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rhosyn-du · 3 years ago

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Never make a mess when a total catastrophe will do - Chapter One

Pairings: Jimon, past Clace, background Clizzy, a bunch of other minor background pairings Rating: Explicit Art: @cor321 Beta: @all-thestories-aretrue Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, fake dating, oh my god they were roommates, friends with benefits, idiots to lovers, pining, miscommunication, holidays, drinking games, mistletoe, symbolically significant Oreos, domestic fluff, brief mention of past character death, Jace’s self-worth issues deserve their own tag Summary: What do you do when you find out your sister is not only dating your ex and love-of-your-high-school-life but is also bringing her home for Christmas? Bring your annoying, hot, annoyingly-hot roommate as your fake boyfriend to show them you're totally fine with it, obviously! There's no possible way this could backfire. Link: AO3, Tumblr Master Post

Chapter One

“Lightwood’s Mortuary, you stab ‘em, we slab ‘em. How may I direct your call?”

“You know,” Izzy said, “that joke would land a lot better if you hadn’t turned green last week when I mentioned getting to do my first cadaver dissection.”

“First of all,” Jace said, abandoning his laptop in favor of flopping back onto his bed, “it’s creepy that you say ‘getting to’ instead of ‘having to.’ And second of all, no one wants to hear about how much fun you had slicing up dead bodies over Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Max wanted to hear about it.”

“Max also can’t wait to get to middle school because he heard you get to use actual fire in science class,” Jace pointed out.

“Max is just into science like his big sister,” Izzy countered breezily. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Christmas.”

“Please,” Jace said with far more enthusiasm than the situation probably warranted. “I’m desperate enough for any distraction that will take me away from trying to memorize third declensions that I would love to discuss whatever family holiday drama is so colossal I’m hearing it from you instead of Alec. Is Robert planning to show up uninvited to Christmas dinner with his girlfriend again? Oh! Did Mom finally snap and kill him? Is that why Alec isn’t calling? Is he helping her hide the body?”

“Oh my god,” Izzy laughed. “Dad and Annamarie are spending the holidays in Provance with her family, and there are no bodies to be hidden. This is what you get for taking Latin instead of Spanish like a sane person.”

“This coming from a woman who’s studying both,” Jace pointed out.

“Yeah, because a basic understanding of Latin and fluency in Spanish will both help me get into med school, and I need all the help I can get if I’m going to get into Grossman. Besides, I’d never imply anyone in this family is sane. If you studied more, you’d know that ‘Lightwood’ is just Latin for ‘totally fucking cracked.’”

“Please,” Jace snorted. “It’s not even a Latinate name. It’s Germanic. ‘Lightwood’ is Old English for ‘totally fucking cracked.’ Speaking of which, what’s the Christmas disaster?”

“It’s not a disaster exactly,” Izzy hedged, and Jace felt a sudden frisson of actual unease. Izzy normally had no problem speaking her mind. “It’s not a disaster at all, actually. It’s just. I invited someone.”

“Oh.” Jace relaxed. He didn’t know why Izzy was making such a big deal out of this. In the years since the divorce, Maryse had often encouraged her kids to invite any friends without a place to go to join them for holidays. Izzy’s own roommate had come for Thanksgiving last year. “That’s cool.”

“No,” Izzy said, like he was missing something obvious. “Jace, I invited someone. Someone I’m seeing. Seriously.”

“Oh,” Jace said again, this time with dawning comprehension. “That’s great, Iz. I’m happy for you. Wait, Mom’s not doing her overprotective, no-one-is-good-enough-for-my-children thing again, is she? Is that why you called, you need me to run interference?”

“No, no,” Izzy reassured him, although her voice still held an underlying tension. “Mom’s been great, actually. They knew each other already, so that probably helps.” Jace heard a shaky inhale before Izzy continued. “You, um. You know her, too, actually.”

“Oh yeah?” Jace said with forced ease, wracking his brain for any clue as to what could have Izzy so freaked out. Whatever it was, Jace wasn’t going to add to her stress. As far as he knew, Isabelle had never even been serious enough about someone before to even use the term girlfriend or boyfriend, let alone bring them home for Christmas. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“It’s Clary,” Izzy said in a rush. “I’m dating Clary.”

The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and Jace was glad he was already lying down.

“Clary?” he repeated. “M—” He just barely stopped himself from saying “my Clary.” Because she wasn’t, not anymore. Not for a long time. “Morgenstern?” It was a clumsy recovery, but it was the best he could manage. “You’re dating Clary Morgenstern?”

Jace and Clary had met at the beginning of Jace’s junior year of high school. Clary, a year younger, had just lost her mom, and the two initially bonded over the shared experience of having lost parents. But Clary was fierce and bold and so full of passion even in the depths of her grief that Jace really couldn’t help falling in love with her. They’d dated for nearly two years—practically forever in high school terms—and even though they’d both known they were growing apart by the time Jace had to choose between his first-choice college in Boston and staying in New York to go to NYU, Clary would always hold a special place in Jace’s heart as his first love.

“Yeah,” Izzy said on a heavy exhale. “For a while now. That—that’s why I called. I didn’t want it to be weird, you know? For us all to just show up and for it to be a surprise. But I guess I probably shouldn’t have done it over the phone, either. I just didn’t think—”

“Izzy,” Jace said, much more calmly than he felt. “Breathe. It’s okay.”

“God, I should have told you sooner,” Izzy continued as though he hadn’t even spoken. “I just knew it probably would be weird for you, so I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure—”

“But you are now,” Jace interrupted again. It wasn't really a question. “Sure.”

“Yeah,” Izzy breathed. “I’m so sure.”

“Then it’s not weird,” Jace lied. “I mean, come on, my sister is dating someone who makes her happy and who I know will treat her right. What kind of idiot would I have to be to complain about that?”

“Really?” Izzy pressed. “Because I told Clary I wanted to talk to you before we finalized plans. So, if it is weird for you, or even if you just don’t want to be the only single person at the table on Christmas—”

“I won’t be,” Jace interrupted.

There was a pregnant pause, and then Izzy squealed so loud Jace had to pull the phone away from his ear.

“Oh my god, Jace! That’s amazing! Why didn’t you just say you were bringing someone, too, you jackass? Do you know how worried I’ve been about telling you about me and Clary?”

Which wasn’t what he’d meant at all—he’d only meant that Maryse was single, too—but Jace couldn’t resist the excitement in Izzy’s voice, not after her earlier panic.

“If I’d known you were all freaked out, I would have said something sooner,” Jace improvised. “It’s kind of new, and I haven’t even had the chance to tell Mom yet.”

“Let me,” Izzy insisted. “I’ve been trying to get her to admit that she and Luke are an item for ages, and maybe knowing that we’re all happily attached will be the push she needs.”

“Hold up. Mom…and Clary’s stepdad?” Jace was starting to wonder if this was some bizarre stress nightmare brought on by impending finals.

“Yup,” Izzy confirmed, popping the “p.” “They’re not even subtle about how much time they’re spending together, but Mom keeps talking about how they’re ‘just old friends.’” Jace could practically hear the eye roll.

“Anyway,” she continued, “if I leave now, I can catch Mom closing up the bookshop and maybe finally get her to crack. Don’t worry about Christmas plans. I’ll take care of everything. Talk to you later!”

“Iz, wait,” Jace started, but he was interrupted by the telltale beep of the call ending.

Jace stared at his phone, wondering how, exactly, he’d managed to make such a disaster of things. He couldn’t deal with this right now, he decided, tossing his phone aside. He just had to get through finals, and then he could come up with some excuse for why his nonexistent girlfriend couldn’t make it for Christmas. An excuse that wouldn’t make Izzy suspicious. Or Clary. Or Alec. Or— Fuck. Not thinking about it.

He turned his attention back to his laptop only to realize after several minutes of staring blankly that he wasn’t prepared to think about Latin anymore, either. Fuck it. He was going to spend the rest of the evening on the couch, drinking beer and watching stupid people doing stupid things on TV and thinking about absolutely nothing at all.

Because Jace just couldn’t catch a break, he found both the couch and TV already in use. He wanted to be annoyed, especially since he knew this was at least the dozenth time this semester his roommate had watched Return of the Jedi. Part of him was annoyed. But another part of him was…not annoyed. And that was yet another thing Jace wasn’t going to think about.

Jace’s first impression of Simon Lewis, when he’d walked into History and Literature of Music their freshman year, had been that he was kind of hot, in a nerdy way. His second impression, when he actually talked to Simon a few days later, was that the guy was annoying as hell. Over the course of the year, as they somehow ended up hanging out with the same group of friends, it became a tolerable sort of annoying. So tolerable, in fact, that when Jace found himself desperate for a roommate the next summer when Raj bailed on him last-minute, he’d agreed to let Simon have the second room in the surprisingly affordable apartment he’d found.

Jace’s third impression of Simon came four days after they’d moved in together, when he happened to be walking down the hallway at the exact moment Simon stepped out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, a stray droplet of water trailing down his surprisingly well-defined abs. In that moment, Jace must have lost his mind, because he had the sudden, almost overwhelming urge to follow the path of that droplet with his tongue and, oh. Oh no. Jace had been wrong this entire time. Simon wasn’t just annoying. He wasn’t just nerd-hot. He was annoyingly hot.

And Jace was maybe just a little bit in trouble.

Because he’d seen the kinds of people Simon dated. Thoughtful. Driven. Well-adjusted. Unlike Jace in pretty much every way that mattered. Not that Jace dated, but he wasn’t the kind of person Simon hooked up with, either, he was pretty sure.

(Jace confessed his fourth impression of Simon to Maia several months later, after many, many shots of tequila. Maia laughed at him for a solid five minutes, but she also poured them another round and never mentioned it again after they sobered up because she was actually a pretty good friend despite how much she always seemed to enjoy Jace’s suffering.)

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked around a mouthful of instant ramen. Jace refused to acknowledge that the way his cheeks puffed out when he ate was cute.

“Just.” Jace shook his head. “Holidays. Family stuff.”

“Your sister planning to make Christmas dinner again?” Simon asked.

“Worse,” Jace said, flopping onto the other end of their stained Goodwill couch. “She’s dating my ex.”

Simon winced. “Ouch, dude.” Simon poked at his noodles with a pair of well-used disposable chopsticks. “You still have feelings for your ex?”

“What? No, of course not. It was ages ago, and we were practically still kids. And the breakup was mutual.” He made a face. “But Izzy’s bringing her home for Christmas.”

“Okay, yeah, that could be a little awkward,” Simon conceded.

“It gets worse,” Jace admitted. “When she told me, I kind of panicked and said I was bringing someone home, too.”

Simon frowned. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.”

“I’m not,” Jace told him. “Which is kind of the problem.”

“Wow. You really know how to make things difficult for yourself.”

“Thanks,” Jace said. “Very helpful.”

Simon shrugged, then said, as casual as if he were offering to toss Jace’s towels in with his to make a full load at the laundromat, “You could always take me home with you.”

Jace stared. “What?”

“I mean, I’m going to be in the city anyway,” Simon continued, “and it’s not like my family does Christmas. I think Mom and Becky can manage the traditional Chinese takeout and Fast and Furious marathon without me.”

“Your family watches The Fast and the Furious on Christmas?” It was the only part of that Jace was emotionally prepared to process.

“It used to be Die Hard, but Mom’s got a thing for Vin Diesel, so now we alternate years.”

Jace stared a moment longer, waiting for any of this to make sense. On the television, Boushh threatened Jabba with a thermal detonator.

“Right,” Jace said when it was clear the situation wasn’t going to make sense of itself. “Okay. Rewind to the part where I’m supposed to take you home with me for Christmas and, what, pretend you’re my boyfriend?”

He could picture it all too easily. Simon wielding his enthusiastic charm to keep Izzy out of the kitchen while Jace helped Maryse make dinner. Simon joining Alec in coaxing Jace toward the piano when it was time to sing carols. Simon flushed and smiling after a couple mugs of Magnus’s deceptively alcoholic eggnog. Simon’s hand in his because that’s just something boyfriends do.

It was a horrifyingly tempting prospect.

Jace pushed those thoughts away, crossing his arms over his chest and directing all the scorn he felt at himself into the stare he leveled at Simon. “What’s that supposed to accomplish other than giving me a headache?”

“Hey,” Simon said, setting the dregs of his ramen down on their secondhand Ikea coffee table, “I’ll have you know that I make an excellent boyfriend.”

That wasn’t exactly news. The fact that Simon was friends with basically all of his exes said as much. But Jace wasn’t about to let on that he paid that much attention to Simon’s dating habits. Or to pass up such a good opening. “That why you’re single?”

“Not the one currently desperate for a holiday date here, pal,” Simon pointed out.

“I don’t know, you seemed pretty eager to be my holiday date just a second ago,” Jace said, adding a wink just to be obnoxious.

“It was an offer, jackass. One which I now deeply regret.”

“Which you should,” Jace told him, turning to the TV and pretending to watch. “Now we can both forget this conversation ever happened, and I can go back to figuring out what I’m going to tell my family about why my nonexistent significant other can’t make it for Christmas this year.”

“Right,” Simon muttered, picking up his bowl and turning his own attention back to the movie.

Jace told himself he didn’t feel just the tiniest bit disappointed.

“The thing is,” Simon said several minutes later, as Boba Fett tumbled into the Sarlaac pit, “my cousin Rachel is getting married on Valentine’s Day. And my Bubbe Helen is still pretty cranky with me for breaking up with Maia.”

Jace frowned at him. “You and Maia dated for like a month and a half. Over a year ago.”

“Yeah, well,” Simon said, “Bubbe Helen really liked her, but I think maybe that’s because Maia’s the only person I’ve ever brought to a family function. So, I was thinking maybe if I brought someone else to Rachel’s wedding, she’d get the hint and drop the Maia thing. And then you suddenly needed someone to take home for Christmas, and I thought we could, you know, help each other out.”

It was a terrible idea, and Jace meant to say so. He really did. But what came out of his mouth instead was, “You want to introduce me to your grandmother?”

“I mean,” Simon said with a shrug, “she’d probably be happier if you were Jewish, but I honestly think she’d be happy to see me with anyone who’s not a total asshole. Ever since she found out Maia and I aren’t together anymore, she’s been acting like I’m going to end up a lonely old maid or something, which I totally don’t get, because A, I’m only twenty-one, and B, she doesn’t think it’s a problem that Becky’s single and Becky’s two years older than me.”

“Glad to know I meet the very minimal requirement of not being an asshole.”

“Not a total asshole,” Simon corrected with a teasing grin.

“You’re really making a compelling case for trying to convince our families that we’re a couple,” Jace said drily. But he was maybe just a little bit weak for Simon’s smile, so he added, “But you might as well tell me how exactly you think this would work. Theoretically.”

“Theoretically,” Simon repeated. “Right. Well, we’d need to come up with a game plan, obviously. And rules. Rules that we actually follow, because that’s where things like this always fall apart, when someone ignores the rules.”

“Where things always fall apart,” Jace repeated. “Is this something you do often?”

“What? No! I just mean like in movies and stuff. Fake dating is practically its own genre, so we have a ton of examples for how not to do it, and…” Simon frowned as his voice trailed off. “And now that I’m saying this out loud, I’m realizing how dumb it sounds. You’re right. We should forget this conversation ever happened.”

“Or,” Jace said slowly, knowing he was going to regret it but unable to stop himself, “we could spend some time coming up with a plan and then decide if we think it will work.”

“Wait, really?” The slow grin spreading across Simon’s face did nothing to ease Jace’s sense of impending doom, but it did fill him with a soft warmth that made the doom easier to ignore.

“Why not?” Jace shrugged with practiced nonchalance. “I’m done with classes at noon tomorrow if you want to do it then.”

“I’ve got a break from then till three if you don’t mind meeting near campus,” Simon said. “Say, Java Jones at twelve-thirty?”

