#school after summer break: an anxiety cocktail | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

inknopewetrust · 2 years ago

Text

𝔰𝔢𝔠𝔯𝔢𝔱

Summary: a conversation at lunch reveals much to be decided as senior year races to a close.

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader (Stranger Things) Word Count: 7.4k

Warnings: 18+, smut, outdoor/public sex, fingering, slight angst, secret relationship, anxiety.

Quick Links: Masterlist

The tray’s plastic pushed deeply into your palms–not that you could truly feel it, however. Your gaze was glossed over, vacantly staring into space as time ticked within the line. The smells of steamed canned corn, chicken with a less-than-flakey coating, and cardboard frozen pizza couldn’t break the spell.

Overwhelming—high school was.

Sometimes it lost you.

And that clock was ticking too, just like the one behind you signaling 12:17 with its skinny, frail arms pointing to the numbers. May had arrived with a flurry as the spring air quickly turned to summer and the transition hadn’t allowed anyone to prepare themselves for the end of the year. 29 days left and you’d be free.

No more expectations from people you’d grown up around since you were five, no more eyes constantly staring and expecting the best. You’d be free of expectations, and your mind wandered with the weight beginning to lift every day that passed.

Even in the middle of a busy school day in the lunch line, your thoughts couldn’t help but stray.

“Corn?”

The hairnet on the lunch lady squeezed her hair so tight it began to poke through the top of the netting. Her soured expression grew as the spoon became heavy in her hand and the subject of her calls had ignored her. Unmoving, static, the woman dumped the corn back into the tray and hit the spoon on the metal buffet stand twice.

“I said,” the woman spat, “do you want corn?”

Your stupor broke. The tray became lighter, the dim lighting reflecting against the woman’s face startled your inability to form words in that moment.

“Sorry…” You chuckled, shaking your head and giving her a smile. “I got lost in my head for a second.”

The woman, even in the disturbance to her flow of lunch delivery, gave a small smile and nodded. She picked up her spoon and shucked the corn onto it once more and asked: “Corn?”

“Yes, please.” And you picked up the pace in line.

Senior year. What was it supposed to be like?

You had just seen that movie… The Breakfast Club… and it challenged you. The way goody-two-shoes Claire found her way into your soul and pulled it out for the world to see; asshole activity girl with perfectly white Adidas and a dazzling smile. Perfection was only seen as such if others bolstered the idea. For you, that had always been the case and it was eating away at your consciousness as the legacy of what you’ll leave behind as you walk across the stage becomes more clear.

A little preppy girl with no record, no sense of danger, who held her head high amidst the other social groups that merged to their tables in the Hawkins High cafeteria. For a moment after you had exited the small room that served you two pieces of stale chicken and watered down fruit cocktail, you stood holding your tray clutched between your hands and watched.

The world revolved around you without your input. The accomplishments that littered your parent’s refrigerator and awards that dangled from the pegs on the back of your bedroom door meant nothing to anyone in that moment. As the crescendo of the year crept toward its close, you felt as though you were not doing anything for yourself—just what others wanted from you.

Was there anything they didn’t know?

Had your life become an open book for everyone to read and discard it once it was complete? You were concerned you had peaked and were slowly descending into a downward spiral.

The chaos of the cafeteria accentuated those feelings.

You felt it from the top of your head through the socks that rested over your toes and somehow, you managed to get moving again. The crippling world around you opening up once more as Nancy Wheeler’s hand shot up and began waving frantically in your left peripheral vision. Your name breaking through the loud chatter of each subgroup of misfits, jocks, nerds, and metal heads.

“Y/n! Quickly!” Nancy was almost frantic which meant whatever she was squirmy about, it had to deal with the newspaper—not that you were a part of it in anyway. The eldest Wheeler found it comforting having you check over the articles for proof before she laid them down for printing.

Your feet moved quickly, squeaking in the slightest with that new-shoe feel.

“Come here, come on!” Nancy rushed you and you set down your tray a bit harder than you would have liked as the juice from the fruit mix going over the sides and onto her pencil.

“What?” You asked, pulling out the orange chair and plopping down. Your green tweed dress riding up on the sides as the shift fabric was less than forgiving.

“Read it.” Nancy handed over two pages of a typed story as she shoved a piece of apple in her mouth, wiped her hands and cleaned the juice off the pencil with a napkin.

“I don’t know why you make me do this… it’s not like I contribute anything to the paper and I have plenty of homework to do right now.”

“I make you do it because,” Nancy dropped the napkin back on the table and rose her eyebrows high in judgement at you, “you have an eye for spelling mistakes. I might know how to write but I can still miss letters or butcher a word now and again.”

“Can’t you get one of the kids to do it?” Well, you were both months over 18 now so kids? Not like some of the students who went to Hawkins High. “What about Mike? Can’t force him, huh?”

“Like he would even give me the time of day…” Nancy laughed, glancing over at Mike as he settled with Dustin at a table with other members of the Hellfire Club… nerds? “You know he spends so much time reading letters from El that I don’t see him unless its dinner time or he passes me in the hallway. Not that I am complaining though,” Nancy digressed, turning her head away from the table as quickly as she looked. She put her arm up by her face, nearly shielding her eyes from the direction to your right.

“And being your only friend leaves me to do it,” You mumbled, “It makes me wish that Jonathan was here to– “

“Don’t you dare!” Nancy cut in. She was still in denial about what was truly happening. The two were growing apart and she spent so much time putting herself into extracurricular activities this year that she hadn’t even had time to really think about it.

“Fine, fine,” you put your hands up in defense, the papers in your right hand going up. “But I’d rather you stop doing this to yourself.”

“Y/n…”

“I mean it, Nance. Come on…” The eyes you gave her were pitiful, but she wasn’t watching you. Her hands clutched her fork, knuckles turning a shade of white she wasn’t. “He hasn’t written you back in weeks.”

“Y/n…” Her voice was small so you barely heard her over the sound of your own voice.

“I love you, I do, but it pains me that it’s been eight months of this and there is no end in sight.”

“Y/n!” She shrieked and you furrowed your brows at her outburst. As if the world had slowed, the paper began lifting from your fingertips and Nancy’s eyes looked up to the intruder in concern. Nancy with her doe-eyed innocence gulped as if she were afraid and Nancy Wheeler wasn’t afraid of anything.

“The end is in sight with that dress you’re wearing today.”

The hand that had been holding the paper dropped to the table and barely missed the tray.

Did they know everything about you?

“Let’s take a sneaky-peak at tomorrow’s headline, hm?” His hum was melodic, antagonizing yet playful; scary, to those who didn’t know him. “Tigers win!?” He read aloud, “predicting the news a little early, don’t you think, Wheeler?”

Eddie Munson was a two-year flunker whose presence in the school grew every year. Everyone knew that the guy had crawled his way through each semester to skate by with D’s just to make it to his senior year which had been repeated two times before 1986 arrived. Stoner, nerd, metal-head… from his looks but you wouldn’t necessarily call him a nerd even if his table had a lingering few large-lensed glasses kids with pants that were floods. On most days, he looked like a mix between John Deacon and a member of Mötley Crüe. Eddie’s metal rings glinted in the poor cafeteria lighting as he held the paper high above the both of you.

“And what about you, Y/n?” The paper shot down quickly and ended up covering your tray, halfway bent between your milk carton and fork. “Getting the inside deets with miss clairvoyant over here?”

“That’s a pretty big word,” you responded, not turning in your chair but looking up at him as he leaned against the table with his hip. Unlike Nancy, you did not shrink. “Are you sure you know what it means?”

Eddie smiled. His pearly whites biting down on his lower lips as the grin made him less intimidating. You felt the effect from Nancy–her hands less white, her jaw less tense–but what it did to you… well your heart lurched. You felt that in your toes.

“Oh I don’t know…” He careened, turning his head and looking back at his table–all of whom were looking back anxiously. Mike and Dustin who sat there each lunch period since the second week of school looked as though they weren’t even breathing. “I’ve been in a lot of English classes so I might have picked up some things.”

Nancy snatched the article back into her hands after her nerves had settled and huffed. “So what do you want? Can’t you just leave us alone?”

Eddie’s face dropped for a second, his attention drawn to Nancy as her sour mood soured his own. Smile gone and no longer doting, Eddie focused his attention onto her.

“I want a lot of things Nancy but we can’t have everything we want, can we?” He played her words carefully, no true intention as to why he waltzed over to the two of you in the middle of the day. Eddie acted on impulse, even if that meant going against social rules he already disliked.

“Go back to your table then… We don’t have anything you want.”

“Actually,” Eddie held up a finger and pointed it at her. His face was scrunched before proving to her that he indeed did have a question even if it was trivial, “I have a question for Miss President over here.” He pointed to you and she shut up. You looked at him expectantly, not sure exactly what could go flying out of his mouth at any second.

Instead of speaking right away, Eddie crouched to your level. You cleared your throat and shifted in your chair, wiggling a little as you pulled your dress as it tried to ride up again. Eddie’s eyes flashed down, watching as your fingers gripped the fabric and pulled. The dress was unforgiving in the best of ways. Not willing to expand as you had attempted and shot back up to where the Dean of Students would surely comment on the “fingertip” rule he so admired when you broke it. He lingered there for a moment as your fingers dragged against the fabric and barely skimmed the skin of your thigh that remained uncovered. As he looked up again he met your eyes already looking into his own. Those dark brown beauties dilated and mischievous without a blink; a smirk quickly forming on his face as tongue quickly wet his lips.

Nancy couldn’t see the twinkle in your eye as you looked down at him from the side; your eyes perfectly hooded for such a simple question.

“Student Body President…” Eddie began and Nancy’s skin crawled compared to your own which had not. “How does one even get there?”

“What’s your question, Eddie?” He wouldn’t admit publically that his name from your pretty lips had sent a tingle down his spine.

“Rufus isn’t gonna be here tonight for Hellfire and I need keys to get in the room. Thought you’d be able to pull some strings and make it happen.” You noticed he was wearing the club shirt and remembered it was Thursday. Spring break was a bit late this year and fell on the third week of March and a Friday which made the week unnecessarily busy and long. Busy week for a busy year and everything was so close to ending.

“You think I have keys to meeting rooms?”

“No,” Eddie shook his head and titled his head back. His hair blew behind his shoulders and you could see a small bruise on his neck to which Nancy coughed as if it were inappropriate, “but you can convince Principle Higgins to leave it open because he’ll close it if Rufus isn’t there to open it.”

“And why should I do this for you?” You narrowed your eyes at him. “What do I gain from this… associating with a club such as yours?”

Eddie heaved in a heavy sigh and craned his neck, flashing it more as if showing it off in a way. He ran his hand through his hair and pulled on the spot to let his long fingers linger and your eyes trailed as he wanted. Eddie knew what he was doing. When he had you, he shrugged.

“Just asking a favor.”

“Hm.” You hummed and glanced over his lowered shoulder at the table of other misfits that sat staring with their mouths agape as they watched their seemingly fearless leader retreat to his knees to get what he wants. One look at Dustin and Mike you knew that there was no way you’d say no, but there was hardly a chance of that in the first place.

Miss goody-two-shoes needed everyone on her side–the people believed.

“Fine, I’ll ask him but I can’t promise anything.”

Eddie smiled again. He turned to the group and gave them a thumbs up and you could just about see their relief wash over their faces.

“Thanks, Madame President.” He awkwardly bowed with his hands, rising back to his feet with a little jump that made the pins on his vest jingle. “My club will honor your decision by giving you an honorary title and ranking that holds no significance what-so-ever.”

“Oh that’s alright–” You shook your hand in front of you and returned to your tray trying to divert anything that will spiral into an embarrassing outburst. Eddie shook his head and got louder and louder as his declarations began spewing out into the cafeteria. Some listened, some didn’t, but the moment he mentioned your name, all the heads turned.

“Hawkins High! This shameful, scummy place! Listen here good people!” Eddie knocked into the chair beside you and in one second he went from feet on the ground to feet on the chair and stood tall before everyone. Members of the school newspaper scrambled to get the drafts off the table so he didn’t ruin them.

“Madame President here, Y/n L/n,” all heads turned and the conversations stopped, “is OFFICIALLY an honorary member of the Hellfire Club! Just another one to add to her long list of activities…” He glanced down at you as you covered your mouth with one hand and watched him carefully. “I hear by induct her as a level 12 Paladin for her devotion to her oaths as leader of our dear class.”

The Hellfire Club clapped. Loudly.

Their cheers were the only thing that sounded in that room and others could hear a pin drop. Nancy Wheeler sat with her mouth open and waiting for a fly to dart in, not sure what exactly to do. She had never seen a spectacle like it.

Once Eddie was satisfied with the few cheers that his friends gave, he jumped down from the table and turned to you once more.

“And if you ever find your way to our little club, you’ll have to start at level 1 and earn your spot.”

You moved your hand back down to your lap and shook your head. “I expect nothing less.”

Eddie left without another word and the room slowly went back to its usual chatter with others making their frequent glances toward the prep table and toward you. Nancy closed her mouth and opened it again to say something but nothing came out. She had few words for the ordeal.

“What the hell was that?” She asked lowly, looking in your eyes for an answer she wasn’t sure she’d find.

“I don’t know, Nance… you know how that group is…” You trailed off, picking up your fork and moving the corn around in its small square.

“Yeah! But! I don’t expect Mike to come over here and make a scene!”

“Mike isn’t Eddie.”

“Thank God.” She muttered and you tried to not let the bite of her dislike sting. “You don’t need to be associated with them when graduation is just around the corner. Imagine if they start running for student council and doing debate, or, or, whatever!”

“Oh come on…” You looked at her exasperated, “they don’t want to join the clubs I’m in. He asked for help so I helped. End of story.”

“You know he sells drugs?”

“And?” You shook your head, not realizing that your attitude had turned as sour as hers had when Eddie first approached the table before.

“What has gotten into you?” She threw up her hands turned to the others at the table to tried to pretend they hadn’t been eavesdropping the entire time and their eyes immediately diverted too late. They were all guilty but neither of you truly cared.

“Nothing! I’m just saying. That’s all.” You said, drawing out your words in protection and she felt she had an inkling of clues beginning to trickle in. Did she know you? What had she missed?

“You’re not keeping secrets from me, are you?”

“Nancy…” You sighed, pushing away the tray and losing all appetite the longer she kept talking about this. “You are my best friend. Why would I keep anything from you?”

“I don’t know!” She exclaimed, focusing her attention back on the articles as her levels of comfort dropped further into the pits of Hell. “I just think that something’s been going on and you don’t talk about anything anymore.”

“I’m fine,” you stated bluntly—perhaps a little harshly and she stared at you for a second before scoffing, shaking her head in disbelief and returning to the article before her. You sat for a moment until you couldn’t stand the silence and hunger had left you. You stood up, the chair squeaking against the ugly as you grabbed your tray and left the cafeteria.

On your way out, you glanced at the table of the Hellfire Club and Eddie caught your eye, winking as he popped in a chip and you couldn’t see the way Nancy crinkled the paper up in her hands and threw it on the table with her tongue in cheek in incredulity.

You barreled out of Spanish at 2:45 when your final bell of the day rang.

As everyone remained preoccupied with their thoughts leading to the final class of the day, but you reached your locked, shoving the folders and books you knew you needed for homework into the bag and slammed the door closed as people truly began to fill the halls with an amlost–end of the day relief.

Outside, the sun was beating down on Hawkins with a sweltering heat. In the Midwest, it was as though the mix of spring and summer was always skipped to lean right into summer. A trick, if you will. One or two days of good, hot weather only to be brought back to a wintery spring where a jacket and hat are needed just to walk out the door.

In the front of your backpack, you unzipped the small compartment and pulled out your Walkman and foldable headphones, pressing play when the system was in place. The world around you disappeared as you passed the parking lot and went behind the school beyond the trees.

Play the game, you know you can’t quit until it’s won/ Soldier on, only you can do what must be done.

You wanted to chuck the device so far into the distance that even an evening of searching couldn’t find it. St. Elmo’s Fire… It felt too on the nose for it to play first–you had sworn you rewound the tape before you left that morning.

You know in some way you’re a lot like me/ You’re just a prisoner and you’re tryin’ to break free.

“What the fuck,” you mumbled and continued on through the forest until the break was found. The beat of the song falling with your steps every second and by the time you reached the opening, the next song in the rotation began playing.

In the opening, it was clear. The sun shining, the trees bristling even if you couldn’t hear it and the picnic table remained unused and empty. You lobbed your backpack on the ground and took a seat on the table, not the bench. Its raw, warping wood threating a sliver every time you sat down with anything more than jeans but today was an exception.

You liked the dress.

It was freeing and fun; a pretty green with white buttons that matched the blouse underneath and shoes you had chosen that morning.

You had forgone the tights because it wasn’t something people expected of you… but no one noticed and that bruised your polished ego as the clock pushed further and further into the days’ end.

