had to grow up and then the other three all started hanging out later and getting into fights which was fine because you had Angela and Sylvia. well, you had Sylvia till the summer before high school. then suddenly over that summer, she started smoking cheap cigarettes and wearing tight jeans where you were still happy to read a silly romance novel and bake cookies. angie was more like Sylvia really but she was like a street dog who you’d given a treat to - loyal to a fault and kept coming back.

which leads you to where you are now, the last day before junior year and the house is packed. you and Daryl were determined to keep up the tradition of home-cooked meals, mainly for Ponyboy but if you were honest with yourself sometimes as you mashed the potatoes with the radio turned up you would close your eyes and pretend your parents were slow dancing behind you. it turned out that most of your brother's friends didn’t normally eat well so they would often come round too. privately you wish they wouldn’t, they were too loud to you with no manners and they didn’t wash their hands before they ate. but for Ponyboy, the baby of the family you put up with it. You break out of these thoughts when Two-bit speaks, because as you hate to remember he’s Two-bit now not Keith anymore.

“guess who scored themselves a girlfriend”

You choke on your broccoli as all the boys cheer and clap him on the back. your ears ring and you feel like you’re gonna be sick. quietly you whisper to Daryl.

“I don’t feel very well. I think it’s my monthlies - I’m gonna go to bed”

he nods ruffling your hair affectionately as if you're still five and not almost seventeen. you don’t mind - that’s Darry’s way - playing dad to you and your brothers.

“g’night kid I’ll bring you some hot cocoa up and one of those hot water bottles wrapped in a towel.”

as you retreat to your bedroom with tears stinging you hear a chorus of “goodnights” and “feel better soon” from all apart from Dallas. despite your pain you still have the energy to roll your eyes, god forbid Winston cares about someone other than himself for once.

once you clasp your box and retreat under the floral quilts that your mom made you finally allow the tears to fall as you reread the letters. you decide tomorrow you’ll draft a new letter for two-bit, an official goodbye to the foolish hope you’ve clung to for so long. You hear the click of the look, and hastily you shove the letters back into the hatbox and wipe any resounding tears. Pony perches on the edge of your bed holding out the hot cocoa and water bottle that Darry had promised you.

“sissy, you okay?”

you bite back a laugh when he calls you that, a name that he called you as a baby that just stuck. then you watch his eyes catch the hatbox with curiosity.

“what’s that?”

clutching the box to your chest you speak.

“nothing just an old hatbox of mom’s that I keep recipes in. I’ve been working on a new strawberry shortcake one.”

you lie easily knowing that since that’s Pony’s favourite dessert it’ll distract him. he grins widely at you and you are reminded how young he is like a stab in the gut.

“promise?”

he says holding his pinky finger out.

“promise baby, I’ll see you in the morning okay?”

standing up you say to him as you press a kiss to his forehead and place the box away in the top shelve of your wardrobe. he’s still at an age where he pretends that stuff grosses him out so he scowls childishly as he leaves the room. you slip into your white cotton nightgown and finally let sleep overtake you. you’ll deal with it all in the morning and yet in that weird stage between sleeping and awake, you swear you hear the door open once more…

hope you like it! xoxo, flo <3

@socgf @heart-shqped-box @jujuheartz13 @r0seb100d @cranberrv @anifever @notagreasernotasoc @honeysmoonn for now i’m just tagging all the people who expressed an interest but if you don’t wanna be tagged or wanna be added let me know <3

[yauchfilms]

big thighs, new jersey ✢ mattias samuelsson (18+)

pairing: mattias samuelsson x fem!reader (childhood friends to lovers)

warnings:  pining. so much pining. fem language (reader is referred to as a woman). cursing. alcohol consumption. reader and mattias are drunk but coherent. super vague religious imagery. oral (f receiving), unprotected p in v, fingering, petnames, praise, enthusiastic consent, cocky mattias but literally who is shocked, begging, so many feelings involved. ever so slight angst.

summary: y/n has been in love with mattias since they first met when they were 8, and they had matching bowl cuts. being his best friend is the hardest job she’s ever been tasked with. 16 years of pure desperation all boils down to one night on the beach. 

word count: 5.2k ... jesus christ

author's note: welcome to what is essentially a year's worth of brainrot, compiled into one fic. i started this concept a year ago with some friends, and now thanks to @pldstattoos, @flashyfucker, and @puck-luck, it is now a tangible piece of literature. based ever so loosely on the song “big thighs, nj” by lowcut connie, amongst other tunes that i will share later. this man just SCREAMS childhood friends to lovers so i had to give my very best to my favorite boy ever. 

it’s late again.

he’s got one arm draped over your shoulders, gesturing wildly to the rest of the group with his can of seltzer, not spilling a single drop. the old, paint-stained sheet you two share has gone cold, matching the feeling of the sand beneath it.

if he remembered you brought that old “seaside heights” sweatshirt you bought back in the heyday of the jersey shore era with you to the beach when you told him you were cold, eyes wide and hopeful, he kept it to himself.

another day spent at the beach with your friends, skitting along the sand, never too far apart from each other. you could feel him on your skin like the humidity. 

it’s been like this since your parents agreed, reluctantly, that you were too old for day camps and you barely got to see mattias anymore during the school year. your mom softened when you mentioned him like she always did. since then, you’d bike to his house in the morning to find him strapping on his rollerblades. you’d make him race you for a few blocks since he insisted on cross-training in the offseason or whatever it was he said to make himself feel like he wasn’t totally slacking off. then you both slowed down, falling into a rhythm about as familiar as your own heartbeat. you’d meet up with friends, skipping through town and letting the breeze off the ocean push you one way or another. and more often than not, it ended around a fire pit — and as you got older — with cans in hands, recounting the day and making half-hearted plans for the next one.

except, now you’re older. old enough that you just finished your first ever real internship, one that led you up to the summer, now leaving you with the stress of finding a real job. but that doesn’t matter right now. what matters right now is the fact that you’re back with your friends, on the beach, recalling those stories from long ago, like how you broke your arm when you were 10 because you insisted to mattias and his older brother, luke, that you could do a cartwheel on the trampoline in your roller skates. it had been his older sister, allie, that called the ambulance, naturally. 

you’re acutely aware that there are a finite number of these days and nights left. mattias is a big-time hockey player now (well, not actually, but to you, he might as well be wayne gretzky), and just like you, he can’t spend his whole life on the beach. but you really wish he could, with you, forever. knowing you have to share him with the world, that’s the part that eats at you. 

you’re also acutely aware of his position on you, his hand skirting just barely along the top of your bikini top, just barely out of reach from where you really wish he’d lay his hands. you wonder if he can feel the goosebumps on your skin from the calm jersey winds. 

mattias’ voice vibrates through your body, its deep, steady buzz keeping you centered. it’s not until you hear angelo let out an almost inhumane noise that triggers the group into a state of hysteria, that you feel a cold splash on your shoulder and the sound of mattias stifling a choked laugh, snapping you out of your thoughts. you glance up at mattias, whose guilt slowly etches onto his face as he drunkenly realizes what he’s done. he didn’t even spill that much, but he knows there’s a good chance you’ll overdramatize for the sake of poking fun at him.

“mattias, how could you!” you widen your eyes again and fling your wrist against your forehead, leaning your back into him as though you’re fainting. you stick to your performance as much as you can, trying to ignore how his muscular frame presses against you, his arms catching you with your quick movements. he’s leaning down over you, rolling his eyes and laughing at you. you smell the scent of mango and alcohol on his breath, his signature summer scent at this point. you could kiss him right now if you wanted; he was close enough to your face. 

you want to chastise him for not being more careful, for not paying attention to his own body. but you know it weighs on him more than anyone else. there are boundaries you know not to cross. 

he lifts up his shirt, just enough to use it as a makeshift towel for the drink he spilled on you. just enough to see his soft, tan skin and the ripple of his muscles that he, for some reason, chooses to hide more often than not. 

“sorry, baby. lemme help you,” he half-whispers, because he’s mattias, a man who can never be truly silent. baby. a nickname he started using on you when you were 15, starting to drink when you went to the cool parents’ house, a nickname that he only really uses on you when you’ve both been under some sort of influence. he knows the effect that it has on you, and you hate that you know that he seems to do it on purpose. he’s so unfair sometimes. 

he uses his free arm to keep you steady, wrapping his arm around your stomach. you can feel his heartbeat against your back, but choose not to focus on it too much. you’re practically in his lap now, being cradled in his arms as you feel the soft material of his shirt swipe down your arm, and back over your shoulder, and just along that same forbidden spot along the hem of your bikini top. it’s killing you at this point. 

“all good?” he asks, causing you to be forced to look him in the eyes again. 

“all good,” you squeak out, your voice barely a whisper, leaning back into him and taking your spot back in his arms.

“sorry again, dude,” he slurs, smoothing down the messy hair on top of your head, and it reminds you that you, too, have plenty of alcohol in your body, and it’s just now starting to catch up. it’s that same consumption of alcohol that would account for why no one has paid attention to either of you for the past 5 minutes, everyone caught up in telling their own drunken tales from the past. 

you go to tell him that you swear it’s okay, when josh loudly —and suddenly— announces his departure from the group, saying something about his early morning tee time with his dad the next day. it was from there that lauren, bri, and anna got up and began making their way back to the house together, arm in arm, giggling about an inside joke that you had been too distracted to participate in. julian and angelo linger for a few minutes longer, arguing with each other and mattias about stuff that doesn’t matter. your eyes feel heavier still. the pair of boys eventually peel off, their yawns becoming hard to ignore. they bid their goodbyes to you and your human pillow, disappearing up the dune and into the house. 

mattias nudges you, and you stir. 

“do you want to head in? it’s, like, 3:45 am,” mattias asks, showing you the time on his phone. his phone background – a photo of the group, his arms, wrapped around your chest, everyone smiling like it was picture day – lights up your face, the sudden brightness causing you to squint. sure enough, the clock reads 3:42 am. you let out a sigh, twisting in his arms so you’re laying with your back to the sheet, between his thighs. he grabs your head on both sides, shaking it slightly, his fingers loosely carding through your hair. you don’t say anything, just staring up at him like he’s a god of some sort. 

“what’s up? talk to me. did i do something?” he looks down at you, a sympathetic look in his eyes mixed with that damn smirk of his. 

“tias,” is all you can manage to get out, your voice barely a whisper. 

“yeah?” his voice suddenly going quieter than normal. this is rare, and it worries you. 

“would you be mad at me if i asked you to kiss me?” you ask, suddenly feeling bold and vulnerable with your loneliness in the moonlight. 

“of course i wouldn’t; am i ever mad when you ask?” he replies, cocking an eyebrow at you. and he was right. you two had made out countless times before, always in private, never escalating past light groping, always leaving you both high and dry, but too scared to ask for more. even at your big ages, you were still stuck in this routine, always running back to each other when the girl mattias tried to fly out bailed on him or the guy you met at the bar ended up giving you a weird vibe. it was normal in some way. like, of course best friends kiss each other. why wouldn’t they?

“you don’t get it, i don’t think,” you dare, the alcohol in your system giving you a strange boost of confidence.

his hands loosen around your head, ever so slowly moving down your neck, over your shoulders, and to that damned spot on your chest. your body reacts to his touch, suddenly hyper-aware of just how cold you are on the beach in nothing but a bathing suit. 

“no, i think i do. let me know if i’m reading this wrong, but i think i get it,” he responds.

you adjust yourself between his legs, your head now laying on his upper thigh. you feel the strong muscles tighten underneath you, causing a chill to run down your spine. looking up at him, your eyes soften, and he leans down again, feeling his breath on your face. the scent of mango white claw still lingers, only slightly less prominent now. you squirm slightly at the feeling of him so close. 

“tell me what you want,” he speaks, low and gravelly. the feeling of it in your eardrums sends a pang straight to your core. 

“what do you think i want?” you tease, wondering if he truly has caught on, or if he’s telling you want you want to hear.

“you want me to fuck you, don’t you?” his words catch you off guard, even though he said exactly what you were hoping for. “you don’t think i haven't felt you squirming in my lap all night? i’m not that dumb, baby.” his voice is barely audible at this point, just enough to get his point across.

all you can do is stare up at him, suddenly unable to form a complete thought, putty in his lap. your breathing grows heavier, and he can’t help but notice. 

“so, what’ll it be?” 

“please, ti.”

he pulls you up into his lap and you straddle him, finding your place settled directly above the bulge in his since-dried board shorts. his hands immediately find their place along your sides, gliding gently up and down from your ribcage to your hips. his fingers linger slightly over the string of your bikini, toying with it, not daring to remove it. he leans down, connecting your lips from where they were parted dumbfoundedly in front of him, as if you had never been in that position with him before. you had, but this was different.

 he moves slowly, as if wanting to take his time with you, not knowing whether or not this would be the first or the only time he would have his way with you. you open your mouth once again, a moan escaping your lips. he takes the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth, licking up into you with desperation. the roll of your hips against him elicits a loud groan from him, now, and you decide that if that was the last thing you ever heard, you would die a happy woman. you can feel his shorts growing tighter underneath your lap, causing you to roll your hips again, slower than the first time. another groan escapes his lips, causing you to stop and look him in the eyes, your hands holding his face tenderly.

“what are you so fucking loud for?” you tease, knowing that the sounds he’s making are turning you on even more, as evident by the wet spot growing on his shorts. 

“sorry, i’ve just been thinking about this moment since we were 16. you don’t know how hard its been to keep my cool around you, y/n. i’ve been so good, so patient. i can’t think of anything i’ve ever wanted more than this,” he says, panting slowly, trying to control his breathing. he seems as if a huge weight has been lifted off of his chest.

you hold back the tears threatening to spill over your waterline. you feel the exact same way, just unsure of how to express it. all you can do is plant a delicate kiss to his lips, letting the moment speak for itself. his hands find that spot of your bikini top, finger rubbing lightly on the freshly tanned skin there. 

“may i, please?” he almost begs, toying with the strap of the thin top, a look of desperation looking up at you with big hazel eyes. 

“of course,” you whisper, a kiss planted to the tip of his nose. 

long, slender fingers make their way down your shoulders to the front of your chest, as he hooks the strap around his fingers, pulling slightly. a gasp escapes his lips as your full chest is exposed, the harsh chill immediately giving you goosebumps, you reaching back to unclasp and remove the rest of it. he sees the way your body reacts to the cold, and he takes your right breast in his large hand, enveloping it in his grasp, and you immediately feel warmer. he kisses you again, more passionate than the last, massaging the flesh in his hand, deft fingers keeping rhythm against your skin. 

he leans back, taking you with him, now fully laying on top of him on the sandy blanket. his hands trail to your ass, the lack of his hand on your chest not too significant due to the lack of space between your bodies now. 

the kiss never breaks, your hips rolling deep into him, the feeling of his hardness underneath you growing almost unbearable. 

“ti, i need you to touch me please,” you sigh, pulling away. 

all he can do is look up at you, his face slack as he furiously nods his head. 

his hand trails down your ass, following the hem of your bikini bottoms, his fingers tracing the fabric down to your core. he moves the fabric to the side, sliding his fingers through your folds with a loud gasp. 

“oh my god, so fucking wet,” he groans into your shoulder, you kissing up and down his neck, nibbling just below his ear. 

“just for you, only you,” you whisper in his ear, causing his hips to buck up at you. “slow down,” you warn, not wanting to waste this moment. 

he begins rubbing down on your clit, and now it’s your turn to moan. he glides his middle finger through your wetness a few more times before slowly teasing your entrance with the pad of his finger. you let out a whimper, signaling that he can go ahead. he slides his finger into your cunt, and you immediately feel the stretch of his thick digit.

“can you take another, baby?” he asks, not necessarily waiting for permission before adding a second finger. the stretch was almost unbearable, and he could feel you react to it so viscerally while he scissored his fingers slowly in and out.

“just wait till you take my cock,” he growls, his confidence suddenly taking over. 

“now, please,” you whine, desperate for what you’d dreamt about since you were a horny teenager fantasizing about his length in math class. 

“what happened to patience, baby?” he questioned, fingers never losing pace in your cunt. “i wanna taste you; are you gonna let me do that, huh?” 

all you could seem to muster out was a weak “mhm”; his fingers already overwhelming you. 

he removes his fingers, eliciting a wince from you. turning you over in his arms, he begins kissing your face, barely avoiding your lips, down your chin, to your neck, stopping right by your ear.

“i know baby, i know, i’m gonna take such good care of you, don’t you worry, baby,” his voice almost primitive. 

he returns to his path down your neck, leaving marks that you’re sure your friends will see in the morning. he takes his time, agonizingly slow, and you wonder how he hasn’t come in his shorts yet with how patient he’s being. he gets to your chest, placing chaste kisses across it, until he reaches your left breast. he takes your nipple in his mouth, rolling his tongue, causing you to arch up into him. he doesn’t say anything, simply opting to hum into your skin, the sensation driving you crazy. he comes off with a pop, his hand quickly replacing his mouth as he makes his way over to the other side.

you run your fingers through his hair, the hair that he has yet to ruin with his midsummer chop. you twist the longer locks between your fingers, needing some sort of stimulation. your hands trail down his back, tugging at the collar of his t-shirt, wondering why it’s even still on in the first place, suddenly feeling overexposed. 

“take this off, now,” you demand, your voice sounding stricter than you intended. he stops, leaning up on his knees to look down at the beautiful sight below him. 

“yes, ma’am,” he groans, drawing out each word. if he hadn’t had you pinned down beneath him, you probably would arched up into him. he reaches behind him, yanking the top over his head in one fell swoop, exposing his soft, tan chest, the few hairs left at the top near the base of his neck curling up neatly. 

“stop starin’, baby,” he teases, knowing exactly what you’re thinking, although both of you refuse to acknowledge it; something to tease him about at a different time. 

he leans back down towards you, placing a soft kiss to your lips, eliciting a giggle from you, which makes him pull back, that signature goofy grin of his plastered across his face. 

“you ready?” he asks, making sure you two are on the same page, although he knows he doesn't have to ask.

a soft “please” escapes your lips, reverberating off of his own, and he begins making his way down your body, starting with your neck, softly nibbling at the skin there. he trails down your shoulder, kissing the newly-formed freckles that have appeared from the past few days of sunshine, then, obviously stopping to spend a quick second alone with your tits. from there he makes it to your stomach, causing your breath to hitch sharply. he pulls back, quickly placing another peck to your lips, as if to say “it's okay”.

he regains his place at your navel, using his hands to pry your legs apart for him. despite your sudden shyness, you oblige immediately, and he lets out a guttural groan at the view of the wet spot prominently featured on your bikini bottoms. 

“i need these off, now,” he demands, this time, tugging at the strings of your bikini, undoing the ties on your hips, patting the flesh of your hip to lift up for him. you oblige, and your bottoms are joined with your top in the sand. 

mattias ducks back down, face fully aligned with your cunt. his finger once again finds its place between your folds, not quite doing anything, but rather scoping out just how wet you truly are. another groan escapes him, mixing with the moan that escapes you, harmonizing together into what you could only describe as a masterpiece. his groan echoes off of you, feeling the warm breath of him. 

you look down at him, and he looks up to meet your eyes. while never breaking eye contact, he allows a string of spit to fall down his tongue and into your folds, making your legs twitch, embarrassingly though, because his tongue had yet to make contact.

you think he’s about to touch you again, when you suddenly feel the cooling sensation of his mouth on you, catching you off guard. his tongue circles your clit, much like how he had your nipple in his mouth earlier, causing you to arch your back into his face, the feeling of just 3 days worth of stubble stinging your thighs. he wraps his arms around your upper thighs, holding you in place. 

“gotta be still baby; taste so fucking good. i love this pussy,” he coos, his warm breath once again driving you mad. 

you giggle, not out of malice, but because you often found yourself alone at night, imagining him saying similar things to you, your own hand never seeming to do the trick. you wonder if he’s ever done the same, even though you’re pretty sure you know the answer. 

you thought your reaction would’ve deterred him, but shockingly, it only seemed to motivate him more, picking up his speed, practically making out with your core. his nose, long and slender, hits your clit, sending shockwaves through you, your legs growing shakier with each kitten lick. 