“Sure,” Jace agreed to the background of Jabba’s sail barge exploding. He hoped that was less metaphorical than it felt.

~~~

“I thought we were planning a couple of fake dates, not staging a major military operation,” Jace said as he surveyed the notebooks and stacks of paper strewn across the rickety cafe table in front of Simon.

“Oh, sorry,” Simon said, hastily shoving exactly one of the many notebooks into his backpack. “I was just reviewing notes for my econ final while I waited.”

“Is all of this really necessary?” Jace asked, attempting to clear enough room on the table for his coffee and the banana muffin that was attempting to pass for lunch.

“It’s so necessary,” Simon told him, reaching over to steal a piece of Jace’s muffin. “I don’t want to end up like Melissa Joan Hart in My Fake Fiancé.” He popped the piece of muffin into his mouth. “Or Melissa Joan Hart in Drive Me Crazy. Oh! Or even worse, Melissa Joan Hart in Holiday in Handcuffs.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

Simon sighed heavily. “I’m saying we need clear, well-defined rules if this is going to work.”

“Is rule number one ‘don’t be Melissa Joan Hart’?” Jace asked, snatching his muffin away when Simon reached for it again and taking a pointed bite.

“No,” Simon said, with far more seriousness than Jace thought the situation warranted. “That’s rule number two. Rule number one,” he continued, opening a blue notebook to a fresh page, “is ‘absolutely no sex.’”

Jace choked on his muffin.

“If there’s one thing everyone seems to agree with, it’s that things always break down when that rule gets broken,” Simon continued as though Jace weren’t struggling to breathe around a mouthful of muffin and why Simon thought they even needed a rule for that.

Jace washed the remaining crumbs of muffin down with a generous swig of coffee, then leaned back in his chair with a deliberately cocky grin. “I mean, I know I’m damn near irresistible, but do you really think you need a rule to keep from jumping me?”

“Rule three,’’ Simon said, scribbling furiously in the notebook, “treat each other with the same respect we’d treat people we’re actually dating.”

“Hey, I would have the same question for someone I was actually dating.”

Simon looked up from the notebook. “That explains so much about your dating history.”

Jace flipped him off, and Simon flashed him a shit-eating grin. “Nope, sorry, rule one. But,” he continued, serious once again, “we should have rules about what kind of physical affection we are comfortable with. Like, I know we don’t normally do hugs, but it would be weird if we never hugged in front of your family if we were dating, right? What about holding hands, is that too much? And what about kissing? I’m definitely cool with cheek kisses, but I don’t know—”

“Simon,” Jace interrupted before he could get too worked up. Or make Jace think about more things he really shouldn’t be thinking about. “You’re allowed to hug me. And hold my hand. Honestly, I’m sure I’d be fine with anything you’re comfortable doing in front of my family, so how about we just go with this: casual touches are fine and for anything else, I’ll follow your lead.”

The look Simon gave him was so searching that Jace almost worried for a second that Simon would be able to see right past his crossed arms and feigned nonchalance to the part of him that was less worried about showing physical affection than how much he wanted it, the part that avoided hugging Simon because he liked it.

“Okay,” Simon said finally. “But you have to promise you’ll tell me if anything I do bothers you even a little bit.”

“You mean like singing Shake It Off at the top of your lungs in the shower?” Jace asked.

“That was one time!” Simon protested. “I was up all night studying and under the influence of too many energy drinks. We agreed never to mention it again.”

“No, you told me never to mention it again and I laughed at you.”

“See, this is why we need rules. You’re already breaking number three.”

“Yeah, because we’re not pretend-dating yet,” Jace said. “That one might be a little rough, but I’m sure I can manage with some practice.”

There was that searching look again, but then Simon nodded like Jace had said something particularly insightful. “You’re right, we should practice.”

“We—what?”

“If we’re going to convince people who actually know us that we’re dating, then we should practice first,” Simon said, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. “Not just the rules we know are going to be hard, but all of it, so we can work out any kinks in the plan before showtime.”

And maybe it was reasonable, but it was one thing to put on a show for his family, for Simon’s family, for a few days at a time in places that might be familiar to each of them individually, but that weren’t theirs. It was entirely another thing to do it here, in the cafe they went to at least twice a week, or on campus where they’d first met and had to keep on attending classes for at least another year, or even worse in the apartment they shared, around their friends—

“I really should have thought of it earlier,” Simon continued, blissfully unaware of Jace’s inner turmoil. “My best friend back home, she’s an amazing liar. Like, seriously, she got away with everything when we were kids. But any time she needed me to back up her story, she’d make me practice with her like a hundred times until she knew I could convince her mom and stepdad, even after I got good enough that I didn’t have to practice to convince Mom. Man, those two could sniff out the tiniest discrepancy in any story. Like, if normal parent bullshit detection is a one, my mom’s is probably a solid three, but Fray’s parents? Eleven, easy.”

“I’m pretty sure no one I’m related to has supernatural bullshit detection,” Jace told him. “And it’s common knowledge I’m a better liar than you are, so if you can fool your mom without practice, so can I.”

“Maybe,” Simon conceded. “But a little bit of practice couldn’t hurt, right?”

Jace was pretty sure that it could hurt, actually, but he was also pretty sure he was the only one in danger of getting hurt, so it probably wasn’t worth consideration. Especially weighed against the hopeful enthusiasm in Simon’s expression.

“What did you have in mind?”

“We could start by pretending we’re on a date right now,” Simon suggested. “We’re already sharing a muffin. So, just treat me like you’d treat anyone you were on a date with.”

“My dates don’t usually involve this many notebooks,” Jace told him. “And if my date stole my muffin, the date would be over.”

“Come on, you’re not even trying,” Simon said, gathering up the papers and notebooks. “You’d really ditch your date over a muffin?”

“Absolutely,” Jace insisted. “They’d have to be seriously good in bed to make up for it, and I’m pretty sure rule number one says you’ll never get muffin-stealing privileges.”

“If the biggest benefit to sleeping with you is getting to share your muffins, then I’m not the one missing out,” Simon told him.

“You selling your body for muffins now, Lightwood?” an amused voice interrupted. “I bet I know a few people who’d toss a bran muffin or two your way for a chance at that ass.”

“Which is why you’re not my pastry-pimp, Roberts,” Jace said, smirking at Maia as she helped herself to one of the table’s empty chairs. “I only trade this ass for top tier, gourmet muffins. If your muffins don’t have at least two Michelin stars, I’m not interested.”

“I give him a week until he’s working corners for Entenmann’s,” Simon told her. “He was just threatening to walk out on our date over a bite of mediocre banana nut.”

Maia’s eyes widened. “Your— Oh, shit, sorry,” she said, scrambling out of her chair and throwing them both an apologetic smile that Jace was pretty sure wouldn’t be directed at him if he were sitting with anyone other than Simon. “I swear I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just thought you were studying or something. You guys have fun, and I’ll just—”

“It’s a practice date,” Jace interrupted, “not an actual date. And Simon’s a dirty muffin thief who won’t even put out, so I’m not sure it really even qualifies as any kind of date.”

Maia looked between the two of them, then slowly lowered herself back into the chair. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what exactly is a ‘practice date,’ and why are the two of you on one?”

“Jace needs a fake boyfriend to take home for Christmas, and I need a fake date for Rachel’s wedding,” Simon explained, snatching the last bit of Jace’s muffin without remorse. “And we thought we should practice dating before trying to convince our families that were actually, you know, together.”

“That’s a terrible idea, and I regret any part I played in the two of you becoming friends,” Maia said flatly.

“Yeah, that would probably worry me more if you didn’t say that like twice a week,” Simon told her.

“Oh god, Simon, what did you let Jace talk you into now?” another voice asked, and suddenly there were three more people crowding around their tiny table, because apparently all of their friends were at Java Jones today. Which, in retrospect, Jace should have expected, given how often they all hung out there.

“It was actually my idea,” Simon told Maureen, sliding his chair closer to Jace’s to make room for her, Bat, and Lily. “Jace is taking me home to meet his family over the holidays, and I’m taking him as my date to my cousin’s wedding.”

This proclamation was met with a stunned silence that was broken when Lily turned to Jace and punched him in the arm.

“Ow! What the hell?”

“That’s for abandoning me, jerk,” Lily told him. “Not that I can really blame you—either of you,” she added, giving both Jace and Simon an appreciative once over, “‘cause damn—but I thought we had an understanding.” She sighed heavily. “Now that you’ve gone over the dating Dark Side, who’s going to be my wingman? You’re probably going to start doing all kinds of relationship-y things and talking about feelings—” she said it like it was a dirty word “—and crap like that.”

“I am not going to talk about my feelings,” Jace said, at the same time that Simon said, “We’re not actually together. We’re just pretending.”

“They’re planning to try to convince their families they’re dating even though they’re not,” Maia explained. “Because they apparently think that’s not just a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Oh,” Lily said, sounding oddly disappointed.

“Fifty bucks,” Bat announced, “says that when this blows up in their faces, Jace is the first one to break down and call Maia in a panic.”

“Hey,” Jace protested.

“Oh, you’re on,” Maureen said, ignoring Jace entirely. “Sorry, Simon, but no one panics quite like you.”

“I’m in,” Lily said, “and I agree with Maureen that Simon will break first, but his call to Maia will be interrupted by Jace calling five minutes later.”

“Why am I the one getting all of the panicked calls?” Maia wanted to know.

“Because you’re the only person at this table who isn’t an asshole,” Simon told her, “but nothing’s going to go wrong, let alone panic-inducing levels of wrong, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Dude,” Jace said, “she’s an asshole to me.”

“You like it,” Maia and Simon said in unison, causing the rest of the table to collapse into laughter.

“Okay, fine,” Maia said around her giggles several minutes later, “if you’re all betting, then count me in, too. I bet that these fools,” she looked pointedly at Jace, then at Simon, “don’t call me when this whole thing goes to hell, but I somehow end up having to haul their asses out of trouble, anyway.”

“I rescind my assessment of you as not an asshole,” Simon told her.

“I’d think twice about calling the woman who’s going to haul your ass out of trouble an asshole if I were you,” Bat said.

“Back to this pretending to be together thing,” Lily said. “What exactly does that entail?”

“That’s actually what we were trying to figure out when you guys showed up,” Simon told her. “We started a list of rules, but we only made it to four so far.”

“Your list should definitely include making out,” Lily said decisively. “Having made out with both of you, I can say with confidence that you’re definitely missing out if you don’t. In fact, you should try it now so we can let you know if it looks authentic.”

“You just want to watch them make out,” Maureen said.

“Yes,” Lily told her. She didn’t add ‘duh,’ but it was implied. “I always want to make hot people make out. But in this case, I’m also being helpful.”

The ensuing argument over the line between helpful and self-serving was thankfully cut short by the opening guitar line of Blonde Redhead’s Barragan.

“Sorry, I’ve gotta take this,” Simon said, holding up his phone. “I’ve been playing voicemail tag with Becky all week.” He looked at Jace. “Talk more about this later?”

“Sure,” Jace told him.

“Tell your sister I said hi,” Maia called after Simon as he headed away from the cafe’s crowd.

“You know,” Jace told her in a low voice, “you could always tell her hi yourself instead of always asking Simon to pass messages.”

Maia gave him an unimpressed look. “After everything I just heard, I’m pretty sure you’re the last person in this room I should be taking relationship advice from.”

“Bite me,” Jace told her, but he didn’t disagree.

#shadowhunters #shmb2021 #jimon #jimon fic #jace wayland #simon lewis

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lovelivingmydreams · 4 years ago

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A story by heroes and villains

Roman Castile: Passion and duty

Roman finds that his different passions seem to get in each other's way for now. But one day, he will find a balance.

“Ugh! I am done!” Roman exclaimed relieved, barely hearing the hissed warning from the librarian. Homework had been draining. Sure they’d had fun. Especially when it came to teasing Virgil about his pronunciation when they worked on Spanish.

Still Roman was ready to do literally anything else.

“Give me a sec, I have to finish this thing for English,” Virgil muttered absentmindedly. Roman knew that Virgil had rewritten that particular assignment two times already.

“Want me to read it trough for you?” Roman offered. Maybe hearing someone say that it was good would be enough to stop him from second guessing himself again.

“You don’t…” Virgil started, somehow looking guilty.

“We’re here to help each other Virgil. If I didn’t want to help you I wouldn’t offer. I thrive on being of help to my friends. It’s no trouble,” he assured him. Virgil offered him a small smile and a nod in response. “Alright. You can read it when I’m done,” he allowed.

Roman took peace with that and opened his notebook to start doodling.

He had a few ideas for some more shirt designs. He’d enjoyed making his ‘coming out’ shirt. Then there was the Halloween party and every other social event this year has to offer where he had to slay. Junior year was a year to be noticed. Nothing wrong with putting down some ideas in advance. He just might come across the perfect outfit.

“Seems I’m not the only one who can draw up some clothes,” Virgil noted and Roman nearly fell of his chair when he jumped at his sudden proximity.

“Will you stop that!?” A thing about Virgil Roman had learned over the last week. He always seemed to pop up out of nowhere. One minute he’s gushing over the latest Disney trailer with André and suddenly Virgil stands next to him giving his two cents. It was terrifying.

“Not a chance,” Virgil chuckled as he picked up Roman’s sketches.

“This looks good though… You ever thought of becoming a fashion designer?”

Roman’s eyes widened. Making amazing outfits for a living? He could make a whole ‘wear your pride’ line and… Oh… Oh…!

“You are a genius!” Roman exclaimed. He’d had no idea what he wanted to do with his future, aside from hero work, but now the idea was brought up he wanted nothing else. Fashion designer, superhero, actor, maybe also Mr. Castile-Anker. That was a future he could look forward to!

Virgil chuckled. “It’s the least I can do. I sent in the designs like you said… I’m kind of excited.”

Roman beamed at him. “I’m sure next time you see DreamPrince on the news he’ll be wearing your design.” He was. He’d been shown some alternative designs by Manifestor and found Virgil’s drawing among them and immediately declared that that was the one.

As he’d told Roman, he’d changed a few things. He’d shown him on Wednesday to get his stamp of approval. Roman had gushed unapologetically, because he knew he’d have to tone it back a bit in front of the team.

Which had been hard.

Tonight he’d be taking it for a test run and he’d make sure to be seen by people and cameras.

“We’ll see,” Virgil smiled as he pushed his laptop with his assignment towards Roman.

Roman read it, dropping the subject without problem.

Virgil was easy to be friends with and he’d quickly learned to read his moods.

During lunch Virgil usually sat himself a little bit away from the group when he felt the need to just focus on his music and sketch a little before heading back to class. He was sarcastic, witty and could dish it out about as well as he could take it.

He was also very guarded emotionally, which Roman could understand, but whenever they were just the two of them, Virgil opened up some more. He’d learned about Virgil’s soon to be stepdad and the admittedly adorable meet cute he’d been a part of.

He knew that Virgil’s dad had found them a new home and they’d moved in just that week.

He learned that Virgil was mature and his dad’s only wingman which they both agreed was super awkward but also hilarious.

Roman had joked that Virgil might end up being his father’s best man. But apparently there was a family friend ‘uncle Thomas’ who might get that position.

Virgil had gone out with another girl that week. Anna, who’d had English with him last year or something. Virgil had listened patiently, but relatively unaffected to her asking him out and arranged another semi-date at the music store for the next evening. Luckily nothing came from it again. Roman asked him why he kept saying yes to people he barely knew. Virgil explained that he had missed out on enough chances to befriend others. So the way he saw it he’d at the very least get a friend out of it. Roman kind of took comfort in that. It didn’t sound like Virgil was trying to get a girlfriend or a boyfriend right now. Just trying to socialize. Roman had reminded Virgil to watch his boundaries though. He wouldn’t want him to push himself out of fear he’d be missing out.

One more thing he learned about Virgil: he was overly critical of himself.

“Well, I think you can hand this in with confidence Virge,” Roman concluded as he returned Virgil’s laptop to him.

“So… I recall something about pizza? I’m starving!” he grinned.

Virgil chuckled and lead the way. Soon they were sat at a table with their orders and they were talking about everything and nothing. It was great. And Roman was so close to asking Virgil out but…

“So… Um… There’s this… Shoot wait a minute,” Roman got up and picked up his phone.

“Si mama…?” he asked curiously after seeing the caller ID.

“Darling. I know you are out with your friend. But I wanted you to know we’re headed to the university now,” his mother informed him. The university… Wait. “Que?” Roman looked at his watch incredulously. He was going to be late. Unless he left right now that is.

“Perdona! I’ll be there soon.” He hung up and dug through his wallet for some money.

“So sorry Virge! Time got away from us I’m afraid. I swear I intended to give you that ride… Can you call your dad… You know what? Just use the change to take the bus or something alright? My treat! I’ll call you later!” he promised as he tossed down a few bills that should more than cover the tab and the tip before rushing away.

How was it so late already?

He sprinted around a few corners and found a spot to get changed. BS had explained about the sciency stuff behind his costume change, but all Roman really cared about was that he basically had a magical boy transformation. Sure he could sit there and let the tech do its thing, but it was much more fun to make up a cool transformation sequence.

First, hair. He retrieved a lip balm like object and applied the substance to his hairline. He tucked the balm away and with one smooth movement of his hand he styled and recolored his hair. Instead of parted in the middle with regal waves it was flicked to the back, save for a single rebellious strand dangling down his forehead. Instead of a deep ash brown it was warm chestnut in color.

Then he took a tini metallic bead from a ring on his finger and tapped it against his temple, before he swiped his hand in front of his eyes as his mask placed itself securely on his face, changing his eye color in the process. He tapped his wrists together in front of his chest and brought them down with force, feeling his blazer and shirt get replaced by the skintight suit. He tapped his right heal against his left before taking another power position and finishing his costume change.

How cool was his life?!

He created a platform to lift himself to the roof and sprinted towards the university. The GTH was in it’s basement. As he made his way there he started to think over asking Virgil out again.

Maybe, now wasn’t the time. Virgil was clearly still upset about the whole Janus thing. He didn’t say it but Roman could tell. And he didn’t want Virgil to think for even a second that Roman’s crush was anything less than genuine, he had noticed that Virgil still had trouble believing their friendship was real at times. Not to mention that starting a relationship with someone while he was still figuring out how to balance out superhero and civilian life was clearly a bad idea. He couldn’t even ask him out without being interrupted by his other life.

So, he'd wait until he had his life in order and he was sure Virgil was ready. There was definitely some kind of connection between them. And Roman was willing to wait until the time was right…

He knew he was being a coward, but his friendship with Virgil was so fragile.

He entered the basement campus with little hassle and dropped of his bag in his personal locker, making sure to lock it. If anyone with ill intent got in here they could easily find out his identity with it's contents and Roman didn’t want his name out like that. Not yet at least.

He hurried to the training hall, threw open the doors and slid inside.

“Your prince has returned!” he exclaimed, doing a pretty good job at pretending he hadn't just sprinted the whole way there.

“Has he now?” BS asked, apparently in a bad mood today.

“Oh come now big S, the boy is just excited for his present! I would be too if I got a new costume made for me by a secret admirer,” Sweets offered with a calming hand on BS' shoulder. Sweets was an empath. He could share his emotions and those of others, perfect match for someone who wants or needs to keep his calm.

But what sweets said made Roman rather flustered. “I don't think DreamPrince has had enough appearances to already gain such attentions. Whoever did this just couldn't stand to look at this any longer.” Roman gestured to his current costume.

“Speaking of which…” he held out his hand bouncing on his feet in excitement. He was supposed to meet the chief of police today and he wanted to look presentable.

Manifestor chuckled from his spot on the desk. “Give the boy his stuff. He's been looking forward to this day for the past four years.”

BS sighed and handed Roman a small box, which the young hero snatched up before rushing to the dressing room.

He turned his suit off and took off the containment units. He opened the box and switched the old units for the new ones. The bracelets were more comfortable and adjusted to his skin tone, the metal bead was replaced with two skin colored stickers he applied to his temples.

“Let’s do this,” Roman smirked excitedly.

“To adventure!” he called out as he crossed his arms and tapped at his temples while simultaneously clicking his wrists together. At the same time he tapped his right toe behind his left heel and brought his ankles together. He struck a power pose, facing the full length mirror and grinned excitedly. Virgil had added an insignia on his cape and golden trimming in the final design. There'd been a few options for his emblem and Roman had chosen the shield with a castle by the sea with the sun shining down on him. He looked quite dashing.

He left the dressing room and handed the box back to BS with an elegant gesture.

BS wasn't amused. Sweets and Manifestor on the other found it hilarious.

“So? What do you think?” Roman asked as he turned around to show off the end result.

A loud ‘bing' announced a message from his family watching from the observation room.

“Gaaaaaaay!” Roman rolled his eyes good naturedly. Remus was a fan.

“Stay away from Planes!” the next one read. Roman chuckled. He had asked Virgil about the cape, considering he’d expected someone as cautious as him to heed Edna Mode's advice.

Apparently Virgil had intended the Cape to be an addition for official events. So ‘Prince’ would look good on camera. He'd also pointed out that it would look badass for the prince to un-claps his Cape before a fight. He'd had a point and Roman actually loved it.

“You look very handsome darling.”

“Thanks mom!” Roman called out.

Then two beeps came from a device on BS wrist. He looked down and relaxed, tapping away at a holographic screen, turning up the intensity of his shadow. “The chief is here,” he announced.

Roman raised an eyebrow, that was not what BS had been so tense about. Something in his private life maybe? If that was the case he'd never find out.

Roman had no time to worry about that though. The door opened and in walked the police chief. A small but commanding African American woman. It was something in the way she walked that made Roman want to stand at attention. And so he did. He wasn't the only one.

“DreamPrince, at your service ma’am,” Roman introduced himself respectfully.

“So you are what all the fuss is about?” she asked as she looked Roman up and down.

Chief Davies pursed her lips before nodding to herself. “I’ve read your file, you’re quite the prodigy aren’t you?” she asked.

Roman chuckled a little awkwardly. “I’ve just been training from a young age, that’s all.” Most gifted didn’t realize their talent until they were well in their teens.

“Good answer. I have no time to stroke an adolescent ego. We’ve got work to do.”

Chief Davies turned to Manifestor. “You got the files I sent?”

Manifestor nodded hurriedly. “Yes. I had no time to review them though.”

“I’ll walk you through it,” she announced dismissively. The leader of Roman’s training team nodded and tapped at something on his wrist. The screen that had shown the messages from Roman’s family earlier was now filled with mugshots.

The men looked dangerous. Roman shifted nervously. “You… you want my help apprehending these men?” he asked, trying not to show how frightening it seemed.

“God No!” Roman hid his relieve. “These men are all in jail already, with iron clad cases keeping them there for a long time. You think I’m going to send some rookie after hardcore criminals? No offense, but you are still a baby,” Roman blushed at that and focused back on the pictures.

Wait a minute. “I know that guy! Remember at the end of my first week? I spotted some tugs bothering that kid and tossed a rock at them?”

“And by some miracle you weren’t found when said tugs came looking for you,” BS added through gritted teeth. Still upset at Roman's initial recklessness.

“I wasn’t the only one they were looking for,” Roman insisted. He’d been so sure he hadn’t been alone that night. But BS claimed the would have known if anyone else had been there.

He never went after the tugs after they left the alley. BS insisting he was done with back alleys for the night.

And now those guys were apparently behind bars?

“Next slide please!” Davies called out.

A picture of a ziplock bag with pictures, a USB stick and a note of cut out letters that said ‘your turn’.

“For almost a year now we’ve been getting mysterious packages like this. Pictures, audio and video recordings. Every last one had one of these men incriminating themselves. It’s like whoever delivers these stands right next to them, but never gets caught taking pictures or carrying a wire. I have a small task force on the case who have dubbed them ‘The Phantom’. We are keeping this as in house as we can. Once the public hears about the Phantom, we’ll lose the most valuable asset we’ve ever had. Plus until now we weren’t sure if they were a sensible vigilante or a mobster who was taking out competition in a very clever way. Given what you just said I’d be inclined towards the former. They might have some sort of gift that hides them well enough to get away with spying. But right now, they are putting themselves in danger.” Davies turned towards Roman.

