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ill-skillsgard · 4 years ago

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His Mistress - Series Finale

Warning: 18+ smut, mentions of cheating, coarse language, mature themes.

Author’s Note: I am terrible at ending stories because I never want them to end. The ending I initially wrote wasn’t good enough, so I started again until I felt it was right. I’ll keep it brief, but I want to thank all the readers who fueled this crazy fire and inspired me to flesh out a dark love story that I’m proud to say I wrote. I’ll miss Mr. Deaver and all the smutty, angsty, drama of his life with his mistress. Thanks for tolerating the never-ending POV shifts and filling my inbox with love and support for the story and for me. You guys are the BEST. I’m forever grateful!

I hope you enjoy the 9K series finale. It’s been a slice!

Henry X Mistress Masterpost [x]

Henry's company held an office party to bid farewell the building that had brought them growth and success over the last few years. Once again expanding, the company added a brand new customer-relations department, a slew of employees fresh out of university and interns to fill in the gaps. The celebration took place on the evening of their last workday and boasted live entertainment and enough luxurious fare for each employee and their loved ones. They rented a bouncy castle and ball pit for the kids and set up an open bar next to two seminar tables' worth of catering.

It wasn't only a farewell party for the company, but the first time Henry showed off his girlfriend in front of his colleagues and employees. Word of Henry's divorce had already made its rounds, his colleagues begging for gory details after the documents were signed and filed. Rumours fluttered in and out of ears and mouths, but never while Henry was in the room—Henry had cheated on his wife with a coworker, Henry screwed the cleaning lady and his wife caught him in the act, Henry picked up a venereal disease, and poor Mary. The speculation rose tensions, but like all rumours, faded into irrelevancy once news of the company move surfaced. People forgot all about Henry's ugly divorce for the next round of gossip. Word of his mistress died down.

Although the tension had mostly evaporated, she felt eyes crawling on her when she showed up on Henry's arm. Of course, everyone recognized her—she was the secretary for a time, the only line to get an opening with Mr. Deaver. She had spent months parked next to his office, taking his appointments, booking his days, answering his phone. They remembered, and they leaned into the nearest ear to whisper, "I knew it all along."

If Henry noticed the curiosity, he chose to ignore it, but she couldn't. She felt every woman in the place wringing her silently, scrutinizing her moves, her hand in Henry's. People who knew Mary tended to side with the older woman, and the nattering reinstated in hushed exchanges. She was alone at the party save for Henry, but he could only guard her for so long before his colleagues whisked him into conversations littered with business jargon that lost her attention.

Still, she clung to his hand, and once in a while, Henry would break from stock discussions to turn in for a kiss. He surrounded her ears with his fingers, tilting her face up so he need not crouch just to show some affection. When he buried her mouth with his, she savoured the taste of wine, the power in becoming the first lady, the stares from Henry's subordinates.

Henry pulled back an inch, staring drunkenly, though he'd only had one glass of pinot noir, and nipped her bottom lip. "Having a good time, sweetheart?"

"Sure. I love catching all the cattiest office workers glaring."

Henry smirked as though he too tasted a dollop of satisfaction from the envy. "You know what I say to that?"

"What?"

"Fuck them," Henry whispered.

She feigned a gasp, swatted his shoulder, and he pulled her even closer. "Gosh, you look beautiful. I want to undress you later and do all the things they're thinking about me doing to you."

"My, my, Henry. You better take it easy on the vino."

"I'm not tipsy. I'm excited."

She checked his pockets for bulges, hoping Henry's intentions weren't to propose in front of all these near-strangers. The lines of his suit were smooth, and when she hugged him, she only felt his cellphone, wallet and keys, no ring box. She sighed with relief and sweltered under another one of his long kisses. He moaned against her, stroked her neck and back until she interrupted him to say, "Jesus, Henry. What's with the PDA?"

"I'm sorry. I just don't care anymore. Let 'em look."

"Easy, tiger. You're the star of the show. People want to talk to you without lipstick all over your face."

"Mm, I'd fuck you right now if I could," said Henry.

She squeezed his shoulders, holding him off for a moment before he swooped in for another peck. "Okay, okay, I'm done. For now."

"Don't make me spank you when we get home," she warned, mouth curved in jest.

"I'll behave," he assured.

With children running about, the catering service making rounds in the nearly empty office space, more employees and their significant others piling in by the minute, it was easy to get lost in the bustle. Henry's colleagues whisked him away into a conversation she had no business understanding, leaving her stranded, drink in hand, smoothing out the wrinkles in her blouse to distract herself from her friendless reality. None of Henry's employees came to talk to her. She stood alone, a flag on a pole reminding everyone that Henry had upgraded in every way. Some people went by, nodding respectfully, while others bypassed her like a piece of furniture.

Just when she felt the pressure behind her eyes saying she was tired, Frank stepped out of the elevator with his wife and two boys. The children bolted for the bounce house, leaving their bickering parents in their dust. Frank travelled through the crowd rolling his eyes and sneering at his wife, who looked upset about something, but retracted her frown as soon as a colleague's wife greeted her. The loud businessman honed in on Henry, and she watched her helpless boyfriend go limp when the man slung his meaty arm around his shoulders, thumping his back with a ham hock fist.

She mused over Henry's embarrassment as Frank launched into a story designed specifically to draw attention to him in the worst way. Frank's baritone floated above the music, and soon, others gathered to listen to the man tell the story of how Henry got too wasted on sake on a business trip to Japan because he didn't want to seem rude to the host and didn't know how to decline.

"This fuckin' guy—pardon my French—is rolling on the floor in his hotel room, has ten minutes to get dressed and downstairs for the conference, but can't even hold his head up straight. How many did you have, Henry, seven? Eight?"

Henry blanched, shaking his head. "Eight, yeah, I think that's about right."

"You've never seen a guy so drunk in your life! He did the conference, slurring the entire time, stumbling over his shoes, but the folks loved it! Didn't they, Deaver? You really got their attention when you started hiccoughing between every word."

"Different times. We were younger. We were boys."

"Ah, yeah. Young and dumb. Now, look at you! Much older now and just as dumb, eh?"

The gaggle surrounding Henry burst into laughter and carried on as Frank surrendered his grip. She tried to picture Henry staggering, too drunk to string together a sentence, but couldn't imagine him as anything less than poised. The image reminded her of the conversation she had with Mary in the parking garage. Before the divorce had been finalized, Mary told her Henry had done questionable things abroad with his colleagues. Frank's story, although comical and meant as a harmless jab, filled her with suspicion.

Henry had denied the accusation that he cheated before that night he invited her up to his hotel room. With desperation on his face, he vowed on his love for her that he was never unfaithful, barring their affair. She believed him, with reluctance, and stowed it away in her mind with the rest of Mary's dubious claims. Now that stories of shenanigans and unprofessional conduct were in circulation, she tried not to let her suspicions gain traction.

The night played on, and as more of the families left to put their hyper children to bed, the heads of business brought out the top-shelf Scotch and sat around picking at sandwich trays and hors d'oeuvres. Frank caught Henry's assistant-turned-girlfriend in his cross-hairs and approached her with a drink in hand. Red-faced and loud as ever, Frank asked her why she wasn't enjoying herself.

She cleared her throat and offered her best smile. "I am having fun. I just don't have a rich enough history with the company to offer any entertaining stories."

"Oh, come now. You were Henry's assistant for months! You don't have anything to share about banging the boss?"