“mattias, i’m close,” your words croak out; you can barely think straight. 

“you’re doin’ so good for me,” he pants, trying to stifle the moans that dare to escape his lips. “you got it, baby, so fuckin’ good.” 

his words, mixed with his motions, are enough to send you over the edge. he continues his movements with his tongue on your clit, electing to tease your hole with his finger. the sensation is too much, and you try your best to keep your screams in, knowing that your entire friend group is a mere yards away, likely sleeping off their hangovers that were bound to appear. 

you come, then, your legs shaking in his arms as he continues to lick through your orgasm. as your breathing becomes sporadic and heavy, he peels off, running his hands down the sides of your body to calm you down — and warm you up. 

your shaking doesn’t stop, and you’re almost certain its due to the fact that the temperatures have dropped since you and him became preoccupied, but there’s no point in going inside now.

“how you feelin’, baby?” he asks, spooning you against his chest as you lay on the blanket. “you’re shivering. do you wanna go inside? we can finish this in my room, if you want,” he continues, stroking your arms tenderly in his grip. 

“need you inside me, now,” you mewl, not fully able to find your words. you were gonna finish what you started.

“you sure?” he whispers, and you can feel his heart beating faster — and his shorts growing tighter — behind your back.

“tias, i can feel you. you want this as bad as i do,” you half-argue back.

“i don’t have a condom or anything; are you sure it’s fine?” he implores.

“oh my god, mattias, please just fuck me already,” you whine, begging him for more. 

and with that, he’s rolling you over, pinning you to the sheet, the warmth of his body caging you in. 

he begins kissing you again, his movements slow and soft, savoring the moment, all while simultaneously thrusting down onto you, trying to get some kind of friction going. you reach down between your bodies, untying the strings of the bright red shorts he’s wearing. you fidget with the waistband, and he lets out another groan. 

“go for it,” he confirms, panting into your ear, and you tug them down just enough for his cock to bob free. he shuffles them off, discarding them with the previous pile of clothes, and you look down between you two. he was right, it was big. you begin calculating in your head how he was going to make it work, suddenly growing desperate to find out. 

“told you,” he says, with that stupid smirk back on his face. you let out an exasperated laugh, catching his chains in between your teeth. it’s his turn to laugh now. 

he pumps himself a few times, although he definitely didn't need to, adjusting himself in order to line himself up with your entrance. he glides his cock through your folds, and you arch up into him. he uses that opportunity to grab onto your back, keeping you flush with his body again.

he finally pushes in, and the stretch of him is almost mindnumbing. 

“holy shit,” is all you can muster, as he bottoms out and readjusts himself to get the right angle. he begins slowly rocking in and out, not quite fully pushing all the way back in, and you can tell that he thinks you can’t take it.

you moan his name, signalling for him to pick up speed. the sounds of your bodies mixing together are most definitely echoing through the air, and you hope and pray that none of your neighbors have decided to go for an early morning jog. 

he finds his rhythm, picking up your left leg and hooking it over his hip. this angle is heavenly, and you can tell it feels good for him, too, because another throaty groan escapes his lips.

“so tight, holy fuck. you like that, baby?,” he asks, planting kisses across your chest and neck, leaving plenty of marks in his wake. 

“yes, oh my god, ti,” you squeak, the feeling of his thrusts interrupting your ability to speak in full sentences. 

you can feel him getting closer, judging by the way his cock twitches inside you. 

“where do you want me, sweetheart?” he asks, and you know exactly what he means. 

“anywhere. just not in,” you reply, your paranoia suddenly taking over. 

he complies, pulling out. the loss of contact makes you wince, but he leans back on his heels, jerking himself off over you. your hand reaches down between your thighs, rubbing your own clit, until he swats it away, replacing it with his own free hand. the image of the large, muscular body in front of you, doing what he’s doing, is enough to send you to your second orgasm of the night. you come, quickly, nothing but smalls gasps escaping your lips. this is enough for him, and he spills, painting your chest with his seed. 

you can’t help but grab for your own breast, lightly rubbing it into your skin. mattias is still straddling you, his own breathing trying to recover. 

“i wish i could take a picture right now,” he says. “this is the hottest thing i’ve seen in my life. you’re so perfect, oh my god.” he’s panting. 

“why don’t you?” you ask, motioning toward his long-abandoned phone on the blanket next to you both. his eyes grow wide, as if he was certain that he had misheard you, until you quip, “seriously, go for it. something to think about on your roadies. consider it a gift,” you tease, and he scrambles to grab his phone. he turns it on, the time now reading 4:38 am. the sun is just barely starting to peak over the water, the sky now a pale purple, like something out of a national geographic magazine. 

he swipes to the camera app, lining you up in the frame, your come-covered tits prominately centered in the middle, the breaking of dawn just barely visible behind you. you hear the camera click, and you let out an exasperated giggle. leaning up, you wrap your hands around his neck, and he pulls you close. 

“it’s fucking freezing out here,” you complain, your shivering suddenly returning to your body. 

“i know, i hid your sweatshirt under the blanket about 2 hours ago,” mattias reveals, and you smack him lightly on the back of the head. he reaches over, lifting up the corner of the sheet, revealing the old sweatshirt, shaking the sand out of it. he uses the old sheet to clean you up quickly, then helps you place the sweatshirt on, planting a sweet kiss to your lips as your head pops out the top. 

“we should definitely head in now,” you say, standing up from your place in his lap. reaching for your bikini bottoms and loosely retying them to your hips, you then throw his shorts and shirt playfully against his chest, and he quickly and haphazardly put them back on. he continues to hold on to your top, and he grabs your hand as you make your way back up the dune, up to his house that is all too quiet now. 

you walk through the gate, pausing at the sliding glass door, turning to face him. 

“we should talk about this, later,” you say, scared of what he might say next. he looks down at you, his height suddenly overwhelming you. 

“later is good, yeah. let’s just savor it for now, okay?” he suggests, and you wonder if he truly means it. your friends would surely catch on, and you have no clue how to go about that awkward conversation, even though, unbeknownst to the both of you, the group had been placing bets for years now about how long it would take for you two to break. anna was about to be $1,000 richer. 

with that, you two quietly open the sliding glass door, both cringing slightly at the chime of the alarm system that notifies when doors are opened and closed. he leads you up the stairs, daring to not make any extra noise, when he stops at his bedroom door, your shared guest room that housed the 3 other sleeping girls just 2 doors down.

“stay with me, please?” he begs, and his eyes soften. he reaches up to rub his left eye with his finger, a nervous tic of his that never goes unnoticed from you. 

“of course,” you whisper, and you let him lead you through to his room. 

you make your way to his bed, grabbing a pair of his sweatpants that had been thrown lazily on the floor, replacing your bikini bottoms with them, the small article joining the pile next to you. he climbs up onto the bed with you, a fresh pair of boxer briefs now on his body. he pulls you close, taking in the scent of your hair — the salt of the ocean, now mixed with his cologne — and he lets out what sounds like the largest sigh of relief of his life. 

you once again feel his heartbeat against your chest, this time, the steadiness, mixed with his rhythmic breathing, lulls you into sleep.

this wasn’t the first time you two had shared a bed, but it was different, this time. as you drift off, you hoped that it wouldn’t be the last time you fell asleep with him holding you like this.

[storiesbyrhi]

Witch!Reader x Bat/Vampire!Eddie Munson Series Masterlist The Grimoire The Timeline

Warnings: canon typical violence, horror genre typical violence/some infrequent gore, swearing, animal death, no beta, death in childbirth (mentioned, not described), abusive parents, suicide, spiders/bugs, grief/mourning; light smut; warnings updated each chapter.

Synopsis: No witch has stepped foot in Hawkins since 1845, but when Vecna opens the ground and poisons the town, a voice begins to call to you. Have you been brought back to this cursed place to heal the townspeople’s wounds, to save a hexed bat that always finds its way to you, or to redefine your history with a reunion 150 years in the making?

Chapter Summary: In coven we trust. 3390 words.

1986

Seven years of cheated death,

Felt deep pain but kept his breath.

These plants I crush and bend to will,

Impart my magic,

Let me heal to kill.

Remembering Henry Creel was bittersweet. There was the craft. There was Eddie, spitting out, “There is nothing you can offer that sees you survive me,” to a dying Vecna. There was victory. But there was Steve Harrington’s ghost. The broken bones and bodies of children. There was death, so much death, in Hawkins.

“A witch, all of the witches, could never have killed that monster,” you said. “He was undead. Beyond the science and magic of this world. He would have killed everyone in that town, then the country, then the world. He would have won.”

Gillian narrowed her eyes, her hands not moving off your shoulders. “And so, you theorised a vampire could kill him? And just so happened to find the right bat and unhexed it just in time?”

Retelling history differently made you like them, you decided. Gillian’s recount wasn’t how the timeline unraveled, and though it painted you in a much better light than the truth, the truth is all you had.

You pushed your aunt off you, took a shaky breath in, and retrieved your chair. Sitting back down, you put your palms flat on the wooden table top.

“I heard a voice call to me. The voice of fate,” you began.

As you spoke, you realised the truth punished them more than the lie would have. No, you weren’t a whip-smart witch more powerful than all the others. You were a lost little sheep, lied to by your family, used by fate, but given comfort in the one way the coven couldn’t comprehend.

You told them the story, entirely, truthfully.

“And now I am here. I don’t know what I want from it. From either of you. I really don’t. But you need to give Kelsey her memories back. And you have to reconcile the idea of a good vampire,” you finished, exhausted.

“She’s right,” Sally said to her sister. “About Kelsey,”

“I’m right about both,” you correct.

“I feel that the right decision was made that night,” Gillian started. “But it was come to in the wrong way. We should have spoken to The Witches Who Came Before. We should not have become a three-headed dictator… The secrecy ends now; we take it to the coven.”

You and your mother were stunned into silence. Involving the entire coven was destroying any notion of a peaceful resolution. You began to list the possible outcomes in your head. Someone being excommunicated. Eddie being hunted. A coven in ruins. But Gillian was right. There was no way forward but the truth.

“Kelsey comes first…” You stood. “I’ll go to her now. I need to see her. I’ll bring her up later.”

Without a word of goodbye or softness of smile, you left Sally and Gillian in their kitchen, your mulberry tea going cold in the fine bone china teacup.

On the walk back down to Kelsey’s cabin, your jaw was clenched so tightly it ached. You were willing yourself not to cry, but as soon as you snuck through the back door and into the cozy warmth of the cabin, you fell to the floor.

Eddie scurried out of the coat pocket and flapped his wings, begging to be returned to his normal state. You said the spell with your final piece of coherence. In a second, he was pulling you into his lap and holding you as you sobbed.

Kelsey heard all of this from the next room over, unsure of what she would find when she opened the door. She could tell you weren’t alone. The bat man. But she hadn’t worked out what exactly the bat man was. Whatever it was, he was good at soothing you.

Within minutes, he’d comforted you to a calm and Kelsey knocked on the door once before entering.

You and Eddie looked up at her.

“Oh,” was all she said at first. A couple beats of silence. Then, “This man is naked.”

You laughed, looked at Eddie. He seemed unconcerned. You were sitting in his lap, providing the most basic kind of coverage.

“His clothes are in my car,” you told Kels, wiping your tears away.

“That makes sense. I already brought your stuff in. I wondered what was going on there. Thought maybe you’d killed a hitchhiker for his boring clothes or something,” she replied, words yelled from the next room over, as she collected Eddie’s clothes from where she’d put them.

The clothes replaced you on Eddie’s lap, and you left to join Kelsey in the living room. You sat side by side on the sofa, holding hands. Resting your head on her shoulder you held back more tears.

Eddie emerged, taking a tentative seat on an armchair across from you.

“So… Where are your manners?” Kelsey asked you, nodding over to Eddie.

“I believe we have met before,” Eddie answered for you. “Fern,”

“Well fuck. It’s Kelsey now… I knew I was missing something…”

You sat up and looked at her. “It’s my fault. My mother… and Gillian and Penelope. They took our memories because of what I did. And I don’t know how to even begin to make that up to you,”

“What did you do?”

“Me,” Eddie quickly replied.

Kelsey laughed. Then abruptly stopped. She looked at his dark eyes and creamy skin and smooth movement. “Well fuck!”

Before she could scream or attack, you stood up, placing yourself between them. “He’s good! He’s not like the others! He’s-”

“Woah, calm down! Obviously… It’s not as though you’re stupid enough to resurrect a vampire for no reason. And the reason is obviously… at least, partly… that he’s not… not a monster.”

You pulled her into an aggressively tight hug, while Eddie tried to process the fact that there were now two witches who did not see him as a monster.

“I love you,” you told her.

“I love you too,”

“You gotta go get your memories back now. They’re waiting.”

You watched Kelsey go before turning back to Eddie. He was sitting casually, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle. Being free and clear with him felt so close.

“Come,” he ordered.

Immediately, you folded yourself onto his lap, letting him hold you again.

“They won’t ever admit it. They know, they fucking know what they did to me, but they won’t ever say sorry for it. They’re gonna live like that forever. Up there. Alone and all fucked up over it,”

“Let them,”

“How am I meant to live like this though? This is meant to be my home too. I’m as much a part of this coven as them. But I feel like I don’t belong here anymore,”

“I think Kelsey would disagree. And if she does, others will too. Perhaps the others learning the truth will be a good thing.”

Eddie had one armed around you, keeping you close, while he used his free hand to bring your fingertips to his mouth for small fairy-light kisses. You closed your eyes.

“I want to think about something else. Even for a minute.”

Eddie hummed, thinking of another topic. “After watching Hawkins develop, and seeing the cities, I had expected your coven to be enjoying an urbanite lifestyle… Microwaving potions and subway rat familiars…”

You smiled. “Yeah, well… I don’t know. We had spent all our lives so singularly focused on vampires, that when the war was over and we left Hawkins behind… I think we got a little lost. Everyone tried to carry on as normal but that didn’t last long… It felt like we all began to heal a little better when we came up here. Not all of us did though. Some of the coven live closer to New York. I guess we’re still trying to work out exactly what it means to be a witch without a cause in a modern world that doesn’t need us like it did.”

Eddie nodded, understanding the feeling of being a living anachronism. Still, he hadn’t provided an adequate distraction.

“I don’t think I am the only non-witch here,” he offered.

You sat up to look at him properly. “What do you mean?”

“I can hear the heartbeats. Dozens of witches. Countless birds and snakes. Chipmunks. The deer and cats and bears. The odd… What did you call them? Bigfeet?”

Laughing, you shook your head. “Bigfoot. Wait. Actually. I don’t know the plural of Bigfoot. Or the collective noun,”

“Well, there’s at least three around. But beneath all that, there’s something else. It’s faint. But it’s there. And I can smell something. I don’t think they’re the same creature.”

You considered this information. “There’s bound to be other magical beings here,”

“Yes. But they are close. Too close to not be within the walls of your coven,”

“Great. Just when I thought we had solved all our mysteries,”

“If one of your sisters is harbouring an outlaw monster or lost other-worldly entity, who are we to interrupt?” Eddie whispered conspiratorially.

“Maybe I should start a support group for witches who fall in love with non-witch non-human creatures.”

Eddie laughed. “You should. I think you’d find you have many allies.”

…

Kelsey quietly came through the back door of her cabin. She found Eddie in the same armchair she’d left him in, you asleep in his lap. She flopped onto the sofa and stared into the flames of her fireplace.

Eddie could tell she had been crying, her mascara messy and her nose red. She wore sadness the same way you did.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

Kels shook her head. “This is on them,” she whispered back. “And they still think they did the right thing,”

“Perhaps they did by the coven.”

Kelsey frowned at looked at Eddie. “Witches have made a lot of hard decisions. We preserve as much life and good as we can. And… yeah, we have bargained with lives before… But it’s always been the last resort. We have always weighed up the value and consequences of all routes forward. We aren’t rash. Or a dictatorship. And we have never and will never have the luxury of small and singlemindedness…”

Eddie loved her. It was like meeting your twin, and though Kelsey seemed slightly more put together than you, a little less unhinged, he guessed her madness manifested differently.

“The betrayal isn’t what they did. It’s that they did it alone and with their self-appointed authority,” Eddie concluded.

Kels nodded, studying Eddie carefully. “Why do you think you’re like this?”

He looked away from her to you. He smiled sadly. “I don’t know. Making a vampire is less of a science more of a… crime against nature… But, from what I have seen, it is all meant to happen quickly. Someone tried to save me. It didn’t work. I died and I came back. But… not all of me died. And not all of me came back.”

Kelsey thought about it. “So, you’re a bit of a freak of nature,”

“I suppose, yes,”

“It sounds… lonely,”

“It was,” Eddie agreed.

“Until you met this little freak of nature,” she replied, pointing to you.

Eddie chuckled. “Yes. Fate was kind to me that day,”

“Ah, yes, our mutineer fate. She’s off the rails…”

They sat for a moment, in the quiet Catskills, watching the fireplace snap, crackle, and pop.

“There’s going to be a meeting tomorrow morning. I’ll wake you up then,” Kelsey announced, standing up and stretching, ready to go to bed.

“I’ll already be awake,”

“Oh. Right. You can’t sleep,”

“Not like this. That’s one of the bat spell perks,” Eddie told her.

“You don’t want to change then? I can set up a little bed for you guys,”

“No. I’ll hold her. Let her sleep.” The love felt like a presence in the room. It had in 1836 and it still did

…

“In 1836, Penelope, Sally, and I made a decision on behalf of the coven. Today, you are to learn of this decision, and the circumstances surrounding it,” Gillian announced to the coven, who had gathered at sunrise in the hall used for meetings and parties. The floorboards were speckled with glitter that could never be fully cleaned off. Not even with magic.

“That year, I… grew to know… a being that was unlike any other. He was a vampire-” No cliché gasps, just dozens of eyes set firm on you, waiting for the punchline. “And for reasons neither of us could explain, he wasn’t like the others. It was as if his soul was left intact. He wasn’t a mindless killing machine. He wasn’t a monster. He was an outcast in his colony. We became friends. Then became more. I didn’t tell anyone.”

There was whispering, but no raging chaos. Not yet.

“Sally and Gillian had found him. Taken him to Penelope. I couldn’t let it happen. Penelope hadn’t found a way to kill them yet. I knew what she was doing to them. But he wasn’t like them. And I couldn’t let it happen. I begged for his life. I begged them to let him go. To kill us both, if they were to kill him. Anything. Anything that kept me with him.”

It was your job to tell the story, but at your hesitation, your moment of being lost in the memory, your mother stepped in.

“If we could have killed him, we would have. Instead, we hexed him with a transformation spell. He was to spend all eternity as a beast, his memories gone. We knew if it was left at that, it was likely she would find him and restore him. For the safety of the coven, we took her memories. And Kelsey’s, as she was a witness to this night.”

Finding your voice again, you looked at the faces of your sisters. “Nothing has felt right since then. I’ve been… missing something. Directionless. Until I returned to the flatlands.”

The coven braced themselves, some already predicting how the story would end.

“Fate called me there and pushed me into place. I found him. The beast - a bat. I restored him to his true form. Together, we killed Henry Creel. But without him, I couldn’t have. None of us could have. It was only ever going to be at the hands of another undead creature. After that, we worked on our memories. We got them back. I remember everything.”

A silence fell over the hall, everyone deep in thought.

“We concede that we should have consulted the coven before taking such drastic action. We should have consulted The Witches Who Came Before. However, we did what was right for the coven as a whole. There is no such thing as a good vampire,” Gillian stated.

They all looked to you for a response. “There is. As there are dark witches. Creatures we haven’t met. And other dimensions we do not know about. I don’t know what I wanted, coming back here, and doing all of this. If I have to stand here and ask for it though… I guess, just assurance that if I leave, nobody will come after us. That he is left alone.”

From your coat pocket, Eddie shifted, a small reminder that he was with you.

“And for our part, we ask the coven to come to a decision. We will no longer act outside the bounds of the group,” Gillian added. 