“Keep an eye out, see if you can spot him during your patrol this evening. And if you do, get him on board with the program.”

“Prince did not go through all that training to be your recruitment poster boy!” BS snapped to Roman's surprise. That was the most emotional response he's seen from BS ever. Aside from when he scolded Roman on his reckless behavior.

Davies glared at BS, looking quite intimidating, despite barely reaching to his chest.

“Now don't go all noble on me BrainStorm. What? Did your heart grow three sizes while I wasn't looking? Is there suddenly room for more than one other person there?”

Roman knew that this was a threat. Davies knew BS’ true identity, where he worked, who he cared for. She could ruin whatever he had built in an instant.

Roman often wondered what kind of life BS had outside the facility. Did he have a partner? A family? Did they know about his past at all.

A few seconds ticked by with no one daring to do so much as breathe.

Then Davies relaxed and stepped back. “I'm no monster BrainStorm. I wouldn't ask some rookie to deal with this if I hadn’t tried everything else already. I send in my agents and even called in other gifted. All we got out of that was this,” she gestured and Manifestor showed the next image. A note in the same style as the previous one that said ‘no babysit!’

��Our profiler thinks they are young. So maybe your prince won't seem as threatening. They might've had his back once before already. If this Phantom were someone you cared for, would you rather we left them be, or would you drag their noble behind here yourself to give them proper gear and back up?”

The question hung in the air for a moment, BS had nothing to counter with. Roman imagined Phantom being one of his friends, or even Janus and the answer remained the same.

“I will do what I can,” he vowed before lifting his chin and facing the fierce chief head on. “But ma'am, I don't appreciate you threatening my mentor like that.”

BS had stood up for him, it was only right for him to return the favor.

Davies chuckled. “Just when I started to worry you were only brawn and a pretty face. You can be smart too huh? And you’ve got guts. You just might have what it takes kid. Now. I have places to be. Keep me updated, and don't lose this.” Roman accepted the watch he was handed with a confused frown.

“My people will call if we need you. Please use that brain and return the favor?”

With that she left. Well… that was intense.

Roman put on the watch and saw that it had a frequency displayed on it instead of time. He also spotted two buttons. One blue and one red. It didn't take much to realize that one was a panic button and the other was to make it so the cops could hear him. He wondered if it would connect to the nearest patrol car or to Davies directly.

He hoped he’d never have to find out.

“Well… time to show the city their hero is ready for action.”

It had been a pleasant evening so far. He'd stopped a few shoplifters, broke up a fight or two and dodged a few reporters, though he let them snap a good picture of his new outfit.

Now the sun was down however and he was making his way to the back alleys.

“Looking for a fight is foolish Prince!” BS growled through his earpiece.

But Roman wasn't looking for a fight. He was looking for someone who'd gotten him out of at least one pickle.

He ignored BS as he landed on a roof, overlooking the city using his sight. He didn’t know what he was looking for exactly, but it was his only plan.

Suddenly he spotted something strange and unusual. There was an energy, a few blocks ahead. But it was impossible for him to really see it. Like he was looking at it trough glasses with strong prescriptions.

He rushed towards it and found a gang of criminals with violently swirling auras. He knew what this meant. They were going to hurt someone.

“Send back up to my location,” he instructed before turning the receiver off. He needed to focus.

“I say we attack now! They are week! We can take them down easily.” A shorter guy with energy like glass shards insisted.

“Boss says we have a truce until the rat is found,” a giant of a man stated calmly, though his energy betrayed how much he wanted to go with the first guy's plan.

Were they talking about Phantom?

“What rat!? Those idiots just bragged to the wrong crowd.” The first voice shot back. Phantom was becoming a bit of a ghost story it seemed. Some who believed, judging by the shudder that went through the other men's auras at the mere mention of them. But clearly not everyone was convinced.

“Oh and they gave out pictures as well? Did a little livestream? We're not safe until this rat is lynched,” the tall man pointed out tensely. He was a believer. And he wanted Phantom dead. Not good.

Roman studied the tugs and to his relief he spotted they were all armed. Weird thing to be happy about. But it meant he had probable cause to interfere.

He jumped down, slowing his descent just so that he didn't hurt himself on the landing without sacrificing the cool factor.

“Do you gentlemen have permits for those weapons?” he asked as he rose up to his full length facing them fearlessly.

“what the…?”

“It's that Prince clown!” Rude.

The tall guy, the leader probably, silenced the group with a gesture and smiled, his anxious energy almost completely disappearing. He'd found something to vent on. “Sure kid. Got mine right here.”

Roman flung his cape in front of him and manifested a gelatinous shield around himself as the leader pulled out his gun and fired several rounds at him. The tugs wouldn't see it. But it was there, and it caught the bullets slowing them down until they were harmless, making them fall to the ground when they met with the fabric.

“Well now you just pissed me off. This is brand new!” he complained as he dropped both cape and shield.

“I suppose you won't surrender peacefully?” he deduced. The criminals all readied their weapons. Seriously? Did they not get that he was essentially bulletproof?

He sighed as he took off his cape and hung it on a water pipe that ran down the side of the building.

“Fine,” he sighed and then he amped up his speed a bit while shielding himself from the rain of bullets heading his way. He used the gelatin shield because he didn't want to risk the bullets ricocheting and injuring someone. Especially the gifted he was sure was still watching the whole thing.

It wasn't hard to disarm the criminals. He even managed to knock a few to the ground. But there were at least two who'd gone down without him even touching them. And he would’ve sworn he saw a figure move between him and a tug once or twice to block a blow. He couldn't really see the other hero. It was an odd sensation. But he could feel his presence better and better and soon he was adapting his moves to those of the Phantom. Together they took out the whole group. Though to the villains it would seem like he'd done it by himself. He stood victorious over the leader, a pile of disassembled guns behind him and sirens lighting up the alley.

He twisted his foot to show off his white boot with gold accents. “So… how does it feel to get your butt kicked by a guy in heels?” he wondered playfully before looking up towards the presence and winking in acknowledgment.

“Good job Dream Prince. We've got it from here.” Roman turned to the cops and bowed to them

“It's my pleasure to be of assistance to the police of this fine city.” Then, while turning around, he made a gesture that could be taken as a ‘goodbye’, or as a ‘follow me’.

He was glad to notice that the presence seemed to follow him. He found a fire escape and floated himself to the roof it led to.

He turned to face his hopefully soon to be partner in crime fighting.

He could hear the clanging of someone climbing the metal fire escape. And while he still couldn't quite make out the figure that reached the roof he saw his reflection in a pool of water left behind by the rain earlier that day.

An unfortunate weakness, but so long as no one knew, no one would be looking for it. In order to be a hero, no one could know Phantom really existed. Was that why the authorities were kept at a distance? Why Phantom never made introductions despite having crossed paths at least once before?

He stepped forward with a bow. “Greetings Phantom. I must thank you for the assistance. Both just now and three months ago. I am Dream Prince, he/him if you please. A pleasure to officially meet you.”

A distorted chuckle made him look up. He could see Phantom much better now. He was dressed in Male coded clothes, though that was no guarantee. The hero outfit was simple. A black t-shirt, boots and denims, paired with a black coat that reached down to his calves and had the collar popped up. He looked really cool… but Roman couldn't make sense of his head. He was looking right at him he could see it, but his brain couldn't identify a thing.

It was so weird.

“Phantom huh?” His voice was a strange deep echoing sound. The distortion was pretty spooky if he was honest, but he wasn't afraid. Phantom was on his side.

“Sure you can call me that. He/him… mind telling me what that was about? I thought you officials weren't let of your leash unless you could be responsible enough to not get yourself killed?”

Roman cocked his brow. “Says the guy who has half the criminal underworld out for his blood,” he reminded him. Phantom looked away. Clearly he knew Roman had a point.

“Do you have something against the program?” His tone had been oddly bitter.

“No I…” Phantom took in a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m just pissed at the cops for sending you, I guess.” He sure sounded upset. And Roman could understand that. Here Phantom was, doing his part and all the cops could do in return was bother him At least as far as the young vigilante could tell. But then why…?

“Yet you chose to follow me up here?” Roman pressed. That didn’t make any sense. Phantom had shaken off his ‘babysits’ before. What made Roman special?

“Um… Well… I just…” Phantom stammered. Roman wondered why. Was he bad with confrontation? Social interaction in general? Or had Roman said something that hit a nerve somehow?

“You interrupted my stake out!” Phantom blurted out all of a sudden.

“Do you know how long it takes to work my way up the ranks? First I have to find a low level runner, then I follow him to his boss, that guy to his and so up the ladder I go. I was getting real close to the big guy of this group. And now…” Oh… Well Roman could understand how that would be frustrating.

“I apologize,” he said sincerely with a small bow. “I merely intended to help. They were talking about killing you.” Surely he could understand that he could not stand by after hearing that.

“And now there is a price on your head! The leader of that little club is like two steps away from the big boss. They won’t be happy with you taking him in.”

Well… He had a point. But Roman had back up. It would be rather stupid of the mob to come after a hero with government sanctioning. And these guys would go behind bars for a long time right? “You got dirt on them?” he asked. If the guns weren’t enough then surely whatever Phantom had gleaned from his stakeouts would be sufficient. Right?

“Yes… But that’s not the point. They have no clue about me. Not really. But you are out in the open. This is not your kind of mission Royal pain.” Oh, he had nicknames huh? It was an insult, but Roman didn’t mind witty banter. Especially if it came from a place of care. And Roman was starting to think it did.

“And now that you are out, you can’t expect me to hold your hand any longer…”

Roman crossed his arms and smirked catching the implications of what Phantom just said.

“You’ve been looking out for me all summer huh?” he guessed.

Phantom scoffed and probably rolled his eyes. While Roman still couldn’t quite see it, he would bet his entire Disney collection on it.

“It’s not like I came looking for you.” Phantom snapped. And Roman believed him.

“Still… Thank you…” he was going to say more but then he heard a beep in his ear followed by a loud voice. “Prince! Answer this instant!”

“Ow!” Roman exclaimed annoyed, reflexively reaching for his ear though it wouldn’t help much. He pressed the button to talk to BS. “One. Loud. Two. Rude! I am in the middle of something! And did you seriously remotely reactivate my com?”

He would demand a new com that couldn’t do that or he’d refuse to wear one period. What if he needed to concentrate right now? What if he was in the middle of tense negotiations or being told delicate information. As a matter of fact. This situation right here was delicate. One wrong move and Phantom might bolt. And he might not come along next time he found him. And even if he couldn’t get him to join the program, he wanted Phantom to know he had an ally in him. Someone to talk to, confide in, count on if he didn’t have anyone else.

“You do not turn off your com while going into a gunfight! It’s moronic to go in alone!”

Roman rolled his eyes. “I am fine, not a scratch on me.” He wasn’t going to mention that he wasn’t alone exactly. Phantom had never consented to BS and the rest of his team knowing.

“I’ll call you when I’m done here.” And this time he took the com out of his ear. BS could yell at him later.

“Sorry,” he sighed. “My mentor is… intense at times.” In a cold and distant way.

“Mentor?” Phantom asked.

“One of the people helping me practice my powers, test my limits. Comes with the program. It’s not just a babysit and a nice suit,” he joked casually.

“Oh…” Phantom’s tone was odd. It made Roman want to come closer and offer comfort. He didn’t though. They weren’t at that point yet. Not by a long shot.

“Listen, I admit I was sent by the chief. But I didn’t come here to recruit you. I wanted to thank you and tell you… If you ever need someone to talk to, to help you figure something out… I’d be more than happy to oblige. No need to tell me your name or anything about yourself,” he vowed as he reached out his hand. Phantom hesitated for a few moments before bridging the distance and offering his own.

Roman grinned and grabbed it for a firm shake. “I’ll see you next time,” he assured his fellow hero before letting go and turning around to finish his patrol.

Progress was made. Not much, but still.

He just might’ve made a new friend.

@cirishere @hestianerd1 @moonlightshow00 @naturallyunstablegamer @alias290 @meowthefluffy @frida0043 @angelic-cali @selenechris @theblackveilinreverse

End of this part meet Virgil and read his story.

Masterlist

#ts sides #sanders sides #Roman Sanders #Virgil Sanders #Prinxiety #Patton Sanders #Logan Sanders #Remus Sanders #Hero Au #Janus Sanders #fic

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imaginariumpod · 4 years ago

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A Tapestry of Lace and Silk : the visual aesthetic and costume design of Crimson Peak (2015)

In the dark corners of an ancient mansion, you hear the rustle of a long dress on the floor, there behind a closed door, lies some ghosts and secrets that should never be unearthed.

A woman walks in the silence.

Crimson Peak (2015) is a movie directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and is one of the most obvious mainstream examples of the gothic romance in cinema in the recent years. With a story full of ghosts, a secret, a haunted house and of visuals directly inspired by the mid-century gothic romance book covers. This movie is visually highly stylized and immersive in a way I think a lot of filmmakers and studios tend to shy away from.

While Guillermo Del Toro’s movies tend to always be very stylized and visually cohesive, Crimson Peak is truly the one, in my opinion, where the production design was at its most compelling and beautiful. To me, it’s obvious how much care and attention has been given to even the slightest of details, to create the perfect visual identity for this film. I have read once that the gothic was very decorative, as a genre. From the dark mansions, and the flowing nightgowns to the flickering lights of the candles and the creaking floors. The ~aesthetic~ is something that is very important to a gothic romance story. It’s all in the atmosphere, as well as some important elements of the story in itself, that make a gothic romance. Gothic Romance is a genre that you have to lean into, and Guillermo Del Toro perfectly understood it when it came to Crimson Peak.

Before we go more into it, i just want to warn you all that there’s probably going to be spoilers in this article. I will try my best to avoid being overly blatant about what happens in the story in itself, because that is not my focus. My focus during this article will be on the production design of the movie, the way this movie looks and has been designed, especially when it comes to the costumes and the outfits the characters wear throughout the movie. I mostly want to go deep into the visual aesthetic of this film, from the decors and visual themes to the dresses and outfits that were created for this story. I want to talk about the visual aspect of the movie and how it translates within the genre of gothic and the medium of filmmaking.

Guillermo Del Toro : the cineast

Guilerrmo del Toro is a mexican director mostly known for having a very distinct style of dark fantastical movies often featuring monsters, myths, the folklore and fairytales. His movies alternate between being made in spanish or english. His stories and movies often explore the dark side of the fantastical, of fairy tales and stories told after the dark. and yet. they have a hopeful side to them .

While a lot of his movies were successful, I do think it’s El Laberinto del fauno (2006) (Pan’s Labyrinth) that really established him as a thriving filmmaker, despite how niche a lot of his movies and stories are. Which, by the way, as a quick aside, Pan’s Labyrinth is a very formative movie to me, I watched the year it came out, when I was 11 years old, my dad brought the DVD home, thinking it was a movie for children. And well. It was not. I ended up being TERRIFIED and yet mesmerized and this was my first contact with Guillermo Del Toro as a filmmaker but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. His movies are crystallized in my memory, and they awakened in me a love of this more gothic and fairy-tale inspired horror. He's definitely a movie director that brings his unique touch to whichever work he’s doing.

The Gothic is a very prominent part of Del Toro’s work, which he calls Gothick (and is indeed a word that represents the genre that got started by Horace Walpole’s book The Castle of Otranto in 1764) and he describes the relationship he has with this genre as “a way to discover beauty in the monstrous” The protagonists of Del Toro movies often embrace the darkness that exists around them and within themselves. For Del Toro, the gothic is the “only genre that teaches [us] to understand otherness.” You can see it in the narrative of so many of his movies, which culminates in The Shape of The Water, where the monster ends up being the victim of society, and the real monster is the character of Michael Shannon, who represents the pressure of society, the norms and accepted and what can happen if you deviate from what is accepted.

The narratives of Del Toro’s movies reject authorianism in any shape or form, whether the societal authorianism or the narrative ones, and this makes for a way of storytelling that often turns around all expected tropes.His movies are, at their core, anti-fascist and, in my very humble opinion, very relevant during our current political climate on an global level. I really do not feel like I am the right person to dive deep into this subject in a small article on the visual aesthetic of one of Del Toro’s movies, but I want to recommend the thesis The Dark Fantastic of Guillermo Del Toro : Myth, Fascism, and theopolitical Imagination in Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth by Morgaan Sinclair. That thesis is widely informative and interesting to read and will probably dive deeper in those themes that are always somewhat present in every Del Toro movie.

He loves using “typical” genre stories and making them his own. From folk tales, fairy tales, vampire stories, legends, he uses these narrative motifs as a template for his stories, but he always subverts them in one way or another, exploring the darkness within. And this is what he also did with Crimson Peak, but now with the gothic romance genre as his template. Gothic Romance is one of those genres that is very formulaic in some ways, it has very common tropes and themes that are often used. For example, the way he explores the gothic house and its entire symbolism in his early movie The Devil’s Backbone (2001).

[These old-Gothic notions insinuate themselves in the Gothick terrain of del Toro’s films. The Devil’s Backbone, a ghost story set in a remote orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, seems at first glance to be a classic Gothick romance, which, as del Toro reminds us in his commentary, focuses on the house, the domicile, as an emblem and warped container of the human self. This symbolically charged structure, he says, always conceals a “dark secret,” linked to a treasure and deep passions, “that is buried in the past and affects the people living in it.” At the center of the darkness stands “a very pure hero—a new set of eyes to explore the secret and through the purity of his heart unravel the mystery.”]

When it comes to his films, Del Toro tends to often use archetypes as a way to effectively communicate certain concepts, but more often than not, he will turn these archetypes upside down. Del Toro tends to also use a lot of symbols in his movies, weaving a tapestry of overarching themes and meaning. He gives depth to his stories by a use of various artistic and literary references, historical references. building a story that contains layers upon layers. This depth also translates to the visual aspect of his movies, as Del Toro movies tend to be carefully and precisely crafted. The aesthetic is, as one might say, on point. From the somber and fantastical creativity of Pan’s Labyrinth to the epic and vibrants colors of Pacific Rim. Crimson Peak is, to me, one of the most visually beautiful and compelling movies of Del Toro, and this is what we’re going to get into a bit later.

A ghost story:

This story starts at the end. This is a narrative device Del Toro also used with Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie starts with the final scene, and we know that something terrible is going to happen, and it just keeps the tension and stakes high during the entirety of the movie, as we keep wondering when things will take a turn for the worse.

We can see Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska ) wearing her white nightgown, in a scene of fog and piercing white. Her blond hair is flowing down on her shoulders, her face is pale, and her hands.

Her hands are drenched in blood.

The first sentence of the movie is then spoken : “Ghosts are real. This much I know.” This immediately sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

And then. It goes back to the beginning, when she was just a young child, at the moment her mother died, when the ghost of her mother, veiled in black lace, came to warn her, to beware of Crimson Peak…

Edith Cushing is a young woman living with her father and who dreams of becoming a writer. She keeps trying to publish her story, not a ghost story, but moreso a story with a ghost in it. “The ghost is a metaphor” she says. A metaphor for the past and for regrets and violence that still permeates a place. She then meets Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), an english baronet without fortune, and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain). After the sudden (and suspicious) death of her father, she marries Thomas and follows him and his sister back to England, in their strange mansion that stands isolated in the midst of english hills, atop a source of red clay. The Sharpes are an aristocratic family with no fortune and a decrepit mansion where strange things happen, where ghosts roam.

There’s also a social commentary here on the changing social norms and social classes. While the Sharpes are an aristocratic family, owning land and a title, they are not rich. Their clothes are good quality, made from good materials and hand crafted, but they are also old and not of the current fashion. They are in a very strange place socially, being higher up on the social class and yet, being broke and trying to figure out how to get money to take care of their crumbling estate.

Ghosts are real, we need to remember, and are a reminder of what has been forgotten and what has died. The past is still lingering on in the present, and violence of the past will not go unpunished. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying. I do not want to say much about them, because it would reveal too much about the plot and the story, but I want to talk about them in terms of visual design. The ghosts of Crimson Peak are terrifying, they are skeleton-like, and red. Vibrant red. They are nothing like I have ever seen before in terms of ghosts, and this is yet another way Crimson Peak sets itself apart from other movies.

Lucille says something at the end of the movie, and I will not say anything about the plot, so fear not for spoilers, she says “but the horror… the horror was for love” and I do think it says so much about the movie and about the genre. Gothic romance is not really a love story, but it’s not strictly a horror story either. It’s a blend of love and horror. And sometimes… the horror, the horror will be for the sake of love.

The building of a haunted house

Production design, when it comes to movies, relates to everything that has to do with the visual identity of the movie. The look and the stylistic choices that are made to make the movie look the way it does. From the costumes, to the sets, to the decor, and all the small details, production design is one of the most important parts of constructing a movie. It’s those elements that make out how the movie will look and what it will communicate to its audience.

The production designer works on all the aspects that pertains to the visuals of the movies, along with the director of photography. They manage everything from the costume, the sets and the decor. And they work closely with the director to craft the visual identity of the movie. Guillermo Del Toro always draws from a very vast range of thematic and visual inspirations when it comes to his movies : from gothic architecture, symbolist art, the surrealists, but also more popular inspirations such as comic books and even video games. So many of these elements are brought and matched to visually create a layered look to the film.

The visual storytelling, the ambiance, the atmosphere, all of these elements are a huge part of what makes Crimson Peak truly interesting. The visuals of the movies were not an afterthought to the script, but were an integral part of how the movie was constructed. Under the directives of Guilermo Del Toro, Thomas E. Sanders [Dracula (1992) ; Braveheart (1995)] constructed an intricate and vibrant appearance for Crimson Peak, which I think is one of the most memorable components of the film.

This movie takes the canons of gothic horror and gothic romance and embraces them, whether it is narratively speaking or visually speaking. I always love a story that leans heavily into its genre and its tropes and convention, only to make use of them in a different and new way. I can mention The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) as another movie who embraces its genre, here the corny 1960s inspired spy movie, and just GOES WITH IT. I do so much appreciate when any type of storyteller and artist fully work within the genre and then try to expand the boundaries of that specific genre, all the while trying to create a work that is definitely recognizable as a certain genre.