Frank's announcement only fell on her ears, but it was enough to make her blush and want to escape. He apologized and sidled up to her, clinking his whiskey tumbler with her wine glass.

"Gotta get you a refill, Whaddaya say, toots?"

"I'm fine for now," she said. "I offered to drive home."

"That's right. You two live together now in that little condo."

She blinked, unsure of how anyone might think of the condo as little, then realized she was standing among wealthy men whose homes spanned acres, who owned Summer cottages bigger than the average townhouse.

"I gotta say, Deaver's got that colour back in his face since he started on with you, doll. What do I gotta do to get me a woman like that? He's a whole new man. Is that all it takes is a nice, young honey to roll back the decades? I bet the old bastard gets it up just fine. Just fine."

"Thank you, Frank. I'll try to sift through that to find a compliment," she scoffed and sipped her wine.

"Aw, I mean it with love, darlin', you know that. Ol' Franky just talks, right? I don't mean any harm. Maybe I come from a place of envy, who knows? Not every day a dry old fella gets his hands on something pretty as you. I can see you're good for him. He sure smiles a helluva lot more! Christ, can't chisel the grin off that face. Loopy as a damn circus clown since you came around."

"Really?" She tittered.

"I'm serious. Shit, when Henry was with Mary, you couldn't pay the guy to crack a joke. Now, he's nothing like the shlub I met all those years ago."

She ran her finger along the glass rim as Frank droned on, her eyes on Henry across the room. He had been having a good time, his cheeks aglow with cheeriness. She'd never seen Henry interact with his coworkers for more than a quick trip in and out of the conference room to deliver him a printout or progress report. Tonight, Henry hadn't complained about people talking his ear off. Even after Frank's unflattering account of one of his rare blunders, he hadn't whined or wished they could sneak out unseen. Henry was at ease.

"He's planning on proposing to me soon," she said.

Frank cocked his head and rose his glass. "Here's to hoping he makes the right decision, and quick, before you realize you can do better!"

She clinked glasses with Frank once more, and while he drained his whiskey, she set her glass down on a table nearby.

"I was wondering what his coworkers might say about him remarrying."

"Anything to get him away from that soul-sucking ice queen of an ex-wife."

"Frank? Can I ask you something and get a sincere answer?"

Frank read her serious tone, shifted his brows and angled in, unaware of his alcohol-laden breath fanning over her face. "Anything, love. Franky tells no lies. That's what they say. With me, it's pure honesty."

"I heard a rumour about Henry in Thailand. Somebody said he cheated on Mary. Do you know anything about this? I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into, being young and all. I don't want to end up wasting my best years with a man who might cheat on me down the road."

Frank scoffed, slapped his leg and howled. She waited for him to wipe an invisible tear from his eye, hoping nobody asked what was so funny.

"Oh, doll. You can't believe all the rumours you hear in this place. Thailand... Shit, that was so long ago. I can hardly remember what happened. It's true, we did some partying, but when in Rome, right?"

She grimaced as Frank went on, "Ol' Deaver never left his hotel room on that trip. Me 'n a couple of our work buddies cruised around, got ourselves into a little trouble, but not Henry. He spent the whole week hunched over his laptop, putting last minute touches on some PowerPoint crap—never was good with computers, myself. And don't get me wrong, there were offers made during dinners—generous offers. You know the type. They like to show their hospitality. But Henry was the professional. We call him Dad since he's always keeping us in line. Even us old guys, eh? No, no... Company is rock solid 'cause of him. We told Deaver a million times to drop the ball 'n chain, but the kid stuck it out, he really did."

"Am I stupid to marry him?"

"Doll, I think if you want someone to treat you right, it's my man, Henry Deaver. The Kid can't contain himself. And who could? He's a lucky man, really fortunate to have a dish like you."

"Oh, stop," she gestured at the opposite corner of the cleared out office space where the wives gathered. "You know, if I marry Henry, I'll have to join the wives' club and stand over there with Phyllis and Dorothy."

Frank beamed at her. She decided not to loathe the man for his praise, both for her and Henry. He was a bumbling idiot at times and unfiltered, but she had seen much worse. Before the corporate job with all the nice clothes and gadgets she used to pine for while browsing fashion websites, she worked her food service job. With every type of asshole and gentleman coming through the hotel bar, Frank was the loudmouth who'd changed her mind on Henry Deaver.

"You're a different kind, ain'tcha? I bet Deaver has his hands full with you."

Warm, wine-drunk confidence slid off her tongue, "Oh, I keep him busy."

"I'll kill him if he doesn't marry you, kid."

"I'm sure you will."

"That's Frank's Guarantee."

She tipped glasses with him once more and excused herself to use the washroom. The night was drawing to a close, and she enjoyed the quiet of the bathroom and its 3 stalls. Many times she had retreated to the washroom to text Henry while he was in his office. She couldn't risk getting caught exchanging dirty messages with the boss, so when she wanted to make him blush, she snuck off to the lady's room. Many nude photoshoots happened in the safety of the last stall on the right, and all of them fed to Henry's phone at inopportune times—mostly during meetings or video calls with clients across the world. Now, she laid her head against the cool metal and thought of marrying Henry.

Back then, falling in love with him was forbidden, tingly, like a shot of alcohol at an inappropriate hour that she hoped nobody could smell on her breath. Now, it was pure. There were no more walls, no need to hide in the stall to talk to him. Henry was hers, and everyone knew it.

Henry waited for her by a stack of chairs. Behind him, the catering company was clearing away serving trays, stacking cups and folding tablecloths. The band had long since packed up, and anyone with children had taken them downstairs to the shuttles the company had arranged to drive them home.

"Hey," she greeted him.

"Hey, indeed. How're you doing? I thought I saw you getting along with Frank." Henry chuckled. "What was up with that? I thought you hated him."

"I don't hate him. Maybe I wasn't keen on him hitting on me back at the hotel, but I think he's smartened up. As uncouth as he may be... He has your back and cares about the company."

"He's the drunk uncle of the business."

"You'll have to teach him some manners, though. One day, you'll have a female big-wig to schmooze, and she might not take kindly to pet names."

Henry's eyes bugged as he nodded. "Frank doesn't get to talk to the women in the industry, and don't worry, I'll whip him into shape."

"Hm, is that why they call you the company dad?" She asked, tracing one finger down Henry's lapel. "You just keep everyone in line, don't you? Lay down the law. Tell all those silly men how to act."

Henry shivered as her hand travelled lower, coasted over the front of his pants while nobody was looking. He puffed his chest, a crafty look taking over his visage. He snatched her wandering hand and stepped closer, eclipsing her as he slouched over to whisper in her ear.

"Yeah, I'm the Daddy around here."

"Is Daddy ready to head home soon?"

"Let's say our goodbyes, then we'll get out of here. Come on."

Henry gave her directions that took them in the opposite direction of home. When she questioned him, he patted her thigh, assuring there was a surprise waiting at the end of the line. She tried to pry it from him while they cruised the highway in the dark. The radio played low while Henry tried changing the subject.

"Where am I going?" She asked.

Henry pointed ahead. "Get off at the next exit."

The roads narrowed, and the street lamps spread farther apart outside of the city. She slowed the car, flipped on the high beams and guided Henry's BMW over gravel hills. There were houses along the quiet strip of country line, but they were hidden behind spruce and maple trees.

"Henry, we're so far from home. I'm tired. Please tell me what we're doing."

