#see the thing is i think it would be funny if every single dead poet had some sort of daddy issues

[character-obsessed-fem]

sorry for not being active for a while, i'm on vacation and my schedule is pretty packed + my wifi connection is pretty spotty :3

as an apology, i grant thee; Meeks family headcanons!!!

(might post this on my other account too)

Stephen ??? Meeks Sr. [father] - 46 years old, American

- born in Maryland

- was "present" in his family's lives until Stephen and Stephanie were about eight, then left. lives in Maryland now

- isn't divorced from Julieta only for convenience's sake, still shows up for his kids' school ceremonies/graduations so the heads don't think their home life is "wacky", doesn't show up to any other events

- engineer

- favourite family member used to be Stephen Jr. (before she ), now he hates them all equally

- is everyone's least favourite family member

- he, mr perry, and mr nolan would get along. i feel like that's enough explanation as to what kind of man/father he is

- has fist fought stacy before and will do it again

Julieta ??? Meeks [mother] - 45 years old, Italian

- born in Italy (Florence)

- currently lives in Maine with Stephanie

- overbearing mother. was extremely hesitant to send Stephen to Welton, a boarding school, where she can't easily reach her

   - it's why Stephanie doesn't go to a boarding school

- otherwise amazing mother with some minor flaws and like one or two major flaws

- doctor (specifically cardiologist). dabbled in engineering when she was younger but gave it up for a while due to peer pressure. brought it back once stephen (jr) started showing interest

- favourite family member used to be just Stephen Jr., now it's a tie between her and Stella

- will indulge her children in just about anything (as long as it's not illegal (underage smoking/drinking is an exception)), especially different interests

Stella Ines Laura Meeks [oldest sister] - 25 years old, Italian/American

- born in Italy, Venice

- currently lives in Vermont

- Stephen's emergency contact

- married with one kid (2 years old) and expecting another

- paid astrology intern, will be an actual astrologist soon. always makes sure to tell stephen all about her research because she knows stephen loves stars

- highkey overbearing but is trying to rear it in in an attempt to not be just like her mother. has to bite her tongue everytime she sees the steph twins breaking rules

- favourite family member is their mother

- accidentally hid her first pregnancy from stephen throughout the school year, meaning when stephen came home for the summer and saw stella with a baby she just went "... who's goddamn baby is that"

Stacy Isabella Sofia Meeks [second oldest sister] - 21 years old, Italian/American

- born in Vermont

- currently lives in Maine

- Stephanie's second emergency contact (first is their mother)

- raising an adopted child (six years old) with her "best friend"

- studying psychology, wants to be a therapist specifically so she can "fix" her family (every member of the meeks family avoids therapy like the plague)

- super chill, wine aunt vibes. regularly sneaks cigs and alcohol to the steph twins

- favourite family member is a tie between Stella and Stephanie

- respecting elders for simply being elders? not her thing. has cussed out mr nolan before stephen even started attending welton

Stephanie Cristina Kennedy Meeks [twin sister] - 17 years old, Italian/American

- born in New York

- lives in Maine with her mother (and twin sister when she isn't at Welton)

- if goth music existed in 1959 she'd be goth/gothic

- favourite family member is Stephen

- steals stephen's and stella's clothes all the time. the others have to pry her clothes out of her cold dead hands (unless it's stephen)

- literally the only artist in the family, but is also interested in biology. wants to go to med school or art school, depending on her grades during senior year

    - depending on which sort of school she ends up going to, she wants to either be an ER nurse or an art teacher

- has an aunt who's the dean of an art school, wants to work there as a professor or anything similar - preferably doing a 3D modelling class

Stephen Kennedy Chris Meeks Jr.  - 17 years old, Italian/American

- born in New York

- lives in Maine with her mother and twin sister when not at Welton (Vermont)

- favourite family member is Stephanie, absolutely no way she could have a different favourite

- steals everyone's clothes but also gives back just as many

- does not plan to go to college/university if given the choice. will only go to Yale (engineering/physics) for Pitts and her mom

- wants to be some sort of mechanic or engineer, or even an engineering professor at some university, when she's older.

   - if she doesn't end up going to university she wants to be a plane mechanic - her uncle has connections, especially in the air force so she knows he can get her sorted

   - is on the fence about becoming a pilot - thinks it's cool but not sure if it's a good profession for her. willing to try

hope you enjoyed!! sorry if these headcanons are a bit cliche lol. also i am sorry for just blatantly throwing canon away like that

[ahtsumu]

vignettes from a simple and good life ; miya osamu

pairing: miya osamu x f!reader

synopsis: a year in review.

tag(s): fluff ; warning(s): profanity, suggestive themes, kinda bad but i tried LOL ; wc: 1.3k

a/n: happy birthday to @bbytetsu​ ​! ik i said i wouldn’t write anything but i’m a woman of my own word. also sorry this isn’t geto LOL. anyway this is kinda different from anything i’ve ever done but i hope you like it! love u

1.

he walks past you and suddenly the world’s aflame.

“um,” you stutter, turning around with wide eyes. “excuse me?”

cool grey irises hold your gaze expectantly.

he’s gorgeous.

“i–” you falter. there’s no way you can describe the feeling that made you turn around. the gravitational pull that sometimes occurs between strangers. perhaps the clever tugging of two red strings. separate melodies that converge at whim on a concord. it’s all so abstract, but that’s what you’re good at.

to your surprise, he just smiles. “same.”

2.

learning miya osamu is like learning to whistle: either you get it or you don’t.

you get it.

you get that he’s not at all the serious, stony-faced man he makes himself out as. that he’s hot-headed and petty but doesn’t want to be. that just because he’s not laughing doesn’t mean he’s not amused.

miya osamu is the dead of night and all the mischief that happens during it.

3.

seven a.m. is too early. osamu isn’t sure how he used to get up even earlier for morning practice, but then he remembers that that was when he loved volleyball. either way, it’s seven a.m. and for some god-forsaken reason, miya osamu is going on a hike.

(god-forsaken is a bit dramatic. it’s not all that bad – he’s just grumpy in the morning. actually, to think of it, it’s not bad at all…)

“one cappuccino," he tells the barista. and then his eyes widen. smiling, he adds, “and a matcha latte, please.”

4.

it dawns upon you in the passenger seat of his car.

“what?” he asks, feeling your eyes on him as he drives.

“… nothing.”

“tell me,” he laughs, squeezing your hand with his free one.

“later,” you promise, feeling giddy with realization.

osamu hums, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

5.

the light from his laptop illuminates osamu’s darkened bedroom, bathing both of you in a subtle blue glow. osamu looks down at your body tucked into his side and smiles. he whispers your name. “are you awake?”

there’s no reply – just the steady stream of your shallow breaths.

maybe you hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the middle of your movie night but now that you have, osamu doesn’t have the heart to wake you. it’s late, it’s still a little cold outside at night, and it’s not like you’re busy tomorrow morning…

and maybe he doesn’t want you to go. carefully, osamu shifts around to make you both comfortable, slings an arm over your waist, and closes his eyes.

you wake up to the smell of breakfast and the swingy tune of twenties jazz.

6.

how do you know it’s love?

you tell him that he feels like a soft blanket and a rollercoaster ride at the same time.

he laughs and grabs your hand, placing it on his chest right where his heart is.

“that’s how i know,” he says.

7.

when you step into his apartment, the first thing you notice is the mouthwatering scent floating out of the kitchen.

“babe?” you call out.

a muffled “kitchen!” reaches your ears.

the kitchen’s a mess of ingredients. and in the middle of the mess is your boyfriend. lo and behold, miya osamu is yet again experimenting with new recipes for onigiri miya, mixing potential fillings in a large metal bowl, wearing the “kiss the chef” apron you bought him a while back. he takes a bite of the stuff on his spoon and looks up at the ceiling in thought. not a single muscle in his face twitches, probably because he isn’t sure what to think of it.

you clear your throat. “hey, you.”

smiling, osamu spins around. “hi, angel. can you taste this and tell me whatcha think?” he spoons out some more of the mixture in the bowl, holding it out for you to try.

“sure,” you say, and you ignore the spoon, pressing your lips to osamu’s for a kiss instead. when you pull away, you lick your lips and hum. “needs more salt.”

the grin on his face is absolutely charmed. “i thought so, too.”

8.

what most people get wrong about miya osamu is that he doesn’t talk much.

he does.

(“and i told her she had the wrong place, but that woman just wouldn’t leave,” he complains, pacing around your living room with so much force that you think you might have to check on the rug once he’s gone. “held up the entire line, too. so embarrassin’. and then she said she’d leave us a one-star review, which is ridiculous because it’s not like i could make her a burrito, right? jesus. so i told her to go fu–”

“babe,” you laugh, pulling him gently towards the sofa.

osamu sits down beside you and inhales deeply. “so i tell her to go fuck herself–” he pauses when your hand runs through his jet black hair. seconds later, you feel his firm body melt against your arms.

“well, go on,” you say with a giggle. “what happened after?”)

osamu just doesn’t talk to most people.

9.

and when he isn’t talking, he’s thinking.

“i saw something funny earlier. if you were a tortured poet,” you ask on the walk home, “what would be the cringey quote people know you for?”

osamu raises his brows and looks up at the sky. “hmm,” he says, grinning. the two of you continue walking as he mulls over your question. a few minutes later, he says, “take not my silence for a lack of thought. i am always thinking. i am haunted by the magnitude of thoughts i can never put to spoken word.”

you stop in your tracks. “that was actually good,” you say in disbelief. “what the hell? ‘magnitude’? seriously?”

he shrugs and slings an arm over your shoulder. “i’ve been readin’ lately. forbes said somethin’ about good leaders readin’ books’.”

“are you actually haunted, though? ‘cause you can always tal–”

“no,” osamu laughs. “i like my thoughts. and if i really like ‘em, i just say ‘em. it’s a simple and good life.”

10.

“you’re beautiful,” he breathes, pressing kisses up your neck.

the air’s thick with tension and want and he needs to be closer – he needs every inch of your bare skin touching his and even then that wouldn’t be close enough.

but it’d be a great place to start.

“god, you’re so beautiful.”

11.

when he steps into your bedroom, you don't even notice.

“hey,” osamu says, knocking on the door.

jumping in your seat, you whip your head around to face the intruder. “you scared me,” you sigh.

“i texted you this morning and it’s almost midnight now,” he says, frowning. “had me worried.” osamu walks to your desk and observes your work over your shoulder.

“i’m sorry,” you apologize, tilting your head back against his chest. “this is due soon and i lost track of time. i’ve been at this since midnight last night.”

osamu’s frown deepens. “what?” he spins you around in your chair and studies your face with disbelief. but seeing the bags under your eyes and frazzled hair, he suddenly completely believes you. of course you’d procrastinate for days and then work yourself to the bone.

his firm hands find your shoulders and squeeze. “take a break.”

“‘samu–”

“or at least let me give you a little massage.”

12.

“when i stopped you in the street,” you say, “what was going through your mind?”

osamu laughs, the light sound melting into the mellow atmosphere of the restaurant. “nothing. absolutely nothing.”

“how romantic.”

“for the first time in my life,” he says, grey eyes twinkling, “my head went silent.”

he raises his glass of wine and takes a sip.

[kashimos-hajime]

homestretch of the hard times | g.t.

summary: the eve days of your potential death kinda spurns things to move forward: for takemura, it means confessions. for you, it means making exceptions. and drinks. ‘cause takemura’s the pickiest fucking eater you’ve ever met.

WARNINGS: small spoilers for act 1 of cyberpunk 2077 and references to non-spoiler texts between takemura and v, just fluff, small angst, swearing, idk what else is going on so if there are actual spoilers thats completely coincedental ndlnskfsldnf pairing: goro takemura x fem!street-kid!v word count: 2.6k

a/n: so cdpr did us dirty for not allowing us to romance him (to my knowledge) but he has my mind, heart and everything else so :) listened to the bones by maren morris w/ hozier

part of the tales of a two-bit thief series

It starts with something straight out of a romance movie: A car crash, saving each other’s lives (well, him more than you) and “Wait, V, I need you.”

You don’t know how you got here, to be precise. There were a chain of events, some absolutely stand up fucking moments on your part, and just… fuckery. So much fuckery and life went to shit.

All you know is the ticking time bomb’s only ticking louder and at this point, the only thing that can silence it at all is the man beside you. Not even the meds Misty gave you can help you now. 

You’re sitting in his car because you called him and he had answered and now… now they’re on one of the off ramps looking over Night City like they own the fucking place.

Maybe you did, once. Ha, maybe back when everything seemed more job to job and not life to life. For a moment, maybe you were in the big leagues.

Takemura doesn’t say anything, even though you can tell he wants to. His hair still pulled into that man bun, collared shirt with not a single wrinkle in sight. Weird how he never looks out of place, not really. Not even with the car crash. Shit, he always looked good.

You think you’re actually gonna miss that. That one semblance of someone being put together that gave you the hope that maybe you could stick it too.

You think you’re gonna miss a lot of things about him—from his stupid complaints about the food here, to his stupid random philosophy texts in the day, to the fact that he eats the ramen you buy anyway without complaint, even though it’ll never compare to what he has in Japan.

The thought that counts.

They don’t even have the radio on, just the dim lights of the car, a window rolled down. You don’t smoke but you feel like you should be tapping a cig either way. You haven’t had the time to just fucking breathe—not with Silverhand breathing down your neck, corpo rats swarming you on all sides. 

Everyone wants a piece of you, it feels like. 

You look at Takemura.

Almost everyone.

“Thank you,” you tell him quietly, with difficulty. It’s hard to get through your words without thinking Silverhand’s behind your back, mocking you. You’re so fucking tired. “It hasn’t been easy.”

He doesn’t respond. He’s too busy looking at one of the cars nearly collide with a pedestrian. You could’ve laughed. You used to make fun of the shitty drivers in Night City, knowing full well you’re one of them.

You get chased by a couple of cops, rules start to bend.

You used to wonder why you never left.

Then, you actually left, and you realized that hell, you can take the person out of Night City—can’t take the Night City out of a person.

Atlanta fucking sucked, but maybe you should’ve stayed there.

But then, a tiny voice whispers as you look out the window to the fresh night wind. You never would’ve met him.

It’s funny, you think. To come back and get a brain tumour in the shape of a rocker who can’t fucking touch anyone who loves him, who he loved, only for you to fall in love with a corpo you can’t fucking touch at all because… because there is no time left. It just isn’t fair.

“I used to be a corpo kid,” you confess, looking at him with a wry smile again. That catches his attention. He looks at you with those eyes that scrutinize you, interrogate you, peel you apart to your bare essentials and you have to look away before you can’t control your face anymore. God fucking damn it. “Not when it mattered, obviously, but… I remember what it was like. Grew up hating every single on of them.”

“Your parents were Arasaka?”

“Mhm. Security division.” It’s like your eyes are magnetic to his because when you blink, you find yourself regarding him again. Your fingers play at your lips. “Counterintelligence. I was supposed to go into that, too. Big dreams.” 

“I see.”

“Yeah, then my parents were tried for treason and murdered, so I got thrown out. That’s it.” Your hand falls away. You pick at the chipped nail polish on your thumb. “Never told anyone that. ‘Cept…” Jackie. Well, he’s fucking dead, now. “‘Cept you, now, I guess. Guess some corpos aren’t so bad.”

The corner of his mouth pinches up like he’s flattered and you can’t help the pleased warmth spreading through your chest. 

“Should I be honoured I am one of the few exceptions you have made?”

“Well, I don’t make exceptions often, so…” You grin slyly. He looks away just as you catch a flash of his smile growing. It’s a nice smile. You wish you saw it more often before the end of the road. Maybe it’s one of the regrets you have, too. “Yeah, maybe you should feel special.”

“Hm.”

“C’mon, Takemura. Humour the walking dead, yeah?” You stretch against the leather of his car seat with a pleased sound. “I’m spending what time I have left with who I want to. Can’t ask for much better than that.” A quiet hangs in the air as you melt against the black leather and you look at Takemura who’s staring at the wheel with an intensity you don’t often see. It makes your gut squirm. 

“And I? I am one of those people?”

You lean on one hip and look at him, bending a knee and resting an ankle on your thigh. He looks at you with an uncertainty—an uncertainty you’re sure echoes in your eyes.

It was business, then it wasn’t. Maybe it never was.

“Yeah. You’re one of the few on the short list.”

“Exceptions again.”

You laugh. “Yeah. You’re an exception to most things, I think. Weird, that.”

“How so?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I’ve had family—still do, ones that matter, you know. Just… no one ever like you, Takemura. Drives me crazy.”

“The feeling is mutual. Your mocking brings you onto thin ice, V.” His fingers tap against the steering wheel. The engine’s off so it seems more fidgety than anything. Weird. You never noticed he fidgeted before. Maybe he’s nervous?

About what?

“I must ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“If you have a future, what do you see for yourself?”

Your eyebrows shoot up. You frown and pick at your flecking nail polish even more, looking at your hand and focusing more on that so you don’t have to answer your question. His eyes burn into you and you swallow, trying not to act like you haven’t thought, in regret, at night, about a hundred million fucking times the possibilities they could’ve had together.

You’re not about to say all that.

Instead: “Settling down with the family. Mama Welles, people at the Coyote.” You blatantly don’t look at him when you add, “Others. This has been enough action for a lifetime.” You rest your hands on your lap and chance a glimpse at him. He’s looking away from you, out the window on his side, and you shift in your seat. “How about you? You must’ve… had dreams. Before all this shit went down. You make it out of here and then what?”

When he looks at you, your heart nearly cracks at the sadness in his eyes. He smiles, but there is no strength, and his eyes are darker than the night surrounding them.

“I would go to the countryside, just as I’ve always wanted. Leave this, all of this, behind. Rural Japan is beautiful, so a small town would suffice where everyone knows everyone. We do favours for one another. It is community. Nothing like here.” His lips pull into a tiny frown. “When I was a younger man, I wanted a daughter,” is all he says. “I believe I could have been a great father, so perhaps… perhaps one day.”

“A daughter? Not a son?” you ask curiously, and he almost chuckles. You can’t help the faint smile on your face. 

“If my daughter grew up anything like her mother,” he explains with a slight glance towards you, “I would have more hope than a son who was like me.”

You frown.  “You’re not a bad man, Takemura. Any son like you—with your code of honour, your shitty selfie skills—no one’s gotta a chance.”

He merely scoffs in response. Again, with the you mocking him. It’s a wonder he lets you.

“But really, that sounds… nice. A daughter, a wife.” You drum your fingers against your knee and his eyes dart to yours, click like they were always destined to meet, and your lips part. Words stall on your tongue and you want to speak but in the dim lights, you are lost in the darkness of his eyes. Something comes, something goes, and you barely croak out, “Whoever marries you will have to deal with so much of your shit that the kids have to turn out alright. The complaining, for one. Picky eater for another.”

This time, he does chuckle and you swallow a breath at the sound. “Dealing with it comes with practice, V.”

