#it's my fucking french two teacher's fault because she did such a shit job that it got me behind and now i am suffering

[ineffable-gallimaufry]

guys i am going to die ngl

[tomfreakinghollandneedsaoscar]

Fake It Till You Make It

Pairing: Rudy Pankow x Reader

Summary: You join a drama club.

Word Count: 1,500

Note: The bookshelf interview that Rudy did + the gif below = this imagine. I was a choir kid not a theater kid so I had to do a lil research for this college AU. I hope you like it! Please tell me what you think :)

*gif is made by @faceclaimed

You freeze, stuck in an awkward pose on your knees in front of Rudy. You hear someone chuckling, but you cannot look who it is nor who called out, “Freeze!”

 With the way Rudy looks at someone behind you, you guess it is either his best friend Jonathan or Chase.

Probably one laughed while the one just waited to get you in a weird position with Rudy. You are still looking up at him when Chase taps on your shoulder. You run away from the main stage to join the others in the front row.

Chase begins where you left off, on his knees and claps his hands together. “Please, sir.” He begs in a high pitch voice. “I’m too young and pretty to die.”

Rudy makes a finger gun with his hands and points down at him, “I’ll be the judge of that, pretty lady.”

Neither of you nor the others cannot help to let out a small laugh for hearing him using a cowboy accent.

Before Chase can respond, the drama teacher calls out, “Freeze! Games over everyone, good job today and I’ll see you at the same place at the same time next week.”

You grab your backpack and throw Rudy his, but he does not catch it since he is helping Chase stand up. “You called me pretty lady; you think I’m pretty.”

Rudy runs his hair through Chases hair and puts his hand on the back on his neck to lean him in closer, “I was thinking of someone else.”

They both look over at you and Jonathan starts laughing as he squeezes his way in the middle and throws his arms around them. “Poor you, that was the only time you’ll see her on her knees for you.”

“Heard that!” You yell, heading towards the exit door.

Rudy elbows them both in the ribs before running to catch up with you. He swings his arm out to keep the door open for you and bows as he tilts an imaginary hat. “After you, my lady.”

You gasp and put a hand over your heart, “well thank you, good sir.”

Outside of the Drama department, Rudy asks, “So, are you regretting joining drama club yet?”

You chuckle, “You asked me that last week and the week before that.”

He shrugs his shoulders and sheepishly smiles. “I have to make sure the new kid is doing okay. Cause you know, it’s hard being surrounded by so much talent.”

“I know right? Everyone is going to go so far in their careers, especially when you help them by becoming the Drama teacher one day.” He bumps your shoulders together and fake cries, “I have feelings you know!”

For me? You hope to yourself.

You wave him off and tell him you will see him next week.

He grabs your wrist but let’s go as soon as you turn around. “I can walk you to your dorm again.” 

He did after your first practice since you did not quite know the right way to head back. The second time was because he swear he had to go that way anyways, and then the third time it was like second nature for both of you.

“Thanks, but you should go back and grab your stuff.”

He mutters, “Shit” under his breath and runs back inside. He smiles for hearing your laugh.

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

Since Rudy silently speeds walk up to you, you get to partner up with him to do the mirror exercise.

“Okay everyone! Stand face to face with your partner.”

Your breath gets caught in your throat when Rudy puts his forehead against yours. He whispers, “Good morning.”

You do not trust your voice to anything so you just give him a weak smile as you feel like he can hear how fast your heart is beating.

The teacher rolls his eyes when he sees you two and adds, “Make sure you are about a meter apart. Choose who will be the leader, who will be the mirror by following their movement from the waist up. And…action.”

“What do you want to be?”

Your girlfriend. “I can be the mirror.”

He nods and you stare at him. The lighting makes the highlights in his hair more noticeable and you wonder what he would look like if he was all blond. Your type would certainly change. He starts waving his hand in front of your face, and he cannot help to grin for catching you red handed.

 “You have to nod too. Follow my movements, remember?” This time, you nod as he does and wave back.

Both of you stick your tongue at each other, flip your hair back and forth and what else he makes you follow until he says, “kick me if you want to go out with me after this.”

“Lik-like I date?”

“I mean, yeah. I know this really cool bookstore that I wanna show you. If that’s okay! Or if you want to, I’ll totally underst-“

You kick him to make him stop talking and to say yes. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

“Cool!” He clears his throat, “cool.”

Your teacher comes from behind you, “Less talking, more moving.”

Both of you look at the clock that is hanged up on the wall every few minutes, counting down.

Both of you almost forget to grab your stuff as soon as it was time to leave.

“Welcome to Samuel French! How may I help you?” A boy with a nametag that says ‘Drew’ stops using his customer voice when he sees its Rudy. They share a quick bro hug and catch up since, with what you gather as you listen and look around, he shocking hasn’t been back here for a couple of weeks.  

“You know how sad the college life can be.” Drew hums in response for going to the same school as you two and needing to work part time at the bookstore. He gives Rudy a quick look and mouths, “who is that?” as he points at you as you walk further away to let them talk. “Did you get yourself a girlfriend?”

Rudy blushes but does not deny it. He does not want to.

“Madison is going be so proud of you when I tell her.”

He perks up for hearing her name. She is like the sister he has never had, and he would love to talk about you to get a girl’s point of view as to what else he should do to win you over. “Is she working right now too?”

“Nope, you’re stuck with me today. But go, you don’t my help showing you nor your girlfriend around.”

Rudy can get used to hearing people calling you that.

He gives Drew a thumbs up before sneaking up on you. He laughs in your ear when he rests his chin on your shoulder as one of his arms wraps around you. “With that scream, you should stare in a horror movie.”

You repeat when he says, mocking his tone. He laughs harder and grabs your hand to pull you to the play writes area.

“Pick one out and we can act it out together. We can grab something to eat before we go back to the campus?”

“Damn Rudy, that’s creative. Brownie points to you, boyfriend.”

He starts choking on the slip of water he was taking, so it is your turn to laugh loudly. “I heard you talking to Drew, it’s not my fault this store is small.”

He lets out, “I hate you” as he catches his breath.

“You’re a good actor but a bad liar.”

“I’m an amazing kisser, wanna see?” He makes a fishy face and you kiss his cheek before you start looking through the books.

He smiles down at your still joined hands.

Rudy dared himself that he could climb up a tree in the middle of the campus ground. You take a candid picture of him when he gets comfortable and starts reading his lines from the play you picked out.

Madelyn, your roommate replies soon after you send her the photo.

“Is that the cute actor you haven’t shut up about for weeks???? GO CLIMB HIM LIKE A TREE.”

Rudy looks down when you burst out laughing. “Care to share what’s so funny, pretty lady?”

“Wanna show me how amazing of a kisser you are, cowboy?” You ask nervously but you feel his excitement as he tries to climb down as fast as he can but says, “fuck it” and jumps down.

Since your sitting on top of your jacket, you go on your knees to make it easier for him to lean down and kiss you.

When you two walk into the next practice holding hands, the drama teacher gives himself a pat on the back for pushing you to join the morning club and not night. He makes a mental note to see which play he should put on next that has a couple in it.

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

Tagging everyone I tagged in the Drew College Au and the people who responded to it (I hope that's okay):

@drewsephsmiles @rudysrings @jjsbxtch @snkkat @mahleeyuh @drewstarkeyobx @softstarkey @ilovejjmaybank @scandalousfemale @tembo-ndoto @ptersparkers @girlsru1eboysdroo1 @delinquentstarkey @everydayimfangirling @decap-quadrant @goldenmaybank @apoguecalledjj @pixelated-pogues @maaybanks @thelocalpogue @sunnypogue @sortagaysortahigh @arthiriticcricket @thatsme-johnbookerroutledge @obx-saltlife @jjmaybanksbaby @jjaybank​ @jjcultmain​ @tcmhollnd​ @teamnick​

[rpf-bat]

Spent My High School Career Spit On And Shoved To Agree

Pairing: Gerard Way x Reader

Genre: High School AU, Romance, Drama

Summary: You find out that a classmate has been picking on your best friend, Gerard. You won’t let this go - even if he tells you, that you should. 

A/N: Guess who came off, like, a year long hiatus from writing, just because I read a really shitty high school AU fic, and thought I could do better? (It me. Sorry for being inactive for so long!)

Trigger warning for bullying/violence, and usage of the f-slur.

You held the paper towel Coach Rickly had given you to your nose, trying not to bleed on your Misfits shirt as you walked to the nurses’ office.

As soon as you entered the clinic, you saw a familiar figure seated on one of the cots.

“Gerard?” you blinked, surprised.

“Y/N?” your friend looked up at you, not expecting you to be here. “Oh geez, what happened to your face?”

“I was in gym class,” you explained. “We were playing dodgeball, and when Ray threw the ball, it hit in me in the face.”

“Oh no,” Gerard grimaced.

“It was an accident,” you shrugged. “He apologized like six times, he felt really bad. I told him I’d be ok.”

“I hope so,” Gerard replied.

“More importantly,” you asked, “what are you doing here?”

Gerard lifted up his shaggy hair, revealing a black, bruised left eye.

“What happened?” you gasped.

“Matt happened,” Gerard sighed.

“Matt, from French class?” you guessed.

“Yeah,” Gerard confessed. “The, uh, the school play is coming up. It’s a musical this year. The tryouts are today, so I was in the boys’ bathroom, practicing my singing. Matt came in, and he heard my falsetto, and started making fun of me. Said only fags sing that high. And then his friend was like, I bet if you kick him in the dick, you can make that pansy boy sing even higher. So, Matt kicked me, and I tried to fight back, and then his friend punched me in the face.”

You saw red.

 “I’m going to kick Matt’s ass,” you growled. How dare he bully your friend like this! You were going to make him pay.

“Y/N, don’t….” Gerard protested. “I just….I’m just gonna wait for the nurse to come back with that ice pack for my eye, and then I’m going to back to class. And so should you. Just forget about it.”

“I can’t forget about it!” you insisted. “Matt’s a douchebag! I won’t let him get away with hurting you!”

“Don’t get in trouble on my account,” Gerard argued.

“I don’t care if I’m in trouble,” you fumed. “You’re my friend, Gee. I hate the way people at this school treat you. You don’t deserve it. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to protect you.”

“It’s not your fault that we don’t have fourth period together,” Gerard shrugged. “And it’s not your job to defend me. Guys are supposed to be able to defend themselves….I just need to get stronger.”

“You don’t need to change anything about yourself.” You loved Gerard for the chubby, nerdy, soft boy that he was. He wasn’t like all the other boys in this shitty New Jersey town. Nothing was wrong with him.

Something was very wrong with the system, that allowed a popular kid like Matt to get away with this. But, you were going to fix that, and god damn the consequences.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

You found Matt at lunch, sitting with his goon friends from the football team. You stormed right up to his table, rage in your eyes.

“Hey asshole,” you glared. “I heard you beat up my friend.”

“Who, the little poof from the art club?” Matt chuckled.

“His name is Gerard,” you snapped.

“I don’t care what his name is,” Matt shrugged. “He’s a fucking weirdo. Putting on lipstick in the bathroom mirror, singing some fag song about being a ‘sweet transvestite’….does he want to be a chick or something? Wasn’t sure his dick was actually there til I kicked it.”

His friend high-fived him, as if this was the funniest joke he’d heard all day. You weren’t laughing. You grabbed Matt by the collar, pulling him out of his seat.

“Hey, let me go, you psycho!” Matt protested.

“Eat me,” you swore, and punched him directly in the face, knocking him backwards.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Matt screamed, getting back up, and launching himself at you. You dodged his punch, and kicked him in the shin, sending him tumbling  back onto the cafeteria floor.

“Guys, help me!” Matt cried, and his friend (probably the one who had blackened Gerard’s eye) leaped up from the table and punched you in the mouth.

You tasted blood - the lip had split. You didn’t care. Still fueled by rage, you punched Matt’s friend in the gut. He cried out in pain.

“Miss Y/N!” you heard a horrified voice scold, and you whipped around to see the principal standing in front of you. “What on earth are you doing?!”

Shit, you thought. I’m in trouble.

“My office,” the principal barked. “Now.”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Ultimately, you were given three days of suspension. Matt didn’t get suspended along with you, which you thought was bullshit. But, you weren’t really sorry for what you had done.

Your folks had grounded you, when they found out what you did. But, three days sitting at home watching zombie movies while they were at work, still wasn’t all that bad.

You were halfway through Dawn Of The Dead when you heard a knock at your front door. You hit pause, wondering who it could be.

You looked through the peephole and saw Gerard standing on your doorstep.

It’s four o clock, you realized. School must have just gotten out. He came straight here to see me?

He really was the sweetest friend a girl could have. You opened the door to let him in.

“Hey, Gerard,” you greeted. “How’s your eye doing?”

“The bruising’s gone down,” he shrugged, shuffling awkwardly into your foyer. “How’s your lip? I heard you got hurt, trying to….avenge me.”

“I’m fine, Gee,” you assured him, shutting the door behind you. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But, I am worried!” he said, and you realized he sounded near tears. “I….I wasn’t man enough to fight my own battles, and so you got dragged into it, too. And he hurt you.”

“You don’t have to ‘be a man’, Gee,” you sighed. “You’re just a sixteen year old kid. The adults - the teachers - they should do something about all the bullying that goes on at our school. They should try and help you.”

“They don’t care, Y/N,” Gerard frowned. “Matt is the teacher’s fucking favorite, he’s the MVP, Homecoming King, whatever, and I’m just some weird loser….”

“You’re not a loser,” you insisted, grabbing Gerard and pulling him into a tight hug. “You’re amazing, Gee. You draw, and you sing, better than anybody else I know. You’re special. They just don’t know you like I do.”

“I’m not special,” Gerard mumbled, pushing you away. “The drama teacher probably won’t even give me the role of Frank N. Furter. She’s gonna tell me I suck.”

“You don’t suck!” you reassured him. “You can get that role!”

“Even if I did,” he argued, “prancing around onstage, in that costume, would just make people like Matt, make fun of me even more.”

“Who cares what they think?” you scoffed. “Gee, listen to me. Two more years at this piece of shit school, and then you’re gonna graduate, and you can finally get out of this town. You’ll get into a good art school in New York. I know you will. And in the big city, people will appreciate what you can do. They’ll be more accepting, of people who are different.”

“They keep calling me gay,” Gerard frowned. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, but, I....”

He blushed and trailed off.

“But, you do like girls,” you supplied.

“I’ll never get a girlfriend,” Gerard mumbled self-loathingly. “What girl is gonna want a fat wimp who can’t even defend himself? Who hides behind a girl, like a coward?”

“I chose to fight Matt,” you reminded him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.“You didn’t make me do this for you. As I recall, you told me not to.”

“I knew you were going to get in trouble,” Gerard said, looking up into your eyes. “You’re suspended from school, because of me.”

“I’d do it again, in a heartbeat,” you confessed. “I care about you a lot, Gee. I couldn’t stand to see what he did to you, and just do nothing.”

Gerard turned red again, and looked away. “I, uh, I brought you the notes from French class, that you missed today,” he stammered.

“Thank you,” you replied gratefully.

“There’s going to be a test the day you come back,” he reminded. “So, you’ll need to study while you’re stuck here.”

“I will,” you nodded. “I appreciate the heads up.”

Gerard looked around your living room awkwardly, unsure what to say next.

“Since you’re here,” you asked, “do you want to watch the rest of this movie with me? It’s your favorite.”

“Your folks won’t mind?” Gerard asked uncertainly.

“Oh, they won’t be home for a few more hours,” you shrugged.

“Were they really mad,” Gerard wondered, “when they found out, that you got suspended, for getting in a fight?”

“A little,” you winced. “They confiscated my car keys. And my phone.”

“Oh!” Gerard realized. “That’s why you didn’t answer me, when I tried to call you last night?”

“My phone’s been off since yesterday,” you frowned. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s ok, I’m….actually kind of relieved,” Gerard admitted. “I was worried you weren’t answering, because you were mad at me.”

“Never,” you said gently. “You’re my best friend, Gerard. I couldn’t possibly stay mad, or blame you, for something like this. I was the dumbass who decided to fight him in the middle of the cafeteria! Whatever consequences I get...that’s on me, not you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Gerard smiled, sounding like he was feeling a bit better. He sat down on your couch. “Let’s watch some zombies eat people.”

You grinned, and unpaused the classic Romero movie.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

As the credits rolled, Gerard sat up straight and turned to you.

“Y/N….” he began nervously.

“Yeah?” you smiled. “What is it, Gee?”

“So, the day after your suspension is over,” Gerard said quietly, “is also the day of the school dance.”

“Are you planning on going this year?” you asked. “I think it was pretty fun last year, when we went with a big group of friends. I know Frank got in trouble for spiking the punch bowl, but…”

“I don’t want to go with friends this year,” Gerard interrupted.

“Oh?” you blinked. “Is there a girl that you’re going to ask, to be your prom date?”

“I shouldn’t even bother,” Gerard sighed. “Never mind.”

“What do you mean?” you frowned, looking over at him. You wished he had more self confidence. “You’re really cute, Gerard. I’m sure if you ask a girl, she’d be happy to go with you.”

“I’m...cute?” Gerard repeated, like he didn’t believe the words he was hearing.

You looked him over again. His long, soft-looking hair. His big, strong hands. His squeezably chubby cheeks. He really was a cute boy. Secretly, you’d thought that for a long time.

You leaned in closer, and his face reddened.

“Gerard,” you said, almost in a whisper, as you looked into his hazel eyes, “is there something that you want to ask me?”

“I….I can’t,” he blushed.