He pointed at a driveway tucked behind a line of birch and a dented metal mailbox standing crookedly on the side of the road. "Down there. It's close now, don't worry."

They curved through a loose gathering of evergreens and pulled up to a sprawling ranch house with a double garage and topiaries along the sides. The place was dark, but a motion light illuminated the paved driveway as she pulled up and parked. Henry pulled a set of keys from his pocket and exited the vehicle. He waited for her to catch up, breath turning to vapour in the crisp night air.

"Care to explain what we're doing at some random house?" She asked.

Henry took her hand and guided her toward the front door. In the dark, she sailed by the realtor's sign and stepped onto the first stone slab leading to the front door. She watched Henry fiddle with a key, shove it into the lock and turn the handle. The door opened with a whoosh, the scent of fresh paint and lacquered wood spilling out of the massive wooden door. Henry hit a switch, and fractals of light exploded from a chandelier on high in the foyer.

"Check this out. It's so open in the center, you could drive a truck through to the backyard. And the kitchen! Oh, you gotta see the kitchen. It's lovely," Henry said as he grabbed her hand and led her through the house. "All stainless steel and marble. The island is bigger than our bed! And come this way, down here."

They journeyed down an echoing hall, footsteps casting off the hardwood floors and glass light fixtures. Henry threw open a door and ushered her inside a furnished bedroom. A sleigh bed domineered the far end of the room, all dark wood, plush duvet and pillows.

"I know you're not keen on beige, which is fine. We'll paint it. But, look at this bed! And this window overlooks the backyard—Well, I wouldn't say 'yard.' It's more of a...field. Look, look, look!"

"Henry, what is this?" She asked, peering out the window at the blackness beyond the dim orange halo of the bedroom light.

When she turned back around, Henry placed his hands on her hips, excitement simmering. He smiled, wry and lustful, and bent down to kiss her.

"Isn't it obvious? This is our house."

"What are you saying?" She gasped. "You bought this place?"

"Mhm. I've had my eye on it for a long time."

"And just how long exactly were you planning on keeping this a secret?"

"Only until I bought it."

"Henry!"

He jingled the keys in his pocket. "Well, you can't just walk into a place that's not yours."

Suddenly, she realized Henry had put this in motion weeks before, masked it under the search for a new office building. Realtors had rung Henry's phone off the hook, and she had answered them all, oblivious to his underlying motive. When it clicked, she dropped her jaw and swatted him playfully.

"I can't believe you. Right under my nose!"

"It was good timing."

"But...why? What's wrong with the condo?"

Henry guided her to the room's centre beneath the carnival glass light fixture that had to go, along with the drab paint job. "Nothing is wrong with the condo. It's just not ours. There are too many memories preventing me from letting go of the past. I want to let it all go, but I can't when I look around and remember where I was just a year and a half ago. It served me well as a place to escape, but now, I don't need to hide. I want new memories. I want to walk outside with my coffee and see you in the backyard, doing whatever you want—gardening, reading, lounging. I want to pull up after a long day at work, see this place, and know that you're inside, all of our things, our memories, our smells."

"And what if I hate it?" She asked, stifling a giggle.

"Then I'll sell it, and we'll find a new place."

"I don't hate it, Henry, but...This was such a risk."

"It paid off. I knew you'd like it. It's the perfect combination of vintage and modern. The structure is old and strong, but the renovations give it that modern class. It's like that chalet we stayed at in Sweden. Remember?"

"Of course, I remember. We didn't leave bed for two days."

Henry smiled fondly at the memory and stroked her hair back, smiling with her in his arms. She laid her cheek on his chest and breathed in a contented sigh.

"There are two offices, one for me and one for you. Two other bedrooms. One for guests and one for a kid."

She looked up at him, and all the playfulness fled from his eyes. He kissed her to avoid the inevitable questions. When will we see a doctor? What is the plan if we can't conceive? They didn't need answers, only trust that whatever battles stretched on, they would meet them hand-in-hand.

"I can't wait," she whispered. "I love you. And I love this house."

"There's one more thing," Henry cleared his throat and stepped away from her. "It's kind of important."

"What is it?"

"I'm old, babe."

"Henry, you're not that old."

"I'm an old man. I'm head of a multi-national company, y'know. I wear suits and talk to people who hemorrhage money day in and day out. I like to style myself as a professional."

She cocked her head, wondering where Henry was going with his monologue.

"It's awkward when people ask me about you, and I have to refer to you as my girlfriend. Guys like me aren't supposed to have girlfriends. It just sounds creepy. Plus, you're so much more to me than that. You're not my girlfriend; you're the love of my life. My soulmate. My queen. I want you to be my partner."

"Henry—"

He cut her off and fetched something from the table next to the bed. When he rejoined her in the middle of the room, he bent at the knee and presented her with the ring box she had already seen, yet she fluttered as though it was the first time.

"Baby... I could have flown you to a tropical island or put this in a glass of champagne. I could have done this in front of everyone at the party tonight, but all of that seemed silly. Don't get me wrong, I still want to take you to every corner of the world and give you all the nicest things, but I wanted to propose to you in our house, just you and me. So... Will you quit being my girlfriend and become my wife instead?"

Henry separated her ring finger from the rest and slid the band down to the knuckle as she blotted her sobs with the other hand, nodding and fighting joyful tears.

"You think you're so clever, don't you?" She asked as he rose to his feet and clamped her in a bone-cracking hug.

"I know I'm clever! You thought I would propose to you in front of all those people? No way."

"You hate being the center of attention."

"That's right. And although I want to shout it from the rooftops, I thought you'd prefer me asking you to marry me someplace quiet."

She gazed at the stone glittering on her finger, and a fresh wash of tears wet her cheeks. "I'm marrying you... You're going to be my husband."

"If you don't mind, I'd like to skip fiance altogether and get right to the wife thing."

"You're my husband."

"You're my wife!"

"We're getting married!"

"That's right," Henry beamed. "And we move in next month."

Breathless, she ripped her eyes off the ring and looked up at the man who gave it to her. She threw her arms around his neck, pressed her face into the column of his throat and breathed in the scent of old hotels, of pastry and coffee and drying ink on newspaper. She had a vision of him seated at a table across the room, smiling in her direction, tapping his silver pen on the spine of his planner. Two eyes, one green and one brown, drinking her in like fine wine, full of secrets and passion, indulgence and guilt. Her good Christian boy who was anything but pure or chaste.

"I'll worship you until I die, you know that, right?"

"Henry, I can't. You're making me cry. There's probably mascara all over my face!"

"I don't care," he pressed the words to her temple, swaying in languid step. "You'll never be rid of me. Think about that."

"I believe you, Henry."

His eyes flooded and no amount of squeezing suffocated the tears. The streams met the cuff of his suit jacket. He questioned why he still wore the suit and slipped out of it as her hand tugged his tie. Leash in hand, she pulled his face to her level and touched the tears coasting his cheeks, brushed her thumb over the scar two inches from the lips she kissed.

"Are you sure you want to marry me?"

"Shut up."

"I'm serious."

"And I'm telling you to shut up, Henry. Don't ask those kinds of questions."

"I just can't believe you're mine."

"That's right. So stop wondering if I'll change my mind. I've had many opportunities to reconsider. I stuck it out through times I should have walked out, and now we're standing in this gigantic house, and there's a ring on my finger... And you still think I'll back out?"

"I hope not. You're everything I've wanted my whole life. I have it all. Now I can spend the rest of it happy."

