#my biggest bro arguing against something in such a way that has me convinced OF the thing is such an experience

[pagesofkenna]

my oldest brother and I don't really agree on much at all, but every now and then I see a take online and I wish we had the kind of relationship where I could send it to him and get his overly verbose reaction to it, because he would either

Disagree (or agree) with it, and be able to explain his reasoning in a way that would help me understand why I also disagree (or agree) with it

Agree (or disagree) with it, and be able to explain his reasoning in a way that would help me understand why I actually disagree (or agree) with it

[issaxcharlie]

Owen hosts Couple tag

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x Artist Fem Reader

Summary: We play pretend world guys✨ (I missed them, I’m SoRryyyy.) So, Charlie wants some reassurance after starting to prepare his proposal to Y/N and makes this “genius” plan with Owen to find her answers without being suspicious. (She totally knows tho) also a lot of friendship fighting between Owen and Y/N because I had to, I made myself laugh a lot so I’ll hope at least makes you smile🤧🤣Anyways, have fun!

This is also my weird and nonsense way of doing sweet @marvel-ousnesss request of the we play pretend couple to do a couple buzzfeed quiz 💖

The blonde takes a deep breath before picking up his phone and heading to the living room, where his couple of friends and roommates are on the couch. Charlie is lying down watching television and Y/N is lying on top of him with her face snuggled into his neck, he hugging her around the waist while gently running his fingers down her skin.

The plan was simple, to help Charlie plan the perfect proposal and give him an idea of what she expects from her wedding, they were doing a “Couple tag” video. That way the questions wouldn’t be as suspicious. Of course, there are easier ways but we are talking about Charlie. They convinced Kenny to call her and tell her that it was to promote the second season that is currently being filmed, and she agreed.

Charlie mentioned many times that someone else had to ask her the questions because she reads her boyfriend like an open book, so his improvisation had to be perfect to keep his best friend’s clever girlfriend out of the hook.

He decided to start the live from his room so as not to give the singer the opportunity to think much about it, so he sits in the living room and focuses the image on his friends who are not affected in the least by their positions. After all, everyone already knows that they are a couple and that they live together.

“Hello, I’m Y/N Y/L! And yes, that sexy, beautiful, adorable and talented man is my boyfriend, Charlie Gillespie.” He blushes as the memory of their first night back as a couple invades the mind of the Canadian, who had his girlfriend in exactly this position when she was, as she said, 'practicing' her introduction. Sadly, this time it will not end like that night because his best friend and about 500,000 people are watching.

“Welcome to my first edition of the Couple tag everyone! Here's my first guest couple, I know it’s not much, but I promise to find someone worthwhile next time, this is just for practice." Charlie laughs but looks nervous. Instead, his girlfriend sits down and rolls her eyes.

"I can't believe you chose him over a puppy or a hamster." The girl says to her boyfriend while laughing at her friend's offended reaction.

“I'm going to write that down in my long enemies list, but for now I have a live to lead. Okay guys, so basically I will ask them questions and I will also choose who answers them because I’m the only one hot enough to call the shots here."

She laughs and sticks out her tongue. Charlie sits down too and she takes his hand to fiddle with it. She keeps arguing for a few minutes with Owen but shows no signs of not wanting to play the game so he starts before she regrets it.

“Okay, first one is for Charlie. How did you guys met? This is actually a good one because a lot of the fans think you met on set and are like this really intense couple who started to date the very first week without even knowing each other’s last names.”

They both start laughing at the comment. The truth is that they have seen multiple posts and comments online from people judging their relationship and how fast they were going, especially when they did that last interview together and Y/N said that Charlie was taking his sweet time to ask for marriage, since for the fans they only have one year and months of knowing each other.

“We have known each other since forever. Our moms were best friends and we were born only a few weeks apart so we've always been together. We grew up as best friends and were dating before Y/N moved to New York to play Daniela on Stardust." Charlie tries to shake off the memory of the last tearful kiss before Y/N got on the plane. Hopefully he’ll never have to part from her for so long again. Sometimes he can't even understand how he managed to get through those 5 years.

"So no, we don't know each other for just one year, but 22." She adds, kissing his nose.

"Y/N, honey. I didn't ask you, don't be rude and wait for your turn." Owen says teasingly, the girl laughs and throws a pillow at him.

“Okay, rude again. Y/N, What is the first thing that he ever gave you?”

“Oh my, this beautiful valentines card! We were like eight I think. The paper is red, and it is filled with gold and silver glitter stars. Inside is a big star that has written in the middle, “My bright star, happy valentine’s day. I love you. And a lot of doodles of my favorite things, like my guitar, a microphone, chocolate, and a little Charlie. Just adorable, I still have it and to date it is one of my favorite gifts.”

The emotion with which she responds makes Charlie's heart melt. That was the first time he called her bright star, and he kept saying it to her during every audition, every performance, every practice. The exact reason not even she knows, but maybe one of these days he'll tell her.

“Rude and a liar. The 22-year-old Charlie's handwriting is horrible, the 8-year-old Charlie handwriting could only be close to a squiggle, nothing more. Oh, and probably only you had the ability to read it. I very much doubt that was beautiful."

She opens her mouth in surprise and wrinkles her nose, feigning annoyance. “I liked you more when you had a crush on me. You were nicer.”

Owen's eyes widen and he turns to see Charlie looking for help but he just starts laughing. “Wh- What are you talking about, mean girl?”

“Oh c’mon, you totally did, Ohio.” She smiles at the camara while showing a superiority face.

“Really? I already told you a thousand times, I'm from Oklahoma. But hey, how funny, forget about Stardust and audition for Funny Girl!”

“Jokes on you, I would nail Fanny Brice.”

“Man, defend my honor!”

“Bro, I can’t. You totally did, I even got worried for a second there.” It is incredible to think about how their friendship has grown and matured over time. They went from Owen fangirling every time he saw her to being really good friends. All these fights are more of a show than anything else, the truth is that when nobody is recording they tend to be very cool around each other and the three of them have quite a pleasant dynamic now that they are living together for the show.

“I won, Idaho. Now, please continue.”

“Well, my friends embarrassed me on my own live. I can already imagine the headlines tomorrow. Anyways, Charlie, Would you let yourself in danger to save her?”

Charlie starts laughing as he drops his head on the girl's shoulder. "I think she's not going to let me lie, I always have and will continue to do so. For me it's always her safety first."

"Which has given me more than a scare but he's so freakin stubborn." She adds while looking stressed and Owen can't help but imagine all the situations Charlie must have put himself in before.

“I prefer you scared than in danger, beautiful.” He grins and kiss her lips, her facial expresions relaxing at his touch.

“Gross. Y/N, do you prefer a small wedding or a big wedding?” She can feel Charlie tense at the question, so she leans her body back to support it against him and give him a lowkey reassurance.

“I hadn't really thought about it, but I know that my almost mother-in-law has been planning it all her life so you should check with her.”

His mom. Y/N is right, as always. His mom is their biggest shipper and the wedding is probably something she’ll want to be an importart part of, maybe way more than with his brothers since she adores the girl as much as her own kids, and the fact that his girlfriend is even more aware of that fact than him makes him smile.

“Do you love it when someone refers you as ‘her boyfriend’?”

“Always. Especially if it's her. She has that little knack of saying it whenever she can and it’s the most adorable thing in the world.”

“Oh I thought she was just showing it off to me because she was intimidated by our chemistry. I don't feel so special anymore.” Charlie chuckles and sends a secret air kiss to his friend, who just smirks and fakes to blush.

“How would you handle it if you thought another man was hitting on her?” Owen asks the guitarist raising an eyebrow.

“She usually takes care of that situations, her method is to take me by the shirt and kiss me hard on the lips. I’m never going to complain about that.” Charlie says smirking and blushing.

“We are a celebrity couple, for better or for worse. I’m not having him in a fight when I can just kiss that beautiful lips and solve the problem.” Charlie smiles as he wraps his girlfriend in his arms, so she can't see his face with the next question.

“What do you dream of your marriage? Mmm, let’s go with Y/N.”

“Anything will be perfect if I spend it with the man of my life. My Char is my everything and my biggest dream is to live my whole life laughing by his side.” Owen pretends to vomit as Charlie fills her with kisses under the ear, clearly moved by her answer.

“Let’s get to someting less cheesy because I really can’t with you both anymore. Has anyone ever tried to break your relationship?”

Charlie rolls his eyes and thinks for a moment. “Yes. We were like seventeen, and this guy from hockey had this big crush on her, so he tried to flirt with her many times even though everyone knew she was my girlfriend, until one day that he made her too uncomfortable and things escalated between him and me. Luckily my brothers intervened before something else happened because he was much bigger than me. I would have totally lost.” He chuckles while his girlfriend turns to see his face and gives him another sweet kiss on the corner of his lips.

“Yes guys, they are this annoying all the time. How do I survive? A lot of yoga. Next question, If three guys are standing, and you have been blindfolded, then how would you recognize him? Guys we actually did this like three days ago on set.”

“It was awesome! We put my bandana on her eyes and since it had my smell she couldn't be guided by that to choose.” Charlie explains excited.

“We got the three of us, first Jeremy then Charlie and then me in front of her, then she began to lightly touch Jer's hand. Then she went to Charlie's, it didn't take her a minute to recognize him and she took him from the hair and draw him to her lips, it was actually a pretty smooth and risky move, I’ll give you a point for that, prodigy brat.”

“Char's body inadvertently reacts to mine. It was pretty easy to tell the difference, especially after touching Jeremy's hand.” She turns her head to give Charlie a soft kiss on the lips and then Owen starts laughing like crazy and telling her to come see a specific comment.

She gets up and goes to sit next to him, Owen changes the camera so that now they are the ones in the image and she begins to read aloud. “Charlie I could give you my... Oh my god!” Owen continues laughing, resting his head on his friend who simply watches the screen in shock.

“Thank god Charlie doesn’t know how to read.” Owen, who was just recovering from his giggling fit, laughs again as Charlie giggles and sticks his tongue out at his girlfriend.

"Who needs to read when you look this hot with sleeveless shirts." He jokes while winking at his partner, which seems to melt in front of the camera that is still pointing directly at her.

“The man has a point. Okay, Y/N move your ass back there I’m still in charge of this show. Would you prefer a silver or gold ring?”

She makes sure to move off the screen and sticks her middlefinger at Owen before heading back to her place with her boyfriend. “Good and really random question.” She smirks, not making contact with her boyfriend. “I don't have a preference, but I would love Char to design it. Obviously with the correct guidance, but yeah he choosing every detail and then explaining to me why he choose it would be the dream.”

Charlie smiles. He was already imagining something like this after so many years of gifting and has already been visiting the jewelry store several times to make sure he designed the perfect ring for his girl, a slight feeling of pride filling him.

“Which series does she thinks resembles your relationship?”

“She loves Boy Meets World and see a lot of us in Cory and Topanga. I can totally see it too, after all they too have known each other their whole lives and have a bond as strong as ours.”

“Well that explains why she’s always telling me ‘Life is though, get a helmet’ instead of actually help me.” She grins at the memory of Charlie’s last prank on Owen a couple of days ago, it was really good since she secretly helped him plan it.

“Man, It wasn’t personal. I do the same with Char. I’m not going to be known for being the one ruining prank war. Take it to the end of the road, if you need me to take you idiots out of jail I totally will... eventually.”

“My girl, everyone. Isn’t she awesome?” He watches her adoringly and she blushes in response, buring her head on his neck.

“She always has this enormous energy and personality but all it takes is for you to see her for her to melt, that’s... kind of cute actually. Okay next question Stardust, What about If Charlie tells you to marry him tomorrow?”

For the thousandth time that night Y/N can feel Charlie stressing out. The fact that he planned together with Owen and Kenny all of this just to make sure he was on the same page with her is the most adorable thing in the world.

“I’m pretty sure he knows I would always say yes. He could have gotten on a plane when we were 18 and told me ‘I don't want to be without you, let's get married.’ And I would have said yes. He’s my person, I have nothing to think about, I have always known it’s him."

Now it's Charlie's turn to melt, and Owen himself can't help but smile.

Charlie's confidence in what he has planned is higher than ever, and the day when he can finally make it official is near. He has been dreaming of this day with his Y/N for years and he will finally get it.

“Well guys, that was it, give it up to my favorite couple of dumbasses and please stop asking obvious questions. Will I be Y/N’s maid of honor? Of course I will. Oh, and tune in next week to see me becoming Kenny’s new favorite after I challenge Y/N in a dance duel with I got the music. Golden star is GOING DOWN."

Thank you for reading✨

NEXT PART HERE

Taglist: @writerinlearning, @ghostofmgg @strangerthanfanfiction713, @thebloodthirstyvampress @kinda-really-lost, @kcd15, @magnet-girl, @aliandthephantoms, @stxrkspidey, @pinkrockstar19, @s0uz4s, @shycupcakealissa @cookiebuba, @fangirlangioma, @sageellsworth05, @twist3dtinkerbell, @sunsetcurvenotsunsetswerve, @caitsymichelle13 , @ifilwtmfc, @luckylouiebug, @bibliophilewednesday, @totomoshi, @siennanoelle01, @lunashadow6955, @bookfrog247, @morganayennefertyrell, @kiss-themoongoodbye, @rachelle3musicals, @imsydneywalker, @really-dont-forget-it @agentstarkid @talksoprettyjjx @kaitieskidmore1 @lukeys-giggle @katie-navarro @crybabyddl @cocopuffs0211 @marvel-ousnesss @blackhood5sos @dpaccione @tuttigunner

[jincherie]

fox rain | five

• ☽ — pairing: bts x reader • ☽ — genre: crack, fluff, angst, college/uni au • ☽ — words: 9.9k+ • ☽ — rating: sfw • ☽ — warnings: stop two on the angst train express!!! not as blatant, more reading between the lines here...... have fun! • ☽ — notes: bros... it’s only downhill from here. cowa-fucking-BUNGA amirite cowboys???????!?!?

— posted; 18.09.2020

When the love letter you wrote and submitted as an assignment is leaked to the entirety of your university, it becomes a race against time to dispel rumours and convince the seven suspected muses of the poem that they aren’t the subject before anyone realises that you are the author. Easy, right? Well… maybe not as easy as you think.

— • masterpost | prev. | five | next • —

You lay in a sort of placid, bewildered shock, the kind that is sourced from confusion as opposed to an unpleasant surprise. After waking to blearily turn off your alarm before it blasted through the entirety of Dancing Lasha Tumbai, you’d unlocked your phone to find this curious set of messages from a number you haven’t saved. You’ve been lying in place for several minutes as your tired, wired brain slowly kicks into gear and attempts to debunk the mystery. After another unsuccessful few minutes of staring blankly at the screen, you’re saved from impending cranial combustion when your phone lets out a delightful little tinkle and another message hastily joins the others.  

Ah, that makes so much sense now! Except it doesn’t. Actually, it kind of adds to your bewilderment. Taehyung… is texting you? You don’t think you’ve ever in your life had any correspondence with him that didn’t either take place in the presence of Jimin or under the influence of alcohol… also in the presence of Jimin, now that you think of it. You haven’t really interacted with Taehyung outside of Jimin. So it is particularly odd to wake up to a series of messages that are from him, and pertaining to such an odd topic. You’re still so tired you can’t even fathom what would warrant a text from him. Maybe you dropped something at one of your tutoring sessions and Jimin asked him to give it back to you? It would make sense, since after the rollercoaster of a ride the last week has been for him (in particular, the questionable events that took place at the hands of one Kim Seokjin but somehow ended up with Jimin and Hoseok making up? You don’t really understand it but you’re not even going to bother to try to at this point) he has ended up a little preoccupied.

Tapping the screen when your inactivity leads it to go dark, you take a moment to scrounge a response from the empty barrel bottom that is your brain. Once satisfied, you drop your phone onto your bed and flop yourself back to the position you’d been in before your own alarm woke you so rudely. Technically, you don’t have to be up and about for another hour…

With faith that your additional hour of sleep will revive your ability to think, you allow yourself to slip somewhat self-indulgently back into sleep and pass the fuck out like a woman who has spent the night trying to forget.

(Which you are, and did do, except with maybe a little less alcohol than what that sentence implied.)

X     X     X     X

 It has been almost a week since the unfortunate end to that tutoring session on Monday, and while you’ve managed to stay off social media enough that you haven’t triggered yourself by accident in the entirety of that duration, every time you come on campus it’s like for however many steps forward you took, you take double the amount backwards. University students are such gossips! Well, the jobless ones are, anyway. The students that work and study are too busy dragging themselves around campus in a stunning rendition of the undead from various media to be bothered with the latest plot twist in the resident school drama. Which is to say, there has been no twist. The population is still shamelessly up Sera’s ass in the belief that she is the author of the poem, and as has become the norm you find yourself resisting the urge to hunt the bitch down and go in for round two on her face. Surely, your self-control has earnt you the title of a saint by now.

You’re blasting some angsty shit on the way to your music history class and pretending you’re in a music video for some indie band (it’s cathartic, and you will argue that fact to your grave), when you make it a few steps past the entrance to the food court and have the absolute living daylights scared out of you. Thudding footsteps reach you through your earphones and two hands clamp on your shoulders to halt you in place and spin you around like Barbie Ballerina.

“You’re a disgrace!” It’s Seokjin who has halted you in the middle of the hallway, every bit as dramatic as you’d come to expect. “You skipped drama class? And you call yourself an acting major, PSH!”

Yanking your earphones out, you nail the tall, pink-haired idiot with a glare. Very bold of him to be approaching you after you nearly chopped off Lil’ Jinnie barely a few days ago for his bastardous antics. Perhaps he’s getting a bit big for his glittery pink rainboots.

“First of all, will you please listen to me when I tell you I’m not an acting major?” Unfortunately, when you speak your voice comes out more exasperated and less threatening than you intended. “Second of all—very bold of you to be approaching me right now. You’re lucky you escaped with your life, you meddling bastard. You want me to bite the rest of your dick off?”

“You should know by now that I take that as a compliment,” Seokjin sniffs, haughtily, ignoring the latter part of your threat. “And do you know how boring it is for me to crash your class when you’re not even there? No one threatens me like you! It’s getting harder and harder to get it up these days, you know. I need a hit of the good stuff.”

For a moment you’re simply stunned into silence, staring at him and wondering just how and why he seems to have been sent here with the sole mission of making you want to kill him and then yourself. Nothing you could think to say really is enough, so you settle on simply turning and walking away.

Of course, you forgot that no one turns their back on Kim Seokjin and gets away with it.

“YAH!”

You wince—you think he actually just broke a sound barrier, or maybe your eardrums— or both. Seokjin quickly scrambles to place himself in front of you, arms out. His eyes are wide in something you suspect he thinks is a puppy-eyed look, but actually comes across more like he’s trying not to shit himself.

“Promise me you won’t skip drama again!” Seokjin says, pointing a finger at you in borderline accusation. When he doesn’t see your expression budge, he quickly changes tactics. “If not for me, the most charming prince in the story of your life, then at least for Jungkook, that poor virgin—”

You blink, distracted for a moment by what he said. “Wait, Jungkook is in my drama class?”

“’Wait, Jungkook is in my drama class?’” Seokjin repeats in a voice a few octaves higher than your own. “Listen to you, not even knowing who is in your own class. For shame! But have no fear, since you clearly skip so much I will happily extend my generosity and take you under my wing. Tutelage fee starts at $55 with an extra $5 for every question you ask that I don’t know—”

“Do you ever actually hear yourself talk?” you ask, feeling your will to live draining out your ears. “Like, the shit that comes out of your mouth? Do you hear it? Because—wait, are you saying you would charge me for questions that you don’t know the answer to?!”

Seokjin shrugs, “It’s a little unorthodox, I know. But—”

“I would literally be bankrupt! Thousands—no, millions of dollars in debt!” You exclaim, grabbing him by his stupid big shoulders and shaking him about. “Do I look crazy to you?!”

“Oh, what, you think you can do better?!” Seokjin demands, voice wobbling from your shaking. “What’s 2x2?”

“Fucking four!” you wail, releasing him in your despair. You can’t do this, your day only just started and you are not exhausted enough to micronap while he talks like usual. “I’m leaving, don’t follow me. DELETE MY NUMBER.”

“Haha jokes on you!” you hear Seokjin holler from behind you, voice rapidly growing quieter from the speed that you’re powerwalking away. “You never gave me your number!”

You make it to class barely on time due to Seokjin acting as one of the biggest inconveniences in your life, and while you manage to push him from your brain for the duration of it, you wish you could say that is the last time you see him,

It’s probably the fact that you busted his ass being a weirdo with Jimin and Hoseok last week that has him so…. attached this week, you suspect. You’re at your third Seokjin encounter for the day and you’re honestly considering whether you should trip to the campus pharmacy and look for some pepper spray, or maybe an umbrella. Pepper spray would be more effective, but the umbrella…. You can’t argue against the satisfaction it would provide.

You’re trying to sneak your way into a library on the Arts side of campus, one you don’t usually go to, so you can study without worrying about going absolutely batshit insane in the presence of Seokjin. It was hard, but you think that you’ve finally managed to shake him. What on earth had him so determined to tail you today? Was it seriously because you skipped your own class? Nutcase.

You peek your head around the corner looking not only for Seokjin, but for another thing you had happened to notice every time you were ambushed. You have yet to determine whether the glimpse of phenomenally bright floral print right before Seokjin pounces you is causation or correlation, and it makes you a bit nervous. Cautiously, like timid forest animal, you creep around the corner and begin to make your way into the building, eyes flicking from the library door right at the end to the rest of your surroundings. The café coming up on your right tempts you greatly, but you know it is too great of a risk. Out in the open, you’d definitely be seen.

This area is almost like a courtyard, an undercover area between three separate buildings. With a looming cement and glass ceiling, though, it feels like a building of its own. The library sits nestled in the corner of the largest building, and although it isn’t very wide, it spans several floors. You plan on going to the highest one and hiding in a corner near a window.

You’re close, so close to reaching the library in fact that you’ve fallen into a false sense of security. By the time you register the sound of pounding footsteps approaching behind you, for the second time today, it’s too late.

“Ah, y/n! Wait!”

Instinctively you prepare to burst into a sprint to get away, but at the last second stop yourself. That doesn’t sound like Seokjin… that sounds like—

“Taehyung?” you ask, turning in surprise as the boy comes to a screeching halt in front of you, bending with his hands on his knees as he attempts to catch his breath.

“I’ve… been trying….” he huffs, “To talk to you…. all day….. hah…Why are you so….. good at running away?”

He looks absolutely wiped out, cheeks red and sweat beginning to bead on his forehead. You’re just beginning to feel guilty when you notice his shirt, the bright floral print that you literally don’t know anyone else bold enough to wear, and you realise he’s really not lying. Poor Taehyung, just like you he has fallen victim to—

“That Seokjin bastard,” you say, completing a quick scan of the area to make sure the mention of his name didn’t somehow summon him. “He’s been harassing me all day. I’ve had to really up my game. By the way… are you okay? Please breathe… also what did you want to talk to me about?”

Taehyung straightens, eyes closed as he attempts to control his breathing. One of his hands comes to sweep the ashy hair from his face, the ends slightly damp with sweat.

“I’m fine,” he says, sounding slightly like he’s about to pass out. You prepare to take a step forward and catch him if he does, but he opens his eyes in the next second and shoots you a dopey smile. “I’m fine! Apparently just… whoo… really out of shape.”

“Your sacrifice is not in vain,” you say, smiling when he lets out a sudden laugh. Another shaky breath rakes past his lips before he straightens, eyes blinking a little wider. “Ah, right. I was looking for you because, um… you didn’t respond to my text… and I needed to ask you something that’s a little time-sensitive…”

“Your text…” you wrack your brain, sure that you remembered responding to it this morning in bed. Your mouth shifts into a wince, though, when you can recall writing a response, but not actually sending it. “Oh. I am so sorry, I’m an idiot. I was kind of half asleep when you texted, and I swear to god I typed a response but I think I fell asleep again before sending it…”

There is not a shred of accusation on Taehyung’s pleasant features, lips instead slightly curled in a smile. “That’s fine,” he chirps, rocking on the balls of his feet for a moment. “I do it all the time too. I’m just glad I caught you.”

You return his smile, before a thought that had been nagging you earlier returned and you acted on the urge to voice it. “By the way…. How did you get my number?”

Your question seems to be unexpected and, for some reason, flusters him slightly. He reaches to scratch the back of his neck, averting his gaze for a moment. “Uh, Jimin gave it to me. It was for something stupid a while ago but I never needed to use it.”

You raise your brows at what he said, but get the feeling he’s not going to elaborate. Instead, you remain quiet and wait for him to continue his thought from earlier. He shuffles on his feet, returning his gaze to your own. “Anyway, the reason I was trying to catch you all day was because I wanted to ask you something…”

“I know it’s not really any of my business, but I kind of noticed, and Jimin mentioned lightly that things haven’t been, uh…. great for you lately.” He doesn’t even give you time for that statement to sink in amongst your shock, continuing without pause despite the way his cheeks begin to flush, “And, uh, my exhibition is this Friday, and I was gonna go with Jimin but he double-booked himself with Hobi, so now I have no plus-one and I was wondering… if you wanted to go?”

When you simply stand there, dumbfounded, he clears his throat awkwardly, fiddling with the cuffs of his button-down. “To um, you know, take your mind off things… maybe… you don’t have to, of course, but I just thought I would—”

Snapping out of your stupor before he can take back the invitation, you hastily step forward and outstretch your hands. “Oh, no I would love to go! This is really—” you clear your throat, trying to ignore the light sting of your eyes “—sweet of you. I’d like to go, if it’s ok. You’re sure Jimin doesn’t mind…?”

Taehyung seems shocked, and you suspect he might have thought you would turn down the invitation from the way his eyes seem to light up. Have you really been walking around campus looking like that much of a gloomy bitch? You need to check your facial expressions when you get home this afternoon.

“He won’t mind,” he says, waving his hand excitedly. “Great, perfect—um, here is the little info sheet. I’d stay to tell you more but my class actually started a few minutes ago, so…”

“Oh!” you exclaim, taking the sheet from his hand before waving him away. “Go! Go to class! I’m sorry I made you late! Thank you for this, by the way!”

He seems slightly dazed at your enthusiastic thanks and farewell, but he shakes himself out of it and before he goes he sends you a smile that you can’t think of any other way to describe except dazzling. “It’s no problem, y/n. See you then.”

And then he’s off and you’re left standing alone in the pseudo-courtyard, clutching the exhibition pamphlet in your grip. Your eyes sting ever so slightly, and you can’t help but think how kind of sad it is that one person goes out of their way to think of you in the midst of everything you’re dealing with and you’re so touched you’re nearly driven to tears.

Hormones suck and you want a refund.

 X     X     X     X

 Taehyung was right when he said that what he had to ask you was time-sensitive. 

You hadn’t realised it at the time, but Friday was only a few days away— and in the midst of classes, schoolwork, and everything else, those days went fast.  Before you know it, it’s Friday morning and a panicked glance at the pamphlet Taehyung had given you reveals that the exhibition opens officially around 4:30PM. That works out surprisingly well for you, considering your last class ends at three o’clock and you can easily reschedule your session with Hoseok and Jimin. 