As I said, the visuals are obviously very much inspired by the canons of gothic romance, whether it's the illustrations that were in the book of the 19th century, as well as all the historical inspirations from the late 19th century in which the movie is set. There’s also the obvious references to the book covers of the gothic paperbacks of the mid 20th century, with their jewel tones, and their heroines escaping a dark and looming manor behind them. Or sometimes, she is exploring the dark winding corridors, with only the help of a few candles lighting her way.

There’s this dichotomy that sometimes occurs when it comes to movies, of style over substance or vice versa. Which to me is a moot and useless point, because style is a form of storytelling as well. The way you construct the visuals of the movies, the decors and the costumes, and the way the film is shot, all of this is a way of telling a story and is as essential to a good movie. Even a movie that doesn’t put the emphasis on “style” also makes a visual choice. Not focusing on the visual elements such as the costumes, or the decor, is also a stylistic choice in itself. Even if the choice is to make the movie devoid of any outlandish visual assets. Taking these decisions are what ultimately make the movie be the way it is visually. A film is a visual form of storytelling,

When it comes to the sets, the movie is set mostly in two diametrically opposed houses, the airy and light house of the Cushings in Buffalo, homey and comfortable, and the cold gothic estate of the Sharpes : Allerdale Hall. Where the house in Bufallo was full of light and a warm color palette, Allerdale Hall is the opposite. That house is the typical gothic mansion, and one of the most important elements of any good gothic romance. Imposing, dark, with twisting corridors and actually decaying above them. Visually, it’s also distinctive with the colder colors that are used when filming there. It’s the ideal setting for the gothic romance story to happen. Sanders says that the only reference that he was given by Del Toro for the design of this house was the painting House by the Railroad (1925) by Edward Hopper. This painting was the beginning of a very long and arduous process as Sanders tried to create this perfect haunted house.

The house of the Sharpes, is atop a source of red clay, hence its name. It’s decrepit, falling apart, cold. “colder inside than out” says Edith when she first enters it. The house is slowly but surely sinking in the red clay that once used to be the source of the Sharpes’ fortune. Visually, it looks as if the house was bleeding, as if the house was alive. As Sanders says during an interview with Slate :

“We felt that the clay is the blood of the earth, and it’s also the blood of the house, and that the house was a living thing that embodied the family over all those years.”

Within the genre of gothic horror and gothic romance, the house plays a very peculiar part. Whether it is haunted or not, the house is very much often an important character of the gothic story, on the same level as the heroine or the antagonist or the ghost. The spaces of Allerdale Hale are tight and menacing, the house is full of dangerous sharp angles. This is not a warm house. Del Toro said that he repeated the wooden pattern on the columns three or four times, so that it looks slightly out of focus, like something is wrong, but you cannot pinpoint what it is, exactly.

Allerdale Hall is thus the perfect setting for this gothic romance to unfold, through the sharp and twisting corridors, with the gaping hole in the ceiling through which the snow falls and covers the red crimson blood of the house.

A nightgown to explore strange corridors at night:

The main costume designer for this film was Costume Designer Kate Hawley, assisted by Cori Burchell. Even though they hadn’t worked specifically on period movies and historical movies or more fantastical movies prior to their job on Crimson Peak, I cannot help but think that they did a marvelous job when it came to the costume design for this particular movie. Hawley had previously worked on Pacific Rim with Del Toro, so she was familiar with the way he worked and envisioned things. Together, they truly created a wardrobe that was absolutely wonderful for the movie of Crimson Peak. Highly stylized. Imbued with the fashion and artistic trends of the era, without being exactly Literal to the clothing of the time. She used costume design as a vehicle to communicate ideas and moods that were intrinsical to the characters of the story.

Hawley worked closely with Del Toro to create the costumes that would be perfect to convey the personality of the characters and would help build the depth of the movie. In her interview with digital magazine JEZEBEL, she says that she definitely considers Crimson Peak to feel like an opera, a piece of music in which there’s two distinct acts, and so the costuming had to also follow those two distinct acts and those two distinct worlds that the characters inhabit. From the color scheme and mood, to the details of the historical period. But most importantly, especially for a Guillermo Del Toro movie, it was vital for Hawley to look at it thematically first. Del Toro movies are always chock full of references to art, folklore and literature, and there is no surprise that the costume design should follow the same direction.

The costumes are an important narrative device as well, the clothing a character wears reflects their personality as well as their narrative journey. It can inform on the status of the character, their place in society, it’s an effective tool of storytelling. A good costume designer will use the wardrobe of each character to say something about the character in themselves but also create a cohesive visual look for the ensemble. From the colors to the chosen fashion style and to the accessories, fashion is a silent mode of communication that we all inherently understand, even if not on a conscious level. The wardrobe of each different character is thought and designed, to fit the character but the movie as a whole.

As our queen and icon, legendary costume designer and winner of eight separate academy awards for costume design, Edith Head says : “Fashion is not the primary thing, the primary effort in motion pictures is to tell a story”. And clothing do tell a story, whether or not you think they do. This is comes back to what I was saying earlier, that sometimes, people tend to not put any sort of importance on the clothing, considering it shallow and superficial, but I would argue that it’s a very subtle way of storytelling that says more about the character in a single outfit than a whole scene of exposition ever could.

Edith’s clothes are all very modern and current to the era the movie is set in (ie. 1901) The silhouette of all the clothes she wears are very much within the fashionable silhouette of the era, with the gigantic sleeves, and the cinched waist and slightly flare-y skirt. All of the dresses she wears throughout the movie have the leg-of-mutton sleeves that were so fashionable during the late 1890s and early 1900s. The color palette of Edith’s clothes is very much within a very soft and warm-toned palette, with a lot of soft yellows, ivories, creams, mustards and golds. this very much visually set her apart from the Sharpes. Hawley says she imagined Edith as a canary in a coal mine, her vibrant yellows and gold outfits in the dark and somber walls of Allerdale Hall. Hawley and Del Toro also used a pre-raphaelite portrait of Helen of Troy by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863) as a visual basis to work on Edith’s aesthetic.

She’s a down to earth woman who is ready to make efforts and her dresses reflect this aspect of her personality, they are comfortable and practical, while still having that air of whimsy to them. From the gigantic buttons on her honey colored dress or the beautifully eccentric belt in the shape of hands. Kate Hawley, the movie’s costume designer, says that this belt is just an upscaled version of the small mourning jewelry in which a lock of hair of a loved one who passed away can be found in. “I took these little earrings, these little ivory hands, and we scaled them up so it was almost like a mother's hands clasped around her waist”. (I so desperately want a belt like that btw, it is creepy but i still want it, if any of you happen to find one, please do contact me, thank you so very much.) She matches her hat and gloves with her ensemble, and generally, Edith, is just very visually cohesive and coherent within her own style.

During a very romantically and sensually charged scene, she wears a beautiful evening gown in ivory satin and ornamented with pearls. She enters the room dressed in this lovely dress and a long satin cape of the same color and a pleated collar, her hair delicately swept up. This is Edith’s very own dramatic moment, where she gets to dance with her romantic lead and wears an outfit that is a bit fancier than her usual fare. This dress is still within the very soft and pale color palette that represents Edith. This particular dress is visibly inspired by a painting of the italian artist Giovanni Boldini : The Black Sash (1905), which furthers the fact that this movie’s visual aesthetic is deeper than what first meets the eye. From the delicate color and stark black ribbon down her back.

Edith, though, is our ingenue heroine of the gothic romance. One of the main archetypes in the gothic romance is the innocent heroine, a young woman thrown into a situation that’s claustrophobic, scary and dangerous. In every gothic romance, there comes a moment where the heroine leaves her bed in her nightgown, it’s a very striking visual that is the mark of the way we visualize gothic romance. She holds a candle, wearing only the lightest of clothing, and goes to explore the darkness within the walls she inhabits. Her nightgown ends up being the most significant outfit of the whole movie, it truly marks her as a gothic romance heroine, while she roams the corridors at night.

«I’ve never done so many nighties and nightgowns! It’s all about running around in night dresses through long corridors. That also blended to the fabric. When Guillermo said to me, “It’s about a house that breathes,” that’s why we chose the lightest fabric, just a little thing to try and help the storytelling with the idea of the house.»

Edith’s nightgown is striking, the movement of the heavily pleated garment fills the whole screen whenever she moves, it gives her a certain elegance and follows the cohesive silhouette and color palette that was established for her thus far, with its gigantic sleeves and the soft warm and earthy colors of the dressing gown she wears over her nightgown, as she goes down the dark stairs of Allerdale Hall.

Where Edith is the innocent ingenue, Lucille is the woman hardened by life and misfortunes. She is all sharp angles and contrasts, where Edith is soft and kind, with a seamless color palette. Lucille’s outfits are stuck twenty years in the past and this is very much a narrative device and tool that’s used through the usage of dress and costume design. By showing her in these lavish but old-fashioned dresses. it serves both the purpose of showing how rich and noble the family of the Sharpes is but also, it effectively communicates how they do not have the means to actually follow the current fashionable trends. It shows that Lucille is not one to want to have something of lower quality or cheaper than she thinks her standing deserves. Lucille is a woman that is stuck in the past and is not truly living in the current times. I think that even though these details often necessitate a basic knowledge of the dress silhouettes of the late 19th century and early 20th century, this tactic still visually works because it sets Lucille apart from the rest of the world. It expresses visually how she and her brother are distanced from the world outside.

Her dresses and outfits are dramatic and striking, with the sharp silhouette of the 1880s, with the bustles. The colors of her dresses are always in deep tones, like reds, blues or black. The colors are very rich and vivid. The first dress that we see Lucille wearing is the beautiful red dress during the scene where she plays piano. A silhouette typical of the 1880s with the bustles and the very extravagant detailing. That one dress is a striking red, with a skirt that has a long train. The one very important design detailing is the back of the dress, replicating a spine of sorts in the middle of her back. Those sharp angles forebode a sense of danger that is conveyed strictly through the construction of the dress, and the arrangement of the textiles, the various shades of red fabric intertwined to create this gorgeous pattern that goes down the skirt. Her hair is swept upward and decorated with fine red jewels, and the pale complexion of Jessica Chastain only make the whole ensemble more striking.

Compared to the two other components of the main trio, Thomas Sharpe’s outfits seem much more muted and sober. His clothes, same as his sister’s, are also too old to be fashionable, but made of high quality materials. The color palettes of his clothes are very dark and deep, with touches of deep blues and greens. When you transpose him into Allerdale Hall, he fits seamlessly within the decor, meanwhile he seemed out of space and out of time in the sunny and modern decor of Buffalo.

A desire for accuracy :

Historical accuracy is always a point of contention when it comes to movies set in a particular historical setting, in this case in the early years of the 1900s. And before we go any further, is historical accuracy even That important when it comes to an effective costume design ? I honestly think historically accurate costumes are very important when it comes to setting your movie. The visual immersion and world building when your story is set in a specific time and place, like for example, in this movie, set in Buffalo, United-States, and England, during the year of 1901, depends on these important elements, such as the costume design and the decor. Especially when a movie is not tending toward the fantastical. For this reason, I really do think that having period accurate costuming, design and makeup is incredibly important when it comes to immersion and creating a visually cohesive world.

Nonetheless, to me, this part of the costume design is less important than what the costume design says about the story and the characters. As I said earlier, costume design is a very subtle but powerful narrative and visual tool to use in filmmaking. And for this reason, I personally think it’s more important for a costume to be efficient when it comes to storytelling than to try to achieve perfect accuracy. Simply put, a costume designer is not someone whose aim is to recreate historical garments perfectly (if this is your jam, I follow a bunch of creators on youtube who actually do that, using historical sewing techniques as well). Their aim is to use the clothing for a storytelling purpose.

There is this thread by fashion historian and curator Hilary Davidson on the subject of ahistorical costume design and this is what she has to say about Crimson Peak:

“Kate Hawley's designs for Crimson Peak (2015) are immersed in artistic trends of the fin-de-siecle, making costumes that embody the period's aesthetic spirit without being completely literal”

When it comes to Crimson Peak, are the costumes historically accurate. For the case of Crimson Peak, the answer is yes and no, at the same time. More than creating historically accurate costumes, Hawley wanted to create an atmosphere, with dreamy costumes that would serve a narrative purpose, and use historical sources as a guideline and inspiration Liberties will often need to be taken to complement the story and to serve the purpose of storytelling nonetheless, I do think that the more researched and accurate the costuming is, the more complex and interesting it can be . and I do think it ended up being SO SO INTERESTING.

Costume design is more than simply making historically accurate costumes, a costume designer needs to know fashion history and fashion trends, but ultimately, their job is not to recreate exact replicas of the clothing of a certain historical period. What a good costume designer has to do, is to create a wardrobe that fits the story that is being told, and fits within the general universe it's set in and gives you information on the character. What Hawley did was to respect the silhouette of the period, from the foundation garments to the outer garments, and then, when it came to the actual costumes, she could play around with the details to convey a certain mood and narrative. The underpinnings always do define the general structure and shape of a garment, and it’s one of the most important elements when someone wants to construct a historically accurate costume. Even if, like Hawley, liberties are then taken when it comes to the actual clothing, the “spirit” of the clothes is respected. From the corsets and to the petticoats and all the subsequent layers, it was important for Hawley to have all of these elements in a historical accurate way, because it would change the posture and the demeanors of the actors. It shapes the way they stand and the way they move through the different spaces.

Visually, Crimson Peak is a masterpiece of a gothic romance. From the sweeping nightgowns to the imposing and sharp gothic mansions, and the scary ghosts behind the door, Del Toro and his team have created a movie that takes everything that is wonderful about gothic romance to the highest theatrical level, and I, for one, always enjoy this visual and cinematic experience.

#crimson peak #guillermo del toro #costume design #gothic #gothic romance #haunted house

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kate-read-that · 4 years ago

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-мами, папочка!! (Mommy, daddy!)

Rose covered her eyes with her arm and turned around. She could hear the storm against the window and the window roaring, and she knew her son would come the second she saw the first raindrops.

Dimitri yawned besides her, woken up by Lev's cries. They both looked at each other knowingly as they heard the little footsteps approaching, and the little boy jumped to their bed before they had time to say anything.

-Shh, its just another storm, honey, lightnings can't hurt you -Dimitri murmured softly while caressing Lev's long black hair.

-No like it-little Lev shook his head and hid in his father's chest-. Too loud.

Rose walked to the kitchen to get the little boy some warm milk as Dimitri kept trying to xalm him down.

-Lev, you can sleep with us id you want, but you have to know that storms aren't hurtful. They are just climate phenomena, and this one will pass just like any other.

-Only you would tell a kid that storms are just "climate phenomena" -Rose came back with a plastic cup and rolling her eyes. Both Dimitri and Lev looked at her from the bed, marvelling at their favourite woman in the world. That is, until another lightning stroke and Lev hid under the blankets.

Rose sat on the bed next to him and lifted the bed sheet a little, peaking at their son with a smile.

-Now, Lev, what do we do when a noise is scary?

-We... we make... a scarier noise. To... assert dominance.

Dimitri lifted a brow at that and looked at Rose. His looked seemed ro say "did you really said that to a 3 year old kid". Rose smiled sweetly and got Lev from under the bedsheets.

-Exactly, so, if the lightnings scare us...?

Lev looked at his mother for a second, then turned at his father and, when he saw Dimitri looked as lost as him, he turned to the window and started roaring.

Dimitr looked alternatively at his wife and his son with equal looks of surprise. While his wife laughed, their son kept howling and roaring at the sky with the most furious expression a three-year-old can fanthom.

-кричать громче! (scream louder!) -shouted Rose between laughing.

-I knew teaching you Russian was a bad idea -mustered Dimitri while trying to contain his own smile-. Okay, Lev, I think the sky has taken the hint. It'll never try to scare you again, I'm sure. Do you want to sleep with us?

Lev shook his head -Sky is scared. я в порядке. (I'm fine)

-Okay, chipmunk, but if you change your mind we're here-Rose kissed her son's black hair and picked him up-. Now it's time to go back to bed.

Lev didn't complain, he just waved at his father, who was still sitting on the bed with a smile, and drank the mil his mother was offering him.

Rose came back a few minutes later and jumped to bed next to Dimitri. Inmediately he hugged her and turned the light off again.

-We have the best kid in the world.

Dimitri did laugh at that, for Rose's anoyance.

-And I'm the annoying parent?

-No, you're the over protective parent. I'm the proud one-he could hear her smugness in the dark as she kept talking-. He speaks two languages perfectly, and I know Dad is teaching him Turkish as well when he comes. He's funny and brave and sweet and...

-And his poop smells like death, just like any other poop. He doesn't speak perfectly, he's three. I don't know whats funnier, how motherly you are or how competitive you are about it.

-Oh, come one. Its not my fault if Declan is the only kid that can compare to ours. Of course, Sidney is his mom, so of course he would speak English and Spanish and Italian -Rose rolled her eyes even though her husband couldn't see her, and felt the way Dimitri shook with his laugh.

-Roza, I just... I swaer I'll never figure you out completely.

-Dont compliment me, Comrade. I have to get up early tomorrow and I dont have time for a quickey before.

Dimitri groaned in annoyance, yawning again and kissing Rose's hair.

-As much as I love your line of thought most of the time, Roza, I agree right now it's not the best timing. Lev could come back and there's no need for traumatic experiences just yet -Rose let out a laugh at that, so loud Dimitri hushed her to make sure Lev wouldn't wake up. Dimitri staied silent for some minutes before talking again-. I agree, we have the best kid in the world. Do... do you think we could have more?

Rose hummed before talking-Are you asking me for permission, Comrade?

-I'm not the one that would have to carry a baby for nine months.

-You helped me so much through the whole thing and afterwards its almost an equal job. You got up to feed Lev everynight since the birth day until a year had passed.

-Yoy haven't answered my question. You'd have to stop working for a few months like last time, but as soon as the baby is born they'll give me time off and I can...

-Dimitri, I have no doubt you'd help me out like last time. I've thought about it, too, but I'm scared we won't have enough time for both. We already have to find time to be with Lev and another baby will make it harder.

Dimitri seemed like he hadn't thought about it, which told Rose that was a recent idea in her husband's mind.

-But... -Rose turned to look at him-if we want to have more kids... Lev will start at the Academy in two years. I have been thinking, and once he's five he'll spent most of his time in St Vladimir.

-If you got had the baby then, the age difference wouldn't be that big, and we'd have time to adapt to the baby before Lev comes back in Christmas-as always, Dimitri followed her mind without problem. They both smiled at each other and kissed.

-We have a son, and we'll have more. We have our family -Rose said, with that smile that made Dimitri think everything was possible-. We made it.

-We made it, Roza. We have our family.

#romitri #rose hathaway #dimitri belikov #rose hathaway x dimitri belikov #rose belikov #va #vampire academy #oneshot #belikov kids #cuuute #i may make more because i love them

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strvngcrs · 4 years ago

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『 adam brody. forty. cis male. he/him. 』 oh heavens, is that DANIEL ABRAMS from FAIR LANE i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -BROODING & -EVASIVE. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool HORROR AUTHOR and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +DEBONAIR & +ELOQUENT. i hope i see them around again!

classically rolls in ridiculously late bc i forgot i had to work last night & then proceeded to sleep in today wooo !! good afternoon ghouls, it’s ya girl maia, finally here to deliver the definition of hot mess with good intentions.

GENERAL

FULL NAME. daniel elijah abrams.

NICKNAMES. dan, danny.

AGE & BIRTHDATE. 40 years old ; may 4, 1980.

GENDER & PRONOUNS. cis male ; he/him.

ORIENTATION. heterosexual.

MARITAL STATUS. estranged.

RELIGION. jewish ( non-practicing ).

OCCUPATION. horror author.

INSPIRATION. bill denbrough ( it ), donnie darko ( donnie darko ), lucas scott ( one tree hill ), stephen king.

PHYSICAL

HAIR COLOUR. black.

EYE COLOUR. dark brown.

BUILD. athletic.

MARKS. freckles scarcely spread across his entire body.

TATTOOS. none.

PIERCINGS. none.

HEIGHT. 5'11".

FACECLAIM. adam brody.

PERSONALITY

ZODIAC. taurus.

ALIGNMENT. chaotic neutral.

HOGWARTS. ravenclaw.

LABEL. the arcane.

POSITIVE TRAITS. cheeky, debonair, driven, eloquent, resilient, solicitous.

NEGATIVE TRAITS. brooding, evasive, inquisitive, sarcastic, stoic, stubborn.

HOBBIES. smokes like a chimney while writing until he forgets what day of the week it is, dabbles in hunting & fishing (thanks @ his dad), labels all crime / thriller genres as ‘predictable’ but continues to watch them, obsesses over & relentlessly criticizes his own work, drinks heavily & passionately plays moonlight sonata or fur elise as if he’s betoven’s disciple.

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH. california.

CURRENT RESIDENCE. mapleview, north carolina.

NATIONALITY. american.

ETHNICITY. ashkenazi jewish.

PARENTS. judith miller & mr abrams.

SIBLINGS. mia miller.

BIRTH ORDER. eldest.

CHILDREN. penelope abrams.

EDUCATION. university of california, los angeles; bachelor of arts in english.

LANGUAGES. english, some spanish & french.

HISTORY

EARLY LIFE. born to THE judith miller and some newspaper editor, daniel was raised by the latter and notoriously abandoned by the former. well, not completely abandoned - there’s an old shoebox containing a few letters as proof - but that was the only source of communication in their otherwise absent relationship. while little danny boy didn’t fully understand why he couldn’t see his mother, he sought out an alternative solution by watching her movies. his father wasn’t aware, at first, and dan created this extravagant fantasy of the person he thought she was based on the roles she played. however, once papa abrams found out his son was watching these movies (which were probably not fit for children in the first place lmao oop), he begrudgingly revealed the bitter truth. being forced to come to terms with the fact that his own mother willingly abandoned him with his father, daniel didn’t fully understand what it meant; he couldn’t properly process why. the hurt of absent mother was expressed more out of anger, feeling as though there must have been something wrong with him. there were fewer and fewer letters sent to judith until he gave up altogether and thus, dan’s out of control behavior was born.

TEENAGE FEVER. SUICIDE MENTION TW. he struggled in school. his emotions betrayed him. instead of relishing a happy childhood, daniel found himself pushing everyone away, getting into fights, sneaking out late at night to run around the city streets with his friends and get into all sorts of trouble with them. he couldn’t count on his hands how many times the police picked him up and brought him to his dad’s doorstep. it only got worse once one of his best friends was found dead, written off as a suicide, though it didn’t add up in dan’s eyes and seemed so much more sinister. the young man was nearly deemed to be a lost cause, until he discovered his passion for writing.

language arts or literature was the last thing anyone would ever think to group with daniel abrams. but his english teacher noticed how well he could articulate his thoughts and feelings on paper, and submitted one of his pieces to a writing contest, which earned dan the win and a cash prize. bewildered by a talent he hadn’t even realized was in him, daniel embraced it. he started writing in a journal ( which he kept safely tucked away beneath the mattress of his bed ), documenting every feeling and thought as a way to express his emotions in a more productive manner. this talent earned him a full ride scholarship to ucla with a major in literature and plans of diving into some sort or creative writing career or perhaps becoming an english teacher, to follow in the footsteps of his high school teacher who he came to idolize.

