#its the blue i think in most designs it vibrates weird with everything else

[foulserpent]

i do wish we didnt mostly go with a ‘its a few stripes’ design for lgbt flags like honestly love designs that incorporate other symbolism

[mc-lukanette]

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

—————

Luka took a breath as he hit the last emotion-filled note on his guitar. His body vibrated just as his strings did, though he realized soon enough that there weren't enough high notes to lift him from feeling so low.

Marinette was Ladybug. He was still absorbing it, even though a part of him insisted that it should've been obvious; not just because there could only be one girl in Paris who was so brave, kindhearted, and suited for the job, but... well—

There was also only one girl in Paris who could be so unlucky. Luka was upset - angry, really - at all the things he couldn't have known that just proved to put more pressure on her. People idolized and adored Ladybug, but he never once thought that he wanted to be her. She didn't get anything from being a superhero outside of wasted time and the guilt of having to lie to everyone. He'd felt bad enough keeping Viperion a secret from his family, and he was only a temporary hero.

He sighed, setting his guitar down and raking his fingers through his hair. Marinette being Ladybug would've been enough of a shock on its own, but Adrien being Chat Noir made everything both worse and more complicated. In the midst of all the realizations he'd been having at the time, he felt lucky that he was able to get Ladybug - Marinette - to believe that his mind had just drifted for a moment. She'd still looked worried, but there was nothing he could've told her at the time, his mind too scrambled to be certain what the right steps were.

He'd always imagined that past snakes had learned of other's identities before as well, and thus had wondered before what he'd do if such a thing ever happened. Chat wasn't the one "in charge," so Luka wasn't worried about him (at least not in terms of talking about identities), but Ladybug was a different story.

Previously, he would've said that he'd tell her without hesitation, but the problem was that she was Marinette and the way he found out made things messy. If he told her that he knew, she'd blame herself and demand to know what happened for him to know so she could try to "fix" it, except there was nothing to fix and a conversation about his abilities would inevitably lead to talking about Adrien being Chat Noir.

In essence, he was at a roadblock. There was probably no "right" solution either, as he figured Sass might tell him; that even seemed to be the message Sass wordlessly sent him as Ladybug took his miraculous back. He’d probably known, and maybe had intentionally given him the power to see red strings on heroes in the first place. He didn’t know for sure because he couldn’t ask, aware that it would make Ladybug even more suspicious after he’d already tried to assure her.

What he did know was that Chat was something else to think about now. Chat was tied to her, and he knew - everyone knew, really - that there was drama going on in their relationship. He'd done only a little digging and Face to Face was all the evidence he'd needed, as if seeing the two interact in person wasn't already enough.

There was a pressure there, for Ladybug and Chat Noir to be a couple. Chat Noir was a habitual flirt, and most people ate up any drama or “juicy details” about their relationship. Everyone went wild for the hand kisses that Chat gave Ladybug, whether or not she pulled away from it. Add on the red string of fate, and it just made everything worse, making him wonder what the ties meant; did Adrien's string being tied around his ring mean that he became the cat through fate, specifically so—

It made Luka feel gross just thinking about it, and knowing what he knew made it even worse; people were shipping his friend with someone she wasn't interested in, even if it was "one side" specifically that she wasn't interested in.

He shook his head, feeling vaguely possessive. It wasn't about Marinette being his friend; it was about her deserving better than something deciding her fate for her.

He was brought out of his thoughts by a familiar jingle, pulling out his phone to see a message from Marinette.

Are we still on for tonight?

FOR THE FIRE I MEAN.

I just don't want you to get in trouble! You're sure???

He chuckled, his shoulders easing at Marinette's usual enthusiasm. It was adorable that she was worried about him and not what they were planning to do.

He typed back immediately, I'm sure, Marinette. Don't worry.

He glanced at the drawer under his bed, where all the Adrien pictures were. He imagined Adrien's face plastered all over Paris, flashing back and forth between Adrien himself and Chat Noir.

He felt like he shouldn’t be shocked by the revelation, though he wouldn't be able to quite explain why.

—————

Luka looked over his work once more, checking to make sure the fire would start properly. It'd been a while, but he at least hadn't gotten rusty and even got a congratulatory pat on the back from his mother when she'd seen him carrying the supplies. Had she known that it was Marinette's decision to do this, she would've married them on the spot herself.

As he eyed the box of Adrien pictures set out, he had to bury another slew of thoughts. He knew it was right to try and get rid of Marinette's string, but and he felt guilty knowing that he’d be satisfied at seeing the pictures burn for reasons outside of Marinette.

Speaking of whom, he looked up as he heard a familiar set of footsteps to see Marinette herself heading towards the Liberty, having just made her way down the stairs. She was dressed fairly lightly for nighttime, but wore a fluffy pink shawl around her shoulders to make up for it. Considering what they were doing, it made sense that she wasn't concerned about the cold.

The gangplank had already been put up for her, so she walked across with a smile that warmed him more than the eventual fire would. "Hey."

He smiled back, plopping down comfortably on the seat behind him. "Hey."

She gripped her shawl closer to herself as she glanced at the setup for the fire, the moonlight briefly shining off of her earrings. Luka attempted to avert his gaze from them, but only ended up staring at the red string around her neck. He gave up looking at her entirely at that point, checking the setup again as if it was extremely important to do so.

"You can sit anywhere," he offered, gesturing vaguely to all of the mismatched seats he'd placed around the future fire. He'd wanted to make sure she'd have options, though he hoped the designer side of her didn't mind the chaos of it all. He'd just grabbed whatever spare seating they'd had.

Marinette's eyes scanned over the various choices. Giggling, she replied, "Thank you."

He nodded in acknowledgment. He wasn't in any hurry to get the pictures burned, even if burning them was their goal that day. He'd intentionally had her go slowly so as to test the red string as little as possible, and he planned on doing the same here.

"I brought one for you too," she suddenly said off to his side.

He looked over in curiosity and noticed her open purse, a large piece of blue fabric nearly bursting out of it. It took a bit of effort from her - he imagined that she'd wanted it to be a surprise - but she managed to pull it out, presenting him with a shawl that matched hers exactly outside of its color. He smiled in appreciation of her thoughtfulness, then reached for it before realizing with a start, "Wait. Marinette, did you make these?"

Before she could answer, he took the shawl in his hands, turning it every possible way. Without a doubt, it was her handiwork, and along the back was where the design broke with a Marinette.

"Yeah," she confirmed, and he could practically hear her shy blush. "It's just—you're doing this for me, but even if you weren't, I don't want you to get cold, so..."

"It's great," he cut in firmly, leaving no room for doubt on her end. "Soft. Comfortable. I wish I was better with fashion to say more."

"No, you said more than enough," she assured, taking a seat next to him. That fact looked both silly and intimate given the multiple other seats she could've chosen instead, but he tried not to think about it.

Instead, he gave a curious glance at her pink shawl, silently comparing it to the one she'd given him. "...You didn't have to make it blue," he commented, and clarified before she could think anything bad, "I would've happily worn your colors."

She gave him a look, though didn't seem weirded out by the idea. "But... it's pink."

"What's wrong with pink?" he asked, genuinely confused. "It's your color."

She blushed, her shoulders hunching forward shyly. He didn't even bother taking back what he said, because he meant it; he might've favored blue when he picked out an outfit, but pink made him think of her.

It was much better than red at the very least.

Marinette pursed her lips in response, idly tugging at her shawl and seeming to be in an internal debate with herself. Apparently making a decision, she closed her eyes and breathed up, letting out a soft, "Okay."

He blinked and gave a tilt of his head to show his confusion. "Okay?"

She turned to him, resolutely pulling the fabric off of her shoulders. "T-then you can wear mine?"

He couldn't get another word out, too distracted by Marinette leaning towards him and carefully settling the shawl around his shoulders. Despite the bold move, she couldn't keep eye contact with him, awkwardly hanging onto the front of the shawl as she stared at his lap. She wasn't exactly warm or exuded any particular body heat - in fact, he was sure that her hands would be cold if he held them - but there was a comfort there that couldn't be matched by anyone else.

It took him a moment to make a move, at which point he remembered the fabric underneath his fingers. In a motion equally as careful as hers, he raised the blue shawl and settled it around her shoulders. She finally met his gaze, surprised, but smiled gratefully and released her grip on the pink shawl.

"You can keep it," she said quietly, with less shyness than before.

"Really?" he asked, placing a hand on the fabric to make sure it was what she meant.

She nodded, gripping her own as she replied, "A-as long as I can keep this one in exchange?"

He snorted, even covering his mouth to stifle a chuckle. "You made them, Marinette. Of course you can." He gave an obvious glance at the shawl to admire it. "I'd be happy to match with you."

She beamed at him. "Me too."

That topic officially concluded, his mind went blank for anything more and both of their gazes drifted to the unlit fire. He didn't have to look to know that she was shifting in anxiety in her seat, either wanting to back out or just get it over with.

"Are you ready?" he asked experimentally.

"Yes," she responded, perhaps a little stiffly but the resolve was there. She wanted this.

Luka stood briefly, and within the next few moments, the fire had been lit. The flames started out faint at first, then grew until it was something respectable, easily illuminating the small area around them. The slight chill from the wind dissipated as the fire warmed their skin, Luka hearing Marinette sigh in content harmony with him.

Neither of them took their shawls off despite the increased warmth.

The additional light from the fire made the box of pictures more obvious, with it sitting on a table not too far away. Luka took a step towards it, but Marinette was faster, grabbing up the box and turning to him with a determined expression.

"I have to do it," she insisted.

He didn't exactly disagree - this wasn't his battle - but it didn't stop him from looking nervously at the red string, the dangling part of it laying across her hand and dipping itself in the box, taunting him.

"How many do you want to do at a time?" He was careful in his wording, not wanting his tone to imply anything.

She furrowed her brows, staring down at the box in deep thought. Her fingers flexed against the cardboard, a small gust of wind blowing by and causing the fire behind her to whip around in protest.

"...All of them," she muttered, then met his gaze cautiously. "Will that be okay?"

Luka glanced at the fire, but it wasn't that he was worried about. The string would try to fight her, he was sure of it, and the only thing he wasn't sure of was if it would be better or not to let her go with her wishes. He half expected the string to physically drag her off the Liberty, and the mere thought caused his neck to sting.

But, he also believed in her. She was fighting fate herself without having used the snake even once, and he wasn't going to deny her if she thought this was best.

"Yeah," he assured. "Just don't get too close. I don't want you to get hurt."

She nodded, obviously not catching onto what he really meant.

Luka sat down on his chair, toying with the rips in his pants to keep his hands occupied as he watched her. Her posture was straight and confident as she faced the flames, despite the shake in her hands, and he was sure the fire in her eyes wasn't just a reflection.

He didn't see Ladybug in her place. There was only Marinette and everything that he already knew about her. Knowing what he did now wasn't surprising, but heartbreaking, and he couldn't be prouder of her for doing what she was trying to do.

To go against what everyone - even fate itself - expected of her. He couldn't relate on her level, but looking as he did and having the mother he did, he understood.

Finally, Marinette stepped forward, and the string was already tightening around her neck. She froze, shutting her eyes and clutching the box tighter as she mentally fought the sensation.

He barely managed to keep himself still.

She swallowed, taking another step and managing to open her eyes again. She squinted at the fire, either from the light or from her own resolve.

Then, all at once, she thrust the box forward, the pictures flying out and mingling with the flames. The fire flared up in response, practically roaring, and the string tightened further in protest. Marinette even let out a cry as she tossed the box aside.

Luka barely had time to react when she suddenly rushed towards him. He outstretched his arms and she filled up his lap, her heart seeking him out as she clutched his jacket. He wrapped his arms around her, hoping his comfort came through without words.

Her breathing was ragged, and he couldn't tell whether it was from the string or her emotions running high. He brought one of his hands higher up on her back, knowing that he could do nothing more for her but wishing he could.

He took solace in the fact that the worst of it was over.

Staring over her head, he watched as the pictures burned, blond turning black as the flames singed the pictures and reduced them to ashes. Marinette, meanwhile, remained against him, desperately clutching his fabric for wordless support. He honestly would've been okay being the only spectator to what she'd done, but she then shifted in his lap to glance behind her.

They watched the sight together, the fire whipping about with the wind like it was making sure the job was done as they'd wanted. In no time at all, there was no evidence of the pictures left outside of what was allowing the fire to burn brighter.

Marinette let out sigh of relief, collapsing against him again and nuzzling his chest. "What's wrong with me...?"

"Nothing," he replied, clutching her tighter. "You were amazing."

She looked up at him, possibly searching his expression to ensure he meant it, then offered a tired smile. She shifted again, but this time without any urgency or need. Luka sucked in a breath as she nestled her head against his shoulder, making herself comfortable on his lap while still being in a position where they could watch the fire together. Slowly, he relaxed, and they ended up not needing those other chairs after all, neither moving from their comfortable positions.

And, maybe it was just him, but the string seemed looser around her neck than it ever had before.

[rjhpandapaws]

A Hand in the Matter

Ch8: Make a Home Here

Richard would eventually learn that when seeking help he should probably ask Connor rather than Silas, and he shouldn't ask them both. It was a mistake he probably wouldn't make again given how it went this time.

The Family Feud

UnluckyNine: I need help. I think I made a mistake.

UnluckyNine: I don't think I'm ready to have someone in my apartment for two days.

UnluckyNine: I know its only Gavin, but this is kind of a big deal.

Sixty-Second-Set: Its still a couple days away right? Just cancel last minute, that's what I would do.

Sixty-Second-Set: Wait. Who is Gavin?

Sixty-Second-Set: Why is he staying with you for two days!

Sixty-Second-Set: Where did you meet him? Have you seen him before? Is his name actually Gavin?

Sixty-Second-Set: Do you have proof he's real? Are you sure he's not a serial killer?

RunawayArkait: Silas, stop. Gavin is a friend of Richard's from school.

RunawayArkait: He's staying the weekend because he is helping Richard renovate his apartment.

RunawayArkait: They met at the cafe. Yes his name is Gavin, and they go to school together so obviously they've seen each other.

RunawayArkait: He's not a serial killer Silas. He isn't smart enough.

RunawayArkait: Anyway Richard, you want to do this right? It would be best to just get it over with. Because if you don't do it this weekend, it will just be hanging over your head for whenever you reschedule it.

Sixty-Second-Set: Solution! If he isn't there at a decent time, don't let him in.

RunawayArkait: As someone who was an hour late to their own birth, I don't think you should be the one to give time based ultimatums.

Sixty-Second-Set: Fuck off, Connor. You were an hour early.

UnluckyNine: Thanks for the help. I'll just see how I'm feeling on Friday

RunawayArkait: It'll be fine Nines, you'll see.

Sixty-Second-Set: Call Connor if you need back up.

Sixty-Second-Set: He can call Nora, or whatever her name is, and she can come kick his ass.

RunawayArkait: Her name is North, and he won't need to because its going to be fine.

UnluckyNine: Thanks for the advice

Sixty-Second-Set: Of course! That's what big brothers are for.

RunawayArkait: Its gonna be fine. I promise

The rest of his week was spent getting ready for Gavin to come over. Cleaning. Making sure he had sheets and a blanket big enough for the pull out bed. Cleaning the pull out bed. He went grocery shopping and bought snacks and junk food like what he had seen at Gavin's apartment. Almost texted Gavin on several occasions to cancel, and then deleted them. After the longest and most stressful week in recent history, it was finally Friday. There would be no backing out last minute, he wasn't Silas. On top of that, he was actually looking forward to seeing Gavin. As if on cue his phone lit up with a message from the man in mention.

