#listened to insanity while drawing jeff

[paranoiainducedinsomnia]

Will i make this my 4th year going as jeff as halloween

[yeahimcal]

CYBERFLOWER HEADCANONS!!!!!!!! EAT SHIT AND DIE EVERYONE WHO ISNT THEM

Anyways (headcanons below the cut)

Margo loves Minecraft but she is very much like “I am going to fight these zombies and kill these enderman and kill these Ghasts and win this game” and Miles is like “I’m going to build a red stone contraption the likes of which have never been seen and I’m going to spend twenty five Minecraft days in the mines” but Margo is also “let me build the house using insanely complicated tutorials and NO I won’t be doing it in creative mode that’s cheating etc” and miles is “I’ll decorate the house with flowers and paintings and gather animals for us to use for milk/wool etc”

Miles loves to paint Margo especially in the coloring of her avatar because he thinks she’s absolutely gorgeous

Margo always always begs Miles to let her do stuff with his hair and sometimes he will relent and say yes and that’s the story of how he had twists for like two months

Margo is an avid sims player and does the Hashtag Girl Thing of making her and Miles in the sims and planning out their life together

She and Miles will bike through his Brooklyn a lot and hit like three convenience stores one right after the other, they are tiny (respectful!) menaces to bodega owners, they’ll drop off lunch for Rio at the hospital and drop off lunch for Jeff at the police station, head back to Miles’ house and crash on the couch with their snacks and lunch and energy drinks and Margo will play games while Miles draws

Margo likes the games in Miles’ universe a lot more than her own so he shares whatever games he has with her

Margo will leave kiss marks on his face with her lipstick and he sometimes forgets and goes out to see his parents and Rio just teases him about it as he desperately tries to wipe it off to no avail

Miles makes really wonderful flower crowns and Margo dries them out to keep them, she has a wall with them hanging up in her room

They go on roller rink dates a lot and Miles is very good and Margo is very bad so he pulls her around the rink while she squeals and yells at him to stop going so fast

Margo sends him a specific gif whenever she wants to talk but can’t really type very well bc her hands are shaking (she gets very excited very easy and her whole body starts shaking as a stim) and he’ll immediately hop on call

They call all the time Miles has slept on call many many times, Margo is a chronic insomniac but having him on the phone makes her fall asleep easier

They have so many playlists together :] they love listening to each other’s music

Umm they love each other and stuff :] that’s it that’s the post

Follow me for more Cyberflower! Or don’t idk

[scary-lasagna]

It’s time to make a crack fic and return to my roots as a 12 year old fangirl. Everything below this is satire and should not be taken seriously. (contains mentions of abuse, depression, bullying and more cliche things of the sort)

___ creepypasta x reader (idk haven’t decided yet xDD)

A/N: THIS WILL HAVE TRIGGERING TEHEMS!!! IF YOU DONT LIKE DONT READ!!!!!!!!

i was sitting in my room reading creepypastas while listening to insanity by vocaloid (the nightcore version). it was a scary one. it was about this boy named jeff?? these guys bullied him and i was crying so hard because i related to being bullied at school by this BTICH SANDRA and her friends. (sandra if you’re readying this i dont like you). 

then my abusive mother came in and hit me for no reason. “YOU A BITCH” and then she left to get drunk and high and pass out

i cryed really hard until i passed out 

---TIME SKIP BECAUSE AUTHOR IS LAZY XDDD ---

i woke up to a pale face as white as paper and a bloody, carved smile with burnt eyes and eyelids. “go to sleep.” he was holding a big and bloody knife (porbably from other victims he killed)

i gasped and screamed until i realized who it was “omg!!! Your jeff!! jeff the killer!!!”

“yeah that’s me.” he said, and put his bloody knife away. “are you ok you were crying”

“im ok now.” i blushed, and looked at his beautiful face before looking down at my feet (i stood up after he said go to sleep).  “im just sad because i keep getting bullied and abused and i have depressnon now.”

“oh me too.”

“really??”

“yah. maybe we aren’t so different after all.” jeff looked at the clock. it was 6am. “i have to go. slendy is going to be mad because i stayed out to late.” he winked and climbed out the window and disappeared into the forest behind my house.

slendy? like slenderman??  maybe this was a dream.

---ANOTHER TIME SKIP XD---

i brushed my shoulder length (H/C) hair and went downstairs to eat some breakfast. but my mom was passed out on the kitchen so i couldnt get to the food. i went to school and on the way i saw a faceless man and it was weird.

i sat down in my seat and started drawing jeff. i made sure his smile looked etra beautiful like when i saw him last night.

“today we have two new student. jeffery woods and ben downward” i gasped and jeff winked at me. omg it wasnt a dream!1 sandra and her friends said jeff looked ugly and i told them to shut up and everyone started clapping. 

jeff sat next to me and ben sat next to my friend nicole. i blushed super hard and passes out 

----:OOOOO---

“hey are you ok.” i fluttered open my orbs and saw the bautiful smile of jeff.

“y-y-y-yah i-im okay....” i brushed my hair out of my face. i passed out from blushed too hard and got a nose bleed. then school ended and i walked home with jeff.

“hey slendy said he has a job for you.” jeff said as we walked.

“me???” i asked.

“yeah. he said he wants you to be a proxy and that you can live at the manor away from your abusive mom who hits you”

“omg!!! that’s everything i dreamed of!!!” i jumped in excitement.

“oh, and one other thing.” jeff then suddenly kissed me on the lips! our lips danced together and then before we could touch tongues slender walked up.

“come with me child and ill show you a new life.”

“ok”

and i followed slendy to the manor where i met my new family. me and jeff are dating and ben and nicole are dating too. (she’s a gamer ghost like him). me and jeff live in the same room and its decorated with emo stuff that my mom doesn’t let me put up.

i hope you enjoyed my story leave a comment byee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *waves bye with jeff*

[claybefree]

A Letter to Josh Poteat

To be honest, I don’t know why I’m writing you this. It should have been the art I made for my ex-wife Mary in 1995, that she gave back to me in 2008 after I left her, that I later put in the trash. The art you told me recently got you working with shellac. It should be that I’m giving you, instead of this depressing thing about how I haven’t spoken with the oldest of my children in almost nine months, and the younger not since two Christmases ago. 

I guess because when we talked about it before, I can’t remember exactly, maybe you asked in passing, “How’s the kids?” and I didn’t have an answer at the time. Maybe because I think you’ll understand me, like you always did. I haven’t been sleeping again lately, and this is when my mind wanders to the man I read about who died, trapped in a cave, but I don’t want to tell you about him. It’s too awful. If I find my mind lingering on him, I get seized by a whole body panic and I have to get up.

When I first got sober and couldn’t sleep, I went to war nightly with God. My mind was a scorched battlefield, blackened, shelled earth churned from trenches to craters. These days it resembles Zone Rogue in France, given back to nature and forbidden, saturated with ordnance, hundred year old arsenic lingering in craters. The toxic woods, wild and hoary, haunted now by deer and wild boar, trenches filled in with vines.

There is this vision I carry, not quite of myself- An old man alone in a mouldering trailer in the woods, bitter, childless and insane. No doubt, you have known such men. When I first got sober, he figured heavily in my mind- I considered this an alcoholic death even if I managed to stay clean. 

It’s cold mornings like these- when I’m up early to feed the yowling cats, but again not quite early enough to manage to write, I wonder if perhaps he’s already arrived. I get on my worn out coat hanging by the leaky back door I haven’t fixed yet and head out into the frozen mud to free the chickens from their coop. The cracked tile floating underfoot like a shit-covered mosaic, and I remember to grab the screwdriver. I’m not using it to kill anyone, it’s to prize the eight little half-domes of ice from cups of their watering bucket. You know how this works. I always figured that, being a country-boy, you grew up with the same tales of horrors perpetrated against these birds, or else, like me, witnessed them firsthand. 

Summer gets up and I finish my coffee with her as she tapes up my sprained hand. I try to get out the door before her kids wake. To facilitate quiet conversations that have a better chance of happening if I’m not around.

Pointing the truck toward Southside, it’s crossing the Powhite bridge where it really starts to bother me. Likely because it’s this point on the other side of the bridge, I’m only a mile away from their house. I ignore the river, bloated and steel grey,  I’m looking for the nameless creek that empties into it there. I’m sure you know it, completely fabricated, it passes under Forest Hill and the train tracks. It’s cold outside the cab of my truck, but I’m not fooled by the last groan of winter. Studying the woods alongside the road, accessible as they aren’t yet burdened but the weight of all that green, I’m not sure what I'm looking for. Lost children perhaps. The sandy stretch where it emerges from snaking around behind the toll station is lined there with birches, flaking and slender, and shouldered with granite as it runs fast from a glut of late March thaw.

I’ve been going this way for a little over a month, filling a friend’s garage with sawdust from fabricating casework for bookshelves, paying particular attention to whatever happens to be going on with the creek as it seems to determine the flavor of grief for that week. Throughout the winter It’s been ever present, with me to the point I feel like there's something wrong, like a vitamin supplement I'm not taking. 

Even though it’s been a string of bad days, the garage is warm enough, and I’ve been doing this work long enough I can rip down material on the table saw letting sadness wash over me without worry of losing a finger. I pay special attention to the music I listen to, so that I don’t have to take time and fall apart. At the end of the day I’ll sweep the dust-pile under the saw into a bucket for the chickens. There’s a ruined tire from the Harley I keep filled for them to bathe in. Which reminds me I haven’t told you about Greg the Bastard.

 When Summer brought them home a year ago as chicks, they were unsexed, and as they grew, we inadvertently wound up with two roosters. Even though Greg is much bigger, he’s still number two and it’s made him skittish and unpredictable. Fierce Greg the Magnificent, Hen Raping Greg. He charges the dog as well as the kids now, and he’s even started to buck up on me. He stalks the yard like boys and men you and I have both known all our lives- insecure, large and dangerous. He doesn’t scare me, I’m more afraid the day will come when I will have to kill this animal. 

In my twenties, Liz King, who you might know, got me a job after school let out with a woman I won’t name here. Another artist, she lived in an old farmhouse down Jeff Davis Highway and had been sexually assaulted by a man there. My job was to help powder and paint the place in order to put it on the market as she didn’t feel safe there anymore. We painted the whole inside. Flying the back roads in her pick-up to some Paint store way out Hull street, she told me how the man had befriended her dogs beforehand and how he threatened to kill her if she looked at him. I don’t remember asking her about it, just the image of her long legs in cut-off shorts clutching and shifting the small truck all over Southside. I made it most mornings, except after getting home late from a Rancid show in Hampton, I was too hungover and didn’t get to her place til well after noon. She was gone, but had worked the whole morning by herself. Later that day, when I called Liz to tell her how I fucked up, she fired me over the phone. 

I bring all this up because she owned a lone rooster named Ajax, who hated me. Specializing in ambush tactics, I wasn’t safe anywhere in the yard from Ajax. The lady usually escorted me in from the gate, but heading out to the shed was dangerous. I can still feel him on the backs of my bare legs. Once, while rolling the living room ceiling and overwhelmed by the fumes of oil based primer, I stepped out on the front porch to dry heave a minute and catch my breath. Ajax heard and came stalking around the corner. Incapacitated, I cussed him, but head lowered, he came for me, creeping up the steps one terrible talon at time. 

Later I made a six foot tall portrait of Ajax as best I could remember him. Crimson comb like a child’s depiction of fire out of control, waddles surrounding the beak blazing and reckless. The emerald of the sickle feathers a cyclone of green. Hock, shank and spur a series of harsh, black lines. Very Twombly-esque, it’s still hanging in my dad’s office. Based on this one hangover, I went on to make work for the next ten years depicting the Battle of Troy as a series of cock-fights. Achilles the Terrible dragging Man-killing Hector through the streets of Troy. That sort of thing. The drawing I made Mary came from that run. 

I go home by way of the Huguenot bridge, because the Nickel bridge takes me directly in front of the house where my children live, which no matter how I’m doing, always threatens to cave my head in. If I go that way, I always think about stopping, and kneeling outside in the cold, perfect grass, with the thought if I wait long enough they might come out to see me.

I know it’s merely grief, the same garden variety of depression, that Chris Cornell said in an interview once was no less dangerous and could just as easily land a man on the end of a rope. 

But that is not my way. I’ll drive home to Summer and her kids, help with dinner, watch TV and bed by ten thirty. Regardless. And if I find myself lying awake and the void comes, I won’t scream into it like the old days, I’ll sing to it. I don’t know why, maybe it’s a lament. Maybe I think my children will walk out of the darkness and into my arms.   

[thomasharpole]

Jubilance - 7/28

A evening with the Dave Matthews Band in Tampa, FL

I am still trying to piece together and process what I experienced last night in the sweaty mess of a pit, watching some of the most talented, world-class musicians weave unforgettable songs and melodies together with us. The last 2 hours of this show amounted to the most powerful and most spiritual experience I’ve ever had seeing live music. Words, especially in English, fall short of my experience and don’t do it justice. It seems futile to write about it, and yet I want to preserve this night in my writing and internalize the lesson from last night as much as I can.

To stand so close at a show is something I had only done 10 years ago, but I wasn’t ready at the time to understand what I was seeing. As a musician, to watch these men last night, who I have now listened to for the better part of 20 years, genuinely felt like spending time with family or the closest friends of your life.

I could see everything. I could see the smiles, the laughter, the concentration, the emotional highs and lows, and the chemistry of these humans on stage together. I could see Carter’s love and thrill for each band member, his genuine undying smile and extraordinary speed and language he speaks on the drum kit. I could see him feel every single cymbal hit before it even landed. I could see Jeff and Rashawn’s friendship as two brass players, and the way they observe each other through their intricate solos. I could see Fonz get giddy during certain musical moments. I could see Tim’s immense concentration and what feels like his access to another dimension in the way he speaks through his guitar. I could see Buddy fresh and fly demeanor, his constant smile while playing keys, and how he is so deeply appreciated by the other legacy members of the band. I could see Dave’s raw outpouring of himself into every song he sang, his soul eternally begging to be released and shown to the world through the language of music. I could also see the warm twinkle in Dave’s eye from 25 feet away, you could tell that he, who feels like a lifelong friend to all of us, felt right at home and his presence communicated something like “I am so thrilled and happy to be here with you, my loving family, after so damn long.”

The venue disappeared for me because we were so close. I felt like I was in a small room with these guys. I was listening to exactly what I would want to hear and watch if I knew I had one evening left until my life was over.

Below are a few moments from certain songs that I wish to hold onto forever.

Setlist and moments:

**I felt the show really started to take off from JTR onward, so I’m going to start song comments at that point.

Tripping Billies Raven Seek Up So Right When The World Ends Seven You Might Die Trying Satellite The Riff

JTR: the pit crew was absolutely thrilled when JTR started playing. “Rain down on me” resonated deeply with a crowd and musicians who were so brutally covered in the sweat and humidity of the evening, it felt as if everyone in this moment resigned to the extreme physical state we were all in, and the musicians were right there with us. The way the horns built the the jam motif in the end of this tune, teasing and getting snagged on the same melody (between 4 and 6 time sig) until their final release in the last 8 bars. The way Carter carries the group through the end, with Dave high stepping along the way… just fantastic.

The Song that Jane Likes: Sweet song, amazing visuals behind the stage, and first time playing this year on tour.

Typical Situation: Something happened at this point in the show that changed the dynamic of the rest of the night. I watched Carter and Dave come alive during this tune. First, to see Carter playing shaker, mallets, and drumsticks on one song and switch effortlessly between them was awesome. But when this song went into the 7/8 chromatic jam during the middle of the outro it was off the charts. Buddy was hammering the keyboard, Carter was slamming the china cymbals, and Dave was DANCING harder than I’ve seen in 4 shows. The pit sang this one loud.

Do You Remember: Endless 90s nostalgia for me. The visuals of the bicycle evoke extremely colorful feelings of my childhood on Ivy St. The endless summer days, the laughter and sports and quiet evenings outside. My dad sitting on a chair watching us. I could write pages on just this feeling, but this song is a portal into my childhood.

Grey Street: Felt the song coming, and as Carter counted the intro out loud the tempo is so recognizable, it almost has its own identity for this song as the drums roll into the opening chord. The third verse comes back to life and the pit loves it. The girl I’m with says something about me being the crazy man creeping and I make a maniac face and she laughs. The thrill of seeing someone I know witness this song in person, up close, is overwhelmingly wholesome. It feels for a moment, as if the night has conspired to make this all happen. I almost hit the floor during the yeah scream on Grey Street after the 3rd chorus. Belted the note too hard and lost oxygen to my head, felt myself about to pass out immediately and grabbed on for dear life. The sax and trumpet duel during the outro between Jeff and Rashawn is staggering and leads us into the final riff of the song which just punches you in its goodness and power.

If Only: Just a humble little song. I need to listen to this one again (live version) to draw out what I remember from the stage.

Dancing Nancies: Dark, absolutely astounding. Tim Reynolds played the most other-worldly guitar solo with visuals on the back of broken dolls, babies, all kinds of crazy things. Dave began the song asking all the right questions about what he could have been to the audience. The hits on the outro in series of 8 were felt in my chest. Best version of it I’ve seen.

Warehouse: My all-time favorite song from this band. This intro is the most visceral and raw sequence in the show. When the sax, trumpet, guitar, and keys come together all in tremolo in 32nd notes, the frequencies and overtones created along with Carter’s enormous rapid cymbal sound is so intense you can see the physical effect it has on Dave. The closest way I could describe this intro as if the soul is being extricated by force out of the body and almost vacuumed or sucked upwards into a new reality it has to reckon with. “Only hope you’re here to pull me out, when I start going under, as the warehouse slips away” gives me chills. (To get a slight idea of what this is like, watch this clip at 38–40 mins. It’s from a different show, but note especially Dave’s viscerally clear connection with something beyond our understanding around the 39m mark.)

The strobes and lights here only add to the intensity of this intro. The huge yell before the 2nd verse. The drive into the outro. The salsa hits at the end. Rashawn just driving the trumpet to where it sounds like a different instrument. And the final lyrics in the moment of great reckoning:

That’s our blood down there⁣

Seems poured from the hands of angels⁣

Then trickle into the ground⁣

Leaves the Warehouse bare and empty⁣

Then my heart’s numbered beat⁣

Will echo in this empty room⁣

And fear wells in me⁣

Til’ nothing seems big enough to stay long

So I am going away, I am going away

The final Eadd9 chord lands as the warm summation and resolution to the song. I see the faces of all of my friends from the last 10 years that have been moved by this piece of music as well, and every place I have been in my life when listening to this song. It’s a sweet ending.

Everyday: One of Buddy’s licks on the intro to this song was a 32nd note run that blew the entire band away. He played 16 notes in under 2 seconds down the scale. Carter, who is probably the most attentive to rhythm, had his jaw on the floor. Everyone was loving it. The improv vocals. The 3 part harmonies. The crowd singing Hani Hani come and dance with me. The final build. Richness.

PNP > Rapunzel: Endlessly playful song that is perfect way to end a show. Funniest part of the show is when Dave’s string broke about 15 seconds before the outro-dance-explosion that becomes the end of this song. It was very critical that the new guitar get on before the downbeat of the outro because of how much the song picks up and to keep that energy. As Dave is bending his neck to put the new guitar on, after 3 hours of playing and probably in some pain, he changed the last lyrics of Rapunzel to: “Every single thing you do to me, my god I’m FUCKED, but I’ll do, my best, for you, I’ll do yeaaaaaa. LOL! I’m sure he’s used this change before but it was timed so perfectly with him tangled in a new guitar strap, with his head banging against the various items, knowing he had about 3 seconds to pull of this change and it was not going well.

Encore:

Singing From The Windows: I could not hold it together for this song. After a year and a half of what has felt like chaos in the lives of many people and in humanity, the acceptance and hope that pours from this song, and out of Dave, is enough to floor anyone that has an ounce of care for the rest of our species. I looked around and everyone around me in the pit was crying. Dave got choked up on this song the other night and looked like he was barely holding it together. There was a quiet and serenity for a moment without the band, and all of the focus went to the songwriter and the gripping power one man and a guitar can have on an audience of 20,000 people.

Why I Am: Man, it really felt like Leroi still carries a presence in this band and you can tell why the band sings it often.