On top of the table, you leaned your arms back behind you and lifted your head to the sky that the clearing allowed to break through. You closed your eyes to soak up the small piece of joy that was the heat and you could feel the sweat begin to build at the back of your knees, at the crest of your forehead.

Bliss as Madonna began to play through your headphones.

In your quiet reflection with your eyes closed and the Queen of Pop ringing through your ears, your mind wandered back to a few hours before. The scene in the lunchroom; how Nancy gave you the cold shoulder for even offering to help Eddie in the smallest of ways. That burned–her irritability to such a tiny piece of your existence. The man pushed boundaries. It was in his nature and whether anyone liked it or not, he was often outside the box because of sheer conformity of others to act a certain way.

You knew that better than anyone: a picture perfect image that cannot be tainted by the simplest forms of excitement or pleasure. A fool enjoyed life more than those who stayed within its lines. And this had all settled within the last year.

Finally, Hawkins had gone back to a sense of normalcy that you could live with and although there were pieces of the town that left a gaping hole in your heart, you tried to heal by becoming something bigger and better than you were before but you hadn’t healed. Hopper, Joyce, El, Will, Jonathan… all gone in the span of a month and even those you weren’t close with like Billy and those who fell to his corrupted being were missed. You buried it all for the sake of getting out of this God-forsaken town and yet there you were, keeping secrets and trying to perfect an image that was already blemished but trying to be something you weren’t.

In some ways, you were spawning into something along the lines of Nancy and although you had been joined at the hip since you were kids, you weren’t her. You always were something more, something aching to be different than the girl who was so popular and once had a boyfriend who wore polos and drove a nice car.

It wasn’t you.

And at some point, you recognized that as the winter turned to spring and you went looking for a blunt.

Lost in your thoughts for the hundredth time that day, you didn’t hear or feel the clatter of a metal lunchbox meeting the wood of the table. Madonna’s lyrics swirling in your mind, you wanted to be like her: edgy, fun, and exciting. Except you were a Claire—searching for someone like Bender to break you free of a life of conformity.

It was your dirty little secret.

The lunchbox’s lid opened with a thud–which you did hear because it coincided with the change in song. Slowly but surely, you felt the chord of your headphones being lifted and lifted until a snap caused the music to stop and as the muffled padding of your headphones did not give you the clearest sound, the music remained playing louder in the open. You needn’t bother cracking open your eyes to know who disconnected them.

You imagined he shrugged as Jefferson Starship began playing even though he had put the mixtape together.

Then, you imagined him debating on whether or not he should remove the headphones or leave them on–half for giggles and the other for sheer enjoyment of the moment. He also knew he might have angered you for what he had done earlier that day, but was willing to take the chance. So, he carefully lifted the headphones off your ears so they didn’t snap back and add another problem to the list you may have already began building.

He sat them down beside the Walkman that continued to play and moved around the table to stand in front of you–your knees almost knocking into his chest as his stood at the side of the table beside the bench and guided his pointer finger onto one of your kneecaps.

He wanted to see if you’d open your eyes.

His finger was cold–like the kind that had been in air conditioning too long when it was too early to put it on. But as your skin met his, it warmed to an even degree. One finger quickly became two, then three, then his entire hand rested on your exposed knee and gently caressed the skin before silently, and not forcefully, nudging it open. You kept your eyes closed but the inability to contain your growing slime gave him the confidence to keep going.

Just as your legs parted enough, you heard the rustling of the wood chips underneath the table and he drew close standing between the spot he created for himself. You, however, were still leaning back against your arms and that wasn’t good enough for him. So, he bent over to meet your body and his face aligned with yours in a mirrored look. You could feel his breath on your ear; hot and melting in the blaze of the sun.

“Don’t be shy…” He muttered quietly as his hands fell on the outsides of your knees trailing upwards toward your waist. “Put your arms on me.”

You complied by lifting off the warping wood until your fingers met the taut leather of the jacket’s sleeves. He must have been overheating in a jacket like that just to look cool. In one quick swoop, he grabbed at your waist and pulled you to the edge of the table so your body connected with his and the space between the two of you was limited.

Your teeth caught your bottom lip as the smile could no longer be contained and you opened your eyes to see his dotting brown ones looking back at you.

“I thought you’d be mad at me.”

Eddie Munson was always looking for trouble; you had learned to accept that by now.

“But I really did need the help.” That was truthful, you knew.

Were you angry at what he had done? He was a showman, one prone to cavalier outbursts that people often shook their heads at but in the end, why did you leave? Nancy’s disgust and disapproval to something she did not even know about? It wasn’t Eddie, no. He had few boundaries but enjoyed the spectacle of a game.

“I know; I know…” You nodded, running your hands over the fabric of his jacket one of his rested wrapped around your waist and the other just at the end of your dress’ skirt. “It wasn’t you.”

“Nancy Wheeler still got a chip on her shoulder?” He smirked knowingly.

“Yes,” you replied, moving to try to readjust a button on his vest that was intentionally crooked but awkwardly upside down, “I don’t think she appreciated your little display.”

“I couldn’t help it…” Eddie laughed, his smile drawing wide. “This dress, baby.

God, you felt yourself blush at his words.

“I couldn’t look away!” He exclaimed happily, looking down at the way the dress hugged you and flattered you in the best of ways.

“Oh, please!” You shook your head, looking away from him with your chin tucked into your chest.

“No, no, no, no!” Eddie said over and over, quickly and efficiently as he worked your own belief that you were as attractive as he said. “I really, really love it.”

“Well I’m glad someone does.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know!” Your reaction was killing him, his heart thumping so loudly for you and this blood flowing so freely. “I can’t stand the length sometimes!”

“Well I love it and the fact you didn’t wear those white tights either.”

The first time he met you, he made fun of a pair of white tights you had been wearing. Eddie called them “fuliginous” and it was the first time someone had ever said something that made you open a dictionary because it intrigued you.

“Yeah… well… I thought the outfit looked better this way.”

“And it does!” He reaffirmed your thoughts, rubbing the tweed material between his fingertips as his temptation brewed. You could see the impish gleam in his face; it was only fitting for a guy like him but it wasn’t as though you didn’t know that.

A part of you wanted him to think that way.

It helped you break away from the preppy mold you were stuck in.

“You know,” You began, looking at his face, lips, and then the little peaking bruise on his neck from where his vest met his skin, “you don’t have to show that off.”

“What?” His hand left your waist and pulled down the side of his vest just enough. Eddie feigned innocence. “This?”

“Yes, that!” You smacked his arm away as it returned to you. “It’s gross!”

“It’s gross!? You’re the one who did it!”

“I know but you don’t need to flaunt it!”

Eddie laughed, moving to place a kiss on your forehead that evolved into one on your cheek, one on your nose, and one on your chin but not where they were supposed to be.

“I might not have girls lining up like Jason Carver but I’d still like the ladies to know I’m taken.” You felt Eddie’s hand run up your back, moving to grip the back of your neck with a gentle yet stern grip. He was always unlocking something new about you that hadn’t been awoken. He tilted your head enough where he had you at an angle that he liked.

“Yeah?” You questioned knowingly.

“Yeah.”

Eddie’s nose lightly bristled yours in anticipation.

“When is…” You trailed off, sucking in a breath as your eyes threatened to flutter close and his lips barely touched yours. You gripped the sides of his jacket fiercely. Eddie hummed in curiosity. You wet your lips with your tongue and looked up at him. He was so close, so warm on this sweltering day.

“When is the last time you washed your hands?” You asked, not breaking the seeming trance he had set upon you. Eddie opened his eyes and furrowed his brows, not backing away or taking his hands off of you.

“Wha– “

You gave him and look and it sent his mind right where you wanted it to go. At first, he looked surprised at your suggestion but he knew you took nothing lightly. The decision was yours and he’d follow you to the pits of Hell if he had to.

“Right here?” He asked seriously and you nodded your head, eyes steady on his moving lips.

“Mhm,” You nodded.

“We have like a-a half hour before school gets out.” He wasn’t finding an excuse, just valid reasoning.

“You already have me,” You told him honestly, “what’s a little more today?”

He was speechless. Eddie’s mouth fell slightly agape and he felt like a fish searching for food. A short circuit in his brain brain as it went into overdrive. He liked you in control.

“So,” You asked him again, running a hand over his chest where the distorted words of his club were beginning to fade, “those hands clean?”

“As a whistle.” Eddie mumbled and crashed his lips to yours in a fury.

His kisses are desperate and hot, both in passion and in the heat of the day. His lips claim yours as your tongue begs for refuge in his mouth, your hands moving from his chest to hair as your fingers glide across his skull. Eddie’s right hand clutched your right thigh tightly, reveling in the exposed skin that remains so plump underneath his fingertips and guides your legs open further as you bend backwards from the weight of his kiss. With one on your thigh and the other on the back of your neck, he positions you as needed, open for him and the skirt of your dress rides up enough to gather near your hips.

“I’m so fucking glad you wore this dress.” He groaned as you broke the kiss and did as you had two nights before this moment–guiding your lips down his neck and pulling on his hair to give you better leverage.

Eddie’s hand roamed higher and higher on your leg until you felt that same pointer finger bend and run from the junction of the top of your thigh to the top of your underwear. Your breath hitched as you tried to focus on pleasing him as much as he was you. The palm of Eddie’s hand that had been on the back of your neck moved to grip your opposite thigh and hike it over his arm. He would hold you like that forever if it meant he had better leverage on the pinnacle of pleasure for you.

“Baby you’re fucking wild.” He muttered it almost in disbelief you’d propose this in the middle of the school day. Having the same free hour brought so many benefits.

Eddie’s nose nudged your jaw as his hand slipped underneath your underwear and you could feel him descend down in calculated inching, finding your aching folds already wet for him. In a fell wisp, he cupped you and pressed down sending your back arching outward and giving him the perfect second to lift your leg a bit higher.

As he pulled his hand back upward, two of his fingers barely breached your entrance and had you swooning. He watched as your eyes shot closed, mouth went slack, and you held onto his being just a bit tighter.

“Already, baby?” He was as breathless as you.

That fucking nickname.

Eddie kept those two fingers on the outside of your folds as you pushed to get him inside, setting his thumb on your clit with precise stress. You could feel the cool metal of his rings just barely grazing the skin too.

“Dammit, Eddie.” You gasped as he began moving it in small circles, watching your face for the simple pleasure of his own. You had sent him into a euphoria.

You hadn’t even noticed the three songs that had transpired on your Walkman.

“Just do it already.”

“Why?” His light smile teasing, “You been thinkin’ about this all day?”

“You know I have.”

It’s all you could think about in Spanish.

“Well if my girl commands.” Eddie nipped at your chin playfully and kept his thumb on your clit as the two fingers slowly, but efficiently entered you. You moan and clench down on his fingers for a moment as you adjust to the welcome intrusion. Your chest was heaving and he wished you hadn’t worn the blouse so he could get his lips on them and leave marks that surely had faded by now.

As if it were a test, he began moving his fingers at an agonizingly slow pace. The ticking clock of a half-hour final hour class ready to be released at the top of your mind, you moved one of your hands off of him and grabbed the wrist of the hand that was inside of you.

“If you don’t hurry up, we’ll be arrested for public fornication.”

Eddie laughed, letting the pressure of your hand guide him faster as your hips slowly met his fingers’ thrusts. He’d be dreaming about this encounter for the rest of his life.

“I think we can manage.” He worked in unison to press hard and circle your clit while continuing to thrust his hands in and out, working himself up as the barreling heat coincided with his own exertion.

Your body was in overdrive. Your senses were heightened, the feel of his hands in you in such a precarious moment of the day gave you a jolt of danger. Breaking the rules… You kept your vocalizations as quiet as you could, but Eddie could hear the low pants, the whines that you tried to suppress when he hit those spots just right. Even in this position, he sent you to the heavens and back with a simple movement. The coil had been winding. Winding higher and higher since you thought of this very moment an hour before as you stared at the teacher’s projector on Spanish foods.

But maybe you weren’t fast enough.

The tip of the iceberg was so close. His fingers working diligently as he assaulted your mouth with his own, begging for the dirty truth of your feelings toward him. He gave you everything in that moment and wanted the final precipice to be given to him as well. So close.

And then the bell rang the moment you began feeling that tingling sensation through your lower spine. The coil was wound, reading to spring. The bell was off in the distance but it jolted you.

“Shit!” Eddie mumbled, breaking your kiss as he reveled in your swollen lips and the plumpness that he had given them. He didn’t stop his fingers.

“I’m close. Keep going.” You groaned as your head fell onto his chest. He picked up his movements even faster–surely his arm would be sore tomorrow.

“I’m a-almost ther-re.” You fumbled through your words as you focused on only him. Eddie nodded and noticed that the only sounds he could hear were the whistling of trees and your panting. You gripped his arm tightly in his jacket, sweat beaded from his hairline and onto his temple. He could see it in your face that the coil was springing to life.

“Come on, baby… I got you, come on. Show me what good girls do.”

Eddie was enraptured by the beauty of you in that moment. The way your dress was now hiked above your hips and all he could see was the bulge of his moving hand in your black underwear. He gripped your thigh tightly and whispered those words of encouragement until finally it snapped.

Your breath hitched and the faintest of moans released from your mouth as his fingers slowed with the feeling of your release on them. He didn’t want to move. He wanted to remember that moment forever. Eddie pulled his fingers from you, enjoying the way the aftermath makes you squirm just a bit more than before and carefully dropped your leg once he was out.

He wiped his fingers of in record time with a bandana that stuck out of the back pocket of his jeans.

Under the hot summer sun, you breathed in deeply to level out your heartrate and calmed yourself down. Eddie shuffled in front of you and adjusted the front of his jeans which made you laugh.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all?” You commented with no obvious agreement looming. This was the best part of his day.

“I would have a million boners in public if that means I get to do that again.”

Sometimes, he was crude. But, then again, you had convinced him to finger you in public with classmates just beyond the forested hill.

You knocked the side of his leg with your white shoe and motioned for him to move so you could get down. The uncomfortable stickiness in your underwear a cautioned reminder that no one knew your secrets. They didn’t really know you at all. Pulling down your dress, you adjusted the fabric just right and dapped at your forehead as neither the heat outside or inside of your soul had cooled.

“What are you doing later?” Eddie had moved to his lunchbox and pulled out a joint already rolled, lighting it with the barely fueled lighter from his pocket. You shrugged, remembering now you had to go ask Higgins to help keep the room open for Hellfire to meet.

“I guess I have to go to the game… not that I want to.”

“You could always come to Hellfire. It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he proposed, hopefully optimistic even if he knew the response was going to be no.

“And have Nancy even more upset?” You quirked a brow and took the joint from his fingers, looking at its fiery bud before taking a hit. Fuckin’ Reefer Rick and his brilliant dope. “I have to go.”

Eddie watched as you took it like a champ.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” he took it back once you were done. Your backpack hadn’t left the spot you had dropped it in, so you stuffed your Walkman and the headphones back in once you gathered your thoughts.

“Oh!” Eddie stated rather loudly as he locked up his lunchbox again and let the smoke dissipate into the air. “You’ll never believe who wants to buy from me!”

“Do I have to guess or will you just say?” You shrugged the bag onto your shoulders and tossed the keys you retrieved into your palm.

“Chrissy Cunningham.”

Your eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

“What!?”

“That’s what I thought!” Eddie laughed, taking another hit and offering it you but you passed. The time was ticking, you needed to go. For the duties you were questioning were calling.

“Hawkins man…” You breathed out a sigh. This town was always turning over new ways to surprise you. “Never a dull moment here.”

Eddie looked over at you with that brilliant twinkle in his eye and couldn’t help but grin at you. Yes, certainly never a dull moment. You kicked at the wood chips and nodded your head at the direction from whence you came nearly 40 minutes prior.

“I gotta go before he leaves. I don’t want you guys not to meet because of Higgins’ judgment.”

Eddie took one last hit and put the bud on the steel of his lunchbox–the sizzle diminishing its light so he could litter it on the ground.

“Don’t let Chrissy catch you on the way out… Wouldn’t want her to spread a rumor or something.” He meant it as a joke but the truth of it stung. A secret.

That’s the way it had to be, right?

“Yeah I won’t.” Your voice was smaller than you thought but you stood up, letting him grasp your face with the hand he hadn’t used to ruin you and pull your lips to his once again before you departed.

“I’ll see you later, yeah?” He asked with a closed nod.

“Mhm,” you nodded, giving him a smile that made the sides of your eyes crinkle. “Have fun at Hellfire. Don’t let Vecna ruin the night.”

You meant it honestly, as part of the game.

You hadn’t realized how on-the-nose you were about the night.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson smut #stranger things #stranger things season 4 #eddie munson stranger things #x reader #fanfic #fanfiction #x female reader #I am in love your honor… for the 100th time this year #joseph quinn

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invincible-selfxmade-punk · 2 years ago

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I have started to work out again for the first time in a year and my blood sugar is going bonkers.

