#keep in mind that it's going with red jacket characterisation

[th3overthink3r]

Hello. It's time I chime into the nonexistent Harley Quinn convo regarding her rebrand.

After she broke up with the wallmart Clown, she got a redesign, which supposedly broke her apart from the Joker.

Except she kept the name. And the colours. And the mannerism. And the themes.

She just got a sexier outfit in red and black, and I do not appreciate that. I know I am probably late for the party, but I recently joined the fandom, so it's better late than never.

I had gotten out of an abusive relationship before, so I might be projecting, but I wanted to get away from that part of my past, the moment I realized what was going on. I think that Harley would know that the best way of dealing with the trauma of the relationship is to move on, but the crazy in her would want revenge. But not the "you gave me this, and I will make it mine" kind of revenge. I just personally think that is not the healtiest way of looking at it.

Keep in mind that I myself am not a therapist, I'm just a human with a not so stellar life, projecting my problems onto nonexistent characters.

Let me introduce you to my take on a post wallmart clown, Harleen Quinzel!

Sharlatan!

I think she would be around to cause chaos, spraypaint buildings, and just being a nuisance to everyone. She doesn't get up to murder, except when it comes to the Joker.

I wanted to keep the pink and blue hair, because I actually love that, and also chose that as the main colours. I gave her a torn black leather jacket to give her more of a punk vibe.

I let her keep the bat, bc it's kind of logical for her in my AU.

I decided to give her her roller skates as a permanent part of her outfit, and also pached jeans from the number of times she fell, or tore them on fences and things like that.

The roller skates are yellow because they are meant to kind of stand out, feel a bit alien compared to the rest of the outfit, because she got them before she got herself a rebrand.

They were actually a gift from Poison Ivy, and at the time, she just wanted Harleen to have something that wasn't black or red.

I think Harleen would keep Harley as a nickname, but would get really angry when someone would call her Quinn, because she left that life behind, and started with a clean slate. She's Harley Quinzel, a mix of her two former life, that create something new. Like chemicals.

I think that's it. If you have any questions, I do have the question box open.

(Don't mind my Harley Quinn design, I just needed her to have a bunch of bells on her.)

The name is a play on the Charlatan word, which in my language is really similar "sarlatán." I just mixed them, because why not.

Harley calls herself that because her main form of villainy shifted to grafity and vandalism. Except she can not draw for the life of her. She is not a creative person, being more analitical and such, but she claims to be the best of the best, and she wants that to be her new image. A charlatan, just like every rouge. Except she embraces that fact.

(It's also because she didn't notice the abuse. She thinks she failed as a psychiatrist because she fell for Jokers manipulation.)

It might be a bit out of character, but that is not a me problem, I am not trying to appeal to canon when there is no defined characterisation in canon. Thank you.

Excuse any linguistics mistake, I am not an english speaker.

You wanna see Poison Ivy in my AU? Here you go.

My DCAU collection

[hotchley]

the green light of forgiveness

FIRST MENTALIST FIC WHOO!

Hi?

This is my first fic since March. Since then a lot of life has happened (as I'm sure you're all aware.)So my writing is a little rusty. And I've never written for The Mentalist so I don't really think I characterised anyone properly, but oh well. I basically watched Red John today and I kept waiting for someone to say something about Lisbon (the moral dilemma about Red John) was so interesting. So because I didn't get my line about Lisbon, we are now here.

I haven't actually watched the episode after. I got carried away. Anyways, I've been AWOL for ages so the writing is… questionable and hasn't been proofread (like always) and I will probably go AWOL with fics again, because I'm trying to keep this fun! So yeah! Title is from happiness- Taylor Swift. It's the best song off evermore and you can't change my mind /j

Let me know if I missed any TWs, it's 12:30am and I spent my morning talking to ten different children about multiple books and I am tired.

read on ao3!

All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness You haven't met the new me yet And I think she'll give you that

Thomas McAllister is grinning at Patrick Jane.

He can't stand it. How dare he. How dare this pathetic coward, who murdered an innocent woman and child and hundreds of other people, grin at him? He isn't smart. He hasn't won. He is just a man, who has fears and weaknesses. Now that his identity has been revealed, there are no cards left for him to play.

Jane knows he is a wanted man, but there is a dead body lying two feet away from him and he didn't put the bullet there. It will be selfish and unfair, but if he escapes, he can get to Lisbon and the rest of his family. He can get them out of whatever situation they are in. Because he knows something has happened to them. It's the same prickling feeling he used to get when Angela gave Charlotte a bit too much sugar before bed since she wanted to say goodnight to him, or when Charlotte accidentally spilt glitter on one of his jackets.

The point is, he is a wanted man, but Red John is desired. The FBI will let him and the rest of the team go if he leads them to their worst enemy, especially now the public is so aware of his existence. He has learnt, that for better or for worse, they will do anything to protect their image. And if that means letting him go because the public perceive him as a grieving man that simply wants closure, they'll do it.

Which means McAllister shouldn't be grinning.

"You shouldn't do it," he says, as though it's simply a conversation about a haircut.

"Shouldn't do what?" Jane asks through gritted teeth.

Red John has seen his full range of emotions without him ever intending to showcase any of them. Red John is his nemesis. Red John is the monster under his bed, the figure he sees out of the corner of his eye when he feels paranoid. Red John is undefeatable.

But Sheriff McAllister is a man who is afraid of death as all people are. Even Jane is afraid of dying. There are so many things he hasn't done. So many words he hasn't said. He hasn't told Charlotte that there's nothing to be afraid of anymore. Hasn't told Angela that he found peace. He needs to tell Cho that he's brave, tell Rigsby that he's going to be a good father, tell Grace that she must never lose that childish hope.

He needs to tell Teresa more things than is humanly possible. He needs to say sorry. That he's proud of her. That she is the most beautiful woman he has ever known. That she needs to loosen up. That he can't afford to lose her and that's why he always runs and leaves her behind. That he loves her.

So whatever reason he's about to be given for keeping him alive is going to be born out of self-preservation and it will be easy to rationalise it into something that means he can pull the trigger. But more than pulling the trigger, he wants his hands to end his life. He wants to watch as that pathetic man starts pleading, wants to make him as helpless as every other victim, wants to witness the light leave his eyes and the panic and realisation set in-

"Teresa won't ever forgive you if you do," McAllister taunts. 

Just for a moment, his hand falters. But then he thinks of her. The real Teresa Lisbon who loves with patience and laughs at his awful jokes and never rolls her eyes at the team with any emotion other than humour. He thinks of the Teresa Lisbon he loves, not the woman that has hidden her personality from so many people for her safety. 

It’s why his voice doesn’t waver when he speaks.

"You're wrong."

"Oh?"

"Agent Lisbon will find it difficult to reconcile the image of me with blood on my hands with the gun-fearing man I appear to be on many of our cases. She will understand that I likely acted in self defence and will eventually come to terms with what I was forced to do."

"And are Agent Lisbon and your sweet, darling Teresa two different people? She wears a wonderful perfume, I'll have to find out what it's called. And she looks so peaceful when she's unconscious. Likely because she isn't burdened with your shenanigans."

The image of Lisbon, breathing and seemingly relaxed, but Partridge’s blood on her face as she became another on a long list of Red John’s victims comes to the forefront of his mind. He made a vow that day. Never again was he going to wipe the blood off someone he loved because of something he had done. It made him even more determined to find Red John. Because nobody should hold the power to make Lisbon vulnerable unless she had already given it to them.

He had abused that power once. To make her annoyed, so she wouldn’t question where her birthday gift was. He hadn’t expected her to hurt, and the look she had given him- one of pure disgust, as though she had always believed she would be immune to his barbs- had stung more than he’d ever admit to anyone.

“Teresa is simply a woman who is a human. She’ll forgive me in the blink of an eye because she cares about me. And when she cares, she forgives. In fact, she’ll be grateful that I killed you. You abused so many people. You have used them and you have ruined lives and you do not deserve a jury or a trial. She believes in forgiveness. Lord only knows how many times she forgave her father and brothers in order to move on with her life.  She cares for me, and she knows this is the only ending to the story. Whilst she may not want to accept it, she will.”

“She loves you.”

“She loves many people.” He can’t afford to give into this game. Not now he is so close. 

“She loves you more. And I know you love her also. I wondered what you would do when you found out I hurt her. I was disappointed in your reaction. I was hoping for a more romantic gesture. Perhaps a declaration of love, given that you won’t ever get the chance again.” 

“I will. And she knows. This is your downfall.”

“My love for love? Now, now, Patrick, let’s not be silly.”

“Your desire for theatrics. It makes you blind.” He only has a few moments to work with.

“Does it?” There is the cockiness he has needed.

“I need to show you something,” he says, and when McAllister smirks and leans forward, he acts.

The gunshot sounds unnaturally loud. Everything else happens too fast for him to process. All he can think of is the last time Charlotte smiled at him and the last kiss Angela blew him. Tom McAllister, not Bertram, not Red John, took them and so many others. It’s only right that he joins them.

He does doubt whether or not Lisbon will truly forgive him, but he can hardly focus on that when he’s so close to revenge.

He gets it. McAllister begs as much as he’s able to, and then it’s over. It feels shockingly anticlimactic, but he supposes he should’ve been prepared for that. After Lisbon finally arrested Walter Mashburn, she came and sat with him. And when he asked how it felt, she shrugged and said it was just another closed case.

He wonders if the feelings will kick in later.

He knows he needs to leave.

So he does.

In his first letter to Lisbon- he rewrites it several times, knowing that she’ll know but quite frankly not caring enough to send the first copy because there is too much and it is too soon- he details exactly what he did.

He sends four more letters with zero reference to the events that led to this method of communication. Because if nothing had happened, he would’ve been sauntering into whatever office she had and saying whatever he wanted regardless of who was there. He sends four more with zero reference because Teresa sent five with no acknowledgement beyond thank you.

Six months later, at the same time that she starts a new job, she sends a letter. It deviates from their usual pattern. 

He fears the worst as he opens the letter. He won’t go back unless he has to. He wanted that “has to” to be something like Cho’s wedding or because Grace and Wayne are expecting, but if Lisbon is writing early it’s unlikely it’s something good.

 But the letter is blank save for three words.

I forgive you.

He breaks down there. He clings to the letter as his legs give out and tears stream down his face because she forgives him. She forgives him, and even though he knows he had nothing to apologise for and that she would always grant him this, to see the words written in her own handwriting is like a weight lifted off his chest.

If Teresa can forgive him, then he will be okay. Because yes, Teresa is a forgiving person, but he hurt her again by running away. At some point, her mercy was going to run out. He assumed it would run out when he tried to bury a man alive because that almost jeopardised her career, and when she still let him use her for his vendetta, he knew he needed to be careful.