“Well, then, I can,” you smirked, leaning over so you were almost touching him. “Gerard, will you go to prom with me?”

“Y/N, I…..”

“Not as friends this time,” you clarified, a long-hidden attraction in your eyes. “As a date.”

“Yes,” Gerard whispered hoarsely. “Yes. I never thought you would say that, but, yes, please!”

You closed the gap between you, kissing him on his stunned mouth. He didn’t move at first. It was as if he was waiting for you to tell him, that this was all some kind of sick joke.

But when he realized this was real, you wanted him, his mouth responded to yours eagerly, and he pulled you closer, into his lap.

“No matter what Matt, or anyone, says,” you gasped, coming up for air, “you are so handsome, Gerard, and so talented, and one day, the world will appreciate you for who you are.”

You pressed him down into the couch cushions, enjoying the redness in his cheeks and the desire in his eyes. You thought he was beautiful - and you were certain that one day, you would be far from the only one.

[minchase-ingclouds]

𝕒𝕗𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕪𝕠𝕦 ｌｅｆｔ, 𝕚 𝕔𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕒𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕤𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝒻𝒶𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓈𝓎

╰ ♡ ✧ ˖ chae hyungwon. 25 he/him. have you seen charles “chase” min? they used to be so +confident before their heart got broken. now they just seem to be very -timid. i think it had something to do with (tw: abuse) his sugar mama emotionally/physically abusing him, but who knows how accurate that is. i know, we should get them hair dye to help cheer them up! maybe then they’ll start acting like fairy floss and cherry blossoms blooming.

basics

name: charles min

nicknames: chase, whatever nicknames his sister gives him, rosir (his sTriPPEr NamE)

age: 25

pronouns: he/him

sexuality: heterosexual (he thinks) ((but is actually bisexual)) (((he’s confused ok)))

tldr

traumatic childhood backstory etc in the bio below so if ur here from dee’s intro on ciel then jump down there hey

anyway bc of the traumatic childhood backstory, chase and his little sister ciel moved out when he turned 18 and she was 14/15ish

long story short he became a stripper to support them

when he was about 20, he met tiffany, a rich business woman who frequented his strip club because she thought he was stunning and had seen him on a night out with the girls

she wasn’t that old, maybe 7 or 8 years older than him, and approached him one night asking for a private session where she then asked if she could take him out on a proper date

they dated for a while and she became his sugar mama, asking him for sexual favours but paying for pretty much everything, EVERYTHING he wanted and even offering to pay for things for his little sister too (she was stubborn and refused tho)

only a few months ago, tiffany had an STI scare and insisted it must be chase’s fault bc - you’re a stripper, you’re a whore, i bet you cheated on me - and when he told her that no, he’d been loyal, and if she had cheated on him and had this scare then he thought they could work through it and stay together, she continued to grow more agitated and (tw:abuse) started to throw things and hit him

when his little sister found him in their lavish penthouse (courtesy of tiffany, ofc) he was covered in bruises and cuts

together, they decided to move to palm springs to a shitty little apartment since chase was done with tiffany, wasn’t going to use her credit card ever again or even speak to her again and now we’re here, his arm’s just healed after being broken but his heart still hurts and he kinda misses tiffany - after all, they were together for four years

bio

born in new york, new york, chase was a curse to his father from pretty much the moment he was born; with his mother dying in childbirth, his father had a love/hate relationship with him, since he reminded him so much of the wife he so loved but was also the very reason she was gone

when he was 4 his father remarried a woman named stacy who was pregnant with a little girl ( @cielmins )

speaking of ciel! if you are here because you were redirected by dee (thanks for palming this bit off to me btw sweetheart) then buckle up kiddos, cus we’re about to go for a RIDE

stacy was never all that nice to him, mostly put up with him because she loved his father, gerald or some other basic dude name

of course, stacy absolutely ADORED ciel, since she was her actual daughter, but chase never resented ciel - in fact, quite the opposite, since he adored her even more than their parents did

yes, chase is literally the most doting big brother that could ever exist, would move mountains for his baby sister if she asked (she would never ask because she’d figure out how to move the mountain herself), but that doesn’t stop the pair from being literally The Worst™ to each other and general public nuisances of the meme variety

side note - although nobody ever told ciel that she and chase aren’t related and are just step-siblings, she has a big brain and figured it out eventually (chase couldn’t be prouder of his genius little sister, although the difference in their ethnicities was probably the biggest tip off)

home life was not so great - stacy was constantly feeling undermined by gerald’s first wife, knowing he would always love her just that little bit more, and the more insecure she felt, the more she’d take it out on chase, and the meaner she was to chase, the more distant gerald was towards her and to ciel. it was kind of a cycle.

just before chase’s 18th birthday, ciel pointed out that they could run away, just the two of them, and take care of each other like they always do. her big brain pointed out that as an 18 year old, he could be her legal guardian

so, at 14ish (maybe 15? idk how old ciel is tbh) and 18, the pair moved out

when it became apparent that they weren’t coming back, stacy and gerald said fuck it, got a divorce since they were really only together for the kids at that point anyway, and ciel and chase were pretty much independent from then on

he and ciel even adopted a kitty named mayonnaise britney spears min - but you can call her may for short

as two teenagers they uhhh weren’t so great in the funds department and chase took it upon himself to provide for them so that ciel could focus on her studies - sacrificing his own education, he put himself through odd jobs here and there until one day shortly after his 19th he was approached by someone who told him he’d be great at ‘twilight modelling’

turns out by ‘twilight modelling’ they meant hhhh stripping

well, one look at ciel’s immaculate report card and the pleased twinkle in her eyes when she started talking about scholarships and college and stuff, chase was absolutely fuckin gone and knew he’d do anything to keep that look on his baby sister’s face so - hoo boy, here we go, ya boi turned to stripping

it actually took him a while to let ciel know, he told her he was, well, twilight modelling because he didn’t want her to know, but when she did eventually find out about one and a half years later, she help him come up with his rad stripper name - Rosir, because it’s french for ‘pink sky’ which matches ciel’s name, but also ‘the colour you turn when you’re embarrassed’, which suits him

a year into stripping, he meets tiffanny, and yk, all that stuff in the tldr, she pays for all his loans, buys him all his fancy designer brands, gives him plenty of allowance (which ya boi saves cus he’s not an idiot), even buys him a car and opens up her penthouse for the two of them

of course, when shit hits the fan, he has to give up his fancy car and leave the penthouse with ciel, now the two of them live in a shitty little apartment in palm springs because he doesn’t want to blow al their savings and since his arm was kinda uhhhh broken after the ordeal, he’s only just been able to get back into stripping (since he stil isn’t qualified for anything)

(tw:emotional abuse) before he started dating tiffany, he was pretty sure he was bisexual. tiffany had him confused for years because she told him that liking it up the ass didn’t mean he was gay and he could enjoy bottoming for a woman without being bisexual; he was totally straight, she would insist, and he started to believe that and to this day he struggles with whether or not he’s straight or bisexual because he knows he finds men attractive, but he isn’t sure if he would date one --> this was a form of emotional abuse that went on for literal YEARS

(tw:emotional abuse) should i mention that tiffany was kinda lowkey the worst and also tried to convince him to stop being a stripper several times? things like “you don’t have to strip, you’re basically my personal prostitute baby” and “you don’t need an education, i’ll always be here to provide for you, you’re all mine baby boy” and when she’s mad uhhh “you’re my little whore, got it? no one else’s” so............. yh let’s just say ciel wasn’t a fan but chase, well, he was blinded by those hearts in his eyes

but don’t feel too bad for him! chase actually kinda likes stripping now, thinks it’s made him feel much more confident with himself and his body, having always felt maybe he was too gangly and thin and awkward, and he likes the feeling he gets when people can’t take their eyes off of him

despite the fact that he’s a stripper, he’s actually real sweet and innocent. has only had sex with tiffany, has never even kissed a guy and hasn’t even really kissed many other girls except for a few awkward dates he’s had here and there - most he’s done is private dances for paying customers

anddddddddd now that he’s been saving, and is finally free of tiffany and of his shit ass parents, with encouragement from ciel, ya boi has finally, finally started college

it’s a little scary since he’s older than most of the people in his classes, but he’s studying to become a kindegarten teacher and cannot wait for the day that he can hang up his lacy black garters and pick up a whiteboard marker

so, still stripping and working part-time as a waiter to pay the bills, chase is starting a new chapter of his life (signified by his brand new pink hair, courtesy of ciel), and whilst he doesn’t know what the future has in store for him, he’s ready to face it with a big smile and with his baby sister (aka his favourite person in the whole wide world) by his side

wanted connections

well hello beautiful people! if you’re still here, i must say, i’m rather impressed, so without further ado let’s get into this

ride or die best friend - chase only met this binch after moving to palm springs, but they happened to see him entering the strip club and figured out he worked there and, uhh, with persistence and a promise not to tell anyone, they became great friends and probably visit his shitty apartment to play with may and piss off ciel all the time

classmates - everyone needs a study buddy! if u got an ugli in college, throw em his way

gay awakening - now, chase isn’t necessarily going to date this person or even develop feelings, but as a beautiful man he’s going to turn chase’s sexuality upside down and cement his suspicions that yes, he is bisexual no matter what tiffany said (taken: moon jisoo)

honestly open to anything! hmu if you have any plots you’d like to chuck at him or any you’d like to fulfil <3

signing off for now,

yours faithfully

mich 

[fluorescentpipedream]

Ezra Hale - warning for content

@musesnotebook​

Ezra was awake long before his alarm had actually gone off, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His father was already awake, and probably halfway through his first drink, Ezra could hear him downstairs crashing around in the kitchen. The alarm on the nightstand got only one round of beeps out before he turned it off and rolled out of bed, sighing softly. It was the first day back to O Fallon Township High School, he was going to be a junior this year and while he was happy it meant that there were only two years left before he’d be 18 and could leave...there were still two years left before he could leave. Pushing himself up on his other arm, Ezra sighed and walked into the bathroom. 

He usually got a cool shower in the morning because it helped wake him up and he needed to be a bit more on the ball, time to pretend everything is fine. I’m becoming one hell of an actor...He thought, looking down at the cast on his arm as he wrapped the shower protection around it. That was going to make things so much worse this year. Getting out he ran a comb through his dark brown hair, initially, it stayed behind his ear but he knew by the end of the day it was going to be in his eyes. He was starting to like it that way. Looping a soft towel around his hips he looked in the mirror one last time before opening the door and came face to chest with his father.

“Morning, dad.”

His father said nothing as his son carefully scooted past him, getting around the larger man relatively easily, despite him blocking the door almost like Frankenstein’s monster looming down at him. He was already drunk and Ezra scrunched up his nose, trying not to breathe in the sharp smell of beer at 7am. Ducking into his room he leaned against the door and locked it behind him, taking a few breaths before he pulled on a pair of skinny black jeans with striped white and black suspenders, pulling them over the top of a plain white t-shirt. He opted for a pair of black and white converse and snatched his backpack off his desk chair before tossing a look at his room. It was clean from the night before, he’d made his bed before he got a shower, there was nothing out for his mother to find when she came in looking for something to send his father after him when he got home. She usually came through when he was at school, looking for cigarettes, drugs, condoms...whatever. Anything she could tell his father about later. 

Walking out of his room he came down the stairs and stopped in the kitchen noticing his mother was making coffee. “Morning, mom.” She didn’t respond, just continued to stare at the coffee pot. She was as horrible as his father was at being a parent but she was still his mom, right? Ezra made himself a couple of Eggo French toast waffles and while they were in the toaster he moved around, getting a dark blue hyrdroflask from the cabinet and filled it with water from their cooler in the corner. After taking a drink of his bottle, he let out a sigh which got her attention.

“What was that sound for?”

“Nothing mom. Just...breathing.” Is that okay, you fucking cunt? He clenched up his free hand for a moment, resisting the urge to tell her off. He actually wanted to go to school today, at least he’d be away from them for a few hours. As his waffles popped up, he took them out, wrapped them in a napkin and then moved around her and out the door as quickly as he could. After eating his breakfast on the way to the bus stop, he took a pair of Skullcandy headphones out of his bag and put them on, turning on Nine Inch Nails to scream in his ears.

He fell asleep standing up for a few minutes before one of his classmates appeared beside him and he was suddenly aware that someone was attempting to talk to him. Yep, headphones totally mean talk to me, I’m listening! He sighed and pulled up one side of his headphones, looking over a young man named Paul. He was on the lacrosse team with Ezra. 

“Oh it’s you.” Honestly the only thing Paul had going for him was that he was good at sports. The boy had been dropped from the ugly tree, rolled down the dumbass hill, and was struck by an even uglier bus, so his rambling story of some girl who creamed herself looking at him was about as likely as Ezra finding out he was adopted. As he tried to put his headphones back over his ear with his bandaged hand, Paul suddenly realized there was an extra 2lbs attached and pointed at it somewhat excitedly. Ezra couldn’t help but imagine Paul as an annoying little chihuahua that got so excited it pissed itself. While he was trying not to snicker at the thought he also tried to remember what the rehearsed answer was.

“Jetski accident” he replied dryly. 

“That sucks. How’d it happen?”

“I lost control of the thing and ran it aground in the Lake of the Ozarks. Broke my wrist and got some bruises.”

“Oh man...that new coach might not let you play.”

Oh yeah...they’d gotten a new coach. He hadn’t even considered he wasn’t going to be the star player this year. Shit. The old coach had retired recently, Ezra had found out about it when his dad had come home from racquetball with the other man. He had been watching something on TV when his dad came home and started yelling about it, realized his son wasn’t listening and then positioned himself in front of the TV, starting over again. Ezra had turned off his show and looked up at his father expectantly. The man was livid, even though his friend had actually chosen to retire, not wanting to deal with pathetic kids anymore. They had no real gumption, whatever that was. The grumbling had continued on through most of the night, with his dad randomly bringing it up without much warning.

“She’s probably a fucking lesbian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Ezra shouldn’t have asked but the comment had been so random over dinner that it had caught him off-guard. To his surprise, his father had actually answered him but it was an aggravated grumble about how women were taking all the jobs meant for men and how they needed to be reminded where their place was. Ezra mouthed along with him as he nearly screamed ‘in the goddamn kitchen, that’s where’ before turning his attention back to his dinner.

Shortly before the new school year started, Ezra had been sitting on the floor in front of the TV only half paying attention to the news when there was a report about how the drama and music teacher, Eliza Ramsey, was arrested for “indecent exposure” and had been caught contacting a 15 year old male student on Facebook and sending nudes to him. The cops were urging any students that may have had contact with her to come forward. Ezra had shifted uncomfortably, shooting a look back at his father and watched as the man’s face contorted. He had been angry about something already and this was just piqued his interest. Ezra frowned and took a shaky breath knowing where it was going to lead and some stupid part of him hoped maybe his dad would change his mind if he knew.

“Boys can’t be fucking raped. They can’t...men, real fucking men enjoy sex, especially if it’s with a bitch that hot.”

Mrs. Ramsey had been a beautiful woman, there was no lying about that. Short cropped blond hair and red lipstick most days, she had legs that went on for days and the kind of body that made most of the boys in the school get hard without even meaning to. Granted, in high school, that could happen when the wind blew but still. He had too, thinking how nice it would be to see what her skin tasted like. But it hadn’t been as good as he’d hoped. He had originally gone in to audition for the school’s version of Grease, singing Blue Moon for the role of Danny. She’d said he was okay, but she could help him if he wanted and before he’d really known what was happening, she had her hand on his thigh, squeezing. Ezra had tried to tell her no, but it hadn’t mattered.

His dad was still going on ad nauseum about how men are supposed to enjoy sex with a beautiful woman and if he got that chance he’d have jumped at it. When he’d gestured at his son, Ezra frowned, realizing how he hadn’t actually heard anything over his heart beating in his ears.

“Wouldn’t you, boy?”

“No.”

“What the fuck do you mean, no?”

“Um…”

“What...Are you about to tell me that if a beautiful woman wanted you in her bed you wouldn’t eat that shit up? What are you, a fucking faggot?”

“No! But it wasn’t like I had a choice!”

There was a flicker of acknowledgement on his father’s face and for a split second, Ezra was hopeful. The man had heard him. His son was raped and he was going to do something about it! Instead, the temperature rose in his father’s face, causing it to flush and Ezra scrambled off the ground, meeting his father on his feet and stared up at him. Alright so we’re throwing down...

“That woman had her hand on your cock?” 

“Yes...sir.” His tone was soft at first while he tried to find his voice. He was searching his dad’s face.  

“And you expect me to believe you didn’t fucking didn’t get hard?”

“That’s not fair…”

“Not fair? Life’s not fucking fair boy. Lay it out for me...how was it not fair?” His father was patronizing him and it was making him angrier.

“She wasn’t...she....I told her no, to stop...I....She had her hand on my dick and told me she was going to help me…” He stopped and looked up at his father, realizing he was too far in now to stop. He bit on his bottom lip to stop it from quivering but he could feel the heat coming to his cheeks and tears welling up. Why didn’t this man believe him? She hurt me, forced me to do things I didn’t want to do and somehow it’s my fault?!

“Help you do what?”

Ezra had searched his brain for something to say. All he could get out was a whispered, “be a man…”

“And by god she did it.”

“No! She RAPED ME!” Ezra had shouted suddenly, and his outburst surprised him as much as his father. His voice had crackled as the dam broke behind his eyes. With tears streaming down his face he’d pointed at his father and screamed at him.

