#it's au for lots of reasons but mostly the point was be mean to est for a bit and then let her have a hug

[aurore-parle-de-ses-idees]

16, Est & friend(s)-of-your-choice?

poking pelennor until 'au where est does throne... sort of' pops out :D (edit- oh the actual prompt was 'aftermath')

The first sound that returns to you is the thundering of hooves. It’s so great it rumbles the floor of the cage, and beneath it and the jangling of heavy horse harness you can hear battlecries. You try to open your eyes. Nothing moves. Your arm. A foot. Nothing. You can huff a breath in frustration, though, and at the sound someone shifts under you. Someone’s holding you.

“Esterín?” Derufin calls uneasily. “Can you hear us?” You manage another annoyed sound. “Here, get her up-” There’s shuffling, and hands pulling you upright. With great effort, you at last pry your eyes open.

You are still in the cage. Derufin and Duilin are with you, Duilin’s arm in a crude sling against his chest and both of them bloodied and bruised. You shiver, and Derufin rubs at your arm.

“What’s happening?” you croak, and both faces staring too intently at yours sag with relief.

“The Swan-knights,” Duilin says. “They’ve driven off the wraiths, at least for now.”

“Hopefully they’re coming back for us sooner rather than later,” Derufin adds with a tight grin.

“The wraiths...? The Nazgûl?” you demand suddenly, sitting up on your own and regretting it as your head spins worryingly.

“Not the ones in black,” Derufin says, “or the tall red one from the other day.” There were more than that in the field? you think, despairing. Who?

“We tried to fight after you collapsed,” Duilin says more seriously, “but against the red one...”

“We couldn’t touch him,” Derufin says. “There is some sort of truth in what he was saying in Osgiliath.” He says it almost accusingly, and maybe you should regret snapping at them in the stables but you are weary and you are still too angry to do as you think you ought.

“Too much,” you say, slumping against the cold iron of the cage. “Hopefully less than I fear.” You turn to them. “You are lucky you were not slain outright.” They trade uneasy glances and you sigh, thin and with terrible coldness. “What else?”

“He said he would find some use for us,” Derufin says. “We wouldn’t leave you alone with whatever he did to you, so he had us thrown in here all together.” You rather wish you could muster the energy to curse out Mordirith. There would be nothing new in it, but it would make you feel a little better.

“Thank you,” you say instead, “and I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Duilin says with forced cheer, “we aren’t dead yet are we?”

“There are worse things,” you say before you can think better of it. “The wraiths, the Nameless- trampled by a mûmak might be the least of it.” Their looks are dark, but you are right and you are tired and you are afraid, somewhere under it all. You had found Derufin and Duilin far from the rest of the archers of Morthond, separated and on foot, searching for mûmakil to feather with arrows. The beasts were charging in the distance, but you had come upon the boys on the other side of a great set of rolling holding cells from the charge, and they had followed you in search of stranger prey.

Even men who lived in the shadow of the Dwimorberg looked at the Nameless and backed away. They had returned, but they looked at the squirming darklings with revulsion and their bowhands had wavered before the monster barely restrained by the Morgul-sorcerers. After those things, the two Nazgûl had seemed nearly ordinary, cold and dreadful though they were.

The Nazgûl had been uninterested in you, though, and had abandoned their strange hissing fountains at the call of a great war-trumpet across the Pelennor. You can’t even say if they noticed you, and for that you are more glad than you can possibly say.

But Gothmog had waited beyond, and there he had turned something on you, and in your mind you had done battle alone.

“Who is this red one, Esterìn?” Duilin asks. “He seemed to know you personally.”

You heave a deep breath and wearily you face them. “He is a wraith. Lesser than the Nine, but more than dangerous enough. He is a lieutenant of the Witch-king- or, he was- and was his regent in Angmar until a few months ago. He-” you hesitate, then, and wonder how much you should say, and how much you have time for, and how much is true. “He was a man, once.”

“Are they all like that?” Derufin asks, as if you are some storyteller and not just as much a prisoner of the False King as he.

“Do you know who?” Duilin adds.

“It’s the nature of wraiths, yes,” you say. “...he was from Gondor.”

Eärnur is still a beloved figure in the kinds of tales often told to young boys. With everything the wraiths had said on the field, it’s enough for them to put it together. They fall silent, and you sit in uncomfortable quiet until the jingling of the harness of heavy cavalry returns. You tend to Duilin’s arm while they slow; your whole body protests the pull of the runes, as if you had used up all your strength in truth while trapped in Mordirith’s strange illusions.

“Prince Imrahil!” Derufin calls. The man at the cavalry’s head turns, his high feather plume streaked with soot.

“What have you boys gotten yourself into this time?” he asks, reining in near the cage. He nods to you and you wave tiredly.

“Long story,” you say dryly, and Derufin and Duilin shrug concession. “What’s the state of the battle?” Some of the knights behind the Prince look at you askance, but Imrahil answers readily.

“Ships that should have belonged to Balakhôr arrived some two hours ago,” he says, and you start at the realization of how long has passed. “They landed not far from here; you were brought nearly to the Causeway Forts.” You do start at that, paling at the thought of what Goth- Mord- the wraith had in store for you. You knew you had come into the southern half of the Pelennor by the time you met Derufin and Duilin, but you had not thought you were so close to the Harlond.

“Ah,” Imrahil says, “some of them are here now from the ships.” And you look up, and a familiar voice is calling your name in concern and surprise, and you sag with relief to see Golodir standing there.

“Stay back,” Derufin says sharply after introductions are made, pulling you back from the rusty bands of the cage and glaring at Golodir and you make a small sound of protest. “This is the one Gothmog spoke of?” This he directs at you, still watching a confused Golodir with naked hostility.

“Esterín?” But you’re shaking your head already, twisting away from Derufin to reach through the cage for Golodir’s arms because he’s here and you have been terrified for him since you left him in Pelargir and you had feared he- you had feared.

“He was wrong,” you say vehemently. “And he lies. He knows nothing.”

“Esterín, what are you talking about?” Golodir says, returning your desperate grip with great concern. Duilin reaches for you with his good arm but you twist sharply aside. Please, don’t let him have heard, you think, for all the good delaying it can do. Not yet.

“Gothmog,” you say, swallowing hard. “He- one of Sauron’s lieutenants below the Nine. He has command of much of their forces now. He... we saw him in Osgiliath. He claimed that he could not live while...” And you nearly can’t bring yourself to say it, but Derufin and Duilin are still bristling with well-intentioned wariness and they will not be so kind, and so the cage is struck open and you fly out of it to hug Golodir and hide your spinning head against his shoulder, and you whisper: “It’s Mordirith.” Golodir stiffens. He tries to pull away but you cling more tightly to him. “Golodir, I’m sorry,” you whisper pitifully. “I don’t know how. Some of the things he said, today and in Osgiliath... I do not believe them.”

“Esterín, you must explain yourself,” Golodir tries. To Derufin and Duilin he says: “What happened to her?” And you don’t care for the worry there, even if you know you must be acting bizarrely, and everything hurts and you can see all too clearly the things Mordirith showed to you in the Breach of Terror.

Grudgingly, the sons of Morthond answer, and terrible concern wars with some fearful anger you have not seen since Angmar in his face- but you are here before him, and Mordirith is not, and so the worry wins out, at least for now, and he leads you away, back towards the burnt-out farmhouse where the rest of the Grey Company waits. Derufin and Duilin trail unhappily after you, but when neither Golodir nor your other friends show any sign of manifesting an angry eight-foot wraith after hours and the enemy retreats from the field, they return to the city with other scattered soldiers of Gondor. You, despite your best efforts, can hardly keep your feet, and are kindly but firmly made to sit and rest, watching everyone else shuffle this way and that as they try to bring some order to the blood-soaked fields. You surprise yourself by sleeping that night, but perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising, with so many of your friends gathered close for easy comfort. Explanations will be had in the morning.

[northsalpha-archive]

i  will  have  a  proper  carrd  and/or  verse  page  one  day,  but  until  then,  i’ve  finally  done  some  rough  drafts  of  the  ones  living  rent  -  free  in  my  mind  :

main  verse.      this  is  based  heavily  around  everything  outlined  on  his  stats  page.  to  ensure  his  survival,  esther  resurrected  ansel  using  an  amended  version  of  the  original  vampire  creation  spell.  this  brought  him  back  with  original  qualities,  including  being  harder  to  kill,  meaning  while  he  did  die  in  klaus’  arms  when  son  killed  him,  he  only  appeared  as  such  until  body  later  healed.  he  now  continues  to  remain  in  new  orleans  /  re  -  building  his  pack  /  attempting  to  connect  with  his  eldest  /  protect  the  family,  etc.  lives  in  a  little  cabin  in  the  bayou  woods  that  he’s  mostly  built  with  his  own  hands  after  finding  it  abandoned  and  falling  down.

past  verse.      set  in  canon  past  timeline  /  before  the  originals  became  the  originals.  ansel  is  a  much  -  respected,  powerful  chief    &    alpha  to  the  north  east  atlantic  werewolves.  you  know  the  rest!

other  side  verse.      set  throughout  the  thousand  plus  years  ansel  spent  on  the  other  side,  generally  spent  watching  over  niklaus.  not  likely  to  be  used  often,  but  could  be  fun  to  explore,  especially  during  those  times  the  barrier  went  down.  

hybrid  verse  i.      suspecting  what  would  happen  when  their  son  was  reunited  with  ansel,  esther  didn’t  only  resurrect  ansel  using  the  original  vampire  creation  spell.  she  also  ensured    (  unknowingly  to  them  both  )    he  came  back  with  klaus’  blood  in  his  system.  this  meant  when  klaus  inevitably  killed  ansel,  he  returned  as  a  hybrid.    ⸻    and  needing  elena’s  blood  to  complete  the  transition.  open  for  plotting  /  affiliate  with  canon  divergent  elena’s,  or  main  go  -  to  is  that  esther  kept  a  supply  of  her  blood  ever  since  the  mikaelson  ball.  this  was  also  an  attempt  from  esther  to  keep  ansel  dependent  on  her,  but  that  def  didn’t  last  long  after  he  got  what  he  wanted.  

no  emotions  verse.      some  point  after  his  resurrection,  either  the  pack,  klaus  or  hope  became  in  danger,  and  ansel  made  a  deal  with  an  ancient  witch  that  would  help  them.  in  exchange,  the  witch  demanded  he  sacrifice  what  mattered  to  him  most.  believing  this  would  be  his  wolf,  ansel  agreed.  it  was  worth  it  for  them.  in  doing  so,  the  witch  realised  he  cared  more  about  them  than  he  did  his  wolf,  and  instead,  took  his  ability  to  feel.  he  now  continues  to  live  but  is  completely  detached  from  the  things  that  previously  made  him  who  he  is;    his  loyalty,  his  love  and  his  bond  to  family.  it  is  technically  the  equivalent  to  a  vampire  switching  off  their  humanity.  he  feels  nothing,  but  exists  nonetheless.

hybrid  verse  ii.      after  a  life  -  threatening  injury,  hope    (  nklsdttr  )    turns  ansel  into  a  hybrid  using  her  blood.  there  is  really  only  1%  chance  ansel  would  willingly  agree  to  be  a  hybrid  /  part  -  vampire  because  he’s  such  a  proud  wolf,  but  turns  out,  that  1%  would  absolutely  be  for  hope  because  that’s  his  grandchild.  

au  verse  i.      a  really  simple  didn’t  die  verse.  this  isn’t  fleshed  out  a  whole  lot  because  it  feels  like  it  could  be  plotted  /  affiliated  more  with  others,  but  the  general  idea  is  he  survived  mikael’s  onslaught.  he  was  there  when  klaus  arrived,  and  has  been  by  his  side  since.  very  actively  worked  to  try  and  help  his  son  break  the  curse.  sorry,  folks.  

au  verse  ii.      another  didn’t  die  verse,  but  for  whatever  reason,  klaus  and  ansel  became  estranged.  similar  to  his  behaviour  on  the  other  side,  ansel  still  stayed  klaus,  watching  over  his  son  from  afar.  in  both  these  verses,  ansel  lived  this  long  through  magic    &    the  loyalty  he  earned  as  chief  from  a  powerful  line  of  witches.

the  hunger  games  verse.      ansel  won  the  41st  annual  hunger  games,  aged  15,  representing  district  7.  though  he  wasn’t  raised  in  a  career  tribute  district,  he  might  as  well  have  been,  kept  locked  away    &    forced  to  endure  severe  training  by  a  father  determined  to  make  a  winner  out  of  his  son.  by  the  time  he  was  reaped,  the  games  were  almost  an  escape.  he  then  went  on  to  be  a  mentor  to  blight,  and  possibly  johanna.  as  he  grew  older,  he  became  a  respected  figure  amongst  the  district,  as  their  local  blacksmith  and  chief.  though  he  wasn’t  mayor,  due  to  a  strong  dislike  for  politics,  he  was  perhaps  considered  more  the  people’s  leader.  recognising  his  ability  to  gain  people’s  trust,  ansel  became  one  of  the  many  victors  put  out  for  sale  amongst  panem’s  wealthiest.  during  a  visit  to  district  two,  ansel  met  and  fell  in  love  with  their  head  peacekeeper’s  wife,  fathering  a  child  named  klaus.  he  later  returned  to  his  own  district  and  married  himself.  the  pair  had  several  children.  the  bigger  his  family  got,  the  harder  snow’s  demands  became  to  meet.  in  the  end,  ansel  refused.  as  a  result,  head  peacekeeper  mikael    (  who  always  suspected  the  affair  )    was  sent  to  murder  ansel’s  family.  it  was  supposed  to  inspire  ansel  to  never  rebel  again.  instead,  it  only  encouraged  him  more  and  he  became  the  first  to  engage  when  war  started,  leading  the  people  of  district  7  in  their  rebellion,  as  well  as  providing  hand  -  crafted  weapons.  

supernatural  verse.      ansel  is  the  elusive  /  never  seen  alpha  werewolf,  aka  the  first  werewolf.  i  really  don’t  have  anything  else  here  yet,  but  that’s  the  long    &    short  of  it.

[anika-ann]

Errare Humanum Est - Pt.2

Q & A… or more like Q & more Q

Type: series, soulmate AU series  (part 1, part 2)    x Supernatural

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader (past?)    Word count: 3050

Summary: Team Free Will (Dean, Sam and Cas) try to explain the situation and they are not all that great at it. Your amnesia isn’t exactly helping; the words tattooed on your body might.

Warnings: swearing, mention of death, mention of blood, amnesia, Team Free Will being themselves

The briefest guide to SPN characters of Team Free Will (at the end of the post)

Story masterlist

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An ominous silence fell on the motel room for what felt like minutes. The woman was watching them with a mixture of emotions so complicated it was hard to identify them all; but there sure was fear, confusion and hope to be waking up from whatever insane dream this was.

To be fair, Sam wished for the same thing.

Neither of them had such luck.

He blinked several times, but the image remained the same. Wonderful.

“Oh. So we have a Jane Doe,” Dean stated with a sarcastic smile. “With amnesia. That’s… really great, Cas. Thanks for that.”

Both Sam and Castiel shot him a look of disapproval.

“Who are you? Why… why do I look like I’m wearing your clothes?” her trembling voice asked, her gaze shifting from one man to another.

“Cause you are wearing mine,“ Dean hummed proudly and Sam was just so done with the company he kept.

“And why can’t I… why can’t I remember anything?” she sobbed, watching them with terrified and absolutely perplexed eyes.

Sam decided to speak up before any of his tactless companions could. “We don’t know. But I promise you, we’ll do everything to help you.”

“You were… you were soaked in blood,” she choked out, her whole body shaking. Sam grimaced. Well, that… yeah, he imagined that freaked her out even more and he couldn’t blame her. Amnesia, supernatural powers on display, their pathetic explanations… “And he just… snapped his fingers and-“

“Yeah. The truth is, we didn’t quite find you on a side of the road and we’ll get to that. It’s hard to explain and I know this must be so much to wrap your head around, but like I said. We want to help you,” Sam whispered in earnest, holding her gaze and adding what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Are you… aliens?” she breathed out sheepishly, but lost the deadly grip on the covers that had been keeping her knuckles white.

Dean snorted, while Castiel simply answered her. “No. They’re humans. I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Sam hid his face in his palms and let out a silent whine.

“Are you guys crazy?” she continued her questions, eyeing them warily. Sam could tell she had no idea what to think. She had seen Castiel’s powers already. “Or are you messing with me? Am I drugged? I should probably just go-”

“You have no ID, no wallet, no memory and your face looks like you ran away from a costume party for firemen. I don’t think you should be going anywhere, sweetcheeks,” Dean deadpanned, causing the woman to inhale sharply, but not to respond as she realized she had been delivered the harsh truth.

Well, if Dean decided to be the ass of the three of them it looked like Sam had to be the nice guy; just like most of the time after all.

“Are you hungry? We can order something. And you can take a shower-“

“I could just-“ Castiel interrupted and Sam cut him off with a pointed look.

“You can take a shower. I’ll get you a clean towel, alright? And… clean clothes,” Sam hurried, reaching for something from his own-

“Dude. You have a sasquatch size. Just grab something mine… again.”

