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amtopmthoughts · 2 years

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How Glee Should Have Turned Out

VERSION 1

SEASON 1

1. Starts in the season 1 instead of after Finn’s passing in season 5

2. Quinn is dating Finn and joins Glee just like on the show and begins to have feelings for Rachel

3. Rachel seems like she’s jealous of Finn but she’s really jealous of Quinn

4. Rachel is the first to realize she has feelings for Quinn

5. Meanwhile, Quinn also breaks up with Finn with some excuse but the truth is that she doesn’t really love him and never has

6. Finn tries to kiss Rachel but she tells him she likes Quinn. Finn is the first one to know that Rachel likes her.

7. The whole Quinn/Quinn’s father debacle happens but because she comes out to her parents as gay, not because she’s pregnant

8. Rachel and Jessie DOES happen but it ends sooner because they reveal to each other that they’re actually gay and become really good friends

9. Rachel and Finn become best friends

10.Finn has another love interest

11.They only reveal their feelings for each other to each other in the season finale

SEASON 2

1. Season 2 starts and they are dating

2. They’re on and off during season 2

3. Sam is the new kid in school and develops an interest in Quinn

4. Quinn and Rachel are still struggling with their relationship. Quinn is still very popularity-obsessed and doesn’t want to go public with her relationship with Rachel. She’s really struggling with her sexuality, is afraid of what other people will say

5. Among this drama, she tries to “deny” that she’s gay and begins a sort of relationship with Sam

6. Santana and Brittany don’t have as much drama in the beginning as they did on the show. Struggle a little as first, because Santana is afraid of what other people will think and say and Brittany doesn’t really understand what’s going on between them. But she does struggle just like in season 3 when her grandmother finds out.

SEASON 3

1. This is the season when, just like with Finchel in season 3, Faberry is in full swing. Their finally open about their relationship and it all goes (kind of) smoothly

2. Quinn isn’t portraited like a psychotic, neurotic, popularity-obsessed, with a prom queen complex like she is on the show

3. Brittana is in full swing too

4. As well as Klaine

5. Mercedes and Sam have a more serious relationship on the show

6. Kurt gets in NYADA but Rachel doesn’t

7. Rachel and Quinn break up as she’s about to leave for Yale. They’re afraid of ruining things trying long distance so they decide it’s better to end things this way

SEASON 4

1. Rachel stays behind in Ohio while Kurt moves to New York.

2. She’s really beaten down but eventually remembers her lifelong dream and joins Kurt in New York, after a conversation with Quinn

3. Quinn and Rachel get back together. They decide they want to try long distance after all and that they don’t want to be apart

4. They breakup after because of long distance, it’s really hard to be together and because of some misunderstanding

Rachel finally lands a role on Broadway. Her opening night is around the corner and she wants to invite Quinn but she’s afraid she won’t show. She finally gathers up the courage to invite her but doesn’t hear back from her.

On her opening night, Rachel is understandably nervous. She asks about Quinn but Kurt says she’s not here. A few minutes later, Quinn knocks on the door. They hug. After the play is over, they all celebrate together.

Sometime after, Quinn is offered a job in New York and moves there. She’s afraid of contacting Rachel but eventually meet again when Rachel goes to Quinn’s first art exhibition.

Rachel Berry was one the most ambitious people you could meet. In fact, she probably was the most ambitious person in all of Ohio. She has dreamed of being a star her whole life. Not just any star: a Broadway star! She had everything in her favor: an outstanding voice and singing and ballet lessons since the age of 3 in her repertoire. She knew what she wanted and where to get it and she was willing to do just about anything to get to where she belonged: New York City.

Quinn Fabray was your average teenage prom queen. Blonde, beautiful, mean, head cheerleader, and now that the was dating the quarterback of the football team, the most popular guy in school, she was at the top of the pyramid that was the high school hierarchy system. Every guy wanted to date her and every girl wanted to be her. Everything was the way it should be. She was right where she belonged: on top, looking down on the rest of us, common mortals. Except for one thing, she wasn’t really... happy. She just lived a life serving everyone else’s expectations of her, her parent’s pride and joy. Her obsession with perfection had begun at an early age, actually, but it had become gradually worse with the course of the years and with her getting older, pressure to fit in a certain spot that seemed to be reserved just for her and obligatory for her to occupy.

(at the Vocal Adrenaline showcase in the pilot)

“I’m dating Quinn Fabray.”

“Oh…”

(Rachel knew both of them, but because they had only been dating for a month or two, she didn’t know about it yet)

(talking to Jesse and coming out)

“Are you… gay?”

“No!” she said “exalted”. She paused and continued, calmly this time. “I-I don’t know, okay? I’m very confused about my feelings. Truth is I never identified myself as gay or straight either. I’ve never liked a boy or a girl. Not for real, anyway. I never even thought about that. But now… I have all these feelings that I don’t understand…”

“For me?”

“Quinn Fabray.”

…

“Actually, Rachel. I am… gay.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ve never been with a boy either but I

“I can’t say I’m surprised though. I mean, with your designer boots

“I thought we were friends…”

“We’re show choir mortal enemies, Rachel, we could never be friends.”

(talking to Quinn)

“So why did you break up with Finn?”

“Finn is just not the right guy for me. And I don’t need a man anyway.”

“Yeah, exactly. You don’t need a man.”

“I don’t need anyone. Period. So just leave me alone, okay?” (and leaves)

“I am awful to you”

“I don’t hate you, Quinn. All I’ve ever wanted was for us to be friends. For you to consider me a friend/For you to like me.”

“Look, I’m not gay and even if I was, you would be my last choice.”

(talking to Finn)

“You’re imagine us kissing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah…”

“Of course.”

(Finn talking to someone)

“So, you dated both of them and now they’re dating each other?”

“Yeah. Cool, right?”

“Everyone knows high school relationships don’t last. I’m pretty sure the average of relationships that start in high school and last forever are…”

“I just thought it would be different with us.”

“You know, Quinn is having her first art exhibit downtown.”

“She is?” She tried to seem uninterested.

“Yeah. Next month. I’m doing the PR.”

“I didn’t even know she was in the city.”

“She has been for a while. She hasn’t told me until recently or I would have told you sooner.”

“Why would you? She didn’t.”

“You should go.” Rachel didn’t answer but Santana knew she had heard her and continued. “To the opening.”

“Why would I go?”

“Because.”

“Okay, right.”

“Just think about. I have to go now, see you later.”

Rachel didn’t even have time to say goodbye, she left immediately.

She did think about it. Should she go? Why would she go? She wasn’t even extended an invitation. If she wanted Rachel to come, she would have personally invited her, given her a phone call or even sent her a text message, but she didn’t even let her know she was in town. Was she living here? Would she be living here? In New York, in the same city as her. They hadn’t lived in the same city since… Well, since high school, almost 5 years ago. Would that mean something? Rachel couldn’t help but wonder. She stopped her own thoughts. She and Quinn were over. For good. They had been for a long time now. Just because they were now in the same city it didn’t mean that something was to happen between them again. Rachel knew that deep down that’s what she wanted, she knew that she had never stopped loving Quinn but she didn’t know if that was the case for Quinn also.

After their last time together, they spoke one or two times on the phone just to check on each other. They decided it was better that way. Actually, she decided it was best if they didn’t talk, not best, easier. She missed her though and she was pretty offended that she didn’t call her at least just to tell her that she had moved to New York or that she was just visiting. Should she go to the exhibit… Uninvited?

The day of Quinn’s first art exhibit was here and she still wasn’t sure whether she should go or not. Quinn still hadn’t said anything to her. No calls nor messages of any kind. The only news she had from Quinn was through Santana who didn’t tell her much because she knew it hurt her. That day, Santana called her to remind her of what day it was, as if Rachel hadn’t marked it on her calendar, and asking if she was going to go or not but Rachel said no. Santana texted her the address of the gallery anyway.

She didn’t really plan on going. Ever since she knew of it, she struggled with herself to decide whether or not she should go. She wanted to see Quinn and she wanted to know why she hadn’t talked to her about any of this. She knew how much Quinn wanted this, she talked about this day since high school. They had countless conversations about it. About their dreams. Part of what made Rachel so sad was the fact that she really wanted to have been part of this journey and she wanted to have been by her side when Quinn learned she was going to get her art on display of everyone to see, she wanted to have been able to congratulate her, to hug her, to share in her happiness and tell her how proud she was of her. She was very proud of her.

But she didn’t know if Quinn wanted to see her. If she did, she would have said something. Right? She would have told her about coming to New York, maybe asked to see her and most importantly she would have told her about something as big as this. Rachel was tired of wondering. When she looked at her phone it was 6:10pm. The show had started 10 minutes ago. She got up the couch, went to her room, put on one of her favorite dresses and some heels. Thankfully, she hadn’t taken off the makeup she had put on that morning, because really, she knew that if she took it off, she would end up having to put it on again. She grabbed a purse, left her apartment and hailed a cab.

“Downtown, please.”

The show was beautiful, just like she knew it would be. In all of the years she had known Quinn she discovered many talents of hers such as singing, playing the piano, cooking and other things that are not appropriate mentioning, but painting was by far her biggest talent. She could see every side of Quinn’s personality portraited in each and every single one of those paintings. They were astounding. It was beautifully heartbreaking to look at some of them.

A waiter passed by her and offered her a glass of champagne. She accepted it even though she didn’t really like champagne. Rachel smiled at the thought of hearing Quinn noticing and saying it.

Later, it started in the same place what seemed like a sort of an after party. People started to scatter and go the bar inside the gallery where Rachel went, too. There were high tables with no chairs or stools so she stood and placed the champaign flute on the small high table. She hadn’t seen Quinn yet which she thought was strange. But as soon as she finished that thought she saw a blonde coming in her direction. Stunning as ever. She was wearing a knee length emerald green dress with gold embroideries all through it. She always loved her in emerald green. Her hair was loose with beautiful soft waves and she was looking right at her. Rachel suddenly forgot how to breathe.

“Rachel. Hi. I-I didn’t expect you to come.”

“Why? Because I didn’t get an invite? Crashing is so much more fun.” She said in all her ironical glory.

“I wanted to invite you. I meant to send you an invite, I just-” Rachel stood in silence waiting for the explanation she knew Quinn didn’t really have. “I wanted to invite you but I didn’t think you would come.”

“I invited you to my opening night. And you came.”

“Yeah, I know but-but we haven’t spoken in so long. I didn’t even tell you I was in the city.”

“Yeah… Why is that?”

“We just didn’t leave things on the best of terms and I just didn’t know if you wanted to hear from me or not. Things were just awkward between us. I didn’t really know what to do or say or how to act.”

“The show is really beautiful. The paintings are stunning. You were always so good at it.”

“Thank you, Rachel.” Quinn paused for a second. “I really did want you to come, Rachel. And I’m really happy that you decided to come even though I didn’t.”

“Yeah… I couldn’t miss it.” She started looking around her. “I just had to see it.” The two stared at each other in silence for a minute too long. “I did contemplate the idea of coming and avoid you. I figured, with so many people here, it wouldn’t be that difficult for me to hide from you. But I eventually just realized that was silly. If I did come, I could at least say hello. So, hello.”

Quinn showed an ear-to-ear smile. “I’m happy you came.”

“I’m happy I came, too.”

“So… What’s going on with you?”

“Rehearsing for a new play.”

“Another one?”

“Yes, it is very hard being a star.”

“I bet it is, yeah.” She gave out a smirk. “How’d you heard about the show anyway?”

“Santana.”

“Of course./Makes sense.”

“Where is she, anyway?”

“Around here somewhere. She was talking to this other artist who came too. Why are you drinking champaign, you don’t even like it.” Rachel smiled again.

HOUSE DESCRIPTION

They now live in a big brownstone in New York. Inside it’s a mix of modern and vintage furniture. Colored walls, art paintings hanging on the walls, a fig family kitchen. When they bought the house, Quinn was pregnant with their first child and their weekend plans was to go scavenger hunting in antique stores and vintage flea markets. Both of them shared a love for everything vintage so that was really the look they wanted for the house.

The house is very lived in. They sing and play the piano for each other. Surprisingly, Quinn taught her. They have pizza nights, game nights and brunch every Sunday which mostly consists in pancakes and bacon. There’s always music playing at the house even if the volume is so low you can’t really hear it unless there’s no noise. When it’s Rachel who puts music on, she mostly plays show tunes and when it’s Quinn, she mostly plays jazz or rhythm and blues, 50s and 60s music in general. It’s only when it’s the kids’ turn to choose what plays that you get to hear more recent artists and songs.

There’s always noise and people arguing and talking over each other but there’s also joy and laughter. A lot of joy and laughter.

LIFE DESCRIPTION

1. They live in a brownstone in New York

2. Rachel is a Broadway actress

3. Quinn opened a gallery downtown and paints

4. Quinn also sings at a bar in a hotel in New York

5. They have 3 kids. One that Quinn had, other that Rachel had and one adopted. Alice, Theo and Brady

6. In the present time, Alice is 17, Theo is 14 and Brady is 4

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tuiyla · 3 years

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If RIB ended up having Quinn explore her sexuality offscreen after I Do (instead of the character devolvement that had her getting w Biff and Puck in s5 🙄), what do you think her return to Lima would've looked like in 100? Not expecting she'd be ready to flaunt around a gf or anything like that, but still, the possibilities are interesting 🧐

Interesting question! I'm a queer Quinn truther so let's see. I see it going down something like this, working with the assumption that Dianna is available as much as she was in season 5 (and 6).

I Do can play out the exact same with the Quinntana convo in-between rounds (Quinntana anon I will get around to answering that!). Then, come the 100th episode, Quinn still shows up with Biff. Whatever, let's have Nate from Gossip Girl included in this version as well. And Quinn says much the same stuff as she did in the actual show, how he's old money and just this perfect candidate for a husband to be. Puck could still call her out on it, I don't mind involving him as long as we don't have them get together. BUT, and here's where we start to diverge.

Like I said in another post, Santana also sees right through her bullshit and it crescendos into an Unholy Trinity scene with all of them pointing fingers - in their own temperaments, so Britt being more chill than Quinntana. Quinn might not actually care about this guy, but Brittany's miserable trying to live up to this genius label and Santana's been busy destroying the good life she had in New York all because she doubled down on Rachel's worst expectations of her. The three of them are not having a grand time. And who knows, maybe the Quinntana hookup gets brought up, maybe Brittana question why Quinn is with a guy at all but she freaks out about that line of questioning and storms off. All three of them are shaken by the scene and a song begins - I'm yet to think of what it should be but I'm sorry to all you thirsty Sapphics, it would be replacing Toxic as the UHT trio.

Brittany's singing and we get glimpses of her life at MIT and her looking sad. Santana takes over and it's a flashback of her in the loft, alone, regretting the Pezberry feud. Maybe we can throw in a montage of other ND members in there, either them feeling lost too or them doing well to provide some contrast. And then when it gets to the last verse, Quinn's singing. Scenes of her at Yale begin to play, some of them involve Biff but she's clearly uncomfortable. Cut to her and another girl, maybe a roommate and the two having fun hanging out. Basically, just let Dianna Agron do her thing here. As the audience we begin to wonder: is this who Quinn really likes? And then as she's singing the song, we see them kiss, but we cut again to her being with Biff and looking regretfully at Girlfriend walking by, who just shakes her head when she sees Quinn with her ~boyfriend~.

Then in "New Directions", Brittana still have their choir room scene (maybe the churros scene in "100" as well as the UHT one). In this version, Brittany begins singing Landslide to Santana and it turns into a Landslide/Everywhere mashup as they get back together. Shh just let me have this it's special to me. So anyway, Quinn walks past and has a sad smile on, simultaneously happy for her friends but also thinking back to their convo and Biff and this girl she actually wants to be with instead. Ideally, the song montage conveyed that she's (still) struggling with some comphet and is too afraid to pursue her true desires. We might even find out that she went back deeper into the closet because her dad reentered her life and she once again believes that she can have the life she (thought she) wanted as a 15-year-old.

But what do you know, Girlfriend followed her to Lima. Not in a creepy way, she just realized she can't let Quinn lie to herself anymore. She shows up as the New Directions are about to perform another nostalgia number or just after Pezberry sing Be Okay, or something. And it's a big confession about her true feelings and how she understands if Quinn isn't ready to be with her and she won't force it, but at the very least Q shouldn't be with Biff of all people. And Quinn, having been reminded of all the mistakes she's made at McKinley and how life's short and all that, decides to go for it. She chases Girlfriend down the corridor and tells her she loves her. She's still not 100% sure about who she truly is and what she wants but she's done pretending.

We could have Quinn return for season 6 like she did in the show, with Girlfriend being in one or two episodes and a few words on how they're doing. It's not like we got much of Quick, either. So anyway that's what I got; the whole Girlfriend plot would be a lot to cram into like, what, four scenes? But we don't have a lot of Quinn screentime to work with. Let me know what you'd do Anon, or anyone else for that matter. And I'll get back to you about song choices lol if I ever figure it out.

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thomas-the-goat-of-satan · 3 years

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can you elaborate on rachel being a lesbian and feeling like she needs to be with finn please? it sounds very interesting

oooh, yay!

okay, so Rachel exhibits several signs of comphet from the very beginning, very similarly to both Santana and Quinn. Rachel consciously chooses boys to date because she knows it's expected for her to do so. she also chooses them based off of what they can provide for her at any given moment. for instance, Rachel only develops an interest in Finn after she discovers that he can match her vocally (how vocally compatible they are is debatable lmao, but that's neither here nor there.) you can literally see the moment where she chooses him as her desired love interest.

likewise, Santana chose to pick Finn to be interested in after she realized that Sue wanted her to have a boyfriend. and with Quinn, her interest in Finn most likely spouted from her wanting to claw her way to the top. and even if that's not how their relationship initially came about, it's pretty obvious that her interest in Finn skyrocketed after he was promoted to Quarterback again in season two. the major difference here is that Rachel is actually consistent in her interest, but also, Rachel is just generally more consistent in her wants and her needs than Santana and Quinn.

another interesting thing about her crush on Finn is that it's heavily implied that she didn't even know who he was before they were in Glee Club together (they get rid of this idea in season three, but I'm choosing to ignore it, because that's not at all how it was framed in season one.) she didn't know him, but she was more than aware of Quinn. which I understand, as Quinn had been directly targeting her for at least a year, but Finn is Quinn's boyfriend. he seems like a person that Rachel should've been aware of before this.

with Noah, Rachel isn't even the one to initiate their relationship. she goes out with him because he asks her to. she also does it with the intention of making Finn jealous. when she realizes that it's a dead end, she breaks up with him. the only time that Rachel pursues Noah after that is out of spite. with Blaine, she's interested in him as a duet partner. and she's also intrigued by the children that they could potentially have lmao. her interest in Jesse could easily be read as her wanting a duet partner also, as her interest in him sparks after they perform Hello together. it's not like he made a particularly good impression other than that lmao. her relationship with Brody hinges entirely on how he makes her feel. he's practically a Rachel Berry worship machine. who wouldn't want somebody like that around them, especially when you're as insecure as Rachel was at the time? her interest in Sam was canonically her attempting to fill a void. Sam could've been literally anybody. it wouldn't have mattered. the only reason that Rachel chose him was because he felt like a safe space.

#also you don't have to agree with me on this #I'm just throwing it out there #glee #rachel berry #show #cloey talks glee #ask #anon #mine #f

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timelyowl0 · 3 years

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Brittana/Faberry Fic Recs

Hi! Here’s a list I compiled of some of my all time favorite Brittana and Faberry fics! I was originally going to separate the list by Faberry and Brittana, but many of the stories have both, so instead you can just read the pairings listed for each. They are sorted by multi-chapter complete, multi-chapter incomplete/in progress, and one-shots. Each title is a link you can click on to take you to the fic. All credit goes to their respective authors :)

Also, here’s a quick rating guide in case you needed to know:

GA/PG - General Audience

T - Teen

M - Mature

E - Explicit

NR - Not rated

That’s all, I hope you enjoy!

Multi-chapter (complete):

Between The Lines (T) - 19 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana and Rachel/Quinn - Rachel invites Brittany and Santana to a sleepover. Brittany/Santana with a healthy side of Rachel/Quinn

The Only True Paradises (M) - 20 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - The tortuous evolution of Santana's feelings toward Brittany. See also "Pas de Deux," a companion piece from Brittany's point of view.