“She hurt me! And you don’t even care do you? Some woman forced herself on your son and you’re too much of an asshole to even give a shit. Cause I was supposed to enjoy it?! I DID NOT WANT IT. I DID NOT FUCKING ASK FOR IT!” His voice was squeakier as he broke in front of the man.

“Do you even care it wasn’t just once? She called me into her office all year long and pushed me into the desk, her hands on me no matter how many times I begged her to stop. Why...why can’t you just care about me for once in my goddamn life?!” Ezra stopped screaming, with his right hand poking into his dad’s chest and as he’d met his father’s eyes he got his answer. His father took hold of his hand, making a jerking movement with it and broke the bone without even flinching. Must have been the former marine training...When Ezra had let out a cry, he’d been struck across the face and knocked into the wall. The hit had knocked the wind out of him but as he slipped down the wall, he’d looked up to see his mom standing just behind her husband as he was taking his belt off.

“Mom?”

“You should have known better.” She took her wine and walked out of the room.

“MOM!”  He cried out again as the belt hit him across the face. “Dad...please.” Stop begging you idiot, it’s making it worse. Instinctually, Ezra curled into the fetal position to protect himself and covered his head with his arms too. The beating had lasted until his dad had worn himself out. The man had stumbled back onto the couch again. “Fuckin little pussy. I raised you better than that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get cleaned up.”

“My wrist hurts...” He had squeaked out the words as he sat up and realized he couldn’t put any pressure on it. It was swelling already and his father had a moment where he actually looked like he felt bad. An hour later he was sitting in the emergency room telling a nurse he had been jumped as he was walking through the Hardee’s parking lot by a group of hooded men. His father was standing with his arms crossed over his chest giving Ezra a warning look as he lied to the woman with his swollen lip, broken wrist and red marks on his neck and back.

That was two weeks ago. The bruises and his lip had healed, but his wrist was going to be in a cast for the next few months.

Once the boys were on the bus, Paul had taken a sharpie out of his bag and had started handing it around to the other guys on the team, everyone writing something on his stupid cast. Ezra honestly wasn’t even paying attention and after a couple of people who obviously didn’t care any more than he did got on the novelty had worn off and he was finally left alone. He turned his music back up to an almost deafening volume and closed his eyes. When he got to school he stopped at his locker, putting his gym clothes on the bottom shelf for PE later and set his headphones and iPod on the top shelf.  

Homeroom was typical for the first day back. Announcements about new students, the change in staff following Ms. Ramsey’s unfortunate firing and once again a suggestion that any male student comes forward if they had any experience with her. The assistant principal was the same kind of dirtbag his father was so that was never going to happen. The man they hired had a complicated name that the man stumbled over a few times before just saying Mr. Lock, though he probably had intentionally mispronounced it at that point. “Mr. Lock comes from India, he should make for an interesting addition to our staff.” How did a man from Delhi wind up a teacher in this shithole? Ezra was drawing in his notebook with his other hand as the last round of announcements started. Lunch today was the fried rice and egg rolls, and of the panini bar was back up and running after being down much of the end of last year. The last announcement hit like a punch to the gut though.

“As I’m sure some of you are aware, Mr. Anderson, the coach for the Panthers Lacrosse Team has recently retired and in his place, we are proud to introduce Ms. Thomas as the new coach. She would like me to inform everyone that tryouts will be Friday and no one will have a reserved position this year, just because you were captain last year doesn’t mean you will make it this year.” Ezra cursed under his breath, he was going to have to tell his dad.

The rest of the day was a blur. History, biology, and chemistry passed quickly, his math class made him feel as stupid as ever. This new math shit was ridiculous. In an interest of reclaiming some control over the day he had taken to teasing and goading some of his favorites. To say he liked being a bully was really splitting hairs, he liked the control it gave him over the situation in most cases but he knew that if any of his so-called friends found out that he used to go to Brentwood Dance Studios they would probably turn all their hate on him. The new kid was an easy target, tall and scrawny as fuck with a stupid leather cord with a feather attached to his hair and a dorky hat. He’d give Andy one thing, the boy didn’t back down from him and instead he turned back to one of his favorites.

Emma was an easy target for him too. She was fat, shy and adopted, all the best for bullies to pick on. The sad thing was, he had a crush on her back in junior high. As Ezra had started a new round he was stopped by Evan Rogers, one of the other boys on the lacrosse team and Ezra’s ex-best friend. Why they’d stopped being friends was incidental, but it had more to do with jealousy on Ezra’s side. Evan wanted to be a theater geek and his dad had been rough about it until he’d seen how much talent his son really had. Evan had been Danny last year, Ezra had lost the will to do it after everything and as much as he wanted to tell his friend, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Evan had about a foot on Ezra and his shoulders were as broad as a house, the boy did not look like a high school student at all, especially now that he’d put on added muscle over the summer. Ezra playfully raised his arms like he was trying to protect himself, before backing off for now. Tomorrow was another day.

Right before history he was asked into the guidance counselor’s office and already he wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Mr. Hale, have a seat.”

“Sure...why am I here?”

“Well...the nurse tells me you’ve got a pretty nasty fracture in your right wrist and because of that you can’t play any of our team sports this year.”

“It’s only going to take 8 weeks to heal, sir...Can’t I still try out and just play when it heals, I’m one of the top players!”

“That’s not really fair to the other students that might want to get a chance to play, is it?”

Who gives a fuck? “Yeah....” Asshole. “Then what am I supposed to do?” He wasn’t fast enough for track, despite being tall and slim, and while the school had a lot of teams, almost all of them would involve something he couldn’t do with one hand. “Well... I think we might look at something a little off the beaten path for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something you’ve never done before. How about Home Ec?”

Over my father’s dead body. “I’d rather not.”

“What about drama?” Ezra felt his pulse quicken. More than anything, he had wanted to be an actor since his grandmother had taken him to see West Side Story when he was 9. He was going to be an actor, he told her. He was going to be in music videos and movies and on the stage under the lights and making everyone look at him. She would never get to see it happen, unfortunately, and he had tried to perform at her funeral but was knocked down several pegs by his father. “Real men don’t prance around in tights and no son of mine is gonna be a fucking dancer.”

“I could make a lot of money, I’ve got a pretty face and I could take care of you and mom for the rest of your lives.” He had tried to reason with his father but the man was having none of it. Ezra had let it go but had started sneaking around to do the things he wanted, the dance classes at the same time as a kickboxing class downtown? He could take the bus to St. Louis, that wasn’t a problem. After Mrs. Ramsey though he’d lost a lot of the will to do it anymore.

“Mr. Hale? Shall I sign you up for drama?”

“Do I have a choice?” He had some enemies in that class. Evan had joined the little group in the middle of last year, Darnell was part of it, Emma...pretty much everyone he had ever picked on was in one room. Welcome to hell.

“Is there a reason you wouldn’t want to be in drama?”

No good reason. “Not really.”

“Good! Having a background in the arts also looks good on college admissions as well.”

“Okay.”

Ezra was excused and headed to his locker to get out his textbook and notebook for English. He felt hollow inside and shifted somewhat uncomfortably in his seat as he sat and listened to the teacher start her lesson. She was one of his favorite teachers, always had a kind smile and genuinely cared about her students, not in the creepy way Mrs. Ramsey had either. If there was ever anything wrong, she said she was always open to talk. He’d never taken advantage of that and was even more scared to do so now. Scratching his pencil over his notebook to at least look like he was paying attention his mind was far away.

On one hand, he was excited about the prospect of getting to go to drama every other day, but at the same time, he had to go home tonight and tell his father that he wasn’t going to be able to be on the lacrosse team or any other team for that matter because of his broken wrist. A wrist his father broke but somehow was going to end up being his fault. His arm throbbed and he suddenly felt a cold shiver creep down his shoulders. After a second his hand shot up to get the teacher’s attention. 

“Yes, Ezra do you have a question?”

“May I be excused?” She looked a little bewildered at the sudden interruption but nodded her head, scribbling a hall pass but Ezra was out the door before she could hand it to him. Once in the hall he covered his mouth with his hand and tried to make to to the bathroom as quickly as he could. That plan didn’t exactly work, Ezra had only made it a few steps towards the bathroom before he took his hand away and vomited. He gasped for breath, feeling his body shake and before the next wave hit him he ducked into the room nearest him, dropping hard onto his knees and throwing up again.

Resting his right arm on the edge of the bowl he laid his head against it for a moment before reaching up and flushing the toilet. It took him a few seconds to realize that someone was behind him, and while he’d expected to hear one of the guys teasing him, the first thing he noticed was a pair of shiny silver flats. His eyes traveled up the rest of the body and he was met with brilliant red hair and bright green eyes. Roxie. What the hell is she doing in the boys....Oh fuck.

Roxie Phillips was a bit of a pariah herself. She had gotten pregnant last year and was bullied into leaving by the principal. Her and Ezra had a brief moment when she had found him sitting outside with a cigarette in his hand, tears streaming down his face and his pants still unzipped. She hadn’t asked, probably because she knew. Considering the father of her baby was the assistant scumbag. Roxie said nothing when she’d found him out there, simply sat down beside him and laid her head on his shoulder while he cried. He’d found out from her friend Lily that she was encouraged not to come back to school in her fragile state. She was back and actually looked pretty good for a girl who just had a baby.  Ezra had gone to see her in the hospital after she’d had her son and told her if she ever wanted to tell him something else about his father, that he wasn’t some fucked up rapist, he’d take the rap for it. She had thanked him but said she didn’t want to ruin his life. Besides, she wasn’t ashamed of her son, she was ashamed of the man who gave him to her.

“Ez...” Roxie’s tone was gentle as she knelt beside him and rubbed on his back  before getting up again. Ezra closed his eyes, trying to talk his body into stopping this revolt and could hear the water running. He sat up to face the toilet again though he was only dry heaving at this point. He nearly jumped out of his skin when she put a cold paper towel against his head, pulling his hair out of his face and mouth. Ezra frowned, coughed and spit out blood before he flushed the toilet again. He took a couple of shaky breaths before pushing himself up off the ground and sort of motioned for Roxie to leave the stall. Once she was out he closed the door so he could take a piss, though he knew she hadn’t left the bathroom.

“Well let’s hear it, Phillips.” He sighed, trying to figure out how to recover from whatever the hell that was. Stress is a terrible thing. His eyes blurred a little as he stared down at the bowl, his movements mechanical more than intentional.

“I’m not sure what you’re expecting me to say, Ezra. You just threw up in the hall and on some kid’s locker and now you’re in the handicapped stall in the girl’s bathroom. I think you’re probably beating yourself up enough.” Ezra sighed, readjusted himself and opened the door, leaning against the frame of the stall. Lifting his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, Roxie clicked her tongue against her teeth.

“Did your dad do that?” He looked a little taken aback by her sudden revelation but said nothing. “I used to make up all kinds of shit to explain my bruises and black eyes, though my old man never actually broke a bone.”

“It was an accident at the Lake of the Ozarks, my jetski ran aground.”

“That’s a pretty good one.”

“It’s not a lie.”

“Okay.”  

Roxie moved into her purse and handed him a small piece of candy which he stared at until she explained she used them for her nausea, they work wonders and told him he might want to change his shirt.

“By the way, your fly is down.”  

He blushed, zipping it and looked past her at his reflection in the mirror. He looked horrible. Fuck, I just want to go home. Popping the hard candy in his mouth, the sudden sour taste almost made him spit it back out. Walking out of the girls’ bathroom he glanced down at the spot on the floor that the janitor had already started cleaning up, cursing up a storm. First day and someone already threw up in the hall...Ezra moved past him and down to his locker where he took out the shirt he’d been wearing in PE and changed right there in the hallway, unclipping his suspenders while he was at it. His knees were weak and he felt like he was going to drop under the weight of the world.

What a mess. It took him a few seconds to realize that he wasn’t alone at his locker and closed the door, coming face to face with a slightly older boy named Ben who was holding his backpack. 

“You look like shit.”

“Fuck the Asian bar.” He couldn’t think of anything else. Ben raised an eyebrow but set his bag down again and patted Ezra on the shoulder before walking away from him. Ben was one of the few people that was immune to Ezra’s bullying, but then again he was older. He’d been held back following a car accident a few years ago, the assistant principal kept trying to get him to just take his GED and leave but for whatever reason, Ben wouldn’t do it. Ezra watched him walk over to the new kid and strike up a conversation and for a moment he wanted to walk over and actually introduce himself like a normal person. He didn’t though and instead switched out his books for the last time, grabbing what he was going to need for his homework for the night and closed the locker, staring at it for a moment. 

He didn’t really want to go to drama like this and meet the new teacher and have to pretend like he was okay but he didn’t have a lot of other options. He could go to the nurse and say he wasn’t feeling well but she’d probably call his mom who would have to send his dad to go get him, which meant a hell of a lecture on the way home and the possibility that he’d just end up hurling in his dad’s BMW while he was getting yelled at again. Not gonna happen.

He could go out back and try to hide, but he’d probably get caught and then he’d have detention on the first day. Another fight he didn’t want to deal with. He started heading toward the drama classroom and stopped outside of it. The teacher had a thick Indian accent and was correcting the class on the pronunciation of his name. It wasn’t Lock, it was Lahk, but they could call him Mr. K if they wanted. Since his first name was Kiernan. Ezra paused before deciding his best option was to go to the nurse. He still felt sick and like he just wanted to curl up in the fetal position and cry.  

The school nurse was a kind hearted black woman and had given him a small cup of water and sent him back to one of the cots behind a curtain in the back. Lying on his right side he pulled his arms over his head and curled tightly in on himself, quietly letting the walls fall down around him. He fell asleep there for the last hour, waking up only when the nurse carefully laid her hand on his shoulder.

“School’s over sweetie, do you want me to call your parents to come get you?”

“hmm...no. I can take the bus.” He got up and wiped his face on his shirt, picking up his bag again. It was open and when he looked in it he found a couple of sets of notes from Roxie, one from history and the other from drama, they already had their first assignment in both classes and he sighed, closing his bag and shifted it over his shoulder.

“What a horrible day.” With any luck his dad wouldn’t be home when he got there and he could just sleep through the rest of the day. 

[amorremanet]

OC profile meme: Adelaide?

oc profiles meme!

…okay, so, uh. Fair warning: Most of the length of this is actually taken up by the footnotes, and there are several periods where it stopped being about Addie specifically and turned into, “And now, I shall babble a lot about her, her brothers, their parents, their family dynamics, and a lot of THINGS AND STUFF that are generally related to this family of weirdos, because they are my weirdos and I love them.”

Also, the footnotes are kind of egregiously long, even by my standards. So, uh. That’s a thing. But anyway.

Full Name^: Adelaide Léonide Beauharnais Moncrieff.

Like all three of her brothers and several of their cousins, Addie got screwed by their family’s love of Significantly Significant and more-than-vaguely pretentious names.

For starters: she, Max, Seb, and Ambrose all wound up with, “Beauharnais” as a gratuitous middle name. It is their Mom’s maiden name, which she still uses almost as often as her husband’s surname. Giving it to the kids was their Dad’s idea.

It didn’t even have anything to do with carrying on Marceline’s family name, since she has two brothers who both had sons; Abe just thought it would be nice for the kids to have “Beauharnais” in their names, too.

Aside from that — Adelaide’s given first name was actually chosen for two reasons: 1. it’s a name with Family History™ behind it, just like all of the boys’ first names; and 2. in honor of St. Adelaide of Burgundy, one of the patron saints of victims and survivors of abuse (also, large families and princesses).

Léonide was just chosen for the sake of family history, rather than being a saintly name. The boys were not so lucky on that count, but Adelaide would’ve had a double-saintly name too, had Marceline not decided that she liked the name, “Léonide” more than, “Leonie.”

Addie is cool with that choice on her Mom’s part, because she got a French feminine counterpart of Leonidas as a middle name, while Max got his middle name from John the Baptist, Ambrose got that guy who the original Twelve Apostles recruited to replace Judas Iscariot, and Sebastian was middle-named after that long-winded douche who wrote The City of God, but he’s way more famous for praying, “Lord, please grant me chastity and self-restraint, but not right now!”

So, yeah. As far as middle-namesakes go, Adelaide is pretty sure that she won and her brothers lost.

Her Bastian is the only one she’s not going to lord it over when she’s bored or insecure or something along those lines, and that’s a relatively recent development, because watching her baby brother nearly kill himself multiple times and go to rehab made teasing him about his saintly middle-namesake really not funny to her anymore.

Seb wishes that Addie would let it be funny again, like?? Please? Acting like it’s not funny makes him feel broken.

Adelaide would be more open to listening on that count if their arguments about it didn’t tend to involve Seb saying that this middle-naming thing is totally funny because he’s a bigger drunken, worthless fuck-up than the patron saint of drunken, worthless fuck-ups, and not getting why his sister doesn’t think that it’s funny.

(It’s largely because she’s realized that her Bastian isn’t kidding when he calls himself a worthless fuck-up or make self-deprecating “jokes,” and she has no idea what to do to help with any of this, but helping fuel his problems is definitely not funny.)

Gender and Sexuality: Cis woman. // Bisexual.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers.

Birthplace and Birthdate: May 27th, 1982. // Baltimore, MD. She’s a Gemini (Leo Moon, Virgo Rising).

Addie’s birthday is known as, “the Day of Driven Dedication,” her birth week as, “the Week of Freedom,” and the “way” that she was born under is, “the Way of Originality.”

And because I like sharing and want someone to see what I did here, these are the birthdates and signs for Addie’s immediate family members:

Abe: January 26th, 1949. // Aquarius (Capricorn Moon, Leo Rising).

Day: The Day of Striking Deeds.

Week: The Week of Genius.