I work 10 to 12 hours a day as a teacher and then also work most weekends. Right now though I'm, I'm on break. 🙏🤘I'm about to turn 51. While I look pretty good for my age, my health is just not the best and hasn't been in a while.

6 years ago I started teaching at a very violent and poorly run school. At the same time I moved across the state; at the same time I separated from my husband; at the same time I developed double pneumonia; and at the same time I lost my sister whom I was very close to.

All this was a cocktail of horror that I did not recover completely from.

I went from looking and feeling 30, to looking 30 and feeling 90.

I ended up with crippling anxiety in the form of agoraphobia, and a lot of problems with my lungs due to the pneumonia. I have lived with chronic asthma all my life and having pneumonia just made it so much worse that I ended up nearly dying from an asthma attack two and a half years after having pneumonia.

Last year however I discovered Trim Healthy Mama and lost 25 lbs when I did not think I was ever going to be able to lose weight again.

Now that it is summer I am bound and determined to get exercise as many times a week as I can. My agoraphobia means that I cannot go walk around the block or anything like that so it has to be done at a gym. Luckily there is one in town that gives teacher discounts.

My blood sugar simply does not know what to think about all this. I started working out on Monday and I have been dizzy and off-kilter all this week and am pretty much forced to eat something with protein in it every 2 hours to make sure my blood sugar is staying stable. That was a feeling is a pain in the butt, but I'm hoping it gets better as my body gets used to doing cardio again.

#50 is the new fit me #fitblr #actually old as hell #actually autistic #actually agoraphobic #drive to survive #chronic illness #down but not out #exercise

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lolahasmoxie · 4 years ago

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Winter Break

Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Reader (TEACHER AU)

Warning: curse words, smut, alcohol/edibles (18+)

Word Count: 2,081

Notes: I envision this as a sequel to “Fall Break” which I wrote a couple of years ago. I see Seb being a high school science teacher, reader as a middle school math teacher. The setting is Brooklyn (Red Hook) and the places I mention are real and ones I love and recommend.

Also, it’s late and I’m sleepy. Please enjoy whatever this is.

@ 11:15AM - Friday

“YES, WINTER BREAK MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Her loud voice echoed out of their shared home office, and a moment later she came bounding down the hallway adorned in an ugly sweater, black leggings, and oversized fluffy slippers. Her hands were raised over head in victory, and when she reached the kitchen, she was greeted by the sight of Sebastian pouring a cocktail from the shaker into a highball glass.

“Right on time.” He said with a smile. Seb’s school had finished the day before, but he had gotten up early today to surprise her with coffee and bagels from Baked, her favorite coffee shop down the street. She took the offered glass, giving him a wary look.

“While I am always happy whenever someone hands me alcohol, I would like to note that it is only 11:15am.”

Seb chuckled as he poured the remains of the shaker into his own glass.

“After this semester, we have both earned this.” She shrugged, and they clinked their glasses before each taking a swig of the drink. She paused, finally realizing that Seb was dressed to go out as she put down her glass.

“Going somewhere?”

“Just downtown; I have to pick up a couple of gifts I couldn’t find online and then I have to go help your brother hook up some electronic stuff. I think I’m going to pick up dinner too.”

“I start winter break and you’re going to leave me here all by myself? That wasn’t part of the plan.” She gave her best pout, and he couldn’t help but smile as he stepped closer and cupped her face. He kissed her softly, pulling away after a moment before he got tempted to drag her into their bedroom.

“If I go now, we’ll have the entire weekend to ourselves. Plus, I know you haven’t finished inputting your data yet, and your A-type personality won’t let you truly relax until you do.”

“You don’t know me!” she responded, and all she got was a raised eyebrow back. They stared at each other until she took another sip from her drink, muttering something under her breath.

“I shouldn’t be too long, so why don’t you go finish up and tonight I am all yours.” She nodded, and he kissed her again before he gave her a quick goodbye and left their apartment. She stood in the kitchen and sipped her drink, looking down when she felt something rub against her leg.

“I can skip my work, Daddy doesn’t know me, right Alpine?”. The white cat locked eyes with her before yawning and giving a few chirps in response. “Fuck, he’s right it would literally drive me insane. Let’s go bud.” Alpine followed her into the office, perching on her lap as she sat down. Turning on Spotify, she took one last sip before getting to work.

At 3pm, she finally shut her laptop and stretched her sore muscles. She was officially done with work and checked her phone when it buzzed. Sebastian was going to be home by 5pm and as she wandered into the kitchen, she thought about what she could do to pass 90 minutes. The apartment was pretty spotless thanks to Seb the night before. He was also bringing dinner, so she didn’t have to cook. Suddenly, her mind remembered the jewelry box in the bedroom.

When she had gone home over the summer to see her family and friends, she had come back with some edibles she had hidden in her carry-on. She liked to use them if her anxiety got really bad, but she and Seb had also enjoyed a couple before school had started. But once September came, they were too tired or busy to enjoy them properly. But now, now they had two glorious weeks with no plans, and she was delighted to find four chocolates staring back at her when she opened her jewelry box. She took one, popped it into her mouth, and decided that now was the time to find some holiday movies on Netflix.

@ 4:48pm – Friday

She was engrossed in The Holiday when she heard the tell-tale jingle of Sebastian’s keys as he entered the foyer of their building. Alpine slowly stretched before casually sashaying over to greet him. She turned her head as he came in the apartment, his hair and the tops of his shoulders kissed with a dusting of fresh snow.

“Hey baby, your brother sends his love.”

“Mmmm, that’s nice.” She said and Sebastian paused placing bags on the island counter taking in her ultra-relaxed voice and posture on their couch. He walked over and leaned over to kiss her, and when he pulled back, he had a shit-eating grin on his face.

“You are high as fuck right now, aren’t you?”

“Nooooooooooo!” she said as she sat up straighter. She paused for a minute before making eye contact and blinking. “Okay, maybe just a little.” Seb giggled as he went back to pulling cartons out of the two bags, he had brought with him.

“Well, I suppose it’s a good thing that I come bearing food.”

“What did you bring?”

“Something we haven’t had in a while.” She inhaled deeply, the scent of fried dough and meat filling her lungs as she felt her stomach growl.

“Did you really go to East Wind?”

“Yep, I have enough Dim Sum to feed a small army. Now Cheech, do you want one of your ciders or a beer?”

“I’ll take a Cider, please.” Soon Sebastian placed a plate heaping with food in front of her before taking the space next to her on the couch. They ate, making potential plans for the weekend while the movie played in the background. After the sun set, and after Seb had changed into sweats and the dishes had been put in the dishwasher, they were cuddled on the couch under a blanket while watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as the small Christmas tree in the corner and the lights on the window bathed the living room in soft colors. Seb had his arm wrapped around her shoulder, while she was cuddled into his side with her arm around his waist. She usually kept casual physical affection to a minimum, and he loved how the edibles opened up this side of her. He placed a kiss into her hair, causing her to look up.

“This is nice, all cuddled up with two weeks off and no real plans.” She hummed in agreement as she placed her leg over his, her foot rubbing his calf as she nuzzled his chest.

“We could make it even better.” The sultry tone in her voice instantly reminded Seb about another side effect the edibles had on her. Before he could respond she was placing soft kisses under his earlobe as her hand rubbed his cock over his sweatpants. He couldn’t help but whimper as her hand and lips began to set his skin on fire.

“Baby….” The words died on his tongue, coming out as a deep moan when her hand disappeared in his pants and grabbed his now fully hard cock while her teeth grazed his Adam’s apple. It was a race to disrobe after that, clothes landing here and there before she was bare before him, climbing into his lap before leaning down to finally kiss him. He pulled back when she did, watching her as she reached between them to line him up, mesmerized at how the Christmas lights cast red and green against her naked skin, only looking away when he felt her warm wet heat envelop his cock.

She stilled when he bottomed out, her face buried in his shoulder as his fingers began to trace over her skin as he felt her warm breath against his neck. He waited patiently for her to move, and he smiled to himself when he felt her hips begin to rock. His eyes locked onto her face as she moved, looking to see what she might need. She was never overtly vocal during sex, but the hitches in her breathing were a dead giveaway he knew to look for. His hands found her hips, thrusting up to meet her rhythm. Her eyes were closed, brow furrowed in concentration and he took it as his cue.

She made a noise of confusion when his hands stopped her movement, but when he angled her hips and thrust up, he stole the very breath from her lungs. His second thrust had her against his chest, her fingers digging into his skin as he made her toes curl. His thick cock filled her perfectly, and when he wrapped his arms around her body, she was enveloped by him completely. She managed to rest her forehead against his, the two of them breathing each other in as he expertly hit her g-spot again and again.

“Look at me.” he managed to rasp, and when she hesitated, he responded with a harder thrust. “Please” She did as he asked, and she found two blue eyes looking at her. The way he looked at her during times like this, filled with so much love and adoration, it made her feel like she could burst under the weight of that gaze, but all coherent thought left her when his fingers began to circle her clit. She gave in to the feeling that was spreading through her body as the coil in her belly began to wind tighter and tighter.

Sebastian knew she was close; her breaths were getting shallower and quicker, and he could feel her walls begin to pulse and tighten around his cock. When she came, it was gasp followed by a breathy moan that shook him to his very core. He grit his teeth, his hips not stopping when she collapsed against his chest, her body shaking and trembling in his arms. When he came it was with low growl, his hips still moving at a slow, steady pace as he tried to prolong both of their pleasure. He only stopped when he felt her tap his shoulder three times, her signal that she needed him to stop.

She could barely make out the television in the background as Sebastian ran a hand up and down her back. She could however make out his low voice heaping praise on her as she came down from her high, telling her how wonderful she was and how good she was to him. After what felt like ages, she managed to lift her head. When she looked up at Sebastian, his gaze was already on her, a stupid dopey grin on his face.

“There’s my sweet girl.” His voice was low and raspy, she could feel the vibrations through his chest as she lay her head back down.

“Well, that was one way to kick off break with a bang.” He chuckled as she ran her fingers over his bicep. They stayed that way in quiet repose, her eyes were starting to close when he tapped her waist to get her attention.

“Come on, let’s go to bed.”

“Already?” she asked with a confused sleepy expression which made his heart leap in his chest. He helped her off his lap before he stood up, his hands finding their way to her waist as he leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“Don’t think I’m done yet; in about 15 minutes I will be thoroughly prepared to rock your world again.” He had a cheesy grin on his face as he waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis, and she couldn’t help but chuckle at his eagerness.

“Fine, I’ll be waiting. Why don’t you turn off everything here and, uh…fair warning; if you aren’t in that bed in 15 minutes, I will be starting without you.” She leaned up to place a quick kiss on his lips before she promptly turned and left him stunned.

He watched her walk away, a lovesick smile a mile wide on his lips as she disappeared into their bedroom. He made quick work to turn off the TV and to unplug all of the lights. He quickly fed Alpine, asking the cat to be a good boy and to let Mommy and Daddy have some quiet time alone. As the furry beast dined happily, he gave one last look around the living room before making his way down the hallway to your bedroom, his heart full and happy.

It was going to be a GREAT Winter Break.

#sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan x you

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bluecrusadearcade · 4 years ago

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Harrison Osterfield is not your regular irregular

By Baker Street, Gentleman’s Journal quizzes the star of Netflix’s new drama on world records, Sherlock Holmes and his golf swing…

Draped in a silk shirt and paisley scarf, Harrison Osterfield is shivering his way across a brisk Regent’s Park. But he’s not complaining. Why would he? After all, the 24-year-old has dealt with worse. In his latest television series alone — Netflix’s The Irregulars — he’s tussled with demonic crows, paranormal serial killers and even the occult. So a little nip in the air? Nothing to worry about.

“I do have my eye on that jumper, though,” beams Osterfield from behind a bold pair of sunglasses. I don’t blame him. It’s a chunky-knit, funnel-neck number from Connolly, and the next piece of clothing lined up for this al fresco photoshoot. But, for now, the young actor must grit his chattering teeth — and continue striking willowy poses in that billowy shirt.

And those poses are turning heads. Dog-walkers, taxi drivers and tourists are all picking up on Osterfield’s energy; a coolly British blend of big grins and bouncy enthusiasm. He swings from a lamppost! He dances through daffodils! He feeds the pigeons! NW1 hasn’t seen this much action in months…

And we’ve come to Regent’s Park for obvious reasons; Baker Street snakes down from its south-west corner. And, on that famous thoroughfare, sits the fictional digs of Sherlock Holmes. But The Irregulars, a supernatural-tinged drama named for Holmes’ gang of trusty street informants, wasn’t shot in London. Rather, it was filmed on the authentically old streets of Sheffield and Liverpool — the same cobbles walked by the Peaky Blinder boys. So this, Osterfield grins, is a fun opportunity to see the real thing.

“All of the rest of the cast,” he admits, “are really big Sherlock fans. I’ve never really read any of the Sherlock books. I’ve seen maybe one Robert Downey Jr. film? So I was very new going into it.”

Today, then, will be a crash course. Because, after we get Osterfield out of the park (and into that jumper), we’re heading to the Holmes Hotel for a coffee and a catch-up. It’s a relatively new hotel just off Baker Street, decked out with knowing nods to the world’s greatest detective. There’s a bronze bulldog guarding the door, pipe-patterned wallpaper and signature cocktails at the sadly-closed bar (anyone for a ‘Case Closed’?).

But, though there are only suggestions of Sherlock in the Holmes Hotel, Osterfield explains that they’re even subtler in the show. Because The Irregulars, in a nutshell (wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma), sidelines the sleuth, and shifts the focus onto Osterfield and his fellow gang members. The actor plays one of the show’s leads; frail runaway nobleman Prince Leopold. All sullen glances and broken bones, his story is the heart of this first season.

“And it’s been a long project in the making,” says Osterfield, noting that filming on The Irregulars began almost two years ago. “That’s quite daunting. When you’ve spent that much time on something and you’ve got no idea how it’s going to turn out?

“It means that, now, it’s crunch time,” he continues, face creasing with mock-worry, “and I have no idea how people are going to react. But I’m really proud of the work, and that’s what I’m taking away from it.”

The Irregulars may be Osterfield’s first lead role — but he’s been acting for years, popping up in several short films and the George Clooney-directed adaptation of Catch-22 before Netflix took notice. His first role came at 11-years-old, when he was cast as Tiny Tim in his school’s stage production of A Christmas Carol. “It’s funny, actually,” says Osterfield, “because it’s quite a similar physicality to my role in The Irregulars”.

“But that’s where it started,” he continues. “And the real reason I got into acting was because there was this girl in the drama class who I really liked. I thought, if I joined up and impressed her, I could take her out on a date. That didn’t happen. But, although she wasn’t interested at all — the acting seems to be going okay!”

It certainly does. But, like actors all over the world, it’s been a very slow year for Osterfield. He returned to set in September to finish filming the Netflix show — but the rest of his lockdown was eerily, cannily familiar to everyone else’s.

“I went back to my home in Kingston,” he nods, “where I was living with three of my best mates who are also actors. Quite a few of my friends are in theatre, and they had a really tough time of it — not knowing what was going to happen next. I was very lucky, knowing that I was going back to finish something”.

The actor says it was strange being locked-down with fellow performers. With sets closed around the country and curtains falling on theatres, it was one of the first times they had all been at home together. But, even with the additional pressure, he says there were no problems. And there never have been, according to Osterfield — as it’s rare that he and his friends ever compete for the same role.

“We’re all very different castings!” he laughs. “Which is good. It’s a mixed bag, really. But it’s very useful when you’ve got to self-tape an audition and there’s another actor literally upstairs. Also, we’ve all known each other for ten years, so we’ve grown up together and, luckily, know when not to push each other’s buttons.”

With no work, Osterfield spent most of his 2020 getting stuck into lockdown. And he shamelessly tried every self-isolated stereotype. He binge-watched every sports documentary from Drive to Survive to Last Chance U. He upped the frequency and intensity of his workouts. He even tried his hand at cooking. He tried everything.

“I did try everything!” the actor laughs, fizzing once more with that lamppost-swinging, daffodil-dancing energy. “Really! I think I went though every lockdown activity there is. I gave baking a go for two weeks — that didn’t work out. I made a banana bread and that was it. I’m not going to be delving into that any more…

“We were quite lucky, though,” he adds, “because we had an outdoor space. We built a homemade golf net in our garden, by putting up two wooden poles and hanging a blue screen we had left over from filming. That kept us entertained most days”.

But, despite the failed banana breads, closed-off golf courses and Irregulars anxiety, Osterfield says that the worst thing about lockdown was missing his family.