Pas de Deux (M) - 20 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Companion piece to "The Only True Paradises." The evolution of Santana and Brittany's relationship from Brittany's perspective.

Faithfully (T) - 5 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - "That moment when Santana had sworn, even though she and Brittany were standing at opposite ends of the raised platform…that she could still feel Brittany's energy zinging toward her, like they were connected on the same current." Brittana, Seasons 1 through 5, as told in five increments.

My Girlfriend's Sister's Keeper (T) - 13 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Brittany isn't the only Pierce that has Santana wrapped around her finger. Santana's life with her two favorite people.

Mariposa (M) - 5 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Like a butterfly, Santana's journey out of the closet occurs in stages. From the first time she heard the word gay to the first time she flew free from her chrysalis, she can remember everything.

time passes, in love and in seasons (T) - 4 Part Series - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Brittana, from the end of junior year and throughout senior year, told through the seasons. Mostly follows Season 3 canon.

Brittana Shorts (GA) - 8 Part Series - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - A collection of Brittana-centric short stories

it’s nice to have a friend (T) - 8 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - They're six when they first meet. It's the first day of school in a crowded classroom and Santana finds herself drawn to the new blonde girl. OR The story of how Brittany and Santana meet and all the significant moments in their lives following the first time they see one another. - sequel

A Matter of Miserable Time (T) - 10 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - "His voice was deep, quiet, and sure, so calm compared to the last words they had exchanged. Her voice was only a faint whisper as she questioned the man she hadn't spoken to in three years.'Papi.'"

Influence (M) - 26 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Brittany is perpetually cast as the dumb blonde, but the reasons behind her demeanor are more complex than that. She looks back on her childhood, her relationship with Santana, and the life-altering effects the decisions of her youth had on her future.

It’s Not Like I Wanted This to Happen (T)- 101 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana and Rachel/Quinn - Quinn takes a very drunk Rachel home from a party...encounters the Berrys…and herself. This story contains a huge amount of Brittana and a lot of Puck.

Rough Beginnings (M) - 44 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Quinn decides she needs to end this obsession once and for all, but life doesn't always work out the way we want it to. Sometimes it's so much better. Faberry.

Never Asked to Feel Your Halo (T) - 45 Chapters (1/2 in series) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - The thing was, neither of them wanted this-whatever it was, but since when did the Universe care about what Rachel or Quinn wanted? Their cards had been dealt the moment they'd entered that shower together. Now it came down to how well they played them.

Standing on the Edge Dancing in the Flames (M) - 34 Chapters (2/2 in series) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Life isn't all singing and dancing, not even in Glee club. And what if being on top of the pyramid just gives you further to fall. When everyone feels like a frienemy and fathers and faculty and babies and boyfriends complicate EVERYTHING, how are you ever supposed to get anything right? (Book Two of the 'No Halo' series)

The South Side of Anywhere (M) - 47 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Sometimes you fall in love with your eyes closed, and when you open them, the person is someone you never thought it could be. It started with letters, and turned into Faberry.

Somewhere in Between (M) - 77 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Imagine if Faberry happened instead of Finchel. This is a re-telling of every episode as if Faberry were cannon. Each chapter will chronicle each episode starting at the very beginning. Some things will change and some will remain the same. Longer description in first chapter. Also side Brittana. As well as Quinntana friendship, and Puckleberry bromance.

Didn’t See it Coming (M) - 63 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana? - AU HS. After a devastating breakup, Quinn turns to Rachel in need of a friend, and ends up with so much more. - "If, one day, someone asks me how it all started; I'll have to say it was a granola bar that finally did me in." Faberry.

Bet You Didn’t Know That (T) - 19 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Faberry. What she doesn't know, she doesn't need to find out.

Take Me As I Am Seasons 1 & 2 (T) - 48 chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana and Kurt/Blaine - The incredibly true adventures of Quinn and Rachel, starting from Sectionals Season 1. It's just like watching the show, if Faberry were the central couple and everything revolved around them! Brittana & Klaine co-star in supporting roles.

Take Me As I Am Season 3 (T) - 26 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana and Kurt/Blaine - The continued adventures of Quinn & Rachel as the starring couple of Glee. Some integration of canon events, but mostly this is the story of Faberry and their world! Klaine & Brittana co-star in supporting roles

Blink and You’ll Miss It (M) - 31 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Quinn Fabray and Rachel Berry discover they like each other. Against all odds, will they be able to get together before they tear each other apart?

You’re All I Need (M) - 17 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - A Faberry romance story, set when they are both single but I haven't specified when as I'm not even sure myself but most of the events are from series 3. Points of view will change every few chapters. And that's probably the worst description you've ever read but yeah I can't be bothered to change it.

quarantining or how quinn might lose it, once for all. (T) - 8 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - It starts like the worst horror movie ever but instead of being trapped in the basement of a creepy 50-something year old, Quinn finds herself being trapped in Rachel Berry's basement.

Once More From the Top (T) - 22 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana and others - Here's what you missed on Glee: McKinley's Glee Club reformed under the direction of Will Schuester. Rachel tried to recruit the Cheerios but that ended up being a total disaster. It's cool though because she heard Finn Hudson sing in the shower and he's actually really good. She successfully recruits him and now the Glee Club has enough members to be a real thing.And that's what you missed, on Glee!

Outside Hearts (M) - 37 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Rachel Berry's world is about to be turned upside down when one of Hollywood's most sought-after young actresses, Quinn Fabray, abruptly and mysteriously leaves her fame behind, moves to Ohio and tries to have a normal life while attending McKinley High. (Faberry w/ some Brittana)

I See That Ragged Soul Take Flight (M) - 44 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana, Mike/Tina, Kurt/Blaine and Sam/Mercedes - Ensemble cast piece exploring what happens after Season 3. Rachel, Santana and Kurt are in New York together. Quinn is at Yale. Explores adulthood, friendship and long-distance relationships. Eventual Faberry. Also contains, Brittana, Klaine, Tike and Samcedes content, plotlines back at McKinley, and frequent use of Santana POV.

All The Best (T, but I would rate M for descriptive scenes of suicide, eating disorders, rape, etc.) - 80 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - After spending the entire summer away, Quinn is eager to get back to normal and make the best of her junior year. Excited to put everything behind her and start fresh, she struggles to establish a new normal. But when she's least expecting it, Quinn finds support in the most unlikely places and is forced to confront the very feelings that landed her where she is in the first place.

take these broken wings (M) - 4 Part Series - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana and Kurt/Sam - Begins in Season one and follows Quinn through her life should she have chosen to keep Beth, realize she is gay, and fall in love with Rachel Berry. The main romantic relationship will be Faberry, with a bit of Hevans and Brittana, but apart from Faberry it will be very heavy on friendship and Quinn&Beth oriented.

the state of dreaming (T) - 3 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - Rachel couldn’t help the guilt that bubbled in her chest when she watched Quinn get a prom photo alone. Determined to make it up to her, she invites Quinn over for a sleepover. It becomes a routine. Set immediately after 2x20 (Prom Queen).

Enough to Believe (T) - 2 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - Years after Shelby ups and disappears from Lima with Beth, a blonde girl shows up on Rachel and Quinn's doorstep, armed with a lot of questions, and very familiar cheekbones.

you and her loathing this cruel world (M) - 3 Chapters - Pairings: Quinn/Rachel, minor Kurt/Quinn and Kurt/Sam - "Of all the girls he had to have sex with (which really, were none), of course it was someone with a painting of Jesus above her bed, so he knows that his only hope in hell that this will go away is in a negative test result." Season 1 AU; Kurt is pretty sure he's gay, but would like to make sure. Quinn Fabray has similar questions running through her mind. They put their theories to the test, with very much unintended consequences. - sequel

I’ve Been Trying to Reach You (T) - 25 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana, Santana/Puck, Rachel/Jesse and Sam/Tina - After falling pregnant in sophomore year, Quinn Fabray plummets from the top of the teen hierarchy at McKinley High to the very bottom. In an effort to give her a chance to start over, her parents transfer her to Carmel, a private school in the area with a blossoming arts program. It's supposed to be a new beginning, but what she doesn't count on is immediately becoming enemies with the most popular girl in school: Rachel Berry, co-captain of Vocal Adrenaline.

The Lopez Manifesto (T) - 8 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - santana starts writing a rachel/quinn fanfic for everyone at McKinley. it’s also extremely popular as everyone awaits her weekly updates. (usually based on what the girls are doing that week.) quinn is the last to find out and is�� pissed.

my heart’s a leather jacket I am waiting to give to someone sweet (T) - 15 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Brittany is McKinley’s resident broody rebel who doesn’t see much point to high school, and who, completely incidentally, just so happens to be kind of a math genius. Santana is Lima's golden child, the perfect and unapproachable only child of public figure Dr. Lopez. She’s also the high school’s enigma; no one actually knows anything about her aside from the fact that she’s cold, distant, terrifying, aloof, and willing to eviscerate anyone who looks at her the wrong way. Unfortunately for her, Brittany is about to get a crash course in the complete mystery that is Santana Lopez when she is asked—or, more realistically, forced—to be Santana's math tutor.

Dead Girls Don’t Sing (T) - 39 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana, Rachel/Quinn, Kurt/Blaine and Tina/Mike - S3 AU. Brittany doesn't believe in unicorns anymore, Rachel's dreams are as dead as the world, Santana is no one's hero…and Quinn? Quinn's just trying to breathe. The world as they knew it is gone -now all they can do is survive. Zombie Apocalypse. Faberrittana Friendship. Slow Burn Faberry. Character Death. COMPLETE

Simple Parts (T) - 13 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - That awkward moment when you travel thirty years forward in time and find out you're married to your high school nemesis? Yeah, it totally sucks...except...maybe it doesn't.

The Lateness of the Hour (M) - 12 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - "Brittany has much less to lose. She always has."

half of me (T) - 4 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - a run-in (quite literally) at the bookstore, two broadway tickets, and a seven-year-old in a plaid catholic-school uniform. what has rachel gotten herself into? future AU where quinn has beth and rachel makes it on broadway.

April Fools (T) - 10 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - Santana recruits - forces - Rachel to help her prank Quinn. All she has to do is pretend that a love potion has caused her to fall madly in love with the cheerleader. Simple, right? Wrong. Faberry.

Stars & the Moon (M) - 15 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - In the midst of dealing with Beth's adoption, Quinn ends up working on a summer community theatre production with Rachel. Hilarity ensues. Just kidding.

Love Me Any Less (M) - 25 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Junior year becomes the beginning of something no one expected, and maybe the beginning of something a few can't understand how they ever lived without. Starts mild but progresses to M rating. First fic ever! Faberry.

Better Where It’s Wetter (M) - 10 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - Rachel and her dads are going on a LGBT family-friendly cruise for the summer and Rachel's told she's can bring a friend. Who else to bring but Quinn?

Like a Seal Upon Your Heart (M) - 20 Chapters - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana? - Quinn Fabray is Daddy's little girl and the perfect Christian. She CAN'T be gay. But then her friendship with Rachel Berry starts to change...

Somewhere in Brooklyn (M) - 47 Chapters - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Santana and Brittany have been trying to get pregnant for a year without any luck. What happens when a teenage foster child and positive pregnancy test land in their laps on the same day? A unique journey of motherhood ensues.

Multi-chapter (incomplete/in progress):

Everyone's Gonna Know Now (T) - 8 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - 3/4 in series - When Santana confronted Finn about outing her, his response was, "The whole school already knows." That was pretty much true. This story is about the first moment or incident in which each member of Glee - and a few others - discovered Santana's secret.

Be Okay (M) - 2 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - “Kurt doesn’t know why he does it. It’s not as if he and Santana had ever had anything resembling a friendship, but he feels drawn to her, feels connected to the anguish in her voice as she realized that her biggest secret in the world was about to be revealed.“ This is the evolution of Kurt and Santana’s friendship taking place over a series of one-shots.

looks like a girl but she's a flame, so bright she can burn your eyes, better look the other way, you can try but you'll never forget her name (M) - 5 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - santana lopez writes down the story of her life for a reunion project set for the glee club by none other than rachel berry. aka, a deep dive into santana's life told through her eyes. very santana/brittana centric.

No One Left to Blame (M, read tags) - 30 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Quinn Fabray is well-versed in keeping the truths of her family and her past firmly hidden away. But, her efforts prove to be moot when Rachel Berry, armed with her own secrets of the past, arrives at Dalton Academy and manages to turn both their worlds upside down - or, perhaps, right way up. Faberry. Trigger Warnings.

I’m not breaking, I won’t take it (M, read warnings) - 2 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and minor Quinn/Santana - Santana gets up and starts toward her, “Jesus, what happened to you?” she mumbles, but she's softer than she was moment before. It's obvious that she’s concerned. Quinn chokes down a sob and then admits, “There’s something wrong with me.”“Hey, listen. Whatever it is, you’re going to be fine." Santana is still not getting it, but she’s rubbing soothing little circles on Quinn’s shoulders. There really must be something wrong with her too, because then Quinn is lunging forward and then she’s kissing Santana. Quinn feels her freeze, but then Santana relaxes and she’s kissing her back. or, a study in quinn fabray.

no love like your love (T) - 5 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana and Blaine/Sam - Following the death of her mother, Rachel Berry assumes guardianship of her six-year-old brother, Daniel. After a cross-country move for his sister's job, the first friend Danny makes is a soccer-playing, lucky fin having, firecracker of a girl named Beth.

Song of Mine (M) - 18 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Santana Lopez, the new Music teacher at a religious private school in Indianapolis, meets Brittany Pierce, the resident Math teacher. A love story with a happy ending. Promise.

Girls Over Flowers (NR) - 14 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Brittany/Santana - Dalton Academy—a school of prestige, refinement and the country's wealthiest students—houses the famous F3. When "commoner" transfer student, Rachel Berry directly offends F3's leader, Quinn Fabray, she becomes their target. Mayhem ensues.

we were built to fall apart (then fall back together) (T) - 8 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - Rachel and Quinn haven't seen each other for seven years and neither thought they'd see the other again. They certainly didn't see themselves starring together in a Broadway musical, as each other's love interests.

A Different Life (E) - 33 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Brittany/Santana, Finn/Rachel and Kurt/Blaine - Canon!Divergent Brittana. Santana and Brittany move to New York after high school. Everything is going perfectly until Brittany gets a phone call that changes everything. Seven years later, Santana has a daughter and she and Britt haven't seen each other...Canon until 3x16ish. No Louisville, no second senior year.

you get too close you’ll get a royalty high (so breathe it in to feel the love) (T) - 9 Chapters (Incomplete) - Pairings: Brittany/Santana, Rachel/Quinn, Sam/Mercedes, Mike/Tina, Kitty/Artie and Kurt/Blaine - "Alright," she began uneasily. "I'll do it. I'll go to the dumb school."Her parent's smiles beaming back at her were almost enough to make her think this could possibly be a good idea, but the nerves surging in her stomach said otherwise. Boarding School/Royalty Brittana AU

One-shot:

Tattoo (T) - Oneshot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - "She soaks it in for a few seconds—this night, this place, these friends, this family room floor, this girl—before she says it back." Post-3x11. Brittana.

Eden (T) - Oneshot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Brittany and Santana teach Joe about love. 4K

Riding in Cars With Girls (M) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - After Quinn quit Glee club and joined a band Rachel feels the gap Quinn has left and sets out to get her back, whatever the cost. But what happens when Quinn's only condition involves her car and Rachel's lips on hers every day at five? Punk!Quinn

and things we’re all too young to know (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Five vignettes set after the point when Brittana become girlfriends. Not too many people would guess it, but Brittany knows that loving Santana is the easiest and best thing in the world to do; Santana is just the best person to love.

My Friends Say That I’m Falling In Love (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Brittany and Santana spend the week leading up to Valentine's Day giving Mercedes grief about her date. Brittana romance, Brittanacedes friendship. Mouseverse. One-shot.

And What Would You Say If I Wrote the Whole Thing Out for You? (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Some things have changed a lot since Sam left McKinley and some things haven’t really changed at all. Set circa 3x08.

The Landslide Brought Me Down (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Our girls’ story. Sweet lady kisses, Landslide, their separation, the night of Prom Queen, Songbird, Santana’s Abuela’s rejection, the night after Santana learned about the political ad, Brittany’s senior year falling apart, the lights of New York, and other scenes.

seven (GA) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - A companion piece to 'it's nice to have a friend'. Takes place after the first scene in the second chapter - can be read separately to 'it's nice to have a friend'. Basically just childhood fluff that examines their friendship and the items they connect to their friendship.

baby you don't gotta fight (i'll be here til the end of time) (GA) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - She sees red for all of last period, a strange twinge of pain in her chest because all these people think they know Santana but they’re all wrong. or: three times Brittany tells people they've got Santana all wrong and the one time she tells Santana

The Unicorn Tapestries (NR) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - We lie on our stomachs on my pale blue sheets, a book lying open in front of us that we bend our heads over, sunlight all over the page and bringing bits of gold out in your skin..

But You Could Sing (NR) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Why am I always the one who tells bedtime stories? Because your stories are prettier, BrittBritt. But you can tell real ones. Like what?

Colors (NR) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - The sunlight in my room shines from the south. The way I know: when I lean far out my window, the sun rises on the side where I can feel my heartbeat, and sets in the direction of my writing hand.

You’re Something Else (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - 'Quinn gets the impression she and Rachel are finally on the same page about what may or may not be happening between them. All she really knows is that it's colourful.'

Raising the Bar (M) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and minor/implied Brittany/Santana - Quinn never expected that the best matchmaker would turn out to be a lumpy pullout couch.

the one with the friends reference (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, minor/implied Brittany/Santana and minor/implied Kurt/Blaine - "You can see it. Quinn standing in front of you, as close as she can get without touching you and saying, 'Are you attracted to me?'" Faberry. Post-season six.

Blame it on the Alcohol (or the gay, whatever) (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and minor/implied Brittany/Santana - “I can’t believe what you did to my body, I used to have abs!” - In which one sentence is totally incorrect and causes chaos and havoc and Faberry feelings to happen. Also known as drunk Rachel is kyoot and Finn is stoopid.

could you pass in love? (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - “'Quinn Fabray, I will divorce you, don’t think I won’t!'” In which Rachel and Quinn get married, sending them into a possibly out-of-character feelings frenzy . Season Three. Faberry.

Do You Wanna Know How This Story Plays Out? (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - It's not her fault that you feel the way you do about women, you know that, and you knew that then, too. But you've been angry at Rachel Berry for making you feel things you wanted to lock away for years, and it was far too easy to put all of the blame on her to avoid dealing with your own feelings. It wasn't and isn't fair, but it was about protecting yourself and it makes it a little easier to bear. - OR - After everything implodes with Finn, Quinn moves in with Rachel. They make out a lot without ever talking about how much more it means to both of them. Introspective Closeted!Quinn POV from second-person.

you succeed at being mine (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Kurt/Sam - Sequel to 'you and her loathing this cruel world'.

This Must Be The Place (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - Santana is eight years old when her Tio Carlos joins the Army. Or the less-cracky-than-you-might-expect Glee/The Losers crossover where Cougar is Santana's uncle. (If it tells you anything, i nearly titled this 'Ohana Means Family.')

This Modern Love (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Brittany/Santana - "How do you know when you're dating someone?"