There’s a lot about the invitation you haven’t gotten to really dwell on, and that continues to be the case as the day flies before your very eyes. By the time your music theory class comes to an end and you finish scribbling down the last few lines of note from your teacher, the event is even closer than you anticipated. From your recent examination of the pamphlet, you’d found earlier that Taehyung’s exhibition is being held at a small university-sponsored gallery downtown. It shouldn’t take you too long to get there from your house, and on the way home after packing your things, you plot out the route you’re going to take. It’s about a twenty minute trip, as you discover, since there is by some stroke of luck a bus that goes straight there from a street just around the corner from your own. Taking that into account, you should have around forty minutes or so to get ready. 

Considering you’re one of many poor university students populating the area, it’s not often you actually put the effort in to get dressed up. Around these parts, there is a distinct culture of sweat pants and comfortable tops and more often than not a socks-and-slides combo, something you take part in more often than you’d like to admit. Still, you feel that considering the nature of the event you’ve been invited to and what you know of Taehyung’s works, you should probably be putting in much more effort than usual. 

While you might act like a slob sometimes, this isn’t actually a problem— even goblins like you can have a stash of decent clothes somewhere in their cave. Yours happen to be pushed to the back of your closet on hangers that haven’t seen the light of day in months. What can you say? University takes its toll in mysterious ways. 

Standing before your closet, eyes boring into the portion that’s been held in its depths for longer than you can remember, you wonder which way you should go with your outfit. Exhibitions are fancy right? Should you dress it up? Logic says you should, but on the other hand what if you are the only one dressed up? That would be humiliating. You pause for a moment to think about the type of garb you usually see Taehyung in— you have a feeling that he will probably dress the same way tonight. Recalling his bold, avante-garde taste in fashion is about as helpful as one might imagine, but it does comfort you to know that no matter what you choose, most eyes will likely be on him anyway. 

Comforted by that fact, you make up your mind and pull out a set that isn’t too over the top, and won’t make you look like a rat. Once you’ve slipped into those, you freshen up and wash your face, trying to make yourself seem a little bit more alive afterwards and not like you had an 8AM class today. You’re successful, to a degree, but you’re a little tight on time so you can’t really dwell on it. Feeling your stomach rumble as you grab your bag and key, you can only hope that this exhibition has free food.

x — x — x

“Ah, y/n! You’re here! You… you look nice.”

You were so busy staring at the large, shiny building before you that when Taehyung’s voice rings out in greeting, it startles the hell out of you. You don’t even register what he says before you’re pointing with eyes and mouth wide open, “Your exhibition is in there?!”

His expression of surprise melts into one of amusement, a laugh tumbling from deep in his throat. You don’t even notice the way his cheeks are flushed ever so slightly as he meets your gaze.

“Fancy, right?” he says, wagging his brows. “Some loaded alumnus who actually enjoyed his university experience practically donated it to them. So now they use it for, uh… for most exhibitions.”

“For the best ones, you mean,” you say, your grin widening when he scratches the back of his neck, bashful and blushing. “But yeah, damn. I was expecting it to be nice but I wasn’t expecting it to be this nice.”

Taehyung laughed again, clearing his throat. As he takes a moment to collect himself, you let your eyes scan over his form. The second you do so, you feel a foreign flutter in your stomach, heat flushing to your face. There is truly no other way to describe his choice of outfit for today except for painfully boyfriend. Perhaps on anyone else it would look a little less than presentable, but on Taehyung’s model-esque form the loose chestnut pants and an oversized leather jacket over a boldly patterned shirt work wonders. How does he look so effortless yet so…?

If you’d attempted to wear something like that you’d end up looking like the local court jester. Perhaps you should just make peace with the fact that God has favourites and Kim Taehyung is clearly one of them. 

“It, um. It started a few minutes ago, shall we head in?”

Taehyung offers you his arm, a gentlemanly move that completely contrasts the boyish grin on his face. Ignoring the sudden sensations in your abdomen, you make a show of curtsey-ing before you take it, eliciting a laugh from your company as the two of you head to the entrance and the full exhibition experience begins. 

As soon as you enter there is someone by the door, who seems to be at the very least taking note of how many people enter, a table with flyers and booklets beside him. Taehyung parts from you only to move over and grab a few, brandishing them as he returns with a bright grin.

“Here is all the information about the event, madame,” he says, with an extremely exaggerated air of grandeur, presenting one of the flyers with a flourish. You take it, unable to help your soft snort.

“I would have thought I had something better, what with the very artist behind the event accompanying me,” you say, grinning when you see his cheeks turn an endearing pink as he flashes a bright, boxy smile. 

“True,” he returns, folding the other flyer and slipping it into the pocket of his jacket. “You can’t ask a flyer questions in real time. Anything that crosses your mind, you can ask straight to the source.”

“Oh? Then, may I enquire as to what the theme of this exhibition is?” You’re enjoying the playful air that drifts between you now, unable to rid your face of the smile currently displayed on it even if you wanted to.

Taehyung’s eyes flick to you, a lopsided smile tugging his lips to accompany the sly accent to his gaze. “Ah, a tough one right off the bat. I think telling you straight-up would be too easy. Let’s see if you can try to guess it as we walk through.”

You turn to him with an affronted look, having expected him to easily supply you with the answer. Taehyung is a little cheekier than you remember. You snap your mouth shut, cheeks heating when you notice he has offered his arm to you once more. Taking note of the other people in the room walking around in a similar manner, you slip your arm through his and try to ignore the way you feel your ears light on fire.

“Okay, you’re on,” you respond, if a few moments too late. He doesn’t comment on the delay, simply sending you a smile that you can’t quite decipher the emotion behind. You don’t get to dwell before the two of you are off, beginning on your journey through the building and starting on your tour of the exhibition. 

You’d kind of always known that Taehyung was talented, considering he managed to make such a name for himself on campus in such little time with such ease. Hell, he’s well-known enough to have made it onto the list of suspects for the muse of your poem. Still, this knowledge is only compounded the further into the building you go and the more of the exhibition you see. Taehyung is truly talented, the images blown up and displayed on the wall each capturing a certain emotion that you don’t have a name for, yet is so familiar that each time you see a new one it gives you pause. Viewing his works, seeing into this part of him and witnessing this bit of his soul he has bared, you can’t help but feel a slight sense of kinship. 

It’s something that rests in the space between your lungs and diaphragm, something that tickles but also something that aches. You do know this feeling, so familiar yet so out of touch and far from the tip of your mind’s tongue. You do try to guess the theme of the exhibition as you go, throwing out the occasional dumb guess to elicit a laugh— he always laughs, and it always makes you smile— but you don’t quite manage to pin it. 

“The five senses,” you shoot into the dark, standing before an image that has made you stop and stare for a good five minutes now. It’s not quite black and white, and it’s not a particularly unique image— but something about the composition, something about the movement in the two hands that are so close yet so far from actually touching, speaks to that hidden part of you. The way one of the hands simply hangs, unbothered and neutral, but the other, the one slightly closer to the foreground, has fingers ever so slightly outstretched, reaching but never quite committing to the movement and the unspoken consequence of the hinted action. 

Of course, you know the answer even before Taehyung says it. He laughs, hands in his pockets, “Nope, ddaeng.”

“This is hard,” you whine, without much heart behind it. The smile stays on Taehyung’s face.

“Whatever. You’re smart, I know you can guess it. It should be easy, for you.”

The compliment catches you off guard, and you have to turn away so that he doesn’t see your cheeks warm. The two of you had parted when you caught sight of the snacks table; you’d been prepared to abandon him and make a beeline over, but Taehyung had surprised you by marching over himself and coming back with a loaded plate. He’d confessed with a sheepish smile that he hadn’t had lunch, and really you were in no place to judge since you hadn’t either. By this point in your journey, though, the plate is almost empty. There’s only two tiny cupcakes left and you’re letting the rest of the things you scarfed down settle before you go in for more. 

Perhaps it was a little dangerous, coming here with Taehyung. He looks so fine, even while shoving sweets in his mouth, that you spend about the same amount of time looking at him as you do at his artworks. It takes all of your willpower to tear your eyes away every time you catch yourself looking at him and admiring the truly boyfriend fit he has donned for this occasion. Every so often he will simply stand before one of his works, scrutinising it with a fresh perspective and ever-criticising eyes, and the sight of it will make something nameless and foreign well within you. You don’t quite know what to do with it, so you ignore it. Or at least, you try to. 

It feels a little too similar to what you know of yearning. It leaves you confused.

You stop not long after in front of another piece, this time a combination of three images that act as separate snapshots of smaller parts of a larger image. You admire the way he has set it out, revealing not too much but just enough that the viewer gets a sense, a feeling, but isn’t confronted with the message. It allows everyone to take their own sensation from it. You like that a lot about his works— he doesn’t tell people what to feel as they view his images, but merely hints, prompts and nudges. He sets the stage and allows people to take what they need, see whichever bits draw their eye most and spell meaning from elements of their choosing. He’s talented, you find yourself marveling again, so incredibly talented.

But still, you can’t put a finger on what the theme is.

By the time you make your way completely though the exhibition, having doubled back at a few points to look again at a select few of the pictures, you’re still no closer to guessing. It has you deep in your thoughts as you stand outside, waiting for Taehyung to return from thanking one of the guests who had recognised him for coming. 

“Guessed it, yet?”

You turn, pinning him with a look that you hoped didn’t look as dumb as it felt. “Leave it with me,” you say. “I’ll figure it out eventually.”

At your words, Taehyung laughs— it’s one of the full-bodied ones you’ve come to enjoy, where he throws his head back a little and shakes his hair back into place after. You have to snap yourself out of it before he catches you staring. 

“I’m sure,” he says, unable to keep the cheeky grin off his face. It does slip ever so slightly though, just for a moment, as you watch a thought cross his features. “By the way…”

You tilt your head, waiting for him to continue. You feel an odd combination of at-peace, and unsettled. Holistically, this is the most at-peace and relaxed you’ve been in weeks. However, when you take a moment to tune into the inner machinations that make up your being… something in this exhibition has reached into your insides and fiddled around, moving things where they shouldn’t be and touching things that aren’t meant to be touched. It’s odd, and you acknowledge that it gives you quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. Even so, you’re calm enough that you have no trouble being patient while you wait for Taehyung to continue and say what he seems so nervous to say. 

“Um, I know I initially only asked you about coming here, to the exhibition…” he begins, reaching to rub the back of his neck in what you recognise to be one of his nervous ticks. “But, I actually have these vouchers I won in a competition a while ago for a paint-and-sip session that are about to expire, and I was wondering… would you like to go? Now, I mean. Since they actually kind of expire tomorrow. Unless you’re busy, because if you are that’s—”

You decide to put him out of his flustered misery, reaching to nudge his arm. “Of course, that sounds fun! Plus, you were right the other day; I could really do with the chance to relax. Thank you, for all this. I really appreciate it.”

It takes a second for your words to register, but when they do the most blindingly bright smile spreads across his face; he’s practically beaming at you. 

“Of course,” he says, with barely a moment’s hesitation. “I’m really happy you agreed to come— I’m glad you said yes to the paint-and-sip, too, because it’s one of my favourite places. Come on, let’s get going. If we get there at just the right time, we can get a really good seat, hopefully by the window.”

The journey continues, Taehyung leading you through the city while chatting easily all the while, a stunning twilight cityscape backdrop and the gentle glimmering surface of the river meandering through buildings providing the perfect scenery. If you had a little more faith in your artistic ability, you might try and paint the image you see now; Taehyung in the colours of dusk, soft and natural against the bright lights and harsh lines of the metropolitan landscape. But alas, you aren’t as talented as the man besides you, and you don’t even want to think of how it would turn out if you attempted to paint such a thing. You quickly throw the thought from your mind before it can linger and get up to more trouble than it’s worth. 

“Here we are!” Taehyung’s cheer breaks you out of your stupor, bright smile directed your way once more as he stops in front of a large establishment with long strips of window and a colourfully sewn awning. 

‘Brush & Bar’, the cursive, neon sign reads above the door, flickering between soft pink and peach orange. It’s an interesting aesthetic the place has going on, but when you look over and catch sight of Taehyung once more it suddenly makes sense why he likes it so much. The style of this place is very similar to some of the more outlandish things he tends to model around campus. Before your reverie lets you remain abandoned outside, you hurry to follow after the ashy-haired boy, grabbing the back of his jacket when you almost trip over the door frame. He spares a look over his shoulder to make sure you’re okay before he continues, moving towards the counter and smiling with more charm than you can personally handle at the staff member there. 

It’s a woman, who you suspect is in her mid-thirties, and she is pretty enough that it takes you by surprise when she rolls her eyes heavily at Taehyung’s approach. 

“You again, boy?” she asks, though it sounds more rhetorical than anything and you catch the slightest tinge of humour accenting her words and it soothes your hackles. “Don’t you ever get sick of hanging around here?”

“Nope!” 

She cracks a smile, lines appearing at the edges of her eyes. “Well, I suppose that’s a good thing. We’d miss you an awful lot if you ever stopped showing up here.” Her eyes flick ever so slyly to you, and then back. “Say, is today the day you’re finally gonna make good on those vouchers you won? I know you said you were waiting for the right chance to ask that g—”

“Yes!” Taehyung cuts in loudly, eyes wide and cheeks flushing darkly. “Yes, yep! I brought the vouchers! They do expire tomorrow after all!”

The woman, Bora as you now see from her nametag, simply smiles, something sly about the action intriguing you. Taehyung clears his throat, reaching to scratch the back of his neck sheepishly. “So, um… I will use them now. Is the window seat free…?”

Bora nods, a fond curve to her lips now as she rummages around behind the counter and takes the offered vouchers from Taehyung to punch holes in them. “Your favourite spot? Of course. I had a feeling you were coming, too, so I’ve already gone and set it up with some canvases and acrylics.”

She hands the vouchers back, and Taehyung slips them into the pocket of his jacket.  “Paintbrushes and jars are in their usual place, and I know you don’t normally drink while you’re here but if you’d like some tonight just take your order up to Kyungsoo. Oh! And tonight’s special for snacks is tea cakes, so definitely make the most of that. There are some good ones in the display.”

At the mention of food and alcohol, your gaze had already started to wander on its own— you catch sight of the display of cakes and other sweets and feel your mouth water. Ridiculous, since you were kind of full before, but what can you say, you’re a complicated woman. Lots of layers, not unlike an onion. The thought almost makes you snort.

With a gentle nudge to your arm, Taehyung is bringing you back to the present moment and leading you over to the window, where a medium-sized table has been set up with two square canvases and a basket of paint bottles, palettes leaning to the side. Taehyung instructs you to take a seat, informing you with a smile that he’ll grab some paintbrushes and water for the two of you to use. At his suggestion, while he is gone you open up your phone and search for something to paint. Something that’s not too hard and not too easy. Because your skills are… well, they’re not nonexistent but you’re not about to go around tooting your horn in front of someone with actual art skills and talent. Apparently there is usually an image supplied for each night, but Taehyung says it’s not strict and that tonight is one of the nights where all the patrons just have free reign. 

You sort of get distracted part way through the activity, eyes subconsciously seeking Taehyung’s leather jacket amongst the decently filled establishment. It’s really quite nice inside, actually; the walls and general decor are soft and neutral, with pops of colour everywhere that bring each corner and table to life. A lot of the furniture is wooden, natural and polished underneath specks of paint that decorate in layers that tell of time spent well. The lighting is soft with the exception of the bulbs stationed above each table, which are brighter and angled towards where the canvas would be. On one of the walls, the one near the bar, it is completely covered by greenery— vines that, as far as you can tell, aren’t actually fake. A soft, almost jazzy tune filters lightly through the room, complemented by the low hum of chatter and paintbrushes hitting glass. You’re incredibly impressed and, admittedly, you like this place a lot. It has the kind of vibe that just… makes you content. 

“Here we go!” 

You startle at the sound of Taehyung’s low register, looking over to see him placing a bundle of paintbrushes in between the two of you and a jar beside each of your canvases. He takes his seat across from you, smiling brightly. “Did you decide what you want to paint?”

You hum, turning your gaze out the window for a moment to see if it grants you any inspiration— it’s a gorgeous sight, the twilight sky broken by the outline of buildings with glimmering insides, but it doesn’t help much. You don’t know what you want to paint. Of course, there is this big, expanding feeling inside you, the urge to express it somehow filling you to your fingertips, but what do you do with it? You don’t even know its name.

“No,” you answer, reaching for one of the palettes propped up to the side. “But I’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll just see where the vibe takes me.”

The smile Taehyung gives you at that is softer than most, and he eagerly follows suit in grabbing a palette and beginning to set it up; he squirts a big dollop of white, blinking at it for a moment as though he hadn’t intended to put that much. “There are some pencils and erasers to the side there, too. I prefer the moldable one.”

You thank him for his advice, before realising as he puts his own pencil ever so lightly to canvas that he hadn’t told you the subject of his painting. “What are you going to paint?”

“A secret,” he says, leaning around the canvas to grin at you. “Since I don’t know what you’re painting. Let’s swap paintings after, though. I do want to see eventually.”

That makes you laugh, but you don’t bother pushing further. A surprise is nice every now and then, you know. So long as it’s not the kind that ruins your life as you know it indefinitely.

But you’re here to have fun and relax, so you’re not going to get into that. You’re not even going to think about it. 

Taehyung clears his throat, catching your attention immediately. “Right, before we start we should probably order. Did you—”

“No need, my boy!”

Two new figures appear at the side of the table, one a youthful man on the shorter side, the other older and plumper with grey beginning to speckle through his hair. The shorter one places two drinks onto the table, colourful cocktails in a generous glass, and the older laughs before placing down two plates, each with a different kind of cake slice situated neatly in the middle.

“On the house,” the man continues, chuckling at the shocked and somewhat flustered look on Taehyung’s face. “You’ve given us a lot of business so don’t even worry about it. Plus, we heard you were finally making the most of those vouchers so… here’s a little something to start the night off well!”

“...Thanks, Mr Kang,” Taehyung finally manages, shooting them a smile that could honestly give Hoseok’s own a run for its money. “You too, Kyungsoo. Do…. do I wanna know what’s in this?”

He���s gesturing to the drinks, a somewhat fearful look on his face. The shorter man shakes his head, thick brows curved in mirth as his lips twitch into a lopsided smile. “Nope. Tastes good though, so you got nothing to worry about.”

You can’t tell whether Taehyung is relieved or concerned, and so step in to save him a moment of reprieve. “Thank you so much— this all looks amazing!”

Happily, the two men soak in your praise. “I assure you,” Mr Kang says, patting his chest proudly. “It tastes as good as it looks.”

Kyungsoo snorts, but doesn’t disagree. He gives the two of you a small smile. “Right, we should be on our way. You two enjoy yourselves, and if you want refills just come let me know.”

Taehyung nods, thanking them again, and then it’s just the two of you once more.

“Well,” he says, licking his lips and reminding you of a puppy as he stares intently at the slice of strawberry crepe cake, decorated with a generous drizzle of syrup and two fresh, sliced strawberries in a dollop of cream beside it. The other one, a coffee-caramel blend you presume from the heavenly aroma reaching your nose, looks just as good but is nowhere near as successful at capturing his attention. “I guess… let’s begin!”

Whether he meant painting or devouring the food, you end up doing a bit of both. Each mouthful of cake that enters your mouth is announced with an explosion of flavour so rich it lingers long after you’ve swallowed the mouthful down. The drinks, too, are delicious. Fruity but not too syrupy or sugary, you suspect Kyungsoo had used spirits and tempered the fruity flavour with a bit of lemon or lime.

You still aren’t really sold on what to paint, but in the meantime you end up sketching out the flowers that sit on the windowsill a little behind Taehyung. They don’t seem too complicated, and if they end up looking terrible you can just smear the canvas with paint and call it abstract. Of course, part of Taehyung’s shoulder cuts the vase off from view so he’s probably going to end up making an unwitting appearance in whatever mess turns up on your canvas. 

Even though neither of you have any idea what Kyungsoo put into those drinks, you’re sure its something strong. Before long the two of you are already giggly, conversation flowing easily as you put paint to canvas and attempt to make something decent. It’s around the time the two of you are almost finishing your drinks that the conversation takes a delightful turn, which consists of Taehyung telling you about his little fluffball, Yeontan.

“Oh my god,” you say, fingers gripping the paintbrush tight as you try to pet the urge to pet a dog that isn’t even here. “He’s so cute! Look at his grumpy little eyebrows!”

Taehyung laughs, having taken a break from painting to show you his dog like a proud parent. He takes his phone back and slips it into his pocket, paint-flecked hand returning to the brush he’d abandoned. “He’s such a smart dog, but he’s also super dumb. Runs into shit all the time. And there was one time that a friend came over and brought a new camera that he hadn’t seen before—”

Taehyung has to pause recounting the story, he starts giggling so hard. It makes you erupt into laughter as well simply because of how contagious the sound is. “He got so mad, he ran in front of me with his little legs and started barking at it like he was trying to protect me. I love that little dog.”

“I love him too and I haven’t even met him,” you giggle, using your pinky (the only finger you’re sure you haven’t gotten paint on yet) to wipe under your eyes. You don’t think you let a tear slip but you’ve been laughing so much you can’t be sure. 

Taehyung beams at you from around his canvas, brush held midair.  “That’s exactly what Jiminie says.”

That gives you pause. “Wait— Jimin hasn’t seen your dog? But you’ve been friends for ages!”

You catch the photographer smiling as he delivers a few soft strokes to his painting, affection hidden in his tone as he responds, “Yeah, a few years. Since… the last? Second last year of high school? Maybe? It was a wild start to the friendship.”

“Wild?” you echo, intrigued. 

“Yeah. What really kick-started our friendship was this one time I came over while Jimin was really upset about something. I can’t remember exactly how it happened but we ended up at some wack university event nearby. It was boring as hell, and somehow we figured the best way to be entertained would be to commit a mild crime and get away with it.”

Once more, the ashy-haired male has to pause his story to get the giggles out of his system, taking the opportunity to sip a little more of his cocktail. You do the same, not one to pass up much of any drink these days. 

“Long story short, he ended up streaking across the field and earning himself a title at the university as ‘mooncheeks’ or something equally dumb and funny, earnt himself a bit of a nude legacy.”

You pause, the alcohol beginning to slow your mind just enough that it takes a little longer for you to connect the dot between his story and something you’d shoved so deep in the back of your mind years ago that you’d almost forgotten it.

“Wait—” you smack your paintbrush down, eyes wide as an accusing finger is thrown his way. “That was— he ran into me on the way back! Oh my god I almost forgot, that was you two?!”

Taehyung erupts into laughter that is an octave or two shy of being too loud, having to place a hand over his chest to brace himself. He’s nodding wordlessly, eyes pinched shut, and it’s probably the alcohol making your eyes blur but for a moment you could almost swear he’s glowing.

“Yeah,” he finally manages to articulate, wiping a stray tear or two from his eyes, sniffling. “It cheered him up, though, so I think it’s worth the potential trauma.”

That makes you laugh, another sip of your drink going down. A lot of the spirits must have settled at the bottom, because this one had a little warmth as it went down. 

The night goes so easily it’s like a dream, the atmosphere and alcohol in combination with Taehyung’s company making you feel much like you did before this whole shitshow, back when it wasn’t so hard to release the tension in your shoulders or to muster a genuine smile. Taehyung happily gets you a few refills, refusing to let you pull out your card— which is probably for the best because you’re not sure where your wallet is and you’re not coordinated enough to look right now.

You’re on the further side of tipsy, teetering on the edge of pleasantly drunk where nothing makes sense but you’re still somewhat coherent, and everything is funny. Taehyung has almost dipped his paintbrushes in his drink instead of the jar a few times, resulting in a long round of laughter and sore stomachs each time. Eventually, you’d moved his drink to the other side of the canvas and he’d offered you a sheepish smile. 

Surprisingly, your painting doesn’t look too bad, either. Currently it has a bit of a blurry, undefined quality to it, but in your current opinion it kind of works for it. Taehyung’s shoulder did end up making a feature and as the two of you talk you find yourself distractedly painting patterns in the ‘leather’, swirls and hearts and hell, even a few triangles. Eventually, you reach the point where you think that you really can’t do anything more to make the painting better in the time you have, so with a contented sigh you place your brush down and instead turn your attention to Taehyung.

Even as he talks to you and wobbles a little in place, he’s still so incredibly focused in his work, in every detail that meets canvas at the direction of his nimple finngertips, that you don’t think you even see his hand shaking while he paints. Which, your hand was— a lot. It’s the main factor responsible for this one squiggly flower stem in particular you can see in your painting.

As you sit there, happily listening and laughing at each anecdote Taehyung offers you about his life, you find your mind wandering a little bit. Back to the exhibition, and the works and even the way you caught him regarding them. You recognise the critical lens that he viewed them through, because it’s one you adopt yourself for your own creations. Something wells in you, an urge to reassure him in case he ever had any doubts about his own talent; you’re far too many drinks in to be in a place where you can stop yourself.

“Taehyung,” you begin softly but seriously, with minimal slur. He doesn’t stop his motions, but you see him pause for the briefest moment before humming in acknowledgement. “Taehyung, I have to tell you…”

You’re figuring out how to best word your impression of his works and his talent, but you must take longer than you thought because Taehyung lets out a soft huff, giving you a smile that you can’t quite decipher.

“Don’t worry,” he says, flicking the paintbrush back to rest the wooden stem on his knuckles. “I already know I’m not the muse. You don’t have to worry about convincing me.”

For a second, all you’re able to do is blink. Taehyung simply goes back to his painting, expression neutral and his soft hum brushing your ears beneath the soft melody floating from the speakers. You realise quickly that you don’t know what to say to that, and that the full implications of his words haven’t really sunk in yet. He must have noticed that you’d been trying to go around and convince all the suspected subjects that they aren’t the muse of the poem… you feel oddly ashamed, for some reason. Your cheeks feel hot, and not just from the alcohol flush.

“Done!”

Taehyung’s voice breaks you from your reverie, his cheery smile greeting you once more. “All finished?”

You nod, offering a smile of your own and taking the opportunity to say what you wanted to earlier. “Yep. I’m excited to see yours, you’re so incredibly talented, Tae.”

His smile turns shy at that, a bashful laugh tumbling from his lips as he does his best to clean up his area. You do the same, standing up for the first time in a while and having to reach out and stabilise yourself on the table so you don’t fall. The drinks hit you a little harder than you first thought!

“Thank you,” he finally mumbles a few moments later, collecting the brushes. “I’m excited to see yours, too.”

You let out a short laugh at that, knowing that whatever you threw onto that canvas isn’t going to be able to hold a candle to what he made.

Quicker than you can keep track of, the two of you finish tidying and then before you know it you’re saying your goodbyes to the staff and stepping outside. You shiver at the unexpected breeze that greets you, people along the other side of the street huddling together. It’s a windy night and the breeze carries a bit of a bite.

“Oh, right,” Taehyung starts in place, offering his canvas to you. “Careful, it might still be a bit wet…”

Somewhat mindlessly, you swap paintings with him, smiling brightly before your gaze is drawn to the side. By nothing but absolute chance, it passes over the line in front of a bar popular with students at your university, and you almost blink and move on before your eyes halt in familiarity. At the hands of nothing but stupid luck, there is someone you recognise over there. Yoongi stands, face indicating a loud complaint before it even leaves his mouth, and there are a few others around him that he seems to be with who are laughing as they wait in line.