"I love you," she whispered against his bottom lip.

Henry crouched, circled her hips with his arms and carried her to the bed, murmuring, "I love you, too, baby. So much."

"Are we gonna fuck right here?"

"Right here, right now," said Henry, perching her on the bed so he could work open the buttons of his dress shirt. She lifted her legs, slipped off her heels, then wrestled her blouse off. The struggle to undress ended with their tops off, Henry standing with his knees pressed into the plush mattress, between her legs. He ran his hands up and down her thighs, nylon sighing between skin as he stroked.

"I didn't think I'd make it out of the office without fucking you. Gosh, you looked so good in that outfit. All those guys were looking at you... Especially when you dropped your phone and bent over to pick it up. That fabric stretching over your ass. You should've seen 'em staring."

"You think they're jealous of you?" She asked as Henry bunched her skirt around her hips, revealing satin and lace panties pasted to her crotch with arousal. His palm traversed her thigh, paused at the edge of the panties. He sent out two fingers to stroke the stitching along her groin, satin running like water across the tips. Henry wanted to take his time, but she was restless. He subdued her with a kiss.

"Don't get ahead of yourself. I'm in control tonight, and I want to feel and lick and taste every inch of your body before I even get my pants off, understand?"

She returned his sly look and rolled onto her stomach, parting her legs so he could admire the shiny material ruched between her cheeks.

"To answer your question... Yes. Of course, they're jealous."

"Oh, yeah? How do you know?"

Henry snickered, like a bully cornering his prey. "Those old bastards can't keep their mouths shut. Even when you were my employee, they'd hound me for details... Ask if you were single, if I was tapping you, if I'd thought about it. I'm not one to boast, but they all knew. Henry Deaver doesn't kiss and tell, but then you'd come in and smile at me like just an hour before I was balls-deep in your pussy... Like my cum was still dripping down your thigh. They knew. We weren't as covert as we thought."

"It's that naughty little smile of yours that gives it away. You flashed me that same smile a few times at the hotel, and I just thought maybe you didn't realize how seductive you looked. But you know, don't you? You know what you do to me. How hard you can make me with just one look."

Henry lifted her leg over his shoulder and kissed her ankle as he squeezed the sole of her foot, admiring the coloured polish on her toenails peeking out of the semi-opaque stockings.

"I do enjoy getting you worked up, sir."

"Let's not tonight. I'm supposed to make love to you, not treat you like my office pet. I'm marrying you, for fuck's sake."

"Then make love to your future wife. That doesn't mean I can't be your slut anymore."

"Oh, my God," Henry growled.

"Look at what I'm wearing for you. I know how much you love the way my pussy looks wearing this fabric. Thigh-high stockings aren't practical, but I figured you might fuck me in your office one last time, and I wanted to torment you."

"Not so predictable now, huh?"

She simpered and ran her toe in a line down his chest and didn't stop until she grazed his belt buckle. "Yeah, and you've been thinking about filling me up all night."

Henry grasped her ankles and pulled her to the edge of the bed to meet his groin. He gathered her up in his arms, pressing his entire weight on her frame as he kissed her desperately. When her legs grew weak, he clamped them around his hips and undulated. Hardness strained against her crotch, pulsing from the heat between her legs.

"You're right. I've been aching to fuck you. How long has it been? Gosh, this week has been so busy, I've hardly had any time alone with you. And you've been occupied with your new job. It's been a while since I've come."

She made a coo of sympathy. "Aw, my poor baby. You're probably so sensitive."

"I want you to do something for me," Henry muttered, adjusting his crotch, then giving up and undoing his belt and pants altogether. "I'd love it if you sucked my cock."

"Oh, Mr. Deaver asking for a blowjob? A rare sound to my ears."

He shook his head, grabbed her hand and pulled her off the bed to kneel on the floor. With feet spread wide, his fingers tangled in her hair, Henry waited for her to make the first move. His view of her from on high was angelic. In the prismatic light, her eyes twinkled, and he thought of whiskey in a glass, poured by a dangerous woman he'd grown to admire. She always wore a smile, but for the right person, that smile turned luscious and dim. Her eyes would relax on him, soothe him, delight if he made small conversation instead of only demands.

Henry did not demand, but as her smiling lips tightened around the midway-point of his cock and sank, he couldn't help aiding the way to her throat with one firm thrust. "Oh... Oh, Jesus fucking Christ," he droned.

"You can use my mouth, sir."

"Just suck that dick like a good girl. Do your magic on me, baby."

With free reign, she slathered his shaft with her tongue, side-to-side, up and down. She met his eyes and smiled, the tip nestled between her puckered lips. Her grasp on the base sent waves of hot blood pumping through the veins, filling him out entirely.

"I can't wait to feel this big cock pumping my pussy full of cum."

"Oh, I know, baby. We'll get there. For now, I need your mouth. All over me, please. Balls too. Come on... Eat that cock, you hungry little slut."

She chased Henry up on the bed where she could kneel between his legs in comfort. Henry enjoyed the position, too—back against a mound of pillows, his long legs spread to the lower corners of the bed, her crumpled form nestled between his thighs while her lips and tongue worked in a circuit on his length. He leaned his head back, arms thrown over the pillows. In this position, Henry bucked his hips a few times to touch his tip to her tonsils. Each time she brought up a wave of saliva that coated him and made it easier for her to slide down.

"What about that ass, big boy?" She asked after popping up from a harsh series of head-bobbing. "I know how much you love it when I play with that pretty hole of yours."

Henry sucked air in through his teeth, chin dimpling and lashes fluttering. "Mmph, not tonight. I want that pussy. Yeah, I wanna taste you."

They flipped positions. Henry pulled her onto her back away and snatched one of the pillows to wedge under her tailbone. With both hands, he hooked the back of her knees and spread her thighs wide, elevating her pelvis until his breath stroked the front of her panties. Henry nipped the fabric, pulled it into a tent and let it snap back against her lips. He nuzzled it, faint stubble scratching the delicate fabric. She let out a gentle sigh, a whimper of lust. Henry kissed the satin once, twice harder, then a third time like he'd met her mouth in a fevered touch.

She watched his long fingers sneak the fabric away, how he made shapes with his mouth like he wanted to say something but lost his voice. Henry bit his lip, kissed where he knew her clit was hiding, then prodded her folds with a long lick. He repeated the motion on the right side, along her labia, and again on he left side.

For a while, he would only meet the crest of her entrance with light kisses and whispered promises.

"Do you like it when I tease your pussy? Giving you just enough to make you wet, but not as much as you need?"

"Henry, please," she begged.

"Please, what?"

"Please give me more!"

"More of this?" Henry asked, ghosting his breath over her clit.

"No more teasing."

"You sure?"

She clutched some of his hair and pouted. He chuckled, laid his cheek on her thigh and brought his hand up between her legs. "What if I'm not done teasing? What if I want to torment you a little longer?"

He spread open her lips, applying pressure on both sides. She could almost grind against his fingers if he didn't have her at his mercy, arched over a pillow, thighs splayed wide and vulnerable. Henry tapped her clit with three fingers, stippling with gooseflesh from the wet noises the pads made on her vulva. "Oh, I love that sound," he sang. "You're so wet for me."

"Please, sir. I need your mouth."

"Is that right? Well, you've been so good and helpful. I'm sure I can give you what you want... but you have to promise me something."

"Yes, yes, I will. Anything."

"Promise you'll tell me before you come?"

"Uh-huh. I promise."