“Is that so?”

“Shouldn’t you know?”

“I—“ For once, no funny retort, no witty quip shoots out of your mouth, and you realize that there is an implication—an intricate dance where they’re struggling not to step on each other’s toes and nearly failing at every turn, yet somehow, it works because they’re dancing, and it’s quiet, and it’s… it’s peaceful.

Shit, you’re getting a load of this. When’d you become a poet?

“I guess I should know,” you finally say. “Never understood why I got so giddy whenever I saw your texts, you know, seein’ your name flash on my phone.” You laugh bitterly. “Guess I know why, now.” He’s silent and you don’t look at him. You look at the dashboard where you’ve kicked your feet up a dozen times, the glove compartment that still has your sunglasses inside.

Shit.

“Thank you for everything. Shit’s a little… more bearable, I guess. When you’re around, that is.” The words come out stilted, awkward, but your heart is so heavy in your throat you feel like you’re going to choke. You look into your lap, your whole body incinerating under what you’re sure is the most judgemental glare of your life and you just hope to fucking God this man says something, does something.

Holy shit. You’re going to die of embarrassment. Didn’t even think that was possible.

Then, a loud sigh. A sigh you’ve heard often enough beside you right before a gunfight or when he has to eat the food you ordered for him or even the nights when they’re exhausted, bruised, and just plain tired right before going to sleep where they lay on the floor.

It’s exasperated, a how on earth did we get here, a very annoyed again, you’re so fucking stupid, and you’re still running through your list on what this particular sigh can mean before a hand gently takes hold of yours. Your eyes dart to his, blinking and he stares at you like you’ve just stabbed him. Your heart is fucking racing in your chest, pounding like thunder. His fingers fold over and you realize, as you interlace fingers, that his skin is burning at your touch. 

Or maybe, it’s the other way around.

They sit there in silence, not looking at one another, looking out windows, parts of the car, everything but each other, and when he squeezes your hand, you close your eyes and swallow your heart.

It’s over.

“V,” he murmurs, voice so deathly quiet and raspy in your ears that your gut clenches. You turn to watch him. “Tell me that you will not stop fighting.” You swallow your breath as his eyes flicker from your own to your parted lips. He inhales quietly and you swear you can feel his heartbeat pulsing in his fingers in your grip. “That this is not all for nothing.”

“It isn’t.“

“Then I was right.” His eyes flutter back to your gaze and he tilts his head. Wisps of fine hair escaping his manbun brush over his nose and you reach up on your own accord, swiping it behind your ear. You lean over the console, your elbow digging into the leather and, tentatively, you trail your fingers down his jaw, hold his face in your hand. “I am… what is that phrase you use so often?”

“SNAFU?”

“No.”

“Assblasted.”

“No.”

“Royally fucked?”

“We need to expand your vocabulary.” You smile nefariously as his other hand reaches for your chin. He pinches it lightly, thumb stretching up to brush over your lips and your face freezes at his touch. “But yes. Royally fucked. I wasn’t wrong when I said I needed you.”

“I think that meant a whole something else back then,” you whisper rawly and he smiles sombrely. His thumb leaves your mouth to brush your cheek, his eyes fixing on you as if he’s trying to memorize aspects of your face: the arch of your nose, the bow of your smile, the way your brow wrinkles. “Meant more business-like.”

“I did. And now, I believe the terms have changed.” He arches an eyebrow. “Are we at a mutual understanding, V?”

“Yes.” And I hate that we are. Your hand along his jaw lifts to wrap around his wrist. “Consider that feeling mutual, yeah? It goes both ways.”

“I will.” Another small smile graces his lips. It makes him look younger every time and you rub your thumb over the back of his hand. 

“Do you wanna grab something to eat before you drive me back home for some shuteye?”

“The choices here are atrocious, V.”

“Then, drinks,” you propose, letting go of his wrist. He lets go of your chin, and turning to face the front, you kick up your feet on his dash. He stares at you for a moment then sighs because there really isn’t anything he can do about it. Nor, do you think, he wants to. You squeeze his hand and send him a silly smile. “How about drinks? I wasn’t hungry anyway.”

“Are you paying?”

You eye him incredulously. “Who do you take me for? You?”

He snorts and the engine roars to life with a flick of his wrist. He grabs the wheel dominantly and you swallow at the way his fingers wrap around the handle. “The Afterlife, then?”

“Or, we could make it rustic.” You pull his hand into your lap playfully and run a thumb over his knuckles. His eyes flit over and you send him a smirk. “I know Mama Welles doesn’t like you, but the Coyote’s serving cheap. Happen to like me there.” He begins to pull out of their little overhang and he nudges their joined hands into your abdomen, silently telling you to buckle in. Rolling your eyes, you mumble out a ‘boomer’ underneath your breath before letting go of him and following orders.

He settles a hand on your thigh and squeezes. You hang an arm out the window. 

The wind’s running through the car, he has the radio on low, and they’re easing through onto the highway.

Your chest is lighter than a feather, mind’s quieter than a ghost.

You’ve seen scarier deaths, dealt a lot more. You know that silence is a bigger killer than most bullets.

But here you are now…

“I’m changing this,” Takemura says. “This music is terrible.”

…Shit, maybe life isn’t so bad, ending the way it is.

[path-of-my-childhood]

Taylor Swift: Pop Star of the Year

By: Jonathan Dean for The Sunday Times Date: December 27th 2020

Rather than hunker down, the singer put out two albums in 2020 and won over new audiences. She’s the pop star of the year.

Taylor Swift met Paul McCartney in the autumn for a big interview in Rolling Stone. The two would have headlined Glastonbury this summer. Who knows if they will do that next year. Anyway, both recorded albums in lockdown, working from home like the rest of us. When they spoke, though, Swift had a secret. As well as Folklore, released in July, she had a follow-up record in the pipeline — Evermore, which was released this month.

Swift noted that the former Beatle was still so full of joy. “Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?” he said. “We’re really lucky,” Swift replied. “I can’t believe it’s my job.” And she is right. Being a pop star is an extraordinary way to earn the living she does. But rather than accepting luxury and letting this tough year tumble on, Swift is also keenly aware what music means. Sad songs soothe, happy songs make us dance, but as fans of most artists waited for something — anything — this year, this 31-year-old released two albums that broke chart records, were critically adored and introduced her to people who once thought that she wasn’t for them.

“I’m so exhausted!” she said to the American chat show host Jimmy Kimmel, laughing, a few weeks ago, when asked if she had a third new album planned. “I have nothing left.” In addition to Folklore and Evermore, she filmed a TV special and even started rerecording her back catalogue, after a volatile dispute over who owns her work. By October I’d just about cobbled together my first sourdough loaf.

A decade ago Swift moved firmly into the limelight thanks to a squabble with Kanye West entirely of the rapper’s own making. In 2009, when Swift — then a nascent country music star — won the best female video award at the VMAs, West stormed on stage, grabbed her microphone and said that Beyoncé should have won. Swift was 19 — West was 32 — and she looked scared. This wasn’t just about her biggest moment yet being stolen, but also about her position in the pop hierarchy being questioned, very publicly, from the off. She stood there as that man bullied her. Apparently she left the stage in tears.

Years later West released Famous, with its infamous lyric “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.” The alt-folk singer Father John Misty also wrote about sleeping with her. Every time that sort of thing happened, a powerful man in Swift’s industry was reducing a successful, talented, younger female to the level of a sex object. It was back-in-your-box belittling — as it was when a TV host groped her. (She successfully sued him.) While Swift herself would retort to West, as her music became less country, more slick pop, such retorts felt forced and gave the rapper too much of her oxygen. A nod to him on Folklore comes with the “Clowns to the West” line, but it is a sideshow now, not a headline.

Not that Swift’s life is entirely her own. She’s been one of the world’s bestselling female artists for a decade, coupled with curiosities such as a well-orchestrated relationship with Tom Hiddleston that kept her in the spotlight. Like many twentysomethings, Swift spent her youth apolitically, only to receive flak for staying silent during the 2016 US election. This year she endorsed Joe Biden, but what if she had wanted to stay quiet? Would the media have let her? She is under so much scrutiny that, after she made an innocuous hand gesture in a recent TV interview, similar to one women make to draw attention to domestic abuse, this headline ran: “Some people think Taylor Swift is secretly asking for help in her latest interview.”

Like many at the start of the pandemic she felt listless. The world we were used to was a wasteland, and we could only find the energy to watch Normal People. Swift’s ennui, though, was, well, swift. Stuck in LA, she emailed Aaron Dessner of the beloved beardy indie band the National to see if he fancied writing with her. No fool, Dessner said yes and, mere weeks later, the duo — with help from Swift’s regular collaborator Jack Antonoff as well as Justin Vernon, from the beloved beardy indie band Bon Iver — released Folklore. The gang just carried on working and, five months later, gave us Evermore.

Creativity is not on tap. Indeed, this year is not one for judging what others may or not have achieved. However, the silence of many big pop stars is striking because they know that even a single would make someone’s day; distract for a while.

Everyone needed to adjust to working from home, but Swift was one of the only musicians who did and, by eschewing the arena pop of recent albums for something more subdued, organic and folky, she gave the sense that she was letting fans in more than ever. She was at home, like us. This is who she is, and the first single from these sessions was so cosy, it was even called Cardigan.

“I just thought, ‘There are no rules any more,’” she told McCartney. “Because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, ‘How will this song sound in a stadium?’ If you take away the parameters, what do you make? I guess Folklore.”

Maybe it is tedious, for a deft writer with a career of varied, brilliant songs — Love Story, I Knew You Were Trouble, Blank Space — to find respect from some people only when artists who appeal to middle-aged men start to work with her. On the other hand, pop has never been particularly welcoming to many until it sounds like something you are used to and, with delicate acoustics and gossamer-like piano, Swift’s two new albums recall, sonically, Nick Drake or Kate Bush. Thematically, lyrics seem to come from anywhere. Daphne du Maurier, for one. Even the Lake District and its poets.

Some songs are personal. She is dating British actor Joe Alwyn, and on one track she sings, “I want to give you a child.” Make of that what you will. But these records’ highlights are not about herself, but others. “There was a point,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music, “that I had got to as a writer, [where I was only writing] diaristic songs. That felt unsustainable.” Instead, she does what the best writers do and mixes subjective with objective. The Last American Dynasty is a terrific piece of writing about the socialite Rebekah Harkness, who lived in a Rhode Island house that Swift bought and was, by all accounts, a bit scandalous. Swift tells her story almost with envy. Imagine, she seems to say, that freedom.

“In my anxieties,” she said in Rolling Stone, “I can often control how I am as a person and how normal I act. But I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and if they follow our car and interrupt our lives.”

Then there is Epiphany. The first verse is about her grandfather, who fought in the Second World War; the second about frontline workers in hospitals now. Sung in a high register, it is suitably choral. Marjorie, on Evermore, is even better. It is about her grandmother, an opera singer who died in 2003. “What died didn’t stay dead” is the repeated line, and it is eerie, gorgeous. Swift sings how she thinks Marjorie is singing to her, at which point some vocals from the latter’s recordings waft in. Touching, but the real power is in Swift writing about vague memories of a relative who died when she was young. “I complained the whole way there,” she sings. “I should’ve asked you questions.”

In person she is warm like this, and funny. When Kimmel told her there were far more swearwords on Folklore and Evermore than previous records, she replied: “It’s just been that kind of year.” She is also odder than people realise. In the way pop stars should be. Obsessed by numerology, she wrote, on the eve of her birthday when announcing Evermore: “Ever since I was 13, I’ve been excited about turning 31 because it’s my lucky number backwards.” When I turned 31 I just wished to be 13 again, with all that youth, but then, maybe, she is just joking. “Yes, so until I turn 113 or 131, this will be the highlight of my life,” she said. “The numerology thing? I sort of force it to happen.”

Swift, of course, is far from the first pop star to become public property, or have a close bond with fans. This year, however, she was one of the few to show that such adoration is not one-way. She is, simply, a fan of her fans — from planting secrets in her artwork and lyrics, to recording two albums of new music as a balm for them when real life became too deafening.

“One good thing about music,” sang Bob Marley. “When it hits you, you feel no pain.” The 80.6 million who streamed Folklore on its first day will attest to that idea. So will the four million who bought it. Swift is pop star of the year, no doubt — leaving her peers in her wake, on their sofas, rewatching The Sopranos.

[piratefalls]

A McDanno rec list for a new friend. (These are also authors I enjoy, so consider this a blanket rec list.)

The Bareknuckle Poet by pleasebekidding

After a serious accident left Steve temporarily wheelchair-bound, working towards his recovery, he enrolled at Rutgers for a year. He met Danny Williams in his criminology course, wearing pride pins and chipped black nail polish, so sure of himself that Steve found it breathtaking. What happened next redefined Steve's sense of self, his ambitions, and many of his priorities.

Tax Benefits by renecdote

“Everyone already assumes we’re married so maybe we should just...” Danny gestures broadly with his beer. He’s maybe a little bit… Not drunk, but definitely tipsy.

“For the tax benefits.”

Danny gives him an aggravated look. “Yes, Steven, for the tax benefits.”

Danny (jokingly) suggests they should get married. Steve takes him seriously.

ua kaha aku la ka nalu o kuu aina (the surf has pressed upon my land) by icoulddothisallday, TetrodotoxinB

Steve knows, he learned, how a man behaves. He can play his part. Danny, who is a good man and great father, looks nothing like what Steve was taught. Reconciling the two means giving up everything he's clung too for the last two decades, and there's nothing about it that's easy.

*potentially triggery AF (deals with effects of conversion therapy) but beautifully rendered

the art of leaving and saying goodbye by Verasteine

2007 is the year Danny learns that choice can be the worst kind of heartbreak. AU.

*warning for infidelity (not mcdanno)

in jest by apathyinreverie

“No, babe,” Danny shakes his head with a grin. “If the apocalypse were to go down while I’m elsewhere for some godforsaken reason, then you stay put and I’m coming to wherever you are.” His grin widens. “And I expect you to have cleared any aliens or zombies or whatever else might be messing with us off the island and to have set up a nice, comfortable military dictatorship for us to rule over by the time I get back.”

It’s a joke.

Of course it’s a joke.

Until it isn’t.

(A the-day-after-tomorrow-style apocalypse AU, where the world decides to end right when Danny is visiting one of the other islands with Grace. Because, of course, it does.)

not just friendship (romance too) by earthquakedream

Steve's gone and gotten himself a boyfriend. Danny's not sure what worse: the fact that he's stupidly jealous or that he actually likes the guy.

All I Ever Wanted (It Comes with a Price) by leviarty

Steve gets shot. Again. Danny is not okay.

* warning: a young grace shoots someone to protect both herself and a gravely injured steve

After All Our Troubles, We Have This by Banshi13

"I'm ending this," McGarrett muttered after a few moments of silence. "I'm not coming back until Wo Fat is in the ground. I'll dig his own grave and bury him myself if I have to, but my father is dead, my mother is running all over the world in hiding, my sister and I were uprooted from our lives, and now he's got Danny locked somewhere in a basement in the middle of Japan." He looked both Chin and Kono in the eye, deadly resolve in his eyes. "This ends. Now. This is the absolute last time that man interferes with my life and my family."

The Other Guy by haldoor

Danny tells Steve what he thinks is a funny story from when he attended Grace's school play. Steve doesn't think it's so funny; in fact, it makes him jealous.

Strapped by stellarmeadow

Steve's determined Danny's going to be prepared next time.

Warm to the Touch by veronicaluv

Danny didn't think twice about going to North Korea to find Steve. He just didn't know everything would go to hell when they got back.

Me and my heart (We got issues) by SquaresAreNotCircles

“I’m in love with you, Steve,” Danny says. He does it softly, quietly, laying the words into the darkness of Steve’s backyard like they’re something breakable, something to be tiptoed around. “I thought you should know.”

Steve’s heart jumps. It rams against his ribcage so hard it’s going to leave bruises. So hard he startles awake, and he almost yells before he realizes he’s outside because he fell asleep in one of the garden chairs in his backyard again.

how to be gay for your best friend in ten easy steps by commatme

See, the thing is that Danny doesn’t really do gay sex, what with being straight and all, but when Steve says I love you he sounds so earnest he makes Danny want to consider it. Which is crazy, right? He’s pretty sure that’s crazy, or at least a little unhinged.

It’s Not So Easy Caving In by paradis

The one where Danny used to be a heroin addict.

blame it on the ocean view by carryokee

Danny gives in, freaks out, and comes to his senses.

So Have I Loved You by Brumeier

In which Grace has a surprise for Steve's birthday and there's not a dry eye in the house.

take it back to a couple years yesterday by itsrosencrantz

Danny really, really doesn't want to go to his twenty year high school reunion.

Steve decides they're going anyway, and Danny takes it about as well as you'd expect.

View From The Shipwreck by flowerfan

Danny Williams isn’t in a great place – he’s a reluctant transplant to Oahu and an outsider at HPD. Former Navy SEAL Steve McGarrett isn’t doing much better, having suffered a career ending injury. When Danny’s young daughter Grace wanders into Steve’s bar after getting lost on a school field trip, Danny is drawn to Steve, somewhat against his better judgement – he’s got enough on his plate. He’s not exactly sure what Steve sees in him. As they spend more time together, Danny learns how Steve’s injury has changed his life in many ways, but not the most important ones. As one thing leads to another, Danny realizes that things might be looking up after all.

True North by lavvyan

“Tell you what, my dad’s throwing his annual Christmas Ball on Saturday. It’s not a trip to Aspen or anything, but it is nice. Fancy food and everything. You guys should come!”

On the trail of a suspected war criminal, Steve and Danny have to go undercover at a fancy ball. The sacrifices they make for the job.

Oh, and Steve's pining like the taiga. Nothing new there.

outside the lines by withoutwords

“I’m Detective Williams.” Danny says, not trying too hard to keep it smug free. “This is my partner, Detective Mackenzie.”

Ken Doll keeps his arms up, his eyes flickering between them all as if he's only seeing police for the first time. “Good cover,” he tells Danny, and it sets Danny’s teeth on edge.

“This is the part where you say sorry for assaulting a police detective, for compromising an investigation, and for acting like a complete asshole while doing it,” Danny growls, about to change his mind and cuff the guy himself.

“Sorry, Officer.”

The bastard is still grinning.

Boys Like Me, We Try Too Hard by romanticallyinept

Steve's always wound so fucking tight.

And Danny's worried about him. Legitimately worried about him. Because maybe Steve always lays into the perps a little hard, and maybe he follows his own rules and his own morals and doesn't stop to sleep unless his body's actually shutting down around him, but usually, Steve's okay at the end of the day. Usually, Steve's not leaning against the wall of the alley they're in, eyes closed and shaking, with the perp he'd cuffed a minute earlier lying on the ground and crying about his broken nose.

Steve keeps a secret, and Danny does his best to patch him back up when it comes to light.