Beth’s family tree (GA) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - "Now that being said, my family tree is composed by both my biological family and my adoptive family" Beth explains easily enough as she clicks the mouse. But then the next slide appears and the teacher gapes at all the information, names, colours and arrows in the diagram.

pictures of you, pictures of me (hung upon the wall, for the world to see) (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn and Brittany/Santana - "Quinn looked around her room again. She'd never noticed it before, but she had a lot of pictures of Rachel." or: a faberry oneshot set between seasons 1 and 2 where Quinn reflects on a series of moments with Rachel that led to where she is now

anything could happen (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - She stared down at the test in her hand. The line was faint, disappearing depending on the angle. It was possible she was just seeing things, but still. She pulled out her cell phone, tears running down her flushed cheeks. It felt like the earth could open up at any second, just swallow her whole. The line rang. Once, twice, she cursed quietly. She sucked in a breath as she heard a click signifying the call had connected."Hello? Rachel?" Her voice cracked. "Quinn. I need your help." A Faberry-centric rewrite of Rachel's season 4 pregnancy scare

Frannie’s View (T) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - When Frannie was a child she did everything she could to make her father happy. She was a daddy’s girl through and through. She was quiet and never disrespectful. She went to church every Sunday with her mother and father and prayed every night. Frannie had a lot of friends at school and was popular and well liked. She did very well in school though her participation grades were always low. Daddy told her women were supposed to be quiet and always treat their husbands with respect. She was a princess and he was the King. He ruled the house. Frannie absolutely hated the way her father treated her little sister. Frannie desperately tried to change Lucy. She thought if Lucy could be better then their father would be happier, nicer. OR A journey from Frannie's perspective of Lucy/Quinn and Quinn's sexuality and later feelings for Rachel.

According to Judy (PG) - One-shot - Pairings: Rachel/Quinn - How Judy Fabray deals with Quinn's infatuation with Rachel.

#brittana #faberry #fic rec #brittana fic #faberry fic

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ehbunnehsblog · 2 years

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As much as Quinn was wrong in S3 EP 2 of Glee I don't think Will had any right to talk to her that way.

He was being hella aggressive and could have said what he wanted to much better. Also telling Quinn she has to stop playing the victim? Will let's Rachel play victim almost whenever and get away with it but when Quinn is being manipulated into making a video for Sue's campaign Will actually says something? I hate how this show constantly tries so hard to make Quinn the villain like yeah she has her moments but so does every other character yet Quinn has it so bad compared to Rachel or Santana.

Will sucks and although he clearly loves his students, after all of the shit he let's pass and how he talked to Quinn he shouldn't have been a teacher.

Oh let's not forget how Glee tries to get us to like Will and root for him into making him seem like a victim and a good guy even though he has cheated on Emma, ruined her relationships and treats her like shit sometimes.

I don't understand how Will lets Rachel get away with sending someone to a cr@ckh0use and has let her act way more childish than Quinn but when Quinn, someone who is actually hurt and probably has trauma from the stuff she has been through e.g. her father guilt tripping her, her mom not standing up for her, having a baby, putting said baby up for adoption and straight up just having a crappy year, shes punished?

Rachel will act like a brat if she doesn't even get one solo yet Will let's her act like that (except for one time but she still continued her behaviour 🙄)

Also I hate how Will only seems to punish or gets mad at those who stand up to him or reject his ideas like that one time Kurt wanted New Directions to perform Britney Spears songs and spoke up to Will for how wrong he was to not perform Britney because of his biases and although yes Kurt could have said things better I think this really shows how shit Will is of a teacher. He sent Kurt to the office but not any of the kids who physically fought each other, the kids who slushied New Directions and he didn't do a lot when Rachel sent someone to a cr@ckh0use except scorned her.

The more I rewatch this series the more I realize how in the wrong Will is and it's sad because i feel like in the beginning he was kind of in the right but later on hes just a total jerk to his students and others around him.

I like characters that have faults but I don't like how this behavior never seems to be called out and when it is they paint the person who tries to speak out against him as the villain and the person we should be booing when in fact Will Shuester is just a crappy person and a crappy teacher.

Also in case anybody asks when I mention that Quinn gets it worse than Santana and Rachel (especially Rachel) I am mostly talking about how she is constantly painted as a villain and a bad guy yet Rachel is absolutely awful and gets away with it when they should be showing us the consequences for her actions and Santana is just your outspoken bitch character who is constantly a not so great person while they actually try to make Quinn likeable but constantly try to make her a fully bad person when she really isn't.

It feels like the show really wanted her to be your stereotypical blonde haired bully and I think they were being super lazy when they could have added so much more to her but I guess that would have taken away from Rachel wouldn't it?

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slipping-through-my-fingertips · 3 years

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If Glee did a Taylor Swift Tribute Episode...

Just my opinions, feel free to add on to them. I know I have some fellow gleek swifties following me. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Obviously they have to do some of the hits but I think some people would have some out of the box picks.

*This post assumes all Taylor songs are available to choose from as of May 14th 2021 but focuses on Taylor’s first 6 albums (if you want more glee and Taylor I have fics with that; LOVER and FOLKLORE) and takes liberties with where this episode’s placement is in terms of canon. But since it’s all made up anyway who cares (but Blaine’s involved so I guess season 3 idk).*

Okay, trying to do a full plot here (completely inspired by @kurtdeservesbetter head canon posts. I hope this lives up to her fabulous posts). This will be my version of glee so everyone gets solos and Rachel can’t hog the spotlight. Also, this is about to be super long (both post wise and episode wise).

Let’s open the first episode with

...Ready For It because the New Directions are in their reputation era. Santana does the opening cough centerstage. Everyone in black and/or camo green outfits (can you just see Kurt in a dark green bedazzled snake jacket, Santana in a black leather dress, and Tina digging out some goth clothes for people to borrow?), snakes everywhere, but probably no Karyn (she just wouldn’t fit on the auditorium stage). Santana takes the first verse but we have Blaine step up for verse 2. (I just love their friendship in the Michael tribute, cute little badasses are BACK. Also him singing “Burton to this Taylor” is such a Klaine thing to do).

Everyone is still dressed in their rep outfits but we’re in the choir room now. Mr. Schue is talking about why Taylor had to disappear and clap back with rep, how rough the industry is for women and tries to uplift the ladies in the room and encourage them to not silence their voices (cue snarky comment from Santana about Rachel needing to be silent).

Then, Mr. Schue goes on about how you can only understand how Taylor got to her rep era by studying her earlier music. So we have a performance of Tim McGraw. Simple, front of the choir room performance, maybe Puck does guitar, and sitting on stools.

Everyone is surprised to find out how pumped Sam is for this assignment but he is all over it. “It's about time we did some country in this room.” Cue Sam and Quinn at her locker talking about their ‘date’ last night, Sam’s all cute and teasing and Quinn is not into it. She tells him it was fun but she was wrong, they shouldn’t do this again. In turn, he does a wonderful performance of Bye Bye Baby. He thought it was more but clearly he’s “a part of her past.”

Then, we’re in the empty choir room. Tina and Mike are there. (I love their cutesy duets) They sing Everything Has Changed and it’s utterly adorable. Can’t you hear Mike asking Tina if she’s “good to go” like Ed does? And while we’re on the subject of cute duets and RED, we flash to the courtyard to see Santana and Brittany. They turn Stay Stay Stay into a duet. “I’ve been loving you for quite some time,” “before you I only dated self-indulgent takers who took all their problems out on me,” “no one else is gonna love me when I’m mad, mad, mad,” and “it’s occurring to me that I’d like to hang out with you for my whole life” it’s perfect for them. Adorable ladies kisses are had.

Let’s toss in some boy drama for fun. Idk shit about football but somehow Puck is praised by their coach over Finn, which gets him all pissy, and Puck’s upset and jealous because Finn is back with Quinn now (this is why Quinn shut Sam now earlier, she changed her mind). Can we say duet of Bad Blood? “So if you’re coming my way...just don’t.”

After their dramatics, we have a Brittany solo in the choir room. It’s after school at this point (or whenever glee club is). Brittany does You’ll Always Find You Way Back Home.

When she finishes Mr. Schue tries to explain that it’s a Hannah Montana song. Britt injects that it’s confusing how she’s really Miley Cryus “like how can you be two people at once?”. Before Mr. Schue can continue, Kurt pipes up “you never specified that the songs had to be sung by Taylor Swift, just that they were her songs.” Mercedes adds, “yeah, Mr. Schue, Taylor wrote that song.” Mr. Schue concedes that he has once again been outwitted by Kurtcedes. The friends do their little hand shake thing.

With a sigh, Mr. Schue asks Mike if he’s ready to go and Mike asks to take things to the auditorium for some dancing room. Everyone’s on stage with him and it’s kind of a group number but Mike is the focus. It’s Shake It Off. All inspired by the music video. He’s tried to fit in elsewhere (i.e. football, with the smart kids, etc..) but he’s really himself in glee when he’s dancing.

Part 2 of Taylor Tribute Episodes

We begin with an ALL GIRL NUMBER of A Place In This World. Just because.

Glee is dismissed and we zoom in on Artie. He’s watching Tina with Mike and Brittany with Santana. Both Tina and Britt have broken his heart by this point. So, he’s rolling down the halls singing A Perfectly Good Heart. While Artie’s soloing, we cut to Rachel watching Finn and Quinn chatting. Artie’s song playing over this scene. Rachel is feeling similar to him at the moment.

She’s pretty sure Finn dumped her to be with Quinn again even though Kurt and Blaine told her they saw Quinn and Sam at the movies last night together making out in the back row. Fine, if that’s how he’s going to be, she doesn’t need him anyway. Cue Mr. Perfectly Fine. Uber dramatic solo performance walking around McKinley’s halls watching Finn and Quinn together ending in the auditorium alone. (see what I did there, both broken hearted peeps singing a song with Perfectly in it (this was not at all planned, actually, happy accident))

After some good old heartbreak, we have Kurt and Blaine on screen. Blaine walks into the auditorium to see Kurt sitting on the edge of the stage. “What’s all the fuss?” he asks from the door. Kurt had texted him “EMERGENCY.” The band starts to play and Kurt just starts singing, Enchanted. It’s time to profess their love for each other, just like they sing Perfect together in the car, this duet needs no audience. Blaine catches up and sings while walking towards his boyfriend. It’s very reminiscent of past New Directions competitions where they come in from the back and make their way to the stage. “Wondering if you knew I was enchanted to meet you?” Kurt and Blaine both know the answer to that question now but just a few months ago they were both wondering that exact thing.

They kiss before we cut to Kurt and Blaine walking hand in hand into the choir room where everyone else is already. Mr. Schue is praising the performances thus far and of course asks Rachel if she’s ready to solo (some practice for her completion solo). This causes an uproar from Mercedes and Santana. Another classic argument of how she gets too many solos. Mr. Schue tries to shut them both down but Santana tells Rachel to watch her back, and we get three very different reactions to this.

All three girls storm out.

First, we visit Mercedes alone in the courtyard. This solo is all about being hurt over this great thing in her life (glee) and her being denied happiness within that club. Thus, Cold As You. (mostly to indulge myself because she’d blow us away with this song).

Next, Rachel in the auditorium. A huge bridge on stage (very Speak Now Tour of her), belting out Better Than Revenge. Santana’s dropped the last straw (the humiliation, name calling, Finn at one point and now solos,) it’s too much this time.

And finally, Santana walking around McKinley, showing us flashes of Rachel ‘outshining’ her and the rest of glee and Mr. Schue being unfair, while singing Look What You Made Me Do.

Tina walks out at the same time as Rachel, Mercedes, and Santana but no one seems to put two and two together. She feels just as underutilized as the latter two do. She ends up in an empty classroom and sings The Outside. “Nobody ever lets me in” and “on the outside looking in.”

Once the 3, err 4, divas have left the room, Finn sticks up for Rachel. Quinn, of course, has something to say about this along the lines of “you always defend her.” Finn, intimated by her ‘scary Quinn’ fumbles and blurts “because she’s my girlfriend” WHICH IS NOT TRUE AT THIS POINT. Quinn dumps him on the spot, cuts quickly to Blaine and Kurt sharing some ‘oh my god, can you believe this’ expressions, and vanishes from the room.

By this point, Rachel is long gone from the auditorium but the bridge is still there.

Here’s where we go way off script but imagine, Quinn has decided to just quit boys. They’ve all failed her anyway, she’s better off being alone. She walks up the bridge and thinks to herself “god Rachel’s so dramatic, where did this thing even come from” before it hits her “fuck, I’m as bad as Finn. I want her.” Then, she starts singing Clean to herself in the auditorium, likely tearing up throughout and ending with a good cry. (Because Dianna would DELIVER with Clean.)

While Quinn is having a sexuality crisis, the rest of glee is still happening. They’re discussing upcoming competition and debating solos and songs.

Kurt’s all: “Mr. Schue, if I may” and performs a lovely rendition of Call It What You Want. Those opening lines are too good. “My castle (ie McKinley) crumbled overnight, brought a knife to a gun fight (ie couldn’t fight off Dave Karofsky), “I’m doing better than I ever was ‘cause my baby’s fit like a daydream,” and “at least I did one thing right.” When he’s done, Blaine’s a mess in the back of the choir room, and Mr. Schue says: “not really what we’re looking for but very nice, Kurt” however, Kurt’s too busy sitting beside Blaine teasing him about blushing.

Then, the missing girls return to the room having sung out their emotions. Quinn, having realized her feelings for Rachel, ends up soloing You Belong With Me to the New Directions in the choir room. Odd looks all around, no one knows what’s up with her and why does she keep glancing at Rachel? (Faberry just fit so well I had to add it, don’t know if I’m a shipper or not but it’s here now) (also thanks to @spicygemini for pointing out the obvious “Quinn would have ate YBWY”).

Mr. Schue wants to move the group to the audition to perform their final number of the Taylor Swift tribute well but Tina asks to sing first. He’s surprised but allows it, taking a seat with the rest of the New Directions.

Tina sings Beautiful Ghosts. “Watch from the dark, wait for my life to start” because New Directions is refusing to use her talents AGAIN. She’s singing this to Rachel and the girls who were in the Treble Tones. Because she absolutely SMASHES this number, the glee kids agree she gets solo for their next competition (and they deliver on that promise).

To conclude Part 2 of the Taylor tribute episode, we have a group performance of Long Live. “One day we will be remembered”, “all the years we stood there on the sidelines wishing for right now”, “for a moment a band of thrives in ripped up jeans got to rule the world” ie wining completions, “when they look at the pictures please tell them my name...”

#this took so long please enjoy it #Taylor tribute glee episode #glee head canon #gleek swifie #glee #taylor swift

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royallyprincesslilly · 4 years

Text

Title: Kismet {11}

Henry Cavill x Famous OFC Aliya Taylor

Warning: Plot, Slow Burn, Mild Cursing, Dialogue Heavy

Words: 7k

Summary: Aliya is a singer turned model turned actress. Since she was fifteen, she’s been creating her empire in the entertainment world. As the daughter of a famous fashion model/designer and Hollywood director, you’d think life is easy for her, but her past has been anything but easy. Due to past trauma, she’s forever changed and no longer trusts any man that is not in her family and a select few in her team. She’s sworn off love and serious relationships and has planned never to fall again, but love isn’t something that can be planned. It just happens when it’s meant to. Can Aliya outrun a love that seems hellbent on holding tight to her, a love that is Kismet?

Note: The musical notes emoji 🎶 signifies a song being sung. They are the lyrics.

If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG!! 😘

As always, thank you so much for reading. ❤️❤️

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

***Interactive***

Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |

🎶 “But I don't wanna give up. Baby, I just want you to get up. Lately, I've been a little fed up. Wish you would just focus on—me. Can you focus on me? Baby, can you focus on me?”

The sounds of H.E.R filled the semi-rustic kitchen as you moved around it, checking on the multiple things you were making. Her album was one of your go-to things for mellowing out. You sang along and got lost vocalizing along with her. It didn’t take long for you to forget what time it was and that you weren’t exactly alone in the house. As the song ended and the next came on, you held your hands in the air, already feeling the opening of Girls Need Love Too.

🎶 “Honestly, I'm tryna stay focused. You must think I've got to be joking when I say. I don't think I can wait. I just need it now. Better swing my way.”

The lyrics were hitting you as right as gospel right about now. Pulling open the oven, you checked on the treats inside, making sure they were rising just the way they needed to. After you were pleased with their progress, you checked your pots on the stove one more time, then went back to the pitcher you were mixing your famous mimosas. That was when DSVN came on, and the hypnotizing sound of the lyrics with the beat made your mind drift back to Henry, especially when the hook came on. It sounded like it was made just for you in this situation.

For the next few minutes, you focused on trying not to burn breakfast rather than dancing or singing. That was until Santana came on, and you couldn’t help but bust out your best salsa moves to Carlos’ electric guitar and Latin flare. The song was so catchy that you quickly got carried away winding your hips and doing your best Shakira impersonation. If she were standing in front of you, you thought she’d be proud because you gave it everything you had. Before you knew it, the song was almost over, and you’d forgotten about being quiet, and were now singing along to the song as you danced around the kitchen.

“Someone woke up on the right side of the bed.”

Your scream was loud, so loud it bounced off the walls of the room. Your head nearly snapped off your neck from the force of which you spun around.

“Oh my god!”

Henry stood there pinching his lips, trying to stop himself from laughing at you.

“You scared me half to death.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I um—I smelled food and heard music, and here you are,” Henry explained.

“Oh no, no. How long were you standing there?”

Another smile spread across his face, and it was all you needed to know he’d probably seen the whole thing. Embarrassment filled you.

“Oh god, no.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. You can dance and sing. I enjoyed the show.”

You snorted while shaking your head, trying to overcome your embarrassment. When you met his eyes again, you still saw the amusement there.

“Good morning,” you began.

“Good morning. What’s—what’s going on?”

He motioned to the organized chaos around you.

“Oh, breakfast.”

“Did you order?”

“Nope. One hundred percent handmade but these hands,” you replied, holding up your hands and flexing your fingers for emphasis.

Henry’s eyebrows shot up as he approached the kitchen island.

“You cook.”

Approaching the same island on the opposite side, you nodded. “I cook and bake and mix and clean, iron, and do laundry.”

Henry snorted and nodded, clearly amused by the sarcasm in your voice.

“Cute.”

You smiled and leaned against it, resting your elbows on the wooden island keeping your eyes on him.

“I know I don’t look it, but they do say never judge a book by its cover,” you replied.

Henry nodded before he spoke. “For the record, I’ve never judged you.”

You studied him for several moments before your eyes drifted over him, taking in his tan linen pants and cream shirt. He looked good, and you almost got lost in that before you snapped out of it. Clearing your throat, you pushed off the island and looked around.

“I’m almost done.”

“What’s for breakfast, chef Taylor?”

You smiled, “I’m glad you asked Mr. Cavill. We have lavender vanilla bean beignets, scrambled eggs, sausages, and of course mimosas.”

Henry’s eyebrows again shot up. “Wow. How long have you been up?”

Turning from him, you dropped a few mint leaves into the pitcher you’d just mixed. “Well, I actually haven’t slept yet.”

“So you’ve been up all night?”

“Yep.”

Sliding to the right, you turned off the oven and took out the beignets to place them on the stove to cool.

“Why? Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. I’m a night—insomniac.”

He was going to find out one way or another throughout this vacation anyway, you reasoned with yourself.

“Really?”

He sounded hesitant but also surprised.

“Yeah, most of the time.”

You used the time he stood there in a state of shock to finish up what you were doing before turning back to him.

“Are you going to pass out later or soon?”

“Nope. Come on. All done. Can you grab those two?”

You nodded your head to the two platters on the stove as you took the others walking out of the kitchen to the outdoor dining table he’d shown you yesterday. Once he saw the table that had two other platters and set place settings, he exclaimed.

“Wow.”

“I know, but I like to cook.”

“Everything smells incredible,” Henry complimented as he stood at one of the Rattan chairs waiting for you to sit first.

Once you sat down, you motioned for him to begin. “Dig in.”

A few minutes passed with the two of you loading your plates with various items. Once you were finished, you took up the pitcher and poured drinks for you both. When he brought one of your beignets to his mouth, you paused and watched him sink his teeth into it. As soon as he did, he moaned so loud it filled the space and drifted off.

“Holy--,” he began but never finished because he took several more bites finishing his first one. Once he’d swallowed and reached for another, he continued. “How did you learn to make beignets?”

“Well, it began with my Gramaw, but eventually, it was experimenting.”

He bit into another and rolled his eyes into the back of his head, and groaned. “These are heaven.”

“I’m glad you like them.”

Covering his food-filled mouth, he spoke, “Love them, get it correct.”

You snorted and nodded as you began to eat. The view before you caught your eye once again, and getting lost was easy. The morning was beautiful, warm, and calm, with a gentle breeze that carried the salt in the air from the nearby sea. You didn’t know who wouldn’t love waking up to this every day. It was then you realized how badly you’d needed a vacation after all.

“You stare out a lot.”