Teresa’s forgiveness feels much like her love. He doesn’t want to think about that. He wants to think about how beautiful she is. How much she’s changed, for better or for worse. Because the Agent Lisbon that let him look at the files wouldn’t have dreamed of letting him near Red John. The Agent Lisbon that still writes him letters despite saying she can’t has forgiven him for killing.

The first time she sees him, she flinches.

Patrick wants to make her hurt. He wants to shout at her. How dare she say she’s forgiven him if she’s going to look at him like he’s not her friend?

But then he thinks about it for half a second longer. She flinched because she was afraid of what she’d done to him. She was terrified that it was seeing how many criminals they caught walk free for one reason or another that drove him to the edge of a cliff you couldn’t come back from. She thought it was her fault he’d dived off it with no regard for the landing.

He wanted to say he’d desired revenge long before she ever said hello to him, and that she had remained his one tie to the world. That he’d started living- not just surviving- because she looked at him without pity and without sorrow. He wanted to say that he didn’t feel like there was any more blood on his hands because they’d done what they could.

But all those words died when she looked at him with those wide eyes and that slightly hesitant smile since she’d had a moment to compose herself.

So he said the words that said all of that and more. And he did the thing that proved he wasn’t lying.

“Lisbon,” he whispers, and then he embraces her with all the love he still holds for Angela and Charlotte, as well as all the love he’s grown to hold for her. 

She smiles, and in some strange way, she feels forgiven too. Perhaps it’s for waiting so long to write the first letter. Perhaps it’s for something she can’t remember she felt guilty about because Jane is back and she’s in his arms and he feels like home.

“Jane,” she replies, the same teasing lilt emerging.

And he knows then. It’s definite. It’s certain. There are now five indisputable facts for when he can’t sleep.

One: Lisbon loves him. Two:  they’re back together to solve cases and tease each other. Three: forgiveness is possible, even for people like him. Four: he can keep his vow.  And five: he is home, and it is filled with a brightness he has never seen before. 

[darker-soft-starker]

Starker High School AU Pt. 7 (1...6)

tw: general Howard Stark warning

----

So, here’s the thing.

Peter meant to ask May about the letter the night he got it back from Tony, He really did. But then everyone was in such a good mood, he couldn’t bring himself to shatter that to satisfy his own curiosity.

So then he meant to ask the next day.

And he tries, he really does.

But the letter feels as heavy as an anvil in his desk drawer and Peter is too nervous to ask about it. Something always comes up or he gets too scared to shatter the image of the good, obedient nephew he is, one who doesn’t go rifling through mail not addressed to him, prying into personal business.

So he flusters and stumbles pretty badly for the first couple attempts. He changes topic quickly, pretending like he was going to ask about something else, asking himself where exactly his business ends and where his curiosity begins.

Once during a gymnastics comp he stopped mid routine to check on a rival who had fallen from the rings and injured themselves. His coach asked when he was going to stop being a goddamn martyr.

He shakes the Magic 8-Ball on Monday morning and asks the universe if it’s an appropriate time to approach May.

Reply hazy, try again.

Well, that’s not what his flagging courage had hoped for. He shakes it again.

Ask again later.

One more time, harder.

Better not tell you now.

“What the hell,” he whispers, placing it haphazardly upon where he took it. “That’s bullshit.”

“What’s with the potty mouth,” May asks suddenly from behind him. He turns as she’s affixing some dangling earrings to her ears. “What’s wrong, kiddo?”

“Nothing,” he sighs. “Just - do you have a minute?”

She checks her watch. “I have about forty seconds. Is something wrong - are you okay?”

“No - I mean yes, I’m okay. Are...are you?”

“Top of the world, bubby,” she scoops her keys from the bowl, approaching him with a curious expression. “Why do you ask?”

There’s no easy way to ask without blatantly admitting to going through her things, and the last thing he wants her to think is that she can’t trust him.

“I just mean. If you weren’t. If there was something wrong, you would tell me, right?”

“Of course,” her face falls. “You’re acting strange, Pete.”

“I just worry, that’s all.”

You’re all I have left, is what loops over and over in his mind, but doesn’t say. She seems to hear it anyway, rushing forward and kissing his forehead, her perfume filling his nose.

“Everything is fine, bubs. The second it isn’t, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Okay.”

“I gotta go, but stop worrying okay? That’s my job. You have a good day.”

She hurries to scoop up her handbag and closes the door before he’s broken out of his thoughts long enough to reply. He sighs and shakes the stupid ball again before he leaves as well.

Cannot predict now.

Of course.

Just for once he’d like fate to be firmly on his side.

---

Something smells weird.

It’s sharp, chemical and not entirely unpleasant. Noticeable, however, sharp enough to cut through the usual musty smell of the library. It’s like apple cider, but overpowers the usual library smell of old books and dust and pencil shavings, a scent Peter has long associated with study, solitude, and the easing of his anxious heart from a gallop to a steady stride.

It’s not a bad smell, just misplaced.

And Tony’s been acting strange all study period. Like, weirder than normal - and his resting state of normal is already ineffably frenetic and bewildering, so this was an entirely different carton of eggs.

Peter doesn’t exactly want to bring it up, they’re kind of on a tenuously peaceful truce, a silent lay down of arms, so to speak.

Well, as peaceful as a truce can be while they call each other all sorts of names and rib each other over literally any sign of weakness, but still. They have some sort of an understanding now, and it’s all relatively innocent, good natured banter.

Mostly.

Peter for sure could have done without being called fuck-face-mcgee upon entering the library, but he’s willing to let it pass. He was late, after all.

“Anyway,” Peter says, sitting across the table from Tony, “so I think if we removed the monthly gym membership, we’d have an extra sixty per month that could go towards other stuff.”

“Like what?” Tony’s face pinches.

“I don’t know, like a college fund?”

“Ridiculous idea. I need that membership,” Tony rebukes, shrugging his leather jacket off, hooking it over the back of the chair. “When else am I supposed to get a reprieve from you and the cabbage patch?”

“When do I get a reprieve? I’m the money-maker. When do I get my break from work and childcare?”

“At work. What are you, like an art teacher or something? Your whole day is like a rich, white woman's vacation. Parents don’t get a lunch break.”

“Right. I’m sure watching Dora and burping an infant is as hard as teaching a class of thirty.”

“Wow. So dismissive. I mean, if you were a good spouse, you would give your withered and weary husband a break from screaming babies and shitty diapers.”

“Mhmm. That would mean I’d have to do something nice for you, and that doesn’t sound like me.”

Tony shakes his head. “We’re getting a divorce as soon as Molly is old enough to pick me as the superior parent,” he points to Peter’s papers. “Put that in the notes.”

Peter closes his eyes and sighs, willing himself not to lean over the table and smack the other boy.

“You are not the superior parent. You’re the deadbeat that forgets to pick her up from school and day drinks.”

“And yet, she loves me the most. You’re just the breadwinner who comes home grumpy every evening. I’m the cool dad.”

“Fine, keep your druglord baby. I never wanted kids anyway.”

“Fine. I’m keeping the car.”

“I’m keeping the apartment.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

They snicker quietly in a rare moment of camaraderie before a lightbulb goes off in Peter's head.

“What if we used the membership, but cut costs elsewhere, like, cutting our own hair and stuff. We could save for a yearly holiday, go to the beach or something.”

“Florida! Disney, roadtrip, yes,” Tony clicks his fingers towards Peter, smiling wide. “Look at you getting all savvy. Call the judge, the marriage is back on.”

“You can’t go to Disney for a few hundred dollars, dumbass, that’s barely the price of admission,” Peter scribbles on his pad, making note of their ideas. “You ever been?”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“Not even once.”

“That’s surprising. Isn’t that where all rich white people take their baby sociopaths to beat up their first mascot?”

“One, I was never a baby, I emerged fully grown, and two, could you imagine Howard Stark within a mile of the happiest place on earth? He’d have a fucking stroke,” his face changes like he’s had an epiphany. “Not a bad idea, actually.”

Peter doesn’t mention that he doesn’t personally know Howard Stark but is willing to take Tony’s assessment at face value. That being said, he can’t imagine Tony, now, voluntarily heading to Disney without coercion or the promise of copious quantities of alcohol. He’d probably smoke and cuss and scare away small children.

He mind lingers on that particular characterisation, and for a moment tries to picture what Tony looked like as a kid, if he was a chubby, toothless little brat, can’t help then imagining him with Mickey Mouse ears, gleefully running through his gigantic home, harried caretakers running after him.

He must have been the worst.

“I’ve never been further than Washington,” Peter offers, “but that was for AcDec, so it wasn’t like we got to see much.”

“You did Academic Decathlon?”

“Yep.”

“Ew, why would you do that to yourself.”

“I still do it. It looks good on college applications and it’s fun,” he shrugs. “I like it. I’m good at it.”

Tony’s hands cover his mouth, but it doesn’t stifle the rising apple of his cheeks or the mirth in his voice.

“I’m feeling so much second-hand embarrassment for you right now.”

“Shut up,” Peter huffs, kicking him under the table, satisfied when the other boy winces. He fails to smother his own wince when he gets a kick in return, right in the kneecap. “Nothing wrong with being an intellectual.”

“You’re a fucking nerd, four-eyes.”

“What about you?” Peter rolls his eyes, keen to change the subject. “Been outside New York?”

Tony shrugs, tapping his pen on the pad, looking anywhere but at him. “When I was younger I’d sometimes go on my dad's business trips to Europe or Japan or whatever. And we have a house in Malibu.”

“That sounds awesome.”

Tony snorts. He shuffles on his seat, sliding their notes over and making further amendments in quick strokes, the cheap pen spurting bright red ink over the paper like arterial spray.

“Oh yeah, it was a real blast.”

Spoiled brat.

“Are you going anywhere for Thanksgiving?”

“With my family?” Tony looks up. “No, I’d rather stick my head up a turkey’s ass. You?”

Without warning, Peter’s hand flies to cover his mouth, unable to  but snort at the imagery, He’s not sure if Tony just doesn’t get along with his family or if he’s still stuck in that churlish, ‘too cool to be around my parents’ stage of adolescence. It’s one the idiosyncrasies that would have annoyed Peter before, his ungratefulness of having a family that’s still alive would be just another thing for Peter to hate him for.

Now, he thinks, he’s beginning to parse out when Tony’s being sincere and when he’s  hyperbolic, finally recognising the latter as a mechanism to throw someone off a topic that makes Tony uncomfortable. He sees it - the warning lights and stop signs in barbed coding, wrapped up in dry wit and sarcasm.

Peter is like that sometimes, too.

And what the hell would Peter know about having a normal family.

“Yeah, actually, for once,” he says softly. “My aunt - not May - and uncle have a holiday home up north, so we’re staying with them over the long weekend.”

“S’cool. May’s family?”