Gavin Reed: Getting ready to head your way. Need me to pick anything up on my way over?

Me: No. Not that I can think of.

Gavin Reed: Alright, see you soon.

Richard set his phone on the kitchen island and gave his apartment another once over. Making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, that his apartment was presentable. Richard himself was dressed in a more relaxed way than usual. He had on blue sweatpants from Silas, that said University of Idaho Theater Fest down the left leg, and an oversized blank white hoodie. He didn't want Gavin to give him a hard time for going over dressed at home a second time. His phone vibrated against the counter top.

Gavin Reed: On my way up to you.

Me: Ok. The door is unlocked.

He put his phone back down on the island and made his way over to the door and unlocked it. He glanced at the shoe rack by the door. A small grey thing. The impulse purchase that had started all of this. He smiled and headed back to the kitchen.

Normally he would be waiting in the living room, but that was going to be Gavin's space for the weekend. He leaned against the counter until his nervous energy became too much to handle. He opened the fridge and dug through it, looking for the bottles of soda he had bought. He heard Gavin come in, followed by the sound of his shoes hitting the shoe rack. He looked up when Gavin spoke.

"Where do you want this?" He asked gesturing to the bag on his shoulder, an excited smile curling at his lips.

Richard straightened up and pointed at the couch since that was where they decided Gavin would be spending the weekend. With that taken care of, Richard grabbed the two bottles of old fashioned soda and set them on the island. He turned to grab the bottle opener since he didn't know if they were twist tops or not. He slid a bottle over to Gavin when he came back to the kitchen.

"Thanks." Gavin said as he took the bottle, "I got you something, a bit of a house warming gift."

Gavin's other hand came up and he placed a hastily wrapped box on the counter. He slid it over to Richard like it would have bit him if he didn't. Richard opened it carefully, not wanting to tear the paper. The box didn't have a label or anything that would hint as to what was inside, and Richard didn't want to shake it in case it was something fragile. He set the box down on the counter and carefully opened the top. He took out a white mug. Richard turned it over in his hands to see if it had a design on it. He found 'Silence is Golden' written in pretty light blue font. He set the mug down so he could sign and felt a smile tugging at his lips.

'Thank You.' He signed, 'I Love It.'

"I'm glad," Gavin said with a smile of his own, "I saw it in the campus bookstore and thought you might like it."

Richard took a drink from his bottle, trying to ignore the clutter on the counter. Gavin had gotten him something, saw it and thought Richard would like it. Connor and Silas were really the only other people who did that.

"What's the plan for tonight?" Gavin's voice pulled him from his thoughts. He was heading for the living room, "Online shopping, actual shopping, relaxing, or starting on changing around the place."

Richard came to sit beside him on the couch, leaning into the back rest some. Gavin, on the other hand looked like he had melted into it, he looked relaxed and comfortable. A contrast to the tensness that was still clinging to Richard, he was trying his best to relax. His fingers were tapping against the bottle in a rapid staccato pattern. He didn't really want to do anything tonight. If he was honest, he didn't want to do any of this, but Gavin was already here and it was too late to back out. He figured they could just hang out for tonight and worry about the apartment tomorrow.

He finally set the bottle down since he had come to a decision. Richard tried explaining this to Gavin, but he couldn't find signs that conveyed what he meant that were also signs that Gavin knew, and he didn't want to fingerspell everything. He let his frustration out as a sigh. Gavin was picking up ASL quickly, and Richard was proud of him, it was just that he was feeling more than what child-sign could express. So it was only natural that his texts didn't even scratch the surface either.

Me: Could we stay in tonight? Relax and maybe look at things online?

Me: I don't think I'm ready to do much else yet.

"That's perfectly fine," Gavin said as he turned on the tv, flipping to some cartoon he liked listening to, "We'll only do what you're comfortable with."

That was how their afternoon went. Gavin told Richard about his week as he looked at stuff online. Writing down a list of things he wanted to buy and the stores the website said he could find them at. It was comforting to come up with a plan for the weekend so it didn't feel so much like he was going into this blind.

Hours passed and they were just talking. Gavin was talking and Richard was texting his responses. It was a normal evening for them, up until Gavin's stomach growled loudly interrupting the story Gavin had been telling.

'Food?' Richard signed, not bothering to hide the amusement. He was feeling a little hungry himself.

"Yeah, that would probably be a good idea," Gavin said, a laugh hanging onto his words as he covered his stomach, "You in the mood to cook or is it a take out kind of night?"

Definitely a take out kind of night. Richard couldn't cook to save his life and he wasn't about to expose Gavin to that. He pulled up the app and tapped on his usual Italian place and picked the same thing he always got before handing the phone off to Gavin. He took his time picking before handing the phone back. Richard placed the order and Gavin went back to his story.

The conversation fell away when the food arrived. The two of them falling into a familiar and content silence. They relaxed like that for a time, eventually passing notes. Gavin in the mood to talk, but not in the mood to speak. It was nice, and they stayed like that for hours. Enjoying each other's company until Gavin yawned bad enough that it sounded like something in his jaw broke.

"So how are we doing this Nines?" Gavin asked, rubbing at his face and muffling his words.

'You Take Couch.' He signed slow and clear since Gavin was tired, 'I Take Bed.'

With that established Richard began packing up the remaining food and putting it away. Leaving Gavin to handle the garbage. It reminded him of when he spent the evenings at Gavin's. Getting the pull out bed set up didn't take long and he let Gavin get ready for bed first since he looked like he was going to fall asleep if he stayed in one place for too long. It was new, but not unsettling to have someone else here, but he supposed it was because he was used to being around Gavin.

He took his turn getting ready for bed, and once he was done for the night, he checked in with Silas like he promised he would.

Me: I'm not dead.

Silas: Did he do anything weird.

Me: No.

Me: He bought a coffee mug as a house warming gift which was nice

Silas: You're alright then?

Me: I promise.

Me: I'm going to bed now.

Silas: Sleep well.

When morning rolled around Richard got ready for the day, a grey turtle neck paired with dark jeans, and made his way to the kitchen as quietly as he could. Being mindful of Gavin, who was still passed out on the couch. He got the coffee grounds out and into the machine before he heard signs of life from the living room. Gavin came into the kitchen as though summoned by the spluttering of the coffee machine.

"Good morning Richard," Gavin managed through his yawn, his sea green eyes barely showing signs of life. "How did you sleep?"

'Good Morning.' Richard signed back with a smile, 'I Slept Fine.'

The kitchen fell silent after that. Gavin was leaning against the counter, in the small corner made by it and the fridge. His eyes were open and he was looking around, but it didn't seem like he was seeing anything. Richard hadn't gotten to witness pre-coffee Gavin before, and now he understood why Gavin's texts this time of day were only one word. It was kind of endearing to see a new side of Gavin.

Richard grabbed mugs as the coffee finished, a plain one for Gavin, as well as the one Gavin had bought him. He poured Gavin's first, leaving room for the abysmal amount of cream he felt the need to add to his coffee, and pointed the semi-alert male in the direction of the fridge. He poured his own next, then returned the pot to the machine.

"That's some good coffee," Gavin joked tiredly when he caught Richard looking at him.

'You Monster,' Richard signed back with his free hand and pulling a face to make his point.

Silence settled over the kitchen again, though this time it was content rather than exhausted. Richard was absently staring out the window, going over the plan for the weekend in his head. Today they were shopping, picking up the things Richard had decided on last night. He liked them and hoped they would make his apartment feel less like a hospital room.

Gavin got ready quickly after he finished his coffee and met Richard at the door when he was ready to leave. They were taking Richard's car because Gavin had brought his bike over. He was glad to have Gavin with him since he'd never done any important shopping like this before. What he had now was a collection of things that used to belong to Connor and Silas that had sat in storage when they had moved. The things they were getting today would be Richard's and would finally make the apartment feel like it was his.

Richard had made a list of stores along with what he hoped to find at each one last night. When they arrived at the first store he found a place to park that was relatively close.

'Ready?' He signed at Gavin as he got unbuckled.

"Yeah." Came Gavin's reply as he got out.

Richard joined them and they made their way inside. The store was big and had an open floor plan with furniture on one side and decorations on the other. He made his way through the store picking things out that were on his list, crossing them off as well as other stores as he got them. He also picked up a few novelty things that caught his eye, including a present for Gavin. It was a mug that said 'cunt' in black print with the letter 'c' making up the handle. He figured Gavin would get a kick out of it given his sense of humor.

The other stops went similarly. Richard getting things off his list as well as a few other things that caught his eye. Some of them for Gavin when he did well on signing or passed his Psychology tests. None of the places they went had the shelves he wanted for his room. One place had some that were similar, and he bought them for his office. They were going to try one last place before giving up and ordering them online.

The store his phone directed them to was massive. The website said they at least sold the shelves he was looking for, but didn't say if they had any in stock. Looking couldn't hurt.

He and Gavin wandered the store. Following the signs in hopes of finding the shelves. They were stopped in an aisle trying to get their bearings. Richard didn't think they were going to find the shelves here. He was going to say as much to Gavin, but he saw a girl in the store's uniform coming toward them. Maybe she could help.

She spoke to them as she approached, "Can I help you and your..." her eyes moved from Richard to Gavin and then back as she chose her words, "partner find anything specific."

Richard froze. His partner? She meant Gavin, he knew that much, but it wasn't like that. They weren't like that. It wasn't like that. Richard tried telling her that but his signs wouldn't cooperate. He turned to Gavin, silently begging for help because he didn't know how to get out of this situation.

"Oh, uh. No. We're alright, thanks." Gavin sounded just as embarrassed as Richard felt, he hadn't explained that they weren't together, but his words had gotten the sales clerk to leave them be, which was just as good.

They stared at one another for a long while, the silence between them wasn't awkward, but there was something hanging in it. Gavin broke into a smile and then broke down into uncontrollable laughter. It got to the point that he was nearly doubled over. Richard's own anxiety was beginning to subside and he couldn't help but smile at Gavin, the other's delight rubbing off on him. They didn't find the shelves, but that was fine.

"Let's head back," Gavin said when he finally had control over his breathing. "We can pick up some food on the way back. Then order the shelves when we get back to your place."

Richard found himself hyper aware of how close he was to Gavin the rest of the night. Keeping a friendly distance between them and decided he could give him the mug another time. He didn't want to give Gavin the wrong impression.

They continued talking about it, Richard taking delight in Gavin's awkwardness. They exchanged pleasant stories and memories well into the evening. The late night hours became early morning and when they were both sagging into the pull out bed, Richard decided it was time to get some sleep.

'Okay,' Richard signed as he stood with a yawn, 'Bed Time.'

He let Gavin use the bathroom first again. When Richard was done for the night he climbed into bed and messaged Silas.

Me: Today was interesting

Silas: What did Garrett do?

Me: Gavin.

Me: He didn't do anything, but a worker at a furniture mistook us for a couple.

Silas: You said he wasn't doing anything!

Me: He wasn't. We were just kind of close

Silas: Why?

Me: We were lost.

Me: Anyway, its late so I'm going to sleep.

Silas: Be safe

Me: Always

Richard woke up at his usual time, the late night not quite beating natural habit. Like yesterday, Richard went about making coffee as quietly as possible. Since they were staying at the apartment he was back in comfortable clothes. The same blue sweatpants as before and a loose black t-shirt with an old style cat emoji on it. Just like the day before, the smell off coffee brought a barely coherent Gavin into the kitchen.

"Morning." Gavin muttered, sounding like he would much rather be asleep. "Today's the day. Are you excited?"

'Morning.' Richard signed back, choosing to answer Gavin's question with a nod. He didn't look awake enough for more signing.

When the coffee finished he poured Gavin's first sliding it over to him so he could get around to actually waking up. Richard poured his own next, holding it in his hands to soak up the warmth. He found himself watching Gavin, and rolled his eyes when the other all but moaned into his coffee. Understanding the sentiment, Richard lifted his own mug in a mock salute.

"Look. One of us can't function before eleven in the morning." He complained, hiding a yawn behind his mug before he took another drink, "Its not my fault you can't wake up at a normal time."

'Waking Up Afternoon Not Normal,' he replied dryly, winking at Gavin in place of a smile. Richard found morning's to be the most peaceful time of day and he liked them the best.

"Richard." He groaned gesturing to the window with his free hand, "Its the weekend. Its practically against the law to wake up early on the weekend."

'Yet Here You Are.' Richard felt himself smiling as he signed, 'Awake Early Sunday Morning.'

Gavin rolled his eyes and gave a genuine but tired laugh, "Okay, no need to be so damn smug. You've made your point."

'Have I?' Richard asked with the quirk of a brow.

This earned him getting flipped off by Gavin. He rolled his eyes again and hid a broad smile behind his mug. Gavin finished his coffee first and cleaned his mug out in the sink, setting it aside when he was done.

"Alright, I'm going to start by cleaning up my shit from the living room," he gestured in the vague direction of the couch, but Richard got the idea. "Then where do you want me?"

'My Room.' Richard signed before finishing off the rest of his coffee and cleaning out the mug.

Richard went to his room with every intention of redecorating but caught sight of his open closet doors. Part of making this apartment his was getting rid of those. He walked back out of his room to the hall closet, he opened the door and dug around until he found his tool kit. Richard took it back to his room and got started on the doors. He was working on the one farthest from the bedroom door. He got the top hinge detached without a problem. With that out of the way, he sat down and got to work on the bottom hinge. He heard Gavin knock on the doorframe before he spoke.

"What," Gavin started from behind him, sounding genuinely confused, "are you doing?"

Richard, personally, thought what he was doing was rather obvious. He was taking his closet doors off their frame. He gestured to the door as a way to get his point across and got back to work.

"Okay," Gavin continued, sounding just as confused as before, "and you're taking the door off its hinges because why exactly?"

Richard took a deep breath, letting it put as a frustrated sigh. After making sure the door wasn't going to fall if he left it unattended, he turned to face Gavin.

'I Do Not Like Noise They Make. Help Me.' He emphasized the last two signs by pointing at Gavin, then at the door that was still standing.

"You have a plan of what you're gonna do once they're off?" He asked as he walked over and leaned against the frame of the closet.

'No.' He stopped for a moment, wondering if they could fit in his car, deciding they couldn't he moved on, 'Do Not Want Them Here.'

"We'll figure it out I guess," came Gavin's response as he stood upright again, he eyed the door before he looked back at Richard, "you got anything to make this easier or are we just gonna brute force it?"

As much as Richard would have loved to see that, he didn't think the complex owners wouldn't like it too much if they couldn't replace the doors. He reached behind himself for the screwdriver he had been using and handed it to Gavin.

They worked in silence after that. Getting thr doors off and finding a place for them took longer than Richard thought it would. They settled for sticking them in the back of the bathroom closet, he found the irony of that a little amusing. The shelves for his room wouldn't be coming in for another ten days, but everything else could be set up today.

He took his time in his room, reorganizing things as he got it put together. Richard enjoyed himself as he redecorated his room, relaxing as the space came to look more lived in. His room came to have a blue and grey color scheme that he found calming and visually appealing. He took a picture of the finished product to send to Silas and Connor, making sure Gavin wasn't in the shot. Silas would lose it if he saw him in Richard's room, he would get the wrong idea.

The office came next, and setting up the shelves took the longest. Organizing them was easy though. The one to the right of the door as you came in was for books and paper work, the one to the left came to hold office supplies, a ship in a bottle, and a Lucky Cat statue from Gavin. Like with his bedroom, Richard took a picture to send to his brothers once Gavin had left.