Alright, that was a good point; maybe they should have thought it through in the first place, cleaning her up with Cas powers as well before dressing her up. Well. Too late.

Sam smiled at the woman apologetically and she unsurely tried to reciprocate the gesture – it came out looking more like a grimace really, but he appreciated the effort and trust.

“You’re… you’re not gonna hurt me, are you?” she asked in weak voice, cautiously climbing from the bed.

“Don’t worry, Fire Princess,” Dean grinned at her, adding a wink and she hesitantly smiled back.

“What…? Please, don’t call me that… or that,” she murmured and Dean rolled her eyes.

“What do we call you then? Until we figure it out?” Castiel inquired gently.

“I’ll… think about it. But… I think I’d like Natasha. I don’t think it’s my name, but… I like it,” she admitted sheepishly and Sam nodded, handing her a pile of clothes and a towel with a spare toothbrush.

“Natasha it is.”

The moment the door clicked behind her, Sam sat down on the bed heavily.

“What are we gonna do?”

“I’d say drop her on the nearest police station, but…” Dean started, only for Castiel to finish.

“…I brought her back from death. I was told to bring her here and take care of her for a reason.”

Dean just pointed a finger at him, smirking as if he wanted to say ‘exactly’.

“And what the reason might be?” Sam asked, not expecting an answer at all. They never got the answers they wanted.

“I don’t know. But…”

“But? Cas?”

Castiel frowned, staring in the direction of the bathroom as if he could see through, watching the woman and hoping to figure her out. The shower started running and Castiel’s gaze shifted back to Sam and Dean.

“But she has a soulmark.”

“A what now?” Dean asked, his forehead crinkled in confusion.

“She has a soulmate?” Sam blurted out, pleasantly surprised for multiple reasons.

That could be a great clue! And also a bummer, because there was someone out there, who had lost their soulmate to what could be a house fire. Sam always liked the idea of the soul bond, rather wounded he didn’t have a soulmate himself. Seeing what he did for living though, it was probably for the best.

“I thought soulmates were just a fairy tale,” Dean exclaimed, dubious. “You’re telling me it’s a thing? Because cupids aren’t enough?”

“Pretty common, actually,” Sam sassed him, remembering the one time they had encountered with a cupid… and Dean punched him in his face. Good times.

“Can you use the mark to find her soulmate?” Sam queried, hopeful.

When Castiel sighed in response, the brothers got their answer.

“I can’t, unfortunately.”

“Of course it doesn’t work like that,” Dean muttered under his breath, falling backwards into his own bed. Right. Beds. There were only two. Shit. The couch in the room was tiny. Plus, she might not be comfortable sleeping in the same room as them – not that she would get a choice. God, Sam just wanted to sleep.

“We’ll figure it out,” Sam groaned, running his hand down his face. “In the morning.”

“You think she’s gonna sleep?”  Dean questioned, making space between his feet to see Sam when he raised his head.

“Doubt it, actually. We should prepare for the ‘monsters are real’ talk.”

Dean whined.

“If don’t want to do it, I can-“

“No!” the brothers cried out in unison, causing Castiel to flinch.

“But... you should stay here for it. ‘Cause angels? Good impression. Ever when they can be dicks…” Dean added and Sam rolled his eyes, the corners of his lips twitching. “Hey, can’t you search her mind or something? That would be helpful!”

“I can try,” Castiel replied in mild voice. Sam didn’t believe it could be so easy, but hey, there was usually no harm in trying, right? “Even though I doubt it will work either.”

“Yeah, because that would be too easy.”

“We’ll see,” Sam breathed out, lost in thoughts. Soulmates. What a case. “We need to not to break her trust first.”

“Looking forward to it,” Dean remarked sarcastically as he went to the fridge for a beer and Sam couldn’t quite blame him.

Yeah, he did too.

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She took her time with cleaning up – not that Sam could blame her. He was confident she was also trying to reconcile with what she had learned so far and mostly with what she hadn’t. They all had been there, having their brain scrambled in some way and they knew it wasn’t exactly walk in a park.

While Dean and Castiel went hunting for food, Sam busied himself with searching information on soulmates so he wouldn’t fall asleep. They had never encountered such thing before, which was about as convenient as surprising; after all, soulmates weren’t that rare. He even tried to look into some websites that claimed to be able to find one’s soulmate when being told their words. Hell, Sam even started considering finding one of those dubious forums in which people posted ideas about their other half’s expected words based on the ones they had on their skin.

Of course, they didn’t know Natasha’s words yet.

She emerged from the bathroom, steam following her. Her hair was dripping wet, her figure swimming in Dean’s clothes. Sam attempted not to think about the lack of undergarment; they would have to go shopping. A lot.

The woman smiled at him reluctantly, the gesture not quite reaching her red-rimmed eyes. Sam’s heart clenched; she had been crying in the shower.

“I’m sorry if I took too long,” she murmured, her voice weak.

Sam just shook his head, returning the smile. “That’s fine. How do you feel?”

‘Natasha’ gave an uncertain shrug. “Better than before the shower. I… uhm, I found out I have tattoos. Do you think it might be helpful?”

Before Sam could process her words, Dean and Castiel returned with the groceries.

“Hey. How we’re doing? Magically remembered everything? Please tell me you did…” Dean hummed, clearly not serious. Sam shot him a withering look and he grinned in return. “No? Sorry, just had to make sure…”

Castiel put the plastic bags down, meeting Natasha’s gaze. “We weren’t sure about what you’d like… we have both, the good stuff as Dean calls it and ‘rabbit food’.”

Sam rolled his eyes, not at all surprised at the woman’s confused gaze.

“He means fruit and vegetables.”

“Oh. Thank you. I… I’m not sure either,” she admitted with a sigh, her eyes getting glassy.

Sam quickly cleared his throat, hoping to stop the waterfalls before they could start. “What were you saying before?”

“Uh, the tattoos, yes. I have them on my collarbones, one at each,” she explained, unbuttoning the upper part of the plaid shirt, enough to be able to show them and stay decent at the same time.

Sam’s mind raced as he exchanged looks with the other men. Two soulmarks then? What exactly that meant? Why couldn’t simply have an easy case for once?

Oblivious to their inner mussing, Natasha carefully pulled at the collar, revealing a set of crossed out words. The line over them surprised Sam the most as he reluctantly came closer to read the words.

“But I really am 95,” Sam read out loud, perplexed. Well. He turned to Dean and Cas before looking at Natasha. “Ideas? Anyone?”

“We might have a case of gerontophilia at our hands,” Castiel offered flatly and Sam grimaced. Please let him be wrong. “Or it could mean anything else. A hotel room number, a locker room number, order number in a fast food. Literally anything.”

Sam internally whined in frustration; he couldn’t tell which option he liked better. The one that she had been with someone that old or that this was zero clue.

Natasha sighed and showed Sam the other mark. “I hate dreams like this. Huh.”

“Cause that’s really telling,” Dean stated sarcastically, opening another bottle of beer.

“Why would I have tattoos like these?”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. She didn’t know about soulmates either.

“It’s not a tattoo, not really. You were born with these – or people who have them usually are,” Sam explained, distancing himself to left her some personal space. It gave him a perfect view of her confused frown.

“I don’t understand.”

“The lines you have written on your body – they are called soulmarks. These are the first words your soulmate told you – or will tell you,” Castiel interjected softly and Natasha’s lips parted.

Sam gulped when her eyes went wide. Did she understand what it meant? Did she have any clue what was the meaning of the word ‘soulmate’ in the first place?

“Soulmates are real?!” she breathed out, astounded. “Like… someone perfect for each of us, but… actually real? These words will help me find them? That’s…” she chuckled incredulously, not noticing their stares. So she did have an idea of what a soulmate meant. “Why do I have two? Why is this one… crossed out?”

“Well, not to be a party pooper, but I’d blame dying, that might be it,” Dean suggested bluntly and Sam mentally rolled his eyes.

Sure, Dean, why beat around the bush…

“Oh?” her face visibly saddened, but then she revealed her uncrossed words. “So why do I have this one? Does that… does that mean that I have… another soulmate? Is that even possible?”

“Or you could meet your original one, supposedly for the first time, since you don’t remember… can I see both of those at once?” Sam scooted closer again, intrigued.

He squinted at the marks. It might have been only a wishful thinking, but… the handwriting looked similar.

“It looks like it’s written by one person,” the younger hunter stated, casting a questioning gaze towards Castiel. “What do you think?”

“Well, it is… unusual for a person to have two soulmates. It is not unheard of, but I only saw it few times in thousands of years of my existence, so it might be just another of their first meetings. Just like Sam said, if you don’t remember them…”

Natasha’s brows furrowed. “Firstly – is that my soulmate’s handwriting? That’s so freaking cool. Secondly… you’re that old? I mean… thousands of years?”

“Well, I am an angel,” Castiel reminded her with a gentle smile and she just shook her head, incredulous.

“Says the girl who has ‘But I’m really 95’ on her,” Dean teased her, wiggling his eyebrows.

“I don’t think I’d be with someone who is-“

The thought struck Sam with a force of a train.

“Maybe they’re not human? I mean, that would explain why you were told to bring her back, right? This might be important-”

“What do you mean that they’re not human? Like an angel then? And bring me back? Bring me back from where?” Natasha took a step back, watching them with sudden wariness.  

“Oh, there are many different unhuman things alright.”

“…the death,” said Castiel at the same time and Sam seriously considered having them signed up for some course in communication. How about breaking things to her slowly?!

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve been dead, Natasha. I’ve been tasked to bring your soul back from Heaven,” Castiel continued, oblivious to Sam’s exasperation, but at least his voice sounded more… patient. “And we don’t know why.”

“Until now. This might be a thing,” Sam added with a sigh, watching her squirm uncomfortably as she buttoned up the shirt again, looking as if she wished for the fabric to hide all of her.

“I… I was… dead? In… in H-heaven?”

“Yeah,” Sam confirmed, closely inspecting her reaction just in case she was about to a) run away or b) pass out. “We think you died in a house fire or something of that sort.”

Her face suddenly lacked colour so laboriously earned in the hot shower. Her voice was dull, emotionless. “That’s why I was… dirty.”

“And naked.”

“Dean…” Sam scolded him tiredly and his brother shrugged innocently.

“What? She was!”

Luckily – or unfortunately – Natasha chose to ignore the additional information. “I was dead?”

“Hey, that’s okay. It happens. I was dead too,” Dean informed her swiftly, causing her eyes to bulge, and not caring for boundaries he made her way to her and patted her shoulder. She didn’t even flinch when he touched her.

Apparently, openness worked as much as Sam’s lets-break-it-to-her-slowly approach. Huh. Who would have thought…. perhaps it was the combination. There was a reason they always played the good cop-bad cop combo.

“What?! Really?”

“Actually… so was Sam,” Dean pointed at the younger brother, unfazed. “But I made a deal with a demon, which caused me to die and go to Hell, literally, but Cas brought my soul back, much like he did with yours-“

“I was dead too at some point,” Castiel supplied helpfully.

That had the woman finally freeze, blank stare her only reaction. Sam threw his hands in the air. “Really, guys?”

“I’m afraid we broke her.”

“No kidding.“ Sam shot both Castiel and Dean a murderous glare before shifting his attention back to the woman. “Hey, Natasha, you okay? I know this is a lot to take in-“

“Everyone in this room was dead at some point?!” she yelped, her voice unnaturally high-pitched, making everyone flinch. Sam worried his bottom lip with his teeth, dreading her reaction.

“…yeah. The world is a much stranger place then you were led to believe.”

“Not that I remember much from that…” she huffed, sitting down to a couch heavily.

“Yeah, about that. We thought Castiel could try a thing,” Sam remembered, smiling reassuringly when Natasha eyed the angel warily.

“A… a thing?”

“I’d like to try and look inside your mind,” Castiel explained, slowly approaching her, the coat dancing around his feet. “To see if I can do anything about the amnesia or at least find a clue that would lead us to someone who knew you.”

Natasha opened her mouth, no sound coming out for a while. Then she shook her head as if she was trying to get rid of some annoying thought.

“O-okay. I guess… it’s not gonna kill me again, is it?” she joked, her voice too anxious for anyone to actually laugh.

“No. Believe me, if I meet an obstacle and the only way of overcoming it would mean hurting you, I’ll stop. You can trust me, Natasha. I have no reason to cause you any harm.”

Sam was impressed; that was a good speech. Wow. Dean had been right. Angels = good impressions

“Okay. I trust you, Castiel. Do your… thing.”

Cas nodded and smiled at her briefly before placing his hands to hover next to her temples. She automatically closed her eyes with a deep inhale.

“Alright. Tell me if anything hurts…”

The familiar glow of angel grace wrapped her scalp. The brothers held their breath, eyes flickering between the angel and the woman.

Natasha’s features hardened, but she didn’t let out a sound. If she was in pain, it was either bearable or paralysing. Sam really hoped for the first option.

It didn’t even take a minute. Castiel’s hands fell to his sides and he stepped back, his lips in a frustrated line.

“Nothing?” Dean wanted to know, but they all both had a hunch that the question was rhetorical. The answer was written all over Castiel’s face.

The angel only shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

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Part 3

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I’m having fun... are you? ;) Thank you for reading!

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Tags: @cxptain​ @smilexcaptainx​ , @murdermornings​ @irepostthingsiwanttoseelater , @polarcrystall​ @eliza5616​ @rayofdawnworld @victor-criss-bish​ @skychild29​  @elysianecho​ @simmisblog​ @scentedsongrebel​ @orions-nebula​, @sergeantrosabellaswan​ @songofcosplay​, @ilovesupersoldiers​ @wxstedhexrt​ @silver-winter-wolf​ @guardian-tn @janieavalos  @vxidnik​, @patzammit​ , @annathesillyfriend​ and @maravderofthephoenix​ (I’m really sorry about forgetting to tag you in previous chapters)

[ilusionis]

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: vinn (or ila, for close friends)     Age: 22       Contact: IM, discord

Character(s) I rp: aizen sosuke on here, askin nakk ke vaar (@ levaer) and lille barro (@ firstritter, sideblog) Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): all of them actually. Current Fandom(s): bleach. Fandom(s) you have an AU for:  none. i’ve been debating about making a modern au but i wouldn’t be sure what to explore in it. within the context of bleach, though, i’m very interested in developing a bunch of AUs. My language(s): i’m only confident in writing in italian or english.  Themes I’m interested in for rp:   Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: none.

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?:   YES / NO   only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?:   YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?:  24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?:  IC / OOC. Are you selective with following others?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting:  if you want to plot, it would be best to send me an IM and ask me, then we can definitely move to discord if you’d rather. it’s possible to approach me for rp without plotting first, best way would be to send me a meme when i reblog them or simply an ic ask, which i will answer, while memes might get lost. ic asks are good ice-breakers, we can continue plotting from there.

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner:  i need my partners to be as interested in our plot as i am. it would be great if you already have an idea, but it’s still good if you don’t, i get that coming up with ideas can be hard sometimes; mostly, i require honesty. you can definitely tell me that you got no ideas and i will do my best to help, ask questions, try to spark something. i do require the feeling of having that commitment reciprocated.

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?:  i tend to straight up drop the conversation lmao. no hard feelings, but if i get the feeling you’re not interested, i will take my distance - i won’t waste my energy on a plot if my partner doesn’t share my enthusiasm. still, you can always approach me again, if you’re feeling up to it / have new ideas / whatever. nice thing of online convos is that they don’t have an expiration date lol.

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?:  i always ask if they got any ideas to begin with. if my partner already knows, more or less, what kind of dynamic they wanna build with my character(s), that makes it infinitely easier to build something meaningful. it’s still fine if they don’t, i will usually ask a lot of questions regarding their muse’s opinions / feelings / etc., and try to navigate from there. a question i usually ask is: is there any aspect of your muse you’d like to explore? i think that’s a pivotal point in any interaction. 

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: if they feel like telling me, why not. but usually, i don’t warn when i drop a thread, so it’s not expected of my partners ever. - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?:  nothing in particular tbh. they can tell me or approach me to start a new thread if they wish to, but it’s not required.

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?:  i might lose interest in a thread, especially if i feel like it’s going nowhere or if the inspiration for it simply doesn’t come. it’s never happened so far that i had to drop a thread because it was making me uncomfortable, but that could still be a reason for me to. in general, though, i would approach my partner in that case. - Will you tell your partner?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Is communication in the rpc important to you?   YES / NO. - And why?:  absolutely. i’d rather avoid awkward situations or misunderstandings of any kind; if something’s up, tell me. i also like to communicate with my writing partners (be it in the tags of our threads or in IMs), makes me feel like the enthusiasm is not one-sided and i find it generally pleasant.  - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?:  sure. we gotta stay polite, but honest. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way?  YES / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?:  to have fun, to cultivate my writing skills and my english, and to explore my favorite characters. 

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios:  i want to develop aizen’s wandenreich verse, because i’m deep in quincy hell and i think his dynamics with quincy muses could be super interesting. anything involving the intricacies of bleach politics is super interesting to me, be it with aizen or with my two quincy muses - who, btw, are also good to explore dynamics between quincies / their culture / relationships etc.