(If Marceline ever heard this, she’d probably go, “So, is that astrology’s way of explaining the elaborate scale model of the storming of the Bastille that he built in the basement? Or the collection of Area 51 conspiracy theories? Or the time he responded to, ‘Dad, I’m gay’ with, ‘Hi, gay, I’m Dad’?”

Abe doesn’t believe in astrology, but might agree with that interpretation, if only because he likes it when his belle étoile affectionately teases him for being kind of a space cadet outside the office.)

Way: The Way of Empowerment.

Marceline: October 23rd, 1951. // Libra/Scorpio cusp (Leo Moon, Pisces Rising).

Day: The Day of Conflicting Destiny.

Week: The Week of Drama and Criticism.

Way: The Way of Extension.

Cusp: The Cusp of Drama and Criticism.

Technically, Marceline falls on the Libra side of the cusp here, but she’s right on the line.

Max: October 31st, 1978. // Scorpio (Scorpio Moon, Capricorn Rising).

Day: The Day of Attentiveness.

Week: The Week of Intensity.

Way: The Way of Grounding.

Max would really rather you didn’t remind him that he was born on Halloween. Like…… please don’t.

Unless you’re his daughter or his wife or maybe his sister, he probably won’t find it amusing

Ambrose: September 23rd, 1984. // Virgo (Virgo Moon, Aries Rising).

Day: The Day of the Breakthrough.

Week: The Week of Beauty.

Way: The Way of Modulation.

Cusp: The Cusp of Beauty.

Ambrose is, in fairness, right up on the cusp with Libra, but technically, he’s still on the Virgo side.

Sebastian: August 13th, 1985. // Leo (Cancer Moon, Pisces Rising).

Day: The Day of Long Odds.

Week: The Week of Leadership.

Which freaked him out, when his late cousin Jeremy was having an astrology phase and Seb had to hear this because Jeremy was one of his best friends, and ahahaha, no thank you, that’s not funny, Seb is not a leader or a role model or anything, why

Way: The Way of Grace.

Marie (Addie’s niece): July 9th, 2008. // Cancer (Libra Moon, Leo Rising).

Day: The Day of Dark Pragmatism.

Week: The Week of the Unconventional.

Way: The Way of Consideration.

Linda (Addie’s sister-in-law): May 13th, 1979. // Taurus (Sagittarius Moon, Scorpio Rising).

Day: The Day of Natural Appeal.

Week: The Week of the Natural.

Way: The Way of Solution.

Yes, I am slightly ashamed of how much time and thought I put into this, and into toggling my characters’ birth charts using the free chart-making things on alabe.com and astro.com — plus the book, The Secret Language of Birthdays, and their free app, for all of the, “Day of X,” “Week of Y” stuff — and of doing it all for no real purpose beyond, “I really like all these inane details,” “Sometimes, I get fun ideas from doing shit with these inane details,” and, “I want someone to see what I did here.”

But clearly, I am not nearly ashamed enough to stop doing it and/or at least not admit to it in public.

Species/Race & Ethnicity: Human (non-mutant). // White (French).

For the most part, the Moncrieffs have not lived in France since about 1781, when Addie and her brothers’ some-odd-great-grandfather sold off the family’s marquisate to join the Marquis de Lafayette in saving the American Revolution, then stayed an expat to find new opportunities.

The only exception to that is one ancestor who Seb is partly named after — partly because said ancestor’s name was Severin Sebastien vs. Sebastian Augustine, and partly because there have been other Sebastiens and Sebastians on the family tree — and he was only an exception because he stayed in Paris with his husband-in-all-but-tedious-legalities, and they eventually got involved in the French Revolution. Severin had no children, so the family in France died when he did.

Marceline’s family hasn’t been in France for several generations either.

This does not stop any of them from being ridiculously insistent on how French they are.

Addie has the most chill about it — which is particularly notable because she doesn’t really have any chill to speak of, ever and about most things — because she’s of the mind that bringing up the family’s French-ness is really only useful when it comes to matters of business, and more specifically, matters of advertising.

See, the Moncrieff family business is wine. The family’s first vineyard in the States is in upstate New York, and they have another in Maryland that was one of the big reasons why some of the family moved to the Baltimore area in the first place. Wine was the family business even before they came out to the States; a huge amount of land on the old ancestral holdings in Bordeaux was taken up by a vineyard.

Traditionally, most of the Moncrieff offspring go into the family business in some capacity.

This generation is sort of odd, in that regard, since Ambrose is a teacher, Sebastian is a mess, and only a handful of their odd cousins joined Max and Adelaide in going to work in the wine business.

(Max has been trying, fruitlessly, to get Seb to please, just come over here and take a job with the company, like. Not even a hard job, you can have a do-nothing desk job that has basically no expectations put on you, aside from you showing up and getting a haircut.

Although there are lulls between rounds of, “Sebastian, for God’s sakes, please stop being obstinate and just take the job,” Max has overall doubled-down on these efforts ever since his little brother went to rehab about a year and a half before the story starts, because dammit, he wants his brother to not die.

The big problem here is that Max is genuinely trying to help, but he’s coming at the whole issue from a place of, “It’s not as though Sebastian needs any of the money to be found in crime, he must need some guidance about what else to do with himself” — and he doesn’t get that this comes off as patronizing because he thinks that he’s being super-earnest about wanting to help his brother, so Seb’s constant refusals and exasperation make Max go, “?????”

[But to be fair, that’s not entirely his fault, since both of them have a problem of not trying hard enough to get on each other’s level, and getting several pieces wrong when they do try, and missing crucial pieces of information about each other’s situations.

So, it’s like…… Yeah, okay, Max isn’t doing great on his end, but Seb and his not-listening are part of the problem with everything, too.]

What Adelaide gets about all of this and Max doesn’t — largely because Seb is closer to her and has an easier time being open with her, so she knows more in general and has a better idea of how to listen and talk to him than their big brother does — is that although Max is sure that getting Seb a steady, reliable, non-criminal job would give him some much-needed stability, a job at the family business would do more harm than good.

Like, it would obviously be a position that he got by virtue of nepotism, which is pretty Not Good for someone who feels like he’s not qualified to be a person on a really basic level, much less anything else, so Seb would feel like shit for it, and he’d want to do a good job of everything but he would also feel like he couldn’t manage it.

Then, the routine and stability would be good for him, yes, but he wouldn’t be able to settle into them for long. He’d get bored and feel stifled and trapped, then hate himself for feeling stifled and trapped (and, “ungrateful,” which is how he’d put it, regardless of whether or not anyone else would agree), or he’d feel like it’s all too much pressure — especially given the whole, “he’s only here by virtue of nepotism, so he’d feel even more of a pressure to do well and like that standard is even more unreachable” — and he’d crumble under it.

Which would all be even Worse than the nepotism part of things, and Addie is trying to be understanding of how her big brother doesn’t get this shit about their little brother, and of how Seb doesn’t feel like he can communicate it to Max at all without making Max, “hate him more,” and of the way each of them think the other one hates him when that’s not true, it’s just that they’re doing a bullshit job of not-really-communicating with each other, and Addie gets it, she does

—but holy fuck, the both of you! you are ADULTS and she is your SISTER, not your trained message-carrying raven. Now do everyone a favor, get your shit together and TALK TO EACH OTHER instead of talking to her, and Ambrose, and Mom *ABOUT* each other

But anyway, as I was saying.

It’s sort of assumed by most people that Max will end up inheriting the position of CEO whenever Abe decides to retire, just like how Abe inherited it from his father.

Addie is probably Max’s biggest competition for the position, and she’s hellbent on not making it easy for him to just walk into it (which he’s not making easy for her in turn, because he has a huge chip on his shoulder about proving that he deserves the position and isn’t here solely because this is his family’s company and he’s the eldest son of the CEO, eldest grandson of the previous CEO, and so on, going all the way back to the some-odd great-grandfather who first started the company and Gaspard Maximilien Moncrieff, who wasn’t the firstborn son — since that was Severin — but who got the marquisate when his brother wouldn’t take it and first brought the family to America).

(Not that Max is deliberately making it hard for Adelaide to give him competition, here. He’s just dedicated, driven, determined, and very insecure about seeming like he’s at all incompetent or undeserving, or like he’s just an entitled rich kid who’s skating by on his family’s name — so, when you put that together with his aptitude, skills, and so on, he sets a really high bar for anyone to meet.

He’s aware of this, to some degree. He doesn’t get why Adelaide is his only sibling who feels like she’s up to the task of matching or beating him — though to be fair, it’s not that Ambrose thinks he couldn’t and more that he just doesn’t want to, vs. Seb, who definitely doesn’t think that he can live up to the examples set by any of his siblings, especially not Max’s — but still.)^^

Either way, Adelaide’s done some work she’s proud of with the company’s ad people, and she thinks there’s value in bringing up the family history in the company’s advertising. Partly, she thinks so because the family’s history is part of their brand, at this point. The company’s been around for long enough, and they’ve relied on the family’s history often enough, that part of what makes them stick out from other companies built around the production and sale of alcoholic beverages? is that their company can point at the Moncrieff name and at their history, and go, “Hey, look at our pedigree in making booze”

Mostly, though, Addie sees the value of family history here because it creates an easy appeal to authority and legacy:

e.g., “our family knows wine, so our company knows wine, and our wine is Quality™”

or, “our buckwheat single-malt is still made with the old ancestral recipe, handed down from the old marquisate in Bordeaux, first brought to us after this ancestor married that other noble family’s daughter from Brittany and the two of them learned how to grow better buckwheat and worked to refine the recipe — therefore, you can trust that we have a Quality™ product and you totally want to buy it now, don’t you?”

Otherwise, it’s like…… Yeah, okay. Addie sees the importance of her family’s history to them as a family — not least because Vigne Rêve (the family’s first estate in America, just outside of Poughkeepsie) is a National Historical Site, and they maintain a local museum there and everything, and if Addie has to endure another round of her grandfather and her baby brother arguing about some aspects of the museum and how it handles certain parts of history, she feels like she’s going to fucking scream

—but she doesn’t actually see the point in insisting on how French they are in most cases, like? To Americans, it makes the lot of them look pretentious. To French people, it tends to make them look completely ridiculous because none of them was born in France, none of them was raised in France, and Addie’s pretty sure that semi-regular trips to France while they were growing up (+ study abroad years in France, in her and Seb’s cases*) is not actually the same thing as legit growing up in France

So, Addie’s perspective is basically, “Seriously, fam. We’re not actually French, we’re Americans whose roots go back to France and the fact that Mom and Dad raised us speaking French at home as often as English — to the point that all four of us padded our college applications by taking the French language AP exams and SAT subject tests, and that Bastian can tell you he’s an idiot while reading Proust in the original French because, ‘none of the English translations get it right’ and this legitimately doesn’t faze him or strike him as weird or intellectually intensive? None of that changes how we are not actually French.”

(*: Max and Ambrose also did study abroad programs, but Ambrose went to Oxford for a conventional study abroad year — like what Seb and Addie did with their Paris programs — while Max went to DIS Copenhagen, did a summer program at the London School of Economics, and had a summer internship in Berlin through IES Abroad.)

Guilty Pleasures: Mint chocolate, pineapple on pizza, soft pretzels, arguing for the sake of arguing, deliberately (but playfully) winding up her brothers for no purpose beyond, “but they’re so cute when they’re wound up” (she really doesn’t mean this to hurt anyone, which is why she doesn’t do it to Seb that much anymore, and why she tries to steer clear of any genuinely sore or sensitive spots with all of them), finding excuses to stop by Seb’s place because she doesn’t feel like cooking today and he likes feeling useful and needed so maybe she can sweet-talk him into making her dinner (she can. she always can. she doesn’t even need to sweet-talk him, really; she just does that because she enjoys the sweet-talking aspect), binge-watching reruns of Law and Order: SVU, Catching All-Stars (the reality show about America’s premier superhero team), and Project Runway.

Phobias: Failure; not finding out what her full potential is and then actualizing it; (but at the same time) pulling an Icarus because she tried too hard or tried to go too far or opened the Ancient Tome Of Horrible Knowledge, Of Which Humanity Was Not Meant To Know, or something like that; loneliness; the CN Tower in Toronto — or, more specifically, the glass walk in the CN Tower, where logically, you know that you’re safe because you’re inside and the pod is secure, but you look down and the glass lets you see the ground and your brain goes, “DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER DANGER YOU’RE GOING TO FALL”; extreme physical heights in general tbh, though she’ll tell you that it’s not the heights she minds, but the threat of falling off of them (and she’ll cite amusement park rides as evidence, telling you how she doesn’t mind rollercoasters but can’t stand drop rides like the Tower of Terror at Disneyland).

What They Would Be Famous For: Well, she isn’t overly famous or anything, but she is actually fairly well-known in-universe, already, at least in certain circles.

On one hand, Addie can sometimes turn up in the, “society” pages of different gossip blogs or publications like the New York Post and Page Six. This is true of her parents, siblings, and some of her cousins, too, because their family is well-off and essentially minor nobility — just… y’know, this is still set in America, where we largely don’t acknowledge that we have our own de facto systems of nobility, even though we do.

This doesn’t happen to Addie herself all that often, unless:

there’s something big going on that the family’s involved in^^^

they sort of wandered into something that’s a big deal to social voyeurs, even if it isn’t a huge deal to them (like the one time, when Addie was at Barnard, when she dated the son of a Massachusetts senator who was tapped as a potential recruit to the All-Stars)

or it’s a slow news day

But she sometimes shows up in the society pages because of something or other involving whatever higher-profile trouble Seb’s gotten himself into this week

On the other hand, she’s getting a name for herself as part of the family business. Like, a few months before the story starts, she, Max, and Abe had an interview for a fairly big deal feature piece in Fortune, Addie commands a pretty decent amount of respect among business partners, and some people know her from that, even if it isn’t necessarily, “being famous” as such.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Well, there were a few times in undergrad when she only dodged a, “drunk and disorderly” charge by virtue of being a rich white girl. But generally speaking, Adelaide is, if not well-behaved, then at least not doing anything illegal or (ostensibly) too horribly irresponsible.

Unlike their self-destructive trouble-magnet baby brother, and their middle brother whose idea of a wild time would be spending so long in a really well-stocked library that he skips two meals and possibly gets locked in, Addie and Max are proponents of the, “stay within the letter of the law while violating the spirit of it” school of misbehavior

As well as being fairly well-practiced in it, both of them generally prefer to do so when it’s either for a good reason and/or working to a good end, or the infractions involved as so small that no one will actually care enough to do anything (and I’m talking like, “who took the cookie from the cookie jar” small, not like, “bored rich kids trying to justify shoplifting by being all, ‘whatever, it was just one pair of earrings’ or whatever”).

OC You Ship Them With: Margot, but it remains to be seen if that’s going to go anywhere beyond, “I like them individually, I think their interactions with each other are fun, they hit a lot of shipper trash buttons for me personally, and since I’m their writer, I could totally just make it canon if I wanted. I dunno if I want to yet, but I could.”

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: I’m honestly not sure.

Thing is, Addie can be an irksome little gadfly when she wants to be, but she generally doesn’t irritate anyone enough to actually want to murder her, and while she’s loosely affiliated with the story’s main superheroes by virtue of being close with her baby brother and Pete, she technically isn’t a member of the team and doesn’t want to be.

If she did end up targeted by supervillains, it would probably be either a coincidence (as in, “she wasn’t actually targeted, but statistically speaking, if you happen to live in a universe that has supervillains, there’s always a chance that you will end up in the crossfire of one of their attacks, like Max almost was during this one incident in Manhattan back in December 1997, i.e. the end of his first semester at Columbia”), or because Seb and/or Pete fucked up and got identified by a villain who didn’t promptly end up either dead or in custody.

So……… yeah. I don’t know. Good question.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Dude, as long as it’s not going to demand a lot of thinking or attentiveness for her to enjoy it, Addie probably doesn’t care very much. Not like she tries to shut down any debates about the deeper meaning of pop culture or anything, but if she’s going to be reading or watching something for fun, then she’s looking for brain candy that she doesn’t feel like she has to pay a lot of attention to.

Vintage cartoons and “fill in the blanks” genre novels — like, potboiler noir knock-off detective stories, “what if it were like a sci-fi detective story with vampires or some shit,” and so on — are a common source of joy for her.

The ASOIAF books, she only read because Sebastian promised her that GRRM’s writing style isn’t particularly dense, and she’ll acquiesce that the books have the better story, but if she’s going to do anything with that universe, then sorry, brother, but she’s going to watch Game of Thrones, because if you ask her, it’s pretty much just a ridiculous, trash soap opera with more nudity, more dragons, and an actual production budget.

And she may not know more about Star Trek or Star Wars than you because Addie doesn’t want to actually engage with their fandoms or expanded universes or anything, but she can likely rattle off exact quotations or plot summaries better than you can, because the SW movies and TOS are good brain candy background noise, in her mind.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Alleged “love stories” that consist entirely of some dude bullying some girl, and then they hook up because of reasons or something (the relationship between Judd Nelson’s and Molly Ringwald’s characters in The Breakfast Club is Addie’s usual point of reference for what she’s talking about here).