Richard worked on the bathroom next, which didn't take him long. It was just changing the shower curtains and putting up different towels. The shower curtain was a blown up picture of the beach. Another picture that was sent to his brothers.

The last room left to do was the living room. Richard left it as the last room so Gavin had time to get all of his stuff together. He started with the media stand, placing ocean themed glass globes on either side of the tv, and light blue fairy lights along the front of the shelf. He placed two grey costers in shade order from lightest to darkest on each corner of the coffee table and a line of three white-blue electric candles along the center of it.

The couch was the last thing left to be decorated. Richard went back to his room to grab the bags of throw pillows. When he came back he couldn't find Gavin. Assuming he was in the bathroom, Richard started on the couch. He was smacked on the back with something soft, and turned to find Gavin triumphantly holding a pillow with "fuck off" stitched into it with light purple thread. He smacked Richard again, this time in the chest. It was on now.

Richard took a pillow off the couch and grinned at Gavin who seemed to realize he was a little out of his depth. He threw the pillow at Gavin causing him to back up, it hit him in the chest anyway. He ducked under the next one and threw his pillow at Richard. He caught it effectively disarming Gavin.

He backed Gavin into the wall with a barrage of pillows and was poised to throw the "fuck off" pillow when Gavin finally called his surrender.

"Okay! Okay!" He managed between bouts of laughter, "I'm sorry for smacking you with that pillow. Even if you deserved it."

Richard still threw the pillow, hitting Gavin lightly in the shoulder. They got to work setting up the pillows at each armrest, some along the back. Gavin placing the "fuck off" pillow in the center so it could easily be seen. When he moved away from the couch, Richard took a picture of the living room, making sure Gavin was in the shot this time, and sending it to his brothers.

"There its perfect." Gavin said, turning to face Richard with a smile as he put his phone away, "home sweet home."

Richard returned the smile, something light and warm making its home in his chest as he looked at Gavin, 'Home Sweet Home.'

For the first time, it felt true. This apartment was finally a home, a place where he could simply be, rather than be confined to. It was a new feeling and he liked it. Richard hoped one day he had the right words to thank Gavin for this.

[codynaomiswireart]

“I Can Bring You Back”

Rapunzel once again falls into a trance induced by the moon incantation...and it's up to Varian to bring her back out of it.

A quick ficlet inspired by the events of "Rapunzel and the Great Tree" (SPOILER ALERT FOR THAT EPISODE!) and a piece of TTS/RTA fan art by @qu-r.

Link to fan art reference - https://qu-r.tumblr.com/post/183044858770/p1-rocks-stand-and-endure-let-your-sorrow-free

Also, moon!Varian AU, because I can't get enough of it. ^^

“Wither and decay,

End this destiny,

Break these earthly chains,

And set the spirit free…”

Varian furrowed his brow as he saw her standing there.

Rapunzel stood with a slight, sleepy stoop to her shoulders, and her eyes were empty and black as translucent tears streamed down from them uncontrollably. Rapunzel’s hair flowed around her like dark, inky tentacles, and they seemed to be searching for any source of life that they might drain, though their search was by no means in haste. Death felt no need to rush apparently. It could slink about, taking its time. Time didn’t seem to matter much to it. Just so long as it kept moving. Kept spreading.

Varian felt himself shudder as the cold darkness spread into the ground beneath his feet, and it took all of his resolve to not flee in terror. He heard the sprinting footsteps of everyone else retreat in the other direction behind him, and he heard the sound of Cassandra’s metallic footfalls falter and stop when she realized they’d left him behind.

And Varian wasn’t moving.

“VARIAN!” Cassandra screamed at him. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU IDIOT!? GET OUT OF THERE!”

But Varian only responded with a quick glance at her over his shoulder, noting the look of panic in her eyes as they met his. And then, he began to walk forward…towards Rapunzel.

“Wither and decay…”

“NO VARIAN!” Cassandra and Eugene yelled at him, and the others all made distressed gasps of their own as Varian continued to move into the soul-sucking darkness. Cass and Eugene didn’t know what Varian was thinking (Had he gone mad!? Did he have a death wish!? Would he try to hurt Rapunzel a second time!?), and the two of them would’ve gone rushing in to try to grab him and drag him back beyond the range of Rapunzel’s powers, but their attempt was in vain. Almost immediately, the two of them stumbled and fell as they made their way passed the outer line of the dark radius, and they felt the life begin to drain out of them.

“End this destiny…”

Hearing their cries of distress behind him, Varian paused just long enough to see Lance and Hookfoot manage to drag the two of them back beyond the dark circle of decaying plant matter, and as Varian breathed a sigh of relief at their safety (for the moment), he continued on in his stride, with his coat beginning to billow around him slightly as the thick locks of Rapunzel’s hair brushed against him like curious animals sniffing about for prey.

“Break these earthly chains…”

Varian tried hard to concentrate as he could feel his steps slowing as he drew nearer. He may have had protection from death for the moment (at least, so he’d been told), but he knew it wouldn’t last long. Varian could hear more gasps from his comrades behind him as his hair began to glow a similar dull blue to that which flowed along the strands of Rapunzel’s own, with the most prominent blue streak in his hair growing the brightest the most quickly. A moment later, his whole head was crowned in a silvery white, and his eyes went bright and blank as Rapunzel’s hair curled loosely around his form, searching for any chink in the equal-and-opposite magic protecting him. He drew nearer still.

“And set the spirit free…”

At last, Varian came to stop right in front of Rapunzel, and while she appeared to be looking right at him – her pitch black eyes meeting his pale white ones – it also seemed like she didn’t actually see him. She only continued to stand there, with her arms hanging loosely at her sides, and the tears still streaming down her face unheeded.

“Wither and decay,

End this destiny,

Break these earthly chains,

And set the spirit free…”

Again Rapunzel repeated that verse, though now instead of singing it in melancholy melody, she was now just chanting it over and over and over again.

She couldn’t stop.

“Wither and decay,

End this destiny,

Break these earthly chains,

And set the spirit free…”

“Wither and de- Ah!”

Rapunzel started back as she felt Varian’s touch on her left hand. Varian couldn’t help but let out a breath of relief as his gloved right hand remained in tact upon clasping hers gently. While he did feel a chill go into his palm and fingers – like his hand had been plunged into a bucket of ice water – it did not burn, wither or spasm. Rapunzel blinked down at him, though her eyelids fluttered over what were still the deep, dark voids that were lost and confused.

“…V-Varian!?” Rapunzel cried in a frightened tone as reality suddenly began to crash in on her. Varian swallowed hard.

“H-hello Rapunzel,” Varian nearly whispered as he pushed passed the hoarseness in his throat. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be all-”

“Wither and decay…”

Now it was Varian who started back a little (though still keeping a hold of Rapunzel’s hand), as Rapunzel began to enter back into the monotonous trace of the moon incantation.

“End this destiny…”

“No no Rapunzel!” Varian tried again, though with more desperation in his voice now as he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Rapunzel, it’s ok. You just need to-”

“Break these earthly chains,

And set the spirit free…”

Varian now felt the first pin-pricks of burning in his fingers as Rapunzel continued to chant, and Varian tried again to bring her back to her senses with a few shakes of her shoulders and crying out to her, but this only seemed to maker her chant louder in response.

“Wither and decay!

End this destiny…!”

Varian felt his posture begin to slump as weakness began to close in on him. He needed to act now! But what could he do!? Nothing seemed to be getting through to her, and Varian probably had only a minute or two at the most before he would lose consciousness, and then worse.

“What should I do!?” he asked himself, trying to ignore the persistent curling and caressing of Rapunzel’s hair about him – as if beckoning him into eternal sleep – as his mind raced to think of what he could possibly do to calm Rapunzel down.

Then, he got an idea.

“It might be a bit weird,” he thought to himself, “but under the circumstances, I don’t really care.”

Trying to be as gentle and non-threatening as he could, Varian set his hands on Rapunzel’s shoulders, and slowly guided her down into a sitting position, where he too sat down in front of her on his knees.

“Don’t worry Rapunzel,” Varian said calmly underneath her continued chanting. “It’s ok. You can stop now. It’s all right. I’m here. I can help you. You just have to trust me.”

“Wither and decay!

End this destiny…!”

“Rapunzel,” Varian tried a bit louder. “Listen to me. I know you’re scared. You feel alone, cold, and in a dark place, but you’re not alone. I’m here. I can bring you back.”

“Break these earthly chains,

And set…s-set the spirit free…”

Varian felt his consciousness waver, but Rapunzel’s stammer in her speech and a quick blinking of her eyes was all of the encouragement he needed. He was getting through! But it wasn’t quite enough.

Again, trying to be as gentle as he could, Varian moved to draw Rapunzel’s face towards his own, and shut his eyes as he felt her forehead make contact with his. As their foreheads met, Rapunzel’s words suddenly died in her throat, through the tears continued to flow from her eyes, and her hair still billowed about them like a dark, streaming cloud.

With that, Varian took a deep breath, and now he was the one who began to sing.

“Flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine,

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back what once was mine…”

If Varian had his eyes open to see it, he would’ve seen the gradual receding of the darkness along Rapunzel’s locks, with their usual gold coming back from the ends and making its way swiftly towards her scalp as his singing rang in the air around them.

“Heal what has been hurt,

Change the fate’s design,

Save what has been lost,

Bring back what once was mine…”

Everyone else stood and stared with their mouths wide open as the darkness retreated from before them at Varian’s song, and Rapunzel’s eyes returned to their usual vibrant green just as the last notes ceased to vibrate in Varian’s throat.

“What once was mine…”

Pulling back and opening his own eyes, Varian was able to give Rapunzel one weak, reassuring smile, before the silver glow from above him dimmed back to a deep ebony. Then, everything else went black around him as well as he felt himself beginning to fall, and he just managed to feel Rapunzel’s arms catch him and her voice call his name before exhaustion engulfed him in its embrace.

[anythingbutmyname00]

Spierfeld- Alternate Meeting

what if Simon immediately found Blue’s second note and they started texting? What if Bram forgets to put his phone on silent before lunch?

*Will be posted on AO3 as soon as I get my account fixed up* 

Simon had no intention of wearing the shirt to school.

First of all, his wardrobe of blank T-shirts and hoodies suddenly including band tees might throw a few people for a loop. He’s not self-absorbed enough to think people actually care that much about his style where they’d notice a change, but if he knows one thing it’s that Leah would notice. And if Leah notices, Leah makes a comment, and then Nick and Abby notice, and then it spirals.

Second, He doesn’t know if that’s too desperate on his part or coming off too strong towards Blue. Even Simon knows wearing it to school the very next day would be extremely pathetic. The best he can do is email a thank you for now. Also, who knows if that would freak Blue out? I mean, it was a gift, a shirt, and yes, shirts are supposed to be worn, but is the very next day a sign where Blue would be totally freaked out? Like Woah, Simon is obsessed with me freak out?

Third, he wanted this to be a gift that was just for him. He knows that’s stupid; of course the gift is just for him, but it’s like the emails. No one else needs to know about it. It’s between him and Blue.

So, yeah. Simon had no intention of wearing it to school. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to wear it at all. He got home from play rehearsal--- an extra hour every night, now that the show is less than two weeks away--- and slumped his way through all of his work while heating up whatever his mom made for dinner. By the time he finished everything he had to do, it was close to 11:30, but nothing could’ve stopped him from trying that shirt on.

He’d never felt this sort of need before. It’s not a need like a crush-on-someone need where its just an aching. Or a need where its an I-want-that need where you forget you’re supposed to breathe when thinking of whatever it is. It’s a new need, one that doesn’t have a name yet. To him, it just feels like an unstoppable force. This isn’t physics though, there is no immovable object. There’s just his hands, complying as he removes the shirt from the bag, standing in front of the bathroom mirror waiting to try it on.

He holds it up first and just admires it. And then he admires how much Blue must know him to get him the most perfect shirt. Simons’ not even thinking about the fact that it was Elliott Smith--- an A+ right there in his book--- but the fact that it was just the kind of fan merch he’d wear. There is fan merch that goes way over the top, like, who would ever wear that over the top. There’s also fan merch that is more casual but just feels wrong; like the lyric they chose is weird or the design is off. Simon would browse the internet for hours looking at potential band tees he would wear if he felt like he had the right and confidence to. And, of course, Blue got him the most perfect shirt. It’s simple and not flashy. Muted colors. Comfortable fit. He’s too distracted thinking about how this boy must know him so deeply that he stands there for five minutes without even putting it on.

When he finally felt ready to try it on, Simon slipped his hand through the bottom of the shirt, but about halfway up, he felt something too thick and scratchy to be a tag. Frantically, he lifts the shirt to eye-level and sees a second piece of blue-ish-green construction paper.

In his effort to remove the paper, he’s so excited he almost rips it. His hands shake so much as he holds it up he almost can’t read it.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself down, he begins to read the note.

P.S. I love the way you smile like you don’t realize you’re doing it. I love your perpetual bed head. I love the way you hold eye contact a moment longer than you need to. And I love your moon-gray eyes. So if you think I’m not attracted to you Simon, you’re crazy.

And then, underneath it, a phone number.

Blue gave me his phone number. He actually gave it to me.

7 million thoughts buz through Simons head at once. Is blue waiting for him to text him? Did he pressure Blue into giving the number to him? Should he text him now or wait? What does this mean?

And then: I can text him a thanks instead of emailing one.

Rushing back to his room without even trying the shirt on, Simon begins drafting texts to Blue.

Simon: Hey, It’s me Simon. Thanks for the shirt.

Simon: Hey, It’s Simon. I love the shirt.

Simon: It’s me, Simon. I cannot believe you got me a freaking Elliott Smith shirt AND gave me your number!

He went with the last one and collapsed on his bed to scream into a pillow, fitfully. Life is a Ferris Wheel indeed. He thought he’d ruined everything they had, and then Blue turns around and gives him his phone number.

He waits up for another fifteen minutes, but decides he can’t possibly keep his eyes open any longer. He knew there was a good chance Blue would already be asleep anyway.

The next morning, he wakes up to no new text messages. He checks his phone every five minutes anyway, despite the fact that his volume is up all the way. Yeah, so he’s that pathetic.

No new texts during his morning routine, during breakfast, during the drive to school. Nothing; it’s killing him. He knew Blue had to have a reason for giving him his number. He wouldn't do it if he had no intent of answering. Maybe he just needs some time to comprehend that this is happening. Simon would give him all the time in the world if he knew it meant in the end he would get to see Blue in person and kiss him and his perfectly grammatical lips.

It would just mean he needed more patience. He could do patience; sometimes. He just needed to relax.

Walking into the school, he headed towards his locker. The hustle and bustle of the hallways was so obnoxiously loud that he almost didn’t hear his phone go off.

Almost

But of course he heard it.

Simon reached so quickly into the pocket of his sweatshirt to grab his phone and whip it out, that he accidentally threw it into the person at the locker he happened to be passing.

Gasping, Simon looked towards the direction of where he flung his phone and his eyes met those of cute Bram.

“Hey, I’m so sorry man. I’m a bit of a mess this morning my bad.”

Bram looked at me from his position at his locker, hands cradling my phone where he caught it on reflex. His eyes softened when he saw it was Simon he was now forced into a conversation with, which he guesses for him was better than if some stranger had been the person to accidentally throw their phone at him. He really does seem to have a small problem with the quiet thing. Simon could see his shoulders relax a little from reflex tension and social interaction pressure.