Peter shakes his head. “Sort of - they’re not actually related, but May and Margaret have been best friends since college, so.”

“Is Margaret a babe, too?”

Peter throw a chewed-up pencil at him that he catches easily.

“Don’t be gross.”

“I’m not,” he throws the pencil back, overshooting and hitting the shelves behind them. “What are we talking, on a scale of haggard to hottie.”

“I don’t know, man. You seem to have questionable taste in the people you are attracted to.”

Tony grins crookedly, eyes shining with something Peter can’t decipher. “Ain't that the truth.”

“What’s the supposed to --” he stops himself, suddenly recognising what the strange scent was that he’d been picking up. “Wait - dude, are you wearing cologne?”

Tony’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he responds. “No,” he denies, just as the bell rings. “Oh, look at that, time to get to class.”

Saved by the bell.

“So, this is it,” Tony nods, shutting the lid of his laptop as the bell signals the end of their free period. “We’re done. The assignment. That’s the last of it, right?”

Dazedly, he watches Tony stuffing his laptop and notes into his backpack, brow creasing as his mind catches up.

“Uh, yeah. I guess.”

“Send me your notes tonight, I’ll stitch them together with mine and send them back.”

“Okay,” he sluggishly collects his own notes, picking up the bag by his feet. “That’s - that’s good.”

“Well, Parker,” Tony slings his backpack on his shoulder, shuffling backwards, “we didn’t kill each other. I mean, not for a lack of wanting on my behalf.”

‘’Yeah, from Wednesday we’re free. We can go back to normal.”

“Yeah,” Tony’s grin fades. They stare at each other for a long moment that could have been seconds or hours, he doesn’t know, until the second bell rings.

“Hey, um --”

“I’ll send you the notes later,” Tony interrupts, sotto voce. “I gotta get to class. See you around.”

Something in his stomach deflates, sadly and slowly, like a balloon with a pinprick, emptying itself until it’s an uncomfortably hard to digest crumpled mass at the base of his stomach. He pastes on a smile and looks out the window, hoping the feeling doesn’t show in his eyes.

That’s when he notices the leather jacket Tony has left behind, still slung over the back of the chair.

“You left your…” he trails off, turning back, but Tony is already long gone, probably already halfway to his next class. Like a bat out of hell, Peter thinks wryly, picking up the jacket, the leather smooth like butter under his touch, still warm around the collar where Tony’s had been leaning against it.

No good leaving it here to get stolen or be tossed into lost property. He decides to take it with him, folding it gently over his arm. He’ll give it back when he sees him again, maybe after school.

“Nice jacket, Parker,” Flash says approvingly when Peter bumps into him out in the hall.

At first he thinks he’s referring to Peter’s ratty hoodie, and it confounds him for a moment because it’s decidedly not nice, but then he realizes he’s referring to the leather in his arms.

“It’s not mine,” he replies a little too late, because Flash is already down the hall, out of earshot.

Peter sighs. It’s beginning to become a depressing theme.

---

The weird feeling in his chest doesn’t subside all afternoon, and into the evening Peter is starting to think maybe he just has indigestion, like acid reflux or something. Must be the chilli surprise from lunch. Maybe he’d missed his meds.

He sends his portion of the final notes to Tony’s email, turns off his computer and switches on Colbert.

---

It’s not until hours later, well after midnight and the infomercials are playing, only then does his phone buzz against his thigh with a response.

Figures that Tony would be a night owl like him.

> soz was distracted > youtube spiral

Peter shifts downwards on the bed, holding the phone over his face. < s’ok  < what were you watching  > say yes to the dress  < lmao really > lol no > anyway, looks good. ur notes > will print off for u to sign tomorrow < is that a compliment or an admission u were wrong about me 

> neither. One subject does not a genius make  > unlike me, an actual genius

In your dreams, dipshit, he wants to type, but doesn’t, not really keen to provoke a muddy discussion on who is the smartest (it’s definitely Peter).

< u left ur jacket in the library btw, I have it, he texts instead, his pulse jumping when Tony replies with crying emoji’s.

Tony sends him a snap, unexpectedly, a sad face that makes Peter snort. His face seems distressed, the caption reads, thought i lost it for good.

Shifting down further on the bed, he’s feeling suddenly and inexplicably courageous, fire burning up from his belly button to his fingers.

Peter takes a silly photo of himself and sends it back. > didn’t want it to get stolen < aw u care

“I do not,” he whispers to himself.  > i do not. come collect it after school tomorrow or im throwing it out. < u wouldn’t do that to me > there’s a lot of things i would do 2 u  > ....  > um  > lol 

 Peter’s face flames at the implication. He reads over what he just so carelessly typed, stomach positively knotted with embarrassment. Oh god, that is not what he meant. His fingers fly over the screen at record speed as he types out a response. < NOT LIKE THAT < I MEANT IT IN A THREATENING WAY < I’M LITERALLY GAGGING > yikes > ur dirty talk needs work < no it DOESN’T bc we’re not sexting > sure jan > damn. didn’t kno u had it in u bubs < i don’t have it in me > not yet > ;)

Despite the deep blush still heating his face and his heart galloping in his chest, a laugh breaks out of him. The phone in his hand vibrates again. > jk jk, not ever > need to bleach my brain now 

Slowly gliding back to earth he types out a response. < ikr me too < ugh.

He puts his phone down on the bed, looking up at the water-stained ceiling, amusement slowly fading. His pulse though, that doesn’t return to normal.

How could it when his mind suddenly runs away from him, evoking short-lived, but nonetheless strikingly vivid images of intertwined legs, planes of pale skin, and lush lips. How can the heat in his stomach escape when his thoughts conjure phantom sensations of a soft mouth sucking on his neck, the punishing grip of hands on his hips and the warmth and weight of another body on top of his own.

A forehead leaning against his, brown eyes that knocked his pulse off kilter.

The taste of nicotine.

Stop it.

That is dangerous territory right there. And a line he doesn’t want to cross.

Shaking his head, Peter swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, looking anywhere for a distraction; his window, the posters on his wall, his figurines on his shelves, anything to douse the low-burning fire in his gut.

Standing, he heads to the bathroom to get ready for bed, banging their crappy old heater with his fist to get it working again.

He takes a very cold shower.

----

It’s not that Peter doesn’t enjoy sex.

Not that he’s had it.

But he enjoys jerking off, at least. Like a regular amount, whatever that is for a teenage boy. He likes kissing. Likes thinking about one day being in a real relationship and exploring someone's body and he likes exploring what turns him on and what he doesn’t.

It’s just that he doesn’t let himself think of anyone he knows personally that way, no matter how conventionally attractive they are - not Thor, and especially not him.

Typically, his fantasies are people with vague features, sometimes with bodies like those he has seen in porn, all shapes and sizes. And that’s safe for him.

He doesn’t want to have to look anyone he knows in the eye and wonder what their lips would feel like pressed against his own. If they’re any good at kissing. If they’re the type to take control or cede it.

He does wonder, sometimes though. No matter how much he denies what or who he wants.

Because it doesn’t matter if it’s a person or a thing. Want is never superficial in his experience, it doesn’t feel good most of the time. It’s deep and sometimes dark, it sinks itself into him with its hooks and it tugs, and keeps tugging. It yields to craving and yearning.

Back in his bedroom, his eyes land on his wall-mounted mirror. It’s small. Like the Mona Lisa. Small enough that he doesn’t have to see his whole reflection if he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want to crave and yearn for anybody, because he knows it will always be one sided. He’s well aware that he isn’t exactly centrefold material.

Who is gonna look at his weird ears or thin lips, and think, shit, that’s the guy of my dreams. Not with his big glasses or the way his hair twists itself into frizzy, unruly curls once the gel wears off and he starts looking like an unkempt labradoodle.

Who would want to wake up next to him? No one.

So it’s better not to risk imagining anyone real. It’s only in his head that anyone could ever want him back.

His eyes go from the mirror to the jacket folded and placed on his desk. It was intended to be plain sight so he remembers to bring it in - out of sight, out of mind, is what Ben would say. He can still smell the cologne Tony denied wearing earlier.

Once he’s in bed, he turns to face the wall.

Out of sight, out of mind.

---

Maybe Tony subscribes to that mantra as well.

Peter forgets to bring the jacket in all week and Tony doesn’t ask.

---

Danvers wants him fit and ready to be harpooned into the mud by next week; that’s why she looks the other way when Thor and Peter take their informal training in the boundaries of the field, stretching out on the grass as the JV team runs their usual morning drills - drills Peter would have been a part of before his stupid injury and his stupid wrist-brace.

This school is stupid too. Now he has to pay to see a doctor so he can get medically cleared for a sport he doesn’t really care that much about.

Like he didn’t have enough medical bills to deal with.

In any case, he’s not really in a position to complain, because he has the opportunity now to run through his warm-up with Thor, who is taking his direction to spread his legs into a butterfly position so beautifully, even as his knees raise from the ground to make a v-shape, whereas Peter’s lie flat on the grass.

If the last few days had been different, he might have blushed and used the situation at hand as an opening to place his hands on Thor’s knees and applied pressure. But now he just smiles encouragingly and reminds himself that he has no chance - no place - and his hands do not belong anywhere but his own body.

And surprisingly enough, he’s okay about it all.

Thor was a good guy. Peter will never say no to having more friends.

It’s a dreadful, bitter morning. Icy cold, wind biting into his shirt, the grass below them is damp. He has to keep rubbing his hands together so he can restore feeling in his fingers.

To make things worse, Tony is back on the bleachers. White v-neck, jeans and dark sunglasses. Sprawled out over a set of steps, legs askew, arms behind his head, unmoving as if he were napping or sunbathing, appearing like a cocky main out of an eighties movie.

Or a king surveying his kingdom.

Rhodes and Potts slouch on either side of him, swapping phones over his idle figure, taking pictures and laughing amongst themselves.

“It burns,” Thor says lightly, hands on his thighs in an attempt to aim his knees to touch the ground.

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, despite the ease in which he can lean in. “It just takes practice, dude. Twenty minutes a day, warm up and don’t over-do it. You’ll be limber in no time.”

“You can do this better than I can,” Thor argues, accent thick as he tries to lie flat like Peter.

“And you can lift a hundred pounds better than I can,” he tries to rebut, even as they switch positions, hip flexors aching with old injuries.

While the stretches are like second nature, he doesn’t miss the pressure of training for competition. The eagerness to get into a flat butterfly or oversplit. There was no argument that he spent nights on crunches back then, and he was somewhat toned - but he was shit at weight training. He hated lifting. Reps were more boring, more tedious and difficult and the diet required to give them any value was frankly not worth giving up a great hotdog or a loaded sub from Delmars. He wouldn’t go back to it now.

None of that old heat is there when he inspects Thor’s form. That quick simmer, the call to be closer. That terrible thing, want. All but gone. awe is still there, as he suspects it always would be with someone as outstanding as Thor, but the butterflies have very much flown away.