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore:  i won’t write anything pertaining to sexual assault. 

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: it’s gotten difficult to work with starters such as “you summoned me / do you need anything / did you call for me” etc. i used to receive that kind of starters all the time with aizen, and i can’t come up with something new every damn time. i also have a hard time working with starters / replies that already feel like a closed conversation and don’t give me anything to reply to.

What type of characters catch your interest the most?:  i’m not sure i have a type. aizen is pretty much an exception, the only example of an already well-built character i write, since i tend to gravitate around minor ones that don’t have much material and that i can work on and expand without being affected by the fandom’s opinion or whatever. somehow i always tend to rp tall guys-

What type of characters catch your interest the least?:  children and teenagers don’t interest me for the most part. characters who don’t have a shred of an opinion or can’t offer any interesting conflicts. overly friendly, mushy, affectionate and flowery characters are really not my cup of tea either. 

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?:  oh god i have no idea. i’m very laid-back, i guess. i’ll never pressure my partners for replies, i don’t think i’m owed a reply in the first place because we all have lives offline,  so i’ll never take it to heart if a partner drops a thread. if i really feel like our roleplaying styles don’t mesh, it will be at my own discretion to do something about it. another strong aspect i have ....... i think i have a decent grasp on all my muses? especially aizen. of course ur free to disagree lol. also, lately i’ve been p active, so that’s it. 

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: i’m really slow. i might speed up for my closest friends, with whom i plot / rp regularly, but usually i take quite some time to reply to random unplotted threads. i probably have a thousand other flaws as a rper, but this is the biggest one that comes to my mind rn. 

Do you rp smut?:  YES / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?:  YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?:  i don’t write detailed sex scenes. sorry lmao they’re just not interesting to me. however, i’m super-ok with writing anything around it, like intimate scenes etc. in fact i find it somewhat soothing.  - Anything you would not want to rp there?:  the nitty-gritty part is already a no, but i guess also sexual violence and shit like that. it’s a no.

Are ships important to you?:   YES / NO. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?:   YES / NO. Do you use read more?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship  —  Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?:  all my ships are with snow 8′) and ur never bored with her. in general, i love being able to explore the muses’ relationships, their conflicts and their peaceful moments, especially in relation to canon events! - What is your smut tag?: nsfw / ........ my n*sfw posts are rare anyway.

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: to an extent, i prefer pre-est relationships to first meetings - which they can get a bit dull after some time. i’m ok with mostly anything, and only more selective when it comes to relationships that might severely alter my muse’s canon / past / overall character. 

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?:  not to stroke my own feathers but aizen offers a perfect chance at character development to any and all bleach characters. he’s the main villain, he holds some wild opinions, and whether you agree or disagree with him, he leaves no one indifferent. aizen is the main cornerstone of bleach, and if you want your muse to questions themselves and the system / world around them, interacting with him is the best way to start. also, aizen interacted with a fuckton of people, knows practically everything there is to know, is responsible for significant amount of canon events, so you see ... whatever character you write, aizen has the full potential to be extremely relevant in the course of their development.

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?:   children, ordinary low-ranked shinigami (i find it hard when it’s out of the blue, even in aizen’s captain and lieutenant verses ... because interactions would likely be only work-related, and won’t go far), characters whose personalities really have nothing to do with aizen. unfortunately, he’s not my easiest muse, and i don’t want to force interactions with him.  - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?:  characters who have opinions, some political involvement, in general characters with whom aizen had a dynamic in canon. 

- What interests your Muse(s) in general:  reading, calligraphy, philosophy (especially in-world philosophy), science (again, mostly related to the specificity of the bleach universe), the very careful crafting of his plan- - What do they desire, is their goal?:  kill the soul king and take its place, destroy the institutions of soul society, subdue them. and then rule, as the soul king never did before. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?:  the idiosyncracies in their behavior, the particularities, their possible weaknesses.  - What do they value in a person?:    very little, usually. he may appreciate a resolute personality, strength, and intelligence. - What themes do they like talking about?:  speaking mostly of mundane talks, he likes conversing about his interests. it takes a lot for him to share any personal information, though. - Which themes bore them?:  anything about the greater good, friendship, love, very human topics.

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?:  seeing the soul king, in all things like a ghost stalking his dreams, and well ... spending his early life in rukongai as a whole. being forced to consume other souls in order to survive. the first times his reiatsu killed anyone who tried to get near him.  - What could possibly trigger them?:  it’s rare that he will outwardly show signs of distress, i’d say almost impossible. the few times the soul king still appears in his mind, greatly upsets him though. - What could set them off, enrage them?:  the soul king gets him particularly heated. urahara, as we witnessed. after his defeat, ichigo, to an extent. - What could lead to an instant kill?:  kubo was a coward who didn’t dare let him kill any relevant character, but actually aizen kills very liberally.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?:  the soul king, urahara. he has a strong disdain for yamamoto, and that joke of C46. - Is there someone /-thing they love?:    himself. tousen

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?:  he’s only really easy to approach for bleach characters, who, depending on who they are, have different eligible verses to further facilitate the interaction. humans / powerless bleach characters can’t really interact with him tho. - Where are they usually to find?:  soul society or hueco mundo. i have a verse set in the wandenreich.

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?:  aizen is not a particularly easy muse, but it’s part of his overall mosaic to be somewhat unapproachable and distant. i’m not out to make him someone he is not, so forgive me in advance if plotting with me turns out to be difficult in a way or another. he’s very dear to me, and i try my best to do him justice! while my main headcanons may not affect our interactions specifically, i still ask my partners to look them up (they’re linked in my about page) because they’re essential to my portrayal and it makes me happy to have them acknowledged. i think that’s all lmao. come visit me over at my quincy boys too.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by:  @skyvar​ I DID IT AT LAST. Tagging:  i don’t know who has been tagged so, you know what to do.

[yallreddieforthis]

Believer

Fandom: It (2017)

Pairing: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier

Rating: T (for language and Richie being Richie)

Words: 7k

Soulmate AU. Takes place in 2004. Humor, banter, first meeting, first date, first kiss.

And wow. Wow and a half. Richie couldn’t have even dreamed up a guy this cute, although admittedly he’d been picturing some dude in baggy jeans and a beanie with a hacky sack this whole time. Which couldn’t be further from this...absolute snack of startled, prep-school perfection.

Oh my fucking god, I hate that song.

Y’know, Richie has seen worse. Some girl in his English class has damn, how you fit all that in them jeans? so really, anything after that is an improvement.

And it’s not like the soul mark is constantly on his mind or anything. It’s on his back—literally, he can’t see it without two mirrors and he had to have Bill read it out to him when it first showed up—but every once in awhile he remembers that someday he’s going to hear oh my fucking god, I hate that song and he’ll just know. Well, maybe more than every once in awhile. It’s kind of like a recurring daydream. That, and what he’d do if he suddenly became Cyclops from the X-Men.

Fifteen year old Richie was positive it was going to be like some punk-ass rocker chick standing outside Hot Topic and reacting to 98 Degrees over the loudspeaker. At least, that was his first thought. And it’s not like it’s going to be a problem if that’s what ends up happening—because no matter what or who else he’s into, Richie is positive he’ll always have a deep-down internal hard-on for punk-ass rocker chicks—but lately he’s had this nagging feeling in the back of his mind that… Well, it could just be like, a memory of a dream or some shit. And Richie certainly does not believe in dreams coming true, but it wasn’t until well after he got a soul mark that he admitted to himself that his secret thing for Chad Michael Murray is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Richie thinks it would’ve been easier to admit to being The Bi-est if it hadn’t been goddamn Chad that forced him to realize it. Like if it had been Orlando Bloom in Pirates or something when he’d been like alright, time to fuckin’ fess up . But he explained away his crush on Orlando as like, well, Orlando is cool as fuck. Duh. Who doesn’t want to blow him?

Same with like, David Boreanaz. Richie is convinced that even the straightest of straight guys fell desperately in love with Angel when they watched Buffy. He could stick his stake in anyone and they’d thank him.

But Chad...mm. Richie is the only guy he knows who watches One Tree Hill. He’s sure about that because every joke he’s ever made about Lucas Scott has been met by blank stares by Bill and Bev and even Ben, who, though ostensibly straight, would totally love One Tree Hill if Richie ever got the balls to ask him to watch it with him. The only people in the whole world he has to discuss it with are the group of girls who sit next to him in Physics. So actually, Richie blames One Tree Hill for his D in Physics. If he hadn’t started talking to those girls—and he probably wouldn’t have if they hadn’t been discussing the show—he might’ve been able to learn about science instead of playing Fuck Marry Kill every period. So even though it truly is the worst show he has ever watched on purpose, once a week, like clockwork, Richie sits his ass down in front of the computer to jerk it to Blondie McKenDoll because...what are you gonna do.

It ended up being a blessing in disguise because he decided to let his friends know he’s bi and a One Tree Hill fan in one fell swoop. He only got shit on about the One Tree Hill thing, especially because he was the one who used to give Ben shit about Dawson’s Creek. So really, that was only fair.

Still, that was nothing compared to the shit he got for having a soul mark that’s like...inches from being a tramp stamp. Secretly (and also not-so-secretly), Richie loves it. It’s deliciously tacky, the handwriting is almost as bad as his; really, he couldn’t have asked for something trashier. He might’ve died of shame if he’d gotten delicate, loopy cursive around his forearm like Bill it’s lovely to meet you, finally Denbrough. Anyway, anybody who writes that nicely would never be compatible with Richie. And god help whatever poor guy has a soul mark in Richie’s handwriting somewhere on his body. Richie can only pray it’s somewhere unobtrusive.

The messy printing is only a small part of what has convinced Richie his soulmate is a boy. It’s mostly just a gut feeling, something he doesn’t want to acknowledge because he can’t explain it. It feels stupid to bank on something like that.

Richie is low-key disappointed by the fact that he's never seen the handwriting from his soul mark crop up in any of the school graffiti. He's even gone and tagged the bathroom stalls a couple of times, in the hopes that whatever guy it is will see it. And deep down, Richie knows he probably wouldn't have done that if he'd thought his soulmate was a girl.

They're all reasonably convinced that Bill's soulmate is British, based on the whole lovely thing, and Richie has taken to mimicking the kind of accent he thinks she might have. Bill keeps being like I'm not gonna match with the qu-qu-queen, Richie, but if she's the kind of girl who goes around telling people it's lovely to meet you... Richie's not saying she will be like some kind of aristocratic socialite, just that she might be. He thinks Bill should probably be taking steps to prepare for that sort of scenario, although he's not sure what those steps might be. Cotillion? Cigar smoking? Tea making?

Either way, Bill has time. There aren’t any British girls in Derry. No way is he going to meet her until at least college.

In any case, thinking about what song he and his soulmate can hate together to be a lot better pastime than whatever the fuck Mr. Shulman is writing about on the whiteboard. Richie feels like he can't take a hundred percent of the blame for failing to pay attention. The green marker Mr. Shulman is using is frayed, fading, and praying for the sweet release of the trash can, and it's not like Richie can really see the board from the back of the room on the best of days. His parents have suggested, well, more like insisted he sit up front but like...Bev sits in the back, and sitting up front would put a damper on the bubble gum blowing contests they have when Mr. Shulman isn't looking. Tragically, his parents probably wouldn't agree with his reasoning. But whatever.

Richie has a list in the back of his notebook, which he relies on his inscrutable handwriting to protect from prying eyes, of every song he's ever heard that he immediately disliked. He started it on his fifteenth birthday with a list of past horrors and adds on every time Creed releases a new single.

  Titanic song—My Heart Will Go On

I Hope You Dance

Hero—Enrique Iglesias (although Richie has admittedly crossed out and rewritten this one several times because, you know, Enrique)

Soak Up the Sun—that chick that’s dating Lance Armstrong

Summer Girls

I Knew I Loved You

Your Body Is a Wonderland

I’m Like a Bird

Anything that has ever been on American Idol

 And so on. He's got 37 entries so far, and it's been two and a half years in the making. He's just in the process of deciding whether A Thousand Miles deserves a spot on the list when Bev nudges his shoulder and hands him a note under the desk, written in Ben's even, exacting printing.

  Tuesday: Circle one

- National Treasure

- Mean Girls

- The Passion? (probably not, I know)

- Saw

- Troy

 Richie truly sees no point in reading further because Bev has only circled National Treasure and Mean Girls and there is a zero percent chance Ben won't side with her , but he'll be damned if he's not going to give his opinion anyway. He scribbles a big fat line through The Passion, because although he knows Ben's AP history class will give him extra credit for seeing it, but he's not sure he loves Ben (or rather, Ben's history teacher) enough to sit through three hours of Jim Caviezel getting whumped.

Apropos of nothing, a song begins playing in Richie’s head; a good one, thankfully. Richie has very little control over his internal radio and sometimes it gets stuck on Radio Disney, so some Weird Al is a welcome reprieve.

  And the guide... Richie mutters while tapping on his desk.

  Said not to stand

But that’s a demand

That I couldn’t meet

I got on my feet

And stood up instead

And knocked of my head, you see

Tell meeee…

 From Richie’s other side, Bill’s elbow collides with his ribs.

“You’re doing the th-thing again,” he mutters under his breath. Richie rolls his eyes. He doesn’t understand why anyone— his math teacher included—would not be delighted by a surprise rendition of a Weird Al song, regardless of where in the song he happens to start singing. 

Back to the movie list. Everything else...hmm. Troy looks badass—and stars Richie's one true love, Orlando Bloom. There's a good chance he's gonna be naked in it too. Richie draws a dick next to Troy as part of the decision-making process. He knows Ben only put Saw on the list because he thought Richie would like it. There's no way Ben actually wants to watch Wesley from Princess Bride get chopped up. Richie scratches Saw out and writes you're not fooling me next to it.

He's heard good things about Mean Girls, but still... Bev probably only circled it because she knows it's Ben's first choice. Sometimes being best friends with a couple makes Richie want to spray them with projectile vomit. But, you know, in the best way. He has no particular objections to Mean Girls himself, except that National Treasure promises to be amazingly, spectacularly adventure-y and ridiculous, and Richie is always down for that kind of action. In fact, he would just as soon use the advantage of a half day where his parents are at work to watch Jumanji on the big TV in the living room, but...

Fuck it. He's feeling generous today, and he kind of wants to witness Ben vibrating with excitement when he sees the note so...he circles Mean Girls and passes it back.

Ben's gasp upon receiving it is worth it.

Apparently, Derry High isn't the only school having a minimum day because the mall is fucking packed with teenagers. The concession stand line is super long, but where else is Richie supposed to find a nauseating selection of overpriced candy and a bucket of popcorn that could feed a small village? After dousing the popcorn with butter to the point where Ben almost gags, they make their way into the theater to find seats. Which are shitty almost-front-row ones because it took them so goddamn long to get snacks that those are the only four seats together by the time they get in there. Lucky the guy sitting in front of Richie is super short. Bev and Ben aren't so lucky—the curls of the guy to his left are almost as impressive as Richie's, and the guy in front of Bev is just obviously really tall.

The previews haven't even started yet—it's just the shitty like don't talk in the theater ads and dumb TV trivia questions.

Richie feels incumbent to entertain his friends at all times, but especially in moments like this, where nothing else entertaining is forthcoming.

Uh huh, he whispers, starting up a beat on his thigh. Uh huh. Extra Cheese.

Bill sighs in a long-suffering sort of way beside him.

  Uh huh. Uh huh. Save a piece for meeeee…

 He turns to Bev and starts whispering the rest of the lyrics directly into her ear because he can’t not.

  Pizza party at your house

I went just to check it out

Nineteen extra-larges, what a shame

No one came

We sat eatin’ all alone

You said, take the pizza—

 “Shh!” Bev puts a finger over his mouth. “You’re going to get us kicked out again.” 

That’s fair. Although, in Richie’s defense, it’s not like they missed out on much last time. The Village was supposed to be shitty anyway.

Mean Girls is, as it turns out, almost as interesting as the antics of the people in the row in front of them. Curly and the tall one are  a couple, clearly, and Richie feels for Shorty The Third Wheel, whose face he has yet to get a good look at. His hair is as neat as Richie’s is messy though—the kind of perfect where Richie can’t tell if he tried to make it look like that or if that’s just how it is. It’s just long enough to sweep over the tips of his ears and to almost touch the back collar of the polo shirt he’s wearing. He sits with his legs crossed in front of him, which Richie hasn’t been able to do since eighth grade.

The couple is cute, like stupid cute. The tall one is black and like, easily a ten no matter what your taste is; Curly is white with defined cheekbones and a cardigan. Tall has his arm around Curly, who has leaned into his neck. It makes Richie at least ten times gayer than he was before he walked into this theater.

Halfway through the movie, Richie has finished his monster popcorn and started in on the Milk Duds. He’s getting intense gay vibes from Aaron, who is supposed to be hot but is a little too Mister Muscles for Richie’s taste. Of course, Richie also likes Chad Michael Murray so… Even Richie’s taste doesn’t match with Richie’s taste. Whatever. At least his mouth and brain are in agreement on the subject of Sour Patch Kids, which is what really matters in the end.