Talents and/or Powers: Well, she doesn’t have superpowers, but some of her mundane powers include, but are not limited to: motivating pep-talks that are sweet yet simultaneously kind of abrasive; multitasking (she’s not as good at is she thinks she is, and tbh, she probably should’ve been diagnosed with ADHD at some point*); remembering the details that you probably wish that she’d forget but spacing on some of the ones you want her to remember; being the absolute worst person to go with her baby brother to make sure that he doesn’t try to adopt every single dog at the ASPCA, because she’ll be right there with him going, “oh no, they’re so cute, we should take all of them home”; getting way too intense when she’s playing foosball, racquetball, Mario Kart, or literally anything else that has a competitive aspect; being the cool aunt who’s down for everything and can be a responsible chaperone while making it seem like she’s a BFF, rather than a babysitter; and looking bomb as Hell in a suit.

*: the fact that she hasn’t been diagnosed with ADHD is even more glaring in light of this one instance when she was at Barnard, when she went to a party where Adderall was available and being offered to people, she took some, and instead of getting high, she got the sudden, abrupt clarity that comes when you’ve been living with brain-static for your entire life and haven’t realized that this is not just a normal part of life that literally everyone experiences.

……Except then, Addie didn’t connect the dots here, or talk about this to anyone to compare notes on what happens when you take Adderall without having ADHD, and she went back to thinking the brain-static was just a normal part of life. She does wonder sometimes, because her mind wanders too much and onto too many tracks for her not to wonder, but she’s 35 and still doesn’t think she might be even a little bit ADHD.

Like, if you pressed her, you would eventually hit a wall where she has to admit that her rationale here is essentially, “Because of reasons” and the reasons do not exist. But that’s sort of a point because no one’s pressed her about this.

Unfortunately, one of the people who could probably help her the most (Sebastian, because he has more experience with psychoactive substances than his big sister does) has never heard the story of this night, and these days, Addie would be reluctant to bring it up to him, for fear of “triggering” him in a way that might mean screwing up his sobriety.

(note: I use the, “scare quotes” here not to question the concept of triggering, but to illustrate that Adelaide…… sorta doesn’t know what she’s talking about, right now.

Like, she understands the concept of triggers and triggering someone, and her understanding is more or less accurate, but when it comes to her baby brother and his well-being, she blows it a little out of proportion.

Meaning: when Seb is involved, her understanding of how triggers work gets hypervigilant and excessive about the power that triggers have over people, to the extent that you usually only see among people who are trying to go, “checkmate, sjws!!!” by presenting shit as like, “triggers are a way of blaming you for someone else’s mistakes because you said the word, ‘assault,’ it made them angry, and they decapitated a bunch of baby seals with a chainsaw and it’s all your fault, how very dare you use words, you horrible person, blah blah blah, don’t respect people’s ~so-called~ triggers because they’re just a bunch of whiny piss-babies, etc. etc. etc.”

I mean, her heart is in the right place, but Addie sort of hasn’t put it together that simply saying phrases like, “pharm party” or, “junky” around Sebastian isn’t a magic spell that will compel him to go get high.

Further unfortunately, Seb has only vaguely realized that she’s doing this, so he waffles between, “I don’t even know if I’m actually seeing a trend or if I’m ‘just being sensitive’ and imagining things” and, “ugh, if I’m not imagining things, I can’t call her on it. She’s trying to help, and I appreciate that, so I don’t want to make her feel bad.”

She also kinda hasn’t realized that talking about drugs and alcohol in general is also not a magic spell that will make Seb go out and use — which he has noticed more clearly**, but still hasn’t called her on, even though Pete’s pointed out to him that it’s kind of ridiculous because:

“Princess, what the fuck does she think we talk about at meetings [of AA and NA]? Our burgeoning collections of vintage Barbie Dream-Houses or something?”

and, “Seriously. Part of why we see Genevieve [Seb’s and Pete’s therapist] is for help staying clean, which generally requires that we talk about our drugs of choice at least a little bit. Does? Does Adelaide think that we — an unreasonably tall, unfathomably kind, and unfairly down on himself addict, and a witty, abrasive, temperamental, but resilient, insightful, and devastatingly good-looking addict — don’t talk to our therapist about being fucking addicts? I’m just???? WHAT.”

—but, still. She’s trying to help, she is just…… being sort of overprotective and misguided about the particular way in which she’s going about it. Whoops.)

(**: He might not have noticed, if the, “Adelaide is averse to and skittish about talking about drinking, getting high, parties or partying, or any of that with Seb, these days” thing had stayed a series of vaguely similar, disconnected incidents, like her aversion to brining up drugs and alcohol with him.

But it’s sort of difficult to miss this when your big sister:

catches you, slightly over a month sober for the eleventh time now, and trying to break the new high-tech lock on the liquor cabinet in your Dad’s study, a few hours into his birthday party [and getting absolutely nowhere because it’s a really good lock with multiple redundancies, designed to make someone get frustrated and give up on breaking past it, which is why Abe and Marceline picked it];

notices that you’re barely even fully aware of what you were doing until she startles you and brings you back around;

sees that you’re deeply upset by this, not because you got caught, but because you really are serious about staying clean, but then shit like this happens and it makes you feel like maybe you’re not serious about it, or maybe you’re too weak for it, and it all sort of makes you feel like you’re gaslighting yourself;

tells you to talk it out at her if you need to;

listens attentively, and hugs you while you cry on her shoulder;

……and then still can’t actually contribute to the conversation without stumbling over trying to find a bunch of euphemisms for drinking and getting high, apologizing for saying things like, “getting high,” “using,” “getting wasted,” and so on

………and when asked about why she’s sorry for saying phrases that tend to be commonplace in your life, making up some rationale about how you’re already upset and she didn’t want to make it worse

…………and then, before you can point out that you wouldn’t be upset about her using the phrase, “getting drunk,” abruptly changing the subject to ask if you want her to go ask Mom and Dad to put the alcohol away for the rest of the night so you don’t have to watch other people drink when you’re feeling upset and vulnerable.

Why Someone Might Love Them: …it’s past 1 AM on Wednesday, I’ve been writing this since Monday afternoon, and I’m seriously blanking on how to answer both this question and the next one.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: …so, while I feel bad about skipping them because it’s such a cop-out, I’m still going to skip them because I’m tired and I’m blanking on how to answer these, and *whines while making vague gestures at my bag of pretzels*

How They Change: This part, I’m sort of making up as I go and really don’t have hashed out yet, because Addie is one of my favorite secondary characters, but she’s still a secondary character. If this were a TV show, she’d be a colorful recurring cast member, but not a, “main cast member in all but name” recurring like Tara on Buffy, Isaac on Teen Wolf, or Kevin on Riverdale.

So…… I’m experimenting and kinda, “vibe-ing it” with Addie and where she’s going to go, at the moment.

But at least I have the integrity enough to admit that I’m “vibe-ing it,” instead of acting like it’s entirely intentional, I say, totally not casting a judgmental sidelong glance at JK Rowling for any reason whatsoever, nope, not me, I would never.

Why You Love Them: okay, full disclosure, I’ve been writing this since yesterday (and if I don’t get this posted ’til it’s technically Wednesday, I mean that I’ve been writing it since Monday), with only periodic breaks to sleep, or eat, or regroup because I could feel my thought processes getting messier than usual, or space out to cartoons for a bit.

So, my ability to bullshit is a little tapped right now, and all I’ve got for this answer is, “idk, I just think she’s fun, like? She’s loving but obnoxious, principled but still someone who winds her brothers up about pineapple on pizza just because they’re so cute when they’re wound up, probably the sort of person who would end up chasing a white whale while making deliberate references to Moby Dick and lampshading that this is a terrible fucking idea but continuing to do it anyway, and??? idk, I just really enjoy her.”

^: This point isn’t actually a legal name or anything, so much as something that’s important to Addie anyway (even though she’s a Catholic in name only, like she’s barely even a “Christmas and Easter” Catholic), but she picked Saint Monica as her Confirmation namesake.

She did this entirely because Monica was Augustine’s mom, and Addie thought that Seb would probably pick Augustine for his own Confirmation saint because Max picked John the Baptist as his saint.

See, for a long time, when they were growing up, Seb wanted to be Max, so Addie felt like, “why wouldn’t he follow Max’s example and just pick his middle-namesake.”

The endgame in this idea was that Seb never would’ve been able to go, “You’re not my MOM!” at her, because Addie could pull out a ridiculous misapplication of Church doctrine to go, “WELL TECHNICALLY, LITTLE BROTHER” and she’d win because Seb is genuinely devout, so she thought he’d just go with it

Then Seb went and chose John of the Cross, contemplative mystic and author of The Dark Night of The Soul, for his Confirmation saint, and by that time, Addie had forgotten her plan anyway because she was too busy with the early stages of college applications, competition season with the debate team and Model U.N. team, and about fifteen other things.

^^: …This footnote is seriously just here because I can’t help Hogwarts Sorting all of my OC’s and I got thinking about it while writing that answer and its spiel about ambition, proving oneself, meeting challenges and the like, so here we are.

Max: SLYTHERIN primary, GRYFFINDOR secondary.

Max would, along with Addie, most likely end up being a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Hat-Stall. But Max would ultimately end up in the Snake Pit, rather than the Lion’s Den, by virtue of his values, rather than his behaviors or personality traits, exactly.

I mean, his personality and behaviors definitely fit better with how people perceive Slytherin overall — like, if he wound up in Gryffindor, he would be very much a Percy Weasley-model Gryffindor, who’s intellectual but not as invested in learning for its own sake as Hermione, Remus, or a Ravenclaw, and really fixated on Doing Cool Shit or Doing Great Things, to the point that his ambition can overshadow the values and ideals that underlie and guide it

(so much so that people would rather try to argue that Percy should’ve been a Slytherin, rather than actually asking why he’s a Gryffindor or examining what him being in Gryffindor means about Gryffindor, Slytherin, and the Sorting system overall)

Where Max differs from Percy, though, is that all of his ideals are important to him, and he does care about Doing The Right Thing (which he usually conflates with doing the thing that’s best for everyone, or as close to it as possible, which is where his Hufflepuff points come from) — but Max values ambition, determination, and cunning more than he values courage and daring and nerve.

So, y’know, a Slytherin version of the reason why Percy and Wormtail aren’t Slytherins (Percy values courage, nobility, daring, and moral righteousness more than ambition and so on, while Peter values boldness, self-righteousness, and being a big, obnoxious, grandstanding bully, which is why he could go from allying himself with James and Sirius [who were bullies like that] to joining Lord Tom-mort Voldingdong [who is, without question, the biggest example of a bully like this in the entire series, because Heir of Slytherin or not, he would’ve done as well in Gryffindor as Harry would’ve done in Slytherin], and not see these stances as contradicting each other)

Or a Slytherin version of the reason why Neville is a Gryffindor and not a Hufflepuff (by trying to push for Hufflepuff because he felt like it would involve less pressure and he wouldn’t be a failboat who didn’t live up to Hufflepuff’s values, he shows that he places a higher value on the traits that Gryffindor looked for in his students than any of Helga Hufflepuff’s ideals)

Basically, what this means for Max is that he does fixate a lot on the morality, the rightness or lack thereof, and so on of what he does, and he does hit several points where Gryffindor and Slytherin canonically overlap with each other (determination and conviction, a distaste for being told what to do, a tendency to come off like a complete asshole, a habit of slipping into a self-aggrandizing mindset that goes like, “I’m right, you’re wrong, my way of doing things is inherently better than yours, and there’s nothing you can you can do about it,” a tendency to assume that he knows what’s best for people more than they do, and “a certain disregard for rules”)

(though you’d be forgiven for not guessing the last point, since Max ostensibly seems like he’s a total stickler for the rules and would probably make out with a student conduct handbook

—but Max’s take here is generally, “A lot of these rules are actively counterproductive. Yes, a lot of rules serve a purpose and help make things better for everyone, because complete anarchy is fundamentally, completely unsustainable and would probably end up reenacting the Reign of Terror because humans are bastards. Bastards with the potential to do better, yes, but most of us choose not to, and trying to instate anarchy — whether it’s in the sense of complete disorder, or actual political anarchy — based on idealistic hopes, rather than acknowledging the material reality and humanity’s established precedents will do more harm than good.

“However, a LOT of rules are either fundamentally wrong — such as the legislation that used to punish people for having consensual same-sex intercourse — or are greatly misapplied in ways that are wrong. Or, they just don’t do anything beyond pointlessly regulating things that don’t actually need to be regulated. There are some things that it’s silly to fight because it would be a waste of time and energy — such as people telling you to type things in a certain font — but there are others where you can and should ignore and/or flout them because they’re asinine.”)

…and what makes Max more Slytherin is that. in the breaking rules example, he would advocate for people to break the rules more cleverly and with more cunning than just going, “look at me, I am defying the rules!” There are smaller ways of protesting, or maneuvering within the letter of the law in order to defy the spirit of it, and Max would favor those approaches to situations because they’re less likely to get you caught, which means you have a better chance of being able to affect more change over a longer period of time.

More generally, though, it would come down to how he would sooner compromise somewhat on the ideals to get something done, and then try to improve that something once it’s out there. Likewise, he thinks that ideals, values, morals, and ethics are great, but you need to back them up with action and ambition, or else they’re meaningless — so, the drive and determination of Slytherin are more important to him than all of the self-righteous moralizing and, “who actually cares about pragmatism, we have ideals and a Cause” shit of Gryffindor.

Finally, while he definitely believes in some versions of The Greater Good, Max wouldn’t prioritize The Greater Good above all else.

Like, for one thing, he wouldn’t put it above the human element (e.g., he wouldn’t leave Harry in an abusive home, and if he had to keep Snape at Hogwarts for some reason, he would still try to get Snape help, rather than taking advantage of how damaged he is and manipulating him in service of some, “Greater Good,” and thus, he wouldn’t let Snape get away with whatever the Hell he wants as a professor, since Max wouldn’t have any guilt to assuage by letting Snape have more or less complete carte blanche to be a douchebag to children, and he would understand that any alleged lessons that kids could learn from having an asshole teacher wouldn’t be worth it compared to what they can get out of having a more positive learning environment)

For another, while Max would believe in The Greater Good, in the utilitarian sense of trying to create the most good for as many people as possible, he would be pretty exasperated by the idealistic, pie in the sky, “there is almost definitely no way that you can actualize this in the real world, and trying to pursue it without room for constructive compromise” sense of The Greater Good, and he would negotiate hard — and not be above manipulation, word-twisting, and so on — but he’d still rather try to find a compromise (within reason), than be an absolutist who gets nothing done

Adelaide: GRYFFINDOR primary, SLYTHERIN secondary.

The other Moncrieff Hat-Stall, and much like her brother’s Slytherin Sorting, Addie’s Gryffindor Sorting would ultimately come down to her values and priorities. And much like Max, probably no one would believe, at first, that she was almost a Slytherin, because she would seem so undeniably Gryffindor that the idea of her being in Slytherin would seem like a really bad joke.

Contrariwise, if she’d wound up in Slytherin, then she’d probably adapt to it well enough to do well there and find a way to flourish, but there would probably end up being some kind of disconnect between her and a lot of her Housemates, because she would definitely be all like, “Fuck, man, I want to win the match against Ravenclaw (or whoever) too, but I want to win because we’re genuinely better than the other team, not because we cheated. If we can’t prove that we’re better by working hard and beating them fairly, then we don’t deserve to win but we *do* deserve to be put in our place by losing, period.”

Also, she’d probably end up being more of a loner within her own House, rather than playing into all of the ridiculous miniature games of thrones that we Slytherins no doubt get up to, trying to vie for social status and then exert it over each other.

As far as most people would ever hear, Addie just refuses to play those games because she thinks they’re a stupid waste of time, but the reality is a little bit more nuanced.

On one hand, she would kind of have moral objections to those games of social status and lording it over each other (because the whole point of a House is to promote togetherness of people who should work better with each other than with members of other Houses because they share similar values, not to create sub-hierarchies about who’s better than whom and start treating each other like status objects and tools to gain it).

But on the other, there would definitely be an element of, “screw you guys, I’m going home” or, “I’ll make my own theme park! With black jack! And sex workers!!” because Addie doesn’t fucking want to kowtow to some smug, smarmy little shits like Draco, Pansy, Narcissa, Lucius, or Tom-mort Voldingdong Riddle

—which would have a mix of Slytherin motivations (she doesn’t want to lick boot because she’s better than that and fuck you, that’s why; she doesn’t want to follow someone else’s directions and be their courtier because fuck you, Martha, you can’t tell her what to do), and Gryffindor ones (most of the people involved in these games within Slytherin House tend to be assholes with whom Addie would have many serious moral objections, and fuck you, she’s not going to play nicely with them just because they’re Malfoys or Parkinsons or whoever).

(Basically, I see Addie’s objections to the intra-Slytherin social gaming nonsense as being kind of in the same, “Any man who must say, ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all” vein (with apologies to GRRM and Tywin Lannister), as my headcanon Theodore Nott’s objections to Draco’s bullying bullshit behavior patterns, just without the lack of challenging fundamentally Blood Purist assumptions under the guise of supporting meritocracy.

Like, my headcanon Theodore gets on Draco’s case and tells him not to be such a ridiculous, bullying little shit because it’s “demeaning for someone of his status” and, if he truly believes in the power that they have by virtue of being wealthy white Pureblooded young men, then Draco has no need to try and assert his superiority or dominance by tormenting people who are so far beneath them and disadvantaged in ways that they are not. All it does is make people think that he’s weak, especially when he goes on about being so powerful and so strong but then runs crying to Snape or Umbridge or whoever as soon as Potter, Granger, Longbottom, and their pet Weasleys fight back — which shows that Draco cannot back up his threats on his own and suggests that he might not be deserving of his superior position because he might not actually be better than those whom he would rule and subjugate.