It’s only occurring to me now how little he know about him despite the fact that he’s played soccer with one of his best friends for years and they sat at the same lunch table all school year long thus far.

Bram reaches out and hands him back his phone, smirking slightly, in the way cute Bram often does at the lunch table when Garrett says something stupid or Nick makes a fool of himself in front of Abby. “Must be something good on there.” He says, obviously making a casual play at my excitement which caused this interaction in the first place.

Simon takes the phone. “Huh. I guess so.” He holds the phone up and does that smile nod thing to say thank you and continues on his way down the hall. Once he turns the corner and gets to his locker, he opens it and take out his phone behind the locker door. Sure enough, there it is. A reply.

Blue: So, I’m guessing you liked it?

Perfect grammar and punctuation, even in text. Anyone like Nick or Leah doing that and Simon would’ve ripped them apart for being a huge nerd. But, suddenly Blue does it and he just finds it incredible hot. Figures.

Simon: Are you kidding me?? Best gift I’ve ever received. Easily top 10.

And the rest of his morning continues just like that. Simon patiently waiting to feel his phone vibrate against his leg while also trying his best to remain invested in class. There are more weird breaks between texts but he’s not dense enough to not be able to apply that to the fact they’re in school.

The conversation continues naturally, the way it would in their emails. Simon is so blissfully happy that he finally has Blues number that he doesn't even care when two of his teachers have to remind him that phones are prohibited in school.

He’s antsy all day waiting to be able to pull out his phone and respond to Blue’s texts, but it really reaches its height during lunch.  

For one, he keeps his phone on the table instead of in his pocket. This way, when it lights up he can see it and doesn’t have to pull it out. He knows he’s being pathetic, he’s just too giddy to care.

“What is up with you?” Abby questions from directly across from him, snapping him out of his eager daydream. “All you can do is glance at that phone. What’s on it, something juicy I hope.”

“Ha Ha.” Simon deadpans. “As if. It’s nothing” he says, moving his plastic fork around the pasta salad on his plate. As far as school lunches go, it’s definitely not bad. But that still doesn’t make him feel inclined to eat it.

“She’s right, Si.” Leah says from next to me. “I’ve never seen you so invested in the thing.” Leah makes a face that, to someone like Abby who she’s only known for a few months, would seem like she pleasantly agrees, but to me, seems like she would like anything else in the world than to agree, but she does.

“Oh, whatever, I’m not invested, see?” Simon says as he tucks his phone back into his sweatshirt middle pocket, trying all too hard to seem casually like he doesn’t care at all that he has to put it away.

“He was so excited over it this morning he practically assaulted me with it.” Everyone looks up at the fact that Bram was the one who next put into the conversation. It’s not like he never speaks, he does; it’s just usually he does in small sentences or phrases, and mostly when Nick or Garrett are involved. So when Bram speaks up in a conversation mainly featuring me, Abby, and Leah, it pretty much made the entire table want to join rather than just spectate.

Cute Bram, tried acting like the sudden attention wasn’t getting to him, but Simon could see that his jaw was a little tense, as if he’d clenched it slightly, waiting for someone to say something.

“Buddy, come on. If BRAM joined the conversation to say so, then something’s up with you and the phone.” Nick claims from his spot next to Bram, where he gripped him on the shoulders and slightly shook him when mentioned his name.

Bram blushed a little and released a small pointed laugh. The blush looked really good on him, coloring his tanned cheeks. Simon himself, felt his face get a little hot and he mumbled another “yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever” before returning once again to his pasta salad.

The rest of his day blurs by. He almost doesn't survive the entirety of play practice without being able to check his phone, which Abby notices and fondly teases him about. At home, he texts Blue in between working and eating and everything else. He was smiling at his phone below the table so often during dinner he was too distracted to hear his mothers’ “would you like to be excused, Simon?” and responded with a meek “hmm?”

Wednesday went mostly the same. It was so much nicer texting Blue continuously rather than having to wait for wifi to answer an email.

This time, he gets to lunch and he's careful to not make it obvious that he’s waiting on his phone.

After five minutes of half-heartedly listening to Nick and Garrett complain about the new soccer drills their coach is running while Bram enthusiastically nods at their points and occasionally adds his own two cents, Simon can’t help it and pulls out his phone.

He sees a response from Blue. He hadn’t felt his phone go off, it must have been while he was walking back to the table or something.  

Blue: I see you haven’t taken Mr. Wise’s advice about those sentence fragments.

Laughing slightly to himself, forgetting his surroundings, He types a reply.

Simon: I thought you loved my sentence fragments! Is there someone else with more adorable sentence fragments? You can tell me, it’s okay. I can handle it.

He bites back his smile, trying to seem like he was just casually checking his phone, looking at the time, texting his mom.

And then something happens.

He presses send on his reply, just as his phone is going back in his pocket, looks up, and a phone goes off somewhere in close proximity.

No one else even flinched at the noise, instead the guys at his table continued their stimulating soccer conversation which Abby listened in on, and Leah spoke in hushed tones to Morgan and Anna.

He looked around but couldn’t see anyone visibly looking down at their phones; not near enough to matter anyway.

Taking advantage of the sudden invisibility at his table, Simon pulled out his phone to perform an experiment.

Simon: what changed your mind into giving me your number, btw?

Simon made sure that he was looking up and alert when he pressed send this time.

Once again, somewhere nearby, a phone went off, same as before. It had to be at one of the tables surrounding his. The first time could’ve been dismissed as a coincidence, but both times? Simon wasn’t superstitious enough to believe it could’ve happened twice.

As he’s about to start casually staring down the occupants of every table surrounding his trying to scout out the source of the phone, he notices cute Bram excuse himself from Nick and Garrett, who barely acknowledge his leaving, and head towards the door. As he does so, he reaches into this back pocket and pulls out his phone.

There’s no way, he thinks. There’s no way Blue is cute Bram. The same Bram who’s been at his lunch table right in front of him the whole time. He thinks about what he knows.

He thought he knew Bram liked Leah based on the other day, but Simon realizes he failed to see that Garrett was also present in the conversation it could easily have been him crushing on Leah.

He knows…...he knows nothing. He knows Bram is quiet, quiet can relate to Blue’s shyness.

He also knows Bram is really smart. He need only remember the paper Mr. Wise accidentally gave him of Brams. Good at english means grammatical.

He doesn’t know about his religion, but he knows he doesn’t have Blue eyes that’s something right?

Bram. wait. Bram.  

“Garrett.” Simon says. “Garrett!” A little louder.

He gets his attention. Garrett looks slightly inconvenienced at his conversation about the price of his new cleats being paused but he answers anyway. “What, Spier?”

“What is Bram short for?”

“What?” Garrett responds at first. “Abraham. Why?”

Abraham.

Abraham Lincoln.

Simon doesn’t answer. He gets up as casually as he can manage and tries not to trip over his shoelaces as he walks maybe a little too quickly to the doors of the cafeteria.

Bram. It has to be Bram. How could he never have seen it?

Pushing the doors out of the cafeteria open, he glances down the hallway to the left and right. To his left, leaning against a random locker, facing the opposite direction, is Bram.

Even though Simon cannot see the front of him, he can see that Bram is hunched a little, leaning over something. It has to be his phone.

He decides to try something. He takes out his phone and turns the ringer on, putting it up on full volume, and waits. He walks out of the doorway so that he’s about 10 feet behind Bram facing him, holding his phone.

And then, it happens.

He sees Bram stand up straight again, and, just after he does, Simon’s phone goes off. Loud.

They’re the only two people in the hallway which makes it echo off of the lockers. He knows Bram heard it. He saw his shoulders slightly tense when he heard the noise.

Slowly, Bram turns around, and his eyes meet Simons.

They’re wide and unblinking. He doesn’t seem as if he knows what to do, and, honestly, neither does Simon. He’s been waiting for months to meet Blue, and now that he has, he doesn’t know what he should be doing or saying.

Instead, Simon looks down at his phone, at Brams text.

Blue: No one else has sentence fragments as cute as yours, I promise. I don't know exactly. I was dead set against not giving it to you, but then in school I saw you smile at one of your friends and I suddenly changed my mind. ;)

Simon sees that Bram still hasn’t moved from his spot, so he texts him.

Simon: Bram?

He looks up as the phone in the hands of the boy he loves goes off once again, a few feet down the hallway.

Bram also looks down when his phone goes off, another loud echo through the hallway.

Right afterward Simon begins walking forward towards Bram, but as he gets close enough to be in arm distance, Bram puts his arm on Simons elbow and ushers him into the classroom closest to them, which happens to be unoccupied.

Inside Simon walks forward and runs a hand through his hair as Bram quietly shuts the door.

Simons turns to face him, one hand still in his hair, the other one by his side. Bram stands there, his hands in front of him one tightly gripping the other, his face unsure of what exactly to say. But he speaks anyway. “Simon I-”

But Simon doesn’t want to talk. Simon just found the boy he’s been in love with for months. After so much bullshit and secrecy and Martin fucking Addison, Simon’s done talking. He surges forward and places his hands on Bram’s cheeks and kisses him.

He feels all the tension melt out of Bram as his arms wrap around Simons waist. The kiss is short. It only lasts about 3 seconds, and it's not enough. But right now, Simon would take anything.

He pulls back and looks at Brams face, his hands still on his cheeks and brams arms still hugging his middle.

“I can’t believe you sat at my lunch table all fucking year and I didn’t know.”

Bram laughs and removes his arms from Simon. Simon takes the hint and takes a step back, his hands back to his own sides.

Now it's Bram’s turn to nervously run his hand through his hair. He looks down and bites his lip just a little. Simon wants to kiss him again.

“I guess I feel kind of stupid now for not giving you my number sooner.” He says and looks back up at Simon.

“No, you had every right to wait. I shouldn’t have pressured you the way I did anyway.”

“No, Si, man come on you didn’t do anything wrong.” He reaches across to grab Simon’s hand “If I could’ve predicted that kiss I definitely would’ve given it to you sooner.”

Simon smiles at him. “Oh yeah?” He says, taking a step closer.

“Mhmm” Bram says, him this time being the one to kiss Simon. This one lasts no longer than the last as Bram pulls away again and says “but we should probably go back to lunch.”

Reluctantly, the two stagger their return to the lunch room, Bram first, saying he went to the bathroom, and then Simon a minute later.

Simon walks back in and sits down, focusing too hard on his seat and tray as to not stare pointedly at Bram on the other side of the table and a seat down.

“And where’d you go, weirdo?” Says Abby who tilts her head in a youre-still-acting-super-odd sort of way.  

“Wait,” Leah says, “let me guess...to find service!” Nudging his arm with her unused plastic knife.

“Something like that yeah.” Simons says smirking a little. He deals with his friends friendly prodding about his new phone obsession for the rest of the period and laughs at all the right moments, though his head is somewhere else. Somewhere across the table and a seat or two down.

The rest of the night goes something like the last. His phone constantly going off and Simon constantly smiling ear to ear at it. The next morning too. All of it relatively familiar.

And then he gets to lunch. He sits in his usual seat. The end of the table right next to Leah, across from Abby and then Nick and finally, Bram. He says hi to everyone as he sits and throws a hidden smirk towards Bram who returns one.

He takes out his phone and reads the text that's been waiting for him.

Bram: I thought you should know that Garrett has been asking me all year why I suddenly get even quieter at lunch despite the fact that it's him and Nick.

Simon: WAIT. You mean I’M one of the cute guys who makes you all nervous?

Simon cant help but smile at his phone, not knowing that he’s caught the attention of about half the table since he’d sat down. He looks up, still trying to bite the smile off his lips, and then sees Abby, Leah, and Garrett all looking at him with an amused sort of expression. Nick is too invested in his mac and cheese. That helps the smile go away pretty quickly.

“What!” he defends. Glancing around at all of his friends individually.

“Okay” Abby begins saying. ”I MUST know who you’re texting. Come on Simon.” She has a determined look on her face that says she’s joking enough to be kind about it, but she’ll do everything she can to find out who it is.

“It’s none of your business actually, so I think I’ll just send my text, put my phone away, and change the topic of conversation.” Simon says, smirking right back at her, his phone now visible above the table which before he’d used as a shield to type. He uses one arm to hold Leah directly where she is next to him, while they all laugh at her trying her best to see around him at his phone. Chuckling, he uses his other hand to send his text to Bram.

He just hadn’t even considered the fact that maybe he should wait, maybe Bram forgot to turn his phone on vibrate. Maybe he should’ve played the phone thing off again.

But of course he didn’t do that.

And of course Brams phone went off at a loud enough volume for the entire lunch table to hear, causing Leah to stop fighting against Simons arm, Abby to stop laughing, and even Nick to look up from his food. Even Garrett stopped what he was doing to open his mouth at the boy sitting next to him.

Bram had paused in the middle of opening his water bottle. Suddenly, as if someone had pressed play on a remote, he continued opening the water bottle and stared straight ahead while he drank some, trying to act like no one just heard his phone go off from his pocket.

“Bram” you could hear the smile in Abby's voice as she said it. “Was that YOUR phone that went off after Simon sent his text?”

Simon could do nothing but watch as he felt the color rush into his cheeks. He watched the event unfold, unable to say anything.

“No” Bram responded too quickly, his voice an octave higher than usual. He began to play it off. He cleared his throat and tried again. “No, definitely not.”

Two more seconds passed, and then the entire table erupted.

Garrett was smacking Bram on the arm and saying “way to go Greenfeld holy shit!” while Bram laughed and played into it.

Leah and Abby are firing questions at Simon like its nothing. How did this happen? How long had he been texting him? But seriously how did this happen?

Nick was glancing back and forth between both of them going “nowaynowaynowaynoway.”

Simon didn’t care though. He laughed as Garrett and his friends got the most out of this sudden discovery, and in the midst of all the craziness, he met Brams eye, and his smile got impossibly wider. Bram smiled right back as he swatted Garretts arm away again, and the whole rest of day couldn’t have done anything else to make him happier than that smile made him.

Simon was good.

thanks for reading!!! hope you enjoyed!! message me with comments or anything!! I will gladly take requests for more fics if I can work with them!!

-Emma :)

[burberrycanary]

They sort of break up on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of the March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.

She doesn’t. But she takes his hand.

Betty strikes a bargain with him in the first week after they’re official again: they won’t celebrate his birthday as long as they start skipping Valentine's Day, too.

It was never about Valentine's Day, he wants to say. But then it was never really about his birthday either.

—

Last week’s snow lingers on the north edges of buildings and in dirty, packed-hard piles near the ends of driveways. Over the last few days the air has lost the worst of its damp, brutal edge. By the trailer park fence, small purple and white flowers spill down the side of rotted out wooden planters abandoned long ago.

He’s walking past the faded Sunnyside Trailer Park sign when his phone vibrates in his pocket. A hot-cold rush coils up tight in his chest when he sees Betty’s name.

Jughead swipes to pick up and says, “Hey.”

Read it on AO3 or below the cut.

I had so many season 2 bughead feels and nowhere to put them so I wrote this. Many thanks to my amazing, amazing betas, @soyforramen and @bewarethesmirk <3333

I Leave This at Your Ear

They sort of break up on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of the March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.

She doesn’t. But she takes his hand.

Betty strikes a bargain with him in the first week after they’re official again: they won’t celebrate his birthday as long as they start skipping Valentine's Day, too.

It was never about Valentine's Day, he wants to say. But then it was never really about his birthday either.