Slowly, murmurs to the person next to them turned to conversations between smaller, then larger groups. The coven was in talks as the sun filtered through the stained-glass windows, rainbow shapes covering the walls.

Kelsey came to you, held your hand, and nodded. “Whatever happens, I'm on your side.”

After ten minutes or so, one of the older witches in the coven, Anna, watercolor artist by day and tree climber by night, asked across the hall, “May we have question time?”

The questions came hard and fast, in both directions. You had answers for the ones posed to you; you were willing to admit when you were wrong, naive, or put the coven in danger. Sally and Gillian couldn’t fully explain their actions, unwilling to move from their position and unwilling to state their ego got in the way of justice.

The final question was asked by Myra. Myra worked as an accountant. By choice. She liked numbers and was good at helping people budget. She was one of the most human of the witches in the coven.

She turned to you, sweet-faced and unassuming. “Do you want to stay here? Is there space within a coven for this discord?”

Before you could answer, Ev stepped forward. Ev had been working as an autopsy technician since spending the early 1740s in Italy, befriending childhood sweethearts Anna Morandi and Giovanni Manzolini. “I value loyalty and love above all else,” they said. Ev looked directly at you. “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Meg, who you were pretty sure was responsible for the North Americans learning about cinnamon rolls from the Swedish, stepped up next. “It’s simple… We’re meant to be a family. You can’t just make decisions for all of us, without all of us being involved,” she said to Sally and Gillian. “But you, this doesn’t mean I agree with being put in danger. I just don’t think having your memories toyed with was the right thing to do.”

You nodded, understanding. Meg baked fluffy cinnamon rolls bigger than your head; it was silly and selfish, but you felt immense joy at the prospect of having those in your life again.

Like Myra and Ev, Hailey had a mortal day job. She worked from the Catskills restoring and binding antique books. Sometimes, if you looked hard enough, you could see the characters that were awfully Hailey-shaped in some of the stories. She used to have a habit of inserting herself into the lives of prolific writers. Byron never stood a chance.

“Meg’s right. As a coven, we should be consulting everyone. It’s not a dictatorship, especially when there’s wrongdoing occurring. That isn’t a decision for just a select few; that is a decision for all the coven,” Hailey argued.

“And isn’t our loyalty to each other? Tradition is sacred, but in time those can change. It’s each other, all of us, that get us through. Loyalty to a friend before loyalty to an institution,” Ash said, adding to the growing chorus. Ash had always been good at making an argument. She was in the midst of trying to convince Meg to open a bakery with her. Those cinnamon rolls would look great next to my lemon lavender cupcakes.

Melissa had been standing to the side of the group. The thing about Mel was her gifts doubled as her curse. She could be in a room of people, in a crowd united with single focus, and still feel and be separate from everyone else. It’s why she was an inspired music journalist; she saw more than the band on stage, but the living creature of the venue. She saw the bigger picture of not just the songs but the fans and the cultural impacts. Mel was talented, but often alone on her laptop in the dead of night.

You watched her stand up straight from the wall she’d been leaning against. She looked at you and raised her hand. The coven hushed, surprised by her request for attention.

“No one deserves to have memories of love taken away…” The sentiment echoed what the others had been saying. Yet, from Mel, it seemed to hold a sad weight. “Sometimes memories are all we have.”

Every witch in the coven pictured then, those they had loved and lost. Or worse – those they hadn’t even had the chance to properly love at all.

You smiled at Mel, but she broke eye contact and went back to where she was before, ever the wallflower.

Maybe there hadn’t been a need for all your worrying and all your fear. Maybe your sisters were more ready for change than you had given them credit for. Just as you were trying to imagine what a coven different to this one could look like, the voice of dissent sounded.

End note: Thank you to the following witches for the inspiration: @vintagehellfire @courtingchaos @pastel-pillows @ghost-proofbaby @kookygranger @toomanyacorns - you will all continue to be a part of this story.

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[aconflagrationofmyown]

Patch It Up Baby

A Sarge and lil Mama fic

Summary: It’s 1977 and Jesse Presley has never loved his family more or had more chances to prove it. When America’s last dynasty implodes, it‘s up to the Presley heir to mend and rebuild what’s left. His first and least glamorous commission is to take his little sister Daisy Mae to rehab in Texas after she embraced their daddy’s rock n’ roll lifestyle a little too thoroughly. In the great game-plan of getting mama and daddy back together, keeping up appearances and bolstering up his siblings’ spirits, what Jesse doesn’t expect is Donna. Just…Donna.

Warnings: mentions of past hard drug use, mentions of withdrawls, a brief but recounted callous comment encouraging death, children dealing with parent’s divorce, publicity of said divorce, paparazzi stalking, a panic attack, Jesse being a bit hardcore like his father to a stalker and mentions of his previous violence, brief sexual scene and occasional mentions of sex.

My thanks to all the dears who helped me so much with this, who added their lines to this and aided in the plot, @prompted-wordsmith @elvisabutler @stylespresleyhearted @ab4eva @butlersxbirdy @eliseinmemphis to mention a wee few

NOTE: In this chapter the baby that is referenced as growing inside Elaine was conceived during Elvis and Elaine’s divorce, and ends up being Danny. Jesse refers to his upcoming sibling as a “last” and “surprise” baby, which he was. However he was neither the last nor the only surprise for Elaine and Elvis. Danny came and a few years later was followed by Shiloh. So uh, that means better times must be around the bend, right? But of course, Jesse wouldn’t know that. ;)

2nd Generation Refresher: as this is out of order and missing many key pieces, I understand it may not make perfect sense yet but I hope y’all enjoy getting a glimpse into the family later on. You’ll meet Elvis and Elaine over the phone and the older kids as they grow into their maturity. Everyone is a bit spread out in their different pursuits in this one compared to the last one shot when it was all young, familial domestic chaos, but there’s little updates in here I think y’all will enjoy. Xoxo

Jesse’s long and ringed forefinger pecks peevishly at the Rehab Center’s grimy rotary dial. He waits for the phone connection to be made with studied nonchalance, leaning casually against the bleach white wall in a tiny alcove, checking like a studied dandy for dirt under his nails. It’s a photogenic sorta lean, one boot crossed over the other and bell bottoms flaring in a way that naturally carries the eye to the belt buckle at his tapered waist.

Daddy taught him well enough how to cut a figure, and daddy was the reason why Jesse had any need to pretend nonchalance when calling home.

Home, he wants to scoff.

Not Graceland while this fiasco lasted.

Graceland was too storied and way too watched. Home was Palm Springs and warm weather and privacy to figure out what the hell the rest of them were gonna do with their lives and if mama and daddy could still make it. Together.

Home, where mama could cook this last little one that precious few in the outside world knew was coming, home where daddy could eat crow and stay sober.

Jesse’s teeth ache from the way he grinds them in his stress, he rubs at his cheek and wills the tenseness away, if he answered with clenched teeth mama would be able to tell. And mama would worry. And mama had done enough worrying to nearly cost her her life.

“Hello?” came through the receiver.

Jesse felt guilty for one brief second at his immense relief that she’d been the one to answer, not daddy, but then a flood of very legitimate grievances against one Elvis Presley came flooding in and he shrugged it off. “Hey mama.” he kept his voice down but he couldn’t help the smile that lifted his tone at just hearing her sound so soft and rested. “How’re you doin’?” he ventured, keeping an eye at the nurses and patients passing nearby, always aware of potential eavesdroppers.

“I’m good baby, I’m real good, how’re you holdin’ up?”

Jesse listens for any trace of a fib in her tone but for once she doesn’t sound strained when she says she’s good. He’ll take it that physically she must be finally good for the first time this whole pregnancy. “Thas good.” he whispers, cupping the receiver closer, “He takin’ care of you, mama? He’s being gentle a-and he’s -he bein’ respectful?”

Of her space and her nerves and her whole taken for granted self. He’s picked a cuticle till it’s bleeding on him, wincing he sticks it into his mouth, full lips curling around it, something his mama gave him in a face strikingly similar to his father’s. The scowl he sends at a lurking relation of some inmate in this druggie bedlam is entirely his father’s and he’s grateful for that one singular legacy. It’s come in real handy as folks come up to him and pepper him with questions on the football field like:

-is your dad strung out on coke or heroin these days? is it true what happened to your sister, man? did your daddy force himself or is your mama so pathetic she couldn’t say no to a man she was divorcin? got anythin’ I can trade off ya, Presley?-

Benign, regular family questions. Sorta questions most 20 year olds have gotta answer, for sure. He sucks harder and tastes copper round his finger.

“Oh yes. Really darling, I’m fine. We’re fine, in fact.” Mama’s talking again. That’s a bold statement. To refer to them as “we” and to say they’re fine. She’s not mean enough to lie to him now, not now it’s all crashed and crumbled and they’re trying to pick up the pieces together. His little cupcake world of happy families is sorta shot to hell by this point, anyways. Least Mama can do is be truthful about it, and learning from his daddy’s mistakes, Jesse chooses to believe her when she says she’s well.

That they’re good.

“Ok, good.” he breathes for what he realizes must be the first time in awhile, his fingers are numb and his lips feel tingly, he’s gotta stop doing that, he’s gonna pass out one day, he can feel it. “The baby?”

“Fine. We’re all fine, Butnin, I asked how you were.” she reminds him gently.

“I’m fine, mama.” he is, now that he’s back to breathing. Breathing is good for one’s health. He’s gonna keep it up. “Daisy is settling in alright, too.” he beats Mama to the question, glossing over some of the more queasy aspects of heroin rehabilitation. “T-the nurse here, uh, D-Donna, she uh, she said we oughta be over the worst of it. The uh, initial withdrawls and such.”

“Was it bad, Jesse?” poor mama, how’d it come to this that she has to ask it.

“Yeah, fairly.” he admits, recalling his baby sister’s foaming mouth and dilated eyes and seizing throat. Holding her as she scratched at herself like a maniac, forced her to tear at him instead. Donna, the nurse, has got him fixed up with plasters all up and down his forearms and hands. “But that part’s worn off.” he assumes mama knows what he means, if she hasn’t dealt with it directly with daddy she at least knows of it, even if his were all prescribed. “She’s just real sleepy now. Sleeps all day and most the night. I try to keep her talking and singing and playing stuff so, uh, so that she’s tired, ya know? So she’ll sleep heavy. She’ll get better quicker. That’s what Donna says, the more she sleeps the faster she’ll detox.”

“My sweet boy.” Mama murmurs and that’s compensation enough for how little sleep he’s gotten this past week and everything else.

“Happy to do it.” he mumbles, and he means it.

“I know,” she answers earnestly, “and we’re grateful.” they both let that lie and after a minute she speaks up again, a saucy undercurrent to her tone that throws him for a loop. It's been such ages since he heard it: “So, this Donna, you’ve mentioned her last time and before that, too. Is she an experienced nurse, dear?”

Jesse groans into his hand only to realize it’s amplifying the sound through the speaker. In his loneliness here he may have forgotten how obvious it is that he’s latched on like a limpet to the one genuine human who’ll give him something besides canned answers when his sister aspirates on her own spit in the bathroom floor.

“I-I-I lost one sister this way already.” he’d gasped to sweet little Donna and her baby cheeked self as they peeled Daisy off the floor and got her on a stretcher, “Jo, Jo died from this.”

Not a drug withdrawal, of course. Jo had drowned inside mama. But still.

-Aspirating.

It held a bizarre terror for him, that fancy word, his whole childhood and the whole nine months of waiting for Marie to come out healthy. He’d never forget asking his daddy one day at table how they could be sure this new baby wouldn’t drown, too. Daddy had gotten so angry before bursting into tears at the head of the table. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before or since. All that grief just stored up, and him scared as any of them for a repeat and no kid’s tactless inquiry and it all surface. “We don’t know.” Mama had said and daddy cut her off harshly, “No, Elaine!” he’d near yelled, “No, don’t even say it. This one’s gonna live, I'm demandin’ it.” Mama had bit her lip and replied softly, “Then we’d better start praying so.”

And that’s what they did every night for eight months, Daddy led them all in laying their hands on mama's growing belly and prayed and prayed until Marie came screaming into the world with clear lungs. And so Jesse got himself on the floor and beat at Daisy’s back while praying and Donna did it too, right with him.

“Uh, Donna’s pretty young but she’s capable.” he answers mama’s question.

“How old?” there’s nothing sly in her tone now, just genuine concern for the quality of her daughter’s care takers.

“She’s nineteen, mama,” Jesse admits with a wince, “she’s my age.”

“Ah.” and a long pause follows.

“There’s others too, but she’s the most eager, most -caring.”

“That’s good. Thank God he sent someone for y’all. I knew He would.”

“Yeah, she’s, she’s real sweet mama.” he assures.

“Oh is she?” there’s a smirk in her tone now.

“Nineteen and sweet.” that’s daddy’s voice coming through the phone from a distance and Jesse starts to stiffen. “Does this Donna happen to be pretty, too, son?”

Jesse is back to grinding his teeth and it sends a spark of pain up to his temple.

“Elvis!” His mama honest to god titters and it’s been such a while since Jesse heard that sound he suddenly feels like forgiving his daddy a few things just for that. Just for bringing that back. It makes his eyes sting.

Donna has hair the color of mamas but with a touch more red in it and it curls and fans in such a messy and unstudied way as to remind him of an artist, all while smashed beneath a nurse's cap. And her smile is sunshine incarnate and her eyes are as blue as his and her lips as plump as strawberries and she’s the first person he feels like he can trust in ages. Not that he’s trusted her with much besides showing he’s at the end of his rope with exhaustion and emotion. But she never missed a beat.

“I-I-I don’t mean to keep mentioning her it’s just-“ he bites his lip harshly before deciding to be frank, “it’s hard to trust anyone. Even here everyone is gossiping about us, they think I can’t hear ‘em but I do and it’s all the time and I ain’t going up to one of those tongue wags and asking them to help Daisy when she’s that vulnerable. I just can’t. So -so it’s Donna.” he explains.

It’s dead silent on the other end for a length of time that oughta be uncomfortable but instead it soothes something in Jesse’s soul to think that he got his point across enough to shut his smartass father up for a whole minute.

“I’m sorry this is so damn hard for you, son,” it comes in a deep rumble and bitter as he is, Jesse feels his hands sweat and his cheeks too, or else that sting has overflowed and he’s crying. In public. “I’m sorry you’re havin’ to pay for my sins.”

“I-I-I’m just glad you’re back.” he croaks and looks about the place frantically to make sure he’s unobserved.

It had been so good that day daddy walked through the threshold at Graceland looking twenty pounds lighter and stone cold sober, there to sort out his children, there to intervene for Daisy. The day mama’s body gave out on her and she puddled like so much water on Graceland’s foyer floor, as if her body trusted Elvis to take care of her family even if her mind wasn’t sure he’d forgiven her for the divorce. Daddy had been perfect that day, picked mama up like a baby and took her to the hospital, made press statements like a ordinary human sayin simply that he’d “jacked it all up and was here to make amends.”

Mama and him tucked off to California to grow that baby that made her faint and Jesse was charged with Daisy and bringing her here to Dallas. It had felt like old times, Sergeant Presley and all that famous stage presence ordering them all to battle stations.

It wasn’t till later that Jesse wondered how the hell the man had the gall to show up and demand respect. Turns out mama had kept that fire going bright enough all the kids just fell in line like nothing had ever been askew. Jesse wonders if now he can go back to being nineteen again. He’s a little scared to hope. That’s the worst of it, he’s not bitter, he’s scared.

Twenty year olds have futures with little nurses named Donna. For now Jesse is not a normal almost-twenty year old.

“I’m glad you’re back.” he repeats to his daddy, “Please…stay…back.”

It’s what he begs Daisy when she tries to bribe him to sneak her illegal shit next morning.

“Enough of that, you’re nearly sober and you’re gonna stay sober. Please stay good, f’me! Please.” he begs and weedles until her big blue eyes go from watery to scornful and she has fun at his pathetic expense but Jesse doesn’t mind. It gives her something to do, teasing him for being a blubbering softy over her. It distracts her. It assures Daisy she’s wanted, that somebody -more than one in fact- would be devastated if she didn’t win this fight.

She’s become a skeleton as the detox racks her. Hospital food tasting bad on a good appetite, it’s ever worse on a poor one and Jesse tears out clumps of his now shaggy black hair in desperation to have her stay nourished. He’s not supposed to be sleeping there overnight but Donna fibs for him. He’s not supposed to sneak shit into the clinic but Donna takes him back to her house, lets him use her stove to cook pancakes -Daisy’s favorite- and helps him smuggle them in under his leather jacket. All for the price of a motorcycle ride.

Jesse’s belly burned for nights after where her little hands had overlocked to hold onto him during the ride, burning him and cooking his guts hot and wanting even beneath the leather and the layers.

“Donna’s got the same spatulas you use, mama.” He’s reporting by the third week.

“The baby’s the size of an cantelope.” she reports back.

“What’ve y’all been doin?” he tries to make conversation and even to his own ears he sounds suspicious. When did he start to sound like Jack? How much more could daddy possibly screw this up? Knock his ex-wife up doubly? Like a cat? Jesse snorts and covers with a cough.

“Talkin’ mostly, floatin in the pool.” he can hear her shrug from here, “It’s terribly hot.”

“Mmm.” he sympathizes.

“We got a marriage license yesterday.” Daddy pipes up and Jesse lets out a stifled sob of relief. The gang is back together, it would seem.

“Cool.” he rasps before Donna passes and then approaches in concern for his blotchy face.

“You ok?” she asks gently.

“Yeah, yeah fine,” Jesse scrambles, “hay fever. Killer.”

“Who’s that, Butnin?” mama asks.

“Uh, umm nobo-“

“Is that Donna?” she guesses and he winces for the umpteenth time at this damn phone.

“Mamaaaa.” he begs.

“Can I talk to her? Please, please!” she begs in turn.

“Mama no!” Jesse pleads right back and Donna backs away with that keen sense of intruding while unable to suppress her fond smile at this cute, boyish side to such a burdened young man.

By week four Donna and him have taken to walking Daisy along the corridors, getting her strength back and making her move, her always lanky frame a featherweight between them now. They all share a laugh at how Daisy towers over Donna’s tiny self, has to hunch to use the petite nurse’s shoulder while Jesse’s height makes her strain to reach. They can use a laugh, the stares they get as Daisy’s famous face gets hauled past in pajamas and socks makes Jesse lose all appetite afterwards, his fingers going cold and his lips numb. He’d like to punch something but everything here is breakable, his sister and his family’s reputation, most of all.

It’s not fair to her and it’s more work for her but this loss of appetite worries Donna and by the end of their long day’s shift they’re together again as she force feeds Jesse tacos from a nearby stand, as they walk around the old part of the city and inadvertently become friends. He may have sucked some mango salsa from her fingers, but neither of them mention it. Too busy watching the others' faces as the sun dies out and eventually he drives her home, her body tucked behind his on his bike, wind whipping her hair that’s escaped his offered helmet.

By the fifth night of this routine he steals a kiss. It’s not hard fought, she leans into him eagerly and for the first time in his life there’s nothing about conquest in the act for him, it’s just…nice. So nice he tries it the next night while they’re sat on his bike, parked by a dance hall. It’s less nice and more like licking fire this time, suddenly his sweet intentions for her are a burning mass of need and that night Jesse goes back to his dinky motel alone and engages in wasteful practices in the shower. Donna had asked where he was staying and when he told her she’d been aghast.

“I just prefer something more -normal.” he’d said.

“Sure but -but that place is dangerous, Jesse.” she’d been so concerned for him and he gobbled it up like a starved man. “Normal folks don’t stay there even.”

“Maybe I’m not normal.” he’d quipped and Donna thought about his mother and her mafia connections, the ones with the dirt that sank Colonel Parker during the divorce, she thought of the bike clubs that Jesse is seen frequenting in the magazines, she thinks about how far the Presley’s might go to reconnect with normal folks -she holds her tongue. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, lil, I can handle myself.” he’d assured her as he thumbed out her frown.

“I know.” Donna had replied, “I mean, I’ve read about how you handle yourself.” and she’d run an admiring hand down his bicep before kissing him again.