As he suspected would be the case. He has someone and they’re happy. With the cat out of the bag Thor had shown Peter pictures of his boyfriend all morning. He’d gotten a puppy, apparently, which just tickled Thor. He was so happy it was almost sickening.

When is it gonna be him that sickens someone with photo’s of his partner?

“Hey, Parker,” Tony yells from the stands, “you suck!”

Looking over, the idiot is raised on his elbows and grinning, like he’s proud of himself for a spectacularly unoriginal insult.

Rolling his eyes, Peter gives him the finger and he gets one in return.

His stomach twists and he has to duck his head to conceal his smile.

“Your husband is somewhat rude,” Thor says, following Peter’s example and switching from a pike to a lunge.

Peter looks back over to the stands. A cigarette now dangles between Tony’s full lips, sunglasses slid to the tip of his nose.

That’s how Peter knows he’s looking at him too.

Even from afar his eyes are round and mirthful, framed with ridiculously long lashes like a cartoon mouse, far too outlandish for any real person to have.

“He’s the absolute worst,” Peter bites his bottom lip, quickly averting his gaze. “It was an arranged marriage, to be fair.”

---

Wednesday comes and goes.

Their assignment gets handed in, Peter signs it off to say he did his fair portion of the work and Miss Ahn beams at the both of them when she is handed the thick binder, looking all too pleased with herself.

They have a presentation of their work next week, after Thanksgiving, each pair expected to give five minutes of their life pretending that they’re passionate about schoolwork in front of their fellow students who don’t care.

After that they are completely unburdened. No study sessions, no car rides, and no fries dipped in milkshakes.

They’re embarrassingly hailed as a prime example of people working through their differences, as if they had come together and were now friends or something.

From the front row Tony sneaks a furtive glance at Peter when she applauds them to the class.

“See, kids,” she says, “it wasn’t so bad working together, was it?”

Their eyes meet briefly.

“Zero out of ten, would not do again,” Tony declares, brash and loud, kicking his combat boots onto his desk in a leisurely display.. “That guy is the human equivalent of watching paint dry. Awful.”

“Oh, come on,” she chides. “Be nice.”

Not one to be outdone, Peter lets his horse out of the gate too.

“Singular worst experience of my life. I once had a root canal without anaesthetic and it was less painful than working with him.”

“Alright, boys, that’s enough out of you,” Miss Ahn sighs deeply, walking to the front of the room. “Mr Lang, how did you find the assignment?”

“Very informative…”

From the front row Tony turns in his seat and winks at him.

----

“Thanksgiving plans?” Natasha asks, leaning beside his locker, smothering a smile as he struggles to get his locker open for the nth time that day with one functional hand.

“Visiting my Aunt and Uncle,” he says, finally prying the damn thing open. “They’ve got a place up at Otisco Lake, so. Probably watching old movies and swimming all weekend.”

“Oof,” his friend winces. “That’s a trip. Think the May-Mobile will make the distance?”

The May-Mobile of course to the ancient, ‘89 Volvo 240 that May has been driving ever since Peter was born. She adores it and refuses to trade in, despite the fact that it rarely gets driven, practically haemorrhages gas, and has cost more in repairs in the last five years than the actual value of the car. But May really loves it. It's sentimental. She says it was the car Ben and her picked out together.

“It better make it,” he dumps his books in, closing the locker. “I don’t want to spend the weekend waiting for AAA in the middle of nowhere. What’s your plans?”

She shrugs, walking with him down the hall.

“Probably go and annoy Yelena. Was supposed to spend it with Bucky and his mom, but that ain't happening.”

He bumps her shoulder sympathetically. “Do you think you two will get back together?”

“Probably. But he’s got a shitload of grovelling to do first.”

“Don’t maim him, please. We need him on the team.”

“No promises.”

“Speak of the devil,” Peter adjusts his glasses, spotting Bucky at the base of the stairs talking to somebody. He gets startled, heart jumping when Natasha grabs him by the waist, pushing him towards the wall and inching them closer to the stairs.

“What are you --”

“ -- Shh, I want to listen. Who is he talking to?”

Craning his head, he finds himself in for another surprise when he sees that the other person he’s talking to is --

“He’s… he’s talking to Stark - what...?”

She shushes him again and Peter listens, curious now too.

“... what do you want, Barnes?” Tony visibly grimaces, taking a cigarette from his pocket and tucking it behind his ear. “Make it quick. I got places to be and your noxious stench gives me headaches.”

An announcement goes off over the loudspeaker over their head, calling for Brendon Bennett, a dick of a senior, to move his car from where he has blocked a teacher from leaving. It would be funny at any other time, but as it goes, he misses a chunk of their conversation.

“...Rogers isn’t the boss of me.”

“Yes, he is, and I’m not getting suspended again because you’re a pussy and he has roid-rage.”

“I just need an ETA. C’mon, pal, I really need this.”

“I’m not your pal and I don’t give a flying fuck what you need.”

Ever the easy going guy, Bucky puts his hands up placatingly as a group of students file down the stairs, causing enough noise that Peter misses whatever is said next. As he strains to hear he tries to draw the line between the dots, but comes up short on exactly how these two are connected.

“That fucker,” Natasha mutters near his ear.

By the time the students clear, Tony’s descended the stairs and begun to walk away

“I have better things to do than to sit around and wait for you,” Bucky calls out, giving him the finger.”

“And yet you will.”

Not in any possible lifetime was Peter going to address that he was weirdly relieved that Tony didn’t flip him off in return, some part of him petulantly thinking that’s our thing, but that’s wrong - Peter and Tony are not friends and they do not have things, even when they do, it’s not like a thing thing.

Nat grips his hand and pulls him along when Bucky leaves as well, swiftly walking away to avoid being caught. His backpack jostles at the speed and he realizes he’s still clutching Tony's jacket from where he had retrieved it from his locker.

“What was that about?” He asks, struggling to keep up with his friend's furious pace as he’s led down the hall. “Tash?”

She drops his hand once they are outside, her disapproval near palpable, voice laden with fire and fury.

“That’s Bucky being a world class idiot, he’s gonna get himself expelled, I swear.”

Peter stops on the spot.

“Expelled?”

Something dark curls unpleasantly in his gut, heavy and not leaving.

“They have a thing,” she explains hotly, mouth turning down. “Bucky and Stark.”

“What?” Peter breathes, uncomfortably thinking back to the party and the way Bucky overtly complimented Tony’s body. “Like a.... like a sex thing? Did he cheat on you?”

“What? No.”

“Then what?”

Red strands whipping in the wind, his friend looks around to see if there is anyone nearby before leaning in to speak low. He leans in too, unabashedly curious.

“Do you remember when Bucky was having issues with his parents when school started?”

He nods, thinking back to the times Bucky slept over in the late days of summer and early weeks of the school year, once or twice a week to get away from the shouting in his own home.

Natasha continues.

“Don’t tell him I told you this, but he got really depressed and fell behind with his work and everything he was handing in was terrible. Danvers pulled him up and said if he didn’t get his grades up, he’d be risking his spot on the team. So Bucky paid Stark to write up a few assignments for him, apparently he was doing it for a few kids, like it was a thing.”

...Okay.

That was not good, and definitely disappointing, but -

“Rogers found out. He gave Bucky a warning, but with Stark he threatened to go to Fury.”

Peter thinks back to the fight between their captain and Stark and their fight not long ago. “That’s why they…”

“I’m told Stark snapped, but I don’t know. I found out about the whole paper thing after that and me and Buck fought about it. I just got so mad - he’s - he’s not stupid, you know?”

“I know.”

She exhales heavily through her nose. “He’s going to get himself kicked out of school and I’m so -- I could kill him. We’re supposed to graduate together and get away from our families and go to college, and then he does this.”

“I’m sorry, Tash, I didn’t know,” he hugs her, her body going stiff before relaxing in his hold. “That’s shitty. For both of you.”

“I’m sorry for thinking you were in on the loop.”

He smiles, self-deprecating.

“Nope, I’m as clueless as ever.”

“No, you’re just too good for that,” she shakes her head. “Look, I gotta go and blow off some steam. Please don’t tell anybody about all this.”

“I won't, I swear - but text me later, alright? Let me know you’re okay.”

She ruffles his hair before stepping back.

“You’re a bleeding heart, PP. Keep an eye on that, will you?”

Hearing a squeal of tyres, he whips his head around to the parking lot, the source of the noise. The Firebird squeals out of the lot and onto the road, the sound as angry, the glimpse Peter gets of Tony’s face, even angrier.

He turns back to Nat, but she’s already walked away. Which means she isn’t there to hear him mutter to himself.

“What are you getting into, Tony?”

----

His thumbs hover over his phone that night, as he writes i saw u with barnes today.

He quickly deletes that, not wanting Tony to think that he was following him or spying on him - or worse, thinking that Peter actually cares about what he does. He doesn’t. They’re not friends.

A dread settles in the spaces between his ribs, like thread trying to squeeze them together too tight, his lungs feeling compressed. Maybe it’s his asthma, or allergies.

It’s not and he knows it. He’s disappointed.

He rubs at his chest on his way home thinking about the scene they just saw and about what Natasha said. How is it that so many people in his orbit had this entire entanglement going on without Peter having any whiff of it? It really makes him wonder if they were they good at hiding it or was he just really fucking stupid. Stupid enough to think Bucky was doing okay, that Rogers wasn’t as sanctimonious as he appeared to be, and that Tony was --

Nevermind.

It’s none of his business and it’s not his place.

He knows better than to ask. It’s not as if he can forget all his own secrets that he clutches tightly to his chest, so tight it feels like he constantly walks through life with his fists clenched.

That and, like May, the real truth is that he can’t claim any entitlement to their trust. He eavesdropped in more ways than one these last two weeks. He tries to brush off that dry, sobering thought; it’s none of his business anyway and he has enough on his plate without getting involved.

When are you going to stop being such a goddamned martyr.

So then he thinks about the sheer fury on Tony’s face, how his - how he used to look at Peter the same way, and how Peter used to think that angry and bitter was Tony's default mood. That was that. The status quo.

Well, that wasn’t entirely fair, was it. It was easier to dislike Tony when he was distant enough that Peter could pigeon-hole him into a stereotype.

Because Tony got into fights, sure, countless and petty, but he was the guy who pet puppies and snuck them food under the table. Not the guy who kicked them.

He looked like the puppy that was kicked, though.

Not angry.

Wounded.

And that’s what confuses Peter. Turns out he doesn’t really know anything about his friends.

Or Tony, it would seem.

----

May closes the drivers-side door and throws a packet of snacks into Peter’s face.

“Pretzels.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he adjusts his glasses where they'd been knocked askew.