Addie, on the other hand, would look at all of the intra-Slytherin social gaming nonsense and self-aggrandizing, bullying bullshit behaviors and go, “Okay, so you’re all essentially a bunch of tiny, dumb-ass birds who are puffing up their chests, spreading their tail feathers as far as possible, jumping around while making obnoxious, annoying shrieking noises, and so on, in an attempt at seeming bigger and more threatening than you actually are. If you need to reaffirm that you have power by harassing people and hurting them, trying to cow them into submission, then you don’t deserve to have power. I’m not going to play into your games when you are really just sad, pathetic, and ultimately insignificant. Run along.”)

But anyway, as I was saying: Addie would wind up getting Sorted into Gryffindor because she values nerve, daring, boldness, Doing The Right Thing (or at least sticking to some sense of internally derived values and beliefs, if you don’t get on a moral high-horse about it being Completely Right And So There Because Fuck You That’s Why), and so on more than all of the Slytherin traits she has or values she shares.

Like, she’s someone who wants to win, and would push herself and her team to ridiculous lengths in order to win (like, Addie, honey? Oliver Wood called and he said you should chill), and she would utilize cunning when she comes up with different strategies for how they could win… but she wouldn’t advocate or allow for any cheating.

She wouldn’t, because according to her, if you win by cheating, then you aren’t really winning. It doesn’t count, she wouldn’t find it satisfying, and she would absolutely judge someone who did find it any kind of satisfying because how the fuck even can you enjoy a so-called “win” that is tantamount to admitting that you should have lost.

Which is, admittedly, a bit of a complicated point.

Like, the “disregard for rules [coupled with a tendency to be okay with them when you’re the one making them]” bit of both Houses isn’t being threatened either way, but on one hand, Addie’s objection to cheating has a Gryffindor sense of valuing the game itself, but she values the game out of a Slytherin’s drive to win. On the other, it’s definitely a Gryffindor’s morally self-righteous objection to cheating, but it’s also based in a Slytherin’s drive to prove yourself and be the very best, like no one ever was.

What ultimately makes this more of a Gryffindor point, to me, is that both Gryffindor and Slytherin ultimately do believe that some people are just better than others, and certainly don’t object to getting in people’s faces to go, “ha ha, I’m better than you” for whatever justifications someone pulls out for this (whether overtly, like James, Sirius, Draco, Tom-mort, Bellatrix, Harry when he takes Draco’s bait, and the list goes on

or more subtly, like most of Snape’s put-downs for people and Albus “paragon of virtue” Dumbledore being all like, “Hagrid, you’re not allowed to keep feeling bad that Rita Skeeter outed you as a half-giant because she’s trash and you are better than this” or, “My brother Aberforth challenges me and won’t let me manipulate him, so I’m going to make snide little comments about his maybe being illiterate and maybe having sex with goats when he’s not here to defend himself, because ugh, I’m right and he’s wrong and why doesn’t he just agree with me about things”)

—but Gryffindor House’s way of doing this is usually more grounded in some kind of underlying sense of moral self-righteousness that Gryffindors genuinely believe in.

Like, James is weird among Gryffindors, when he flat-out says that he’s tormenting and publicly humiliating Snape just because he exists. Most Gryffindors have some kind of moral justification for being shitty to people, like how Hermione hexes the D.A.’s sign-up sheet, even knowing that Umbridge is okay with torturing students, because if someone rats the rest of them out, then they deserve to have ‘SNEAK’ magically break out on their face.

But for all Slytherins will have some kind of underlying belief that we’re better than whomever we’re being shitty to (whether we deserve to have it or not, and in fairness, we probably won’t), and we might bullshit a justification for it… but unless we’ve really sold ourselves on our own bullshit (which, unfortunately, plenty of us have), we won’t believe those justifications. We will know that we’re being shitty to people and that it is, in most cases, nowhere even close to being right or justified, and we’ll do it anyway.

—Which is all relevant to Addie’s opinions about cheating because she does genuinely believe that whether or not to cheat is a matter of moral fiber, and that choosing not to cheat means that, even if you lose, you’re still better than someone else who would choose cheating instead of doing the work to be the best, and she would rather have the moral high-ground of not cheating than the win.

Make no mistake: she still absolutely wants the fuck to win, but… It’s like she says, “Winning by cheating doesn’t count because it isn’t really winning. It’s tantamount to admitting that you should have damned well lost. Either win with honor, or suck it up and lose.”

So, yeah. The Gryffindor and Slytherin are both strong in her, but the Gryffindor does ultimately win out by enough to count.

For another example: Addie wouldn’t rule out subterfuge or sneaky ways of doing things — like Max, she could get behind working within the letter of the law while defying the spirit of it, if she thought that was a more or less right choice — but in order for her to do so, there would need to be some kind of Cause, some kind of Greater Good, some kind of moral or idealistic justification, and/or some kind of larger endgame goal that she can’t accomplish through any other means (or if those other means would do more harm than good).

Aside from that, if this was a prolonged amount of sneaking or a particularly underhanded form of subterfuge, Addie would probably spend the whole time complaining on and off to someone, even just her journal or Ambrose (because she knows that he understands when she’s just venting without any plans to actually go against the plan and won’t get personally hurt, like Seb might, or get offended and argue back at her, like Max), and all of her complaints would be about how she sees the point of the sneaking but would much rather do it some other way where they could be more direct instead of manipulative and sneaky.

Like, manipulation has a place and she’s overall totally fine with using it — and she would agree without question that it’s better to use subterfuge and manipulation than to just beat the shit out of people until they either say they’ll play by your rules or die — but she’d rather get the Right Thing done out in the open. She doesn’t doubt that, sometimes, the Right Thing has to be quieter or underground, and this doesn’t make it any less Right or any less brave, but it sucks when you can’t be open and honest about it.

(Which is where most of her Hufflepuff points end up coming from. Her sense of ethics and commitment to honesty might not be that strong — and she is definitely more committed to both of those things on moral grounds than a more Hufflepuff reason like, “it’s called not being a dick to people, you should try it” — but they do exist.)

Like, with Adelaide, we’re talking about someone who looked at the situation where her baby brother had just nearly killed himself twice over and wound up hospitalized twice within a single week — once for an OD that might’ve been intentional or could’ve been an accident, he legitimately had no idea; and then again for inexplicably (as far as they knew) passing out and falling backwards down the stairs at their parents’ house — where everyone in Seb’s life was on the same page about him needing professional help and wanting him to go to rehab, and everyone knew that he was going to be difficult about it, at best, because he had insisted to all of them that he was fine, even after that particular series of events…

…and still went, “Okay, but do we really need to lie to him in order to get him to the intervention? Look, I get it that he’s lied to all of us more than enough times that we can feel like it’s justified to tell him one little lie that’s hopefully going to be good for him in the end — but it might not end up being good for him. If we catch him off-guard, it might make him get defensive, and it make him start pushing back at us and lashing out instead of letting us try to help him. He could hurt himself more than he already has, or he could hurt someone else, whether he means to or not, and just? It could do more harm than good to lie to him and we might end up hurting him with that deception without it accomplishing anything.”

……and who only wound up relenting about that because: 1. she was given permission to not go help Pete, Margot, and Ambrose get Seb up to Abe and Marceline’s place for the intervention, and thus, Addie didn’t have to lie to Seb herself;

and 2. Pete gave her a few minutes after she stormed out onto her parents’ back deck, then followed her, and despite being pretty high himself at that particular moment — and really only getting away with it because only Margot and Todd could tell for sure, and neither of them was saying anything right then — sat with Addie and gave her a Talk about how he didn’t like the idea of lying to Seb to get him to the intervention either

—“I mean, it’s like you said: lying could go really, very badly for all of us, especially him. And more importantly, to me at least? My Princess values honesty so much that he asked your Mom for permission to sneak some of your parents’ good booze to our unofficial Into the Woods cast party, back at St. Andrew’s, instead of just taking it from the cabinet which is what I would’ve done, because he felt like it would be a better decision for everyone if your Mom knew that we were going to be drinking.

“Once, I had to listen to him agonize for, like, ten days about whether or not it was okay for him to put up a front of being a dick to some ex-boy of yours, because you hadn’t listened to him about his honest reasons for not liking the douche, he didn’t have any proof that you were believing him about at the time, and he accepted that he was going to have a hand in something that would hurt you because dumping someone or getting dumped does tend to suck like that, but he didn’t want to do you any additional hurt through that deception.

“Even worse? He values honesty so much that he gives people the benefit of the doubt when he really fucking shouldn’t, I mean? How many times have we had to hear him say some shit about how Josh was really serious about treating him better this time? Or how Rémy said that he didn’t put anything in Seb’s drink, Seb just got plastered like a cast model of David Lee Roth’s dick and blacked out, and that seemed legit because that’s something that he would do? Or how Mark apologized and he seemed really upset about hurting Seb, so Seb was going to trust him again?

“The downside of this for those of us who don’t treat him like shit for fun or because we’re insecure about our dick size or because our parents were mean to us, or whatever sob story any of his exes has ever sold him on? The downside for us, is that we know that lying to Seb, even for his own damn good? Is going to hurt him. He’ll probably end up blaming himself more than us, after being angry with us for a little while, but that’s really not much better and he’s still going to be hurt.

“But the thing is? There really isn’t a way to do this — this meaning the intervention, and rehab, and getting him to accept help? We can’t do that without hurting him, at least a little bit.

“Your brother is the best friend I’ve ever had in my life, Addie, and I, the gayest of all possible gays, would rather have sex with my own sister than willingly, deliberately do anything to hurt him. But there isn’t a way to do this without us telling him things that he doesn’t want to hear, which will absolutely hurt him in the short-term, because he’s an emotionally sensitive marshmallow and, at first, everything we have to say is going to sound like we’re calling him a fuck-up, accusing him of deliberately hurting us, and confirming all the self-degrading bullshit that he believes about himself.

“It’s going to hurt him and it’s going to suck for all of us, but we need to do it, because every other thing we’ve tried to make him care about what he’s doing to himself? Hasn’t fucking worked. And being above-board with him about it? Hasn’t fucking worked.

“Know why it hasn’t worked? Because he doesn’t want to hear what we want to tell him, and unfortunately, he is really good at showing us enough of what we want to see that we back off. Because we want him to be okay, and we want to believe him when he says he is, and whether he’s taking advantage of that intentionally, or just freaking out and falling back on shit that he knows will work? It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is that he straight up doesn’t give a fuck about whether he lives or dies, and we need to get with the program and stop using kid gloves techniques.

“And yeah, it sucks to realize that that’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear it, and when it’s on your own time? You can believe all you want that Max was making shit up, exaggerating, or misconstruing things in the whole, ‘I told him he was going to die, and he said, “So the fuck what”’ story — but you aren’t on your own time right now. We’re on, ‘trying to save your brother from himself’ time now, and we have to act like it.

“But, for what it’s worth? Personally? I believe Max. I don’t know how many times Bastian’s almost died have been accidental or intentional or whatever, but I know my Princess, I know that he has deliberately tried to kill himself more than once, and I know that he’s thought about dying by suicide more than he wants any of us to know. Know how I know that? Because I’ve been his friend for almost fifteen years and I’ve lost count of how many times he has said or done something that, if it wasn’t just outright and obviously suicidal, then we can see it leaning that way, if we look at it in retrospect.

“And I feel like rancid, microwaved vomit for how badly I’ve fucked up in trying to handle things as they came up with him, but I wanted so fucking badly to believe that, even when things were rough for him, he had enough of us on his team who could help him and, no matter what happened with anybody else, he’d always have me. He’s done so much for me, he’s gotten me through some of the worst shit in my life, he’s been there for me when I didn’t feel like I had anybody else, whether I did or not, and It was like a matter of pride to be there for him in the same way.

“He’s my best friend, Adelaide. I was supposed to be able to find the magical combination of things I could do or say for him to make him get better or at least keep him from getting worse. Admitting that I couldn’t? Sucked. It sucked so badly that I ignored all my instincts until the second time he wouldn’t admit that Mark had put him in the ER. After that? It’s been a few months of me trying to nudge him into getting help and being, by my standards, perfectly above-board about it.

“Not that I’ve lied to him about it, but I’ve tried being subtle, like trying to gently lead him to the, ‘You need help’ conclusion in a way where he’d think it was all his own idea. I’ve tried being telling him outright that he’s hurting himself in ways that he is better than and telling him that I love him and want better for him than that. I’ve tried being all, ‘Please don’t you dare die on me, I would be a fucking mess if I lost you.’ About the only thing I haven’t tried is telling him that he is hurting me right here, right now, because I’ve been terrified of it going sideways on us and making him get worse instead of better.

“I know I’m not alone in this, either. Todd was trying it before he got clean, and he’s been trying it even more since he got back from rehab. Everyone in this house has tried talking to him, except for Linda and Marie, and you can’t blame Linda when he still gets skittish around her without her even needing to be mad at him, and you can’t blame Marie because she’s five.

“Addie, we have all given Sebastian innumerable fucking chances to do this without lying and ambushing him into an intervention, and it has. not. fucking. *worked*.

“At this point, yeah. We are the taking a huge risk by deceiving him, even in the name of helping him. But if we don’t take that risk, then everything about how this has gone so far says that he is going to keep getting worse until he pushes his luck too far and dies.

“We might not feel good about lying to him, but right now? It’s not about us or how we feel. It’s about what’s right for him and what’s going to help him. You don’t have to like me or anything, but I know you love your brother, and right now, he needs us to put our egos aside for his sake. If we really want to help him — if we really, honestly love him and if we really want him to get well — then we need to suck it up, go all in, and resort to desperate measures that we might not feel good about. Because playing safe with his feelings and our comfort has, so far, only made him worse.”

(On the level of ideas, this was a moment of a Slytherin primary, Gryffindor secondary talking to a Gryffindor primary, Slytherin secondary, about the balance between ideals and results in trying to help someone they love get to somebody who, unlike either of them, could actually help him like they needed.

After Adelaide agreed that lying to Seb was, in this instance, as close to okay as anything was going to get, the moment also involved a moment of, “Uh, as an aside? Why did you say that I don’t have to like you? I mean, sure, you were Bastian’s friend first, but you wouldn’t be my friend if I didn’t like you”

“…um, I actually wasn’t aware that you thought of me as a friend? ……Really?”

“Yes. Really. …Why would you think I don’t see you as a friend? Did I do something unfriendly?”

“No, just… I can’t go into that with you right now. It’d take too long, and we need to get back to the intervention planning session. …Preferably before Max kills Todd or Margot. I don’t think my Princess will play nicely with going to rehab if we let anything happen to those two.”

But now I’m like ten miles away from the actual topic, oops.)

TL;DR: much like how Max is ultimately a Slytherin because he values getting results and the actual doing things more than ideals, Addie is on a very fine line between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but she’s ultimately a Gryffindor because she places more value on why someone does things and would rather have the moral high-ground than the exact victory.

Ambrose: RAVENCLAW primary, SLYTHERIN secondary.

Ambrose is getting skimmed over af because this is way too long already — like, “I have resorted to typing in TextEdit and copy-pasting into the tumblr box, because Firefox keeps trying to stall out on me, oops” too long — but the gist of his Sorting is that anyone who spends ten minutes with him can see that he’s a Ravenclaw.

There is nothing close about this; every other House lags so far behind his Ravenclaw-ness that it isn’t even funny. His Ravenclaw-ness comes out in both conventional ways (e.g., he’s a nerdy, deadpan snarking little shit who loves learning, did well in school and was usually a teacher’s pet, and out of his siblings, he’s the one who would ignore someone telling him not to do something just for the sake of seeing what happens, and the one who’s most likely to waste his last words saying, “oooh, what does this button do?”)

and unconventional ones (e.g., he’s an artsy fartsy little shit who enjoys sewing, watches all of the weird History Channel conspiracy theory documentaries just to see what they’re on about, sometimes reads shit like, “I married Bigfoot and she’s having my baby!” tabloids because they’re so out there that he has to see them for himself, and would rather not gossip, but if you’re going to gossip, then he wants to hear everything)

That said, almost no one would see his secondary House coming, at least not until they get to know him, and even then, there’s not a guarantee that people will see this in him. Like, he’s determined and resourceful, but not in a way that makes most people think it comes out of anything but him being a dedicated nerd. Likewise, he can be cunning, sure, but he generally doesn’t go there, first. And sure, he’s willing to go to extreme measures and even cheat or break the rules, but he’s just so nice that a lot of people don’t pay it any mind.

Frankly, even Seb and Adelaide usually forget or overlook all of Ambrose’s Slytherin traits, even though they usually come out more in his interpersonal dealings than they do when he’s on his own. Which is, in a way, part of why he is such a secondary Slytherin: he’s so skilled at manipulating people that he can convince you that he isn’t manipulating people. Usually, Ambrose does what Pete wanted to do with Seb before giving up and resorting to “desperation tactics” — leading people to conclusions and ideas while making them think that they came up with it all on their own — but if not that, then it’s going to be pulling the right strings to try and keep his siblings from losing their shit, or playing peacemaker between them and spinning things exactly the right way

Sebastian: HUFFLEPUFF primary, GRYFFINDOR secondary.

Seb is, like Ambrose: 1. getting phoned the Hell in right now

and 2. a case where his primary House isn’t really up for debate, and all of his other options lag way, way behind Hufflepuff, and are so close to each other in how much he aligns himself with those Houses’ values and ideals that his actual secondary House only wins by a narrow margin.

Aside from being their Houses, the only reason why they’re different on this cout is that, as I said, people would totally peg Ambrose as a Ravenclaw but Seb would get mistyped as a Gryffindor pretty easily.