But anyway, Richie prepares to come away from this movie a changed man with a new appreciation for Jingle Bell Rock by the time the credits roll. He’s definitely going to have to see this at least four to sixteen more times—or however many he can get away with before his friends threaten to kill him—because he missed a lot of the jokes being distracted by the way Shorty was craning his neck to look up at the screen. Richie pops the last of his Starburst into his mouth without unwrapping it. If there was an Olympics category for unwrapping a starburst with your tongue, Richie would be a gold medalist.

“Did you finish all that?” Ben gasps, leaning over and gaping at the graveyard of candy wrappers across Richie’s lap. Richie nods, burps, and rubs his belly like a proud expectant mother. He spits out the Starburst wrapper and hands it to Ben with a wink because he knows Ben’s too polite to drop that shit on the floor for the ushers to clean up.

“Well,” says Beverly, taking a final, bubbly sip of her Icee, “when you give birth to that thing later tonight, don’t call me to cry about it.”

And because she gave him such a perfect opportunity—and because he absolutely will be calling her from the bathroom later tonight—Richie decides to finally finish his song.

  Why’d you have to go and make me so constipated?

This really is a—

 He doesn’t get any further because a sharp voice cuts in from directly in front of him.

“Oh my fucking god, I hate that song.”

And then Richie’s back is attacked by a thousand mosquitos at once—or at least that’s what it feels like. He overheard a guy on the quad once say that the sensation from his mark when he met his soulmate gave him a boner, but apparently it’s different for everyone because all this does is make Richie want to light himself on fire. 

Which is why when Shorty in the J. Crew polo wheels around to look at him, Richie is awkwardly shifting, trying to find a way to itch his back on the seat. Maybe not the first impression he was going for, but just then, Shorty’s eyes lock on to Richie’s as he locates the source of the song, so yeah. There it is.

And wow. Wow and a half. Richie couldn’t have even dreamed up a guy this cute, although admittedly he’d been picturing some dude in baggy jeans and a beanie with a hacky sack this whole time. Which couldn’t be further from this...absolute snack of startled, prep-school perfection.

Before either of them can say anything else, Shorty yelps and grabs at one of his legs. That’s when he seems to regain the power of speech.

“It’s you?” he says, glaring sharply at Richie. “You’re the reason I haven’t been able to wear shorts for three fucking years?”

People are starting to leave the theater, which Richie hardly registers because he is having a full-on, swear to god Disney moment. This guy is like a...a bear cub. Not like hairy— he’s actually noticeably not hairy—but in the sense that he’s small and huggable-looking and Richie wants to pick him up and squeeze him but would probably get mauled if he tried to do so.

“Do you even—oh, sorry,” Shorty says, apologizing to the person who is trying to scoot past him. Then he turns back to Richie and flicks his eyes over him; just like a quick once-over. It’s impossible to tell if he likes what he sees. Richie notices he is still rubbing his calf.

“Itches like a motherfucker, doesn’t it?” he says, giving up on his seat-wiggling and reaching behind himself to scratch at his soul mark. Unfortunately, it turns out to be one of those itches that hurts when you scratch it, so he pulls his fingers back with an, “ow, son of a bitch!”

Shorty hisses.

“What’s wrong, Eddie?” Tall leans over Curly to ask Shorty—Eddie. Eddie.

“Fuck,” says Eddie, then he takes in a deep breath, rubbing his leg like he’s dying to scratch it. “This asshole—” he points an accusing finger in Richie’s direction, “—is the reason I’ve had those Weird Al lyrics about being—sorry, excuse us—about being constipated on my leg since before the goddamn song even came out.”

Tall and Curly both swivel around to stare at Richie. That gets Bev’s attention.

“Wait, Richie,” she says, grabbing his arm. “Is this—” 

“The love of my life,” Richie announces proudly, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. “Eddie.”  

There is silence for a second during which Richie can almost see smoke coming out of Eddie’s ears.

“Fuck,” he says again. For all his preppy khakis and neatly combed hair and pristine white sneakers, he sure has a potty mouth. Richie couldn’t imagine anything better.

Bev gapes too, tapping Ben rapidly on the knee to get his attention. Curly’s eyes narrow as he examines Richie critically.

“Eddie, are you sure this is him?” he asks, still staring.

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, pulling up his pant leg and peering at his leg. “Yeah, cause—you know what? You can’t really see it in—”

“Excuse me,” calls an usher from the end of the aisle. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” Richie calls back cheerfully. “This is my soulmate! Isn’t he—”

“Right,” says the usher, blank faced in spite of this being the greatest of all possible happenings. “You think maybe you can move this party out to the lobby? I need to get the floor cleaned before the next showing.”

Eddie practically disappears into his friends during the awkward group shuffle out of the theater, but Richie walks backwards, keeping his eyes on all five feet and...four inches? three? of the gorgeousness that is Eddie.

Out in the light of the lobby he’s even better. Soft-looking brown hair, lightly freckled cheeks and arms, and—once he pulls up his pant leg—a soul mark that looks like the logo for someone’s z-list death metal band. The skin around it is pink and blotchy, but Richie can see the lines already fading. The only word that’s really fully legible is constipated. Which is hilarious, so Richie can’t understand why Eddie seems so ticked off.

Not that it fazes him in the slightest. It is actually written in the stars or the Book of Fate or whatever that he and Eddie are meant for each other. They’re destined to fall in love. If Eddie is mad at him now, he won’t be later.

“Whoa,” says Curly, tracing his fingers over Eddie’s soul mark. “Yeah. There it goes.”

“I’m Mike,” says Tall, who, now that they’re all standing, is actually the same height as Richie. He extends a hand, which Richie takes and then uses to yank him in for a hug. He smells amazing.

“Richie,” he says into Mike’s shoulder, before next trying to plaster himself to Curly. He hears Ben start to make introductions with Mike before Eddie’s voice cuts in.

“Stop,” he orders, running both hands through his hair, which bounces immediately back into its immaculate style. “Okay? Just—this is not happening right now.”

“Tell that to my heart, cutie,” says Richie. “And by my heart I mean my—”

“My mom?” Eddie says, like he’s name-dropping—like that should mean anything to Richie.

“God, if she’s half as cute as you, then hell yes.”

“No,” says Eddie. “I mean like, my mom. Does not know. That I’m gay. Fuck. Like, she has no fucking idea. And she’s gonna have a shit fit when she finds out. I keep telling her I don’t even have a soul mark yet—she never would’ve let me out of the house again if she’d seen it.”

“So?” says Richie. “Now it’s going away; now she doesn’t have to see it.” Seems more like a solution than a problem if you ask him.

“Honestly I was hoping not to even have to deal with any of this shit until like after college,” Eddie says. He looks like he’s considering just making a fucking break for the door. Like, don’t want to deal with this now, bye! Which, fair.

It’s a lot to roll with, especially just out of fucking nowhere like that. Richie probably should be freaking out way more than he is right now.

The idea of not seeing Eddie again until after college sounds terrible, but he doesn’t want to admit that. Going around like, yeah, I met my soulmate but he had a meltdown and ran away so… Like, he could do it if it’s what Eddie wanted. But he really hopes Eddie changes his mind.

“Do you want me to just like...fuck off?” he asks Eddie, quietly enough that the others won’t hear him.

Eddie frowns. “I don’t—”

“I mean...I guess we don’t have to like, you know, go for it now. Like. If you’re not into it, it’s cool. No offense taken. Maybe I’ll… I dunno, find you on Friendster in a few years? When things are easier? Or you can look for me. It’s Richie T-O-Z-”

Eddie cringes, checks his phone. “Shit, I have to go. My mom left me three messages; she’s probably already in the parking lot.”

And before Richie can even get upset about the idea that his soulmate is about to walk off into the sunset without so much as a dramatic monologue about how he’ll never give up on their eventual theoretical love, Eddie bites his lip and looks up into Richie’s face. His eyes are big and brown and make Richie feel like his ribcage is liquefying.

“Gimme your phone,” he says. Richie’s heart leaps into his throat as he pulls it out of his pocket.

Eddie takes it from him. “You should really get a case for this thing,” he says, clicking away on the number pad.

Their fingers brush as Eddie hands back his phone, with one last long look back as he scampers away.

Richie starts typing before he’s even left the lobby.

 From: Richie

hi its richie, the actual love of ur life

 From: Eddie

jesus i havent even reached the parking lot

dont text me too much its 15c a text, my mom will catch on

 From: Richie

can i see u again

i miss u already

 From: Eddie

i can probably get out again saturday

 From: Richie

saturday? what about tmrw?

 From: Eddie

im lucky if i get saturday

saturday, yes or no

 From: Richie

YES OF COURSE

meet me in front of the arcade 1st and Adams

…

ok?

 From: Eddie

Yeah 2pm stop texting me 

Eddie—god even thinking his name brings up a rush of butterflies—is standing outside the arcade looking about as comfortable as if it were a strip club. He’s wearing shorts, apparently for the first time in years. Something tells Richie that Eddie’s not going to be one of those people who gets their soul mark tattooed on after meeting their soulmate. The jury is still out on Richie—he kinda misses his already.

In the five days since they met, Richie has outlined itineraries for at least three different honeymoons and started a shortlist of names their adoptive children. He hopes Eddie also dreams of naming his sons after the kids from South Park.

“So,” says Richie, leaning down and looking Eddie in the eye, “yes or no to kissing on the first date?”

“Who said this was a date?” Eddie scoffs, opening the door to the arcade and rolling his eyes.

Richie has as much of a plan as he’s ever made in his life for this afternoon. First it’s the arcade where he can show off his bitchin’ Dance Dance Revolution skills, then to Johnny Rockets next door for a burger to remember, then hopefully back to Richie’s car to make out if they really hit it off.

Richie honestly cannot wait to show Eddie his car. It’s super impressive, even though it’s missing a bumper and the back passenger side door is held on with duct tape. Is a handjob too much to hope for on the first date? He doesn’t want to pressure Eddie or anything, but Richie is ready to give Eddie a handjob yesterday. So as soon as Eddie’s ready to rumble, they can get down.

Richie brought both his windshield covers just in case—the blue one and the Ren and Stimpy.

Turns out there’s a long line for DDR, which Richie probably should have counted on since it’s Saturday. Perfect opportunity for getting to know each other though. If Eddie would just like, you know, talk. He’s silently chewing on his lip instead, brow furrowed.

“Come here often?” Richie asks him.

Eddie shakes his head. “More like never. My mom won’t let me. Says the arcade is full of germs. She thinks I’m at Stan’s house watching High Society again . ”

“What’s High Society?”

“Really?” Eddie looks up at him. “You haven’t seen—like, with Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra? Bing Crosby? No?”

“So it’s like...a super old movie?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says slowly. “What—I’m just curious—what’s your favorite movie?”

“Definitely The Big Lebowski,” says Richie right away. “That’s easy. Best movie of all time. Oh, except maybe White Chicks. Pulp Fiction. Scary Movie 3.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie whispers, apparently to his shoes.

“Please don’t tell me you preferred Scary Movie 2. That might be a dealbreaker. Soulmate or not.”

“But you do like scary movies?” Eddie perks up a little. “Have you seen Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn? It’s super scary.”

“Audrey Hepburn? Ohhhh, that chick in The Philadelphia Story? My grandma makes us watch that every year when we come over for Thanksgiving.”

Eddie purses his lips. “That’s Katharine Hepburn.”

“Are they sisters?” Richie asks.

“No.”

Richie isn’t worried. Eddie probably just hasn’t seen, like, Dude Where’s My Car yet. Easily fixed. His parents will be out of town next weekend; Eddie can stay over and they can watch it. That and definitely Catch Me If You Can.

He pitches the idea to Eddie, whose eyes light up at the mention of Catch Me If You Can.

“Oh my god,” Eddie groans, “Leonardo DiCaprio was like, my sexual awakening.”

“For sure,” says Richie. “He was such a badass in Gangs of New York. Which one did it for you? Was it The Man In the Iron Mask?”

Eddie looks at him like he’s being an idiot. “Uh, you’re guessing The Man In the Iron Mask before Titanic?”

“Really?” Richie winces, super disappointed and unable to hide it. “Titanic, Eddie?”

Eddie smirks. “No. Romeo and Juliet. You’re up.”

Richie tries to decide whether Romeo and Juliet is a better or worse sexual awakening than Titanic as he chooses a song. Richie practices DDR every weekend the way some people faithfully go to church, so he’s pretty confident he’ll blow Eddie away no matter what.

Still, just to be safe, he picks easy mode when he thinks Eddie isn’t looking. Eddie’s never been here. He doesn’t need to know that it took Richie six months of practice before he finished a song without failing out. It’s gonna look cool either way.

And, okay, in hindsight...these brand-new Dickies are still kind of stiff. They might not have been the best choice for DDR. He just figured they’d make a better impression than the old ripped ones he was wearing when they met. Eddie strikes Richie as the kind of guy who doesn’t wear the same pants two days in a row; he doesn’t need to know that Richie (up until the day before yesterday) only had the one pair. Richie has decided he might even be convinced to break his strict rule of not throwing out pants until they’ve worn through in the crotch. All for love.

Eddie smiles brightly at his abysmal score. “Wow, that was pretty good. Can I try?”

Damn, that smile. Whipped already and they haven’t even kissed yet. Richie steps down with a bow.

Eddie stands tentatively on the DDR platform.

“Um…” He looks at the screen. “This one?”

And before Richie can stop him, he’s picked a crazy song on hard mode. If it were Bill, Richie would settle in and prepare laugh his ass off. Maybe even try to grab his camera from the car.

“So you just like, step on the arrows when they show up on the screen?” Eddie asks while the game loads.

“Uh, yeah,” says Richie. “But you know—don’t worry if you fail out. Took me awhile to get the hang of it.” He winks. 

“Okay,” says Eddie. He rolls his neck and shakes out his arms and… Whoa, why does Richie suddenly feel like he’s about to pop a boner?

And then, uh. And then Eddie is nothing but a flurry of legs, jumping, twirling, hopping back and forth. He claps and snaps with the beat—god, he knows how to use his fucking body. Thank god for Richie’s stiff new pants. He bends a little at the knee, letting his sweater drape down over his lap. Other people in the arcade are stopping what they’re doing to watch—he’s that good.

After what could have been either ten seconds or ten years—but nothing in between—the song ends and Eddie bounces lightly off the mat. Richie’s throat goes dry.

“How’d I do?” Eddie’s little smirk is positively edible.  

“Marry me,” Richie croaks. “I was gonna offer to teach you to play but, uh…”

Eddie laughs. “Mike has that game,” he says, still smiling. “We play it all the time at his house. It’s even harder with the shitty fold-out mat.”

“Well there go my plans,” Richie says, throwing his arms in the air. “It was gonna be a DDR lesson. A sexy one. And you’ve gone and totally schooled me, so now I’m just gonna have to try to impress you with Halo.”

Mercifully, Eddie turns out to be absolute shit at first-person shooters, so Richie isn’t totally humiliated on his home turf. But Eddie creams him at the driving games almost as bad as he did at DDR. 

“Jesus, dude,” Richie says, watching Eddie punch his initials into the hi score list. EFK. “What kind of car do you drive?”

“Pffft,” Eddie shakes his head. “My mom won’t even let my get my permit yet.” 

“Wait,” says Richie. “How old are you?”

“I’m eighteen,” Eddie tells him. Shut the fuck up. No way.

“You’re older than me?! But you’re so short! I thought you were like sixteen.”

Eddie shoots him a baffled glare. “You know that’s not how it works, right?”

“Well, how old did you think I was?” Richie asks. 

“I guess I thought you were eighteen too?” says Eddie, shrugging. “I mean…” he gestures vaguely upward.

Richie raises his eyebrows.

“Alright, touche,” Eddie admits. “But seriously, how old are you? I’m gonna feel really weird if you’re just like, the world’s tallest freshman and you’re hitting on me.”

“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen next month. So we’re practically the same age.”

Eddie nods. “But as far as driving, yeah. I don’t like, have my own car. So yeah, technically I could get a license but I don’t have anything to actually drive yet.”

“My dad gave me his old car and basically let me destroy it while I was practicing,” says Richie. “Your parents don’t trust you with their cars?”

Eddie hesitates for a second before looking away. “It’s just me and my mom,” he says quickly.

“Oh,” says Richie stupidly, feeling like an absolute tool. “Oh yeah, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Eddie tells him, and it sounds like he mostly means it. “I was so young when he died, I don’t even remember him. It’s just that my mom…”

“She sounds like a hardass,” says Richie, drumming on the Whack-a-Mole console while Eddie grabs the mallet.

“It’s not— wham— that,” he says, eyes darting between the moles. “It’s like… My mom acts like she wishes she’d never even —wham— given birth to me.”

“Ow,” Richie grimaces. “Harsh.”

“No,” Eddie corrects. “I don’t mean it like— wham —that. Just that like I think she would rather they’d never— wham —cut the umbilical cord. Like she wishes we were still— wham wham wham —attached.”