Stay: By this point, everyone was so insanely hot in the pit that they were belting Stay knowing that it was the last chance we would get to sing together. The way Carter syncopates the china cymbals on the outro of this song has always captured me. To watch Dave dance to this one more time while the horns went off and spread his arms wide on the final 3 seconds of the song was an exclamation point on a wild ass evening.

— —

Anyway, I wish that every human being could experience what I did last night. The world would be an infinitely better place. It’s not often that we have moments in our life that alter the course of the path we’re on, but I think it’s important to recognize them when they happen.

Whatever God is or means, or exists insofar as we allow him/her/it into this world, God was absolutely radiating last night. In the faces of the people, and in the entity that lives and breathes and is created when these musicians get together on stage. There is something above and beyond human form that I am humbled to have been a witness to.

It sounds a bit wild, but we are so unbelievably bigger than our bodies trick us into thinking we are. We are so much bigger than the Warehouse that contains us. And yet, we must live and do God’s work through this physical vessel because it is the only form that we take while we’re here. We must learn from this self and feed it, nourish it, teach it to become more than what it thinks it is.

One other thought: to share this musical experience alone is wonderful. But to have shared this band with someone I love so deeply is all a person could ever ask for. It is the epitome of the human experience, that is, to watch another person receive their own gift, their own joy, their own meaning from something you believe in, and to know they will carry it with them forever. They are changed by your truth. I got to see her become fully and endlessly alive because of this music last night. And that was infinitely enough.

We left the venue on fire with gratitute. It sounds wild, but I remember thinking I could die quite peacefully at that moment! I couldn’t conjure any other thing I needed to go do on this planet. I couldn’t conjure a negative thought. It was impossible. The word “ecstasy” doesn’t do this feeling justice, because the emotions are so much further in range than just intense happiness. Perhaps “awareness” or “power” or “spiritual fullness” resound a bit more to me, but for everyone it is different.

I think what’s most special about this band is that their music permeates into the core of who you are as a human being. It’s spiritual. It’s bursting with truth. It transforms how you see the world. It becomes your attitude and your way of life. This is why these guys sold more live tickets than any other group on earth for 10 years straight. The range of emotion embedded in the music is also the perfect analogy of what we as people honestly grapple with during our journey here. The lessons are clear. The music has given millions of people permission to live better lives: with jubilance, resilience, and an understanding that joy exists even amidst the deepest of pain. Each day we have an opportunity to show someone else this honest attitude, this truth, through whatever medium we choose. It is one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person. There is no question I will carry the richness of this experience with me, from now until the end of my life. I am forever thankful for nights like this, nights that are simply transcendent.

Thomas Harpole

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ThomasHarpole.com

[lovethatlaiduslow]

eight songs/eight people

answer 8 prompts with 8 songs, then tag 8 people!

tagged by @ta1k-less ty babe!

1. a song you can’t stop listening to

OH MAN laughing with a mouth of blood. this album had a chokehold on me in high school and it’s taking me back. i just. the line ‘all my old friends aren’t so friendly all my old haunts are now haunting me??’ felt. ms clark u r insane for that. also colors by grouplove bc it fucks and it's a summer song

2. a song you associate with a favorite character or ship

something to believe is a riza song. that’s all i have to say about it ❤️

3. a song that could be about you

happy by mitski. a flighty lover as a metaphor for happiness? the repetitive, obsessive beat throughout the song to symbolize happiness taking a train and leaving her behind? she really peeked into my head for that one. also king of carrot flowers pts 2 & 3 by nmh. ‘up and over we go through the wave and undertow i will float until i learn how to swim inside my mother in a garbage bin.’ 😐 jeff mangum, kindly stfu

4. a song you think is overrated

i don’t want to be negative because music taste is subjective. but taylor swift isn’t my favorite.

5. a good song that reminds you of a specific memory

i heard chasing pirates by norah jones recently and it made me burst into tears. it was the first song on a mix cd my older sister used to play a lot. it reminds me of being a kid and drawing w ms paint on her desktop while she did her homework and feeling safe u know?

6. last song you listened to

holy fucking shit: 40,000 by have a nice life

7. a song that makes you laugh

crabwalk by party in the hills. THIS SONG. i have the entire thing memorized it’s so damn quotable. i walked around for a whole month last year singing ‘grab your fuckin legs put em on the ground take your fuckin butt put it in the air i named my crab abby daddy you’re my crabwalk baby bitch' i love how the artist can barely keep himself from laughing the entire time he’s singing. and the fact that this is his only song. legend.

8. a song you want mutuals to listen to

new song by alice phoebe lou. listen. rn. there’s a gun to ur head.

tagging @froglatte @evergardenwall @fionaapplefan999 @rizadyke @neilpvrry @civilianplus @pissywillow if any of you are interested! <3

[tired-college-student-writing]

The Painter’s Daughter Ch 3

Summary: Marinette is the daughter of two bakers

Marinette is a happy sometimes naive girl

Marinette is loved to create and make more than they liked to destroy

or was she?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 

Chapter 3 (HERE)

Chapter 4

_________________________________________

Marinette grew and grew.

At age 5 her mother married the baker across the street and all of them ended up hyphenating their names to Dupain-Cheng, Tom became her Papa after her Dad reassured her it was alright on one of his visits as he brought her fabric flowers and a lovely set of paintbrushes. He was always bringing her gifts, mostly art supplies but sometimes sketches he’s made and even one of his paintings, given on Her first birthday after Helen met her. When people came over they always commented on the odd brown painting in her room, how it didn’t seem to match the rest of the decor, a sprawling landscape with a single woman resting up a tree, hair blowing in the wind Marinette just shrugged and said it was a present from her dad, one Mama hadn’t been too pleased about.

At age 7 she met her rival, Chloe Bourgeois, and ranted and raved about her to her Mama, Papa, and Dad. Her mother looked worried every time she ranted for a while before she overheard her Dad offering to turn Chloe into paint only for Mari to scrunch her nose and tell him that she didn’t want to be the reason someone died. She knew what her Dad was, knew what he did, and she still loved him but she would not allow him to work in her name.

At age 10 she had mastered sewing and began making her own clothes. It took a few times to get right, but she had a lot of practice patching things up since her Dad often had cuts and rips in his clothes and she hated to see him look anything less than his best. Whoever heard of a ragamuffin serial killer after all. Soon she was making her the majority of her own clothes from the fabrics her Dad and parents bought her, and she made them cl too. The creeps often commented on The Painter’s new outfit, an updated version of his old one and asked if they could have some too. By age 12 Marinette had endeared over two dozen creeps to her by eagerly making them more durable clothes for them to wear on hunts and willingly patching them up if they promised not to hunt in Paris outside of missions they were required to do.

At 13, Marinette was given the Ladybug Miraculous, becoming a heroine. Her Dad had laughed hysterically at this when he visited after she first transformed, feeling the ancient magic swirling through her, claiming her as much as Slender’s magic did. They had always been worried about her becoming a creep or proxy, unfeelingly ending lives like her father and here she was, with the magic to heal and bring life back. The power of creation from a being just as old as Slenderman and Zalgo.A true holder of the Ladybug earrings, born to control the magic of creation Tikki had greeted the creep with a warm smile and fierce eyes, telling him that her bug was safe, safer then she ever was before even if she was flipping over rooftops and fighting magical foes.

At 14, a new rival appears right as Chloe is starting to try harder, this one is named Lila. Helen’s blood boils as he listens to his daughter’s tales, knowing this girl would be the exact he would string up by her ankles and bleed like a pig for his next piece if only he promised years ago to leave anyone in Paris alone. He still offered though, and this time her refusals were hesitant and unsure, as the words got harsher and harsher as the lies spun became more intricate.

At 15, the class showed their true colors and the once-bustling friend group broke apart into two camps, Team Lila, with Alya, Myrlene, Sabrina, Rose, Juleka and Ivan, and Team Marinette, with Nino, Max, Nathanial, Kim, Alix, and Chloe. Adrian was strictly neutral, refusing to take either side, fearful of his father finding out about the mini-war and removing him from school. Her Dad wanted to remove him himself but Marinette told him no. The boy was sheltered beyond belief and had to be convinced that the lair’s constant unwanted touching was sexual harassment clear and simple. He meant no harm with his ill-suited advice and ideals of the high road.

Now at 16, she was faced with an even bigger issue.

Her Dad had arrived unannounced as always, never knowing when he’d freely be able to come visit without the police trailing him. They ate dinner, all four of them talking as they always did, avoiding talking about Helen’s job, instead asking about new stories of creeps’ blunders. After dinner, the married couple had shooed her and her dad upstairs so they could clean up.

“I want to kill someone,” She told her dad, slowly once the door to her room was shut, from where she sat on her chaise, sketchbook balanced on her knees as she sketched without looking at it. She couldn’t tell anyone else her thoughts, mama and papa would both panic, others would think she was insane…

"Let me do it," He offered as easily as if he was offering to drive her to her friend's house as he sat down next to her, “I’m sure they would make a lovely painting for you to hang on the wall. Just tell me who. Or if not a painting I’m sure Jeff would put them to sleep, or EJ could make a meal out of them, or-”

“You don’t get it,” She hissed, eyes hard as she stared forward with an unblinking stare, pencil dancing, “I don’t want them dead. I don’t want you or any of the others to handle the situation. I WANT to kill them, by my hand no one else’s, I can picture it.”

He stared at her for a long second, face blank, but she could see his form flickering. Her dad mentally was over 40 at this point and appeared it most of the time too, but Slenderman always kept the proxies the age they were when he created them. She rarely saw her father looking her age, the age he was frozen at forever.

It only came out when he was killing, or when he was in emotional turmoil and unable to keep hold of the magic-making him appear older.

He didn’t know what to say to her announcement, didn’t know what would come of it, what advice he should offer.

They both knew the rules. If she killed someone, truly intentionally killed someone, she was Slender’s. She had met the being back when she was 10, greeting the horror with a smile and gifted him a new tie, faded charcoal with red skulls seeming to be ingrained within the fabric, from a distance or through Slender’s fog it simply looked red but the effort…   She had apologized that she only made him a tie, but wasn’t sure if she could create a suit to match his dimensions as Helen had told her about his tendency to change his height and the tentacles that would appear from his back on occasion. To say that Slender was gone for the girl was stretching it, but he was pleased with her and her attitude towards the darkness that was her dad’s world.

It didn’t mean that anyone wanted her to become part of his domain permanently.

“Tell about them,” Helen finally settled on, “Why do you want to kill them.”

“Gabriel Agreste, and Lila Rossi,” She whispered, eyes faraway. He heard their names before, the absentee, borderline abusive father of his daughter’s crush and the liar that nearly broke his ray of sunshine. Two people ripe for the picking if only Marinette hadn’t ruled Paris off-limits to all creep hunting that wasn’t mandated by Slenderman.

But she told them that they didn’t deserve to be killed.

“What changed?”

He couldn’t quite keep the snarl out of his voice, but Marinette didn’t comment instead of continuing to stare at the wall.

“Gabriel hired Lila to keep an eye on Adrian, back when she first came back. They struck up a deal where she reports back to him about what Adrian and his friends won’t and in exchange, she can model with Adrian all she wants and gain the benefits of being a Gabriel Model, along with having open access to Adrian. This was after she broke into their house and posted a picture of her kissing Adrian’s cheek without his permission. He knew what kind of person she was and still, he struck up a deal and refused to let Adrian tell him about any problems he had with Lila. He shut Adrian down every time he tried to tell him about the sexual harassment, about isolating him from the rest of the class.”

She paused pain flickering in her blank depths, “Then last week Chat Noir showed up on my balcony in tears, shaking so bad I was surprised he didn’t fall off any of the roofs on his way over. He told me he really needed a friend he could trust, someone he could be truthful with and transformed in front of me, begging me not to turn him away, not to call my parents. Adrian basically curled up on my bed at that point and wouldn’t stop sobbing. He told me how Lila had slipped him something, how he couldn’t move as she took off his clothes and…”

She paused as the mechanical pencil shattered under her grip, plastic scattering across the room, anger flashed across her face for a second before

“He begged me not to tell anyone because he didn’t think anyone would believe him. His dad wouldn’t even let him talk about the sexual harassment to him, he didn’t want to be shut down trying to explain. He’s been running around as Chat Noir for since then, only stopping here to shower and get food. Plagg is furious and wants to kill them too, but refuses to leave Adrian for even a few minutes. He’s… he’s so very broken, Dad. His eyes are more hollow than some of the proxies. I’m surprised he hasn’t been akumatized yet.”

“You won’t let me kill them?” He asked again, hands trembling as his image flicked down to 14 and refused to rise again.

“No, because I don’t just want them dead,” She laughed hollowly, “I’ve been drawing these for the last three days.”  

She flipped around the sketchbook to show the two new outfits she had drawn. On the left was a bleached white leather suit, flawlessly put together with bulky buttons just as white as the suit. On the right was a leather dress, dyed deep red with a ribbed corset. He didn’t understand what was wrong with the designs until he looked closer and saw faces on the back of each outfit, the suit had a face with its eyes and ears sewn shut with venomous green thread, while the face on the dress was split in two, one half scowling with a black eye, with a horn stabbed through the temple, the other a smiling happily as a green eye. Each material was listed as she usually did, but instead of the usual fabrics, all it said over and over again was hair, skin, bone.

“A death worthy of a proxy,” He commented slowly, not sure what else to say.

Silence overtook them. Both knowing what lay ahead, but being scared of what could come up.

A knock at the balcony door made both of them jump, Helen’s glamor instinctively rising up.

“Chat,” She called, a blond head poking through the trapdoor only for him to freeze when he saw Helen.

“Easy Kitty,” Marinette whispered, “This is my Dad, remember I told you how he stops by every once in a while when his work allows it. He’s safe, I promise.”

“Safe for you guys,” He mumbled, “the rest of this city outside of this house? Not so sure anymore.”

Chat gave him a weary look but slowly moved down the steps, “What does that mean?”

Helen looked at the boy, passed the mask and the blank expression and really looked. Marinette was right, he looked broken, broken as a new proxy, one that was still scrambling to understand they had reached their breaking point, to realize what they had done now that the bloodlust and sickness had faded. He looked like Helen had back when he first killed Tom.

Well, that wouldn’t do.

“You’re going to detransform,” He told him, “Get a shower and eat. Then we’ll talk.”

He turned on his heel and marched down the steps to the kitchen where he found Sabine and Tom relaxing.

The pair jumped at his sudden appearance especially since he had shifted back to 14 as so as he closed Marinette’s door.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked, “Business?”

Helen frowned, then sighed, “Maybe, but… it’s complicated. Chat Noir is here though and he needs food, I don’t think he’s eaten at all today.”  

Sabine’s eyebrows furrow, “Is that why Marinette’s been sneaking food? She could have said something, of course, we’d feed her partner.”

Helen snorted at that as he helped the woman go through the leftovers and make up a heaping plate, along with some leftover pastries from the bakery, “I’m fairly certain that she doesn’t know you two know about her being Paris’ saving grace, plus she promised him that she wouldn’t tell anyone he was here. Something bad happened to him, in his civilian life.”

“How bad?”

“I’ve seen proxies and creeps form from less,” He admitted, “He’s in danger of snapping.”

He disappeared upstairs with the food before they could respond.

There floating in front of Marinette was a tiny cat-like being. Power pulsed off of it making the hair on the back of Helen’s neck stand on end. Plagg, the cat of destruction.

“So,” Helen started, “You’re the counter to Tikki’s power then? Almost felt like Zalgo in here.”

The cat hissed, “Don’t compare me to that bastard. He’s an ass and deserves a solid cataclysm to the face.”

Helen smirked, “Ah so this is why Slender said you were an interesting being. Either way, I’m Helen, and we need to talk.”

“If you want to break my kit-”

Helen cut him off harshly, voice like ice, “Don’t. While some of my coworkers are assholes, I would never intentionally break anyone, but Adrian is holding on by a thread and something needs to be done if you don’t want to become part of the next creep, or worse, down a user.”  

His whiskers drooped as he glanced towards the closed bathroom door, “... What do you have in mind?”

Sabine and Tom didn’t check on Marinette until the next morning and were only slightly surprised to see a note signed with a smiley face, ladybug, and cat on her made bed.

The kids need to see what happens if they snap.

_________________________________________

Tag List: @marinettepotterandplagg @sassakitty

[zmediaoutlet]

in support of Black Lives Matter, @scgemini donated $50, and requested ‘Jensen/Jeff sneaking around on set with peeping tom Jared.’ Thank you for donating!

to get your own personalized fic, please see this post. (no longer taking prompts)

“Okay, everybody, we’re going to call that lunch. Crew, back at 1:30; cast at 2:00.”

Jared wasn’t even in the scene, but he relaxes. It’s boring in his trailer when he’s waiting to shoot coverage and, anyway, this is a fun crew. Greg the sound guy high-fives Jared as he heads for craft services and Tori the script supervisor invites him for beers later at their new favorite bar. “I’m so there,” Jared says. “In fact, I’m so there I’m actually already there, and I’m waiting for you to show!”

Tori grins at him, rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. See you later.”

Most everyone’s cleared out of the set already. There’s a little huddle going on near the screens as they work out something about--Jared doesn’t know, editing or whatever--but other than that, the cast and crew pretty much evaporate when lunch gets called. Means it’s pretty quiet, on the stages. Means there’s privacy, if anyone needs it.

Jensen was gone about one minute after the cut was called. Time enough to smile at people, shake the hand of the extra they’d brought in for the scene. Enough to be polite and not suspicious, and--well, who’d be suspicious? Jensen’s perfect. Jared’s oversensitive, maybe. With what he knows.

He’s still wearing Sam’s costume, from shooting a few scenes ago, and they’re going to pick up a Dean and Sam scene after lunch. The sneakers are soft, comfortable, nearly silent as he walks through the stages, getting further and further in. Darker, back here, with only the ambient lights high up in the ceiling illuminating things, and he sticks his hands in his pockets, tries to chill out. He doesn’t even know if what he’s looking for is going to be there. No need to get excited, before it’s time.

He passes the interior set for Bobby’s house, all tumbled props and fake dust. A motel shell, currently half-stripped for another new insane design. Furthest back is a bar set, this new roadhouse location they’re bringing in for next episode, and he hears--a laugh, and stops in his tracks, and has to take a deep breath.

It was an accident, the first time. He really didn’t know what he was walking into. It had been that episode with the shadow demons, when John Winchester met up with his sons again, and afterward they’d all gone drinking and Jeff bought everybody rounds--was charming, and funny, and awesome. Jared liked him a lot; Jensen liked him even more. They’d gone back to Jeff’s rental house for a few more drinks, after the bar, and Jared had gone to the bathroom and then he’d spent some time talking shit at Hank and Mike playing that basketball game on the Playstation, and then he’d realized Jeff and Jensen were MIA, and he’d looked in the kitchen and in the den, and he’d turned into the hall down to the bedrooms and he’d--

They’re here. Another laugh--Jensen says, “Shut up,” quiet but not quiet enough that it doesn’t carry, and Jeff says, a little louder, “Maybe you should make me,” and Jared bites the inside of his cheek. Every time. This happens every time there’s been a John Winchester scene, and he doesn’t know how he’s getting this lucky.

The roadhouse set has a big frame--wooden walls, a bar. He’s careful as he comes up to the side, listens careful. Jeff says, “Oh, that’s right,” dirty and nasty-low like Jeff’s voice can get, and Jensen makes a--sound, something Jared’s gotten to recognize. That’s Jensen turned on beyond belief, wanting something. Jared bites his lip, eases closer. Lines up, against the very edge of the set, and peeks around, and sees:

Oh, fuck. Jeff’s in street wear, with his coverage finished for the day; Jensen’s still in Dean’s hospital clothes, and Jeff has him crowded up against the edge of a pool table, his hands under the thin white shirt, his mouth up against the back of Jensen’s ear. They’re in profile to where Jared’s watching and the lights are dim, but Jared can still see how Jensen’s eyes slide shut and how he tips his hips back against Jeff’s crotch, how Jeff’s hand moves under the shirt and Jensen huffs out a low fuck.

“You said to be quiet,” Jeff says, low and teasing, and Jensen flails a hand back and grabs his hip, says, “Oh, fuck you,” and Jeff grins and kisses his shoulder. Soft, almost sweet, and Jared presses his temple against the set wall, hot and sick inside. God, they look good together. Comfortable, knowing each other’s bodies, and even that first time when Jeff had Jensen pressed against the wall in that hallway, practically eating his mouth, it looked--right. Like that was how it should be.