That was another thing he liked about Donna, she didn’t play stupid about his family and she also didn’t pry. She’d read about him and Jack bustin’ those guys asses for what they did to Rosalee and she mentioned it. And left it at that. Jesse liked that maybe most of all. He also liked how everything he’d trusted her with never got related by anyone else. No nursing staff gossip or a sweet insider tip for a newspaper. Donna took his trust and tucked it tight inside her chest, right in that tender heart of her’s. He liked that about her, right next to her sweet smile and her warm nature and the feel of her breasts smashed to his back on a long ride.

“You’re in love.” Daisy goaded him the next day as she scribbled in the journal he had gotten her. They encouraged writing here and Daisy’s material had gradually shifted from juvenile doodles and giant block letters proclaiming “JESSE IS AN ASSHOLE” to something that looked alarmingly like stanzas as he snooped over the top of the pages.

Jesse colored brightly at her goad and adamantly refuted it. “That’s the drugs talkin’.” he joked.

“So you’re just passin’ time with her.”

“I-I-I dunno, Daisy.” he spluttered, “It’s not exactly hoppin’ here when you’re out cold. Can only call mama so many times a day. Gotta talk to someone.”

“Does mama hate me?” she asked suddenly and he stopped cold in the middle of tuning her guitar to stare at her dumbly. “I mean -I deserve it I just…”

“No she don’t hate you!” he found his voice, “Don’t be an idiot. That self pityin’ mope don’t help the beauty of those dark circles none. She’s just wore out.”

“I wore her out.”

“Mm well, we all had a hand.” Jesse fudges.

“Ella told me to just get on with dyin.” she reveals, and Jesse puts his pick down for good this time, taking a deep breath and trying to listen coolly. “When mama was taken to the hospital and layin’ there unresponsive, Ella said I’d brought her to that, said if I was so intent on killin’ myself that I should get on with it and spare mama the suspense.”

“Well,” Jesse tries for a moderate tone, “that was a shitty thing to say.” he concedes, “And you -don’t pay Ella no attention. She’s worried and scared to death half times that Johnny won’t come back from ‘Nam. And now she’s takin’ care of Marie on top of her own baby. She’s just a little vinegary, thas all, pregnancy hormones. Took it out on you.”

“I think she’s scared the guy she married in such a rush is gonna come back.” Daisy growled. She crossed out a line angrily and Jesse was really starting to worry about those scribbles.

Jesse let her finish before he asked, “Why’s that?” It’s not like he got much thinking done lately between the court hearings and getting his head knocked about on the turf.

“She don’t love him.” Daisy rolled her eyes heavenward in an action that mama would have looked on with annoyance. Jesse glared at Daisy in her stead.

“People love in different ways, Daisy.” he sighed even as he had no bullets to fight her argument, Ella had left in uncharacteristically rash fashion, seemingly unable to take the atmosphere at home anymore. “And she says John’s a good man.”

“All that means is he don’t beat her.” Daisy snarked.

“Well, that’s a step towards romance.” Jesse joked back and they let the subject lie.

Each day Daisy gets stronger and writes more and more in that little book. Not that Jesse sees her at it most times, it’s just the pen she wedges in to keep her place gets closer and closer to the middle, and then towards the back. Snooping isn’t an option but he imagines they’ve got a lotta heartbreak on those pages, maybe bled out like lyrics.

Now days he makes the walk with her without Nurse Donna, and it’s both sad and a victory in one. Now that she’s strong enough to notice the stares Daisy takes delight in feebly flipping off her voyeurs and that’s a fight Jesse doesn't have it in him to win. If it makes her grin, he allows it, that stupid, crooked little boy grin that his daddy plopped right onto a young girl’s face. She’s perfect, she’s perfect and getting healthy and the stares don’t matter much. Not till he hears a voice he’s become very attuned to, snap at some idling nurses:

“Haven’t you got any work to do?”

And his head spins like a top on his neck and sure enough, that was Donna, temper snapping for what might be the first time in her sweet life, and Jesse feels his tingly gratitude down to his very toes.

“She’s alright, that one.” Daisy smirks beside him and little does he know her enthusiasm stems partly from last night when Daisy gave a little sisterly admonition to Miss Donna that her brother liked her and if she didn’t treat his soft heart gentle like, then Daisy was gonna unstring her guitar and end her with a metal cord.

“How ya doin, mama?” he asks her on a Tuesday and even to himself his voice sounds better. He may be far more tired than he was when he first came in here but his relief at Daisy’s progress colors his tone in hope.

“Doing good Butnin, real good.” she sounds good alright, more than good and Jesse uncurls his fist and let’s himself relax a little as he gives his daily report on Daisy. And Donna.

“Rosalee told me she’s gonna pop in and see y’all.” Mama informs him.

“Good time for it,” Jesse hums, “Mae Mae’s better enough to chat but she could use the encouragement.”

“I bet.” Mama sounds sad again. That won’t do.

Jesse lip curls up in mischief as he asks next, “Jack been by to see ya?” he inquires about that little sea creature hybrid he’s been missing and must call brother, “Brought any dolphins home to meet ya yet?”

“Oh Jesse! Stop!” she laughs a sweet peal of laughter and Jesse smugly twirls the phone cord round and round at his success, “He’s coming to dinner tonight, he has been too caught up before, he’s been out on the ocean for six weeks! I’m scared to see the state of his skin!”

“Welllll,” Jesse drawls, “No way the sun could burn that dimple off so, he’ll be fine.”

“He actually saved someone’s life, uh, day before yesterday.” Daddy’s voice rumbles through the receiver and Jesse’s eyes roll backwards a little at the way he’s never caught his parents separate on this trip, not even once. He can picture the patio phone and its loungers and its umbrellas right now, and imagines that daddy is probably cradling mama’s belly like he can push that magic healing through the skin and make that baby the healthiest infant California’s ever seen.

“Did he now?” Jesse admires, “Makin’ us proud, ain’t he?”

“Yeah, hauled someone who’d been adrift for ages, right up into his boat.” Daddy elaborates without a hint of mockery in his proud tone and Jesse smiles to himself.

“Bout time he put those muscles to use, s’not like he uses them when carrying snails around.” he teases back because having a serious and admiring conversations about Jackson might be a step too far in the healing process. Not this early, mama resting and then getting remarried and cooking a baby is plenty for the plate. Conceding that Jack isn’t a walking disaster is a little too much too soon. Heroics aside.

By week six at the Center they’re into behavioral shit and Jesse can freely admit this isn't the Presley family’s strong suit, but he’s gotta hand it to his sister that she is less preoccupied during it than he is. Out of respect for Rosalee’s interest in the same profession, Daisy pays a decent amount of attention to the therapist’s counsel. Jesse would be more attentive if the first fifty pages of Red West’s freshly published tell-all of his family’s secrets wasn’t banging around in his head. Somehow, somehow it’s not even the dirt that gets to him, makes him stagger out into the hall after a while and crumple against a cart and let the world go dim.

It’s the sweet stuff, the gentle stuff, the stuff that was only ever supposed to be theirs as a family and that fuckers like Red West were goddamn privlidged to be witnesses to, spilled out for all the world to pick apart and psycho-analyze. He hasn’t told Daisy and now she’s asleep and as he’s on the floor in the deserted hall he finds there’s really nothing stopping him from doing what he wants. So he panics and lets himself work up to a dim eyed fury and only the cool shock of a wet rag against his neck brings him back from it.

“Just breathe for me, honey.” That little Texan ascent is saying as he gulps into a brown bag with the embarrassed realization he’s had a panic attack. Sure Daddy had them at his age, too, but that was to go perform in front of hundreds of folks. This is just from reading Red Fuckin’ West’s bad prose. He can hear himself laughing, hiccuping little laughs of derision at himself and it, and Donna cooing all the while.

“You can’t drive your bike like that.” she points to his still shaky hands half an hour later.

It’s comforting watching Donna shut the place down, not that it’s totally abandoned at night, not at all, but just watching her finish up her duties and stash away her papers and arrange her workspace feels as if the heart of the place, the vitality if it, is turning in for the night. And he’s going with it.

He follows Donna like a lost puppy and she doesn’t mind it, he’s sweet and soft spoken and no matter what she does she only gets weak chuckles from him.

His boisterous charm and tired joviality is threadbare and she feels like it’s the right thing to do to slip her hand into the crook of Jesse’s elbow, to gently tow him out of the Center’s fluorescent lit maze and out into the night. He giggles at her guiding him into the passenger side, a soft little noise of trusting gentleness that is bizarrely attractive in such a capable man. He folds his long limbs into her dinky car and waits patiently for her to get into her side.

“What?!” Donna asks him as Jesse keeps gazing at her with big blue eyes and droopy pink lips as she turns the key and fidgets with the windows to get some air flow, “Am I gonna have to buckle you in?” she teases at the way he’s just melted into the seat, head leaned against the headrest and long limbs folded where they first flopped.

“Mmmmmaybeee.” Jesse drags it out and giggles again -and she knows it is common to be a little drunk, a little silly, a little loopy after a panic attack as severe as the one she found him having, but she’s never heard of it or seen it be so cute. Against her better judgment to coddle a grown man, Donna leans over the small console between them and reaches across Jesse for the seatbelt, getting the strongest whiff of his natural musk and spicy cologne she’s ever gotten, it makes the musty cab of the car feel ten times hotter than it was moments ago and she fumbles in her haste to hurry up and distance herself.

It’s silly, Donna thinks, she’s being silly to find this procedure of bucking him in a intimate thing when they’ve done far more, when they’ve kissed heatedly on his bike and danced wildly to that new Elton John record in her off time. They’ve been more forward than this but somehow his pliant and drowsy magnetism has her heart thudding and her body responding in ways not even his glorious kissing could produce. But the way his breath puffs from his lips and the way he looks at her as if she’s everything he wants in this moment makes it hard to brush this interaction off as a nurse with her patient. Or a friend helping a friend. Donna brought Jesse in because he was physically unfit to drive, she is being kind because he’s obviously had an awful day, he’s loose and pliant because of exhaustion -these are familiar things to Donna, they are integral to her vocation and her expertise.

And yet there’s those eyes of his, soft and burning all at once, catching her skin on fire and soothing it right after.

It does nothing to make her breathing calm as she drags the buckle across his soft yet lean belly, down the taper of his waist, so willowy and elegant that it makes her want to cry in envy, sliding it to latch at his hip.

“Donna.” he rasps before she can pull away, his hand shakily coming up to touch her cheek and she stalls, feeling as scared as a kid for what he’ll say next, “You take the sunshine with ya, everywhere you go. M’sorry for those poor suckers we’ve left.” he jerks his head towards the blazing ball of light that is the Center amidst the dark parking lot and Donna blinks at the compliment, absorbing it slowly as his fingers on her cheek do their best to wipe her mind blank.

“Daisy is gonna be fine.” Donna assures, scrambling to order her reassurances for maximum comfort, “She’s getting stronger and she’ll be asleep the whole time we’re gone. A-and we gotta take care of you, ok? Can’t have you going down too, can we?”

“Okay.” he whispers and she realizes her hand is still pressed to his belly. “I-I’ve had a bad day.” he admits, and it’s the first self focused thing she’s ever heard out of this forever uncomplaining boy.

“Let’s uh, let’s get you home -rested. Let’s get you rested.” she propels herself back over to her side of the car and jerks the gear more forcefully than needed before driving them out. She’s not sure they actually talked about it or that it was agreed to verbally but they somehow both know they’re headed to her rented house, the place with the ratty sofa and the duck taped windows and the malfunctioning stove that Jesse cajoled into working long enough to make Daisy batch after batch of fluffy pancakes. She had nearly sprung on him back then, taken him down to the floor and ravished him for being such a nice human being.

The bar might be low for men, but since that day, Donna had learned that Jesse Presley was more than lean legs, a nice ass, a gorgeous face and an earnest desire to please. Jesse Presley was a good man. And so Donna felt no qualms about taking him to her house, plopping him down on the sofa after fetching sheets, and letting his grabby hands tug her down atop him for a goodnight kiss. A kiss that lasted, and lasted, and lasted. Lasted until he was kissing between her breasts, the neck of her tshirt tugged down in a way that would deform its shape forever as she was idiotically scrambling to undo his clunky belt, eager to see the expanse of perfect, golden skin that his face and neck promised.

Donna had never gone this far with a man before but some inner voice told her it was a once in a lifetime chance, not to sleep with a Presley, but to ease a boy who needs so much comfort right now he literally can’t breathe. Jesse’s kisses don’t stop and she doesn’t try to make them, he’s inexorable while being slow, and it’s a combination she’d never witnessed before. Perhaps if he’d rushed her, or made an outright pass, she’d have had time to consider, to deny. But he just kissed her and kissed her as his hands mapped and worshiped her, caressing her all the way from his allotted couch to her bed until she was beneath him, accepting him inside her body like she had let him in her heart.

Idly Donna wondered how many girls his father took and left with the same good intentions, winders if the generations will just keep at it, on and on. It doesn’t feel trite though, she’s not sure if it’s because it’s her first time or because of how intensely tender he is, or the way he cries partway through the act.

“Hay fever, sorry.” Jesse insists weakly.

“Killer this time of year.” Donna agrees, stroking down the sweaty muscles of his rippling back, “For me it’s the cedar.”

She feels trusted with his tears, cherished by his revenant kisses, and never once does he give her cause to regret it, to panic. It’s slow and needy, strong but kind, the whole way through -just like him. Donna’s eyes sting at the realization he’s giving her such a sweet first time, even if he doesn’t know it. She finds herself sniffling with him over the thought that it might be the only time.

“Thank you, thank you.” he gushes, sweet as anything in a thin whisper, after he scrambles out of her and she adds her hand to his to finish him off. He had dexterously snagged a pillow case off one of her pillows and after it had served its purpose, he dropped the sodden thing to the ground.

There’s nothing trite about the way they lay in sweet silence afterwards, the way he doesn’t even try to collect his autonomy but instead winds those long limbs around her and keeps his face on her sweaty chest. “You’re a rare one Donna.” he praises, sleepy and gentle over her heart.

Donna struggled against sleep for the next hour, desperate to engrave the feeling of him laying melted on her in peaceful slumber and the pounding ache between her legs that had finally known a man. Something like virginity that she simply hadn’t gotten around to tossing away, was suddenly something very dear and painfully sentimental to her now it was gone. Now it was now wrapped up in soft kisses, large hands entwining hers to the sheets and raspy endearments. She fell asleep propped against the pillow with his head on her belly, repeating to herself at the rhythm of her pulse down there -it’s just a fling, it’s just a fling, don’t expect more, you hopeful idiot.

Cold sheets, or the sound of the door shutting from his exit or the scratchy presence of a note the next morning were conspicuously absent when Donna woke up.

Instead she heard the sound of gentle babbling, like the way a person might talk to a pet and combined with the gentle wriggling she sensed beneath the sheets, Donna engaged briefly in a time warp and wondered when she got a puppy and who was talking to it. But there was no puppy here, instead, as cognisense fully set in she frantically sat up and beat at the wriggly sheets, Donna found Jesse, still long and lean and naked as she hazily recalled from the dimness last night, wedged between her legs and chatting with her muff, placing chaste kisses to it that barely parted her outer lips.

“No way.” she said her foggy morning thoughts aloud at the sight of this beautiful boy still with her in the daylight and more pressingly -face to face with her used and unwashed and unshaven privates. “Oh what are you going to do?” she wailed as that mortifying relaxation sunk in. “Why’re you down there, you nut?“

“Good Mornin’ to you too, miss.” Jesse laughed and his breath tickled her core that was feeling strangely achy and happy all at once. “I’m gonna lick your wounds, silly.” he slapped her thigh gently as he went on as if to reprimand her while tugging up a mildly bloody sheet corner as evidence for his displeasure, “Donna, ya shoulda said, dear.”

“Oh it’s not a big deal.” she insisted in a bit of a panic to get him away from her vagina and in an attempt to convince herself it didn’t mean much. “You were so good. Don’t worry about it.”

“But you shoulda told me.” he insisted gently.

“There wasn’t much time for talking.” she cringed as soon as she said it but he took that in stride after realizing she was not insinuating any wrongdoing on his part.

“Are you hurtin’ much?” he asked gently and he was still down there, broad and smooth shoulders wedged between her stubbled thighs, tapering down to his tiny waist and that peachy butt and then those legs that were hanging off the edge of her bed like so much lumber. “Donna?” he asked with laughter in his voice as her eyes glazed over in review of him.

“No, not much, you were very nice. It felt great.” she insisted truthfully and ended with a little hiss as he ran his knuckles along her petals. “I mean, I-I’m honestly not sure I’m up for more activities right this minute but it’s not bad. It’s not hurting. Please don’t worry about it.”

“Did you even…peak?” he asked and his face flushed red like he was most ashamed of not being sure of that.

“No I-I was mostly just soaking up the whole…experience.” she admitted because it was true and didn’t strike her as deplorable at all. He had been big and she was new and it wasn’t quite comfortable enough to get there. Which hadn’t diminished the experience or changed the point of their tryst anyway. “That wasn’t the point of it all anyway.” she said softly while reaching to push his hair out of his eyes. It had grown inches since she first met him. “Not for me.”

Jesse’s face softened quickly at that. Like she had struck a nerve and soothed him all at once. “Yeah,” he nodded, “it wasn’t for me either.” and it feels like a far larger confession that it is for both of them, “Which is rich comin’ from the man who got to come.” he laughed at himself right after and she did too. “Now spread these legs so hims can do a lil community service on hers poor widdle clam shell.”

Donna never would have thought such babyish, almost infantilizing gibberish could be so authoritative but the potency of its endearing qualities, with his skilled tongue and earnest desire to please, ensured her cooperation so that they didn’t leave the bed for hours yet. Donna soon forgot her unshaved legs, her need for a glass of water and the fact she’d forgotten to set an alarm -and then when she recalled that detail in a lull of his caresses, she recalled that it was Saturday and she was off. And then he wiped her mind blank again.

It wasn’t till halfway through the radio blasting Dancing Queen and Jesse discoing in jeans and nothing else while flipping an omelet that it seemed to occur to him there was a life outside Donna’s little place and Donna’s fluffy hair and Donna’s ratty rented flat, and Donna’s sunshiny smile. She watched as reality intruded on his creaseless features, an instant pucker and burdened eyes clouding that ethereally sweet face as the outside crashed in.

A world outside Donna. It felt as good to see how well she’d helped him to escape as it was painful to watch it all come back down on him, weighing like a mantle on those strong shoulders.

“Shi-eeet!” he slid to a screeching stop of his jiving in his sock feet across her linoleum floor. “I was gonna call mama, see how they’re takin’ the book release stuff.”

Donna had vaguely heard gossip about what she supposed was the book in question. A dirty little tattle tale by a fired employee is all it sounded like to her. “It’s bad then?” she asked.

“Shitty enough grammar to make me puke.” he joked bashfully and she supposed that it was his way of asking to drop it. “What’re you doin’ with your weekend? Like today? What else ya doin?”

“Not much.” she admitted, crossing her arms over the baggy shirt she’d donned to watch him cook her breakfast. “Um, I suppose I should get more groceries-“

“-I’ll make ya a list and we can go.”

“-and, oh. Ok. Yeah. And umm, well, I need to check on my dad. I usually spend my Saturday dinners with him.”

“Oh.” Jesse bit his lip, “I-I can go…you wouldn’t mind me taggin’ along for the groceries bit?” he asked.

“Of course not!” she tried to laugh off her butterflies, “Are you worried I’ll buy the wrong flour?”

“No, I’m worried you’ll buy margarine instead of good wholesome butter.” he growled gravely as he looped his arms around her waist and tugged her to him, laying his chin on the top of her head like she was dear to him and the butterflies went rogue in her belly against all her attempts to stay untangled. “I just wanna be with ya.” he admitted and she shuddered, winding her arms around his willowy waist and clinging on.

“I’d like that.” she admitted.

“Lemme just call my Mama real quick?” he asked.

Donna cringed before admitting, “I don’t have a working landline.”