“Yikes,” says Richie, because that’s all he can think of to say. 

“Big yikes,” Eddie agrees.

“I’m guessing you don’t go to Derry High, then,” says Richie, resting his head against the machine while Eddie continues to annihilate moles. “Makes sense that I never saw you around, cause I totally would’ve remembered seeing that ass before.”  

He hesitates before adding, “I even wrote some graffiti in the bathroom stalls so you’d recognize my handwriting.”

Eddie’s nose crinkles adorably at that. “First of all—no. I’m homeschooled. Maybe because my mom doesn’t want me making too many friends, or maybe even just to keep me from using public bathrooms.” 

“How do you know Mike and Curly then?” Richie asks.

“Cur—Stanley? Shit,” Eddie says as he misses a mole. “Mike and Stan are homeschooled too. We go to the same testing center in Bangor. And—ha!—I dunno? I sensed their gayness?”

“Yeah I sensed their gayness too,” Richie says. “By the way they were all over each other.”

“No, actually. It wasn’t like that. I knew both of them before they knew each other,” says Eddie. “I was there when they met.”

“Wow.” Richie uses his fist to hit a mole he thinks Eddie’s about to miss. “soul mark surprise?”

“Not really,” says Eddie. “Stan had a thing on his wrist that said, hi, I’m Mike , in Mike’s handwriting, so I kind of connected the dots and introduced them.”

“I’m the third wheel with Bev and Ben all the time,” Richie tells him, leaning over to collect tickets from the Whack-a-Mole.

“They’re not usually too—wait, what’s that?” Eddie asks, snatching something out of Richie’s back pocket. He unfolds the piece of paper.

“Oh, well, uh,” Richie says, thinking for the first time that it’s kind of embarrassing that he kept the list in the first place, “I just… Well, my soul mark said oh my fucking god, I hate that song, so I kind of like kept a list of songs I thought he—they might be talking about.”

Eddie snorts. “I have every single one of these on my iPod,” he says. “And that’s like, my all-time favorite song.” He points at I Knew I Loved You by Savage Garden. Oh god.

“Do you really hate Weird Al?” Richie asks him on their way to the air hockey table. “Cause I gotta say, I don’t know if this,” he gestures between them, “is gonna work out if you don’t want to hear the Angry White Boy Polka at least three times a day.”

“No,” says Eddie quickly. “Weird Al is great. It’s just, you know, the soul mark thing. Like I got it and I was like, what the fuck is this shit? And I guess it was kind of a relief when the song came out because I really hadn’t figured out like...what context I might hear that in. But then I just got sick of associating the song with like...true love. Cause it’s like, ridiculous and gross, you know?”

“I guess,” says Richie. “I dunno. I thought that was pretty fuckin’ romantic.”

“Yeah, I bet you did,” says Eddie. “That’s the kind of romance I’d expect from anyone who hasn’t watched Bing Crosby serenade Grace Kelly.”

“Damn, Eddie. You’re a pretentious little dick, you know that?” Richie says, picking up the puck.

“And you’re a goddamn mess,” Eddie shoots back without pausing. “Your serve.”

Richie is already balls deep in love by the the game ends. To be fair, he’s not sure how he was supposed to concentrate on the game with Eddie giggling and doing a little dance every time he scored. Eddie may have kicked his ass, but Richie walks out the door of the arcade feeling like he’s the one who came out on top. 

“What’s next?” Eddie asks, backing out the door of the arcade, catching his new sticky hand toy on Richie’s glasses on purpose.

“Road head?” Richie asks hopefully, jutting his chin in the direction of his car and grabbing onto his glasses to keep them from being pulled right off his face.

“You wish,” Eddie rolls his eyes. “I haven’t even decided if I want a second date yet.”

“Ah ha!” Richie points at him. “So you admit this is a first date?”

Eddie laughs and raises his eyebrows. “I dunno. Is it?”

“Let’s ask Johnny Rocket,” says Richie, cocking his head to the right. “Got time for a burger? We can split a milkshake.”

Eddie gives him a considering sort of look. “I could probably squeeze it into my schedule.”

Ohhhhhh the things Richie wants to squeeze… With great mental fortitude, he refrains from commenting. Instead Eddie opens the door for him and they grab two menus and a booth. 

“What are you gonna get?” Richie asks.

Eddie peers at him from over the menu. “Depends who’s paying. But we’re definitely not sharing a milkshake. I can already tell you’re a dessert hog. I’d end up getting like one sip.”

Richie laughs, running a hand through his hair. “God.”

“What?” asks Eddie, eyes already fixed back on the menu.

“Honestly? You.”

“Me what?”

Richie hesitates because it’s something he’s never talked to anyone about before. And for good reason—it’s fucking stupid. But right now, sitting in this Johnny Rockets…

“You know…” he starts, drumming his knuckles on the table, “I’m like, super bisexual. But I knew my soulmate was going to be a guy.”

Eddie puts the menu down. “Huh. Really? How?”

Richie shakes his head. “I dunno. It sounds really stupid but like… I don’t know if it was a dream I had or… you just. Like when I heard your voice and then you turned around in the theater…”

It’s so corny. He can’t say it. He’s playing with the straw dispenser on the table like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world. How do you say you make me feel like, gooey inside and it’s fuckin’ nasty but also I don’t ever want it to end? Without sounding like a pussy, of course.

“Thanks? I guess?” says Eddie. “I mean, I still have no idea what you’re talking about but—”

“I’m really glad you’re my soulmate,” Richie blurts out. “Not just to have one, I mean. I’m glad it’s you. You’re awesome. Like...you’re totally knocking me off my fuckin’ feet here. And I hope you—”

The rest of his sentence is drowned out by Eddie leaning over the table and kissing him. Not like, full-on tongue kissing or anything. Just kind of a peck. But longer. Something in between. Soft, but definitely real.

And afterwards Eddie draws back, a little pinker than he was a second ago and then digs into his pocket, fishing out some quarters. He puts two in the little jukebox at their table, punches in a number and letter combo, and then sits back in his seat, shredding a straw wrapper between his fingers.

  I thought love was only true in fairy tales

Meant for someone else, but not for me

 Eddie looks like he’s trying as hard as he can not to grin, going even redder. Richie leans in and offers his hand. Eddie drops his straw wrapper.

  Love was out to get me, that’s the way it seemed

Disappointment haunted all my dreams

But then I saw her face—

 “You know,” Richie says, looking Eddie in the eye, “I like the Smash Mouth version better.”

  Now I’m a believer

 Eddie laughs and takes his outstretched hand. “I think I can live with that.”

[tmnt-veelicious]

Across the Stars - Ch.13

... This chapter was supposed to be way longer. And yet, here it is. I feel like I had to leave this as it was. I won’t lie - that chapter deals with a lot of personal stuff. When I had first finished writing the last part, I actually got a panic attack that night because, oh boi, it really hit close to home :’) Anyway, that’ll probably mean that chapter 14 will come soon ! I already know what I have to write so that will be easy-peasy -u- There’s some French dialogue in this, but I translated it. It’s some heavy French Canadian speak at some points so google translate wouldn’t be able to translate it accurately x’D !!!

First Chapter --> HERE Previous Chapter --> HERE Next Chapter --> HERE

Winter was already on its way out, the temperature on the brink of lightly cold and pleasantly warm. It's been some weeks since Leo's 'protection plan' was going on, each turtles taking turns on keeping an eye on Vee and April whenever they had to come home late from work. Tonight the artist was the only one walking, her roomate having a day off. The stroll was as eventless as usual, her only cue that one of the mutants was following her being that she could spot a form getting from one building top to another. And also she was speaking on the phone with him. ''So, what project am I forbidding you to work on, all thanks to Leo's awesome plan?'' She could hear Donnie's snicker at the other end of the line. ''Oh don't say that, you know he only has good intentions. … And for your information, I was working on the toaster.'' ''Again? It's like the third time in not even a month.'' ''I know! … I think Mikey is letting his cooking creativity take the best of him; you can't heat pizza bagels in an upright toaster.'' ''Even when it's laid to its side?'' ''You're just asking for more trouble,'' laughed the terrapin. ''They'll just fly off to the floor when it's done.'' ''Point taken!'' A long sigh escaped her as she crossed a street, the streetlights shining down on her path as her boyfriend still remained in the shadows. ''… I wish I could be walking by your side,'' echoed Donatello's voice through her phone. She was surprised at first to hear that, somehow wondering if he had read in the depths of her mind. A small smile got to her lips, quickly calculating the remaining time until reaching her home. ''I know, Don, I wish too. But we're almost there, don't worry about it.'' ''Oh, before you get inside, can you wait for my cue? … I have something special.'' ''And April is involved?'' asked Vee, amused. ''She was, in a certain way, but she won't be at your place tonight.'' That lifted the woman's spirits, knowing she'd get to spend the evening alone with the mutant. And now she was eager to see what was awaiting her! She finally arrived upon her apartment building, already making her way inside until reaching her entry door. She waited some minutes before knocking gently on the door to signal Donnie that she was there – as they weren't speaking on the phone anymore. The artist could hear some footsteps on the other side, guessing he was probably setting some things. Then the moment of truth came, the door finally opening, large enough for her to enter without revealing the mutant's presence. ''Madam,'' jokingly greeted the terrapin as Vee was in. She instantly noticed how the lights were off, except for the faint glow of various candles way ahead in the living room area. Her smile wouldn't fade, Donnie taking her spring coat off of her and setting it to the side, next leaving a hand at the small of her back as they made their way to the next scene. Many candles were placed around, giving a focus on the coffee table in the middle of the living room. On it was placed a bottle of white wine with two glasses and a plate of sushis. Vee showed a smirk as she looked at her boyfriend. ''Is this a date?'' she asked, reminiscent of that time on the roof some months ago. ''Only if you want it to be,'' answered the other, playing her game. The woman filled the wine glasses, handing one to the mutant. ''Why do you keep bringing wine? I remember you saying you don't even drink that.'' ''White wine is less worse than red, so I don't mind,'' explained Donnie, taking a sip before he continued: ''Also there's another bottle in the fridge so we're not done for tonight.'' Vee faked being shocked. ''Who are you and what have you done to my boyfriend?'' ''Yes, I can be fun sometimes, how surprising is that!'' She lightly slapped his arm, bringing a small chortle out of the other. The evening couldn't get any better afterward, hilarity never escaping them and wine flowing. They were already at the half of the second bottle that they found themselves in eachother's arms – or mostly Donnie sitting on the couch as Vee was seated in his lap, facing him. She couldn't help her smirk as she lightly bit her lip, tracing imaginary patterns on his torso. ''Are you a scientist? ... Because I'd love to do you on a table periodically,'' she blabbered, lovesick. ''Hey, oh, that's my job to say cheesy liners like that!'' laughed the other, unconsciously laying a hand on her hip, bringing her body closer to his. ''What are you gonna do, oh mighty ninja warrior? You're as drunk as me anyway,'' smirked Vee. He returned the same smile, finishing what was left in his glass before putting it aside, removing the woman's right after. His hands easily found a new place at the lowest part of the human's back, soon petting her skin. ''First I will destabilize,'' he started, his tone low and seductive. ''You'll be begging for mercy soon enough and that's when I'll strike.'' He took her scent in the crook of her neck, travelling higher so he could leave kisses along her jaw. Every sensations were amplified when drunk, their skins numb and yet so sensitive. Vee couldn't retain her moan, her hold slightly tightening around the mutant's shoulders. She felt the world spin, nuzzling her lover's cheek in hopes of finding his lips. A low churr rose from the turtle, smiling once more as he could clearly feel the woman's need. ''Look at you; so hot and eager, just for me,'' he murmured. ''You're mine, all mine,'' he added, cupping her ass, forever loving her form. ''Don...,'' gasped Vee, her body exploding in a wave of shivers all over her skin. Their lips finally met, their passion already in place. When sober, Donatello would always wonder how he could have ever become so addicted to her, but now everything made sense. This euphoria and need he was currently going through, it was all a thrill he knew he'd never get tired of. Every moves and sounds she made could only fuel his very core, always demanding for more. Her shirt was soon thrown away, Vee easily taking control as she started grinding against the other, panting dued to her growing lust. The mutant was about to remove her bra that a loud sound stopped them both, their eyes instantly diverting to the coffee table. Vee's phone was ringing, indicating that someone was calling. Donnie was frowning, Vee was laughing. ''Let it be,'' she said. Oh no, drunk Donnie was a confident Donnie. And he would not take that kind of shit from anybody. He lunged for the phone, keeping the woman against him. ''Donnie, stop!'' warned Vee, still smiling from amusement. The turtle took the call in, putting it on speaker. ''Whoever's calling, you better have a goddamn good reason,'' he started. ''Véro?'' answered a woman's voice. Vee instantly jumped, her eyes as big as plates. She grabbed the phone out of the other's hand, already switching to her native tongue. ''Maman?'' Oh shit, Donatello realized, that's her mom. The human stayed seated where she was, trying to get down from the high clouds she was on. ''Depuis quand tu m'appelles aussi tard?'' (Since when you're calling me this late?) she started. ''Il est à peine 8h30, j'trouve pas que c'est si tard.'' (It's barely 8:30, I don't think it's that much late.) ''Peu importe, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?'' (Whatever, what's the matter?) asked Vee, somehow annoyed. ''J'veux juste prendre de tes nouvelles. Ça fait au moins un mois qu'on s'est pas parlé! Et c'est qui qui a répondu au téléphone? T'es avec qui?'' (I just want to get some news about you. It's been at least a month since we last spoke! And who answered the phone. Who are you with?). Her mother's tone sounded somehow impatient, demanding to be answered without delay. Donnie couldn't catch everything that was said, but he did recognize some words or two, easily guessing that she was asking Vee who she was with. ''J'suis avec mon chum...''(I'm with my boyfriend) answered Vee with a sigh. ''Quoi?! Depuis quand t'as un chum? T'as tu fait ça sur un coup de tête encore? C'est quoi, tu veux te donner une autre raison de rester là?'' (What?! Since when you have a boyfriend? You did that impulsively? You want to give yourself another reason to stay there?) ''De quoi tu parles?'' (What are you talking about?) added the artist, visibly angered at that point. ''T'es si contre le fait que j’habite ici que peu importe ce que je fais, c'est mal?'' (You're so against my choice to live here that whatever I do, it's bad?) ''Oui! Tu l'sais que c'était une criss de mauvaise idée que tu partes. Tu l'vois ben que t’arrive pas à trouver de l'emploi dans ce que tu veux. Arrête de vivre dans un rêve inutile.'' (Yes! You know it was a dumb idea to leave. You know you're not able to find a job in your domain. Stop living in this useless dream.) As soon as he saw pools of tears invade Vee's eyes, Donnie couldn't stop frowning, taking back the phone. ''Hey, hi. Name's Donnie,'' he started, not even caring that the woman was now looking at him with fear. ''Are you aware that your daughter is currently crying?'' ''Uh, I- no,'' answered the other, taken by surprise by the sudden change in voice and language. ''Hand me back Véro, I-'' ''No, no, listen ma'am,'' cut Donatello, firm. ''I may have not fully understand what you both just said, but I know enough about that stupid argument to tell you that it needs to stop. Your daughter is talented and has such potential. Why won't you just let her do her things? She's an adult, for crying out loud!'' ''You don't know anything about any of this,'' spoke back Vee's mother. ''I'm trying to protect her by making sure that she has a stable future.'' ''Financially, maybe, but emotionally, that's pure bullshit. She's been having panic attacks all because you don't want to believe in her.'' ''Donnie, stop!'' pleaded Vee, trying to contain her sobs. ''Wha- I-'' started the other woman. ''I'm glad she decided to move here,'' cut Donnie once more. ''She won't have to live with people who want to make decisions in her own place. She won't have to live with people who are ashamed of their own daughter.'' ''Donnie!'' said Vee once more, gritting her teeth. She yanked the phone back, promptly ending the call and then throwing the device far from their position. A loud crash was heard, but Vee did not care, her eyes poorly meeting the mutant's, her vision drowned with tears. He thought she would scream, hit him, anything! But he was rather met with a renewed kiss, strong and passionate. Vee couldn't stop her crying, but this time she knew she wasn't bawling her eyes out due to complete sadness. She was madly in love, invaded by strong emotions. Her body wouldn't stop shaking, hungry for his touch... Donatello was quick to comply, his hands back in action as he proceeded to remove the woman's bra. He couldn't help feeling protective over her, wanting to shield her from any harm – may it be in the form of words or physical. He did not mind her tears, knowing Vee was probably going through a lot right now. He wanted her to empty her mind, let it all out. When she pleaded to be nearer, both soon disappeared into the artist's room, clothes scattered on the floor. Alone in the world, forever emprisoned in eachother's arms. They wanted to spend eternity this way... *** When Donnie woke up the next morning, he couldn't help his slight frown, eyes still closed, as he felt nothing but emptiness beside him in bed. He dared crack open an eye, glancing around rapidly; he was truly alone, the faint sound of music finding its way to his ears, coming from the kitchen area, he supposed. Stretching with a light growl, he finally decided to get up, only deciding to wear his underwear and his glasses, next heading towards the sound. His body felt strangely numb after last night. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation - he liked it in fact – and everything kept playing again and again in his mind. It all seemed like a strange dream, remembering Vee's tears, her moans, her lust. It didn't take long for the mutant to notice how lost she had been in her feelings, revealing them entirely to him as she rarely did... Donatello stopped when he reached the kitchen, his eyes instantly falling on the woman seated near the table, occupied. She was only wearing a large shirt, her hair caught up in a bun. Dark circles could be seen under her eyes, but it never tossed away the fact that she looked radiant, beautiful, divine, to him. He did frown when he noticed her center of interest: an alto saxophone. She was carefully cleaning around the keys with cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol, ever so patient and precise. ''Wha-...'' started Donnie, perplexed. Vee looked up, showing a small smile as she noticed the other. ''Bon matin,'' she greeted sweetly. Her tone shot right through his heart, finding her ever so cute. He finally moved and took a seat, observing the instrument with a renewed frown. ''… Since when you have a saxophone?'' he asked. ''I've been playing that instrument for way over ten years. It's the first one I learned in school, in fact.'' His brain had troubles connecting the dots. ''Then why have I never seen you play it?'' Vee snickered, still cleaning: ''When you have close neighbours, it's sadly harder to practice at full capacity. Unless I want people to bang against the walls and floor! For now I simply practice in silence so I don't lose my fingering.'' He couldn't help tracing around the bell's opening with the tip of his finger, fascinated by the instrument's form. ''You could practice at the lair!'' he suggested. The woman looked up to him, showing a playful, yet annoyed look. ''No thanks. First it'd be annoying for your family and I'm unfortunately shy when playing the sax in solo.'' ''Oh come on, I'd like to hear you play!'' added the turtle. Vee simply stuck out her tongue, returning to her task. She did catch Donnie's smile, amused by her behavior. ''Are there any other instruments you know how to play that I'm not aware of?'' he questionned next. The artist puffed a small chuckle: ''I can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a violin, I'm somehow decent on a drum and I can toot some notes on a trombone. I also want to learn to play the guitar and the cello. Is that enough? Oh and I learned the piano by myself, in case you were wondering.'' ''You're insane,'' commented Donatello, still smiling. ''… I wish I had hands like yours, I'd love to learn to play the piano. All I can do is hit two or three notes at the same time with one finger.'' Vee couldn't stop her laughter this time, accompanied by snorts. She kept her focus on the saxophone, not noticing the other who was now looking at the cracked cellphone on the table. When Vee threw it away last night, it had cracked the screen completely, making it impossible to see anything. The turtle grabbed the device, observing it carefully in order to see if there was any other broken parts. The woman quickly glanced at him, finally sighing as she diverted her gaze back to the instrument. ''I can fix this,'' said Donnie. ''… Sure, whatever,'' mumbled Vee. This time he frowned, setting the phone down. He knew something wasn't right. ''Tell me everything,'' he started. The human stopped, looking up to her boyfriend with a confused look. ''What do you mean?'' ''I feel like you've told me so little about what's happening between you and your family. Sure, I know the big lines, but there has to be more! … The way your mother spoke last night - her tone - I feel like the fact she doesn't approve your life choices is not the only thing going on.'' Where to begin? … Her eyes shifted around for a while, trying to think. She forced a small laugh, her smile somehow fake. ''… It's so weird, I feel like I can only speak about that in French. The words won't come easily, this is so dumb.'' One of Donnie's hands got to hers, holding it gently as his thumb caressed her skin. ''… You don't need to rush anything. I just want to know – I need to know. I want to understand and make you feel better, if you want me to.'' His warm smile renewed Vee's, feeling much more confident. ''Let me brew coffee, that will give me time to find my words.'' He watched her get up, first setting her machine on as she next got two mugs out. Music was still playing on the radio, this time the tune of A Ship Without A Sail by Ella Fitzgerald starting. Vee froze for a moment, patiently listening to the lyrics. She cursed life's timing for bringing this tune up, knowing it would perfectly sum up what she was going to talk about. Still alone, still at sea. Still there's no one to care for me. When there's no hand to hold my hand Life is a loveless tale For a ship without a sail. She fiddled with the mugs, unable to decide where to place them on the counter. Her back still facing the table, she began to talk, knowing not looking at Donatello would help. ''I'm a mistake. I wasn't planned and that broke my family apart. My dad left my mom as soon as I was born and ever since we lived at the brink of poverty. I won't say I grew up without being loved, far from it, but I was often forgotten. … Since I'm very young I've always had this huge imagination, this need to escape reality and be somewhere else.'' Coffee was ready, her hand shaking as she tried to lift the pot. She was soon stopped by the mutant who had gotten up, now behind her. He filled the mugs with one hand, his other arm now around the woman's waist, keeping her near. Her voice was now slightly shaking as she continued: ''I was a child prodigy, excelling at school. I learned to read faster than other kids, which brought me to read many books and learn way more things than any children my age. I matured so fast, at some point it was scary... I was a freak, a goody-two-shoes that never smiled. My parents hated this. My family was often putting me down whenever I was talking about complicated subjects because, in their minds, a kid could never know about such things; kids are supposed to be dumb and clueless about life in general. … I wasn't and that scared them.'' She felt Donnie nuzzle the top of her head, now fully embracing her from behind. She knew he must be relating to her, his intelligence easily over-throwing his brothers'. ''Whenever I would have actual questions, I would be mocked with 'If you're so intelligent, why don't you know about that?', and so on. I was bullied by so many people because of my way of thinking. No one understood my mind, no one took time to actually speak to me and know what were my needs. I had to learn so many things on my own. … Hell, I even paid all my college on my own. I did everything on my own. As soon as I turned eighteen, I was an adult and that meant that no one would ever care or pay anything for me anymore.'' She was shaking so much at this point, she thought she would explode... ''My parents had such high hopes for me. They wanted me to get a prestigious job, exhaust my brain for something that I knew would never make me happy. … They were so angry when they saw that I wanted to be a musician, an artist and even a writer. They thought my intelligence meant that I would excel in every spheres, while my greatest strengths were only found in arts. … I could finally be at peace when creating, alone and free. I was finally smiling...'' A soft hiccup escaped her, trying so hard to calm her emotions. ''I left my country because I was alone. I left because everything there made me feel so unimportant. I left because I was mocked, ridiculed for something I wanted to devote my life to. My mother was often putting me down, my father barely spoke to me. I left because they thought I was a coward, an anxious mess that loved to play the victim card – when it's clearly not the case. I know my emotions are strong at times only because I keep them inside for so long! They explode, they destroy me like a crushing wave. It's exhausting and it's killing me.'' Her eyes burned, her tears warm. ''I always have to excuse myself for anything I do, I always have to watch myself because whatever I do, it's always a mistake. I'm a mistake, I shouldn't even be born.'' A sob got out this time, Donnie quick to try to calm her, his stance slowly swaying from one foot to the other, trying to be soothing. ''Don't say that, baby, you have so much worth,'' he whispered. ''You're wonderful, incredible even. Don't ever bring yourself down, you're so strong...'' ''I- I just want to forget the pain. I want to forget everything. I hate my brain.'' The mutant shushed her gently, finally turning her around so they could face one another. Vee's eyes were red, forever pouring rivers of tears. He tried to erase them with his thumbs, his traits always so calm, somehow translating his love. ''… Vee, you have no idea how much you were meant for me,'' he started. ''You are not a mistake, you were meant to be here, right in this place and moment. Don't you see?'' He got a hold of her left wrist, bringing the tattoo on her inner forearm up to his lips, kissing it tenderly. ''You are here for a reason...'' This time she did not stop her crying, feeling this strange relief from this sentence alone. Especially when said by him... Vee's body sticked closer to the mutant's, her face hidden against his chest, somehow ashamed of her outburst. Although emptying everything simply felt so good... Soon enough she couldn't help feeling tired, her sobs turning into sad whimpers, closing her eyes as she felt the other's hands at the back of her head and her shoulders, caressing in a soothing motion. ''Je t'aime... Je t'aime tellement,'' she sighed, nuzzling his skin, forever in love. Donnie's heart clenched, understanding those words. He did not care for the woman's tears that had soaked his skin, he did not care about the coffee getting cold – those words, right there, were the most important thing. ''Moi aussi...,'' he spoke back, somehow glad he could finally say something to her in French without fear. Vee's soft gasp and small smile was not missed, a small laugh trying to rise, always amused to hear him try to speak in her native tongue. She only needed to look up to him and lift herself at the tip of her toes for them to finally meet in a kiss, tender and loving. Donatello's hands cupped her cheeks, erasing the remaining tears with his thumbs as they were still lip-locked. His every instincts told him to be gentle, delicate, en amour. He'd give everything in his life only for Vee to be happy and safe... At once, he instantly knew he wanted her forever by his side.