Your head feels so messy, like the wind has managed to get inside your skull and fling everything about like leaves on the autumn breeze. You’re so distracted in the moment that you don’t see it as Taehyung follows the direction of your gaze, and his expression drops. When you jerk out of your reverie, it’s just in time to see his eyes flicking from your painting, to his, and then back to you.

You’re about to peek at his painting and fill the silence with a compliment, but he beats you to it. Something is different about his expression, and not just because he’s no longer under the warm light of the paint bar. The glow you’d noticed so easily earlier seems to have dimmed a bit.

“Did you figure out the theme of the exhibition?”

At his question you startle, gaze flicking to the side as you try and figure it out on instinct on the spot. You’d completely forgotten to think about it, and considering you spent about as much time looking at him as you did his works while at the exhibition, you can safely determine you’re still nowhere closer to the answer. “Ah… no.”

As though drawn like a magnet, your gaze ends up over in the direction of Yoongi for the briefest second. You struggle to tear it away.

“It’s anaxiphilia.”

Even through the inebriation slowing your thoughts, his words reach you immediately. It’s as though your heart has turned to stone and dropped straight through your chest. That unspeakable, unknown emotion wells and bubbles within you, swelling to twice, thrice its size and blocking words before they can even reach your throat. Your eyes are on Taehyung again, but his are still centred where yours had been— had he also noticed Yoongi? You didn’t know they knew each other...

“Oh,” you finally manage, swallowing down that nameless sensation. Taehyung’s gaze slowly slides back to you, dark eyes full of so much… something, you think it would take you years to unpack and familiarise yourself with it all. 

For a second, the two of you stand with your gazes locked, both of you too deep in your own thoughts to do anything about it. Taehyung is the one that breaks the spell. 

“Well, it’s getting late, I shouldn’t keep you out any longer… There is a bus stop here, and tons of ubers in the area…” His eyes flick away as he talks but return as he murmurs this last bit, “Thank you for coming today. I hope you had fun.”

“Of course I did,” you rush, finally finding your voice amongst the shambles in your head. “Thank you for inviting me, Tae. I really… I really needed this. Thank you.”

He nods, smiling at you, but you notice it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Please get home safe,” he says, and you nod immediately, making his gaze soften. “See you later.”

“Bye! Thank you again!” you wave, Taehyung turning quick and already a decent way down the street after his farewell. He offers a wave over his shoulder and you catch it just in time before you turn back, gaze unconsciously seeking out the familiar figure across the road. Distantly, you observe that Yoongi is no longer in line for the bar and has switched to the bubble tea place a few stores down.

Taehyung’s exhibition and it’s theme swim through your mind, a sudden impulse welling within you in response that spurs your legs into a motion. You’re about to go across the road in a sudden spurt of something like bravery, but for some indecipherable reason, you stop before you can get more than a few feet. You turn your head, gaze thrown over your shoulder, eyes seeking without an explicit goal in mind.

You catch sight of him just before he rounds the corner and disappears from view— even from the back Taehyung presents a handsome figure, but in the split-second you manage to view him, the most notable things about his retreating form is the slumped curve of his shoulders and the lowered angle of his head. He’s gone before you can blink leaving you for good this time with nothing but your messy head and the one thought that swims to the surface that says after seeing him glow in happiness for the better part of the evening, sadness doesn’t suit him much at all. 

Clutching the painting, your turn back to the front and try and focus on the present for just a minute or two, like whether you’re going to catch a bus or uber it home, but each time you start a new thought it always brings you back to the odd mix of guilt swirling deep in your gut. There’s something else there, the familiar hollow pit of yearning, but for once… you can’t quite tell who it’s for. 

a/n: thank u so much for reading! i really hope it was worth the wait and that you look forward the future parts as fox rain begins to slowly draw to a close!! pls let us know u liked it w a like and rb and screaming in our inboxes is always ALWAYS welcome!! thank u !! love u !! <3

[jojoboisimagines]

Josuke x Reader :: Promposal :: Ch. 5

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summary: A strange new transfer student has enrolled in Budogaoka High School. Josuke falls head over heels for her, but has a limited time to win her over before the school prom.

.::.

The accusations thrown at Josuke by his baffled mother were hard to listen to, especially with your face practically burning from it and hearing only ringing in your ears from the shock alone and having to sit in the midst of the two arguing. You decided your best bet was to hurry, pack your stuff and leave. You’d maybe call him later to let him know why you left and tell him that your time together was great, lest he get the wrong idea.

It was easy to sneak past them. They did seem like the types to block everything else out when stubborn. Perhaps that's why some considered him and his friends delinquents.

.::.

About an hour later, you found yourself dialing Josuke’s number (or well, his house number) while lazily lying on the bed of your temporary apartment. He had written it at the bottom of his love letter, which you actually bothered to keep amongst all the other ones. 

“Yeah, I see. Thanks for calling me instead of just leaving me hangin’.”

“No problem...I’ll see you tomorrow at school. Sorry for any trouble I’ve caused.”

“No no”, he was quick to disagree, “It’s fine, my mom just gets fussy like that sometimes, its not your fault at all. To be fair I should’ve been paying more attention.”

You frowned. He shouldn’t have blamed himself. You weren’t being entirely courteous as a guest either to fall asleep on him like that. He spoke up before you could say anything about it.

“Did you have fun though---er, get a good study in? I know I did. Cleared up a lot of stuff I was missin’ during class. Thanks a lot for that!” You could hear the grin in his voice. Admittedly, he had a nice voice to listen to. But you convinced yourself that was just a supplementary compliment rather than you starting to have a school girl crush on him like the rest of his groupies.

You wondered what drew them to him in the first place. Was it his hair? It would seem like he’d take pride in having groupies if it was for that reason, being so uptight about his hairstyle and all. Yet he would always look so annoyed whenever they came up to him, so that probably wasn’t the reason. His personality? No, they hardly let him get a word in whenever they bombard him. His height?

...Fair assumption.

“Hey, (Y/N), you there?”

Crap, had you been spacing out?

“Yeah, I’m here.” You replied, rubbing your eyes.

“Do you have time tomorrow for ice cream after school? Its totally cool if you’re not, I understand.”

You did have a bit of studying to do to keep your grades up (and to keep up appearances, but that was less important) but keeping Josuke happy in your friendship did also mean something to you. Skipping one study session wouldn’t be that much of a deal, you could skim through it once you get home anyway.

“Oh no no, I’m down for it.”

Josuke’s tone noticeably turned up an octave after hearing that. “Cool! You wanna come by my house or I’ll come by yours?”

After saying he could pick you up from your own house (especially thinking about how Tomoko would react) he joyfully lets out a ‘sweet!’ and you exchange your goodbyes before hanging up.

One thing you could safely say about Josuke at this point is that he was certainly...interesting. If you had to weigh your options between giving everyone that sent you a letter an opportunity to court you and just only giving Josuke a chance for the time being, the latter set well with you far more.

.::.

Classes had passed by rather quickly. It almost seemed like a blur but you didn’t mind it. At first the thought of instantly going home and looking over the notes you took to refresh your memory came into your head, before Josuke and Okuyasu voices behind you made you realize what you had planned already. You had recognized the other two, but hadn’t bothered to hold a single conversation with either of them. 

As far as you knew, they were just ‘the guy who looks like he’s still in elementary’ and ‘the guy that looks like he’s committed a crime before’.

However you would withhold your assumptions for the time being and attempt to get to know them truthfully. They seemed excited to see you, anyway.

“Glad to see you waited for us (y/n!)” Josuke happily said.

You didn’t really. But you forced a smile as if you did anyway.

Josuke stopped behind you and contemplated putting an arm around you like he would his other buddies, but decided against it, thinking maybe the two of you weren’t at that point yet. You didn’t exactly seem like the touchy type either. Instead his hand firmly rested on your shoulder, his face offering a kind, genuine smile towards you. 

Gesturing toward his friends, he began to introduce them. “(Y/n), this is Okuyasu Nijimura and Koichi Hirose. They’ve kinda been excited to meet ya ever since we started hanging out.” Josuke lets out quite the cute chuckle as his free hand finds itself sheepishly behind his neck now.

“Yo!” Okuyasu was quick to greet you with quite possibly the biggest grin you’ve seen anyone sport since you’ve gotten to this country. Koichi on the other hand seemed a little more calm and reserved, saying a simple ‘hello!’ with a wave.

They didn’t seem too bad now as you had thought before, but you’d keep your eye on them. After the introduction Josuke had mentioned that itd be wise to get to the ice cream truck as soon as possible, seeing that it might leave the neighborhood soon. You still were a bit unfamiliar with the area, so you followed behind the other three and let them lead the way.

.::.

When the four of you finally arrived to the spot of the parked vehicle, you had just noticed that you’d tuned out the conversation that was had on the way here. Now that you think about it, Okuyasu was pretty swift to wrap an arm around his taller friend’s shoulder and immediately start talking about something else. Maybe it was just your imagination, but you had thought Josuke would’ve been inclined to talk to you during the brief walk. That’s what you were invited for, right? Or is this just what he does with all his friends?

The lack of attention didn’t bother you that badly, as you’re generally used to it, but you still couldn’t help but wonder.

You had walked up to the window to get your own ice cream, before Koichi promptly stopped you, pulling out his own wallet.

“Hey, I can pay for your ice cream for you!”

You blinked, not exactly sure how you were supposed to respond to that. “It’s alright, you don’t have to.”

“No I insist! Don’t worry about it okay?” The small boy smiled at you, a face that was pretty hard for you to resist. Giving a slight nod, he proceeded to pay for it. You did get the biggest size they offered though, who’s to say you couldn’t after he graciously agreed to pay?

You and Koichi walked back to the others, already sitting down in the park with the ice creams and chatting. As you were making your way over there, Josuke looked back at the two of you, his happy grin melding into a guilty wide-eyed frown.

He turned back around when you and his other friend walked past the bench he and Okuyasu sat on to go to another one across from them. Without even glancing at him, you started to eat your ice cream. From the corner of your eye you could see the pompadoured teen lightly tap his clueless friend, motioning them to move to the same bench you and Koichi were.

Trying to prevent things from becoming awkward, Josuke immediately started talking to you as he sat down. “So, (Y/n), is that your favorite flavor?”

You nodded, not trying to get distracted from your melting ice cream.

“Cool, I like that flavor too. I really really like strawberry though, especially the kind they have at the truck.”

“Strawberry’s a good flavor.” Okuyasu chimed in. “But Koichi likes nasty shit, like pistachio. Bleh!” He stuck his tongue out to emphasize his disgust. The shorter teen was slightly offended.

“Hey, its good with the right toppings! At least I don’t bombard my ice cream with everything, if you’re careless like that, you’ll get a cavity!”

Oku dismissively waved his hand. “Whatever. I’ll just go to Tonio’s again and it’ll be good as new, so there’s no problem!” He grinned.

Koichi sighed, and you were left wondering what kind of place “Tonio’s” was.

“Oh right, we need to take (Y/n)-chan there someday!” Josuke added. “Maybe we should do a little tour thing of Morioh for you, would you like that?”

You happily nodded, almost at the end of your ice cream. The three of them had gotten along so naturally

Eventually everyone else got done with theirs and began to throw everything away. Koichi had started on his way home, saying that he was going to start on his studying before his goodbye. Thinking you should do the same, Josuke walked in front of you.

“Hey me and Okuyasu are gonna hang at my house, so we can walk you home first okay?” 

“Okay.” Probably the first time you said something in about an hour. You saw Okuyasu about to walk up with Josuke again, but was stopped immediately and whispered something by Josuke. After which, he hung behind the two of you for the remainder of the walk.

When your apartment was reached, The boys asked if you enjoyed yourself and you happily responded with yes and that you’d love to hang out again, before going up the stairs and waving goodbye.

The two of them stood there for a while, making sure you were safe up until you got inside the house. As you closed the door, Josuke let out a groan and his head sunk into his hands. Okuyasu, obviously concerned by this, put a hand on his shoulder.

“Bro? You okay?”

Jojo shook his head. “Ughh..I can’t believe I let that happen. She must’ve felt so left out. I didn’t even pay enough attention that Koichi paid for her stuff..god..That didn’t look good at all.”

“Hey, you’re not obligated to treat her like a queen or anythin’. You’re still just friends right now right?” He tried to reassure his downtrodden friend.

“Yeah but...I still feel like a dick. I invited her there..Plus there’s also the fact that she’s got a limited time here in Morioh..” His blue eyes widened after saying that statement, the realization just now hitting him. It was so silent all the boys could hear was the slight breeze ruffling the trees.

“Huh, now that I think about it, why are you tryin’ to woo someone who’s a transfer student? Seems kinda rough to get someone to fall for you in a few weeks...unless you’re Yukako.”

“Goddammit Okuyasu, I don’t get to choose who I fall in love with!” 

His fist balled up again, lips going dry as he resented saying things before thinking about them first. 

“Woah...Josuke..”

Before he could say anything else, the teens noticed a slight shift in the window blinds where a light was on in your apartment. 

‘Holy crap, i hope thats not her, i’d shit myself if it is!’

“C-C’mon Okuyasu, lets get out of here, I-I’ll race you!” He bolted down the sidewalk in the direction of his house, with his best friend in tow. 

It was you who had peeked out the window from your living room, but only because you were startled by the sound of someone shouting. You didn’t see anyone when you fully pulled the blinds back, must’ve been your imagination. Putting the window back as it was, you returned to your studying.

[fakecrfan]

[Martin + Tapes] bro, what's the Eye gonna do when it figures out that Martin's gonna die of old age some day? I feel like it'd either A. "Oh shit!!! — wait, we got the Archivist all marked up? Good, great," and Jon would recite the ritual out of nowhere or B. Find a different way to preserve him a la book of the trapped dead or the coffin

Okay I could see this going one of three ways.

1: The Eye does have that realization, panics, and ends the world so that it can keep Martin and friends alive as one big happy polycule for the rest of eternity (until the End shows up and awkwardly clears its throat, at least). Or Surely Martin will be happy about it. Eventually. Any day now he’ll stop crying.

I am leaning away from this. Not because I don’t love it, but because I already wrote a whole thing about Martin being courted by the Eye in the apocalypse, and I don’t want to repeat myself too much. Plus I feel like the fanfic Beloved has already accomplished this sort of guilded cage angst better than I could, with Jon as the object, so I’d recommend anyone who wants to see more of this sort of thing to just go and read that and maybe wheedle @inklingofadream into giving us more of that sweet sweet Beholding/Jon content :D

2: The Eye doesn’t have the foresight to realize that Martin is going to Die Someday. Even after multiple kidnapping and death scares. Once the immediate threat of death is out of sight the Eye, like a distractible toddler, forgets completely about it in favor of going 😍 Martin! Martin, Martin, Martin!

And so Martin one day gets to slip away quietly in his sleep because the Eye is too much of a dumbass to prepare for future eventualities. The Web consoles its poor dumb sibling and tries not to laugh too hard.

3: My favorite one for this scenario: as you said, the Eye keeps Martin alive some other way. Not the book of trapped dead, I think, except as a last resort. Just--the situation goes on and Martin’s sanity gets whittled away. And then one day, (some time after Melanie has managed to quit?) he says something like “You guys are gonna make me go grey. You’re gonna drive me to an early grave.”

Jon looks at him unblinkingly. “No er won’t,” he says. “We won’t let you die. At all.”

And then Martin realizes that he hasn’t aged. That people have mistaken him for 19 for years. That he hasn’t gotten a single new spot on his skin since he got a job at the Institute.

Martin tries to blind himself, then.

(cw: attempted suicide, self injury, non-consensual restraint, denial of bodily autonomy, attempted manipulation, and slight (?) non-consensual body modification of the ‘‘protective, not allowed to be Injured” variety.)

Martin is pinned down before he can get his hands on a sharp object. But by now he’s gotten a lot better at playing them. So instead of trying to fight he just goes limp, forces all thoughts of escaping or dying out of his mind and looks up at Jon with the biggest eyes and goes Oh, you guys are right, thank you for stopping me. I’m not going to blind myself, that would be awful! Can you let me go now?🥺

“Eh, I don’t know,” Sasha says. “He’s opening his eyes a fraction wider the way he does when he’s trying to manipulate us.”

😅 Whaaaat, no. Definitely not! I was just scared for a second. Anyway, my arms are all itchy are you going to hold me down forever? 😭 That’s so mean you guys are so cruel sometimes! 🥺

“Well,” Tim says uncomfortably. “It would be really mean to hold him down too long...”

Martin gives the most Convincing lip wibble and starts to tear up, and then they let him go. He doesn’t make an immediate move to reach for something sharp, and lets them all hug him and hugs them back even! 🤗 Yay!

The next time, Martin gets close enough that he actually slices his temple before they wrestle the awl away.

This time they actually tie him down to a chair while they pace around and try to figure out what to do. Martin schools his expression and thoughts into the perfect picture of remorse, even sheds a few tears and says he’s so sorry. The others are still too antsy to let him go so easily this time.

“But we can’t just tie him down forever,” Tim insists again. “It isn’t like that one fantasy he had back when he was 21 and he got really into yugioh abridged series fanfiction!”

Martin’s eye twitches a little at being reminded of that.

“Yes but we can’t let him blind himself and die either!” Sasha says. “That’s even worse! Remember: death--bad!”

Sasha points to a chart she made with various arguments about how death is the Worst. Points on it include “likelihood all Martin thoughts will stop after death: 100%” and “Research shows that after being dead no one can feel happy, because the part of the brain that makes the happy chemicals shuts off.” The others nod solemnly.

“We can’t let him go until we can be certain--”

“But he’s gotten too good at controlling his thoughts for us to ever be certain all of the time,” Jon says, distressed. “And he’s upset. He doesn’t like this. He’s going to cry.”

Martin is about to genuinely cry, but he also starts to play it up once they notice.

They keep arguing until Martin starts to doze off a bit. When they wake him up and tell him that they’ve come to a decision, he expects to be love bombed for a few days while they try to Convince him how wonderful it would be to live forever with them. He gets ready to play along, to (pretend to) open up about his fears and accept reassurance, to--

Goggles?

“So you can’t blind yourself when they’re on,” Elias, who came down at some point, says with a smug grin. (He’s the one who came up with the idea, so course he’s decided it’s Genius.)

“Oh,” Martin says. “Yeah, sure! That makes--sense?”

He looks at the goggles. He expects to find a lock or something on them, but no. Just regular motorcycle goggles. Kind of cool looking, because of course they’ve been selected according to his taste.

He bats away a thought about how easy it will be to just take them off. None of them seems to have noticed, so he lets out a sigh of relief.

“Excellent,” Elias says, smugly. “Will you do the honors then, Jon?”

Martin is about to protest he can put them on himself once they untie him. But Jon nervously steps forward and puts them on himself before he can. And that’s fine, they’re gonna let him go once he’s got them on so he can deal with that. They slip on comfortably, and Jon holds them there longer than he strictly has to.

“Right,” Martin says. “On now. Can you let--”

Then, he feels the goggles melt into his face.

It’s not painful. Not exactly. The point isn’t to torture him, after all. But he feels them burrowing into his skin and fuse into the bones on his face and it’s wrong, it’s wrong. He screams. He thrashes.

“Hold him tighter,” Elias instructs.

Martin can hear Jon make a distressed sob through the white hot terror that makes all of Martin’s senses turn to static. He feels more hands grab onto his head to quell his thrashing--probably Tim, he’s got a stronger hold than Sasha. Soon he can’t even move his head, just sob as he feels the things welded into his skull.

They do let him go afterwards, as promised. Martin’s out of his mind then. No thoughts, just get them off. He claws at his face and violently bangs his head against the walls and the floors.

“Don’t stop him,” Elias tells the others when they cry and reach out to stop him. “This is how he will understand.”

Because nothing will crack the goggles. They’re supernaturally reinforced. Martin beats that realization into himself, and then crumples on the floor breathless. The others swarm around him then. They hold his hands and gently stroke his hair.

“It’s okay.” Tim. That’s Tim. “We’re here with you.”

“It’s going to be so much better now.” Definitely Sasha. “Just think about all of the things you’ll get to see over the next century!”

“I’m sorry.” That’s Jon. Choked up and barely able to get the words out. “Martin--”

“We love you.”

Martin can’t tell who says that one, but it makes him snap and scream until he’s frothing at the mouth with rage. Because he’s finally too spent to stop himself from shouting all of the things he’s been keeping in. 

No you don’t! No you don’t!

[tsarisfanfiction]

In Your Shadow

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: Gordon, Scott

Random thing that wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it, so here it is.  Missed half a very important meeting because I lost track of time writing this, whoops...  More Scott&Gordon because I will die on this hill.

“Tomorrow, they’re not gonna say ‘that’s Gordon Tracy, the Olympic Champion!’  Tomorrow, they’re gonna say ‘that’s Scott Tracy’s little brother!’, and I’m gonna say ‘damn straight I am.’”

The lights were off in his brother’s room, but that meant nothing.  Scott had been sent to bed by the combined parental force of Grandma and Dad, and Gordon knew for a fact that John had been recruited to freeze all his electronics to make sure he didn’t sit up doing something all night instead of sleeping.  So, if Gordon didn’t miss his guess, Scott was going to be staying up all night doing nothing, just staring blankly at the ceiling, the wall, the view out the window, and working himself up about tomorrow.

There had been straws pulled between them to decide behind Dad’s back who went in and knocked some sense into him.  Gordon won. Gordon may have rigged the whole thing, but Virgil’s suspicious brown eyes could prove nothing.  This was something he needed to do.

Sure enough, as he slunk into the room, door shutting silently behind him (he’d had years of practice on that one), the body on the bed first rolled over, then sat up as Scott identified him in the dark (Scott had had years of practice at that).

“Gordon?  Is something wrong?”

And still he worried before being suspicious.  Any of his other brothers would be looking for the prank right about now, but Scott’s default would always be concern for him before concern to himself.  Gordon rolled his eyes and padded silently over to the bed, poking Scott until he moved over.  He did, arm shooting out to wrap around his shoulders the way he always did when Gordon had a nightmare.

Gordon was man enough to admit that the last time wasn’t as long ago as maybe people thought, but that wasn’t the reason tonight and he dodged the arm, catching it and using the opportunity of catching Scott off guard to roll his brother over onto his side.

“Gordon?”

Before he could roll back, Gordon dove onto the bed, wedging himself behind him and wrapping his arms around his biggest brother tightly, burying his face in the back of Scott’s neck and feeling his brother tense up.

“Gordon, what’s wrong?”

“Hey, Scott,” he started, voice still low so no Dad or Grandma caught him – there may have been some implications that all of them were to leave Scott alone tonight – even though John was supposedly running interference to make sure they didn’t. “When did you last celebrate your own achievements?”

The concerned set of his brother’s shoulders gave way to a confused one instead.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t remember so much as a graduation party when you finished college,” Gordon pointed out. He didn’t mention the medals, locked away in storage where Scott refused to look at them.  Those didn’t count.

Scott didn’t answer, and Gordon decided against voicing the observation that Scott hadn’t celebrated any of his own achievements since the Zero-X.  This would be the first one, and he was all too aware that the only reason Scott wasn’t ducking out of it was because Dad wouldn’t let him.

“John had one,” he said instead.  “You didn’t let him escape it.”

“John graduated early with the highest grades in the university’s history,” Scott pointed out, and Gordon huffed.

“And you were top of your class.”  He’d checked the records before coming in.  “How did you even talk Grandma out of it?”

“What are you trying to say, Gordon?”  That was a non-answer if ever he heard one.  Gordon squinted at the back of his brother’s neck but let it slide.  For now.

“John’s graduations,” he started.  “John’s books.  Virgil’s graduation.  Virgil’s art shows and piano recitals.  My acceptance into WASP.  My medals. Alan’s everything.”  There had been a lot of parties for the youngest – getting his pilot’s license, youngest astronaut in history, anything Scott could remotely justify.  “You haven’t let any of us miss a single achievement.  But yours…” he trailed off meaningfully, but Scott was still tense in his hold and didn’t say a word.

Gordon sighed.

“Your achievements matter too, bro,” he said.  “Stop skulking in the shadows and directing the limelight onto us all the time.”

Scott made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a scoff.  It sounded sad and a little pathetic.

“You guys do so much,” he said.  “I’m proud of you.  All four of you.”

Aha.

“And we’re proud of you,” Gordon retorted.  “That’s why you’re not getting out of tomorrow.”

“I didn’t even do anything,” Scott protested.  “I-” Gordon cut him off with a scoff.

“You piloted that jet.  You broke the airspeed record.  Professor Kwark is getting her dues for designing it – you know you’re not taking anything away from her achievements so stop pretending you think you are – but you piloted it.”

“Because she asked me to,” Scott pointed out, and Gordon rolled his eyes.  “She could have chosen anyone.”

“And she chose the best damn pilot in the world like a sensible woman, and don’t even try and tell me anyone else would have even been a consideration.”  Gordon jabbed him in the chest with a finger.  “Her own attempt last year ended in disaster, so she picked the most experienced high-speed pilot in the world for the next one. Sounds like a smart decision to me.” Scott was gearing up for another counter-argument; he could feel it in the way his chest tensed.  “They didn’t have to pick me for the Olympics,” he continued, switching to the reason he had absolutely rigged the straws to be the one in the room.

When it came to wrangling Scott, Virgil was definitely the most experienced, with John hot on his heels. But Virgil and John weren’t world record holders.  Gordon was.

“You were the best in the team,” Scott immediately shot back.  “They’d have been daft not to pick you.”

Exactly, but Gordon didn’t say that, just waited for Scott to realise he’d cornered himself.  It didn’t take long, shoulders slumping with a fondly exasperated sigh.

“That’s different,” Scott tried to argue.  “You still had to beat the other seven swimmers.”

“And you still had to beat the record.”  Gordon shot that argument back down.

“The jet-”

“Would not have beat the record if I was piloting it.  Hell, if Virgil was piloting it.  Even Alan’s not that good, Scott.”  He squeezed his ridiculously stubborn brother tighter, a grin slipping onto his face as Scott let out a quiet oof.  “That was all you, Scott, and I know you know it, despite what you’re trying to tell me.”

Scott didn’t say anything for several moments, and Gordon didn’t break the silence even if he pressed closer to his brother’s back.  He knew what it was like, those few hours – days, weeks, even – after breaking a world record.  The state of disbelief that he’d actually done it.  Scott had stepped out of what they had nicknamed Icarus II (not actually called that, after the original Icarus had proven too close to its namesake, but Gordon didn’t really care for the jet’s actual name) less than twenty-four hours earlier, breathing hard from the adrenaline and excitement of Mach 23.8 to congratulations and jubilation from Professor Kwark’s team and his family.  What he’d actually managed hadn’t properly sunk in yet, but the official celebrations were tomorrow, complete with paparazzi from all over the world, and Scott was doing his best to escape it.

“…Why are you here, Gordon?”

Gordon was there to tell his brother he was being an idiot, and hammer it home that they were all ridiculously proud of their big brother for doing the thing they’d always known he would one day, and convince him it was okay to be proud of himself. He didn’t say that.

Each of his brothers always required a slightly different touch, and Scott needed to be caught off-guard. The head-on approach never worked; he just headbutted it back with twice the force because he was stubborn like that. Unless you were Virgil but Virgil could just keep throwing it back again with interest until he wore him down.