“What?” Jesse pulled away just enough to look her in the eye, his own wide in protest, “Good lord darlin’, that won’t do. Livin’ alone and no phone for me to hear if you’re alright. Well, lemme grab my shirt and- help yourself to the omelet, baby. And remind me to get ya a damn phone!” he was already disappearing down her hall and she stared at the egg and ham concoction before her, wishing the terrible anxiety she felt over much she liked him would calm so she could taste it.

They ended up swinging by the Center first as Jesse acted like he’d committed a murder when noon rolled around and he hadn’t checked on Daisy yet. Donna felt for him and recalled the feel of his tongue too clearly to a fuss as she flicked her blinker to turn left, away from groceries and phones, and back towards her workplace. Some little part of her hoped he’d forget his promise to buy her one, it was extravagant and a little embarrassing.

The thumping beat of Springsteen’s Thunder Road filled her car with verve that matched the muggy exhaust tainted breeze that whipped through the windows and the noonday sun that glinted off Jesse’s rings as his hand wind surfed out the window.

“I got to play bass on this one.” Jesse murmured like someone might mention they had a hand in scoring a strike in their local bowling championships.

“What?! On this? You’ve worked with Springsteen?” she cried in shocked admiration.

“S’all my mama’s doin’.” he insisted as if regretting he’d made a deal of it. “A-and daddy. He taught me bass.” it’s the first personal thing about his daddy he’s divulged and Donna tucks it away for safe keeping.

“Aren’t you marvelous.” Donna swears.

“Hardly,” he blushes, “S’just when your name is Presley and your mom’s got her hand on the levers -artist’s tend to let ya mess about.”

“I somehow doubt they’d let a complete dud jam on their album.” she snarks and he bites his lip and doesn't retort.

The harmonica warbles on and Jesse’s hand raps out a rhythm on the car door. “-show a little faith there’s magic in the night! You ain’t beauty but hey you're alright, and that’s alright wi’me.” he sings to her, far more melodious than Springsteen’s grit and his eyes sparkle far more than stereo light ever could.

Once parked he worries his lip between his fingers as he stares at a faintly familiar car parked by his bike. It’s probably telling enough that Jesse left the thing here and went home with someone else. Or maybe folks will assume he wandered the streets and dive bars all night. At least that would spare Donna’s reputation while at it. “How ‘bout I go in first a-and if you want you come in later or -if ya don’t mind, you could wait out here? I’ll be back! Soon, I-I won’t dawdle, I swear!” he assures.

“Jesse, take all the time you need.” she smiles at him, leveraging her chair to lay back as sunbeams bathe her in a lemony glow, “I’ll be out here working on my tan.”

His smile is so full of relief that Donna realizes he was worried she’d be offended by his distancing himself and if he weren’t so relieved then maybe she’d be tempted to be offended. But she can’t bring herself to be. It’s all a mess in her head but she figures she can not make it worse by being accepting of the fact he doesn’t want to be seen with her. It’s ok, his smile makes that ok, as does the way those long fingers unclasp his seatbelt and the way those long limbs lean over her in a mirroring of last night and she feels those plush pink lips smooch her forehead, long and devoutly.

“Sit tight, baby.” he commands with his lips barely leaving her skin and then he’s out the door and strutting across the parking lot without a seeming trace of nervousness.

Rounding the hall down towards Daisy’s room he passes by the familiar wall phone and stops in his tracks at the sight of Rosalee propping Daisy up while having the receiver wedged between their cheeks. For a flash in his mind they don’t look a day over six with their scrunched faces and contrasting hair, always so compatible while entirely opposites.

Rosalee spots him first as Daisy is busy yacking at whoever they’ve held captive on the line and her blue eyes light with sweet recognition as she teases, “Well hey loverboy, good morning. Or is it afternoon?”

That makes Daisy look up and she answers someone on the line by proclaiming, “Yeah, he juusssst nowww walked in.”

“Who is that?” Jesse mouths, his forehead a washboard of wrinkled anxiety that Rosalee can’t bear anymore so she cracks and admits,

“It’s Mama, silly.”

Jesse relaxes a little on that account, moreso for the fact Daisy has obviously gotten past her presumption of being hated by their mother, if the giggles and gumption in her talk are any clue.

“Well yeah, I think he can talk,” Daisy is saying, “I mean I dunno, I’ll ask him. He looks like he’s missing a few ounces of fluids. You still got your tongue Jess?”

“Hush up!” He begs, pink in the face at the thought of mama thinking he’s been sleeping around when he was entrusted by Daddy to take care of his sister.

Daisy sticks her tongue out at him and Jesse finds that more reassuring that she’s stone cold sober than any other behavior he’s seen from her in rehab. Checking to make sure their squabble is unwitnessed, Jesse turns back and sticks out his own.

“Eww put that away, where’s it even been this morning?” she groans and his closes his mouth so fast his sisters become convinced of what had just been a suspicion.

“Oooh…” Rosalee coos.

“Nope nope nope.” He silences them with a meaningful hand chopping motion to the throat, “I kinda had an episode last night, and uh, Miss Donna was kind enough to lemme ride with her since my hands were shakin’. That’s it.”

“Oh Jesse!” Mama’s concern is loud enough over the phone to blast Daisy’s eardrums and reach his own, “Are you ok? You gotta make sure you eat and sleep. Did you sleep? She taking care of you? Baby? Are you -is he there, y’all?”

Rosalee scootches aside and pats the tiny sliver of white wall between the twins in invitation and resignedly he wiggles between them as Daisy laughs and tugs on the cord to help it reach him. Tucked together like this it feels doubly absurd to Jesse to be so fretted over and also, entirely soothing. He flings a lanky arm around each girl’s shoulder and squats a little to help Daisy reach his ear as she holds the receiver for him.

“Mama I’m fine.” he insists mid giggle as Rosalee’s finger finds a way to his armpit.

“Yeah, so fine you can’t drive!” Mama retorts and it relieves him that she obviously thinks the best of him, that he was in bad enough shape to go to a random girl’s house and not that he’s behaving like an absolute horndog in a new city. Just to make her not worry, he half wishes she’d think worse of him and just be displeased.

“Alright so, maybe I snooped through Red’s book yesterday.” Jesse admits since he intended to see how daddy and she were taking it, after all. “And it’s such shitty storytelling I got a little worked up. You know how I am when folks lyrics are dry a-“

“-Red wrote a book?” Rosalee interrupts as does Daisy with a-

“-am I in it?”

Jesse purses his lips and nods, twirling the phone cord and waiting quietly for Mama to say something.

When she does it’s a droll, “Red made takin’ LSD sound boring.” And between Donna’s sweet lovin’ and mama’s superhuman ability to shrug off the most defaming shit on the planet, Jesse is left smiling and burdened with only one small anxiety.

“How’s daddy takin’ it?” he asks as his ear gets pinched from Daisy mashing her face to his, eager to overhear. Rosalee is just face watching and Jesse knows she’ll get more information from that than if she listened.

“Oh, a bit hard.” she admits, “It's just so -so- tacky. To do that to a friend!” now she sounds mad, “When did we ever hurt that narcissistic fool? If our lifestyle was so unbearable he coulda quit, he had two decades to do it.”

“Yup.” Jesse pops the word for emphasis and notices someone down the hall has a disposable camera pointed at their little huddle. He supposes they do look a little bizarre, stacked in the alcove like overly matured sardines.

“Anyone giving you trouble about it?” Mama adds in concern.

“No. You know it jus’ came out yesterday and I-I-I haven’t been out and about much today.” Jesse admits and Daisy makes suggestive hand motions at waist level that he pointedly ignores.

“He predicts that when we’re in our fifties we’ll get back together.” she murmurs.

“Spoilers!” he hisses and mama laughs as does someone in the background that could only be daddy. “A real, genuine prophet, that Red.” Jesse wheezes. “And daddy,” he hollers loudly in hopes he’ll hear, “he were wrong about me hating the damn rollercoaster. I shit my pants everytime outta joy, I swear. Don’t let nobody make ya doubt that.”

For a minute all he can hear are mama’s suppressed belly laughs before Daddy’s rings clatter on the other end and the kids can almost hear the scratch of a sideburn against the mouthpiece, “Y’all can hear me?” he rumbles through and Jesse’s face gets smashed from both sides as the girls crowd in.

“Yeah we can hear ya daddy.”

“Alright then listen to me, lil munchkins,” his voice sounds as deep and smooth as chocolate, even over a trashy phone speaker, and they all hypnotically sway in anticipation of his next word, “y’all know how much I love each of ya, that I’d happily burn down my trophy room ‘fore I let anythin’ happen to the window boxes with yer various uh, weeds and rocks and such in ‘em that Red was always mockin’ and uh, I wanna apologize to ya, from the bottom of my heart, that I hindered y’all in your quest to strap the Wests to Roman Candles that one christmas. Ya had the right idea.”

Jesse’s day gets magically better after that phone call, like one sentence from Daddy can patch up his whole life. But deep down he knows, it’s a thread of Donna running through the whole thing, buoying him up, smoothing out the creases, patching up the little cuts. It makes daddy’s voice sound richer and his promises truer and Jesse holds the receiver and smiles as Rosalee makes plans to drive back for classes and visit them while she’s at it and Daisy suggests baby names.

Things are as they should be and somehow that means he ends up walking out into the parking lot with his two sisters, one of whom was technically not released and piling into Donna’s beat up Oldsmobile and taking off for the grocery store as if that were a sane thing to do. Rosalee tries her best to meet the young woman driving them and Donna is anything but cagey, yet with Daisy’s blathering about her and Jesse’s blushing over her and Donna’s slightly overwhelmed joy at it all -they make for a chaotic entourage picking out butter and pickles and hamburger buns.

Next stop, Donna watches as Jesse and Daisy spend a solid twenty minutes weighing the value of different landlines when all Donna needs it for is to answer if she’s been murdered or not and during this analysis she learns from Rosalee that the auburn haired girl with the bashful grin is going to school at Stanford. Nearly gave her father a heart stack, she laughs when she tells it, but she wanted to study psychology and be nearer him -the subtext that Elvis was more often in Vegas than at his own home goes unsaid and Donna doesn’t bat an eye.

For what the papers have to say about this family, there’s never once been due credit given for their love and comradery. It couldn’t have been easy and maybe it was far from good at times, but the Presley’s didn’t create this much love from a vacuum. Some aching part of Donna wants to meet them all and watch them in their natural habitat, swear to them that she gets it, that she’s so starved for it herself she’d trade anything for such affectionate dysfunction.

The phone Jesse buys her has no superior merits in static or connection but it does have a zebra print handle on it that Daisy insisted was the height of chic, and he insisted in turn that Donna deserved sexy things. Looking down at her overalls and plaid shirt, Donna has to agree she’s not exactly in Jesse Presley’s league.

Before she can think on that for too long and get herself into knots about it, they’ve piled back into the car and Daisy is eagerly asking if they can get dinner -if she can eat outside of her fluorescent lit, sterile white prison. Donna feels for her and she can see Jesse trying to formulate an excuse, how now is time to let Donna be as she’s gotta go visit her dad. If she weren’t so convinced these dear kids actually liked hanging with her she’d never have the guts to suggest it but they’re too honest and forthright in their affection for her to doubt it so she hears herself suggesting:

“Y’all could come meet my dad? H-he loves your dad’s music. Learned drums awhile back just to match Fontana. I know he’d love y’all to bits.” Rosalee and Daisy raise a chorus of agreement in the backseat but Jesse hesitates and Dona refuses to be hurt by it. He’s obviously the more cautious of them, and he’s got reason to be. Donna thinks she saw someone taking photographs of them all as they came out of the market.

There’s also the unspoken worry about putting Daisy out in public so soon with surroundings teaming with alcohol and other temptations. It makes Donna clarify, haltingly, “It would be somewhere quiet, wholesome. My dad he’s um, he’s a recovering alcoholic, see? That’s how I got into nursing, mama left to go get more from life and I stayed to take care of him. He’s been clean for a good bit now but -he could use the friendship.”

Daisy looks like she’s about to take offense at being considered only fit for friendships with washed up drunks and Donna gets it, that it’s touchy but it needed to be said if they’re going to meet him. Rosalee intervenes instead with a soft,

“Sounds good to me, we’d love to meet him. For my schedule it works, doesn't it Jesse?” she asks, “I mean, as long as it’s somewhere quiet? Maybe out of the city proper?”

“Yeah,” Donna agrees, already having a joint in mind, “we’ll get out of the city. Maybe out by Plano? They’ve got good barbecue at this one place.”

“Jess?” Rosalee asks again, softer this time.

Jesse just turns around in his seat, long arm bracing himself and his bulging forearm stretched across the console and Donna’s mouth waters at the popping veins and nimble fingers as she watches him stare a mute Daisy down. “Can I take you for barbecue with Miss Donna and her daddy and trust you to behave yourself?”

“Oh for fu-“

“Daisy?” Jesse cuts her off, dead serious and so easily authoritative that Donna’s legs rub closed despite the inappropriate context. He’s not all sweet boy and needy young heir and it gives her shivers. “I mean I don’t want even a raised middle finger outta ya, you hear me? Just imagine whatever you do is gonna be plastered everywhere, think about that and we’ll go. We got a deal?”

Daisy seems to weigh her anger at her brother’s bossiness with the dire need for something besides hospital food and after twenty tense seconds of belligerence she gives in with a hoarse, “Deal. Gosh it’s not such a big thing, relax.”

That night Donna’s love for them gets cemented. They’re only licking their fingers of sticky sauce and ordering five different smoked briskets to try but the kids make conversation like they’ve learned a bit of everything from everywhere. Which in retrospect, Donna assumes that maybe they have, exposed as they were to the best and the worst, but she didn’t expect it to be so natural and kind, so outwardly focused where Jesse pulled anecdotes about the Korean War from her dad she’d never heard and a mention or two of Ma from happier times after one of Rosalee’s queries.

Everyone just talks, talks about the stuff they want to talk about but usually don’t. It’s cathartic and Donna hasn’t seen her daddy so recharged in ages. Jesse ends the night digging in his deep pockets for something that ends up being a guitar pick.

“I-it’s my d-daddy’s, sir,” he stammers as he puts it in Donna’s father’s weather palm, “wish he were here to swap stories but I-I-I thought maybe you’d like it. Till you can m-meet him.”

Her daddy takes it gratefully and thumbs over it with a fondness Jesse has seen a lot of folks show for the man he knows too well and they love more than seems possible for strangers. It never fails to humble him and reignite some apprecIation of his own for Elvis’ warmth that’s made it all the way into the heart of a middle aged vet from Waxahachie Texas.

“I’d sure like to meet the man someday.” Her daddy admits. “And thank ya for dinner, young Presley.”

“I hope you will meet him, I think ya will.” Jesse stammers and can’t bear to meet Donna’s surprised gaze, “We owe your Donna a heap, sir. Mama is about ready to come down here and eat her up she’s so grateful. And I uh, I intend to not lose touch.” he mutters the last bit and it makes Donna feel close to faint with hope that her father misheard as they go on to talk about how the press has treated Elaine Presley and eventually say their good nights. Jesse won’t meet her eye, just tucks her into his armpit like her short height mandates for a hug and says goodnight. After the heat of last night she thinks she’ll waste away from such propriety.

As she gets in the car to drive her dad home, working the shift, a bright light slices across their windshield and after the sparks clear from Donna’s dazzled eyes she realizes someone, probably with a professional grade flash, just snapped a photo of them. They’re ordinary people who had barbeque with the kids of a famous man and now they’re being stalked. It’s not fair to them or the Presley’s and her dad rages against the unfairness of it and how nice those kids were all the way back to his place. It keeps Donna from crying over the notion that Jesse went through all those motions this morning to make her think he liked her more than just a lay, and now it’s a sideways hug and a terse “goodnight.”

Jesse’s heart hurts as he drives the girls back to the center in Rosalee’s car, smiling softly as he listens to their protests against his ratty motel and noticing the car behind trailing their every turn. He knew that the rehabilitation was wrapping up and he knew they were getting sloppy at laying low. There’s been a countdown in his head that’s kept him going, after all, and they’re so close now to the finish line that he had burned out and fallen into Donna’s arms for the last leg. The fact it is the last leg makes him jittery with a thousand thoughts at once. The chief one is how unfair it all is.

For her mainly.

But if there’s one thing Donna taught him last night, it was to take a little time to hurt for himself. By the time he sneaks Daisy back into the Center under a cloak of darkness and drives Rosalee to a hotel fit for housing a nice girl like his sister is, his heart just about wants to burst with hurt. He sends Rosalee up to her room with a kiss to the forehead and plans to have her car back in time for her to drive back tomorrow. He goes cback out to the parking lot and making a beeline for the beater Mercedes’ parked three rows down from his ride. He raps on the window and it doesn’t even take the gun in his boot to freak the unexpecting and nosy little bastard in the driver seat.

“Hey, brother.” Jesse greets as the guy actually rolls the window down in his panic on being confronted, “You like my route?” he asks congenially but there’s an edge to his voice that isn’t false bravado, “I noticed ya liked the barbecue, too. Wanna come up to my room and watch me sleep? Or were you gonna wait till I leave and try that with my sister? Hmm?”

The guy, like most guys in the nation, knows what Jesse did to the last fella who tried something with Rosalee, how his brother Jack and his friend Sam and the whole of Sam’s squad from the Memphis police just sipped bourbon while Jesse drug the fucker by the balls down S. Riverside Dr. It makes the smirking boy at his window a lot more imposing than his decent stature, hippy length hair and strong hands seem on first impression. “N-no man I’m here- I’m here to- uh-“

“Just hand me the damn film rolls and we’ll part ways, ok?” Jesse holds out his hand expectantly and the guy hesitates a bit. Sighing heavily, Jesse reaches into his back pocket for the persuasive shit and he can see the man’s panic show in his eyes again as Jesse reaches, only for it to be replaced by confusion as he’s presented with a badge of sorts. “This here badge was given to me by President Nixon himself, alright? Back when he asked to meet my daddy in the Oval Office, and he gave me this badge and it’s got the authority to demand such private property as photographs of my face and my sisters’ faces, ya understand? I wouldn’t wanna get you into trouble none by writing a damn reportc a. Just -hand ‘em over, k?”

The guy still hesitates, doubtful he’ll get off so easily and wary to give in and still get his ass handed to him. To be perfectly honest he doesn’t care much about some badge that some impeached President gave a rockstar’s fifteen year old kid . “Really, dude, I’m just here to meet a-“

“You really wanna see what my daddy gave me for my birthday last year?” Jesse asks with burdened patience and somehow, without it even being said, the man knows that birthday gift was a gun. Elvis Presley has been downright insane for some time now, it just fits. Jesse Presley, lanky frame bent to wedge into his low window like a looming specter in the dark doesn't look much more stable. He fumbles in the passenger seat and grabs the priceless rolls containing an excellent shot of that girl he’s been hanging out with, in her car with her dad as she pulls out of the barbecue place. It hurts the guy deeply to watch them go but he comforts himself with the thought of all the earlier snaps he’d managed to drop at the publishers earlier.

“Here, Jeeze.” the guy plops them in Jesse’s large palm and Jesse’s fingers curl over them elegantly while his pointer finger beckons still.

“Gimme the one in the camera, c’mon now. I’m not stupid.”

“You can’t shoot me-“

“No, I can do way worse, believe me. The roll, give it here!” Jesse’s ringed fingers make a gimme-gimme motion and the guy notices that those rings would make a mean and gaudy sort of brass knuckle if tested. His nose hurts at just the thought.

He hands over his camera and despite expecting the kid to drop the precious thing and stomp on it or something, all Jesse does is pop the lid and take out the roll. Adding it to the others in his back pocket along with that stupid and sentimental badge that belongs in an era back when his famous daddy still had the nation’s respect.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Jesse murmurs as he hands back the neutered camera, “and I hope you understand that if I ever catch you at this again, for myself or my friends, you’re gonna have more audits and subpoenas than you do donuts in that gut. Am I understood? I’ll bury your ass.”