[actualhumancryptid]

I watched that conman/puppetmaster docuseries that’s currently new to Netflix with my sister last night. Obviously we thought immediately of the coercive control exhibited by the leaders of NXIVM when we saw it. But it also reminded me of the kinds of techniques most MLMs and other predatory organisations use, and made me recall the time our dad got caught up in one back in the early 2000′s when the Rich Dad Poor Dad bullshit seminars were big here in Aus. I decided to google and I swear to god I’m remembering all sorts of shit dad was saying at the time.

They reel you in with free seminars/workshops for financial advice. But push the paid one. Standard practice really. 

Ok you’re in the first paid tier, but what if you paid 35K USD for the next one? In order to receive top tier financial advice mentoring. You don’t have that much money? here’s ways to max out your credit cards and bankrupt yourself to do it. Basically telling you to use any financial loophole to get money, like using student loans etc because the lie is you’ll make it back quickly. (here’s a link to a description of a 3-day workshop from a participant. as well as a link to a run-down of why the scheme is a racket. )

I mean a lot of it sounds like the garden variety advice you’d expect from a parasitical motivational speaker, whose actual financial success only comes from selling the books and seminars that ‘teach you how to be a financial success’. From the outside it looks sus. But it’s easy to think that when you’re not in it, when you have the benefit of hindsight, or aren’t someone currently vulnerable to these kinds of practices.

 I’’m now remembering being maybe 17 or 18 and hearing dad justify getting several credit cards and going into debt for whatever business he was convinced he would succeed at, high off the rhetoric from this schmuck. Because it’ll be worth going into debt and this is the real trick in how you get rich. I remember feeling very confused and sure it was bullshit (I have lots of experience with this feeling from my upbringing). But mostly I remember desperately wanting to exit the conversation every time Rich Dad Poor Dad came up.

Flash forward to me being almost 21 and watching dad fall into what looked like a depression because he was in a really bad financial position now and much worser off than he had been.

And yes, people are responsible for the decisions they make as adults. But the thing is, these sorts of seminars or spaces are intensely pressurised environments. Obviously they vary, but they tend to use all sorts of coercive techniques such as: peer pressure, manufactured urgency (a standard sales technique. Buy now to avoid disappointment!), judgement, humiliation, shame, and the sheer length of them to wear you down. EST was notorious for this (you might remember it from The Americans), NXIVM. Herbalife. The list is endless. Also Landmark Forum (which is the next generation EST, started by former students that bought the EST ‘technology’). I never went, but most of my friends did, I got to experience how insanely they pressure participants to recruit anyone and everyone, when an acquaintance of mine got next-level sucked in. It was a little unnerving. 

Anyway. Clearly this is a topic that I have a reason to be interested in. Re: the Netflix series that led to this little segue. I hope the inevitable online true crime sleuths pump it up in popularity to the point where the awful conman/puppetmaster faces some real consequences. Wouldn’t that shit be nice.

[getinthefunvee]

mobile-friendly rules

GENERAL INFO

❔ #getinthefunvee

❔ semi-private:  will generally only write with mutuals, but very happy to meet new people.

❔ exclusivity:  is pre-pubescent and used as a cliquey gatekeeping & ostracising mechanism 99% of the time. I do not practice character or ship exclusivity; I will side-eye you if you do, and I will not tolerate it on my dash, and I will lay the verbal smack-down if I see you using it to bully someone else. I've been playing with some muns for nearly 5 years, and at least one for more than a decade; if anyone was going to be an exclusive, it would be those friends, but exclusivity = possessiveness and it's really, really not the way to roll your adult relationships. Note: if you choose to make me your exclusive Tony for any reason (ie, if you generally hate Tony interaction and want to avoid it, emotional safety reasons, whatever) please give me a heads up. Please be aware that, as stated above, I will not do exclusivity in return.

❔ basic etiquette:  human decency is expected. Do not attempt to god-mod (it's so 90s), force-ship, engage in pass-aggro nastiness, harassment, or any other asshattery. Thanks.

❔  Personals et al are very welcome to follow and 'like' RP posts and to reblog non-RP content. Please don't reblog RP threads you aren't participating in; it's creepy, and I will call you out on it.

❔ multi-muse, side & personal journals:  I will not follow you back if you run a multi-muse blog or RP from your persona that heavily features muses from fandoms I’m not familiar withl; I really need to limit dash clutter in order to be able to focus. (ADD & autism are gr8 that way.) That doesn't mean I won't RP with you on your multi-muse blog, and I'm very happy to RP with side blogs, but I will not RP with personals.

❔ OCs, female characters, obscure canon characters:  This shouldn’t need to be said, but: Yes please! I look for fully-formed characters whose creation you've put thought into; this goes for 'popular' canon characters in equal measure.

❔ crossovers:  Please check with me first to make sure I'm familiar with your fandom.

❔ cut your replies:  Please cut your replies & repost asks as new posts when replying. (note: this is not the same as 'read mores'; I'm happy to explain the difference.) I will not follow you if you never cut your replies.

❔  You must have rules or, at the very least, your age stated somewhere on your blog. I will always read your rules before interacting, and I ask that you please do the same.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

❕  est Dec 2012

❕  21 or over for intermittent content which may not always be tagged; I will generally not play with you if you are under 21 as I may not be comfortable writing certain content [because I'll feel like a dinosaur]. I will not RP with anyone under 18 years old, regardless of thread content or your geographical location's 'legal age.' This is not up for discussion, though I'm happy to explain the legal ramifications (for you and your RP partners around the world) of lying about your age. tl;dr I'm not going to jail so you can have smut. Thanks.

❕ safe space:  This blog is fiercely inclusive. I make a point of avoiding ableist or bigoted language and terminology. Please come talk to me in chat or send an ask and tell me if I screw up. note: If you ever need to talk about anything, or if you're having a really bad day, I'm here for you & wouldn't want you to feel alone. Seriously. Come talk to me. I do have chat set to mutuals only thanks to the huge influx of spam messages I was getting, but you can always unfollow me after we’re done talking (I won’t be upset) or send me an ask if that's easier.

❕ triggers:  I will tag genuine triggers when asked (please don't conflate squicks with triggers). I don't have any triggers, but I prefer not to see child abuse, domestic violence, incest, or pregnancy on my dash; if you regularly include that content, I will generally unfollow. Please see below for a comprehensive list. Triggers will be tagged 'triggery thing tw' and added to the tag dump post.

❕ formatting:  usually no fancier than small text +/- 66x66 or 100x100 icon (depending on the size you use), but I will try to match your style. If you need any special formatting to make it easier for you to read, please tell me. I'm very happy to comply.

❕ pre-established relationships:  I'm happy to discuss these.

❕ readmores:  used rarely, but will always use for explicit dubcon/noncon content & graphic stuff.

❕ memes:  generally mutuals only but will always be tagged as 'mutuals only', so if you don't see that, feel free to interact. I do my best to observe reblog karma but don't expect you to; it's all good.

❕ open posts:  will be tagged clearly; generally open only to mutuals, sometimes character-specific (will specify in tags).

❕ shipping:  multiship; not ship exclusive. Shipping is dependent wholly on muse interaction and never guaranteed. Tony is demiromantic and pansexual; he may or may not be open to poly setups depending on verse. He's experimental, inclusive, and flexible. Got a kink? Bring it. BDSM? He'll want to know your safeword. Three/four/eightway? He's probably into it. That in mind, I'm on the ace spectrum (see below) so mature-content threads aren't going to be that common and will generally, though not always, fade to black.

YES PLEASE

✅  duplicates, multiple 'canon' realities, AUs, cross-fandom, What Ifs

✅  crossovers, especially within Marvel & DC

✅  AUs: love, love, love. Give me your tropey coffee shop AU; better yet, give me your research-worthy Mesopotamian AU, time-travel AU, etc. I'm utter trash for Sentinel!verse (and if you don't know what that is, come at me).

✅  plot-development, complex characterization

✅  conscious, intentional, creative abuse of grammar/syntax

✅  any gender identity/lack thereof; sexual orientation/lack thereof; neurodivergent characters; disabled characters

✅  LGBT, non-cis/het, POC, or other minority versions of canonically white cis straight Christian etc characters

✅  female versions of canonically (cis)male characters

✅  dark, edgy, angsty themes up to and including psychological & physical torture, abuse, and character death

✅  complex and conscientious portrayals of trauma and mental health issues

NO THANKS

❎  self-insertion (omnipotent manic pixie Gary-Stu/Mary-Stu characters make me cringe)

❎  pages of ooc

❎  pages of graphic porn

❎  you RP nothing but smut of a variety that squicks me, such as (below) and don't put it behind readmores: - A/B/O, especially if it involves 'mating'/'breeding', pregnancy (esp cis male or cis female pregnancy), etc. Really major squick; - BDSM that uses an abundance of misogynistic language like 'slut'; 'daddy/mommy' themes; pet play; romanticising unhealthy abusive relationships ('50 Shades of Nope' comes to mind) by framing them as consensual BDSM.