Henry’s voice brought your eyes back to him to find his already on you.

“I’m sorry,” you began with a soft smile. “Another thing about me, I do that—a lot.”

“What’re you thinking about?”

You looked out again and nudged your head to the view. “How incredible this view is and that I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve taken a vacation,” you confessed.

“Tell me about it. I was literally running on fumes. I have no idea how I made it this far,” Henry said.

You continued to eat and fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes before he spoke again.

“Was there anything particular you wanted to do today?”

“Like what?”

“There’s so much to do. I know a good spa. There’s diving, boat tours of this incredible lagoon, wine tasting, touring, driving along cote d'Azur. You name it, and it can be done,” he listed off.

“A lot of choices.”

You brought your legs up and hugged them to your body as you continued to eat while thinking about your options.

“What do you feel like doing?”

“I don’t mind either way,” Henry quickly responded.

That didn’t help you one bit, but you made the decision all the same. “Nothing screams vacation like a bikini, and a beach, so let’s live it up.”

He smiled as he nodded. “All right. We have a plan then,” he said, clapping his hands.

The rest of breakfast was comfortable and peaceful. Neither of you seemed to mind that conversation fell to the wayside because you were both lost in the food and scenery before you. After breakfast, you and Henry managed to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen together as you endured his teasing on the multitude of things you’d used to cook. As you cleaned, you caught his eyes on your body a few times, but he kept his physical distance for the most part. After you separated to get yourselves ready for your day in the sun.

You spent longer than necessary trying to decide on the right bikini. You didn’t know if you should go demure princess or buxom goddess. You were moving and making decisions by reading him. You told yourself the night before that you’d go at his pace and take your cues from him. If he initiated touching, you’d reciprocate. If he kissed you, you’d kiss him back. If he stayed away, you would too. You didn’t want to do the wrong thing or anything, especially since you didn’t know where you stood with him. Letting your self-doubt win, you chose the middle ground on the bikini.

Thirty minutes later, you stepped outside the villa to find Henry waiting patiently at a white Fiat convertible.

“Wow. Is this yours?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised. We have established that you’re a car man.”

He smiled as his eyes trailed over you. “Wow. The short shorts come out, huh.”

You looked over yourself, then back to him. “This is short? Ha, just you wait. I have even shorter.”

“I bet you do,” Henry chided as he held open the passenger door for you.

“It’s about a ten-minute drive to the beach, maybe eight if the cliffside isn’t flooded.”

“Wow, you’re right there, huh.”

He smiled and nodded as you slipped into the car.

“All right, let’s go. I have a goal to be kissed plentifully by this French sun, so in two weeks' time, I’m showing every bit of the melanin my ancestors blessed me with,” you joked.

Henry shut your door and walked around to the driver’s side. Once in, he pressed the start button.

“Bring it on. I happened to really like yours…it’s sexy,” he slipped in, meeting your eyes for a few moments.

“Did you just call me sexy, Mr. Cavill?”

His smile was wide before he slipped on his sunglasses. “Did I? Maybe, maybe not,” he said before he pulled off, beginning the journey.

As he drove, you relished the breeze and sun on your skin and waved your hands in the air, fully enjoying the carefree vibes you felt. Before long, you’d pulled out your phone and began snapping a multitude of pictures of the scenery, the people, and occasionally even Henry, though he probably had no idea. You didn’t want to miss the chance to see how perfect he looked behind the wheel.

When you got close to the beach, Henry parked along the cliff as plenty other cars had done. According to him, no one made a fuss about small things like that; as long as people could still pass it was all right. The laidback style was already agreeing with you. With him carrying all the bags like the gentleman he was, you allowed him to lead you across the road toward the sands of the beach and then down the shore to find the perfect spot. It took a few minutes, but when you found it, you staked your claim, stomping in the sand, marking it as yours. Henry took the initiative, spreading the oversized beach blanket using the items you’d brought with you as anchors for the corners.

Once he’d gotten it perfect, you wasted no time pulling off your tank then peeling off the shorts your wore. You tried to keep your eyes away from him, though you really wanted to know if you had his undivided attention. The middle ground bikini you’d chosen was still a look. The cut complimented your curves, while the color complimented your complexion. You wanted to take it at his pace, but you also had to show him you were still hot.

When you lied back on the blanket, you gawked at the ocean before you and marveled at its sparkle while the sun reflected off of it. Looking beside you to him, you found his eyes on you and his jaw slightly ajar.

“This is so beautiful.”

Henry snapped his head away from you and looked at the view you were just staring at. “Very,” he replied, his voice constrained as if his throat were closing. He held your bag out to you, but he didn’t look at you again.

“Thank you.”

You dug through it looking for your sunscreen spray. Once you’d found it, you began spraying along your arms and shoulders, rubbing the mist in working your way to your chest.

“Why France?”

“Huh? Excuse me?”

“France. Why France for buying a house?”

“Well, I have some French blood-ties; the Channel Islands has its history of it, and France is smack in the middle of there and London. I fell in love with it,” he explained.

“Why Bandol?”

“Oh, that’s easy. It’s still luxurious enough like St. Tropez but not as high profile. I can be Henry here and not worry someone is taking my picture.”

You nodded and understood perfectly. It was hard being on all the time. You’d gotten so used to it that you often forgot how to be off.

“I get it. It’s the same reason why I’ll always choose Australia and Ireland overall,” you explained.

“I’ve only seen Ireland a few times. I think I need to go back,” Henry added.

You smiled as fond memories washed over you of your time in Ireland. “You definitely should.”

You sprayed your shoulder closest to him and began rubbing in the liquid.

“Ehm, need some help?”

Your eyes met, and you fought back your smirk. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Yeah, I can help. It’s no problem,” Henry assured.

You handed him the bottle, then turned your back to him and waited. He didn’t touch you for several moments.

“How many tattoos do you have?”

“Um—not sure, seven, eight maybe,” you said while anxiously waiting for him to begin.

“That’s quite a bit.”

“Not too much. They’re all strategically placed,” you explained.

When you felt the sprays on your back, you held your breath and waited for him to touch you. As Soon As he did, you bit your bottom lip, trying to ignore the feeling of completeness that washed over you. You liked the feel of his hands on your skin.

“Have you—ehm, have you ever thought about tattoos?”

“I have,” Henry began, his voice deeper than it had been moments before. his hands trailed lower to the small of your back, and you hunched over even more, giving him more access. “I’ve just never gotten around to it,” he finished.

Turning your head to rest your cheek on the tops of your knees, you smiled. “Too much work?”

A soft chuckle escaped him, and you felt his thump trail up your spine until he reached the back of your neck. Two sprays hit your skin, and he began rubbing into your shoulders. A weak moan slipped out, but he didn’t pull away. The kneading of his hands became more forceful then. You were quickly losing your nerve and grip on reality. Another moan slipped from your throat, and that was when Henry’s hands stilled and rested at your shoulder blades. You felt his fingertips trace the softest pattern onto your skin before they were gone.

“All done.”

By then, your heart was racing, and the butterflies in your gut were fluttering below your waist. Clearing your throat, you turned back to the ocean.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” Henry said before he stood and discarded his shirt.

The action didn’t help you at all. Your jaw hit the floor as you took in every inch of him you’d spent all night since seeing the sprigs of hair peeking out his shirt. Plenty of dark hair decorated his chest and trailed down his abs until it disappeared behind his pants. A soft gasp drifted out of you, but your eyes refused to stop ogling. So you sat there looking at him and counting each of his eight ab muscles. The man had an eight pack; you thought to yourself as your throat painfully tightened.

“What’s wrong?”

Jerking your head up to his face, you shook your head, trying to find words.

“Wrong? Huh, nothing—um—you uh—you’re—you’re--.”

Henry smiled as he cocked his brow, waiting for you to say something intelligible. You had nothing, though.

“Cat got your tongue?” The humor in his voice was so obvious, and you felt like an idiot.

“And my brain cells, it would seem.”

His smile made you smile while trying to avert your eyes from the rock hard statue that he was.

“Sorry.”

Henry scoffed. “It’s okay,” he said.

“No, it’s not. You’re a person, not a piece of meat,” you clarified, feeling awful. You were doing the same thing to him that you hated men doing to you.

“Wait, you think I’m a piece of meat?”

Looking back at him, you spoke, “No, but I’m sure women look at you like you’re a piece of meat and in turn treat you like it.”

He nodded, “They have in the past.”

Your eyes again drifted downward, but you caught yourself before they got to his massive pecs. Clearing your throat, you stood.

“Do you burn easily?”

“I’m a white British man, of course, I do,” Henry joked, making you snort loudly.

“Wow, do you want some?”

He held his hands up as if to shield himself from you. “Are you looking for an excuse to feel me up?”

“What!?”

Henry snorted and laughed loudly.

“You’re kidding,” you surmised.

“Yes. You should have seen your face.”

You shook your head while burying your face in your hands. “Wow. That’s not cool.”

“You were an easy target,” Henry said, turning his back to you. “Oil me up, baby.”

You had every intention to, but the side of him from the back stopped you in your tracks for a few moments. As you slowly approached him, you accessed the entire meal that was him before you, unsure where to start. You sprayed over his back then slowly began rubbing across his skin. You couldn’t believe that even his back was as toned as an Olympian. Your brain was slowly short-circuiting with every inch of skin you touched. When you brought your hands down his spine to his tailbone, Henry groaned, and you fought the urge to go lower.

“All—done,” you said slightly above a whisper.

“Not quite,” Henry said, turning to face you. “My chest burns easily too.”

Face to face with temptation; you knew you were destined to give in. it was only a matter of time.

“I thought you could--.”

“—Nope. You started the job, so you should finish it.”

Smiling, you bit your bottom lip. “Does that go for my chest too?”

Henry’s eyes dropped to your breasts and rested there for a few seconds before he looked back into your eyes with a completely cheeky expression on his face. “Well—that is entirely up to you, Ms. Taylor.”

Like a child, you giggled most uncharacteristically. Slapping your hand across your mouth, Henry laughed at you. “Oh god.”

You sprayed across his chest and abs but hesitated touching him. Instead, you stood there gawking at the way his chest glistened. It’s not that you didn’t want to feel. You really, really wanted to feel. You just didn’t think you would be able to not come across as a thirsty fiend. Henry waited patiently waited no doubt taking notice of how you were beginning to hyperventilate. After a minute, he took a step back.

“Here, I’ll finish the job—this time.”

You dropped to the blanket and laid back, trying to recover. You couldn’t believe this was life right now. You’d never been attracted to anyone like this. You never struggled like this with anyone, and that reality was a little alarming. Peeking up, you watched as Henry finished rubbing the sunscreen into his chest, spreading it along his swollen shoulders and bulging arms. Your mouth ran dry while another part of you was anything but.

While proving to be a heightened temptation, a day at the beach was just what the vacation doctors ordered. The roaring sun, the breeze with the salt in the air, and the screams and laughs of people enjoying themselves were wonderful. You didn’t think about work not once, or anything beyond the man beside you reading a book and the book you were reading while the soft sounds of jazz drifted between you. It was perfect.

Every so often, your eyes drifted to Henry and took in different parts of him. Everything you saw you liked, and the fact that you liked it, only helped your brain daydream even more. There were a few times he caught you staring at him just as you caught him staring at you or parts of your body. When you did catch him, it only emboldened you to play up different parts of your body. You were relieved to know he at least still found you attractive.

When he goaded you into the water, the two of you played in the waves. The first time Henry splashed you and got water in your hair, you made gasped and pretended to make a big deal about it, which prompted him to apologize profusely. You considered it payback until you tackled him in the water, holding him underneath until he lifted you in his arms like he was Goliath. Your eyes locked, and there was a moment you thought he would kiss you, but instead, he tossed you into the water. That one action began a water war that he easily won thanks to his colossal size and overpowering strength. You didn’t mind.

By the time you’d sat to enjoy the picnic lunch Henry had packed, only a handful of people had recognized the two of you and asked for autographs and pictures. It really was the perfect first day of vacation, and you already didn’t want it to end. After lunch, you and Henry were walking along the shore, enjoying the lull of water crashing onto your ankles like you had no cares in the world.

~~~~~~~~

-Henry-

You were gorgeous, more gorgeous than you’d ever been. You were drop dead with make-up on, but without you were a knockout. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you, and he knew you had to know. There was no way that you didn’t. He didn’t start the day with any expectations because he really didn’t know what to expect, but it had turned out to be a great day. He looked across to you and took in your curled and coiled hair that framed your face and gave you an even more youthful glow.

“So your hair is naturally curly?”

You smiled and nodded as you turned to look at him.

“Curly, coiled, kinky, it’s a bunch of stuff.”

“So you straighten it.”

“Yeah,” you confirmed.

He was confused. “Why?”

With your brows knitted together, you took him in. “What do you mean why?”

“Why? I can imagine it takes a lot of time. So, why do you do it?”

You scoffed but didn’t speak right away. He allowed you the time to think.

“Well—in the business, it’s easier. As horrible as it is, there are not many people who will cast the black actress with unruly hair or will have the right people who can do it properly. It’s a huge thing for black actresses, and unfortunately, can be the reason why many don’t get a role. So for me—I guess I got used to directors or photographers preferring the sleek look, so I just—maintain it. No one really cares for this,” you said, motioning to your hair.

He understood what you were saying. Hollywood was fickle; he was living through it right now but couldn’t believe people's ignorance.

“I like your hair right now. I like how free and beautiful it is. You don’t look—bound. You look free.”

Your eyes met his, but he couldn’t read the look in them.

“Oh uh—thank—you.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied with a smile. “You should just leave it alone from now on.”

You snorted. “Oh, is this how you want to see me?”

He could hear the tease in your tone, “Free and beautiful? Absolutely.”

Again the look in your eyes stumped him. Before he could ask you what you were thinking, you looked away and back out to the water.

“What if I want to see you like this from now on?”

He chuckled, “What, shirtless with bad hair?”

You laughed with him for a few seconds. “Well, nothing wrong with this view at all,” you said, making him blush.

“Oh, and for the record, your hair is anything but bad. When it’s all slicked to perfection, you look put together, but—I like the more…distressed you. You look free and boundless.”

The smile on his lips hadn’t slipped since you’d begun your walk, and staring at you, he didn’t think it would slip. You looked away and cleared your throat, something you’d been doing a lot the entire day.

“I’ll make a deal with you. You keep this look going, and I’ll keep this look going,” you proposed piquing his interest.

“Do we have a deal?”

“All right, we have a deal,” he sealed, holding out his hand for you to shake. When you did, you smiled mischievously.

“Good,” you said before you pushed him into the water and the incoming wave.

Shock flooded him though he should have known from the glint in your eye he’d picked up.

“Did you really?”

With pride and joy, you nodded, “I sure did.”

As he stood, he wiped his face of the water and chuckled to himself.

“As a gentleman, I will give you a four-second head start,” he announced.

“Four seconds?”

“Three now.”

You squealed and ran down the beach, trying to put as much distance between you as possible. It was futile. He was fast. Once he’d counted down, he took off after you. When you looked back to see him coming, you screamed louder and tried to pick up the speed, but as he said, he was fast. In a few short seconds, he caught you and immediately began tickling you, making you scream even louder.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” you shouted through bouts of laughter and screams.

“No, no, too late for that.”

With you in his arms, he brought you to the water facing you out so you could see the massive wave coming in. You screamed again while kicking your legs, trying to get him to drop you, but it was no use. Seeing there was no way out, you stopped screaming, but when he tossed you into the wave, you screamed until the water engulfed you. He stepped back and waited for you to wash up on the shore. When you did, he proceeded to tickle you some more until you tripped him and rolled onto him to retaliate.

Though he hadn’t let on that he was ticklish, you figured it out and exploited it mercilessly. The tickling led to both of you playfully throwing wet sand at each other while waves knocked you down. When he grabbed you, he smeared the wet sand across your chest below your collar, making you scream. That was when you coated his chest down to his waist. He pulled you to him rubbing his chest over yours to make sure you were as lathered as he was.

“Oh my god!”

A wave crashed over the two of you, nearly drowning you—nearly. When the water receded, you were still there in his arms, practically underneath him. he took in your beauty, and all he wanted to do was kiss you. he almost did before he stopped remembering what had led you to this point. He was tired of proving and showing you he wanted you—wanted to be with you. It was your turn to prove to him that you wanted him just as much as he wanted you. That was when another wave washed over you, dampening the mood. He was thankful for it.

Once he was standing, he pulled you upright.

“Ready to go?”

You nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

~~~~~~~~~

-Y/N-

After leaving the beach, the two of you walked along the shops that decorated the surrounding area. He pointed out all the places he’d visited over the last few days. He knew some of the shop owners by their names, and it was something you liked for some reason. After the first few shops, you decided to pick up something for dinner and spent the next few minutes trying to decide just what to get.

“Any special requests?”

Henry’s surprise only lasted a few minutes before the smile you were getting so used to appeared.

“You’re cooking?”

“Yep.”

His surprise turned to awe as he circled you once. “You can pick whatever you want,” he whispered in your ear before he walked to a stack of cans.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, assuring you that you were good to make the decision.

“Do you eat a lot?”

“Do you?”

“Hell yeah, I do,” you said in an exaggerated tone that had Henry laughing.

As you walked around the store, you placed various items in the basket that Henry carried. Some peppers, scallions, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and plenty of herbs followed before you walked across the way to a seafood shop. You thought about something simple like salmon but changed your mind when you saw lobsters and said what the hell. You were only going to get two, but Henry piped up and tricked you into four, citing your insatiable appetite. Deep down, you wondered what appetite exactly he was referring to, for food or him. A trip to the local spirits shop had you stocked for more than just one night.

When you made it back to the villa, Henry was the one to carry the bags to the kitchen, not letting you lift anything but the beach bag you’d left with at the start of your day. You met him in the kitchen in time to see him hoist everything onto the island.

“All right, you’re all set there.”

“Thank you, Superman.”

He smiled and helped you unpack the items in the bags, laying them out on the counters and the island. Once that was finished, you made a move to the door.

“I’m going to take a shower. I can feel sand everywhere.”

What was to be a relatively quick shower quickly turned long because you needed to wash your hair and treat it, so you didn’t have any residual salt damage. No one liked breaking hair. That alone usually took almost an hour. Instead of going for the full experience, you cut a few corners in the routine but still managed to complete it. After throwing on a pair of shorts and a tank, you made your way back to the kitchen, ready to cook one of the best meals he’d ever have.

With soft music playing and a towel wrapped around your hair while your leave-in heat treatment did what it was made to, you began prepping the ingredients. The soft music and time alone gave you more time to process the perfect day you’d just had. There was nothing about it that you’d change, even down to the intense tension that was constantly between you. If another day played out the same way, you still would think it was perfect.

“All right, I’m clean now. Would you like some help?”

Henry stood behind you in a tank and sweats with his hair full of curls.

“Sure, you can actually prove to me that you know what you’re doing in here,” you teased as he approached your side.

“I’m about to knock your knickers off.”

You snorted and peeped at him. “Promise.”

The flustered look on his face said he just realized the land mind he’s just stepped into. Pushing it to the side, you focused on the chives you were chopping.

“What would you like me to do?”

Looking around the kitchen, you assessed everything that needed to be done then delegated.

“Those veggies need to be rough diced and washed.”

“Consider it done,” Henry replied, stepping away to begin prep. Before he began, though, he walked to one of the bottles of wine you’d just gotten, popped it, and poured two glasses.

“A little vino for you.”

Smiling, you took the glass. “Thank you.”

The two of you worked together chopping, dicing, and slicing the vegetables and herbs and the seafood for dinner. Every few minutes, your eyes met, and you giggled. Once the cooking began, Henry teased you about your towel wrapped hair, saying that was how magazine covers should show you. You watched his form and how he handled his knives and liked how he moved. He handled knives like he’d been doing it his whole life.

When you saw him perfectly Julianne cut the cucumbers you practically drooled and were ready to push him against that island. You loved a man who could handle himself in the kitchen. Pumping iron and weights and a nice body was great, but cooking dinner for someone because you care, was a supreme turn on.

When the lobster was steaming and the potatoes boiling, you leaned beside him and watched him kneed the dough he was prepping for what he called his famous sugar rolls.