It’s freaky getting threatened so effectively by a teenager. Like he’s old inside and knows that paperwork is scarier than a knife when you’re tired and broke. Most of these Presley’s belong in the loony bin or the MET, with Elaine Presley being the latter and the rest of her family the former. Either way, all of them need to be under lock and key, except they're too rich for that. And they’re certainly rich enough to make the guy’s

I life a living hell. Or very rich if he were to sell pictures of Jesse Presley necking a rehab nurse on his bike.

“Yeah ok, can I go?” the guy asks, exasperated.

“By all means, get the hell away from my family!” Jesse smiles and backs away, patting at the back of the guy’s car in farewell before the man hears a screeching sound of metal ripping off.

He frantically looks behind him only to find Jesse innocuously sauntering back to his bike in the dark parking lot. Suspicious of what the kid did, and suspecting a poked tire but too scared to get out and investigate while he’s still on the prowl, the guy waits and watches as the kid’s bike revs to life. Sure enough Presley steers the thing right past his window while waving the guy’s license plate like a giant metal envelope in his hand.

“Have fun without this, man, lotta bored cops on the lookout tonight!”

Feeling very good and very angry, Jesse waits at the red light, full aware the guy is watching him and when the fucker doenst get the hint to leave the parking lot ahead of him, Jesse revs his motor and bekons the guy over like a gentlman ushering a lady through the door first. Exhaust fumes have never smelt so sweet to him as he takes a turn trailing the guy until he’s well out of Dallas and nearing Arlington, well away from Daisy and Rosalee.

And Donna. Jesse’s blood boils and the hot summer air clings to his neck as he peels off into the dark of night and heads back to his motel with its greasy bedspread and its mildew shower where he’s gunked up the drain with his fervor for her large lips and sweet eyes and eyebrows that are like busy caterpillars dancing across her forehead. He wants her so badly it’s painful and now he knows what it’s like to be with her and held by her and accepted so readily, so selflessly, so sweetly -it’s worse than before. He can’t even bear to think of settling for shower steam and his fist. He falls into bed and rolls onto his belly, pulling open the bedside drawer before placing the license plate next to the complementary motel Bible. It makes him smile, Donna’s got a phone and he’s got a license plate. He keeps staring at his tin trophy knowing fully well tonight’s slumber is merely metaphorical. He’ll not be sleeping a wink.

He’ll be thinking of her. And how he’s gotta be a bastard for a little longer to keep her safe. And how mama’s about to have a baby and daddy’s about to remarry her and Rosalee just started to sleep herself after the attack and how Daisy will be out and testing herself and how John will be coming home to Ella and their baby and -he really outta visit Ella while he’s here in Texas. And while she’s got Marie staying with her. Marie could use to see another face. There’s so much ahead and none of it needs to involve Jesse fending off reporters so he can go make professions of premature love to a little Texan with a penchant for his pancakes and clitoris nibbles.

Like the planner his mama taught him to be, he steadies himself with a hand to the bridge of his nose and lines all these frantic responsibilities into a tidy row. And to the side are his wants. For a few years now those have gotten a little dusty and he doesn’t begrudge that, not really. But right now he makes another column to this mental checklist.

His needs.

Which comprise Donna and more Donna and Donna forever. It’s so simple, the roses ahead that may take years but it is simple nonetheless.

Go get the girl, that’s what they all say. Daddy had done just that.

Jesse thinks about that phone he got her this afternoon, assuming she’s hauled it out of the trunk by now. He’s already arranged for someone to hook it up by next weekend.

Step one accomplished. He wants to laugh at his own impatience. Step one, already done. Before the end of the week he can be calling her and she’ll be wrapping her fingers around the phone like he wishes she would somewhere else and he can make comments about how nice the barbecue was and she can ask about Daisy’s progress once released.

And they can keep that up. Till he finds a time to marry her. Hopefully not in some red letter year that involves his parents remarrying or making a surprise child.

Hope y’all enjoyed! Your “bugging” and “screaming” is music to my ears, fuel to my fire and keeps me writing, please never hold back -this is a safe space for feral little Elvis loving rodents…like you and me.

If you’d like to be tagged in this particular series please drop a note below. I’ll admit I’m disorganized and have trouble keeping all the requests sorted when they’re scattered, what I do check regularly are the requests in the notes for chapters -and I do manage to get those added. So, if you’ve put in a request and I’ve failed ya, or if you’re new and would like to be added, please pop a note below. Xoxo

@paradsol000

@eliseinmemphis

@prompted-wordsmith

@ab4eva

@foreverdolly

@powerofelvis

@butlersxbirdy

@crash-and-cure

@elvisabutler

@heartbrake-hotel

@stylespresleyhearted

@thatbanditqueen

@crazymadpassionatelove

@myradiaz

@ash-omalley

@arianatheangelgirl

@steph-speaks

@burningloverdoll

@angelface-555

@lookingforrainbows

@missmaywemeetagain

@coolgirl462

@kingdomforapony

@18lkpeters

@richardslady121

@from-memphis-with-love

@lillypink

@artlover8992

@pennyroyalcreep

@notstefaniepresley

@ellie-24

@renaissingle

@waiting4brucewayne2adoptme

@presleyenterprise

@marriedtopresley

@ashtag2887

@dkayfixates

@vampireindistress

@ashtag6887

@i-r-i-n-a-a

@obsessedvibee

@peskybedtime

@goth-cowgirl-03

@stephthestallion

@fav-fanficssss

@loving-elvis

@honeyorangess

@soloangel

@xenaspace3-blog

@60svintage

[stardustndreamsofsilver]

Inferum

Prologue

Jake x OC (f)

Warnings: possibly spooky subject to some, talk of human remains

Quocumque ingrederis sequitur mors corporis umbra.

My story begins like any other I suppose. When I was small and staying with my Grandma Julie, as I did most weekends, I saw my first fantôme, ghost. As I lay sleeping, I woke to a woman sitting at the end of my bed. She was old, her red hair reminded me of a poodle and the way she dressed seemed out of place, even to a five year old. She lounged at the end of the bed, legs crossed, one arm draped across her lap and a cigarette in the hand of the other. Up until then my little mind had not thought to be frightened, just confused. 

Then, she took a drag of her cigarette and slowly faced me. She stared at me, unblinking. My heart began to pound and I could feel my throat begin to close from the sheer terror that coursed through my body. I wanted to scream, jump up and run to my grandmother, anything! But I was frozen in place. All I could do was screw my eyes shut and pray for her to go away.

The next morning, I told Grandma Julie about the woman in my room. She, like most adults, thought nothing of it and figured the woman was an imaginary friend I’d conjured up. That is until I began to describe her. As I recounted the details of the woman, from the color of her pants to the pattern on her sweater, my grandmother’s face slowly began to fall.

“Oh! And she had funny looking hair. It was red like yours, but looked like cotton candy!” I’d said.

All color drained from Grandma’s face. Her hand slowly raised and covered her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes and she whispered, “Oh, God!” I later learned that the person I’d described had been my grandmother’s mother, Ava. Not only that, but the way I described her was how she’d looked the day she told Grandma Julie that she had lung cancer. 

Since that day, I’ve never stopped pursuing the paranormal. It started with me asking my parents– or rather any adult– about ghosts. Were they real? Had the woman I’d seen just been in my head like my mother tried to convince me? As I got older, I would read any ghost story I could get my hands on, be it fiction, reddit forums; whatever form they took. Some would say that I was/am obsessed, but I’d like to think that I’m on a lifelong pursuit of knowledge. Albeit niche. 

Which brings us here, to Paris.

Paris, the city of love, the city of light, the city of the dead. It should be clear as to which name brings me here. The city of love… Ah, who am I kidding? I’m here for the Ossuaire Municipal de Paris, otherwise known as the Catacombs.

The Catacombs are steeped in mystery, the macabre, and stories of the paranormal. Which, how could they not be? They hold the remains of an estimated six million people. Not only that, but most of the remains were exhumed from their original resting place and dumped into the then abandoned limestone mines. 

But then there was good reason for this, as the cemeteries of Paris were overflowing by the mid to late 1780s. It was so overflowing and “unpleasant” to live near that it became a matter of public health and safety. So, the bones of millions began to be moved and continued to be until 1814 and then began again in 1840. 20 years later, the interment of remains officially and finally stopped.

Now, the remains weren’t left undisturbed during this time. Just before the Ossuaire Municipal de Paris was opened to the public, a man named Héricart de Thury was charged with heading the “decorative rearrangement” of the bones, that up until this point, were just pushed in the massive piles along the walls to utilize as much space as possible. So, Thury was the man who planned and executed the macabre and morbid designs and art that you see today within its walls.

These two things, the mass exhumation and further disturbance of the remains, are said to be the catalyst for the haunting of the Catacombs. Which in turn has brought thousands of urban explorers, paranormal investigators, and lovers of all things supernatural to the city. There are so many stories and urban legends told by those who have braved the uncharted parts of the catacombs. I’m sure they could fill a library's worth of books. 

This particular excursion of the city of the dead will fill mine.

taglist: @peaceloveunitygvf, @edgingthedarkness, @jakekiszkashangnail08

If you would like to be added to the taglist for future installments, let me you 🖤

[paintedscales]

FFXIV Write 2024 :: Day Two

Prompt: Horizon Characters: Nomin tal Kheeriin, Dorgene Haragin Word Count: 729 Warnings: Mentions of death

Master List

The fried bread that Nomin had was a day old and a combination of being slightly crispy and stale around the edges while unsatisfyingly floppy in the middle. It certainly did not serve as the best breakfast one could ask for, but she supposed that this was something she was simply going to have to get used to in order to sail the seas tolerably. And that was going to have to be a priority if this was going to be her life for the time being.

“Just look at that endless horizon…!” Drogene jogged across the deck of the ship past Nomin, a smile growing on her face. Leaning at the ship’s railing in a near-anxiety-inducing way, feet lifting off the ground. She was clearly enjoying herself. “I never get tired of looking at it during days like this.”

Nomin turned her gaze out upon the open sea. The Haragin had been sailing for a while, and land had disappeared from view since late the day prior. Bright blue skies met the azure seas in a setting that Nomin never really imagined being surrounded by. It was a combination of being both bleak and beautiful at the same time, and it was that slight obstacle that prevented Nomin from seeing what Dorgene saw.

Dorgene’s feet returned to the ship’s deck, and she looked over at Nomin. “What do you think? This is your first true experience out at sea, isn’t it?”

Nomin stopped mid-chew on her piece of bread and glanced from Dorgene back out toward the horizon. Swallowing, she hummed in thought. “I…don’t really know? It doesn’t seem too exciting to me. But…maybe you can tell me why you like it?”

At that moment, Dorgene’s brow went up as she chuckled lightly. “Fair skies, fair seas…it’s a beautiful day. Though, living on the land as long as you have, you have probably taken it for granted in a way. For if the skies are angry and tumultuous, then so too becomes the sea. To appreciate the beauty of the calm horizon is to appreciate the air we breathe and the life we still live.”

‘The life we still live…’ Nomin thought to herself, her brow forming a small furrow as she considered Dorgene’s perspective. “... How…dangerous is it to sail?”

Dorgene’s expression fell, a sad smile lingering on her lips as she folded her arms over the ship’s railing. She stared down into the deep blue waters. “You know how we have three ships?”

“I do.”

“It used to be a small fleet… When I was but a toddler, maybe three or four summers of age, I remember there being much more. Eight. My parents told me there used to be even more,” Dorgene began, recalling her past and the stories she had been told over time. “Only when I was about ten and three summers was I allowed to start sailing with the rest of the tribe. That was my first real taste of the sea… I loved it from the moment we took off from the bay.”

A sigh left Dorgene as she looked back up at the distant horizon.

“The first terrible storm I ever experienced was when I was ten and five summers -- two years later. The khan urged me to stay safe in the ship’s cabin, to hold onto something sturdy when I did.” Dorgene’s tail had even stayed slack behind her as she recounted her tale. “When the storm finally passed, we lost two of our ships… At least thirty or forty of our tribespeople. All because of a storm -- because of how angrily the seas and the skies danced with one another that they cared not who they punished.”

To think that a storm could do that. Dorgene was right -- perhaps Nomin had taken her life upon the Steppe for granted. Though casualties and even fatalities from storms were not unheard of, they never took out entire swaths of members of the tribes she knew.

“...Why… Why continue to sail the seas knowing the dangers?” Nomin asked.

“I love the open waters. I love seeing new horizons. New people. New foods. New things to discover.” Dorgene’s smile returned, though the sad look behind her eyes remained. “Perhaps, one day, I shall also be brought into the sea’s embrace. But until then, this ship is my home, my tribe is my family.

[blurglesmurfklaine]

NEWSIES UNO REVERSE

I LOVE IT

tell me EVERYTHING

starting questions I have

-what happens to esther, Sarah and mayer in this au

-how does this change les and jack's dynamic of like "cool older kid who's street smart" and "little kid who idolises him"

- what happens, is Jack now the more educated one, is it Jack who has the words to start a strike,

-who leads the manhattan lodging house

-has davey had run ins with Brooklyn before (and what does Jack think of Brooklyn when he becomes a newsie)

-does davey like getting into fights (bc I think especially 92sies David would, but bc of how he's been brought up he dismisses the mere notion and avoids fisticuffs)

ok warning u now I will have more questions later haha

I WELCOME ALL THE QUESTIONS!!! Sorry this is sooooo long but here:

what happens to esther, Sarah and mayer in this au

Oooh I haven’t thought about Sarah yet! But I will tie it in to what happens to the Jacobs parents. Be warned, it is Sad and Tragic.

Mayer tangles with a delivery truck, just like in livesies, but instead of staying at home he leaves the state to find work with family somewhere west. He never comes back. This happens when Davey is about eight. Sarah is a little older, maybe twelve, and Esther is pregnant with Les, who never gets to meet his father. Three years later, Esther falls ill and passes. I imagine Sarah being the oldest and ‘Most promising’ would be sent/taken away to live with an elderly relative, or possibly some sort of home for girls

how does this change les and jack's dynamic of like "cool older kid who's street smart" and "little kid who idolises him"

Well Jack is still Jack, you know? Oh and if you thought he was confident before, just IMAGINE how insufferable he in a world where he had a clean bed and full stomach every day?

I think Les would see him as the cool new “rich” kid who is confident enough to try anything and has all these wonderful stories about growing up in the theatre—which Davey obviously cannot stand bc he believes Les should keep his head on earth

what happens, is Jack now the more educated one, is it Jack who has the words to start a strike

Omg omg ong okay SO I’ve actually been thinking bout this a TON, and although their on roles are switched, they still are the characters they are if that makes sense??? So in my mind, it’s still Davey who has the words and information to start the strike—orphaned or not, this motherfucker READS. Similar to the show though he sort of sparks the idea, and Jack is kind of egging him on which Davey doesn’t understand because Jack HAS a mother, a family, he has so much more to lose

And there is this one scene that has been chewing on my brain and shaking it nonstop like a Rottweiler with a toy. Jack is still very much an artist in this AU, and Davey is the one who escaped from The Refuge.

Post rally apology scene, Jack says he’s talked to Kath and they have an idea—Davey says he just talked to her, too… and Davey isn’t kissing and telling but he doesn’t have to. Jack can tell there’s something (and there’s a lot of internal angst from Jack about this, who is trying to stay cool)

Anyway. The plan involves needing words and art for The Neesies Banner. Kath and Davey’s words, and Jack’s art. So Jack and Davey sit down together, Davey recounting everything he went through at the refuge while Jack draws it.

And then Jack can’t take it anymore and puts his pencil down and Davey’s like “???? Why’d you stop?”

Jack looks at him and just says, “I am so sorry this happened to you” and Davey is taken SO aback because he doesn’t think anyone has ever told him that and they have A Moment and uh oh??? Feelings??? And the moment breaks and they scramble away to the printing press at Pulitzers basement lol

-who leads the manhattan lodging house

Davey, but in a more unassuming way! He’s not so outright about it, and definitely not a big personality. He mostly talks kids out of making stupid decisions, but if they’re stubborn enough (Race) he’s not going to waste his time, because they’ll find out the hard way (Also Race). He’s not even necessarily the “leader” he’s just sort of the oldest and has been there the longest so

-has davey had run ins with Brooklyn before (and what does Jack think of Brooklyn when he becomes a newsie)

Davey has had a run in with Brooklyn through Race. I can see Race getting into a scuffle with Spot and Davey having to intervene. Not sure WHY yet? Maybe Race was selling on Brooklyn turf, maybe he was conning Brooklyn newsies, but I DO know that Davey was Very Annoyed about having to save Race’s ass

-does davey like getting into fights (bc I think especially 92sies David would, but bc of how he's been brought up he dismisses the mere notion and avoids fisticuffs)

Honestly? I don’t think he *likes* it, but he realizes the necessity of it quite early on!

THANK YOU FOR THESE!! They were so fun! 🤩 Anyone anywhere anytime is ALWAYS welcome to ask me about my brainrot newsies AUs lol

[paralleljulieverse]

A Milestone in Time: Julie Andrews' 15th Birthday Celebration

In honour of Julie Andrews' birthday on October 1, the Parallel Julieverse takes a nostalgic look back at a festive occasion from her past: her 15th birthday celebration in 1950, featuring a few photos from the party held at The Old Meuse, her childhood home in Walton-on-Thames.

A 15th birthday is a significant coming-of-age milestone in many cultures, marking the transition from childhood to adolescence and the onset of adult responsibilities. For Julie, it was particularly meaningful, as it marked her release from UK juvenile labour laws, allowing her to work freely as an adult. In her memoir, she recounts:

"On October 1, I turned fifteen and was officially freed from the London County Council’s child performer restrictions…To celebrate my ‘liberation,’ Mum threw one of her great parties. There must have been about sixty people in the house. Everybody danced and jitterbugged and had a fine old time" (Andrews, 2008, pp. 128).

Elsewhere in her memoir, Julie describes how her parents' parties were legendary, with friends eagerly anticipating each gathering at The Old Meuse. The evenings typically began with drinks at the bar before moving into the sitting room, where Barbara played the piano and Ted sang, bringing the party to life. Guests danced, sang, and socialised, with Aunty Joan encouraging everyone to join the fun. Between these lively moments, there were quieter intervals for food and tea, before the revelry resumed (Andrews, 2008, pp. 89-90).

One of these "quieter" moments at Julie’s 15th birthday took a sudden, chaotic turn when an intoxicated Ted Andrews made an inappropriate remark. Annoyed by his behaviour, a family friend picked up a large dish of blancmange from the supper table and hurled it at him. As Julie recalls, "Pop ducked in the nick of time, and it hit the wall behind him…There was utter silence in the room as everyone watched the wobbly pink goop slide slowly down the wall…Then everyone began talking at once" (Andrews, 2008, pp. 129). After the mess was cleaned up, the party continued late into the night.

Interestingly, the blancmange story resurfaced three years later in a 1953 news article where it was adapted as a Christmas "anecdote from the stars." In this version, however, Julie was the one throwing the pudding, and the target was a fellow child rather than her stepfather. She writes:

“When I was seven, I had a Christmas children’s party soon after our house had been redecorated. During tea, one of the children annoyed me, so I scooped up a handful of blancmange and threw it at my guest. Of course, it missed and hit the newly-painted wall. Mummy has kept the mark as a souvenir to this day” (cited in Hubbard, 1953, p. 5)

This was likely a bit of PR embellishment, but if it really was another flying blancmange incident, the walls of The Old Meuse must have been a frightful mess!

Either way, Julie's birthday respite was short-lived. By Monday morning, she was back at the BBC's Paris Cinema for rehearsals ahead of that evening’s broadcast of Educating Archie. Two days later, she was on a train to Manchester for a charity concert, before returning to London for another week of shows. Such was the gruelling schedule that young Julie Andrews maintained during these early years.

Happy birthday, Dame Julie! However she chooses to celebrate her 89th year, we hope the festivities are as joyful as ever—and that, this time, the blancmange stays safely on the plate!

Sources:

Andrews, J. (2008). Home: A memoir of my early years. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Hubbard, D. (1953). '"'Anecdotes of the "Stars": When Julie threw the blancmange.” Bristol Evening Post. 24 December: p. 5.