mere days into his freshman year, however, his high school sweetheart showed up in the middle of the night at his dorm with a positive pregnancy test. it was then the chaotic world as he knew it turned a new leaf, revealing a silver lining in the form of their daughter, penelope, who daniel hadn’t a clue, just yet, would save him. and so a shotgun wedding was quickly planned around the pair, both families either completely supportive or in utter disbelief. it was quick, it was cheap(ish), and it was stressful as all heck. but they were young, and in love, and were looking forward to starting a family together, despite it being a little earlier than initially planned.

“ADULT”HOOD. fast forward five years, and they’re signing divorce papers. fortunately, it wasn’t messy. the two had simply grown apart as they matured in their respective ways, and remaining together was only causing a rift to develop between the two. the last thing they wanted, for the sake of their daughter, was built up resentment to tear the little family apart. his wife, who daniel initially thought to be the love of his life, blossomed into an absolute goddess; she was ambitious and knew exactly what she wanted. daniel, on the other hand, was still somewhat caught up in his ‘bad boy’ habits of drinking excessively and his career was still pretty up in the air. the two just didn’t compliment each others’ lifestyles anymore.

daniel moved out but remained in california, settling for a bachelor’s apartment where he was able to have penelope every weekend. during this time, he finally cracked down and worked on finishing a novel he’d started years prior. within a year, he found a publisher who took interest in his grotesque works, and by the time daniel was twenty seven, his first bestseller hit the shelves, changing his life for the better with the ability to provide for his daughter without stress of landing another odd job ever again.

as his fame increased, so did his desire to slink back into the shadows away from the limelight. at first, he enjoyed the wholesome book signings by day and grungy celebratory benders by night. but it grew old pretty fast and he certainly didn’t want to end up as another washed up shmuck. so, on a whim, daniel decided to move out of california completely, removing himself from the toxic lifestyle he’d grown accustomed to and shacking up on a beautiful piece of land in the rocky mountains of north carolina. the serenity and scenery certainly aided in his inspiration, as well as his unacknowledged lowkey addictions slowly being rehabilitated from his bloodstream.

OLD YELLER. now, in his utmost prime at forty years old, he’s written numerous cult classics, a few of which have successful movie adaptations. he was lucky enough to land himself in a second marriage, though.... that one is now deteriorating as well because he literally doesn’t know how to maintain a healthy relationship. he received full custody of his daughter when she was sixteen, under the unfortunate circumstance of her mother’s untimely death. although they’d been separated for nearly twenty years, daniel was still very much affected by the loss, more so empathetically for penelope. he’s still hooked on the drink, though he’s definitely calmed down quite a bit from when he was a young buck. basically a messy, depressy old soul who uses sarcasm to deflect his true feelings.

CONNECTIONS

ESTRANGED WIFE. first marriage was a bust, and the second is turning out to be no better. they haven’t hit rock bottom just yet, in his opinion (which would be finalizing a divorce lmao), and he’s unsure if they should work things out or not but also really.......doesn’t wanna go through the process of another divorce. plus he likes her and deep down adores their bickering. the reason(s) why things started falling apart between them can be discussed of course. lowkey debating on whippin this up as a big official wc but.... if anybody already here would like to snag it, i would 100% mclove it.

COLLABORATORS. literally anyone he’s worked with over the years, whether they be fellow authors, publishers/publicists, journalists, screenplay writers, etc. yeehooo the possibilities are endless !!

FOLLOWERS. anyone hooked on his books, whether devout fans from his early beginnings or people who newly discovered his fictional writings.

FORMER CLASSMATES. could be from high school or university, but he was in california for the better part of his life aka not a mapleview native. former friends to foes & anything in between. dan’s that one kid who spiked the punch bowl at all the dances and years later probably snuck in party favors to snort off the bathroom sink during their high school reunion lmao whew !!

ANYTHING. literally anything. i’m my groggy state of mind on my lack of creativity rn so please, i’m beggin. if daniel can enrich your characters’ lives in any way, shape, or form, hit me up and we’ll hatch a plan.

#———— 🥀 . 𝙳𝙰𝙽𝙸𝙴𝙻 𝙰𝙱𝚁𝙰𝙼𝚂 ╱ DOSSIER .#mv:intro #alcoholism tw #abandonment tw #drug use tw #mommy issues tw #suicide mention tw #i think....that covers it?? if i missed anything pls let me know & ill tag accordingly #this is awful bc i rushed a wee bit buT #HOT DOG am i stupid excited to write with yall

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stevemoffett · 4 years ago

Text

A Hard Nap, The Fall of Math, The Star Wars Holiday Special, Disco Point, and There You Are

In January last year, I noticed a sign in myself of the same cancer my dad had back in 2008. Unlike the usual symptoms that set off my paranoia, it wasn’t some vague feeling, it wasn’t an intermittent pain, and it wasn’t a general ill feeling—it was clear and unambiguous, out of the ordinary and one of those symptoms that, if you google it, is under the list of “call your doctor if you experience any of the following.”

It was also nonspecific: this symptom could mean cancer, but it could also mean about five other cancer-unrelated conditions. I called for an appointment that morning with my general practitioner, who said that the earliest available date was about two weeks later.

I knew that the only way my fear would be effectively relieved was with the one sure-fire diagnostic tool for this type of cancer, one that’s recommended for everyone, but not until about age 50: a colonoscopy.

For the two weeks before my GP appointment, I mentally prepared for death. For the record, I do this every time I interpret my body’s signals as cancerous, but the mental preparation usually stops after a few days when the symptom either goes away or when a clear alternative cause presents itself. This time, I didn’t get that kind of relief and, in fact, the symptom repeated more than once between setting the appointment and going to it. Each time, it was like an intrusive thought come to life: you’re going to die. You’re going to go through surgery and chemotherapy like Dad and you’re either going to die early, or find out like he did that the cure is worse than the disease, or maybe you’ll hang on just long enough to experience both.

Winter mornings in Texas can sometimes be surprisingly cold. While stepping out the door on a midsummer morning is like walking into someone’s hot exhale, as you might expect, a 33-degree morning is more like a slap in the face. When I packed everything I figured I’d need to move here a couple of years ago, I threw away my winter coat, thinking, I won’t be needing this anymore. (The coat was also about ten years old at that point.)

My first winter in Texas, I layered a bunch of shirts underneath a light jacket and wore a scarf on freezing days. The second winter, I decided that I’d had enough of being cold. After all, I rationalized, here in Texas it was monetarily possible to never have to feel cold again if you really don’t want to. So I bought the warmest coat I could find, an unstylish, bulky parka made by Caterpillar, the company that makes construction vehicles. No more layering, no more checking the weather before leaving in the morning. I could just put this coat on and not worry about it.

But now, under the shadow of a cancer scare these January mornings, wearing the big coat made me feel less like I was smarter than the weather and more like I was trying to smuggle a terminal disease wherever I went. Under my coat, tie, button-down shirt, undershirt, skin, fat, and muscle, something was growing silently in the dark. While maybe it had slipped up and showed some of its handiwork to me, it was already too late to do much about it now.

Since it has affected my life several times before, and since it is such an exquisite mixture of dread and uncertainty, cancer is one of my mind’s biggest bogeymen. I feel personally insulted by the idea of it. I treat you so well, body—why would you betray me? Was I not nice enough? Is this poetic justice for my vanity? Is it, as the old anecdotal saying goes, due to my worrying?

Not only did I feel like I was smuggling cancer under the big coat, I was also warming it up by drinking my coffee. I was feeding it directly when I ate something too sugary. And I was probably even giving it an evil sense of satisfaction when I got stressed out about it. If I was able to keep my mind off it by working in the lab, mixing and pipetting, using kits, and doing arithmetic in my head, it would come crashing back into focus when I was pulling my gloves off to wash my hands.

I pulled up incognito mode on my phone’s browser during my breaks, googling “5-year survival rate colon cancer age 35.” “Cancer staging colon prognosis.” “Colon cancer smoking.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack in college.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack 18 years ago.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack after seeing Luke Wilson smoking in The Royal Tenenbaums.”

At home, I suddenly started noticing the expiration dates on my nonperishables. What will last longer, I thought, the freshness of this baking soda, or me.

I knew I wasn’t going to be comforted by the first GP visit. After all, they’re usually the first stop to a specialist, unless you have a PPO insurance plan, which I don’t. The doctor listened to my symptoms and family history. “Well,” he said, “Given your history, it’s a good idea to refer you to a GI. But, you seem like you lead a healthy lifestyle otherwise, with none of the other risk factors, so we’ll see what he says.”

I made the GI appointment and had to wait two more weeks for it, with the same circular worrying and googling. At the GI appointment, I sat in the waiting room, the youngest patient there by a few decades, and I felt a little bit ridiculous. On the other hand, I’d also just read a harrowing story about a woman in her late 20s who had colon cancer and died from it. That was a real person, I thought, who at the first phase of it probably went through all the same feelings I was now, the I’m-being-ridiculous and is-this-worth-the-time-and-vacation-days, all the way up until her diagnosis. Not just because I was scared, I felt a pang of sympathy. A disease of the old picking a victim from the young is terrible luck.

And I figured, if it could be her, it could be anyone. But most of all, it could be me.

That last bit, I think, is one of—one of—my greatest flaws, the vanity of always thinking that the worst things will happen to you, in spite of the odds. It’s a way of making yourself feel special, but it has no upside. You don’t feel confidence with this type of special-feeling. In fact, you’re more likely to be timid and self-centered, and you just come across as weird to the outside observer. They might think, There’s only a few steps between that guy and Howard Hughes. Somewhere, deep in your mind, they think: Wires are crossed.

Shortly before I went in, another patient arrived, a man around my age or maybe younger who, despite a dozen or so free seats, declined to sit down. My name was called, and I passed a sign on the way to the back that said, “If you have recently traveled to China and have a fever you must let our staff know.”

This doctor’s exam rooms had floor-to-ceiling windows, the kind you’d see in a movie, instead of the usual dull and bulby, off-white plastic exam room interior. A Spanish medical student came in to give a pre-appointment questionnaire and to take my vitals. He asked, in much better English than I could have mustered in Spanish, “So. There is some blood in they crep?”

When he came in, the GI repeated what my GP had said, and since he was also the person who would be performing a colonoscopy, he said I should set an appointment for one with him. I managed to get a date three weeks later.

From other people’s stories, I knew two things about colonoscopies: they are no fun, especially the night before, but the general anesthesia on the day of the procedure, on the other hand, is fun. I was nervous enough on the day before that I actually asked someone at the pharmacy for help finding the items I was looking for: Polyethylene Glycol (or PEG, which we use all the time for lab experiments, and which I was going to have to drink 2 liters of), Gatorade, and laxative pills. I had to take about 800% of their recommended dosages, each.

The bodily effect of those chemicals was dramatic, and I will spare the details. The worst parts of it, I found, were the generally exhausting physical toll it took, and the feeling by the end that I had some kind of dangerous sodium imbalance: I was sweating between my fingers, for example, but the rest of me felt as dry as paper. At 10PM, I was too tired to do anything, but too nervous to sleep for more than a few hours.

One smaller worry that I felt the next morning, as I took a selfie in my hospital gown to send to a friend back home, making a backward peace sign to show off the IV sticking into my hand and also how brave I was being, was that I might just die right there on the table from the general anesthesia. Part of my grad school research was on Propofol, the most-used general anesthesia nowadays (which, incidentally, also killed Michael Jackson). This was the same drug I was to be given.

I’d never been fully put under anesthesia before. It was astronomically improbable that I’d have an adverse reaction to it and die (and by the way, Michael Jackson abused it, using it far outside of medical praxis—if you’re afraid to get a colonoscopy yourself, don’t be, it could save your life), but keep in mind what I said about my vanity.

“Hey, I’m really scared,” I told the anesthesiologist. He said something, muffled by his mask, that sounded like, “It’ll be all right.” Then he busied himself with a syringe, connecting it to my IV. He depressed it about a third of the way. “This should help you,” he said.

The last thing I said was, “Whoa…I feel it.”

After what felt like a hard, late-afternoon nap, I said, “Hello?”

My head was wrapped with something. When I touched my face, I could feel that there were cotton pads underneath the wrapping, holding my eyes shut. I guess that at some point either mid-procedure or after, my eyes had opened, unseeing, and they’d done this to keep them from drying out. “Hang on, sir,” I heard a nurse say, and my head was unwrapped.

“It’s over?” I asked.

“You’re all done,” he said.

“Gimme a minute, please,” I said, my South Jersey accent peeking out. “I feel a little weird.”

Eventually, I sat up. Two of the nurses helped me stand, and I pumped my arms like I was lifting light, invisible dumbbells. As I put my glasses on and looked around, I thought that they all seemed like they were fighting to not smirk. What did I say while I was blacked out? I wondered, with a twinge of panic, before deciding that it would be worthless to speculate. It could have been anything. There are literally millions of possibilities. Again—it would be worthless to speculate, I told myself, firmly.

An Uber driver, I had been told by hospital staff during a consultation, was not a legally strong enough party to take responsibility for me at discharge. Someone I knew would have to escort me to my apartment. Also, they said, they really would do that thing where you’re back in your own clothes, and they push you to the exit in a wheelchair when you’re all finished. After my procedure, my co-worker stood waiting in the discharge zone with his car as an orderly wheeled me out of the hospital exit. I stood up from the wheelchair and got into the passenger seat of his car, for some reason more aware than usual of the heat coming from the vent and the smell of the car’s leather upholstery. “I still feel weird from the anesthesia,” I said to my friend.

“I’ll bet you do,” he replied.

It was about lunch time, and I had taken the rest of the day off from work. When I got home, I ordered a pizza and lay on my bed. I ate the pizza and watched Star Wars. I had not felt any euphoria when I woke up, I thought hollowly. And my first solid meal in almost forty hours tasted unremarkable. I was still groggy, but not in a pleasant way. I felt cheated.

The hospital staff had put a manilla envelope into my hands as I left. It contained sheets of images the doctor had taken during the procedure. Once lucid, I leafed through them and compared the thumbnail-sized images on printer paper with googled images of cancerous tumors viewed through a colonoscope, trying to diagnose myself.

A couple of the images on the papers had shapes that looked weird, with what seemed like variations in the texture or color of my colon wall that to me, at least, appeared one hundred percent fatal. It was another two weeks before I had a follow-up appointment to go over them with the surgeon.

“See this?” The GI said, two weeks later, pointing to one of the images that had seemed completely normal to me, unlike other ones I had thought were much more scary and unusual-looking. “That’s a low-risk polyp. Of course, now it’s a no-risk polyp, ‘cause it’s gone.”

This medical episode ended only three or so weeks before the whole world changed, but I was all the more grateful for that. If I’d waited to be checked out, then I would have been weighing whether it was worth getting tested against the possibility of being infected with COVID.

The doctor recommended that I get a colonoscopy every five years from now on, but added, “If you want, you can go earlier than that.” I told him thanks, but once every five years sounded fine.

I wrote about the first seven weeks of the pandemic in my last entry. After that, May and June passed in the same way as March and April had. I went back to work in mid-June for two weeks before the first summer COVID spike closed things back up. I continued to play Quake, and I continued to fret about my family.

I had a job interview for a position in northern Maryland in April. I didn’t get it, but I had a good idea why I’d been turned down: the position wanted people with proven math skills. Which makes sense—for the last few years I’d said repeatedly that I wanted to have a job that involves less lab work and more data analysis. This was one of those jobs.

My graduate program gave me a degree in “Computational and Integrative Biology.” Sometimes I shorten it to “Integrative Biology,” or “Computational Biology,” but I always feel sort of dishonest when I tell people my degree. (Apparently this feeling is common among grad students). My own reason for feeling dishonest was because, in any other college, the work I was doing would probably just fall under normal old “Biology.” While it was true I had done course work that reflected “Computational and Integrative” Biology, they were courses taught in a remedial way.

When I say remedial, I mean that they were courses designed to get biologists up to speed on how to do higher-level data analyses with their experiments. For instance, in my “Biomath” course, we went over ordinary differential equations and graph theory. Those are both intermediate-level math types, ones you’d encounter in the later part of an undergraduate math degree program. Throughout that course, there was a lot of handwaving whenever I asked questions.

“Eh…,” the professor might have responded to something I had asked, “that requires a lot of background explanation we don’t need right now to handle the problem here. Just take it as a given for what we’re working on.”

In grad school, it’s common to be well-versed in only your narrow little research tunnel that leads outward to the edge of “known” biology. But a few times each month, several of us students would head to the bar down at the city’s waterfront after work to talk about our research. It usually began with a complaint—“This is the third time this kit wouldn’t work this week and it takes twelve fucking hours to run it each time,”—but to give us a more context for their problem, whoever was griping would have to go back and start at the beginning, recounting all the steps leading to their experiment’s failure.

This was a useful exercise, since a pair of new eyes on your work meant that at least you could get feedback on how to better relate the subject matter when you talked to a non-science audience, and at most, you might get a real solution for the problem you were bumping up against.

But I would sometimes get privately upset, as I sipped my beer and glanced out the window at the river, when a math-centered Computational and Integrative Biology student would start talking about their research. As someone who feels an unpleasant, TV static-like anxiety in my chest the moment I see letters in italics, or one of those big, orphan sorority sigmas following an equal sign during a math seminar, this upset feeling was directed at myself. Because, as a result of my insecurity, I would start listening to the beginning of the math student’s explanation of their research, trip over the first unfamiliar term I heard, lose the thread of what they were talking about, give up, and zone out. The math students, overall, just seemed light years ahead of me.

A critical vocabulary word that I began to mentally tie to the situation—slumming, these math types were slumming when talking to us biologists—was the grain of sand to my insecurity’s oyster. By the time I got my diploma a few years later, it had developed into a little pearl; now I had the feeling that I was, relative to those who’d come from a math background, a fake computational biologist.

Unhelpfully, the people in charge of hiring for the jobs I want nowadays seemed to agree. All the job listings I was interested in applying for made me feel the same panic that advanced math symbols on powerpoint slides did. The subjects they wanted their applicants to have experience in—machine learning, deep learning, regression analyses—were all frightening, impregnable terms, reminding me either of some kind of giant machine made up of endless tubes and valves, all spitting dangerously hot steam, or of a highly secure, underground bomb shelter that requires fingerprints or eyeball scans to get into. I knew from my previous learning experiences that if I didn’t understand the fundamentals and learned only the higher-level, applied stuff, it was just going to make me feel unworthy, and I’d forget it at once.

But summer had come—it was midsummer now, in fact. The pandemic wasn’t going anywhere, so what was I going to do if I didn’t start learning something? I ended up registering for three classes at a community college back home, which offered their fall semester online. For two thousand dollars, including textbooks, I got a spot in Introductory Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Calculus III.

Calculus III was a risk. I’d taken Calc I and II in undergrad, now about seventeen years ago, and I had earned Bs back then. I didn’t remember much of the material from either class. I’d tried watching Khan Academy videos at various points in the meantime, but could never stick with it. I’d watch several videos in a row, feel like I understood things, try a practice problem, get it wrong, and forget about it after a day or two. But now, I had put actual money into it and, in a few months, a grade would be spit back out, so this time I had real skin in the game.

But I had misgivings that I was too old to learn new stuff, or that I would be one of those students I remember when I was in undergrad, the older students who would grind class to a halt with their endless questions. Or maybe I would get worse grades than I had in undergrad, despite taking things more seriously now.

Two of the classes were taught asynchronously, meaning each lecture was a video that you could pause or replay at your leisure, and all tests were take-home, but the other class, Statistics, was done over Zoom. You might think a Zoom class could be a better way to learn—clarifying questions can be asked immediately, for instance—but for me, at least, it was not. Instead of focusing on the material being taught, the whole time I’d be thinking, “They can see me. Everyone here can see me. I can see me, and I have a dumbass expression on my face. Can they tell that I have a bedsheet instead of a curtain over my window blinds?”

My mind wandered during class just as much as it had while sitting in a lecture hall when I was eighteen, but now, these classes were held later at night, after I’d been working all day and had eaten dinner. As a result of this, and the fact that I find Statistics to be boring when it’s taught as a series of don’t-worry-about-how-we-derived-it formulas to plug numbers into, I did the worst in Statistics.

But Calc and Linear Algebra were more interesting. When I watched the class videos, I got familiar with the disembodied voices of the teachers, who each seemed to be trying to do an impression of Khan Academy videos. My Calc teacher, with his strong Vietnamese accent, would punctuate every few lines of derivation or proof with, “So what does that mean then?” Every time—new topic, new chapter, new problem, exactly the same tone of voice: “So what does that mean then?”

Eventually, in my head, his cadence merged with the tones of Woody Woodpecker’s laugh, and I began saying it to myself as I did chores around my apartment. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d half-sing at my garbage can liner as I cinched it shut. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d say to a wrinkled button-down shirt, enjoying the pepper shaker-y smell of my iron when it’s turned up to its hottest setting. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d say to the window blinds, when considering whether I should replace the bedsheet I’d hung there with an actual curtain, before answering myself that No, this apartment is too temporary for something as tony as curtains.

Sometimes I’d say it three times in a row, like Woody Woodpecker himself:

“So what does that mean, then?”

I kept a Google Sheet of how much time I spent doing work for each class, and found that I averaged about 20 hours a week total. That broke down to approximately an hour and a half each weekday, and on Saturday and Sunday I would go for about six or seven hours each. I’d get up at 7:30 those weekend mornings and brew a pot of coffee, then sit taking notes and working through every part of each assigned homework, not moving on from a problem until I understood everything about it.

I think that those Saturday and Sunday mornings may have been the happiest I felt during the year 2020. In the middle of a difficult Calc problem, not having the answer yet but certain I was on the right track, while also buzzing on caffeine, as a beam of early horizontal sunlight hit my kitchen backsplash and filled the apartment with more brightness than all my lightbulbs put together, I for once did not feel worried. I was unworried about my parents, my sisters, my brother, my sister-in-law, my niece and nephew, and all the pets. Unworried about COVID, or cancer, or the work stresses of the week. Unworried about getting older, about being alone still, or about enjoying being alone too much; unworried about letting all of this time go by and still feeling like real life hasn’t started; unworried about my dad having another stroke, or about my mom just suddenly up and dying out of nowhere, or cancer, or whether my hairline is changing, or the fact that my heart has been skipping a beat sometimes lately, or whether my friends who I speak to on the phone were getting sick of me, or whether I am too graphic when I describe symptoms I am afraid mean I might have cancer, or whether my apartment neighbors will keep me up with their noise again tonight, or whether the tooth sensitivity I feel drinking cold water lately means I need to risk a dentist visit during a pandemic, or whether I will be able to have healthier boundaries with my parents whenever I return to the northeast, or whether I’ll ever feel truly satisfied and content, or whether I’ll ever feel actual joy some day, or whether my hang-ups, and anxieties, and fears, and regrets about my personal and professional choices will end up all ganging up on me at once, or, of course, whether at any given moment, I might have cancer.