And, like? I can’t blame people for that, because Seb, admittedly, doesn’t act like how most people expect Hufflepuffs to act.

For one thing, he isn’t a, “You have ten fingers? I have ten fingers! Let’s be friends!!”-model Flufflepuff, or a happy-go-lucky, Hobbit-like stoner who’s always super chill with everyone and about everything, or a tireless try-hard who keeps telling himself, “I must work harder” while pushing himself beyond his limitations, and he isn’t cheerful and peppy all the time (and based on some of his precedents, the people who love him would be incredibly Concerned if Seb started being uncommonly happy and peppy like some people baselessly stereotype Hufflepuffs as being, because his precedents say that, when he acts like that, he’s probably high, tipsy but not drunk, or deliberately faking because he’s actually more miserable than usual).

He does kind of fit some of the more obviously negative stereotypes associated with Hufflepuff, whether fairly or not — e.g., he can be a pushover and a doormat; he’s a disaster whom some people would say falls under the heading of, “I’ll take the lot / and treat them all the same”; etc. — but even so, a lot of his outward behaviors are more in line with what people expect from Gryffindors, for better and (more often) for worse.

For example: Seb has a habit of running into dangerous situations, even before he gets into the superheroics line of work, which always, in every fucking fandom, makes some people mis-type characters who are obviously Hufflepuffs as Gryffindors, despite how they are obviously Hufflepuffs. I could go on all day about how this is a flawed piece of logic that relies too much on people projecting their own values and ideas onto the characters — e.g., they look at the heroic acts as being brave, noble, courageous, etc., and assume that these acts must be about bravery and courage for the people doing them, even though you could do heroic deeds in order to manipulate people

—but it’s even more glaringly wrong with Sebastian because he really explicitly doesn’t see these acts as being about any of the Gryffindor values.

Like, he doesn’t flinch from danger when he rushes headlong into situations where he could die or get seriously hurt… but before he gets into superheroics, he’s usually doing these to keep Margot safe because she’s one of his best friends and he won’t just sit there and do nothing to help her while she does dangerous things. After he gets into superheroics, he doesn’t see anything that he does in that line of work as brave or even as particularly heroic; he sees it as an ethical obligation to humanity, because he believes that if you have the power to help people and to make life safer for them, and you do nothing, then you do share partial responsibility for what happens to them because you made the choice to stand idle by and do fuck-all nothing.

For another thing, uh. Okay, Seb’s depression and addictions skew a lot of things about his situation, but if you ask him, it’s not a matter of courage to keep fighting them. Depending on how badly off he’s doing when you ask him, he might try to tell you that the real act of bravery on his part would be killing himself for real and getting his problems out of his loved ones’ lives, and then he’d probably berate himself for being a, “coward” because he hasn’t found a way to make any of his attempts on his own life stick yet.

So, no. It might be incredibly brave, overall, to keep fighting his own mind and his mental illnesses, day in and day out, just to wake up in the morning, but in Seb’s case, from Seb’s perspective, his choices to do so are not brave and they aren’t about bravery and anyone who thinks otherwise is either speaking in general terms that happen to be wrong of him, or trying to make him feel better.

The thing is, he doesn’t personally feel like he relies on nobility, chivalry, courage, moral righteousness, or any of that Gryffindor shit to keep fighting. He relies on loyalty and love. Like, on the smaller scale, one of the biggest things that gets him out of bed in the morning when it seems like too much and he’d rather not? Is that he has six dogs and they need him.

On the bigger scale, the people in his life are his biggest and most frequent reasons for doing almost everything

for better (e.g., he can easily be talked out of doing stupid things by thinking about whether or not his Mom would be disappointed in him for what he’s doing; “Be the person who your seven-year-old niece already thinks that you are” is an effective way to make him think about the potential consequences of his actions, and, “Pete needs me to be there for him” motivated him to kick a relapse right after Pete got back from rehab)

for worse (e.g., one of the things that he liked about alcohol, drinking it as a teenager, was that he wanted so badly to feel like he belonged and like his peers actually liked him, and other kids at cast parties seemed like they liked him when he was drinking;

and the first time that he fell off the wagon after going to rehab happened because his Dad had a bad reaction to anesthesia after an arthroscopic surgery, his Mom told his siblings not to tell him too many details so he wouldn’t worry too much, but that backfired because Seb worried anyway and his anxiety dragged his imagination to Hell with it, no one would let him do anything to help and that made him feel helpless and worthless, and being too emotionally overwhelmed and desperate, he texted one of his old “drug friends,” got his hands on pills, and got high)

and for a little bit of both (e.g., while it’s nice that he’s too loyal to let Margot go do dangerous shit by herself, they are still doing things that are extralegal and dangerous; while it’s nice that he’s so willing to sacrifice things for his loved ones and for people in general, it’s a lot less nice when you consider that he does genuinely feel like he’s only worth anything insofar as he’s useful to and doing good for others;

and one of the biggest things that made him relent and go to rehab was that he’d justified a lot of his self-abuse by telling himself, “Well, I’m only hurting myself, so it’s not a problem” and he didn’t want to hurt anyone else, even though he didn’t think there was a problem with the logic, “As long as I’m only hurting myself, it’s okay and there’s nothing bad about it, because I’m not hurting anyone who matters”).

One of the biggest issues here is that Seb could unwittingly give overly Gryffindor-biased people some ammunition because of how little he values himself and how much he dismisses any of his legitimate good points, because it would seem to be a lot like Neville’s push for Hufflepuff over Gryffindor.

But the thing is, when Seb devalues himself, it isn’t a matter of, “I should go to Loser House because I can’t be a Winner, that’s too much pressure” like it was for Neville; it’s a matter of, “All those traits are good and I have none of them because I am garbage.”

He values the Hufflepuff traits — loyalty, acceptance, fairness, kindness and compassion, hard work, etc. — more than he values courage, daring, moral self-righteousness, wit, creativity, learning, cunning, resourcefulness, or determination. If he ever seems like he’s talking them down, the reality is that he is talking himself down and berating himself for )allegedly) not having the good traits that he feels like he’s “fooled people” into thinking that he has.

But, with that said, Gryffindor is his secondary House for a reason. It really is a close call between that, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin — you could probably get any of them, depending on what day you ask, though Slytherin would probably be somewhat less common (regardless of the results below, Seb isn’t actually very Slytherin, at heart, and a lot of the places where he could be a Slytherin are probably actually Hufflepuff traits that happen to overlap with Slytherin) — but Gryffindor wins out because, for all he doesn’t really care about most of Gryffindor House’s values or traits, Seb does want to do the right thing.

He has a fundamentally more Hufflepuffian understanding of, “the right thing” (and he’s not an absolutist about it in the Capital Letters For Significance way that you’ll see more readily among Gryffindors), but still.

And because I like sharing (breakdowns gotten using this quiz):

MAX

ADELAIDE

AMBROSE

SEB

^^^: for example, the kerfuffle that ensued after Doctor Delphi of the All-Stars got outed and, overnight, got an endorsement deal from the family’s company — which was not really an issue of either business or politics, for all the public statements on the matter talked a lot of solid socially liberal talk about equality this and anti-hate that and so on, and for all people who were critical of the decision were right to say that the company’s endorsement deal with one gay celebrity superhero wasn’t really the same as actual political progress for LGBTQ people, and could have been seen as pandering to LGBTQ consumers

Just…… yeah. Those aspects of the situation were definitely still there, and it was fair to make note of them, but they weren’t at the foreground of Abe’s mind.

See, by that point, Seb had been out to his family for a few years and was getting increasingly invested in learning about LGBTQ history and the experiences of other LGBTQ people*, which Abe noticed and could admit that he didn’t get in a way that another LGBTQ person might.

His not really getting it wasn’t helped by how he saw a lot of this as, “Sebastian is being sensitive and upset again, because he does that a lot, and it’s nice that he cares so much about other people and their pain, but now, I feel helpless to do anything to help my son because I have no idea how to make him feel better about problems neither of us can actually do anything to fix on our own, or how to make him not get so upset about other people’s suffering when it’s not his fault or???? Anything?????”

So, basically, Abe wanted to put the company on the side of LGBTQ rights less out of concern for the larger social or political implications, or even out of concern for the business, but entirely because he thought that putting the company’s support behind a gay public figure might? maybe? help his son?? feel better???? maybe??? please????**

—none of which actually directly involved Addie, but at the time, she was taking a parentally-mandated mental health year off before starting at Barnard College, and staying with family in New York City, so it got noticed and turned into a Thing when she went clubbing with a few older cousins, one Saturday night

*: and in fairness? Seb was genuinely interested in this stuff for its own sake…… but it was somewhat more pressing because, on one hand, he wanted to try and figure out what his own place in LGBTQ communities and history might end up being.

And, on the other, he was friends with Pete as well as dating Damian, his best friend to first boyfriend, on the sly, and had to admit that there were parts of their experiences that he didn’t get.

Because Seb was, at this age, “high-strung and tightly-wound, and somehow, still the biggest Pollyanna you have ever met in your life” — in Pete’s words — he wanted to help and do right by two of the most important people in his life, and he decided to supplement listening to Pete and Damian with trying to read up on anything he could get his gay little hands on [which, given that he had rich parents and two siblings with access to top-tier university libraries — Barnard and Columbia, respectively — was a lot].

Which led to a lot of sadness and anxiety because so much of what Seb learned was so upsetting, and it’s very easy for him to get emotionally overwhelmed by other people’s suffering, the impulse he always feels to do something about it because people are being hurt and it sucks, and the realization that, in most cases, he either can’t do anything or has no idea what he could do.

**: Abe tries his best, he really does — and he and Seb often end up having, “strange minds think alike” moments where they come up with the same or similar equally weird conclusions, logic, solutions to, and/or approaches to something completely independently of each other — but…… well.

At the same time, Seb has always been emotional and sensitive in ways that Abe doesn’t always know what to do with, and he’s still tried and done a pretty okay job — like, the biggest problem here is by no means exclusive to him, and he can’t really be blamed for it because no one who’s close to Seb has understood all the different ways that his depression manifests itself as symptoms of depression because they’ve been going on for long enough that people think of them as, “just little Sebastian things”

—but Abe still had plenty of moments with Seb that went like, “uhh, mon belle étoile? Our five-year-old son is having an existential crisis about Winnie the Pooh and he’s very upset about it. He won’t go to bed, I don’t know what to do or to tell him, and I think I’ve only made it worse. Can you please come help him?”

and, “Nothing I’ve said or tried so far has made my son feel any less bad about everything he’s been reading about LGBTQ people and history. I can’t very well tell him not to read it because he’s a teenage boy who’s trying to find an understanding of himself and of where he fits in the world, and he can’t get this particular understanding from any of us, as far as I know.

“Besides, if I told Bastian not to read any of it, he’d probably just continue doing so anyway, because that’s generally what tends to happen when you tell him not to do something and make him get even more curious about it, and??? IDK what to do, maybe it might make him feel better if I put the company’s support behind some LGBTQ public figures and causes??? He has a Thing about looking into the philanthropic ways we spend some of our money, so maybe it’ll do some good for his emotional well-being if we support LGBTQ people and causes???”

—Abe does genuinely love all his children equally, but

At the same time, he has an easier time relating to Adelaide and Ambrose than either Max or Seb, because Seb is emotional in ways Abe doesn’t always get or know how to help with, and Max has always had a Thing about seeming as self-sufficient as possible and prickling when people offer help even if he probably needs it, which Abe has an easier time with than, “oh no, Sebastian’s upset and I’m unable to help,” but it still makes it harder for him to relate to Max, sometimes

But on one hand, Ambrose’s way of doing things tends to either line up with Abe’s or else complement it pretty well, and both of them have a primarily logical way of interacting with the world, where it’s not that feelings are unimportant, but they’d rather take a minute to breathe and get people grounded, then try to proceed with logic at the foreground, rather than making heat of the moment emotional decisions about things

And on the other hand, Addie is ultimately more of a Feeler than a Thinker — just… getting Myers-Briggs about it (she’s an ENFP vs. Abe’s ESTJ and Ambrose’s ISTJ) (and Marceline is an INTJ, Max is an INTP, and Seb is an ESFJ) — but Addie has an easier time with switching between feeling her emotions and letting them be valid (most of the time), and taking actions in the world that are based more in a logical approach and an attempt to balance between the emotional, subjective side and the necessity (if you ask her) of an organized, thought-out, and logical approach

Since I’m MBTI nerding already: Abe and Adelaide have the same cognitive functions in their stacks — Extroverted Intuition (Ne), Extroverted Thinking (Te), Introverted Feeling (Fi), and Introverted Sensing (Si) — but they’re just rearranged a little bit differently.

As an ENFP, Addie’s functional stack goes Ne-Fi-Te-Si, so she primarily approaches things using Extroverted Intuition to look for all the cool new possibilities in life, all the fun ways she can connect the dots in unexpected ways, all the shiny neat ideas that she hasn’t explored yet, etc. When it comes to feeling vs. thinking, her actions are guided by her values and her senses of what the best options are, what’s most exciting, and so on, but she tries to use organized, logical approaches to actualize them IRL

As an ESTJ, though, Abe’s functional stack is Te-Si-Ne-Fi, so he has a sense of ideals and emotional sensitivity that he relies on in how he approaches things, but his primary approach to the world is to break things down logically and intellectually, and to try and sort out which things are more or less useful for whatever he’s trying to do, make, fix, or otherwise work on

And as an ESFJ, Seb’s functional stack has some of the same functions as theirs — Ne and Si — but instead of Fi and Te, he has Extroverted Feeling (Fe) and Introverted Thinking (Ti), and his stack goes Fe-Si-Ne-Ti, which means that his primary way of relating to the world and approaching situations is based on people and feelings, but rather than prioritizing an internally-guided sense of values, morals, ethics, etc. like Abe and Addie do, Seb instead focuses on interpersonal relationships, group harmony and social cohesion, and potential threats to those things

Which is additionally unhelpful for Abe because, sadly, it’s not uncommon for ESFJs to have trouble understanding their own feelings, much less being able to articulate them in a way that others understand, because they’re guided by a Feeling function, but being Extroverted means that its focus is on the world outside themselves and that it’s harder for them to sort out their own feelings on their own.

Add in how some of them (like Seb) end up repressing the shit out of their, “negative” emotions in the name of, “not dragging other people down” or, “not ruining everything for everyone else”…

…and how Seb specifically puts a lot of effort into trying to put his fingers in his ears and ignore all his “negative” feelings — especially the “selfish” ones (as in, “the ones that come from sources other than compassion and/or empathy for other people and their pain”) — until they go away, refusing to try and understand them in a way he could communicate to people more easily, for several reasons (e.g., “if you don’t give them enough attention to understand them, then the feelings won’t be real and they can’t ruin everything for everybody else”)

……and yeah. That’s a recipe for exhausting Abe’s ability to help when his primary approach to most situations is to identify the problem and then try to fix it, or at least come up with something that might make the situation better, if he can’t fix everything right now

Also, y’know. Addie has had her fair share of rough spots in her life — and another thing she and Seb have in common is that both of them have dated some serious douchebags before, though Addie has thankfully never wound up in an emergency room because of one of her douchebag ex-boyfriends — but she hasn’t been living with clinical depression that has gone undiagnosed and thus untreated until about chapter three

[dralentines-day]

Gift # 24, @bangyababy

@bangyababy , but only if you are Draco Malfoy and “ baby” is what you call Harry James Potter when you’re alone. ;)

Our gifter says:

“Hello dear! When I read the prompts I could only think about tooth rotting fluff, I hope you're in the mood for that. Whatever Valentine's Day means to you, I hope you have a fun time, and I hope you enjoy this. Take care!”

Library Dates -  A bunch of times Draco goes to the library for the books and a bunch of times Harry goes to the library for literally any other reason, dammit, did he mention the part where Harry can come and go without ever even touching a book? 3k.

Tags: real happy and feel-good, the kind of fic to take home to your mother

Exactly one week ago, Potter, out of fucking nowhere, kissed him. Perhaps you're not sufficiently shocked at this turn of events, so let's try again, just to be sure. Potter kissed him. Potter kissed him. Potter kissed him. It was, Merlin, it was the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened to Draco and let him tell you what, a lot of ridiculous things have happened to him.

It all started when most of the students returned to Hogwarts to finish the school year they'd missed. Some Slytherins were there because it was the best chance they had in a world post war, Granger was there because she valued proper education, Draco was there because there's not many places he could be right now, and the familiarity helped.

He has no idea why Potter was there. It's not like he needed it anyway, Draco heard somewhere that he and the Weasley have auror jobs waiting for them as soon as they want them, no matter how they do at school. But they're there too, and that wasn't Draco's problem. He had enough on his mind.

Like the fact that he had been wrong, and had made a lot of shit choices, and, in spite of everything, he was still here to tell the story. He had some reparations to make.

Apologizing to Granger had happened on a whim. She was the person he most owned an apology to, if he let himself think about it, which he didn't on principle. But she still had the scar from what his aunt did to her, from a word he called her half a dozen times before. It catches his sight when he walks by her on the library. It's the Saturday after the first week of classes, there's not many people around, she's alone at her table. Before he considers it too much he stops next to her and waits to be noticed.

"I'm sorry." He nods to her arm when she does. "For shit I said before. I know it doesn't- it doesn't-" Merlin, he's bad at this. Maybe Malfoys just weren't made to apologize. He takes a deep breath. "I know it doesn't justify, but I was young and I won't be doing it anymore."

She blinks at him. Shit, what is he doing, she hates him. She could humiliate him right now, what did he even expect? He starts to walk away and startles when she grabs his wrist.