[supernovafics]

✧∘ଂ ࿐ ཾ 𝑳𝑬𝑻𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑻𝑯𝑹𝑬𝑬. ✭・.・✫・゜・。.

pairing: ex-bestfriend!steve x fem!reader

word count: 2.3k words

warnings: explicit language, mild underage drinking, so much angst 

series masterlist | last part — next part

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

❝ 𝒘𝒉𝒚'𝒅 𝒊 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒌 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒔𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉? 𝒊𝒕’𝒔 𝒐𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊’𝒎 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆. ❞

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Dear Steve,

As much as I don’t want to, and as much I would have no problem talking about the mundane things we did during Freshman and Sophomore year of high school and recounting stories from that time, I guess we can just fast forward to Junior year because that’s when everything went to absolute shit. 

First, at the beginning of the school year, my parents told me that we would be moving to California in January because my dad got a new job there. 

Somehow I wasn’t immediately sad when they broke this news to me, even though they thought I would be because of how much I liked the life I had in Hawkins and how much I would hate having to start over. Instead, it was when I had to tell you that it all finally hit me and felt so fucking real. I remember immediately crying right after saying the words “I’m moving,” and I didn’t even get to tell you everything else, like when and where, until hours later. 

I could tell you were sad too but you didn’t tell me that right then because you knew it’d probably make me cry even harder (which it definitely would’ve). Instead, you told me everything would be fine and we’d talk all of the time and nothing would change too detrimentally. 

And I believed you. I believed we were strong enough to somehow make it out of that unscathed. 

And then there was the other part of me that deep, deep down was the tiniest bit glad that I was moving away because it would make it easier to get over you, and the romantic feelings that I never wanted in the first place would finally fade away. 

I’m just realizing that this is the first time I’m mentioning how I felt about you, and it feels slightly weird doing so. But, it was the catalyst to everything that happened before I left, so of course I had to mention it eventually and rip off that bandaid. 

Anyway, fast forward again to Christmastime aka the true moment everything went downhill. 

My parents were having our annual party on Christmas eve, which I had always hated because they would always make it super formal and it never felt anything like Christmas. 

For the past years, probably since the party became a thing, the night would always happen pretty much the same. You and your parents would come over, and during the party, we would detach ourselves from all of the adult stuff happening and have our gift exchange in my backyard sitting on the wooden playground set. It was always, always freezing out but we never cared. 

However, I assumed this year would be different because you were dating Nancy now, and she was the first girl that you dated that I actually fully approved of and liked. And not to sound vain or whatever else, but there was something about her personality that reminded me of myself, and maybe that’s why I liked her so much in comparison to everyone else you dated. 

Because of how solid you two were, I automatically thought that you and I wouldn’t be spending Christmas eve together. And when I mentioned that to you a few days before the party and attempted to give you your present early, because I wanted you to be able to have it for actual Christmas, you immediately gave the gift bag back to me. And then you said that, of course, we’d be spending Christmas eve together and nothing could change that, and that this one was especially important since it would be my last one in Hawkins. And you also assured me that even if it wasn’t the last one, you wouldn’t have broken the tradition anyway. 

Before then, I fully had my mind set on never telling you how I felt and instead just moving away and continuing to pretend like what I was feeling wasn’t real while somehow continuing to be just your best friend but from afar. Very solid idea, right? (don’t answer that)

But, it was after that brief conversation we had, that I decided that I needed to tell you the truth, and I further decided that I would do it on Christmas eve because just in case it went badly (which I was certain that it would, just not in the horrible way that it actually turned out to be), the next few weeks before I left could consist of us moving on from my confession and me making sure that it didn’t change us in any way. 

Which, in theory, sounded like it was a logical plan and it made complete sense. But, I forgot that emotions were a thing and that rejection fucking sucks and always hits harder than you expect. Especially rejection from someone that’s such an important person in your life. 

But, I think I’m skipping ahead too much.

I want to write everything that happened because I don’t think I’ve ever truly looked back on that night and actually processed it. Mainly because it was an insanely embarrassing moment for me, and also because I still feel so bad about it. 

So, Christmas eve rolled around, and we found ourselves outside almost immediately, with our gifts in hand and stupidly happy smiles on our faces because we’d also slipped a few glasses of champagne from the kitchen and drank it during the first hour of the party. 

The older we got, the smaller the playground seemed to get, so we were always sandwiched very close to each other; which neither of us ever really minded. But this time, probably solely due to the champagne, we found it funny how our legs, which were hanging on the slide, were tangled up as our respective gifts sat in our laps and our sides were firmly pressed against each other. 

I gave you your gift first and was still nervous about it even though I knew you’d like it because it was the denim jacket that you had been eyeing a few weeks earlier at our usual thrift store. I remember convincing you not to get it then so that I could go back and buy it for you the next day.

Your exact words when you pulled it out of the bag were: “I knew you actually did like it!” I laughed at that and watched as you immediately put it on over the white button-up that your parents forced you to wear to match the formalness of the party.  

And then you gave me my gift which was a tenth-anniversary edition VHS tape of The Great Gatsby that had extra behind-the-scenes stuff and interviews with the director and some of the actors (I know how much it probably pained you to buy that since you absolutely hated the movie). I became obsessed with the gift almost immediately and was already thinking about when I would watch it, and when I would force you to watch it with me. 

And then you told me to open up the case and inside of it right next to the movie was a locket. I definitely remember almost crying when I opened the necklace and saw the picture inside of it. 

It was from that summer when we first met and we convinced our moms to take us to the beach one random Wednesday. They got wine drunk pretty fast so we were free to do pretty much anything we wanted that entire day as they laid out on the beach. We found this photo booth on the boardwalk and took pictures, and they all came out kind of bad but we loved them anyway. The specific picture you put in the locket was one where your eyes were half-closed and I was mid-laugh and looked insane; that was probably my favorite one actually. 

That necklace was the best gift I’d ever gotten (and that’s still true now). I was smiling as you put it on me and then I pulled you in for a long hug. 

I remember your voice was soft as you told me that even though we have our “one Christmas gift rule,” the necklace was going to be my going away present but you didn’t wanna wait so you gave it to me that night. 

Every emotion was bubbling right then because it was hitting me with full force this time that that was going to be our last Christmas like that; sitting in the too small for us playground, freezing our asses off, exchanging gifts while our parents fake laughed with their friends inside. I had so much dread about moving right then, and I only hugged you tighter as I willed the tears not to come. 

And then there was the matter of me finally telling you how I felt, and I was so close to deciding against doing so because that moment was so good and I didn’t want to make shit awkward and ruin it. (that’s actually a very laughable statement now because of what actually did happen next)

We pulled out of the hug and I wiped at my face to push away any stray tears that managed to slip out and you gave me a sad but hopeful smile that silently said that everything would be okay. 

And I think that’s why

That was what made me

It was your smile  

And I think it was that smile that made me lean in and kiss you. (god that was insanely hard to write down)

The rest of that moment was a blur and I can’t even remember what your initial reaction to the kiss was, which I’m actually glad about because I know it probably would've made me feel even more embarrassed. But, I do know that “Oh my God” were the first words that left my mouth when I pulled away from you. And then I proceeded to say that at least five more times before moving on to saying “I’m sorry” at least ten times. 

Then I started rambling like an idiot, my face embarrassingly covering my hands the entire time as I told you that I had a crush on you and that I couldn’t not do this before I left; not necessarily the kiss part but the telling you that I liked you part. And I knew for certain that you didn’t like me back because you had Nancy and you loved her. But, for some reason, I still had to tell you how I felt because I didn’t want to hold on to that secret when I left. 

I actually have no idea how long I rambled for. It could’ve been thirty seconds or it could’ve been thirty minutes, but it felt like an eternity to me because you didn’t interrupt or say anything so that just made me continue to word vomit everywhere. 

When I finally did finish and I forced myself to look at you it was easy to decipher the shock and confusion written on your face. And then you gave me a sad smile that had no hopeful undertones this time and I had to look away. Because I knew what you were gonna say next and I couldn’t allow myself to hear it. It was going to be the response that I had fully expected you to say, but all of the mentally preparing that I did for that inevitable moment actually didn’t make me ready to hear it. 

“Don’t say it,” I had told you before proceeding to detangle my legs from yours. 

But, of course, my embarrassing moments for the night couldn’t end there because as I was rushing to get away from you, I tripped walking down the slide and face-planted into the grass and also hit my knee hard against the end of the slide, which left a pretty bad gash. I mentally cursed the long silk black dress that my mom got me to wear for the party because the fabric was way too fucking easy to get tripped up in. 

You came down the slide almost immediately to help me up, but I managed to quickly do it on my own although the pain in my knee was already killing me. But, something about the thought of looking at you again, and seeing the pity written across your face, killed me more. 

I rushed inside and I couldn’t care less about the potential stares I got from people as I went upstairs to my bathroom and locked the door behind me. Moments later I heard you knock and you asked if you could help me because my knee looked like it was bleeding a lot. It definitely was but I couldn’t allow myself to see you right then, so I said, “I’m fine. I can do it myself.” And then you softly said, “Please.” 

I remember almost letting you in, but I couldn’t because all I could see in my mind at that moment was you and your sad smile, so instead I said, “Really, it’s okay. Just go, please.” 

And then finally after debating it for a few moments, you left. 

The only words running over and over in my head right then were, “Holy shit, I ruined everything,” which in that moment felt completely true. Because I had kissed you even though you were in love with your girlfriend; that’s probably the epitome of friendship ruining. 

I knew there was no coming back from that, and I honestly couldn’t believe that I thought that things would be able to go back to normal between us after my confession, even if I hadn’t kissed you. But, kissing you just made it even more clear to me that we would never be able to be who we were. 

Now that I’m truly reflecting on it though, I think I was way too cynical.

Because if I had let you into the bathroom in that moment and let you help me clean up my knee, maybe we could’ve just talked about everything right then, and things could’ve actually turned out okay between us. Maybe not exactly the same as they were before, but close enough. 

But, instead, I pushed you away. 

Because I was scared. 

Sincerely,

Y/N

(p.s. just in case you’re wondering, i do still have the necklace. i don’t wear it because it doesn’t feel right doing so, but i keep it in one of my drawers with a bunch of other things that remind me of you that i can’t bear to get rid of either)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

next part

[thefundiemuseum]

I Read the Anderson "Love Story" So You Don't Have To

I've been vaguely aware of the Andersons for a while, but I don't know them nearly as well the other fundies on this blog. As we learn more and more about what's going on in that home--and as the Andersons try to cover their digital tracks--I thought I'd try to document the shitshow as best as I can.

To start, I went through the story of how a 19-year-old fundamentalist missionary and a 21-year-old German college student got together.

Steven Lee Anderson (July 24, 1981) has his own Wikipedia page. He is the founder of the NIFB movement and pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe. You've probably heard of him as "that guy who prayed for Obama to die and is banned from a dozen countries."

Zsuzsanna (Toth) Anderson (1979) is a former German-Hungarian citizen who was raised culturally Catholic. Steve was in Munich "soul-winning" when he met her.

October 4, 1999. Steven hands Zsu a Gospel tract. They start talking about the Gospel and what it means. Zsu seems interested, and says:

"Well, none of this will do me any good if I am late for work." I [Steven] then asked her for her phone number and email address so that I could do a little "follow-up"! (Anyone who knows me knows that I am not big on "follow-up," but I made an exception for her…)

source

Side Note: Not being "big on follow-up" is a bizarre thing for a missionary to say. Theoretically, the follow-up is the most important part--it's where people ask questions, dig deeper, and you build a relationship. It's pretty telling that Steven wants none of that.

They meet up a few more times during that week (he calls her and asks her out, and Zsu ghosts him, which he says "was probably for the best because that church was pretty lame"). On Wednesday, October 6, Steven has "a premonition that I might marry her," but he reflects that it's kind of ridiculous because he barely knows her.

Steven returns home to America in late October. He and Zsuzsanna start exchanging emails. He invites her to his (parents') home in California when she says she wants to visit the US, on the condition that she attend church 3 times a week with his family.

Steven recounts that he did not ask his parents for permission, which leads to this exchange:

I started by mentioning it to my dad (while he was busy and not paying attention, of course) in a hypothetical way. "You know, dad, it's really hard for me to practice my German without having anyone to speak it with. Wouldn't it be great if instead of having to go all the way to Germany, I had someone here to practice with? Maybe a traveling student or one of my friends that I met in Germany. Maybe one could even stay at our house for a little while and sleep in the guest room. Then I could practice every day. That would be cool, huh?" Next I went through the exact same hypothetical conversation with mom (also when she was preoccupied and not paying close attention). Then a week or two later when they were both together I said to them, "Now you remember about the girl from Germany who is coming to visit in a few weeks, right?" "What? What are you talking about?" "Remember, mom and dad? We talked about this! This is a friend from Germany to help me practice my German! You don't remember me telling you about it?" "Well, I do remember something about that…" "Yeah, exactly! Well she's coming on July 28 and staying in the guest room. Isn't that okay with you guys? I thought it would be fine."

source

I bring up this conversation because it gives us a look at what young Steven was like: smart, savvy, manipulative.

July 28, 2000. Zsuzsanna flies into California to meet Steven. He spends all of the money he has saved up from his job at a pizza parlor taking her sightseeing.

July 29, 2000. They go to Marine World for the day. While in a Rite Aid stocking up on snacks, Steven advocates for parents spanking their children (a totally normal topic of conversation to have with a friend while practicing your languages).

July 30, 2000. It's Sunday, which means attending 2 church services. Zsuzsanna is fairly receptive to the whole thing. They go stargazing that night, and Steven deliberately scares her with stories of bears and mountain lions. Zsu turns the tables on him by pretending to be hysterical because "she liked listening to me pleading with her that everything was okay." Back at the Anderson house, Zsuzsanna prays a prayer of salvation.

July 31, 2000. Zsu tells Steven that she is saved. He is over the moon in part because it means he can have feelings for her.

August 4, 2000. Steven and Zsu go camping with his sister and her family. (Don't worry, they're in separate beds and well chaperoned by his sister and BIL.)

August 5, 2000. Steven teaches Zsu how to drive his BIL's motorboat. She panics, and he has to save the day. He accuses her of faking being scared "to be cute." They later have their first fight over the topic of "homos" and the fact that Steven thinks the government should issue the death penalty to gay people.

"She was just emotional because she considered me to be a nice guy and could not believe that I would condone of such a 'violent' measure." source

August 6, 2000. The couple starts talking about marriage.

August 10, 2000. The marriage discussion goes from "in a year or two after Zsu finishes school" to "next summer" to "after next semester." Note: because I'm getting this info from Steven's blog, I don't know how much of this expedited timeline is his idea and how much of it is hers. I hesitate to assume that he is intentionally pressuring her, but from what we know of him in hindsight. . . Well, it's a bad look.

August 12, 2000. Steven and Zsu reason that if they know they will be married in about five months (after she completes her next semester of school in Germany), why not get married now? They drive to Reno only to discover the chapel is closed because Reno is not the same as Las Vegas and does not have 24/7 marriage services.

August 13, 2000. Another Sunday, another sermon. Steven hears the sermon on "Childhood and Youth are Vanity" and takes it as confirmation that he and Zsu should get married today because they are not children. source

Tangent: The sermon is on Ecclesiastes 11. Listen. I was once a horny 20-year-old Baptist desperate to get married. I know what it is like to interpret every piece of Scripture or sermon as confirmation of my desire to marry. I remember that fervor. So I say this as someone who has not only spent a lot of her life reading and interpreting Scripture and poetry, but as someone who has been there: this is a WILD take on Ecclesiastes 11.

I do not know what Steven's pastor preached about this passage. I do not know his exegesis or commentary. All I know is that Steven heard a pastor say that "childhood and youth are vanity," and Steven's response was "good thing I'm not a child (19); my desires are therefore not vanity."

ANYWAY. The couple drives back to Reno, gets married, and does not tell anyone.

I wouldn't normally comment on this except that Steven himself has publicly written about it on his blog, and this ends up raising more questions for me, so. . .

In the ~24 hours between their Reno wedding and Zsu's flight home, they consummate their marriage "repeatedly." (He reflects on the fact that they did not use birth control, but not out of any moral objection at the time, and admits that it would have been very difficult if Zsu had gotten pregnant then.)

They were staying at his parents' house in separate rooms. They were keeping their marriage a secret. And yet. . . "repeatedly."

I mean. I guess it makes sense. The point of getting married for them is, largely, about sex. They're young and feeling all these intense feelings, and they believe the only way to alleviate this tension is reserved for married couples. If they had 24 hours to be married in the same country, I guess it makes sense that they'd find a way to make it happen.

August 14, 2000. Zsuzsanna Toth-Anderson flies back to Germany. Steven starts planning how to move out, earn money, and break the news to his parents.

Late August. Steven tells his brother about the secret wedding, and moves in to their spare room. He gets a job installing home alarm systems and even finds an apartment that he can afford.

August 30, 2000. Steven's plan to tell his parents about the wedding only after he and Szu are together again with his new apartment and job fails when Susan Anderson sees a piece of mail addressed to Zsuzsanna Toth-Anderson and opens it. They take the news surprisingly well, all things considered.

September 2, 2000. Zsuzsanna returns to the US, having dropped out of school and quit her job.

September 6, 2000. Zsu and Steven move into their apartment, officially independent from his parents.

It is crazy to read how, in the span of less than 12 months, Zsuzsanna went from college student with a job to housewife in a foreign country with no connections outside of the Anderson family. There is a horror story here, the severed connections, the expedited timeline of their relationship, the pressure. It's bizarre and unsettling.

I've been trying to find Zsuzsanna's reflections on their relationship, maybe on an archived blog post, but so far I've got nothing. She sums up their relationship to a BBC writer "We dated for two weeks, eloped on the last day of my vacation in the United States."

It's all a bit sad, you know?

(This is not to downplay any of Zsuzsanna's behavior, her abuse toward her children, or her reprehensible teachings--we're in The Nuance Zone here. Zsu can be a victim and a perpetrator at the same time.)

Anyway. My theoretical plan to do a deep dive on the Andersons keeps getting slowed down by how sad the whole thing makes me.

[shefanispeculator]

Before Gwen Stefani wrote and performed hit songs like “Make Me Like You,” she learned a lot about music and love from her parents, Patti and Dennis Stefani.

The No Doubt singer’s mom and dad met at their high school in Anaheim, Calif., and they raised her and her three siblings — Eric, Jill and Todd — in the same city.

As fans of bluegrass and folk music, Patti and Dennis took Gwen to concerts when she was young, which helped spark her interest in music. This fostered a bond between them that wasn't deterred even when Gwen reached stardom, and she decided to keep living with her parents until her late 20s.

To this day, The Voice coach shares a close relationship with Patti and Dennis. For Mother’s Day in May 2024, Gwen posted a touching Instagram video montage, featuring photos of Patti posing with various members of their family. In her caption, she wished her “beautiful Mom + all the beautiful Mom’s out there” a happy Mother’s Day.

The following month, she shared a sweet Instagram photo dump with throwback shots of her and Dennis to celebrate him on Father’s Day. “Happy Father’s Day to my incredible Dad 🤍,” Gwen wrote in her caption. “I love u !!”

Here’s everything to know about Gwen Stefani’s parents, Patti and Dennis Stefani.

Patti and Dennis met in high school

During a January 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, Gwen shared the story of how her parents first crossed paths.

“My mom and dad met at Anaheim High School,” she said. “After they got married, all they wanted to do was have four children, and they did.”

They married in 1966

Ahead of exchanging wedding vows with fellow Voice coach and country star Blake Shelton in July 2021, Gwen shared moments from her bridal shower with her family on her Instagram Stories.

"The Sweet Escape" vocalist posted a card with a copy of “The Mass on the Day of Marriage” of her parents, which showed that their wedding date was June 11, 1966.

The card served as her "something old," and it read, “Wishing you all the happiness your heart can hold... today, tomorrow, always. We love you so very much!”

They raised Gwen and her siblings in California

After Patti and Dennis tied the knot, they welcomed four kids: daughters Gwen and Jill, plus sons Eric and Todd.