“Because we’re a very close family”, he explains. “Massively so. And, usually, we’d have family gatherings every other weekend – my whole family are in East Grinstead and closer to Brighton, so real countryside. I’m honestly just looking forward to the day, with summer on the horizon, that we can do some good barbecues outside.

“We even tried family Zoom quizzes over lockdown,” he adds, “and they all figured out that I’m not that clever. The rest of my family all seem really, really intelligent. I don’t know if they were just revising beforehand, but I was definitely last a couple of times…”

And Osterfield’s most inspiring family member — not to mention the most irregular — is his 89-year-old grandfather. Despite the young actor upping his own fitness levels during lockdown (“I started doing handstand push-ups. That’s my new skill!”) Osterfield’s grandfather put those athletic achievements to shame.

“He’s fitter than me!” laughs Osterfield. “He’s been kept at home for most of the time and, as a family, we’ve been quite worried about him. But I struggle to keep up with him. I’ll ring him up and ask how his day’s going and he’ll say ‘Oh, hi Harry. Can I call you back later on? I’m just doing some exercise’. So he’s doing better than okay!”

But the exercising, Osterfield says seriously, has been a real lifeline. It’s kept both him and his mind busy during lockdown — and has motivated the actor to pursue more physical, active roles in the future. If he can look back at a body of versatile work, measured out in marked body transformations, he says he’ll be happy.

“I’ve been doing a lot of bodyweight exercise over the last year,” he nods. “I thought it would be quite cool, while in lockdown, to break a world record for something — so I’ve been trying lots of fitness challenges. I’m very close to getting the most burpee chin-ups in under a minute. I’ve got to knuckle down on that.

“I also tried to eat an apple in under 38 seconds,” he laughs. “Which sounds like a long time, but it’s actually quite difficult. And, with apples, I eat everything. Even the middle bit. Even the stem. I just chuck it down. I’m a big fruit bat, so I eat everything apart from the seeds.”

There’s that bouncy energy again; that fun-but-utterly-sincere enthusiasm. It’s an odd thing for an actor, to be so happily unabashed by everything — but the 24-year-old is as animated when talking about his acting as he is about his apples. And that’s nice to see. He’s clearly relishing every opportunity to better himself, and just getting started with what promises to be a very exciting career. Harrison Osterfield, it seems, takes every bite of the apple — literally. Talk about irregular.

#Harrison osterfield #the gentlemans journal #the irregulars #interview

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artificialqueens · 4 years ago

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Happiness Isn't Here, Chapter 2 (Jan-centric) - Joley

Chapter Summary: Jan really wants to be friends with Crystal’s girlfriend, Nicky. Gigi struggles to comprehend her attraction towards Jan. Brita gets further invested in Jan’s love life and confesses why she was so drawn to Jan.

ao3 link

It had been three days since Crystal had texted Jan, and Jan was getting frustrated at the lack of follow-up. She and Brita had visited most, if not all of the spots Crystal frequented, but to no avail. And now Jan was out for a jog, hoping to either clear her mind or have a breakthrough with a new idea. But all she got was a leg cramp and a strong pang of hunger.

There was a convenience store towards the end of the block, so Jan decided to do a quick shop. She wanted to get home right after and take a shower, flushed red and drenched in sweat from her run, she knew she must’ve looked like a hot mess.

Jan started to walk down the snack aisle, but instantly backed out and hid. “Oh, come on,” she whined to herself before carefully peering back into the aisle. Sure enough, Crystal was there and oblivious to Jan’s presence, much to her relief in her given state. “Wait, who’s that?”

A woman walked up to Crystal and wrapped her arms around her from behind. The first thing Jan noticed was that this woman – this unfairly gorgeous woman – was dressed entirely inappropriately for a trip to the convenience store. This woman was dressed for a high-end cocktail party, wearing a little red dress and black stilettos with hair that must’ve had taken at least an hour to style. She didn’t seem to belong in Missouri at all.

“Yeah, that’s Nicky,” a familiar voice pulled Jan from her thoughts.

“Fuck, how long have you been standing there?” Jan jumped slightly, putting her hand to her chest.

Gigi shrugged. “Not as long as you’ve been staring, I imagine,” she mused, then looked Jan over. “What happened to you? You look like hell.”

Jan huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. “I went on a run, thank you very much. I did a whole… half a mile.”

“Oh shit, didn’t realize you were training for a triathlon,” she teased.

“You too?” another woman, presumably one of Gigi’s friends, chimed in out of seemingly nowhere. “What’s your routine? I’m pretty sure I’ve got mine down, but-”

“It was a joke, Kameron,” Gigi cut her off.

Kameron wasn’t alone either, as a shorter brunette joined her side. “Who’s your friend, Gigi?” she asked. “This the girl from the party you was talkin’ about?”

Jan smirked as she looked from Gigi’s friends back to her. “You were talking about me?” she asked, twirling her ponytail around her finger.

“Never,” she retorted dryly. “Jan, let me introduce you to two friends, one brain cell. This is Kameron and Vanessa.”

“Vanjie.”

Gigi rolled her eyes. “She goes by Vanjie.”

Jan offered the two of them a bright smile. “So nice to meet you guys,” she said, though her attention started to shift when she heard the click of high heels on linoleum getting louder and the conversation between Crystal and Nicky entered earshot.

“Who’s the sweaty girl with Gigi?” Nicky asked with perturbed confusion.

“What?” Crystal looked where her girlfriend was pointing. “Jan?”

“You know her?”

Crystal swallowed thickly, her eyes darting back and forth between Nicky and Jan. “No! I mean yes. I mean… kind of?”

“Kind of?” Gigi chimed in. “I thought you guys were friends.”

“We are,” Jan jumped in to assure. “It’s just been a while since we saw each other at summer camp,” she explained, happy to be able to tell the truth. “It’s been a while, we were–”

“Ten!” Crystal abruptly cut in. “That’s why the details are a little hazy, you know? It’s been so long.”

Jan furrowed her brows and looked at Crystal with a mix of hurt and confusion on her face. She tried to meet her eyes, hoping she’d explain, but to no avail – Crystal wasn’t looking at her at all, her eyes were fixed on Nicky.

Nicky did look skeptical, though she didn’t say so. “Well, you did smoke away most of your brain cells, I guess that makes sense,” she decided, watching as her girlfriend’s entire body relaxed in relief. Then her attention shifted to Jan, whom she offered a polite smile. “So nice to meet you,” she said, offering her hand out – not to shake, it was more like she was presenting it on display.

Not that Jan questioned it; she surmised that it fit the way Nicky carried herself. “The pleasure’s all mine,” she chirped, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

“What is it that you do?” Nicky questioned as she looked her over.

“Jan’s a lawyer!” Crystal jumped in yet again, though this time it appeared to be in Jan’s defense. “You just started at a firm out here, right?”

Jan nodded, ignoring the way her chest was still aching. “Yeah, it’s been going super well so far. What about you, Nicky?”

“I am a professional hairstylist,” she answered stiffly. “I do Beyoncé’s personal trainer’s sister’s hair, it’s very high-profile.”

Both Gigi and Crystal, with slight grimaces, had opened their mouths to say something, but Jan cut right in. “Really? Oooh, how fun! You should totally let me know if you’re ever taking new clients.”

Crystal winced and once again tried to interject, but Nicky answered before she could. “I do think I can fit you in, as a courtesy at least. Since you are a friend of Crystal’s,” she told her, then rifled through her purse until she pulled out a business card and handed it to Jan.

While neither Jan nor Nicky had noticed how Crystal was stressing out and Kameron and Vanessa had long since wandered off, Gigi noticed and cocked her head to the side so Crystal would follow her down the next aisle. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing!” Crystal insisted. “I just… don’t think it’s a good idea for Jan and Nicky to be friends. You know how she gets.”

“I guess,” Gigi shrugged. “But Jan seems pretty non-threatening, it’s not like you guys fucked or anything, right?”

She swallowed thickly. “Right. Because we only knew each other as kids and that would be weird,” she reminded herself, not wanting to forget the lie she’d established.

Her friend was dubious, but allowed it to slide. “So… Jan is definitely available, then?”

Crystal’s eyes lit up, this was perfect. “She is. Are you into her, Geege? Because you should ask her out, she’s great. And you’re great. So it would be, you know, great.”

Gigi shrugged, glancing down. “I dunno,” she told her, though a slight smile tugged at her lips. “Maybe.”

Before Crystal could argue her case further, Nicky rounded the corner. “Crystal, come on, we’re gonna be late,” she whined.

“We better go,” Crystal said to Gigi. “But think about what I said.”

——

Jan looked at her phone – 12:48 pm. She was a bit early for her hair appointment, by no accident. As soon as she stepped inside, she wanted to try to fit in a bit of a tour.

The salon reminded Jan of the one she would visit during the winter break she had spent in Beverly Hills. It was clean and chic and everyone who worked there could’ve moonlighted as a Victoria’s Secret model. Normally, she wasn’t intimidated by that, but she found herself cutting her tour short as anxiety started twisting her stomach into knots. Sure, she was used to the high-end life, but that didn’t make her ‘cool’. Jan didn’t know how to be cool – her ideal Friday night consisted of Chinese food, a bottle of wine, and her library of bootleg musicals.

But Nicky? Nicky oozed cool out of every invisible pore. It sent Jan back to her middle school days when she would see the popular kids and silently yearned to unlock the secrets to social acceptance. And while thirteen-year-old Jan had found the answer when she started high school without braces and with newly-developed D-cups, things were far less simple in adulthood.

“Jan?” The girl at the front desk pulled her back into reality. “You can go ahead and take the middle chair. Nicky will be right with you.”

Jan nodded and thanked her as she moved to take her seat. By the time Nicky made her way over, her racing thoughts had slowed to a walking pace, something she was eternally grateful for.

“Your hair is so thick and smooth,” Nicky observed, a hint of surprise in her tone. “You’re Italian?”

“Half Italian, half Jewish,” she confirmed. “Lots of hair on both sides.”

“I could tell from your arms,” she remarked offhandedly, but by then she was massaging shampoo into Jan’s scalp, rendering her too blissed out to register the comment.

Jan was entranced almost instantly, and she understood why Nicky worked at the only salon in Springfield with a near five-star rating. She had gotten actual massages that were less satisfying, and she was already certain she would be happy with any final result. “So, how long have you and Crystal been together?” she asked after a brief silence, curious as to how her answer would compare to Gigi’s.

“Since I moved here in the tenth grade,” Nicky answered. “Not consistently, but that isn’t the important thing.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re together now,” Jan murmured through gritted teeth, regretting bringing it up in the first place and deciding to change the subject. “This place is so nice, how long have you worked here?”

Nicky was too focused on Jan’s hair to notice the shift in tone. “About a year and a half, I cannot complain, but the goal is to open my own salon. I even think I can poach some of these girls to come with me,” she told her. “But securing a space is impossible.”

“I work in real estate law, you’re preaching to the choir,” she nodded, though her mind was already doing a speedrun of ideas. This was the ‘in’ she needed, how she could win Nicky’s favor and be her friend.

The comment didn’t connect the dots for Nicky, who finished Jan’s hair and spun her around. “And we’re done, what do you think?”

Jan gasped, her eyes bright and wide. It wasn’t an act, she was genuinely impressed with what Nicky had done. She had only trimmed a couple of inches off, but the styling was pristine, she never wanted to wash her hair again because she was afraid she could never get it back to this. “It’s gorgeous, oh my God.” As she got up and paid her, she added “Don’t stop thinking about getting your own salon, in fact, text me the info about the space you’re trying to secure,” with a wink.

Nicky’s intrigue outweighed her trepidation. “I guess you can give it your best shot, then. Landlord’s a real asshole, though.”

——

Brita eagerly led Jan into an empty conference room and set a folder down on the table. “Okay, so, what’s the plan? Before you say anything, I already looked it up and we can’t deport her to France unless we frame her for murder.”

Jan shut the door behind her and rushed to Brita’s side with concern and confusion. “What the hell are you talking about? No one’s being deported or framed for murder or… seriously, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Isn’t that what you were up to at your little hair appointment? Getting close to Nicky to find her weaknesses and exploit them to get her out of the picture? Everyone overshares at hair salons, it’s just how it works,” she explained as she opened the folder up. “I printed out all of the important social media posts dating back from when she started dating Crystal.”

“Brita, that’s eleven years’ worth of posts!”

She scoffed. “And? Do you want your happy ending with Crystal or not? Nicky is an obstacle in your way, she is the enemy.”

Jan rolled her eyes. “I don’t want her to be the enemy. I like her. She’s so cool and pretty and she smells nice and–”

Brita grabbed Jan by the shoulders and shook her. “Listen to yourself! This isn’t the Jan and Nicky love story, it’s the Jan and Crystal love story. The last thing you need to do is go all starry-eyed over, and I cannot stress this enough, Crystal’s girlfriend.”

“Okay, so, I get that you wanna help and I really appreciate it, but I promise I totally have this under control. You keep working on your plans, I’m sure they’re great.”

She sighed and let go of Jan. “I’m sorry, I know I’m intense and everything, but I just really like you and want to help you. I’ve always wanted a daughter, you know? I have a fourteen year old son, and he’s an asshole.”

Jan’s expression softened. “Aw, I didn’t realize… but that’s sweet, and it’d be nice to have a mother figure that isn’t massively disappointed in me right now. Don’t ask, it’s a story for another day.” Ideally that day would never come, but she didn’t expect Brita to let her off the hook on that either. “On that note, um, don’t get mad, but I’m getting brunch with Nicky tomorrow. But it’s a business brunch.”

“A business brunch?” Brita looked at her skeptically.

“I’m helping her get her own salon. The landlord’s a jerk but he’s only like, a four out of ten compared to what I’ve dealt with. And…” she strummed her fingers against the table as she tried to think on her feet. “Think of it this way – if she’s busy at her own salon, she’ll have less time with Crystal.”

Brita beamed and cupped Jan’s face, squishing her cheeks. “There’s that Harvard-Columbia brain at work, I knew you had a plan. You didn’t need to worry me like that, missy.”

Jan pressed her lips into a fine line and nodded. “It won’t happen again.”

——

Jan tried to keep her conversation with Brita in mind when she was out to brunch with Nicky, she really did put in an effort. But then she found out mid-mimosa that they got the location for the salon and Nicky showered her with gracious praise and it all went out the window. Jan’s latent praise kink and overwhelming desire to win Nicky over was more than enough to keep her from heeding Brita’s warning.

So, it didn’t end at business brunch. They wound up back at Jan’s house, talking, laughing, drinking, as if they had been friends this whole time. And Jan was becoming more and more convinced that in the end, she could have the best of both worlds – she could have Crystal as her girlfriend and Nicky as her bestie. There was no downside in that, right?

“Have you heard of The Nebula?” Nicky asked as she set the glass down on the coffee table, “It’s this cool, exclusive club downtown. Crystal and I were planning on going tomorrow night, you should come.”

Jan nearly spilled her drink with how quickly she perked up. She almost couldn’t believe this had worked so well and so fast. “Really? Oh my god, yeah, that’d be so much fun. I am such a club girl.”

“You’re so fun,” Nicky giggled, resting her head on Jan’s shoulder. “I love how fun you are, we’re gonna have the best time ever. You’re totally not the cunty east coast bitch I thought you’d be.”

“Aw, thank you!” Jan hugged Nicky from the side.

Nicky had ended up staying into the late afternoon, waiting until she was sober enough to take care of some things at the salon, but happily reminded Jan several times over that they would be going to The Nebula the next day at nine.

——

“Alright, are you gonna tell me what’s on your mind or not?” Crystal prompted as she watched Gigi absentmindedly clean the same glass for the third time.

Gigi looked up, finally putting the glass away and tossing the towel over her shoulder. “You know damn well I try to keep my head empty at any given moment.”

Even though Crystal might have agreed at times, she wouldn’t take that as an answer. “Come on, you’ve been weird ever since we all ran into each other at the store the other day.”

“I just…” she hesitated, chewing on her lip. “What’s her deal, anyway?”

“Who?”

“Jan.”

Crystal smirked. “See? I knew you liked her. You never act like that around girls like you did at the store. I don’t know what the hold-up is, she’s cool.”

Gigi snorted. “Cool isn’t the word I’d use, babe,” she retorted dryly, then added, “you sure she’s not into you?”

“What? Of course not. I told you already, we were kids, remember?” Despite how comically suspicious her voice was, Gigi didn’t push her any further, so she continued. “Hey, Jan’s coming with us to Nebula tonight. You should come, it could be like a cute double date.”

After a bit of hesitation, Gigi nodded. “Yeah, alright. My shift ended ten minutes ago anyway, I just gotta get home and change.”

The four of them met at Jan’s house, as she lived the closest to downtown, and took an Uber (Jan happily upgraded them to the best option) to the club. Considering they were four attractive women in mini dresses, they were granted entry easily and went right to ordering rounds of drinks.