Jeff’s hand slides down Jensen’s stomach, palms at his dick through the thin hospital pants. “You ready?” he says, soft, and Jensen nods, fast. He’s so much cooler than Jared is--always calm, in control--except like this, with Jeff, and it just makes Jared’s dick throb, every time. Jared watches while Jeff undoes the drawstring on the pants, while he pushes them down along with the white boxers, and Jensen’s dick spills out, heavy and thick, dragging against the wood rail. Jeff gathers it up in a big hand, squeezes, and Jensen groans, loud enough that he covers his mouth with his own hand. “That’s right,” Jeff says, grinning big again, but then he’s probing at Jensen’s ass with his other hand, not asking, and Jensen props his hands on the pool table, his shoulders high and his head dropping, the line of his back curving down to where Jeff’s fingers are inside him.

It’s Jeff who groans, though, unexpected. “Oh, sweetheart,” he says, and Jensen smiles, eyes closed, tipping up his hips. “When did you manage that?”

“That break for the blown light,” Jensen says, and it’s quiet but it’s cocky. “Knew you’d want to take lunch. Was I right?”

Jeff kisses the back of his neck, his shoulder, says, “So right,” sounding almost dumb, and he’s fumbling his jeans open, drawing out his dick and pumping it, dark in the space between them, before Jared finally puts together--Jensen lubed himself up. On set. In costume, in a break between scenes. Jared feels his face go bright red, the heat searing up in his cheeks and throat, and he has to get a hand on his crotch, squeezing through his jeans, because--because that meant that when Jared was playing a quick match of Soul Calibur in his trailer, in the trailer next door Jensen was spreading his legs, getting his fingers wet, pushing--in---

A groan, two--Jeff, lining up, shoving inside. It’s fast, and Jensen’s rocked up against the table with the force. “God,” Jeff says, and gets his hands around Jensen’s bare hips. “You’re perfect.”

“So I’ve heard,” Jensen says, and braces his hands better, backs up, makes the angle better. His mouth opens, his back arching. “Ah--Jeff, come on--”

Jeff obeys. They always fuck hard, after all the teasing--no slow corkscrewing thrusts, no pausing. Every time Jared’s seen, the same. Jensen likes it, shoves back into it, wants it deep, fast, and his dick’s heavy and slapping against his thigh now, his shoulderblades popped out from how he’s bracing against the table, giving as good as he’s getting against the force of Jeff’s hips. Jeff holds him tight, rams him strong and good and steady, and Jared--he’s fucked a girlfriend in the ass, a few times, but they’ve always been doing him a favor and he’s given up on it because they clearly didn’t love it, and so--he has an idea of what it’s like, but he’s never had that. Never someone like Jensen, who clearly loves it, hard and flushed, throwing his head back at how good it feels, wanting it bad enough that he’s lubing himself up on a break and fucking at work--

“Jesus,” Jeff spits, “for fuck’s sake, Jen, I’m--” and shit, he’s close already--Jensen groans, goes down to his elbows on the table, and Jeff grips him tighter, shoves into him even harder, faster, chasing it, and Jared watches Jensen’s face the whole time and sees the tight turned-on ripple of pleasure when Jeff shoves up into him and groans, flexing, dumping inside him. Fuck’s sake is right--Jeff shoves in again, reflex, and Jensen’s mouth falls open, like it’s the hottest thing that’s happened to him in years.

Jeff folds over for a few seconds, forehead against Jensen’s back. “Lord in heaven,” he mumbles, and Jensen laughs breathlessly. Jeff pulls out slow, makes Jensen shudder--says, quiet, “Creamed you up, sweetheart,” and Jensen’s face spasms, and Jeff smiles like he knows--and then he spins Jensen around by the hips, kisses him on the mouth, and sinks down to his knees. Jared can see just enough above the corner of the pool table to see Jeff suck Jensen’s dick down at the same time that he burrows three fingers right into his open wet ass--and Jensen shoves his knuckles into his mouth, half-shouts fuck around them anyway, and it’s not long then, a handful of seconds with Jeff clearly working magic and Jensen caught between his mouth and his hand, before Jensen grips Jeff’s shoulder and goes stiff and comes nearly silently, aside from his heaving breath.

Jeff swallows. Jared breathes shaky, against wood. He never saw that before. Jeff swallows, and keeps rocking his fingers into Jensen’s ass even when he pulls back and let his dick fall wet and heavy from his mouth. “How was that, sweetheart?” he says, smiling and smug, and Jensen shakes his head, laughs, soft and shaky. His shoulders gleam with sweat in the dim light.

Jared’s hard enough that he feels like he’s going to pierce a hole through Sam’s jeans. He’s got to get out of here, got to find a quiet place to jerk off with this new image fresh and hot behind his eyes. Jeff finally drags his fingers out, pats Jensen’s ass. “That’s a wrap, champ,” he says, hearty as a little league coach. He stands up, does up his jeans, and when he looks up from that his head turns, and he looks Jared directly in the eye.

[drabblesofrapture]

Mod Dusty here. Following up Vicey’s post about the Among Us AU with a scene that I wrote for it. It’s not a continuation of her scene (sorry) but it does contain the same characters!

First time posting one of my written works here so I hope y’all like it!