My attitude going into the classes was that I would disregard whatever grades I got and simply aim for as much comprehension as possible. But about halfway through the semester, I lost my nerve and began to think of my grades as a direct indicator of my level of understanding. So I started fretting about my grades, and on days of Calc III exams during the second half of the semester, I took vacation time so I could spend the whole day working on them.

It got a little crazy toward the end, but finally, it was over, and I managed to get all As. That made me happy, even if I knew that that kind of satisfaction is a bit immature. But I felt like I was making up for some of the sins I had committed as a college student, my laziness and my previous lack of appreciation for education finally, in a small way, absolved.

I spent Christmas here in Texas. When I think back on Christmases from previous years I find that I can remember the past two years very well because I flew home and packed a lot of family and friend time into a few short days. Before 2018, though, I can’t remember any specific Christmas well enough to recount anything that happened on the day.

But when I was a little kid, I remembered each Christmas perfectly, mainly due to the gifts I got and the room where we put the Christmas tree—where “Christmas happened”: in 1990, it was in the back room and we got a magic set, and also my brother pretended to faint when he saw he’d gotten Reebok Pumps. In 1991, it was in the family room, and my brother and I got the Nintendo game “Base Wars.” In 1992, it was in the living room and we got a Sega Genesis along with the game “Sonic 2.” In 1993, it was in the family room again, and I got a Hot Wheels Key Force car, and my brother got the Genesis game “Hard Ball 3 With Al Michaels.”

In 1994, my grandfather died a few weeks before Christmas, and we got a Sega CD. That was the year I became aware that the Christmas spirit was vulnerable to external forces, one’s first experience with death being the most offensive of those forces, and after a few months I also became aware that a hot new gaming console like the Sega CD could “fail,” slipping into obscurity with a small and unremarkable library of games. As a result, the indestructible-seeming sheen of Christmas fell away, leaving behind a better idea of what Christmas really is: a bare, thin-glassed lightbulb plugged into the middle of the year’s darkest period. After 1994, I can’t really remember what happened each Christmas.

This past Christmas will always be memorable, though, because I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day pretty much doing one of three things: playing Quake (yes, that hobby still refuses to die), watching something Star Wars-related, or video chatting with my family. At any time when I wasn’t speaking to family, I had Christmas music playing in the background, including while Star Wars was on. I turned the heat up in my apartment to 75 degrees and enjoyed how money-wastingly hot it was getting, until my nose started to bleed from the dry air.

I want to take this opportunity to say that I much prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is generally all anticipation and guest arrivals, buoying the mood long into the falling night. From the viewpoint of Christmas Eve, any miracle might happen the following morning. But then after a late, over-buttered breakfast on Christmas Day, there’s nothing much else to do except think about cleaning up and regret how much you’ve eaten. The “anything could happen” feeling is now all gone, collapsed from a dazzling infinity’s worth of possibilities down to one homely outcome.

I hadn’t put up any decorations for my apartment, unless the Christmas music can be considered a decoration. This ended up being a good thing, though, since I didn’t have to take anything down once the holiday was over.

I started taking walks pretty early in the pandemic, my first walk happening after about one week of lockdown. That day there was a surprisingly large amount of people also walking. We all stayed far away from one another, since none of us were wearing masks—the width of even a modest suburban Texas street is still impressively wide, so there was no safety issue. I always took the initiative to be the one who crossed the street if I saw someone, exaggeratedly swinging my arms as I crossed so the person walking toward me could see my intentions even from far away. I did this because I figured it would be harder for the dog-walkers to wrangle their dog across the street and get out of my way, and the people without dogs were either old or were walking in a group.

In the beginning I was walking maybe twice a week, which then became three times, which became five. It held at five times a week during the fall semester because I’d have to be on Zoom from 6:30-8:30 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays, which took up the whole span of time in which I would usually walk. Nowadays, no longer taking classes, I walk every night.

For a while, I tried to get home before sunset, because I’m afraid of being hit by a car in the dark. After the clocks shifted back, I had to choose between walking earlier, during rush hour when everyone was arriving back at their houses from work, or waiting to walk until after the sun has set. I ended up buying one of those reflective construction worker’s vests for $8 on Amazon and waiting for nighttime. I feel like a dork when I wear the vest, but most of the people walking at night who I see are also wearing reflective clothes. Theirs are more chic than my vest, though, looking like they were ordered through an expensive fitness-wear catalogue. I’d buy the same type, but to me, walking is a meditative, solitary act, and I don’t want to feel that I’m catering to externalities like looking stylish while I’m trying to feel solitary. It also acts as a tacit acknowledgement that I’m not a criminal: “I’m making myself as visible as possible! I’m not casing your houses to break into them later on!”

Even though the focus of COVID is on the transmission of disease through shared, respired air, I still pay a lot of attention to contaminated surfaces. When I go out anywhere, I have a routine: first, I put on my going-out clothes (newly clean), then my shoes, which are possibly dirty, since I have to re-tie them sometimes with unwashed hands, so before I touch anything else after tying my shoes, I wash my hands. Then, I put on a mask, turn off all the lights except the one at the front door, pick up my keys with my right hand, slip my phone into my left pocket, and walk to the door. I put my keys in my right pocket (my wallet is already there), open the door with my right hand, turn out the light, step out the door, and take the keys out of my pocket to lock the door with, again, only my right hand.

I use my right hand pretty much everywhere outside—to push or pull open doors, to open my car to retrieve something from it, to open my mailbox and carry my mail in—because I know that if I use my left hand, my phone-operating hand, I’m going to have to put the phone into a little UV light phone-sterilizing box that I bought when I get home. And for some reason, I feel like it’s a small moral failure to have to use that UV box, so I try to keep my left hand from touching anything except for the phone. But I know that if I drive anywhere, all bets are off—both my hands touch the steering wheel, my left hand touches the car door handle while getting out, and I push open doors with both hands whenever I get somewhere. I’m sure that my left hand ends up touching something that may have SARS-CoV-2 on it as I carry out an errand, and therefore into the UV box my phone must go when I get home. But, when I go out to walk, there’s a good chance that I won’t need to touch anything with my left hand between leaving the apartment and coming back. If that’s the case, I can use my phone freely while walking if I want to, but when I get home, I can still just take it from my pocket and place it on my desk, no ultraviolet sterilizing waves needed. But of course then I still have to wash my right hand.

The walk is the same route every night now. It’s a vaguely circular, level 2.7 miles, starting northbound, bearing west, south, then east. It takes about forty minutes for me to walk the whole thing, plus or minus four minutes, depending on how warmed up I get while walking. My heart rate generally goes up to about 115 beats per minute for most of the walk, according to my watch, then spikes to 135 as I climb the stairs to my fourth floor apartment at the end.

Insulated by the sound of music or an audiobook on my headphones, and with my hands stuck in my pockets, actually holding onto the cloth pocket linings themselves, I feel less like a person on a walk and more like someone steering a large, inertia-filled thing—a sailboat that I have to tack against an unfavorable wind, or a bobsled whose blades I have to turn out of deep ruts on the ice. But despite feeling bodily awkward, I find suburbia to be a soothing place to move through. I really don’t understand how some people think of the suburbs as some kind of dystopia, to be honest. My neighborhood has wide streets, as I mentioned, and the houses are almost all ranch-style. The trees, like the houses, are shorter than they are in the northeast. Some of the trees look more like very tall shrubbery. As for the ground, the blades of grass are wider, and the soil is just a bit sandier. Sometimes, I see two-inch-long cockroaches, what people back home would call “water bugs,” creeping across the sidewalks.

I can’t remember the names of the streets on the walk, except for Forrest Street, which I noticed once when I saw the street sign while I was running and it made me think of “Run, Forrest, run!” and Kenilworth Street, which has the same name as a street back at home. Other than those, I only know points along the route by the informal names I’ve assigned to them. There’s a road where it changes direction from heading north to heading east, and it looks over a little park. The lack of houses there gives an unobstructed view of the western horizon. For that reason, I call that part of the route “Sunset Bend.” At another point on the route there is a house where, in the beginning of lockdown last spring, a family was always outside, the parents sitting motionless in Adirondack chairs while their kids all went nuts on the front lawn, playing with the sprinkler, or doing hopscotch, or sitting at one of those tiny plastic picnic tables, playing some board game. That part of the walk I called “Kidville.”

There were other houses that were always so inactive, so abandoned-seeming—the blinds were always closed and there wasn’t a car in the driveway—that I started to wonder if anyone lived there at all, and whether maybe the neighborhood association was mowing its lawn to stave off the shabbiness. But after the switch from walking in daylight to nighttime, I saw that some of those houses, while still shut up and silent, had lights on inside in rooms not facing the street. Looking at those houses is like staring into the vents of a space heater in a dark room.

Eventually I started thinking about how the walk is exactly 2.7 miles. Then, idly, I realized that if you multiply 2.7 by 30, you get 81. That number of years, eighty-one, seems like a decent amount of years to hope to live—it’s not greedy, you’re not asking for a hundred years, for example—but also, maybe when I get closer to 81, there will be better medical treatments and 81 will seem younger. Assuming that doesn’t happen, though, I think of 81 years as more or less “a complete life.” It is very sad, but not exactly a tragedy, to die at 81.

With this in mind, I started translating the distance along my walk to human ages. For instance, 1.0 miles into the walk, times 30, would equal 30 years. And 1.2 miles times 30 would equal 36 years, which is how old I am now. Since by the time I’d discovered this “conversion formula,” the walk was already so familiar to me that I had a very good perspective on how far into the walk any given point felt—the precise moment when I sense that I’m transitioning from the middle to the end phase of the walk, for example. So when I came up with the multiply-by-30 conversion formula, I was interested to see exactly what part of the walk 1.2 miles, or 36 years old, corresponded to.

The answer is that it was later in the walk than I’d hoped. The moment I reach 1.2 miles is long past the most scenic parts of the route; it’s just after a left turn that puts me on a long straightaway of modest houses leading to an arterial road, known to me as the hook-around part of the circuit where in past walks, I had thought, “Now I’m on my way back home.”

Over the next few evenings, I noted other points, ones that had come before the 1.2 mile marker, and compared them to parts of my already-lived life: I graduated high school at 0.6 miles into the walk, which was the beginning of Sunset Bend. I got my master’s degree in a spot where, at nighttime, a streetlight shines through the leaves on a tree, giving the street a dance hall, disco-ball kind of lighting (hence, “Disco Point”). That friendly, lighted patch of street, with a jaunty-looking house standing next to it, makes it my favorite part of the walk. As for points I have not yet reached: still ahead of my current age distance, at around 1.5 miles, is Kidville, but I haven’t seen anyone in the front yard there in months now.

Toward the end, almost back home, there’s a large school property. I’ve never seen anyone on the grounds, except for the occasional person who sneaks onto the running track to jog it. Along one of the fences that borders the school, in springtime last year, someone started zip-tying laminated sheets of paper with jokes written on them to the chain links. The jokes are all clean, and pretty lame—these days it seems like almost all kid-friendly jokes are just puns, like “How did the farmer find his wife? He tractor down!”

One time, I saw a kid about ten years old on his bike, riding along the sidewalk and stopping to read each joke. The fence ends at a small park for toddlers. There’s a big plastic sign at the entrance of the park, faded but still legible, that has a boy’s name displayed on it. Below his name is written a tragically short span of years, and below that, a message: “This park is dedicated to the memory of (the boy’s name), and to all of the little tykes of (the neighborhood).” Whoever it was putting up jokes on the schoolyard fence stopped replacing them with new ones some time during the fall, and I walk too late to ever see anyone playing at the playground. Well, that’s not quite true: very rarely, around 9 PM on warm nights, I might see what appears to be a young mother scrutinizing her phone as her kid swings in the dark.

I haven’t been to the gym to lift any weights since lockdown started. I’ve been able to do cardio in my apartment, but the result of all the cardio and all the walking is that I’ve lost a decent amount of lifting strength, as well as about ten pounds. This is consistent with how life in general has evolved: I have also reduced the list of spaces I travel to, leaving my apartment only to go to work, to pick up groceries, and to walk through my neighborhood. My body, and the edges of my life, have gone through a great miniaturization, but my perspective has adapted with it—each feature within this smaller space seems more detailed, and the day’s moments are of a finer grain. Inside my apartment, I have realized how much the lighting affects the atmosphere, and as a result the mood, so I can change which lights are on when to reflect the mood of each time of day. When I walk at night, sometimes I have the same feeling I did the week before I moved here from New Jersey, a sort of farewell feeling. That feeling started in the fall as a dessert-like flipside to my happy mornings spent doing math homework. Those evenings, I also felt like I was saying goodbye, to a more insecure, more ignorant version of myself, I guess. Nowadays, I get the feeling that I’m saying goodbye to the person who had, until now, always feared that he was missing out on things.

There will be a time, closer to now than now is to the beginning of the pandemic, when I will leave Texas. I will be happy and relieved to return home, whenever that is. But at the same time, there’s a new feeling that is starting to take root, and it’s a weird one: for all the hardship that the pandemic has presented to me, the anxiety for my family and the limitations it’s put on my mobility, social life, and career, for more than ten months now, its most memorable effect, unless I’m affected by the illness itself, will be that it made me love my neighborhood. I have walked more than 500 miles of it over the months, and scores of miles remain to be walked before I move away. I’ve walked during steaming afternoons, during cloudy sunsets, in pre-dawn twilight on cool mornings, and during soft, breezy evenings. It’s always picturesque, pleasant, very green. The houses look inviting, and the dog-walkers wave to me. I listen to music that suits my mood and do the geographical equivalent of palm reading. That’s all, really.

Can a person love a place? Feel gratitude toward landscaping, houses, parked cars, and people viewed only from a distance? Can someone feel affinity to a fox seen in a churchyard and streetlights shining through leaves in the night? Affection for lawn mower exhaust, for the noise of an approaching SUV slowly carving out a bend? Love for landmarks that correspond to moments in one’s past, or to moments that one might encounter in the future?

There will be a time, I hope, when my years in Texas are far in the past. But some day, I will hear a song, or see a house with a certain architecture, or smell a variety of grass, and Texas will return to me. At the same time, I also hope that it isn’t too overwhelming. I’ve found that I can never tell how potent a memory of a particular time or place will be until there’s a lot of distance between me and it. Sometimes, a memory will come gently, settling on me like a haze, ready to be indulged, even laughed at. In such cases I turn up the music that brought the memory, or take a luxuriating whiff of the scent, and I think back on the time, feeling only a little bit sad.

But other memories swoop down like some kind of predatory bird, and in those cases, the nostalgia feels more like the punch of the bird’s talons in the back of my neck. The sense of missing is so strong that it feels less like nostalgia and more like a distilled, portable homesickness. Ridiculously, I’ll even want to return to the memory’s time and place, despite knowing that in reality it had been fraught with pain or unease. Which makes the sneaking feeling growing during this time, at this place, all the more uncanny. I mean, all that this span of time has been, is me, and some terrain, and the wind, and the light of the sun or the moon. No one else. My nostalgia for anything before this was always about times and places with other people. So who will I be missing?

Someone once said, Wherever you go, there you are. But now, I wonder: is that really true?

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reading-while-queer · 5 years ago

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Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston

Rating: Great Read Genre: Romance, Coming Out Representation: -Bi main character -Gay love interest -Mexican American/Mixed race main character -Other LGBTQ side characters Note: Characters have explicit sex; this is not YA and definitely not appropriate for younger teens Trigger warnings: Sex under the influence of alcohol (not in a predatory context, but still), forced outing, attempted rape (talked about, not in scene), drug abuse (not in scene), parent death, rare instances of homophobia, racism, xenophobia.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is the story of Alex Claremont-Diaz, a 21 year old student with political dreams: to climb the rungs as intern, staffer, and finally Senator by 30. And his mother just happens to be the President of the United States. Alex likes politics, but he can’t stand the fakeness of it all - and his frustrations come to be centralized around one man, Prince Henry of Wales. Henry is only two years older than Alex, but while they play similar roles in life, and occasionally collide at international events, Henry is cold and aloof, never stooping to befriend his American counterpart.

This is where the novel begins: a rivalry come to a head at the royal wedding of Henry’s older brother, Phillip. After a PR nightmare, Alex and Henry are forced by their respective handlers to play nice, or else. And so a romance begins.

I really enjoyed Red, White, and Royal Blue. Underneath its fun trope-y beginning, it becomes a drama that addresses queer sexuality on a more thoughtful level. It deals with coming out in an interesting way, since the stakes are global. If Alex comes out, what does that mean for his mom’s bid for re-election? And for Henry, who doesn’t have the luxury of disappearing from the public eye after another four years, is coming out too costly? This isn’t your average coming out story, but one of celebrity (especially unasked-for celebrity). And, in fact, it isn’t entirely a coming out story at all. “Coming out” is hardly the most pressing issue when Alex and Henry struggle to have a private relationship in the first place, both of them plagued by paparazzi and all their movements tracked. Henry needs a political excuse to be in the same country as Alex at all, and vice versa. This was such an interesting, high stakes spin, that Red, White, and Royal Blue really felt like a new, fresh story.

McQuiston’s writing definitely does her story justice - the characters feel like real 20-somethings, despite the display of artifice they give the cameras. The writing is timely, too - Alex’s speech patterns are very 2019 Gen Z. This book will age well, not because it could be imagined as taking place at some future point (the 2020 presidential campaign features strongly, after all), but because it is so unapologetically of its time. McQuiston may be writing an alternate reality where Alex’s mom, Ellen Claremont (not Hilary Clinton), made the bid for president in 2016 - and won - but McQuiston still addresses the issues we are dealing with today, just in different ways. A Trump-like character is Claremont’s challenger for 2020, for example, and an email leak winkingly brings to mind the nightmare of 2016. But apart from these nods to root us in a familiar world, this is an alternate presidency where nothing seems to be happening at all - perhaps the greatest fantasy of LGBTQ readers today. No war, no oil pipelines, no mention of policy whatsoever.

That isn’t to say that McQuiston entirely turns a blind eye. As a fuck-you to current administration, McQuiston has Alex notice, almost with wonder, how he, a Mexican-American, can put his feet up on a White House railing where racist presidents have stood. He’s aware of how plenty of White Americans today would be frothing at the mouth at the thought. In this great escapist fantasy, all is calm, though the tempest is beating at the door.

I thought that Alex’s Mexican identity was handled gracefully in the novel - he’s half White, parents divorced, with his White mother the President, his Mexican American father a Senator. His race isn’t something that’s mentioned once and never again, or worse, a “romantic” descriptor to sexualize and exotify. It’s something Alex has to think about and mediate as a public figure - he has learned that he doesn’t necessarily poll well with White “family values” America. His White mom being divorced, having non-White children living in the White House, this is all part of her “image.” Alex has worked overtime to become popular anyway - he charms the camera as easily as he charms congressional representatives. He manipulates his image purposefully, playing up his friendship with his ex-girlfriend Nora in order to tease the press that they might be back together. America eats it up.

But McQuiston makes sure that being Mexican-American isn’t something that Alex is working past, or overcoming. While racism is something he thinks about and must navigate, Alex loves himself. He loves getting together with “Los Bastardos,” his dad and family friend/congressman Rafael Luna, to have a couple beers and talk shit in Spanish and English. He loves making Mexican food with his dad. He is especially passionate about Texas, his home state, and fixing harmful policy there.

This is only the stage on which the romance stands, but suffice it to say that McQuiston has spared no detail to make Alex’s life real outside of his relationship with Prince Henry. When the reader is so invested in the reality of the characters’s lives, it only makes the romance more cutting, more true. The emotional climax of their relationship was so heartbreaking I cried through a good ten pages. McQuiston knows how to write emotion with lightning strike power and accuracy (which serves her well when writing sex scenes, too), and it is through emotion that McQuiston accomplishes her most crucial goal as a novelist: Red, White, and Royal Blue is a page-turner, at once cathartic, steamy, star-crossed, honest, and dramatic. Reading this novel just feels good. Red, White, and Royal Blue is a step above the rest, and should be a staple for LGBTQ romance fans.

Despite McQuiston’s resounding success with this novel, the arc of Alex and Henry’s romance did ring a little odd. Not bad, just odd. McQuiston starts off holding the railing, so to speak. The romance begins with Alex hating Henry, so much so that he tells him to his face, despite being charged, as the President’s son, with grace and diplomacy. The characters themselves compare their dynamic to Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, a comparison that was perhaps more a window into the author’s taste than strictly in-character. Then, after a brief weekend of faking being friends for the camera… they become friends for real, texting each other about their lives. Their supposed “hatred” becomes teasing ribbing and name-calling, which you can’t read as anything else but flirting. This is a 400 page book, and already in the first 70 pages the blurb is out of date. Red, White, and Royal Blue isn’t really about a couple who start out hating each other and gradually come to realize each other’s qualities, though it starts off on that path. McQuiston could have packed a lot more character development into that “fake friends” weekend and a lot less in the texts and emails that came later, for a smoother transition from the narrative as advertised to the story she ends up telling - an even better romance, in my mind.

The better romance happens after the rather rushed arc of the first romance - McQuiston lets go of the railing, so to speak. And though I won’t spoil it, this later arc deals with themes of sex versus love, the unique quandary of the forbiddenness of their relationship, and the fact that neither Henry nor Alex want to be in love with each other, because the consequences of taking their relationship seriously are global, public, and terrifying. Where McQuiston starts in slapstick, trope-y romance, she ends up in something heart-wrenching and real. The tonal dissonance between the two is a little awkward, and the former is less developed than the latter, leading to an imbalanced feeling to the novel as a whole. However, where the novel ends up going is such good writing that I can’t fault the book - I think it’s an excellent read, beginning to end, its imbalances only visible once you reach the other side and look back.