It only took a few drinks to get Crystal and Nicky on the dance floor, giggling and grinding to the beat. But Nicky stopped after a couple minutes when she realized Jan and Gigi were still lingering awkwardly at the table, and simply had to remedy that. She jogged back to the table and grabbed both of them by the arm. “Come on, Jan, dance with Gigi,” she insisted, pushing them together.

“I didn’t expect you to come,” Jan admitted as she draped her arms around Gigi’s neck. “This doesn’t seem like your scene. Like, you probably think the music is too generic and the drinks are too sweet.”

“Well, both of those things are true.” Gigi rested her hands on Jan’s waist, the two of them doing the bare minimum to count as dancing. “But Crystal dragged me out and I thought it might be fun to watch you get drunk and make an ass out of yourself.”

Jan scoffed. Sure, she was a lightweight and already tipsy, but she thought she could ignore it if she tried hard enough. “Why don’t you get me another drink then, Captain Cynical?”

“Oh, I’m a captain? Here I thought I was just Lieutenant Cynical,” she teased, then let go of her to go to the bar.

While Jan was waiting, Nicky came back over and pulled her to dance with her and Crystal. “You and Gigi look good together,” Nicky remarked.

“You’d look good with anyone,” Jan mused playfully. “Oh my god, if we hooked up, we’d all be even!” She gasped, gesturing between the three of them and giggling at what she thought was a funny observation.

But Nicky and Crystal all but froze in their tracks. “What do you mean by that?”

Jan glanced at Crystal, suddenly remembering the lie she’d helped commit to. “I just, um…” To her relief, Gigi had rejoined them at that moment. “Oh good, you’re back!” She quickly took the drink and started to down it.

“No, no, tell me what you meant by that,” Nicky insisted.

Realizing she had been caught, Jan thought the only option was to tell the truth. “I meant, well, you and Crystal are together, and we, um… used to be…”

“You both said you weren’t,” Gigi cut in. “You both insisted you weren’t. What the fuck?”

“I just didn’t wanna make things weird!” Crystal defended. “But… yeah… Jan and I were actually sixteen when we met and um… did stuff.”

Nicky’s face reddened with anger. “I can’t believe you both lied to me!” She turned to Crystal. “We are leaving and will be talking about this. And you,” she turned to Jan, “just stay away from us.”

Although Jan tried to object and plead her case, Nicky was already storming out of the club with Crystal in tow, leaving her alone with Gigi. “Don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it.”

“For a Harvard-Columbia grad, you’re kind of stupid, aren’t you?”

Jan pouted and nodded.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

Jan nodded again.

Gigi wrapped her arm around Jan’s shoulders and walked her out of the club and got into an Uber with her once it arrived.

The ride was quiet, enough so that by the time they arrived at Jan’s house, she was asleep with her head in Gigi’s lap.

Being rail-thin and fragile looking in comparison, Gigi struggled carrying Jan into the house and placing her on the couch. “God, you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” she muttered to herself before taking the blanket off the back of the couch and draping it over Jan.

Just as Gigi was in the middle of contemplating if she should stay or leave, Jan started to wake up. “Ah, it lives.”

Jan looked around, slowly realizing that she was on her couch, and that Gigi tucked her in. She pushed herself to sit up a bit. “Um… thank you, you know, for helping me in. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, I know you’re probably pissed at me too.”

“Oh, I am,” Gigi readily assured. “But you look like a sad baby deer, so I can’t just abandon you, I guess,” she decided. “You need help getting to bed, Bambi?”

“Please,” Jan mumbled. The two of them went upstairs and Jan stepped into the bathroom to get changed and wash her face. Then once again, Gigi tucked her into bed.

Once Jan was sound asleep, Gigi went downstairs and crashed on the couch. But she woke up early in the morning and left without a trace. Without the alcohol softening her heart, she found herself mad at the fact that she so easily overlooked what Jan did in favor of taking care of her. And what was worse was that she still liked her.

When Jan woke up, she went downstairs, only to find her house empty. She felt a pang of disappointment, only to perk up at a knock on the door. “Gigi?” No answer, so with another wave of hopefulness she asked “Crystal?” as she opened the door.

“How funny, Gigi and Crystal are exactly who we need to talk about,” Brita huffed as she walked inside. “You are skating on thin ice,” she warned, walking Jan to the couch and sitting down. “What happened last night?”

Jan sighed. “Nicky found out Crystal and I were together and now she hates me and Gigi took me home. That’s it.”

Brita pinched the bridge of her nose. “I was afraid of this,” she muttered and took a deep breath. “It’s fine, we just need a new plan.”

#rpdr fanfiction #jan sport #crystal methyd #gigi goode #brita filter #nicky doll #brooke lynn hytes #kameron michaels #vanessa vanjie mateo #gigi x jan #crystal x jan #crystal x nicky #lesbian au #s12 #joley #happiness isnt here #rare pair

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 4 years ago

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Kissing Dead Pearls (Part 13)

When he was a boy he and Iroh were bold. They made a game of cliff diving from the highest that they could find. They’d race each other on jet skis at speeds that had them in overnight juvenile detention centers. They would have wrestled sharks if they could. And how much trouble would they get in when Azulon caught them.

There came a summer when that all stopped.

It wasn’t that he’d lost his sense of adventure nor his brazen recklessness. It wasn’t that Iroh had either. And they certainly hadn’t grown tired of their high risk games and thrill seeking antics.

It was that he’d found a new thrill. She had the most gorgeous eyes--eyes that her daughter would eventually come to share--and hair that shimmered under mid-july sun. He’d spent that summer chasing her and hearing jests from his brother about how such a flower like her wouldn’t go for a prickly shrub like him.

His flower wasn’t so delicate. A summer later and she’d already beaten their record cliff diving height. Ursa was a storm, destructively alluring. And she’d went out like a storm, went out in a storm.

He didn’t know it then. Then he was just another teenage boy. Then he was high on life and testosterone and the whoops and hollers of his peers.

Then he and his brother were going to conquer the world. They were already on top of it.

So many summers later the world has conquered him.

.oOo.

He is in an abysmal state physically and mentally. It has been three days, three long and horrible days since his last drink. They promise him that his symptoms will begin to in another four days. He isn’t sure that he can last that long.

He hasn’t seen his children since he’d but the bottle down. His mood has been too unstable. He has already seen Azula look up at him with hate, fear, and pity once. Such a cocktail of emotions is horrible to feel exuding from her.

And Zuko. He has that same fear and hate, but Ozai senses disappointment. He is a disappointment to his own son. He supposes that it is a helping of karma considering the rough patch the two of them had, had when Zuko first began high school. He expected Zuko to share his love of surfing. He’d done it as a boy and his father and his father before him. Zuko took interest in beach volleyball which was acceptable enough and then he’d dropped that to spend time with Katara and join a culinary club with her.

He felt a sense of betrayal somehow, that his son so adamantly refused to carry on the family tradition of becoming the school’s surf champion. Hell, Ozai hadn’t even expected him to be a star, he just wanted the boy to join the team and carry on the legacy.

He felt a sense of loss. Loss over what could have been an opportunity for solid father-son bonding. And that feeling of loss and betrayal, the paranoid notion that he’d chosen cooking just to spite him turned to anger and disappointment. It drove a heft wedge between them. Even with Ursa there to mediate for a while, a sense of unhappiness permeated the household and only grew more palpable when a twelve year old Azula proudly declared that she’d made the middle school surf team.

It was innocent, truly she hadn’t meant to escalate the situation. He would later find out that’d she’d joined the team solely because her friends were on it and she wanted to make time to see them when there otherwise would have been none. Later he’d found that she was trying to cheer him up, to bond with him, and to let him know that the family legacy would uphold. Zuko took it as his little sister trying to one up him. And Ursa had scolded her well and good for making things harder for her older brother.

It was a feud that lasted the rest of the year. Father verses son, mother verses daughter, brother versus sister, and husband verses wife. The siblings had cleared the air between each other first. Zuko when he came upon his sister practicing with her friends. That level of enthusiasm couldn’t possibly have come from a place of ill will. He’d also noted that, at the time, she wasn’t even particularly good at surfing. She usually placed in the bottom three, much to her frustration. And thus the tension with her mother was cleared. Ozai had caught his wife consoling her after a particularly bad competition.

After that, Ozai made a point of at least pretending to be interested in Zuko’s culinary hobby. Eventually he’d decided that it couldn’t be so bad to find a meal already made after a strenuous day of working the lighthouse.

He misses that. He wishes that Zuko would trust him to come around a second time. But he has probably worn the boy’s trust too thin and this time Ursa is not around for damage control.

For it he finds himself alone. Azula offers to visit him, he refuses her company. God forbid he says something in a fit of withdrawal induced rage that will drive her away too. More than that he does not want her to see him in such a pathetic state. She’d idolized him once. She wanted to be like him…

For the life of him, he hopes that she never will be.

Perhaps another bout of anxiety is coming on, he finds himself dreading that she will. She has lost a lover the same way he has, to nature’s merciless sea-salted hands, and addiction runs deep in her genetics. His mind carries itself away to images of her alone in the dark, disheveled and shaking with a half-empty bottle in her hand. He fights to put the visual out of his head. His little girl is stronger than that. He taught her to be. She has more control than that...and yet she had almost ran out to sea fueled by her grief.

He rakes his fingers through his hair. They can dim the lights, they can hush the noise level. They can give him lots of water, they can feed him well but they can’t free him from his own thoughts.

His head pounds and his hands shake and he is consistently on the verge of losing whatever meal they have given him. It should be easier with each hour that passes, but instead, he thinks that things are reaching a head. A new peak. A new intensity. Minute by minute the pounding in his head heightens until he thinks that his brain may burst--and this might be a mercy. Minute by minute the shakes grow worse until he can barely hold a fork steadily.

He can’t move, he can’t even shift lest he upset his stomach. He wishes that Ursa were there to take him through it. Instead he has a team of nurses checking his heart rate every half an hour or so. Apparently a rapid heartbeat isn’t uncommon. Maybe if he is lucky, it will quicken so furiously that it will cease beating entirely. His children might be better for it.

Hakoda and Kya watch them well...

.oOo.

Azula glances back at the hospital with a queasiness in her belly. Her father is angry with her. He had said that he wasn’t but he is. He is angry with her for trying to run away. He is angry at her for losing her senses and nearly doing something recklessly stupid. She can’t see any other reason for him so adamantly refusing to let her visit.

She storms up to Zuko’s car, climbs in, and slams the door.

“He still didn’t want to talk?”

Azula shakes her head. She notices the way Zuko presses his lips together. The way his brows crease. “Lets go pick up Jet and Katara, you’ll have a lot more fun with them. We’ll have more fun.”

Azula nods. “Sure, Zuzu.”

“I’ll let you pick the station.”

Azula toys with the radio dial and finds the rock station. Zuko pushes the pedal a little two far down and they leave the parking lot at a fairly questionable speed. She doesn’t call him on it, she is in the mood for a little thrill. A pinch of rock and a little speed, the wind in her hair and the prospect of a night on the town doing who knows what…

Realistically she knows that they will only make it to a club parking lot. Katara isn’t the rule breaking sort. She supposes that, that is just one more reason to bring her along. They could use someone who’d talk them out of truly foolish acts of rebellion.

They get to Jet’s house first, she climbs into the back seat next to him. He slings an arm over her shoulder and pecks her on the cheek. It is such a different feeling than the one Sokka had given her.

This is probably a good thing. It would only hurt more if it felt the same.

In her head, Jet smokes a cigarette and she has a glass of rum. In her head Zuko drives faster. In reality Jet is sucking on a twizzler and Katara offers her a juicebox. Jet gives a humored snort and a remark about how he hasn’t had a juicebox since grade school.

In reality Katara has lectured Zuko about his speed and she shares a juicebox with Jet.

Azula thinks that she is alright with this. There is something pleasantly simple about sharing a juicebox and sitting on the swings of a park with an ocean view. For a moment she doesn’t think of her father, her losses, and the future. For a moment she feels the freespirit of her childhood. Jet chucks the juicebox, receives a rant for littering, and begins pushing her on the swing.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #Azula #Zuko #Ozai #Katara #Jet #Sokka #Sokkla #Zutara #Fanfiction

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littlemissking · 5 years ago

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Hiya! Cali here! I’m just getting everything together now, so if you’d like to plot come hit me up!

did you see arya king this morning, heading out to the beach? they’re a guest at opal dunes. if i remember correctly, they’re a leo and they remind me of a stack of unfinished books, midnight strolls along the shore, and fruity cocktails sipped between sarcastic remarks, probably because they’re demure and self-indulgent.

Rewind: Arya was originally born in New York into a family of four, her two fathers, both surgeons, spent most of their days in the hospital, so she was mostly raised by her older brother, though her relationship with all of her family is very strong. She was a bit of a different child, favoring spending her free time hanging out with the kids in the many different wards over the friends from school and continued to volunteer her time as she grew up, organizing fundraisers and little events for the long term patients and their families. It wasn’t surprising to anyone when she eventually was accepted into NYU School of Medicine.

~TW Trauma/Drowning Mention~ For spring break of her senior year, Arya and her friends decided to go to Florida for the last of her fun times (so she thought) before heading off to med school. The flight there is all she remembered after waking up in the hospital. After her and some friends had apparently gone out in the water to watch some late night fireworks, she found herself caught by the undercurrent and according to her friends and doctors, she was under the water for quite some time and seemed to hit her head once if not repeatedly before she was drug to the surface. Though she doesn’t hate the ocean because of her accident, you won’t catch her more than waist deep in the water, you’ll typically find her walking along the shore or sunbathing while reading a book nearby.

Personality wise, she changed quite a bit, bits and pieces of her memory just seemed to be missing and the once calm and friendly girl was quieter, a little more reserved and much more easily startled than she had been in the past. She suffered from immense anxiety when she tried to go to University in the fall and after a long year she decided to take a break. However that gap year turned into 6 and instead of returning to school, Arya found herself just wanting to get away to find some peace and fun, spontaneaty was her new comfort rather than keeping a structured schedule.

Because Arya never knew what might happen to her memory and didn’t want to risk forgetting a thing, especially if something unexpected were to happen again, she started to write about her travels and experiences. All of her stories and videos were uploaded online and before she really realized it, her travels and blog became a job with quite the following. Two years ago, her travels led her to the Opal Dunes Resort for a two week visit and the beauty and peace she found there had her returning for a month the following summer and alas here she was once again, staying for an indefinite amount of time.

#dunesintro #I write essays so I really tried to condense this down #hopefully it's not trash

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emmvxnce · 5 years ago

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i didn’t know i was a p h o e n i x TILL I LEARNED HOW TO S P E A K

𝖖 𝖚 𝖔 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘

"Without losing a piece of me, how do i get to heaven? Without changing a piece of me, how do I get to heaven? So if I’m losing a piece of me, maybe I don’t want heaven.” — Troye Sivan, Heaven

“She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you’re swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water’s deeper than you think and there’s nothing there.” — Julia Gregson

“The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.” — Henry Ward Beecher

“I’ve left my fingerprints somewhere. And that’s good enough. And I am my own person. And that’s good enough. And… I stand my ground. And that’s good enough.” — Morrissey

𝖇 𝖆 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈

NAME: Emmeline Glenys Vance NICKNAMES: Emme, Em, Vance AGE: Twenty Two BIRTHDAY: 10 September 1957 GENDER: Cis Female PRONOUNS: She/Her SEXUALITY: Homosexual ETHNICITY: English, Welsh, Chinese

𝖋 𝖆 𝖒 𝖎 𝖑 𝖞

MOTHER: Jìngyi ‘Jenny’ Vance, née Ling (44) FATHER: Raymond Thomas Vance (46) SIBLINGS: Charles Vance (23), Margaret Vance (20)

𝖕 𝖍 𝖞 𝖘 𝖎 𝖈 𝖆 𝖑 𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖇𝖚𝖙𝖊𝖘

FACE CLAIM: Chloe Bennet BUILD: Naturally slim, of average height. Several years of training have lent an athletic edge to her body. Solid bone structure, thin but not waiflike. HAIR: Shoulder length, thick, and wavy. Typically pulled back off her face in some way or other. Often twisted up with her wand which backfires when she is forced to pull her wand and her hair comes falling around her face. HAIR COLOR: Dark brown. EYE COLOR: Typically brown, nearly black when she’s upset or angry but lighter when the sun is bright or her mood is up. SKIN COLOR: Beige with warm undertones. DOMINANT HAND: Right. ANOMALIES: Broken nails from years spent biting or picking at them. A scar on her hairline on the right side of her forehead from where she fell when she was eight and cracked her head on the coffee table in the living room. Various minor scars from several years with the Order. SCENT: Honey and lilac from her shampoo, a touch of something floral if she’s decided to put on perfume which is rare and reserved for the most special of occasions. ACCENT: RP but with traces of welsh from years listening and speaking with her dad who is from Cardiff. ALLERGIES: Pollen and blueberries. DISORDERS: Mild anxiety triggered in the last several years by the worsening war FASHION: Leans to muggle fashion, typical late 70′s clothing. Bell bottoms, high waisted jeans, crop tops, the occasional leather jacket, over sized men’s shirts paired with leggings. She prefers pants to skirts as often as possible. NERVOUS TICS: Biting and picking at her nails, toying with any jewelry she may be wearing, usually a necklace, twirling hair at the base of her neck or from her ponytail. In general her hands are usually fidgeting in someway, she has a hard time keeping them still. QUIRKS: She doesn’t like silence and sometimes will hum to herself if there is no other sound just to fill the empty air, she almost always sits with her legs pulled up either under or in front of her.