CW: graphic depiction of violence, blood, mentions of weaponry

~~~~~~~~~~~

“IT WAS HIM!” Takeo roared, his arm raised to point at Johnathan at the other side of the round cafeteria table. “THE BASTARD KILLED HER RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!”

“You’re a terrible liar, Takeo. Only you are capable of such a grisly crime,” Johnathan responded immediately, his voice steady and calm.

“Takeo... how could you?” Roxanne managed to croak out in a shaky voice. She stood close by Johnathan with tears in her eyes, practically hugging the boy’s side. She broke down into a fit of heavy sobbing, burying her face in John’s shoulder.

Takeo’s lips pulled back in a snarl to reveal his pointed teeth. “THAT’S FUCKIN’ BULLSHIT, YOU WEREN’T EVEN-”

He was cut off by Jeff slamming his hands down on the table to get everyone’s attention. “That’s enough, we’re not going to solve anything by just yelling at each other.”

“Who even died?” Selena interjected with a confused look.

“Take a look around the bloody table you nitwit,” Oliver spat. “Notice anyone missing?”

Selena took a second to scan the other seven crewmates sitting around the table. “Jazzy?”

“And the last horse crosses the bloody finish line,” Oliver scoffed with a sarcastic slow clap.

Jeff just pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Of all the people to be stuck in space with. “Listen we don’t have much time. Let’s just let both sides tell the story from the beginning. Johnathan?”

He had been comforting Roxanne, one arm wrapped around her slender frame while the other softly petted her raven hair. Once Jeff addressed him, he looked up and gave a small nod. He let go of Roxanne, whose sobs had now died down into quiet sniffles, and turned to address the others. “It happened right before the O2 was sabotaged. Roxanne and I were walking into the reactor room to do our assigned tasks. As the alarms went off, there was a gunshot and we saw Jazzy drop dead in the doorway to the reactor with Takeo standing just inside the room.”

“It was so awful…” Roxanne murmured. “The blood... her head…” She buried her face into her hands as she broke down sobbing again.”

“That’s not what happened!” Takeo insisted, slamming his fist on the table. “We were coming out of the reactor and that emo SHIT STAIN slaughtered her like a goddamn ANIMAL!”

“John and Roxy both said they saw you do it though,” Selena pointed out. “Sounds kinda sus if you ask me-” “SHE WASN’T EVEN FUCKING THERE!” Takeo shouted once more, pointing an accusing finger at Roxanne, causing the poor girl to cry even louder. ‘SHE’S LYING, I’LL BET SHE’S AN IMPOSTER TOO!”

“You leave her the Hell out of this!” Johnathan said defensively, a hint of anger slipping into his voice.

“Enough!” Jeff said sternly, raising his voice to be heard above the chaos. He leaned over the table, propping himself up on his elbows and lacing his fingers together as his eyes flitted between the two parties. “Did anyone else happen to see Roxanne anywhere else on the ship?”

There was a collective shaking of heads from the other crewmates. “The two lovebirds seem to like sticking together so it checks out,” Melissa said nonchalantly.

“I’m sorry Takeo, but it’s two against one,” Jeff said as he pulled out his tablet to vote. The others followed suit and Takeo could feel his heart sink as the small beep sounds came rolling in. He looked around the table desperately, trying to find one kind face to defend him.

“Guys come on! I loved Jazzy, she was my fiance for Christ’s sake! I would never do anything to harm her I swear!” He looked around at them but all faces were solemnly turned away from him. His eyes landed on Derek who was looking down indecisively at his tablet. “Derek c’mon bro! We did wires together earlier, remember? I watched you clear out those asteroids!”

Derek looked down, not daring to meet Takeo’s gaze. “I... I don’t know. All the evidence seems to point to you-”

“Oh are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” Takeo snapped, his eyes burning with fury. “YOU ALL THINK I’M JUST SOME KIND OF MINDLESS MONSTER HUH?! YOU’D RATHER BELIEVE THAT I KILLED MY GODDAMN FIANCE INSTEAD OF BELIEVE THAT I WAS FRAMED, IS THAT RIGHT?! GO FUCK YOURSELVES!”

Derek flinched at Takeo’s rage and pressed the skip button in the voting options on his tablet. Selena patted the poor boy’s shaking shoulders while Jeff glared daggers at Takeo. No one said a word, the only sound being that of Roxanne’s weeping. Everyone had voted now except for the hulking ghoul himself. Takeo’s anger subsided and he just scanned their faces hopelessly one last time as he slowly lowered himself onto one of the seats around the table and looked down at the tablet in his hands.

“I’m comin’ home, Jazzy,” he murmured to himself as his trembling hand pressed the “skip vote” button. There was nothing more he could do, it was over for him.

***

TAKEO HAGAKURE HAS BEEN EJECTED.

The words flashed in white on the screens of their tablets as Takeo’s frozen corpse drifted out into the empty vacuum of space. The remaining seven crewmates sat around the meeting table in quiet reflection, none of them wanting to look out the window as Takeo became a tiny spec, drifting farther and farther away from the ship. Jeff looked around at the rest of the crew before standing up, drawing all eyes to him. “Ok listen up, if Takeo was an imposter then that means there’s still one left on the ship. I want you all to just continue doing your tasks and stay sharp. Let’s try to get this ship up and running before the imposter has a chance to strike again.”

They all nodded and started getting up to leave. Roxanne clung to Johnathan as they both stood up; she was still crying quite a bit. Johnathan looked over at Jeff as he tried to comfort her. “You go ahead, I’m going to take her to medbay for a bit so she can calm down.”

Jeff just nodded, but he narrowed his eyes at the two as they left. He dreaded to think about it, but he couldn’t deny the possibility that Takeo had been right. The girl did look pretty shaken up though, so it would probably be best to just let them be for a bit.

When the two finally walked into medbay, Johnathan brought Roxanne over to one of the beds to sit down while he went to peek outside the doorway to make sure no one had followed them. Roxanne just sat there hunched over on the bed with her face buried in her hands. However, as she carried on, her sniveling started to change into something else entirely; it quickly became apparent that she was giggling. It kept twisting into something more sinister until she finally couldn’t contain it and threw her head back to let loose a torrent of uncontrollable maniacal cackling. Johnathan began chuckling in a similar manner, his deep voice resonating ominously in his chest. The room was filled with their sounds of twisted and insane delight.

“That was almost too easy,” Johnathan said with a contemptuously smug grin. “Those damn idiots will believe anything; they’re even willing to condemn an innocent man to death over a hastily cobbled-together alibi.”

“Oh darling, it was wonderful! I can’t believe they even bought that I was with you!” Roxanne cackled. She mocked a look of helplessness and began fake crying. “I saw it happen... it... it was awful!” Her crying quickly devolved back into that sinister giggle.

“We’ll make quick work of those fools for sure,” Johnathan said as he strode over to the bed Roxanne was sitting on. He bent down slightly so their faces were about level and she put her hands on his cheeks to pull him in for a kiss. After that, she stared dreamily into his eyes for a few moments and smiled.

“Oh, what a lovely pair we make darling.”

[onestowatch]

Caity Krone Is the Songwriter Making Timeless Pop Ballads

Influenced by Laurel Canyon folk and current icons like Adele and Feist, Caity Krone is a rising songwriter with a flair for timeless pop ballads. With tracks like her first single “Thank You for the Sunday Paper” and her latest “I’ve Been Lonely,” her work is seemingly suspended above the trendy, often kitchy-ness of indie pop today. Growing up as an avid reader of poetry and short stories, Krone’s “I’ve Been Lonely,” proves her devotion to lyricism and to creating music that lasts longer than its three minutes and twenty-one seconds.

A dream-like story of what could’ve been, “I’ve Been Lonely” feels incredibly vulnerable with lines like “I’ve been underwater since we met.” Often using vivid imagery, Caity Krone’s words are clearly influenced not only by the reading she did in childhood but also by her career as a music photographer. A way to fund her own artist career, Krone has taken countless photos for up-and-coming musicians in Los Angeles, and she has used her background in photography to create stunning music videos to accompany her work, including for her most recent release “I’ve Been Lonely.”

Ones to Watch got to speak with Caity Krone to discuss her latest single, how she blends her photography with her music, and the best advice she’s been given as a songwriter.

Your latest single “I’ve Been Lonely” feels incredibly personal, could you walk me through the story your lyrics are telling?

Caity: We started I’ve Been Lonely in late 2017, and at the time it was me daydreaming about being in a relationship with this person, trying to sonically paint how it would feel to be with them. I listened to it and I felt in love, but I also felt like the weight of longing for it and how shut out I felt. I spent the following two years writing and recording, and the process made me start trusting myself and believing in the fact that I deserved something real instead of spending all my time trying to change myself into someone for the sake of someone else, and that my songs deserved someone who stood behind them rather than building her dreams around someone who didn’t want her. I felt a new sense of belief in my work, it felt like I could breathe again. When we finally recorded ‘I’ve Been Lonely’, the producer Will kind of said to me “this song needs another section, and you need to admit that this whole song is an idealization of a person rather than a relationship with them”, and I sang “I’ve been underwater since we met”, because that’s exactly how it felt.

Do the stories in your songs always draw from personal experience or are you also inspired by outside influences?

Lyrically there’s been a lot of escapism, and a lot of longing to be a part of things that I’ve idealized far past the point of reality.  I build stories from that, and sometimes try and incorporate elements of fantasy to support feelings and experiences that are very real. I’ve only recently started to write about my life and past experiences in a more straightforward way. A few weeks ago, my friend Jensen said to me, “You need to write about your life and the life that will have you, not the one that leaves you out”, and it really made an impact on the perspective of my writing.

You’ve said your love of music and songwriting was inspired by the Laurel Canyon folk scene, why have these artists been so particularly influential to you? And do you have a particular favorite artist from this scene?

The intersection of rock with traditional folk storytelling and harmony is something that I’ve always been drawn to, especially being in the concert choir in high school. Joni Mitchell and Carole King are my lodestars when it comes to the songwriting, but I also have a real soft spot for the romanticism of Graham Nash demos.

Apart from your music, you take photos for other artists. Did your background in photography impact the music video you made for “I’ve Been Lonely”?

Yes! I’ve been able to meet so many incredibly talented photographers and videographers through my work in photography, as well as learn so much about what styles would suit my music. I love the inherent character that film has, so incorporating Super8 and Camcorder footage was our way of doing that without the budget to shoot entirely on film. I love the pastels of Kodak Portra, and Ashley Kickliter brought out that dream-like quality in all of the digital footage through her color work.

You began songwriting at 15; what is the part of crafting a song that comes most naturally to you and why?

Growing up I always loved writing short stories, poetry, and persuasive essays, so the lyrics come most naturally to me. I’m learning chord theory now, and finally getting to a comfortable place playing guitar, so I’m hoping that adds some confidence to those elements of my writing process.

This is your second release in 2020, following your single “Thank You For The Sunday Paper,” can we expect more singles or a larger project coming later this year?

Both “I’ve Been Lonely” and “Thank You for the Sunday Paper” are off of the debut EP, Work of Art, that I’m releasing this summer.

What does a typical day look like in quarantine for you?

I really like the quiet of the mornings, so I try and wake up, make my breakfast and coffee, and kill an episode of Gilmore Girls. I’m re-watching it from the start. I’ve been doing a ton of walking and listening to my friends’ playlists to find new music or deep cuts from artists I already love while I walk. I’ve also been taking virtual guitar lessons, which has led to more writing than before. Trying to find the balance between evaluating the fear that is behind me not doing what I love regularly without expecting myself to be productive all the time.

Who are your Ones to Watch?

Jensen McRae and Georgia Greene - two of my favorite vocalists and storytellers in the world, who I am also so lucky to call my friends. I also have been loving Jeff Pianki (his new song Bad Timing’ is so great) and Remi Wolf (her new song Disco Man - insane)

[chocoholicannanymous]

If the Spit Hits the Fan (Glee) pt XI

Follows pt I, pt II, pt III, pt IV, pt V, part VI, pt VII, part VIII, part IX and part X.

Kurt's experience with show choirs and preparation is limited to the rumors about Vocal Adrenaline, and practicing like mad for months, and being part of the New Directions, and not practicing at all.

The thing about being part of a group that does prepare for competitions more than a couple of weeks – which, truth be told, is a sometimes too generous amount of time for Mr Schue – is that you have the time to both prepare properly and have fun. Having made the decision to sing Michael Jackson the Warblers go all out on deciding which songs. Everyone gets to pick songs they think should be part of the setlist, and get to perform it as they please. Solos, duets, group numbers... They have it all.

And the best part is that each song actually is a contender.

It's the best part of the New Directions, with the parts Kurt hated taken away. It's glorious.

It's also everything the Warblers hadn't been for him the year before.

He claps until his hands burn when Jeff does an impressive imitation of MJ's dancing and laughs himself silly when Rob goes Weird Al in full costume. When David, Thad, Peter and Trent join him for 'Man in the Mirror' he's warm with happiness. And getting to see Trent moon-walk is an absolute treat – Kurt never would have guessed that he was so good at it.

And he fights back a blush when he and Sebastian sing 'Human Nature', somehow turning it into a duet that feels like more than a song. They sound amazing together, and it's a shame that they can't sing that for Regionals, but they all know it's impossible.

If part of him keep expecting Mike to pop up and show off – and that same part wants to strangle Rachel and Mr Schue for depriving him of seeing Mike dancing to Michael – well. That's for him to know and noone else to find out. And if sometimes wishes Finn was there to sing with him, especially during 'Man in the Mirror'... Well. Same goes for that..

But in the end it's fun, and amazing, and it makes him feel alive. Kurt might not as bad as Rachel, but out of everyone in Glee he was probably the one who understood it the best when she claimed she needed applause to live. Nothing else feels quite like performing, and Kurt's not willing to be without that.

(That's why he never complained about the useless weekly themes and assignments Mr Schue used to pull out of thin air. Because they allowed him to perform.)

As the Christmas break draws close they've got their setlist ready though, and everyone's got a good feeling about it.

Something Kurt doesn't have a good feeling about however is Sebastian. He's been looking more and more pensive the close to break they get, and it's obvious he's thinking hard on something. On one hand, people are allowed secrets. On the other, Sebastian has been looking at Kurt while doing a lot of his thinking, so chances are it involves him.

That means Sebastian gets two weeks to hopefully get over whatever it is. If he's still brooding after that he's going to have to talk to Kurt or get dragged to the student counselor's office.

“Do I have to talk about it?”

The pout on Sebastian's face is definitely not cute, and Kurt's definitely not affected at all. Really. So instead of giving in he gives Sebastian his third best “bitch, please” look and waits.

“Fine, fine. You know, life was a hell of a lot easier when I didn't care about people.”

“Cute. Really. Good job on making yourself sound like a sociopath. Except we both know that's not true. Now, cough it up. What's wrong?!

“You're going back to Lima for the break. What's not wrong? No, really. You've told me how you've been treated there, about the bullying, and the abuse, and the harassment, and I'm supposed to feel good about you spending the better part of three weeks there?

“And yeah, I know you can avoid going out, but there's also the fact that the reason you're here this time is that your so-called friends were taking part in the harassment. You've said yourself that it was most likely one of them that caused you to almost get suspended. And unlike those jocks these are people with access to your home. Even if you don't invite them, they're your stepbrother's team. How the hell am I supposed to think you're going to be safe there?”

The words come faster and faster, and Kurt can't hear Sebastian's breathing pick up, and the anxiety is almost catching.

“I can take care of myself, you know.”

“Yeah, but will you? Because from what I can tell, you haven't exactly done that in the past.” Which, true, but. “And I know you miss your family, but the thought of you being in Lima is leaving a really bad taste in my mouth.”

“Calm down, please. Look, I understand. I do. From your point of view I guess I've done a pretty good impression of a doormat. As for the general bullying, there are reasons I haven't done as much as I maybe should have. Possibly not great reasons, but still.

“As for the Glee kids... I'm not going to let them walk all over me. Yes, they've been my team, and my friends, and I've let that influence me in the past. But I'm not going to let that happen again. If they are willing to apologize, and listen instead of accusing, then fine. I'll give them a chance. If not, then I'm done.

“High school is going to be over in less than six months. I have every intention of going to New York after graduation. Chances are I will never see most of them again – maybe not even between now and then. Thus I have very little reason to let high school drama and high school relationships dictate how I live my life. The only one who's ever even mentioned New York is Rachel, and while I'd rather not have to deal with her again, it's a big city. I'll be perfectly capable sharing it with her.”

It takes the better part of an hour to calm Sebastian down, and even after that he admits to having an urge to stuff Kurt into his bag and bring him along for Christmas break – and yes, he's perfectly aware of how insane that sounds. Kurt just shakes his head, smiles and doesn't let on to how part of him would love to spend his break following Sebastian through Europe.

The first day of break Kurt and Finn spend hours singing along to karaoke videos of MJ songs, just enjoying themselves, and singing together in a way that they've never really taken the time to do before. It's amazing, and Kurt never wants that feeling of togetherness to go away again.

Of course that's when the downside to coming home over Christmas break shows itself, in the shape of Rachel Berry. When she slips into his room, clearly using the fact that Finn’s out for a bit, Kurt sighs and promises himself he's not going to let Sebastian know how right he was about what'd happen.

He's not, he tells himself, going to give Rachel the satisfaction of getting to him. Instead he's going to give her five minutes, and then kick her out. Politely.

He manages to hold on to that conviction for about three minutes before he's had it with once again being told he's a cheat and being lectured on “driving poor Blaine away”.

“Shut up.

“My boyfriend left. He didn't break up with me, or anything, he just disappeared. One day he was there, and the next he was just gone. And instead of being there for me, instead of being my friend and helping me, what did you do? You punished me for it.

“He fucking ghosted me, and then you made me pay for it.

“So tell me Rachel, when you rigged the election, did you do it with the intention of getting me into trouble or did you decide on that afterwards?”

Her face is priceless, and under different circumstances Kurt'd laugh. This is no laughing matter though.

“Oh, you didn't think you got away with it, did you? Because let me tell you, you are nowhere near good enough of an actress for that. It was obvious you knew more than you were saying, and that you didn't actually believe I'd done it myself. Didn't exactly take a genius to figure it out from there.”

“I am an amazing actress!”

“That's what you're focusing on? Really?” Only, Kurt realized, of course she is. Nothing's ever mattered more to Rachel than her supposed star-dom.

“Eh, what am I saying, of course you are. To do anything else would mean you'd have to care more about someone else than about yourself for once. And we all know that's not how Rachel Berry operates, don't we?”

To himself Kurt can admit that he's being a bit too harsh. Because while Rachel does tend to put herself first most of the time there have been instances where she's been selfless and caring. They never really last though, is the thing.

The truth is that Rachel is more like Sue Sylvester than either of them would ever care to admit.

“You ruined Kurt's election? You're the one that almost got him suspended? What, how, why? Who the fuck even are you?”

And oh, Finn's back.

Damn.

[vegetacide]

Coffee - Insomnia (TaG)

Veg-notables: Andddddd another one. This one is courtesy of Nutty cause she tossed a few lines at me.. So I ran with it. Anything below with a ** bracketing it was provided by her marvelous brain.

Likes and shares are awesome so thanks in advance. Reviews are my inspirational fuel so please feel free to drop a line.. I don’t bite ^,.,^

As per the norm.. All typos and mistakes are purely my own.

Special thanks to @gumnut-logic for the inspiration and the encouragement.

Part of the Coffee series.

Characters: Virgil, Kayo

Timeline: Post S.O.S part 2

Spoilers - VAYOR (cause these 2 give me life!)

ENJOY!!

**Kay walks up behind him with a steaming coffee in her hand**

Catching a whiff of the wonderful aroma - ‘cause the man was a bloodhound for coffee, Virgil pulled his head out of the aft VTOL access panel. The large cargo transport was nestled down close to the ground,  her massive weight settled on her aviation rubbers. Not her usual pre-flight position but this way made gaining access to her innards and all his tools a hell of a lot easier and only slightly hampered her module load up sequence

**“You’re up early.” She sipped her coffee knowing what his reaction would likely be. “Anything wrong?”**

Snagging a spanner out of the rolling tool chest, Virgil shrugged a shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep” and turned back to what he was working on, swiping the back of his forearm over his brow.  Kayo knew from experience how stifling the small, cramped confines could be even in the cooler environs of the hanger. The bead of sweat working its way down the curve of his spine paid testament to that fact

Even with the protective material of his coveralls pulled from his heavy shoulders, the arms tied loosely around his waist, it did little to alleviate the discomfort.  Though she had to admit she did enjoy the view because at some point he’d also ditched his shirt.

She briefly lost her train of thought as the over head lighting played across the hard expanse of muscles running up his back. The sinew corded and rippled with movement while he quietly argued with whatever he was working on with such intensity.  

**A slight frown, why wasn’t he sleeping? But that was quickly replaced by a fond smile as he smeared grease across his forehead. She reached out and brushed a hair off the smear. “Anything you want to talk about?”**

She watched his profile as his lips turned up slightly with the gesture, his head tilting subconsciously to follow the path of her fingers.  Straightening from his task he caught her palm in his and gave it a brief squeeze. “Couldn’t shut my brain off.” The spanner was tossed haphazardly into the maw of the access hatch and it hit with a dull thump. His frustration at his work was evident in the careless action.

Pulling a rag from his pocket he wiped his hands, leaning back against the great big green beast of a craft.  "You might find this surprising but occasionally I actually get up at a ‘reasonable’ hour.“ He air quoted, the flex of his biceps causing the muscles to bunch and thicken.

Kayo resisted the urge to snort,  his idea of reasonable and everyone else were two vastly different concepts. “If I didn’t know you so well I would actually buy that.”  She looked around at the array of tools and the scattering of miscellaneous parts that littered the usually tidy space. “You’ve been at this for hours.”

Virgil’s eyes lost their focus, seeming to stare off into the middle distance.  His hands fiddling with the oil stained rag, playing with the tattered fabric as he was drawn inwards in introspection.  

Kayo looked down and watched as the unsweetened brew swirled and trembled in the mug with her minute movements. The distorted reflection of Two wavering and looking back up at her from the cooling beverage like some omnipresent ghost.  "I’m a light sleeper. You never came to bed last night.” She peered up at him through the loose fall of her hair and watched the series of emotions play across his tired face. The muscles in his jaw flexing as he clenched and unclenched, deep in thought and searching for the appropriate response to her statement. The length of time needed to come up with a viable answer speaking volumes of his level of exhaustion.

Drawing closer, she offered him the still warm mug.  He needed it. She’d intended to use it to entice another response out of him, a playful one of teasing but this situation hadn’t been what she’d thought it was and it was obvious another approach was needed.  

Initially when she’d awoken alone with the sun creeping across the cold sheets on his side of the bed, she’d thought that he had just gotten caught up in his work again.  Engineering was more than just a mere job to him. It was a passion that allowed him to use his exquisitely talented mind and his creative soul for projects that aided in their every day work as emergency first responders.  