Transformative by boxparade

“You know, I’d heard you’d changed a lot after high school, but I’ve gotta admit, this is a little weird.”

* trans (FTM) Danny

All the Way by VictoriaAGrey

Danny has lost count of how many times he and Steve have used the sexual tension between them for undercover work, only for it to be bottled away after the op is over. With Saint Michael as his witness, that ends tonight.

Nocturne in C# Minor (featuring Stevie Ray Vaughn) by minor_demimonde

So, to recap, Danny has beautiful eyes, great shoulders, a pleasantly-shaped butt, a delectable mouth, expressive hands, and he smells good.

You know, Steve has gone to bed with women who didn’t have that much going for them.

seen it in the flight of birds by Siria

AU from the beginning of Season 2. The Five-0 task force has been reinstated, but the new governor's determined to shake things up. Facing changes and unexpected betrayals, the team has to work together to face new challenges.

It Ain’t Me Babe (Nah), It Ain’t Me You’re Looking For (Babe) by tourdefierce

A story in which Danny makes lists and can't find his heterosexuality underneath all his homogay, Steve has a lot of faces, Kono is perfect in every way and Chin continues to keep Hawaii safe from the Five-O's general disfunction—Or, a story about Kono being awesome and how she likes her men with hearts in their eyes for each other.

Ratios, Decimals, and Percentages by fuchs

In which Steve takes an internet quiz and slowly loses his mind. Danny's okay with it.

Let’s Dance Like We Used To by AndreaLyn

There isn't a world in which Danny wouldn't go after Grace. So when Rachel moves the family to California, Danny goes with. Steve gets left to process life without Danny.

Gunfire, Rainfall, and Beach Erosion by thegrrrl2002

Steve and Danny are kidnapped. After which there is too much swimming and too much rain and it's all very romantic. If you are Steve, that is.

Moving In (To Every Single Aspect of Danny’s Life, Including the Boring Bits like Dry-Cleaning by westgirl

It felt wrong for Steve to sound unsure of his place in Danny’s life. His place in Danny’s life was at Danny’s side, driving him slowly insane. Steve should feel secure about that.

Always Known What I Wanted To Be by mickeysixx

Grace Williams has always wanted to be a cop.

The Taper Phase by popfly

It’s like being run over by an armored car, like the impact of gunshot to tac vest. The pride Danny feels for his daughter and something else, something about Steve’s tank top sticking to his stomach, the way his shorts stretch across his thighs. The goofy grin that lights up Steve’s face when he sees Danny and Charlie, waving one hand while he nudges Grace with the other.

Pitching Woo by SBG

In which Danny pitches (and then accidentally catches) woo.

clue: four letters, ‘is a many splendored thing’ by armillarysphere

“Crosswords? What are you, sixty?”

“They stimulate brain activity, Danno. You ought to try it sometime.”

Steve doesn’t even look up from his newspaper, half-chewed pen resting at the corner of his mouth in an entirely too distracting way.

That’s Not Just Friendship, That’s Romance by thismuchmore

Danny and Steve start out accidentally dating each other, and it turns into something more.

it’s not what you’re sure of (it’s what you don’t know) by somehowunbroken

Art thief Steve McGarrett and his team come up against FBI Special Agent Danny Williams, and things spin wildly out of control from there.

Same Deep Water by JiM, kalena

This isn't the first lifetime Danny's been in Hawaii. When the stress ratchets up, the dreams get more and more real. Turns out Danny has some unfinished business . . . with Steve.

Warning: Ambien use may lower inhibitions in a wakeful state.

Curiosity Didn’t Kill This Cat by unadrift

"I'm confused," Rachel says. "Are you two dating or not?"

Danny sighs. "You remember that thing with the cat in the box? The one that's both dead and alive?"

"Schroedinger's cat?"  

"It's kind of like that."

"Okay," Rachel says. She clearly has no idea what he's talking about.

2727 Piikoi Street by imaginary_iby

The ways in which Danny makes himself at home by Steve's side, and the family he gains as the years go by. (Featuring Steve in Timberland boots and little else, and happy goofs who like to make out against the front door).

All The Earth Awaits Thee by Portrait_of_a_Fool

Steve knows all about war and willpower, but this is still the hardest battle he’s ever had to fight.

* warning: life threatening illness, no MCD

The Vertical Challenge by AlamoGirl80

Five times Danny thinks about his height, and then realizes that being "not-tall" doesn't really suck at all.

Some Things to Think About When You Decide to Be an Asshole by sutlers

Steve gets high and tries to fuck Danny; things devolve from there.

Inked by thehoyden

Of course Steve is enjoying himself. They're bait for a serial killer who has some sort of serious hangup about tattooing loved ones' names on their skin -- of course Steve thinks this is practically like a vacation, but better, because the chances of collateral damage are higher.

This Thing Of Ours (It Needs a Better Name) by leupagus

Cosa Nostra: (kō'sə nō'strə) etym: Italian n. The branch of the Mafia operating in the United States. Literally, "our thing" or "this thing of ours."

Ho’oponopono by ember_firedrake

Groundhog Day AU. Danny finds himself trapped in the same day over and over again.

Swim for Brighter Days by zarah5

Danny kisses Steve late on a Tuesday, early on a Wednesday. Steve punches him. (Set vaguely post-finale, so spoilers for that.)

All My Guards Away by sheafrotherdon

Tag to episode 1x18, with all the heartache that implies. Now with bonus fixes. With thanks to dogeared for all her suggestions and edits.

Let’s Take it from the Top by pterawaters

Steve goes along with the bachelor-party-in-Vegas, because he chose Danny to be his best man, and that's what Danny wants to do. Unfortunately, the things that happen in Vegas don't necessarily stay there.

How to Keep Your Mouth Shut by primetime

Danny’s sometimes gay. Gay, sometimes. Does dudes. He doesn’t know how to say it right. He doesn’t know how to say it at all.

Don’t Turn Me Home Again by gyzym

After a rough day of island living, Danny wakes up in New Jersey and learns the hard way to be careful what he wishes for.

End-Around by t_fic

Steve hesitates with his hand on the doorknob, looking back over his shoulder at Danny and nodding once before disappearing inside, and yeah, Danny is going to be so fucking lucky to get through this night without a coronary event.

Lonely People Do Stupid Things by waketosleep

Danny decides to show Steve the true meaning of Christmas, and does it by dragging him to New Jersey.

Down Beneath the Waves by samjohnsson

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes it takes another thousand to explain it.

Love’s a Battlefield (and the Navy Did Not Train Steve for This Shit) by cyerus

The Kalakaua-Kelly clan are determined to matchmake Steve. Out of desperation, Steve makes up a boyfriend named Danny.

It doesn't quite go according to plan.

put your mind at ease by eleanor_lavish

Somewhere in the last year, while Steve was busy killing bad guys, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been erased from the books and guys like Jeff can marry whoever they damn well please.

You’ve Got Hawaii (and all I’ve got is you) by queenklu

In which Danny has issues, presents, and Steve fleas, not necessarily in that order.

Jaws by JoeLawson

Danny has a secret.

[honestlyfrance]

bury me here

pairing: sam/bucky

square filled: palm kisses/wiping away tears ( for the kisses bingo held by @bingokisses​​ !)

warnings/content: angst, hurt/comfort, soulmate AU, established relationship, angst with very happy ending

summary: Bucky Barnes is afraid of losing his soulmate another time.

a/n: oh hey it’s like 1.8k words and a week after the last one! im not playing to win but it just so happens that my fill is also the bingo call so i plowed thru this :D please leave some feedback and tell me if you like it; it goes a long way <3 enjoy! (also title ripped off from my old fic that didnt finish lmao)

my masterlist | find this on ao3

He asks you to bury him right here, and you laugh. Oh, how hard you laugh. You can’t find a proper reaction to such a thought so you brushed it off with a simple friendly gesture. Bury me here, the request echoes in your head when you drive back to work, when you wake up before sunrise, and when you come running back into his home in a fervent sweat. Bury me right here with you, he says to you. It must be all just a funny joke because there he lay… lifeless; a vessel without a soul. He asked you to bury him that night, and you were a coward, and that killed your lover in the deepest way possible.

You mourn. You sobbed— You screamed, you screamed until the air is exhaled out of your lungs until heaven and hell could hear your plead and resurrect your man. You hold onto his shirt, tugging on it, hoping that his chest elevates just a little. You wanted to find him in the dining room eating his breakfast but all you found was his soul slipping from your fingertips. Yes, Bucky Barnes, the universe isn’t kind, and Fate doesn’t care if Sam Wilson breathes his final breath.

That was two years ago, and Sam had never let it down. He teased and jested at Bucky’s obliviousness every chance he got. Bucky’s just glad they were soulmates with souls irrelevant to time, hence, they were excused from death when with each other.

After that moment, Bucky never left Sam’s side (but if the man says he needs his space, Bucky will give him that). They go grocery shopping together, they sleep together, they were partners in crime together, they did most things together. Out of everything, Bucky’s favorite thing to do with Sam was falling asleep with him. They would both be in bed, in their little bubble enjoying their time in silence and tranquility; Sam would be jotting down in his planner and journal while Bucky would be looking through his socials and occasionally send a link of a funny video or picture to Sam’s respective DMs. After all that mess of poking each other’s feet and just slyly catching a glimpse of each other. Sam would turn off the bedside lamp as Bucky begins to spoon him. It’s their kind of bubble of peace and oh wow they feel like flying being light as a feather right here.

They sleep with each other’s stardust in their veins, wrapping their fingers around the other’s wrists to feel their lover’s life strum against theirs. Bucky loved moments like this, when he could have Sam in his arms for a long time, never letting go. It assures him much like a kiss, fleeting and deep, yet he understands and he doesn’t doubt it. Falling in love must be like this: fleeting and deep, a constant fact.

It’s because Sam was so beautiful it’s incomprehensible, and to think that Bucky hadn’t realized he had fallen in love sooner. It all looks like a joke, he swears, and he still laughs about it, how ridiculously oblivious he was. All those nights under the stars and morning runs that consisted of sunrises that look like his love; these are the things that made Bucky look so stupid next to love, but he thinks it’s alright. He knows now, and he knows he’s so hooked up he’s never giving up.

So it’s no surprise why he’s still shaken up from finding the man he loves slipping from his grasp. It’s a scary moment, to see the love of his life slowly fade away, stars at the back of his eyes, night turns into galaxies, everything so pretty but everything was dead. God, death never was supposed to be so pretty and he was prepared to mourn for that too.

Bucky cries in his sleep as he sees those same stars he looked up to like the art Sam analyzes: carefully crafted by the very thing that created who he was, it was never supposed to be so intimate. He sleeps with Sam in his arms and all he could feel is stardust slipping away, further and further as he drowns in his sleep, and he worries that he’ll lose it all when he wakes up, his arms empty of the world.

He’s shaking, his breath stuttering like a panicked child. He wanted to come back home, back to Earth, relive nothing but happiness and Sam’s laugh, so bright and charming he’s swooned every single time like a damn fool. Bucky wanted to sleep in Sam’s arms without ever feeling like he could lose him at any minute. Bucky wanted to believe that Sam is his soulmate and they’ll live forever, as they feel they could be.

Sam wakes up with Bucky’s tears painting the back of his shirt. His heart aches at the mere feel of it, knowing that his man will never let it go. Let it go? How can I let go of a possibility? he would say, and Sam breaks a little bit in the inside as he turns around to face him. He’ll find him shaking, his arms around himself, and his eyes shut tight. Bucky will see stars in his sleep and that’s too beautiful a dream to wake up from, so Sam really couldn’t wake him.

It’s like this some nights. Bucky refuses to get help but will reluctantly do so anyway, just so Sam wouldn’t pester him. Bucky tries, oh how he tries but it’s no use; how can he not be scared about an eventual thing? One day, it’ll be the day without Sam that he’d lose him, and he’s not ready for that yet.

“I’m dreaming…” Sam sang, his voice so hushed that it’s breaking. The back of his hand brushes against Bucky’s wet cheek and the man visibly shivered. “…of a white… Christmas.”

It was the first of August but Sam couldn’t wait for the holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas — oh! and New Year’s Eve.

“Just like the ones… I used to know…” Sam continued to sing, and as he sang, the closer his lips set a gentle kiss on Bucky’s forehead. It was just a fleeting kind of kiss, nothing too exciting, but the way Bucky’s shoulders rolled back, exhaling a little sigh, and his eyebrows relaxing, Sam could tell it meant everything.

Sam couldn’t help but smile at that. He brushes his hand against Bucky’s cheeks and began to wipe the tears away, humming to the tune of Christmas songs as August wind zips past their window.

“Is it the day of your Lord, already?” Bucky hummed in his sleep, his fingers curling around the collar of Sam’s shirt.

Sam hummed back, snuggling closer to his man that their noses are almost touching. “No. Christmas songs are just nice.”

“I know. That’s why I let you play them in July.”

“James… It’s August already.”

Bucky’s eyebrows furrowed deeply as he scowled. “The fuck?”

Sam’s laugh, even in the first few seconds of the next day, was as lively as if he was awake, but in fact, he’s still stiff as a log and half asleep when he’s wiping Bucky’s tears away. Bucky hummed along with Sam and it’s their kind of symphony. His breathing was lax and Sam didn’t have to hold his breath anymore.

“Can I tell you something, Sammy?”

Sam’s eyes fluttered open, meeting Bucky’s open ones. The room was pretty dark, but it’s as if he could see the blue in them as clear as day. “Yeah, Buck?” he said.

Bucky pursed his lips, wrapping his arm around Sam’s waist. “You don’t have to do that for me. Don’t wake up.”

“I want to. Why don’t you want me to wake up?”

And it’s innocent, almost child-like when he says it. Oh, naive Bucky, he and his aching heart, forever played in Sam’s hands, it’s all in six words: “You grow old when you’re awake.”

There’s goes Sam’s heart shattering into a million pieces, his breathing stuttering for a moment before he stares at Bucky, trying to piece in the vague shapes in front of him, figuring out the details that made sense. After a few seconds of silence, Sam lurches forward and captured Bucky’s lips in his in a chaste kiss, sweet and deep, Bucky’s already twisting him so he could lay on his chest.

Sam lets go but he plants a quick one again before he says: “That’s not how this works, you know.”

“A lover can wish.”

Sam’s got his hands on Bucky’s chest as the man turns the lamplight on. They’re then doused in orange light, and it dances in Sam’s brown eyes, the absolute picture of a supernova, or the sun, swirling in the darkest recces of space like a burst of God’s light. It’s such a beautiful sight that Bucky just had to voice out his thoughts, his breath on Sam’s neck as he says it all, those same words in his thoughts: like a burst of God’s light.

Sam smiled, chuckling as Bucky brushed his fingers above Sam’s eyebrow. “You’re a poet at one in the morning too, huh?”

“A poet’s gotta have ‘nother poet,” he replied as he brings Sam closer to his body, his arms enveloping around him like a warm blanket.

“Hm, all I can say is just stop worrying,” Sam whispers into Bucky’s ear. “You’ll have white hair stressing like that.” Sam’s hands caress his cheeks, forcing the man to look into his eyes. “I need you to know that we both grow old. People age. We do that. But you know what doesn’t change? Our eyes. Ma’s always said if you’re gonna fall in love with someone’s body it better be the eyes, because God— those never change, not even the color nor the pupil.”

Bucky hummed, and when he smiled it was all squished up from Sam’s hands, and that only made his smile reach into both their eyes. “Your mama’s nice. Wish I could’ve met her.”

“Well, that’s a long time from now.”

With that, Bucky’s hand interlocked with one of Sam’s. Turning it over, Bucky pressed a deep kiss into the palm of Sam’s hand. He practically inhaled Sam’s scent as he did so, kissing his knuckles then his fingers, then to the wrist then to the elbow. As he did this, Sam’s found a home in the crook of Bucky’s neck, a smile on his lips he couldn’t wipe off.

“I love you and your eyes,” Bucky says out of the blue, the light turned off and the morning light creeping through the gaps of their curtain.

Sam groaned and rolled over, his hand still intertwined with Bucky’s. “Is it morning already? What did we do.”

Bucky planted a kiss on Sam’s ear and the man snorted at that, turning quickly to face him as he says: “Kissin’ and sleeping. The perfect combo.”

Sam laughed at that, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s neck as the man brings him close to his chest. There they felt each other’s life strum in a better place: the heart. It’s their favorite song in the entire world too.

[tellywoodtrash]

immj2 12.11.20 lb

well………….. let’s get this the fuck over with. isske baad pls god let this show go back to their random tuchchi saazishein. mere se itna action jhela nahi jaata.

ok back to dead inside vansh who is analyzing every single interaction with riddhima and musing about DHOKAAAAAAA DHOKAAAAAAAA DHOKAAAAAAAA

lmaoooooooooooooooooooooooo kabir is like “itne saalon se tum mere liye itneeee bade sardard the, but finally ab khel khatam.” dude i love this caviler fucker.

but tell me these caps don’t look like kabir expressing a whole other sentiment:

damnnnnn, dat chemistry. seriously, 10x what riddhima has with vansh. i am so mad that we’re not getting these two as endgame.

aaaaaand the handcuffs are out. mmmhmmmm. kinky!

mummy be like ARRE AISE KAISE TUM DONO HI SAARE OSCARS LOOTOGE KYA, MERE KO BHI CHAHIYE I AM ALSO PERFORMERR and throwing herself in front of vansh and giving passionate defense.

this one also like chalo my turn nowwwwww.

human angry bird is like NOT ON MY WATCH YOU FUCK.

DUDE WHAT ARE THESE LOOKS THEY’RE GIVING EACH OTHER THERE’S SO MUCH SEXUAL TENSION HERE I CAN’T TAKE IT

asljdaslkjdlaskjdlaskjdlaskjldkj kabirrrrrrrrrrrr’s internal monologue: “haath mein hathkadi lag gayi, phir bhi tashan nahi gaya tumhara” hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

RIDDHIMA IS STILL FUCKING RUNNING. FROM FUCKING BANDRA, WHERE THE FACTORY OR WHATEVER WAS, TO BLOODY ANDHERI, WHERE THE VR MANSION IS. DUDE, MUMBAI MARATHON CHAL RAHA HAI KYA IDHAR????????

unf the way kabir pushed vansh towards the van. big Top energy.

THIS SCENE HAS JUST SOOOOOOO MUCH FUCKING SEXUAL TENSION I’M LITERALLY HERE LIKE

LIKE I’M REALLY FEELING SOME KINDA FUNNY WAY, THAT I’VE NEVER FELT IN THE VANSH/RIDDHIMA SCENES.

oh yeah in between that mummy was doing some more mother india acting, ki iski sazaa mujhe de dijiye and all, but HONESTLY WHO CAN PAY ATTN TO THAT MESS WHEN THERE’S BHAAARI SEX EYES GOING ON HERE???????

ok now that they’ve driven away, i’ll focus on her. yes, very cool acting. iss saal ka manikchand gutka jio fiama di wills colors golden petal stardust whatever the fuck award aapke hi liye.

riddhima also managed to medal in the marathon, and reach justttttttt as they pull outta the gates.

back to the Sexy Van™

ohhhhhhhhhhh boyyyyyyy, kabir instructing mishra to go off the path.