   Last week’s snow lingers on the north edges of buildings and in dirty, packed-hard piles near the ends of driveways. Over the last few days the air has lost the worst of its damp, brutal edge. By the trailer park fence, small purple and white flowers spill down the side of rotted out wooden planters abandoned long ago.

He’s walking past the faded Sunnyside Trailer Park sign when his phone vibrates in his pocket. A hot-cold rush coils up tight in his chest when he sees Betty’s name.

Jughead swipes to pick up and says, “Hey.”

“Jug.”

He thinks stupidly of repeating, hey, then thinks of asking if she needs something—except he gets a flicker of warning that the question would come out wrong, like she needs a reason to call.

The quiet fumbles along between them. Background noise filters over the line: a confusion of distant voices and a single muffled car horn.

“Practice just finished,” Betty offers. “V’s giving me a ride home. She’s calling a car.”

He's never bothered to work out the details of Veronica’s endless supply of mysterious black cars. They’re just part of the Veronica Lodge brand of magical realism: best simply accepted.

But the oddity catches at him, since Betty has never liked asking for favors and, though it’s cold out, the sky is a clear sweep of blue.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah, of course.” He can hear Betty blow out a steadying breath. “I took a fall at practice. It's nothing, just a few bruises. I could walk home. I’m okay.”

But her voice is too flat as though, after everything in the last six months, she is no longer calibrated to register this scale of hurt.

“The more you say you're fine, Betts, the less I believe you.”

She gives a short, breathy laugh, the one that tends to land between a giggle and a scoff.

“Jug, I’m fine. The fall looked worse than it was. But if Veronica wants to drop me off at home, she can. She'll feel better.”

Jughead pictures her standing on the top of the steps leading out of Riverdale High in the cool cast of afternoon light, waiting for a car she doesn't want. But then he considers how observant Veronica can be when she isn't distracted and how far Betty will stretch the edges of I’m fine.

What kind of fall looks worse than it is, he wonders.

“You're really all right?”

“Yeah. I was just calling to say hi. Hang on.” Muffled voices overlap and then Betty's back on. “I should go.”

He nods to himself. “Okay. I’ll call you later.”

A silence spins out to fill the space where Betty would have once given an easy hum of agreement or, near the end, one of those mournful I love yous.

He's about to hang up when he hears her voice again.

“Hey, Jug.”

“Yeah?” Another pause stretches out, but this one doesn't feel so heavy. He knocks the side of his boot against the wooden post holding up the trailer park sign.

“This weekend.” She trails off. A choppy truck engine approaches and fades along the unseen road that runs south of the trailer park. “My parents will be gone some. They’re leaving Friday after work.”

Before, inviting her over would have been like nothing. Jughead arranges and listens to the words in his head twice before he can manage, “Want to come over?”

A handful of heartbeats lurch past before Betty gives a quiet, firm, “Yes.”

   He calls her after school on Wednesday from the Red and Black’s office-slash-darkroom, tipping his chair back and staring at the silver coffeemaker she’d brought over that he’d kept on using most school days even when they weren’t talking. He hasn’t turned up any new leads. Nothing about the fundamentals of Southside High has changed and his classes are boring, so he tells her about the new, unexpectedly high brow graffiti that repeats down all the lockers in the main hallway: but is it art? but is it art? but is it art?

Betty doesn’t call on Thursday, but just after eleven she texts him good night with a moon. He watches the typing dots cycle and cycle and then disappear. Nothing else shows up.

  Friday morning she texts: 9:30 ok?

For an insane moment he debates whether he should text back yes, sure or great.

He presses his forehead against the kitchen cabinet door, hard, and goes with a thumbs up emoji.

   She knocks at about quarter to ten. Jughead takes a breath and, after a moment of deliberation, leaves his beanie on the arm of the couch.

When he opens the door, Betty is staring back down the battered steps. The yellow wash of the porch light turns her a little bit golden and her profile is sharply defined against the surrounding dark. He tries not to think too hard about the last time she was here, how that ended, just how many nights he’s wanted to open the door and see her like this.

“Hey, you.”

She looks up and smiles. “I got Pop’s.” She lifts the white takeout bag towards him.

He shoves down saying I love you, because the words would come out as a joke, and closes his fingers over hers instead of taking the bag. He tugs her a step closer. She tips her face up so he bends down and kisses her, thinking the words in a fast, dizzying loop.

She pulls back with one last brush against his mouth and, after a perfectly dragged out pause, says, “It’s just Pop’s.”

Jughead huffs out a laugh, kisses her forehead and takes the grease-spotted white bag.

“Come on in.”

   They eat at the kitchen table off of the paper wrappers. She got him two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a strawberry milkshake.

Betty eats her burger fast but picks at her fries as she tells him about school, about the voicemail she got from Polly, about Kevin’s steady hook up and sorta-maybe boyfriend that he’ll talk about only using waspish cynicism or TMI designed to bait her into shutting the topic down.

Betty frowns at her fries like she wants to help Kevin with this problem of being a little fucked up by life and doesn’t know how.

Jughead presses his knee against the side of her leg because she’s already helping more than she knows, but Betty flinches away. “Sorry. Cheerleading.”

The fall.

“I didn’t know it was that bad.”

She shrugs. “I got off pretty easy.”

“‘It could’ve been worse’ wasn’t really the standard I had in mind.”

Betty regards him from across the table and finally says, “Okay.” Only, because she’s Betty Cooper, she has to add, “But I’m—”

“I get it.” He reaches out to steal one of her fries even though he’s not even done with his own yet. “You’re okay.”

She absently tilts her bag of fries towards him a little bit more.

   He gathers up the paper wrappers and empty milkshake cups while Betty gets the small pink gym bag she left by the door.

That tethered draw, which can sometimes pull him in so tight, leads him down the hall after her and deposits him with a shoulder propped against the bathroom door that she’s left open as she unpacks a little transparent travel bag that holds a crinkly green packet of wipes she uses to clean her face, a few small bottles and a toothbrush.

Betty takes off her makeup with a white cloth that leaves her skin faintly pink. She tugs the elastic out of her ponytail and rubs her fingers against her scalp, shaking her hair out into waves that settle around her shoulders. He’d stand here and watch her brush her teeth if that didn’t cross the line between a little weird and full on creepy. So he retreats into the kitchen. He closes his laptop but leaves it charging on the kitchen counter, double-checks the deadbolt and then stalls out in the boxy area between the kitchen, the living room and the front door.

He still has some condoms left from before. He assumes she came over for sex, but—Jughead stares up at the ceiling and thinks, What the fuck do I know?

  He trades places with her in the bathroom to brush his teeth, sliding past her.

When he’s done and opens the door, she’s leaning back against the wall of the narrow hallway, less than two steps away.

All he wants to do is take those couple steps forward, to get back to that lost place where he wouldn’t have thought twice about any of this.

Maybe if she wasn’t banged up, they’d crash into each other with the blurred out rush that comes so easy between them. But what he’s got right now is this: Betty nudging the flannel off his shoulders as he kisses down her neck, Betty tugging his t-shirt up and off as he straightens, Betty staring at his shoulders and chest.

He brings his arms up against the wall to box her in and slows down leaning into her, dragging the motion out so that when he kisses her again she’s smiling a little into the kiss.

Betty’s hands slide down his sides and she tucks her fingers in between his jeans and his hips.

They’re barely even touching and the crazy spun out slowness of what they’re doing twists up how much he wants her tighter and tighter. He thinks he might crawl out of his skin with this frustrated, banked down desire that’s amazing and terrible all at once.

Jughead drops a hand to touch her breast through her sweater and opens his mouth over hers. Her tongue flicks over his lower lip like she knows what he wants but is going to give it to him one piece at a time. And she does bit by bit until at last he’s got her tongue in his mouth and his hand under her shirt and he needs her to not be wearing so many clothes.

He pulls back, skims his hand down the hard curve of her ribs to the edge of her sweater and raises his eyebrows. At her nod he strips off both layers, sweater and cami, and gets his mouth on the soft, warm swell of her breast just above where her bras always cut in a little.

He hears, “Bed. Bed, Juggie, c’mon.” Her voice is pitched so low, rough with how turned on she is, and the sound is like getting kicked in the chest. He wants to scoop her up, his hands under her thighs, her breasts pressed up tight against him, but he remembers her flinch in the kitchen and grabs her hand instead, pulling her back towards his bedroom.

She backs him up against the open door, her lips and then teeth against his jaw, making him lift his chin up for her so she can suck a mark onto his neck. She works at his fly, fumbling because she won’t step away far enough to manage the button on the first go.

He wants her naked—bra, jeans, shoes, panties, all of it. He unclasps and drops her bra, cups both her breasts, pressing in on her nipples because that makes her shoulders draw back and her spine arch.

She uses one foot to push down the stuck leg of her jeans, turning slightly. He sucks in a breath between closed teeth. Dark patches of bruising run from the point of her hip all the way down her right thigh.

Betty kicks her jeans to the side. “It looks worse than it is.”

“You keep saying that,” he reminds her as his hand hovers over her right hip. He settles the pads of his fingers against her black-and-purple skin but she doesn’t tense or flinch. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

Her eyebrows pull together at that.

Betty slides her hands over his stomach and goes up on her toes to press a slow, careful kiss against his mouth.

When she steps back, she nods towards the floor lamp, wanting the lights off. She’s only let him try a few times with more light and each time she’s had trouble coming. He wants to turn on every light in the room, in the whole fucking trailer, to see her spread out naked for him. He can’t understand how she could look like this and find anything to feel self-conscious about. But he reaches over and kills the floor lamp before twisting on the tiny bedside reading light with the dimmer bulb on low.

Jughead sits next to her on the bed and traces his hand up her arm to her shoulder, letting his eyes adjust to the glow of the dialed-back lamp and the fainter light from outside that curls in yellow streaks around the edges of the curtains.

He pulls a condom out from the box tucked under the bed frame and he leaves it on the edge of the bedside table, mostly to reassure her before she has to ask. He kisses her as she sinks onto her elbows, following her down until he’s braced over her and she's lying back on his faded blue-gray sheets.

He takes her in: her pink nipples and pale skin, blonde wavy hair spread out around her face and that gorgeous mouth that he wants to kiss and fuck and have touching his body however she wants and—

She twists and reaches for the side table. The motion creates an amazing dip-flare-curve of her waist to her hip to her ass.

She tears open the packet and rolls the condom on him.

Betty’s hands settle on his hips. Her knees spread for him. And he’s got to kiss her as he leans his weight on one arm and gets between her thighs. He slides his other hand down over her stomach.

Betty shivers under him.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thinks.

He wants to last, to make this so, so good for her. He wants to feel her arch up as her body tightens and flutters around him. But it's been a long goddamn month and he misremembered how unreal getting inside her is, that hot tight slide, how soft and small and strong she feels under him.

Her legs shift up higher around his waist. Her hand cups the back of his neck and her mouth opens for a blur of messy kisses until she’s so far gone all she can do is press her mouth near his. That cut-off edge of a whine creeps into her breathing on the exhales. Her eyes keep fluttering close when he gets the angle just right only to blink back open to watch his face.

And that’s it. He just can't, can’t slow down or hold back. He gets so deep into her, forehead pressed against her cheek, and everything slams through him all at once. He feels, horribly, almost like crying as Betty presses a line of kisses along his temple while her palms smooth up and down his back.

He pulls himself together at least enough to stop shaking while he ties off and tosses the condom, then gets her off with his fingers curled up into her and his thumb on her clit and his tongue in her mouth. He drags one long kiss along her jaw and presses his mouth against the sensitive skin under her chin when she bows up off the bed for him, flushed and lovely and somehow still his.

He leaves his fingers curled inside her, kissing her mouth, her neck, her face, until she nudges him back with a hand on his chest and a funny little lick across his lips that he thinks she expected him to dart back from. But hell, whatever. She can lick him for all he cares.

They pull apart. He wipes his hand on the sheets he’ll have to wash anyway. When she gets up to use the bathroom, her bruised side is a livid smear of deeper color even in the dim room and the shape imprints on his slow, sex-dazed brain like the lingering afterimage of a camera flash in the dark.

Betty slips back under the covers and curls up against him, in his bed, wrapped up in his arms. He can’t bear to put words to the raw mess that opens up inside his chest as he falls asleep pressed close to her again.

  His dreams are strange, but not unhappy.

When he blinks his eyes open, all he’s left with is a jumble of fragmented images that get lost in the morning half-light.

Betty’s palm is fitted against his arm just above his elbow. She’s sitting up with his other pillow between her back and the wall, reading a dog-eared Sam Shepard anthology—The Unseen Hand and Other Plays. He doesn’t know if it’s hers or a library copy.

Betty is wearing the same pale blue sweater as yesterday but has her legs tucked under the blankets for warmth. He watches as she props the spine of the book against her knee and painstakingly turns a page with her thumb.

Under the covers, he slides his hand over to touch the backs of his fingers to the smooth, warm skin of her hip where the line of her panties cuts high up, skimming over the darkest part of the mostly purple bruises.

She blinks and glances down at him, so fucking beautiful with her messy hair and bare face. In the hazy morning light, she looks as soft-edged and irrecoverable as a happy memory.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

He yawns. “Morning.”

She bends down and kisses the corner of his mouth. “You can sleep some more, if you want.”

What he’d like is to make up for last night, maybe even go down on her if she’d let him, but he’s not picking up that vibe from her at all. She seems calm and content. So he shifts forward and presses his face into her side, feeling the warmth of her body through the thin material of her tight sweater, and drifts in and out for a while with her hand slowly moving through his hair.

   They get up around ten, since that’s as late as Betty can stay in bed—a solid hour more than he was expecting.

He dumps grounds and water into the coffeemaker on autopilot.

Leaning her unbruised hip against the counter, Betty tugs the sleeves of her sweater further down over her palms and presses her fingers into the fabric rather than her skin. Her knuckles don’t turn white.

He divides his attention between the coffee brewing and Betty’s loosely closed fists.

Jughead puts one spoonful of sugar in Betty’s coffee and leans over to kiss her with all the aching, torn up softness he’s got left before passing her the mug.

“So.” He pulls back and turns to get his own cup of coffee. “I’ve got eggs or cereal. Without milk.”

He's eaten breakfast at the Coopers often enough, those huge plates of pancakes and bacon and breakfast potatoes served out on complicated matching sets of dishes, to brace himself against the flash of shame that heats the back of his neck. The kitchen around him feels abruptly so alien and he’s hit with the memory of that left-out food and rotting dishes smell from visits over the summer when his dad had hit rock bottom again.

He blinks and the memory vanishes. The kitchen is clean, has been for months now.

“I’ll do eggs, you do toast?” Betty offers.

In the light falling through the gauzy curtains, Betty’s hair glows with that cinematic Grace Kelly magic as she peers into the fridge. He wants to wrap his arms around her and press his face into the long curve of her neck.

“Sure,” he says and reaches for the loaf of Wonder bread.

It’s not really a very equitable division of labor as Jughead puts bread in the toaster but doesn’t push the lever down yet. He slumps back against the counter with his coffee to watch Betty stir the eggs, looking so just like herself in the old blue sweater, tight jeans and ponytail that her bare feet stand out with a vivid underscore.

Timing the toast just right flips into a kind of game as he lets his finger hover above the lever. He takes his best guess.

Betty scrapes the eggs onto two plates and sets the pan in the sink to soak. A moment later the toaster dings.

Close enough.

They eat at the table, his back to the door.

“My parents aren’t at a conference,” Betty says out of nowhere.