She’d lost track of the amount of times she had found him asleep in random places in and around the villa. So with that thought in mind, she’d headed to the crowded kitchen, ruffling a few heads in passing, grabbed the biggest mug she could find - really the thing was a bucket in disguise, and gone in search for the dark haired Tracy.  

What she’d found was definitely far from what she had expected.  He was withdrawn and quiet. The usual child like gusto that simmered beneath the surface of his calm exterior when he was tinkering away was absent. This was concerning and alarm bells started ringing loudly in her internal landscape. Klaxons of piercing noise that she couldn’t ignore.

She nudged the cup at him again and he absently took it from her outstretched hand, staring into it without really seeing it as the aromatic steam drifted lazily between them.  

A shoulder raised again in a shrug and he  dropped the tattered remnants of the rag over the lip of the hatch before tucking his arm around his bare torso. An action of self containment that she was well versed in reading in others but was shocked to see being used by the usually self-assured man in front of her. “Lot on my mind,  couldn’t put it to bed last night. So I came down here.”

“Like what?”  She queried. It was like pulling teeth with him sometimes but she knew that patience was her best weapon. He would speak only when and if he wanted to do so.  

He shook his head,  like he was trying to brush it off. “Everything.  Bramen, the Hood, Chaos Crew, Gordon…Dad..” He listed off, the last of which hung tensely in the silence. Cloying and heavy with so much more unsaid.

Kayo held her breath, not wanting to discourage him from speaking by jumping on the large, scary topic of the great Jeff Tracy. She’d danced around that subject for years with the Brothers and she knew what buttons could be pushed and which ones should be best left alone.  

Virgil was always there for his younger brothers when they needed an ear to listen and a gentle reassuring guidance but when it came to himself, he played things close to the chest. Not wanting to show any sort of weakness for fear of worrying the others.  

Well, she’d come against that wall enough times through why he was putting it up around her of all people was beyond her. He showed her so much of himself but for this one thing.  The barricade for which he secreted this part of himself from her, sturdy and unmoving no matter how many times she attempted to surpass it.

“Virgil,” She placed a reassuring hand on his solid forearm, the flesh unyielding as he tried to clamp down on his emotions.  His fist straining and clasped tight against the forced calm he was trying and failing to project. “Don’t hide from me.”  

His brows flinched at being caught out on that but she knew that she had to try to probe the well built wall to get him to open up to her. The need for him to share in his burden spurring her on.

His eyes finally met hers and the raw emotions in them had her catching her breath.  “What is it?”  

Pushing away from his ‘bird, he put the mug down on a workbench, stalked a few steps away and stopped.  Hands on hips, his gaze down cast towards the hard floor “I gave up.”

“Gave up?” Kayo let the confusion show in her voice. “I don’t understand.”

“On ever finding Dad.” The confession brought rough hands through his hair and he turned back to her with a sudden flash of anger,  frustration that she knew was directed solely at himself “I’ve been lying to everyone. Being supportive. Keeping up an act for everyone, Alan..Gordon.. Scott, but I’ve been lying for a long time.”

Kayo followed him as realization dawned on her. Putting herself in front of him, a nonverbal shout of support for the man that she had years ago unwittingly fallen head over heels for. “And now Braman..” She supplied.  

The retrieval of Braman had changed everything for all of them.  Jeff Tracy was alive, somewhere in the vastness of space and now they were planning a rescue.  Albeit it was crazy, considering the distance and the resources both physically and mentally need for such a task but they were going to attempt a rescue nonetheless.  

Virgil gave a weak nod, his shoulders slumping. “I gave up. Resigned myself to the fact that he was dead, let myself grieve and started to pack it away…  All this time…I shouldn’t have..Dad wouldn’t have given up on me if the roles were reversed. He would have moved heaven and earth for us.. Why couldn’t I for him?  He’d be ashamed..”

“Virgil,  you can’t blame yourself for this. It was a logical conclusion that all the information we had supported..”

“A Tracy never gives up…” Was his only response.  It was the unofficial family motto.

Kayo’s heart ached behind her sternum.  He’d never whispered a word about any of this to her.  He’d been carrying this guilt around for nearly two weeks since the hidden message had been found and she’d had no clue. With just three little letter hidden amongst a sea of codes, they’d all been consumed with new found well spring of hope and an insane plan of action had been decided on.  

The time since spent amidst a mad smash up of planning and research and material gathering. Schematics and supply lists. And of course there was Gordon, recovery,  repairs to Four.. in all that time she’d never had the faintest clue that the fervid hope that had overtaken the island hadn’t in fact been felt by all.

Cupping his cheeks, her ran her thumbs across the dark smudges of guilt that hung doggedly below his eyes and turned his face up to hers.  Her lips brushing at his smeared forehead. “Virgil, you are a good man. No matter what. This, ” She stated pointing around at their surroundings, “Is all proof of that and more.  Even not knowing what had become of your father all those years ago, you still kept going. No matter the cost or the sacrifice and that makes you a good man. Your father would be proud at what you have accomplished, how many lives you’ve saved with all that you and your brothers have lost.  Never doubt that.”

She paused, leaning her forehead against his. “But, you are still human.”  Fallible, ambivalent. Mortal. Traits that they all carried within them, “Don’t let this tear you down.”  She hoped that it wouldn’t, prayed fervently that he could and would push past it. Find the strength she knew he had and use this to fuel him to be even better than what he was. Now though, was not the time to lecture him.

She stood silent before him, her head to his own and looked across the short distance. A distance tiny in actuality but which felt vaster than she had ever felt before. This man,  this loving, caring savior of others carried with him a great many weights and all she wanted, wished with everything within her was to help hold him up and ease his burdens like he did for all of them.

Regarding him with his eye held closed, he brow low she knew that  her words would stir within him, churn the swirling self doubt and contempt he hid away from everyone. His body quivering slightly as he breathed in haltingly,  trying desperately to once again find the safe harbour within himself.  

She knew once the storm had calmed and the torrent of emotions had stilled,  he would examine what she said and compare them against his own self image. Assess and reconstruct and disassemble so that he could try and bring himself back up to an even keel.  It would take time and patience and her love to guide him through it but she would be there for him for as long as he needed her.

With another shaky breath, lips grazing hers own, his words fanned her hope and the sun strained to break through the clouds. “I love you.”

Softly smiling she took his stained hand, she gave a gentle tug. With her coaxing she knew that sleep for him would finally come and she lead him away from the unfinished work, the disarray of tools and parts,  the mess of everything that he’d pulled out and scattered about.  

With a sympathetic look and a love that emboldened, she pulled him forwards. Towards the heart of the home where she hoped sleep would find him.

The mug of coffee left forgotten and chilled on the scuffed surface as their footfalls echoed across the great, hollow expanse that was his Father’s dream.

The End.

[0nlythrowharrybeaux]

Meet Me in the Hallway - Five

The next few weeks had been insane. Harry was having the time of his life; Australia had been super fun and things between Lucy and him were just getting better. As Mitch had suggested, he had started asking more questions and getting to know things about her that not very many people knew. Things like her love for Wolfie, the dog her dad adopted for her when she started home-schooling; she considered him her best friend. He was actually named Wolfgang after none other than music prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, her favorite composer. That was another thing he had learned about her -and he himself was getting into- classical music. He also learned that she compiled playlists for people she knew, songs that reminded her of them for when she’d miss them, he often wondered if she had one about him. These little things that he found so interesting and that made her unique in his eye were the ones swimming about in his everyday thoughts.

They were on their way from Osaka to Chiba, it was a long drive and he was sitting in this little nook by a window on the bus, drawing. He was studying Lucy’s face as she chatted and giggled with Clare, he smiled as he glanced down at his journal, squinting because he was trying to get the shape of her eyes just right. When he glanced up again she was looking at him, a smile on her face as she listened to what Clare was telling her about and he quickly glanced back down to his journal; he was listening to music, Mozart actually, and so he was just caught in a moment when his phone buzzed and he glanced down at it, unlocking it to see what she had said.

Lucy:

Stop staring at me, creep:)

Harry:

Who says I’m even looking at you?

Lucy:

Your eyes… and the direction they’re looking…?

I mean, I know I’m cute, but geez no need to make it obvious

Harry chuckled as he read her response, face scrunching up all cute, that was her strategy, to look while she knew he wasn’t. Lucy eagerly waited for his response.

Harry:

Yeah, you are pretty cute:)

Lucy:

I reckon you’re pretty cute yourself. Anyway, I’m being incredibly rude. Byeee!

Harry smiled down at his phone once more before getting back to his drawing. Some times glancing at her, not so obvious this time, but it seemed that she knew when he was about to look, because her eyes would flutter up and meet his every now and then, which made her blush more than him and he was the one who should be all blushy - being caught stealing glances and what not. Suddenly his moment was disturbed when Jeff sat down across from him. Harry quickly shut his journal and pushed his headphones to fall around his neck.

“You two are absolutely disgusting.” He said through a smile and Harry chuckled.

“There’s nothing going on.”

“Yet!” Jeff cut in and Harry shook his head.

“I think you should dedicate Stockholm Syndrome to her…you always seem to be holed up in each other’s rooms. Very appropriate song choice.” He said and Harry giggled.

“You’re dumb… please.” He said and Jeff chuckled.

“Can I let you in on a secret?”

“What is it?”

“She likes you, her dad told me.” Jeff said, grinning and Harry’s eyes lit up, fighting hard not to glance at her.

“Really?”

“Yeah, man. I swear! Maybe you should… make a move soon?”

“Maybe… Oh, I was meaning to ask her, but it might be a sensitive topic. Where’s her mum? She always talks about her dad.” He said and Jeff nodded.

“She left them when Lucy was little. Ric doesn’t talk about it much, but my mom told me that one day he got a call from the school telling him that no one came by to pick Lucy up. He was still in the UK at that point, so her aunt went to get her and she tried calling her mom but she didn’t answer. When they got to their house all her things were gone and they just never heard from her again.” He said quietly and Harry frowned, glancing at Lucy quickly.

“Oh wow… I can’t even imagine how shitty that is.”

“Yeah, that’s why she’s so close to my mom. Her aunt, housekeeper, and my mom were pretty much the ones who helped raise her during those tough years. Her dad visited often, came back for every important thing, but when things started getting bad at her school he pulled her out and decided to move back.”

“God, it’s always the best people that get fucked over.” He mumbled and Jeff nodded.

“Yeah, but look at her now. It’s as if nothing had ever happened.” He said and Harry sighed. He glanced over to her when he saw her standing and he checked the time, it was 2 o’clock; she was probably calling her dad.

Lucy stepped into the back compartment of the bus and shut the door, dropping down onto the bed where her and Harry would lay and sighed as she dialed her dad. They talked for nearly twenty minutes without interruption, which did seem odd to her, even her dad pointed it out. They were saying their goodbyes when the door creaked open and Harry stepped in, a smile came over her face as she placed the phone down beside her and he let himself down, laying beside her.

“My dad was like “where’s Harry? I’m so used to him interrupting?”. He was very concerned.” She said smiling and he smiled at her too.

“Lucy.” He said and she rolled onto her side, facing him.

“Hmmm?” She asked, letting her hand push back a few strands of hair that had fallen out of place.

“I just need you to know how much you mean to me. Well, to all of us. You’re one of the most talented and pretty persons I’ve ever met and you’re just a real gem. I’m so glad you’re here.” He said and she smiled, a bit sadly though, her hand leaving his head and sliding under her head, giving her head some support.

“Jeff told you… about my mom?” She whispered. “Your whole mood changed… you guys were being very secretive, could feel you glancing towards me.” She said knowingly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I just wasn’t sure how to bring it up to you.” He said softly, his eyes pleading with hers for forgiveness.

“It’s okay, m’not upset. It was a long time ago; my dad and I talked about it and I get why she did it. She wasn’t well… and she wasn’t happy with us, so she decided to go.”

“I’m sorry.” He said, his hand settled on her jaw, thumb caressing her cheek as she often did to him.

“It’s fine, really. I forgave her a long time ago.” She explained and he bit his lip. Who was this girl… she was everything he ever wanted. So pure and understanding, caring, loving…. She was perfection incarnate.

“That’s one of the things I love about you.” He said and her eyes crinkled a bit when she smiled. “You’re just so… I don’t even know how to say it… you’re just you. I love that.” He said again, his eyes not daring to leave hers.

“Hey, new record!” She said grinning and his brows furrowed in confusion.

“What?”

“I’ve kept eye contact, this whole time.” She said excitedly, her lovely smile making his heart race million miles a minute and he just surged forward and guided her face the rest of the way as he pressed his lips to hers.

Her eyes grew wide for a second, but soon fluttered shut at the feeling of his lips slotting against hers. The kiss made her heart burst with joy; her tummy was tingling as she attempted to pull him closer. They shuffled around until he was hovering over her, resting his weight on his forearms as he kissed on her with all the feeling he could muster up. Maybe he was reaching a bit, but it was worth the risk, he thought, as he let his tongue run against the top of her bottom lip. He smiled for a second as her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer to her, it was an accident when his hips dragged against hers as he tried to decrease the distance between them, but the action made her mouth part in a little gasp and he took advantage, letting his tongue slip in and run over hers. This awakened something primal in her. Her hands ran down from around his neck and down his back, when they reached his lower back she pressed him down, causing more friction between them, Harry groaned into her mouth as he felt the bulge in his jeans growing against her. He kissed her feverishly, heart pounding in his chest because of the way her soft warm tongue felt against his. It took every ounce of self-control in him to pull back for just a second.

“Lucy, slow down.” He panted and she seemed to realize what she had just done. Her eyes shot open and she bit her lip when she felt him pressed up against her thigh.

“I’m sorry, Harry. I-if you want I can sort you out, s’my fault.” She said quickly and he shook his head.

“No, no, I’ll be alright. Just figured I should stop you before you did something you weren’t ready for or that you’d regret later.” He said pushing himself up to sit, ignoring the discomfort he felt because of the pulsating in his lower region as he helped her sit up as well.

“Thanks… again, sorry.” She said, looking into his eyes and he just leaned forward, kissing her lips gently, just a quick, tiny one.

“S’alright. Quite like kissing you, love. Y’taste so sweet.” He said and her blood bubbled with a little bit of lust at his words. She wanted to lunge at him and also lick into his mouth and let him get away with whatever he wanted to. She would do just about anything for him. Her eyes fluttered shut at the mental images she was conjuring up.

“Please don’t say that.” She whined, her hands going to cover her face, she could feel her skin beginning to prick with the familiar tingles of arousal. Her lip was being gnawed on by her teeth, suppressing the feeling of lustful flames licking consistently at the deepest part of her core; a gentle and steady pulsing letting her know that she was turned on. She hadn’t felt this type of thirst for anyone in a while.

“M’sorry.” He said softly, trying to hold back a whine, because he felt it too. He knew she was fighting that animalistic need to just take whatever he was willing to give right then. His mouth actually watered as he watched her, squeezing her thighs together to relieve some of the pressure she felt. He was a grown ass man, he could control himself. His eyes clenched shut as he tried to think of the most innocent things. He wasn’t going to do anything to Lucy on a fucking bus, she deserved more than that. The more he thought of it the more it helped calm him… how did he even consider that in the first place. When he peaked his eyes open she was just moving her hands away from her face, taking a deep breath and letting herself fall back onto the bed.

“Kissing you is dangerous.” She said softly and he chuckled.

“Could say the same about you.” He mumbled and she shook her head in disbelief.

“I’m really sorry… I mean you know it’s… been a while.” She said and he nodded. She had her reasons and he respected that. “Just got a bit carried away.” She said, finally looking at him and he just smiled reassuringly at her.

“S’okay. We stopped in time, nothing happened. Just a pair of friends who kissed, thas’all. Besides, m’the one who started it. Maybe it was your fault though, you’re pretty fucking tempting.” He said and she chuckled.

“Let’s just drop it.” She said, her eyes fluttering shut once more.

“Sorry.” He said softly and she nodded. “So… what’re you gonna do on your week off?” He inquired, changing the subject.

“Already?” She asked and he nodded. “I hadn’t even bought my ticket…” she mumbled. “Well I suppose I’ll be going home.” She said quietly, “I do miss my dad and Wolfie.” She said of her dog and he smiled.

“I’m sure they miss you like crazy, too.”

-

-

-

That night as she lay in her hotel bed with all the guilt and anxiety in her heart being pushed away, she got herself off. Moaning and whimpering about Harry and the things she thought about him doing to her. She was panting, suddenly feeling hot and barely alleviated from this feeling. It had even been a while since she got herself off… how would she ever even look in his eyes again after this? She had to take another shower because she was still feeling the warmth of lust tickling at her. She also managed to buy a flight, which was a great distraction, although it would be leaving half way through the show.

The next morning she made sure to tell Jeff and her crew mates, who all assured her it would be fine. As they accustomed now, she saw Harry’s outfit and assured him he’d be amazing and had to go and pack shortly after. Right around the time the show was starting she was on her way to the airport, regretting that she didn’t actually say goodbye. But she figured this distance would be good; the things she was feeling for Harry were driving her insane and she really could use a break from him.

When she landed in LAX she turned her airplane mode off and bit her lip as a text from Harry popped up on the screen and she opened it, waiting for them to allow them to disembark.

Harry:

You left without saying goodbye?!?!

Despicable!

Just kidding. I hope you have a lovely time at home. Tell your dad hi for me and Wolfie, too. - H xx.

Lucy locked her phone as she let out a sigh. She would text back, eventually… she had to think of something to say that wasn’t just ‘sorry’. She snapped out of her thoughts when the person standing behind her tapped her to keep moving and with a quick muttered apology she hurried down the narrow aisle, off the plane, and into the cold airport. Naturally, her bags were some of the last to come out onto the claims carousel, so she took the time to order an Uber, and was hurrying off to the pick-up when the woman texted her that she had arrived. Then from there it was another half hour before she was being dropped off at home, the large wooden gate blocking the view of their home from the outside world and she called from the intercom.

“Yes?” Her dad said and she smiled.

“I have a delivery for Mr. Y/L/N! All the way from Japan!” this is how he’d announce his return home to her when she was a child.

“Sweetheart! What a surprise! Come on in!” He cheered joyfully as a buzz sounded and the wood doors slowly parted. She was walking up the long drive way when her dad and Wolfie quickly came down. They were equally excited to see her.

-

-

-

Harry’s flight was just landing in Heathrow, he checked his phone right away, he wasn’t one to fret over that, but he just wanted to see if Lucy had texted him back, but she hadn’t. Maybe he had done something? He worried his bottom lip between his teeth as he was let off the plane and until he got home, where his mum was waiting for him. They had a cup of tea and then she went out to breakfast with Gemma and he opted to stay in to sleep and lie around, turning on the telly to see if anything good was on. Suddenly his phone was ringing and Lucy’s name was on the screen, he didn’t even wait a second to pick up.

“‘Lo?”

“Hi, sorry were you sleeping?”

“No, don’t worry.” He assured her.

“Sure? I asked Jeff and he told me your flight would get in in the around 8am, so I waited a bit in case you were sleeping.”

“Yeah, m’sure. I got in like an hour ago. What are you doing up?” He asked, “S’like past midnight for you.” He said squinting at the clock on the wall.

“I just got in bed. I forgot to text you back, got so carried away being back and everything- hold on.” She said and he heard some shuffling and in a few moments she was back. “Sorry, Wolfie was scratching at the door, wanted to come snuggle.” She whispered and he smiled.

“I’d love to see him, send me a picture later, alright?” He asked.

“Yeah, alright. How was the flight?”

“Good, I slept most of the way through, so m’not too tired, just a bit jet lagged.”

“Oh, I know… I’m hungry for dinner and it’s not even near breakfast time,” she said and he chuckled. Should he say that he misses her? Because he does, a lot. “I just wanted to call to say sorry for leaving abruptly, this was the only flight I could find that didn’t have transfer or layover, so I took it.”

“S’alright. Was just a little shocked when I couldn’t find you afterwards.”

“Being evasive is part of my mysteriousness as a woman, sorry.” She said giggling and he followed suit, rolling his eyes a bit and turning to his side and frowning a bit when he recalled that she wasn’t actually there. She wasn’t even a little near; there was an entire ocean and a continent between them at the moment and he could feel it. “You know, earlier this evening as I was washing clothes I decided to listen to your last album as One Direction and I must say Olivia is one of the greatest pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time. Everything about it screams light and joy and excitement! God, I listened to it about ten times… well done. The lyrics are beautiful, they gave me butterflies in my tummy picturing how happy you must’ve been when you were inspired to write it and I just couldn’t stop smiling after that.” She confessed and he smiled.

“I’d kill to see you smile right now.” He said softly and she felt her heart flutter in her chest, his eyes grew wide at the realization of what he’d actually just said and waited anxiously for a response.

“I’ll make sure I’m in the picture with Wolfie then.” She said and he chuckled.

“Okay, you already said it.”

“It’s gonna be a long week.” She said quietly and he hummed, letting his eyes close for a moment.

“Yeah… but enjoy this time with your dad, yeah? He must be thrilled to have you home.”

“He is, he cried when he saw me. I cried a little too, I missed him a lot.” She yawned and he frowned, she was tired, and as much as he wanted to keep talking to her, he should let her go.

“Hey, get some sleep fo’ me, love. We’ll see each other real soon alright?”

“Yeah.” She said quietly.

“And if you really, really miss me you can always call. But I’d prefer you didn’t.” He said smiling.

“Why not?” She frowned, scratching between Wolfie’s ears when he laid his head on her tummy.

“Because if you don’t it’ll be even more exciting when we see each other again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder… or at least that’s what they say.” He said.

“Don’t see how I could be any more fond than I am now.” She said softly before yawning once more and literally his heart skipped a beat at her sleepy confession. “Good night, H.”

“G’night, Lucy.” He smiled.

“Oh almost forgot!”

“What?”

“Mwah!” She made a little kissy noise and he blushed, face beet red, “Should last you the week.” She giggled and before he could say anything the line went dead. He couldn’t wait for the week to be over.

-

-

-

Lucy woke up to Wolfie barking angrily out the window, she groaned as she turned over, burying her head in the pillow. She had only been home three days and already there was commotion.

“Wolfie, please… Shhhh!” She shushed and the dog whined before jumping onto the bed. She could faintly hear shouting. She sat up, perking her ears up and eyes growing wide at the familiar voice growing closer and closer. She rushed out of bed and Wolfie shot after her like a bullet and she hurried out to the entrance, squinting and seeing none other than Ezra, storming up the drive way with her dad hot on his trail, demanding that he get off his property.