“vansh raisinghania, apne life ke sabse bade adventure ke liye taiyaar ho jao.”

DUDE THESE TWO ARE KINKY AS FUCK.

lmao vansh is like don’t write checks you can’t cash, don’t be promising orgasms you won’t be giving, “dhamki toh dhang ki dete.”

“vansh tumhe andaaza nahi ki kitni shiddat ke saath maine aaj ke din ka intezaar kiya hai. aaj meri zindagi ka sabse bada din hai!”

well damn, me too. i didn’t know that this was the pairing i was gonna end up shipping SO HARD but here we are!

ok mummy has seen riddhima and she tries to shoot her but riddhima drove the fuck away. good for her.

they have reached that random maidaan where every outdoor sequence on tellywood happens.

mishra can you gtfooooooooo from in between the hot boy sandwich??????

this dude is hottest when his eyes squinty.

OUFFFFFFFFFFFF THE SMILESSSSSSSSSS

TBH I’M NOT EVEN PAYING ATTN TO THE TRASH TALK THEY’RE DOING I’M JUST HERE LIKE KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS KISS

kabir freeing him, which nooooooooooooo, i wanted to see some hot handcuff actionnnnnn. vansh is as disappointed as i am.

anyway some searing indictments of our country’s legal system by kabir, about no matter how much proof he collects, rich ppl anyway get away with whatever. and so will vansh. sooooooo, he’s like i just needed to arrest you and break your ego, blah blah. which, yeah right. like anyone with one working brain cell doesn’t know you’re gonna shoot him down in an encounter for trying to flee police custody.

some more flirty banter. and then……..

yup.

damn, those some cat-like reflexes.

vansh like, i knew your bitch ass would pull some shit like this.

fuck fuck fuck fuck so much sexy him walking up to the gun like that.

ofc there have to be some BE A MAN type dumbass dhamkis. you know what real men do??? KISS THEIR RIVALS WHOM THEY HAVE THIS MUCH HOMOEROTIC TENSION WITHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

DANG KABIR HESITATEDDDDDDDD. HE COULDN’T DO IT. IT’S RIGHT OUTTA THE FIGHT SCENE BEFORE THE SEX SCENE IN MR. AND MRS. SMITHHHHHH.

aaaaaand that pause was enough for vansh to start beating the fuck outta him. yeah i don’t care. the only thing i wanna see you two wrestle is TONGUES.

mmmmmmhmmmmm just a lil closer, come onnnnn you stupid fucks.

ok they’re back to pounding on each other IN THE NON FUN WAY so fwding.

aaaaaaaaand riddhima is following her special Vansh Tracker App. I REALLY DON’T CARE.

told y’all K had Big Top Energy. oh yeahhhhhhhhhh, choke him, daddy!

ok they back to hitting each other.

ooooh nice callback to that firstttt fight they had where kabir threw sand in vansh’s eyes and then vansh fought blindfolded.

back to sexy banter.

“dil, dimaag, aur taaqat. teeno hi tumse kayiiii zyaada hai mujh mein.” LIFE MEIN CONFIDENCE CHAHIYE, TOH OF AN RICH, UPPER CASTE, MALE PSYCHOPATH ON TELLYWOOD.

he’s walking backwards to the edge of the cliff as he keeps talking. sigh.

“dushman mein woh dum kahan ke mera kuch bigaad sake. woh toh apne the jo dagaa de gaye, sazza de gaye.” waaaaaah waaaaaah!!!! THE PSYCHOPATH WAS A POET AND WE DIDN’T KNOW IT!

walking back some more.

“main aaj bhi vansh raisinghania hi hoon. meri maut bhi mujhse pooch ke mere paas aati hai.” this fucker nicolas flamel or what, with the philosopher’s stone????

“kissi tuchche insaan ki gun se chali goli ko ijaazat nahi ke meri jaan le sake. maine apni zindagi khud banaayi hai, kabir; aur iske aage kya hoga naa tum decide karoge, na tumhare haath mein yeh pistol. the choice is mine.”

pehli baar this dude’s tashan has been effective for me. IT’S COZ THE DIALOGUE DELIVERY IS MEASURED AND HE’S SAYING IT FULL OF MIRTH, INSTEAD OF GRINDING HIS TEETH AND YELLING. SEEE WHAT A FUCKING DIFFERENCE IT MAKES????????

anyway kabir is like, cool, your funeral. as vansh continues to walk backwards. it’s hilarious kabir thinks he has anyyyy control in this scene anymore.

le. aa gayi. dhaaansu scene kharaab karne.

vansh having ALL TEH FLASHBACKS. poor sad eyed puppy.

“tum log kya kar rahe ho?!!?!?” BITCH THEY WERE ABOUT TO GET IT ON, BUT NOW NO THANKS TO YOU……………….

blah blah usual ishq nahi aasaan aag ka dariya hai doob ke jaana hai blah blah from piya psychopath

“aaj apne dhoke ke aag ki dariya mein dubo hi diya na tumne mujhe, riddhima?”

i’m sure this is some kasautiii kinda metaphor, ki they’re working together, or like….. he actually does trust her… or some such shit, but i can’t be arsed to analyse anything with this dumbass show. it doesn’t deserve it.

kabir watching this whole angst ridden scene with such horny eyes, i can’t even…………………

obligatory placement of show naam. tashan mein usko lete lete, JAI MATA DIIIIIIIIIIIII, LET’S ROCK.

if this isn’t the Biggest Mood for 2020, idk what is. vansh finally being relatable to the rest of us normals.

yeah whatever. i really don’t care about you. i’m more devastated ki when will i get such a KaValicious sexual tension filled episode next??!?!?!?!!? probably next fucking year now. ugh. bloody waste show, forcing us to watch this het bullshit.

let’s end this with a nice pic of this face. i think we’ve all earned it.

[aion-rsa]

Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’

https://ift.tt/35QzhQ6

The Ghosts creators have worked together for over a decade. To-date, the six-person team (Mat Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond) have written and performed in long-running children’s sketch comedy Horrible Histories, three series of fantasy sitcom Yonderland, feature film Bill, and two series of the supernatural BBC comedy Ghosts, with a third on the way. 

Channelling Mrs Merton asking Debbie McGee what first attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels, I ask Baynton and Howick via Zoom what inspired the group to write Ghosts, a sitcom about a group of individuals who frequently drive each other nuts, trapped together for what may well be eternity? 

Both laugh. “I’m sure we do drive each other nuts in many ways,” says Howick, “but the truth is, like the ghosts, what we always come back to in these episodes is that they love each other and don’t know what they would do without each other. I think that can be said for the group?” He looks to Baynton for confirmation and gets a happy nod. 

Considering the well-documented fallings-out and imploding egos of other comedy gangs – the Pythons not least among them – this level of harmony over such a long period feels remarkable. What’s their secret? “I think we keep each other honest,” says Baynton. “There are certainly heated debates.”

Heated’s too strong a word, says Howick. “We only really fight for our opinion, we never fight each other.” On the rare occasion that there isn’t unanimity about a particular topic, there might be a locking of horns and a democratic vote, but real arguments don’t happen. “There’s no animosity or jealousy with each other’s independent careers,” he explains. “We are our most important project. We have no desire to work each other up. We’re all genuinely fond of each other.”

That much is clear watching them interact. The online BBC press launch for series two was punctuated by the group making each other laugh. Silly voices. Running jokes. At one point, to the absolutely delight of his colleagues, Simon Farnaby’s crotch moved unavoidably front and centre as he stood up in front of his webcam to adjust a window blind. The rapport is real. 

Indeed, during UK lockdown, say Baynton and Howick, the group’s regular Zoom calls drafting Ghosts series three were a godsend. Aside from the boon of having regular work when so much of their industry was in uncertainty, being able to see friends for three hours on a Wednesday evening kept them sane. 

“It’s been a tonic in an otherwise relatively difficult and quite miserable time to have been able to jump on Zoom and make each other laugh with ideas for these characters that we love,” says Baynton. Entertainingly, when the group splits off into writing pairs, each does impressions of the absent characters while drafting dialogue. “It’s funny,” remarks Howick. ‘When we come together as a six, if we’re trying to pitch a positive idea, it’s usually done in a [segues into the regional accent of his upbeat character] Pat voice. Or if it’s a melodramatic idea or if it’s over-the-top, it might be a [Baynton’s Romantic poet character] Thomas voice.” 

Via video chat, it took a little longer for the group’s writing wheels to start turning. Ordinarily a new series would start with two weeks of the gang together in the same room. Stretching that to months of three-hour Zoom calls, fitted in amongst home schooling for the parents among them, was an adjustment. “The energy that you would bring to a room at 10 o’clock in the morning in an office wasn’t there,” says Howick. “You’d have to try and generate this feeling even though everyone was exhausted.”

Howick found himself seeking out frivolity to reach the right frame of mind. He played videogames. “If I sat and thought too hard about what was going on outside my door, it would make me really sad, and so in order to keep a vital part of me going, in order to meet with Mat and the others every Wednesday and keep that bright demeanour, it was good to do that.” The writing momentum started to return with the ease of lockdown, says Baynton. “The simple mental health-saving fact of being able to meet up with family in a garden helped a lot.” 

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Trying to write comedy against a such a serious backdrop of world events also felt uncomfortable, says Baynton. “You feel like it’s almost… immoral is too strong a word, but when there are nurses and doctors and teachers and crucially important people doing the work they do… It felt like an elephant in the room to be tap tap tapping away at a story about another day at Button House and what the ghosts are up to.”

It helped to know how warmly Ghosts series one had been received by its many fans. “What’s touching is when we do get messages from fans who say how much the show means to them. I know how important comedy has been to me in my life, so if we can be that to other people, it doesn’t feel completely frivolous.”

Ghosts, with its colourful selection box of characters (there’s a caveman, a headless Elizabethan, a 17th century witch, an excitable Regency woman-child, an Edwardian snob, a WWII captain, a 1980s scout leader and a 1990s Tory politician) may look frivolous, but series one had moments of real pathos. Baynton is proud of the fact that the series doesn’t shy away from the bleaker side of its ‘dead people’ premise. “If you really interrogate the truth of it – these are people who lived, people who died, people who loved or were thwarted or killed or suffered injustices or never got to love the person that they admired…”

The original idea was for a much bigger cast of ghosts, with everybody playing multiple parts, Horrible Histories-style. It quickly became clear that the story needed to home in on a small ensemble, giving the gang what Howick calls “its own silhouette”. Had they stuck with the original plan, “It would have been like The Muppet Show,” he says. “Every week would only have scratched the surface.” Too many ghost characters would have diminished the show’s emerging premise, says Baynton, which is about “being stuck forever in a tedious and endlessly repetitive existence.”

A bit like lockdown, we joke. Exactly, says Baynton. 

“We talk about this a lot. The way I see it is that their situation is just the same as a living person’s: they’re stuck, they’re in an existence they didn’t ask for, they don’t know why they’re there or what happens next. They know that there is a next ‘thing’ but whether they go to heaven, or hell, or something else, they don’t know. They’re just the same as people on earth.”

Howick agrees, “Their existence is very mortal in that respect.” 

Writing about the afterlife, a sense of existential metaphor is unavoidable, says Baynton. “There is something deeply relatable about it, which is where sitcom will always thrive. You can’t really fail to connect with a story about a person who doesn’t know what to do with their time or who feels stuck. Regardless of class or job or circumstance, that is all of us.”

If the ghost characters are all of us, they’re also peculiar to their time period. The collision and unexpected blending of different social contexts is where much of the series’ comedy comes from. Howick compares the composition of the group to Blackadder Goes Forth, which kept “ranks of characters from different classes stuck together in a hell hole, cheating death every single week.” 

The source of much of the comedy is thwarted status, says Baynton, “It’s the stuff of Alan Partridge and Hyacinth Bucket and Basil Fawlty… people who see themselves a certain way but who aren’t that way to the audience. Every single one of the ghosts is that to some extent. Anything that gave you status in life, you’re robbed of the second you die, so that’s already pretty funny in the sense of a captain who can’t lead, a wealthy woman who has no wealth, a politician who is not recognised as an authority, a poet who can’t pick up a pen, a Scoutmaster with no kids…”

“Not Scoutmaster!” interrupts Howick. “Adventure Club leader!” Before series one aired, they were instructed not to use the “Scouts” organisation name in scripts. “That was before they knew who Pat was going to be,” says Howick. Pat, for info, is a sweetie, and the Scouts should be proud to have him. He’s also a vibrant dancer, as series two, episode two shows. 

“There’s a lot of dancing this series” says Howick. “Without giving too much away, there’s dancing in the last episode. I think Thomas’ best dance is at the end.”

Fans can expect more playfulness with series two. Now that the characters are established and the tone has been taken to heart, the team could afford to experiment a little more. “With series two, because the audience hopefully are with us at this point, we can throw different curveballs,” says Baynton.

“In that way that The Simpsons or those long-running American things, you can suddenly do one in black and white, as if it’s a Hitchcock thing. We’ve definitely had fun. There’s an episode later in the second series which is a format of its own. We’re thinking about those things for series three, being free to be really playful with it.”

There’s a Christmas special episode to come, “the last one ever to be filmed!” joked Farnaby at the press launch. The timing on series two’s filming was especially jammy, with only one day lost to the UK TV and film industry shutdown in March. They made the decision not to use supporting artists in the last scenes filmed, set in a Medieval plague village. The irony of having to tell actors they couldn’t come and play plague victims because there was an actual plague wasn’t lost on them, says Baynton.

Thomas gets a gun in series two, they tease, and we’ll find out how he met his end. “The burning question for fans of the show is how the characters died, and you will find out some in each series,” says Baynton. “There are some we’re holding onto for as long as we possibly can, but rest assured, they’re coming!” 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Ghosts series 2 starts on BBC One at 8.30pm, with all six episodes available to stream afterwards on BBC iPlayer. 

The post Ghosts Series 2: ‘They’re stuck in an existence they didn’t ask for… like all of us’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2RKeoxw

[nothingbutimagines]

Letters to Milk Carton Faces (Peter Parker x Stark!Reader)

Pairing: Peter Parker x Stark!Reader

Warning: Cursing, sad stuff 

Summary: Peter has disappeared in the blip and her father has gone missing as well. During the five years Peter is gone and the time that her father comes back with some of the family friends, Y/n writes letters to Peter every day, but very few actually survive.

Author: Dizzy

A/N: Just a little Peter fic that got inspired by End Game. So sorry I haven’t been on in like months, school has been hectic and I am now getting some time to write on break while I still have the sweet summer time to do so. So sorry it’s so sad! I was in the mood for dramatic. 

 Masterlist Request Any Of These

______________________________________________________

Dear Peter,

It has been a day since you and my dad have disappeared and a day since I last heard from either of you. Your Aunt May disappeared and Cap said that almost half of the population did as well. 

It would’ve made sense for me to stay with Pepper during this difficult time, but she hasn’t been herself lately and Cap always said if anything happened, my dad always wanted him to take care of me. 

Where are you, Peter? Are you with my dad?

If you’re out there somewhere, just know that I love you.

Love, 

Y/n

___________________________________________________

Dear Peter, 

It’s been a few months since you left. My dad’s come back and Pepper’s gotten better, leaving Cap and the rest of the gang to disperse from our lives. I know that they all love me, my dad tells me everyday, but it doesn’t feel like it since they don’t talk to me anymore.

I have good news, though. Pepper and my dad have gotten together for good. I have a mom again. I mean, Pepper has always been like my mom, but with her and my dad having such a weird relationship, I haven’t really considered her to be as such. 

I miss you. School and work haven’t been the same without you. 

My dad has moved us into the countryside, in a little house you would’ve loved. It’s nice and I like it. I’m homeschooled now, since my dad thinks it would be too painful for me to go to Midtown for the rest of high school. I guess he’s right. I wear your clothes most days now, the smell of you is starting to fade and I miss being able to give them back to you so you can wear them again. 

My dad misses you. He said it was hard to see you disappear into ashes. He loves you, you know. He’ll never tell you that, so I will. I’ve seen him pull your things out of my closet every once in a while. He’s stolen your suit from me and tucked it away, saying that it is his and he needs it back. But, I know better. He didn’t ask me to go with him to your and May’s apartment because I needed your things, but because he did. 

When are you coming back, Peter? We all miss you. 

With all my love, 

Y/n

________________________________________________________

Dear Peter, 

It has been a year since you disappeared and I hate that you’re gone. I have so much to tell you. I just turned 17, my dad is finally getting better, and I have a little sister now. She’s beautiful and bright and I tell her about you every day. She’s just like my dad, I will admit. Even though she’s a little munchkin and can’t speak yet, her little face scrunches up like my dad’s when you talk to her and she always laughs at things you say. 

I’ve graduated early, too. I can’t stand being here without you. I hate New York. I hate the East Coast. I hate everything without you in it. I plan on going to school in California where it’s sunny and maybe I can get a good job as a singer, get noticed by someone. I don’t know. I know it sounds silly, but I can’t keep doing this anymore. 

Are you dead, Peter? Am I speaking into an empty void?

I wish you could be here. You’d love it with my family. Even though the team fell apart, my family did not. My sister has the same brown eyes as you. Her name’s Morgan and you definitely would have loved her, showered her with gifts.

My mom says I should move on, that I should put all the time and energy I put into you into someone else, or into school. But, I don’t want to put my time into anyone else, I love and want you. I know my mom is only looking into my best interest, but I can’t help but be upset with her for suggesting such a thing. 

My dad’s turned your shirts into a blanket for me and Morgan. He knows how much I miss you and I’m starting to grow out of your clothes. 

New York still needs you, Spiderman. And so do I. 

Forever yours,

Y/n 

_________________________________________________________

Dear Peter, 

Today was the first day of college for me. I decided against California. I may hate New York, but I can’t leave until I know for a fact that you’re never coming back. My dad seems grateful, since I don’t think he wants me out of his sight just in case something happens, and my mom mostly seems grateful since I can help out with Morgan because my dad is awful at changing diapers. It’s funny how the man can build a replacement for his heart, but can’t change a diaper. Honestly, I don’t even know how he managed to raise me. 

I sleep with the blanket my dad made of your t shirts every night. I still go to New York to see friends and to go to school. I got a job at a radio station. I help organize the different shows and clean up spaces. I have a single that just came out. I hate that I am growing up and you’re still gone. I’m going to turn 18 in a few months, I’m still praying that you come back so we can take that trip to Mexico to celebrate. My dad said he’d still take me, but I can’t go without you.