𝖑 𝖎 𝖋 𝖊 𝖘 𝖙 𝖞 𝖑 𝖊

RESIDES: Plainview Point BORN: Cardiff, where her parents lived in the earliest years of their marriage before moving to a village just outside London. RAISED: Shere, a village in Surrey, about an hour southwest of London. PETS: Persimmon aka Persy, a ginger cat she met in an alley near St. Mungo’s who took a liking to her after she shared her turkey sandwich one day and followed her home.

CAREER: Healer, specializing in spell inflicted damage and working on the fourth floor of St. Mungo’s. EXPERIENCE: Member of the Potions club in her fifth through seventh years at Hogwarts. OWLS and NEWTS in Charms, Potions, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Entered the Healer training program upon graduation from Hogwarts, rotating through each floor and specialization at St. Mungo’s before choosing to specialize in spell-inflicted damage. EMPLOYER: St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

POLITICAL AFFILIATION: Order of the Phoenix BELIEFS: Equality, in all shapes and forms. Being a muggleborn, a woman, the daughter of an immigrant, and a lesbian have given her a unique viewpoint into so many of the ways that society is stacked against certain people. She does not have a strong religious or spirtual practice or belief but adds it to the list of things she believes people should be allowed to choose and practice without judgment or intercession. MISDEMEANORS: Breaking curfew, pilfering from the potion supply closet in school and a little bit from the hospital when it’s not something she can get at the apothecary FELONIES: None on the record, only in service of the Order DRUGS: Marijuana, both inhaled and ingested. Girlfriend makes a hell of a pot brownie. SMOKES: Marijuana, yes. Cigarettes, no. ALCOHOL: Beer mostly, the occasional whiskey when someone else is in charge of choosing it. Never wine or cocktails. Too sweet for her taste. DIET: Mostly simple meals, usually with a bit of a Chinese foundation. Rice as a staple, a lot of stir fry because it’s simply and quick and can be made in large quantities to last her for many days or to feed a multitude of people.

LANGUAGES: English, Welsh, Mandarin

PHOBIAS: Fire, losing those she loves and being left alone. HOBBIES: Brewing potions, listening and collecting muggle music TRAITS: { + }: compassionate, self-assured, determined, hard working, pragmatic { - }: blunt, ineloquent, inflexible, stubborn, temperamental

𝖋 𝖆 𝖛 𝖔 𝖗 𝖎 𝖙 𝖊 𝖘

LOCATION: Her flat. She’s turned it into a haven with couches you can sink into, nooks where she can curl up, candles and warm smells, even a fireplace she and Persy like to lie in front of until they fall asleep on the poufs she has as extra seating. SPORTS TEAM: Chelsea Football Club, Holyhead Harpies (football first and then quidditch) GAME: Rummy, card games in general MUSIC: Muggle rock and punk - Queen, David Bowie, Blondie, The Clash MOVIES: Star Wars, The Godfather (just the first one), Superman, The Exorcist FOOD: Chinese food but actual Chinese food like her mother makes, not what you can get in the shops. Not that that’s bad - it’s just not her favorite. BEVERAGE: Chocolate Milk. Yes she knows she is a child. COLOR: Deep gold.

𝖒 𝖆 𝖌 𝖎 𝖈

ALUMNI HOUSE: Hufflepuff WAND (length, flexibility, wood, & core): 9 ¼ inches, ash, phoenix feather core, slightly springy. The saying goes that ash wands are stubborn but it isn’t the arrogant or crass type of stubborn that attracts this wood. It is drawn to a person whose beliefs are held strongly in their mind and deeply in their heart. Combined with a core of phoenix feather and it’s slightly springy nature, Emmeline’s wand is particularly loyal and becomes finnicky in the hands of anyone other than it’s owner. AMORTENTIA: Fresh baked pastries, cinnamon, twilight air in the summer PATRONUS: Brown Bear - social creatures who find strength in sharing resources and who are known for their protective instincts. Bears are also closely associated with healing in some cultures. BOGGART: Darkness. The kind of darkness that envelops your senses. Instead of becoming stronger, it dulls each sense so you cannot see but you also cannot hear or feel or smell. You are isolated, alone, helpless. Seconds become eternities as you seek any anchor to hold on to to pull yourself back to the world.

𝖈 𝖍 𝖆 𝖗 𝖆 𝖈 𝖙 𝖊 𝖗

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good MBTI: ENFJ-A (Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging, Assertive) MBTI ROLE: The Protaganist ENNEAGRAM: Type 2 ENNEAGRAM ROLE: The Helper TEMPERAMENT: Sanguine WESTERN ZODIAC: Virgo

Virgos are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful signs of the zodiac. This will lead to a strong character, but one that prefers conservative, well-organized things and a lot of practicality in their everyday life. These individuals have an organized life, and even when they let go to chaos, their goals and dreams still have strictly defined borders in their mind. Their need to serve others makes them feel good as caregivers, on a clear mission to help.

CHINESE ZODIAC: Rooster

Roosters are smart, charming, witty, honest, blunt, capable, talented, brave, and self-reliant. They are known for their ability to do astounding things with extremely limited resources. Their way is always right (in their mind, at least), and they love to debate their stance. Roosters are extremely sociable and bask in attention and praise.

PRIMAL SIGN: Corgi

Loyal, observant, and analytical, those born under the Primal Zodiac sign of the Corgi are devoted friends and family members who take on the role of caretaker with great passion. Few others are as eager to jump in and help a friend in need, and Corgis take great pride in this. More so than other signs, members of this sign like to fill a very specific role in the lives of other people, thus getting the majority of their own personal fulfillment through their service to others.

TAROT CARD: Justice

The Justice Tarot card has to do with moral sensitivity and that which gives rise to empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness. Since the time of Solomon, this image has represented a standard for the humane and fair-minded treatment of other beings. This card reminds us to be careful to attend to important details. It's a mistake to overlook or minimize anything where this card is concerned.

SONGS: coming soon, i suck at this

IDEOLOGIES: Doesn’t believe in wallowing or living in the past. Mistakes get made and bad things happen and the only way to get past it all is to pick yourself up and keep on walking.

Tea over coffee. Fight her about it. Get yourself some black tea if you need the caffeine.

There is exactly nothing that can’t be made better by a dance party around the flat with the music so loud that you can’t hear your own thoughts anymore.

There is no excuse for inequality. People are people and the only way to get through this life is to care about the people inhabiting the world around you. Most common thought - “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.”

#she's a burden on society | aesthetic #dulcetask #this took me a solid six hours #blessings on you if you read the whole thing

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trustyourgutblog · 5 years ago

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The One With the Sunday Scaries

Today, I’m going to talk about something that is close to my heart and has been part of my life since…well, since I joined the adult, working world.

Yup, you guessed it.

The phenomenon that has become known as, the Sunday Scaries.

You know that nagging feeling of dread that creeps in around 3 pm on a Sunday? After basking in the haven of freedom that the weekend offers, you suddenly remember that you’ve sold your soul to the devil (aka your day job) for the next 5 days.

Even the most mindful and present people watch the last grains of sand filter to the bottom of the hourglass as Monday looms over your last semblance of weekend joy.

Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely love my job. But if I said that I’d prefer to spend the majority of my weeks fielding crises, angry phone calls from parents, and keeping a kid from throwing chairs during a meltdown, more than staying in the comfort of my own home, my pants would surely be on fire.

Unfortunately, I’m not writing this to share that I’ve found a cure for the Scaries. But, I will say that I’ve found them to be much more manageable using the following 3 tips.

Tip #1: Meal prepping

Meal prepping seems to be one of the biggest buzzwords of 2019. And for good reason! Preparing my lunches for the work week (and if I’m really on top of things, dinners too), makes me feel more prepared, organized, and ready for what Monday is about to throw at me. Chairs hurled across my office included.

Ever since I have become more dedicated to getting my grocery shopping done on the weekends and planning out my lunches, I’ve become more consistent with eating healthy and really staying aligned with my 80/20 goal – eating whole foods 80% of the time and processed foods 20% of the time.

Meal prepping is also a great way to save your hard-earned dough. Trust me, you’ll feel WAY less tempted to grab Qdoba on your lunch break when you have a yummy crockpot meal waiting for you in the fridge. Especially if it means you don’t have to venture out in the cold to get it.

Tip #2: Journaling

I try my best to do some journaling every Sunday. I have a Panda Planner that’s divided into weekly, daily, and monthly sections.

Journaling at the beginning of each month and week helps me to feel more organized and focused on what goals I want to achieve. Maybe someday I’ll level up to making daily journaling a priority.

*Sigh* a girl can dream.

Sunday nights are when I struggle the most with racing thoughts and falling asleep. Journaling before bed helps me externalize all of my plans for the week and put them on paper so that I’m not keeping myself awake making mental reminders of things that need to get done the next day.

I also like laying out my month with all of my personal plans ahead of time, so that I can ensure that I’m getting enough downtime in between social events. If my month looks super packed, I try to plan for more self-care or “say no” to events that are less of a priority. This proves to be especially challenging when you’re at the age where every weekend of the summer is spent traveling for a wedding, bachelorette party, or baby shower.

If any of my friends are reading this – you know that I love you guys, but I spend all week talking with and listening to people. Sometimes I need to Shrek out and hang out in my swamp by myself.

Tip #3: Put down the bottle

Okay, I know this is going to be the most unpopular tip of all… but, I couldn’t exclude it. Don’t get me wrong – I love a Mango White Claw just as much as any other white girl from the US. But, limiting alcohol use has made a HUGE impact on managing my anxiety.

Over the last two summers, my social calendar was packed which meant lots of weekends spent having fun with friends and enjoying one too many beverages.

Monday would roll around and I’d be fighting brain fog, exhaustion, and leftover dehydration. I would sloth through the day just to make it home to flop into my bed. By the time I felt well-rested it was Friday and I’d do it all over again.

Bitch, who are you trying to fool?! You are not 21 anymore. You do not have to drink that bottle of tequila Lizzo’s been saving for you. You also have a CHRONIC DISEASE to manage.

I started to feel guilty for showing up to my job and half-assing it. I mean, this is my career - my passion, my calling. I worked hard to go to school and earn this degree so that I could help people. And I’m going to show up so fatigued that I have to chug coffee all day just to stay awake during my sessions?

Excuse me, what? Enough was enough.

Since I’ve been diagnosed with Crohn’s and IBD, my energy level has become sacred to me. Chronic fatigue is no joke. If I am going to show up as my best self for my consumers and families during the work week, that means I have to make an effort to take great care of myself.

Does that mean that I’m never going to over-indulge on the weekends? Of course not. Right now, I’ve been enjoying a drink or two about every other weekend. And that’s been working well for me.

Back in September, I took over a month off from drinking entirely after a long summer of drinking at social events.

My alcohol consumption is always going to ebb and flow. But, as long as I’m staying aligned with the life that I want to live, you’re damn right I’m going to enjoy a hot chocolate Rumchata cocktail during the holidays.

I wanted to make sure to get this post up before the weekend so you all could give my tips a try this Sunday. I hope they make you all wake up Monday morning feeling good as hell!

Two Lizzo references in one post?! *hair flip*

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sydneykidneylou · 6 years ago

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falling in love 1,300 miles apart

So, this is my first real blog post so take it easy on me. I’m supposed to write about something I know, and there may be a lot of things I know, this is the one thing that has been on my mind for the past 365 days, so here it goes – my LDR (aka Long-Distance Relationship).

Spring break 2018, almost a year ago to the date, I was set up with a friend of a friend on a trip to New York City, now, I wasn’t alone, and I had spoken to this boy before but due to the distance, never in person, obviously. Through the little phone interactions, we had (mostly text messages and a handful of calls) I already had a crush on him and flying to NYC with my best friend to meet him and her ex was giving me a crazy amount of anxiety. I had never done this before, I had little expectations of how the night would go (I tend to get my hopes up but hey, who doesn’t) but it was beautiful. He took us around Brooklyn, we had tacos, we laughed, made inside jokes, paid way too much for cocktails, went dancing and had an amazing first kiss.

Ariana Grande says in her song Imagine, “After the first kiss, knew you were perfect”, that’s how I felt then, and hearing that song months later I still think of that moment. Now, I’m usually not a kiss-on-the-first-date kind of gal, but this was different and I’m so happy that I didn’t wait. For the rest of the week, we were inseparable. Yeah, our best friends were there, and yeah, we were together all week but there were little moments his hand wasn’t in mine. Of course, as all good things do, the week came to an end. The morning we left was a dreaded one, he had to work so he said goodbye to me early that morning, my heart was heavy, I hugged him tight and start to cry, yes, cry, over a person I had known for six whole days.

Luckily, it didn’t end there. We liked each other so much he bought a ticket to come see me before I had even gotten on the plane, it was the sweetest thing anyone I barely knew had done for me. It seems minor, but I was already falling for this guy, I was scared and excited and just felt dizzy all the time. I won’t bore you with the details, but we fly back and forth for a while, I lived with him for three weeks in the summer, he came to my birthday and every time we saw each other it was amazing. However… never defining the relationship I was always terrified the next time would be the last. Listen to me, if you are scared, talk about it. No matter how much it sucks, it could save you months of heartache and in my case, lots and lots of money.

So, here I am, a year later, just until the other day, we spoke on the phone 6 days a week, said things like “I miss you” often, caught up. For him, that was enough, see he’s not in school, he lives far away, and has many other important things to think about, things that aren’t me. Most people have different top priorities, I tend to put the people that I’m in love with at the top of that list. It sounds sweet, but I think it’s a character flaw wanting to spend hours just listening to someone tell about the things they love and how their day was. This would be great if he wanted to work towards the same goal as, I don’t know, maybe living in the same city as his “girlfriend” of a year one day, but it’s not. As I said about the first week that I met him, all good things must come to an end. So, what I’m left with here, is memories, the idea of a beautiful relationship and a guy who will never love me enough to even think about a future with me.

Before I go, here is another blog to read in case you need a little support in your own LDR, they aren’t all bad. Promise!

#LDR #Long Distance #love #breakup #nyc #okc #views #its going to be okay

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bettycoopergal · 6 years ago

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And You?

In honor of my one-year anniversary with all of you lovely people in the Bughead fandom, I thought I’d repost the New Year’s Eve one-shot I wrote this time last year. Thank you all for a wonderful 2018, and here’s to the many Bughead moments of 2019 that I’m sure are yet to come!

Summary: It’s been five years since they graduated Riverdale High and even longer since Betty and Jughead broke up. When they reunite at a New Year’s party, will they get closure, or something else entirely?

Read on Ao3 or under the cut

“10 more minutes!” someone yells from a room over. Drunken shouts of excitement echo throughout the house, and Betty Cooper lets out a sigh. She is quite literally backed into a corner, silently counting down the last seconds of the year as she tries to ignore the anxiety that is threatening to close in on her. Her back is pressed into the sharp dip where the walls meet between the kitchen and the hallway, and bodies are blocking her view into both. She can only see directly in front of her, a fact that seems suspiciously like some kind of metaphor.

She’s in Archie and Veronica’s new house in Riverdale for their annual New Year’s Eve party. Betty has kept in contact with Veronica over the five years that have passed since they all graduated high school, and by extension she’s kept in contact with Archie, but not really anyone else. Because of that, her yearly visits to Riverdale over the holidays have been mostly limited to family time, with the occasional meet-up between her and the now-engaged duo. But this year Veronica finally talked her into coming to one of her famous New Year’s parties, much to Betty’s chagrin. “You just have to see the new house, B!” she’d said, at last guilting her pushover best friend into agreement.

So far, Betty’s been able to manage her social anxiety pretty well, even with all the forced small talk she’s had to make over the past few hours. But she won’t go so far as to say that she’s enjoyed the experience. There are just too many memories in this town for her, too many unwanted feelings that bubble up in the pit of her stomach. Every familiar face seems to bring her right back to high school, and that’s the last place she wants to be.

After all, it’s been a long time since Betty left Riverdale—a long time since she’s seen a lot of the people surrounding her now. Since graduating, she’s completed a journalism degree at NYU, accepted an editorial position at one of the smaller publication offices in New York, and moved into her very own run-down studio apartment. But even though all of these things seemed like major accomplishments to Betty just hours ago, now, as she is faced with the ghosts of her memories, they feel somehow hollow.