“Sorry, I thought your reflexes were better,” she says, and by way of apology, lobs a packet of sour gummies more gracefully on his lap. “Your favorite.”

“Apology accepted.”

From a plastic bag she fishes out two cokes and places them in the centre console, a bag of red licorice and crackers follow, also making their way onto his lap. She always buys too much food.

Then they’re turning back onto the highway that leads them out of where they paused at Monticello, the radio jacked up loud enough to be heard over the tiny droplets of raindrops sporadically hitting the windshield.

They’ve left early enough that it’s still dark.

Fog still hangs low on the roadside, intangible pale wisps that seem to disintegrate upon crossing, the road dotted with other travellers, but not too crowded, enough so they can easily cruise the speed limit and sometimes over. The Bangles play on a cassette tape and, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, May looks so carefree, driving her sentimental car with the noisy engine, singing along to the same cassettes she’s had since she was his age.

Peter can’t bring himself to say what he wants to. About the letters. One in particular. He knows something isn't right but who is he to break the peace?

So, he doesn’t and they keep driving.

The fog lifts and the tunes continue, both of them singing familiar tunes from ABBA to George Michael and Peter let’s go of what he can’t control and loses himself in the buoyancy of nostalgia - neither of them can carry a tune for shit and it’s funny, and when he rolls his window down he sticks his hand out to feel the frigid air, it’s the most free he’s felt in a long time.

Football and his after-school duties and everything else just drifts away with the wind, at least for this moment.

It was like when he was a kid. The route itself is mostly dark and dull, and this time without Ben, but their usual car games of ‘dollar every time you spot a windmill’ and ‘how many minutes until the next town’ are fun and easily pass the time. This will be another memory that he will gloss over with fondness, how even the boring roads will seem like rapture.

When the sky starts to turn from black to grey they stop for early breakfast at a diner just slightly off their trail in Windsor, both of them famished despite the hoard of snacks and in dire need of coffee.

The car is beginning to emit pale plumes of smoke from under the hood as they arrive at Davis Grove, Otisco Lake in the early morning. The sun rises low over the horizon, a slow ascent that turns the sky grey and brushes wriggling streaks of color over the lake.

The house is exactly as Peter remembers it.

Panels painted slate blue, brown-tiled roof. Two-storeys with a wrap-around porch and a private dock only a short distance away from the entrance. A swinging chair on the lawn that comfortably fits three and a half people.

It looks exactly as it did when Peter first came here as a kid, plucked straight out of his memories in perfect form, like it was set in a liminal space that time refused to touch. A piece comes back to his being at this moment, something that he didn’t know was missing.

Aunt Margaret is already standing at the door when the pull up. She doesn’t look a day older than when Peter last saw her years ago.

“Oh, look at you,” she coos, wrapping Peter up in a tight hug, curls brushing his cheek, “my darling little Petey-pie.”

“Hey, Aunt Margaret,” he returns the hug.

“You’re so tall now, let me look at you,” she holds him at arm's length, warm eyes roving over his form. “Oh my goodness, haven’t you grown a handsome young man? Last time we met you only came up to my shoulders and had braces.” She turns her attention to May. “Isn’t he handsome?”

His aunt nods, smiling at them, both women gravitating into a tight embrace. “It’s good to see you, Peggy. Thanks for having us.”

“Our pleasure. You look even more beautiful than the last time.”

“Oh, stop,” May releases her, wiping at her eyes. “Look who’s talking.”

She tilts her head to the porch and takes May’s duffle from where she has dropped it to the ground. “Come on you two, inside. We’ve got the fire going and scrambled eggs on the table.”

Inside it smells like the best parts of his childhood. A burning fire and butterscotch and lingering musky-but-floral scent from the bowl of potpourri high on the mantel. Even the sounds are the same, the same coo of early birds in the burgeoning daylight, someone humming by the stove.

Margaret leads them into the living room, where her husband meets them halfway from the kitchen, oven mitts still on his hands when he spreads his arms wide to welcome them.

“My goodness,” he beams, “look what the cat dragged in.”

He wears a cravat at the same time he wears an apron, looking every bit the formal yet whimsical man Peter remembers him to be and a crushing wave of nostalgia comes over him so suddenly he can’t help but rush forward and embrace him.

“Welcome, Peter. It’s so good to have you here.”

“Thanks for having us, Uncle Ed.”

“What have you taught him,” he points his query to May as he releases Peter to hug her. “You know you can call me Jarvis.”

---

Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter and Edwin Jarvis had been young twenty-somethings when they first met. Both were born in England before moving to the US, but it wasn’t until they met at Margaret’s first college that their paths crossed. They worked in different departments, Peter thinks Ed was an engineer or something and Margaret an analyst, but the universe pulled them together eventually.

Margaret asked Ed out first and then a year later, May was the maid-of-honor at their wedding and Ben was reportedly a teary guest in the squeaky church pews.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

A photo of that day sits framed upon the mantle. May and Margaret have their arms around each other, Uncle Ben and Ed standing awkwardly at the sides of the frame, holding up flutes of champagne.

They look so young. Happy.

Peter observes the photo, smiling. He would have been a baby back then. Before his parents and Ben had -- well.

His mind does these weird calculations sometimes. Like, the May in this photo is only nine or so years older than how old he is now, and this moment, suspended in time, makes them closer than they have ever been, even though in real life they are over twenty years apart.

Looking at this picture, it makes him wonder how many people he knows now will live full lives and die of old age. How many people his age will stay forever young, and who will be in the future looking back at their time now, wistfully staring at pictures of those who only exist suspended in that time.

It’s funny, being a teenager. His peers are too young to die so they assume they won't. Even in their twenties and thirties or forties, death seems like an elusive thing that doesn’t apply to anybody until it does. It’s for the decrepit, the sick.

But in Peter’s case death comes like poorly aimed darts, always landing badly and scoring low. In his pockets, his hands turn in fists. He hopes the three people left alive in this picture get to grow old.

He smells her perfume before he sees her. Margaret approaches, bumping their hips together.

“This was a nice day,” she says softly, wistful. “I wish we’d kept more contact over these last few years.”

“Me too,” he smiles sadly, her expression reflecting his. With a hand on his back she leads him to the couch.

“Come on, munchkin, come sit. Tell me how you have been.”

---

“We weren’t planning on the big dinner,” Uncle Ed says as he finishes peeling a potato, handing it to Peter once he’s done. “But we’re so glad you two joined us. Neither of us have a lot of family here, you know.”

“Us neither,” Peter runs the peeled potato under running water to rid it of dirty residue before chopping it into quarters. “It’s really nice to see you again, it’s been way too long.”

“You really have grown into such a nice young man,” the man smiles. “Ben would be proud. Your parent’s, too.”

“Thank you.”

They haven’t got together like this since Ben died a couple years back. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Shit happened and it got harder to try. May got busier with looking after Peter full time and working more - and Uncle Ed quit his job and opened up a garage and Margaret lost a baby - all at the same time.

It was a lot for everyone. Even college best friends moved apart when fate put up walls at every turn.

It seems everyone in his circle is just does their best to survive. Or maybe that’s just what growing up is.

The remainder of their morning is spent eyeing the oven and skedaddling while Margaret prepares her pecan pie, ejecting them out of the kitchen with a forceful shoo.

“May says you’re playing football,” Ed says, leading him out to the lounge, passing him a can of soda. “How’d that happen? Last I checked you were doing splits over a pommel horse.”

Peter shrugs, tapping his can with his fingernails, idly paying attention to the football on the old TV. “Needed an extra-curricular, there was an opening and for some reason they accepted me.”

“You were so good at gymnastics,” Margaret comments from the kitchen, whisking away at her bowl. “I’m sure you’re exemplary in anything you do. They’re lucky to have you.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, sculling back the rest of his drink, bubbles burning down his throat. “Looks good on college applications in any case.”

“This kid,” May points to him with her beer bottle. “He does it all, I don’t even know how. He’s brilliant.”

I could do more, he thinks. He wonders again in that moment what it is that makes him so deficient that May couldn’t rely on him to accept the truth about their situation, that maybe he was just too naive. But he’s not. He’d drop his after-school activities and get a job in a hot second if he thought it would help. And for just a split-second he’s mad about that, about being kept in the dark.

But then he sees the strain around her eyes, how the bottle in her hands trembles ever so slightly, how much she makes the hard world soft around them. And it’s easy for him to let that feeling go.

“You’re still freelancing?” Peter asks Margaret, momentarily distracted when Ed’s phone lights up with a call.

“Excuse me, terribly sorry,” he says suddenly, picking up the phone and answering it, rising to his feet to converse in the adjacent room.

“Yes,” Margaret says, eyes lingering over where her husband has gone, his voice carrying over the walls in worried, muffled tones. “Well, consulting. I can work from home, which makes it easier to take care of all my non-existent children,” she gestures to the empty room around them.

“You could go work with Jarvis,” May retrieves a new bottle, popping the cap. “Look after the books, help him replace tyres.”

“Tempting,” Margaret says dully, rolling her eyes. “Can’t understand why I haven’t done that yet.”

Jarvis re-enters minutes later, hands held out apologetically; whispering to Margaret first before he addresses the room.

“Um, we have another guest coming up for dinner, if that’s alright,” he winces at their blank faces. “He works for me. Has a difficult family arrangement and needs a bit of respite. You know how it gets over the holidays.”

Peter meets May’s eyes and shrugs. Anyone working under the business and is vouched for by his surrogate uncle is good by him.

“The more the merrier,” May raises her bottle.

After that, the kitchen needs his hands again.

---

The afternoon is spent preparing the sides, checking in on the truly gargantuan turkey and indulging their cat with nibbles and head scratches. May and Margaret spend the time drinking beer and cider, reminiscing their college years. It’s nice to hear the house full of laughter, given how somber the mood was when they were last all together.

“When did you get a cat?” Peter directs his question to Jarvis, accepting a peeler from him to attack the carrots.

The cat in question is completely black and delightfully plump, not overly so, but enough to indicate it’s decently fed but probably also a little lazy. Or maybe he just thinks that now that it lies tall on the peak on its scratching post, tail flicking idly while it watches them work tirelessly in the kitchen from above.

“Oh, about a year ago. Gives Peggy some company while I'm in the garage. She’s a sweetheart, this one.”

“What’s her name?”

“Friday the Thirteenth. Friday for short.”

“That’s, um, unique.”

“Was the day we adopted her,” Jarvis reaches up to scratch her. “And she’s a black cat, so, you know; spooky.”

Peter tilts his head to the side, considering it. “I like it.”

“Not bad, huh.”

“Yep. It’s a better name than Molly,” he mutters, shaking a slimy carrot shaving off his fingers.

Jarvis pauses. “As in Ringwald?”

Peter sighs and continues peeling.

----

“Did I ever tell you about the time May came to class in a bathing suit?”