He looks up. Betty is frowning and running her thumb along the handle of her fork. The stamped metal silverware has sharply defined edges and she’s pressing hard enough to turn her skin white. He touches the back of her hand and laces their fingers together so that their joints form an interlocking row.

Jughead watches her face and waits.

At last, Betty laughs, a hard, unhappy sound. “There just aren’t that many journalistic retreats in Rockland County, Jug. I think it’s become a sort of dare to her, a game of chicken, how crazy of a retreat she can come up with.”

“You know where they really went?”

Betty shakes her head and squeezes his fingers before pulling her hand away. He goes back to eating while she pushes her eggs around on her plate.

Betty swaps their plates as soon as he’s finished and he eats most of her breakfast, too.

Waste not, want not as his mom used to say with that lost, angry look in her eyes.

He washes the plates and egg pan while Betty showers. He probably should, too, once she’s done.

He isn’t going to. He doesn’t even bother to call himself out on why. He pulls on a clean sweater and jeans with ripped out knees that make Betty’s eyes drift down with the occasional distracted glance as she bites her lower lip. He doesn't know if it’s just the look or if the torn fabric makes her think of what he’d get down on his knees to do for her.

The shower cuts off.

   “Want to watch a movie?” Betty asks from the living room. She’s already got his laptop on the coffee table with the power cord plugged behind the couch.

She knows he’s going to say, “Yes.” What she may not know is that he’s going to spend a good ten minutes kissing her first with her settled warm and close in his lap.

He pulls away enough to stare up at her but leaves his hands spread out along her lower back under her shirt. Betty plays with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“So what’s the shortlist, Film Snob?”

You pick three, I choose. He can’t even remember when that became their movie thing.

He thinks of that dog-eared copy of Sam Shepard, of Betty turning the page with one hand. How her wrist pressed against the open page to pin the book in place. How he briefly lost all this.

“Okay. Blade Runner, Maltese Falcon or Chinatown?”

Betty tilts her head and her eyes go a little unfocused as she weighs the options.

With a shrug she says, “Chinatown,” and shifts off his lap to curl up against his side as he reaches for his computer.

   Roman Polanski may be a piece of shit but Jughead can’t bring himself to stop loving this movie.

   Halfway through, Betty takes his hand. As she skims the tips of her fingers along the side of his thumb, her gaze catches on the series of bad, mostly-healed cuts. But she presses her lips together in a tight line and looks back at Jack Nicolson driving through the claustrophobic Hitchcockian orange groves with that ugly white bandage on his nose.

“Betty. Ask me.”

Her eyebrows shoot up and she turns towards him, gazing up at him with those huge, sucker-punch eyes. She doesn't say anything for a beat, like she’s waiting to see if he’ll snatch the words back.

Her eyes drift over his face before she says, “How’d it happen?”

“I had to knock glass out of a broken window. Wrapping your hand in a shirt works a lot better in the movies.”

Her thumb slides just below the deepest cut. “Most things do.”

The wry twist to her voice makes his chest contract with a ripple of unexpected laughter.

“Why were you knocking glass out of a window, Juggie?”

He goes still.

You don’t get do-overs. Jughead knows this. But you can fuck the same thing up over and over and over again until there’s nothing left for you to love or fuck up or even walk away from.

“‘Cause that was the safest way out. Ghoulies were upstairs. We—” He forces himself past the pause. “Sweet Pea, Toni and I were snooping around somewhere. We didn’t want to get caught.”

Betty nods once. He braces himself for more questions—for his stubborn, ruthless Betty to pull the whole story out of him. But all she says is, “I’m glad you got out all right.”

After so long evading first her questions and then more and more often evading her, he shouldn’t feel this sour rush of disappointment when she lets the rest go that easily.

On the laptop screen, Jack Nicholson is knocked out and there’s no objective, god’s-eye view. He’s knocked out and takes the audience with him as the camera fades to black.

   The movie lurches through its flurry of final revelations that go nowhere and hurt the wrong people as the powers that be churn indifferently forward.

  The credits blur past.

“Want to watch another?” Betty asks, sitting up to stretch out her spine in a rolling curve.

He kisses the high point of her shoulder and thinks, Man up and take the chance. Moving slow enough to telegraph his intent, so she can stop him without forcing her to make a big deal out of it, he shifts forward and kneels in front of her. He tugs her to the edge of the couch with his hands cupped behind her knees, watching her face to see if she’ll go for this or if she’ll turn him down.

A dark pink blush spreads over her cheeks and across her forehead. Her eyes go wide but she doesn’t look away or tense up or ask him to stop.

   They have sex on the floor in front of the couch because he was feeling lucky enough to slip a condom into his back pocket.

The come down lingers. Sunlight slants in through the gaps where the curtains aren’t drawn together. His knees ache a little from the carpet and his forehead rests on Betty’s shoulder. Her hands can be so gentle sometimes that he short-circuits and all this hurts.

Betty draws his face up and kisses him like she wants him again even though he hasn’t even pulled out of her yet.

He deals with the condom and they stumble towards the bedroom, only to get hung up kissing in the kitchen because Betty sitting on the table puts their mouths at just the same level.

Back in his room, she shoves him down on the bed and they fuck again. He falls asleep with his face pressed against Betty’s neck as she traces meandering lines along the arm he’s wrapped tight around her waist.

  A little after four, Betty repacks her small pink gym bag, including the toothbrush, because the world is heartless and requires that she do things beyond have sex in this trailer.

Jughead leans his shoulder against the narrow span of wall next to the front door and stares at Betty's mouth, glancing up to catch the soft, bright look in her eyes, and waits for Betty to kiss him.

Her fingertips land against his cheek. He leans forward into her touch.

[fulloflesbeans]

Hazel Eyes & Cake Pops [Ch. 7]

Read on Ao3 here

"Work, work, work, work!" Rachel cheered me on as I attempted to do a model walk out of the bedroom with my new clothes. Every time I took a step, "work" would be chanted.

I went through the many shirts, sweaters, and hoodies already. It was fun to listen to Rachel's compliments and fixing anything on me that would make the outfit better. Right now, I was wearing khaki jeans for the first time, one of the black "boyfriend tees", and a red-and-blue flannel tied around my waist, but I still wore my old sneakers. I put my hair up again, even though my undercut thing was growing fast.

So far, it has only been me trying on the new clothes. I watched as Rachel had her hand on her chin, pondering something as she looked me up and down.

"Maybe it would look a little bit better," Rachel got up and rolled my sleeves twice, "if we did that."

It was a whole new style I wasn't familiar with. I was really into it; it would just take some time to get used to.

"Too gay," Rachel rolled them back down, "That was too gay."

"I look like I know how to skateboard, but that's a fat lie." I couldn't stop looking down at the pants, mostly. Rachel was highly influenced by Californian styles, as she was from Long Beach, and it showed. What was the Oregon style anyway? Was there one at all?

"Girls are into that," Rachel encouraged, "And I could totally shave down your undercut again, if you want."

"That would be nice. Maybe I should look gayer." I rolled the sleeves again. I felt gayer just doing that.

"I'll fix it when you're done modelling, get into the next outfit, girl!" Rachel pushed me back into the room again.

Even I was starting to get a little excited. It took a moment to take the pants off and put another pair on. It was black pants, apparently the ones used specifically for skating, and a white hoodie. To add to the skating effect, I put my hair down and put the black beanie on.

I walked out, followed by Rachel's clapping and whooping. I did a few poses for her, but they were slightly exaggerated. I felt weird about getting all the attention; I almost kinda liked it.

"Okay, your turn to model something." I fall onto the couch right next to her.

"Don't mind if I do," she goes into the room, "Prepare to be amazed!"

Chloe and I had to watch her fashion shows on YouTube and they were pretty interesting. Rachel had a stronger presence than everyone else and wore the clothes with such confidence and pride. She was in the Fashion Week shows and we wished we could have seen that. Rachel might be up to becoming a Victoria's Secret angel, but she hasn't talked about it.

Rachel came back out, wearing the leather jacket she bought from Gucci, ripped black jeans, and a strappy white bralette under. My mouth might have been hanging to the ground, because she laughed as she looked at me. Rachel has gotten in shape and had well-defined abs, making the outfit a lot more jaw-dropping.

"This jacket was meant for Chloe, but it looked good with these shoes." She showed off her Jimmy Choo boots.

I knew that jacket was too big for her. She said she went into Gucci to buy something for herself, guess she changed her mind.

I took my phone out, "I'll send a pic to Chloe. Give me your best."

She gave some "jacket off one shoulder and thumb in belt loop" poses, pretending to put her hair up in a ponytail, looking into the distance while her jacket fell to her elbows, and one close-up of her winking and sticking her tongue out. I took as many pictures as possible for every pose.

"Which one should I send?" I asked her as I looked through every one.

"You don't want to take one together?" She took her phone she left on the couch.

"I think she would prefer to see you."

Rachel pouted, "Just one."

I sighed, but I smiled and nodded, "Just one."

Rachel took selfies constantly from what I saw from her account, but since she arrived here, it has only been her food and the nicer areas we go to. She might be saving them for a something special. Rachel was so pretty and taking a picture with her made me feel unworthy. She had her arm around my shoulders and we just smiled for the picture. She clicked the button two times; she seemed satisfied.

"Okay, let me see all the ones you took." Rachel put her phone down again.

I haven't been able to use my Polaroid camera for anything, but only because there just wasn't anything that felt right. I would like to take professional pictures of Rachel eventually, but I needed to find a place and time.

"I really like all of these," she groaned, "I can't choose one!"

"I can help, somehow," I took about ten of each pose, "We can just choose one of each and send those ones."

I was stuck with an iPhone 4 and couldn't stop admiring Rachel's 7 Plus. I wished I had a case on mine. She seemed to have a million different ones from designs of red roses, cherry blossoms, marble, and a bird with its wings outstretched.

"That's such a good idea," she started to delete duplicates, "I'll find my favorites."

I watched as she deleted them after looking at them for a second, eventually left with four photos.

"Do you do that with your selfies?" I asked.

"I'm going to let you in on something," Rachel put her voice low, "Every model I've ever met do this. I only do it sometimes. Edit their face and everything, it’s not shocking anymore."

She handed my phone back to me, "This is so fun."

"I'm having fun, too." I just text Chloe first. Hey, we did a fashion show.

I added an emoji at the end to just irk her.

"Now," Rachel opened a browser on her phone, "Do you like these clothes or do you love these clothes?"

"I love them, Rachel. I'll need to repay you sometime."

"Don't, it's fine, I'm happy buying you these things."

My phone vibrated.

NO EMOJI

Must have been fun. You're learning from the best.

Some things never change. All I did was send the pictures; her reaction could be anything. She must be bored if she answered so quickly.

"How bored do you think Chloe is?" I asked while going to a different app on my phone.

"She must be hella bored. She might be dying from it."

The TV was still on, but on mute. It was close to one AM, but neither of us were tired. We weren't bored, trying our new clothes and cheering each other on as we did was the most exciting thing I've done so far. Earlier this week, Rachel made me play this game while different shows were on. She put it on mute and made me say what we think they were saying. It was fun, but I was still awkward and more forced to be funny. She suggested to try again, but the chances of that were second to none.

About thirty minutes passed and Chloe still hasn't replied.

"I think she's speechless." I checked my messages again and it was still the pictures. I was proud of myself and the camera for taking such nice pictures.

"I hope she's okay," Rachel looked over my shoulder, "I wouldn't want her crying in the club."

Her phone was open to Tumblr. It looked like she only followed aesthetic blogs, but my blog was forty percent that and the rest were memes. A lot of the pictures were of various birds and what I think are dream catchers.

"What's your Tumblr? I got one too."

"Oh, it's my name and birthday," Rachel scrolled a little more, "You would have a Tumblr."

"It was for memes. What do you have one for?"

"When I'm sick of talking about myself and promoting things."

Chloe finally text back. She sent a picture, the one that goes "have you ever seen a woman so beautiful you started crying?".

Wish I could leave.

I was going to show Rachel until Chloe sent in another text.

Fuck it, I'm going home right now.

I showed Rachel. Chloe would prefer that I didn't, but I figured Rachel would get a kick out of it.

"You really did it now." I said to her.

Rachel's eyes widened, "It started sweet. What is she gonna do, cry on me again instead?"

"She might really be sniffling in the club, at least. I have no idea what she'll do."

The both of us just turned the volume up on an old school Disney channel movie—the one about mermaids. It was still at the beginning when the main character's birthday was starting.

"You know what, you go change," Rachel directed, "I have a bad feeling about this."

I didn't protest. I changed into my comfy sweatshirt and sweatpants and got the couch ready for me to sleep on. Rachel sat down again on top of my blanket, letting out a sigh as she took her shoes off.

"You're not going to brush your teeth?" She asked like a concerned mom.

"I'll do it later. I may or may not eat later." I bundled into my blanket. I took my beanie off; it was getting a little hot.

It wasn't until a quarter into the movie we heard the door unlocking. Rachel was alarmed and watched the door's lock jiggle around. I was only worried if Chloe couldn't open it. I mean, if I was technical, Chloe was home in the morning after all.

The door swung open and Chloe walked in, shutting it, placing her keys in her back pocket, and then finally taking her jacket off.

"Chloe, you're back so soon, what brings you here?" Rachel acted like she never saw the texts. She stood up and we watched Chloe's actions. Suddenly, she dropped her jacket to the floor and went up to Rachel, abruptly grabbing from the waist and lifting her off the ground. Rachel let out a squeak, and then wrapped her arms and legs around her to hold on. Something told me they've done this "stand and carry" position before.

Chloe stayed silent as she proceeded to go into the bedroom.

"Max, don't come in!" Rachel yelled. After that, the door closed. I only snickered to myself before I raised the volume up again. I became too comfortable in bed, so I decided to brush my teeth and went to sleep.

Yet, I couldn't. I was unable to sleep, not because of them or the TV, but there was this nagging feel hitting me against my side, like it was trying to tell me something. It was so annoying and I flipped around on the couch about ten times. I sat up, sitting crisscross and rubbing my eyes until I saw colors. What was it? I wasn't jealous of them; I was perfectly fine, I think. Was it subconscious? Was my brain kicking itself because its human couldn't talk to a girl she liked? Was I secretly hating myself? It has been a while since I liked someone so much I could barely look at her. Damn it, I should have asked for Kate's number before I ran off. I couldn't help but think that she hung out with me just so I didn't give myself a concussion.

Fucking sucks.

I rested my arms on my lap, slouched over and staring down at the floor, trying to get the feeling away from me. There was something wrong or something wrong close by.

It couldn't just be her. Sure, I was a gay wreck, but I was managing. I was pushing myself too hard. There was something else that wanted my attention.

It was fair to say I got no sleep that night.