“So mentioned you have nieces or nephews? I don’t remember which,” you began.

“Yes. Three nephews, no nieces.”

“Cool. What’re their names?”

Henry smiled as he spoke, “James and Peter and Lucas.”

“Strong names.”

“Yeah, Nik and Charlie picked them,” he said.

“Nik—he’s the older brother, right?”

“Oldest. I’m surprised you remember.”

“No girl?”

“Ha, Charlie really wants a girl. He has a son Lucas but dreams about having a daughter.”

“Nice. I have two nephews, Niko and Milo, and a niece Aloa, my oldest sister Miesha,” you added.

The way Henry smiled, you could tell he liked kids. “That’s nice. Do you see them a lot?”

“I try. It’s hard, though, with my schedule.”

He nodded, then shifted to the sink to rinse off the cucumbers before beginning with the carrots.

“I understand.”

With your curiosity piqued, you decided to dive right in. “So you like kids.”

“Love kids,” he replied. “You?”

“Uh—yeah. They’re precious.”

“I’m guessing you’re close to your brothers.”

“Oh god, yes, really, really close. We talk several times a day. They’re my first call when something good or bad happens, and it’s the same for them.”

“That’s good. I’m close to mine too. We don’t talk every day, but I try. I do have a twin, so we don’t need to talk. We just know what’s going on with each other,” you explained.

“How is that having a twin?”

You shrugged and put a piece of cucumber into your mouth. “It’s everyday like for me. I don’t know what to say,” you said with a small chuckle.

“Are all the clichés true?”

You scoffed and went back to keeping yourself busy. “What clichés exactly?”

“Oh, you know that you feel each other’s pain and feel what the other feels, oh that you know what they’re thinking.”

You couldn’t help but laugh a little. “It’s not like I fall down the stairs, and he feels me fall. That’s just impossible.”

Henry nodded and moved to rinse the carrots.

“Yeah, it’s more like a constant presence I feel. You—you never really feel alone, sort of like this constant connection or feeling like someone always has your back. We can feel what the other feels a lot of the time, but it’s sort of like a gut feeling more than an actual physical feeling. There are times he’ll feel when I’m sad and crying, and it’s incredibly annoying.”

“I can imagine,” Henry started.

Feeling his eyes on you, you turned to face him and waited for him to speak.

“Does he feel everything—your moments of happiness or—pleasure?”

Snorting, you laughed loudly, unable to keep it in.

“Happiness, I think there could be valid proof to that. As for pleasure, no idea. It’s never been brought up but kinda creepy to think about that.”

You both busted out laughing, realizing just how creepy it would be if there were any validity to that. Cooking together turned out to be really fun. Usually, you hated people in your space, but with Henry, you didn’t mind it at all. You didn’t mind the subtle way his body brushed yours whenever he passed you. You didn’t mind the sly looks across the kitchen when he took a sip of his wine. You didn’t mind the flirtation in the air, and when he watched you make your lemon cake for dessert, you didn’t mind that he was learning one of your secret recipes. It was something you felt you could get used to.

Two hours later, you were bringing out one of the platters to the dining table in the yard just in time to catch Henry putting a clay vase filled with beautiful lavender and rapeseed flowers. The purple and yellow combo was so bright it looked like it belonged with the décor around you.

“Wow, would you look at that,” you began eyeing the perfectly set table. “You can set a table too.”

His smile was wide. “I sure can.”

“With the proper place settings. I’m impressed.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and slowly licked his lips as he shrugged. “I didn’t go to finishing school or anything but--,” Henry trailed off, making you laugh at the sly reference to you.

“Oh, okay, Mr. Cavill.”

You backed away with your hands raised, making your way back to the kitchen with him following close behind. You pointed to him the items to go, and he walked with you back outside.

“I know you think I eat a lot, but--.”

“Oh, stop it. I am sure you have to have a high-calorie intake to maintain your Superman shape, so—ta-da,” you said, giving him jazz hands in front of the food-filled table.

“Oh, so you’re looking out for me, huh.”

“Of course. What else is your girlfriend supposed to do?”

Henry’s smile slowly slipped before it reappeared but only for a second. “Girlfriend, huh?”

Just like that, your stomach fell through the floor, fully realizing what you’d said. Now you felt like an idiot especially seeing his reaction.

“Um—well--.”

Not waiting for you to respond, Henry walked to your chair and pulled it out for you.

“Uh—give me a second,” you said, bending forward to pull the towel off of your head.

It had been well past the forty-five minutes you usually kept it on for, and you didn’t want to eat with this heavy thing on your head. Using your fingers, you combed through your curls then stood up to face him. This was practically the first time you stood before a man that wasn’t part of your family with your hair natural. You hated that you felt self-conscience about it. The look on his face was a lot different this time. His eyes were wide, and his mouth ajar.

“Sorry. Thanks,” you said, slipping into the chair.

Once he’d pushed you in, he sat across from you.

“So I know you love your beer and steak,” you began with a smile. “So the steak is cooked in Guinness—a lot of Guinness.”

Henry chuckled and assessed the steak on his plate while nodding.

“Bon appetite.”

Once henry put a slice of the steak in his mouth, he moaned and gave you the chef’s kiss. You knew exactly what it meant, the good ol seal of approval.

“This is really good.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

After putting another slice of steak into his mouth, he nodded. “I love it. you’re a great cook.”

“Thank you. I tried to tell you.”

Henry chuckled, giving you a slight roll of his eyes before he continued eating. He was right dinner was good. While you ate, you enjoyed the setting sun and conversation about music, good food, and good wine. One bottle of wine quickly finished, then you were cracking open another and another. When dinner was finished, you sat there listening to the stories of his childhood where his mother played referee between five boys. The way he talked about her made her sound like a saint. It was clear to see how much he admired and loved her. That made you like him even more.

By the time you climbed into bed for the night, your mind was racing a mile a minute, and all your thoughts were of Henry and the probability that he just might be the perfect man. That thought scared you even more than there being something wrong with him. If he were perfect, then it meant he was perfect for you, and perfect for you meant commitment, complications, and vulnerability while opening the stage for possible heartbreak. Even through the fear, one constant remained—you wanted him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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gellavonhamster · 3 years

Text

cold weapons

Suicide Squad (2016) || Captain Boomerang/Katana || post-canon

ao3 link eng || this was first written and published on ao3 in Russian in 2017 but I didn't attempt to translate it into English back then.

“So, what do you think of them?” Colonel Flag asks.

Tatsu puts the folder containing the rap sheet of Waylon Jones, better known as Killer Croc, on top of three other folders.

“They’re complicated,” she replies after giving it some thought.

The materials in these folders could have formed her first impression about the members of Task Force X – or, as Lawton has aptly put it, the Suicide Squad. Could have, but did not, because they were given their first task earlier than expected. Which is why she doesn’t say “villains” or “scoundrels” or “worst team imaginable” – her first impression of them was formed in combat, and then in an empty bar in Midway City where they all drank together thinking it may be the last drink in their lives. She remembers all of this and says ‘complicated’.

“Very tactful of you,” the colonel chuckles. Then again, what kind of colonel is he now – an unwashed shirt, black circles under the eyes. Just another guy struggling with a deluge of work, a hard-hearted boss, and a troubled relationship with his girlfriend. “But yeah, they definitely aren’t simple,” continues Rick Flag, one of her few friends in the country that will never become her home, and Tatsu cannot suppress a tired smile.

“You like them.”

“They’re… tolerable,” Rick admits, and takes another sip of coffee. Lately he seems to be living only on coffee and whiskey and the verb “must” and (so Tatsu supposes, although they don’t talk about that) the hope that June Moone, who still hasn’t fully recovered from all the horrors she’s been through, will be all right – and will stop isolating herself and avoiding him. These means for not letting yourself just fall down and never get up are far from being reliable, but Tatsu herself lives mostly on revenge and duty and, for that matter, whiskey as well, to a certain degree, so it’s not for her to judge. “Most of them, at least. All of them minus the Australian.”

“At least he’s a good fighter,” Tatsu points out. This is the only good thing she can say about Captain Boomerang with full confidence.

“He’s not cut out for teamwork.”

“When we were fighting the Enchantress, it didn’t look to me like that.”

She does not put much meaning into these words. It’s just that at some point Captain Boomerang saved her, and she saved him – and good thing they’re even, because the last thing she needs is to owe a favour to someone so incompatible with the very concept of duty. She could have said much about the man who tried to escape at the very beginning of the mission and got a teammate killed (and for some reason stood up for El Diablo when Harley Quinn lashed out at him at the bar, and for some reason came back before the battle after trying to desert), but the only thing she’s sure of is that he’s a fine weapon; she can confirm that, being a weapon herself. At the end of the day, that is all that’s required from him.

At the end of the day, that is all that’s required from her, too.

***

It is possible that what she said about Digger Harkness sticks in Rick’s memory, because when the need to comb the area arises during the next mission, he sends the two of them to search through the same building.

“If he gets up to something, do whatever you want to him. No one’s gonna weep for him,” he flings off. This is in the heat of the moment, of course – Boomerang almost got into a fight with Killer Croc on the helicopter over some nonsense. Or rather, it was Croc that almost got into a fight with Boomerang after the latter provoked him. Complicated.

“You heard that, darl?” Boomerang addresses her with a smile so wide as if he hasn’t heard the last remark. “I’m all yours.”

Tatsu looks the other way and pointedly takes her sword out of its sheath – not completely, just a little. No further comments follow, and they part company – Deadshot with Croc, Flag with his team of spec ops, Tatsu with Boomerang – and go on a recce.

In the basement, they discover something that looks like a laboratory – if a place so far from being sanitary may even be called one. All their hopes to move without making a sound crumble as soon as they enter the room: the floor is covered with broken glass. Those who ran the place must have escaped in haste and couldn’t take the entire stock of the serum with them, so they opted to destroy most of it. Tatsu’s attention is immediately drawn to the object on the table in the middle of the room – a metal container with tubes going from it to several smaller vessels. She heads straight for the table, shards crunching underfoot. Boomerang follows her, apparently kicking the largest shards on purpose so that they fly in all directions.

“Looks like a hooch still,” he comments, having come closer, and gives a whistle. “Whoa, fuck, is that blood?”

Compared to the first task of their squad, this one looks almost effortless. Two gangs, the members of one of which possess the formula of the serum that grants superpowers to those who take it. A gun battle, collateral damage, the entire district on lockdown. If a few people weren’t noticed literally floating through the sky, the police would have been handling this. But this is an emergency, which is why they’re here, and the flying gangsters aren’t flying anymore, for Lawton is an exceptionally good shot.

As it turns out, the serum that sparked the conflict is based on metahuman blood – hardly donated voluntarily.

“I’ll contact Colonel Flag,” says Tatsu, eyes locked on the bloodied tubes, and then someone grabs her by the neck.

For the first time in her life, she really has to fight blindly – because her enemy is invisible.

Later, when the dead bodies gradually become visible on the floor like an eerie animated movie, it turns out there were four of them. Before that, Tatsu manages to lose her sword, recapture it, almost choke when an invisible hand squeezes her neck, slash one of the attackers in half, and plunge the blade into another’s stomach. Boomerang takes care of the other two, knocking over the container in the process.

Tatsu is listening to the silence that came after the fight, wondering if any other invisible foes are lurking around the corner, when she feels that something is wrong. Something is wrong with her – she just can't figure out what. Sometimes it happens that one feels unwell but cannot determine what exactly the problem is – she is experiencing something similar now. Until she realizes: the mask. Until she looks up and makes eye contact with Captain Boomerang, who is staring at her and grinning.

“You lost anything, doll?” Harkness inquires innocently, with an emphasis on the last word, and his smile grows even wider and cockier.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The invisible man she fought hand to hand tore off her mask, and she didn’t even notice. But her partner, blast him, did – and picked it up.

“Give it back,” Tatsu demands, hand outstretched. She feels naked. In combat, during the mission, she is Katana, a single whole with her sword. A cold weapon. No one needs to see her face. Truly, if she was wearing only the mask and nothing else, she would have felt less exposed – all right, this is an overstatement, and she doesn’t even want to imagine such a situation. Meanwhile, Boomerang is in no hurry to return the mask.

“What did ya call me when that fucker was about to stab me?” he asks. Tatsu clenches the sword hilt. There is no telling how many enemies drunk on the magic serum are hiding in this house, and he’s dawdling. “You said…”

Damn it, what did she say? She saw one of the invisibles creeping up on him while he was fighting another – a bloodstain was floating through the air. She shouted…

“I said ‘George’”. Isn’t your name George Harkness?”

“You bet it is. It’s just weird. Most people don’t call me George, y’know.”

“How do they call you then?”

“Digger. Boomerang. Boomer. That Prick. All sorts of things, but never George. But you,” he winks, “can call me whatever ya want. I liked the way you say my name.”

“Give. Me. The mask.”

“And the magic word?”

“I will chop your hand off,” as a proof of her intentions, she puts the blade against his extended hand that is holding her mask. In fact, she would face no consequences for doing so. No one’s gonna weep for him.

Harkness makes a helpless gesture and hands her the mask.

“Can’t say no to you, luv.”

The mask helps her conceal her identity, but what is more important is that it helps her conceal needless emotions. Tatsu really hopes that her facial expression isn’t giving away that she’s ill at ease now. This is a weakness; weaknesses are not to be demonstrated. She feels deeply relieved when she puts the mask back on.

“Let’s get out of here,” she commands, turns around, and heads for the exit. Harkness trails behind.

“It ain’t fair, by the way. You know my real name, but I don’t know yours,” he muses. “Care to introduce yourself, eh?”

He asks the same question at least three times more before they return to Belle Reve, and each time she ignores him.

***

A week later, he still doesn’t know her name – but he learns something else.

They do away with the last members of the recent gang on the outskirts of the city. Both wretches have overused the unfortunate serum, in keeping with the best traditions of the clichéd movies about superheroes and supervillains that Hollywood keeps producing for some reason, even though it is more and more often possible to see nearly the same thing on the news. As a result, one of them got puffed up almost to the size of the creature that Superman died fighting, and the other couldn’t control the flames bursting from his mouth. He burned half of the shopping centre with customers, retail workers, and guards. With teenagers in the bowling alley on the second floor and children in the playroom on the first.

Santana… wouldn’t have approved.

Both problems eliminated, they leave: the firefighters and the cops will take it from here. Flag’s spec ops stay behind, because officially it is their victory; the general public shouldn’t know about the existence of Task Force X. Through backyards, they retreat in the direction of the abandoned construction site on the other side of the street; a car has been sent to pick them up there.

There is a workers’ trailer still standing by the construction pit. The door is not locked, and Rick, Deadshot, Croc, and Boomerang go inside. Jones’s arm is broken: his inhuman strength notwithstanding, he still was no match for his enemy – not the fire-breather, but the other one. Tatsu leaves them to figure out how to make a temporary sling, and wanders away. Not far from the trailer, a piece of tarpaulin stretched over the fence has come off, and she can see the building across the street. Tatsu sits down on the ground, puts her arms around her knees, and stares at the dandelions growing by the fence.

In her head, flames are raging.

She doesn’t look up, neither when she hears the footsteps approaching, nor when Harkness – and it is him, no one else in the Squad reeks of the mixture of booze and cologne like that – sits down next to her and cracks open a can of beer.

“You want some?” he nudges her. What extraordinary generosity. It is, however, perfectly possible that if she says yes, he’ll reply along the lines of “Well, then go and buy yourself some.”

“No,” Tatsu replies without looking and, after a short pause, adds, “Thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

With a sigh, she accepts the can from his hands, and takes a sip.

“This is disgusting,” she whispers, and takes another.

Harkness just snorts and opens another one. For a little while, they sit side by side in silence, drinking each from their own can, and study the wall opposite through the mesh of the fence – like out of a prison window. Old advertisements that are half torn off, graffiti, a writing proclaiming that life fucks us all – plenty of things to stare at to avoid looking the person next to you in the eye.

“So what the hell happened to ya?” Boomerang asks, and suddenly she could do with some serum for invisibility or, better yet, disappearing completely. Naturally, it is a fleeting impulse; she has no right to disappear. She has obligations – towards Flag, towards Waller. Towards herself.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You zoned out, Flag shouted himself hoarse before you heard him. Like you were someplace else. Didn’t ya?”

Why do you need to know? Tatsu thinks. If she almost rushed headlong into the fire, it’s her own business. If it only seemed to her that someone was there, it’s her own business. If she’s going to see things that aren’t there for the rest of her life, it’s her own business. He shouldn't have spoken. There is something comforting about being silent together.

“Nah, you don’t have to say if you don’t wanna,” Boomerang assents, and takes another pull on his can. “I just thought that you, well. Might wanna talk to someone.”

And they fall silent again. Yet now Tatsu feels awkward, which makes her angry at herself. She’s not obliged to pour out her heart to anyone who shows something that looks like care.

This silence doesn’t make it any easier.

“I have… bad memories,” she finally says. Now it won’t be as awkward: she answered his question. It won’t be, right? “About a fire”.

Harkness nods, looking at her attentively.

“Someone you knew died, aye?”

“My children,” she hears herself say, and wishes to disappear again.

“Fuck,” Boomerang says, embarrassed, and – unbelievable – looks like he actually feels bad about starting this conversation. “I’m sorry, I… well, uh, I had no idea.”

“It’s okay,” Tatsu says mechanically. Nothing is okay: she can still see Yuki’s tear-stained face, still hear Reiko’s voice, she is still watching the flames run up the curtains that she and Maseo picked together, she is still breathing in the smoke and still cannot believe she deserves a gulp of fresh air. She should have saved them. All of them.

Boomerang looks at her incredulously but doesn’t say anything, and bit by bit, the silence that she doesn’t want to run from returns – the kind of silence in which one is not alone.

Then there are footsteps again, and Flag approaches them.

“There you are,” he says with relief as soon as he sees her. Rick does not let himself overstep the limits of formality – they’re on a mission, after all – but he has obviously been worried. At the sight of Harkness, he frowns warily. “You! Quit getting on her nerves.”

“Who’s gettin’ on her nerves, Colonel? I was just tryin’ to help,” Harkness protests. It appears Rick’s words have wounded him a little.

“He was,” Tatsu says. “It’s all under control, Colonel Flag.”

Flag shifts his gaze to her and then to Boomerang again, and nods.

“Okay. In any case… follow me. We’re leaving.”

Tatsu gives her unfinished beer to Boomerang.

“Don’t talk about this to anyone,” she tells him. This might be an order or a request; she doesn’t really know.

He nods, and she thinks absentmindedly: who would have thought this man knows how to make a solemn face.

“Thank you,” she says again, hoping that he understands that this is not just about the beer or his promise to keep his mouth shut.

***

After a few days, Tatsu comes to visit him. In prison.

Actually, she comes to visit all of them, of course. Not more than fifteen minutes alone with each of them – Waller wouldn’t allow more. This request seems to have surprised her, but Tatsu is certain that Waller is already picturing the new threads she can use to manipulate her special operations puppets. So it is possible that one day this decision will blow up in Tatsu’s face – or in the faces of all of them. But she cannot shake off the feeling that she must do this – so that someone except Rick, who is already dealing with a lot these days, would notice in time if the inmates are treated with undeserved cruelty. So that she knows what’s on their minds, because it is safer to fight side by side with the people whose line of thought she can understand at least roughly. So that there is some kind of variety in their lives between the missions.

This is why she visits all three of them. Killer Croc, who looks like he’s not surprised to see her in the slightest and doesn’t really seems to care that she came, but doesn’t have any issue with that either. Deadshot, who looks like he is surprised, but doesn’t seem to mind answering her questions when she notices a stack of letters in the corner and asks him how his daughter is doing. And Captain Boomerang, who, when she enters his cell, looks like he can’t figure out if he’s dreaming.

“Katana?” he frowns perplexedly. He’s stripped to his waist, so she can see a couple of fresh scars he brought back from the last mission, and he’s got a black eye – when Tatsu saw him last, he had not. Must have quarrelled with the guards again. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

For a moment he seems not to understand what she just said. Then he breaks into a smile – or rather a grin, wide and pleased. Very pleased.

“Aha! Knew it would end up like this,” he pronounces in triumph.

“Like this?”

“You,” he looks like he’s just proven a theorem of immense complexity, “missed me.”