I’ve been working on moving on, like my mom said I should, but I have had the hardest time doing it. I’ve been going to therapy to help with it all, to finally organize my emotions, and my therapist said I could keep writing you so that you aren’t forgotten, but that I need to continue to live my life in the present and not the past. 

I met a boy, Peter, please don’t be mad. 

His name is Lucas and he’s in my composition class. He’s 18 and he looks so much like you, but I know he’s never going to be you. He’s taking me to dinner tonight. I originally told him no when he asked me out, but my mom said maybe this is what I would need. I’ll write you tomorrow with how things turn out.

I miss you. Please come home. 

Love,

Y/n

__________________________________________________________

Dear Peter,

Yesterday was my date with Lucas and I hate to tell you that I had a good time. 

While the boy had your brown curls and your brown eyes, he was anything but like you. He was sweet and kind like you, but he didn’t have your same intellect when it came to science and math. He is a poet, a literature scholar, a great mind with words and like you, he loves music and to hear my own. 

We went to dinner and then we saw some live music at a little hole in the wall joint downtown. We danced and talked and I had a great time. Afterwards, I took him to my parents house and showed him the music I had started to make since I last saw you. He was kind and respectful and he loved my music and seemed to love little Morgan even more than he seemed to like me. He got my dad’s approval, just as you always had. 

I really took a liking to him, Peter. I hope you understand. 

If you came back today, showed up on my doorstep, I’d take you back in a heartbeat, but you’re not here and it seems as though you’re never coming back.

I pray that I have your blessing. It’s been 2 years now. I’m not 15, I’m not 16, I’m not 17 anymore. I cannot keep waiting for you.

I will always love you, Peter. Even if you are really gone. 

Forever and always,

Y/n

____________________________________________________________

Dear Peter,

It’s been 3 years since you’ve left this world. I’m 19 now. I miss you dearly, still. I’m no longer in therapy and I am in the middle of college. I’ve moved out of my parent’s house and back into the city with Lucas. Driving back and forth every day was starting to be too much and I love being with Lucas as well. 

Morgan just turned three not too long ago and my parents let us watch her often. I know it’s silly, but we pretend to be a young family and for a moment, just a millisecond, when I close my eyes as we laugh and watch Morgan, I forget that Lucas is not you. 

I have moved on, but I have not forgotten you by any means. I still have innocent teenage love for you, but I really believe I may marry Lucas someday. He’s good to me, I assure you, and I pray that what I feel between the idea of you and who I am now is a blessing. While I miss the childish innocence of growing old together and the promises of forever that used to be passed between us when we were 15, I truly feel as though I will have those things now. 

My dad still misses you. 3 years to today, he watched you fade into nothing and as much as he acts tough guy about it all, I know he cried when we let go of lanterns in yours and others honor. I still tell my sister about you, I still have the blanket of your clothes.

Lucas understands it all. That even after all this time, I grieve for you and wish for your return. He knows that I love him, but he knows I once loved you too. 

I hope you’re alright out there, in that void you must be living in. 

I miss you,

Y/n

____________________________________________________________

Dear Peter,

It’s been 4 years now and I have been with Lucas for 2 years now. I’m 20 while you are forever 16. I’m graduating college at the end of the year. I got a teaching degree and my music is well liked in the indie and underground world. The pain of your loss still lingers in my music and in these letters, but I know you’re truly gone now. 

Lucas asked me to marry him and I said yes. I know I am young, but I can see a life with him. He’s a really amazing guy and he fits right into my family. At 21 he seems to have the wisdom and knowledge of a 75 year old man and I can’t help but be enamored by it. My dad’s approved of it all and though he says he thinks we should have a big bash of a wedding, we are keeping it small. 

Morgan is going to be a flower girl and she’s been practicing since we announced our engagement. We’ll be hitched in five months, with a small family ceremony at my parents little cottage home. There will be no fancy white wedding just as you and I had planned, but something small and low key. 

I hate to say this all to you, and if we had it your way, it would be us going down the aisle or I would become a runaway bride just to meet you wherever you are. But you are not here, and I am no longer in love with you, but I still love you nonetheless.

This is the moment when you’d tell me everything's okay and I have your blessing, Peter. That your little bug can be with another spider who is not you. 

I will always miss you, Peter. You will always have my little teenage heart. 

Love, 

Y/n

_____________________________________________________________

Dear Peter,

5 years since you’ve been gone and I am married now, but not to you. I will not lie, to say that is a fact stings as if you left me and didn’t die. My dad and the team think they know a way to defeat Thanos and bring you back, but I don’t know if I even want you back. I am not trying to be rude, but I have spent 5 years without you and I don’t know what I would do if I had you back. 

My dad wants you, desperately. He needs his so called “son” back in his life. He needs all his friends back too. I don’t blame him, but I don’t understand now either. Had I been 16 or 17 when he did this, I probably would’ve been over the moon, but now I am just worried.

Morgan’s all grown up it seems. She’s in school, so bubbly and giggly and makes me want to have my own daughter. The baby fever is really real for Lucas and I.

He makes me beyond happy, I hope you know that. And he supports me and all that I do. I’m a middle school music teacher now and the music I do on the side sells well. I am no famous for my music by any means, but I do have recognition for it. I wish you could be here to see it. 

We moved to Queens, in this cute little two bedroom apartment with a view. It’s one hell of a walk up the stairs now that the elevator was broken by some silly teenagers, but I still love it and now I really know why your Aunt May wanted to live and raise you here. It’s charming and that sandwich shop you loved is still back in business, even after people disappeared. 

If you make it back, I hope you make it back okay. You deserve a good return.

As always,

Y/n

_____________________________________________________________

Dear Peter,

You made it back to New York okay, but my dad didn’t. My mom told me how broken you’ve been since you watched him say goodbye and take his last breath and I hate that I now have to see you and cause you even more pain. 

I’m 21 and you’re still 16. You have not aged a day. I have spent all these years hoping you would come back and now that you have, I don’t even want to be in the same room as you. I am so sorry. 

Perhaps you can stay in my life as a young friend, a person whom I see and mentor, just as my dad had done with you. I know he always wanted someone to look out for you when he left and now that I’m an adult, maybe I can do it for him. 

You will get to meet this Morgan I told you so much about and Lucas too. You’ll even get to meet the little bump I started having.

You got it right, Peter, I have a baby. 

And you’re the first to know besides my dad, who died with the secret that there was a grandchild on the way. I know, I am young, but when things happen, they happen, you know?

I hope you’re okay with seeing me today and reading all these letters I wrote to you over the years. I think it’d be best if you knew the truth about what happened while you were gone. 

I love you, Peter.

Y/n

______________________________________________________________

Peter shakily held the letters in his hand and looked up at the woman who was once the young girl he loved. He gave her a shy smile and engulfed her in a hug, the bump on her stomach not yet visible, but he could feel in the lack of space between them.

She smoothed out his hair as she held him back, a soft and motherly touch had replaced the loving and tender touches she once gave him.

“I am so sorry, Peter.” She whispered as the young boy looked up at her. 

“I’m happy for you, Y/n.” He mumbled, not sure if he truly believed what he was saying. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Peter. Just not like that.” Y/n replied, sadness lingering in her voice.

“I know,” Peter started as he clutched her letters in his hand. “I just wanted to hear you say it one last time.”

[quarantineroulette]

20 Favorites from the 2010s

Happy New Year! I could only rescue 20 albums from the 2010s, there are the 20(ish - I doubled up on some) I would carry into the 2020s with me. May this act as your soundtrack on the lazy, hungover day that is January 1st. 

20) Rihanna: Anti-

19) The National: Sleep Well Beast. Still not the hugest The National fan, but I have huge respect for any band that can nearly bring drunken Irishmen to tears, which actually happened when we played “Dark Side of the Gym” in a bar last year. 

18) Leonard Cohen: You Want it Darker .

17) Ahnoni - Hopelessness .

16) Ariel Pink - Dedicated to Bobby Jameson . 13 weird pop gems that are all definitely #1 hits in some alternate, better reality. 

15) Omni - Deluxe . 

14) FFS - FFS . Funny, smart, and touching, this is the “feel good” album of the decade for me. It’s astonishing that Sparks are still doing new things this late into their career, and this is perhaps example #1 in an argument for why they should never stop. And has there ever been a better or more gleeful anthem for misanthropes than “Piss Off”?

13) Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!! / Ultraviolence 

12) Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition . More stressful than a Safdie Brothers film.

11) Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

10) David Bowie - Blackstar . I remember James telling me he almost woke me up in the middle of the night & said to me, “Maria, David Bowie died. What are we going to do?” I still don’t know what we’re doing. 

9) Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly / DAMN. We all know that pretty much everything Kendrick does is brilliant, but to choose just one, I’ll go with “HUMBLE.” and its video in particular. I C O N I C

8) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree . “Girl in Amber” = best Nick song of the 2010s. I won’t be discussing this further. 

7) Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel… . Raw, beautifully sparse, and far greater a risk than it ever needed to be. I can’t think of an album from the past decade that was more singular. 

6) Moonface - Julia with Blue Jeans On . “November 2011” is a Nick Cave-caliber love ballad, and the whole album sounds like it was composed by a deranged, fur-clad poet sitting in a room filled with frayed paperbacks and nothing else. 

5) The Antlers - Burst Apart . My tastes are suspect at times, but I honestly cannot believe this was excluded from the major end-of-decade music lists. Perhaps the trio’s most unique, mature, and consistent release. A respite from the trauma of Hospice but not yet at the same level of peace as Familiars, but heck, all three are fucking tremendous. 

4) Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent . I really don’t know what I can say about Protomartyr, because all my praise of them is so effusive that you won’t believe that any band could be so perfect. But guess, what, they are and Relatives in Descent is a flawless record. I don’t understand how Greg Ahee isn’t being praised to the heavens for his staggering guitar playing, and Joe Casey is of course an all-around great, a poet and genius frontman -- a brilliant concoction of Nick Cave, Mark E Smith, and woke, Midwestern Dad. 

3) Suede - Night Thoughts / The Blue Hour . I can tell you in absolute seriousness that Night Thoughts changed my life. It made me overcome fears, introduced me to new friends, and distracted me from the drudgery of everyday life. Sometimes I sing “I Don’t Know How to Reach You” to myself as I search for missing books at work, and nine times out of 10 this method somehow works. The Blue Hour wasn’t as pivotal to me, but albumwise it was even bolder and more ridiculous, so it’s still earned my eternal respect. It also partially led to me befriending one of my favorite authors, so flying many miles to see this band and be in the presence of my other fave woke Dad seems pretty well justified to me. There may have been more relevant records in the 2010s, but none were as personally significant to me as these, and that’s worth all the relevance in the world.  2) Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest . Any album with a song inspired by a Dennis Cooper short story is going to rate very highly on a list by me. That the song, “Helicopter,” also happens to be my favorite single of the 2010s is just a bonus. Holding a well-justified classic status means there’s little I can say about Halcyon that hasn’t already been said. These songs will live on long after we’re all dead, and future alien races will still be worshipping “Coronado” in all its sax-laden glory. Dark, dreamy brilliance. 

1) PJ Harvey - Let England Shake / The Hope Six Demolition Project . We all (hopefully) know that Let England Shake is a work of art, but where is the love for Hope Six? I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite like it, yet it sounds like a pure PJ record all the same: the bluesy-ness (here melded with saxes and martial drumming), the Flood co-production, PJ’s peerless vocals. Sometimes the songs take on the qualities of battle hymns yet carry a fierce and critical political undertones. Two records of bold, wholly unique protest music done with the focus and care that so much politlcal music - and politics in general - overlooks. And they somehow sound even better with each listen. If I have one wish for this new decade, it’s that everything will be more like this in every sense. And if we can’t have that, there will at least hopefully be another equally brilliant PJ record instead. 

[workingontravel]

If the borders refuse me, I refuse them

(You can read a Swedish translation of this text here.) I mentioned this project to a friend. She immediately said: You should talk to Ghayath Almadhoun. Ghayath Almadhoun is a poet whose poetry has touched me. He is also a poet working with several languages, living and writing in many places. Finding a time when we could meet was a challenge, due to his frequent travelling. I’m happy we managed. His account of travelling for work brings together the personal and the political, the funny and the sad, the historical and the present, in extraordinary ways.

Ghayath Almadhoun: I travel for many reasons that I hardly understand. Some of them started already in childhood. I was born in Damascus, with a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, in the Yarmouk refugee camp for Palestinians. It was just tents when they founded it in 1948, but now it has become buildings, part of the city. The first questions in my life were: What are we? Why do they say that we are not Syrian but Palestinian? Why, then, am I not in Palestine? 

It was very difficult for my father to explain to a six-year-old why land in Asia provided a solution for the antisemitism and racism against the Jews in Europe. But later, things became even more complicated. I discovered that I am not Palestinian-Syrian. I am a Palestinian from Syria. The Palestinian-Syrians are the Palestinians who arrived to Syria in 1948, when Israel occupied eighty per cent of Palestine. As the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe all accepted this, the Arabic governments understood that the land that was occupied had become Israel. As a solution, they gave the refugees all the papers they needed. So those who arrived from Palestine to Syria in 1948 have the same civil rights as the Syrian people. But our family came after the occupation of Gaza, in 1967. When Israel occupied the Gaza strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights from Syria, Sinai from Egypt and some parts of Jordan, the international community said: “This is occupation, and Israel should leave.” The Arabic nations then decided to not give any papers to these Palestinians in order to not provide any solutions for Israel. I found myself growing up without civil rights. I was not allowed to work. I was not allowed to take driving lessons. I was not allowed to leave the country, and if I did leave for any reason, I would not be allowed back. As we were not allowed to own a house, the house is in the name of my mother, who is Syrian. But if she died, the government would take the house and sell it. This, that I couldn’t inherit, was the thing that hurt me the most.

When I understood that I was already born outside, in exile, as they say, I became fascinated by the idea that there are no borders. If the borders refuse me, I refuse them. When I began to study, I also understood that my father was a poet. I began to think about poetry. I felt connected to many Surahs in the Quran, such as The Poet’s Surah, Surah 26. At the end of the Surah, it says:

“And the poets – the deviators follow them; Do you not see that in every valley they roam And that they say what they do not do?” Travelling is the reality of Arab poets, and poetry is very much connected to travelling in the Arabic tradition. Take the most famous Arabic poet El Mutanabbi. In the 800th century, he travelled, but most of all, his poetry travelled. If El Mutanabbi said a poem in Bagdad, the people in Damascus got it in a matter of hours by pigeon. From there, it went everywhere. His poem would arrive in Andalusia within a week. He himself came two months later.

So, I began to write poetry. My friends all went to Beirut, to Jordan or anywhere. They got invitations to go and read there. But I couldn’t travel, because I didn’t have a passport, papers or even an ID. So, the pressure began to build inside. This continued until I turned thirty, in 2008. Then I left the country. I made a sort of fake passport and went to Sweden. After I got a real Swedish passport, it’s: “Catch me if you can!” The travelling is also connected to my writing. For example, I could visit a place, read about it, discuss it and then I write a poem. I did it for example when Assad used chemical weapons on the suburbs of Damascus. Many people got killed in the first attack with the nerve gas sarin. There were 1,400 deaths, out of which 900 were women and children. I saw these bodies shaking. The pupils of the eyes go small. I started to think about chemicals. And I found that the first chemical attack happened in the city of Ypres in Belgium, on 22 April,1915. I went there for the 100th anniversary of that event. I visited 170 cemeteries. They counted 600,000 graves, and I visited all of them in two weeks. At one gate, they have written the names of all the dead soldiers no matter where they came from – France, England, Canada. They play music in honour of one of them every day and speak about what they know about that specific soldier. They had done this for eighty years without stopping for one single day. Even during the Second World War, they played every day. The problem is that they need 600,000 days to finish the names. I listened to such concerts for fourteen days. Then I wrote a poem that moves between the past and the present, Ypres, Syria and Palestine. Another time, I went to Antwerp to do research about blood diamonds. But during that month, thousands of people started to drown in the Mediterranean. So, my poem started with blood diamonds and ended with Syrians drowning in the sea. By the way, this is not political poetry, this is my life.

So, all in all: I travel in order to write. I’m making up for what I missed when I was without papers. I’m a travelling poet like in the Quran. And I’m born in no country, so I don’t believe in borders. But the main reason why I’m travelling like I have been doing now, 345 days a year and not even staying in Sweden for a full week, is another. When I came to Sweden, I accepted Stockholm as my city because Damascus was in the background. Every time I felt tired of being a foreigner, I remembered that Damascus was there, that one day I could go back and feel relief. In 2011, the Syrian revolution began. I really supported it, and it made my hopes of going to Damascus grow. But people I knew got killed, family members, almost all my friends. Cities I knew were destroyed. And the dictatorship won. The country was destroyed. My hopes of ever going back were lower than ever. Damascus disappeared from my background. Everything was shaken. Also, Stockholm didn’t belong to me anymore. What broke me was my brother. I lost him on 2 April 2016, killed by Assad. I was on tour: I was supposed to spend fifteen days in Holland. The second gig was with Anne Vegter, the poet of the nation. We finished our discussion. I went outside and I put the mobile on. Then my other brother called and told me. I disappeared from the universe for two hours. I woke up with people around me. We went to our friend’s house and I asked him to book me a ticket to Stockholm. The coming twenty-four hours were the most difficult in my life. While the plane was over Denmark, I understood there was something wrong. I wanted to tell the pilot to stop and let me off. Why was I going to Stockholm and not Damascus? Stockholm is even further away from Damascus. What is the difference if I cry in Amsterdam or if I cry in Stockholm? So I started travelling this way. As I see it, the best way to survive trauma is to be on the road. When you arrive, the problems will come. I noticed this in someone I know who was in Syria for four years during the bombings. He lost all his friends. People died in his arms. ISIS arrested him before he left the country. His trip here took eight months. All that time, he was doing ok. But when he got here, it took forty days and then the post trauma hit him. That made me even more scared. So, I began to ask myself: What will happen if I begin to travel and never let myself arrive? The panic attacks will wait for me to be settled. But what if I don’t settle? After the death of my brother I wrote a poem. The writing took place in maybe sixty places, twenty countries. If I would sign it with the names of the cities, that would be as long as the poem. What held me in this is that somebody else paid most of my tickets and travels. In this sense, I survived through poetry twice. On one hand, it’s about writing for survival; writing what hurts me on a paper. But then there are the festivals and the residences and the scholarships bringing me from here to there. Many of these festivals were shocked that I only needed one ticket. Germany pays my ticket from France. Belgium pays my ticket from Germany. Everyone pays only to bring me.