So instead, Gordon plucked at a different string – one of those little things Scott thought they didn’t know about but really didn’t hide that well once you knew how to look for it. They all knew.

“You know how many people I’ve heard complain about some ‘shadow’ their older siblings cast?” he asked, rhetorically.  Scott froze so suddenly he could have sworn the temperature dropped a few degrees.  “Whining on and on about how no matter what they do, their sibling’s always there, always the one everyone sees?”

Scott seemed to be holding his breath; even pressed up against him with his arms wrapped around his chest, Gordon couldn’t feel any rise and fall.

“Well, I don’t agree with that,” he said firmly.

“What?”  He felt Scott startle, clearly not meaning to say anything but caught off-guard.

“I don’t agree,” he repeated.  “You’ve never overshadowed us.  Any of us.  John’s got the books to prove it, Virgil’s got the paintings and recitals, I’ve got a gold freaking medal.  Even Alan’s making his own name for himself in the gaming community and he’s a home-schooled kid most of the world has never seen out of uniform.”

“I-”

“How long have you been worrying about that?” Gordon asked, overriding whatever feeble attempt at disagreement Scott was about to make.  “At least since the Zero-X.  I know that for certain, but I bet it’s been longer.”

Scott didn’t answer, but he didn’t expect him to.  Scott was annoying like that – he’d say everything you didn’t want him to, and nothing that you did.  The answer was probably the first time he’d ever heard anyone mention something about an older sibling’s so-called ‘shadow’, anyway, knowing Scott.

“You know,” he said, fully aware that Scott didn’t know, because he was an idiot of a big brother who cared too much about them and not enough about himself, “sometimes I like sitting in your shadow.”  Or John’s, or Virgil’s, but this conversation wasn’t about them.

Scott’s second startle was a full-body thing, a twitch topped off with a jerk of the head, but he still didn’t say anything.

“I doubt you get it, because you don’t have a big brother, but sometimes it’s nice lurking there,” he continued.  “Here.”  He pressed up against Scott’s back again, making sure Scott couldn’t possibly miss that he was plastered against him.  “Maybe it’s because I know you’ll never try and keep me here and I can go wander into the spotlight whenever I like,” he admitted, “but I like it.  The others do, too.”  John and Virgil never left Scott’s so-called ‘shadow’ unless they had to, both content to do their own thing and let Scott handle the world while they handled Scott, and Gordon knew all four of them still found safety in their biggest brother even if they never said it in so many words.

“Gordon, what are you trying to say?” Scott asked.  He sounded genuinely confused, and Gordon swallowed another sigh, because trust Scott to be a brilliant leader and fantastic big brother but not understand just how much they appreciated him.

“I’m saying that tomorrow, they’re not gonna look at me and say ‘that’s Gordon Tracy, the Olympic Champion!’” he said bluntly.  “Tomorrow, they’re gonna look at me and say ‘that’s Scott Tracy’s little brother!’, and I’m gonna say ‘damn straight I am.’”  He grabbed a handful of Scott’s pyjamas and made a fist, right over his brother’s chest. “Because tomorrow is your day and I – we – are damn proud of you, Scott.  So don’t you dare run away from this and try and put us in the limelight instead.  Not this time.”  Not any time it was Scott’s achievement, but Gordon was well aware that was too much of a push right now.

He’d just bring out the pep talks again, and again, and again, until Scott got the message.

Scott was silent, but his breathing was steady, Gordon’s fistful of fabric rising and falling with his chest, so he waited while his brother thought it through, looking for loopholes and – hopefully – finding none.  Gordon didn’t think he’d left anything, but Scott could be slippery when he wanted to.

It was several minutes before he got a reaction, Scott making a decision like the commander he was. An arm moved, brushing against Gordon’s as it did, before a hand wrapped around his fist.  The touch was firm and warm, but not restraining or trying to pry him off.  Instead, it just stayed there, squeezing lightly before falling still.

“Thanks, Gordon.”

Victory.

“Any time, bro,” he grinned, wriggling around to get comfortable and throwing a leg over Scott’s, just because he could.  “Now get some sleep.  Big day tomorrow.”

“Voice of experience?”

“Yup.”  He popped the ‘p’ just because he could, and because it always made Scott roll his eyes.  “You’ll need all the sleep you can get.”  He kicked the covers until he could reach them with the hand not grasping his brother’s top and pulled them up.

“Aren’t you going to go back to your room?”  Scott sounded amused, with some put-on disgruntlement that Gordon ignored.

“Nah,” he dismissed, settling back down and wrapping his arm back around his brother again.  “I’m comfy now.”

Scott laughed a little. They both knew Grandma and Dad had placed a ‘do not disturb’ order on Scott and that he was at least somewhat avoiding being caught sneaking back out.  There wouldn’t be time to tell him off in the morning while they were rushing around ready for the party.

“Night, Gordon.”

“Night, big bro.”  He burrowed down against his big brother’s back and closed his eyes, content that he’d got at least somewhere in pounding some truths into Scott’s stubborn head and genuinely comfortable where he was.

Sometimes, his big brother’s shadow was his favourite place to be.

[greekbros]

"greek-Bros: The Return of an Old Enemy"

Chpr 2: Matters of Merriment

On the island of Delphi, the residence have too encountered these strange happenings. Delphians, however, are a lackadaisical folk and do not worry too much about such things. Their biggest concern as of late was the rural Dionysia, the biggest festival dedicated to Dionysus. Every year, the whole island would gather around the man point of the island at the base of Mount Parnassus for festivities and several hours improv theater and skits. There has never truly been any thing "out of the ordinary" for Dionysia....until the recent attacks on live stock, people have been a little more watchful than usual, as watchful as Greece's largest living community of party animals could get.

In other other news, the island's leading expert in merriment was having an extremely pertinent discussion with the leading expert in literally almost everything. In a field not far from the festival preparation, Dionysus and Apollo were arguing about the logistics of creating a new and exciting event for the festival.

"NO, it sounds like a dangerous idea and I'm pretty certain people aren't to find it interesting.", stated Apollo as he followed Dionysus through a field of long grass. Dionysus was walking through the tall grass in search of a set of flowers for this year's Dionysia, "look I'm just saying a little suspense and drama would spice things up this year. Plus I think some of the people are getting a liiiitle bit bored of amateur hour at the amphitheatre sooooo....yeah let's have a jousting competition!" suggests as he crawls looking for a particular blue flower, "AH HA! found one" he places a small blue grass flower on his messy hair for safe keeping, "aaand the search continues." crawling to find more flowers.

Apollo takes a deep breath in mild frustration knowing he wasn't going to change his brother's mind. Once Dionysus makes a plan, it usually comes to fruition, even if its a disaster by the end. "Fine, but can we just use one of our own for this year? I don't want any of the mortals getting hurt and this whole thing ending in bloodshed....at least not this year" he toned.

"Yeah alright, but who's going to be dumb enough to sit on a chariot while holding a spear and running head first into another chariot racer for us?" Dionysus asked as he continues to collect more field flowers, "-man come on I only found one blue flower this year?", he grumbled. As he continued rummaging, he suddenly had an equally brilliant idea. As he slowly poked his head from the top of the tall grass, "dude.....Ares..... versus...... Heracles." he said trough a mischievous grin.

"No, it would just completely ruin the mood if the two get angry at each other....think about, Dionysia is about culture, happiness and celebrating the season....NOT watching Ares and Heracles fight each other...that is something we can do on another day." Apollo lectured.

A loud discontented groan slowly flies from Dionysus's mouth, "come ooooooon Apollo, we can have the joust after some of the acts. Heck, we can even have it as a "action pact finale" to one of the skits....I think some of the maenads are doing a gender revised version of the battle of Troy, maybe we can have the joust in a scene than let them go back to the rest of their act!" suggested as he stood up to give his knees and back a break from crawling on grass and dirt.

Apollo stayed silent for what he personally felt like days but was realistically was 5 seconds, he genuinely did not want to argue any further with Dionysus on the matter, feeling that no matter what he says.... Dionysus will always say something to change his mind. "Fine....but we can't use Heracles against Ares...we need someone with more.... control." he finally responded.

"GREAT, but who" dionysus loudly pondered, "how about....me?" he thought.

"Dionysus do you have a death wish?" Apollo objected.

"Maybe....buuut think about it. I could do the part o-" suddenly Dionysus was interrupted with a tap on a shoulder. He turns around to see no body, looked around for the source assuming it was Apollo. "Um...did...see anything?" He asked.

Apollo, who saw the whole scene, chuckled a little at the situation, "Hermes, come on that trick is old." he stated.

Hermes appeared in a flash next to Dionysus, "Hey guys how's it going? Listen I need to talk to you about something." He ask Dionysus. "Its about the festival and look I know how much you hate to cancel anything buuuuuut.....I think you may need to cancel the Dionysia."

Dionysus had this blank expression on his face of complete disbelief and mild offense, never in his existence he had ever canceled an event let alone Dionysia. "...is there a plague?" he sorely asked.

"No but..." Hermes replied.

"......is there an army heading our way?" Dionysus again sorely asked.

"No not at all but-" Hermes quickly replied.

"THAN THE FESTIVAL CONTINUES" Dionysus loudly proclaimed "Plus I need to find someone who's willing to fight Ares in a joust and not mind dieing afterwards." After the thought he suddenly remembered something, he looked for a stick, stuck it in the ground to see the time and could see it was roughly 2pm, it was time to regroup with his party palnners. "Oh fuck, I must go, my people need me. Talk to you guys later!" Dionysus trotted off to the temple before he could let Hermes finish.

Apollo turned to Hermes as Dionysus left, curious as to what he wanted to say, "so, what is it, Hermes?" He reciprocated. "I've been trying to convince Dionysus not include a joust during the festival an-" apollo was about to finish until Hermes took his shoulder to get him closer. Hermes seemed anxious and desperately need to tell someone about the information he has gathered the past few days.

"Look, I've been running around Greece telling the other gods this but something WEIRD is going on, people are disappearing, it isn't JUST livestock getting killed, people who are fighting these things are getting their asscheeks clapped, look I know I'm probably saying some crazy shit but don't let anyone stay out at night for too long. There are some crazy ass wolves going around doing some weird shit. I have Artemis on the case but even she doesn't know what or why is this happening." Hermes franticly told Apollo, "plus we have GOT to convince Dionysus to cancel his event. People are going to get hurt." He continued.

Apollo stood there, worried for both Hermes with his possible lack mental sanity and Dionysus, if Hermes is correct. "Hermes what ever is happening, I'm sure father will resolve this. However, if it worries you this much.....than...*sighs*.... I'll talk to Dionysus." He assures to Hermes, he knows that unfortunately, he was going to have to continue the argument with Dionysus.

Hermes gave a smile of relief, "thanks Apollo". He jets off to find Artemis to update himself on the situation, leaving Apollo in the middle of a field of tall grass, mentally exhausted from these conversations of jousts and wolves. All he felt like doing was to sit down and play the lyre, but he knew that he must begrudgingly go and find Dionysus. "Well....how must one convince another to do the opposite of their own comforts.....ah...yes...." He pondered, Apollo then proceeds to find the only person that could convince Dionysus of anything.....every spouse's weakness..... Apollo had to find Ariadne.

End of chp2

[sofiahahaaa]

Demigod Delinquents | Pt. 3 | Jason Being $$weak$$

| MASTERLIST |

Summary: Jason bean is too rule-following to allow himself to be such a badboy... he needs to COOL dOwN... our babies are being sent off so baiii

Rating: Bruh honestly if you can handle a bit of kissing and Jason being upset for (0) reasons ayyyy