There is so much to talk about in this 400-page book, a book I stayed up until 3 in the morning to finish, that it won’t all fit into one review. It’s tempting to derail for another three paragraphs so I can talk about the explicit discussion of colonialism, a powerful metaphor behind both Alex and Henry’s identities. I could go on about how Alex’s safe place is his father’s lake house, where he can be explicitly Mexican and connected to culture, food, and family. In contrast, Henry’s safe place is a British museum of stolen statues, cold and nonliving, but still the only tie between himself, a royal descended from the royals who stole them, and the distant artists and ancient cultural figures depicted, whom Henry identifies as explicitly gay, even if that knowledge is purposefully forgotten. It is a biting comment on the cultural black holes that are White imperialist nations, attempting to fill the emptiness themselves with culture pillaged elsewhere. Henry is aware of it, and critical of it, but he is still a descendant of it.

Red, White, and Royal Blue will leave you with a lot to pick apart. It earns some criticism, perhaps, from its overly sunny faith in definitely-not-Hilary President Claremont. And, if you care about such things, there is the occasional moment of tonal dissonance where McQuiston’s realistic style butts heads with cartoon tropes (characters throwing food at one another to punctuate a point, for example) versus styles of speech recognizable from The West Wing (which come off as rather uncalled for and startling when no one else in the room is threatening over the top bodily harm). But as much as one with an overactive mind might give pause over just how realistic it is for the sheltered Prince of Wales to have leftist ideas about dismantling British imperialism (now THAT is a dreamy fantasy), McQuiston also delivers a depth and breadth of material that is resoundingly good, and will have you walking away not only feeling good, but recommending Red, White, and Royal Blue to anyone who will listen. This is a book to take a chance on.

For more from Casey McQuiston, check out her website here.

#red white and royal blue #casey mcquiston #bi #great read #romance #coming out #protagonist of color #reviews only #not ya

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absolxguardian · 5 years ago

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My Characters: The Adrift Vaquero (Light Fingers)

Known as: The Adrift Vaquero | Jack Dominguez | The Cynical Tejano

Addressed as: Sir. Pronouns: he/him.

Character Masterpost

CW: Mentions of violence against sex workers, period typical low level racism, period typical homophobia, and a coercive human trafficking scheme (although it turns out better than the real world version). Jack’s backstory is very much based in history, and mid-1800s America is exactly the same here as it was in our world. It’s just that these are things excluded from Fallen London, so I feel the need to warn for them.

His backstory also ended up double the lengths of everyone else’s, so it’s under the cut.

On the Surface, Jack Domiguez was a Tejano (the Mexicans living in Texas from before it was annexed) cowboy/vaquero.

His grandfather lived in the part of Texas that was disputed between the Republic of Texas/the United States and Mexico. He was a loyal Mexican, and when the Mexican-American War broke out, he served as a cavalry officer in the Mexican army. He was killed, and his small estate pillaged by the American army.

Jack’s father grew up an orphan, and took the lesson of his father’s death to heart. The only way to survive was to keep your head down. Dominguez found his way north into Texas proper and began to work as a vaquero, driving and rounding up wild cattle on the behalf of white ranchers. He learned to keep his head down. He halfheartedly converted to Protestantism, but there was only so much he could assimilate to avoid the racism directed towards him. He was moderately successful, enough to support a wife in town, and soon she gave birth to a son. He gave this son a very anglo name- Jack. Because of his father’s efforts to assimilate, Jack can barely even speak Spanish.

Jack was born in 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War. While many families were affected by deciding to join the Confederacy, Dominguez learned from his own father’s mistakes and remained neutral. But still, Jack grew up in its shadow, as Texas was flooded with free blacks and white southerners recently stripped of their fortunes. Or as Reconstruction ended and segregation began. But Jack learned from his father the best thing to do was keep his head down, and hope that white racists overlooked him.

Jack learned from his father how to be a vaquero from a young age, and he took. However, when Jack was 15, his father died from Typhoid fever, forcing him to work full time to support his mother, who died a few years later of cholera (again, his backstory is just regular historical fiction).

The increasing industrialization of the west and the invention of barbed wire in the 80s continued to drive Jack west as he sought work wherever he could find it. In 1888, Jack reached California. But by 1890, there simply wasn’t any open range left. He had been increasingly forced to take on more and more stationary ranch hand jobs, and then they were the only ones left.

Jack worked in the San Francisco area, and that was the up and coming town he would go into on his days off. It was there he befriended two twin prostitutes/performers: the women who would become the Fading Music Hall Singer and the Eccentric Opera House Singer, although he was much closer to the former.

It was with them where he first heard tales of the Neath and Fallen London. The sisters were approached by an Italian man who offered them a chance to perform in music halls in London and work as Mister Wines’ ladies. He was tasked with procuring foreign girls and taking them to London. He claimed the sister’s native heritage would allow them to pass as from somewhere more exotic. Of course, this wouldn’t be free, they’d be in debt to him for a good while. But they would be in London, a place where death is more flexible and everyone is too afraid of Mr. Wines to assault a sex-worker.

The Cynical Tejano didn’t want the sisters to agree to the deal. It sounded way too similar to the kind of things men used to lure women to California from China. But after the Eccentric Opera singer was beaten by a client, they realized that the guarantee of protection under the law was too great an opportunity to pass up.

Jack listened to his dad’s advice when it came to political issues. Although, he’s always found a place among the underdogs- free blacks, other Latines, native Americans, and sex workers were more likely to be his short term friends before circumstances separated them. In London, that means he’s found his place among Urchins, Rubbery Men, and the Tomb Colonists. Used to the racial politics of 1800s America, he was pleasantly, but very surprised, that beyond a few side eyes for being American or a newcomer, no one seemed to care that he wasn’t white.

But Jack had trouble listening to his dad’s advice when it came to not getting into trouble. He had a very quick wit, poor impulse control, and a mind for schemes, even if he didn’t have any actual training behind it. It was one of these schemes that began his Worst Year Ever.

Jack decided to start flirting with the son of a wealthy man in San Francisco who clearly showed mutual interest (he’s also very surprised that London doesn’t have homophobia anymore either). He’d had a few casual relationships before, but mostly with other cowboys out in the frontier. That’s just how things happened out there, with no women for miles. And so there was still less judgement when he showed no interest in prostitutes once they were back in town. His relationship with the heir was the same. They were friends with benefits, and he knew his lover would be able to avoid consequences one way or another if they got found out.

One night, instead of doing the usual climbing out of the window trick, Jack tried to take some silverware to make up for the fact he was almost destitute. But that woke up the entire household, forcing him to sprint through the streets of San Francisco and vault onto a ship right as it was leaving port. He still has no idea how his lover fared, but hopefully he was assumed to be a burglar.

And thus began Jack’s Worst Year Ever.

The ship was bound for China. And while the captain took a liking to the Adrift Vaquero, he was unwilling to land somewhere else. So the Adrift Vaquero worked as a deckhand on the ship until they arrived in China.

From there he made his way westward, criss-crossing the East. He could have taken a ship back to California, but all those captains wanted payment. He also risked arrest or immigration problems (he was a naturalized citizen, but non-white and couldn’t prove his citizenship) if he tried to go back to the states right away. So instead he made his way the other direction, alternating stowing away or working as a seaman. In ports, he survived through more theft and schemes, increasing his skills and rapscallioness.

Over the course of most of a year, the Adrift Vaquero finally made it to Egypt. From there, he intended to stowaway on an Italian ship. However, his information was bad, and he didn’t realize that said ship was bound for the Cumean Canal. He was now in the Neath.

The more deserted nature of the Cumean Canal and the Adrift Vaqueco’s bafflement at his new position caused him to be caught by the Admiralty's Port Authority. He was thrown into New Newgate for his crimes and given a do-or-die (but metaphorically) course on London.

Although he wasn’t told, his prison sentence was just a single month, and even that was simply to appease the crew of the ship that brought him down (crews willing to make Neath runs are rare). So even while the Adrift Vaquero was working on his escape plan, he was set loose in London with nothing to do. An outsider to both the Neath and English society in general, he still managed to learn quickly and keep his head down. He became a low level thief, mostly working for the Gracious Widow and simply taking the odd jobs as they come to him.

A few weeks after his release from prison, he received a note from his old friend, the Fading Music Hall Singer. Surprisingly, the man who brought her and her sister to the Neath wasn’t lying about the working conditions, and Mr. Wines made sure that all of his ladies had their food and board taken care of. According to the note, she had recently bought her freedom and retired from sex work, and only preformed in music halls now. There was no mention of her sister. She said that she had received news of a jewel “the size of a cow” and thought that Jack might be able to help her steal it, given his tendency for schemes.

The Adrift Vaquero knew that with such a jewel he could return not just to the Surface, but to the US, and probably even retire with a ranch of his own. (Despite his cynicism and flexibility with work, he also has an honest love of horses). So he sought out the Fading Musical Hall Singer, but he couldn’t find her. Now he’s been drawn into a web of conspiracy involving the Masters themselves. Quickly, a time approaches where keeping his head down will no longer be an option, and he must choose a side.

#fallen london #fl #fallen london ocs #the adrift vaquero

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sapphic-kid-blog · 5 years ago

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the truth is.

Angela Salmeron

Imagine you’re me. You’re twelve and you’re at a family reunion. Family members sitting around you with Wisconsin-made beer turn from the Brewers game on the television and resort to the one question that you’ve been practicing how to answer in your head: “How’s school?” And truthfully, you’re not sure. So perhaps you respond: “It’s fine.” They nod their heads and you think you’re in the clear. But then they ask you: “What are you learning?” And before you know it they’re tacking on the end: “Any cute boys?”

Now I’m sure it varies from family to family, and I’m sure the questions vary in more or less intrusive. Maybe it was never asked, and maybe it was a family friend and not an uncle or cousin. Maybe it was asked but not directly, or enforced another way. But one question for me, stood tall and it stood out among the rest.

My brain was no longer thinking about what we talked about in Social Studies or the book we read in English. It was no longer thinking about the new formula we learned in Math, or the cycle of the ecosystem in Science. It was thinking about one thing, and the one thing that I had no idea how to talk about: romantic intimacy.

From the time I got my period at the end of 6th grade, to the time I finished high school, and even sometimes now, I thought I was the odd one out or the only one who wasn’t experiencing romantic intimacy the way others would. Not kissing or hand holding but even things as simple as a crush.

What I felt was embarrassment.

Firstly, I never really had crushes or really knew what they were. Friendships in a way felt like crushes to me, and when I had no idea what romantic or sexual intimacy was, I felt confused. So then, I stopped introspecting and I started observing.

The romantic relationships I saw were comprised of these aspects: wanting to be around a person, telling that person that you didn’t just like them but you like-liked them, and then saying that you now were exclusively partners or “dating”.

Most importantly: not only were those girls, who were mostly my friends, doing this but they were, as I noticed, only doing this with boys.

I followed suit.

Come the first day of band camp — set in a gym at one of the two middle schools in my small, conservative city. With my clarinet in hand, I watched as other girls talked about boys from different schools. I watched as they giggled and flocked in groups to discuss which ones they’d be excited to see in the starting 6th grade class coming up in a few months.

I saw the first tall boy, who was decently good looking, and told the girls around me: “He’s cute.” One of the girls turned to me and said, “That’s (let’s call him) Snazzlepants and there’s his twin, (and he’ll be) Fizzywizzy.” Quickly, I acted as though I was still not only interested, but now blown away by the look of this gangly preteen walking amongst the group of kids.

This was when everything I knew about myself would be different.

Luckily when the beginning of September rolled around, this boy was in my 6th grade house, also known as the set of students I’d be sharing a side of the middle school with. So as I eventually made friends, the more I had to absolutely drop the fact that I had a crush on a boy. I had to tell them that maybe it would happen between us because one time, I saw him looking at me (wasn’t true) and one time we brushed hands (definitely wasn’t true). They’d be dazzled, awe in their eyes, and I didn’t feel embarrassed, I felt included and important.

The more twisted I became in this lie, the more I had to not only convince others around me, but I had to convince myself. Not even the bullying from his friends after they all found out would stop me from speaking my lie aloud to anyone who wanted to hear it.

I spent the days either convincing myself and others that I absolutely loved him or crying because his friends would call me ugly or stupid and annoying over a lie that I was choosing to spread. But it was better than the alternative, of being singled out and feeling as though I was the only one who felt differently than the rest; it was better than admitting a lie.

This is the first time in my life I felt like I would rather die.

Growing up in my small city of West Bend, Wisconsin, was strange. The town as I knew it was mostly white and definitely a majority, conservative white. There weren’t many people who looked like my dad, dark-skinned, and Spanish speaking, and there weren’t many people growing up around me that I knew who were part of the queer community. But my family, especially my mom, were active in the Democrat party and sticking up for civil rights. I was lucky, I suppose in a lot of aspects to know that if I ever were to come out as anything other than cis and heterosexual, I would not be living on the streets.

However, being surrounded by a lot of religious friends, spewing the words of their parents, I quickly found out that not everyone was lucky the way I was. I found out that even though my parents taught me, gay was okay, not everyone felt the same. And not only did they not feel the same, they would hate someone specifically because they were queer identifying.

I traumatized myself with movies like Brokeback Mountain and Boys Don’t Cry, thinking if I too were to express myself that way, I would meet a violent end. The media told me, I would be hated if I were like them, made me believe that I would find the same fate. It was an ending worse than being alone.

Loving who I wanted to love, because of where I lived, was not an option. It was not even questioned as an option. And even though I hated myself, for telling a lie, for having to deal with the many shitty aspects of that lie, I would continue to tell that lie.

Moving on, I continued to have so-called “crushes” on boys. I continued to force myself into situations that I was uncomfortable in because I wanted to seem normal, and I wanted to seem like there was nothing gay about me. And so, the lie festered.

I ignored signs of my queerness, and forgot them or didn’t realize what they were. Stealing my dad’s PlayBoys, hiding them under my bed, searching “girls kissing” on YouTube, watching exclusively Lesbian porn only meant I was exploring other options, and though the only option that appealed to me was women, still, it didn’t have to mean I wasn’t straight. Maybe it wasn’t as complex or scary as my thoughts were telling me. So I told myself, it didn’t matter because I could choose. I chose heteronormativity.

When it came to high school and crushes in a more traditional sense, dating and going to dances, losing one’s virginity, I became angry. Not because I wasn’t doing it but because if I wanted to do it, I’d have to do it with a guy so to perpetuate the lie.

Getting rid of the last guy, I had moved on to another: one of my best friend’s boyfriends (who’re still dating). This had become a new trend since the stages after my first “crush”; only liking boys that your close friends liked. And I remember so clearly, stepping on so many toes, making so many of my friend’s angry, and pissed off at me. I remember desperately wanting attention, not just from boys but from anybody because I was so sad, and I didn’t know why.

This was the second time in my life that I wanted to die.

Now my journal is filled with pictures of prescription bottles, bleeding wrists, and rants about how I just wanted to go away. How I was so angry to be able to breathe rhythmically and have a working heart with a steady beat, mocking me and reminding me that I was alive and I had this pain inside of me that seemed to have no real source.

When I read back on my words, I am quite literally stunned by the anger, the hatred, and the wish for a violent death.

I was 18 when I realized what was different.

One of the first notable girls I had feelings for, changed literally everything. My life, my experiences in childhood, my views about myself, and so many more aspects of my personal life were all ultimately flipped upside down. I knew that this had to be what I was missing in all those years, even if I was still afraid to say it, or even think it. Up until now, romance had been dramatic, painful, gestures had been grand and demanding, and thoughts had been intrusive and obsessive. But now, romance was soft. It was gentle and uplifting, it was simple and it felt so much more palatable. Until I broke up with her on New Year’s Eve because I still just wasn’t gay— nope, not for me.

And then, I fell in love for the first time. I loved her voice, her eyes; I loved the way that she said my name. I loved her jokes and the way she made me laugh. I loved that no matter what, everything was comfortable with her. For the first time, I pictured myself in the future, being with someone and being happy.

Finally, I was able to admit to myself: yes, I love women, and the floodgates opened.

After my girlfriend and I broke up, I dated handfuls of girls (most of which, never lasted longer than a month) because still, intimacy was such an issue. Maybe, it wasn’t that I liked girls but maybe it was certain girls. Or maybe, I wasn’t pansexual, bisexual, queer, lesbian, or whatever I was identifying at the time, perhaps, I was straight and I just experimenting. It could be possible, I’d never know and maybe, just maybe, this confusion would always be there, no matter what I did.

I was tired; so tired of not knowing, and I just wanted answers.

There’s something funny about being a gay woman, that isn’t funny at all. It’s the fear of what your life would be like without men— it’s the shame of imagining what you’d feel without the demanding presence of men. It’s the lie that you can only be serious in relationships with men, have children with men, and your life and everything you know to be true, revolves around men. I couldn't picture myself loving women, without also loving men.

But someone else could.

My sister has always been a huge presence in my life. And one day we’d just happen to be feeling the single life, so the conversation between us starts with: “We’ll be alone forever, haha.”

What was so different about this conversation was her so sure statement to me that I’d definitely have a wife.

I turned to her and paused before asking, “Can you even picture me with a man? Or marrying a man?”

Her response, so simple and so true, was: “Nope.”

Identifying as a Lesbian, now more than ever, feels so right to me. It feels like an identity in which I belong to. It’s a part of me that I’m proud of and it’s a part of me that I can’t change, no matter how much I lie to myself. It’s a part of me I never realized was there until years and years of thinking there was something wrong with me. I am proud to love women. I am proud to have a woman in my life to love. I am proud of the relationship that gives me hope for the future. And I’m proud of other gay relationships that make me feel a sense of belonging and solidarity.

Of course, there are still struggles: the question if I’m gay enough to have my sexuality be validated, if other people can sense I’m gay, if I’ll be safe, secure, and happy. And there definitely still are some shameful doubts, some questions which make me wonder if some people in my life who know I’m gay, resent me for it. I wonder if there are people in my family, who know, and are too afraid of me to express not only tolerance but support. I wonder if there are some who wouldn’t come to my wedding.

In the end, I sometimes wonder if it’s all worth it.

And then I hear powerful and inspiring stories from other members of the queer community, I see their faces shining for me and people like me to be represented.

And then I remember seeing my uncles love each other so endlessly.

And then I hear her voice, and know without a fraction of a doubt that it’s worth it.

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yutasbirthchin · 7 years ago

Text

Hero - Chapter 6

Group: Seventeen Member: Vernon Word Count: 1884 Genre: angst/fluff/tear jerking/idk

a/n: If you hated the last two chaps and were like ‘wtf???’ then you’ll like this one, trust me, its much better lmao.

Prologue / Chapter1 / Chapter2 / Chapter3 / Chapter4 / Chapter5 / Epilogue

Vernon wasn't an adult and he wasn't experienced in looking after people but he was trying his hardest to look after and help Younghee.

It had been a tough few months for the both of them. He was still wary of Younghee, because now he finally knew more about her and what she was capable of, but was still happy that she was starting to properly open up to him. Younghee was still amazed that Vernon had accepted her and was willing to help her and believe in her. She had wondered what her life would have become if he didn't have him in her life and shuddered at the thought of becoming just like her dad. She was always grateful for Vernon, but recently she felt as though she owed a great debt to him.

It had taken a while for the trust and friendship between them to be re-established, but they were getting there and it meant that they were now even closer than ever.

As she had dropped out of highschool and Vernon was currently coming to the end of his highschool career, he decided that he should help Younghee learn as he was studying for his exams so that even though she didn't graduate, she still had the knowledge. He was actually surprised to find out that she was highly intelligent, and could easily understand and remember everything he tried so hard to understand. Younghee had also taken to teaching Vernon some martial arts and self defence skills, as it was the only skill other than ‘how to handle a gun’ that she could offer. She'd insisted that he wasn't too bad at it despite the fact that he completely disagreed and felt as though he would still lose in a fight. Vernon had also discovered that she spoke 5 languages: Korean, English, Japanese, Spanish and Russian; and that she had taught herself these languages in her spare time because she had nothing better to do.

Vernon stood with the rest of the crowd watching the firefighters desperately try to put out the fire in the house on the end of the street. He had mixed feelings as he watched the flames signalling an end to the life of Kang Younghee, yet simultaneously giving life to Cho Youngjin.

He hadn't liked the idea when she had first proposed it. They'd been separated for a decade and not even been reunited for a year before she was proposing to leave again. But as much as he'd opposed it he couldn't disagree with her logic, and decided it was probably the best thing for her to do.

Younghee had explained to him that for most of her life she had been living under a fake name that her dad had given her, and that her birth name was actually Cho Youngjin. Her birthday was also a few months later than the one he'd known. She'd stated that she wanted to properly shed the life her father had set up for her, and that in order to do that she had to drop the persona and go by her birth name. He wished there was another way of doing it though, as he didn't much like the idea of her burning her house down. Although he allowed her to do so, as he couldn't think of an alternative idea.

People in the crowd were shocked and devastated and the boy felt bad that they were worrying over a girl that was perfectly fine. He felt worse though when it had made the news as it was said that Kang Younghee’s body wasn't found and that she was assumed dead. A lot of people were morning for a girl that wasn't dead.

Youngjin herself didn't really understand how people could be so affected by someone they didn't know nor care about. She found it a little odd though, watching a news report stating that she was probably dead, the news station showing the only picture of her they could, a school photo of her at 7 years old which they had obtained from the school. The girl was happy though, Kang Younghee was finally dead and she could pursue her own life with her real name, not the life that her Dad had set for her.

She didn't want to leave Vernon behind, but she also didn't want to stay in Korea. It was a hard decision, but she thought it necessary. The two had spent the last week glued at the hip, together almost every hour of the day, because they knew it would be a long time before they saw each other again.

The tapping distracted Vernon from his thoughts and he looked across the room towards his window where the noise had come from. When he heard the tapping again he moved to his window, pulling back the curtain slightly and seeing the familiar face on the other side. He unlocked and opened the window enough for her to pull it open herself before he dashed across the room to lock his door.

“Noona? What are you doing here?” He whispered, not wanting any of his family to know about the uninvited guest.

“One last goodbye.” She said, a slight sad expression playing on her features.

“I really wished you weren't leaving.” Vernon crossed to room back towards Youngjin and pulled her into a hug which she returned now that she was a little more used to skinship.

“Me too.” She huffed into his shoulder, hugging him tighter.

They stayed like that for a while before they moved to sit on Vernon’s bed.

“Don't forget to keep in touch with me, I won't forgive you if you forget!”

“Okay.” She replied with a smile.

“And if it doesn't work out, come straight back to Korea!”

“Yes sir!” The girl saluted making Vernon crack a smile despite feeling down.