It happens that there are holes in the schedule, maybe even seven days empty. I fill these holes in order to not stay. I ask the festival to make my ticket longer and I pay the hotel myself before I go to the next festival. Or, if the ticket can’t be changed, I book a flight to the Arabic book fairs. In Arabic countries, the book fairs are two to three weeks long. And they schedule them in a systematic way, so they cover the whole year. Any time you want to go to a book fair in an Arabic country, you can. There are around 540 million Arabic-speaking people in the world, in 22 countries with 22 totally different cultures. So, when you go there to sign your book, there will be completely different receptions. You’re a star in Kuwait, they hate you in Libya, and you’re a bestseller in Iraq…

I don’t even remember all the places I have been to, I mix them up. The security personnel in the airport know me and say hello to me. Sometimes I see them in the morning. I go home to throw out the summer clothes and throw in the winter clothes because I’m going to the other side of the planet. Then I see them again in the afternoon. People understand after a while that if they are trying to stop me, they will lose me. If the train is fast and heavy, you should go with it, not stand in front of it. But the routine with friends is you go to their house, bring wine and cook and they come to you next time. When you are travelling again and again and don't have dinner with them, they are not your friends anymore, in a way. You lose your roots.

It is so good when you arrive in places like sunny California, cornfields and wine. And meeting people, discussing with them, having good food, having intellectual exchanges about philosophy, life, racism, patriarchy, everything I’m interested in. But physically it’s tiring. I have a theory I call The Pillow Theory. There are problems in life such as patriarchy, occupation, capitalism and the differences in the shape of pillows in the hotels. I’m fighting for the right of every person to have a size that fits them. Because of pillows and tiredness and lost friends, I’ve started to think I need a strategy to travel less. Also, my girlfriend is involved in this. Our idea is to let my mind think that I’m travelling though I’m not, by taking long residencies outside Sweden. So now I have a five-month residency in Amsterdam and after that a whole year at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme, a scholarship. It works, in a way. When I went to Amsterdam, I started longing for Sweden as my country. Because I understood I would be away for long, I became homesick for the first time. And when I feel the thirst for travel I can make it subtler, because technically, I am already travelling. Through this, I started travelling less. Now, I travel only twice a month.

When I travel, I bring my laptop. They asked me in India what I would bring if the house were on fire. I said my laptop, because there is another house inside it. What is a home for a Palestinian born in a refugee camp if not language? It’s something I inherited from my father. He told me about paradise, the land of milk and honey. When I got my Swedish passport, I went to Palestine. There was nothing. No milk and no honey. It’s only in the dream of the Palestinians. The first time I went there, I was held six and a half hours at the airport. With all the happiness and sadness that I had about being there, finally the Israeli let me in. To this day, I never spoke with my father about that, because they threw him out twice, once from Ashkelon to Gaza in 1948, then from Gaza to Egypt in 1967, and he left his mother there. Until 2012 when she died, he didn’t meet her.

Home is connected to the mother tongue. I miss hearing my name. I used to say to God all the time that I miss Syria and Damascus here in Sweden. But when I asked God to connect me with Syria, he must have misunderstood me. Instead of taking me to Syria, he sent the Syrians to me.

[evangeline-perry]

Dead Poets Society: Neil x OC: part 9

masterlist

complete series

I sat on the bleachers as my dad coached the boys soccer game. After they score the winning goal they hoist my dad onto their shoulders and carry him away. I watch this and laugh as they do so.

That noon I shared some tea with my dad, so I couldn’t make the Dead Poets meeting. During which my dad tried to talk about Neil and relationships with me, but my cheeks quickly heated up, so I didn’t want to talk.

After this I walk down the stairs to see the boys stand around the phones and Knox calling someone. As I make my way down, Neil sees me. He wraps his arm around me and kisses my temple as I see Knox put a coin into the phone and call.

‘Hello?’ I hear a girls voice.

‘Hello, Chris?’ Knox stammers nervously.

Ow! It’s that girl Knox is crazy about… that one in a relationship...

‘Yes’, Chris answers on the other end.

‘Hi. This is Knox Overstreet.’

Though I can’t hear clearly what is said on the other end, Knox seems happy about something.

‘She's glad I called’, he tells us before listening again, ‘Would I like to come to a party?’

‘Yes. Say, yes’, Charlie urges him on.

‘Well, sure.’ Knox answers, ‘Okay, great. I-I'll be there, Chris. Friday night at the Danburrys'. O-Okay. Thank you’, he continues to stammer, ‘Thank you. I'll see you. Bye.’ Then he hung the horn back on the hook before, ‘Yawp! Can you believe it? She was gonna call me. She invited me to a party with her.’

‘At Chet Danburry's house’, Charlie stated.

‘Yeah’, Knox stated, still in a daze.

‘Well?’ Charlie continued trying to get through to him.

‘So?’

‘So’, Charlie clarifies, ��you don't really think she means you're going with her?’

‘Well, of course not, Charlie. But that's not the point’, Knox tells his friend, ‘That's not the point at all.’

‘What is the point?’ Charlie questions.

‘The point, Charlie, is, uh--’

‘Yeah?’

‘That she was thinking about me. I've only met her once, and already she's thinking about me. Damn it. It's gonna happen, guys. I feel it’, Knox pushes his way through this friends, ‘She is going to be mine. Carpe. Carpe!’ Knox flips his scarf dramatically around his neck as he walks away and climbs the stairs. All of us laugh at the spectacle.

That evening Neil and I are able to sneak out for coffee together. In a cafe, we sit down on one of the comfortable couches and talked about Neil’s theater practices and everything. We also stole some kisses every now and again.

In my dads next class, all of us are standing in a line while Cameron, Pitts, and Knox are walking in a circle as my dad looks on: ‘No grades at stake, gentlemen. Just take a stroll.’ After a few moments I notice that the three boys begin to march to the same beat.

‘There it is.’ my dad points out. The other boys start clapping to the rhythm of their steps.

‘I don't know, but I've been told—’ my dad began to sing. ‘I don’t know, but I’ve been told’, the boys repeated. ‘Doing poetry is old’ he continued and the boys repeated again.

‘left, left, left-right-left, left, left, left-right-left, halt!’ my dad sang as the boys stopped their march. ‘Thank you, gentlemen’, now he turned to the class, ‘If you noticed, everyone started off with their own stride, their own pace’, he began walking very slowly. ‘Mr Pitts, taking his time. He knew he’ll get there one day. Mr Cameron, you could see him thinking, Is this right? It might be right. It might be right. I know that. Maybe not. I don’t know’, then my dad began walking with his groin pushed forward. ‘Mr Overstreet, driven by a deeper force. Yes. We know that. All right. Now, I didn’t bring them up here to ridicule them. I brought them up here to illustrate the point of conformity: the difficulty in maintaining you own beliefs in the face of others. Now,  those of you – I see the look in your eyes like ‘I would’ve walked differently’ well ask yourselves why you were clapping. Now, we all have a great need for acceptance. But you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go ‘that’s baaadd’ Robert Frost said ‘two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’ now, I want you to find your own walk right now. Your own way of striding, pacing. Any direction. Anything you want. Whether it’s proud, whether its silly, anything. Gentlemen, and lady, the courtyard is yours.’

And so, all of us began to walk around, some walking casually, others making up silly walks. ‘You don't have to perform. Just make it for yourself’, I heard my dad call out, ‘Mr. Dalton? You be joining us?’

‘Exercising the right not to walk.’ I heard him say.

‘Thank you, Mr. Dalton. You just illustrated the point. Swim against the stream.’

I saw Neil across the courtyard making his way over to me. But then suddenly I felt an arm wrap around my shoulder. I turn my gaze to see Knox, grinning before winking in Neil’s direction as he skips along aside me. I can see Neil’s eyes narrow though I can still notice the mischievous glint in them. He walks to catch up with us, takes Knox’ arm and throws it off me, causing Knox to make an involuntary pirouette. After, he wraps his arms tightly around me as we continue walking, and I can hear him mumble: ‘Mine’, under his breath, causing my cheeks to turn a violent shade of pink.

That evening, I walk with Neil after he comes back from soccer practice. His arm is around my waist as we walk. We are just about to go back into the building, me and Neil notice Todd sitting off by himself on one of the walkways.

‘Todd?’ I ask, ‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’ Todd mumbles.

‘What's going on?’ Neil asks.

‘Nothing’, Todd says quietly, ‘Today's my birthday.’

‘Is today your birthday?’ Neil asks. ‘Happy birthday,’ Both of us say.

‘Thanks’, he sighs.

‘What'd you get?’ Neil asks his friend.

‘My parents gave me this’, Todd pointed, both of us look down at a deskset sitting next to Todd, still in its wrappings.

‘Isn't this the same desk set-’

‘Yeah, yeah. They gave me the same thing as last year.’

‘Oh’, Neil and I say in unison.

‘Oh’, Todd mimicks

‘Maybe they thought you needed another one’, Neil says chuckling, trying to relieve the tension.

‘Maybe they weren't thinking about anything at all. Uh, the funny thing is about this is I, I didn't even like it the first time.’

‘Todd, I think you're underestimating the value of this desk set’, Neil says as he lets go of me and picks up the desk set, beginning to examine it more closely, ‘I mean, who would want a football or a baseball, or-’

‘Or a car’, Todd opts.

‘Or a car if they could have a desk set as wonderful as this one? I mean, if, if I were ever going to buy a, a desk set twice, I would probably buy this one both times. In fact, its, its shape is, it's rather aerodynamic, isn't it? I can feel it. This desk set wants to fly’, Neil tosses the desk set lightly in the air. Todd stands up and Neil hands him the desk set, ‘Todd? The world's first unmanned flying desk set.’

Todd flings the desk set over the side of the walkway and it falls to pieces down below.

‘Oh, my!’ he calls out.

‘Well, I wouldn't worry’, Neil says as a matter of fact, ‘You'll get another one next year.’

all of us laugh at this as I stand back next to Neil. He wraps his arms around me again and pecks my lips before saying: ‘Come on guys, let’s go warm up before the meeting.’ As all of us walk into Neil and Todds room, Todd sits down on his bed and Neil also sits down but pulls me along to sit on his lap. There he starts kissing my neck, before whispering close to my ear: ‘I can’t get enough of you.’

I turn my head to him slightly: ‘I love you’ I tell him.

‘I love you too’, Neil replies, snuggling his nose in the crook of my neck. I giggle at this: ‘You’re such a weirdo.’ I can feel him smile against my neck.

‘Gee, thanks for reminding me how single I am…’ Todd states suddenly, causing both me and Neil to start laughing.

<- PREVIOUS/ NEXT ->

[popwasabi]

Remembering My Hero, Robin Williams, Five Years Later

Not terribly long ago I used to deride others for feeling sad in the wake of a famous celebrity’s death.

My argument would go something like in the grand scheme of things their deaths “didn’t matter” when compared to various other atrocities and terrible, tragic things going on in the world. I even wrote an entire opinion piece poo-pooing the general populace for being sad in the wake of Whitney Houston’s death waaay back in 2012 for my University paper back in the day all largely because since I didn’t feel anything no one else should essentially.

Then Robin Williams died.

Well, more accurately Robin Williams committed suicide then everything changed for me.

To this day, I can’t recall a single death that has affected or beat me down more than this famous, larger than life comedian’s all too early passing and it still eats me up every time I think about it even five years later. You see, Robin was something of a hero of mine, an uber talented and charismatic funny man who seemed to perform his comedy with the kinetic energy of a hurricane and his humor often brightened my darkest moments growing up.

For him to die the way he did was beyond devastating for me.

Every 90s kid grew up on his various memorable performances. Whether it was “Aladdin” as the Genie, Peter Pan in “Hook” or masquerading as a nannie to win his family back in “Mrs. Doubtfire” we all had one performance that made us all fans early on.

(For some reason I always remember “Flubber” first though haha)

I didn’t start to truly appreciate him though until high school when I discovered his comic stand-up routines from his earlier years. 

Despite not growing up in 70s or 80s his humor was nonetheless electric, unlike any previous comic I had seen up until that point and his impressions of Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon are still among my favorites. Live at the Met is an all-time favorite comic stand-up performance and much later Live on Broadway still has one of the greatest closing jokes ever:

(”Harder than Chinese Algebra” is definitely a line I’ve used in my college years)

What I loved most about his performances was that he could be boisterous and sincere at the same time. Being both genuine and vulgar simultaneously and in the best way. Weave bizarre character references into personal tales of his own life. Tell a multitude of hilarious stories and references at 100 miles a minute like a comedic roller-coaster ride that lasted the duration of his performances and you never wanted to get off it. It’s true when Time Magazine referred to his comedy as something all comedians loved and respected but could never in a million years duplicate. Robin was a one of a kind talent, the penultimate original, and fans loved him for it.

Robin did his performances with such natural gusto and spontaneous hilarity that it might shock you to know he always wrote virtually every line of his stand-ups before his performances. To bring that humor to life with such infectious joy takes real talent and no one can ever deny Robin was one of the best if not the best at it.

The remarkable thing is on top of his stand-up the dude was an all-time great actor on top of that displaying ranges from as absurd as “Death to Smoochie”  and “World’s Greatest Dad” to as sensitive and thought provoking as “Good Will Hunting” and “Dead Poet’s Society.” Robin wasn’t afraid to show a darker side either in famous roles such as “Insomnia” and “One Hour Photo.” His range was simply amazing.

(Personally my favorite^)

Like many high-schoolers, I was angsty teenager prone to hormonal anger and twitches, depressed I couldn’t score girls and that I wasn’t popular but at the end of the day I always had Robin to cheer me up. 

As I became more and more a fan I’d read more into his life learning I actually had quite a few things in common with the famous funny man from a love of all things sci-fi including even anime and Warhammer to a deep appreciation of video games as he famously named his daughter Zelda after the titular Nintendo princess of the same name.

He was not just a comedian to me; he was one of us. America’s favorite funny, semi-secretly nerdy uncle and I loved him for it.

(The sweetest Nintendo commercial ever. #uglycrying)

I would carry my love of this magnificent comedian into college where I would routinely re-listen to his greatest hits when I was at my lowest of lows and boy did I have plenty of them during this period of my life and many of them revolved around suicide.

For reasons that are too personal to expand on, I had a friend who I was close with early in college who had some deep mental health and abandonment issues. She would constantly fear the worst out of others’ intentions and whether I would stick around with her to help her through it all in life. This put a heavy drain on myself and eventually it broke me enough to just attempt to cut her out of my life.

So, she threatened to kill herself when that happened.

If you’ve never tried talking someone down out of suicide before it is by far the scariest thing I have ever had to do and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. To try to reason with someone who is convinced that their life is meaningless that no one cares about them that they are better off dead than alive is unlike any terror I’ve ever experienced. What scared me the most was what I would do with myself if I failed to talk her down. Could I live with myself if I couldn’t do enough to save this person? Is the blood on my hands too since it was my actions that drove her to this point?

Well, long story short, I did succeed in talking her down but it left a tremendous mark on my soul that I don’t think I’ll ever forget (it also would not be the last time this would happen). I did eventually move on from this person (for both our sakes) but the depression it left within in me still stings.

There are limits to emotional dependency that we should all understand and in my need to fix everything for those I cared about I started not to care about myself and it damn near killed me. You should always try to feel empathy and help those who are need but you can’t forget about yourself in this regard because it will destroy you too. Painfully and slowly.

That semester I listened to probably more Robin Williams than I ever had in the past. His humor keeping me from being an unfeeling zombie and my mind from breaking from the stress of that year (there were other events that compounded what was going on.) Robin kept me going, kept me laughing in a period I didn’t have a lot to feel joyful about and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.

Then a few years later, as well know now, on August 11, 2014 Robin took his own life.

Like most everyone else I was shocked, distraught, and in total disbelief. How could a man who had seemingly endless joy and lived by all measures a far more successful life than most people ever would feel the need to kill himself? 

It was tragic beyond comprehension.

The aftermath of course was an outpouring of love and support to the Williams family particularly his children but there was also the detractors as well. People who denounced him as some sort of coward for taking his own life, Christian zealots who believed he was rotting in hell for his sin and all matter of bad takes regarding him being too privileged to be depressed. It was infuriating and broke my heart all at once. Here was a man who more than most probably deserved a happy ending, dead by his own hands and now subjected to dumb moronic statements by people who probably will never understand what depression does to someone.

You’d would only need to a modest amount of research to understand where Robin’s depression could come from though. Despite growing up in an affluent household his father and mother were rarely there with him, raised practically by the maids in his household and by himself most of his childhood. He had survivor’s guilt for being in the same room John Belushi died in many decades prior (which would become a wake-up call for his own drug addictions). Also, he was great friends with the late Christopher Reeves who went to school with him Julliard and that shouldn’t require too much explaining there.

(Personal pain never stopped Robin from lampooning himself of course)

But the real death knell probably came at the end when months prior Robin’s suicide he was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia Association and early stages of Parkinson’s disease. Now anyone being diagnosed with these conditions would be devastating by itself but if you frame it in the mind of Robin Williams, a man who’s comedy and charm relies almost entirely on spontaneous-ness, extreme attention to detail and constant joy this is like losing the very thing that made you who are, what people love you for; your core identity. 

Robin was no longer going to be Robin.

I’m not asking people to like suicide or accept every instance of it but people should try to understand why and not judge others for it. Sometimes the demons are just too strong and we can’t fault others especially a mind as crippled as Robin’s was at the end.

If there’s one positive that came out of Robin’s suicide, it’s that the conversation on depression and mental health has notably shifted since that time. In the years since, it’s more acceptable now to feel sad no matter what your background is; you didn’t need to be a coal miner with black lung or a soldier with PSTD to be acceptably depressed anymore (and no, before any of you start I’m not judging those people). Athletes and celebrities alike such as Demar Derozan, Ryan Reynolds, Serena Williams, and Chris Evans have all come out about their own personal struggles with their inner demons. It’s now okay more than ever to feel inadequate even if on paper you have ever reason not to feel that way.

Though society hasn’t become completely understanding of mental health issues yet society is still a lot more open about it than it was before at least. It’s not a silver lining, don’t make that mistake with what I’m saying, but it’s comforting in a strange way knowing that even in death Robin can inspire positivity.

It’s a shame and tragic that Robin didn’t get age gracefully into his twilight years and given the current state of the country and the world as a whole we could definitely use that trademark wit to lampoon our reality right now but I’m glad that Robin helped keep me going in my most formative years.

(I mean seriously though, could you imagine Robin getting a crack at this motherfucker today on stage?)

It’s not hyperbole to call Robin Williams one of the greatest entertainers of all-time and though his time in this world was cut short by his own hand he has still left an indelible mark on myself, his fans and the rest of the world. Depression and mental health is a fact of life, generally speaking all of us will struggle with it at some point but if we can get help early and not be afraid to ask for it or even cry for it then maybe the world won’t feel so dark for us all.

So please, let’s all remember to take care of ourselves whether that’s seeking friends or professional guidance. There is strength in sadness, power in grief and love when you are lonely. You owe it to yourself to seek help and trust me, there’ll be arms open to bring you in.

Because you matter.

Thanks, Captain.

[holyrose-ethers]

03.05 Björk: -I think, people are always scared of new things. If you wanna make happen something that hasn't happen before you're gonna to allow yourself to make a lot of mistakes. Then the real magic WILL happen. Because if you just play really safe you won't get any treats.