A/N: I cannot believe I am this cool, posting in such rAPID SUCCESSION... i mean if you don’t love me then leave. (jk i need all the love i can get. stay and fall in love?) i’m ready for this story to be fully out.

~~~

Jason’s POV –

My stomach was full of warm food reminiscent of the bakery I loved in New Rome. I missed those strolls I had taken with Reyna, back then. But that was different. I don’t still have feelings or anything. It’s just… Camp Half-Blood doesn’t have that sort of place. To be alone with your loved ones. 

I tried to purge the thoughts from my head.

This happened a lot recently. I would be thinking normal thoughts, and then all of a sudden, I was comparing Camp Half-Blood to Camp Jupiter. It wasn’t fair, because I loved both places, but sometimes I found that I didn’t fit into either, and that taking some aspects of each camp would help me make a better camp. I found that I had to swallow my pride, too. I knew that nothing could be perfect, but still, I kept wondering… 

I kissed Piper on my way out of the Mess Hall, reminding her I would be away for the quest. She nodded, her braid fluttering in the wind. She looked beautiful. So beautiful I… um... I just wanted to stay with her forever.

I set for Cabin 1.

The walls were pristine as always, and the entire room was tidy, too. I sighed. This cabin really needed a refresher. Big Hippie Zeus was always a sight. His glory reflected upon the place where I slept, and let’s just say… nope. I wasn’t digging it. Not in the slightest.

Maybe I could drag Annabeth in here, have her cut down Zeus, redo the entire place, and bam! Awesome. 

That probably wouldn’t happen.

But... I still dreamed as I picked up the orange jumpsuit, changing into the bright costume. I’d seen Leo at the dining hall. He seemed to be rocking it, which most likely meant I would hate it. I slipped it on over the white t-shirt and shorts I had on and studied myself in the polished white marble. 

I didn’t like it. 

The material was itchy, and it bagged out in odd places. But that wasn’t the biggest part. It wasn’t me. I was a rule follower. Typically. All though I chafed against the rules in Camp Jupiter, I was a goody-two-shoes at Camp Half-Blood. I had been trained that way. It was now my nature. But even as I adjusted the jumper– zipped the zipper up and down, shifted, changed out, straightened it, and put it back on, it just didn’t work. 

I had to settle for the collar up, zipped, and my hair pushed back. 

Chiron had said that we would have to get into character for this quest, but character– ugh. Maybe this would not be my sort of quest.

Leo and Percy– they didn’t have this struggle. They were always unruly and wild. But for me? I couldn’t do something like this.

I took a breath. In and out. I tried to create a character. Jason the bad boy. No. Jason, the kid who doesn’t care. Hard no. Jason, the kid who has family problems and hates life. Hmm. Maybe. It had some truth to it. 

I tried making faces to match my character. Scrunch up the nose, slouch. Nope. Maybe a tough guy look. Yeah, no. Then I tried a better idea. I crossed my arms, tried the brooding look Percy always wore and stuck a piece of gum in my mouth. 

I blew bubbles, hoping to look rebellious or something. It worked a little. I did the thing Leo always does, brushing his hands together as if brushing off dust. It heightened my game. I looked like a semi-delinquent. A little flexing of the muscles, some menacing glares. Yeah. It was alright.

(It was not. It was bad.)

I had thirty minutes or so left before Argus was to drive us to the prison. I decided on climbing up to the secret loft in my cabin. I got behind stupid Hippie Zeus and climbed the rungs. 

I had always loved this view. Usually, I came up here at night, maybe with Piper, but now, during the day, I saw the entire camp in motion. The cleaning harpies were hopping through the mess hall, making campers run. I saw that the Apollo cabin was in the arena and that Ares cabin was hanging around the climbing wall. Lava poured in clumps, and campers climbed quickly, with that motivation. 

Annabeth was calling her cabin to the Armory, while Aphrodite cabin was busy grooming the pegasi. I didn’t see Piper, but that was fine. She probably had found something more interesting to do. Holly and Laurel Victor were bickering over a game of exploding-volleyball (Something the Victor twins made up. Don’t play it unless you’re okay with volleyballs exploding in your face.) and Lou Ellen was trying desperately to save a bust she had attempted of Cerberus. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the summer day.

Something that I couldn’t help loving about Camp Half-Blood was how happy everyone was. It wasn’t strained, like Camp Jupiter. Everyone was very excited to be there. This wasn’t an army. It was a community.

I tried to push the thoughts from my head, but they were there again. Compare, they said. Fix, they kept insisting, and I was almost compelled to do it. I clenched my jaw and forcefully thought of other things. Better things.

I slipped down to the main floor of the cabin. I supposed I would go to Thalia’s Tree to wait for Argus, even though I was early.

When I finally got the tree, I had narrowly escaped a nearly fatal incident involving clay and Lou Ellen and had singed off my leg-hair after passing by the Victor twins. It made me think that Holly had deliberately spiked the volleyball so I would get exploded on. 

As it turned out, I wasn’t the first one there. Percy and Annabeth were talking under the tree– possibly saying goodbye, possibly arguing. Hard to tell.

“Hey, guys…" I said as I approached them, hoping I wasn’t offending them by interrupting.

“Oh, hi, Jason,” Annabeth said. She bit her lip. Her hair was combed into a ponytail, and her eyes flashed mini-storms. It was hard to know if Annabeth was mad or not, because her steely calm was too unnerving to decipher. Percy waved and crossed his arms. He was leaning against the trunk, despite Peleus’ protest. Already getting in character, I suppose.

“Annabeth." I nodded in her direction, then turned to Percy. “What’s up, man? You haven’t talked to me in ages." I noticed Percy had bags under his eyes. " I heard about a little sister… Stella?”

“Estelle,” Annabeth replied simply. “Yeah, I have babysitting duty while you guys are gone.” She picked at her nails. “Percy’s just tired. He’s been doing late-night babysitting with me for the last few weeks of summer while Sally and Paul are out on their vacation in, uh, Florida. He was also training my cousin for the weeks before that– he has to stop the end of the world. But that’s about it." I tried to keep my mouth from gaping. Annabeth had a cousin? And… what?

“Oh. Oh, right.” Now I felt a pang of guilt. If Percy was out on baby-duty because of this quest– “Hey, bro, if you don’t wanna go– that– that’s alright, okay? ‘Cause it sounds like you’ve got a lot going on, and I don’t think this quest should, uh, get in the way of that or anything–" I gushed. Percy sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“You know, Annabeth is right. I am tired. But I think this quest will help to some degree. So I’ll go with it, but just because Annabeth has agreed to it. If there’s any change, shift in mood– I’ll opt-out. For now, we’re good. Right, Wise Girl?” Annabeth blinked.

“Yeah. I’m fine with this. It’s okay." I thought that maybe Annabeth was trying to convince herself more than Percy, but I stayed silent. I stared at the looming statue of Athena– the Athena Parthenos that looked down on the camp. I took a deep breath.

“So we’re waiting for sleepyhead Leo now… doubt he’ll wake up any time soon. Nyssa told me he was asleep until noon, and that he was down for a nap after lunch too…I don't understand how much he can sleep. What’s draining him? His ADHD?” Percy commented, sounding gruff. He flipped a golden drachma over his knuckles. "I’ll give him this drachma if he shows up within ten seconds." I looked at Percy warily. The guy was scary, I had to admit.

And now, in this state, he looked like the living dead. His humor and stupidity were replaced by the brooding look he resented. I wondered how he’d react if I told him.

Leo staggered to the top of the hill and collapsed in a heap. “So… tired… Why is that hill so… steep? Can’t even… right… now.” He raised his hand. “Give me the drachma, Perseus.” Percy looked at him as if he couldn’t believe the guy had actually gotten out of bed. He flicked the drachma into Leo’s hand. “Thanks, man.” Leo sat up, spitting out dirt.

“You… got out of bed.” Percy said musingly.

“Nyssa had Harley jumped on me. My ribs hurt still, but I’m good now.”

“Oh. That explains it.”

“You took a nap in this jumpsuit? It’s uncomfortable as Hades’ Gym Shorts." I added. Leo giggled at this comment like a little kid.

“Dude. You’re so, like, uptight. Loosen up.” Leo joked. Percy had a pained look in his eyes, but when he saw me watching, he masked it. Annabeth stood in the middle.

"I’d leave you boys to it, but that’s a bad idea,” Annabeth emphasized. Percy hollered. She glared at him. "I’ll stay here until Argus get here. I don't want another bathroom incident." I stared at Annabeth in mock shock.

“She said it!” Leo shrieked. Annabeth rolled her eyes.

Back on the Argo II, when Percy had been given a tour of the whole ship, we had stopped at the bathroom for a while, making Annabeth wonder. We stopped partly because Leo was in dire need of a bathroom, and because Percy was in love. 

Back when Leo was designing the ship, of all the things that he would have made perfect, he chose the bathrooms. I had shared the same enthusiasm Percy had when he saw them. They were equipped with everything. From toilets (duh!) to bidets and even bubble baths.

Percy had insisted we try out the bubble bath, seen as there were over 20 different types of bubbles. He practically begged that we put every single one into the jacuzzi tub. He had excitedly jumped in (Clothes and all, minus the shirt) and started playing with all the fancy settings Leo had installed into the tub. Long story short, he got so excited, he lost control of his powers and exploded all the plumbing. Annabeth had rushed in, gotten soaked– it was a mess. And it took weeks for Leo and Percy to collectively restore the plumbing. And– not to mention– Leo’s room was soaked for a while afterward as well, it being next to the bathrooms and all. Not that that mattered, since Leo scarcely slept in his room– but that isn’t relevant.

“Nothing like that can happen in that short of time, Wise Girl.”

“Um, that mess did.” Annabeth retorted. Percy stared in shock. He couldn’t get out a comeback.

“Annabeth: One… billion. Percy: Zero.” Leo chimed half-heartedly.

Argus showed up, three handcuffs in hand. Annabeth checked her watch. “Right on time, as always.” Argus nodded, and a few of his eyes swiveled to each of us. He has a hundred, so it’s uncomfortable to get stared at by him. He was a man of few words, (partly because he is rumored to have an eye on his tongue– and that makes it a bit awkward to speak.) and thus said nothing, but gestured towards the handcuffs. I gulped.

“Ah,” My tongue darted to the back of my throat. “Those are for us?" I managed to croak. He nodded. I had spent years scared of being in one of these. And here I was… doing it voluntarily. My eyes dropped as I became queasy.

Leo, in turn, jumped up, brushed off the dirt on his jumpsuit, and held out his hands for Argus to chain. “Dude, it’s been years since I’ve gotten the cuffs around my wrists.”

“Wait, you’ve been arrested before?”

"I guess… I ran away from my abusive foster mother and the handcuffed me to make sure I would pull anything. I had hijacked a car door and rolled out only weeks ago.” Leo grinned mischievously. “Actually, I had the cuffs loose by the time they got me back to the nasty woman… but I stayed put." I stared at Leo in amazement.

“Bye Annabeth. I promise I won't do anything stupid.” Percy told Annabeth quietly. He sounded a little wistful, and I wanted to assure him that we wouldn’t be against him staying at camp.

“Alright, Seaweed Brain. Stay safe.” Annabeth planted a real, nice kiss on Percy’s lips, and he kissed her back, happily. I kind of wished Pipes was here, but I didn't express it. I watched, partially in jealousy, as Percy picks Annabeth up by the waist, lifting her off the ground, still kissing. Annabeth pulled away to look Percy in the eye. “Percy…” He grinned and pulled her head closer to his, kissing her again. Then, he spun her around, lips still locked, and set her on the ground. “Percy…” She said again in between kisses.

"I love you, Annabeth.”

"I love you too.” Annabeth rested her head on Percy’s chest, and Percy stroked her hair. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

“No problem.”

“Or I’ll have to kill you.”

“Love you too,” Percy replied with gusto. Annabeth pulled him into a hug, and Percy gave in.

“Alright, I mean it. Go have fun.” Annabeth insisted as she put her hands on his shoulders. Percy nodded but snuck in one more kiss, which held for longer than I expected. When he finally pulled away, I had to look elsewhere. A little awkward, knowing I was staring, but I had to admit, Percy and Annabeth were always cuter than Piper and I, and I could never be as romantic as Percy. Leo let out a gasp.

“ohlordtheyaresocuteitslikethetitanicbuttheywontsinktheylljustbeeternalandOHMYGODSitssooooocuteandhowdotheyhavesuchalastingrelationshipaphroditesendhelp–” Leo hyperventilated, unable to wring his hands enough, seen as they were locked up. I felt similar, though I wasn't bold enough to state it like Leo. Percy held Annabeth’s waist firmly, and her hand was at his shoulder. This would be practically the first time they had been apart since… Tartarus. Quite abrupt. 

Argus cleared his throat and held out the cuffs for me. I sighed and held out my hands, trying to get into character. Trying to channel my anger towards the messed-up family that had landed me in so many fatal situations– trying to channel my anger towards my divine stepmother, the heifer she is, who wiped my memory. I scrunched my brow and tried the brooding look again as Argus snapped the cuffs around my wrists. “You ready?" I asked Percy. He huffed.

“Yeah.”

“No second thoughts?” Leo added.

“Well, some. But I’m ready.” Percy sighed. Annabeth nodded, and let go of Percy, running down Half-Blood Hill. Percy looked after her, like a lost puppy, but he turned to Argus. “Okay.” And Argus clasped the cuffs around his wrists. I studied mine and felt the weight of the cold cuffs against my wrists. I looked at Argus in the eye– or rather, in one eye. He nodded. I guess this was it. Time for the quest.

A/N: Sad moment, seeing as that’s the last Percabeth moment for a while, but we’ll see Annabeth again, I promise. I apologize about the ‘I’s– I was trying to fix something but now you’ll see that there are ‘I’s without spaces… that was definitely not intentional and I am completely aware. I am trying to get rid of that certain problem. And, unfortunately, this story is heavily Percy and Jason, rather than Leo. Which is horrible because we love Leo, but I’ll try to make it up to you guys and add more Leo, cuz all da ladies luv Leo, amiright? And, as a heads-up JERCY BROMANCE IS FULL FLAME IN THIS FIC. Thanks for reading :)

[littlemisssquiggles]

you know what would be a cool parallel? something similar to v6x2 when oz runs at ruby to try and stop her after she asks her question, and then it cuts to the in between realm with ruby. this time, it's oscar trying to save ruby from a grimm, and he runs at her and it cuts to the in between realm with oscar instead (after he presumably got knocked out by the grimm). and this is where he has to convince oz to come back.

Ifthe V6 finale is expected to be the biggest ending in RWBY history then I can only assume that it’sgoing to be longestseason finale in the entirety of theseries. Let’s not forget that V6 already gave us a long episode in its third episodealone with ‘TheLost Fable’ bringing in a run timeof 26 mins.

Ican only expect the C13 finale episode to top that runtime.A part of me is wishing that the finale episode will give us a possible runtimeof 30 minutes to…oh I dunno…a full 45 minutes to an hour long special event.

If C13 comes and the runtime is just the traditional 24-28 min runtimethat we always get for the finale then not only would that be a major bummerbut in the words of Mercury Black, it’d be ‘false advertising’ on the part of VRV for hyping up this season finaleonly for it to be the same ole vanilla finales we’ve always received forRWBY---at least in terms of the run time.

Imagine …having a RWBY finale that isover 30 mins long. Imagine… RWBY V6 giving us one of the longest seasonfinales in RWBY history! That would be amazing and a huge first forthe show. I would love it if we got a 1 hour long special as part of the seasonfinale for RWBY V6. But…this is just me wishing and hoping here.

Thisfinale has to be big because not only does it have to cover the heroesdefending the city but part of it may also be dedicated to Oscar finally getting in contact with Ozpinwithin his mind.My only curious question is how that’s going to be done. Your hunch is a good possibilityanon-chan.Oscar getting knocked out during a Grimm attack while trying to protect Ruby orperhaps another character, like Jaune is a chance.

Oncemore, as much as I would love to see Oscar fight alongside Ruby for this finalefight, I’m more leaning towards Oscar going with Jaune. Purely for the reason ofTeam JNPR Revival with Oscar joining up with JNR. Picture this:

Imagine…the heroes pair offinto teams of two to help eradicate the city infested with Grimm while helpingthe Atlesian Military who are trying to evacuate as much Argus civilians aspossible.

Picture…Oscar and Jaune pairing off so that Jaune can vacatehis family. Whatif…in C13,a pack of Manticores and one Sphinx corner the Cotta-Arc family in theirown home with the only safe room being a single bedroom near the balcony in thehouse.

Picture… Oscar being unceremoniously knocked unconsciouswhile protecting Jaune. Imagine Oscar pushing Jaune out the way of a Manticore thatblindsided the Arc boy while he rushed to help his sister. So Oscar is pawedstraight into a wall before slumping to the floor, lifeless. Jaune immediatelyrushes to Oscar’s side, fending off the Manticores before they can make an easymeal of the farm boy’s comatose body.

Picture…Jaune carrying anunconscious Oscar in his arms, handing him over to Saphron and Terra Cotta tolook after for him. What if…Jaune basically pulling a Pyrhha with his family.

Withthe Manticores and Sphinx already infesting thewhole house with more coming; picture Jaune askingSaphron to take Terra, Adrian and Oscar and stay locked quietly in the roomwhile Jaune stands on the other side of the door to protect them all; warningthem to not leave the room. Since Terra had already alerted the military, theplan was for Jaune to fend off as much Manticores as he could until the AtlasMilitary arrived to take the Cotta-Arcs to the safe zone.

Saphrondoesn’t like this plan at all, worried for her brother’s safety at fighting theGrimm alone. But Jaune pulls a Pyrhha where he’s willing to do everything inhis power to protect his family. Even if it means dying for it. When Saphron keepsacting resistant against this action, Jaune pulls his big sister into a bigbear hug, telling her that he’s sorry before shoving her into the room withTerra, Adrian and Oscar, locking it from the outside. From there, Jaune braceshimself---his sword raised high as he rears himself up for the battle of hislife as another wave of Manticores and Sphinx arrive to tear him to shreds. ButJaune is determined to not let the beasts get anywhere near his family as hesquares off against the Grimm.

WhileOscar is unconscious, he ends up meeting Ozpin inside his mind and begs Ozpinto help him fight. If Ozpin is to return for the finale, I don’t want him to return to fight for Oscar.I don’t want Ozpin to take over Oscar’s body and fight for him in the finale.That’s exactly what happened for the V5 finale and I’d like to think we’vegrown past that.

I’msorry to the Ozpinheads who want this but this squiggly Pinehead doesn’t. You guys realize for the majority of thisseason, Ozpinhas not fought on Oscar’s behalf not once at all, right? Sure he’s taken over but…Ozpin has NOT fought forOscar at all.

Sincethe first Manticore and Sphinx fight in the first episode, Oscar was the one incontrol fighting on his own. This entire season has shown Oscar finding his ownfooting without Ozpin. Oscar has done a lot on his own without much of Ozpin’sinterference and aid.

Whilehe didn’t receive the full character arc that Pineheads likeme were anticipating, I’ll admit that Oscar has matured morethis season. He’s definitely not the same as he was between V4 and V5 andthat’s good. If Ozpin returns and fights for Oscar in the V6 finale, the same way he did in the V5 finale,  then myimmediate disappointed reaction to that would be:

“What was thepoint of this entire season in regards to Oscar’s side of the story?”

What was the point oftaking Ozpin out of the picture to spend the next couple of episodes building upon Oscar as his own character, watching him stand on his own without Ozpin, build his own relationship with the team outside of Ozpin and thus create his own space among the team if it was all just for Ozpin to randomly swoop in at the literal last minute and save the day for Oscar in the finale? 

Thatwouldn’t sound like a fair idea now would it?

WhatI would actually love to see is Ozpin lending Oscar his power so the two souls can fight asone. So it’s Oscar in control but he’s empoweredwith Ozpin’s magic and the knowledge of the Oz-cane soeven if Oscar is the one fighting, he knows how to utilize the full power ofthe Oz-cane through Ozpin’s help.

Picture our Man with Two Souls fighting as one mind butOscar is still the dominating personality as opposed to Ozpin taking overcompletely.

Imagine Jaune looking at Oscar and mimickingLionheart in V5 wherehe’s looking at Oscar, thinking it’s Ozpin in control only for Oscar to smileand reveal that it’s still him in control. Picture it like:

Justas an exhausted Jaune is about to be completely overpowered by a Sphinx thathad him pinned to the ground, suddenly the door to the bedroom burst open andoutsteps a determined Oscar Pine---all great and powerful ashe suddenly unlocks the Oz-cane and unleashes a burst of magical energy thatsends the Sphinx Grimm flying straight off of Jaune.

Picture… Oscar fending off a horde of Manticores on hisown while protecting Jaune. The entire time Jaune is observingOscar’s solo battle, he’s awestruck. He couldn’t believe how much stronger andmore confidant a fighter Oscar had become. It was almost too surprising tobelieve and for a moment, Jaune’s heart sinks a bit as he considers that theperson fighting might not be Oscar.

At some point, Oscar turns to Jaune and helps him get back up to his feet.

Oscar: You okay?Jaune: …Yeah but…

Jaunelooks Oscar straight in the face.

Jaune:…Ozpin? You’re…Ozpin,aren’t you?

Atfirst, Oscar just stares back at Jaune all serious only for his expression tomelt into a smile more befitting of the adolescent farm boy Jaune knew him tobe.

Oscar: Not quite.

ToJaune’s relief, it is Oscar andJaune beams as he and Oscar share a brief bro hug or bro handshake.

Jaune: …But how? Just now, youfought likeOzpin? If you’re still you then---

Oscar: *cutting Jaune off* I’ll explain later. Right now, we gotta get yourfamily to safety.

Jaune: Right.

Jauneand Oscar then work together to get Saphron, Terra and Adrian to nearestAtlesian Military airship to evacuate them to the nearest safety point. Thoughthe girls and baby Adrian are safe, Jaune and Oscar of course stay behind tofight. So as the Cotta-Arcs fly off with the Atlas Guards, Oscar and Jaune headoff in the opposite direction to continue clearing out the city of Grimm. Who knows? Perhaps alongthe way they can reunite with Ren and Nora and we could get that JNR tag team withOscar that I’ve been itching for.

Following that, wecan possibly have this parallel to V3.My theory for the finale is that at some point, the Atlas Military might haveno choice but to evacuate the whole city of Argus oncethe Leviathan makes it way to land and crosses over into the city. Even ifCaroline Cordovin miraculously manages to get the mechazord back up andrunning, I doubt the mechazord will be a match for the Leviathan.

Whatcould be interesting is if the mechazord is about to be completely destroyed bythe Leviathan and while Cordo is fully prepared to die like the solider she is,she ends up being rescued by Maria Calaverawho comes in with her airship to distract the Leviathan long enough tosave Cordo. I think that could be pretty cool if Maria ends up saving Cordo with thetwo old tarts finally burying the hatchet with their age old rivalry.

Returning to mytheory; remember how back in V3, we had all the huntsmen rendezvous at theairship docks to be taken to safety away from Vale?

That’s when Ruby and Weiss arrive to discover that their teammates hadbeen seriously hurt with Yang losing her arm. From there, Ruby is informed byRen and Nora that Jaune and Pyrhha are still at Beacon even with the GrimmDragon circling the school grounds. So Ruby and Weiss go off to get them.

The lasttime, when Jaune was in danger, Ruby and Weiss both went to find him and Pyrhha.What if …we get a parallel tothat moment where the heroes rendezvous to evacuate like everyone else sincethe Leviathan had made it all the way to the city. However Ruby and Weiss arestill separated. At the sound of Ruby not being back yet, Oscar immediately jumps at theopportunity to go find her only for Jaune to volunteer to accompany Oscar.

So both Oscarand Jaune go back to go find their girls.

When Oscar and Jaunefind Ruby and Weiss, that’s when it can lead into Ruby trying to stop theLeviathan only to fail and then we can have Oscar get his chance to protect herwith the Oz-cane barrier.

Bingo Bongo!How’s that for an Oscar-worthy finale?

I’d love it if the finale events can go something like this. This is thefinal episode thus the season’s last chance to give us Pineheads onefinal Oscar-worthyperformance from our favouritefreckled farm boy turned barn prince. I know these are all just hunches but Ireally hope the CRWBY deliver on a good finale where Oscar ends up contributinga lot to the final fight.

No more standingon the side-lines. No more joining Maria inthe airship.Let my boy fight! Let Qrow swap places with Oscar and accompany Maria on theairship. Speaking of which, who else wants to see Qrowteam up with Maria? Thissquiggle meister surely does! Let’s go Team Grave Bird!

Comeon! Qrow literally said that Maria is his idol back in C7. Plus I’d like to think that Maria’sstill got it. Sure she hasn’t fought in years but I’m sure push comes to shove,give the ole gal her cane and she’ll come in swinging like Yoda from Star Wars.

Thereis Grimm infesting the city! This is an all hands on deck kindof moment. Maria included. Oscar definitely included! Plus I really want to seeQrow and Maria team up together. I got my three episodes full of Maria andOscar teaming up. Now it’s Qrow’s turn to team up with his idol and Oscar to team upwith Jaune. Please CRWBY! But thisis just me wishing and hoping again.

Here’sto a potentially Oscar-worthyseason finale. I know Ruby is expected to be the one to save the daybut I still want my freckled farm son to shine brighter than a supernova likethe true golden boy he is.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

[margridarnauds]

22, 27, & 33 for lazare, if you wanna?

I AM ALWAYS DOWN TO DISCUSS MY SON. THANK YOU. 

22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

Lazare, bless his heart, isn’t a particularly creative spirit; he might have been, once, but that was thoroughly taken out of him. He might try to transcribe music notes that he remembers if he’s feeling particularly creative, but they all tend to be rather formulaic and more...things that he’s ALREADY heard and wants to get out of his head as opposed to things he creates. 

He would probably, realistically, try drafting a letter or report, something to do with his job, in even lines and consistent margins, each word carefully chosen to be as succinct as possible. (So...not like anytime I have a blank piece of paper and try to write words on it.) 

27. What is their biggest regret?

Regret is a hard word to really...work with, when it comes to Lazare? And it’s one I’m forever rolling around in my head because, on one hand, I obviously am always nudging him towards a redemption arc and to do that he obviously needs to realize what he’s done, but I also think it’s...complicated for him. And, if you ask me this question in a month, I might very well have a different answer from the one I’m giving now because it IS one of those questions I’m always tossing back and forth. 

 I think that years of military “training” (which...realistically, judging from the fact that he’s described as “fils de la haute aristocratie militaire” and officers could be recruited FREAKISHLY young, probably means “indoctrination”) have given him an extensive justification system that we see in action during Nous ne Sommes and Maniaque. “This sanction is legitimate, these are criminals, the MOB is the one at fault here, they’re the ones who are going to cause the blood to flow, we gave an oath, this is what we owe the King, the King is ordained by God.” 

(Please feel free to nudge me about my headcanons regarding Nous ne Sommes and who Lazare is REALLY addressing it to.)    

For the most part, I think he tends to deeply internalize this kind of thing; it’s what allows him to keep pressing forward, without really...looking back. One of my favorite things about Seijou Kaito’s take on the role is that, even though she plays a very ruthless, merciless Peyrol, there are also these...little moments here and there where it almost seems like he’s thinking about what he’s doing before inevitably snapping back onto his old patterns. 

That being said, I think, with time, he DOES grow to regret Papa Mazurier’s death. Part of it is seeing how that affects Ronan and Solène, part of it is the lingering effect it has in his own relationship with both, and I think that both kind of...feed into it, but I do think that some part of him, very deep down, that he generally refuses to admit, does regret it. I like to believe that, at some point post-canon, he eventually finds his way to the grave Papa Mazurier was dumped in (probably paid for by the parish, from my very, very, VERY limited knowledge of how this kind of thing would work) and pays his respects. 

I think that, in any universe where he survives past the Revolution, he would evolve further, as far as seeing the blood and devastation and realizing how MUCH could have been averted, especially if he doesn’t have his military career to bury himself in. And, with the King and Queen’s death, being HELPLESS to do anything...that would have an effect on him. I think that the kind of rule of thumb when it comes to Peyrol and regret is looking at how deeply it actually AFFECTS him personally. 

And, of course, in the Takarazuka production, he DEEPLY regrets giving the order to shoot Ronan. Like, I tend to think that that one would...really, really be hard for him to deal with. Because suddenly he can’t walk it off; he has the reminder of what he did every. Single. Day. And it’s something that is impacting every single aspect of his life. I think it’s very telling that, in the Takarazuka production, he’s facing Ronan in Pour la Peine, looking longingly at him while singing about disappearing beneath the waves of history, then when Ronan jumps onto the platform with him, he turns away. I don’t think that one’s out of personal hatred towards Ronan, but out of a self-loathing that’s persisted even in the afterlife, all these years later being unable to accept what he’s done and face Ronan. (And it’s honestly a little bit tragic when you compare with The Hug from the French production.)

33. Concept of home and family?

[since I’m talking about Laz’s childhood as I headcanon it, obvious abuse tw here]

“Family” is...not something Lazare’s familiar with. It’s endlessly interesting to me that, of everyone in the cast, Lazare is the ONLY one without any real personal connections. Like, you can argue that it was shitty writing, probably because Lazare hadn’t been...planned as a character before the sudden switch, but still. Olympe has her father (which is really brought out in the Takarazuka and Toho productions), Ronan (even though I don’t really SHIP them, I can say that they’re CLOSE at least), and the Queen; Ronan has Solène and vice versa, even if the relationship isn’t always steady, as well as his Bros of the Revolution etc. 

Lazare? Gets nothing. We never see him in any of the Versailles scenes, outside of in the context of his duty. We never see him showing any warmth towards any of the other characters. You could argue that he and Artois have some kind of connection, given that they do seem to work together to take down Necker, but I’m pressed to say whether it’s a PERSONAL thing or not, especially since Lazare has various and assorted reasons of his own to want Necker yeeted. I’d tentatively put him as part of the Artois faction at court, but...I’m not sold on them being FRIENDLY. I tend to headcanon that Lazare had a crush on Artois at one point, but it...really, really didn’t go well for him.  

Obviously, this is just what we get in canon, and Lazare COULD have a wife, ten children, and a little dog named “Cuddles” that he takes on long walks in the park...but...I doubt it. I tend to see him as an only child (as much personal JOY as Laz having siblings to torment him over his crush on Ronan would give me), with his father dying young and his mother being forced, as a penniless widow, to give him over to Grandpapa de Fuck, who either died while Lazare was still in America or a few years later. And, as I tend to underline time after time again, while I think that he MIGHT have some amount of affection for his grandson, it’s...a very twisted form of affection that allows him to justify the terrible things he put him through. “I’m doing what’s best for the boy, making him strong, not like his father who I failed. He’ll be thankful for it, in the end.” 

He might have a few distant relatives here or there, an aunt who’s an abbess at a far-flung convent, a few distant cousins who are PRAYING that he never gets married, but no personal connections. As a result, family to him is...a matter of hierarchy and social position, not affection. He doesn’t...HATE his grandfather for what he did to him (obviously not as much as he deserves), because everything’s been so normalized to him that he accepts it, but he doesn’t feel a strong affection either. He is the current head of the de Peyrol family, there are obligations tied into that that he might or might not have actually tended to had the Revolution not gotten in the way, but they aren’t a family unit.  

As far as places that he’s called home...he moved from his father’s estate to his grandfather’s when he was somewhere around 5-6, but that wasn’t home and he never fully...warmed to it. Then, he was signed on for his military career and went all over the place, as ordered, including to the United States during the American Revolution (which he would have been young for, somewhere in the mid-teens; it would have been his first break as an officer and is PROBABLY the reason why he’s at least a colonel [I go back and forth as far as his exact rank, but he’s in charge of a regiment, ergo he’s at least at that rank, though he’s also obviously a trusted enough officer to report directly to the King] despite being pretty damn young), but he didn’t get attached. The closest thing he ever got to that was the apartment with Ronan (which is canon and you will pry it from my cold dead hands), which was their apartment. And suddenly he had something to come home to, a place that was his. Sure, some of Ronan’s furniture decisions were...questionable, but it’s not like he was really an EXPERT on such things, and it made him happy. He knew it was going to go, eventually, but, there were times that he could convince himself otherwise, when they were having a quiet dinner together or when Ronan helped him with his morning toilette or when he found Ronan curling up against him at night. 

Which only made it worse when Ronan died and, yet again, he didn’t have a home, just an empty apartment filled with ghosts, and this time, he’d done it to himself. 

[your-iron-lung]

Mixed Up 24 | Spirit of the Radio |

Chapter Word Count: 6870

Pairings: Zoro/Sanji

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Chapter Warnings: Strong Language

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

Next Chapter: 25

The biggest point of discussion that occurred after Nami arrived was not, surprisingly, about whether or not Zoro would take care of his injury properly on his own, but instead revolved around whether or not he would be okay enough to play at the student recital the next day.  

Nami seemed convinced that he shouldn’t, afraid of worsening his eye by over-exerting the muscles in his face somehow during the performance. Zoro insisted he’d be fine, and when the two asked Sanji his opinion on the matter, he knew better than to take one side over the other. He remained impartial to their disagreement as they ate, taking both of their points into careful consideration.