[mistresssalem]

We Are Both Here

THE WALLS LOOK TO BE COMPOSED OF WATER, liquid pouring in a steady motion to create the illusion of solidity. I see My reflection in it. I reach My fingers through it. Sharp cheekbones turn to distorted ripples. I place My palm along the cement behind smooth lies of mirror images so it looks like I’m missing a hand. Think about what else I’m missing. Stare into the dark end of the long room. Smell the liquor on her breath as she sloppily pushes past me hips swaying beneath the silk she drips in …and I wind up beneath the persistent shower finally seeing past it. The shove of those sharp hips show me I wasn’t leaning against a wall at all. My hand rests on a flattened cardboard box. My two feet are above me. The boom box from my parents’ basement that they sold at a garage sale instead of giving me plays so loud it rattles just like My bones do when I break dance without my skin. Went behind and beneath to see My skeleton and now I can’t stand without knowing where up is…

It’s past midnight. I’m awake. I’m way up on my way higher. Mom’s on a date again and Dad’s snoring like a freight train I can hear from two stories beneath his bed. I went with her, my best friend in high school, to the next town over to kick it with the cokeheads. I left to eat pills with my boyfriend. Get pulled over half a mile from home on her way to pick me up only for cops to find a baseball bat in the trunk of his car. I could see the flashing lights through MDMA-addled eyed from just a block away. Beautiful red and blue lights illuminating particles in the air like a patriotic invitation to pull a stunt. I stood on the porch while the lights blazed trails through the night until I was brave enough to walk towards those lights and do whatever I could to get her out of this…

We’re fifteen. The lights are like exploding amoebas of kinetic energy and I’m suddenly suspicious they could be alive. Walking toward them on more drugs than I could name unable to see past their beauty to the risk, the allure of drowning in this patrol car aurora overcoming the total stupidity of my intention. My feet move one ahead of the other on their own as my eyes bounce back and forth in their sockets trying to chase the trails those big brick lights drag through thick black sand filling the desert of my pupils. Try to focus. Try to fucking focus. He’s handcuffed and she’s sitting on the curb talking to one of the officers. They are a target I must hit despite feeling like I’m inside of a solar flare so I take aim. Beautiful red and blue lights. I might be floating. I might really lose it. A bright white light cuts through the consideration like a round beam meant as a meal for the hungry black machines in my eyes. I stop dead in my tracks and stare down the barrel of a flashlight into a face I did not recognize atop a decorated blue uniform I knew all too well.

“Where are you going, young lady?”

The round spotlight of his intimidating industrial flashlight eclipsed all else for just a few seconds while I stammered until the red and blue lights behind his head like a religious painting of a Saint and their glowing halo were so beautiful again that even fear couldn’t compete with this feeling.

“I was waiting for my best friend to meet me at my boyfriend’s house so we could walk home together. She called me to tell me that the person giving her a ride had gotten pulled over and she was now stuck just a block from me while he was apparently getting in trouble for something she had no involvement in…”

He fumbles with the flashlight shining the jarring spotlight creating a veil much to his advantage again distracting me from the red and blue pulsating veins of color making me feel much heavier, so much heavier that I fall harshly back to earth while specific memories of tonight’s hedonism and how I might just be totally fucked were jangling their way up to the surface of that stupid wall of water, just an illusion to make us feel safe from them. Suddenly the gun in his holster is taller than us both. I’m surfing a slanted sidewalk doing everything I fucking can to keep My pupils from doing that crazy vibrating thing that ecstasy provoked and making a list in my head of all the things I’d give up just for this cop to stop shining the fucking light on me. Aiming it straight into My eyes again waving it around as if trying to frighten me he opens his mouth to speak again, a hole in the darkness that I’m beginning to think could swallow my future.

“Your friend was riding with someone not only violating their license terms by driving this late at night…well, your friends had a bat in the trunk. Now what would they need a baseball bat in their trunk for?”

I am pretending to cry because now I’m privy to the fact that all of these lights and uninvited interruptions to my night were due to a baseball bat in the trunk of a car which makes me want to laugh hysterically and another sweaty wave of euphoria is creeping up and over and around and into me while my laugh-crying at least allows me to finally break eye contact with my new friend here or really just to smash my fists into my eyes so I can avoid having to look into the evil eye of his stupid flashlight.

“I’m sorry officer, I’m so sorry! All I know is that my friend and I were ready to walk home together like we do most nights in the summer and for some reason the person giving her a ride was pulled over… I don’t know them myself, and she’s just an acquaintance of theirs taking advantage of their offer for a ride over here to meet me. Now is there-”

Euphoria is now something I can literally feel coursing through my veins while anxiety rises a bit in the pit of my stomach but the beautiful red and blue lights return to their original state of invitation and I’m about to ask the very first favor of a police officer in my short lifetime if I can make my teeth stop grinding long enough to finish this sentence and then it’s like divine fucking intervention when he FINALLY appears to be able to make out my form in the darkness without the aid of that evil spotlight- I feel every breath fill my lungs and suddenly I am stupefied by the possibility of my existence as euphoria showers me the hardest it has all night and the creeping feeling that I’m not going to like his answer to the question I’m about to ask. Those. Square. Shining. Lights. Am I on a television game show and all of this is a test? Am I alive? Fuck, I’m about to ask a cop for a favor.

“-WAIT A SECOND, I KNOW YOU! I KNOW YOU, DON’T I? YOUR DAD TAUGHT ME WHEN I WAS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL! HE COACHED MY BASKETBALL TEAM IN HIGH SCHOOL! Wow, your Dad is a great man. You know, I don’t how he would feel about all this, but he did so much for me that I can at least do something for his daughter. Now, that’s your friend over there, and where were the two of you about to walk?”

My body seems to change composition after his words fully sink in because I’m much lighter again and don’t feel like any part of me is on the sidewalk or the street and suddenly the snoring middle-aged father I crept past in favor of drugs is the one person on this earth who will get me out of this weird mess before I’m done peaking. I start thinking that shit isn’t so bad as I’m spewing my answer back at him praying to the gods of designer drugs for my absolution.

“Oh! Yes, that IS my Dad! Wow what a coincidence! I even had him as a teacher myself, imagine that! Yes, my friend over there lives just 2 blocks from me and we usually walk home together when we’re out late during the summer just to be safe. I am so so sorry she was with a driver you found to be breaking the law- like I said, she doesn’t have anything to do with that! Can I please walk her home? Both of us need to get home and I know I’m feeling a bit freaked out by all of this!”

My friend is hunched over seated on the edge of the curb, feet dangling onto the street, staring dejectedly through her red hair down into black concrete. Suddenly I’m feeling like all of this was just an elaborate game made up by the universe to ensure that I would spend a decent part of my night with my new best friends, those big flashing light boxes. I am answering him and inside my head I am ahead of myself asking myself if, in the end, I’ll be able to walk all the way right up to those lights, close enough to touch them! That’s where my friend is sitting… that’s all I want really- not too much to ask. Let two underage girls walk home alone at 2 am super probably high on drugs knowing that your middle school industrial arts class was such a standout part of your life that it’s worth doing dumb favors for. I fucking love it.

“Wow, amazing. Your Dad is the man. Make sure you tell him I said that about him, okay? Now look, you and your friend can walk home together as long as you both promise that neither of you will get into a car with this driver again. You shouldn’t be here hanging out with people like that- older kids from the next town over are nothing but trouble. Now you go get your friend and make sure you go straight home, and remember- tell you Dad that I say hi!!!’

The lights. The sidewalk is flat just like the horizon and the flashlight is back in his belt and I’m floating toward her, toward the lights, I am, in this moment, God. I am God. There is no more surfing the tilted ground, just floating elegantly above its surface. Walk up to her, pull her to her feet. Whisper into her ear to follow me. Stare into those beautiful lights for a precious few seconds, just feet away from me. Relaxing My jaw to open My mouth wide as if I can eat the lights. Say thanks and bye to the cops. Pretend I don’t know my other friend in cuffs shaking his head furiously at the sky as if he was just too dumb to realize that God is right here inside of me. Thank the gods he pretends not to know who I am and goes on taking his rage out on the above. The trails linger in the corners of my eyeballs, the euphoria tastes like chemical lollipops and she and I laugh our heads off while we walk back to her house. We cling to each other so as to stay on a somewhat straight path. We decide we must have Frosted Flakes. We pop into a friend’s house at 3 AM to “borrow” some milk and walk all the way home with said milk in a cup. Eating frosted flakes leaning up against the marble counters in her kitchen cackling at the irony of the night feeling the flex of the hands of time on the clock, always mocking us, reminding us… these are not our homes. Our homes do not belong to us.

Nothing is ours, not even ourselves. Our parents own everything. Our parents are just as insane as we are.

I walk the blocks back to my house in swift silence still admiring the trails of light flinging their way through entangled tree branches and the way traffic signs reflected on the shiny dewy concrete of early early morning. Disable the alarm, slip off my boots, shimmy up the stairs into my room to the soundtrack of the freight train snoring along reliably two floors above me. Mom's bedroom is empty and I wonder who she's trying to impress tonight. There is still a heavy chunk of time between me and morning, so I make the illuminated console of the boom box my parents got me for my birthday this year after my tantrum regarding their sale of the ever-coveted ghetto blaster of my youth my ultimate entertainment center. Phrases like “BOOMING BASS” dance in time with one another to the silence between me being awake and me admitting I’m awake. Phrases made of letters shaped like rectangles to conform to the limitations of display technology back then could have been one or one hundred colors in real life and it didn’t matter to me- I saw thousands. New phrases popped up every so often like messages from secret stations I couldn’t even tune in to.

Steps on the staircase, my Dad descending to use the bathroom and head out for his ritual coffee and newspaper… I’m under the covers eyes fixated on the glowing phrases of my stereo slowly beginning to develop gratitude for sliding right off of a slippery fucking slope hours before to land in a bowl of frosted flakes.

Is this how it’s supposed to feel? Like everything ever since I started snorting and swallowing and smoking last night was leading up to this moment laying here alone staring into the blinking display and I’d be lying if I said I wanted to take any of it back but I wonder where to go now.

I keep going.

What happened then has been living in my head for years while my Dad still thinks that he smelled cigarette smoke on me when I came out of my room that next morning because I'd gotten bold during the night with Mom out on another date and decided to light up in my bedroom closet.

I kept going.

Now it isn’t then anymore. Here is the other side of the flowing mirror where we do whatever it takes to keep ourselves on the right side of the stream. A quick tug and I’m soaking wet but I’m looking into my own eyes again, deadened by the strange malaise of the constant water wall… it makes no noise, it appears to simply cycle on its own with no attachment to any pipes or plumbing… Mirror mirror on my teenage wall, who is the most disillusioned of them all? Nothing could ever be so fair as those pulsing lights and the unfamiliar feeling of not having control - and not needing it either. These days we don’t speak much, but I know none of them forget that night.

I go on dancing. I tear off my skin. Coming out of in. A skeleton. This is the way it has always been…

rattle your brittle bones at me

a sun rises in each socket

They keep staring into the wall failing to ever see past the shallow reflections of themselves. The girl who bumped me through to the other side is in the dark end of the long room, her night eyes oddly bright, movements exaggerated for the enjoyment of the crowd hanging off her arms… She twirls. Her heels are tall and sharp defining the infinite slender length of her legs with a straight cut around the ankle and a serpent woven around the heel. I am choking on my apple now. I would still put the apple in my mouth just as I’d still eat all the pills and potions that set such carnage in motion… I used to chew the apple elegantly. I used to enjoy the rich and surprisingly sour flavor. Now the apple just fucking chokes me. She keeps dancing, the room spinning now as the wall becomes a whirlpool that gravity is pulling me inside of along with the rest of them- I do not want this whirlpool. I want my damaged decisions just as they were made, not as they would have been made for me. I am spitting up blood, shards of glass embedded in the apple are sawing through the hologram I wear, and the people begin to notice that I have no skin. I reach out again to thrust My hand through the wall of water once again and find it to be made of glass, simply a standard sheet of mirror, endlessly repeated throughout the club…

Her thighs are surprisingly thick and I find Myself wondering if she is powerful enough to end my breathing by wrapping them around my neck and squeezing, dangling her slender ankles and high heels down my bag while I asphyxiate.

I am choking on the dagger stem of her apple while agonized faces turn from my naked bones and find appeal in her whirlpool. My hands bleed punching the glass. The apple tells me everything I need to know once my splintered teeth have managed to crunch its glass composure into small enough pieces to feel scrape their way into my system… I already knew everything. She’s beautiful dancing with her long legs seductively wrapping around the occasional flirt and dark eyes shooting their strange beacons from the dark end. They know the water. They’ve seen their perfect selves in their reflection, never thinking to search its backing, confident in their solid states of self assurance she so kindly gives them instead of this shrapnel apple they do not know nor will ever come to be able to comprehend is the kinder option. Look away from the skeleton, missing my skin and openly broadcasting a feeling of… disembodiment. Disembodied from the world, disembodied from the appearance of skin on my skeleton and what it turns me into, and deeply indebted to the very apple that caused me to bleed out while everyone else fell down the whirlpool.

My head is not always attached to the rest of me.

I want this apple even though it will kill me. I want to know and feel the reality of the loss of innocence I never had a chance of retaining, I’d like to steal this opportunity of true sight from the sharp-hipped succubus who unknowingly presented it to me with the plucking of this apple from the cobwebs threatening to creep into the corners of her life.

Her allure will eat you alive. Pretend that you have what it takes to keep up with her until it’s too late to turn back. She loves trophies. She is a trophy, coveted by her collection, made all of you always too slow to see her game in time to have a chance at winning. Kill yourself trying to make her happy so you can keep up that false reflection on all four walls around the web she has spun upon the dance floor, every twirl another shot through your already-thinning resolve

My honesty will have you falling in love with me. I kill myself trying to keep myself happy and you will wind up like all the rest- saying those words, regret in your voice but resolve sounding louder… I love you BUT… I wish you would accept it. You love the thought of me, the idea of me, the representation of unbridled lust for living it for myself and you really thought, you really, really thought that you would live it for yourself with me… The miles to go before I sleep will always stand in between the place we could meet- your closed eyes and head on dreams the opposite of my black pupil machines. When you wake up in disbelief that I did not sleep you’ll first find it intriguing, perhaps even challenging. Joining Me for delirium is your first step toward gone. Every staircase is assembled in the order you create based on your need to conquer and keep me, not a single one built to last. A week awake, a week asleep.

She’s the one you want to bring home to Mom. Kill yourself trying to keep her happy. Perfect can’t admit to flaws, so when she wants some give her all. Look in the mirror every day until you just can’t remember living any other way- perfect and plastic, Malibu dream house, the spinner of spirited tales- yoga classes, family vacation, as long as she’s smiling your insides aren’t vacant. Look at yourself on those water walls, you’re just one of SO many at her Ball- clinging to the swinging of the illusionist Queen. Kill yourself making it into her scene.

My manner of cutting myself open to spill out my guts is ugly and so are the innards of my synthetic counterpart. She lives an artless life while my life imitates art. We are both here.

My transparency turns you away from Me, how can lies be prettier than truth?