03.21 Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (President of Iceland, 1980-1996): -You can not say that Björk is copying anybody. This personality that's absolutely unique, the warmth, the mature attitude to life, that heart of a child and her Icelandic way of being.

03.51 Björk: - I come from Iceland and this harbor is probably my roots you know. And and aah and the weather, and the mountains. - For me this is the heart of Reykjavik.

04.07 Björk: - I never try to do things that are Icelandic, you know. I don't ?surgo? my way, just the fact that that ahh like all my family a thousand year back are Icelandic and I was born here with all those things inside me and... with those fat face and this body, you know. And, and with this influence I think that's enough I don't have to... It' so much subconsciously there, I don't have to focus on it consciously as well. But I'm, but I'm... yeah, there IS a big chunk there.

07.52 Björk: - I've been singing professionally more or less since I was about eleven-twelve.

07.56 [clip: Bænin]

08.10 Björk: - It's a small town and people knew I did gigs, I played flute, I sang. And then this guy wanted to make a childrish record.

08.17 Björk: - It sold 5 000 copies which which is gold in Iceland. But but then they wanted to do... then it came out in a record company in a record company it was like they wanted to do another one. But I didn't want to. I, so I... said OK, that's it. Because I felt very ?ungood? I was doing interviews and all sort of stuff and people recognize me in the street and my school. I got much more attention that I wanted... before I asked for it. Well, I think a lot of people don't get the attention till long after they want it. So so I immediately sorted down in my head that that's not what I want. I want to make music.

14.37 Vigdís Finnbogadóttir: - The women of the sagas they are very strong. And Björk is one of them.

14.46 Vigdís Finnbogadóttir: - It is said about the Icelanders is that they are bold in art. They do not calculate the steps: "If I do this today this will happened tomorrow". They do today what they have to do today. All that is very Icelandic because we live with this nature on the elements that we have to defy all the time. We are not thinking about it every day but it forms our character of course

15.11 Björk: - I think when you come from a place where nature can kill, I mean you could literally not be here in a week... that is something that makes you humble. And I think it's healthy, it puts you in your place.

15.39 Björk: - If there's such a thing as Icelandic characteristics we're talking about an individual who is fiercely independent. It's like so self-sufficient, it's like arrogant. And like anarchy it's just like... somebody people who invented anarchy like hundred, 2 hundred years ago... you know, Iceland people, it's like "So?".

16.19 Einar Örn Benediktsson: - The Renaissance of Icelandic music was happening in 79-80 and so... that scene was like has been called "the Icelandic punk scene" because that scene, it was like so much do-it-yourself. It was not like a political thing, like right wing or left wing or anything like that. We were singing in Icelandic and we were dealing with Icelandic reality and we were putting out our records and doing basically everything ourselves.

16.49 Björk: - It was, you know, very stupid local sense of humor. Bunch of 16 year old terrorists drinking absinthe that was smuggled from Spain, and writing terrible tunes and being arrested a lot of times and having art exhibitions and making our own films and and basically act as sort of terrorism, if you want, sort of sabotaging what we thought was really snotty.

17.17 Björk: “I think the people ended up forming Kukl and the Sugarcubes, Badtaste... ah... they... they... they were bound to meet, you know, because in such a small town having same obsessions basically being terrified of mediocracy... I think that was always being our biggest enemy... that mediocracy, materialism and narrow-mindedness... aah small-town mentality. And we'd do anything to break that down.“

19.19 Einar Örn Benediktsson: - There was nothing like it. There was a void in the world of pop music and certainly there was a light. And it happened to be us and we were from Iceland and we were the Sugarcubes.

19.31 Einar Örn Benediktsson: - Somebody told me that Birthday had been chosen single of the week in Melody Maker. And my response was "Oh, shit!" Because I knew it was trouble. And boy, it did prove out to be trouble for us.

19.44 Björk: - That was like companies they came here and got offer to succeed trillion billions and... and and we just told them all you know to "F U C K off" because we were being terrorists you know that. And that took about one and a half year that we just kept sending them back.

20.01 Einar Örn Benediktsson: - The agenda of the Sugarcubes was never to become like... world famous. We were doing this for fun.

20.10 Björk: - Two or even three of the Sugarcubes were probably the most promising poets or writers of Iceland's new generation. And they were finding themselves they haven't written a letter for two years... ehhh... ehhh because they were doing sound checks in like Texas and Alabama and playing doing guitar solos. Which which is kinda funny. I mean, it IS funny. But it's only funny for so long, you know.

20.37 Einar Örn Benediktsson: - The trappings of the business, I think, were the like the end of the Sugarcubes. We just had had enough and we were all friends and so instead of spoiling a very good friendship ... we destroyed a business relationship.

20.51 Björk: - I had been making music like for theatre, for film, like pop stuff eee jazz stuff eee experimental stuff, electronic stuff... basically try everything basically work with everybody in Iceland. But always with other people's visions.

21.27 Björk: - I moved to London to make my own album. It was time for me then to write songs about me. I was 27. I thought: 'OK, you know, you're coward if you don't try move things. It was a very big decision to move, mostly because of my son. I'm a really family orientated person.

21.55 Björk: - When I came to London I was very looking. And and and I was very sure that I wasn't gonna do... I was gonna do an album that haven't been done before. So hmm... when I'm... the people I was most attracted to and and the scene I was most attracted to when I came here was people who knew as little as I did about what was gonna happen. Not people that already established things but people that was still trying to sort of entering the unknown, if you want, and and trying to discover something that hadn't been discovered before.

22.59 Björk: - The people that ended up in my band without me planning it so were like... one person form Iran, one from India, one from Turkey, one from Cypress, one from Barbados. This is a bit like immigrants united.

23.13 Björk: - For me... for whole... brit-pop thing and the Oasis thing and the whole guitar thing. It's this kind of British scare of loosing britishness. And the immigrants taking over in that.

23.27 Björk: - English people, like the brit-pop scene, they just seem to repeating on one, trying to sort of hold the Victorian flag alive but it's just... you know, dead, you know. And and it don't seem to to be doing anything fertile.

27.22 Einar Örn Benediktsson: - Björk does not need adolation adoration for her to make her music. And being stared at in the street and whispering "There's Björk". It does her more harm than anybody people can ex... no, they don't know how much harm they are doing.

PART TWO

29.12 Narrator: - Much of the past year Björk has been living in Southern Spain where she recorded her third solo album.

29.24 Björk: - I think there's something very special about living at the ahh edges of of continents. And it fee.. it just feels completely different and it shouldn't, you know. That you look out the window and you can see another continent other there. And and it's just kinda like... is a really healthy turn on somehow. The idea that every morning you could wake up and literally go to Africa.

29.46 Björk: - When I lived by the ocean there I used to wake up every morning and have to walk for like an hour and and like cross ("p-hhh" shows a splash). And then I felt like I was in Spain. And then I could work. And I wake up the morning after and I still hadn't just grasped the idea. So I did do that for a month. And then I moved up here to the mountain. And and the only way I can take all this in, because it's just so outrageous... And and I keep just thinking on that not just looking at the backdrop or something ... and it's just like... you gonna pull the curtains in the sack.

30.33 Björk: - These are the thing that I owe, that I usually have in my house where I do only demoes. So we we set this up in, brought these down to Spain.

30.47 Björk: - When I did Debut and Post they were very much like greatest hits of my musical passions for all my life. And I knew it would take two albums to do that. That's why I called them "Debut" and "Post" - "Before" and "After" of getting rid of the the back catalogue almost, you know. Gracefully, you know. Because you can only move on if you do that, you know. So this is like a fresh start for me and that's why I want to call this album "Homogenic" or "-genous" or "-genius" or whatever, I'm still working on that. Because it's one flavour. It's just me, now, you know, here. And and it's gonna be... instead of like all these different instruments, it's just gonna be beats, strings and voice.

32.01 Björk: - I knew that this album would be like "back to Iceland" sort of what I'm about. But it's very hard to get a start from a complete scratch with no tradition whatsoever. But there were some pioneers who were trying to hmm look at the landscapes and the country and try to change that what they saw and what they felt into audio.

32.21 Sibbi Bernhardsson (violinist): - There are certain Icelandic composers and when they compose Icelandic music they, you know, try to imitate... geisers or volcanoes. 'Cause the landscape in Iceland is very rough. It's, you know, we don't have like this, you know, trees. We don't barely have any trees. We've lot of lavas, we've lot of volcanoes and there's a lot of outburst stuff, you know. Weather is only the wind comes or snow storms. And that kind of sounds, I think, she's looking after. And she has talked about that, she wants more this raw sound, not this beautiful european sound maybe.

32.55 Björk: - To find that voice is is very chalenging, you know. And it's almost like you have to invent your own roots. And that's one of the reasons why I got the eight string players. I wanted them all to be Icelandic.

It needs more vibrato... - ...more drama - ...just very Mata Hari - It's almost too... - It can be a little bit...

33.29 Sibbi Bernhardsson: - Well, I've picked up some her uses of intervals, for instance, fifths. And it's very traditional in Iceland and actually very unique. Icelandic folk songs often use this interval of fifths. It throughout, you know, the whole song, you know. And that and she uses that in her pieces that way, it makes it very Icelandic.

33.47 Sibbi Bernhardsson: - For instance in the "Hunter" the two celloes they are playing two bar motive, and, you know, one of them plays the lower note then the other cellist plays it the fifth above. And and there when you hear that that's just right away, you know, that's Icelandic.

34.11 Björk: - I wrote a song called Hunter and it's based on... what my grandmother told me on Christmas about two different types of birds who are aahm birds that always have the same nest all their life like swans. And they always have the same partners, all life. And the birds that travel all the time and they always have different partners all the time. And kinda like ehh to make a concsious decision to stay a hunter.

34.36 Björk: - It kinda ended up being a little bit of a bolero, I guess. Maybe because it's Spain.

34.41 Björk: - That's the only song with the string arrangement I asked Deodato to do completely.

34.46 Eumir Deodato (strings arranger): - One of the notes that we had and we discussed maybe trying a figure such as a bolero, you know, Ravel's Bolero. In the course of the recording we've decided to exaggerate certain aspects of of the string parts by having the strings doings lighting notes and kind of lugish and a sluring.

- ... so lovely if the one person could do a solo... on top. - Ah? - One person could do a solo on top. - Sure. - There have to be stun.

35.28 Deodato: - When she says me something it's prety much done... What she what I understanded and and I was correct in understanding it that way is that she really wants a colour. She really wants the humanizing factor into tracks that are basically...ahm I just say sequenced, using different sounds or using electronic sounds.

35.50 [clip: Björk and Deodato in studio]: - It's good if we just put one take down and have that as well. We come tomorrow ..(Deodato: We can do more scenic sense...) we can listen to it. And then we know what to fix (Deodato: - Absolutely), if that works or not. But at least we put it down,OK?

[elissastillstands]

Bitter Myths

Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word count: 2,783 Relationships: Michael Burnham/Philippa Georgiou Summary: Patroclus fell on the field of battle, and Achilles mourned. 

As a strong tree which stood proud and graceful—having weathered many ills and many lightning-laced storms in the grip of winter, and was just now glowing in full bloom—is snapped by a sudden gust, and falls mightily, its glory of flowers now covered in dust, so too did Patroclus fall.

No matter what Achilles does, Patroclus falls.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15896385

-----

Patroclus fell on the field of battle, and Achilles mourned.

-----

"Wait, Michael, you use the holosuite?" Tilly asks, her eyes widening in delight when she sees the sliver of the program chip in Michael's hand. "Oh my gosh, what program do you use? We should do the Old Earth adventure ones together; they have one about spies in the 20th century—"

"I'm not interested in those programs."

"Which programs do you like, then?"

Michael's fingers curl around the chip protectively, possessively. "It's a copy of a program we had on the Shenzhou," she says at last. "Lieutenant Commander Stamets helped me salvage it from the ship's black box."

"Oh, that's amazing. What is it?"

"It was one of Captain Georgiou's favorites." She has practiced to keep her voice from snagging on the syllables of Philippa's title, and she only needs a breath's pause when she continues, "It is a simulation of the Iliad, an epic poem from Earth's ancient Greece."

"That sounds so cool! I've heard of the Iliad—isn't it about a war, or something?"

Michael forces her lips to smile faint in Tilly's direction. "Or something."

-----

As a strong tree which stood proud and graceful—having weathered many ills and many lightning-laced storms in the grip of winter, and was just now glowing in full bloom—is snapped by a sudden gust, and falls mightily, its glory of flowers now covered in dust, so too did Patroclus fall.

No matter what Achilles does, Patroclus falls.

Achilles knows. Achilles has gone through the motions of the story time and time again. She forbids Patroclus from going in her place. She rushes out onto the field of battle in her wake. They fight back-to-back-on the battlefield. She is always too late—by hours or by minutes or by a split second drawn out into an eternity, Patroclus still falls. It will always be Achilles' fault that Patroclus falls. She spins out strategies like the finest wool, shrieks at the gods for their malice until her voice is hoarse, soaks her hands in phantom blood and dust and weeps until bile rises in her throat and chokes her, and Patroclus still falls. 

And then she starts the program again.

She hacks the program after the twelfth try. Patroclus does not fall, and the shock of it makes her scream at the computer to end the simulation. She slides down to the floor and lies there, curled and trembling in the cold, leaf-like. Patroclus is a story, and Philippa—

Philippa fell.

Michael wipes her cheeks dry and rises to her feet, reaching to restart the program once more.

-----

"Can I play it with you?" Tilly asks.

Michael's first instinct is to snarl like a lion protecting her young, but Tilly's smile is bright and earnest, and curious besides. "If you want," she manages to say. She does not blame her voice for its reluctance, for wanting to cradle what little she has left of Philippa close, as if the stories were gold, or silver tripods miraculously crafted.

"You'll have to explain the story to me, because I don't know anything about old Greeks."

Poets were the guests of kings because stories were—are—power. Stories die if they are untold, but when given voice, they turn clumsy words to birds and bid them fly to rest heavy and piquant on human tongues. The most powerful beings in the Iliad were poets. Helen of Sparta, who told Priam the names of the Achaeans ranged before them like grains of barley settling into fresh furrows and wove the stories of heroes into undying wool, was a poet. Michael has never considered herself a storyteller, but she tries, for Tilly's sake.

"Tell me what's going on in here," Tilly mutters into her ear, fiddling with her greaves after they enter the program.

"I picked Antilochus and Thrasymedes for us. We're high-ranking Achaeans, Greek soldiers, serving under Achilles, who is one of the main heroes for the Greek side. The man armoring himself right now is Patroclus, Achilles' mentor and most trusted friend—" she breaks off then, her words failing her as her limbs do every time.

"Wait, what happens to him?" Tilly gasps. "Oh, no, Michael, does he die?"

"You'll see," Michael says hoarsely.

-----

Saru buzzes at her quarters. She lets him in, and he steps through the threshold and stands in silence, his stance uncertain, searching. Her eyes fall to the briefcase in his hand, and her lungs feel as though they have been burst and pulled from the carapace of her chest.

"Saru, no, I've told you—"

"She would want you to have this, Michael," he says, and his voice is gentle.

"You—you deserve it more than I do—"

"No." The word is clipped. "No, I don't. Michael—" he sighs in soft clicks and holds out the telescope. "This is yours—once both of yours, now yours. It was a travesty for me to take it."

Michael swallows hard. She takes the case, and the metal seems to buzz beneath her hands with the memory of old constellations and falling stars. 

"Thank you, Saru."

"Until tomorrow, Michael.”

He leaves.

-----

"They—they were in love," Antilochus whispers to Thrasymedes as they watch Achilles mourning, covering himself in dust. 

She does not know why she said that, other than the heavy knowledge that stories die when they are not told. Did anyone ever know to say that, to whisper the truth among themselves like the hiss of embers dying, like breath long escaped over the teeth of lovers lying in the sand?

Her voice breaks, more than it had when she announced Patroclus' death to the leader of the Myrmidons, and the crying and shouting is too much for her to bear right then. She calls for the computer to end the program, half-fearing that she could not be heard over the grief around her, and then she is kneeling on the floor of the simulation room, her hands shaking just so. Tilly sits down in front of her and grips her hands with warm, dry palms.

"He loved him," Michael says without looking up. “He loved him, and now he’s dead.” She is no poet—the grammar of Standard is a sloppy, broken thing in her mouth, pronouns and antecedents too imprecise for any clarity of communication, and a cloying anger wells up her throat at the dull blade of language. 

Tilly's eyes are wide, her lips working silently. "Michael, were you and Captain Georgiou—"

"No!" Michael barks, flinching at the words—too ugly, too flat, too imprecise. "I—we—"

She shakes her head silently, because words can go no further.

-----

Patroclus fell on the field of battle, and Achilles mourns.

-----

"We were together," Michael says into the dark of their room, after Tilly tells the computer to turn off the lights. "For years."

Tilly is silent for a moment. "How did you keep it a secret?"

"We didn't. Our whole ship knew, both of our families knew, Starfleet knew, everyone knew. But after she died, and I was sentenced. And they tried to make our story more—palatable." Michael's lips twist. "The heroic captain and the mutineer. Much easier than two women who cared for each other."

"That's—kind of awful."

"It is their story."

As a strong tree which stood proud and graceful—having weathered many ills and many lightning-laced storms in the grip of winter, and was just now glowing in full bloom—is snapped by a sudden gust, and falls mightily, so too did Philippa fall, and now what they had is covered in dust.

"Why do you go into the holosuite?" Tilly asks suddenly. "Michael, that program is hard to watch, much less—participate in. Is it to remember her, or something?"

Michael almost laughs at that—as if there were ever a time when she did not remember Philippa, the sweet lines on her face and the honey of her skin, the rumble of her laughter through the bones of her ribs, the falling. 

"Or something," she says.

She tells Tilly about the captain then—about how they had grated against each other when Michael first came onboard the Shenzhou, but quickly became close; how funny the captain was, how brilliant and sharp. It is no different than the information in her official biography, but the words still are slow to come to her, smoke-dull and inelegant.

Stories are heavy work. 

-----

Stamets and Dr. Culber sometimes are waiting outside to use the holosuite when she exits from the program. When Culber first came back, she had helped Stamets encode a simulation that could ease him back into the setting of linear time, little by little.

The lieutenant commander still comes into their shifts with red eyes and shaking hands. I still dream about him dead. I still wake up, and he's right next to me, and I still think he's dead, he had snapped at her when she first asked. That's not something that just gets better, Burnham. That's not something you can just forget.

"Where are you two going now?" Michael asks, pocketing her chip.

"A little cafe on Alpha Centauri," Culber tells her with a wink. "It was where we first fell in love."

"It was where we first met," Stamets says. "I thought you were obnoxious; there was no love to be found there." His words are not so much a correction as a fond second telling.

"Enjoy your date," she tells them warmly.