“I haven’t missed you, Captain.”

A very, very pleased grin.

“And still you’re here.”

“I visited Deadshot and Killer Croc earlier,” Tatsu says, and sees his facial expression change instantly. Not for long: the grin is quick to return, and she wouldn’t be able to tell right away that he’s disappointed.

“Did ya now? And how are our fellas doing? Better than me, I reckon?”

“So it would seem. Did you fight the guards?”

“Why do you care, gorgeous?”

Indeed, why does she? Most likely, he picked a fight himself – and got his just deserts.

“Make up your mind,” Tatsu says, “if you think that I missed you or that I don’t care.”

Harkness chuckles and really seems to ponder over this for a while.

“Beats me,” he concludes at last. “Care to throw some light on it?”

No, Tatsu thinks, I don’t get it myself and I’m not sure I want to.

Instead of answering, she comes closer to him – so close that she can smell his sweat – and studies his face. She has to look up to be able to do that, which must look comical. Then again, he’s hardly stupid enough to laugh at her height or anything else about her, especially when she’s armed and he is not.

“You lost a tooth. What happened?”

“Didn’t get along with one of the Wall’s watchdogs.”

“You could have tried not to look for trouble for a change,” all of a sudden, Tatsu realizes that she’s mad. Really mad at him. They might get dragged to another mission this instant; whether they like it or not, they have to be in good enough shape to protect the society that the most of them have to atone before at least partially. They shouldn’t spend their energy and health on nonsense. Black eyes and knocked-out teeth are nothing, but it mustn’t come to any of them being out of action when all of them are needed. All their powers, all their skills. All the anger they should rather aim at something other than the people who can just press a certain button at any point – and dispose of the wilful weapon.

Boomerang bares his teeth – not like Croc, of course, but still threateningly. He looks dangerous now – big, sturdy, more than a head taller than her. But he still isn’t more dangerous than her – and both of them are aware of that.

“And they could have tried,” he speaks through his teeth, “not to talk shit about my mother for a change. They wanna talk shit about me, they can knock themselves out. I’ve heard enough ‘bout myself, I don’t give a flying fuck about what else they gonna say. But they’d better leave my mother out of it.”

So that’s what it is. They have found a quick and easy way to infuriate the man who has “MUM” tattooed on his chest. In uneven letters, like a child's handwriting. Tatsu noticed that tattoo as soon as she came in but didn’t look too closely at it. Now she feels like she has the right to look, to let her gaze slip lower, at the ridiculous writing that heaves with each furious breath of his, and then to avert her eyes at once.

“They have power, and you have nothing,” she says. “Do you enjoy being their plaything?”

“Oh, so I’m a plaything, darl? And do I have much choice who to be now? In these four walls, and,” Boomerang points at his neck, at the place where a bomb is implanted under his skin, “with this crap in my neck?”

Tatsu looks up again, right him in the eye.

“You already know who you are,” she tells him. “You’re a weapon. Broken weapons get discarded. And you’re letting them break you.”

He stays silent, just looks at her in an odd manner, as if she’s speaking another language but he has a vague understanding of what she’s saying and doesn’t like what he just heard – because it is the truth.

Tatsu still doesn’t understand why she cares, and with each passing minute she has less and less desire to learn why.

“Also,” she continues, “if you call me ‘darl’ or ‘gorgeous’ one more time, you’re going to regret opening your mouth.”

“Yeah? And how should I call ya?”

“Katana.”

“What, and that’s all? Nah, we might be weapons,” and she probably ought to remind him that there is no ‘we’, but in this particular case he’s right. Perhaps that is why Tatsu feels drawn to all of them: they’re cut from the same cloth, “but we’re alive as well. So far. Seriously, what’s yer real name? You know mine.”

“I should not disclose that.”

“Oh, come on. Listen,” he breaks into a pleased grin again. Another theorem proven. “How about a deal? You tell me yer name, and I will try to keep my temper if anyone else decides to stir me up. What do ya think?”

“As if you’re going to keep your word.”

Boomerang makes a show of putting his hand over his heart.

“For you, ma’am… anything.”

For you. All at once, she recalls Rick’s words: do whatever you want to him. How many minutes of the visit she has already spent on this predictably fruitless conversation?

“My name is Tatsu Yamashiro,” she says, tired, and then he smiles – not the way he did before, but in a calmer and more sincere manner. Gratefully.

“George Harkness,” he offers her his hand with an earnest air. “Nice to meet ya.”

Tatsu hesitantly offers him hers. Her hand looks very small and fragile against his huge paw, and he must be thinking the same because the handshake comes out very careful. He could easily break her wrist. She could easily kill him with one hand afterwards. But he holds her hand gently in his warm, pleasantly calloused palm, and Tatsu hastens to take her hand away, because this is a mistake of an even worse kind than the time he saw her without the mask.

“So you promise not to fights the guards.”

“I promise to try,” Harkness assures, but he’s keeping one hand behind his back.

“Don’t cross your fingers,” Tatsu says sternly. Real mature.

With a sigh, Boomerang repeats his promise, this time holding his hands within her view.

“But I ain’t promisin’ not to call you gorgeous,” he declares in the end.

“You know my name now.”

“But you’re still gorgeous.”

“Time’s up!” shouts the guard outside the door, and Tatsu cannot help feeling relieved that she has to go. She doesn’t regret visiting him, but all of this is too strange and awkward, and both of them might be weapons, but her position is different from his, and it is better not to forget that.

“Can I do anything for you?” she asks him on parting.

“Well,” Boomerang smirks. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“With something I would actually agree to do?”

“Come again. Will ya?” This time he isn’t flirting; this time she can feel his insecurity, even shyness. As if he doesn’t like to admit to himself that what she answers is really important to him.

“I’ll try,” she says cautiously. She’s not going to make any promises: she asked Waller about one time only. She doubts if she’ll be allowed to visit them again – to visit him again.

“Try,” Harkness repeats, as if weighing the word on his tongue. “This means no.”

“This means I’ll try,” Tatsu says firmly.

And she comes again in a week. And the week after next. And a week after that.

***

“Why didn’t you walk away in Midway City?” Tatsu asks him once. “When Rick broke the control panel. You left then; why did you return?”

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the time Captain Boomerang dared to smart off Amanda Waller. Several successful missions, slightly more respectful attitude on his part – and his cell already bears a passing resemblance to a place for living, even if for living quite miserably. Now there is even a table, and a chair that she gets to sit on as guest privilege. Harkness is sitting on the floor opposite her. The question seems to catch him unawares, but only for a moment.

“Huh? Why did I return? Gotta live up to my name, that’s why. Have you ever thrown a boomerang, luv?”

I’m going to throw you somewhere one day, Tatsu thinks, yet without much irritation.

“And jokes aside?”

Boomerang attempts to feign an offended sigh.

“How do ya think? Plenty of options, all right. You gonna try to guess which one?”

Tatsu frowns.

“Is this a psychoanalysis session? Were you bitten by Harley Quinn?”

“Nah, Blondie didn’t bite me, I would’ve remembered. So don’t be jealous,” his voice gets playful again, and Tatsu stifles the urge to roll her eyes. “Lookie here… suppose I suddenly realized that I can’t leave you guys! ‘Cause you’re my mates. One for all, and so on. Don’t believe me?”

“You said something about plenty of options. What are the rest of them?”

He scratches his chin thoughtfully.

“We-e-ell… the second, ‘course, is that I wanted to save the world. Not that the world smiles upon me every bloody day, but I still wanna live! And for everyone an’ their mother to know that the bastards like us can also be heroes. Don’t you like being one of the good guys, eh, Tatsu?”

“I’m not ‘one of the good guys’”, Tatsu protests. “And it’s not me that we’re talking about. Any other options?”

“There was no point in leaving. That was still gonna be the end of the world, aye? So I’d rather meet it in battle and in good company than on the run. All the same it’ll be the end. There you go.”

He stops talking, and in the silence that falls Tatsu can hear the footsteps of the guards in the corridor. Once again she wonders what the duty attendants that monitor everything through the surveillance cameras think of their conversations. They must make for the strangest and most pointless reality show ever.

“The third one,” she says.

Boomerang looks a bit disappointed.

“Why?”

“Not the first one, because none of us meant anything to you then. You had just met us. And it didn’t seem like you were upset about letting Slipknot down,” Tatsu explains. She doesn’t intend to offend him – she’s just saying the truth. Once, he claimed it himself that they understand each other – here’s some understanding, he’s welcome. “Not the second one either, because you’re not stupid – no, stop smiling. You never believed that if people like us stop the Enchantress, someone would learn about that. Only the third option remains.”

Harkness nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and his eyes turn pensive, abstracted, as if he is there again, in the night city frozen in anticipation of the apocalypse. As if he sees himself – and makes a choice once again. “And that’s what happened in the end, didn’t it?”

“So the third option, then?”

“So it is.”

But something in his face makes Tatsu think that he was hoping for a different answer.

***

Time flies; weeks and months go by. Tatsu spends them fighting, spilling someone else’s blood, occasionally drinking with Flag at a bar or in his apartment – a bachelor’s home again; reading books – most of the plots seem too naïve and unimaginative compared to what goes on in her life, and that is even for the best, and visiting the members of the Suicide Squad in Belle Reve. Some people go clubbing Friday evenings, and she goes to prison Friday afternoons.

“Don’t get attached to them,” Rick scolds her.

“That is rich coming from you,” Tatsu replies, and he has enough self-awareness not to argue. Lest he gets offended, she chooses not to tell him that sometimes she and Lawton talk a little about him good-naturedly behind his back.

During one of her visits, Harkness raises a topic she has totally forgotten about.

“Hey, come to think of it, we never had that drink,” he points out. Tatsu doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, and it must be written all over her face, because he continues. “Remember I asked you out for a drink? In Midway City, before we fought the witch.”

Tatsu has to make an effort to remember: indeed, he said something of the sort, but it never occurred to her to take those words seriously.

“We had a drink,” she counters. “When… when you shared your beer with me.”

He shakes his head, dissatisfied.

“At the construction site? That’s bollocks. I’m talking a proper bar… nah, a restaurant! With crystal glasses an’ candles an’ shit… Like normal people.”

“Candles,” Tatsu mumbles. She tries to imagine the two of them at the table at a restaurant; the picture turns out pretty absurd. On the other hand, a lot of what has happened in her life during the past few years can be deemed absurd.

“Yeah. Candles,” echoes Harkness, and continues with a crooked smile, “well, that’s me jokin’ around. In the near future,” he gestures in the direction of the small barred window of his cell, “I won’t be able to take you even to a fucking McDonald’s.”

They don’t talk about the hypothetical dinners at a restaurant anymore, but the absurd picture stays with Tatsu, who still feels somehow indebted to Boomerang – for no reason, as she keeps telling herself – for that conversation at the construction site. She doesn’t like to feel the weight of unpaid debts on her shoulders – yes, that’s what it is about.

One day, she finds a way to pay that debt back.

***

She waits for him in the car outside the prison gate. She hears him first; she cannot make out what exactly he is yelling at the guards, but that surely isn’t ‘good evening’. Then the door of the jeep is open, and someone must have kicked him in the rear because he literally falls into the car. Tatsu shrinks back on instinct.

Then Harkness looks up – and notices her.

“Katana?.. Hey, what the hell’s going on? They didn’t let me take the boomerangs, didn’t let me take anything…”

“Close the door,” Tatsu tells him, and when he, still confused, obeys, tells the driver, “Let’s go.”

The car pulls away.

“I still don’t get what’s happening,” Harkness reminds her. “Sure, I’m happy to see ya, but… you weren’t ordered to take me to the woods and finish me off under the radar, huh?”

“If Waller wanted to get rid of you, she would have had you killed in your own cell, and that’s all.”

“Wow, thanks for honesty. So where are we going?”

“To a restaurant,” Tatsu says, and turns away. Yet again it crosses her mind that it is a terrible idea.

“A restaurant?” Harkness drawls quizzically.

“As far as I recall, you said that the beer at the construction site is ‘bollocks’.”

She should turn back to him, of course. The problem is that Tatsu is ninety-nine per cent sure that if she meets his eye now, she will blush. And she is by no means going to give him any sign that might be interpreted as taking an interest… of a certain kind. She has already blundered more than a few times.

Therefore she stubbornly keeps looking out of the window. Then again, she doesn’t even need to look to picture how his facial expression is changing now; she’s seen this rakish grin enough times.

“Holy cow. Tatsu, are you serious? We’re really just going to a restaurant? We’re getting outta this shithole where they only give us porridge with rat crap to gorge ourselves on lobsters and drink wine? Oh, fuck me sideways,” in the end, she turns to him and sees him throw back his head and burst into laughter, narrowing his eyes happily. “I’ll be damned! Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming. Pinch me.”

“I can assure you you’re not,” Tatsu says, and realizes that she is also starting to smile despite herself. She has visited him and the others in Belle Reve often enough to know that porridge with rat crap, unfortunately, is far from being just a figure of speech. After such a diet, a meal at a restaurant must seem like the pinnacle of happiness.

Boomerang shakes his head, apparently still unable to believe her.

“Holy fucking shit. How did you do that? How do you even do all that? I’ve told ya you’re unreal, have I?”

“Yes, you have,” Tatsu confirms patiently. And more than once – too often for her to attach great importance to it, too fervently for it not to please her at all. “Let’s put it that way: this is Waller paying me for a… favour.”

“A favour, then. I take it a lot of some poor suckers died?”

“No,” she shakes her head. And it is true – but there still was a lot of blood. Both the man Waller indicated and his bodyguards turned out to be worthy adversaries. The whole thing went not as smoothly as she wanted it to – not that she wanted to; not that she would kill another person she knows nothing about if she could help it. Nothing to assure her: this one deserves it. Everything turned out rather… nasty. She had to burn the bodies. Then she got home in a haze, tended to a couple of fresh wounds – or rather, just scratches. And then she went to the bathroom and spent a long time soaping herself, as if the invisible filth that bothered her the most could be washed off with shower gel.

Afterwards, she rummaged through her modest wardrobe and dug out the only dress she has about in America. Nothing special: wine red, below the knee length, sleeveless but with a pretty high neckline – very demure. The first and so far the last dress she bought after… after. If she and Rick didn’t have to accompany Amanda Waller to some event once, she wouldn’t have bought this one either. She put it on, combed her hair, still wet after the shower, with her fingers, looked at herself in the mirror – and flew into a rage, pulled off the dress, and could barely stop herself from tearing it to shreds. Restaurant or not, what does it matter? The last thing she needs is for him to think she dressed up for him.

So the situation might be a little less absurd than it could have been. Both of them look like they’re going on another mission with the others, only she isn’t wearing her mask – he has already seen her face anyway – and he isn’t wearing his ever-present coat. It is no wonder he wasn’t allowed to take it – Waller wasn’t going to let him out of Belle Reve armed, and to let him wear his coat would probably be as unwise as to hand him all his boomerangs. Tatsu has no doubt that everyone and their dog have already searched through the personal belongings of the Squad, but she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that somewhere in his inside pockets Harkness has as many boomerangs as he is listed as having officially. She witnessed this man produce from his bosom at least four different lighters, a massive stack of dollars, a pocket knife, small binoculars, flat-nose pliers, and a toy unicorn. She has to admit: sometimes she doesn’t understand how he even does all that either.

It appears that the thoughts of Captain Boomerang also turn to the contents of his pockets.

“Hey, how the hell are we affording this, though? Make no mistake, I’d stand treat, but my stash is in the coat, and these assholes didn’t let me take it, y’know.”

“Don’t worry about that. Waller is paying for everything,” she explains, unable to suppress a grin, because this part, possibly the most unbelievable part of the entire affair, gives her a sort of silly, spiteful joy. Task Force X is a comparatively recent project, but they’ve already cleaned up so much mess for Amanda Waller that Heracles and his labours don’t even come close. A dinner at a restaurant is the least thing she could offer them. So when Boomerang explodes with laughter and gives her a conspiratorial wink, she looks him right in the eye and smiles. Another mistake. Then again, this is not the first time they share a secret.

He puts his hand on her knee, and she shakes it off immediately; this is way too far.

“I see you took your sword with ya,” Harkness observes, not giving any sign that something didn’t go the way he wanted.

“I am to keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah. How about…” he leans in closer, and the smell of cologne blasts up Tatsu’s nose. She can only hope it is due to external use only, “we chop off his head,” he nods at the driver, “and drive the fuck away from this? Huh?”

The driver, who can definitely hear everything, doesn’t turn, but Tatsu notices him tense up.

“You’re kidding,” she says dryly. He may be, or he may be not – with Digger Harkness, one cannot always tell.

“Why kidding, doll? Zip, and done. There’s no way you enjoy working for Waller.”

“I do not. But if you pull some stunt,” Tatsu feels for the sword hilt, and Boomerang sees that – very well, it is good for him to see that, “I will chop your head off. I really hope it won’t come to that.”

“And what’s it to you? Scared of me? But I’m unarmed,” he claps himself on the chest demonstratively, implying that he has no weapons on him. “Why do you care if it does?”

“I just wouldn’t like to do that,” she says firmly, and it’s true. It works well; he doesn’t even mention running away for the remainder of the day.

This might be the strangest evening in her life.

Waller’s man drives them to a French restaurant whose name she cannot read but is almost sure that the phrase was chosen solely because it sounds impressive. They are let in through the back door, so no one among the other guests, who are sporting evening dresses and suits, pays any attention to her crop top and sword or to his… appearance in general. Their table is one of those located in alcoves, away from prying eyes, but Tatsu feels they are being watched. Which means Waller doesn’t trust her too much – well, she can understand that. She is part of a special team composed of deranged madmen, and she must admit she likes these deranged madmen more than she likes certain normal people known to her. Of course, she is Flag’s right-hand woman, but it is most likely that Waller doesn’t trust Flag either. It is doubtful whether there are any people in this world that she trusts at all.

Waller is rich. Their little feast will not shatter her wealth, all the more so since the restaurant she sent them to is not the most luxurious. But they still have a field day ordering loads of food and a bottle of the most expensive wine on the menu.

“To honour among thieves?” she suggests, when they raise their glasses for the first time.

“Didn’t ya say yer not a thief?”

“That is true,” she admits, and adds inwardly, I’m a killer.

In the end, they drink to the Suicide Squad. Then to Lawton and Jones, currently languishing in their cells. Then to Zoe Lawton, who is acting in a school play next week. To a lot of things. He asks her about her life here, in America. At some point she finds herself trying to explain to him what taiyaki is, and him telling her about banana sandwiches, and she can’t remember why they started talking about this at all. The bottle becomes empty, and another appears as if by itself.

They don’t talk about the past. They don’t talk about the future, because there might be no future at all – they can’t know for sure, what with their way of life. That evening, Tatsu laughs and thinks: good thing I’m drunk – it almost gets easier for a while.

When it’s time to leave, Harkness gets pig-headed.

“Whoa, no, no, no. Already? It’s too early, are you kiddin’ me?” he booms out when they exit the restaurant. He protests, but she drags him by the hand and he stumbles along after all, treading heavily like a dancing bear. “Let’s go someplace else, luv. Look at the pretty stars.”

“We are already late. And you… you have to go back to jail,” Tatsu tells him. The stars are pretty indeed, but she regrets looking up at them, because her head begins to spin. Thankfully, she isn’t wearing high heels. Thankfully, she doesn’t have any high-heeled shoes at all, or she could have been possessed to wear them. “Sorry,” she adds when they get into the car and set off. “There is no other way.”

“Back to jail,” Boomerang repeats with disgust. Sprawling on the seat, he unzips his hoodie, and Tatsu is swept over by the smell of cologne again. Weirdly, it doesn’t annoy her as much as at the beginning of the evening. “I’m a fucking Cinderella. I’m not back by midnight, they turn me into a pumpkin.”

“Cinderella,” Tatsu echoes, and giggles: everything is way funnier now. The driver makes a sudden turn, and she is literally thrown at Boomerang. Her cheek presses to his chest – and stays there. Tatsu feels drunk and sated and drunk again, and sleepy too, and he makes for a decent pillow, and she can’t make herself move away.

“Oh, you think it’s funny,” Harkness mutters with mock offence in his voice. It seems he’s about to fall asleep too. “Well, go on, laugh.”