❎  consistent grammar/spelling errors (note: ignore if English isn't your primary language; I’m happy to help if that’s something you want, and I speak a few languages so I might be able to RP in your language)

❎  lots of family/baby/child content

❎  'child of'/'sibling of' & non-canon family member/friend characters

❎  anthropomorphic, furry, or 'real people' characters

❎  SuperWhoLock, anime

❎  gatekeeping, canon-snobbery, constant negativity

❎ erasure of any minority group (ie male versions of canonically female characters; suspiciously white FCs for canonically POC characters, etc)

❎ messianic anything; proselytizing

ABOUT THE MUN

✩  ari (aka kai), 30s, London (GMT)

✩  working in medicine, re-qualifying for med school entry; usually not around much Tue-Fri due to work (replies are sometimes queued & I'm usually happy to do short stuff like texts during the week)

✩  thoroughly spoken for; married to cap.co.vu (but thanks for asking *fingerguns*)

✩  introvert:  very social at times (I tend to 'read' as an extrovert), but I need more distance when out of social energy. Feel free to ask me about this. I will love you forever if you respect the need for space, and will not like you very much if you insta-pounce 10x daily when I've gone quiet.

✩  jewitchy = unrepentantly jewish + low-key hedge witch (observant Reform/Conservative Jew; dash of pagan)

✩  grey-a + demi, greyromantic, as impossibly flirty as Tony Stark

✩  ADD, autism (psa: you can be super direct with me), major depressive disorder, EBS (epidermolysis bullosa), mild anxiety (when out of social energy)

✩  sharp-spoken, sharply-dressed, stickler for punctuation, polyglot, menace to society, method RPer, (mostly) good human being, guaranteed at least 80% carbon-based lifeform, will use elbows on the Tube, well-travelled, great ass (thanks, yoga!), hearts horseback riding, BDSM, dismantling the patriarchy

✩  ask box is always open, Discord available by request, IM/chat is gr8

If you feel like it, send me your favourite trope as a way of letting me know you've read these. I'm not going to ask for any sort of specific symbol, codeword, etc to prove it, but I will presume you have and act accordingly. If you feel compelled to acknowledge any specific parts that jump out at you or query something that doesn't sit right with you, we'll probably be bffs.

[zaritarazi]

idle souls

aka i finally am actually writing the archeologist!hawks au.  -- READ IT ON AO3. chapter 1: in which we meet dr. hall, and he is a very charming douchebag

--

It’s drizzling when she pulls up to the hotel, which is kind of weird and kind of unexpected and kind of dangerous, if it really starts to rain. Already, she knows the site is going to have shifted by tomorrow, and she’s already rethinking where they’re going to start. “Weird,” she remarks, mostly to herself. “It never rains in Cairo.”

“It’ll let up,” the driver tells her. “It’s not too much, anyway.”

“No,” Kendra says, adjusting her bag on her lap. “I- Yeah. It’s silly to complain, really. I’m just- Thinking. Sorry.”

“Here for vacation?” the driver asks. “You’ll still be able to see the pyramids tomorrow. A little drizzle won’t change that.”

“Oh,” Kendra says. “I wish I could just- Vacation. You know? But I’m- I’m working, actually. Around that area.”

“Don’t work too hard,” he says. “It’s a beautiful city. You don’t want to waste being here, you know?”

“Don’t worry,” Kendra says. “I love my job. I’ll have a great time.”

She can feel the driver grinning at her, from the way his eyes crinkle in the rearview mirror. “Have a drink, yeah?” he says. “Relax. You’re still on vacation.”

“Well,” Kendra says, spirits slightly lifted. “I suppose having a nightcap wouldn’t hurt.”

He nods at her as she hands him the fare, clicking open the door and hopping out of the car.

“Trunk, please,” she asks.

No sooner has the trunk popped open then someone calls, in a sort of smooth, masculine voice, “Dr. Saunders.”

  She gives the driver one last look. “Thank you,” she says. “For the ride. And the advice.”

He shrugs.

She knows the feeling.

“Dr. Saunders,” the man repeats, and Kendra smooths her hair before rising to her full height.

She moves to the back of the cab. “Just a moment,” she calls back, not even sure who she’s talking to. “I just have to get-“

And there’s a man in her space. “Can I help you with your bag?”

Kendra takes a step back, pulling back her hand from where he had almost brushed it. “Dr. Hall,” she says. “You’re early.”

“So are you,” he says, easily hefting her suitcase out of the trunk. “Glad you recognize me.”

“Well,” she says. “You recognized me, so-“

“Your photo is on your department’s website,” he says, slamming the trunk shut. “Sorry. Am I being too- I thought you could use a hand.”

Kendra gives him a sort of tight lipped not-smile, taking her bag’s handle from him and rolling it towards the hotel. “I’m fine,” she tells him. “Really. Thanks.”

“Did you have a nice flight?” he asks.

“Great,” she says, the wheels of her suitcase clicking over pavement. “Long.”

He pauses, like he expects her to ask about his flight, in return.

She doesn’t.

“You look,” he continues to walk beside her, even through the automatic doors. “Well. Your photo on the website- Is that a different haircut? You just look-“

“Dr. Hall,” Kendra says, the way she would address a small child or dog or maybe a very persistent bee. “Do you spend a lot of time looking at my department photo?”

When she finally looks at him, hoping to glare him down, he grins back at her. “No more than usual, I think,” he says. “It links to your papers.”

“Ah,” she says.

“I was actually hoping-“

She holds up her hand. “Kendra Saunders,” she tells the front desk. She’s returned to pointedly not-looking at him, if only in the hopes that this will remove some of the surreality of her current predicament. She’s been dreading meeting him since the moment she found out he’d be on this dig, pretty-boy Carter Hall with his tenacity and his disregard for anything like reasonable context and his offensively well-lit department photo.

And here he is. Not giving her a minute of peace. She didn’t even get to decide how she’d wanted to meet him, or put some lipstick on.

He’d just. Shown up. So already, she really feels like she’s going to hate him just as much as she’d expected to.

And there’s satisfaction in that. She does like being right.

She takes the room key from the front desk, slipping it into her pocket.

“Dr. Saunders,” Carter says, still leaning on the desk, waiting for her. “I was going to say, I’d really like if we could- Get drinks, discuss your latest paper? You made this one point on page three, and-“

Kendra balks at him. She doesn’t really mean to, but it’s just- The sheer audacity of it, out of absolutely nowhere, like she has nothing better to do then let him mansplain her paper to her, like he does in all of his little critiques that she definitely doesn’t read at 3AM, full of rage, and he’s still just standing there, looking at her. For fucks sake.

“Dr. Hall,” she says, carefully. “I just arrived. I would like to shower, and change.”

“And then we could meet at the bar,” he says. “I’m not sure if you drink Egyptian beer but let me tell you, it’s-“

“Wait,” Kendra says, the gears in her head screeching from immediate and dire overuse. “I’m sorry. Do you want to discuss my paper or do you want to have drinks with me?”

“Both,” he says.

“You just met me,” she says.

“Oh, I know,” he tells her. “Believe me, I have been waiting to meet you for months now. Ever since we got put on this site together, I’ve really been scouring your work, I think we have a lot to talk about and-“

“Ma’am,” the desk clerk tells her. “There are people behind you.”

Kendra gives her a sheepish sort of look before gently rolling her suitcase away from the front desk and towards the elevator, Dr. Hall still clipping at her side. “So you want me to listen to you explain my papers to me. Right?”

“What?” he says. “No. Of course not. I was actually hoping you could elaborate on a couple of points for me, especially when you spoke out against the idea of my recent find being a fertility idol-“

Kendra lets out a huff. “One hour,” she says. “I will meet you at the hotel bar in one hour. Bring your cliffnotes. I’ll bring mine. Okay?”

He beams at her, and for just a split second, she almost kind of likes how he smiles. “Of course. What’s your room?”

She checks her key. “1404.”

“I’m 1304,” he says. “Right below you. If you need anything.”

“I won’t,” she promises, trying to at least smile when she says it.

“Well,” he says. “You never know.”

“Right,” she says, letting herself into the elevator. “You coming?”

“No, no,” he says. “I’m going to go grab a couple things. Are you familiar with the city?”

“Not really,” Kendra says.

“Perhaps I could show you around?” he offers.

She slams her thumb against “14” and looks up at him. “We’re here for work, Dr. Hall.”

He’s going to say something, but the elevator doors ding shut, and Kendra has never been more grateful for anything in her life.

  It’s only when she reaches the fourteenth floor that she realizes Dr. Hall has just asked her on a date.

“Oh, God no,” Kendra says to herself, under her breath. She lets herself into her room, letting her suitcase fall to the wayside as she steps out of her clothes. If that smarmy pretty boy thinks he’s going to charm her into agreeing with every wrong point he’s ever made- And there are so, so many- Well. She doubts his dick could be that good.

Also, she isn’t thinking about his dick. Weird. Ew. He’s not even like. Her type. Freudian thought slip. Means nothing.

She’s more than happy to see the shower, and not to think about Dr. Hall.

—

She arrives at the hotel bar one hour and twenty minutes later. The twenty minutes, she thinks, prove a point about their relationship. One that she assumes will likely be lost on Dr. Hall entirely- In their brief and painful time together, she’s pieced together that he’s pretty damn dense.

He grins at her when she comes down the stairs, which already answers that question. The lateness had been for more than her benefit than his- Though now she feels like she’d just been prolonging the inevitable.

“Dr. Saunders,” he says, greeting her by putting his hand firmly and inarguably on her shoulder. “You look beautiful.”

She blinks at him. “Thanks.”

“I picked something up for you downtown,” he says. “I hope you like babosa, they always sell out this late in the day and I got you the last-“

“Dr. Hall,” Kendra says, settling into her seat at the bar. “I realized on the elevator that you may think this is… something other than it is.”

“Oh?” he asks.

“Well,” she says, staring at the unassuming, white pastry box. “I think you may be confused by the nature of our relationship.”

He gives her a half grin, leaning onto his hand. “I assure you, Dr. Saunders, my interest in you is purely professional. I mean, we’ve spent how long picking apart each other’s papers?��

“At least two years,” Kendra says. She doesn’t really like how easy-going he is, how unassuming. She crosses her ankles. “I um- I remember the first critique you wrote of my piece about that dig in Punta del Este? Where you said that I-“

“Completely disregarded my previous precedent set based on finds in similar areas,” he recalls. Fondly.

Kendra finds herself almost smiling, despite herself. “And I wrote back and said that you had absolutely no claim to be setting precedent?”

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “I wasn’t- I didn’t know if you’d respond to my critique, and you did, and it was so fiery and smart and just- I have wanted to pick your brain for some time, now.”

Kendra taps her fingers on the countertop. “I honestly thought we were bitter enemies, Dr. Hall.”

“Well who says we can’t be?” he says. “Every good archeologist has a rival.”

“Yes, but,” Kendra says. “You got me babosa.”

“To be honest,” he says, leaning in. “I got it hoping you’d offer me half.”

His eyes are kind of an unfair shade of green, sort of cloying and interesting. “Is that how you always do things?” Kendra says. “You do a nice thing for someone, hoping they’ll give you something?”

“Not always,” he says. “Not usually. But as I said. This is the best babosa in the city.”

Her tongue wets her lower lip. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she says. “My trust is not… so easily given. Dr. Hall.”

“You can call me Carter, you know,” he says, opening the box. “Though I assume you’d prefer I call you Dr. Saunders, and you’re keeping up the pretense to make the playing field seem equal.” He turns away for a second, signaling the bartender. “Could we get forks? And a- What do you drink?”

Kendra folds her hands across her knees. “What do you drink?”

“Whatever’s local,” he tells her, which is just the most excruciating answer he could’ve given. “Two,” he says politely, in Arabic. “On my tab.”

“Don’t buy me a drink,” Kendra says, sighing. “Please, Dr. Hall.”

“Ah,” he says. “You weren’t supposed to understand that part.”

“Of course I speak Arabic,” she says, almost miffed. “Most of my work takes me to this area, not Cairo before now but-“

“Relax,” he says. “You can buy the next round.”

“The next round?” Kendra says. “How much of my time are you planning to take up?”

He gestures to her with his newly-placed fork. “As much of it as you’re willing to give,” he says. “If you’re really that set on this nemesis narrative, then-“ He motions to the exit.

“I’m sorry,” Kendra says. “Narrative?”

He makes a casual sort of face at her, like he’s bemused by his own cleverness.

“People don’t think in narratives, Dr. Hall,” Kendra says. “Most people don’t. People that aren’t you. What’s your narrative, then? I play the Marion to your stunning Dr. Jones, and-“

“I’m sorry,” Carter says. “Did you just call him Dr. Jones? Everyone says Indiana Jones.”

“It felt more appropriate,” Kendra says. “I was-“ She motions to him. “Going with how you’re Dr. Hall and I’m- This is stupid. I’m not having this argument.”

“It’s not an argument,” he says. “I’m just stating a well known fact.”

“Carter,” she says, before she can stop herself, likely because it’s just a better name to say whilst in the throes of true frustration. “What do you want from me?”

“Your brain,” he says. “I actually-“ He reaches down to his bag, the exact kind of leather bag someone like him would be expected to have, and pulls out about seven hundred pounds of paper.

Kendra watches him slam the papers onto the counter, beaming at her. “Holy-“

“Our papers,” he says. “These are the original copies of yours I printed out and marked up, so you’ll find they have some smudges- I’ve been storing them well enough, but I’d love for some more in-person critique from you on my-“

“Dr. Hall,” Kendra says. “That’s hundreds of pages.”

“We have beer,” he says. “And the rest of our little group shouldn’t be here until much, much later tonight- Unless you’d like to do something else? There’s an amazing nightclub in the center of the city, we can go onto the roof and-“

“I’m good,” Kendra says. “I mean. I’m-“ She eyes the bakery box, the beers that have been placed by Carter’s arm. “You’re buying the next round,” Kendra says. “And the next one. And the next.”

He flips through the stack of papers, pulling out a report and passing it over to her. “As many as you want, Dr. Saunders.”

“And-“ She stares at the title page. It’s one of his older ones- one of her least favorites. “I want that babosa.”

“Of course,” he says, moving the box. “All yours.”

She opens the box rather contemptuously, feeling her heart soften just a touch at the small cake slice looking up at her. “It does look,” she pulls her lips into a line. “Really good.”

He offers her the handle of his fork. “It is.”

“Do you have a pen?” she says.

“Any color,” he replies.

She tapes the cake box with her fork. “Red’s fine.”

He lets out a small, amused noise at that, a sort of visible happiness that reaches his eyes. “Red it is.”

She could almost find him cute, if he wasn’t so utterly full of himself. Like she has nothing better to do tonight than read his papers.

Okay. So maybe she didn’t. And maybe he got her cake. That meant nothing.

She takes the pen from him, her fork already placed aside. She uncaps it with her teeth, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “Here,” she says, circling the title on the front page. “I always hated this title.”

“We’re off to an excellent start,” he says.

“Quiet,” she says, reaching for her beer. He hands it to her. For a second, she meets his gaze, and catches something in it that makes almost, almost, feel something for him.

She looks back to his paper, and swallows it down. “And here,” she says, turning the page. “Already, you’re demonstrating your classic disregard of context.”

“Classic?” he says. “Is this something I do often, Dr. Saunders?”

“It’s your signature,” Kendra says. “Here. See how you’re already drawing a false conclusion based on your original misconception?”

“Well,” he says, pulling her paper out from the stack. “That sounds an awful lot like the argument you made in this paper, and I already countered that in-“

“I thought you wanted my critiques,” she tells him.

He’s the very picture of innocence, staring wide-eyed at her. “Well,” he says. “I thought you’d appreciate the back and forth.”

“Right,” she says. “Because you’re just so thrilling to argue with.”

“You’ve been doing it for quite some time now,” he says. “Am I too… intimidating in person?”

And it’s such a clear, present dare, such an obvious way to get her attention, but he’s so smug and so teasing that she sort of wants to take the bait. “You know,” she says. “You’re really pretty full of yourself for someone that misunderstands basic context. Then again, I guess I can’t  really be surprised, what with the PhD program in St. Roch-“

“This!” he interrupts, grinning at her. “From the woman making her mark in Central City, of all places, the city where that lab exploded,”

“I had nothing to do with that,” Kendra says. “I’m an archeologist.”

“All I can say is,” he remarks. “It doesn’t set a good precedent.”

“That has got to be your favorite word,” Kendra says. “Which is hilarious, because I don’t think you know what it means.”

“Oh?” Carter asks.