Her pre-paid perfection has you noose-necked hanging on tight ready to lash out and kill to still be at her side tomorrow night

My habit of haunting my own hallways in my mind with the skeletons I tried to pair mine with remind me to remind you just who you are fucking with

I kill myself slicing fat flanks of meaty stories off myself to feed you fat with only to find that my truths are a poison and storytelling was the death of us both

We are both here

We are both me

We both want you

We know you'd pick poison over plastic

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2017

Red Bull Music Academy returned to New York this year for yet another well-curated series of performances, lectures, club nights, and workshops. As is tradition now, TMT sent a few writers to cover some of these events, which included a hip-hop piano bar show, Brazilian bass music, a showcase for one of our favorite labels, an interdisciplinary performance piece/meditation, and a couple lectures from two vital artists of our time. --- Solange: An Ode To Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool After the late performance of An Ode To had ended, Solange Knowles took some time to speak to the audience about the piece she had just performed for us, her development as a musician, and the space she had just occupied for her work. Referring to the Guggenheim Museum’s atrium, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed “temple” that has been home to countless exhibitions and performances of significance, Solange spoke of wanting to “immerse my work in the daylight,” of “having a show where I can see the faces” of the people there to see her. This quality of light was one of the most striking things about Ode: the combination of bright sun from the building’s skylight (both of the show’s performances were scheduled in the afternoon) and flat, even museum lighting gave the work a context that immediately made it something different than just “Solange playing in a museum.” And it was true, you could see everyone’s face in the small crowd that was brought in, dress code and all (those in the audience who did not heed Knowles’s request to dress in all white were few, and easily spottable). This, and the fact that much of those in attendance were seated on the ground just feet away from the band, gave the event an incredible sense of intimacy; in staging and tone, An Ode To felt almost private, a personal work by a young artist both in development and at the top of her game, wildly talented and still growing. This piece was a substantial step in that growth: billed in the program as “an interdisciplinary performance piece and meditation,” Solange took elements from A Seat At The Table and rebuilt them, framing them in new ways — often stripping the arrangements down to their absolute minimum, at others exploding them with a new, startling sense of size. The core band was skeletal, augmented by two backup singers and a recurring cast of dancers and horn players — and though the music was the center of the performance, Solange seemed just as committed to exploring the work physically, leading her ensemble in precise, often beautiful choreography (done in cooperation with dance coordinator Eloise Deluca) and expressive a capella breaks that were, more than just a compliment to the songwriting, as much a piece of the work as her music. Photo: Stacy Kranitz / Red Bull Content Pool At times it felt like Solange was ripping open her album and re-examining it on a microscopic level, and the evening’s trajectory from its hauntingly minimal opening numbers to the explosion of feeling in her dual performances of “Don’t Touch My Hair” and “FUBU” (through which Solange walked through the crowd to sing directly to those gathered, causing at least one man she approached during the show I attended to have a complete ‘Oh my fucking god solange is standing right next to me’ meltdown — one of the few instances where the close-quarters of the room served to amplify the singer’s goddess status) felt like an investigation of what exactly the limits of this music were. Embracing the atrium as a necessary component of the performance — having her players descend down the ramp to the performance area, hiding her horn section under its walls, or more concretely using the chamber’s space to amplify the echo of basslines, solitary snare hits, or the complex three-part vocal breaks, almost dub-like in their hugeness — Solange built something site-specific and yet with resonances beyond this set of concerts. This, and Solange’s ability to fill the historically white space — figuratively and literally — of the Guggenheim with persons of colors (whether her entirely black and brown band or the vast majority of those in attendance) resonated as both an assertion of Solange’s power, and the ability for change within music to ripple out as broader, Earthly changes, and in some way an echo of the work’s broader exploration of expression voiced against its opposite. –Dylan Pasture --- Sacred Bones 10 Year Anniversary Photo: Colin Kerrigan / Red Bull Content Pool Sometimes I want to be devastated. The morning of the Sacred Bones 10 Year Anniversary showcase, I drew the ten of swords. How fitting. One for each year. The ten of swords is about hitting rock bottom and falling apart. Mine depicts a bull stabbed in the head. One sword even pierces the eyes. Usually I read this card as a warning. Get outside your mind before it eats you alive. I know I should have at least tried to be more vigilant. Instead, I turned to my friend and said that it felt perfect for Sacred Bones. What I mean is, I entered Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse thinking about collision. A giant moon hung from the rafters. I became aware of the space as malleable and tried not to understand. I wanted to feel it. Emotionally and viscerally. How else can I describe the experience other than to call it spiritual? Perhaps it has to do with juxtaposition. Like being ripped in half while watching Uniform and again while watching Marissa Nadler. Both strangely meditative. Uniform wrought havoc in the form of relentless noise. Like a vicious cycle indicative of how frustrating and limiting it can feel to live inside a body as the entire world burns. How everything seems impossible, at least everything but clawing up the walls and screaming into a void. Nadler described that void. Glimpsed it and shed light upon the center when she sang, “I can’t go back, I don’t wanna go back, to that house or that life again.” I felt my heart break like a window thrown open in the middle of a storm. Like I was listening alone in my bedroom. Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool I want music to fuck me up and scrape me out and leave me wondering where to go. This is why I love Sacred Bones. Watching The Men play with all of their original members, I thought about how it felt to discover Sacred Bones when I was on the radio in college. I had just begun listening to more dissonant and intense music, and pretty much anything released on Sacred Bones would freak me out. And I loved it. I still love it. Jenny Hval wore black velvet with a hood. She wore a black wig. She said we would all become family through blood ties. She moved through fog. She received a haircut while singing. She snaked her arms around her collaborators. The line between song and manifesto disappeared, which left me considering the body and the idea of ceremony. Magic as political. I had been inhabited and transformed. Part of me was somewhere else. Blanck Mass made the ritual of noise and light so huge that it was like the whole space had been swallowed. Zola Jesus ended the show with kinetics. I mean, pop so shattered and frenzied I felt hypnotized. Oscillating between the cathedral and the rave. Between gothic and cosmic. It was an ideal culmination of the energy swirling all night inside Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse. Like a vibration powered by obsession with darkness and weirdness. I felt a shift inside my body upon leaving. Simply existing was totally different. –Caroline Rayner --- Piano Nights: Gucci Mane and Zaytoven Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool It’s a cliché meme for someone to say “I am the American Dream,” and in an era with such little room for systemic romanticization, such a proclamation is also politically problematic at best. Nevertheless, Gucci Mane is the American Dream. If you’re like me, or any of the numerous other hip-hop devotees who’ve eventually come around to Guwop, the first time you heard him, you couldn’t understand a word he was saying. “Mumble-rap,” as it’s now called today, may be stylistic affectation for some, but there was no such phrase back when Gucci started doing it; probably because not since Rakim had a rapper put so many words together so poetically while sounding so close to falling asleep. In some parallel world, an alternate version of myself would never dare to use Rakim and Gucci’s names in the same sentence, but here we are. Rap is “mumble-rap,” the phrase itself is an anachronism functioning primarily as an age identifier of the writer who writes it, and this 31-year-old writer has watched Gucci Mane perform some of his most popular songs in a swank cocktail bar on the Lower East Side, accompanied by his producer Zaytoven on live piano. Photo: Carys Huws / Red Bull Content Pool Forget arrest records, jail bids, shootings, rap beefs, Twitter meltdowns, Harmony Korine courtings — forget all that, because it’s not what I’m referring to when I say Gucci Mane is the American Dream. I’m not talking about the American Dream of the bootlegger turned politician or the drug dealer turned real estate mogul. I’m not talking about the American Dream of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby or DiCaprio’s. I am talking about the American Dream of American music. Arguably our greatest cultural achievements, jazz, blues, rock, and hip-hop music were all originally perceived as amusical by the critical powers that be and eventually recognized as expressions of “higher art,” whatever that may be. I’m not trying to absolve myself here. When I first heard Gucci Mane, I might not have gone so far as to say it wasn’t hip-hop, but I definitely didn’t hear what others heard, simply because I had never heard anyone rap like that before. I literally didn’t understand what he was saying. I can only speak for myself , but I’ve personally witnessed yesterday’s proto-“mumble-rap” become today’s instantly sold-out black-tie affair of the millennium — dress code for the event called for attendees to wear their “finest formal wear” — and as far as I’m concerned that’s the American Dream. –Samuel Diamond --- A Conversation with Alvin Lucier Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool Perhaps the best story told at Alvin Lucier’s intimate gathering in the basement of Red Bull Arts was his response to the question of what, if any, recent versions of his legendary work “I Am Sitting In A Room” have been most meaningful to him. As Lucier described it, after a concert performance of the piece at MIT, a 10-year-old boy came up to the man and declared: “That’s cool!” The boy then later went home and recorded his own version of the work on his laptop and emailed it to the legendary composer. This, Lucier said, was a version he liked a lot. Watching Lucier speak, it seems much of what gives life to his work — even at its most conceptually adventurous — is this very down-to-Earthness, an embrace of the everyday, the generosity of spirit and lack of pretense that allows the experiments of a child to stand alongside that of a “legitimate” performance venue. Elsewhere, Lucier explained that he wrote his own text for Sitting in lieu of adapting a poem because he didn’t want to use anything “high falutin’.” Though possessed with perhaps one of the most refined imaginations in experimental composition, he insisted that he was uninterested in “theory.” In Lucier’s words: “My decisions are real.” Through a life-spanning conversation moderated by Red Bull’s Todd L. Burns, Lucier returned to this theme in many forms. When discussing his coursework as a Professor (preserved, in some form, in his text Music 109) he spoke of trying to “demystify” music for his students, of telling them he was not interested in their opinions, but in their “perceptions.” And as he dove into his own use of perception in his work — whether in using the echolocation of bats as a reference for his use of delay, or how his refracted Beatles arrangement “Nothing Is Real” was meant to capture the sense of remembering “where you were when you heard a song for the first time” — one had the feeling of an artist trying to demystify the senses for himself, grounding the mysterious in something sturdy and real. Evocatively describing how those bats use sound to travel in the dark, Lucier slipped us a kind of statement of purpose: “You can’t cheat if you’re trying to survive.” Threaded through these discussions of technique were lovely anecdotes of the artist’s large and impressive circle of acquaintances, dishing on everyone from John Ashbery and Nam June Paik to Morton Feldman and, of course, John Cage, who was revealed to have apparently inspired (and/or peer-pressured) the first performance of Lucier’s brain-wave piece “Music For Solo Performer” into existence. Though anecdotally anchoring himself among many of the greats of 20th century art, Lucier left the intimate group gathered to listen to him on an appropriately humble, un-elevated note. When asked by an audience member if music had a “spiritual meaning” for him, he answered, simply: “No.” –Dylan Pasture --- Fluxo: Funk Proibidão Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool This year’s Red Bull Music Academy takeover of NYC began with the announcement that MC Bin Laden, the headliner for the inaugural evening’s Brazilian bass event, would not be able to perform for reasons out of his and the festival organizers’ control. I found out from a friend that this meant he’d been denied entry at the US border, presumably an exercise of ideological power by immigration officials. RBMA itself embodies corporate accumulation of cultural capital, a late phenomenon toward which discerning ravers maintain a healthy ambivalence, suspended between cynicism and the notion that maybe, particularly if the artists can gain control of it, this type of power could be better than the kind that preceded it. The announcement, emailed via the ticketing agent the day of the event, brought a latent global power strata to the fore that framed the event: the admittedly neoliberal post-nation-state RMBA agenda versus the utterances of the deep-state monolith, which you only find out about through texts from a friend who knows a friend of someone who was at the border. And so RBMA NYC 2017 began. Even with MC Bin Laden not present, though, the Fluxo event was stacked with a formidable range of Brazilian bass DJs and emcees, strung together under the banner of maximalist sonic valence with NYC party mainstays Venus X and Asmara, Detroit ghetto house forbearer DJ Assault and the indefinable entity that is Chicago’s Sicko Mobb, who themselves are Red Bull-sponsored artists. Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool After being encouraged by the coterie of Red Bull chaperones near to the door to enjoy my evening, I entered the venue to find Sicko Mobb bobbing and jack-balling amidst one another on stage, Ceno wearing a bright red T-shirt with “BALMAIN POWER” printed in shiny bold Impact font across the front. My friend and I quickly situated ourselves behind a car whose interior was rigged with overzealous strobe lights, one of several props situated throughout the venue that upon reviewing the event literature I realized was intended to be a simulation of “the neon-lit car stereos lining the local block parties [in the favelas of Brazil] known as fluxos.” Despite being obfuscated by a thick wall of smoke-and-strobe that would give Dean Blunt a run for his money, Lil Trav and Ceno breezed through a seemingly arbitrary selection of their metallic, sweet-sad bop songs, still a sound without any real parallels in hip-hop: “Own Lane” and “Go Plug” from the Super Saiyan Vol. 2 mixtape, throwbacks like “Fiesta,” “Hoes Be Goin’,” and “Round and Round.” In lieu of a DJ, an associate played tracks from an iPhone, and following in the tradition of cutting songs short he simply stopped the playback at random points, the music giving way to the sound of smoke and low chatter in the absence of DJ wheel-up sounds. DJ Assault took the stage shortly thereafter, living up to his name by starting the set out at a casual 145 bpm and playing “Let Me Bang” almost immediately after getting on stage. The venue was only beginning to fill as he warmed up the crowd, plunging headfirst into the obscene territory of booty music blended together with cumbia and proibidão. Obscenity and disorientation seemed to be forming as obvious mantras seeded by the party organizers as I went into the port-a-potty nested inside the warehouse and found it was resonating on beat with the bass, which only served to highlight that there was no respite from the building disorientation of the space. Venus X and Asmara played the mid-event set, rolling out a hip-hop-heavy set that felt somewhat obligatory to the context of the party, and MC Carol did not take the stage until very late, at which point the crowd was not well-positioned to entertain a set of emceeing. We left and hung out in the park, and talked about the slightly off feeling we were left with, and wondered if it was the party or us who was off. –Nick Henderson --- A Conversation with Werner Herzog On Music and Film Photo: Stacy Kranitz / Red Bull Content Pool [This lecture review is to be read in the voice of preeminent German filmmaker Werner Herzog: I do not care if this offends him or you; it is critical.] I was not sure if I would be able to make it to the lecture on time. As it was being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in one of the many areas of Manhattan with notoriously limited street parking, I elected to take the Long Island Rail Road, which picked me up directly behind my day job in Garden City. Inevitably late, the train did not leave me enough time to reach the venue via public transportation, and because this would have required that I transfer between multiple subways and a bus, I instead hailed a taxi in front of Penn Station. I knew this meant I would have to pay more, as these cabs are permitted by the City to charge extra for the premium pickup location, but I did not care. I had somewhere I needed to be and no way to get there sooner. Looking at my phone during the 50-block cab ride, I learned President Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. Also, the publicist facilitating Tiny Mix Tapes’ coverage notified me that the doors were closing. I was dismayed but not altogether discouraged. When I arrived at the event, a discussion with Werner Herzog on music and film, the gentleman admitting ticketholders and press-listees told me the lecture had only started about five minutes ago. My name being confirmed, I proceeded up the museum steps to a dark auditorium where I was ushered to an empty seat not far from my point of entry. I saw erected on the stage a faux living room similar to Zach Galifianakis’s Between Two Ferns set, but more fully furnished, with couches and a film-projector screen hung above and behind them. At stage right, shrouded in cinematic shadow, stood a tall man looking up at the screen. When the film clip ended, the lights came on revealing him to be Herzog. He seated himself on the couch at center stage and spoke with a nebbish film-critic-type about music in films, his and others. He indicated he chooses the music for his films almost exclusively by feeling. He cited Fred Astaire’s dance routines as a prime example of the marriage of music and cinema, though in far less romantic terms. He reminisced about teasing Popol Vuh founder Florian Fricke during a friendly soccer match over his interest in New Age thinking and going home badly bruised for it. He said he hadn’t heard the phrase “krautrock” until just a few days earlier. In the Q&A portion of the event, he found occasion to reassert his argument that Elon Musk is acting foolishly in his pursuit of Martian colonization, that humanity would be better served conserving and protecting its home on Earth. He admitted that though there is no purposeful allusion to so-called spirituality in his films, some of his early religious teachings most likely had a lasting effect on his viewpoint and that he always strives to evoke a sense of poetry with his filmmaking to “elevate” the thinking of his viewers. On my way out, a Red Bull employee offered me a drink from a tray holding multiple colored cans. I took one at random; “Acai Berry”-something, she called it. “Save it for the morning,” she said. Thanking her, I cracked it open and exited to the cultured darkness of New York City’s Upper East Side. –Samuel Diamond http://j.mp/2qxIPYU