They drive back in silence, and through the drowse Tatsu feels the warm arm around her waist and thinks: good thing I’m drunk, I can pretend I’m asleep.

The road to Belle Reve is long, but it still feels like they reach it too quickly.

“Inmate,” calls one of the guards, “get out.”

Harkness, his eyes still closed, moans with discontent.

“Captain Boomerang,” Tatsu says softly, freeing herself from his embrace. “It’s time.”

There is nothing to be done. He’s already about to step out of the jeep, when he suddenly moves closer to her again.

“Hey, darlin’,” he says, looking her right in the eye. “Aren’t ya forgetting something?”

It takes her some time to realize what he means: he must be expecting her to kiss him. All at once she remembers everything that has happened this evening, and awful shame washes over her: it is no wonder he’s expecting that to happen.

“Inmate, get out!”

She shrinks back.

“Good night, Captain,” she tells him as dryly as she can. He looks wounded but says nothing, and almost obediently lets the guards escort him back to his cell. Tatsu closes her eyes and rubs her temples wearily. Tomorrow she is going to regret drinking so much. She already does – and that’s not the only thing she regrets.

She has to stop seeing him.

***

At first, she even succeeds. Next Friday Tatsu, as always, goes to Belle Reve to see the Squad – all of them save for Harkness. She feels sick at heart because if she did promise him anything, it was to visit him, and now she’s going back on her word because of her own stupid weakness. But there is no other way.

“He asked about you,” Waylon tells her a week later, when she brings him the latest issue of Playboy. Tatsu almost doesn’t feel weird anymore when buying it, and doesn’t try to imagine anymore what the news stand clerks think when she pays them for it. Such periodicals cause her a feeling of light disgust, but Croc, who gets let out of jail only to be thrown into another trouble spot, deserves at least some small joys.

“Who?”

Waylon, no doubt observant like all the quiet ones tend to be, bares his impressive teeth.

“You know who.”

It seems a logical solution to give up on these visits at all – but in that case she would betray all of them. Perhaps this little tradition is much more important to her than it is to the prisoners, but Tatsu is almost sure that it means something to them as well. She has no right to deprive the rest of them of this bit of understanding, companionship, normalcy because she wasn’t smart enough to stop the game she and Boomerang started before it became too late.

At home – not that the apartment she’s renting here deserves to be called ‘home’ – she, unable to fall asleep, unsheathes the sword and runs the tips of her fingers along the cool blade. A tender, habitual movement – like touching the cheek of a loved one.

“I’ve lost my way, Maseo,” whispers Tatsu. The place where the souls of the people struck down by this blade are trapped is still a mystery to her, but she knows that Maseo will come as soon as she calls him – as a voice from afar, as nebulous shapes in the swirls of smoke, as the peace and safety granted by the presence of someone dear. “I’m afraid of my own heart.”

I know your heart, Tatsu. You have nothing to be afraid of.

“It makes me act rashly. Makes me succumb to false feelings.”

I know your heart, Tatsu, and it incapable of falsehood.

Only the ones that are already far away can speak so vaguely and with such unrelenting honesty at the same time.

“I will always love you,” she whispers ardently. Not because she doesn’t want him to think it is not so; not because she herself feels like it is not so anymore either. She knows for sure that she is always going to love him, for she loved him as a lover, as a husband, as the father of her children, as the only thing she had left after all her life fell apart, burned in that damned fire. He will stay in her heart until her last breath – even if she has to close her heart to the rest of the world. Once she used to think that after all she’s been through, it isn’t going to be an issue.

And I will always love you, her husband replies, and Tatsu blinks back tears with a deep sigh.

“I just wish you were alive,” she tells him for what must be the hundredth, or maybe a thousandth time.

If he was with her – not as smoke or a voice, but as flesh and blood – he probably would have kissed her gently on the nape of her neck, as he often used to do.

I just wish, says her husband – no, the soul of her husband, which is already rushing away, deep into the world she shouldn’t hurry to go to if she doesn’t want this sword to fall into wrong hands, that you were happy.

***

Literally the next day there is a message from Metropolis that some giant snake-like beast is terrorizing the city and devouring people. The monster was last seen crawling into the building of the opera – which is where their squad heads to after reaching the city.

“Look at that freak,” Harkness comments in a low voice. The creature is curled up slumbering on stage, and they are watching it from the catwalks above. “Not a family of yours by any chance, eh, ‘gator?’

Waylon steps towards him, and the planks creak under his feet, threatening to break.

“Say that again,” he growls.

Tatsu bares her sword and wedges herself between them. Waylon backs off reluctantly.

“Knock it off,” she tells Boomerang. It feels like everything has come full circle – the day Harkness picked up her mask, he also had a run-in with Jones. The day they were sent to fight the Enchantress, she also put the blade of her sword under his chin. Why did she even think something would change?

“Oh, so you’re talking to me after all?”

“Enough,” Tatsu hisses. She really wants to try to explain everything to him. Maybe if she tries to put her feelings into words, many things will become clear to her, too. But if he thinks they are going to discuss this now, he is mistaken.

On the neighbouring catwalk, Rick is looking at them in a rage, gesturing both of them to shut up. Harkness steps closer; now the blade of the Soultaker is within a hair’s breadth away from his neck. A single careless movement, and blood will be spilled. A wild idea crosses her mind: it looks as if he’s into this. Tatsu licks her lips.

“Y’know,” Boomerang begins, lowering his head a little so that it is easier for him to look her in the eye, “I think you’re scared of me. Or of yourself, hell if I know. Am I right?”

A loud rustle comes from beneath, and the next instant the monster bites through the middle of the catwalk they’re standing on, and both of them are falling down. Tatsu manages to grab some rope, but when she tries to climb it, her hands slip, and she comes tumbling down.

The fall is far from being soft, even though she falls on the tatters of the curtain, which the snake must have torn earlier. She is lucky not to hurt her head, but her left leg and hip are aching. Only the awareness that there is no time to lie around makes her summon up all her strength and get up. Her sword is nowhere to be seen, and Tatsu is overwhelmed by fury: now she is useless.

The snake roars and shakes its head, trying to shake off Croc, who is trying to bite through its scales. Rick is shooting at the monster from above, and Deadshot, who is already on stage somehow, is doing the same from below, dodging the blows of its tail. Tatsu sweeps her eyes weakly over the stage and suddenly notices a hole broken in it. At the very edge of the hole, the hilt of her sword is sticking out of the floor. Moving as quickly as it is possible to do that with a limp, Tatsu hurries there.

The moment she pulls the sword out of the stage, Harkness’s head pokes out of the hole. Not waiting for him to ask for help, Tatsu helps him get out.

“Are you…” both of them begin in unison and drop it immediately, because the snake has managed to shake off the bothersome little crocodile – who is hopefully just somewhere on the floor and not in its belly – and is moving towards them, slower than before but still pretty speedily. They scatter, and Tatsu charges at the monster with her sword drawn. Harkness throws a boomerang at the creature, aiming at its eye, but it dodges at the last second.

Eventually, with joint forces they manage to kill the beast. To be on the safe side, Lawton fires a round into its open jaws. The long body shudders one last time and falls still. For some time, the five of them stand there looking at it.

“Where could this thing even come from?” Rick mutters.

“Remember what the Wicked Witch of the West said when she tried to get us to join her? The world is changing, the time of magic has come, blah, blah, blah,” Lawton reminds him. Rick nods absentmindedly; these are not happy memories.

Jones kicks the dead snake.

“Maybe it meant no harm,” he points out in his deep voice.

“Croc,” Rick says wearily, “it ate people.”

“So did I.”

“But at least you didn’t chew the curtain at the opera like a disgraced diva?” Lawton asks, struggling not to grin.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Well, then it’s okay.”

Rick titters nervously, and the next instant all of them are shaking with laughter.

Tatsu is drinking water straight from the tap in the restroom, when Harkness comes in.

“This is a ladies’ room,” she says reflexively.

“Hey, I just wanna wash my face, is all.”

Without waiting for her to answer, he comes closer and starts washing at the neighbouring sink. Tatsu casts a sidelong look at him and notices that the water is turning red.

“Show me your face,” she orders.

“It’s not a bad face, what’s yer problem?”

“I’m serious.”

He rolls his eyes, but stands still while she examines his face, only wincing when she dabs at the cut on his forehead with a paper towel.

“Just a scratch,” he assures at once.

“Just a scratch,” Tatsu agrees. She scrunches up the towel and throws it into the sink. She would like to keep her hand on his face, pretending that she’s still wiping off the blood, but she’s done pretending.

“How about you?” Boomerang asks quietly.

“Fine. A couple of bruises. You were lucky today,” she says just as quietly, and takes off her mask. Tomorrow they might not be as lucky. “I’m happy for you.”

“And I’m happy you got out alive… darl.”

For a moment she wants him to ruin everything. To reply with a jibe, to crack another dirty joke, to try to grab and kiss her only to get smacked. Not to stand motionless in front of her like he’s afraid to scare her off. It occurred to her once that from the outside their relationship might look like an attempt to tame a wild animal. Perhaps this is a mutual process.

Do whatever you want to him.

She stands up on tiptoes and kisses him.

For an instant, Harkness freezes – possibly trying to figure out again if he’s dreaming – and then pulls her closer and kisses back. Drinks her hungrily, like this is both the first time and the last. Bearing in mind what their lives are like, it really might be the last.

Tatsu doesn’t immediately realize why she suddenly doesn’t need to stand on tiptoes anymore.

“Put me down–” she starts, but gives up and wraps her legs around his waist. Boomerang grunts with satisfaction and switches from her lips to her neck. His beard, fortunately, is softer than could have been expected.

“Stop drinking so much,” Tatsu breathes out, now that no one is trying to shut her mouth. “You taste like…” all English words slip her mind, “like… a beer cask.”

It tickles her when he laughs into her neck.

Someone simply must enter now – Rick, Floyd, Amanda Waller, the president of the United States, but no, no one is trying to stop him from squeezing her hips, to stop her from running her fingers through his hair. Weapon to weapon, blade to blade. Red-hot metal to red-hot metal. Melting until something new is forged – without fear, without regret, without the past, without the future.

Clearly, Maseo wants too much: she remembers what happiness is, and she is sure she’ll never ever be happy again.

But she can take a shot at being alive.

#suicide squad #katana #captain boomerang #tatsu yamashiro #digger harkness #kaboom #captain boomerang x katana #boomerang x katana #dc #my fic #gella talks skwad #talk talk talk #my magnum opus lmao #amazed i managed to translate this. i am not a woman i'm a god indeed #once again i still know nothing about the geography of the dceu!united states #and whether a city like metropolis could have an opera house

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spaceorphan18 · 3 years

Note

Since you believe Season 3 is the worst (although I didn’t mind it too much, some of my favorite episodes including my all time fave The First Time are from this season), what are some ways in which you’d rewrite this season?

Oh, I don’t believe, I know <3 <3

Also, fwiw, The First Time and Dance With Somebody are two of my favorite episodes in the series. <3

But this is an absolutely fascinating question -- because I’d completely overhaul the entire season.

(My overhaul of season 3 would kind of wreck havoc on the rest of the series, but let’s keep it to season 3.)

So, first of all, three things I’d get rid of entirely.

1. Sue’s Pregnancy. No one wanted or needed this story. Just have Figgins retire, Sue take over, and continue to have Coach Roz take over the Cheerios. Boom, done.

2. Get rid of Rory. He added absolutely nothing to the story. Sugar, Joe, and Unique were all fine, and can stay.

3. Coach Beiste’s spousal abuse story. I realize the world wouldn’t have been ready for it - but the transition story would have been more interesting here.

----

So, the whole point of Season 3 was to focus on the seniors, so i’d keep them the focus, i’d just give them better stories.

1. Finn and Rachel - I think them spinning in different directions is actually the right choice. And while it did feel like TOO much in season 3, their story lines of them realizing that maybe they are just on different tracks wasn’t the worst story line. I’d change minor things about it, and maybe let Rachel freakin’ fail at something.

2. Rachel and Kurt - I think it’d have been better if they both didn’t get into NYADA, and tried to go to New York to make it without a firm plan. (I have more thoughts on post-season 3 that I’ll place below.)

3. Kurt and Blaine - hey, let’s NOT make Blaine a junior. That said, let’s get some drama up in Klaine land. Or spend some time developing Blaine a little more. They’d both go to New York by the end, but I think a split isn’t the worst thing to happen to them. (Again, be for y’all murder me, I’ll add more at the end.)

4. Quinn and Puck - So, I’m saying a hard no on Shelby. No stupid baby stealing story. No dumb teacher/student ickiness. And let’s not hit Quinn with a truck. Puck’s story is possibly the best written in the season (yes, I’m crazy I know) and I’d leave it be - but Quinn could have something about settling into her life. And then they’d graduate and move on with their lives, because honestly, both of these characters had moved on from this show (in the same way that both Ken and Terri no longer had a place either).

5. Mercedes (and Sam) - I know it’s blasphemy at me getting rid of the Treble Tones, but I’d give Mercedes a story that supported her much more. Not only would her and her dreams be more developed, but so would her relationship with Sam. She deserved proper screen time, and got shit on a lot in this season. Why not lift her up, too?

6. Santana (and Brittany) - I think Santana’s coming out could have been a lot smoother. I think her career aspirations also deserved more than the “I wanna be famous” story they gave her in one episode. I think her story (and her relationship with Brittany) could have been expanded fuller -- as well as letting Brittany be an actual character

7. Mike (and Tina) - i have no ideas as to what -- but give them both something to do! Let them have real relationship issues! Let Mike have a story that isn’t cliche! Idk, something!

8. Artie - Have Artie make a documentary about the graduating class. It’d give him something to do, and it’d be a cool thread to tie the year together.

9. Will and Emma - let them get married at the end of the season. My thoughts moving forward make big changes for the show, so let’s tie up this lingering thread from the beginning of the season, and say goodnight to Will.

They win nationals, of course, which would still be telegraphed, but it’s not as important since the stories are more about the kids and less about the competitions.

----

So here’s my thing. I think the show moving forward would have had an interesting split. I think there’s a Glee The College Years and Glee The New Class thing going on. And, honestly, they’re both new shows. Of course, Glee the New Class would focus on McKinley, and bring in the Newbies in a more organic way. I honestly wouldn’t keep any of the old crew there except Unique (though I know that probably wouldn’t keep people tuning in, so I understand why they didn’t.)

Meanwhile, you have Glee The College Years. And... I can’t believe I’m going to say this but... yes, break everyone up. Because I think they all need new experiences and to explore themselves without their significant others. Some of them would find their way back to each other (Klaine, Samcedes), others wouldn’t (Finchel, Tike), (I’m indifferent about Brittana -- even if I personally like Santana exploring her options more than that relationship.); and Artie would just be living his best life.

So... yeah, that would be what I’d do. :D

#that's how s.o. sees it

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notyourdayrdream · 3 years

Text

Summer’s Almost Over (So Come Spend it with Me)

Day Five, Side A: Austere

read it here on AO3

A/N: brief mention of Kurt being kissed without consent in season two of Glee

(also! for this two shot: Kurt and Blaine met at Dalton, but never dated.)

“What if we went to Coney Island Saturday?” Brittany exclaimed at their weekly potluck, completely out of the blue. Nobody had even mentioned the theme park. Though, to be fair, nobody begins half of the conversations Brittany throws them in.

For some reason, everyone agreed, even Rachel. She said taking a break from the hustle of Broadway was exactly what she needed to be ready to continue her role as Fanny on Monday.

Outvoted, Kurt reluctantly sat between Blaine and Sam on the subway ride to Coney Island, legs shaking the entire time. It wasn’t that he hated carnivals. It was the opposite, actually. When he was younger, his mom and dad took him to the Ohio state carnival. It’s one of the last memories he can fully remember of her, her long blonde hair braided back as she threw a plastic ball at a stack of milk cans. Anything for her kid, especially one who desperately wanted an oversized dragon plushie.

No, he’s nervous because he has a date at eight.

Kurt met Oliver at a coffeehouse near the Vogue office, he was the barista who served him his drink. Oliver’s number was scribbled on the receipt. It was all very cute, and his friends agreed when he told them the story.

They texted back and forth a week before Oliver asked him out. Kurt happily agreed, hoping for a calm day before getting dressed and heading out to a fancy dinner. Now though, he won’t even have enough time to shower the smell of hotdogs off his body and be on time.

So Kurt’s scrolling through Oliver’s Instagram (not at all like a creep,) when Artie pats his shoulder. “There they are,” he points ahead as the rest of his friends stumble to them, chatting animatedly about the rollercoaster they just went on.

“You know, when you said ‘let’s go on a ride,’ I didn’t think you meant the one with a huge drop,” Rachel says, gripping Santana’s arm so hard it might fall off. Her hair is wind whipped and messy.

“C’mon Rach, you could’ve sat with Kurt and Artie if you wanted,” Mercedes says from behind her, arms wrapped around Sam’s waist.

“Did you guys have fun?” Kurt asks from the bench, carefully closing the app so he doesn’t accidentally like an old photo. “Rachel looks like she just died.” This is why he didn’t go on the ride.

Blaine sits beside him on the bench, his eyes gleaming with a sort of childlike wonder. He’s a total adrenaline junkie. “It was amazing, she’s overreacting,” he whispers not-too-discreetly. Kurt giggles.

“Let’s split up,” Santana suggests. “I wanna go on another coaster, and the park closes at six. We can grab dinner after?”

“Unless you’re Sam and Brittany, who already ate,” Artie chides. His camera rests on his lap, storage filled with videos and photos of their trip.

“Hey! Cotton candy is not one of the five food groups!” Brittany sticks out a blue tongue at him, Sam does the same. Their respective partners laugh.

“I have to leave soon,” Kurt reminds the group, checking his phone another time. Five thirty-two.

“Wait, never mind guys,” Santana alerts, appearing to be suddenly anxious. “Kurt has to get his brains fucked out at eight, so we can’t have dinner.” Both Blaine and Kurt wince.

“Too far, San.” Mercedes cringes as her and Sam make their way down the boardwalk steps and to the beach. The others shake their heads in similar disgust before going their separate ways. Rachel pushes Artie to the outdoor arcade with plans to win a bagged goldfish. Brittany pulls her girlfriend by a sticky hand to the older wooden coaster.

“So…” Blaine knocks his shoulder as they walk down the boardwalk. The gel has completely left his hair throughout the course of the day, curls hanging just above his eyebrows. “Whatcha wanna do?” Kurt spies him eyeing the Wonder Wheel beside him.

He shakes his head, not waiting for the question. “No.”

“Please?” Blaine pleaded. “You haven’t been on anything this whole time.” He sidesteps a tiny toddler crying over a fallen ice cream cone.

“I didn’t want Artie to feel alone!” Kurt defends himself. Which was true, most of the coasters weren’t accessible for him, so they spent the time bonding over the grossness of carnival food and looking at footage from the day.

“We’ll Artie isn’t here now,” Blaine replies, voice dropping an octave. “So come on the ferris wheel with me.” He bats his eyelashes for extra effect. Kurt’s stomach swoops.

Blaine has a way of doing that to him. In their near five year friendship, he’s made Kurt’s stomach tie up in knots more times than he can count. He won’t deny he used to have a crush on him in high school; he was preppy and chivalrous and oh so cute in his bow ties and blazers.

Kurt pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he sighs. Blaine cheers next to him, mumbling ‘thankyouthankyouthankyou’ in the same deep voice that makes the blood rush to Kurt’s face.

Okay, maybe the crush wasn’t entirely dead. But it’s completely normal to have crushes on your friends. Friendly crushes.

Since the park is soon to close, the lines weren’t too long anymore. Kurt and Blaine move up first in line after only five minutes.

The ride operator turns to them. Her hair is bordering on orange. “You guys want an outside or inside car?” Her voice has no expression, and she looks two more button presses from quitting her job.

“Outside.” Kurt and Blaine say at the same time, followed by a quiet laugh.

She eyes them. “Alright.” She presses another button, and the outer ring of ferris wheel carts rotate downwards until an empty one comes to the bottom. “Enjoy the ride.”

Blaine and Kurt slide into the seat, sitting on opposite sides of the enclosure. The ride jerks forward and up, until they’re halfway around the ride. “Are you okay? Your face is really pale.” Blaine asks, eyebrows knitting together in concern.