“And here,” Kendra says, emphatically underlining a statement in his paper. “This has bothered me since I read this damn thing. First of all-“

“I’m listening,” he says.

“Don’t interrupt,” Kendra says. “First of all-“

She tilts her head to look at him, and catches that he’s staring at her way too intently, his hand on his knee and his body arched towards her.

Kendra pushes her seat back. “Well-“

—

She’s lost track of the time when she reaches her fourth beer- Or her fifth? She’s scribbled something onto Carter’s paper that reads, “This sounds like something a JERK would say,” with a little frowny face next to it, and she’s having trouble remembering exactly which one the Hellenistic period is- Her thoughts feel kind of warm and fuzzy, and not just because Carter’s knee has been touching hers for like… ever.

He glances down at her note, looking back up at her with a grin. “You think I’m a jerk?”

“I think,” she taps the center of his chest with her pen. “You write like one.”

“Okay, Kendra,” he says, slipping the pen from between her fingers. “I think we have had a wonderful evening, and you should go to bed.”

“I’m not tired,” she protests, trying to grab the pen back from him. He holds it at a distance from her, and the soft way he chuckles warps around her thoughts like honey. “Carter. I’m not done yet.”

“Oh, I know,” Carter says. “But we’ll have other times. It’s late. You should have some water and go to bed so you’re not sick tomorrow.”

“I don’t get sick,” Kendra tells him, hair falling over her shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“I know, I know,” he says. He slides the papers off the counter, carefully re-organizing his bag as Kendra drums her fingers on her knees.

“Carter,” she says.

“Hm?” he asks, still sorting papers.

“Did you ask me out?”

He looks up at her. “Did you want me to?”

“Answer my question,” she says, furrowing her brow. “Have you been spending all this time planning to- Date me?”

He smiles at her, sort of soft and sort of amused, looping his arm around her waist and pulling her off the bar stool. “I asked to share a drink with you, sure,” he says. “I asked for you to talk about work with me, of course. That’s all quite true.”

She finds standing to be a bit of a challenge, and she rests her head on his shoulder, only because it steadies her. “You don’t even know me.”

“Ah,” he says, guiding her to the elevator. “But I know your work. And that makes me feel like I’ve known you for ages.”

She snickers. “We just met.”

“Oh, come on,” he says. “You don’t think it feels like we’ve known each other forever?”

She tilts her head, glancing sidelong at him. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling,” he says. “I thought it was mutual.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know you.”

“Well,” he says, riding up with her to her floor. “I hope you get to know me, at least. I’ll have drinks with you anytime you want.”

He guides her down the hall to her room, moving for her pocket.

“Carter!” she says, jolting at his touch.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. He holds her white key card between his fingers, a show of true intent. “Your key.”

“Right,” she says. “Right. I-“

“I mean, even if we were going to do that, Dr. Saunders,” he says, and she feels very acutely like he’s teasing her. “You’re way too far gone.”

“Please, Dr. Hall,” she says, grinning as the door clicks open. “Only in your dreams.”

“I will,” he says, as she separates from him, letting herself into her room. “I will dream of you, Dr. Saunders.”

“Don’t make it weird,” she says. “Okay? Don’t make this whole thing weird.”

He’s still smiling at her, and it makes her feel like smiling back, like running her thumbs against the creases of his mouth and- “I won’t make it weird,” he says. “You have my word.”

“Goodnight,” she says, softly.

“Goodnight, Dr. Saunders,” he says. “Would you like to ride with me to the site tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yes. I’d- Let’s do that.”

He reaches for her hand, squeezing it once before dropping it. “Until then.”

“Bye,” she offers.

“Goodbye,” he says, and the door shuts between them.

  It takes her ten full seconds to remember to turn on the lights- And another ninety seconds for her to scold herself for feeling so… gooey.

She strips out of her jeans, her shirt, slipping off her bra and letting it fall somewhere on the floor. When she falls into bed, it’s the best feeling in the whole world.

For a second, she’s aware that leaning on Dr. Hall meant she got a headful of him, that he smelled really, really good, a bit like leather and a bit like soap.

“He’s an ass,” she tells herself, and she does mean it. “He’s an absolute ass,” she repeats, and turns off the lights.

[daphxodil-blog]

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[davidfurlongtheatre]

David Furlong interview: The Doctor In Spite Of Himself,  Le médecin malgré lui

This interview was published on This Week London by Caro Moses in June 2016, in English. Below is also a copy translated in French.

By Caro Moses | Published on Tuesday 21 June 2016 on http://thisweeklondon.com/article/david-furlong-the-doctor-in-spite-of-himself/ 

CM: What happens in ‘The Doctor In Spite Of Himself’ – what’s the story? DF: It’s about Sganarelle, a merry but drunken woodcutter, who beats his wife one day, and in return she spreads the word that he is actually a brilliant doctor who can only work when he is beaten. After a stream of beatings, he’s taken by force to tend to a dysfunctional family where silence rules over emotions. His arrival leads to a farcical roller-coaster of adultery and comedy.

This play is the mother of French farces, and I think it’s also the story of Moliere writing a comedy ‘in spite of himself’. He wrote the play after his much deeper works for the King’s court, such as ‘Dom Juan’ or ‘Le Misanthrope’ – for which he got trashed by false critics – and returned to the farcical genre he employed when he first began, when he was touring France for ten years, from village to village, performing on trestles.

But he does it in a very clever way, breaking the fourth wall and speaking about his own creation with a very critical view on the ‘upstarts’ from his time. So our production also explores this sub-story within the story. It’s quite amazing, it’s almost like a Spike Jonze movie!

CM: It’s a new adaptation of the play, of course – how close is the adaptation to the original piece in its events and themes? DF: The vocation of the company is to translate the language of the play, of course, but also its spirit. So even if our production is very modern, and uses a contemporary imagery more suited to a 2016 audience, it’s mostly true to Moliere’s ideas: we did explore more deeply some themes that are already in the play, and could not be ignored in 2016, like the violence or the forced marriage.

It’s generally very true to the original in terms of the script itself, though we devised some scenes in order to tell some of the untold sub-plots, by doing a lot of development work on the characters with the cast (which made the process fantastic). And as we’re producing the original play in French, alternating with the English run, the two productions are exact mirror images.

CM: Who has translated the piece? Is it a one-person job? Over the ten years we’ve been translating French plays to English, we’ve experimented with several different approaches: we worked with a university professor on our Claudel piece, I updated an old translation for Sartre’s ‘The Flies’, we’ve workshopped the play with actors for a more contemporary writer, and we also sometimes found an original translation that worked perfectly.

For this project, as it was our first great classic, I didn’t plan to come up with my own translation, as I was sure that the work had been done brilliantly in the past. But as I was looking into previous ones, there was always something slightly wrong for our version: one would be too outdated for a modern audience, the other too literal, with French turn of phrases which don’t work in English; another one would be too much of a departure from the original, and one last one was too American for London.

As I have an important body of translations behind me now, I decided I would be able to come up with a version that combines the best ideas of previous translators with the elements of my own contemporary vision for the play. Having done this, I then re-worked it with the actors in rehearsal. Our company is comprised entirely of fully-bilingual people, some of them Franco-British, so when we had doubts about a line, we always looked back to Moliere’s original words. Any language has echoes and nuances, so it’s important to have a team that really understands both cultures intimately.

CM: It’s not one of the French playwright’s most performed plays, is it? Why do you think that is? DF: ‘Le Medecin Malgre Lui’ was one of Moliere’s greatest success, and is still studied by all thirteen year olds in French classrooms. But for obvious educative reasons, all the triviality is avoided and the sexual innuendos – the trashy bits – are not talked about, so in the national collective consciousness it occupies a bit of a boring place. Even I had my doubts when the play was first commissioned for the French Lycee… But then I discovered Molière wrote it with a very modern insolence.

I think that in all cultures, there is a misconception about classics being dusty and simply too old. And it’s already so much work keeping up people’s interest in the likes of Shakespeare, though The RSC, the NT, the Globe, and many touring companies are doing an amazing job at this. This means there’s little room for foreign writers, even the greatest ones. So we end up having only a handful of Moliere plays put on because they got a bit famous (just like we only get two Calderon plays and two Goldoni plays).

Even in France, people can be put off by Moliere’s so-called classicism. But it’s worth noting that French theatre makes more room for foreign authors than British Theatre does. Whilst in training at the French National Theatre, I got to work on Shakespeare as a natural part of the curriculum, I got to see Cheek by Jowl reinvigorating these classics internationally, even the least performed plays from the Bard. No one does this for Moliere. A play dies when it’s not performed, so as long as we’re doing it, we’re keeping it alive.

CM: Can you tell us about Exchange Theatre? How did the company come into being, and what are its aims? DF: Remember what I was saying earlier about the lack of translations? The company originated from this idea that there was a gap to fill in the UK scene.  As aforementioned, the work of Moliere and many other major French writers are rarely produced in Britain, whereas in France, we get a lot of plays from across the channel. We felt we could make this work this the other way too.

It began as a ‘side’ to our personal acting careers but it now represents most of it. We’ve translated Claudel, Sartre, and Durringer (the ‘French Ravenhill’ – whose play we even took off-broadway in 2011). Along the way, we also found our own theatrical languages, we explored non western approaches to performing, site-specific works, multilingualism, and I also wrote twelve bilingual shows for a Young Audience season at the Institut Francais.

We settled in London Bridge five years ago, also building a local network within our council, and we are pleased to have a rehearsal space just off Bermondsey Street at the foot of Tower Bridge. Not bad for aliens! We’re very much an international company based in London now, in the footsteps of the artists you’ll see at the Barbican.

TRADUCTION FRANCAISE

David Furlong: Le Médecin malgré Lui  By Caro Moses

Publiée le 21 Juin 2016 sur http://thisweeklondon.com/article/david-furlong-the-doctor-in-spite-of-himself/

CM: Que raconte ‘Le médecin malgré lui’ ?

DF: C'est l'histoire de Sganarelle, un joyeux ivrogne qui bat sa femme, et en retour, elle fait croire qu'il est un grand médecin qui n'accepte de travailler qu'apres avoir été battu. Apres une flopée de coups, il est amené de force dans une famille disfonctionnelles ou le silence prévaut sur les sentiments. Son arrivée déclenche une série comiques d'evenements farcesques melants adultere et autres tromperies.

 Cette piece est la mere des farces Francaises et je pense qu'elle représente aussi Moliere écrivant une farce 'malgré lui'. Il la crée apres des travaux bien plus profonds pour la cour dur Roi, comme ‘Dom Juan’ ou ‘Le Misanthrope’ pour lesquels il subit la foudre des faux critiques auto-déclarés qu'il déteste. Il revient alors au style de la farce qui avait fait le succes de ses débuts quand il tournait en France de villages en villages, jouant sur des tréteaux.

Mais il le fait de facon tres fine, brisant le quatrieme mur et traitant de sa propre création, tout en posant un regard tres critique sur les 'parvenus' de son temps. Notre version explore cette sous-histoire. C'est passionant, presque comme une mise en abyme chez les Frere Coen dans le cinéma d'aujourd'hui ! 

 CM: C'est, pour la version anglaise, une adaptation de la piece – A quel point est-elle fidele a la piece originale dans ses themes et ses evenements?

DF: La vocation de la compagnie est de traduire fidelement la langue, évidemment mais aussi l'esprit qui habite la piece. Et meme si notre production est tres contemporaine et refere a une imagerie d'aujourd'hui, elle est surtout fidele aux idées de Moliere. Nous avons aussi approfondi certains themes déja présents dans la piece et qu'on ne pouvait pas ignorer en 2016 comme la violence ou le mariage forcé.

 C'est principalement tres fidele a l'original en ce qui concerne le texte lui-meme, on n'y touche pas, mais nous créons néanmoins de nouvelles scenes pour raconter des sous-histoires, ou en dévellopant en profondeur le travail sur la vie des personnages avec la distribution (ce qui rend le processus de création fantastique). Et comme nous produisons la piece originale en Francais en alternance avec la production en anglais, les deux pieces sont deux répliques exactes.

CM: Qui a traduit la piece? Est-ce un travail solitaire ? 

En dix ans de compagnie, a traduire des pieces Francaises en Anglais, nous avons expérimenté plusieurs approches différentes: on a travaillé avec une universiatire Américaine sur notre Claudel, j'ai utilisé une vieille traduction sur Les Mouches de Sartre, on a travaillé collectivement avec les acteurs sur un auteur plus contemporain et il nous est arrivé de trouver la traduction originale parfaite.

Pour ce projet, puisque c'était notre premier classique, je ne prévoyais pas de devoir produire ma propre traduction car j'étais certain que le travail avait déja été fait brillamment avant. Mais en lisant les précédentes, il y avait toujours quelque-chose de légerement innaproprié pour notre version a venir: l'une était trop datée pour un public d'aujourd'hui, l'autre trop littérale avec des tournures de phrases a la francaise qui ne fonctionnent pas en anglais, une autre encore prenait trop de libertés avec l'originale, et enfin la derniere était trop américaine pour Londres.

Comme je commence a avoir un baggage important de traduction derriere moi, j'ai alors décidé d'en faire une version ultime qui combine les meilleures idées des traducteurs précédents, et les éléments de ma propre vision contemporaine de la piece. Une fois terminée je l'ai retravaillée avec les comédiens en répétitions. Notre compagnie se compose entierement d'acteurs completement bilingues, certains Anglo-Francais, donc si nous doutions d'une réplique, nous revenions toujours au sens original de la phrase de Moliere. Chaque langue a ses propres échos et ses propres nuances culturelles, donc il est esssentiel pour nous d'avoir une équipe qui comprend vraiment intimement les deux cultures.

CM: Ce n'est pas l'une des pieces les plus jouées de l'auteur, n'est-ce pas ? Pourquoi cela selon vous ?

DF: ‘Le Medecin Malgre Lui’ a été l'un des plus grands succes de Moliere de son vivant, et elle est toujours étudiée par les éleves de college. Mais pour des raisons éducatives évidentes, toute sa trivialité est évitée et on ne s'attarde pas sur les sous-entendus sexuels et les moments un peu trash. Donc dans l'inconscient collectif, elle occupe un peu une place ennuyeuse... Meme moi, j'avais mes doutes quand la piece nous a été commandée par le lycée Francais... C'est alors que j'ai découvert a quel point Moliere avait écrit une piece pleine d'une insolence tres moderne.

Je crois que finalement, c'est dans toutes les cultures qu'il y a un malentendu au sujet des classiques comme étant poussiéreux et trop vieux. Et, ici, c'est déja tant de travail de prolonger l'intéret du public pour les classiques anglais et pour Shakespeare, grace a la RSC, le National, le Globe, et de nombreuses compagnies itinérantes qui sont déja si douées a faire ce travail. Cela fait qu'il reste peu de places pour les auteurs étranger, si grands soient-ils. Donc nous nous retrouvons avec une toute petite poignée de pieces de Moliere produites parce qu'elles sont un peu célebres (comme on voit d'ailleurs seulement une ou deux pieces par Calderon plays ou Goldoni).

Meme en France, les gens peuvent etre rebuté par le soi-disant classicisme de Moliere’s. Mais il est notable que le théatre Francais laisse plus de place au theatre étranger que le théatre Anglais. Pendant ma formation au théatre National de Chaillot a Paris, j'ai eu l'ooportunité de travailler sur Shakespeare comme partir intégrante du programme, j'ai été sensibiisé au travail de Cheek by Jowl, et meme aux moins connues des pieces du barde anglais. Personne ne s'en charge ici pour Moliere. Une piece meurt si elle n'est pas jouée, alors aussi longtemps qu'on le fait, on la garde en vie.

CM: Dites m'en plus sur Exchange Theatre? Comment est née la compagnie et quels sont ses objectifs?

DF: Vous vous rappelez ce que je disais plus haut sur le manque de traduction? La compagnie est donc née de cette idée qu'il y avait un fossé a remplir sur la scene Britannique. Comme je le disais, le travail de Moliere tout comme d'autres textes majeurs de langue Francaise ne sont que tres rarement produites en Angleterre, alors qu'en France, nous recevons beaucoup de pieces d'outre-Manche. Nous avions donc la sensation qu'on pouvait faire advenir cet import dans l'autre sens aussi.

Ca a commencé comme un projet parallele a nos carrieres de comédiens mais ca représente maintenant l'essentiel de notre activité. Nous avons traduit Claudel, Sartre, ou Durringer ( qu'on a meme emmené off-broadway en 2011). Au fil du temps, on a trouvé notre propre language théatral, on a exploré des approches de la scene non-occidentales, du travail hors-les-murs, le multilinguisme, et j'ai aussi écris douze spectacles jeune public bilingues pour une saison de spectacles pour enfants a l'Institut Francais.

On s'est installé a London Bridge il y a cinq ans, construisant aussi notre réseau local au sein de notre council, et nous sommes heureux d'avoir un studio de répétitions au pied de Tower Bridge, au croisement de Bermondsey Street. Pas mal pour des étrangers! Nous sommes essentiellement une compagnie internationale basée a Londres, a présent, dans les pas d'artistes comme ceux que l'on peut voir au Barbican.