“Lucy!” He said when he saw her, running up to where she was standing, her eyes welled up at the image of him. God, he was beautiful, but he had hurt her so much. Wolfie was barking and her dad was shouting at him to stay back, and Ezra was pleading with her, it was a fucking mess.

“Don’t you dare touch my daughter!” Her dad shouted, standing between them, pushing him back as Ezra reached out to her.

“Dad, s’alright. I think we need to have a talk.” She said softly and he looked back at her with wild eyes. Wolfie took a sniff at him and calmed when he recognized the scent.

“I told you!” Ezra said, standing with more confidence.

“Call for me if you need me, I’ll be right inside.” Her dad said before he called Wolfie back inside and she sat on the steps to that led to the porch, sighing and he followed suit.

“How’d you get in?” She asked.

“Said it was a package for you…” he said before chuckling and Lucy managed a giggle despite the ache in her chest. She was feeling it more now that Harry wasn’t nearby and that the one who caused her all the pain was right beside her, she could feel the warmth of his skin radiating onto her bare arms.

“I’ve told him he should get a camera… he’s a gullible guy.” She said and he chuckled. Her breath hitched in her throat when his hand landed on hers and squeezed over it.

“I’m sorry for everything I said before. I love you.” He said, searching in her eyes for a response, but she just pulled her hand away, it didn’t feel like Harry’s. “I know I fucked up, but I need you. I really do love you and I’ve been going insane without you.” He said and she sighed.

“We don’t work, Ezra. It may have been a while back, but the things you did… I can’t trust you and you never did a good job of earning it back. Besides, I’m so much busier now and have a million things to do when this tour ends, it’s impossible.” She said and he shook his head as she stood, ready to end the conversation, he did the same.

“Babe, come on.” He pleaded.

“I’m not your babe or anything anymore. Thanks for coming and saying sorry, but I don’t… love you anymore.” She said softly and his eyes narrowed.

“Are you with someone else?” He bellowed.

“No! I’m just over this!” She signaled between them. “I’m not the fucking cheater here!” She argued back, not afraid to stand up for herself anymore, she didn’t need this. She didn’t deserve this.

“Tell me you don’t miss this.” He said taking her hands, gripping them tight, she couldn’t pull back. “Or this…” he said wrapping his arms around her and pulling her in, pressing his lips to hers, she thrashed her head around, hating the feeling of his lips on hers, tears ran down her face as she tried to pull back because it wasn’t Harry.

“Get the fuck away from my daughter, you son of a bitch!” Her dad burst through the door with a broom, he was caught off guard for a moment and she shoved him away, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Please, just go and don’t contact me again. We’re done, Ezra.” She stated flatly and he shook his head before flipping them off.

“Get him out!” Her dad shouted to Wolfie and Wolfie chased him down the long drive way until he was out the gate. Lucy’s dad jumped, startled as she burst into laughter through her tears, trying to catch her breath, wheezing and he started laughing, too.

“What is it?” He asked between fits and she shook her head, wiping a tear from her eye as she caught her breath.

“You came out with a freaking broom!” She said hugging him tight as they laughed again.

“I don’t have a gun!” He said laughing and she shook her head. “Get inside, I was in the middle of making pancakes when this asshole showed up, probably all cold by now.” He complained.

That was the highlight of her week and it was killing her not to call Harry and tell him the story, but she was trying her best to wait. The week was almost over, and although she was sad to be leaving her dad again, she would be seeing Harry soon.

-

-

-

To say that the rest of the week flew by was an understatement; Lucy was anxious to see Harry. As he had suggested, they didn’t talk all week except for the picture she promised him of herself with Wolfie, her lovable doberman. Her flight would be landing earlier than the bands because as part of the roadie crew, she had to go and set up the arena. She had arrived two days before the show, they spent part of that afternoon and a large part of the next day setting up in the arena. Lucy spent the evening before the show in her hotel room reading. She knew they’d be arriving tonight, she wasn’t exactly sure at what time, but when it hit 9pm she got ready for bed and dimmed the lights, just a bit disappointed they hadn’t arrived yet. She continued reading until the words started blurring together and the lines started shifting on the page and finally until she just couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore.

Lucy groaned at the familiar sound of her phone ringing, she reached for it on the night stand, answering quickly.

“Hello?”

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” The familiar voice said and she shot up, her heart hammering in her chest at Harry’s voice.

“Harry?” She asked into a yawn and he chuckled.

“Yeah, s’me! Come to your door!” He urged.

“Okay, m’coming!” She chirped excitedly.

She hurried to the bathroom and gargled some mouth wash as fast as she could, which woke her up enough and bolted for the door. When she turned it open and saw him standing there it felt like her heart was going to beat out of her chest as they beamed at each other. Her skin was buzzing, itching to touch his skin. He practically charged her, hugging around her waist and picking her up, stepping past the door and kicking it closed as his lips found hers easily, despite the dark. He was overwhelmed with joy and warmth at the feeling of her in his arms. Her lips were nice and soft for him, eagerly opening up as he dipped his tongue into her mouth and tasted her after what had seemed like ages. He groaned at the way she was sweet on his tongue and how her hands wove into the hair at the back of his head, carding through it gently. She pulled back to take a breath and pressed a quick kiss at the corner of his mouth, panting as she burrowed herself in his neck, loving his familiar scent.

“I missed you so much.” She mumbled into his throat, his heart pumping faster when she kissed him right under his jaw, just one little kiss, but it did things to him.

“Me too, love. Now, let me show you your surprise.” He said letting her down and she grinned up at him, taking his hand and pulling him to the bed, the dim lamp still giving the room a nice glow. She took a seat on the bed as he pulled his journal out from his bag before setting it down. He couldn’t stop smiling and neither could she, she was buzzing with excitement.

“What is it?” She asked impatiently and he chuckled, opening the cover.

“In my hands, I have for you the original journal entry of the lyrics for Olivia.” Her eyes grew wide as he pulled out a loose page from right inside the cover.

“No way.” She asked in disbelief, mouth dropping open, eyes going wide.

“Yes way.” He said smiling, relishing in her reaction, he wanted to kiss her all over again. “I had to go through about six of my journals to find it.” He said as he handed the page to her and she took it gently, her eyes going soft as she looked over his handwriting.

“But why? This is so special, Harry. You didn’t have to.” She nearly whispered, looking up into his eyes and he shrugged, a smile making its way onto his face.

“Because you loved the song and I knew that when I got to see you after the break I would be just as happy as I was when I wrote this song. Well actually, I think I’m happier now that I’m here with you.” He said and her heart just about melted as she looked down at the page again. There were scribbles in the margins about instrumentation and little doodles of butterflies and flowers…it was so perfectly him.

“That’s another thing I love about you… your art.” She said glancing back up into his eyes, “It’s probably my favorite thing about you.” She confessed and he felt his heart racing as fast as the speed of light. He was melted butter with her words, he felt loved and important, and cherished. He held her face in his hands as he pressed his lips to hers once more. This time it wasn’t as rushed, it was meaningful and emotional. “Wait, wait, wait, wait.” She mumbled against his lips.

“Hmmm?” He asked, pulling back.

“Need t’put this somewhere safe!” She said of the little page in her hands and he smiled. She hurried to her luggage and pulled out her lap top; he watched as she pulled it out of the case and set it on the bed, popping off the bottom cover and neatly laying the page there before settling the laptop back into the cover and then putting it away again. She walked back over to him and just hugged him to her, his head resting on her chest and she pulled back. “Thank you. S’the best gift I’ve ever received.” She said and he smiled nuzzling back into her. “Are you ready for bed?” She asked and he shook his head. “Do that, yeah? Then we can snuggle. I have thee funniest story to tell you… I almost called you over the break just to tell you.” She said and he grinned.

“Can’t wait.”

[pjbehindthesun]

chapter 25: confrontations and constellations

Tuesday, November 6th, 1990

“Mmmphh? Hello?” Not the most polite way to answer the phone, true, but who the fuck calls at this hour?

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I woke you up, I figured you’d be up early with Jeff…”

“No… I mean, yeah, he left way early, he had to be at work by 4, I went back to bed… what’s going on, is everything okay?”

“Uhm. I hate to do this before you go to work, but… can you come up?”

Cora’s voice is so small it’s terrifying. That’s all I need to know. It’s go time. I’ve barely yanked a comb through my hair, dragged a toothbrush through my mouth, and thrown on something vaguely resembling a work outfit before I’m off up the stairs. Halfway up, I remember the spare key to her place, which is hanging on a hook next to my door, but whatever, thankfully she’s left the door unlocked.

And she looks like absolute, utter hell. She’s curled up on the couch under a massive blanket, white as a ghost, looking at me with dark-circled eyes.

“I got Stone’s flu, I think,” she explains unnecessarily, obviously straining to talk through a sore throat. “Also, I kicked Alex out last night.”

Typical Cora, burying the lede. Pinching myself would be rude, right? I need to not do that. I opt for biting my tongue hard to make sure I’m awake as I scoot some of her mountainous blanket fort over to make room for myself on the couch. Ow. Yeah. I’m awake.

“What the hell happened?”

She winces as she swallows. “Another girl. Here. They were, uh, in the shower, when I… They, uhm, figured I’d be at work longer, but Colleen sent me home early last night, because of the whole…” she draws a circle around her face, which is giving the facial expression equivalent of a shrug.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Uh-uh. So I… came home and… found them. Kicked them both out. And then I stupidly told him to come back tomorrow and get his stuff.”

“That’s not stupid, we should get his shit out of here as fast as possible,” I muse, scowling at her. “Do we know her?”

“No. She’s Brian’s girlfriend or something. She didn’t even know about me. It’s been going on for a year.”

A year?? This is so fucking surreal. I know how to do the friend thing, I swear that I do, but the way she’s relaying this insane information so robotically, it’s really throwing me for a loop. I wish she’d scream about it, or cry hysterically, or call him a rat bastard, or something to let me vent my own anger, but clearly, we’re not there yet…

“...and how are you doing?”

“I’m alright. I just, uhm,” she glances around the apartment, “I told him he could come and get his stuff today, you know, move out, but I don’t… I don’t really want him hanging around forever trying to get it all gathered up… I was gonna try to get a head start this morning but I could use a little help…?”

Okay! An action item! I got this. We’ll deal with robotic Cora later. I’m sure it’s just a defense mechanism and she’ll break down later once she’s had more time to process. I jump up off the couch, a to-do list growing ever longer in my brain. Cora starts to get up too, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to push her back down because she’s not very steady on her feet.

“Park your ass, woman, you need to rest.” She opens her mouth to protest, but I’m already walking toward the bathroom, calling back over my shoulder. “The first thing I can do is bleach the ever-loving fuck out of your shower. And your towels. And your sheets. And who knows what else they touched, but we’re gonna nuke the shit out of it all. Okay? And then… we’ll figure out the packing part later.” A glance at the clock tells me I don’t have a ton of time before I need to go to work. I need reinforcements. But that can wait.

I leave Cora to slump passively on the couch while I gather up a load of sheets (because ew) and towels (because extra ew) and quickly attack her shower with some bleach spray. Out of her sightline, I’m free to gag at the mental image of that dumb, smarmy motherfucker hooking up with another girl IN THE APARTMENT HE SHARED WITH MY FRIEND. WHO DOES THAT??! FOR A YEAR!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m obviously not going to fan those flames with her and make her feel even worse, because she’s still letting it all sink in and what she needs right now is some unemotional, businesslike help getting the logistics worked out. But it’s therapeutic for me to be able to lose my shit in here with the door closed for a moment. Okay, whoa, bleach fumes... moment over. I make the bed up with clean sheets and grab the rest to take down to the basement.

“Laundry, be right back! You good?” I call at her over a giant basket of offending laundry. She nods and manages a small “thanks” as I bustle past. Once I’m in the laundry room, I get to take out more anger on the machine, slamming doors and swearing loudly, but I collect myself before I get back to the 4th floor. She hasn’t moved an inch, and she still looks like a zombie.

“Okay, alright, uhm, I have to leave for work in like five minutes…” I tell her, glancing at the clock as my mind races.

“You’re the best. Even that much was a huge help because I was never gonna make it down the stairs,” she tries for a chuckle but ends up coughing. “I’ve got it from here, you go to work.”

“Stop talking nonsense. I just need to figure out who I can call to come help you.”

“No!” she yelps, wide-eyed. “No, please don’t tell everybody, this is so fucking embarrassing, I really don’t need the whole phone tree to be notified that my life is on fire. I can do it myself!”

“I wasn’t thinking of lighting up the phone tree, I’m just wondering if any of the guys are off work this morning. You need manual labor.”

“I can do it, Lucy, honestly.”

“Uh huh. And you’re going to have help. Stop arguing about it or I’ll fight you and you know I have the height advantage. Let’s see, first, we need to figure out when…” it takes a Herculean effort to say his cursed fucking name out loud, but gritting my teeth seems to help “...Alex is going to drop by. I want to have it all done before then so he’s not here for more than a minute. Get in, get your shit, get out.”

Her eyes start to look a little red-rimmed for the first time. “I love you, Luce.”

“You too. Don’t you fucking move. Get a little rest.”

I grab the phone off the end table, tugging at the cord to follow me, and pace down the hallway and into their den, hoping that she won’t eavesdrop quite as aggressively that way. And then I remember I don’t know Alex’s work number. I yell down the hall, she calls out the numbers, and I punch them in, imagining each phone key is one of his teeth being knocked in. To my surprise, the bastard picks up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

He sounds like shit. This pleases me.

“Alex, it’s Lucy. You’re at work early.”

“Yeah, uh,” he yawns, “I slept at my desk last night, Cora kicked me out, and I couldn’t stay at Brian’s, so --”

“-- I’m playing the world’s smallest violin for you,” I growl, trying to keep my voice low enough that Cora won’t hear but assertive enough to terrify the shitstain on the other end of the line. “Listen. You are going to come get your shit on your lunch break. I’ll have it all packed up and in the front room. If you don’t get it out of here by 1:00, we’re having a bonfire tonight at Discovery Park, courtesy of your video game console.”

He stammers for a moment before mumbling something that sounds enough like assent for me.

“Don’t be late.”

It takes a lot of effort not to slam the phone back down. Get me, I’m mature. Okay, now we have a little over four hours to get his shit out of here, but I don’t have any more personal days left this year so I can’t miss work, Jeff’s at the cafe already… Eddie? Eddie’s a pretty diplomatic guy, I bet he’d be willing to help, and of all the options, he probably wouldn’t make Cora feel too uncomfortable. But when I try the guys’ apartment, there’s no answer, so maybe he had an early shift too.

Hmm. Mike? He’s a bit of a mess, but he’s got a good heart. I’ll try him next.

“H’llo? wh’s happenin’ ‘bout me,” a slurred voice says.

“Mike? Mike! Wake up, I need your help.”

“we’re closed! n’more lettuce for today.”

“The fuck? Mike!” but he’s already hung up. Great, the only two morning people in our whole crew are already at work, and Cready’s either talking in his sleep or wasted or both. I can’t remember Chris’s number, and I’m not about to ask Cora for it because I don’t want her to freak out again thinking I’m calling the whole neighborhood. That leaves one option. She’s not going to like this. She’s really, really not going to like this.

“Hello?”

Okay, finally, someone who sounds at least halfway awake.

“Hey, Stone? Sorry to bother you so early. It’s Lucy.”

“Lucy? What the hell’s going on? It’s like… 7…?” I can hear him stretch and probably fumble around for his alarm clock.

“7:15, yeah,” I finish his thought for him. “Listen, I need your help. Cora kicked Alex out last night, she found him cheating with some other chick. As in, he’s been cheating on her with this same girl all year. As in, she found them here when she got off work.”

His sudden avalanche of bellowed obscenity makes me jerk the phone away from my head. “Okay, okay, get it out of your system, I know, I said all the same things when I heard,” I reassure him from a safe, ear-protecting difference. “The thing is, there’s not really time for that, because he’s coming back at like noon to get his shit out of the apartment, and Cora’s got the flu so there’s no way she can pack it up herself. Despite what she may think.” As I speak, I can hear her making a liar out of me in the other room with the unmistakable sounds of a suitcase being packed. So much for the whole resting idea. She’s impossible. Good luck with that, Stone.  “She’s already trying to do it herself, you know how stubborn she is. I wish I could help her but I’m out of time off for the year and I have to get to work, but I’ll be right back as soon as I’m done for the day, I just need someone to --”

“Be right over,” he says in a terse voice that’s much higher pitched than usual. I hang up and resign myself to trying to restrain Cora from murdering me for calling him.

When I find her next door in their bedroom, she’s busily filling the battered old suitcase with sweaters and polo shirts from the dresser.

“So, Alex will be here around 12… Jeff and Eddie were both at work....”

She cuts me off in a brisk tone, continuing to pack and not making eye contact, “That’s okay, don’t call anyone else, I swear I’ve got this. He doesn’t even have that much stuff. All the furniture and kitchen stuff’s mine, it’s just his clothes, a few books, records, the computer shit in the den… I won’t drop dead from the exertion of packing all of that, I promise.”

For a split second, I consider telling her that Stone is on his way over, but (a), I value my life, (b), I’m not going to have the argument with her that she needs to stay in bed because I know that will fall on deaf ears, and (c), I’m going to be late for work. That’s Stone’s problem now.

“Okay, well, drink lots of water, don’t overdo it, call me if you need ANYTHING, and call me no matter what after he leaves. Got it?” I tip an entire drawer full of socks into the bag to speed up the process, giving her a pointed stare until she finally pauses and looks at me.

“Yes, ma’am. You’re my favorite human, you know that?”

“You’re mine. Try to rest.” I pull her into a quick hug, and then I’m on my way out the door.

I’d better be your favorite human. I bleached your ex-boyfriend’s sex towels. Vivid fantasies of murder accompany me on the drive to the hospital.

***

Of course, I only remember that I forgot to lock the station wagon when I’m already on the 4th flight of stairs in her building, taking them three at a time, trying to get a grip on my temper so I can actually be useful when I get to her place. Whatever, if someone wants my car that bad, they can have it. I was so busy mentally cursing Cletus that I nearly wrecked it like four times just getting it over here, and the drive’s only like 15 minutes.

I have to take a deep breath to avoid pounding on her door, but no matter what I do, I can’t get my adrenaline levels to chill out. Down, boy. This is not the time, place, or person for the whole John Wayne hero routine. Not that I’ve ever been very good at it, anyway. With one more deep breath, I arrange my face into some semblance of neutrality and manage a normal-volume knock.

Cora opens the door, bundled up in a massive quilt and looking like death, so much so that I’m probably gaping at her like a fool. So much for keeping a neutral expression. We stare at each other in silence for an excruciatingly long time, and I would speak up except that I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say. I’ve been preoccupied with all this stupid male anger for Alex, I didn’t even bother thinking about what I should say to her. Thankfully, she speaks up before I have to.

“What are you doing here?”

Okay, that I can work with. “Lucy called me.”

A skeptical crease between her eyebrows tells me that this information is news to her, so I explain as quickly as I can, “she said… she said you might need some help, uh, packing stuff.”

“Did she tell you why?” Her voice is a thin monotone.

I nod but then figure I should probably qualify so she doesn't think I’ve been prying. “I got the gist, yeah.”

“Fantastic.”

“I’m so sorry, Cora.”

“Sure you are,” she mutters with a sniff, huddling deeper into her blanket cloak.

“What's that supposed to mean?” I frown, kicking myself for not resisting the bait. She doesn't need a fight today, and I know that, but I’m still so fucking keyed up from the drive over here.

“This is the part where you say ‘I told you so,’ right? You called it, you should get to take credit for it.”

“I didn't come here to gloat, Cora.”

“Well, you should, you were right.” She rolls her eyes and refuses to look back at me, staring stubbornly down the hallway.

“This isn't exactly the kind of thing I want to be right about.”

My own voice is getting thicker as I talk because her eyes are reddening and I can't stand to see how much she's hurting, and trying to act like she’s not. When she doesn't answer me, I ask in a gentler voice, “can I come in?”

She nods and blinks back her tears, reaching for me, and I’ve got her wrapped up in my arms as fast as I can close the distance between us. She rests her head on my chest. I bury my nose in her hair, fighting the overwhelming urge to kiss her or do anything else that would make this about me, rather than what she needs. But I’ve really missed this. Every other thought vacates my brain, other than how much I’ve missed this. The way she fits in my arms. The way her hair smells. The warmth of her. Holy shit, warmth…

“Jesus, you’re burning up,” I rearrange so I can press my cheek against her forehead, nuzzling closer despite myself, “have you taken anything?”

She shakes her head, not letting go.

“Why the hell not,” I whisper.

“Didn't think about it,” she shrugs. “Anyway, it’s your fault.”

It’s still so terrifying to see her like this, and I don’t mean the fever. This calm detachment. Just like the other night, at the diner. Trying to pretend it never happened. That can’t be good. I give her one more bracing squeeze before loosening my grip, adjusting her blanket around her shoulders.

“Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that. Uh, I’ll check your medicine cabinet. You go get in bed, I’ll be right there, okay? I mean, not, ahem, not in your bed, just… I’ll be right there with whatever fever reducer I can find… obviously…”

She purses her lips in what could be either a smile or a wince and lets me steer her back toward her bedroom, rubbing her back once before I split off to the bathroom on the other side of the hallway.

Her medicine cabinet’s pretty sparse… some floss, some Alka Seltzer, a bag of cough drops that expired in 1986… the last one actually makes me laugh out loud… and miraculously, an unopened bottle of nighttime cold medicine that has a fever reducer in it. I don’t know how she’ll feel about the nighttime part, but she definitely looks like she could use the sleep, so I’m going with it. I grab the bottle, double back to the kitchen to get a glass of water, remembering which cabinet is which from the night I did her dishes. When I meet her in her bedroom, she’s sitting up, still out of the covers, with a nervous look on her face.

“I can’t take this, it’ll put me to sleep for hours!” she whines when she sees the label.

“That’s the general idea, yes. Unless you want to lie and tell me you slept well last night. Go ahead, try it.”

Through a peeved sigh, she huffs, “no. I stayed on the couch. Barely slept.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But if this stuff knocks me out, how am I supposed to help you pack?”

“You catch on quick, don’t you?” I sit on the foot of her bed, tugging the covers back to encourage her to climb under, and she obliges with a sour look on her face. “Look, I follow directions well, just tell me what I need to pack. You need to get as much rest as you can.”

“But what about Alex?”

“Let me worry about Alex.”

“Gee, what could possibly go wrong,” she quips, but she finally reaches out for the cup of dark green medicine I’m holding out for her. With a grimace, she downs it in one shot and washes it down with some of the water before letting me tuck her in like a little kid.

“Okay. I got most of his clothes into that suitcase already,” she nods at a huge bag on the floor, “there’s just the coat closet left. He’s got some stuff in the bathroom, that should be obvious enough. Everything in the den’s his -- not the furniture, but the TV, the video games, all that stuff. And then he has some things on the bookshelf, but I’ll have to talk you through that.”

“Or you could sleep and I could figure it out for myself.”

“You think so, do you?” She cocks an eyebrow and for a second, it’s like that detached fog has lifted. Jesus, I’ve missed her so much. I roll up my shirtsleeves to give myself a sensory distraction.