“Mm-hmm,” Kurt squeaks, closing his eyes to avoid looking down. Even though the car is supposed to be stationary, it rocks just a little as it moves up and down to complete its first circle.

Blaine thinks for a moment before saying quietly, “You’re afraid of heights?” He jumps a little in his seat, and the car rocks with it. Kurt’s stomach drops.

“I am!” he snaps, opening his eyes. “Stop moving so much.” The city is lit up around them, the sound of cheers from the rollercoaster whizzing by below him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Blaine stills himself. “I wouldn’t have made you go on if you had told me, Kurt!” He looks so worried that Kurt feels bad for even mentioning his fear. It’s completely irrational anyway, he doesn't even have a reason to be so scared. It’s just the fact he believes no human needs to be up one hundred fifty feet high.

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” he tries to console Blaine (and himself). “It’ll be over in what, three more minutes?” He can last three more minutes. Hell, he’s lasted an hour listening to Rachel and Santana argue.

And then the ride stops. At the very top.

It takes a minute for the two of them to realize this isn’t supposed to happen. “Why’d it stop.” Kurt says. His body feels like it might melt onto the floor. “Oh my god, no.”

“We’re stuck.” Blaine groans, which, thanks Captain Obvious! Those two words are confirmation that this is actually the absolute worst day ever. “I’ll call someone.”

Rachel’s ringtone beats him to it.

Kurt can’t hear much of the conversation, but from the looks Blaine throws his way, he knows it isn’t good. He cracks his knuckles as a way to distract himself from the slight sway of the cart. Passerbys the size of ants point and look up at the malfunctioned ride.

Blaine clicks the end call button. “Okay, good news first, ” he begins, pocketing his phone. “Rachel and Artie talked to the operators, and they’re working on fixing the ride.”

“Bad news?” Kurt presses. Blaine likes to do that thing where he gives good news then bad news, but the latter is always so bad the good news pales in comparison. He’s done that ever since they met. It’s silly, but it’s Blaine, so Kurt loves it.

“Bad news is that it might take thirty minutes, maybe forty-five.” Blaine cringes from the other side of the cart, waiting for Kurt’s outburst.

“No.” Kurt snatches his phone out of his pocket. “No, no, no, this can’t be happening!” He feels tears prick at the back of his eyes. He’s gonna be late. “I’m gonna miss my date!” He groans, and yeah it may be a little over dramatic, but he hasn’t been on a date with someone in months. He was really excited.

Expecting sympathy from Blaine, he glanced over at him. He’s glaring right back at him. “What?”

“Is that really what you’re worried about right now?” Blaine says abruptly. “God forbid you miss your date.” He rolls his eyes with more venom Kurt’s seen in him ever. It freaks him out and angers him at the same time.

“Okay, what’s your problem?” He retorts, eyes narrowing. Blaine shrinks back a little at the stare, but doesn’t stop glowering.

“You’ve been going on about this stupid guy the whole day, complaining about how you have to go home, I’m so sick of it!” Blaine continues. His voice grows louder by the end.

“He’s not stupid, okay?” Kurt doesn’t know why he feels like he has to defend Oliver, but he does anyway. “And you’re the main one who wanted me to go out with him!” This whole situation is confusing him.

Blaine huffs indignantly and crosses his arms. “Maybe I don’t want you to anymore!”

“Why not?” Kurt presses. He’s never seen his best friend act like this. He almost seems jealous.

“Because I like you!” Blaine cries, eyes wet. “Jesus, couldn’t you tell?” His face is red now, flushed up to his neck.

Kurt flinches. “Please stop yelling.”

“I’m sorry.” Blaine immediately backs down, curling into himself. “I like you, Kurt. I’m sorry if that freaks you out, but I do.”

The sun is starting to set now, casting what feels like the entire world in an orange haze. The ocean to the right of them glimmers, couples walked in tandem along the shore. To the left, the skyline of Brooklyn appears austere and somber from so high up.

“How long?” Kurt says finally, eyes settling on the horizon and the rolling waves.

“How long what?”

“How long have you liked me?” He doesn’t know if he wants the answer.

There’s a pause until Blaine eventually murmurs, “Five years.”

Kurt’s heart drops. “Blaine.” Why didn’t he say anything? Oh god, this is horrible.

“I just, I didn’t wanna ruin our friendship by admitting anything,” Blaine explains, rubbing the nape of his neck. “It’s a lame excuse. But—yeah.” And he resides back into silence.

It is a lame excuse, Kurt thinks. Of course it wouldn’t have ruined anything. He had a crush on his stepbrother, for Christ’s sake. “So why did you want me to go out with Oliver so bad?”

“I thought, maybe, if you started dating someone I could get over you,” he laughs to himself. “That obviously didn’t work.”

Kurt just stares at him for a moment until he makes up his mind. “I’m coming over there.”

Blaine jerks out of his thoughts. “N-no, don’t come any closer,” he stammers. “You’ll mess up the balance of the car.” He looks terrified. Kurt can’t decide if it’s sad or adorable.

He rolls his eyes. “I won’t mess up the balance of anything.” Kurt stands slowly, holding his arms out to his sides. He takes the three steps to Blaine’s side of the car quickly to get it over with, shaking the seats. When he falls into the seat, Blaine steadies him by the waist. The touch shocks both of them, and he snatches his arm back.

They sit shoulder to shoulder, neither of them daring to move. It’s what feels like hours before Kurt takes a deep breath and gathers his thoughts. “Do you remember when we first met? And I was having trouble with Karofsky? You texted me a single word. Courage.” He turns to the side. Blaine looks absolutely disheveled, sweating and curls getting frizzier by the minute. Weirdly, he looks gorgeous.

Blaine snorts. “Yeah, that word got you sexually assaulted.”

“No,” Kurt shakes his head, choosing to ignore the way his heart stops from the words. “That word saved me. You saved me, Blaine.” He would’ve never stood up for himself without that text. It got him through McKinley and Dalton and NYADA to this day.

“I’m always going to care about you. And I’m sorry I don’t… like you the way you like me. But I used to,” Kurt admits, now nervous like must’ve been. That secret was supposed to go to the grave. “And maybe I can again.”

Blaine meets his gaze, an emotion Kurt can’t quite place swirling around his eyes. “Okay.” He smiles, and though it is wavering, it’s also hopeful.

There’s a jolt, and the wheel starts turning again. It’s dark now, the sun fully disappeared below the horizon. The sky is a mix of purple and black and blue, a bruise painted among the stars. Kurt hears cheers from the other cars as they reach the ground below. “Okay.”

#spaceorphan’s sophisticated challenge: austere #glee #writing #klaine fic #klaine fanfiction #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #surprise cliffhanger mwahahahaha #jk i’ll continue it tmrw #also these words just keep harder whyyy #this is my official headcanon that kurt’s afraid of heights

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tuiyla · 3 years

Note

How do you headcanon Quinn figuring out brittana were a thing?

Ohh good question.

So like for pretty much everyone else in the Glee Club I think it's a process rather than one moment in particular. I think Brittana started their making out party trick end of freshman year and Quinn rolled her eyes, given her upbringing and how carefully she cultivated her own reputation. Then during the summer and beginning of sophomore year they continued and amped it up and maybe Quinn chewed Santana over it, told her they were all supposed to be in Celibacy Club and all. Santana called her a stuck-up bitch and pointed out that Quinn was pretty much the only virgin in Celibacy Club. Plus, Santana reasoned, it got guys super worked up and increased their overall popularity. Quinn raised an eyebrow over why Brittana felt the need to do it so frequently but she accepted that the innocent church girl was her look, not her friends'.

I also think she was irrationally grumpy about it on a lot of days but she internalized all that instead of giving it a voice like Santana would have. By 'irrationally' I mean that Quinn didn't quite know why it bothered her, because despite her upbringing she wasn't approaching it from a homophobic perspective nor did she think it was anything too serious. She did realize sooner than perhaps Brittana themselves that it went deeper than a party trick, though, and that's what bothered her closeted ass. But then everything with Puck and Finn and the pregnancy happened and she had other things to worry about. After all that she could also rationalize her envy of Brittana as them still being cheerleaders instead of, ya know.

In junior year Quinn was mostly busy trying to pretend sophomore year didn't happen and having her rivalry for the Alpha Bitch position with Santana. I think she might have caught Brittana glances in the locker room, lingering touches, generally the two of them being, well, Brittana. Quinn had her suspicions that this really was something deeper than what started as a joke in freshman year but once again she had other stuff to think about. That was, until Landslide happened and she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt. She'd known earlier but that was when she knew, you know? When she realized it wasn't a joke or a phase or anything of the sort. And I have a Quinntana scene in mind that I wish had happened here, more on that in another ask.

The face of a girl who knows feat. Mike Chang

In my mind Quinn tried to talk to Santana about it (because it was Santana who started crying, Santana who was like a ghost of herself afterward, Santana whom she'd been having a rivalry with) but it didn't go well, exactly. So Quinn knew but unlike certain people she was smart enough to know it wasn't her business, and she was also busy with her life falling apart as everything that had happened caught up with her and she had her mental breakdown. Then beginning of senior year she was once again busy with her own shit, but nonetheless she was pissed off when she heard about The Outing. I'd like to think that even though she had other things going and she never had The Talk with Brittana, she went feral whenever a creep approached Santana in the hallway or was any kind of shitty to Brittany.

So like I say it was a process and I have to factor in the myriad of things Quinn had going on in her own life. I think she initially had issues but that was all about image and her own repressed feelings, and once she realized Brittana's feelings went deeper for each other she was rooting for them to make it. With Quinn it's complicated ya know, because she does have her own issues (girl is not straight herself idc that it's never outright said on Glee) and I'm sure gay people in general were not looked upon kindly in the Fabray house. On top of that, Quinn feeling excluded because of Brittana's connection, maybe holding a bit of resentment because of that even though she does want them to be happy. And it being this long process until she's finally 100% sure it's the real deal and her friends are in love, and even then the journey until they're an official public couple. Quinn's in a unique position for all of it, both because of who she is and who Brittana are to her. Which is friends, btw. #UnholyTrinityWasReal

#quinn fabray #brittana #brittana asks #kinda #quinn asks #that's a thing now and I dig it #glee asks #anon #glee headcanons #ask #anonymous #unholy trinity #quinn thoughts

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comebackbehere23 · 4 years

Text

Here’s to the weirdest crossover I could write!

Kimberly finds out about Shelby first.

Unlike her baby sister, Kimberly isn’t naive and wondering. She doesn’t have a heart of gold, or stars in her eyes. She doesn’t picture their mother with a crown on her head or imagine that she is some superhero; Kimberly thinks she’s a coward. This woman, their mother, let them both go. Kimberly knows technically there was nothing the woman could do to keep them, but that does nothing to quell the bitterness that fills her whenever she is young and her dads keep her home on the days they make Mother’s Day cards in class.

Sometimes, late at night, Kimberly lays in bed and remembers the vague memory of a voice crooning showtunes to her. And on those nights, if she closes her eyes and thinks hard enough, she can picture the image of a sharp jawline and dark eyes. Her dads tell her it’s all in her head, but it isn’t till she is standing at the mouth of the auditorium where Jesse St. James and Shelby Corcoran stand that she realizes that it was never a dream. It was a memory. It was a memory of her mother.

“St. James!”

Kimberly stops breathing for a second when heads quickly snap her way, and she blinks in awe at how much Rachel resembles their mother. All Kimberly sees of herself when she looks at Shelby is her jawline, and that’s even a reach. A harsh breath blows through her nose as she crosses her arms over her chest and marches down the steps so she can stand at the bottom of the stage and glare up at Jesse and Shelby.

“You know, I had a feeling that you were a spy but this is just fucking disgusting.” Kimberly growls as she glares at him. “How could you do this to Rachel? You told her she was your friend, she trusts you. And for you? What is it? Are you just trying to get in the good graces of your coach?”

Shelby looks down at her in shock, “Kimberly.”

“And you.” Kimberly seethes as she turns her attention the wide eyed woman. “Why the hell are you sniffing around my little sister anyway? Why the sudden interest?”

“Kimberly…”

“I’m glad to hear you know my name, Mom. Not that I care.” Kimberly snaps, and she falters ever so slightly when Jesse barks out a laugh. “What the fuck is so funny, St. James?”

Jesse is cruel, that much Kimberly knows. But she also knows he has a spot for her sister, and for a second she sees that softness in his gaze as he regards her. She also sees the pity. A ball of dread sinks low in her stomach as she looks between them, and she sees the sympathy on Shelby’s face as she tilts her head and observes Kimberly for a moment. As the staring continues, Kimberly feels the air around her tightening and she scratches weakly at her throat as the odd feeling of suffocating begins to bubble around her.

“They never told you.” Shelby whispers.

Kimberly scowls weakly, “Told me what?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Shelby sighs, and her expression melts into one that reminds her so much of her younger sister. “Kimberly, you shouldn’t be here. I’m not who you’re looking for.”

“The hell you aren’t.” Kimberly replies in a harsh tone. “Rachel found your tape, and she’s a mess. If it wasn’t for her girlfriend then I’m pretty sure our dads would’ve had her admitted. You got inside her head, you won. So, why her? Did you think she’d be easier to get to? Scared I’d see right through St. James and his act?”

“I wasn’t asked to get close you, you weren’t even brought up.” Jesse sighs, and he tilts his chin up as Kimberly blinks in confusion. “Shelby never wanted to get close to you, Kimberly.”

Kimberly swallows hard, “Am I not good enough for you, Shelby?”

“You’re...Kimberly, you’re not mine.” Shelby whispers.

“Neither is Rachel!”

“No, sweetie,” Shelby sighs. “You aren’t mine.”

Kimberly knows exactly what she means the first time she says it, but the second time is like a slap across the face. She can barely breathe, and the last of the air seems to vanish around her as she stumbles back. She isn’t Shelby’s. This isn’t her mother. The thought sends her spiraling and she turns to leave, and once she hears Shelby yelling how sorry she is, she allows the first tear of realization to fall.

“Kim? Can I please come in?”

Rachel sounds so small on the other side of the door and it reminds her of the night’s her little sister would have nightmares and come tapping at her door. As far back as she can remember, Kimberly has always taken care of Rachel; sometimes better than their fathers could. She knows her sister like then back of her hand, and she absolutely adores her. But right now? Right now she can’t even look at Rachel. For the first time, Kimberly is jealous of her and she doesn’t know how to process that.

“No. Go away.”

“Kimba.” Rachel whimpers. “Please?”

Kimberly clenches her jaw and closes her eyes as the memories of that stupid nickname flood her. She sees her little sister, all big brown eyes and thick curls chanting it as they play in the backyard. She hears it being loudly shouted by a nine-year-old Rachel at her first dance competition. The soft whispers of it play over and over as she remembers the fat tears on Rachel’s face when they both had come out to each other on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It’s too much.

“Fuck off, Rachel!”

This time, she hears her sister gasp and then she hears the shuffle of feet. After a few tense moments, Kimberly drops her face into her pillow and screams out her frustration and sadness.

“Get your ass out here, Kimberly.”

Kimberly rolls her eyes as she hears the angry voice belonging to Quinn. With a sigh, she flicks through the pages of her magazine and chooses to ignore the blonde pounding a hard fist against her bedroom door. She isn’t the least bit surprised Quinn is here, she figures Rachel ran to her precious girlfriend the second she heard something she didn’t like from Kimberly’s mouth; that is Rachel specialty after all, tattling on her older sister.

“What do you want, Fabray?” Kimberly demands.

“I want you to open this door so I can smack some sense into you.”

Kimberly snorts with a lopsided grin, “Cute.”

“I’m serious. Rachel is crying. When have you ever just let her cry? Something is going on with you, and I want to know what.” Quinn hisses. “So open this door and talk to me.”

“If my sister is crying, shouldn’t you be with her instead of bothering me?” Kimberly hums, and she struggles to keep from darting off the bed. “I’m busy. Go take care of her.”

Kimberly hears Quinn scuttle off and she has to keep herself glued to the bed as she hears Rachel’s sob. Her sister crying is one of the worst things in the world, especially if she is the cause of the tears. With a shake of her head, Kimberly zones off as she flickers through the magazine and waits; eventually the sobs of her sister fade away, and Kimberly blinks as her own cries replace Rachel’s.

“Santana, is that a fucking chainsaw?”

“You bet your sweet ass it is. Step aside.”

Kimberly goes still as she hears the motor of a chainsaw kick on. And then she hears Brittany’s voice, and the sound quickly dies away.

“But Q said…”

“Where did you even get that thing?” Rachel demands.

“I found it in your neighbor’s garage. The dumbass left his back door open.” Santana scoffs. “You said you wanted your sister out of her room so I was just trying to help.”

“By sawing down her door?” Quinn squeaks.

“Details, Fabray.” Santana grumbles. “Kimberly, get your ass out here!”

Kimberly flexes her jaw, “No. Go away.”

“Did she…? I know the bitch didn’t just tell me to go away.” Santana exclaims, and the chainsaw kicks on once more.

“Grab her!”

“She has a chainsaw!”

“So? Grab her!”

Kimberly sighs and drowns the struggle out with loud music as she goes back to her phone.

A soft tap interrupts her as she drifts off.

“What?” Kimberly groans.

“Kim? It’s Jason.”

Kimberly growls in annoyance, “Go. Away.”

“Everyone is worried and…”

“Jason, I will shave off your eyebrows.”

“Alright then. Take your time. See you at school on Monday.”

“Babe?”

Kimberly tenses, “Now this is just low.”

With a grumble of annoyance, Kimberly tosses her sheets off her body and stomps towards the door. The anger on her face slowly fades as she throws it open and sees Trini standing before her in an oversized hoodie and sweatpants. With a lopsided grin, Trini tilts her head and Kimberly reaches out to fist the front of her hoodie before she drags her girlfriend inside the bedroom and slams it shut as soon as she sees Rachel’s hopeful face.

“Hi.” Kimberly breathes out as she curls her hands around Trini’s hips and rests their foreheads together. “What are you doing here?”

“Baby Berry called me.” Trini replies as she reaches up to tug a hand through Kimberly’s hair. “She told me you hadn’t left your room. That explains why you didn’t want to get donuts this morning.”

“I’m sorry. I…”

“You don’t have to explain. I understand. I do this too. Sometimes you just have to shut out the world, I’m not going to push you to talk.” Trini assures her. “I just need to know if I need to kick someone’s ass for hurting you…”

“All I need is you. Here. With me.” Kimberly murmurs as she runs her hands down to Trini’s thighs before she tugs her forward. “I feel like I can breathe if you’re here.”

Trini sighs softly as Kimberly easily sweeps her into her arms and she curls herself around her girlfriend with ease, “Then I’m not going anywhere.”

Kimberly hums as she turns to carry Trini to her bed and she lays her down with ease before she braces a forearm by her head and presses their lips together. With her girlfriend here, Kimberly feels like she can do this. She feels like she’ll be able to face her reality soon. As hands tug at her thin t-shirt, Kimberly allows everything else to melt away as she focuses on Trini; right now, this is what she wants. This is what she needs. And she’ll be damned if she let’s Shelby take this from her too.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Kimberly shakes her head, “I’m not hers.”

“Oh, baby.” Trini sighs as she scratches at Kimberly’s back. “I’m so sorry, Kimberly. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Rachel…”

“She’ll understand when you explain.”

“It hurts, Trini.” Kimberly sniffles as tears begin to cloud her vision. “It hurts so fucking bad, and I don’t know what to do.”

“It isn’t me you need then, babe.” Trini whispers as she presses a kiss to Kimberly’s head and begins to untangle herself. “Stay here.”

Kimberly already knows her Trini is going, and she isn’t surprised when a small frame wraps itself around her minutes later. Finally, Kimberly breaks. She turns in Rachel’s arms and allows her sobs to soak her sister’s chest, and Rachel simply clings to her; the pain radiates through her and she wants so badly for it to go away.

“You may not be hers,” Rachel whispers into her ear as she squeezes Kimberly tightly. “But you’re mine.”

And, to Kimberly, that’s more than enough.

#glee #power rangers #trimberly #faberry #kimberly hart #rachel berry #santana lopez #trini gomez #social media au

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