Gwen had a positive experience growing up in the greater Los Angeles area. While speaking with Clash in April 2016, she recalled that her parents were regular churchgoers and described an overall “happy home.” She elaborated, “We were kind of like the most idealistic family that you could imagine.”

The performer lived with Patti and Dennis in Anaheim until she was 26, around the time "Just a Girl" climbed to the top of the charts.

“My parents were quite strict with me and I was living at home even into my 20s, and I would have to come home and knock on my parents’ door,” she shared in a March 2017 video about the meaning of the 1995 hit.

She admitted, "I just wanted to write a song to express how I was feeling in that moment and I never in my wildest dreams thought that anyone would hear it."

Patti and Dennis shared their love of music with Gwen

During her January 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, Gwen recalled her parents introducing her and her siblings to bluegrass and folk festivals.

Folk and country-rock artist Emmylou Harris was one of the first shows Gwen ever attended. “She had just had a baby and she took a break in the middle of the show to go feed the baby," she recounted. "I couldn't believe it.”

Years later, when Gwen started experimenting with her voice and style, she gave her dad a demo tape of a song she wrote titled "End It on This." The artist told Vogue in April 2008 that Dennis would listen to it while going to work and play it for others. He later came back to her with thoughts that immediately stuck with her.

"I remember two things he said to me. One was 'Everybody's saying that your songwriting is really good and you should just keep going,' " she told the outlet. "And the other was 'Don't ever take lessons, because your voice is really unique. There's just something about it.' ”

Dennis is a marketing executive

According to his LinkedIn profile, Dennis has been the executive vice president at the marketing and consulting company, Added Value North America, since 1989.

The marketing executive’s specialties include “brand and innovation strategy” as well as “new product development systems” and “integrating consumer insights to inspire and guide new product identification.”

Dennis earned an MBA from the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton, and previously worked at DRI International, TBWA Chiat Day and Yamaha Motor Corporation.

Patti was a dental assistant

When Gwen spoke with Rolling Stone in January 2005, she shared that Patti quit her job as a dental assistant to stay home with her and her siblings.

Gwen’s wedding cake was a recreation of Patti and Dennis’

On Gwen and Blake’s wedding day in July 2021, they celebrated with a cake made by Dallas-based Fancy Cakes by Lauren. The business shared photos of the cake on Instagram, which featured bells, sugar flowers, white chocolate cherubs and white swan pillars.

“Our bride wanted to make a sentimental statement by recreating her parent’s wedding cake,” the caption read about the dessert's inspiration. “Both of Gwen’s parents were there to see her honor them with this cake.”

Five years prior, in June 2016, Gwen and her sons celebrated Dennis and Patti’s 50th wedding anniversary with a party and a three-tier wedding-style cake decorated with white roses and gold leaves. Gwen shared glimpses of the special day on Snapchat, posting a photo of the cake and a photo of her parents sharing a kiss.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Je ne me considérais pas vraiment comme une muse.

Jane Birkin

I remember when I was settling in Paris to live and work in this beautiful city, my French aunt (married to my Norwegian uncle) gave me the surprise of my life when she invited me to dinner at their home and there was Jane Birkin, in a big cosy cardigan, a simple t-shirt, baggy jeans and laceless sneakers. I was almost lost for words and more of a klutz in the kitchen than I normally am, but her infectious laugh and her easy going nature just made me forget who she was for one delightful evening. It wasn’t a formal dinner but just friends drinking wine, eating delicious home cooked food, and having a good laugh around the sprawling kitchen table. I was the youngest there - along with a couple of my cousins - in terms of the generation gap, but it didn’t matter one bit. It was just a cosy evening where the alcohol fuelled the conversation and the lubricated the singing around the piano (think of strangling cats).

During one lull in the evening, I was dying to ask so many questions. I had read her book, Munkey Diaries, which were extracts from her diary, dating from 1957, when she was twelve, to 1982. It’s a fascinating read and as someone who also keeps a diary since my early teens it was an inspiration. Throughout the book, she pours her heart out to her toy monkey, Munkey, telling him about everything from her childhood in England to her life in Paris where she met the men in her life, such as Serge Gainsbourg. She holds nothing back in telling the story of their couple, writing page after page to the rhythm of her ardent passion, but does not hesitate to put her foot down when it comes to her independence.

For Birkin was always a free, independent woman, choosing her films and musical interests with conviction. Sensing that her relationship with Gainsbourg was burning out, she left everything behind and moved into a hotel with her daughters, Kate and Charlotte. Her monkey still remained her intimate confidant, a rag doll witness to her heartbreak, particularly when she was seduced by Jacques Doillon. Jane spares the reader nothing. Neither her occasional desire to be done with it all, nor her more frequent excesses of happiness. A happiness she always wanted to share with those she loved. She wrote with such searing honesty and self-awareness that showed the world only scratched at what lay much deeper of this beautiful soul but a complex heart.

As the evening wore the conversation turned towards parenting and motherhood and things like that. I remembered in her Munkey Diaries that Birkin recounted a conversation with her own mother. In it she writes, “"During a bombing, her flat exploded, and I asked her, "What did you take with you?" After a moment's thought, she replied, 'Schiaparelli Shocking Pink Perfume: when you've got nothing left to lift your spirits, you've still got the superfluous.' I happen to mention that - I blame the wine now because the last thing you want to do is go all fangirl over her when she’s just trying to chill with friends. But she took it in her stride and she recalled a story she told elsewhere that many years later she had gone to Sarajevo at the height of the war there. So what does Jane Birkin do? She stuffed her bags with Guerlain lipsticks, tiny bottles of perfume and silk underwear for schoolgirls over there. She said that her mother was right after all. It’s all about being superfluous. By that she really meant what’s important is the essential.

After I heard the sad news of her passing I thought of that as I thought of a way how to memorialise her on my blog.

The thing about looking for a good Jane Birkin picture to post is that there are no bad ones. Go on I dare you, find a picture that looks dated. She was timeless. That’s the clue to her longevity. She wasn’t fashionable but she was stylishly essential. In many respects she presented a fashion paradox: the more Jane Birkin developed her unique signature style, the more brands sought her out. She never saw herself as a fashion icon. She never saw herself as a muse. As she once said, “My look is a cocktail. I'm not as nicely turned out as the french, but I don't care like the English.”

What makes me a little sad is that while Jane Birkin has become kind of an Instagram and social media artefact that fashion girls and luxury and fashion brands use to sell “a vibe”, it makes it all the more easier to forget that she was not just a tectonic inspiration for musicians, designers, filmmakers but also a remarkable artist in her own right.

I could sit in a bric-a-brac room for hours listening to Jane Birkin talk about what’s in or on her famously battered and bulging Bikrin bag, her style and life for hours on end. She was charismatic and stylish, sure, but in person she was absolutely hilarious and so down to earth.

Everything she touched was beautiful, cool and sophisticated as she. Everyone she touched felt their spirit lift a little lighter. It never crossed my mind that she was mortal.

Rest in peace, beautiful Jane Birkin, ‘la petite Anglaise’. My muse.

You’re free now.

RIP Jane Birkin 1946-2023

[solsticekiller]

What happened next

Honestly, I kept to myself after that incident. I crawled back into bed and got ready for school the next day like nothing had happened, as if it was all just a bad dream. But the scars in the mirror that morning forced me to confront my new reality, each mark a reminder of the chaos that had unfolded.

Over the next few years, I became secluded. I tried to make friendships, but I was too weird for the local kids' liking. Being undiagnosed autistic, it wasn't hard to see why. I struggled to understand social cues and navigate the complex web of middle school relationships. My interests were different, and the way I processed things set me apart. It felt like I was watching a movie where everyone else had the script except me.

But it didn’t matter anyway. A few years later, we moved. Just as I was starting to settle in, the impending shift to 7th grade loomed ahead of me—the first year of middle school. It felt like a fresh start, a blank slate. I decided to reinvent myself. I wanted to be emo.

I can still remember the excitement bubbling inside me as I put together my new look: black skinny jeans, band tees, and the eyeliner that I had practiced applying. Alongside this transformation, my obsession with anime began to blossom. I devoured series after series, losing myself in the intricate stories and fantastical worlds. I adored the characters, the bold colors, and the emotions that leapt off the screen. They became my escape, a solace from the chaos of my reality.

It was a huge step forward, even if I felt a little cringey about it. To my surprise, within a few days, I had made a few friends who appreciated the same music, shared my love for anime, and understood the art of being misunderstood. We bonded over our mutual interests, debating the best anime protagonists and discussing the latest episodes of our favorite shows. For the first time, I felt like I belonged somewhere.

As I embraced my new identity, I even started attending anime club meetings at school. Surrounded by fellow fans, I felt free to express my love for the medium without fear of judgment. I even found myself cosplaying at conventions, using makeup to channel my favorite characters, which felt like a powerful form of self-expression.

But as I settled into this new identity, shadows from my old life began to creep back in, reminding me that I couldn’t fully escape my past. I had learned to mask my scars, but they were still there, hidden beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to resurface.

It was at a birthday party for one of my friends, Katherine, during the summer between 7th and 8th grade. We had all decided to have a sleepover at her house. Our families had become trusting enough, and my small group of five friends had come together. After her family had gone to bed, we sat in the living room, South Park playing in the background, and decided to play Truth or Dare.

Brooklyn, Jazz, Katherine, Arura, and I were in the game. Arura asked me, “Truth or dare?” Playing it safe, I called out, “Truth.”

“What’s your deepest, darkest secret, Shae?”

The room fell silent as I thought for a minute, rocking my mind for the answer. Should I tell them, or would they think I was the devil? I had known these people for the past year and trusted them more than I trusted my own family. Letting out a sigh as the air grew heavy, I divulged everything. Moving my fluffed hair to the side and pulling my waistband down to show the scars I had so carefully hidden, I recounted everything that had happened, down to the detail. I even shared how I occasionally shifted at night, disguising it as accidental shark week blood successfully to my parents.

They all looked at me in shock. But it wasn’t fear; it was concern. I saw care in their eyes, and after many tears later, we felt closer. It was a cathartic release, the kind of bond that only comes from sharing your truth, the kind that pushed us all a little closer together.

I had found my home.

[iobsessoverfictionalmen]

The Sounds of Justice (4)

Warnings: canon typical violence, mentions and descriptions of jail, cursing, non-consensual drugging, descriptions of character death, car crashes, lying, manipulation, guns, yandere themes, mafia AU, mafia Rafael Barba (trust me, he needs the warning), mentions of rape (not to the reader), and unwanted advances (nothing happens to the reader).

Spanish translation

¡Darle respeto!  ¿Me entienden? - Give her respect! Do you understand me?

Chapter 4

With mounting frustration, Rafael replaced the empty coffee pot into the machine on the counter.

“That’s just perfect.” He thought venomously, “Something else that I need to fix.”

A knock at the door jolted him from his thoughts and his brow furrowed.  No one at SVU ever knocked if they needed something; it was one of his pet peeves when it came to the squad.  While Carmen always knocked, she was out at lunch and so it couldn’t be her.

Confused and curious as to who it could be, Rafael disregarded the matter of his empty coffee pot and opened the door to reveal one of the NCIS agents on the other side.  His mouth thinned at the fact that this agent’s boss disliked him on principle because of his job but then he noticed the object that the agent was holding and he felt a flicker of warmth spread through him.

“Does the coffee come with conditions?  Or any more of your boss’ rules?” Rafael bit out before he could stop himself.

You shook your head, “No.  Each one of us has been there with long days and impossible cases.  Because we worked together so much, we got into the habit of doing coffee runs for the team.  We rotate so the job doesn’t fall to just one person.”

You offered him the coffee and Rafael accepted it.  His gaze darted from the coffee cup to you.  Catching his gaze and the meaning behind it, a wry smile decorated your lips, “It’s not poisoned.  I asked Sonny how you usually take your coffee and he told me.”

Cautiously Rafael took a sip.  He wouldn’t put it past the detective to mess with his coffee in retaliation for Rafael ignoring him earlier but to Rafael’s relief, the coffee was exactly how he liked it.

“Perhaps it’s against Fordham Law’s moral code to mess with coffee considering he too needs it to function.”

“You have impeccable timing Special Agent (Surname).  Come in.  Have a seat.” His mother had done her best to instil certain, preferred values in him and he wasn’t about to disregard those lessons.  He had an image to maintain after all.

“What made you decide to become a Special Agent and work with NCIS?”  He asked cordially as he sat down behind his desk.

You smiled, “I didn’t set out exactly to become a Special Agent with NCIS.  When I was seven, I had a cold and had to stay home.  My dad stayed with me so my mum could go to work.  I was pretty miserable so he told me the joke where Watson and Sherlock are camping and someone steals their tent to cheer me up.”

Rafael felt envy spear through him as you recounted your story and your bond with your father.  He took another sip of his coffee to calm himself.  The surge of caffeine helped him to focus on your voice.

“I knew the joke was funny but I had no idea who those men were.  When I was feeling better, my dad gave me his copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.  I read it cover to cover for the next five weeks and every time that I read it, I noticed a different detail.  It bugged my parents when I analysed people on the street and family members.  Years later I made my way to the BAU and then I transferred to NCIS.”

Rafael tapped his finger on the side of the coffee cup, “It sounds like you were very good at your job.  Why did you transfer?”

“Flattery counselor?” You teased, “There’s no need; I’m already working alongside you with your team.”

Rafael resisted the temptation to point out that they weren’t his team, not really.  He didn’t want to give you any clues about his other life. 

“You’re lucky we’re not in the courtroom right now,” he shot back teasingly.  “I might think you had something to hide by the way that you’re evading the question.”

“I’m an open book.”  You retorted.

“I doubt that.  You wouldn’t have become an NCIS agent if you were too easy to read.”

“If that’s the case, you won’t have any problems answering my question.”

“One of my teammates,” there was that word again.  Rafael’s hand twitched slightly but he disguised it as bringing his coffee cup to his lips for another sip.  “Described our job as getting in the mind of our unknown subject.  There were times when I felt like I had absorbed part of our subject’s mind after a case.  I started to get that feeling more and more and then I wondered what I was losing at the same time.”

Rafael set his coffee cup down abruptly on his desk, “Take a walk with me.”  He ordered, standing up and pulling on his jacket.

Perplexed you remained seated, “Why?”

“I need fresh air and I hate walking alone.  It’s unlikely that we’ll experience any danger and if we do, I’m sure that you’re more than capable of handling it.”

“I appreciate your confidence in my skills, counselor.”

 “Call me Rafael and I’m certain my confidence isn’t misplaced.”

You gave Rafael permission to call you by your name. Then you and Rafael left the building and walked through the streets of Manhattan.

“Tell me about D.C.”

You shrugged “Not much to tell really.  The main things appear to be the same as the city, the transport, and the variety of food options.  The only difference is that D.C. is a little warmer this time of year.”

“Cold is cold no matter where you are.”  Rafael made no attempt to disguise the distaste in his voice.  He preferred the warmer weather and sunny days.

“That's true. Especially if the heating breaks and your teammates and boss end up crashing at your place.”

“You’re that close with your team?”  Rafael asked incredulously.  He couldn’t imagine ever being that open and vulnerable with the SVU team.

“You can’t work with people as much as we do and not grow close to them,” you replied.  “Our bonds are fo--”

The rest of your sentence was cut off by an obnoxiously loud wolf whistle and with narrowed eyes, you whipped around in the direction of the sound, placing yourself between Rafael and the direction the sound came from.  Since your back was to Rafael, you didn’t see him narrowing his eyes too as he pinpointed where the sound had come from.

Two young men were making their way towards you and it took Rafael precious seconds to identify them.  His fury rose as he recognised the two men because they looked familiar enough to their fathers who worked for Rafael.

The men stopped in front of you.  One of them positioned himself slightly behind the other and Rafael knew you would have picked up on that detail as it was signalling that the man closer to you was the leader of the two.

His suspicions were confirmed when the man closest to you spoke, “I would remember if I had seen you before.”

Rafael’s opinion of you grew as you gave no reply and chose to meet the leader’s gaze.

Sensing that he wasn’t getting anywhere with his current course of action, the leader tried a different tactic, “Why don’t you ditch grandpa and come with us to the club?”

Rafael raised his chin and was about remind the two men of who they were dealing with, damn the consequences, when you spoke, “Are you referring to the comedy club on sixth?  Clearly you’re desperate to fill those empty seats.”

Rafael switched his attention to the second man.  He was clearly the smarter of the two, though that would be of no benefit after Rafael was through with him, and Rafael noticed the instant recognition appeared in the second man’s gaze and he realised who they were dealing with.

The second man reached forwards and grabbed his companion’s wrist, “Let’s go.  She’s not interested.”

The leader of the two scoffed and wrenched his arm free.  He sneered at you, “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Nor class apparently.”  You replied coolly.

“¡Darle respeto!  ¿Me entienden?” Rafael growled lowly at the same time.

Insistently, the second man reached forwards again and pulled his leader to his side.   Since he was within earshot, Rafael was able to pick up the rapid Spanish that the second man whispered into his companion’s ear.  There were a few words that Rafael was unfamiliar with and he reasoned that these two men either grew up with different vocabulary than he did or their family came from another Spanish speaking country.  Either way, even though there were a few unfamiliar words, Rafael was able to get the gist of the one-sided conversation.

The leader drew back, horror crawling across his face as his gaze flickered between you and Rafael before focusing on Rafael with a plea for forgiveness in his eyes.  Rafael decided then and there that his plea for forgiveness would go unanswered.

For now, he would let the two men think they were off the hook, “You accosted a NCIS agent in the presence of one of Manhattan’s ADAs.”  He turned to you and casually asked if you wanted to press charges.  Whatever you said wouldn’t change his plans too much however, the men would probably feel like they were shielded from his wrath if they were locked up in a cell.  They would be wrong.

“Just go on with your day.”

Rafael slowly let a smirk cross his face, “You heard her.  Go.  Enjoy the rest of your day.”

The men gulped and Rafael knew that they had heard the hidden meaning in his words: “Your time is limited.”  They were out of his sight within milliseconds.

“That’s never happened in D.C.” You remarked as you stared after the men.

“I wish I could say that it was a once off,” Rafael replied, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.  “I once had a man threaten me on the steps of a courthouse.”

Disbelief was etched across your face as you turned to him.

“Don’t you believe me?” He asked, adding a hurt tone for the right effect.

“I do,” you replied hastily.  “I just…” You trailed off and shook your head exasperated, “can’t believe that people don’t seem to have any decency or standards anymore.”

“On that note,” Rafael motioned that it was time to head back to the office.  “I heard you received an anonymous call yesterday at the precinct.”

“You know I can’t talk about an ongoing case.”  You refused as you walked back into the building.

“Sonny told me.” Rafael lied as the two of you reached his office.  He smiled warmly at Carmen and introduced the two of you.  Carmen then informed him that there weren’t any messages and he noticed that her coffee cup was empty so he encouraged her to go grab a refill.

The two of you entered his office, and he added the final touch, “Keep me updated.”  He declared softly, “We want the same thing.  We want to bring whoever killed Ensign Michael Burns to justice because that will mean justice for his victim as well.”

Later that night, long after Carmen had finished and bid him goodnight, Rafael left his office.  He strolled into the derelict apartment where the two men from this afternoon sat tied to chairs and with gags in their mouths.  Evidently, their captors had grown tired of their pleas for mercy and judging by the redness in their eyes and the tear tracks on their faces, they had been begging for mercy for quite some time.

“How long have you had them here?” Rafael questioned uncaringly as the two men renewed their pleas for mercy.

“Two hours,” his second in charge replied.

“And the drugs?”

“Not in their systems yet.  Their fathers have been taken care of.”

“Hmm,” Rafael mused thoughtfully, his gaze on the laced food.  “Such a shame that they had to pay for their sons’ mistakes.”

His second in command smiled eerily, “Indeed.  I thought you might like to do the honours.”

“With pleasure,” Rafael replied as he picked up the first piece of food.  Understanding his boss’ plan, the second in command moved silently over to one of the men.  He seemed to realise what was going to happen because he thrashed around uselessly as the second in command removed the gag from his mouth and Rafael stepped over to him.