"Okay, I trust you. Don't get too close. I have other plans for your pussy."

She groaned out loud, relieved when he finally licked her clit. His tongue was a warm blanket, weighted and placed perfectly on top. He undulated the muscle, coaxing out the sensitive parts for adoration. That's how she described his attention in her mind. When Henry ate her out, it was like he'd infiltrated her head and knew the precise amount of pressure, the proper motions, when to flicker his tongue and when to envelope her clit between his lips. He kissed, sucked, lapped and moaned like a symphony, only opening his eyes once in a while to catch her staring in awe between her legs.

"Mm, baby," Henry moaned against her slit. "I can feel you getting close already. Don't go over the edge."

"I'm sorry, you just look so good eating my pussy."

Henry pulled off her, smirking, letting her glimpse his full lips shining in their glory. She couldn't stop herself from lunging for him. The taste of her own fluid on his mouth set off a carnal urge to feel his cock too. She told him to fuck her hard, to spank her ass and make her squeal like a knifed animal. She wanted that deepness, the full stretch as his thighs bounced her up and down. They laid on their sides, and Henry entered her from behind, arm hooking her leg up so he could gaze over at her exposed breasts, her glistening clit forgotten for a moment too long. In his clutches, she was helpless, and Henry used his advantage to squeeze and rub her until more of her liquid soaked between their groins.

"Can you come like this?" Henry puffed next to her ear. "If I rub your clit like that and keep fucking you, can you come?"

"Yes," she peeped. "Yes, keep going."

"Yeah? Gonna come like a good girl all over this dick?"

Again, she nodded, biting down on her lip in concentration.

"'Cause I'm gonna shoot so much fucking cum inside you, but only after you get all tight around me."

She begged him not to stop, to never stop being hers. Henry rushed his movements until she bucked once, legs fighting to fold inward.

"Is that it? That spot right there?" Henry asked. "Keep rubbing you just like this?"

He didn't need an answer; it was written all over her flushed face, denting her lip where her teeth bore down. Henry exerted every inch of stamina he had in his body until her muscles seized hard enough to snap. Mewling as she came, Henry didn't stop pestering her clit with his fingertips or pull out after he emptied as deep inside as he could fit. He gathered her up in his arms, locking fingers and lips, breathing each other's air. Pieces of his hair clung to his sweat-dampened forehead while he pulsed and shivered.

"I need you to get your panties on right away. We can't leave a mess behind."

"Are you serious?"

Henry nodded his head, unperturbed by the alarm in her tone. "Well, it's not our stuff. It's staging furniture. I just convinced the realtor to let me surprise you tonight. She probably didn't think I'd be fucking you in any of the bedrooms."

"Henry! I'm not sure where you slung my underwear."

He pushed into her one last time and grunted. "Aw, honey, mm. That's where my cum belongs."

"You're such a bad man," she giggled.

"I know I'm dirty."

"Come on, husband. Help me find my clothes. We should get back before we both fall asleep and someone finds us like this."

They gathered themselves, sighing and stretching the tension from their muscles as they dressed and took one more look around the property. She saw the house in a warm light now, as a place they could fill with memories, starting in the master bedroom where Henry proposed. He held her hand as they drove to the condo and flung themselves into bed, drained from the night's givings but wrapped in each other's arms.

The next morning, she woke to the smell of pancakes cooking on a griddle. Henry was up, two coffees deep, and buzzing from cupboard to cabinet, humming under his breath. He lit up when he caught her motion in the corner of his eye and went in for a long hug.

"Good morning, wife."

"Morning, husband," she replied, cheeks and chest prickling.

"Pancake buffet?" Henry gestured at the kitchen island.

"It's not even Christmas!"

Henry scoffed. "Who needs a special occasion to have a pancake buffet?

"I suppose I can't complain," she said.

She sat at the island, studying the foreign object around her ring finger every once in a while. When she made a fist or spread her hand, the rock sparkled and delighted her eyes. Henry caught her staring at the ring and smiling as he launched into the day's trajectory, his plan falling on deafened ears.

"Hello?" Henry waved the spatula. "Are you home?"

She sat up straight and folded her hands. "Yes. Sorry. I was distracted."

"I was saying I have to go into the office today, but only for an hour or two. Are you okay with hanging around here by yourself while I take the car? Can you believe the Beamer is still in the shop? They say take the damn thing into the dealership, we'll fix it up for free, but we'll keep it for half the week."

"Oh, well, I was supposed to pick up groceries, but I can wait."

Henry's eyebrows popped up. "Oh, no. No, no, honey. That's all right. I'll find another way there."

"Why don't I drive you to the office? Unless...You're not actually going to the office?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Henry asked.

"I don't know...You could be exacting another one of your famous covert plans and covering it up by saying you're going to the office. How do I know?'

Henry tipped his head back and laughed as he tended the food sizzling on the stovetop. "Oh, sweetheart. No. I promise, no more tricks for a while."

"Sure," she said with a sly edge on her tongue.

"You can drop me off and take the car. It's nothing secretive, I swear."

Henry piled the last pancakes onto a plate, turned off the griddle and wiped the counter clear of flour and coconut flakes. They put together an extravagant array of dressed-up breakfast food, dousing their plates in maple syrup, chocolate chips and heart-shaped strawberries as they talked and sipped coffee. Henry sat across the island holding his hand out for her to touch every once in a while. He didn't need her to hold his hand, though, subconsciously, he always reached out for her in case she wanted to feel his skin.

The morning melted seamlessly into early afternoon, and the couple ventured from the condo after a quick round of energizing couch sex. Henry thumbed the ring on her finger as they walked onto the main floor from the elevator.

"Mr. Deaver and Madame, good morning!" Johnny, the concierge, greeted them.

Henry held up their conjoined hands. "It's Mr. and Mrs. Deaver from now on, Johnny."

The tall man behind the desk made a small gasp and bowed. "Apologies, Mr. and Mrs... Might I say congratulations to the happy couple?"

"You're the first to hear, officially," Henry said.

Johnny touched his enormous hand to his chest. "What an honour, sir. This position never loses its magic."

Henry twisted his mouth. "I have some other news, Johnny. My wife and I will be moving soon. We won't be seeing you every morning."

"Ah, that's all right, Mr. Deaver. Moving up and up, I hope?"

"Yes. It's a ranch house in the country. No neighbours."

"Beautiful. Well, I wish you both the very best and look forward to helping you out until moving day comes."

"Thanks, Johnny," she said with a smile.

Johnny rose his finger as they meant to leave. "One more thing. A package arrived for you, Mr. Deaver."

The concierge ducked under the desk with a set of keys and opened the security box dedicated to the Deaver property. He pulled out a bulging manila envelope and turned it over with a dutiful grin. When her eyes glanced at the writing on the front, a knot formed in her throat. Henry's name adorned the front in practiced, sweeping hand. Henry. Not Henry Deaver or Mr. Deaver. Just his name written in black ink with flourishes on the capital H and a hand-drawn filigree beneath. She watched his shoulders stiffen as he nodded to Johnny.

"Thank you, Johnny. We'll see you later."

She followed Henry to the parking garage, staring at the envelope in his hands. Henry looked ahead, his bright demeanour trampled upon by the object he carried. When they got into the vehicle, they looked at each other, then down at the package.

"What is that?" She asked.

"I think it's from Mary. That's her handwriting."

She swallowed the knot in her throat, but it had doubled in size and refused to budge. "What now? She's not supposed to bother us anymore."