“Mmhmm. I’ve got a pretty good handle on your music taste, Red. What does he listen to, anyway?”

“Well, you can start with all the Elvis Costello --”

“-- oh, it fucking figures --”

“-- and the Springsteen, and the Zappa, and --”

She rattles off several more artists as I disappear around the corner and start pulling records off the shelves. What gets left behind in her collection is both a massive relief and a weird set of bedfellows: obviously, there’s the Doc Watson and the Hank Williams and the Johnny Cash and the Willie Nelson and the Woody Guthrie and the Pete Seeger and the Joni Mitchell and the Joan Baez and all the other hillbilly and/or hippie things I’d fully expect on her shelf. And among other things, she’s got a bunch of old blues and motown, a weird smattering of acid rock and heavy metal, what appears to be the complete discography of Tom Waits, ditto for Neil, and a few others I’m almost too afraid to ask about, just in case they’re Alex’s…

“Uhm… what about the Steely Dan albums?”

“Stay.”

Good girl. “Elton?”

“Go, sadly.”

“Right.” I keep them on the shelf but shove them back just a little. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. “Books?”

Pretty much everything stays except the Asimov, Ayn Rand, Salinger… uhm… Hemingway and Steinbeck. You get the idea.”

That’s for sure. What a fucking prick this guy is. I start pulling titles and dropping them into the box. Every now and again, I’ll call one out to her for clarification, but she sounds increasingly sleepy, and after a while when I check in on her, she’s out cold. It doesn’t even wake her up when I make my way cautiously into her room to finish packing clothes in his suitcase and drag it down the hall. The rest of the apartment is pretty easy to sort out, and I’m taking no small joy in the catharsis of purging all traces of Alex from her place. Even his juvenile man-den takes no time at all to clear out, although I think I’ve pulled a muscle in my back moving his big stupid TV. I’m not going to tell her that, of course. Gotta keep some dignity here.

It’s about 11:00 when I’m pretty sure I’ve got all his bullshit piled up in the front room, and Cora’s still fast asleep. There’s one book title from her collection that stood out to me as being especially weird, even for her, so I snag it and stretch out on the couch to read it and pass the time. Every third or fourth sentence has me laughing, which of course still prompts disgusting coughing fits, so I do what I can to keep the noise down, but Cora doesn’t show any signs of waking. In what feels like no time at all, there’s a knock on the door and the clock is telling me it’s nearly noon.

Setting her book down and checking on her one last time on my way to answer the knock, because who’s in any great hurry to see this motherfucker anyway, I slowly make my way to the front door. His first reaction when I open it is to drop his jaw and turn an extremely unappealing shade of red. He’s looking sufficiently unwashed and exhausted and stressed out and pissed. All very good things.

“The fuck are you doing here?!”

“Keep your voice down, Alex, she’s sleeping.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole, this is my apartment!”

“Mmm, not anymore, I don’t think.” It’s deeply gratifying to keep my voice as calm as possible while he gets more and more irate. I budge past him into the hallway, closing the door behind me so he won’t wake her up.

“So you’re just here playing house with my girlfriend, then??”

I lean against the door frame with my arms folded, maintaining steady eye contact while he incrementally loses his mind, even though he’s encroaching more and more on my personal space. I’ve never been big on the whole males-working-it-out-with-fisticuffs thing, but I’m sure as shit not going to let this dickweed intimidate me. 

“I don’t have to explain shit to you. And she’s not your girlfriend.”

“I fucking knew it, I knew there was something going on with you and her, you obnoxious fucking --”

“I just came over to pack up your stuff. She’s too sick to do it. That’s it. Make whatever you want out of it, I don’t care, just don’t wake her up.”

“STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO, I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU --”

“Hey, Stone, is there a problem here?”

The voice that cuts through Alex’s screeching is a deep, calm, resonant kind of voice, of the kind that can quiet a noisy room without even raising its own volume. Over Alex’s shoulder, I watch Eddie appear from out of the stairwell, and as Alex whips around to face him, it takes every bit of my composure not to laugh. Eddie’s at least a full head and shoulders shorter than Alex, and by rights he’s like the least threatening guy I’ve ever met -- Jesus, he makes people friendship collages, who does that? -- but right now he’s got this crazy-eyed expression that, with his tightly wound posture, seems to fill the entire hallway with its intensity. It’s a look that immediately calls to mind cobras or other animals that can make themselves larger to unnerve predators. Or, in Eddie’s case, probably a non-venomous snake mimicking a cobra, a thought that is threatening to make me laugh even harder, but there’s no reason for Alex to know any of that.

Anyway, it’s working, to my delight and relief. Alex unballs his fists and takes a big step back.

“No problem, we’re just helping our friend Alex here move out of his former apartment today. Cora’s asked him to live elsewhere,” I explain to Eddie, who maintains a deep crease in his eyebrows and a fireball stare as he keeps his eyes fixed on Alex, nodding steadily.

“Sure, yeah, let’s get you moved out, friend.”

My rabid-faced, calm-voiced bandmate seems to be enough of a wild card to subdue Alex, who mutters something to the tune of, “fine, whatever, let’s get this over with.”

With Eddie’s help, it only takes a couple of trips between the three of us to dump all of Alex’s shit outside on the curb in front of his stupid Jeep, letting him pack it all inside. I wish I could say, for the preservation of my integrity, that I handled his belongings with the utmost care and didn’t accidentally crush a fragile item or six. But hey, I’m weak, I guess.

“SEEYA!” I chirp, waving enthusiastically, a shit-eating grin plastered on my face as Alex climbs into his truck with nothing more than a sad little “fuck you, asshole.”

Eddie maintains his cobra posture until the Jeep’s on its way out of the parking lot, before turning to me to ask, “hey, is Cora okay?”

“Ehhh, she’ll be fine,” I explain, heading back inside and holding the door open for him. “I mean she’s sick as hell, so that doesn’t help, but I think she’s alright.”

“Anything else I can do to help?” he tugs at his soul patch, frowning.

“Nah, I think running him off with our torches and pitchforks is plenty for now, thanks man. I appreciate you having my back there.”

“Hey, whatever the fuck happened, he wasn’t gonna make it any better by starting a fight outside her door.”

“Something tells me he wasn’t thinking that far ahead. Not a big thinker, that one.”

“Some kind of son of a bitch or other, too, for her to throw him out like that.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Hey, thanks again,” I repeat once we’ve come to her door. As he opens his mouth, I cut him off, “I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do to help, for sure.”

With that, I wave to send him down the hallway to Jeff’s place and head back inside. So much for not waking her up… she’s parked on the couch, looking groggy and wary but impossibly gorgeous. And she’s ditched her blanket coat.

“Hey! You feeling better?”

“Mm,” she equivocates, “sort of. Fever’s gone, I think. For now.”

“Hope we didn’t wake you up with our friendly little gathering.” I sit next to her, moving the book I’d left propped open on the cushion over to the end table.

She toys with a tiny hole in the knee of her sweatpants. “Sounded ugly out there.”

“Well, given the company, that’s kind of a given.” The fact that she chuckles at my joke and doesn’t tell me to be nice about Alex is like a breath of fresh air after working all day in a mine. “But nobody died. And I’m pretty sure we got all his stuff.”

“Thanks, Stone,” she mumbles quietly, a little tremble in the way she says my name that threatens to do me in. “Really, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Did you manage to get some decent sleep?”

“Yeah, not bad,” she looks relieved at the change of subject. “The meds are still kicking my ass, so if I say anything incoherent, please be kind.”

“You got it.”

“Čapek?” she nods at the book, her voice sounding a little more assured.

“Yeah, well, I got done packing early, I had to pass the time somehow. You’ve got some crazy shit on those shelves, Red.”

“I love that one.” A tired smile spreads across her face. She’s prettier mid-flu than most women I know when they’re all dolled up. It’s unfair to womankind, really.

“Yeah? War With the Newts, 1936. Where the hell do you find this stuff?”

“Got it at a weird little used bookstore back in Asheville. You’re telling me you could resist that title? Come on, a sea captain discovers a race of highly intelligent newts, enslaves and exploits them, causing them to rebel until they finally conquer the world?”

“Hey! Spoilers!” I elbow her.

“Sorry, it’s just too good. How far did you get?”

“Definitely not into any overt newt-human conflict yet, I can tell you that much. The sea captain and that other guy were still debating how to use the newts in their pearl-harvesting scheme.”

“Oh, man, so you’re pretty early, you haven’t even gotten to my favorite part!”

“Which is?”

“Hey, spoilers,” she repeats, a wicked glint in her eyes.

“I think I’d rather hear you tell it, anyway.”

After chewing on her lip for a moment, she obliges. “Okay, you know how the newts develop a trusting rapport with the ship captain, kind of a symbiosis? Like, he sends them on diving missions to find pearls, and in return, they ask him for simple tools for their own developing society?”

“Right…”

“Well, they start to ask for more and more complicated tools, showing more and more of their own hidden intelligence, and the sea captain develops more and more affection for what he sees as his own pet newts, even though they hate him for exploiting their civilization. Very good imperialism satire, by the way.”

“Of course.”

“Well, coming up soon, that symbiosis starts to break down. One of them’s going to start menacingly asking a human for one object over and over, and then the newts all start to chant:” she holds her hand out and widens her eyes creepily, “‘knife? knife? knife?”

“Jesus,” I sputter. “So that’s the beginning of the end, then.”

“Yeah, it ends up being a pretty perfect skewer of nationalism, fascism, scientific hubris… really it’s the perfect sci-fi story.”

“Yeah, and it reads like something Douglas Adams would have written if he were alive in the ‘30s, it’s fucking hilarious.”

“I knew you were a quality human, Stone.”

I watch her cautiously, unsure how much to push her on such a fragile day, but unable to help myself. I mean, this is almost back to normal for us, right? Maybe she’s feeling better already. “Careful, I might start thinking we’ve graduated from a temporary ceasefire to a lasting peace.”

“You’re making a decent case for it today,” she fights a little smile. Hope sparks up in my chest, but now is definitely not the time to make a move, for fuck’s sake.

“So, uhm, you need anything else? You got enough food, that kind of thing?”

“I think I’ll survive, yeah.”

“Well, I mean, I did get you sick… Cornell brought me soup, I feel like I should pay it forward somehow… I still owe you dinner, anyway…”

“You don’t owe me dinner, Stone.”

“I mean it though, what’s your comfort food situation when you’re sick? Everyone has one.”

“You’re going to make fun of me.”

“Oh, most definitely, but I’ll still go out and get it for you.”

She crumples up her face, eyes shut tight. “Uhm… well, there was this one thing I always used to eat when I was a kid…”

“Lay it on me.”

“Tater tots…”

“Okay, that’s an unconventional choice for the flu, but it could be weirder…”

“...dipped in strawberry yogurt?”

“Nope. Okay, that’s it, we’re done here, you’re obviously history’s greatest monster.” I start to get up from the couch, wrinkling my nose in disgust, but she catches me by the wrist and tugs me back down, laughing. Predictably, I fold like a card table at her smallest touch.

“You promised!”

“Ughhh, fine, just don’t make me watch.” I stand up again less dramatically, and this time she lets me go, even though I’d prefer it if she didn’t.

“Wimp.”

“A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice.”

“Thanks, Stoner.”

“You bet.”

“I mean it. Thanks… for all of this. I don’t know how to tell you… how…” her eyes suddenly redden again, and she looks away, almost chuckling at herself with annoyance as she blinks furiously.

“Hey…” and I’m back on the couch next to her, my hand on her knee, trying to get her to look at me. “Hey, don’t worry about it, okay? Maybe go get a little more rest, I’ll be right back.”

“K.”

I give her a quick hug, which lingers as a hand on her back as she gets up and heads back to her bedroom. I wait until she’s out of sight before I throw on my coat and head out, renewing my resolve to just be her friend for as long as we can manage it, because that’s obviously what she needs the most.

***

“Hey… I’m back…”

I open my eyes to a swimming image of Stone sitting on the edge of my bed, still dressed for the outside weather, watching me through those huge, concerned owl eyes. I must have fallen asleep pretty quickly after he left.

“Hey.”

“Uhm, the food’s in the fridge. I got your requested grossness, plus a few other things that us normies eat when we’re sick, you know, in case you wanna try and assimilate.”

“K.”

“I think I’m gonna head out, let you get a little more rest. Lucy’ll probably be back in a few hours, she said she was gonna come straight over when she gets off of work.”

“Stone… please don’t go yet, I don’t want you to go…” I hardly know what I’m saying, my head’s still so fuzzy from the combination of cold medicine and interrupted napping, but I know I don’t want him to go anywhere yet. I don’t want to be alone in this place yet. I fumble for his hand to make sure my point gets across even through my inarticulateness.

“Oh...kay…” he nods, looking taken aback. “You want me to hang out on the couch until Lucy gets back? I can do that.”

“No…” I tug a little harder on his hand. “No, can you… can you stay here? Can you…” ugh, loser alert, “can you hold me for a little while?”  

Frown lines deepening on his face, he nods and stands up to shake off his coat, his baseball cap, his blue button-down. He nudges off his boots and then climbs in next to me, letting me curl up in the crook of one arm as he pulls the blanket up with the other.

“Better?” he asks quietly, once we’re situated. The answer is no, of course not, not really, but the words don’t want to be said. In an inescapable wave, every awful thought I’ve been pushing down since last night swamps over me. Like the feeling of waking up from a nightmare, discovering with sheer relief that none of it was real, except that the wires got crossed somewhere and only the horrible stuff was true all along. Only the worst things you think about yourself are left. That you’re not lovable, not even to the only person who ever tried, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a way station for other people until their Something Better comes along, a consolation prize, a dead weight. That everyone’s going to leave, eventually, one way or the other, and that you might not even be valuable enough to them to be worth leaving properly. That you can’t even take comfort in a moral high ground because deep down, you know you have the ability to treat people this way, too. The sobs shake out in terrible gasps against Stone’s chest, endless, bottomless. God, I hate that I’m doing this to him. Stone, of all people. I’ve got to get my shit together, this isn’t fair to him.

“I’m s-sorry…” I manage to choke out, once the oxygen decides to stay in my lungs long enough to let me.

“Jesus, what the hell for?” his fingers find their way into my hair and begin to rake slowly through it, repetitively, consistently, in a way that gives me something to think about other than… anything else. I wind my arm further around his middle, clutch the fabric of his t-shirt in my fingers, thread our legs together, hold onto him for dear life, trying to get as close as I can, and he responds with a steady embrace and a quick kiss on my forehead.

“You’re just,” I sniffle, trying to pull my shit together, “it’s just really unfair, it’s almost funny, how you’re like… the worst possible person for this job…”

“What job?”

“Listening to me cry over Alex. Like a fucking idiot.”

“You’re not a fucking idiot.”

“God, this is so stupid, I don’t even know why I’m crying, it’s not like I want him back…” I wipe my cheeks, but there’s nothing I can do about the puddle on his shirt.

“That’s fair enough. There’s no excuse for what he did.”

His words cause an uncomfortable twinge, a familiar one. “Yeah, except I did the same thing to him.”

“Huh?” Stone cranes his neck to look down at me, disbelief etched all over his face.

“With you.”

“Uh-uh. No.” He rests his head back on the pillow and resumes his compulsive stroking of my hair. “Our thing was totally different.”

Was…Our thing was totally different. Granted, last week feels like it happened a year ago, but I’m not sure I’m ready to bury it under the past tense yet. I guess Stone is. Ouch. There’s a thought I don’t want to dwell on today.

“Uh… enlighten me.”

“Well, for one thing, you’re a pretty bad liar.”

“I’m sorry Stoner, is this you trying to make me feel better?!”

“You know what I mean. You wear your feelings --” he interrupts the rhythm of his hand to perch it on my shoulder “-- right here. And your whole Jiminy Cricket conscience muscle is way too overdeveloped. You could never do what he did. The sheer amount of deception involved in that kind of two-timing is fucking staggering.”

“Yeah, even to her.”

“Huh?”

“The girl. Cindy. She didn’t know about me either.”

For a second time, Stone arches his neck to try to get a better look at me. “No way.”

“Way.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t know he had a girlfriend??”

“She seemed as shocked to learn about me as I was about her.”

“But, like…” he continues to gape in confusion, so exaggeratedly that it’s almost funny, “she came over to your house? Did she not notice that there are pictures of you guys together here? Like, all over the place?”

I don’t know why, but picking the situation apart like this with him actually helps me get a little distance from it again. Good. I don’t know if I can stand another attack of pathetic sobs in front of a witness. “Yeah, well, our Cindy didn’t strike me as the brightest tool in the drawer.”

He snorts as he relaxes back down again. “God, I love you. That’s another difference, by the way.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone, but likewise. But they were together for a year, Stone, I’m sure similar language was involved.”

“And that’s another thing,” he carries on, undeterred, “the length of time! Jesus! Who does that?? Fucking asshole, that’s who.”

“Well, anyway, I’m sorry. For snotting up your shirt and everything.”

“Who’s the snot otter now?” he smirks. “Anyway, don’t. You’re allowed. You just got your heart broken, you get a free pass for all kinds of obnoxious shit.”

Once again, I don’t know what to say other than thanks, and I feel like I’ve already said that so many times that it’s going to get stuck in my throat if I try again. But another thought occurs.

“Have you ever?”

“What?”

“Had your heart broken?”

“Oh, sure, lots of times. I mean, sometimes I’ve been on the other end of it, but yeah, of course.”

“Tell me about it?”

He’s silent for a moment. “Well, the first one’s always the worst, right? I’d had a couple of girlfriends in high school, but the first one I ever really loved was this girl, Annie. This was like, sophomore and junior year, so real revolting puppy love shit. Writing her name in my notebook, walking her home from school, talking for hours on the phone at night, all that stuff. Anyway, she left a note in my locker at the end of the year telling me that she’d decided to get back together with her ex. And that was it. Didn’t see her all summer, and when we went back to school in the fall, she acted like she didn’t know me.”

“Fuck. That must have been hard.” I wrap myself even tighter around him, wanting to insulate someone so good from ever being treated so cruelly. He responds in kind with a rib-cracking squeeze.

“It was. For a while. You get over it, though.”

“For the sake of argument, I will pretend what you said is not, in fact, a crock of shit and ask you the obvious question: how?”

He shakes with one of those tiny laughs I’ve come to love, the kind that seems to get stuck in his nose. “I don’t know, you kinda… you go through this stage where everything that happens to you, or around you, reminds you of that person, because you’re so used to telling one person everything on your mind, and sharing everything, and all of your stories point to them, they’re you’re reference for everything, like your…” he grimaces at his own word choice, “your North Star, or whatever. So it’s like there’s salt in the wound, constantly…”

“Sounds awful.”

“Yeah, it is. But after enough time goes by, other people start becoming new focal points for you, and you have new stories that are tied to those people, and they kinda start to fill in the sky with other constellations, until that one person doesn't seem so prominent anymore. And then one day you’re squinting at the sky, trying to figure out how that person was ever such a big deal at all.”

Past tense, present tense, whatever we are, however confusing my situation with Stone has gotten, this is exactly what I need right now: to be curled up in his arms, letting him run his fingers through my hair, while he climbs the ladder and hangs the stars back up in the sky one by one. Just like he said he would.

[nellpire]

[171222] Nell Official 2017 Photobook Fan Q&A (translation)

1. You are about to reach your 20th anniversary.. What do you think when you see fans maturing(!) together with you? Do you have any questions for the fans? Jongwan: Standing tickets or seated tickets, what’s better? Jaekyung: Though it’s intimate, since we only meet in concert halls, sometimes it feels a bit surreal^^  We can’t meet often but I’m always happy and grateful to see you… - A question for the fans / Why do you like Nell…?  Junghoon: I’m always thankful. And I feel a sense of kinship with you since we’re maturing together. And of course happy that we’ve been able to be together for this long through music.

2. What part of the chicken do you guys like the best?  Jongwan: Wings Jaekyung: Hahahaha / Wings vs tenderloin Junghoon: For chicken, wings are the way to go.

3. Please introduce your individual instruments! I want to organize Nell’s room. Please check any incorrect entries.  Jongwan: I think they’re too many to introduce; when we record we use about 13 different guitars and 12 different synthesizers.  Jaekyung: If I were to introduce the ones we use for concerts only.. Fender stratocaster (lemon) - Jeff beck signature Fender stratocaster (red) - Greg tessler masterbuilt PRS-custom24 Suhr - Scott Henderson signature Gibson 355 - Standard Gibson 355 - Historic Gibson Lespaul 59 - Historic Schecter Telecaster - Lee Jaekyung Custom model (a gift from Schecter Japan~^^) James Tyler Telecaster - Mongoose Retro Gene Baker B3 - Humburker Gene Baker B3 - P90 Morgan Acoustic Guitar - Jumbo orchestra  Taylor Guitar - 414CE Nylon Bogner Shiva amp 20th anniversary Nord stage2 88

4. What is ripped jeans to Jongwan wanja-nim? Jongwan: Clothes that would be okay even if they ripped even more.

5. Which instrument does Jongwan feel the coolest while playing? Wan is cute when playing the drums!  Jongwan: Guitar

6. How do each of you deal with stress? Jongwan: Alcohol, sleep Jaekyung: Deep sleep or heavy exercise Junghoon: Movies, games, music, travel Jaewon: Alcohol, friends, parties

7. I’ve just come back to Korea after studying in Russia for 6 years. I learned that Russian people all enjoy rock music (I often saw grandmothers with Nickelback songs for their ringtone and grandfathers with AC/DC for their ringtones. Seriously…!). Do you have any plans to advance into Russia?  Jongwan: Spasiba Jaekyung: We went with Seo Taiji to perform in Vladivostok in 2004, and I could feel how the country loves rock music. How much they like alcohol and how cold it is also suits Nell well k I’d like to try it if we get a chance.  Junghoon: Any place where people listen to our music and we can perform would be good, of course. Russia go go.

8. Is there a Korean musician who you want to be like or respect? Also, is there a person who you look at and think ‘let’s not become like them’? For the last question I’m more curious about whether you have someone like that or not, not who it is.  Jongwan: I respect Lee Seunghwan-nim / Way too many Junghoon: I respect all musicians who go forward playing their own music, whether they are seniors or juniors. As for the last question, we definitely do.

9. Do you have any plans on doing this (Q&A) regularly? Aren’t you curious about the fans’ thoughts? Jongwan: We have ‘plans’.  Jaekyung: I think it’d be fun to do this in some shape or form every once in a while!

10. What electronics or instruments are you interested in recently? Jongwan: UNFAIRCHILD 670 M II  Junghoon: Playstation VR / Rolan Gaia

11. What song would you like to play a cover of at least once? Jaekyung: Purple Rain - Prince (even though not doing it would be better) Jongwan: Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley version

12. Any songs you want to play as Jung Jaewon band? kk Jaekyung: Beat it - Michael Jackson (even though not doing it would be better) Junghoon: Celine Dion’s Power of Love Jongwan: Nessun Dorma

13. Can you recommend us a movie, exhibition, concert, book etc that you’ve enjoyed this year?  Jongwan: I, Daniel Blake Jaewon: The movie Maudie Junghoon: Manchester by the Sea, and for concerts Depeche Mode

14. If you could transcend time and space and meet one person in the whole world, who would it be?  Jongwan: It’s not a person, but I’d like to see a huge dinosaur in real life. Junghoon: Rather than a meeting, I’d like to go to a Nirvana concert.

15. If you could give the fans anything (with no regards to cost, and it doesn’t need to be an object) what would it be? Jaekyung: Our unreleased songs (minus the bad ones k)

16. Jaekyung oppa, when you record entire concerts the file size must be insane, so how many external hard drives do you have? Do you have more Kumamon plushies or more external hard drives?  Jaekyung: I have 5 hard drives. And I have 2 Kumamons that the fans gave to me k (the picture I uploaded on instagram was taken in a store hahaha)

17. Which out of your own songs are you the most pleased with? Jongwan: ‘What do you think’ Jaekyung: ‘Farewell’ Junghoon: ‘12 Seconds’ Jaewon: ‘12 Seconds’