“It’s not like I fucked up one of my hands,” Zoro had said as he tipped his bowl against his lips to slurp the broth up noisily. “I’ll just pop a few painkillers beforehand and be fine. We already promised Tony; it’d break the kid’s heart to back out now.”

“Well what about the Tralalaw show on Sunday?” she’d asked then, guiding her spoon through the soup with an air of distraction about her. “There’s no way you’re still thinking of going to that.”

Their disagreement had exploded from there and they’d argued over that for a long while. It started civilized, but had eventually degraded to the point where they’d begun to shout and call each other names. Sanji wanted to intervene, but felt it was something that needed to be resolved between them. Zoro’s main point of arguing stemmed from the supposed pact they’d made that revolved around him going to the show ‘come hell or high water’, but Nami didn’t seem to want to hear it.

“This is different,” she’d stressed around a mouthful of sandwich. “You know how rough their shows can get; you’re already hurt badly enough as it is, why risk making it worse?”

“Because I already bought a ticket, mom. Whether you ‘allow’ me to go or not, I’m going to be there even if I have to drive myself and overdose on Oxycodone to do it,” Zoro snarled, daring her to challenge him further on the matter. “It’s the biggest show of the year and I’m not gonna miss it because some asshole cut up my fucking face.”

A line had been crossed; even Sanji had realized that. Instead of retaliating, Nami had only stared at him, full of an icy rage that threatened to burst before she abruptly pushed the rest of her unfinished food away from her. Clearly pissed, she’d bitterly thanked Sanji for the meal and left curtly without another word to gather the things she’d left in Zoro’s apartment.

“That was too far,” Sanji said, though he was beginning to come to terms with the fact that he didn’t have to take Nami’s side on everything.

Zoro had only shrugged, saying, “Had to let her know I was serious.”

He hadn’t stuck around much longer after that, having felt recovered enough to climb the three flights of stairs he couldn’t earlier. To his credit, though, he did offer to help Sanji with the clean up before following Nami upstairs, where their argument surely must have continued. Sanji didn’t hear Nami return down the stairs for quite some time after.

With everything said and done, he then spent the rest of his day alone.

When he’d finally finished washing all the dishes they’d used, he made a list of things he needed to restock on the next time he went grocery shopping, texted Nami to ask what time the Solstice recital started, and then killed time the only way he knew how: by studying up on various recipes and other cooking techniques he had not yet mastered.

By the day’s end, he’d completely forgotten to listen to the song Zoro had recommended him.

Then it was Saturday, and the thought that it was Saturday never occurred to him. The Solstice recital started in the early afternoon, allowing Sanji plenty of time to sleep in, shower, and groom himself before he drove into the downtown area. Knowing that the recital was a casual event meant he could dress down a bit, saving him time on figuring out what to wear. He settled for a nice button down and some high-waisted jeans that he could tuck the shirt into, knowing full well how many looks he was going to attract. He loved this particular look because it highlighted just how long his legs were, and today he felt like showing off. Today, he felt good.

Checking his look out in the bathroom mirror, he was pleased with how attractive he looked and deemed himself ready to leave. Pulling on his long coat, he checked his phone one last time before he walked out the door, locking his apartment behind him.

Sanji was in high spirits as he got into his car, even though Zoro hadn’t technically invited him to come by. Still, the recital was a public event, and he had no issue with admitting that he was excited to see him play, as he had yet to see him perform live in a semi-professional environment with a band. It was something he’d wanted to see for a while; watching Youtube videos of past Mugiwara Menace shows couldn’t contest with witnessing a live performance first hand.

He kept the radio station tuned to the same one that had played one of their songs before in hopes that they’d play another one for him to discover. As he travelled though, the only music they played was by musicians he’d never heard of before, and the Mugiwara Menace did not make a repeat appearance on the airwaves.

Parking was hard to find as he drove closer to the store, but he saw Zoro’s motorcycle parked by the sidewalk’s bicycle rack and Nami’s truck along the road and knew they were already inside. The turnout at the store when he finally did show up was much larger than he’d originally thought it would be, though it was mostly comprised of young kids eager to show off to their friends and family. He didn’t see Nami or Zoro as he walked in despite having seen their vehicles, and immediately felt out of place as he joined up with the crowd, lingering towards the back.

The stage was still being set up, with Franky’s employees struggling to stack a large amplifier over top of another one. There were several rows of fold out chairs set up in sections in front of the stage, and as he took off his coat to drape it over the back of one in the last row, he earned several appreciative glances from a few women. Unable to help himself, he returned a few of the looks with a smile he knew was seductive that turned a few faces red; it felt good to look good. He couldn’t help but wonder what Zoro’s reaction was going to be when they finally did meet up.

As he took his seat, he pulled out his phone and sent Nami a text that read, ‘I’m here, where are you guys?’ and resumed looking around the store to see if he’d perhaps missed them somewhere. It was then he felt someone’s hand clasp his shoulder. He looked up, half-expecting it to be Zoro and instead found himself staring into the broadly grinning face of Franky.

“Hey bro! Glad you could make it out!” he said as Sanji slipped his phone away and returned the smile.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he replied as Franky pulled out a chair for himself and sat down beside him. “Brook told me I should come, I think.”

“Aw yeah, way to go Brook!” Franky laughed and put up his feet on the vacant chair in front of him to tilt his seat back, balancing meticulously on the rear legs. “Looking for your squad?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I texted Nami and told her I was here already but haven’t seen her yet.” Again, he let his eyes rove around the store in an attempt to locate them. “Have you seen them?”

“Ah, yeah, her and Zoro are in the back giving his kid one last pep talk before we get this show rolling,” Franky said, turning his attention towards the stage where a few of his technicians were now setting up a drum kit for the show’s use. “Poor Tony’s more nervous than a deer at a shooting range. But don’t worry, they’ll be out soon; show’s gonna start in a hot minute.”

“I’d be nervous too, with a turn out like this,” Sanji said, gazing once more at the decent sized crowd of people that had showed up.

“One day you will be, if you keep up with the lessons.” Franky turned and shot him a grin. “Speaking of, Brook told me you missed yours this week.”

“Oh. Guess I did,” he said. He hadn’t actually forgotten, but with Zoro in the hospital, he didn’t think he’d still be expected to come in while his instructor was incapacitated. At the very least, he hadn’t received a call or an email about what he was supposed to have done.

“All good bro, Brook’ll get it rescheduled for ya, but you missed the chance to learn with me! I was covering all Zoro’s lessons while he was out, but I guess you didn’t get the memo on that one eh?”

Franky laughed and almost let his chair fall completely backwards. He quickly righted it with the grace of a man who has made the same mistake several times before by swinging his thick arms to counter-act the momentum until he stabilized himself.

“No, I guess I didn’t,” Sanji mused, trying not to laugh outright at Franky’s antics. His energy was infectious though, and it was hard not to.

“Hey man, it’s cool, probably our fault you didn’t,” he said, his energy calming down to a level that was a little more socially acceptable after he almost took a spill. “Brook’s a great coordinator, but sometimes the technology we use outsmarts him. But hey, lookie lookie who it is.”

Pointing towards the back of the room behind the stage, Sanji saw that Zoro and Nami were walking out of the lessons hallway with a small boy wearing a pink top hat. Zoro had his hand on the kid’s shoulder, supportively guiding him towards the seating area. When he saw them, Franky sat up, letting his seat fall forward onto the front legs with a grunt.

Franky waved to grab their attention, whereupon Zoro released Tony’s shoulder and handed the kid the little guitar case he’d been carrying for him. He leaned down to say something to him then, which garnered a nervous smile from Tony. They parted ways, with Tony hurriedly walking towards where his grandmother was and Zoro and Nami meeting up with Sanji and Franky.

“Hey guys,” Nami said, smiling and giving a small wave as she walked up. Sanji greeted her with a smile and nod in return.

“How’s lil Tony holding up?” Franky asked.

Zoro and Nami shared a slight grimace between them.

“He’s…. more or less okay. Just got some pre-performance anxiety, you know.”

“Poor kid,” Franky said with a dramatic sigh. “Ain’t easy being a natural talent at his age; lotta people have eyes on you.”

The solemn way he’d spoken implied that he was speaking from experience. It was a hard burden to carry, Sanji knew, as he too had been affected by the pressure of being a talented cook as a child. Franky stood up then and put his hands on his hips, smiling proudly at all the people gathered in his humble store before any of them could dwell on it for too long. Sanji spared a quick look at Zoro to see how he was doing, and found that the oaf was actually looking at him. There was a dopey sort of look on the guitarist’s face that Sanji attributed to the fact that he was probably rolling off of the pain pills he’d said he was going to take before they started playing.

His hair had also been restored to its bright green state and there was no longer any trace of his natural hair color to be seen.

Zoro maintained the eye contact even as Sanji looked away hurriedly.

“Well, time to get this bad boy started; looks like Mozu and Kiwi have finished up,” Franky said, attracting everyone’s attention by clapping his hands together He turned towards Zoro and Nami and asked, “You guys ready?”

Nami nodded, a playful look in her eye as she said, “Let’s do it!”

“Super! See you after this is all over pal, hope you enjoy the show,” Franky said to Sanji before walking away, heading towards the stage where a microphone and stand had been set up.

“Good luck guys,” Sanji said, smiling warmly up at Nami as she, too, began to take her leave.

“Should be saying that to the students,” she laughed before turning away and making her way to the front.

Zoro lingered behind for a moment, even as Franky tapped on the microphone to get his audience’s attention.

“What?” Sanji asked, crossing one of his legs over the other.

“Did uh,” Zoro began, but faltered. He had clearly been looking at Sanji’s legs, and had to clear his throat and look away to continue. “Did you happen to listen to the song?”

“What so- Oh, uh, no, I forgot,” Sanji said, torn between feeling guilty and pleased by the fact that his clothing choices had worked the way he’d wanted them to. “Though I wouldn’t have if you’d just let me listen to it yesterday.”

Zoro’s lips twitched into a slight frown, an unreadable expression on his face that registered as slight disappointment. An apology was on the tip of Sanji’s tongue when Zoro walked away without another word, joining Nami, Brook, and Franky on the stage by the microphone. The guilty feeling completely outweighed everything else he felt now, but he did his best not to become consumed by it.

“Hey everyone! Before we start, I just wanna take the time to thank everyone for making it out here today to watch our students show off the talent they’ve been working super hard to refine over the course of this year,” Franky announced, speaking warmly into the microphone. He paused to allow the audience their moment to applaud him, and then continued. “They’ve worked hard under the care of our instructors, who will join them on stage to perform a song of their choosing that’ll exemplify their growth. So without further ado, let’s begin!”

Sanji clapped along with the crowd, impressed with the level of professionalism Franky displayed when he’d only ever goofed around with him before. He’d initially had his doubts about how a man like Franky could own a store, but they were quelled now by his speech. Everyone involved in the production looked happy to be there, as both Brook and Nami had large smiles on their faces, but Zoro still had that half frown stuck on his as he left the stage to be replaced by the first of Brook’s students.

They were an older kid who was learning the fiddle, and played some sort of jaunty tune with Brook’s accompaniment. The speakers carried the song throughout the store, filling it with a lively atmosphere that had more than a few people dancing along to it in their seats. When the song was done, the student bowed off and another one of Brook’s kids took his place. They were doing the recital in batches so the mentors wouldn’t have to keep leaving and coming back to the stage.

For the most part, the kids performing played really well. Every once in a while one would slip up, but they bounced back from their errors with a red face and relative ease. Their talent was being put on full display in an environment that was receiving them well with great encouragement; Franky and his establishment had gone to great lengths to ensure that that would be the outcome.

Occasionally Brook would take a seat behind the drum kit to play along with a kid on guitar, and once or twice he even sang to great applause. It made Sanji wonder if anyone in the audience ever thought to make the connection between Brook and his old alias of The Soul King, as he sounded much the same as he did when he was active. If anything, though, they probably thought of him as a wonderful impersonator.

It took an hour for all of Brook’s students to have their allotted stage time and play through their music. The songs each of them performed ranged from classical music to instrumental renditions of popular rock songs, and every one of them was finished to a round of applause. When the last of his students finally left the stage, Brook went with them, inviting Franky to take the stage once again to congratulate them all on their performances and to introduce the next grouping.

What Sanji had wanted to see all along was finally about to happen.

When Zoro took the stage, he walked with a sort of surly swagger, slipping the white bass that had been left on the stage for him out of its stand and across his chest. An air of arrogance surrounded him as he tuned it, but to his credit, he had sort of dressed up for the occasion and wasn’t wearing much of his usual punk attire. At some point after returning home he’d found three more safety pins to line his ear with, and for some reason, Sanji found that to be comforting, as though Zoro had reclaimed some part of himself that had been lost with his hospitalization and eye.

His first kid stepped on stage, and immediately Sanji noticed a difference in age when comparing Brook’s students to Zoro’s. Brook’s set had been kids of a younger talent, whose parents had probably been told at some point that learning a classical instrument would benefit their child’s development somehow. Zoro’s students were noticeably older; preteens and teenagers who wanted to learn something that would annoy their parents and impress their friends.

They were guitarists who had picked up on some of the punk attitude Zoro had rubbed off on them and bassists who admired their instructor’s talents and sought him out because of his professional career. Occasionally Nami would join them on stage to play a song that sounded better with a three part ensemble, but not once did he open his mouth to sing until that little boy Sanji had seen him with earlier hesitantly took the stage.

The poor kid’s knees were practically knocking into each other as he carefully placed his guitar’s strap across his shoulders and plugged into the amp. Nami, sitting behind the drum kit, threw the boy a supportive thumb’s up which seemed to strengthen his resolve a bit.

Taking his place at the microphone, Zoro looked distant and a little pissed. His eye hovered over the audience, staring more at the back wall than he was at the people filling the rows of seats; the painkillers must have been wearing off.

“Tony and I have been practicing this song for a few weeks now,” he said, and broke the stoic way he was looking out to grin at the kid nervously tuning his guitar. “And even though he’s been coming here for like, two years now, this is the first time we’ve conned him into performing in the end of year recital. We’re all very proud of him.”

Tony’s face took on a furious hue of embarrassment, generating some laughter from the crowd. He said something in response that couldn’t be heard as he wiggled around uncomfortably, but made Zoro chuckle.

“Anyway, the song he picked to play is called ‘The Prettiest Waitress in Memphis’ and we hope you like it as much as he does.”

He stepped away from the microphone then and backed up to say something to Nami, who nodded. She began to clap her drumsticks together to start a countdown, and on the count of three they began to play.

Tony was far more impressive than Sanji realized a kid that young could be. He started off strong, playing the opening rift with great ease and composure, the earlier set of nerves that had been affecting him now gone.

The bass line was steady and fast, being powered on by Nami’s drumming as she set the pace for the song. And then, oh, then, Zoro began to sing.

“Well there is only one reason I stop in this place; let me stress that it ain’t the cuisine-”

The way he was singing seemed refrained, making his voice sound different from the way he sang on the songs he recorded with the Mugiwara. It was, in a way, a little cleaner than it usually was; less like he was singing with a handful of gravel in his mouth and more like he had an actual voice. Sanji understood then that this wasn’t a performance for his benefit, but was instead holding back in order to let Tony shine.

When the fuck had Zoro gotten so damn considerate? Perhaps he always had been, and Sanji just hadn’t noticed it till now.

“She’s- the- prettiest waitress in Memphis, and I think she’s flirting with me-”

For a kid as young as Tony was, the amount of dexterity he had in his fingers was beginning to make Sanji jealous. They were moving so precisely even though he had his eyes closed the entire time, hitting every chord and note he was supposed to without needing to double check his finger placement. His expertise with the guitar was highlighted beautifully by Zoro and Nami, who were each doing their best to support him.

What Nami had told Sanji shortly after meeting him rang true regardless; Zoro definitely did sound better when he was plugged in.

The song held true to its steady, consistent rhythms as it progressed, moving through the first and second chorus until it got to the guitar solo, where Tony’s talent was truly put to the test. Looking at the faces of some of the other people in the crowd, Sanji could see that even many of them were just as stunned as he was by how good this kid was.

The solo itself didn’t necessarily fit the tone of the rest of the song, but was played so well that it didn’t matter. Tony’s fingers roamed the fretboard with practiced ease, hitting notes in a pattern that created a favorable melody that Sanji found his body trying to sway to. On and on it went, fingers roving up and down the neck as Tony held a strained sort of look on his face that showed just how hard he was concentrating. And then it was over, with the three of them finishing the song to much applause after the final chorus was finished.

“Thank you,” Zoro said, smiling and speaking a little breathlessly into the mic.

He ruffled Tony’s head as the kid took a bow, knocking his hat to the floor. Tony’s face when he righted after picking his hat up harbored a pleased smile that stretched from ear to ear as he unplugged his guitar with a slight burst of static and left the stage.

Zoro himself held a satisfied smile as well, and Sanji could feel his heartrate pick up when the punk’s gaze looked out over the audience and landed on him for a moment. This time, Sanji didn’t break eye contact until Zoro had to turn away to walk off the stage. Franky took his place, and commenced with his closing speech to wrap up the event.

“Huge thank you to everyone who came out today to support our young up-and-coming super stars, and an even bigger thank you to those who performed! You’ve all been super!”

With his short speech finished, the crowd began to disperse. Family members went to congratulate their kin and Franky for hosting the event, while Zoro, Nami, and Brook hovered around the stage area, talking amongst themselves and anyone who came up to thank and speak with them.

He sat there for a moment, unsure of what to do until Nami made eye contact with him and beckoned him to join their group. Gathering up his coat, Sanji stood up and made his way over, straightening out his shirt as he went.

“Ah! Mr. Vinsmoke! So pleased to see you again!” Brook exclaimed, greeting him with a broad smile and bringing him into their conversation, which seemed to have been about whose kid had done the best.

“You can call me Sanji,” he said with a half-smile, shifting his weight so he stood primarily with a lean, hip cocked to the side and holding his coat politely in his arms before him.

“Well! Mr. Sanji, how did you enjoy the recital? We showcased many young talents tonight, I do dare to think!”

“Yeah, they were awesome,” he agreed, and then gestured to the three of them standing there. “You guys were, too. That was really cool to watch.”

With the recital now over, most of the store’s main floor had thinned out considerably. Some people still lingered about in the rows of seats chatting amongst themselves, but for the most part a majority of the crowd that had been there was now gone. No longer restricted to his hosting responsibilities, Franky shook hands with one of his patrons and then joined them by the stage.

“What a great turn out! You guys were super!”

“The kids were the super ones, Franky,” Zoro said, though he did look incredibly pleased with himself. Leaning his back against the stage, he had a content look upon his face that eased some of the naturally hard angles of his profile, giving him a more youthful appearance.

“Yeah, but you guys were super too! We should go out for drinks tonight to celebrate a job well done!”

“You buying?” Nami asked, a sly look coming over her at the possibility of free drinks.

“Sure, I’ll buy us all a round; you guys deserve it!” Franky almost shouted, unable to keep his enthusiasm in check.

“Just a single round?” Nami pouted. “Didn’t we do super well though?”

“Don’t I pay you enough to buy your own drinks?” Franky responded good-naturedly, laughing when Nami shook her head no. “Fine, two rounds on me then!”  

Nami let out a little cheer at that and turned to Sanji, saying, “You come too; it’ll be fun with all of us together.”

“Quit inviting him to everything we do,” Zoro complained loudly, letting out a sound of exasperation. “This is supposed to be a reward, not a punishment.”

At that, everyone in the circle booed him. Brook and Franky instantly rallied to Sanji’s side, each of them clapping one of their hands onto his shoulder in solidarity.

“Sanji’s a great guy from what I’ve seen!” Franky attested, shaking him a little as he spoke for emphasis. “He absolutely deserves to come celebrate with us!”

“He hasn’t done anything worth celebrating,” Zoro drawled, but it was evident to Sanji now that he was only complaining for the sake of complaining. There was no fight in his voice or posture, and his lips were drawn up into a slight smirk.

“He’s taking lessons! He is learning something new, and that in and of itself is something worthy of celebration!” Brook said fiercely, shaking Sanji’s other shoulder.

“Alright, alright, he can come, whatever, just quit shaking him like a baby or you’ll break him,” Zoro said, laughing now at the sight of Sanji being rattled so carelessly between them.

They both immediately stopped shaking in favour of cheering, and he wasn’t sure who it was, but one of them initiated a group hug that he suddenly found himself being roped into. He tried to pull himself out of it, but their grip over him was too strong. They held him in place as Nami brought Zoro in, all of them hugging in an awkward huddle before they finally all let go.

“Same old place?” Nami asked once they were all standing on their own again.

“Same old place,” Franky confirmed. “Same old time.”

“What’s the same old place?” Sanji asked, looking to Nami for some insight into the situation.

“We go to Blueno’s Bar usually, since its close by and the owner knows Franky pretty well,” she elaborated. “Sometimes we hang out there after work.”

“And the same old time?”

“We usually close the store at 9:30, but we’re closing early tonight, right Franky?”

Again she turned that sly charm upon him, fluttering her lashes a bit in an attempt to get him to agree. Checking the clock on his phone, Sanji saw that it was only 4, which would mean he had quite a few hours to kill before they all went drinking if that was the case.

Franky frowned, but appeared to be contemplating her request.

“I mean, I guess; none of you guys have any lessons today because of the recital anyway,” he mused, scratching his cleft chin in thought. “Doubt anyone’s gonna come in wanting to buy a guitar that late on a Saturday anyway. We can get outta here by 6.”

“Yes!” Nami exclaimed, and even Zoro seemed pretty thrilled about being let off early, despite the fact that the only thing he had to do while working was give lessons.

“I’ll go tell the rest of the family,” Franky said, beginning to take leave of their group. “So meet up at Blueno’s at 6:15 for your free drinks.”

Brook chuckled and shook his head, delighted by the turn of events. As he too was about to step away, he seemed to remember something and turned back.

“Oh! Before I forget, Sanji, would you like to reschedule the lesson you missed last week?” he said, speaking to him with an inquisitive look.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” he said, quirking his brow at Zoro. “Are you going back to work so soon?”

“Like I said before, it’s not like I broke my hand or my wrist or anything; I can still play and teach with one eye,” Zoro scoffed, holding his hands up for mock inspection. “You all just saw me play for an hour fine.”

“And how many painkillers did you have to take in order to do that?” Nami chastised with a frown. Zoro didn’t answer, and instead rolled his eye.

“Whatever,” he said dismissively, taking leave of their group to hop back on stage and collect his guitar. “I’m resuming my lessons ASAP, so schedule him for whenever you can, Brook.”

Nami sighed, but Brook nodded.

“Will do, Zoro. Now, if you would be so kind as to follow me, Sanji, and we’ll get that sorted out for you.”

“I’ll be up front when you’re done,” Nami said as Sanji followed Brook away and into the lesson’s hallway where his office was.

They rescheduled his next lesson for Tuesday at the same time he’d been set for previously. Brook apologized for not sending him the notification that stated Franky would be covering Zoro’s lessons, and Sanji once again found himself almost unable to believe that he was talking to the Soul King. Brook was just so humble and polite that it was hard to believe he had once been a rock star of incredible fame. His attention was once again drawn to the photograph of Brook and Jimi Hendrix together, when a thought occurred to him.

“Would you uh, ever be opposed to maybe signing something for me?” Sanji asked, trying not to look as awkward as he felt. “Like, as the Soul King?”

Brook looked up from his computer with a surprised look, his fingers halting over the keyboard mid-stroke.

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be worth much,” he replied with a light laugh. Despite his joking nature, he seemed confused by the request.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to sell it, it’s just, uh.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “Christmas is coming up and the old geezer has all your records so I thought it’d be cool if I got something signed for him.”

Cocking his head to the side, Brook merely stared at him for a few seconds before bursting out into what was perhaps one of the most obnoxious laughs Sanji had ever heard.

“Of course! What a thoughtful young man you are; I can see why everyone speaks so highly of you!”

“Maybe not everyone,” he replied quietly.

A small, relieved smile appeared on Sanji’s face as he thanked him though, promising to come by with an album he could sign as a gift he could give to Zeff for the holiday. He had to start thinking about what to gift his new friends as well at some point, but would deal with that later as Brook got his rescheduled lesson into the system. With everything taken care of, Sanji returned to the main area of Super-Star! Guitars and met up with Nami, who, along with Zoro, had resumed her usual perch at the front desk.

“Looks like I’ll be seeing you Tuesday and Thursday next week,” Sanji said to Zoro, who groaned and spun himself around in Nami’s chair.

Despite how it seemed like he was annoying him, Sanji was glad to see that Zoro’s disposition hadn’t changed much with the loss of his eye. Any other normal person, himself included, he supposed, may have become depressed over the loss of such a vital part of the body, but Zoro really didn’t seem to care. He carried on as he normally would have; his resentment of Sanji included.

“Can’t fuckin’ wait,” he grumbled, though as he turned away Nami caught a slight smile trying to force its way out.

“Well lads, since we have some time to kill, want to run over the game plan for tomorrow?” Nami proposed, grabbing a pen and a piece of printer paper.

“Why, what’s tomorrow?” Sanji asked.

“I swear you have the memory of a goldfish or some shit,” Zoro said, spinning back around to fix Sanji with a look that betrayed his annoyance.

Sanji opened his mouth in an attempt to argue back, but was shushed immediately by Nami before he could say anything.

“Nope! We are not doing this in public. The Tralalaw show is tomorrow, remember?” Sanji’s mouth formed an ‘O’ as recognition dawned across his face. “Yeah, so, we should probably work out some of the finer details in advance.”

“Anything you say, my sweet! You’re so smart for thinking ahead!”

Looking around for a place to sit, he was dismayed to find that Zoro was occupying the only chair behind the desk. He settled for half-sitting on the ledge of the desk beside Nami, who was beginning to write on the paper. At the top, she wrote in big, bold letters: ‘TRALALAW PLANS’.

“Ok, so first things first: Sanji, you gonna ride with us?”

“There’s no room,” Zoro said abruptly, now twisting himself lazily around with his feet.

“He can ride in the back with you,” she said. “It’ll fit two.”

“Oh, are you driving the truck?” Sanji asked, to which Nami nodded. “Well, if you’re being gracious enough to drive us all, then who would I be to refuse the ride?”

“Alright,” Nami said, smiling. She made a bullet point on the page and wrote down ‘carpooling’ beside it. “The next order of business is deciding when to leave. The doors open at 7 and the opening act starts at 8, so I was thinking if we left at 3, we could make it to the Hazard by 4 and that should give us plenty of time to-”

“Why so early?” Sanji couldn’t help but interrupt. “We’ve already got tickets, so shouldn’t we be okay showing up somewhere closer to 7?”

He could tell by the way Nami’s face slowly fell that he had said something obviously wrong. She raised her eyebrows as she slowly turned to share a look with Zoro, her eyes lingering on Sanji before they caught up with the direction she was facing.

“Um,” she began, but stalled due to her bewilderment. “It’s… standing room only, you know? We have to get there early to camp the line so we can be up on the stage. Have you… ever been to a live show before?”

Sanji could feel his face flushing with the embarrassment of unknowing and tried to suppress it as best he could. A bit reluctantly, he ended up shaking his head. Evidently, he was experiencing a lot of firsts with this new group of friends.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Ah, that explains it,” she said, stepping forward to punch Zoro in the shoulder when he began snickering. “So, the thing is, when a show is general admission, you wanna get there as early as possible so you can get the best viewpoint, which is dead center right at the front of the stage. In order to do that, we have to show up a few hours in advance and camp the line so we can get in first and secure a spot.”

“Right, makes sense,” Sanji said, trying to play off his embarrassment coolly. Zoro still had a smug smirk plastered across his face though, making it difficult. There was nothing more he wanted to do in that moment than to kick that look right off the bastard’s face. “So, you’ll pick us up at the apartment at 3 then?”

“Not too early for you, is it? Got some really important day plans to attend to?”

Zoro uttered an ugly cackle, throwing his head back and spinning himself in his seat until his back was turned on them. Apparently the pain pills were not entirely done affecting him yet. Beside him, Nami shook her head and rolled her eyes, but she too had laughed a little bit.

“Just ignore the idiot,” she said, and made a dash underneath the ‘carpooling’ bullet point that detailed the time they had decided to leave at. “But yeah, be ready by 3. And be sure to wear something really warm, because it’s going to be cold riding in the back.”

“If he can handle it, then I surely can as well,” he said, focusing what was left of his good mood on Nami.

“You two can share the blanket in the tool box, too.”

With Zoro’s back still turned to them, Nami took the opportunity to throw in a wink with her suggestion. Flustered, Sanji had to look away.

“Speaking of dressing warmly,” he said, immediately switching the subject. “What should I wear? That is to say, I don’t exactly dress like a punk.”

Here he opened his arms and gestured to his current outfit, which didn’t fit his perception of how a ‘punk’ would dress at a show that was reputedly going to be the ‘best one of the year’. Zoro spun back around and gave him a once over, prompting Sanji to close his arms and cover himself with his coat.

“It doesn’t matter what you wear,” Zoro said, resting his head so far back on the chair’s back that he was looking up at the ceiling. “If you’re afraid of looking like a poser or some shit, don’t be; it’s the jackasses who think punk has a uniform that are the posers. Wear whatever the fuck you want.”

“Inspiring,” Sanji said blankly, trying to maintain his façade of nonchalance.

Zoro’s head snapped up on his neck to fix him with a beady squint before it fell back onto the seat cushion.

Truth be told, what Zoro had said did help to put his mind at ease. There was a part of him that was afraid of showing up to the show and being called out for not looking the part. The insecurities he felt only reinforced the idea that this wasn’t his place, and that the styles and music and attitudes he was dabbling in would eventually come to reject him on that basis. He wasn’t a punk, and doubted he ever would be; not on their level.

“If you’re really worried about it, you can wear one of Zoro’s jackets,” Nami said. “But it’s like he said, there’s no wrong way to look at these things. If anyone tries to give you shit for it just beat them up. They’ll learn.”

She reached out and touched his arm, and his unease resettled into a nagging sense of insecurity he’d carry with him in the back of his mind until he was at the show. He didn’t want to let it root in too deeply, and instead focused on looking forward to the night of drinking he had with the friends he’d made who were allowing him this glimpse into their lives.

Eventually though, his free trial would expire and he would have to make a decision regarding his level of commitment to being their friend.

[ronanlyncx]

the best parts of the dream thieves (featuring me crying pt. 2)

part one

- “Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war” 

- Ronan’s second secret #gay

- Gansey: “i would have thought you had more muscles. Don’t feminist have big muscles?” i just want to punch him can someone please punch him

- gansey calling ronan an incredible creature #gay 

- “The elderly made ronan anxious” bitch me too!!!

- Ronan wanting to race kavinsky in the pig and adam is like dude no there is like 5 people in here we weigh too much and ronan goes: “noah doesn’t count” “Hey!” “You’re dead!” i love these nerds

- Gansey: “am I in your dreams?” Ronan: “Oh yes, baby” i hate him jsjksksk

- “Ronan sometimes dreamt of Adam, too” #gay