"I know," Henry breathed. "I can't... You open it."

She tore into the envelope and pulled out a letter accompanied by a DVD in a flat jewel case and photocopies of ruled paper scrawled with notes. Henry nodded at the letter, signalling her to read it aloud.

"Dear Henry... I know there's little chance of getting a private audience with you now that we're legally separated, and the company is in the process of moving. You probably have your hands full and do not wish to hear from me either way. I understand your need to stay away, hence the letter and no phone call. What needs to be said cannot be summed up in a brief call, so I will try to keep this to a few pages.

I wanted to start off by apologizing. It's too late for apologies, and you must think I'm off my rocker to have even considered coming to you with this. Still, I'm not looking for acceptance, sympathy or anything but the need to fill you in on the blank spaces that must have driven you crazy over the last couple of years. The way I scorned you was wrong. A wife should respect her husband in all forms, and answer to him when he calls. I ignored you and purposely drove a wedge between us in order to distance myself from you and our collective failure.

By now, I'm sure your new girlfriend told you what I told her. It should come as no surprise that when I say "failure," I mean our inability to have a child.

When I received the news, and you were nowhere to be found, I felt the clutches of the Devil himself reaching for me. God does not make mistakes, which is how I know we were being punished for our sins, and since the results indicated you were the weaker factor, I can only assume the punishment was meant for you, and by extension, me. I know you have berated me in the past for my strong beliefs, but I cannot compromise my relationship with God for anyone's comfort. I know in my heart, his word is law, and if we couldn't produce a child, lying together would be straying down the path of temptation.

There were things you wanted me to do that I could not, in good conscience, provide for you—sex acts no married couple should have an interest in performing. If I'd have known of your devious tastes early on in our relationship, perhaps I wouldn't have married you. You resisted His word and acted on selfish impulse, spoke of wicked things with your colleagues, and Lord knows what other things I didn't catch wind of. I had to escape your sin yet remain your wife through the bad and the worse, as I pledged before God until death.

I do not judge you, as you are no longer my husband, and I know God will assess your choices in his divine eye. I don't have to worry about the unclean thoughts that live inside of you—they have no power over me; they aren't a reflection of my heavenly worth. If anything, I hope you are happy and have all the freedom one who strays from God can expect to have in this world. I pray for your soul each night and hope you do not meet the eternal fires.

I should have told you, but I was stricken with unbearable grief. I hated you. I fell out of love. I can't describe how, but I felt if I touched you, knowing what I knew then, God would punish me. Please understand everything I did, I did in the name of the Lord and with concern for my immortal soul. Call me selfish. I was and am, to this day, a selfish woman. But you were good to me, up until a certain point.

I cannot forgive your infidelity and can only pray you to seek repentance for your sin, though I will admit I did not care to make it right at the time. My silence was meant as punishment, but only God can dole penance, and in shutting you out, I acted in his name when I shouldn't have. I will spend the rest of my days begging His forgiveness and praying for you, Henry.

This package includes the evidence I've compiled of your cheating. You should know now I no longer seek vengeance. I simply want to scrub my life of all traces of you, and figured you might want to gaze upon your transgressions. Or throw them out. It's up to you now. Sincerely, Mary."

Henry was quiet for several minutes as he digested the contents of the letter. She found a pamphlet for the Evangelist Church of God among the pages and scowled.

"Wow, religion really makes people say some crazy stuff," she muttered, hoping to get a sound out of her fiance. Henry pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He motioned for the letter and gave it a half-hearted scan before crumpling it in his fist.

"Fuck that woman. Fuck that life."

"Sounds like a story."

He puffed, scoffed, burned a hole into the letter written in Mary's graceful hand.

"But you don't have to tell me."

"She's right," Henry said. "I was different back then."

"I know you were."

"How come you've never asked?"

His question nipped the skin on the back of her arms. "The same reason I don't ask other people about their religion. That's their business. You were raised a certain way, but you changed. I know you were put in a cage, Henry. You made a mistake, but it's not the eternal damnation Mary says. Your marriage was practically over. Unless... You cheated before us?"

Henry whipped a look at her, gaping and wordless. She shrugged as a platitude and coughed over a laugh. "Well? How can I not suspect? Mary says you cheated, Frank says you didn't, but I don't trust either of them as far as I can throw them, Henry!"

"Look, I know!" Henry barked, and she pressed her back to the door. "You've gotta believe me, sweetheart. I'm trying to prove to you every day that I'm not this monster she wants me to be!"

"What's on these discs? They don't have labels. Am I going to watch this and find out something you don't want me to?"

His jaw set like he was about to explode. Air escaped his nostrils, and he glared forth at the wet cement wall beyond the hood of her car. Above, the building's pressure crushed out all sound, and Henry became aware of his breath, the tension in his windpipe.

"No. I don't know. I have no idea what's on those DVDs. If she got her private investigator to film me, it's probably just you and I making out in the car. What would be incriminating about that?"

"Did you lie to me that night in Paris?"

A dissonant, heavy silence fell over the man in the driver's seat. His skin turned sallow, and her eyes eclipsed to see the sickly guilt on his face.

"That night, you told me you left her. You said you asked for the divorce, and she just gave up. Was that a lie? Did you say that just to get me to go?"

Condemned by another bout of silence, Henry hid the colour of his ears behind hunched shoulders. "Baby, I was in love. I am in love with you. It's only ever been you! I needed you with me so bad. She knew we were done. She knew it. Divorce was not a foreign word."

"Just tell me straight. Did you put it in stone that night? When you flew me ten hours to Paris to be with you?"

"No. I didn't. I went home, said goodbye to her, she gave me the cold shoulder, I cursed, and she got angry with me. I told her I was finished, and then I left. Maybe I didn't flat out say I want a divorce, but it was implied."

"I'm curious to see what's on these discs," she said.

"Sweetheart, I will watch them with you, totally confident there's no evidence of me with any other woman."

"Good," she nodded. "Because you're mine. Maybe I'm the bad one for not caring. If you're bad, I'm worse. I don't give a fuck about you cheating on her, and this is the first time I've ever admitted it out loud. You're mine, Henry. You belong to me. She knew what she had and uses faith as an excuse for hiding a horrible secret from you!"

"Good Lord, I don't want to cry about this again," said Henry.

"Fuck it, Henry, just like you said. Fuck her and fuck the life you had. Your ass is mine now," she stuck her ring finger in the air. "Like, forever."

Henry pouted and melted into her lap. She quickly ran her hands through his hair as he moaned against her knee. "But what about our family?"

"We'll figure it out, babe. I promise. Until then, just keep shooting loads inside of me, and we'll see what happens."

He burst with laughter and lifted his rosy face to kiss her. "That's such a you thing to say in a time of crisis."

"I told you last night and back at the hotel... I'm with you. I'll back you in everything you do and make sure not a day goes by you wish you were somewhere else."

"I have absolutely no doubt of that, sweetheart. Goddamn it, I love you... Wifey," he giggled.

"But how hot would it be to have sex while watching DVDs of us hooking up in the Beamer and touching on patios and shit?"

"So hot. I've been thinking about it, and I've concluded it is very fucking hot."

"All right, hubby. Let's put this shit behind us forever and get busy getting married and having babies. We have places to go!"