“I don’t think they need to hear that --”

“So we have this exam,” Peggy says, ignoring May, “Super important. Fifty percent of our overall grade. She comes in late, dripping wet, the biggest hickey on her neck I have ever seen --”

“Peggy.”

“-- Only thing saving her modesty was Ben’s shirt over her shoulders. I had to lend her a pen so she could sit the exam.”

“Did you pass though,” Peter asks curiously, shovelling a large lump of mashed potato into his mouth.

“Top grades,” she winks at him.

“She sat there for two hours, dripping water onto the ground and got flying colors. Meanwhile I’m the idiot who studied for weeks and got marked down twenty points for --”

The end of her sentence gets cut off by the sound of a car approaching the property, headlights flashing through the windows.

Then, a knock at the door.

“Ah, that must be…” Ed trails off, wiping his hand on a napkin before standing. “Excuse me.”

He goes to answer the front door, Margaret continues her story albeit much more quietly until the voices of Ed and their guest filter through, becoming progressively louder.

“Sorry to intrude, I know it’s the holidays --”

Wait. That voice is familiar.

“Nonsense,” Ed interrupts, “you know you’re welcome anytime. You’re practically family, kid. Come in, we’re eating now, you’re just in time.”

Peter’s fork clangs loudly on his plate when he sees their visitor, unable to keep his grip on the utensil as his limbs start to tingle. He forgets how to breathe for a second, entire body going hot.

Ed’s arm is around Tony Stark and they’re approaching through the living room, heading right for them. There’s a fresh cut on his lip and an ugly, wreath of bruising around his jaw and neck, deeply purple, speckled spots of burst capillaries visible from even where he’s sitting.

The worst part isn’t the intrusion. It’s how Tony looks unlike himself; he looks small and skittish, gaze flicking nervously around the room, arms curled around his waist. Something in his chest starts to feel the closer he gets, weird, hot and unwieldy, burning, like a hot poker has been drawn across his sternum.

“You’re the best, Jar...vis,” Tony trails off when he spots the Parkers, eyes zeroing in on Peter.

“Um,” Peter says, sharing a surprised look with May, not knowing what else to say.

But then suddenly Tony is shaking his head, shrugging out of Ed’s embrace and backing up, the skittish look gone and replaced with anger.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. No fucking way.”

Then he turns, and leaves.

----

*

*

----

tagging: @bylerboyfriends @ravens-starker-stuff, @starker-rays, @ironspiderstarker, @muse-of-gods, @notfor-temporaryuse, @tabbycat1220, @sugarfreecult, @rebel13lion39, @plueschpop, @spideravocados, @jellybbunny,  @booktrashme, @elfkido, @mycatislickingmybedsheets, @queerghostboyo, @disneyprincessdominatrix, @cherrygoldlove @starkerflowers@starkeristheendgame @thewolffearsher @starkersugar , @starkerforlife6969, @css1992, @parkerrbitch, @fuckmemrstark, @blankblankityblank, @ilovemoreid, @blaquedecember, @killmylonelysoul, @notfor-temporaryuse, @arvaen, @chaos-with-a-pen, @notnormallaura, @portiamarie02, @bloodymisanthropist, @ser-no-tonin, @staticwhispersinthedark

[cheerysmores]

I’m faraway stuck here

Previous part HERE

Getting his things to his new place doesn’t take as long as Yuuri first thought.

It starts out slowly: dropping off his spare gym bag when coming home from the rink, packing some old out of season clothes from the very back of his closet, boxing all the little trinkets he hastily threw into a suitcase while nervously staring at his one way plane ticket to St.Petersburg. They’re all things he theoretically doesn’t really need. Things he can live without should he choose to back out, choose to stay.

More than once he wavers on his decision. Packing some more of his clothes, he stops when his fingers brush the worn softness of an old red sweater. It takes him a second to realise that it isn’t his, that it’s the first piece of clothing he ever borrowed from Victor when he’d seen it mistakenly folded at the end of his bed. He stops himself as he goes to bury his face in the thick material, but the ghost of an old smell still brushes past his nose as he pulls it away. He recognises the cool scent of the ocean. Images of warm breezes and warmer smiles splash through his mind in dappled watercolours as he remembers quickly tugging it over his head on the last day of summer when the orange of the sunset had just started to sink below the horizon. He also remembers what happens after, the firmness of another hand in his, pulling him into the soft foam of the shallows as a dozen messy kisses were scattered like rose petals across his cheeks.

He stuffs it back into Victors side of the closet and quickly slams the door.

Like sand slipping through an hourglass, slowly more and more of his belongings make their way to the small apartment in a mess of disorganised piles. Each new box he carries through the door, carries a little piece of his heart with it. The sound of packing tape ripping is what he imagines his soul breaking might sound like as well.

He knows the route by heart. It’s much further away from the rink then he would have liked, but right now, this is all he can afford. Some shitty one bed with a cold breeze and colder looks in the eyes of the other tenants in a neighbourhood that almost scares him when he walks through it at night.

But doesn’t scare him as much as what he thinks might happen if he stays.

Part of him is almost glad he’s so far away, that they’re coming from opposite directions to train, that he can’t just accidentally end back at his old place when running.

Victor’s place he mentally corrects himself.

It bites whenever he thinks like that. Deep down he knows that once it was his place too. That for a while, even just a short while, they had a life here- together. He also knows that that safety and warmth haven’t been present between those four walls for what feels like an eternity at this point, it’s no longer the environment to nurture life and love.

It’s that thought that has him collecting the remnants of his livelihood and hiding them between four flimsy cardboard sides.

He knows he’s being a coward, finding the cheapest place he could in secret, packing when Victor isn’t home, keeping his words short and robotic at the rink. He wants to say that this is wrong, that he shouldn’t be doing this, but he just can’t. He knows this is what he needs to try and set his mind in some kind of order. Every time he thinks of stopping, the same cold sharp reasoning screams loudly in his mind.

He’s tried everything to fix this, tried time and time again to get Victor to talk to him, tried with all the warmth he could to break through the chilled wall of silence the other man had erected between them and at this point… frankly he’s just sick of being the only one putting in any effort to try and salvage whatever they are.

He knows he isn’t stupid. He can see Victor is hurting, that something is wearing down his spirit until all the brightness of his inspiration had dulled like stone tossed about in a stormy ocean, but nothing he had been doing had helped.

Until Victor has the willpower to actually tell him what’s wrong, there’s nothing else he can do to try and cement the cracks between them.

And he certainly doesn’t want to dwell on the fact that it was starting to feel like the other man just doesn’t care anymore.

And so the last of his things get carefully wrapped and slowly driven over to his new place.

He thinks about telling Yuri. Despite the sharpness that characterises the teenagers tongue, Yuuri knows that he cares, knows that he’s basically family at this point. Knows that this is hurting him too. He mocked and rolled his eyes whenever Victor and him were more than a little affectionate, but it was nothing compared to the quiver of fear Yuuri can see flash in his eyes as the indifference between Victor and everyone around him grew.

Unlike himself, Yuuri isn’t sure if yuri actually knows how to be silent. He’d asked about it, hanging around after training and pointedly asking “what the hell is with you and the old man?” Yuuri didn’t have the energy to try and paint a rosier picture.

“He’s hurting. He’s hurting about something and he won’t tell me what,” he’d replied, trying to get round him so he could pick up the keys to his new apartment.

“It’s hurting you too isn’t it.” It’s not a question.

Yuri’s words had caught him slightly off guard. He knew he hasn’t been hiding his feelings that well at the rink, everytime Victor had given a less than enthusiastic comment, his whispered curses hadn’t been subtle, but Yuri wasn’t someone he expected to comment.

“I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve tried and tried and tried and he just won’t- talk to me.” The words were gushing past his lips before he could stop himself, the fact that someone was finally acknowledging this breaking the lock he’d put around all this. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, his gaze dropped from Yuri’s. “I’ve tried to help but it’s like he won’t let me.”

“So don’t then.” He held up a hand when Yuuri’s eyes had shot back up in surprise. “Look, I want him to go back to his normal oh-my-god-will-you-stop-talking-for-five-seconds self as much as you. He’s useless to everyone here right now.” Yuri folded his arms and leaned forward a little, tone hushed. “But if he’s not going to take the help he’s freely being given by those who care, take it away and see what he does then.”

“It sounds so harsh when you put it like that.”

The teenager just shrugged at the comment. “Put yourself first for once. Believe it or not, you’re not here solely because of him.” He took another step forward, the blade of his expression suddenly softer. “It’s because you fought to be better.”

For the first time in weeks, Yuuri felt the smallest sliver of hope break through the thick bricks of doubt in his mind. He’d actually smiled as he started walking again, Yuri keeping up as he went. “I never expected to hear that from you.”

“Tell anyone and I’ll skate over your throat.” The words were blunt, but Yuuri could hear the slight playfulness behind them. “But I don’t think being around him is good for you right now.”

They’d continued the rest of the walk to Yuri’s place in a comfortable silence until he started to wave the younger man off.

“Hey, Yurio.” He’d stuffed a small piece of paper in his hand before he could question. “It’s my new address. I’m moving in next week.”

It had felt good to do that. Finally telling someone about everything that was playing on his mind, giving him the push to finish what he started.

There’s just one last thing he needs to do. Something that he knows is going to hurt more than the thousand heartbreaks he’s felt splinter in his chest every time he’d been swatted down when he tried to reach out.

He has to tell Victor.

He wants to be surprised that Victor hasn’t mentioned Yuuri’s disappearing things but with how much he’s been sleepwalking through his days like a zombie and collapsing in the guest room when getting home late that he really isn’t.

It’s almost a relief, but it still hurts just that little bit more. How his things, his life can just vanish from the place they both called home and it not feel any emptier.

It’s the purpled dusk of a steely March evening when Yuuri finally gathers his courage.

He sits on the very edge of the sofa, wringing his hands together until his skin aches as he stares at the front door. The last box of his possessions are open at his feet. His skates are deliberately placed on top, next to his olympic jacket which is carefully pressed and folded. He hopes the image alone will be enough to convey what’s happening when Victor walks through the door.

He’s already rehearsed what he’s going to say. He’s had weeks to think about how Victor might react to the news, had more than a dozen sleepless night to play out every scenario in his head, but even now he knows that the minute he sees the realisation dawn in Victor’s eyes that all his words will most likely disintegrate in his mouth.

But still, he can’t run from this. Even if Victor might want to.

Every minute feels like it’s being dragged through syrup as it passes. The light fades ever so slowly through the window until the shifting shadows gradually engulf the room in an unkind darkness. Yuuri uncrosses his legs and shifts on the couch as he watches the clock in the corner tick from nine to ten to eleven, the worry in his gut only pulsing more strongly as each hour passes.

It’s past midnight when he finally breaks.