“I'll miss you.”

“I'll miss you too.”

She had been there for about half an hour and wouldn't be able to hang around much longer without missing her flight.

“Here.” She said, pulling a box from her bag and handing it to him. “Don't open it until I'm gone.”

“What's in it?”

“You'll see when you open it.”

They stood by his bedroom window as she was now getting ready to leave.

“Youngjin, wait.” Vernon stopped her as she leant forward to climb out the window.

“Yeah?” She questioned turning to look at him.

“I… uhh, I like you. I really like you. Like more than a friend. I always have. I just… I.” He trailed off and looked up towards Youngjin noticing her smile and teary eyes.

She stepped towards him and leant forwards, pecking him on the lips. “I like you too.”

And then she was gone.

Vernon stayed at the window staring at the spot in the distance in which she had disappeared into the darkness.

He missed her already.

The boy eventually moved away from the window and quietly unlocked his door. He slumped down on the bed and was about to sprawl out when his arm hit the box Youngjin had given him. He sat back up and pulled the box onto his lap. Running his fingers across it he contemplated opening it, although he wasn’t sure why but he was having a hard time bringing himself to do so. ‘Aish, just open it’ he said to himself and lifted the lid up. A letter was folded up at the top of the box and he picked it up to read it.

Vernon,

I’ve never been good with words and I realised it isn’t any easier when you’re writing it down but I’ll try anyway.

If I think back you are probably the reason I am the way I am today. Before I met you I never questioned anything my dad taught me. I knew I was different, because I was outcasted and everybody tried to pick on me, but I never thought that my upbringing was odd. Not until I met you.

You were annoying and pushy and didn’t shut up but you became my first and only companion. If you hadn’t been there for me annoying me by asking questions that I didn’t really know the answer to I wouldn’t have started to wonder about why I was so different and whether my upbringing was normal.

When we moved to Incheon I realised just how important you were to me even at such a young age. I never had anyone with me before and once you were taken from me I noticed how lonely I was. Obviously, my dad became a lot more active in terms of jobs and so I started to see him less and less. It also meant that he was a lot more harsh with me and training. I wouldn’t have ever thought of my dad as a monster or thought about going against what he taught me if you hadn’t first put doubt in my mind.

I’m very grateful that you were there for me back in elementary school, and I’m glad I bumped into you when I came back here. I don’t know where I would be today if I didn’t.

You constantly called me a heroine for what I did back in Incheon and I will never agree with you. But what I do know is that the real hero here is you.

You saved me. You gave me a chance. You helped me. There’s no way I could pay you back for that.

You’re my hero, Vernon.

Cho Youngjin.

P.s

I only ever had two of my own toys when I was younger. When you gave me those toys in elementary school it made me really happy. I hid them from my dad all these years and held them dear to my heart. I thought I should return them, so I’ve put a car and the transformer in this box. I hope you don’t mind me keeping the other two.

I also gave you one of my own toys (don’t worry, it’s not real).

Vernon couldn’t stop the tears falling down his cheeks as he read the letter and he hoped that none of his family would come into his room at that moment. Reading the letter only made him love and miss his noona even more.

Wiping his eyes he placed the letter down on the bed beside him and peered into the box at the familiar toys which he hadn’t seen in over a decade. The boy was stunned. These toys that he’d completely forgotten about, these toys that were almost meaningless to him Youngjin had treasured and kept all this time. He took the car and transformer out, holding them tight in his hands and being transported back to his childhood. Vernon could picture a younger version of himself playing with them in his room; he could also picture himself in the cloakroom of his elementary school handing the bag of toys to his best friend.

Carefully setting the toys down next to the letter Vernon looked into the box at the last object: a gun. It looked real as he lifted up and turned it in his hand examining it, but he knew it wasn’t. Vernon chuckled to himself.

“Kang Younghee, rest in peace.”

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brittababbles · 7 years ago

Note

Have you ever done a soulmate au? If so could you do one for Frank Castle? Maybe the reader is a vigilante like Frank? 😊✨✨✨

Gun in the Face of Destiny – Frank Castle xreader.

Author’s Note: I hadn’t done a soulmate AUbefore. I actually had to look up what it was. Interesting concept. I’ll tryit.

Firefights were… well, you wouldn’t say theywere fun, but they certainly were a good alternative to a zumba class when itcame to getting your heart rate up.

Maybe laughing from behind the metal table youwere hiding behind wasn’t exactly subtle. Probably would have been wiser tokeep your mouth shut. You poked your head out from behind the table and tookvague aim at the two guys shooting at you. They had better guns than you. Youhad better luck than them. You heard the bullets ricochet and then a shout ofpain.

Gotcha, you thought.

You glanced back over your shoulder at theterrified kitchen staff huddled behind you. A total of five of them, not asingle word of English spoken between them. Your two semesters at NYU and onefailed Spanish class didn’t exactly prepare you for this situation.

But they made a damn good Ropa Vieja.

You were sort of hoping that the pair of 8mmswould’ve been sufficient tonight. The fact that you’d packed a backup .22 inyour back pocket was inconsequential – a .22 wasn’t going to take these idiotsout.

There was a deafening bang from the oppositeend of the galley kitchen that made everyone jump.

“Keep your head down!” a deep voice echoed.

Fair enough. You ducked back down behind yourupturned table and mimed “keep down” to your Cuban friends. Some things must’vebeen universal; they all nodded and managed to get lower to the floor.

Keep your head down. There was something vaguely familiar about that phrase.

Bullets flew overhead. Big ones. Whoever thisguy was had even better guns than your opponents. Sure, you’d think with yourconnections you’d be able to get your hands on better firepower than the twohandguns you’d toted along tonight. A skinny daughter of a local mob boss thatliked to go out looking for a fight ought to have better protection than ametal prep table and a pair of handguns.

But what was the fun in playing fair?

You shrugged at the cooks behind you. Theygawked back, apparently flabbergasted by your casual response to being shot at.

The fiasco at the other end of the kitchendidn’t last long. Whoever was taking out these dudes was a pro. When therepeated cracks of automatic weaponry came to an end, you popped your head backup to see what the damage was.

You hoped the Cuban cooks had hazmat suitsstored somewhere.

“Overkill much?” you called to the onlyremaining standing figure.

He was dressed head to toe in black, standingwith his back to you. From this angle you couldn’t identify the exact weapon hewas carrying, but it was big. Your stomach tightened, once again regretting openingyour big mouth as he turned slowly to look at you.

That’s when you saw the skull painted acrosshis chest. The Punisher. Shit.

Well, great. Panicking, you hid again, turningto the kitchen staff and waving your hands to get their attention.

“Get out! Get out!” you hissed, waving towardthe door frantically.

They seemed to get the message and, one at atime, began to crawl in the direction of the back door. When the heavy, bootedfootsteps behind you stopped, however, the five of them looked up, theirexpressions horrified.

You looked up, directly into his face.

“What’d you say?” he asked, his nose wrinklingslightly as he scowled down at you.

“I said, ‘overkill much?’” you answeredthoughtlessly.

His expression went from a scowl of annoyanceto a slightly disturbed frown, like those two words were bizarrely significant.You couldn’t imagine why. Nothing that ever came out of your smart mouth waswhat you’d consider significant.

“What’re you doing in here?” he finally said,his voice still tantalizingly wary.

“Um… trying to stop a robbery?” you saidhonestly, “Though you kind of took care of the stopping part for me.”

Hegawked at you for a moment longer, the offered you a hand. You took it,puzzled, and allowed him to pull you to your feet. On the way up you caughtsight of the mark across your wrist.

Keep your head down.

There it was, scrawled across your wrist inuntidy writing that’d you’d never anywhere beside that spot on your wrist. Youdidn’t remember ever not having it. Your mother had explained that it was thefirst words your soul mate would say to you. Hers had faded after she’d met youdad, but you’d still been able to read it when you were little. “Excuse me,miss. Is this yours?” You remembered it so clearly. You’d wondered all yourlife why your soul mate would open with “Keep your head down.”

This situation really wasn’t clearing that up.

He didn’t let your hand go when you were onyour feet, instead opting to awkwardly shake it.

“I’m Frank,” he said, still looking a bitstunned.

“[Your name],” you answered letting thehandshake carry on for far past the point of convention.

Apparently he realized how long this handshaking business was going on and released you hand hastily. You just stared athim, unable to think of anything to say. He tugged at his jacket, pulling upthe sleeve to reveal his right wrist.

Overkill much? You recognized your own loopy penmanship.

“Huh,” was all you could say.

Your staring at each other was interrupted byscrambling and Spanish babbling in the background. The cooks had stood,evidently under the impression that the violence had come to and end, anddiscovered the mess of human remains at the opposite end of the kitchen. Youcouldn’t understand a word of it, but their tone suggested that they were lessthan thrilled with the discovery.

“We’d probably get out of here,” you said toFrank, “Before the cops show up.

“Oh. Yeah,” he said, visibly shaking himself.

You grabbed your guns from the floor and thepair of you dashed out the backdoor just as the sound of sirens echoed from thefront of the building.

“You wanna hit the roof?” he offered.

“Yeah, I guess. My apartment isn’t far fromhere.”

The climb up a nearby fire escape was stilluncomfortable. He followed you as you leapt from roof to roof, surprisinglyquiet for his size. He wasn’t particularly talkative, which you appreciated,since you were trying to work through this startling development.

You’d only kind of believed the whole soul matething in the first place. You knew it happened, but some people never foundtheir matching person. And with such an oddly specific phrase across yourwrist, you’d assumed you’d be one of those people.

You hadn’t expected this.

You considered yourself a B-class vigilante.You didn’t have powers, didn’t have any particular special skills. You’dlearned to fight coming up in a mafia family, sure, but mostly you’d just beentrying to help out where you could. You’d been trying to make up for some ofthe horrible things your father and brothers did every day.

You’d been alone for a long time. There’d beenboys occasionally, particularly when you were younger, but few of them werecomfortable with the variable bloodshed that surrounded you. You’d sort ofgiven up on human companionship in favor of a good fight.

Reaching the roof of your apartment, you poppedopen one of the glass panels and climbed down onto a ladder that was proppedagainst the skylight. Once upon a time, your apartment had belonged to a verywealthy man with a very large obsession with exotic plants. The currentlandlord had converted the building into a series of rather quirky apartments.Since he owed your father more money than you cared to think about, you’dgotten the spacious former-greenhouse.

Your feet hit the floor of the loft and youlooked up to see Frank calmly following you down the ladder. You watched him,admiring the easy movement of his body.

The Punisher. Jesus Christ. You reflexivelyrubbed at the mark on your wrist.

Once he was all the way down, you took theladder in hand and use it to poke the open glass panel, causing it to snap backshut. You then paced to the wall and picked the light switch.

“Excuse the mess,” you said casually, headingfor the spiral staircase that led to the lower level.

The sound of the skylight closing had eliciteda loud bark from downstairs. The barking only increased in volume as you camedown the stairs.

“Hey, Peaches,” you said to the boxer mix asshe met you at the bottom of the stairs.

Peaches had been your exclusive companion sinceyou’d found her a year ago. She’d been a tiny, crying little creature thatsomeone had left in a trash can. She’d had her eyes closed still when you foundher. It’d taken several trips to the vet, more puppy milk replacer than you couldcalculate, and a rather shamefully taken loan from your father for the expensesto save her, but you’d do it all againfor the dog. Now a little over a year old, she was still a gangly puppy with abit more growing to do, but she was strong and sleek and considerably moreaffectionate than you thought you deserved. You were maybe a bit too lenientwith the “no jumping” rule, and let her stand on her hind legs to lick yourface. It was good to have someone that was happy you were home.

Frank was circling the spiral staircase as youand your dog had your nightly reunion. At the sight of the strange man,Peaches’ hair went up on the back of her neck. She gave a deep, warning growlas he approached.

“Easy, pup,” Frank said.

“Peaches!” you scolded.

The dog looked at you questioningly, and thensniffed Frank’s outstretched hand curiously. Apparently deciding that he hadn’tyet merited losing any fingers, she gave him a mistrustful look before trottingback to her food bowl in the kitchen. You followed her, flicking on the lightsof the lower level of your apartment.

“Like I said, excuse the mess,” you muttered.

What you were referring to were the paintings.At every vertical surface, and several of the horizontal ones, canvases ofvarying sizes and states of completeness were leaning, laying flat, or hanging.Your paints were scattered haphazardly across the floor. The cacophony of colorwas reflected back in the glass that made up the entire western wall of theapartment.

“Did you paint all of these?” Frank asked,taking in the sight.

“Most of them,” you called back, your headburied in a cupboard in the kitchen, searching for a can of dog food forPeaches.

“They’re amazing,” he muttered.

You looked over your shoulder to watch him forminute. He’d stopped in front of one of your closer-to-finished pieces.Variations on a theme by Van Gogh. The canvas was mostly back, with red andbrown swirls of paint. You’d been aiming for some kind of expression of what aparticularly nasty night on New York’s streets looked like, whilesimultaneously trying to filter it through what you’d imagined yourschizophrenic idol would have seen.

“They’re alright,” you commented.

You lapsed into a comfortable silence as youdished out Peaches’s dinner and Frank took a seat on the sofa, gazing around atthe paintings. After making sure her water bowl was full, you reached up intothe cupboard and pulled out a couple of k-cups.

“Coffee?” you asked, “Hope you don’t mindblack. I don’t keep cream in the place.”

Frank smirked at you.

“Smartest thing you’ve said all night,” hesaid.

You nodded and, once it was brewed, brought himthe first cup of coffee. You watched him carefully as he took a sip, his nosewrinkling slightly. He kept his eyes on you, tracking your movements as youbrewed a second cup for yourself, then cross the room and sank into the chairacross from him.

“So now what?” you asked, cupping your handsaround the mug of steaming liquid.

Frank shrugged, taking another sip from his ownmug.

“I don’t know. Are you actually expecting tobase a relationship off a few words carved into our wrists?”

“No,” you said quickly, staring down into yourcoffee.

You glanced up at him. He was really ratherhandsome, in a way you’d never considered. Not pretty at all, but there was acertain strength in his face. Strong features, not without scarring. His darkeyes were fixing you with an intense stare powerful enough to make even yousquirm. Usually being the focus of someone’s attention didn’t bother you. Butnot everyone was Frank Castle.

“Maybe,” you mumbled.

You heard him sigh.

“Sweetheart, you don’t deserve this,” he said.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“Me,” he said simply, “You deserve someonewhole. Someone not so fucked up.”

You gazed at him blankly for a moment, then putyour coffee on the end table and stood up in front of him. You pulled the edgeof your shirt off, showing him the still-healing slice just above your lefthip. Then you turned to show him the scar across the right side of your neck,then the dappled burn scars that stretched from your right shoulder to your midback. There were more, in places you weren’t ready for him to see.

“Do you know why I do this? Why I go out everynight and let someone beat the shit out of me?”

“Because you want to help people?” he guessed.

You shook your head.

“Nah. I wish I was that selfless,” youcommented.

He frowned at you. You sighed.

“I’m doing this because when they land a punchon me, at least I’m feeling something. Look, soul mate you might be, but youneed to be at least a level four friend to unlock my tragic backstory. Let’sjust say I didn’t grow up in a situation where I was around of lot of…nurturingpeople. I guess I didn’t learn to feel things like a normal person. And now…”you sighed, “Pain is a feeling. I can’t even say it’s a feeling I like. It’sjust a feeling.”

Frank looked at you, his eyes a bit empty.

“So,” you finished, “I wouldn’t say anybodydeserves this either.”

He shook his head at you.

“There’s no way to talk you out of this, isthere?”

You flopped down into the couch next to him.

“Look, I’m not asking for forever. I’m justsaying,” you held up your wrist, showing him where the words marked your skin, “Maybewe should give this a chance. Maybe we should just see if this isn’t purelyrandom chance. Maybe it’s more than mathematics. How will we know if we don’ttry?”

“And if it doesn’t work out?”

You smirked, leaning over to reclaim your coffeecup.

“Then you seem just as likely to put a gun inthe face of destiny and pull the trigger. But I know I’m miserable and you don’tlook like you’ve been having the time of your life lately either.”

He looked at you skeptically, then raised hismug in what appeared to be a toast.

“To destiny?” he offered.

You smiled and clinked your ceramic mug to his.

“To destiny.”

#frank castle #frank castle imagine #frank castle x reader #soulmate au #swbwrites #request

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weirdo-in-the-snow · 8 years ago

Text

~Forever Home (Part 2)

Summary: Morty L-117 is going to live in yet another dimension with yet another Rick. Hooray.

Chapter word count: 1,580

Warnings: Abuse mentioned

Chapter: 2 of 2

Author’s note: Hey again! so yeah second and final chapter of my first multichapter fanfic. Yay! Anyway, this is about my Mortysona and @gibbytrash‘s Ricksona and how they meet pretty much. sorry for the edgy backstory but whatever, enjoy!

The front door of the cream-colored house opened smoothly, with barely a squeak. As soon as we stepped through the doorway, a sweet smell tickled my nose. It was the kind of scent that was synthesized from a compound of chemicals that somehow smelled just like flowers.

My new Rick lead me past a puce wall that was cut by a staircase leading to the second story of the house. On the side closest to him, an empty dinner table sat expectantly in an off white dining room.

I wondered where the flowery smell was coming from. It was probably from a candle or one of those little air fresheners you plug into the wall. Or maybe I just hadn’t picked up on a fragrance this imitation Rick was wearing.

“Beth, sweetie, I’m home!” he called out, cheerfully. We came to a stop in the living room. A teenage girl and her mother sat on the couch, the former munched on popcorn while the latter nursed a glass of wine, the half-empty bottle sitting on the coffee table in front of them. It wasn’t even 4:30 yet.

The two looked up from whatever reality show they were watching, their eyes drawn to me. The stranger. The elephant in the room. The black sheep. I immediately felt uncomfortable, becoming the center of attention in an instant. I felt their eyes pressing into me and I broke into a nervous sweat.

“Guys, this is Morty,” he was all bleach-white teeth and stretched lips as he introduced me to my new foster family. Synthetic flowers still bloomed nearby.

“Uh, hey,” I said.

A truly stunning first impression. I realized that this bland, overwhelmingly teenage greeting was the first thing I’d said since I’d left the daycare. One of the only things I’ve said in the past week or so, actually.

“Isn’t he just the cutest thing?” his rhetorical question asked with such enthusiasm, I half expected an answer. “Morty, this is Beth and Summer. And you can just call me Rik, spelled R-I-K.” He twirled his finger in the air as he spelled. The pair on the couch stood up to greet me.

I swallowed. The entire experience was very vexing to me. I was so used to being ignored, used, passed around by strange and abrasive hands. It confused me to be fawned over or to even be properly introduced.

The woman I knew as Beth stood with her arms raised hesitantly in an uncertain offer for a hug. I accepted it awkwardly, wrapping my arms around her, squeezing weakly. She smelled like cheap wine, lipstick, and hair dye.

“Welcome home sweetie,” she said, her voice soft and compassionate. She seemed so nice. My original mom had died because of complications during my birth so I never got to meet her. My dad would beat me and ignore me and even spit on me, telling me that it was my fault she was dead. And I always believed him.

I had only met one other version of the Smith family, but the only interactions I had with them were tense or sullen, if they weren’t just straight up ignoring me. Shunning me for not being the right Morty. For not being their Morty.

The “replacement Morty”.

I turned to Summer. I only have faint memories of my original sister since she was much older than me and was nearly eighteen years old by the time I was five. Home was awful and almost every conversation between her and Dad morphed into an argument, ending in slamming doors and tears.

Not even a month after she graduated, she got the hell out of Dodge. I remember her promising to me before she left that she’d come back and save me. She would take me far away to somewhere better and nicer where no one would ever hurt me again. I never saw or heard from her after she left.

I don’t blame her, though. Who knows, she could have died. It’s not like Dad would have told me. But even if she did just forget about me or just abandoned me, I never thought bad of her. I probably wouldn’t have come back for me either.

This Summer was a bit different than the few I’ve seen. She was noticeably thicker in her arms and legs as well as having broader shoulders and smaller breasts due to lack of body fat. We were practically the same height, but I knew that she could easily sling my scrawny ass over her shoulder and carry me around if she tried.

Her tanktop hugged her sides, showing the shape of her lean midriff and muscular hips. Her ginger hair was pulled up, drawing attention to her bright brown eyes and clear complexion. There was no doubt that she had a few admirers that were head-over-heels in love with her.

Neither of us could look each other in the eye, our gazes floated aimlessly around the room, hoping to never cross paths. I could tell she felt just as awkward and unsure as I did.

Our hug was brief, her giving my back a small pat while my hands stayed completely still. We pulled apart quickly before continuing our little eye avoidance game. The air hung heavy with pregnant silence.

Rik beamed obliviously off to the side. After a few suffocating moments, Beth had had enough and turned towards the transvestite.

“Dad, why don’t you give Morty a tour of the house?” her question made Rik perk up. He started towards me, overjoyed to show me around.

“Of course, of course! C’mon Morty, let’s go see the rest of the house,” he grabbed my arm again, leading me through the rooms of small suburban home. I was just glad to leave.

I followed Rik though the kitchen and dining room, the table still sitting there, empty. He opened a door that lead into the garage. It seemed to be used as more of a supply room seeing as it was full of an assortment of clothes-making materials (bolts of fabric, dressmaking dummies, a few sewing machines, some broken, others still in their original boxes) as well as stacks of cardboard boxes.

Between the clutter and the garage door was the strangest looking spaceship I had ever seen. Its design was reminiscent of cars from the 1960s, even having those little wings coming off the back. It was the same grotesque pink as Rik’s portal gun, giving the vehicle a very imposing air of femininity.

I didn’t listen to Rik as he talked about the rooms of the house as we went through them. I instead focused on predicting how long it would take for me to somehow end up back in the daycare, waiting for my next home.

All the rooms seemed to monotonously blur together until we walked up the stairs towards the bedrooms. We passed the room that was (in my experience) usually mine, alternatively going towards the smaller guest room just down the hall.

“And this room is yours!″ Rik announced cheerfully as he opened the door. Behind it was a small room, the walls painted a bland dark grey and a pair of shelves protruding from the far wall. One of the two was completely empty while the other had a miniscule variety to choose from.

Half the selection was made up of health and fashion magazines and parenting books. I think there was a English to Spanish dictionary thrown up there, too.

The rest of the room was entirely empty save for a single lamp that sat in the middle of the room, unplugged. I stared at it for a moment.

“Lamp,” I said flatly.

“Sorry it’s a bit... sparse,” Rik apologised,embarrassed. “We didn’t have much time to prepare and this was all we had on short notice.”

I walked inside, setting my stuff down, letting my arms rest. Rik started to follow, but hung back, hovering uneasily in the doorway.

“Don’t worry, though!″ he consoled me somewhat frantically. “We’ll go out and get you everything you need as soon as possible.”

“It’s fine, really,” I said, turning in a slow circle to examine the bedroom. It was small, but cozy. I had never felt at home in big rooms anyway.

“Oh, I could help set up a little spread for you to sleep on!” Rik offered.”C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

I sat on my makeshift mattress of blankets and comforters, admiring the personal touches I added to my new room. My duffel bag of clothes lay splayed open at the foot of my “bed”. several glass tanks of varying sizes lined the far wall, each holding a pet of mine. The empty shell of my red wagon tucked neatly into a corner, a small stack of books from the shelf next to my spread, the dandelion light of the lamp softly illuminating the sleep space.

Having already eaten at the Citidel, I decided to turn in early, mumbling goodnights to my adoptive family before retreating upstairs. Luckily, they seemed okay with my numerous animal companions,though I could tell my snake somewhat bothered Rik in particular.

As I settled into my cocoon of covers, I realized I felt relaxed, content, almost happy. Something I haven’t felt in a while. I wondered how long it would last as I reached for the lamp’s switch.

I pressed it, dowsing the lamp’s light, filling the room with a calming, quiet darkness. Maybe I could call this place home.

#abuse mention//#words #like hella words #mortysona #ricksona #L-117 #GA-331 #my writing #fanfic #rick and morty

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