18. If someone other than Jongwan hyung-nim were to take the role of vocalist in Nell, who would suit it the best? Jongwan: There’s no way.

19. Can you please show us the Selfish Love music video just one more time? Jongwan: No. Jaekyung: We can’t.  Junghoon: How could we ever?

20. Jaekyung-nim, you know you’re good-looking, right? Jaekyung: Of course^^

21. I’m curious about your individual ways of overcoming painful experiences (alcohol and cigarettes, that’s no no, minus those two!)  Jongwan: The thought that I would still have a hard time even if this didn’t happen. Jaekyung: If I can solve it then I do, and if I can’t then I do as much as I can, accept it and let time heal. Junghoon: I just keep thinking about it. Immerse myself in it. Then it will slowly start to get better.

22. If you only had one day left to live, how would you spend it? Jongwan: First I’d say goodbye to my family, then spend 8 hours in the studio before putting on a concert and finishing off with an afterparty with people I love.  Jaekyung: I don’t know if there’s anything specific I’d want to do -- I think I’d listen to the songs we were unable to finish and then say my goodbyes.  Junghoon: I’d be with my family. Jaewon: I’d watch the sunset by the ocean.

23. How come Junghoon has never once shown us a bass solo? And as you always use a pick instead of fingering (of course using a pick will sound better on some songs but), is there a reason for that?  Junghoon: I will work hard.

24. How do you release everyday stress?  Jongwan: Travel

25. What pictures do you use as your kakaotalk profile pictures and cover photos.. k (Jaekyung uses a cover photo of a street full of fallen leaves and no profile photo, Jaewon uses a picture from the movie Maudie)

26. I’m curious about the members’ favorite movies. Also, is there a movie that has influenced your music, like how you got your name from the movie Nell? Jongwan: Stay, Never let me go Junghoon: I like too many movies so it’s hard to choose, but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes to mind.  Jaewon: Lords of Dogtown, Stand By Me, Gilbert Grape

27. If you were a color, what would it be? And please tell us the reason as well. Jongwan: Grey Jaekyung: (picture of… the moon..?)

I love you. Junghoon: Me too.

28. Who cries the most out of the members? Jongwan: Me and Jaewon. Junghoon: Could be me. Jaewon: I don’t know who does the most, but Jaekyung cries the least.

29. Who do you think will get married next? Jongwan: Don’t

30. I’m sad because I can’t go to this year’s christmas concert, and I’m a 13-year fan who wishes to receive a signed CD at some point. I like you so much that I want to ask a question this badly. I love how pretty the album art is; do you decide on the design yourselves? Jongwan: We decide on the concept, the designer makes the art.

31. To. Jung Jaewon / Do you have other hobbies aside from surfing and skateboarding?  Jaewon: Drawing, hiking.

32. To. NELL & SPACE BOHEMIAN / Who first coined the phrase ‘seubo-in’?? Do you like it? Jongwan: I like it. Junghoon: Was it Jongwan who used it first? I don’t know too well, but I like it.

33. Is there a singer you’d like to work with?  Jaewon: The late Shin Haecheol-nim.

34. Chicken vs Pizza Jaekyung: Pizza Junghoon: Chicken Jongwan: Complete victory by the pizza

35. Jongwan oppa, I remember hearing you say on Nell’s Cruel Radio that you like to read. Please recommend me a good book. Jongwan: Blindness (José Saramago)

36. What’s the most memorable performance you’ve seen? Jaekyung: I’ve seen too many, but the ones that come to mind now are Black Sabbath in Korea, 1995 / Steve Vai in Korea, 1997 / Metallica in Korea, 1998 / Roger Waters in Korea, 2002 / Marilyn Manson in Korea, 2003 / Nine Inch Nails in Korea, 2007 / Björk in New York, 2012 / Paul McCartney in Korea, 2015 / Among those, Roger Waters’ (Pink Floyd) concert was the most memorable to me. / As for Nell, it’ll be this year’s December concert. ^^  Junghoon: That’s a difficult question. Off the top of my head, The Verve live in Japan. Their charisma was astounding.

37. Do you have any thoughts of letting us know the lyrics in the backmasked parts of your songs? Jongwan: No. Junghoon: I don’t think so.

38. Can you reveal the playlists you’ve been listening to recently? Jongwan: Currently listening to this year’s Christmas concert setlist. Jaewon: Elbow, Death Cab for Cutie.

39. What are each of your favorite foods?! Jaekyung: Galbi, lobster, soy marinated crab, (bigmac)  Junghoon: Braised spicy chicken Jongwan: There’s too many. Beijing-style duck, steak, pasta, Pyongyang style cold noodles etc.

40. When will Jongwan oppa do a V app live in your house like you said you would? Junghoon: Did he say that? Jongwan: Soon.

41. Junghoon oppa, at some point you started recording the fans with your camcorder -- do you…watch those back..?? Also, you’re taking a lot of pictures with your film camera recently. Have you been influenced by Simz oppa to do that, or is there another reason? Please reveal a few cuts that you’re pleased with! Junghoon: I’ve seen all of them at least once. I edited some (of the videos) and posted them on social media. I was taking pictures with a digital camera using a filter to make the pictures look like they were taken with a film camera, and so I thought ‘if this is how it’ll turn out, I should buy an actual film camera’, so I did. I don’t know anything about photography so I’m just taking pictures with my P&S.

42. Please tell us a song you’re disappointed with from each album, or a song you don’t like, and the reason for your choices, please. Or an album you’re displeased with. Jongwan: Walk Through Me. I think we could give each song a more fitting sound if we were to record that album now.  Junghoon: ‘Reflection of’, ‘Speechless’. At the end of the day, it’s a pity how they turned out. If we had been a bit more skilled at recording and writing, I think they could have turned into a little bit, or a lot better albums.

43. If you were to be reincarnated, what would you like to be born as? Jongwan: A dolphin living in a place no human has ever touched. Junghoon: Wonbin.

44. What do you think when you see your increasing amount of male fans? I’m a fanboy too, haha!  Jongwan: It feels good. Jaekyung: It’s good to see. The sceaming (of the crowd) became thicker! I understand now!!  Junghoon: It’s great.

45. When do you recruit workers for Space Bohemian? (My ultimate goal is to become an employee there… just wait…)  Jongwan: 11AM~8PM

46. Do you use Logic (music editing software) or Pro Tools more? If you use both, which is better?  Jongwan: We don’t use Logic, we use Cubase and Pro Tools. We use Cubase up until the recording, then change to Pro Tools for the final phase.

47. Junghoon-nim, please let us know what brand of sunglasses you wear!  Junghoon: I wear several different ones, but my favorite is Karl Lagerfeldt.

48. I’m curious as to what you’re thinking about! Jongwan: It changes a lot. Jaekyung: I think most of what’s in my head goes into our albums!  Junghoon: All kinds of tremendous desires.

49. What is Bori’s gender?! Junghoon: She’s a girl

50. Is Junghoon-nim’s Bori doing well? Do you have any plans to open a separate instagram account with just pictures of her? Junghoon: Yes, she’s doing well. I don’t think I’ll make another instagram account.

51. I’ll give you a multiple choice question. How long will you continue making music? A. Until I die / B. Until all I have left is the strength to hold a spoon / C. For 50 more years / D. Until our 70th debut anniversary Jaekyung: A Junghoon: A Jongwan: If possible, A.

52. Is it okay to ask for a signature if I see you on the street? It is okay to let you know I know who you are? I love you.  Jaekyung: Yes.  Junghoon: Please be our friend. Jongwan: We don’t go out a lot, so.

53. What are your favorite Coldplay / Muse songs? Any songs you intend to play live sometime? Jaekyung: Coldplay: Gravity / Muse: Exogenesis: Symphony part 3 Junghoon: Coldplay: True Love / Muse: Stockholm Syndrome

54. What’s your most used apps?  Jongwan: Lotte cinema Jaekyung: Hi-Q recorder / Soundhound / Producer tools / Metronome / Boss tuner  Junghoon: Naver cloud. Coupang. Jaewon: Navigation.

55. Tell us about a movie you’ve seen within the last 3 months that left a deep impression, whether it was good or bad. Junghoon: The Outlaws. “Do you know who I am?”

56. What’s your favorite time of day?  Jongwan: 9PM~5AM. Jaekyung: One hour before the sun sets. Junghoon: The space between midnight and 4am. Jaewon: Just because the sun rises.

57. To Junghoon and Jaekyung: Who’s your Twice bias? Jaewon: Tzuyu.

58. To all: What’s your favorite cover of one of your songs? Jaekyung: Taeyeon’s Time Spent Walking Through Memories Jongwan: Kim Feel’s Time Spent Walking Through Memories. Jaewon: Time Spent Walking Through Memories.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 9/11/20 – I AM WOMAN, BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY, RENT-A-PAL, UNPREGNANT AND MORE!

Thankfully, we’re getting a slower week this week after the past few weeks of absolute insanity with so many new releases. This week, we also get a nice string of movies about women that are mostly made by women directors, so hopefully these won’t get lost in the shuffle of theaters reopening.

To be perfectly honest, I went into Unjoo Moon’s I AM WOMAN (Quiver Distribution) – this week’s “Featured Flick” -- thinking it was a doc about ‘70s pop sensation Helen Reddy. Imagine my surprise to discover that it actually was a narrative film with Tilda Cobham-Hervey playing the Australian singer who moved to New York in 1966 after winning a contest, expecting a record deal but only winding up with disappointment.  Once there, she’d meet journalist Lilian Roxon (Danielle Macdonald, being able to use her real Australian accent for once) and Jeff Weld (Evan Peters), the man who would become her manager and then husband. Once the couple move to L.A. with Helen’s daughter Traci (from her previous marriage), things began to pick up at the same time as Reddy starts dealing with issues in her marriage and friendship with Roxon.

Listen, I get it. To some (or maybe all) younger people, including film critics, Helen Reddy represents the cheesier side of ‘70s music. I only know her music, since I was a young kid who listened to AM Top 40 radio for much of the ‘70s, but by the end of the decade, I had already switched to metal, punk and noisier rock. As you can tell from watching I Am Woman, Reddy is a particularly interesting music personality, particularly once you realize how hard she struggled to get into the business with a husband who only feigned to support her after dragging her to L.A. for “her career.”

There were many takeaways from watching Moon’s film, but one of the bigger ones is how amazing Cobham-Hervey is at portraying a woman that few of us may have actually seen perform even on television. I’m not sure if Cobham-Hervey did any of her own singing or is lip-syncing the whole time, but it doesn’t matter because she instills so much joy into the performances, especially the two times she sings the highly-inspirational title song live.

Although there isn’t a ton of major drama in Reddy’s life, most that does exist revolves around her relationship with Wald, who is depicted by Peters as an out-of-control coke-sniffing monster. Those in Hollywood may have dealt with Wald as a movie producer or during his stint as Sylvester Stallone’s manager, and only they will know how exaggerated this performance is. Far more interesting is Helen’s friendship with Macdonald’s Roxon which would inspire her to perform the song “You and Me Against the World.”  (Seriously, if you want a good cry, throw that song on after watching I Am Woman.)

Moon does a great job with the material, whether it’s recreating New York in the ‘60s – often using music to set the tone of the period -- or by framing Reddy’s story with Phyllis Schlaffly’s fight against the ERA, as depicted in FX’s mini-series Mrs. America.  Still, it never loses track of Reddy’s journey and her role as a mother to Traci and slightly less to Wald’s son, Jordan. The movie ends with a wonderful and tearful epilogue, and I will not lie that I was tearing up more than once while watching this movie.

I Am Woman may be relatively uncomplicated, but it’s still a compelling relaying of Reddy's amazing story bolstered by an incredible knock-em-dead performance by Tilda Cobham-Hervey. It’s also one of the most female-empowering film I’ve seen since the Ruth Bader Ginsburg movie On the Basis of Sex, starring Felicity Jones.

This week’s primary theatrical release is Natalie Krinsky’s THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY (Stage 6/Sony), starring Geraldine Viswanathan as Lucy, a young woman who works at a gallery who is still obsessed with her ex-coworker/boyfriend Max. On the night of her  disastrous break-up, Lucy meets-cute Nick (Dacre Montgomery from Stranger Things), who later inspires her to rid of her hoarding issues by creating the “Broken Hearts Gallery.” This is a place where people who have broken up can bring the remnants of said relationship by donating the mementos they’ve maintained from their partners as sentimental value.

I’m a big fan of Viswanathan from her appearance in Blockers and TBS’ “Miracle Workers” series, as she’s clearly very talented as a comic actress, but I couldn’t help but go into this with more than a little cynicism, because it does follow a very well-worn rom-com formula that can be traced right back to When Harry Met Sally. Yup, another one.  Much of this movie comes across like a bigger budget version of a movie that might play Tribeca Film Festival, and I wish I could say that was a compliment because I’ve seen a lot of good movies at Tribeca. But also just as many bad ones.

The problem is that The Broken Hearts Gallery isn’t very original, and its roots are especially obvious when it starts interspersing the recently-heartbroken giving testimonials. It’s also a little pretentious, because rather than the real New York City that would be recognizable to anyone who lives there, it’s more of a Millennial woke fantasy where everyone is a 20-something LGBTQ+ of color.  Even so, the main trio of Lucy, Nick and Nick’s business partner Marcos (Arturo Castro from Broad City) do keep things fun even when things are getting predictable.

To be honest, I’ll be perfectly happy to see Viswanathan become the next Meg Ryan, because part of the reason why I warmed up to the movie is because I thought she was quite great in it. (I hate to say it but she’ll definitely need a simple name to remember to make that happen. I’d like to suggest G-Vis… as in G-Vis, she’s awesome!) There’s no question she’s the best part of the movie, but it also thrives from some of the other women cast around her, including Molly Gordon, Phillipa Soo and (surprise, surprise!) Bernadette Peters. (At times, I was worried Lucy’s friends would get particularly annoying, but you’ll warm up to them as well.)

Krinsky’s movie is cute, and while it certainly gets a little overly sentimental at times, there are also moments that are quite heartfelt, so basically, it’s a tolerable addition to the rom-com genre. The fact that the characters are so likeable kept me from outright hating the movie, especially once it gets to its corny and somewhat predictable ending. Another thing I like about Broken Hearts Gallery is that at least it’s making an effort to have some sort of theatrical presence, including drive-in theaters.

Next up is Jon Stevenson’s RENT-A-PAL (IFC Midnight), a rather strange and very dark horror-comedy. It stars Brian Landis Folkins as David, a lonely 40-year-old living with his elderly mother suffering from dementia, who has been using the services of a dating service called Video Rendezvous. This is the ‘80s after all, so it involves getting VHS testimonials from various women. One day, David finds a tape labelled “Rent a Pal” and he decides to check it out. It turns out to be a video of a guy named Andy (Wil Wheaton aka Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation) who David begins having conversations with, but once David gets his chance to have a real relationship with a nice woman named Lisa (Amy Rutledge), he’s been dragged too far down the rabbit hole with Andy’s evil urgings.

This was recommended to me by my own personal rent-a-pal, Erick Weber of Awards Ace, who saw it weeks ago. I totally could understand why he would have liked it, because it’s pretty good in terms of coming up with an original idea using elements that at least us older guys can relate to (especially the living with your Mom part which I had to do a few years ago).  I wasn’t sure but I generally thought I knew where it was going, because David’s trajectory always seemed to be heading towards My Friend Dahmer or Maniac territory. What I liked about Folkins’ performance is that you generally feel for him right up until he gets to that point. I also really liked his innocent relationship with Lisa and was hoping things that wouldn’t get as dark as where they eventually end up. I also have to draw attention to Wheaton’s performance, because as one might expect if you only know him from the “Star Trek” show he did as a kid, this is a very different role for him similar to Seann Michael Scott in last year’s Bloodline.

Either way, Stevenson is a decent writer and director who really pushes the boundaries with where Andy takes his new friend, and it’s especially great for its synth-heavy soundtrack that reminds me of some of John Carpenter’s best scores, as we watch David’s inevitable descent into madness. You’ll frequently wonder where it’s going, but for me, it just got too dark, so I only really could enjoy it up to a point.

A little cheerier is UNPREGNANT (HBO Max), the new film from Rachel Lee Goldberg, who directed the recent Valley Girl remake, although this time she’s adapting a book written by Jenni Hendricks. It stars Haley Lu Richardson (from Split and Support the Girls) as 17-year-old Veronica who discovers that her dopey boyfriend Kevin has gotten her pregnant. Since women under 18 can’t get an abortion in Missouri without a parents’ consent, she goes on a road trip with her estranged childhood friend Bailey (Barbie Ferreira) to New Mexico to get the job done.

It’s more than  little weird seeing this movie come out in the same year as a much more serious version of the same movie in Elyza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometime Always. That aside, Goldberg and her cast do their best to make this something more in the vein of last year’s Book Smart, although that’s also a fairly high watermark for any movie.

Because this is a road trip comedy, it tends to follow a fairly similar path as other movies where they meet a lot of strange characters along the way, as they try to get a ride after being busted cause Bailey stole her mother’s boyfriend’s car for the trip. For instance, they meet a friendly couple who tend to be pro-lifers who want to change Veronica’s mind, and the best side character is Giancarlo Esposito as a conspiracy theorist named Bob.

I guess my biggest problem with the movie is that it just isn’t that funny and feels fairly standard, but at least it has a decent ending to make up for the predictability of the rest of the movie.

Now streaming on Netflix is Maimouna Doucouré’s French coming-of-age film Mignonnes aka CUTIES, a film that premiered at Sundance and then stirred up quite a bit of controversy last month due to its marketing campaign, but is actually not the pervy male gaze movie which it may have been sold as. It’s about an 11-year-old Sengalese girl named Amy Diop (Fathia Youssouf) who wants to join the school’s “cool girl” dance group, known as the “Cuties,” even though it goes against her family’s Muslim beliefs.  Amy learns to dance so she can be part of the dance team and take part in a dance competition, but you know that this decision will led to trouble.s

Cuties got a lot of backlash from for the trailer and Netflix’s decision to release Doucouré’s movie, which is about a young girl discovering her sexuality, although it isn’t really something lurid or gross but actually a very strong coming-of-age film. I haven’t seen the trailer, but I can only imagine what scene it focused on that got people so riled up, since there are dance scenes that felt a little creepy to me. Other than that aspect of the film, Cuties is as innocent as a Judy Blume book. I mean, how else do you expect kids to learn about real life than movies like this? (Unfortunately, the movie is TV-MA so young teens won’t be able to watch it.)

The big problem with the Cuties is that they’re actually kind of bratty and bullies, almost like a younger “Mean Girls” girl gang, so it’s very hard to like any of them. They’re also trying to act way older than they really are, and you can only imagine what dark places that might led, as you worry about Amy getting dragged down with them, just because she wants to have friends and feel popular.

Despite my issues with Cuties, Maimouna Doucouré is a fantastic filmmaker, and this is a pretty amazing debut, especially notable for how she’s able to work with the young cast but also make a movie that looks amazing. That said, Cuties is a decent coming-of-age film, although I feel like I’ve seen better versions of this movie in films like Mustang and The Fits.

Also from France comes Justine Triet’s SYBIL (Music Box Films), starring Virgine Efira (who appeared in Triet’s earlier film, In Bed with Victoria) as the title character, a jaded psychotherapist who decides to return to her passion of writing, getting her inspiration from an actress patient named Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who she becomes obsessed with. I don’t have a lot to say about this movie other than it wasn’t really for me. As far as French films go, a movie really has to stand out from the usual talkie drama filled with exposition, and though I thought the performances by the two women were great, I didn’t really care for the script or the pacing on this one. After playing at last year’s Cannes, Toronto and the New York Film Festival, Sybil will be available via Virtual Cinema through Film at Lincoln Center and the Laemmle in L.A. as well as other cities. You can watch the trailer and find out how to watch it through your local arthouse at the official site.

Now seems like as good a time as any to get into some docs…

 Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés’ doc ALL-IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY (Amazon) follows Stacey Abrams through her run for Atlanta Governor in 2018, but it also deals with the laws that had been put in place to try to keep black voters from taking part in their right as Americans to be able to vote. I’m not sure what’s going on with me right now, but I generally just don’t have much interest in political docs right now, maybe because there’s so much politics on TV and in the news. I also have very little interest in Abrams or even having the racist history of the American South drilled into my head by another movie. I was born in 1965, my family didn’t even live in this country until 1960, and I’ve spent my life trying to treat everyone equally, so watching a movie like this and being preached to about how awful African-Americans have been treated in parts of the South for hundreds of years, I’m just not really sure what I’m supposed to do about it here in New York. I guess my biggest problem with All-In, which is a perfectly fine and well-made doc – as would be expected from Garbus – is that it lacks focus, and it seems to be all over the place in terms of what it’s trying to say… and I’m not even sure what it is trying to say, nor did I have the patience to find out. I thought Slay the Dragon handled the issues with gerrymandering far better, and I think I would have preferred a movie that ONLY focused on Abrams and her life and political career than trying to make a bigger statement. All-In will open at a few drive-ins (tonight!) and then will be on Amazon Prime on September 18.

I was similarly mixed on Jeff Orlwosky’s doc, THE SOCIAL DILEMMA, which debuted on Netflix this week. This one looks at the addiction people have for social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, and how the information of what people watch and click on is collected into a database that’s sold to the highest bidder. Basically, it’s your worst fears about social media come to life, but my issue with this one is that the filmmaker decided to hire actors to dramatize parts of the movie, showing one family dealing with social media and phone addiction, which seemed like an odd but probably necessary decision other than the fact that the topic is so nerdy and so over my head that maybe it was necessary to illustrate what’s being explained by programmers. Again, not a terrible doc, just not something I had very little interest in even if it is an important subject (and I’m probably spending too much on social media and essentially more of the problem than the solution).

I saw S. Leo Chiang and Yang Sun’s doc OUR TIME MACHINE at Tribeca last year, and I quite liked it. It follows influential Chinese artist Ma Liang (Maleonn) who collaborates with his Peking Opera director father Ma Ke, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, on an elaborate and ambitious project called “Papa’s Time Machine” using life-sized mechanical puppets. I don’t have a ton to say about the movie but it’s a nice look into the Chinese culture and traditions and how the country and art itself has changed between two generations.

One doc I missed last week but will be available digitally this week is Michael Paszt’s Nail in the Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro about semi-retired professional wrestler Ian Hodgkinson aka Vampiro, who is a Lucha Libre legend.

There’s a lot of other stuff on Netflix this week, including THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN, the sequel to the Samara Weaving-starring horror-thriller, again co-written and directed by McG (Charlies Angels: Full Throttle). This one stars Bella Thorne, Leslie Bibb and Ken Marino, as it follows Judah Lewis’ Cole after surviving the satanic blood cult from the first movie.

I don’t know nearly as much about the British comedy series The Duchess, other than it stars comedian Katherine Ryan as a single mother juggling a bunch of things. Julie and the Phantoms is Netflix’s latest attempt to be the Disney channel with a movie about a young girl named Julie (Madison Reyes) who decides to start a band with a group of ghosts (hence the title). It’s even from Kenny Laguna, who is best known for the Disney Channel’s biggest hits High School Musical and The Descendants.

Other stuff to look out for this week include Kevin Del Principe’s thriller Up on the Glass (Gravitas Ventures), which is now available On Demand, digital and Blu-Ray; the Russian dogs doc Space Dogs (Icarus Films) – available via Alamo on Demand; Phil Wall’s doc The Standard  (Gravitas Ventures), and Andrei Bowden-Schwartz, Gina O’Brien’s tennis comedy All-In (on Amazon Prime and VOD/Digital) and Sam B. Jones’ Red White and Wasted (Dark Star Pictures).

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!