"Yeah," Henry grabbed her hand and nodded. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

#henry deaver x mistress #bill skarsgard #bill skarsgard smut #bill skarsgard fanfiction #castle rock fanfiction #henry deaver

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slipping-through-my-fingertips · 3 years ago

Text

Music for the Soul

Summary: Soulmate AU where the song your soulmate is thinking of gets stuck in your head.

This fic is inspired by and gifted to @yellowpaintpots.

Notes: canonical, this is S2 E6 and a little beyond but it’s not exactly like the show obviously.

AO3

Kurt Hummel was used to not fitting in. At McKinley High, he was often an odd man out. He did partner projects alone, he held his tongue around bullies and had no one to complain to, and most days, he had an entire lunch table to himself. No one sat with the kid in weird, homemade clothes unless there was no other choice.

What kept him going was music. He had one earbud in as he walked down the halls. Choosing from playlists his mother used to listen to, Broadway soundtracks sung by people still performing on stage today, and to the thrill of his father, rock classics. If Burt Hummel had passed anything onto his son, it was his music tastes and the fantastical idea of soulmates.

The image of a white knight coming to save him by serenade was one that haunted him before he fell asleep. A boy, which little eleven-year-old Kurt held close to his heart, picked out by the universe meant just for him. Even when he started to find the fantasy a little too cheesy, it kept Kurt going until he found the glee club.

No one could touch him or change him because there was someone out there who would love him exactly the way he was.

The New Directions were a hot mess when they started, of course. The 5 of them weren’t winning any competitions when they first found themselves in the choir room but they were five misfits who finally had friends. People who understood the passion of music and an adult who shared that same passion and would hopefully guide them to their dream futures.

Just months later, they became a mixture of a dozen sophomores and freshmen with a Sectionals win under their belt all ready to face the Dalton Academy Warblers in a few weeks. With Regionals looming over them, glee had become much messier than usual. With plenty of in-fighting about solos and song choices, the choir room was always a jumbled, loud mess. That is until Mr. Schue came up with the idea for a school musical. It was taking their minds off of Regionals for the time being.

Kurt was all too happy to be auditioning for a role instead of sitting in the back row wishing he had a shot at a solo. His voice was too unique for Ohio. But someday, he knew, it would get him to Broadway. He held that thought close to his heart while tuning out Rachel’s insistence bickering.

Yesterday, Mr. Schue had decided their school musical was going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Kurt loved cult classics as much as the next person but he wasn’t sure how Mr. Schue had gotten this approved by Figgins. It seemed too risqué for high schoolers.

He only hoped whoever his soulmate was enjoying the soundtrack he had stuck in his head this week.

Kurt planned on auditioning for Riff Raff. Already putting mental outfits from his closet to wear. The wound of Mr. Schue assuming he’d play Frank N. Furter based solely on the fact that he was gay was still fresh but his audition was going to blow everyone away.

He had chosen “Dammit Janet” for his audition despite it being a Brad and Janet duet. Quinn, who was hoping for Magenta, was going to be his partner. They had joked about the main roles already being off the table before auditions; it was clear Mr. Schue had chosen Finn and Rachel for the leads. It was hard to be upset when Quinn had instantly offered to do a joint audition with him. Their voices went so well together and Kurt liked spending time with her.

Ever since Kurt and Mercedes had their stint as Cheerios, they had gotten closer. The three of them even had a weekend sleepover this past Saturday. Mercedes had dumped the Cheerios but Kurt stayed on and Quinn had just gotten back on the squad after her dismissal last year. Coach Sue had them sing during practice last week and Quinn was waiting for him after their showers with the suggestion of a double audition song.

They had been having rehearsals in the auditorium during their shared free period and twice after glee club on days when it wasn’t already reserved. As the day came closer, Quinn offered her house to practice in since her parents were rarely home and so Finn wouldn’t become Rachel's spy. Though, Kurt assured her Finn was much too engrossed in video games to bother with their rehearsals.

Since they increased their run-throughs, Kurt’s had one song in his head all morning. In case the lyrics weren’t already ingrained into his head, he had his own little concert in his head. Just after lunch, that changed. A mere 3 hours until his audition after school his soulmate’s music had taken root. As much as Kurt was willing to bow down to the queens of pop, what he wouldn’t give for 5 minutes of something other than Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”. This bubble gum pop song had gone from ‘oh, that’s a good song to scream in the car’ to ‘if I hear it one more time, I’ll rip my ears off’ fairly quickly.

It hadn’t helped that his brain went from one song on repeat to another.

As he sits in geometry, he tries to hear Mr. Finnegan’s explanation of arcs but his brain has other plans.

Let you put your hands on me in my skin tight jeans.

Kurt knows it’s just a song but the image is so clear in his head.

Smooth, soft skin. Obviously, someone who used lotions regularly, Kurt expected nothing less from his soulmate. Neatly trimmed fingernails so they wouldn’t catch on Kurt’s pants when fingers trailed up to cup his knee. The grip would be teasingly light. He never let his fantasies get too far. Especially outside the privacy of his bedroom. In all honesty, even when he was alone in his bed at night envisioning the same kind of scenario, Kurt didn’t really know what came next. He wasn’t even sure what kissing really entailed.

What if his soulmate is ready for...certain things...Kurt’s not even to verbalize yet. What if he’s imagining their first meeting very differently then Kurt, who’s hopeful they’ll have coffee or a meal together before they do anything besides maybe hand-holding. The touch of the fingertips is as sexy as it gets, unless you ask Katy Perry it seems.

He spends the rest of math wondering what the boy with Katy Perry in his head must look like. Kurt wonders if his soulmate wears bright colors like his idol or maybe Katy is a secret shame that he’ll only share with Kurt.

…

Blaine liked fitting in. He enjoyed the uniform for many reasons. One, he thought the blazer looked stylish. It was also nice knowing what you had to wear every day, one less thing to worry about people judging you for. Plenty of people at his old school picked on him for his bow ties but at Dalton, everyone had neckwear. The standard blue and red striped tie. He liked how neat it was; there was a certain way to wear said uniform.

Everyone was the same here. No typical hierarchy of jocks and cheerleaders. Only the Warblers stood out simply because everyone knew them.

How could you forget a group of boys singing acapella at all hours of the day?

Blaine might joke that they’re teenage rockstars but really they are just a group of talented guys who liked to sing.

The Warblers were the first real friends he ever had.

When he was still attending public school he held tightly to the idea of his soulmate since it seemed hopeless to wish for friendship. Not when he was being harassed for a sexuality he wasn’t sure of yet and being pushed to the ground in the parking lot for it.

But a soulmate was a guarantee. Everyone had one. By the time Blaine reached eighth grade, he knew. All of those middle school bullies had used words Blaine didn’t quite understand until that moment.

He was surrounded in the parking lot after school having missed his bus because someone had stuck gum in his curls during last period. That was the day Blaine started to seriously consider investing in some gel. Maybe that would prevent some bullying. Anyway, he was surrounded, being literally kicked around by a group of soccer players and friends.

Other students had gathered to watch the so-called fight but Blaine thought their chants would only grab the attention of a teacher or so he hoped. No one came quickly. He had enough injuries by the end for his mom to insist on a trip to the ER. A big black eye and sprained his wrist along with plenty of bruising on his limbs.

But he honestly didn’t remember getting hurt beyond the initial pushing to the ground. When the bullying got bad like this he pulled out those daydreams. This time around it wasn’t this blurry image of hand holding, there was a boy. Blaine hadn’t seen his face but his voice was soft and comforting, inviting Blaine in. There was an outstretched hand just out of reach for Blaine to take. Blaine knew then. His soulmate was a boy.