Either Victor was pushing himself at stupid hours of the night, or he somehow knew what was coming, either way Yuuri is done hanging on for him. In any situation.

Exhaling slowly, he grabs a notepad from across the table and just starts writing. Everything he wanted to say for the past few weeks feels like it’s bleeding from his pen as he writes. All his anger, his love and his hurt spills onto the paper like the flow of so many of his tears as he goes, not stopping until everything he ever thought about the whole situation is stabbed into the pad in messy black and white.

Ripping the sheets from the notebook, he feels some of the weight also rip out from his chest as he throws the pen across the room. He doesn’t reread it, just turns the paper over and rubs his temples.

It’s not the closure he wanted. But it’s done. If Victor reads it, then he’ll finally know exactly what he’s doing to himself. To both of them.

It’s the final thing he’s going to do for Victor. At least until he deigns to reach out to him for once.

He knows he’s being bitter. Knows that if at last years GPF he could see what he was doing now, he’d scream that that wasn’t him. That he could never do that to Victor. That he’d find a way to make it work, yelling and crying that Victor would never do that to him.

He fights the ghostly burn of old tears at the thought.

He’d tried staying and it had done nothing. Maybe space was the only thing left that could heal the chilled air between them. It’s all he has left to try at this point.

He leaves a letter left folded on top of the coffee table as he leans down to pick up the box at his feet.

He feels his body lock up a little as the ring on his finger glints softly in the low light.

It’s the one thing he’d refused to pack, refused to put away despite the fact it felt like it was getting heavier and heavier with the weight of old memories as each day passed. He twists it on his finger until the gold burns his skin raw as he stares at the paper in front of him. Eventually he takes it off and lets the warmed metal sits in the palm, the warped view of his own eyes staring back at him on the mirrored surface.

He dreams about the day he bought it almost nightly, vividly reliving the nervous buzz in his stomach as he slid the matching band onto Victor’s finger while the cold December air bit into his cheeks. When he’d passed his credit card across the counter, he really hadn’t known exactly what he wanted, just that he needed to do something to show how much Victor’s support and love really meant to him.

Things he hasn’t felt for what feels like a lifetime at this point.

He feels something catch in his throat when he spins the ring between his fingers and catches the half snowflake still intricately etched inside. If there was one thing that kept him wavering it was how he knows Victor still has his on. He’d seen him twisting and rubbing it whenever the stress got too much, sometimes pressing the metal against his forehead like it could somehow draw out pain if he tried hard enough.

The rings were two halves. Two puzzle pieces made to be together. Golden wedding rings he’d bought in the hope he could hold onto the similarly golden joy that burst through his mind every time Victor took his hand.

They aren’t memories he’s willing to cut off just yet.

He puts it back on, carefully placing his keys to this apartment by the note instead.

Shutting the door behind him, he’s surprised by how easy it is to walk away now, even with the weight of their commitment still burning prominently and solid on his finger.

He’ll have to face Victor at the rink at some point, have to face whatever it is he might say, but that can wait for another time. He has a few days rest now, maybe he can use the time to figure out a new future.

Five World Championships was what he promised. It might be time to carve out a more realistic goal. One for both of them.

Collapsing into the single cot in his new place, he sleeps with his phone upturned by his face. He knows Victor probably won’t reach out immediately, maybe won’t even notice that he isn’t there when he finally comes home, but that doesn’t stop him turning up the ringer to full volume.

Just in case.

AO3

[georgiecarrfilmreview]

The Highwaymen

This review originally appeared in Ghoul Magazine:

https://www.ghoulmagazine.com/home/2019/5/31/the-highwaymen

Die! In the name of the law! This is the engine that drives The Highwaymen, Netflix’s retelling of the exploits of Depression era bank-robbers, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, and the men who killed them. The Highwaymen follows two ex-Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) who are brought out of retirement by the no-nonsense state Governor, Ma Ferguson (Kathy Bates), for one last job - the extrajudicial execution of outlaws deemed too famous and too violent to be brought to justice any other way.

The Highwaymen is constructed, from its opening shots, around symbols of American Opportunity - vast space, straight roads, Ford cars. The dust of the dirt track and the vintage car show that this is an America of the past, nostalgically rendered through long, loving shots of Ford emblems on car bonnets. Both the outlaws and the law drive Fords - one stolen at gunpoint, one bought with hard-earned pay from a job in private security. The opening song of the soundtrack, composed for the film by Thomas Newman, is called ‘Ford V-8 Deluxe’. The outlaws drive recklessly, switching cars to avoid detection. Hamer’s car is sleek, the dark paintwork reflecting the sky above, almost always in motion. Hamer cares for his car - as he sets out his wife’s parting words are, ‘If you're covering miles, keep oil in her’.  By contrast the Barrow Gang cars are brash cherry red and often sit, unnaturally still, waiting in lure for policemen, the sinister score confirming the sense that these cars  have been mispurposed or misused.  Who, the film asks, has the right to drive this most American commodity and how does this define their relationship with the state? The film, after all, is Based On A True Story, set in actually existing America.  Hamer and Gault track the Barrow Gang across the country:

‘North to Kansas or Iowa,

east to Illinois or Indiana,

south to Arkansas.

Then right back to Texas

to start over again.

We got no jurisdiction north of Red River.

Maybe Hoover will take 'em up there.

Carthage.

Carthage...

Carthage, Missouri.’

Hamer and Gault discuss a lead in Bienville Parish, East of Shreveport. Seconds later, a title card - the Ford draws in to - ���Bienville Parish, East of Shreveport. Kansas’. This verisimilitude established between the historical narrative and its cinematic representation lends the film a documentary weight, a realism. It also creates a of logic of believability in which the accuracy of small things - dates and place names - suggests, by extension, the authenticity of bigger things - the character of Hamer and Gault, the evil of Bonnie and Clyde and the ideological integrity of their mission.

The tightly scripted geographic references also link The Highwaymen to the Western genre - to cowboys and cattle drives to Missouri and the Red River. The film is attuned to this, Gault remarking, ‘I don’t remember a saddle being as hard on a man’s ass as these seats’. In typical Western tradition Hamer and Gault are old men positioned against progress, washed-up and beat, who ‘might go to hell’ for what they have done - their hard justice set against the softer sensibilities of the modernising police force who believe that the time ‘to put a pair of man-killers on the trail and let them do their job’ has passed. This is a recurring Western motif, personified in the clash between James Stewart and John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance wherein lethal violence is discounted as Old West, soft and dangerously out of date - until someone comes along too evil to be stopped by sensitive, modern means. Violent and scored into American geography -  the history of the Western genre is replete with gun-toting double-acts:  John Wayne and Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo, or Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These partnerships work because of contrasts between the characters  - their differences and their attempts to bridge these are often the source of humour or poignancy. In The Highwaymen, however, Hamer and Gault are both firmly characterised as gruff curmudgeons, their monosyllables providing little space to riff off one another. There are attempts to add lightness to their characters - Hamer has a pet boar (Porky), Gault has bladder issues. But these grueling additions to the script are a side-note to the main focus: their damaged Old West masculinity which can only be redeemed through a job well done.  The Texas Rangers (founded during colonial expansion into Mexico, historically both a police force and patriotic militia, and symbolic of state power at home and abroad) have been disbanded by Ma Ferguson - the time of the violent cowboys is past. Instead Hamer and Gault must work on ‘special assignment’ - as Highwaymen.  But under whatever modern bureaucratic aegis they are assigned, Hamer and Gault are cowboys in their mind’s eye. Figuratively, they pick up their sheriff’s star from the dust, pin it ceremoniously back to their jacket and saddle up.

The film works hard to characterise Hamer and Guilt as inherently good, whilst Bonnie and Clyde are intrinsically bad. The faces of the outlaws are hidden throughout. In place of a character for Bonnie we see only an immaculately stockinged and shod foot (the violence thus eroticised and gendered) as she blasts cops’ heads with a sawn off shotgun. Any scenes which might go somewhere to explain the lawlessness of Clyde and Parker or flesh out their characters are set up to damn rather than mitigate. Clyde’s first brush with the law, we learn, was to ‘steal a goddamn chicken’. But in the black and white logic of good and evil this is proof enough of bad character; in a climactic line Hamer asks ‘You ever think maybe there was something in Clyde that made him steal that chicken in the first place?’ Assertions of their immorality take the form of rhetorical questions, barked at anyone who might defend the gang. They must not be romanticised. As Ma Ferguson asks, ‘Did Robin Hood ever shoot a gas station attendant point-blank in the head for four dollars and a tank of gas?’ Bit Characters line up to confirm the justice of the death sentence. Ma Ferguson, the Texas police force, Clyde’s Father and Hamer’s wife confirm that ‘there is only one way this is going to end’. These are reasonable people - adults, property owners, elected officials - conferring reasonableness and a humanitarian drive to their mission. On the afternoon before the execution Hamer and Gault undertake a pre-killing cleanse - shave, fresh suits - bathed in beautiful white dusky light. Killing may be dirty and distasteful but they will be wearing crisp white shirts when they pull the trigger. And my god, when they pull the trigger - over 167 bullets are fired into Bonnie and Clyde’s car, ripping the outlaws, and their 1934 Ford Deluxe, to bits.

But how does the film want us to see these deaths? At times the message seems confused. Sad music plays as the hail of bullets come to an end. We see Bonnie and Clyde’s faces just once - terror-stricken - as Hamer and Gault must have seen them as they opened fire. A tragedy has occurred. But whose tragedy? The lingering shots on Hamer and Gault’s careworn faces assure us that it is theirs. This scene is the most dramatic encapsulation of the film’s aim - a new telling of an old story from the other side of the law. The credits underscore this idea of a story re-told for different tragic emphasis. We are shown black and white 1930s photographs of Hamer and Gault and the Texas police force, the chromatic colouring asserting their everyday heroism and the historical truth of the drama. In monochrome lettering suggestive of Objective Historical Fact (rather than Carefully Selected Fact) we are told that Clyde and Parker’s funeral attracted 35,000 mourners. They, at least, were celebrated.  Hamer and Gault, by contrast, return to relative obscurity as unsung heroes. But the final title card informs us that an even greater justice resulted from Hamer and Gault’s success - the full restoration of the Texas Rangers Department, justifying the central argument of the film and of policing practice; that sometimes, people have to die.

[alliance-recruitment-agency-blog]

Fashion Headhunters - What are some types of fashion styles?

You Can See Some Answer Here

It's very important to have all of the necessary information from each client before embarking on a job search. Then, by narrowing down the candidates to send only the very best of the best, we save our clients time and money making the process a success.

The other way is through a staffing agency. Fashion companies really, truly use these agencies to scout talent. We know Fashion Headhunters plenty of people who've scored jobs through these services.

The executive team is taking its time to ensure each new employee is right for the job. Specifically, the agency recruits technical designers, production people, merchandisers, and buyers. 