She’s spent a good part of the last five years trying to grapple with her past, to accept the way that everything turned out for her. By the time Betty was walking across the stage at Riverdale High’s graduation, everything had fallen apart. People were dead, murdered by the darkness of the town that everyone had thought was innocent. Her family was broken, her dad having left behind the shell of her mom not long after Polly moved to have the twins. Her friendships were strained, unable to bear the weight of the impossible obstacles that had fallen upon them at such a young age. And her relationship—with the boy who she would have given anything to be with—had never recovered from its seemingly temporary break. “Until it sticks,” she can still hear sometimes when it’s quiet. Even now, years later, she can’t believe it actually did.

Betty and Jughead tried for a while after that horrible day to return to some semblance of the friendship they’d had before they became more than that, but it never worked. The love they’d shared—it was irrevocable, and there was no use pretending it wasn’t.

In the aftermath of the breakup, Jughead fell into a leadership role with the Serpents while Betty drowned herself in her studies. Every conversation between them was clipped, every glance cut short by an awkward tension. In time, the core four shattered under the pressure of the Riverdale civil war and the pain of lost love. Betty’s world was upended.

She isn’t proud of the person she became after that. She moved through life in a mist, like she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. Her sleep was riddled with nightmares, and she dug her nails into her palms so often that she wore permanent bandages. She had never felt so utterly alone.

But when she graduated and moved into the dorm at NYU, Betty was determined to make a change. She wanted to write the next chapter of her story—one where she was healthy and happy and living a normal life. So she started going to therapy, starting learning how to cope with her anxiety and depression. She rediscovered herself and began to move beyond the guilt and shame she’d carried on her shoulders in those last years at Riverdale High. She built a totally new life for herself—one where she completely left her past behind.

But now, as she stares through the space between Trev Brown’s shoulder and Ethel Muggs’ head, that past that Betty had worked so hard to escape hits her at full force in the form of a tall, handsome figure. There, in her direct line of vision, stands Jughead Jones. He hasn’t seen her yet; he’s engaged in an animated conversation with someone she can’t quite make out. But Betty can tell by his brightened eyes and his relaxed demeanor that he’s at least a little inebriated.

She doesn’t know why she’s surprised. She hasn’t seen him in years, after all. But Jughead was never the one to get drunk at parties when they were in high school—he was always the guy in the corner of the room sipping the same bottle of beer all night. Has he really changed that much since high school?

Well, Betty certainly has.

She tries to come up with a way to dodge him and make an escape, but she’s too late. Jughead‘s gaze is locked on her face. He hesitates, ignoring the conversation he was just having in favor of whatever battle is now brewing in his mind. But he seems to decide something, pushing his way through the bodies with a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Betty Cooper,” he says when he’s finally standing in front of her.

She doesn’t respond, mainly because her brain stopped working two seconds ago when he started to walk over to her. Her silence doesn’t seem to faze Jughead, though. He pulls her into a side hug that turns extremely awkward because Betty can’t seem to get her body to move. She is stiff in his arms. He pulls back, and she can still read the flicker of hurt in his eyes like no time has passed between them at all.

But his expression changes quickly into something more light, and suddenly the alcohol has him talking more freely than Betty has ever remembered him doing.

“I’ve heard all about you taking the Big Apple by storm! How do you like it?” he asks, bending down to listen to her response.

“It’s good,” she says evenly. She knows she could be more forthcoming with him, but she just can’t bring herself to be normal.

He seems to realize her hesitation and takes it in stride, changing the subject. “You’ll never guess what I’m doing these days,” he says.

“What?” Betty manages to mumble at her shoes, avoiding eye contact.

“I’m applying for doctoral programs. Y’know, in English? I wanna do collegiate research. And maybe publish a book!” She can see in her peripheral vision that he waves his arms around excitedly as he talks, and Betty wants to cry at the carefree tone of his voice. “Bet you never would’ve guessed that, huh Betts?”

She swallows, biting back the cocktail of anxiety and sadness swirling in her stomach. “I would have,” she says, glancing up at him. “I always knew you would do something great.” It comes out as a whisper, and a serious expression passes across Jughead’s face. There’s a long pause, and Betty looks back down at her shoes.

“I thought about calling you.” He says it so quietly that Betty almost misses it. She doesn’t know if he means during the application process or some other undefined time, but she doesn’t say anything. As usual, he reads her like a book and answers the question as if she’s asked it out loud.

“Over the summer,” he says.

She nods, not sure how to respond.

“And last Christmas,” he adds. He’s crinkling the empty red solo cup in his hand as he talks, and Betty shifts her gaze onto the curve of his fingers. “I had the stomach bug, and I thought about how you used to close your eyes and plug your ears whenever people would throw up around you.” He chuckles fondly.

“And a couple of years ago, in the spring, when I signed up to play intramural soccer for some idiotic reason and failed miserably. I could hear you making fun of me in my head.” Now he outright laughs at the memory, and Betty can’t help but smile with him.

“And right after graduation...” he says, suddenly sober. Betty looks up to find his eyes fixed on hers, their intensity almost too much for her to bear. She feels a familiar stab in her chest, the reopening of a wound long scabbed-over. His face is so soft, his eyes so earnest. She somehow doesn’t want to hear what he has to say but also craves it. Her life was dark then, and she carried around the heart that he had shattered for longer than she’d like to admit. Being here with him now and listening to his voice again makes her think that maybe she never stopped carrying it. “...when I quit the Serpents for good.”

Betty feels the air leave her lungs, and all she can do is stare at the boy in front of her. She thinks this moment must be her chance at closure, but she doesn’t know why it feels so much like hope.

“And today,” Jughead says in a whisper. He glances from her eyes down to her lips and back up again, and Betty can’t breathe. “For no reason at all, except for that I’ve regretted breaking up with you every damn day of my life since then, and I miss you so much that I don’t even know if I can be whole without you.”

Somewhere in the next room, the countdown to the new year hits zero. The hallway fills with confetti, and people are yelling and embracing. The house booms with noise, but Betty can’t hear a thing. She can only focus on Jughead, on what he just said.

“Do you still...” she whispers, not really sure how to finish the question without her heart beating out of her chest.

“Yes,” he responds immediately. “I always have, and I always will.”

Betty can feel herself begin to shake. Jughead takes a step closer to her, leaving hardly any space between them.

“And you?” he asks, his face just inches from hers.

She takes in a shuddering breath. “Of course,” she whispers. “I never stopped.”

Before she can even register what’s happening, Jughead’s hands are in her hair and his lips are on hers. She presses her body into his, completely electrified by his touch and desperate for every bit of it she can get. It feels like the most right thing she can ever imagine—it feels like she’s finally whole.

And thus, at 12:01 on New Year’s Day, Betty Cooper’s world finally turns right again. At last, she is home.

#bughead fanfiction #fanfic #bughead #bettycoopergal writes

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imsickoftheseshadows · 6 years ago

Text

London - A Short Story.

Harping did not define the emotion I experienced, for several months, after Axel had left me.

Of course, Axel was not the only man I had pined for; in fact, there was Jack, the other musician who had flown across the Atlantic at summer’s close; there was Tim, a film professor at my university, and Enrique, a South American artist who had told me he was possessed by the devil. But Axel, the New York singer and delicatessen owner, had been special – He was thirty-five, six-foot three, and rail thin, with a vague Williamsburg air that was pretentious enough to clot a Californian cocktail. His first record, evocative of Blade Runner’s score, was perpetually spinning in my bedroom. He was a frequent collaborator with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, who I had admired twice as much as Axel, though had little fantasies about (I will admit I had developed crushes on several of my favorite artists, though James was lower on the totem pole aesthetically than someone of Axel’s caliber).

This recollection isn’t about Axel, but I cannot tell this story without him.

My twenty-first year had proven uneventful – I still spent too much time in collegiate cafes, scrolling through online-dating profiles, and reflecting on whether or not I would ever be ready to leave my comfortably suburban dwellings. I sensed a trace of finality about this season. It was my last autumn enrolled in university, and I would be deciding whether to pursue a professorial path, or obtain stability between the walls of a cubicle. My distraction, Axel, visited biyearly, when we would meet either at The Standard or The Roosevelt, and I would make the pilgrimage to Los Angeles. Already half a year had passed, and Axel was not to return until the following January.

My town was in its final stretch of Indian Summer on this particular evening – The saffron sun unfurled the paper night, brittle and arid. I settled into my bedroom, arrested by the mushroom clouds of milk enveloping my black tea. Halloween was a fortnight away, though I would be spending it in class. I thought about Axel regularly, simultaneously a daydream and a diversion, envisaging the perpetual cigarette dangling from his mouth. Tonight, he weighed heavy in my mind. I picked up my phone, and began to stalk his social media.

Nothing remarkable, I thought, as I peered at his posts. One of Axel’s newest videos, a capture of him expertly playing with a Moog synthesizer, had an entrancing, obscure comment. My ex-girlfriend told me she hates music. The commenter was familiar. I tapped on his thumbnail. The eyes, mass of ginger hair, and Cheshire grin, were reminiscent of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. His profile betrayed him. Beneath his portrait was the name of his band, which I instantly recognized as the English musicians who had scored my first break-up, and had several alternative hits in the US. Lovehurt, I recalled, and began to murmur the lyrics. I thought nothing more of it, and decided to follow him.

I returned to my homepage, and began to think of getting ready for bed. A silent banner flashed across my screen -- GeorgeGibson has followed you. I reclined, falling betwixt my pillows, and held my phone over my head.

No harm in liking a few of his photos – Is three years ago too far? I sensed my desperation. I was in bed, fully-clothed, and it was nearing midnight. My tea had gone cold, and my cat was fast asleep at the foot of my bed. George was sensationally attractive, though I couldn’t imagine being so ambitious as to write to him.

My phone vibrated with another notification.

Hello Madame, it read, in the form of a direct message. I hesitated to respond. Is this really happening? I rolled over onto my belly. Where are you from, I typed. It’s quite late here.

I live in London, he replied. Have you ever been?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We corresponded via WhatsApp over the course of two months – He sent me music; I responded with poetry. Facetime became our preferred mode of communication, though the time difference made it difficult to coordinate our video chats. I began to fear that our contact would eventually taper off, especially when my boredom seemed so conclusively quelled. I blocked Axel, in case George ever asked about us.

I’ve never left the country, I wrote, but I’ve always wanted to see England.

He had spoken of the prospect of me visiting him in prior conversations – I conjured up possible stories to tell my family, if I hypothetically, unexpectedly set off for London. We’re still strangers, I thought. Constant correspondences or not – But when will I ever have the chance to take a trip like this again?

I basked in this quaint fantasy by making an appointment to apply for a passport. No harm in having one of these on hand. I drove down to Orange County, two hours south of my house, to retrieve a copy of my birth certificate. My passport arrived within two weeks. Tickets to London were unreasonably cheap, though I had heard London in January was brutal. I wavered between fiction and reality – George, the famed musician, and George, the friend I had made, so eager to take me to the stationary shops with Italian stamps from the 1970s. I checked plane tickets daily, and told George I was on the verge of making a life-altering purchase.

Know I can only spend a couple of days with you, Taylor, he typed. My band will murder me if I’m away from our recording session for more than a weekend.

I was at my local café, alternating between sips of black coffee and bites of an overcooked frittata. My bangs had grown long enough to tuck behind my ears – I nervously fingered each strand, calculating my response. Christmas was to come and go, as though the seasons had become perpetually stagnant. It could rain for days, and the sky would still be a blaze of azure at dusk.

It doesn’t matter, I answered. The tickets are mine, and I arrive three weeks from today.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I feigned connectivity issues. I silenced all notifications, and then turned on Airplane Mode. I wanted to be certain – I wanted to be confident that not a single person, even those I had entrusted with my private line, would contact me for the next five days. LAX was bustling with people, and I was anxious to remain remote until we were tens of thousands of feet above the technicolor skyline. I had no idea that there was one terminal for all departing international flights. I wore three sweaters to lighten my carry-on, and arrived six hours before my flight.

My parents did not know I was leaving until I boarded the plane. My mother sobbed when she found out, and I consoled her by stating I would phone her the second I landed. I didn’t. My story was simple: I was off to London for a girl’s trip with one of my best friends from high school. It was a spontaneous, last-minute decision that we decided we had to do before graduating college.

George was concerned. How could you not tell your parents, he had written, moments before I boarded the plane. My story was partially true – It was spontaneous, as in, I would have never left America if I hadn’t felt compelled to conduct a transatlantic, pseudo-love affair. George had urged me, and now my departure was met with cool reserve. I started to question my mental state. I ordered three glasses of wine, one after the other, upon takeoff.

I touched down in London around 10 in the morning, and the ground had been veiled by impenetrable clouds, as though I had fallen into heaven – all was in reverse. I noted the specks of cars lining the roads in the opposite direction; the silver buildings and the lush foliage. The tarmac was barely visible from my window, but the jet bridge was clear – and on the other side would be a man and a city, and he was to be my tour guide for the first two days.

Before dealing with border control, I hurried to the airport’s restroom. No toilet seat covers. I caught a glimpse of my reflection -- Perspiration ruined my hair and the little makeup I had applied. Fortunately, I had a spare pair of hoop earrings in my purse, but my complexion remained ghastly. I rushed through the border, anxious in line. I quickly handed over my unblemished passport to the border control officer.

“Who do you know here?” I paused, searching for the answer in the lines of my arrival card.

“It’s a friend – An Internet friend, whom I will be checking into the Hilton in Islington with.”

The officers, an elderly man and towering woman, exchanged dubious glances. They asked for more information. I acquiesced, thrusted my return ticket in their faces, and after several minutes, was allowed through.

The escalator was in sight, and I began to sense an onset of anxiety – I am in a foreign country, about to check-in to my first hotel. I stumbled over my carmine suitcase as I approached the exit; my luggage matched my tired eyes. The heels I had worn so well in Los Angeles were unfit for cobblestone streets, and I clumsily found him, in the front of the crowd, with a ticket for the Heathrow Express in his right hand.

We embraced, and upon contact, my visage colored damask rose.

He was five-foot-eleven, and wore a brown bomber jacket with black leather boots. He pursed his lips, full and heavenly, while I stared, in awe. George was cool in a European sense – He owned boots, and trainers, and foreign vintage labels, but was a minimalist and adored neutral colorways. His accent, crisp and clipped, was warm, and I instantly wondered what it would be like to miss him after only two days.

He took my luggage with his left hand, and we dashed toward the train.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

We arrived at the Hilton in a black cab. He upgraded my room. We made love for an hour, and I thought I was going to faint.

“I want to take you around Islington,” he whispered.

Morning had bled into afternoon, and we were languorous, lazy and lounging. I happily obliged, sensing the ghost of passion about my being. I changed into a dress, and reapplied my eyeliner, but remained equal parts self-conscious and jet-lagged. Does he find me as attractive as he did online? It was frivolous to question this, though my mind was tainted with uncertain thoughts. He put on his trousers, then laced up his boots. My parka, bought at a discount, was colossal for my frame. He smiled endearingly, and we took the elevator to the lobby.

I was clumsy against cobblestone, my ankles buckling beneath me – George caught me twice, and kissed me with each fall. We arrived at a bijou cocktail lounge in Clerkenwell, which appeared to be a repurposed home – the corridor led into segregated rooms, with hundreds of vintage books along each wall. We both had whiskey – This will wake you up. I quietly quaffed my drink, while he took apathetic sips of his. He grasped my hand.

“It’s so lovely that you’re here,” he paused, studying my expression. “Are you feeling okay?”

I was drowsy, disengaged, and enamored. The stained-glass windows could not hide the somber skies, yet I gazed at each cloud lovingly. Everything was perfect.

He took me to another lounge, and then to the British Film Institute, where I imbibed a glass of Malbec in the café. A Hot Chip song boomed through the stereo, and he reminisced the time that he played at a festival with them. Alt-J played next, and he discussed his disdain. I finished my drink and wandered toward the gift shop, where I searched for obscure British DVDs, blissfully unaware that they were region 2 locked (until arriving home). I hung onto his every recommendation, as a schoolgirl would a handsome instructor. I chose Jean-Luc Godard cinema critiques and Stanley Kubrick’s photo book. He picked up a copy of Caligula.

By nightfall, we had arrived at our final bar, which was two-stories, with the bottom floor having been fashioned from a basement. A beautiful woman in a blue beret was reading Proust by the entrance, and he commented on the pretentiousness of the lounge. We went back to the hotel shortly after, as my exhaustion had faded into delirium.

I woke up around 2 am. I noticed that he had spilt tears of wine; red vino, according to the bottle, a Tempranillo. I think I had it in Echo Park one lonely summer ago. The crisp, white sheets were speckled with blood. He turned over, noticing that I was awake – He kissed me, and I realized that I was ravenous, for the first time since leaving Los Angeles.