"Malfoy- it's okay. Well, it's not, but it's in the past now. I don't carry any resentment towards you." She drops his wrist and smiles. Draco, against his better judgment, finds himself giving her a small smile back. "What are you reading?" She points to the book he had picked up a few moments before.

He feels uncomfortable, he had never tried to be civil to anyone from the golden trio before. But she seems genuine, and he doesn't have anything to lose. "A potions book, the professor mentioned something in class and I was curious."

"Really? Can I see it?" He gives her the book and tells her a bit about what he has found so far. "Wow, that's amazing. What else do you know?"

And there begins his state of peace/something akin to friendship with Hermione Granger. He did mention ridiculous things happening before.

So they sit together at the library sometimes and exchange book recommendations, or thoughts about classes and teachers. She's surprisingly funny and they have more things in common then he would have thought.

Pansy and Blaise are doubtful when he mentions this to them. He doesn't blame them, to be honest.

But it becomes sort of a thing and so it has happened before, Granger seeing him at the library, waving, and sitting at his table. It's still a complete and utter shock when she sees him at the library, waves, and sits at his table, followed by Potter and Weasley.

"I need to help them with a transformations assignment from zero, can you believe it? Do you still have that book you checked out on Tuesday? It'd save us the trouble to look for it."

"No, I returned it earlier today." And okay, he's shocked that Potter. And Weasley. Are sitting at his table. But there are priorities to his shock here. "You mean they didn't even start the transformations assignment? That's for Monday."

She looks smugly back at them, in a 'see' kind of way. "You're giving them déjà vu. They heard the exact same thing before."

Both Potter and Weasley look dejectedly away, like the only weird thing happening here is that they have the weekend to write twenty inches of parchment, and not that they're sitting at Malfoy's table.

He sighs and stands up. "I remember where to find the book. Do you need anything else?"

"Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration could help too, if you see it."

"I'll be right back."

And that's how he (begrudgingly) ends up helping two Gryffindors with their homework.

They take that as their cue to start doing the civil/verging on friendly thing with him too. They'll nod at him if they cross each other on hallways, sit with him if they run into each other on the library and even strike up conversations if they're early for class and waiting by the door for the professor to arrive.

Truthfully, none of this things happen all that often with Weasley, who avoids the library like the plague and only gets to classes on the very moment they begin and not a second before. But Potter seems to be pretty much everywhere Draco looks these days.

Sometimes he seems a little embarrassed or unsure. Sometimes he seems absolutely confident, the stupid Gryffindor bravery making itself know. Except he doesn't do anything, there's nothing to be brave about, he just shows up at the library for the 12th time that week and talks to Draco in whispers (so they don't disturb the rest of the students) the whole afternoon, until they're both starving for dinner and surprised at the time.

And he doesn't even say anything important either. He started with the most trivial things, like school work and the damn weather. Once they realized they could, actually, talk for more then five minutes without biting each other's heads off, they expanded their topics, which now include quidditch, schoolmates, how they were arses to each other when they were young (which seems a lot funnier when they're remembering it), and what they want to do after Hogwarts.

That's their topic for today and Draco learns that Potter didn't hurry to the auror job because he's not sure if that's what he wants anymore, and neither is Weasley, though for different reasons. Weasley, Potter tells him, would probably be happier helping George with the store, he's just scared to make the decision.

"What about you?" Draco asks, saving his page on Great Expectations, because apparently that's the kind of thing he's allowed to ask these days, it's the kind Potter will probably answer. There's still a fear deep in Draco that this is all a horrible and complicated joke, that Potter will laugh at him for daring to presume he could ask something about his life, but he barely thinks about it these days. He mostly does what feels right, and tries to move on from the past and his insecurities. It's a new strategy. It worked with Granger, he supposes.

"Me what?"

"What about you, what do you think you would be happier doing?"

"Oh. I guess I haven't really thought about that. There's just, there were a lot of things I was sure I would be doing, after the war. And then the war was over and they didn't feel so right anymore, you know?"

Yeah, Draco knows.

"Some things that I had never considered before and now I think about them all the time." Potter breathes out the last part and looks away, like he just shared some huge secret and not the fact that he, as a regular 18 year old kid, doesn't have every moment of his life figured out yet.

"Well, not like you need anyone to stroke your ego, but I'm sure it will be fine. Like, any job you choose or whatever. You'll figure it out."

Potter looks at him with a little smile and Draco's stupid heart skips a beat.

Another day Draco is in the library immersed in a horribly cheesy romance when Potter shows up right next to him, making Draco jump and lose at least five years of his lifespan.

"Ahhhhh! Potter what the hell?" Potter came with Hermione this time, who's laughing at him from her sit across the table. Traitor.

Some students hush him, like that was actually his fault. Hermione just laughs harder, and Potter grins.

"Is that French?" He asks, sitting down and making himself at home. Just to be annoying, Draco pushes his things away, making a clear line.

"That's my side of the table, stick to your side."

Potter is outraged. "You're not even using the table, Malfoy, you're just reading a book! On your hands!" There's another 'hush' but Potter doesn't notice.

"It doesn't matter Potter, it's the principle of the thing."

"You're an arsehole." And then he scatters his things everywhere again, just to prove a point. Draco glares, but doesn't stop him this time. Hermione is smiling softly at them.

"So, French."

"Well, yes. Did you recognize that by yourself? What a smart boy." Draco didn't even remember the book was in French. He thanks his lucky stars that Potter doesn't understand enough to know what Draco is reading, he'd never live it down. From Granger's glance at his book, and the smirk she gives him next, his lucky stars didn’t make him that lucky.

"Stop being difficult. When did you learn French?"

Draco shrugs. "My mother taught me when I was younger. I don't practice conversation that much these days, not enough anyway, but reading still feels pretty natural to me."

Potter grins at him. "What a smart boy." Granger hides her laughter behind a book this time.

"You could benefit from learning a language or two. It's a good exercise."

"I know parseltongue." Potter points out.

"That absolutely doesn't count."

"Why not?"

"Well, for starters, I meant something you actually had to learn. Put real effort into it and develop a real ability."

"It is a real ability. Pretty useful too."

"Of course. All the snakes we run into in daily life, how could you possibly communicate with them if you didn't speak their language?"

Potter ignores him. "I'm also really good at it."

"That- I'll honestly never know that. There's no one to prove it right or wrong."

"I can show you anyway." And when Draco doesn't stop him, he does.

It's exotic, and powerful, and just the tiny bit of scary. Draco feels a confused sort of arousal settling in, like his poor body can't understand what is attractive about this, but can't help being turned on anyway, and frustrated. But it's not the words, it's the fantasy, like everything Potter's saying right now could be complete filth and Draco wouldn't even know-

"Okay, you speak another language. You're clearly a genius and it was unfair of me to presume otherwise. Now let me get back to my book."

Hours later he hasn't gotten over the delicious sound of Potter's laughter.

A few weeks later he and Potter called it a day and are going to get dinner, like usual. Draco decides that he's caring too much weight and that he will leave his things in his room before going to the great hall, and Harry nods, a little disappointed, and says "See you later."

That's when Draco notices that Potter doesn't have anything with him. Not his school bag, not a single book. Potter didn't touch a single book the whole afternoon and that's-- that's ridiculous, Potter is ridiculous, why does he keep coming back to damn library, if he doesn't even care about the books.

"Potter, you're ridiculous." Potter turns back to him with a little frown.

He likes talking to Draco.

Draco had noticed it before but the realization right now hits him like a freight train. Maybe Potter needs someone that doesn't give a shit about his hero status, someone that will talk back, or maybe he could just use another friend, but still, the whole thing is stupid, why does he keep coming back to the library then.

"...you want to see me." It's that simple, shit, Draco should have noticed before. "Merlin, Potter, if you want to see me you can, you don't have to keep coming back to the damn library when you don't even care about the books." So, Draco is more than a little offended in the name of the books, but whatever, Potter didn't have to snub them so cruelly. Who does he think he is?

Harry freezes, staring wide eyed at him. "You're not- you're not mad?" He blinks a few times, licking his lips. That's distracting, Draco is trying to prove a point here, dammit.

He clears his throat. "What, no, why would I be?"

Harry shrugs. "I thought you might hate me if you realized- what I was doing."

Draco thinks about this. "Well, I'm a little offended. In the name of the books. You didn't have to treat them like that." Harry gives him an easy smile. "But I don't care if you wanna see me somewhere else, I mean."

Harry is looking at him, bright eyed and fascinated. "You really don't mind?"

Harry licks his lips, again, because he's that much of an arsehole. Draco's eyes lower to them, more out of their own accord then anything, mind you, and he shakes his head, distracted. So Harry looks around the corridor, which is empty right now, and then comes closer and, you guessed it, kisses Draco. On the mouth, in case he wasn't clear.

Harry's lips move with the slightest hint of pressure against his, until Draco gives a little groan that he'll deny to his dying day and opens his mouth, just enough to give Harry better access. Harry's hand angles Draco's head back, and he nips and sucks lightly on Draco's bottom lip, and Draco has a second to enjoy it, his own hands getting tangled on the mess that is Harry's hair, before Harry steps far enough away for Draco's hands to leave him. A group of third years rounds the corner and walk past them, and Draco didn't even hear them but Harry must have, because they don't see anything they shouldn't. And then Harry gives him another smile, nods at nothing in particular, and goes to the great hall.

Draco drives himself insane over the next few days. When he's not thinking why, why, why, why, why, he's thinking what he should do now and he has no idea. He told Harry to stop going to the library to see him, so he doesn't go to the library, afraid he'd be sending the wrong message, afraid if Harry walked by and saw him there he'd think Draco doesn't want to see him when Draco does. Very much. So he kind of stays a lot in his room? Which, obviously is a lot worse, and he thinks Harry is laughing at him right now if he knows. That, if Harry is even planning on seeing him again, and the whole thing wasn't just a lapse in his judgment and he is now avoiding Draco on purpose so things don't get awkward.

So exactly one week later Draco took his broom for a ride, just for the fun of it, and is coming back to the Slytherin dormitories when Harry scares the shit out of him by being there, on a corridor Draco was about to walk through, leaning against a wall and waiting for him like he knew where Draco would be, Merlin.

"Hey." He waits for Draco to approach and smiles at him. "I wanted to know- well, I wanted to ask you, that is- if you wanna go to a festival with me? A muggle festival, I mean." He sounds so happy and hopeful that Draco wants to laugh. And kiss him stupid, but dammit, he started it. Not Draco's fault.

"A muggle festival?"

"Yeah. You said no to the library if I was disrespecting the books, so." He shrugs. "I talked to Headmaster McGonagall, she said we're all overage, we can go somewhere other than Hogsmade on the weekends, if we want, as long as we come back on time. I thought you may not feel comfortable in Hogsmade because we'd have zero privacy, but then Hermione pointed out that you may not feel comfortable anywhere in the wizarding community, actually, because we would be recognized and it might not be the kind of attention you want. So I did a little research and there will be a cool muggle festival kind of near here this weekend, with live music, and food, and even those photo booths-" He pauses. "You have no idea what a photo booth is, don't you? It's this muggle thing you get inside of and make poses, and when you leave, it prints out a strip of muggle pictures."

But Draco isn't paying attention, he's just dumbstruck. "You told Granger about me?"

Harry falters.

"Well, yeah. She's one of my two best friends Draco. Of course I'd tell them."

But Harry doesn't get it, Draco isn't mad, he's just- he thought he might be a dirty secret and he could even be okay with that, but instead Harry was asking help to his best friends on how to plan a date with Draco. He doesn't think he can breathe for a second.

"The photo booth thing sounds dangerous."

"Oh god Draco, you just sit there and make faces. How is that dangerous?"

"Don't know. But I don't trust it."

"You'll like it if you see it."

"When I see it." Harry gives him a cautious smile.

"Yeah. This weekend?" He bites his lip and that- that's ridiculous, ridiculous things keep happening on Draco's life, but Draco is starting to think he might be okay with that, after all.

"Sure, this weekend." And he kisses Harry just because he can.

Want to see more? Check the "dralentine's day" tag or head over to dralentines-day.tumblr.com!

Happy Dralentine's Day!

[spooninbackpocket]

I am still scared of Juan

So like. The fact that she’s dating him makes all of this exponentially worse because I have such a bad memory. I repress everything that is too traumatizing to cope with. So I’m terrified of him because sometimes I think, maybe I’ve made it all up, maybe its all in my head and Ana you know ana maybe you’re the shitty one maybe you’re the reason you don’t have any friends so yes sometimes I think that it was me and it was all my fault and he wasn’t bad you know he called me bunny and mole mole and he was very sweet when need be sometimes I think maybe it was all in my head.

But then like there’s things. There’s things like how he smelled. He smelled like rotting water. Like bad like wrong like when I was in his arms there was always a part of me that was unsettled and afraid and you know he never got physical with me (only just that one time) but I couldn’t stand to be near him long I made him shower once and it didn’t go away he still smelled like rotting. I remember how my life was then. I slept through the day and I barely did my homework and I was failing calc and my French teacher wanted to know if I was okay and my Lang teacher asked me if I was okay and you know you smile and nod but god I wasn’t. But of course I do that now I’m depressed still maybe this is all ana this isn’t juan and she’s dating him. She who protected you once is dating him so maybe it’s me and the world is upside down and Ana you’re crazy.

I have to remind myself but then I get triggered and when I see the hair the big poofy shit I get triggered and when I smell an old towel I get triggered and it wasn’t rape it wasn’t because I didn’t say no to him I whispered it to myself and he stopped I don’t remember why maybe I was crying or maybe he heard me or my sister in the hall

because I was terrified but it wasn’t physical abuse not really it was mental it was exhausting it was him texting every minute and pointless fights about his insecurity and constant apologizing and fear. Fear that if I ignored him he’d scream at me saying I was a slut or I was cheating on him when at that point I had no friends because he didn’t like them and I was isolated. he’d show up or I’d have 27 missed calls and he would come and cry and terrify me that he’ll do something to me or himself and I know the fights were this bad because once Rohan picked at it and i got so bad he walked on eggshells for a week because I remembered

I don’t know why

I forget I hate forgetting I hate this I hate it even if it helps me get over things I am sad about like Keyla or luci or my dad or literally anything I hate forgetting it because what if it was all in my head and if I forget I don’t really get over it I don’t really get thorns out of my side I don’t feel like it’s over because some part of my brain replays it at three am like maybe I should’ve just gone to her fucking church and done the song and dance like for me the closest I’ll come to believing in god isn’t begging the devil to take me soul so I’ll cease to exist

Of course like my mom did some of this to me. When my stepdad happened she said forget and I did I did how else can you cope I had it in the back of my mind and it didn’t let me sleep but god I was so good at pretending everything was okay until it wasn’t and the deal was to suck it up and not emote until you die and I’ve died too many times now

So I forget Juan I forget how bad he was and then I have to go through the texts.

The 47 unread texts when I fell asleep without telling him first the constant feeling of being caged because I couldn’t leave him because I didn’t like him because it made me a shitty person and he’d hurt and I didn’t want to hurt him I didn’t want to be shitty but I was scared of him I still am I’m scared of how he took something bad he did and made it my fault. The gaslighting. I think maybe he did it to me or maybe I did it to myself but that’s the actual fucking definition. He made me think I did it and I was bad and it was him he was the reason why. I never felt like I could say no to him. I hated the paragraphs and the manipulation I hated him I was terrified. I was terrified of how easily he could make himself the victim and I’d fall for it and I’d believe him because I was so tired of fighting back. I hated myself for being stuck in this cycle. I hated myself for not seeing the red flags and I figured I deserved it but it was six months, and two years since I’m still terrified of him.

Im terrified and I forget why and I always feel like I need to validate my emotions I always feel like someone’s going to jump out and say you’re being illogical Ana you’re being dramatic which is what Keyla said and really I could give a shit about the boy but ana you’re being dramatic when I come calm collected (but really ana you were barely holding it together) but I had the screengrabs and I knew but ana stop being dramatic it was only a kiss it was only a heart and I let people take away from me so easily I let them take away the meaning of my words and my feelings I let them invalidate my emotions even though I have been logical and cold like a machine I let them take the truth away so they can turn it into a lie into a petty excuse instead of just. Fuck Ana I don’t like you anymore so I fucked you over.

Im really tired of turning the other cheek. I’m tired of being the bigger person and letting them get away with this shit letting them get away with things that are mine. It doesn’t work. My mom keeps pulling her bullshit I still don’t have many friends I’m so tired of trying to make new ones (hi I’m ana I have mommy issues daddy issues anxiety major depressive disorder abandonment issues and I Really like to cuddle even though I don’t think I like anyone that way anymore) anyways. I’m tired. I’m tired of being afraid of Juan and thinking luciana was a good person because yes god yes they did some nice things for me I really do like being called bunny and I really do like having friends but they aren’t good people. They hurt me. And I am so tired of being the bigger person I’m not going to have ambivalence about luci because she’s dating the boy that destroyed my emotional state before my stepdad could finish the job. She’s a shitty person. I need to realize that to get over juan. She used me to explore the taboo world of teenagers and sex where her father was a conservative bigot. She used me to justify to her parents and her shitty hateful god that I led her down the wrong path of sin when all I did was fuck a boy I loved while she went and seduced two and her parents used her to go make friends with the neighbor kids and convert them and then shame them for being human (you slut shame Karyna while you do worse). So yeah. Fuck you. The both of you. In my secret little world where there is no eyes I’m telling you to fuck off. That you’re shitty and you hurt me and you were toxic and by god I’m not going to forget. I’m not going to forget