- Gansey and Ronan going to get orange juice at 3:32 am 

- “Unlike some people, my sense of worth isn’t tied into my occupation.” “Ooooooh,” Orla crowed… she traded her Henrietta accent for a gloriously snotty version of the Old South. “Someone’s been hanging out with Richard Campbell Gansey the third too much.” orla just came for blue’s life holy shit 

- “Jane!” “It’s a wizard in box.” “It will do your homework.” “And it’s been dating your girlfriend.” “Are you all drunk?” hey quick question wtf am i reading

- “Why is the tea so good here?” “I spit in it” Blue Sargent is an icon

“Blue Sargent was pretty in a way that was physically painful to him. He was attracted to her like a heart attack.” not to sound like a cheesy white lady or anything but this shit breathtaking bro

- “What do you want, Adam? What do you need, Adam?… Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue’s hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes. What do you want, Adam? To feel awake when my eyes are open.” PROTECT THIS ANGEL GET HIM SOME TOILET PAPER WTF (also notice how what he wants continues to drop in difficulty to acquire this is so sad i’m literally a mess) 

- “You be careful, Adam Parrish. ‘Cause one day you might get what you ask for. There might be girls in Henrietta who’ll let you talk to them like that, but i’m not one of them.” i really love this woman

- “He [Gansey] was bare-legged and sockless in his Top-Siders and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Ronan want to smash his fist through a wall” #gay

-  “Adam thinks he saw an apparition at his place” Ronan eyed Noah, “I’m seeing an apparition right now.” this entire relationship is just ronan roasting noah have you ever seen anything so pure

- Noah freaking out about the glitter in the snowglobe #angel

- Ronan paying Adam’s rent i am alive

- Gansey comparing Blue to a platypus

- “He threw me out the window!” “You’re already dead!” amazing

- Blue wanting to get Adam high so he can relax seriously someone let this boy take a nap

- Noah: “Is crack the same thing as speed?” 

- Ashley not going into St. Agnes bc she “refuses to participate in a ceremony that doesn’t allow equal spiritual privileges to women”  NICE

- Ronan dreaming kavinsky a replica of his white sunglasses after kavinsky gave him a copy of ronan’s leather bands #pettygay

- “and he was the boy with the most beautifully interesting car and the most savagely handsome of friends, Ronan Lynch” #gay

- Gansey: “I love this car. I should buy four more of them. I’ll just open the door of one and fall into the other. One can be a living room, one can be by kitchen, I’ll live in one…” what...the fuck

- Declan coming to give gansey a new battery for the pig and Ronan actually doing the most™ “He hurriedly sprawled back in the seat, throwing one jean-covered leg over the top of Adam’s and laying his head in a posture of thoughtless abandon. By the time Declan arrived, Ronan looked as if he had been asleep for days.” this is so extra omfgggg

- “His [Declan’s] gaze followed his brother’s leg to where it rested on top of Adam’s, and his expression tightened.” dude ronan even your brother is noticing your crush u gotta do better

- Gansey thinking that Ronan tried to kill himself after all this time and then finding out that Ronan was attacked by a dream demon thing #shook

- Gansey and Ronan fighting a different dream demon thing with a box cutter and a crowbar how are these children alive 

- “She [Blue] wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one. Ronan wasn’t a fan of lamps.” This is the least subtle homosexuality metaphor i have ever read in my life (also: Gansey crushing on Blue #nice)

- refer to this post 

- “Let’s just go on before Gansey has time to say something that makes me hate him” lmao

- “The air was stained permanently with the pleasant odor of Ronan’s childhood: hickory smoke and boxwood, grass and seed and lemon cleaner. ‘I remember,’ Gansey said thoughtfully to Ronan, ‘when you used to smell like this’” #gay

- Dream toaster

- “I am being perfectly fucking civil” #iconic

- “Don’t fucking swear” #iconic pt 2

- Calla preforming arial yoga through the continuation of Ronan’s reading 

- The entire time they are on the boat adam and gansey have the biggest hard-ons for orla and blue wants to die/kill them and ronan is disgusted 

- ronan complains about the heat like 600 times i love my dramatic son

- Gansey finding the skin of blue’s calf more “tantalizing” than orla’s entire torso boiiiii if u dont get!!!!!

- “Blue cheerfully spit a mouthful of brown water on his boat shoes.” she’s doing god’s work

- “He was struck by what a glorious and fearless animal Blue Sargent was.” I’m emo

- “Gansey, pacing next to his ruined miniature Henrietta, set his eyes on Ronan. There was something intense and heedless in them. There were many versions of Gansey, but this one had been rare since the introduction of Adam’s taming presence.” The fact that adam calms gansey down is so pure and i cannot believe this is canon (also: blue also calms gansey down... i love my bisexual son)

- Gansey being badass asf when him and ronan go to confront kavinsky about breaking in the apartment and ronan going super heart-eyes 

- also i am convinced that this scene is dick’s bi awakening

- “…Gansey leaving for D.C. without him was unbearable. They had been a two-headed creature for so long, Ronan-and-Gansey. He couldn’t say it, though. There were a thousand reason’s why he couldn’t say it” #GAY

- “While i’m gone, dream me the world. Something new for every night.” #REALLYGAY

- no one in fox way can work a cellphone maura literally had to get blue to make the gray man’s voicemail work

- Ronan blowing a kiss to gansey and adam when they are flying away in the helicopter i fucking hate him jsjsjs

- Helen asking if Adam wants to go into the whole foods with her and adam just stares at her. me too buddy

- “’Pigmy Pouters. Feisty ones!’ Gansey mouthed Blue at Adam. Adam let out a little wail of helpless laughter.” adam parrish laughing: a concept

-  Blue finally admitting to herself that she likes Gansey while laying in his bed

- “I’d ask you out, if i was alive” “i’d say yes” :(((((

- the fact that adam’s dad actually pushed my manz down the stairs at one point i will personally fight robert parrish

- “This is Adam Parrish. Shake his hand. He’s more clever than I am. One day we’ll be throwing one of these shindigs for him.” MY HEART

- Adam literally filling up a whole page describing helen #bi

- when helen asks why ronan wasn’t with them, adam and gansey both get the mental image of the house burning down lmao

- “you gonna race with those shades on, you Bulgarian mobster Jersey trash piece of shit?” he’s so elegant with words!!!1111!!!

- Ronan thinking Kavinsky is beautiful um this is gross but #gay 

- Gansey calling Blue to calm him down just because she makes him feel “uneven and shattered” im fucking emo

- Kavinsky calling gansey literally anything BUT his name: “Dick three” “dick dick dick” “Dickie”

- Ronan figuring out how to master his dreams and then leaving kavinsky #scammer

- to be honest i cannot believe helen and gansey managed to convince adam about the hondoyota with the literal SKIT they used 

- “HEY, OLD MAN!” “Ronan!” ANGELS

- ronan apologizing for wrecking the pig and Gansey actually not believing his ears.

- “Hey, Churchill tried to negotiate with hitler.” “Did he?” don’t argue with boat shoe about history this man will rip you to shreds

- pink switchblade

- “Times circular, chicken”

- BLUE GOING OFF ON ADAM IM JUST ABOUT TO QUOTE THE WHOLE ROAST

- THE WHOLE ROAST: “Politics! I have no interest. Voting? What? I forgot my apron. I think I ought to be in the kitchen right now, actually. My rolling pin-” “i didn’t know that you-” “thats my point! did it even occur to you? You wouldn’t have gone someplace without Gansey, though. You two make a grand couple! kiss him! (lmao) Well, i don’t want to be just someone to kiss. I want to be a real friend, too. Not just someone who’s fun to have around because- because I have breast!” GO OFF BITCHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Adam calling Blue a raging feminist like do boys not know that this is a complement like yes this is the angle i am going for thanks for noticing

- Gansey and Blue’s first drive together #i #am #emo

- “Jane, in this light you... Jesus. Jesus. I’ve got to get my head straight.” MURDER ME

- When Adam woke up at fox way after being asleep for 24 hours or whatever he drank four glasses for pomegranate juice and three cups of tea and then left in the span of ten minutes. i know sometimes these kids act like they are 50 years old but....this is a teenage boy 

- “It was against Ronan’s nature to appear overly interested in anything.” HES SO EXTRA 

- Grey man: “But it wasn’t personal.” Ronan: “It. Was. To. Me.” :((((((((((( also i’m pretty sure neil josten said the same thing to that police officer one time i love parallels. 

- “when ronan thought of gansey, he thought moving into monmouth manufacturing, of nights spent in companionable insomnia, of a summer searching for a king, of gansey asking for the grey man for his life. Brothers.” kill. me. 

- kavinsky dying #goodshit 

[thejourneymaninn]

Januanders Day 9 - The Chantry explosion

The Chantry explosion is the one argument pretty much everyone throws around when it comes to criticizing Anders, claiming it is an unforgivable act that condemns him no matter what (spoiler alert: I don’t agree), so many people have written about it already, defending and explaining it a lot better than I could, and I doubt there’s any argument in defense of Anders that hasn’t been brought up (and, unfortunately, ignored) yet.

Thus, I’m only going to ramble about a few things that are of personal importance to me when it comes to this oddly controversial topic. And yes, I used “oddly” for a reason, because I honestly don’t understand how anyone could actually think this is something you should condemn him for.

I know Bioware had him use an explosion precisely because they knew what people would associate that with and because they wanted us to react that way, yet to this day, I still can’t believe that actually worked. Yet it seems it did, considering people that criticize (and often, downright hate him) keep insisting that “Anders blew up a church and killed hundreds of innocent people. He destroyed every possibility of a peaceful solution.” Which is especially frustrating considering that this is simply…not true.

 “Church”

Yes, Anders blew up a “church”, yet in Thedas, that term hold quite a different meaning than the one we tend to associate with it.

Everyone is completely terrified of the Chantry, just look at the Viscount’s reaction when you tell him Seamus has been lured to there. He leaves his son in danger (as it turns out, he even leaves him to die) because he “cannot be seen interfering in Chantry affairs”. He literally begs Hawke to go in his place, he is desperate and paralyzed with fear – and with good reason. Cross the Chantry, and you have an Exalted March coming your way.

So while technically, the building itself may be considered a “church”, it is far more than a “peaceful place of worship”. It is the gilded centre of power of the highest authority and military power in all of Southern Thedas (or, in this particular case, Kirkwall). And it also just happens to be the head of the army that controls and imprisons mages. It is their leaders that Anders attacked, and it is hardly his fault that they use religion as a means to control the world.

 “Peaceful Solution”

The argument that he should have found a peaceful solution is downright disgusting, for not only does it put the responsibility of ending oppression on the oppressed, it also essentially asks them to place the lives of the rest of the population above their own. It literally tells mages to wait quietly, let themselves at best (!) be stripped of all rights and imprisoned for life, at worst abused, killed or made tranquil, for perhaps another ten, fifty or thousand years so they won’t inconvenience anyone. Because the lives of others are deemed to have more worth than those of mages, or let’s be real, any worth at all. What a very Chantry argument to make.  

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they are expected to do this despite not actually having means to achieve “peaceful change”. They are not allowed to leave the Circle, they have no rights, no voice, and if they do try to speak up…well, the consequences are listed above. And yet, they are expected to somehow gain freedom by smiling and bowing their heads.

 “Innocent victims”

Anders killed people. No one is arguing that. We can debate numbers, but I don’t think those even really matter, for a) No matter how high we go, they’d still be far lower than the number of mages killed if Meredith had gone through with the Rite of Annulment (which she had sent for long before the explosion), and b) the people he killed weren’t innocent (to be clear: I am in no way suggesting they deserved death, just that there are no “innocent bystanders” when it comes to the treatment of mages in Thedas.)

Elthina isn’t innocent. The way I see her, she is the biggest (and best) manipulator in the game, someone who knows exactly how to stay in power, and how to appear like a friend to everyone while you’re doing so. And even if she isn’t, if her “I feel for them, but I can’t get involved” act is genuine, she is in no way innocent. As Meredith’s superior, it was her job to intervene, and she chose to ignore it, knowing full well her inaction cost lives.

And the other people in the Chantry, or the people killed in the streets? Aside from  the fact that most of the deaths of people who were not in the Chantry are on the Templars (demons, fighting and abomination were a direct result of the invocation of the Rite of Annulment) – the general population is not “innocent” either. They are complicit in the oppression of mages.  “Let the Templars and mages solve their own problems” gets thrown around quite a lot in Inquisition, as if mages just appeared out of nowhere someday when they are in fact, a part of the population until their magic manifests and the rest of the population is only too happy to let them be taken away. Calling the Templars on mages, or outright lynching them as soon as they set foot into a village – the general population is more than willing to do the Templars’ jobs for them. If they didn’t participate, or at the very least ignore, the oppression, the Chantry would have a much harder time keeping the oppressive system in place.

And yes, the Chantry is largely to blame for the populations’ attitude towards magic. They keep them misinformed, poor, and struggling to survive. When you’re literally living in dirt trying not to starve, I doubt freeing mages is your biggest priority. They, too, are victims of the Chantry, but that doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility for their part in the oppression of mages (and elves, for that matter), and they have to face the consequences.

  Of course, you can make the argument that killing people is never ok, no matter the cause. I even understand that, to a certain degree; I don’t like the thought of death and destruction either. The only problem with this argument is that in cases of oppression and tyranny, inaction doesn’t cause less death. It just means the killings continue behind closed doors, where we don’t have to see them or deal with them.

Accordingly, Anders didn’t cause more violence. He just brought it to the people who up until then, had had the luxury of ignoring it. After a lifetime of having been taught the opposite, he finally decided that no, their lives were not worth more than the lives of mages. And I couldn’t agree more.

  As for how the Chantry Boom fit in with Anders’ character…. Well, after years of trying to change the way mages are treated, and the extra push towards action from Justice, I feel it made sense for him to do it. I don’t think it was something he wanted to do, though. He may not exactly regret it, but he certainly isn’t happy about it either. Anders spent ten years trying to find other ways, to make people understand and listen, because when it comes down to it, he is not a violent person. He didn’t want mages to have to fight a war for their freedom, he wanted people to understand that mages are people like everyone else and thus deserve that freedom. He wanted to make them understand so they would give mages freedom. After all he had suffered, after decades of having lived in the Circle, he still tried to believe it was possible.

I say”tried” because I am not sure he ever fully did believe it (looking at, for instance, banter he has with Bethany in Act 1), but he tried anyway. And of course, he eventually had to realize he was wrong. He could not convince anyone – the opinion of the population is controlled by the Chantry, and even if he’d had a platform to actually reach enough people, he wouldn’t have been able to counter the hate and misinformation they had been spreading for over a thousand years with just his smile and words (it’s a nice smile, but it’s not enough).

And while he did have some access to the people in power (the Chantry and in this specific case, Elthina), they had no interest in changing the lot of mages, as it is a huge part of where there power comes from. Fear of mages provides them with both an army of Templars, the mages’/tranquils’ workforce and their magic to aid their army. It also strengthens their role (and presumed necessity) as the “protector of the people” against the “curse of magic” - why would they be willing to give that up? I’m not entirely certain even Anders fully realizes just how much keeping people in fear of mages and mages themselves locked up benefits the Chantry, but I think by the time he finally decides to act,  he has come to the conclusion that they have no intention of ever doing anything to help mages.

I know a lot of people accuse Anders of “betraying” their Hawke and I suppose if you played a Hawke who didn’t fully support Anders’ views, you might feel that way. It’s true that he gets extremely manipulative if Hawke doesn’t agree to help right away; I can understand if people find that upsetting (though I’d still argue that the words he chooses leave little doubt about the nature of what he’s planning. He does lie, but he also makes it rather obvious he is planning something big).

Since my Hawke shared Anders views and agreed to help immediately, I didn’t have that problem; the only feeling of “betrayal” there might possibly have been was along the lines of “What the fuck, Anders?! I wanted to do that myself! Way to steal my thunder, bro.”

I don’t have to “excuse” what he did in order to like him, I fully believe he was right. And I wish the game had given my Hawkes the option to support him as wholeheartedly as I do.

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 16, 2018  - Fantastic Beasts, Widows, Instant Family, Green Book

I didn’t do too bad last week, although other than Universal’s The Grinch, the new wide releases got spanked by either bad reviews, bad marketing or general moviegoer ennui. That should change this weekend with the next movie in one of Warner Bros’ more successful franchises.

But before we get to that big release for the weekend, I want to give a little extra attention to the movie which is currently my #1 movie of the year, and that is Peter Farrelly’s GREEN BOOK (Universal).

Yes, you read that right, that’s Peter Farrelly of the Farrelly Brothers, famed for their low-brow comedies that began with Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary, and then petered out as the ‘00s turned into the PC word that it is today. Needless to say (but I’m gonna say it anyway), Green Book is a completely different beast – it’s a buddy road comedy set in 1962, as Viggo Mortensen’s Italian bouncer Tony Vallelonga (or “Tonylip”) takes on the role of driver and bodyguard for a black piano prodigy, played by Mahershala Ali, as he tours the racist Deep South.

I had already been hearing raves out of the Toronto International Film Festival (where it won the coveted People’s Choice award), but I wasn’t convinced until I saw the movie myself for the first time. I’m a little hesitant to say too much about the film, because part of the joy is just watching these two fantastic actors commit to each of their equally-compelling characters. Tony is a loud-mouth take-no-crap Bronx native who is just looking for a job to take on while the Copacabana club where he works is renovated. Dr. Don Shirley (Ali) is an educated, eloquent and well-mannered classical musician who can’t be more different from Tony.

As they travel down to the Deep South, Tony starts to see the racism that Shirley has faced his entire life—being invited to play at fancy restaurants and club where he’s not even allowed to use the same facilities as the wealthy and snobbish clientele. What’s amazing about their story (which is based on actual people) is that as you watch them arguing and eventually bonding (as happens in the best of buddy comedies), you find yourself relating to both of them, even if you have no direct connections to either.

Mortensen is such a charming and entertaining character that it’s hard not to love him, but the way that Ali makes you feel for the way his character is a lonely outcast, whether it’s around white or other black people, just makes this film such a unique experience.

I’m honestly shocked by what a great film Farrelly has made here, a joyfully entertaining piece of fictionalized history that does a better job exploring racism and the relationship between races. I thought Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and Barry Jenkins’ if Beale Street Could Talk, but they also were needlessly preachy, whereas films like Green Book and The Hate U Give force you to think about these things without necessarily hitting you over the head. Frankly, I feel that we’ve gone backwards from all of the great inroads made in race relations in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, but it’s good to have reminders like this that there was a time when things were much worse.

So far this year, no other movie has had quite the effect on me in terms of entertaining and moving me. Green Book is not only the best movie I’ve seen this year, but also my favorite. Definitely go see this!

Rating: 10 out of 10

I’ll get to the rest of this week’s movies after the jump…

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD (Warner Bros.)

As mentioned above, the big movie of the weekend is the next movie in the “Wizarding World” franchise that began with the eight movies based on JK Rowling’s popular book about boy wizard Harry Potter (as played by Daniel Radcliffe). This is also the first sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which Rowling wrote for the screen based on the Newt Scamander wizard character (played by Eddie Redmayne). The original Fantastic Beasts opened on this same weekend in 2016 to $74.4 million and grossed a more-than-respectable $234 million domestically, plus double that amount overseas, so it made perfect sense for Warner Bros. to want to continue the series, and it’s already been noted that they want to make five movies total.

The Crimes of Grindelwald is a straight-up sequel with Scamander travelling to Paris with his magical colleagues, played by Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol, to fight the evil wizardy of Grindelwald, as played by Johnny Depp. Characters played by Zoe Kravitz and Carmen Ejogo are also featured more fully, but the real draw might be that the movie introduces the younger version of Professor Dumbledore, as portrayed by Jude Law. This is probably Law’s most prominent roles in a while with last year’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword from Guy Ritchie being a box office dud, and it’s been seven years since Law made the sequel to Sherlock Holmes, also with Ritchie and with Robert Downey Jr.

Reviews for the Fantastic Beasts sequel have been mixed (at best), some of that due to the Johnny Depp factor, because Warner Bros. – who yanked Brett Ratner’s credit off their movies as soon as the #MeToo movement broke out – failed to read the room after the accusations against Depp from his former wife Amber Heard (who stars in the upcoming Warners movie Aquaman.) Even before that ugly affair, Depp’s star had begun to falter, although you probably couldn’t tell by last year’s movies with the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean grossing $172.5 million domestically and another $622 million overseas. Depp also appeared in Murder on the Orient Express, which also did well, maybe because his character was murdered pretty quickly in the film. Depp’s recent film with Heard, the long-delayed London Fields, was a big-time bomb last month, and it doesn’t seem like audiences are as interested in seeing him in movies. (Even Disney has decided to reboot Pirates without Depp.)

Still, there’s that rabid JK Rowling fanbase that has been kept fed with steady visits to the Wizarding World at Universal Studios, not to mention the Cursed Child stageplay which arrived on Broadway earlier in the year. The success of both ventures has shown that the Harry Potter craze has not died down without new books or movies based on them. (It’s also good to note that exactly half the original Harry Potter movies opened this exact weekend in November with openings ranging between $88.4 million and $125 million, and the latter was eight years ago when ticket prices were significantly cheaper.)

What else can I say? Well, there’s the IMAX factor which helps up the average ticket price for those going to see the movie. There’s the usual caveat about their being too many family films already in theaters with another one opening next Wednesday.

Essentially, there are a lot of factors that need to be applied to The Crimes of Grindelwald, but the fanaticism of the Harry Potter fanbase should endure over any negatives, including the reviews. With previews on Tuesday night (which will be rolled into Friday), this should still open slightly bigger than the first movie, maybe closer to $80 million than $70 million. Even so, it’s going to have a tougher road to $200 million with Disney’s Ralph Wrecks the Internet opening next Wednesday. (The original Fantastic Beasts dropped 39% in its second weekend against Disney’s Moana, and that wasn’t a sequel to a $189 million blockbuster hit.)

ED’s Review of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

WIDOWS (20thCentury Fox)

Offering the first bit of counter-programming against the Wizarding World juggernaut is the new movie from British filmmaker Steve McQueen, whose previous film 12 Years a Slavewon Best Picture about five years back. It grossed $56.7 million domestically with a strong expansion plan from Fox Searchlight that more than made back the movie’s $20 million budget, greatly helped by the $131 million overseas.

For his fourth film, an adaptation of Lynda La Plante’s recently-released novel, McQueen went over to the parent Fox, presumably to have an even bigger budget for his first heist film, which is just as star-studded as 12 Years a Slave. He also had help with the adaptation from author Gillian Flynn, whose own bestselling novel Gone Girlwas turned into a hit thriller by no less than David Fincher. The basic premise is that a group of thieves end up being killed in a heist-gone-wrong by the police after stealing $2 million from a local thug who comes to the wife of the gangleader to get the money back… or else!

McQueen’s latest has a lot going for it, not just the fact that it’s a crime action-thriller as opposed to a weepy historical drama about slavery – frankly, I’m surprised 12 Years a Slave did that well, but that’s a testament to the power of Searchlight.

Really, the biggest factor that will help Widows is its cast, which includes a number of Oscar winners, most importantly the amazing Viola Davis, whose amazing supporting role in Denzel Washington’s Fences finally won her that Oscar. That also grossed $57 million after a late December platform release, and if you put that next to the grosses of McQueen’s last film, that’s a pretty good barometer for Widows. (The biggest difference is that this is opening nationwide in 3,000 theaters rather than trying to build word-of-mouth.)

Davis’ husband is played by Liam Neeson, who has done his fair share of action-thrillers, and though he has a smaller role in this, his presence is still felt. After Davis, a lot of people will be talking about the performances by Brian Tyree Henry (star of the hit FX series Atlanta) and Daniel Kaluuya, the Oscar-nominated star of Jordan Peele’s Get Out last year and Marvel’s Black Panther. If Davis isn’t able to get African-American males into theaters, than these two guys should help.  There’s also Colin Farrell, the Irish actor who seems to be having a bit of a resurgence in recent years with roles in last year’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Roman J. Israel, Esq., neither huge moneymakers but Farrell received many accolades. (And of course, he starred in the original Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Davis’ partners in crime are played by Michelle Rodriguez from the Fast and Furious movies; Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki, who appeared in films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and others but who really gives a breakout performance here; and the Tony-winning actor Cynthia Erivo, who just blew me away in Bad Times at the El Royale. Then there’s the parental units (of Farrell and Dubecki’s characters respectively) played by Robert Duvall and Jacki Weaver.

Just from that cast alone, it’s obvious why Fox is hoping this will be a good play for Oscar night, especially with the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody receiving mixed reviews and possibly only getting Rami Malek a nomination.

Widows should be a good counter-point to Fantastic Beasts and with few other movies (including Tyler Perry’s Nobody’s Fool) popping with African-American moviegoers, especially not males, I can see Widows bringing out a solid audience of those not interested in other films. I’m not sure it will quite make $20 million this weekend, but it should make a play for third place against Bohemian with $15 to 17 million. Its biggest hurdle is MGM’s sequel Creed II opening on Wednesday which may steal away some of its business, but word-of-mouth could make it a good alternative over Thanksgiving and in the slower weeks to come.

Mini-Review: I’m not sure I’ve ever been as surprised by the evolution of a director as I am with Steve McQueen going from his Oscar-winning work on 12 Years a Slave to Widows. Mind you, I was already a fan of McQueen from his first film Hunger, but I never expected he’d be able to do something like this.

Widows begins with a heist as Liam Neeson’s Harry Rawlings and his colleagues are in a van after a robbery, which cuts back to a quieter time between Harry and his wife Veronica (Viola Davis). It’s a fairly jarring introduction to the characters, especially the way McQueen films the demise of Rawlings and his gang.  The Chicago’s 18thward is in the midst of a heated political race between Colin Farrell’s Jack Mulligan, a second-gen politician, and Brian Tyree Henry’s Jamal Manning, who happens to be involved in the city’s crime sector along with his sadistic brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya). Turns out that the money Rawlings stole belonged to the Mannings, and Jamal threatens Veronica that she needs to repay his $2 million in a week or face the consequences.  Veronica turns to the wives of the other dead thieves (played by Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Dubecki) to enact a plan for Harry’s next big job, which is to rob Mulligan.

Needless to say, with a cast this good, you’re going to end up with a number of brilliant performances. While Davis is a clear stand-out, Dubecki is also impressive as a woman used to being pampered who has to start earning her own living as an escort. Kaluuya is also quite a scene-stealer as the homicidal Manning enforcer, and I wish there was more of him in the movie. Brian Tiree Henry is equally good, and Colin Farrell continues to impress me, and the fact that Davis can be so memorable against so many other great performances (including her scene-stealing dog) shows her to still be at the top of her game. Robert Duvall and Jacki Weaver are also quite great without even having to try very hard.

On paper, this could have been a standard heist film, but McQueen thrives on the complexities of the story’s intricate plot to keep the viewer invested as we follow a number of stories at the same time. Where McQueen really thrives is at creating tension, from the opening set piece which leads to a slow-building thriller to the  point where the actual robbery is just as nail-biting as anything I’ve seen on screen this year.

From the very beginning, McQueen has DP Sean Bobbit shoot the film in such an unconventional way. For example, when Jack Mulligan is having an argument inside his limo with his wife, the camera remains outside the car as it drives, something that gets more uneasy as you realize that the camera is just going to stay there for a very, long time.

If you’re a fan of the heist genre, Widows delivers on everything promised by Ocean’s 8 earlier this year, a strong female-centric crime film that’s up there with what’s been done by men in the genre. In this case, McQueen may have clinched himself a second Oscar nomination with his brilliant work at pulling this amazing cast together into such a compelling story. Rating: 8.5/10

INSTANT FAMILY (Paramount)

If Green Book wasn’t opening this weekend, I would probably give this new dramedy from Paramount a bit of extra lip-service, because it’s also quite a wonderful movie. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have quite the buzz that the Peter Farrelly period comedy does (for reasons mentioned above).

This is the new movie co-written and directed by Daddy’s Home  director Sean Anders, and it once again teams him with Mark Wahlberg, the star of those two comedy hits. The big difference with Instant Family is that it’s based on Anders actual experiences adopting three kids, and it’s not a silly Will Ferrell comedy like the Daddy’s Home movies. That may or may not be a good thing when you realize that the first one of those movies made $150 million while the second made over $100 million, and that was just domestically. The sequel opened a little earlier in November to $29.6 million, and those kinds of returns guaranteed Paramount wanted to stay in bed with Anders, especially with Wahlberg as lead.

Wahlberg has built quite a side career for himself as an actor in comedies with hits like the two Daddy’s Home movies, and at least the first Ted comedy, which had him playing the straight man to a Seth MacFarlane-voiced stuffed bear. The original movie in 2012 did substantially better than its sequel three years later, but Ted 2still made $81 million domestically. Wahlberg’s real break into comedies probably began with his earlier teaming with Will Ferrell for Adam McKay’s The Other Guys, which also broke $100 million domestically.

Playing Wahlberg’s wife is Rose Byrne, the talented actor who broke out with comedies like Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids and Spy, and she recently starred in the Nick Hornby adaptation of Juliet, Naked (which you may recall is another one of my favorite movies of the year). The other part of the equation is popular actor Octavia Spencer, who has received three Oscar nominations, winning for The Help in 2012, a movie that co-starred Widows’ Viola Davis. She teams with popular comic Tig Notaro as adoption agency counselors, and the film also stars breakout star Isabela Moner, who co-starred with Wahlberg in the last Transformers movie, also for Paramount. So basically Instant Familyis keeping it all in the family.

I’m probably not going to review Instant Family since it’s been quite a few weeks since I saw it, but it’s a wonderful movie, a real crowd-pleaser – warm, sweet and funny with Rose Byrne being her usual wonderful self. The fact that it’s loosely-based on Anders’ own story makes it even more compelling, and I hope that people seek it out (not hard since it will be in 3,000 theaters across the country). This might be more of a sleeper that does better as people get into the holiday spirit, as it has a little bit of that in the story.

That said, I’m worried this will be hurt more by Fantastic Beasts than vice versa, and that might mean that it will have to rely on word-of-mouth to get it through the rest of the month. If no one goes to see the movie this weekend, then that’s going to be hard. Because of this (and how crowded the marketplace is), I could see this making between $13 and 15 million this weekend but maybe it’ll make its way to $50 or 60 million if it can get past the slew of Thanksgiving releases.

Also expanding nationwide into about 800 theaters is Matthew Heineman’s A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as war journalist Marie Colvin, which I personally feel deserves at least another Oscar nomination for the Gone Girlstar. We’ll see if it expands wide enough and gets enough attention to get into the top 10, but I think it will end up somewhere in the $1 to $1.5 million range, not enough to get into it. There’s a chance Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased may expand further this weekend, as well.