He went to buy us a kebab, England’s guiltiest pleasure (I found this out much later). He left the BBC on, and the reporter was exploring Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency. Not here. I changed the channel, and absentmindedly flipped past an Amy Winehouse documentary. I began to thumb through my newly acquired Jean-Luc Godard book, then sifted through the treasures of the day.

By the second chapter, the door swung open, and George appeared, grinning, with a fistful of candy and two kebabs. I pulled the covers over my head as he fell into bed next to me; devouring the kebab, popping open a can of Coca Cola. He unfastened his duffel bag, and revealed bags of chips not sold in America. I clasped the delicacies close to my heart, and dissected the Reese’s Pieces bar.

“You don’t understand,” I laughed. “This is a novelty to me!”

We finished our respective dinners, and slept until noon.

Our room was littered with candy-wrappers and wine bottles; our ardent affair had been in view of several landmarks – the London Eye was in sight, and Big Ben was covered in scaffolding.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following day, George showed me his favorite stationary store, Present & Correct. He bought a stamp book, and then promptly lost it at the second scarlet pub we went to. We began our afternoon at a café, where everyone drank their coffee black and from a French press. The coffee was rich enough that creamer was unnecessary – I tasted it slowly, for pleasure, and because I knew he would be leaving at midnight. We went back to the British Film Institute, and he explained a music project he conducted, where he had recorded the sounds of London, while I examined other books from more obscure directors. I kept forgetting that I listened to his music for a number of years before knowing who he was. He stopped speaking for a moment, and shyly reached for my hand.

“George,” I paused. “Do you really have to leave tonight?”

He waited, appearing distraught. “I want you to come be with me in the summer. Can you do that?”

We sauntered to another pub, each one more grandiose than the last. I began to drink out of apprehension, dissolving my worry with each swallow. I wasn’t sure if he noticed – If he did, he didn’t seem to mind. I grew bored of the pub; I grew exhausted of our reservations. I remained awestruck, which translated into perceivable uneasiness, and called for medicinal drinking.

We stopped in Charing Cross, London, after mindlessly walking through the city. He stopped to show me his old apartment, which was built beneath one of the many cobblestone streets. I was two glasses of wine in, and twice as lecherous. He took me to Foyles, knowing such bookstores had fallen out of popularity in America. I bought a book on witchcraft, a Gustav Klimt novel (solely because of a chapter titled “Klimt’s Women”), and an autobiography entitled Art Sex Music (a friend I met later would call this his curriculum vitae) at George’s urging. I didn’t want to forget my fleeting emotions, nor him. I knew our time together was rapidly dissipating. The sky had blackened, as had my mood, though the wine began to enhance my synthetic insouciance.

George chose an Italian restaurant – Why not beans on toast? I knew nothing of British cuisine, and trusted his selection. We sat next to a heat lamp outdoors, in the frigid night, as there were no seats left inside. I peeled off my homely parka, even though I was cold, to remind him of desire. We caroused some more, and I embarrassed myself with comments of a dramatically wretched past – A lack of female friendship, men in power that had plagued my adolescence, and inappropriate commentary on my familial ties. He politely beamed the entire way through, even as I mistakenly slurped my pasta, and messily consumed a slice of his pork pizza. I poured the remainder of the Tempranillo into my glass, and asked him again to stay.

I was not immune to the social anxiety I faced at home – Abroad, I was aware of my unpalatable Californian accent and absence of fashionable clothing. I became hyper-conscious of my unnaturally stiff disposition. He was understanding, but courteously, clinically so. I knew I would be infatuated with him for months after our transatlantic love affair -- I silently wondered if he would ever tell Axel about a young, nameless brunette girl from Los Angeles, who flew across the Atlantic Ocean to make love to him.

He walked me back to the hotel, as I half-smiled and asked him to be with me one final time.

“We’re never going to see each other again.” I spoke with finality.

“I know we will. I’m coming to Los Angeles soon, don’t cry.”

As soon as the door slammed shut, I undressed, filled the bathtub, then mourned my solitude – a constant sob ebbed and flowed. I wrote, incomprehensibly, in my sanguine, store-bought moleskin journal. I took my phone off airplane mode. I sent him a thank you note, fully understanding that I would never see him again. Several moments passed, and twenty text messages from my family came through. I turned on the BBC, and stayed up all night. I became pragmatic at the break of dawn.

I texted my friends, those of which who had known of my secret trip, and then fell into fits of laughter, for two reasons:

I had no idea why I was crying at the Hilton, in a double bed, and God, I had gotten stupidly wine-drunk.

#london #creative writing #short story #trip #famous #celebrity #instagram #direct message #love #lust #infatuation #travel #transatlantic #blog #love affair

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tnffc · 7 years ago

Note

I gasped when I read this one~ "The name of your soulmate appears on your body only after that person falls in love with you."

Yes, that’s a really nice one!

Ok so, I am dead tired now, I wrote this in one go, it’s kinda late and I am not sure it makes entirely sense. But I’m done and here it is:

_________________

When Stiles had hit puberty he had wanted mainly one thing, to find his soulmate.

He couldn’t really tell back then why he felt that strong a need for it - he had thought it might be because his soulmate was close by and he just needed to find them and fall in love and have them fall in love with him as well.

When he met Lydia he was convinced it had to be her.

She was beautiful, he was so smitten and they could banter so great - the few times she decided to let her true intelligence show.

He was sure his name already had to have shown up on her skin, but she never made the slightest of hints it might so he wasn’t sure. Maybe he was just crushing but not really in love with her? Maybe his name had shown up but she didn’t like the idea and he’d have to convince her he was worthy? Maybe she didn’t know it was him? No, if his name had been on her skin she’d have been smart enough to find out it was him. He had no doubt.

When he went to the public pool with Scott one summer though he saw Lydia there, in a pretty revealing bikini and no name in sight. This gave him a lot of questions.

~*~

Two years later Scott was bitten by a werewolf in the woods, and a little bit later than that Stiles was confronted with a man, a dangerous, impressive man that gave him the most conflicting feelings.

Peter Hale.

His heart was beating like crazy when Peter was holding his wrist, when his mouth got so close to the hem of his sleeve and the skin underneath it.

Then there was a quick, burning sensation at the small of his back.

It made him snap out of it and pull his arm away.

“I don’t wanna be like you.”

He didn’t, but he wanted…something.

And the man called him out on it but Stiles stayed put.

The pain in his back was gone and with a final “Goodbye Stiles” so was Peter.

Stiles didn’t even find the time our wit to respond anything anymore.

When he comes home and checks on his back in the mirror his organs feel like they were randomly swapped in his body and not liking it at all. His legs actually gave in.

Peter stood there, in a beautiful handwriting, not in any way modest but big and possessively stretching from one side of his lower back to the other.

Great, he would not be able to show anybody ever again his back with this.

Scott would lose his mind if he found out the guy they were trying to get rid of was his soulmate.

His father would not understand either, he’d try not to be an asshole about it, but he wouldn’t understand.

Why though had Peter’s name even shown up? Surely the little they had spoken wasn’t enough for Peter to have fallen for him…Stiles knew he was neither that pretty nor charming.

Maybe this was a mistake? Maybe a curse? Another Peter perhaps?

No, it was this Peter, it hadn’t been coincidence the name had appeared when they had been in the garage together.

The lower back of all places…obviously the hands or face would have been more difficult, but at least smaller…

~*~

From there things escalated.

The climax of the entire disaster was when Stiles was holding a molotov cocktail and threw it at the creature that was Peter - his soulmate - with almost no hesitation.

He was afraid and then relieved when the glass didn’t break, but everything was already set in motion and he might not have lit the fire but he might as well have.

Watching Peter burn again hurt even more than he had feared and the grave reality of all of it started to set in.

When Peter fell, dead, his flesh burned so much he was almost beyond recognizable Stiles felt a part of him die. That part was the naive wish he had had to find his soulmate.

He had been convinced it’d be something to be happy about, something that’d make his life whole again.

In losing that dream he realized what it had represented for him.

Finding his soulmate - so he had thought - would mean overcoming the loss of his mother and to an extent his father. Because while his dad was still alive Stiles had often felt like he had lost him as well. His father was better now, but the first years after Stiles’ mother had died his father had given himself over to work and alcohol.

Stiles desire to find his soulmate had been his desire to find someone who would not leave or reject him.

And Peter actually hadn’t. He had embraced the idea of Stiles belonging to him, his pack…

In the end maybe people weren’t leaving and rejecting him, maybe Stiles himself was responsible for not having anybody who actually loved him. After all, he had basically killed the one person that might have been able to.

So his dream died, and his faith in love with it.

~*~

The decision to get a tattoo had taken a while, mainly because Stiles was not a fan of needles.

But he felt handicapped, always paranoid about somebody seeing the name of his soulmate.

There were other Peters in their lives, but none he was remotely close to, he would have to answer questions and Derek probably knew his uncle’s handwriting and the risk was just heightening his anxiety to a troublesome level.

So there he was lying on the tattooist’s table, using a breathing technique that usually calmed him down.

The buzzing of the needle changed a bit in tone when it dug into his skin and the pain wasn’t great, but it actually wasn’t as bad a feeling as he had worried.

As long as he didn’t have to watch the needle stab him repeatedly he might actually be fine.

In the end he had a huge black wolf covering his lower back, accompanied by a few pine trees.

He had thought about it for quite a while and decided it was fitting. And considering his best friend was a werewolf now, and there started to be a small pack of them he felt it was easily explained why he had chosen the motiv.

No one needed to know it was in memoriam of the former Hale Alpha.

It wasn’t like he could openly bemoan it.

And it also wasn’t like he actually had a right to.

He hadn’t known Peter.

The love Peter had felt for him could only have been superficial at best, delusional at worst.

He wasn’t really mourning for the man Peter Hale, he was mourning for the lost possibilities.

The eyes of the werewolf were white spots in it’s dark face.

He had thought about having them done in red, but that might raise questions again. He had thought about making them blue, for the death he felt guilty for, but that might have raised questions as well. He hadn’t felt like yellow was an option though. So they were ghostly blank specks, letting the wolf look a bit eerie - he actually quite liked it.

“Why do you want to cover it up?” the tattoo artist had asked.

“You don’t like who it is?”

Stiles had taken a deep breath.

“He’s dead.”

“Shit man…how old are you? You can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen…that’s rough.”

He sighed, resigned, trying not to let it get to him.

“Yeah…”

A small consultation had been the discount the guy had given him on the work.

Stiles would probably have turned it down if he hadn’t already felt bad about using their money on getting a tattoo in the first place.

Scott actually thought the tattoo looked cool and decided to get one himself. Turns out you need fire to get a tattoo to stick on werewolf skin.

In that moment Stiles hadn’t been as sad as usually that he didn’t take the bite.

He continued life, continued the social interactions as before - he even still implied now and then Lydia might be his soulmate, though he did tone it down a lot since it was just for show.

She was the only one to realize actually. And he was the first to realize something was strange about her.

They didn’t figure it out before Peter was resurrected though.

~*~

Peter came back and Stiles had difficulties grasping that for a few days.

He was more aware than ever of the letters on his back, hidden underneath the fur of a big, black wolf. But he had no idea what to do about it. He didn’t even know if they still were soulmates. Resurrection wasn’t covered in soul and sex ed classes…

Maybe Peter belonged to somebody else now…

~*~

When Peter first really came face to face with Stiles his tortured wolf was in turmoil and he had difficulties controlling it, especially with the alpha powers amping up it’s strength even more.

The closer he got the more wholesome and familiar Stiles’ scent seemed to be - like a home he had never known he had. Almost like pack and somehow a lot more.

It was when his nose was almost touching Stiles’ skin when holding his arm that let everything click into place.

Stiles was his soulmate.

Peter knew very little about this boy, but he wasn’t a man at the moment, he was little more than a feral wolf with a human suit. And his wolf loved Stiles unconditionally.

He sense the boy was his soulmate and that was all it took.

Which made it so much more painful when it was Stiles who threw the molotov cocktail and doomed his fate.

~*~

He felt more sane now. The powers were gone, the manic need to take revenge. Left was the pain, the healthy need to take revenge and the knowledge he had found his soulmate in a high school student of his god forsaken hometown.

~*~

Stiles had to admit Peter seemed to do a lot better.

He was widely hated or at the very least shunned by most of the pack - Erica and Boyd being the most neutral of the bunch and derek and Stiles being the only two occasionally acting with anything resembling sympathy towards him. And yet Peter did little more than snark unless someone attacked him first.

He was smart and helpful - if he felt like it - he took no shit but made an effort to be considered pack. He actually cooked for them on pack nights - introducing Boyd to the passion of preparing food.

Stiles was torn between getting closer to find out what they could have had and keeping his distance because it might hurt too much.

But it got harder and harder to ignore their connection.

~*~

Peter had accepted Stiles might never love him back.

Over the last two years he had gotten to know the boy - young man by now - and had understood more and more why they were soulmates. But Stiles had to know it, had to have found Peter’s name somewhere on his body by now, because while at first it might just have been his wolf, Peter ow loved Stiles entirely.

How could he not, Stiles was everything Peter admired in others. If it had been up to him he would have worshipped Stiles every day.

But it was okay, he understood. He had done horrible things and it was understandable Stiles would never return his feelings. He just wished Stiles would mention it to him. Yes, humans did not necessarily know when they found their soulmate, but wolves did.

Werewolf soulmates sensed each other.

And by now Stiles definitely knew that. He had read every book in Peter’s personal library, he knew almost as much about supernatural creatures as Peter himself.

~*~

It happened totally unexpected.

Stiles had been over at Peter’s for hours, researching on a new spell he wanted to try.

Peter was working - he had picked up his old job as a consultant on artefacts, their origin and depending on whether or not his client was in the know if it was dangerous or not.

He felt a strange burning sensation on his neck and cursed under his breath while his hand instinctively covered the skin there.

Stiles meanwhile made a choked noise.

Peter turned to him in confusion.

“What’s with you?” he asked, a little sullen while rubbing his neck.

The pain was gone already, probably just a bug that hat stung him.

He very much appreciated the fact his healing worked just fine. To this day he sometimes dreamed of being imprisoned in his own body, drowning in physical and emotional pain.

Instead of answering him Stiles collected his things, stuffed them in his bag and moved to leave Peter’s apartment.

Not sure how to react Peter passed Stiles with supernatural speed and blocked his way, eyes searching for a goddamn reason.

“What is suddenly going on Stiles?”

He saw Stiles’ eye flicker to his neck where he though he had been stung.

“What? What is it? Does it look bad?”

He was more confused than angry still, touching his neck again but not feeling any kind of skin irritation.

Stiles shook his head while Peter tilted his and still stared.

Eventually Stiles rubbed his own neck.

“Just…go take a look in the mirror…I’ll still be here when you come back. Promise.”

Peter moved to look at the mirror in the hallway and could not believe what he saw.

In Stiles’ scribbled handwriting there was a name written on the left side of his neck, just underneath his jawline.

Mieczyslaw.

He stared at it blankly for a while, comprehending what this meant.

“Is your…” he swallowed hard “It this…yours?” his voice almost died on the last word.

Stiles sighed as if he was sorry.

“Yeah…”

But how was that possible?

“Why now?” he managed to say.

Stiles just shrugged.

“It was just a really nice and soft moment, domestic and wholesome…everything I ever hoped for back when…when I felt like I had noone…”

Peter swallowed hard against the tightness of his throat.

“But…my name…why did you never…”

Stiles lowered his gaze.

“I…I didn’t think you could still love me after I- you know…I also wasn’t sure you were still mine to have…”

Peter rubbed his hand over the letters again and smiled weakly.

“We are such idiots…”

Then his eyes changed and something like a want appeared in them, his voice was still hoarse but the melancholic undertone was disappearing.

“Show me yours.”

~*~

Stiles chewed on his lower lip.

“I covered it up…”

Hesitantly he turned around and lifted his shirt to show the tattoo.

“Oh wow…” Peter mused behind him.

“Can I touch it?”

Stiles swallowed.

“Yes.”

He felt Peter’s fingertips follow the form of the wolf and the trees.

“I actually like it” he said, now definitely sounding longing, almost lusting.

“I will wear your name on my neck with pride though. If you want me to that is.”

Stiles turned around at those words and nodded.

“I would love that.”

Peter grinned delighted.

“May I kiss you, Mieczyslaw?”

Stiles snorted.

“Although I am impressed you actually pronounced it right I really hope for your sake that was the last time you called me that.”

Peter smirked and spoke teasingly “you didn’t answer.”

With his cheeks blushing even more Stiles nodded.

“Yes please.”

#teen wolf #steter #not beta read #soulmate au #angst #canon character death #guilt #feels #tattoos #my stuff

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