Culber's gaze is soft, and Stamets smiles, a departure from his usual single nod, and his eyes are only touched with pink today. His fingers wrap even more tightly around his husband's hand. There is recognition strung between them now. Tilly must have told them. Isn't that why stories are told, so that they can be sung time and time again until the bowl of the sky rings?

The word for glory in the Iliad is kleos. It means that which is heard. 

-----

The next time Tilly enters the program with her, Michael jumps to the funeral of Patroclus. She and Tilly sit on the rust ground and listen to the lamentations of the living, and Michael closes her eyes as Achilles sings in a shattered voice.

"It was his fault," Michael says into the wind, "that Patroclus died."

"No," Tilly says. "No, it wasn't."

"I loved her."

Tilly nods. "You love her."

She sets her hand on Michael's shoulder, and Michael slumps, stricken by the present tense. Patroclus fell on the field of battle, and Achilles lives.

From the corner of her eye, she sees Achilles lead the sacrifices out, sees the blade glint in his hand. Michael had never played the program to here before, and though she knows the story, knows the weight of words like "retribution," she is abruptly furious. She wrenches herself up and dashes to the control panel. Her fingers fly across the interface like eagles hunting for their young, eating up every line of code in their path and spitting them back out, tearing up flesh to feed the future, and the sound of her heart is lead in her ears because all she can think of is how much she hates these bitter myths, these grief lessons, because the necessity of tragedy is not the truth, only yet another story, and people should never be slaughtered for a grieving man's pride, because Philippa is dead and was—is—will always be more than her death, more than grief and anger and a love in the past tense—

Achilles releases the captives, and bids them to return as princes to Troy. 

The Achaeans mill about in confusion before Achilles orders for the funeral games to go on, and they disband, heading for the chariot races. "She never let me play Patroclus," Michael says when they are alone at last in the center of the Achaean camp. She lies back, letting her eyes flutter shut. "She would never play the story, either—we'd always end up fighting for the Trojan side, and strategizing how to win. Or sneaking Cassandra out for a picnic, or weaving with Andromache, or—or challenging Agamemnon for command of the Greeks. Challenging Odysseus to a game of chess! He—maybe it’s because it hasn’t been invented for over a thousand years, but he's so bad at chess—"

The laughter breaks out of her, unstoppable, and she turns to grin at Tilly and lets her cheeks grow wet with tears, light like the fingers of dawn.

-----

As a strong tree which stands proud and graceful, Achilles starts—

Mourning and singing and telling have ever been closely entwined, she reminds herself.

—as a tree which stands proud and graceful, having weathered many ills and many lightning-laced storms in the grip of winter, Patroclus glowed in full bloom, and the sudden gust which felled her does not diminish her glory, and when spring comes again, the flowers will grow around her. 

-----

"Burnham, wait a moment," Stamets calls after her.

He takes out a holochip from his pocket and sets it on the conference table. "I thought you might be—" he stumbles for a moment before hurrying on, "—interested in this. I had a bit of code lying around in dev to tweak into a holo program. Hugh said that I should try my hand at things other than astromycelial engineering, and I had to remind him that I actually am highly proficient in all the science disciplines. Actually, you know what? Consider it a favor to me, if you beta it."

The lieutenant leaves without further comment.

Michael picks up the clip, weighs it in her hand like a coin of bronze. She goes to the holosuite to run the program, and the gray of the walls is turned to the gold of dust in sunlight. The blue and silver of her uniform is jarring against the warmth of a Greek agora—Stamets must not have finished coding the personal costumes.

There is a poet in the center of the agora, and listeners milled around her like ants as she sang of heroes before the war, and how they were each the breath of the other. On the hills around the city, the olive trees are in bloom, their petals sweet snow.

Michael sits, and listens, and breathes.

-----

"I don't know Homer, but this—was not in Iliad," Tilly says slowly.

"How do you know that it wasn't in the Iliad?" Michael asks, brushing her curls out of her eyes. They are sitting in a Trojan courtyard, and children run all about them in clothing worn but carefully patched. They play with toy swords and laugh as they canter on wooden horses, and women with hair knotted like wasps' waists sit on the windowsills and talk about the sky and the things hidden in the mountains. "Maybe it was."

Two little girls come up to them, with spears of twigs and ivy leaves, and Michael and Tilly laugh and pretend to shield themselves.

"Would you take a story as ransom for our lives, my ladies?" Michael asks, holding up her hands in surrender.

The victorious warrior plants her spear in the ground. "What kind of story?"

"An adventure story," Tilly says. "One with heroes and monsters.

"What kind of adventure?"

Tilly pauses, and Michael jumps in. "I'll tell you." 

She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial murmur, and the girls lean in eagerly. "Once upon a time, there were two lovers who went into the desert, to save the spirits of the cliffs by breaking a cursed drought of 89 years—"

"How did they do it?" one of the girls asks.

"Tell us!" the other one says.

"Tell us!" the first girl echoes. 

Michael smiles. Her chest aches as she whispers, "With lightning."

-----

They are Antilochus and Thrasymedes and Alcimedon and Eudorus and many others besides. They end the war. They flee from a razed Troy, carrying on their backs the girls with their ivy spears. They sign a treaty, and the Hellespont is filled with ships that do not carry soldiers.

They build a city on the banks of the river Po and call it Rema Magna, and populate it with shepherds and poets and weavers and potters and singers and artists who carve joyful effigies of life on tomb stelae and priests who draw honey from bee-towns, with the Latini and Rutuli and Etrusci, and there is never a war with which to found Rome.

They sing of heroes beyond the beginnings and ends of war, of pale flowers on a strong tree, and through their tellings these things are both sweet and bitter.

Achilles lives, and tells what the poets do not.

[ibelieveinahappilyeverafter]

deCIPHER

Bonjour, mes chers! Quite a bit late due to being distracted by that terrible eye surgery of mine, but here’s the first released drabble that was my Patreon Exclusive drabble last month!

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Title: DeCIPHER

Alternate Universe: Post Show / Dipper age ~16

Rating: G+

Inspired By: deCIPHER - Madame Macabre

Summary: Dipper is sixteen and the mess that was Bill Cipher was supposed to have been left behind and yet, here he was, hearing that voice in his head. It would be fine and easy to ignore if Bill Cipher wasn't so good at telling the truth.

::

"Come on, kid, I know you can hear me." Taking a steadying breath, Dipper firmly ignored the words, staring at the board and trying to focus on using the square root completion method to solve quadratic equations. It was getting harder. "Hey, kid, I know you can see me."

Biting the inside of his cheek, Dipper refused to look at the golden glow that drifted by his vision, instead sliding his gaze over to where his sister was sitting at her own desk and taking notes in gel pens. She didn't seem to have any worries and wasn't looking towards the gold at all. "Don't be jealous, Pine Tree. You're the only one who can see me."

Just pretend he wasn't there. He just had to pretend he wasn't there. It had been three years since that summer in Gravity Falls. Dipper was now sixteen, Gravity Falls was completely normal (at least for Gravity Falls it was normal), and he was still nothing but stone. Whatever Dipper was seeing, it was probably just stress brought on by a new school year.

"Piiine Tree. I know you're not an idiot." Dipper could feel the cool touch against his cheek, but he did his best to not flinch and instead looked resolutely at the board. "You can feel it. You're probably the only one in your family that can, thinking on it. I bet not even Shooting Star is feeling it like you do."

Yes, just a normal mental breakdown. That sounded about right, honestly. He had been due for one of those for a while now, so he was sure it would all be back to normal in the next few months. "Hey, kid, things are 'bout to get crazy."

"Ma'am, may I go to the bathroom!" Ignoring the odd looks thrown his way, Dipper waited only long enough to get a hall pass before he was speeding out of the classroom and straight towards the bathroom, throwing cold water on his face as soon as he could. Maybe this was a dream. It would make sense for it to be a dream, right?

"Aha, nice thinking, kid! Shock to wake you up, right? Maybe you should try jumping, next. I heard you can't jump in a dream!"

Bracing himself on the sink, Dipper looked up into the mirror. The only reflection was him, but there, just out of the corner of his eye, was the creature that he still had nightmares about. Maybe this was just another one of them.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry for trying to kill your family and take over the world. There, are you happy?" Definitely a dream. "Right, you just sit right there and listen to me then. As I was saying before you ran off, things are about to get pretty crazy for you humans! You felt it, after all, didn't you?"

Felt what? Life was always crazy! Dipper had thought that Gravity Falls was the only place to attract the weird, but the weird was everywhere in the world. He had seen some pretty strange creatures just here in Piedmont, although granted they were harder to track down and even harder to see.

"Oh, kid, I ain't talking about those run-of-the-mill gnomes you see every summer! I've seen more than you can imagine, kid, and this is going to beat it all." Okay, right, Dipper would just go and trust the liar. That would be great.

Running his hands under the water some more, Dipper shook his head as if trying to dislodge the demon from his mind entirely. That would work, right? "Yeesh, you're so stubborn. C'mon, Pine Tree, you're the only one who can hear me! You've felt it, I know you have. It's there every time you go down one of those kitchy suburban streets of yours."

Kitchy? He was eighty percent sure that was just another word for cheesy and he was a hundred percent sure he only knew that because of Mabel- Ninety-nine percent. It could've come from Soos. "You feel it, don't you? Warm summer day, the air's all hot and sticky, you're walking down the street, all the cars are gone, you hear those stupid bugs, and that haze that comes down… That's not a normal haze, Pine Tree."

Don't listen. He was a liar. A conman. A thief. A poet. A psychic. A thaumaturge. He would only tell Dipper what he wanted to hear and what he already knew. Except… Except Dipper hadn't had the words to explain that feeling until now.

There were no words to explain the feeling he had when he had just been walking around their block after they had gotten home and it had still been so hot. Dipper was sweating and huffing for breath even as he smiled at being home, thoughts and heart still full of Gravity Falls. He had wandered into the middle of the road because, well, because it was empty. There was no one in sight and his mind was still full of Gravity Falls where people walked in the road all the time.

He had walked straight down the middle and he remembered the sweat dripping down the back of his neck. A dog had been barking a few streets over and one of those sprinklers to water the lawn had been going. It was a scene straight from a movie or something, but Dipper had felt this sense of…

The haze had felt like a physical presence against him, the heat powerful and strong and his breathing the only sound that seemed to matter in that moment. He had stopped in his steps and just breathed and felt something. It was like a missed step. Something that should have been there but wasn't and the realization sent the mind reeling.

"I've heard things that could torture your soul to that hell of yours and back, kid, but that sound is something that beats even me." The sound of something big. Something massive in a space where there should have been nothing. "Come on, Pine Tree. If you join me then we can both get ahead in what's about to happen. We'll be on top of it all and ready for what's going to come."

Yeah. At what price? Pushing himself off the sink, Dipper spun around and stared straight into the single eye of Bill Cipher.

"Go to hell." Instead of being taken aback, the demon looked nothing but pleased. "Go to hell." After everything he had done- He thought it would be that easy?

"So you can hear me, then." Meeting Bill's gaze, Dipper didn't draw back as the demon floated closer. "Oh, you're going to be something else, kid."

Just like that, Bill Cipher was gone and Dipper was alone in his head. Thrown off balance, Dipper spun around, expecting to see gold and black and instead seeing nothing but a high school bathroom. It… It had been that easy? That- It couldn't have been that easy. Could it have?

Shaking his head again, Dipper took a breath before leaving. He had a math class to get to and he needed to tell… No. Not yet. It had probably been a one time hallucination due to stress. He didn't need to tell anyone.

He was fine.

::

"I told you, Pine Tree, something big is coming." Twitching at the words, Dipper forced himself to not look up, instead staring down at the research he was doing instead of homework. The supernatural side of Piedmont had been growing in the last few weeks - well, maybe not growing, but there were more wild stories in the news than there should be. It was probably just some eclipse coming up or something. At least, he had thought that. "They all sense it too, that's why they're getting so restless."

"What, exactly, are they supposed to be sensing?" Okay, Dipper hadn't quite meant to actually acknowledge and talk to Bill, but, well. The demon was good at getting under his skin. "Nothing in my research-"

"Pine Tree, you're thinking too much like old six fingers! This isn't something you can just read about. You have to feel it." Yeah, well, he was pretty sure the only thing he was feeling was that fifth brownie he had. In his defense, Mabel had made them with chocolate chips this time. "You really think those three books were the biggest mystery in the world? You think this dimension is the only one?"

Well- Of course not. Ford had told Dipper all about his crazy adventures in the other dimensions. Dipper had seen the creatures from the other dimensions! He knew there was more to all of this than just what was here in their world, but he didn't see- "You think this dimension is without magic?"

That… "Oh, Pine Tree. You raised the dead when you were a child and united a town to fight against demons. If you hadn't ruined my plans then I might have been almost proud! The thing is, though, is that you didn't quite ruin all my plans-"

"You're a stone statue in the middle of the woods where no one can ever find you. If you still think you won then I have some news for you." Snapping his book shut, Dipper climbed out of his piles of books and papers before grabbing his shoes and jacket. A walk sounded great right about now.

"Pine Tree, I can help you! Really, I'm impressed with how far you've come, and you seem to the be the best bet to fight off what's about to happen to your little dimension." Ignore him, Dipper, just ignore him. "It's been such a long time since the magic left."

"First you tell me magic is real and now you're telling me it left- It's one or the other, Bill!" Ignore him, ignore him, just ignore him. "Just leave me alone!"

Getting out onto the night streets, Dipper walked as fast as he could, breathing in cool fall air and feeling himself start to relax. "Pine Tree!" Well, there went that. "I'm offering you everything you ever wanted!"

"Yeah, funny, but I've heard that before!" A blur of everything and Bill was suddenly in front of him, Dipper trying not to show his fear as he saw red instead of gold for a moment. "Go bother someone else."

"Trust me, kid, I would if I could." Great. His luck to be forever stuck with a demon in his head. "Kid, if you side with me then you could have everything!"

"Mm, no thanks. Doesn't really sound like something I'm interested in." Walking past him, Dipper looked up at the night sky and shivered.

"You can sense it coming."

"It's fall and night. I'm just cold."

It had been weeks since Dipper last saw Bill and as much as he tried to put the words out of his head… Something was coming. Whatever it was, it was enough to make Bill afraid. That couldn't be good for them.

"It's night, of course I'm a bit cold. It's September!" Dipper kept walking, trying to keep his breathing under control. "It's just the weather. Just like it was in summer. It's nothing but the weather."

"Just keep thinking on my words, Pine Tree." Yeah, right. That was all Bill could do was put words in his head. Dipper would be better off forgetting them as quickly as he could. He would just forget them.

Simple.

::

"You really shouldn't let go of this opportunity, Pine Tree. It won't last for very much longer." Staring out the snow covered forest of Gravity Falls, Dipper absently listened to his family laughing and partying down on the first floor of the Shack. "All you have to do is shake my hand - my real one - and we can both deal with what's about to come."

"Been a while since you brought this up." Ever since that autumn night, Bill had completely dropped his menacing comments and had instead made sarcastic remarks at school and sometimes helped him with his homework. Sometimes. Usually he cost Dipper a letter grade. "Is it because I go back tomorrow."

"Next summer will be too late. I could spend the next few months convincing you, but by then we'd both be out of time." Rolling his eyes, Dipper looked to the floating demon that was hovering over his shoulder, gaze out the window as well. "If that statue is destroyed, then I'll never be able to come back."

"Oh, no." Smirking as the slap phased through him completely, Dipper looked back out the window. "Guess that means we'd be stuck together a while longer, then-"

"No, kid, I'd never be able to come back." Oh.

"Well, good, then. You tried to destroy the earth." He also made funny comments about the teachers Dipper hated, though. "You almost killed my family." He helped Dipper with his math homework when he forgot how to clear the fractions out of a problem. "You were almost the reason Stan lost his memory." Dipper hadn't had a nightmare in months.

"Eh, it turned out alright in the end." God, no amount of 'human' gestures could ever redeem what Dipper was talking to now. This was a demon, plain and simple. There was no reason to feel guilt or pity. "What if I change the deal?"

"Nothing you say could ever make me release you, Bill. Just drop it." Standing up, Dipper stopped with his hand on the door when he heard the next words spoken into his mind.

"If you agree to work with me to face what's coming, then after it's all over I'll return to being stone and stay out of the thoughts of you and all your friends and family for the rest of eternity."

"You said I'm the only one you can talk to. Unless you were lying, then you'll never be able to trick someone else into setting you free-"

"I wouldn't be able to if I was dead, either." To face what was coming… Dipper could feel it. Something in the air was different and the tenuous peace between normal and weird was about to shatter. "Come on, Pine Tree, be smart about this… You know you've always been different. All those wild hunches and theories of yours back in that first summer? They were all right."

They… They had been, hadn't they? Dipper had been right about all of it. Some of it had surprised him, yeah, but he knew from the start that there had been something lurking in those woods. He had been right. "You were right from the start, Pine Tree. Don't start being wrong now."

Not responding, Dipper was quiet as could be as he walked through the Shack, passing by the den and instead donning a coat as he slipped out into the cold air and falling snow. Taking a shuddering breath, Dipper shivered as he felt that pressure that had been growing since summer.

The two were silent as they set off through the woods, Dipper refusing to speak first as he trudged through snow and stumbled over fallen trees. He knew where to go - he made sure to always remember where he was.

Dipper was half uncertain as to what he would even do once he was there, but he didn't stop until he stumbled upon a picturesque clearing with a familiar stone statue covered in a fresh layer of snow. The area around was completely untouched and Dipper felt like he would be disturbing something if he were to take a single step forward.

"You can't ever hurt them. You can hurt them ever or the deal's off and you go back to being a statute immediately." Silence. There was no trying to argue or twist the words around. "A-And it's only until this threat or whatever is dealt with. Once it's not a threat, that's it, you go back in the stone."

Dipper took a shaky step forward when he heard nothing yet again. He paused in his steps for a moment, shaking fiercely. He shouldn't do this. It didn't matter how great the danger was, he shouldn't be doing this. He stepped forward.

"If you get a physical form back then you can't use it to hurt anyone unless they really deserve it - like they've physically hurt or killed another person deserved it. You can't be seen by anyone in my family and you can't tell them what I did." Dipper was rambling off everything he could think of, trying to close each and every loophole he could. "Got it? You can't use this as revenge or another chance to destroy this town or anything else in any of the worlds or dimensions. You're just here to help protect them."

"Well, what are you waiting for, Pine Tree? Shake my hand." Wrong. Dipper had such a strong feeling of wrongness. He knew he was being played. This had to be Bill's plan from the start. It was a plan to get him out and there probably was no danger and since there wasn't that meant Bill could get out of the deal and he would be physical and for them to work together, it-

"Don't worry, Pine Tree. They won't see it coming." The stone was warm beneath his touch and Dipper felt like he had just damned them all with the laughter he heard. Laughter that bounced off the trees and was as real as his breathing.

What had he done?