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this… UPDATE: Changing some of the numbers below, since actual theater counts have been released and many of the returning films (including A Star is Born) have lost way more theaters than I expected. Basically, theaters are dumping movies to open up screens for this week’s offerings as well as the new Thanksgiving movies on Wednesday. (Also, Widows is opening in fewer theaters than originally estimated.)

1. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald  (Warner Bros.) - $77.8 million N/A 2. The Grinch  (Universal) - $38.4 million -43% 3. Bohemian Rhapsody  (20thCentury Fox) - $18 million -45% 4. Widows  (20thCentury Fox) – $15.5 million N/A 5. Instant Family (Paramount) - $14.4 million N/A 6. A Star is Born  (Warner Bros.) - $5.3 million -35% 7. Overlord  (Paramount) - $5.3 million -48% 8. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Disney) - $4.7 million -53% 9. The Girl in the Spider’s Web  (Sony) - $3.7 million -53% 10. Nobody’s Fool (Paramount) - $2.8 million -58%

LIMITED RELEASES

We’re just one week away from Thanksgiving, which means we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty in terms of the first group of awards and nominations, which will take place in the weeks following Thanksgiving.

Apparently, the Coen Brothers’ Western anthology THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (Netflix)opened a week earlier than planned in three theaters in New York, L.A. and San Francisco. It would have been nice if someone from Netflix bothered to tell me, so I could have included it in last week’s column. Anyway, it will open in more theaters and be streaming this Friday, so I might as well write more about it, since I never got around to writing about it at the New York Film Festival. The title character is played by Tim Blake Nelson, but don’t get used to him, as he’s only the star of the first segment, which is also the best. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is very much an anthology film that allows the Coens to explore that genre further than they have in the past with a varied mix of stories of different lengths featuring a cast that includes James Franco, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Stephen Root, Tyne Daley and Zoe Kazan. The segment with the latter is the longest, and it takes a while to get going, but I especially liked the segment which starred Tom Waits, mostly by himself as a gold prospector. The movie will be streaming on Netflix on Friday, but I do recommend seeking it out in theaters, and in New York, at least, it will be playing at the IFC Center and the Landmark on 57thStreet.

Another New York Film Festival (and Venice) premiere is Julian Schnabel’s latest film AT ETERNITY’S GATE (CBS Films), which stars Willem Dafoe as painter Vincent Van Gogh and Oscar Isaac as Paul Gauguin, who become friends during Van Gogh’s days in the south of France. Rupert Friend plays Vincent’s brother Theo Van Gogh, and the film also stars Mathieu Amalric (from Schnabel’s earlier film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Emmanuelle Seigner and Niels Arestrup. Honestly, I wasn’t a particularly big fan of the film, which involved a lot of noodley shots of Van Gogh walking through fields ala Terrence Malick, but it does have some good moments and my favorite involved Dafoe’s Van Gogh having a philosophical debate with a priest played by Mads Mikkelsen.  Regardless, it opens in New York and L.A. (and possibly other cities) on Friday.

From this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Bill Oliver’s Jonathan (Well GO USA) stars Angel Elgort in a dual role as two brothers living separate lives inside the same body, taking shifts in who has control, something that becomes a problem when they both fall for the same woman, played by Suki Waterhouse.

Just when I thought I’ve seen everything, there’s also a documentary about Marie Colvin (the subject of A Private War) opening in New York and L.A. this Friday as Chris Martin’s Under the Wire (Abramorama) features actual footage of Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy sneaking into Syria in Feb. of 2012.

From Sundance comes Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Dweck’s doc The Last Race(Magnolia) that follows a Long Island stock car racetrack that’s being threatened by redevelopment.  It will open at the IFC Center in New York, the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and in Seattle, but it will also have special screenings on Weds night in select cities – you can find out more about those special screenings on the Official Site.

After premiering at Doc-NYC, Ofir Trainin’s Family in Transition (Abramorama) will open in L.A. this Friday and in New York on Nov. 23. It shares the story of a family in Nahariya, Israel whose lives change after the father announces his decision to transition into a woman. This remarkably timely film definitely will make people change their minds about transgender people and what they (and their loved ones) go through after making that decision.

Opening on Weds at New York’s Quad Cinema is legendary documentarian Claude Lanzmann’s final film Shoah: Four Sisters (Cohen Media), which continues his series of interviews conducted in the ‘70s with four women from Eastern Europe who detail their experiences at the end of WWII.  The four segments – The Hippocratic Oath, The Merry Flea, Noah’s Ark, and Baluty-- It’s shown in two parts with each 2+-hour part featuring two of the sisters. The film should roll out to other areas over the next few weeks, as well.

At the Museum of the Moving Image, Syrian documentarian Talal Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons (Kino Lorber) will screen through December with Derki appearing on Friday night. For this one, he spent two years with a radical Islamist family made-up of a father and his two sons. It won the World Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year.

As far as this weekend’s genre films, you’ll be able to see Daniel Goldhaber’s thriller Cam in select Alamo theaters (as well as on Netflix—see below), but IFC Midnight’s offering this weekend is Duncan Skiles’ The Clovehitch Killer, which will play midnight screenings at New York’s IFC Centerand in L.A., as well as be available On Demand. It stars Charlie Plummer (All the Money in the World) as Tyler Burnside, a Boy Scout and church volunteer whose father (Dylan McDermott) is a community leader in their quiet Kentucky town, where ten women have been tortured and murdered by a psychopath known as Clovehitch ten years earlier. Tyler suspects his father might be that killer.

Other films out this weekend include David Levinson’s Welcome Home (Vertical/DirecTV), starring Aaron Paul and Emily Ratajkowski as a couple who end up in a love triangle with a handsome Italian who vies for her attention. John Travolta stars in the action thriller Speed Kills (Saban Films), directed by Jodi Scurfield, in which he plays a millionaire speedboat champ who also happens to be a drug trafficker. It co-stars Kellan Lutz, Matthew Modine and Jennifer Esposito and is in select theaters and On Demand Friday. Lastly, there’s Nijla Mu’min’s drama Jinn (Orion Classics) about a teen girl whose mother converts to Islam. It opens in theaters Thursday, but is On Demand on Friday.

Also if you’re an Atlanta-based genre fan, you might want to check out the Buried Alive Film Festival, which runs from Nov. 14 through 17, which opens with Joe Badon’s The God Inside My Ear and includes other features and shorts that haven’t played at many other festivals.

STREAMING

Besides the Coen Brothers’ THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (mentioned above), one of Netflix’s big streaming premieres this weekend is Daniel Goldhaber’s horror-thriller CAM (also playing at select Alamo theaters), co-written by Isa Mazzei, who used her own experiences as a “camgirl.” If you don’t know what that is, then good for you, you don’t regularly watch porn, but essentially, a camgirl is a sex worker who does things on camera for money. In this case, it stars Madeline Brewer (from Orange is the New Black) as a camgirl who wakes up one day to find out that someone who looks exactly like her has taken over her channel. I haven’t seen it yet (despite it playing many festivals), but it’s definitely on my list to see when it streams on Netflix Friday. As an animal lover, I’m also looking forward to the upcoming docuseries DOGS(Netflix), exec. produced by Amy Berg, director of great docs like Deliver Us from Evil, West of Memphis and An Open Secret. Also, if you’re a fan of the series Narcos, it’s back this Friday with Narcos Mexico, which takes place, you guessed it, in Mexico.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

This is a big weekend for the Metrograph, as they’re kicking off a number of retrospectives, probably in hopes those who have time off over Thanksgiving will venture down to the Lower East Side for a few of them.

First up on Friday is a screening of Joseph Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, starring Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart, on a 35mm print, as part of the Academy at Metrograph series. This one is hosted by Karina Longworth, creator and host of the You Must Remember This podcast, signing copies of her book Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom In Howard Hughes’s Hollywood. There are two screenings of this on Friday night but 7pm screening is already sold out.

Also beginning Friday is a rare series dedicated to actor and filmmaker Bill Duke with films that range from his 1991 film A Rage in Harlem and 1992’s Deep Coverto films in which he appeared like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando (1985) and Predator (1987)to more recent films like Panos Costamos’ recent Nicolas Cage thriller Mandy. (Unfortunately, Duke himself will not be appearing in person as previously planned.)

On Saturday, the Metrograph kicks off a retrospective of Chinese filmmaker Wang Bingwhich just happens to coincide with Lincoln Center’s own Wang-Bing: The Weight of Experience (see below), both sponsored by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation. The Metrograph’s series will include Fengming (2007)Three Sisters (2012), Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), Ta’ang  and Bitter Money (both from 2016). Warning: Most of his films run from 2 ½ hours to almost four hours.

On Monday, the Metrograph begins a series dedicated to the work of cinematographer Darius Khondji, a series that will include screenings of David Fincher’s Se7en (1995), Danny Boyle’s The Beach (2000), James Gray’s The Immigrant (2013) and The Lost City of Z (2016) and even Bong Joon-ho’s Okja (2017).  The series also includes three of Jean-Piere Jeunet’s films including his debut with Marc Caro, Delicatessen (1991), one of my all-time faves The City of Lost Children (1995) and of course, Alien: Resurrection (1997). This runs through Thanksgiving weekend, and it’s a great chance to see some of these films on the big screen.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The recently-renovated downtown theater continues its Ida Lupino 100 series through Thanksgiving, and those lucky kids who attend Film Forum Jr. can see Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Friday there’s a Bruno Mattei double feature of Shocking Dark (1989)and Robowar (1988), while on Sunday, it screens the new 4k restoration of Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire (1987 – Janus Films).

AERO  (LA):

American Cinemateque’s other theater is in the midst of its Cinema Italian Style 2018 program featuring many recent Italian films making their North American premieres… but not repertory, so… next!

QUAD CINEaMA (NYC):

Claude Lanzmann’s Cinema of Remembrance continues to coincide with the release of Lanzmann’s final film Shoah: Four Sisters (see above).

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Doc-NYC is over, so it’s back to Late Night Favorites, this weekend showing Ridley Scott’s Alien(1979). Weekend Classicsis still taking the weekend off, but the Shaw Brothers Spectacularsthis weekend will be 1973’s The Blood Brothers. There’s two reasons right there to be in the West Village late at night this weekend.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

At midnight on Friday, you can see the late Wes Craven’s 1994 film Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER(NYC):

If you can’t get enough Wang Bing from the Metrograph’s retrospective, the Film Society is also commemorating the Chinese documentarian with The Weight of Experience, which will include his newest film, the eight-part Dead Souls, his debut West of Tracks (2002), as well as his single-shot film 15 Hours (2017). Wang Bing will be on-hand to discuss his films here, too, so I wish his handlers luck in getting him from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side multiple times in the same weekend. (I do it a lot and it’s a pain in the tuchus.)

Also, to coincide with the master Japanese filmmaker Kore-Eda’s Shoplifters next week, the Film Society will be showing Six by Kore-Eda, including Maborosi(1995), After Life (1998), Nobody Knows (2004), Still Walking (2008), I Wish (2011) and Like Father, Like Son(2013). It’s a great Lway to catch-up before his Cannes-winning new film.

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, they’ll be showing Janus Films’ 40thanniversary restoration of Chantal Akerman’s 1978 film Les Rendez-vous d’Anna.

MOMA (NYC):

The midtown museum continues its Modern Matinees: Douglas Fairbanks Jr. with The Exile (1947) on Thursday and Joy of Living (1938) on Friday. This series continues through December with weekday screenings at 1:30 PM.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

The Coen Brothers Go West continues through the weekend with screenings of Raising Arizona,True Grit and Blood Simple. Also, I just want to give a shout-out to MOMI’s long-time creative director David Schwartz, who is moving on at the end of the month after an astounding 33 years (!), to be replaced by the equally qualified Eric Hynes. Maybe I should get out to Astoria before month’s end, huh?

That’s it for this week. Next week… Thanksgiving! It will be celebrated with the release of two anticipated sequels, Disney’s Ralph Wrecks the Internet and MGM’s Creed II, plus a new Robin Hood and other films expanding wide. Since most of them will be out on Wednesday, I’m gonna have to get crackin’ on next week’s column right away.

[systemmalfucktion]

oc asks stuff i stole and didnt proof read

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

ollie petrov, i chose the name ollie bc i liked it and pretrov is just one of the most common surnames in russia. the meaning isn’t important to his character at all 

2. Do they have any titles? How did they get them?

nah

3. Did they have a good childhood? What are fond memories they have of it? What’s a bad memory? 

he had a decent childhood and grew up in a high income family but suffered the Neglect from daddy. his fondest memories are w childhood friends, bad memory would be Neglect from daddy and mommy and living in fear 

4. What is their relationship with their parents? What’s a good and bad memory with them? Did they know both parents? 

he loved his mama lots until she walked out on him, he didn’t understand why and he resented her A Lot, when he came to understand why she did it he thought she was a coward and resented her A Lot More. he never forgives her for it over the course of the entire story 

he cared for his dad maybe when he was younger but after his mom left he was basically sent off elsewhere. he made no efforts to talk to his dad over the phone or ask for visits bc he was completely content with not seeing him. after a bit he literally just hates his dad bc of Plot Related Issues, when they have their own fucked up version of Dad to Son talk later he word vomits every thing he hates about him and the dads like “ya i figured this would happen the moment u came outta mamas pussy. dammit”

5. Do they have any siblings? What’s their names? What is their relationship with them? Has their relationship changed since they were kids to adults?

no sibs

6. What were they like at school? Did they enjoy it? Did they finish? What level of higher education did they reach? What subjects did they enjoy? Which did they hate?

he was really good in school and used it as an outlet to pour all his attention into bc he liked the satisfaction it gave him when he got good grades, he planned on going to college until Plot Related Issues derailed his life. he liked the English Language and didn’t care for like science n shit

7. Did they have lots of friends as a child? Did they keep any of their childhood friends into adulthood? 

when he was growing up he was just a friendly nice only kid so he liked to treat friends like his family so he was well liked, when he moved away he lost all contact with anyone there. friends he makes in russia when he first moves there are mostly also left behind, hes Big on leaving places thats 4 sure

8. Did they have pets as a child? Do they have pets as an adult? Do they like animals? 

no pets as a child, he likes animals and is a cat person but didnt see a reason to get a pet

9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals? 

animals are probably chill with him, i imagine any instance with animals is probably just a chill one

10. Do they like children? Do children like them? Do they have or want any children? What would they be like as a parent? Or as a godparent/babysitter/ect?

same w animals, hes just chill. kids probably would like him bc hes relaxed and not strict. he likes the idea of being traditional and starting a family but he truly doesn't see it happening for him given Plot 

11. Do they have any special diet requirements? Are they a vegetarian? Vegan? Have any allergies?

nope he eats whats put in front of him almost always

12. What is their favourite food? 

probs like a soup or something warm and filling

13. What is their least favourite food?

Get Those Damn Avocados Away  

14. Do they have any specific memories of food/a restaurant/meal?

when he went out to restaurants with his ma and pops as a child, or when way later his roommate Matt cooks for him when he was goin thru sum shit

15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking?

he doesnt cook anything complicated at all, when shopping for himself its a lot of instant food bc hes cheap and doesnt care to put a lot of effort into his food. others either dont care or thinks its unhealthy

16. Do they collect anything? What do they do with it? Where do they keep it? 

ive thought of this a lot and its mostly momentos, not that it matters bc every item he gets from someone is eventually left behind when he leaves russia as Symbolism. the collection serves almost no purpose bc of how often he Jumps Ship when it comes to relationships w other human beings but thats kinda the point

17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos?

hes fine with pictures like selfies w ppl or scenery until hes in america, where he is convinced any pictures he takes or pictures hes in will end up being the reason hes found out. but in russia he liked taking silly pictures of just stuff around him. its like on instagram u dont know what someone looks like until u looked at what they were tagged in kinda, crappy over filtered pics of stuff around him like trees or windows. 1 of those instagrams....

18. What’s their favourite genre of: books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything else

he likes those shitty kind of john green novel types with the manic pixie dream with the wallflower type, indie music, documentaries or crime related, video games that are story driven rather than multiplayer. just ur average Introverted Bro

19. What’s their least favourite genres?

sci fi or anything BORING like that

20. Do they like musicals? Music in general? What do they do when they’re favourite song comes?

doesnt care for musicals but likes music, he gets really focused when his favorite song comes on bc he wants to appreciate it if its on and hes not focused on it he will play it over again to Appreciate it.

21. Do they have a temper? Are they patient? What are they like when they do lose their temper?

he has a temper but hides it well but if u manage to get him to actually lose him temper he will glare at u until its his turn to speak and argue u 1 response  before he Fucks Right Off meaning if it doesnt end right there Boy’s Got A Grudge. it doesnt happen often bc hes not huge on confrontation, the reason why goes from social anxiety when he was 14 to PSTD when he was 16

22. What are their favourite insults to use? What do they insult people for? Or do they prefer to bitch behind someone’s back?

i dont know about favorite insults but he manages to stay polite in the face of people, and bitches about them to sergei when he can 

23. Do they have a good memory? Short term or long term? Are they good with names? Or faces?

good memory and with faces for sure 

24. What is their sleeping pattern like? Do they snore? What do they like to sleep on? A soft or hard mattress?

he doesnt stay up very late all that often until he has a reason to (heists n whatnot) he sleeps on an old mattress twin sized, p soft 

25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves?

hed probably have normie humor b4 he met the shitpost that is (i had 2 rename her bc i forgot her fuckin russian name kms but this is a name on doulingo a lot so i wont forget hopefully) vera, her humor is like my mains shitposts so hed find that stuff funny after a bit. he doesnt make many jokes 

26. How do they act when they’re happy? Do they sing? Dance? Hum? Or do they hide their emotions? 

hes good at hiding emotions but when hes happy abt something (thankful for ex) he’ll make it known to them, good times w friends he’ll basically mirror what they’re doing, happy when he’s by himself would be a jittery smiling Fool 

27. What makes them sad? Do they cry regularly? Do they cry openly or hide it? What are they like they are sad?

lots make him sad, his daddy issues, roommate issues, mental health n shit. he cries a few times and tries to be secretive about it, over time he’s not that ashamed to cry in front of sergei given that he’s seen him cry a couple times. when he’s sad he’s even more quiet and sulky. if u made him sad and said u were sorry he’d say he accepted the apology but like the mood wouldn’t lighten up at all. 

28. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared?

1. big fear is probably getting hurt/attacked and being helpless (after the Great Stab), after that era he’s basically all up in self defense knowledge to prevent that turn out again. he’s scared of the ppl he deals to and eventually is scared of anyone he doesnt know well (in america, thats everyone outside of matty, joe, and austin) bc of the threat of getting caught by work peers who are looking 4 him. 

29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective? 

if he were to find out someones fear he wouldnt put it against them, if a situation came out where he could protect them from it he would try to do so casually. Nice Guy

30. Do they exercise? Regularly? Or only when forced? What do they act like pre-work out and post-work out?

he doesn’t exercise but if there were a case of him doing so pre would be a motivated Bro ready to get pumped and post would be tired dead man

31. Do they drink? What are they like drunk? What are they like hungover? How do they act when other people are drunk or hungover? Kind or teasing?

he drank a bit in russia, hes the Underage Ollie. Underage Ollie is really clingy to sergei, the only guy he knows in the group of Bros around him, he tries to have a good time and laugh w everyone. hungover he’s sick and pitiful, boo hoo woe is me i feel like shit kinda way. when ollies around drunk sergei imagine this season of morty dealing with rick, like fed the fuck up but caring uknow? 

Not Underage Ollie is a lil more fun, he went 2 sum clubs w austin only a few times  ;) ;), hungover he was a less whiny version of Underage Ollie. he’s less caring when others are drunk around him bc its austin and austin drinks irresponsibly and is also is ex so SHRUG 

32. What do they dress like? What sorta shops do they buy clothes from? Do they wear the fashion that they like? What do they wear to sleep? Do they wear makeup? What’s their hair like?

he dresses comfort over fashion and owns like 3 shirts basically. clothes shopping is not really a priority for him at all, but he does appreciate some aesthetics just not on himself.  he sleeps in his panties (undies) with a shirt, doesnt wear makeup. his hair is a mousy brown i guess? its not tamed at all hes got that anime boy protag gohan/luffy/ash hair  

33. What underwear do they wear? Boxers or briefs? Lacey? Comfy granny panties?

boxer briefs 

34. What is their body type? How tall are they? Do they like their body?

hes a slight young twink man, and in his youth hes like 5′5 and it caps at like 5′10 maybe when he’s an adult. he’s ok w his body but everyones got insecurities 

35. What’s their guilty pleasure? What is their totally unguilty pleasure? 

guilty pleasure are the john green type shitty novels and the ungulity pleasure is idk! slime vids or something

36. What are they good at? What hobbies do they like? Can they sing?

he’s good at writing i guess (4 school, in english n russian), he likes 2 read, and he can sing but its like generic male voice singing. its just ok

37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction?

he likes 2 read and he’s fast i guess, n like i said the genre he likes is that shitty poetic adorkable fictional stuff 

38. What do they admire in others? What talents do they wish they had?

he likes when ppl are assertive, not really when assertive @ him, but when they can be assertive in general. he would love to be able to hold any power in any conversation he’s in between ages 0-18

39. Do they like letters? Or prefer emails/messaging? 

emails and messages 

40. Do they like energy drinks? Coffee? Sugary food? Or can they naturally stay awake and alert?

he can stay awake without any energy boosters for a while

41. What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship?

he’s gay, he likes Boys. he likes nice friendly boys who basically carry out social interactions and are good at not letting things get awkward (this goes for austin and matt and even vera). he needs a lot of space, like an unhealthy amount of space, Like Mayhaps There’s Something Wrong amount of space. 

42. What are their goals? What would they sacrifice anything for? What is their secret ambition?

goals: get outta the bis! 

sacrifice: friend’s safety/livelihood!

secret ambition/guilty subconscious: get in bis and succeed 2 make papa proud! its a job handed to him that makes BANK and is basically a fallback if his goal doesnt work except he wont admit it to himself

43. Are they religious? What do they think of religion? What do they think of religious people? What do they think of non religious people?

no religion basically, he would probably not be an asshole about it but be kinda an asshole abt religion in private

44. What is their favourite season? Type of weather? Are they good in the cold or the heat? What weather do they complain in the most? 

he loves the winter bc he likes being bundled up, overcast sky, he’s good in the cold and he complains abt wet weather (rain and snow) 

45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves? 

like he’s a troubled navie kid, and he’ll come around when it comes time for him to work. ollie doesnt know about the work he has to do when he’s older for a while, all he knows is that everyone is Preparing him for something. he knows he’s troubled but he doesnt think of himself as stubborn like other ppl do. 

46. Do they make a good first impression? Does their first impression reflect them accurately? How do they introduce themselves?

no, most of the time he’s kinda awkward. it reflects him p good :(. he basically just goes “hey im ollie” and depending on who it is he’ll explain what he’s doing like “i have your coke” or “im austins friend. thanks for taking me in” 

47. How do they act in a formal occasion? What do they think of black tie wear? Do they enjoy fancy parties and love to chit chat or loathe the whole event?

he’ll act mannerly and polite like he usually does, he likes getting dressed up fancy and being in a fancy space. not one for chit chat but he’s not Hating it

48. Do they enjoy any parties? If so what kind? Do they organise the party or just turn up? How do they act? What if they didn’t want to go but were dragged along by a friend? 

he doesnt care for parties i guess, he turns up at them to supply the good stuff and he tries to act like it’s a job, except usually the person he deals with is like ??? y so serious bitch? he’s dragged along by sergei p often, he doesnt complain in front of others but throws fits with him before or after

49. What is their most valued object? Are they sentimental? Is there something they have to take everywhere with them?

Daddys Jacket. its just a winter coat that he wears a lot

50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials? 

accurate to what happsn in canon. his clothes, phone, chargers, wallet, and i think that would be it. hes pretty minimalist and doesnt want to be held down by stuff cus when he went to america he did so Swiftly. 

[touristguidebuzz]

Why Uber May Have Outgrown Its Founding CEO

Sometimes what got you today here won't get you there tomorrow. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick speaks onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2014 in San Francisco. Steve Jennings / Flickr

Skift Take: The rough-and-tumble approach of Travis Kalanick was indulged in the company's early days. But customers, drivers, employees, and investors have different expectations from a multi-billion-dollar global company.

— Sean O'Neill

“This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it,” wrote Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, in an email to his staff the other day.

In that same email, which he sent out after Bloomberg published a video showing him berating an Uber driver, the 40-year-old CEO also said that the incident reminded him that he “must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up.”

To which the only proper response is: What took you so long, bro?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Kalanick is a first-class jerk. And the company he founded — and, to give him his due, built into a ride-hauling juggernaut — pretty much takes its cues from the boss.

Remember when Kalanick gave an interview to GQ magazine and said the company might as well be called “Boob-er” because he was now so desirable to women? Or how about the way the Uber staff used to mess with its chief competitor Lyft by calling for Lyft rides and then canceling them? Or the time an Uber executive used its technology to track a Buzzfeed reporter’s ride without permission?

Peter Thiel has called Uber “the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley,” and while he’s hardly an unbiased observer (he’s an investor in Lyft), I’ve heard plenty of other people in Silicon Valley say the same thing.

For the most part, Uber’s stumbles haven’t slowed it down. Indeed, my Bloomberg colleague Brad Stone, the author of “The Upstarts,” about Uber and Airbnb, told me that Kalanick’s rough-and-tumble ethos was probably necessary as the company fought regulators and the taxi monopolies in one city after another. And its first-mover advantage remains powerful: Uber has nearly achieved the status of Xerox — its name signifies not just a company but an activity.

And its first-mover advantage remains powerful: Uber has nearly achieved the status of Xerox — its name signifies not just a company but an activity.

Besides, companies are rarely punished by consumers for the sins of their executives. That Henry Ford was a bigot who owned an anti-Semitic newspaper didn’t much matter to buyers of Ford cars. Some years ago, the Allentown Morning Call revealed that Jeff Bezos’s Amazon didn’t install air conditioners in its warehouses; instead, it kept ambulances parked outside to revive workers who collapsed due to heat. Amazon’s revenue kept rising. So long as Uber’s technology worked — and it did, beautifully — nobody was going to dwell on either Kalanick’s or the company’s immaturity.

But this time it feels different. It feels a little like the final scene in Ian McEwan’s comic novel, Solar, in which all the bad things the protagonist has done throughout the course of the book come back to bite him all at once.

It began when Kalanick joined an economic council formed to give business advice to President Donald Trump. He quickly resigned after employees and customer howled in protest. When taxi drivers at JFK Airport in New York went on an hour-long strike to protest Trump’s ban on travel from seven mostly-Muslim countries, Uber tweeted that it was dropping surge pricing at the airport, infuriating both the taxi drivers and the protesters.

When taxi drivers at JFK Airport in New York went on an hour-long strike to protest Trump’s ban on travel from seven mostly-Muslim countries, Uber tweeted that it was dropping surge pricing at the airport, infuriating both the taxi drivers and the protesters.

The hashtag #deleteuber began trending; it has since become a catch-all for Uber critics:

And even that spate of impressively bad news was overshadowed after a former Uber engineer, Susan J. Fowler, wrote an utterly convincing account of her experience facing sexual harassment, and then indifference and outright hostility when she tried to get the company to do something about it. Then came the coup de grace: the video showing Kalanick arguing with a driver who complained that his business had been hurt by Uber’s price reductions. “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit,” Kalanick says. Ugh.

Do these recent black eyes have the potential to harm Uber in a way that previous problems have not? I think the answer is yes, for three reasons.

Even though Uber is the biggest brand, ride-hauling has become commoditized. A rider who opts for Lyft over Uber will find little difference in the service. And while Lyft remains a distant second, it’s in plenty of cities; indeed, many drivers contract with both services. So people disgusted with Uber can easily switch. “I’ve heard ‘I’m calling a Lyft’ more times in the past week than in the past six months,” says Lise Buyer, a partner with the Class V Group, a technology advisory firm. For its part, Lyft is trying to take advantage of the moment by raising a new round of capital.

The election of Trump has made this an unusually heated political moment, with Americans taking sides as never before. For instance: the decision by Nordstrom Inc. to eliminate Ivanka Trump’s merchandise from its stores became instantly controversial, with some customers applauding and others threatening a boycott. (Never mind that Nordstrom says it made the move for the most uncontroversial of reasons: the stuff wasn’t selling.) Fairly or not, Uber is now viewed as having taken several “pro-Trump” actions. In addition, sexual misconduct has become a galvanizing issue that can also cause people to shun a company. (Just ask Baylor University.) If the #deleteuber campaign gains traction, it has the potential to cost Uber the urban, upscale — and heavily Democratic — riders the service depends on.

The big surprise in Fowler’s blog post was not the sexual harassment allegations — did one really expect anything different from a “baller” culture, as Kalanick describes life inside Uber? No, it was all the other ways that Uber’s culture is dysfunctional. She makes Uber sound like Game of Thrones — a comparison she makes explicitly. Executives are openly undermining their supervisors in the hope of replacing them. That sort of thing. The result, writes Fowler, is that “nobody knew what our organizational priorities would be from one day to the next and very little got done.”

Would you want to work in a place like that? A company that combines that cutthroat culture with rampant sexual harassment is going to start having problems attracting talented people.

“Information about the work environment that is seeping (or gushing) into the real world now will undoubtedly have some impact” on job candidates, Buyer told me. “There are plenty of other well-funded, super-interesting places to work. And hey, if your interest is automotive, Lyft is just a few blocks away.”

It’s pretty obvious what needs to happen. Kalanick doesn’t just need “leadership help”; he needs to bring in an actual leader, someone who knows how to run the sizeable company that Uber has become. He can talk all he wants about needing to grow up, but he’s run out of time, and out of chances.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg View columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the co-author of “Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA.”

The full title is: “The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb and the New Killer Companies of Silicon Valley Are Changing the World.” (Little, Brown)

To contact the author of this story: Joe Nocera at jnocera3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net.

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©2017 Bloomberg L.P.

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