The breadth of clients is incredible, and 24 Seven aims to find the right people for the right spots, so be honest about your interests when you meet with a rep.

The different designs in fashion have perpetually undergone infinite changes. With the rise within the quantity of innovations, the amendment in trend and fashion designs have additionally been fast.

One of the foremost lovely fashion designs, it positively could be a blast from the past. From missy dresses to Fashion Headhunters pinup article of {clothing|vesture|wear|covering|consumer goods} and from retro swimwear to indie clothing, the vintage look could be a fruits of fashion.

 The best thanks to describe bohemian would be to use the word non-traditional. a mode that is comparable to pretentious, bohemian vogue uses extravagant and wild patterns on exotic textures.  

Chic is characterised by being fashionable and trendy. it's a sort of statement to form oneself look sensible and hanging. Whoever follows this vogue makes bound to select well tailored trendy styles that area unit pretty elegant. For more details Visit Here 

Author Name:- Shreya Mehta 

Address:- 104 Esplanade ave 120, 

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Mobile No:- +1 917-668-8461

Conclusion: In Romans 8:14 says only those people "led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" .You absolutely are a child of God if you live godly and you resemble God and you're a child of your devil if minor live for God and your lifestyle is ungodly and if you resemble the devil which rebels against God for sinfulness, and a really enjoyable evil pleasures and lusts. 

Other as compared to the fabrics, mens dress shirts also give concern for the selection of colors and patterns. This kind of shirt was just available in white color during the Edwardian amount of time. People started cord less mouse with softer colors into the designs, such as blue and Wedgwood. However, people a whole lot more innovative in manufacturing mens dress tops. Manufacture has been introducing bold colors, including red, dark blue, as well as white various different colors. This model has got some collar designs, such as modern spread as well as standard design. fashion headhunters keeps developing more styles into the shirt. It's very not only available for an old-fashioned full cut, but is actually very also priced at an athletic cut and tailored-fit dress models. 

The classic quilted design which been recently used about the purse found Chanel's mind after she was inspired from the designs on his or her jackets of Jockeys. Today, this design is so famous that this is utilized on many handbags from Chanel.

In relation to its style, I'm a big fan of fresh breed of heels these days with the chunkier heels, I think it looks more modern than your usual knocks out. Also, don't go for a black platform stiletto as it is the surface of mind option. Go a little bit crazy and buy an associated with sparkly, silver pumps. Just like black pumps, silver pumps also match with things. I dare say it adds a little more of glamour insanely.

Princess Cup: The cut lets you draw perfectly the contour of your body, thus extending the back with some slack less important than thought to be obsolete style. This style is acceptable for ball evening clothes. 

Take your pet with you when you hit the ski slopes and particular that he will be in essentially the most fleece dog hoodie in which produces him appear to be the cutest thing on four limbs. When you go of a walk in the park or even go to hold out on the inside neighborhood several friends, an individual need to be able to a stylish hoodie from your your dog's wardrobe. When are developing a small family get together or likely to a fancy event, then a knit sweatshirt is an exciting choice. However, it important to make sure to always keep dog's wardrobe closet together with a wide selection of cool dog clothes so that you can select the suitable for the occasion showcase sure that your dog may be the center of attention.

In my view, to put heels or not, factor . question. Is actually contradictory between health and heels many times. There just isn't ground for your blame of woman wearing high heels, because loving beauty is human sort. I just want to remind the women that despite the fact that high heels make them looked more slim and beautiful, however they had better wear heels less with regards to possible.

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[citiusaltiusfraughtius-blog]

SWIMMING

Swimming is the worst, and I’m so annoyed that it makes me feel so amazing.

My poor boyfriend bears the brunt of this strange transfiguration by chlorine. I basically have to be peeled off the sofa and pushed into the pool. I complain constantly. I’m like a cat. I like sleeping and I don’t like being immersed in water. 

My brother was a national level swimmer. I was not a national level swimmer. I was a national level nerd, and moving was not my forte. I have strong memories of squinting up at swimming teachers who stared at me with a kind of horrified amazement, unable to comprehend how I could demonstrate textbook perfect technique but not manage to actually move. It was like I was on an underwater treadmill. I just stayed in the same spot. It was actually impressive, in a way.

Over the years, I’ve become no better at swimming, just more stubborn and resentful. I walk into the pool as a human thundercloud – grumpy, anxious, deeply uninterested in flailing down a length of water and back again, dozens of times. And for good reason. Swimming is profoundly, almost hysterically uninteresting.  There is nothing to look at in a pool. The landscape never changes. There never seems to be quite enough light in any swimming complex, so the place has this horrible drab mouldy energy. The upshot is that the whole session becomes an exercise in directionless hatred.

But in the same way that bellowing invectives at the four wheel drive that cuts you off at the traffic lights is sometimes quite invigorating, swimming provides ample opportunity to work through your stores of built-up resentment. For one thing, freeway rules apply to each lane. This means that anyone going slower than you is a somnolent drain on society and anyone going faster is a dangerous hoon. If anyone causes you to have to overtake them or overtakes you in turn, you get to loathe them, passionately and profoundly, for as long as they’re in your lane. It’s glorious. It’s energising. You usually can’t see their face, so you don’t ever have to feel guilty about hoping they drown. Same goes for children who bring their horseplay into the lap lanes, or old people who insist on walking in the lanes designated for swimming. The people one normally feels a social impulse to protect become detested enemies. It’s wonderful.  

It also works in the other direction – sometimes it feels really good to be enormously passive aggressive and have everyone turn against you. In a world where so many of us are terrified that we’re somehow upsetting people while trying to do good, it feels good to know that you’re being a jerk. Recently, I swam with my brother in a crowded 25 metre pool, and he totally cleared the lane of its six inhabitants with one Olympic-speed lap. It was majestic. Everyone hated him. They all stood together up one end of the lane and bitched about him swimming too fast. It was legitimately inspiring.  

If ruining other people’s days brings you joy, I particularly recommend swimming at the Northcote outdoor pool at around 9 pm on a cold, rainy night. Getting out there is hell, but once you’re in you don’t mind that it’s raining, and there’s always one lifeguard standing shivering in a puffy jacket just boring holes into your skull because you’re forcing them to be out in the cold. The power! Plus, sometimes there are ducks in the pool, so everyone wins.

Aside from befriending ducks, swimming is inherently a lonely activity – it’s hard to connect emotionally with someone with both of your faces underwater. And something about that means that small moments of human connection take on strange significance when they happen between the pool ropes. When you stop at the end of a lap to breathe, and someone pops their head up to see whether you’re about to start another one, there’s often a sweet little ‘Oh no, you go’ pantomime that feels very British and proper. People in a cold swimming pool immediately bond out of a shared suffering. And now and then, you end up inadvertently touching people as they pass, and it’s quite startlingly intimate. Once, late at night at Collingwood pool, I was doing breaststroke, and somehow managed to accidentally hold hands for a second with a woman going in the other direction. I was single at the time, and the suddenness of that touch actually made me tear up. So there’s an image for you. A woman crying into her goggles because she accidentally brushed hands with the old woman breaststroking opposite. Now that I think of it, I also once managed to accidentally grope a friend’s penis while breaststroking, so I think it’s safer for everybody that I stick to freestyle now.  

I know several people who claim to find swimming meditative. I don’t. Or actually, I do, but I find it very similar to trying to meditate when your brain is more interested in yelling at you. My internal monologue while swimming usually goes something like: ‘1. HEY REMEMBER THIS SONG LET’S TRY TO REMEMBER ALL THE LYRICS. I DON’T KNOW YOU BUT I WANT YOU – 2. OH WAIT WE GOT INTERRUPTED BY COUNTING THE LAP NUMBER LET’S START AGAIN. I DON’T KNOW YOU BUT I WANT YOU ALL THE – 3. OH NO WE GOT INTERRUPTED LET’S START AGAIN.’ It’s nightmarish. I also have this inability not to inhale water every time I breathe, so I usually end up swallowing litres of chlorinated peed-in water. I’m sure this is excellent for my health.

If this sounds like total unmitigated torture, it is. But there are benefits even to this. Because you have nothing to do except keep moving, swimming becomes a rather elegant testing ground for more general life skills. Such that when you fuck up a tumble turn and flood your sinuses with water (that particular red nose-eye-face pain that feels like an imminent nosebleed and that so strongly characterised my youthful swimming efforts), as it turns out, if you just breathe out through your nose and keep going, the pain recedes and is quickly forgotten. If you breathe in just as someone passes you and a wave flops into your lungs, you can actually cough it out while still maintaining a passable freestyle. The takeaway being that it is possible to cope with crisis while still maintaining a semblance of serenity. That pain is temporary, and that most things can be cured with some good quality breathing. That most people can’t tell them you’re hacking up phlegm underwater. I’m not sure if that last one is super applicable to the office, but hey, I’m not one to judge.

Even so, I know that this doesn’t seem like a recipe for a good time. And for the first thirty laps (fifteen in a 50 metre pool, but anyone who tells you they prefer 50 m pools to 25 m pools is lying to you and is not to be trusted), it’s not. It feels like those agonising nightmares where you’re trying to run but you look down and realise that you’re not moving. But – and finally! The but! – at around the 750 metre mark, your body suddenly remembers that somewhere back in its evolutionary chain, it was a fish. It’s as though you have to clear out the old oil in the engine by churning through 30 horrible laps where you feel like you’re not moving at all, and then suddenly, you are. Suddenly, you get a grip on the water. And then you’re not a human trying not to drown accidentally, or trying not to drown on purpose out of boredom. Suddenly, you’re just swimming. Your brain shuts up. Your body clicks over into autopilot. And you just cruise.

And then you get out, and go through the interminable effort of trying to comb chlorinated knots out of hair, and have the inevitable naked chats with similarly naked, gloriously fat women in their 60s. I’ve had some excellent naked conversations with women in changerooms, all of whom don’t seem to give a single fuck about what their bodies look like, which is an inspiring energy to be around. I’ve befriended stressed mothers and joined gossip circles and learned about how border security works, all from wobbly nude ladies. I understand that the male changerooms at pools lack this kind of joyous camaraderie. My boyfriend once saw a man at the Coburg pool placidly drying his pubes with the wall-mounted hairdryer once, though, so there’s something to be said for that.

And then you’re outside and then – suddenly, finally, it hits you. The calm. The calm. The blissful, blissful calm. After an hour of deafening pool-amplified echoes and bubbles and water and children shouting and shower noise and hairdryers – suddenly, the silence. Your body feels like setting jelly and your head feels like it’s been pressure-hosed and the serenity is like nothing else. It’s like a drug. It’s the only reason I ever go back, and by god, it’s a good reason.

Swimming. Boring as fuck, feels awful – until suddenly, it really doesn’t.