When everything was over and he was being released by the doctor, all he knew was there was some boy built perfectly for Blaine just waiting to be found. Waiting for him.

He hadn’t even been upset by his injuries because he was sitting with these thoughts of ‘how do I come out to my parents?’

Instead of deciding that day, he kept those daydreams close to his heart for the next year and a half. Until the issue of high school came out and Blaine didn’t want to go back to public school. To his surprise, both of his parents took it well. They were more concerned for his safety than his sexuality. Together, they decided on Dalton. A private school with a zero tolerance policy for bullies. That was that.

He still had his doubts at Dalton. Was he really good enough to be a lead soloist let alone go onto Broadway someday? Could he make it out of Ohio? In those moments, Blaine still came back to his soulmate. Someone, no matter what came, Blaine would have by his side.

When he imagined his soulmate, Blaine could never truly figure out what he’d look like. All he saw was that outstretched hand. Usually, people could draw up a picture in their heads based on the music they heard.

For Blaine, the genre of music didn’t help. His soulmate was clearly someone with mixed taste.

Today’s selection was...a musical. Blaine wasn’t familiar with the characters Brad and Janet but he had looked it up at lunch. Some kind of cult classic people went to see in the weeks leading up to Halloween. It was October so it made sense for the soundtrack to be stuck in his soulmate’s head. Blaine wondered if he had gone to see it, wondered who he saw it with.

The Warblers thought he was crazy. Imagining that his soulmate was off with some other person. It was rare to date seriously before meeting a soulmate but Blaine always told them the same story of his parents. Both of them had been in very serious relationships before they met. Hell, his mother had been engaged. Neither of them thought they’d meet their soulmate, which was also fairly rare but had happened.

When they met, they didn’t drop everything to be together. The wedding was put on hold but his father hadn’t broken up with his girlfriend right away. His parents wanted to be together only if they agreed with the universe’s choice.

Blaine knew his dad had been wary of his mother’s music taste. Pam had been deep into her metal phrase in her early twenties. His dad, Robert, was not a fan. He loved classical music. Forever dooming Pam to hum music without lyrics meanwhile Robert was cursed with “nonsense yelling” as he called it. Lucky, both of their music tastes had shifted over the years to have more overlap. Though, Blaine and Cooper had been subjected to dinners with a mixtape of Def Leppard and Bach.

They got together in the end, which was the important part, but what if they hadn’t chosen each other? What if Blaine’s soulmate was deeply in love with someone else and he’d spend the rest of his days loveless and alone?

When he voiced these thoughts aloud, his friends usually told him what a downer he could be, which tended to shake those fears away. If his parents, different as they were, still fell in love it would happen to him too. It was just a matter of when.

…

The next day at lunch, Mercedes was fretting over her soulmate.

“What if he’s super young, Kurt?”

“What makes you think that?” He asked, stabbing his salad.

“He’s got The Backyardigans theme song in his head again,” she sighed. “He got to be like 7. I’m just not comfortable with that.”

“It’s an age gap for sure,” Kurt agreed, but he’s fairly sure Sam Evans was singing that song after PE today, “or maybe he just has younger siblings. Don’t let your only-childness cloud your judgment.”

She hummed in agreement and pushed her tater tots around.

It was sort of a hard way to figure out your soulmate unless they were obvious about what music they had playing in their heads.

Some people, like Mr. Schue, we’re pretty obvious. He had been singing in the auditorium when Ms. Pillsbury found him. It was a pretty clear-cut match. As far as Mercedes was concerned, Kurt is sure she’ll overhear Sam’s humming soon enough.

He doesn’t want to spoil anything for his best friend nor does he want to be wrong. Soulmate meetings only come once in a lifetime.

Well, the first soulmate meeting that is.

There are plenty of people, like his dad, who lose a soulmate too soon and are gifted another one later in life. Kurt was so happy when he introduced Burt and Carole at parent-teacher conferences. They had just been listening to the Wicked soundtrack in the car ride over and Carole Hudson did not strike Kurt as the type of person who knew “I’m Not That Girl” by heart.

“Are you nervous about auditions?” Mercedes asked. “The list goes up today after glee.”

“Not at all like,” he shrugged, “I think Quinn and I did well.”

“Oh no, Kurt, we crushed it,” Quinn said, sitting down with her lunch.

He smiled at her. Quinn went on to compliment Mercedes on her audition, having heard part of it from outside the audition. She would’ve been inside with Kurt to watch but Coach Sue wanted to meet with her head Cheerio about their upcoming competition. From what Quinn had told them via text, Sue was going all out at practice today.

“She doesn’t want us to be late,” Quinn said. “That list better be up right away.”

“We should change before glee,” Kurt suggested.

“Good idea.”

Once Quinn had sat down the rest of the New Directions filed in. With interlocking pinkies, Santana and Brittany wandered over taking the last two seats available.

“Cheerios practice is gonna be hell, hope you’re up for the challenge Hummel,” Santana said.

He shot her a short glare.

“Kurt always understands the assignment, Santana,” Quinn quipped back.

Brittany nodded in agreement smiling at Kurt from across the table. She gave him a small wave half hidden by her lunch tray. In return, Kurt waved back just as shyly.

They had an interesting friendship. Kurt had kissed Brittany before. He was sure it hadn’t phrased Brittany as it had him. After all, she had kissed almost every boy in school. Some kind of record, he thought.

They sort of dated for like a week when Kurt was trying to convince himself he was straight. When he firmly realized he was kidding no one, not even himself, they broke up. Since then, he and Brittany had remained close. They were both Cheerios and in the glee club, it made sense.

He was happy to have Brittany in his life, even if that meant Santana by extension came with her. Santana was fine outside of the public eye. If the Unholy Trinity incited Kurt to their sleepovers, Santana was a different person. She put up a front at McKinley, extremely similar to the one Kurt attempted when he dated Brittany.

Few are privy to why she did this, Quinn and Kurt knew and he was fairly certain Mercedes did as well. She was very perceptive that way. Brittany was Santana’s soulmate. It explained so much about their relationship. Always in sync, completing each other perfectly, a literal better half.

Honestly, it gave Kurt so much hope that everyone’s soulmate was like that. A missing puzzle piece.

He really hoped his soulmate listened to more than just Teenage Dream because the lyrics were slowly creeping into his everyday language.

Usually, Kurt found himself hyper-focused in glee club. He got an energy boost just from walking into the choir room. Like a light switch turning on. His focus wasn’t always on whatever lecture Mr. Schue was pursuing, sometimes he watched his fellow glee clubbers (catching himself up on drama just by sideways glances), or mentally mapping out his next performance.

Today, Kurt wasn’t able to do any of those things. With the soundtrack of Teenage Dream (again) in his head, all he was thinking about was the center of a bulletin board with the cast list for The Rocky Horror Show on it. How far down the list was Riff Raff? How many names came before his?

Someone was snapping in front of his face. Kurt shook himself from his daydream to find Mercedes.

“Boy, wake up!” She said, “cast list is about to go up.”

Either glee club had gotten shorter or Mr. Schue was putting it up early.

…

Blaine didn’t really understand why the Warblers were concerned. Doing an improv performance was not new to them. In fact, Blaine had done three already this school year and he was only a freshman.

The first one he did had been way back in September, he hadn’t even been an official Warbler yet. Warbler Tradition said: all potential freshman recruits were required to perform again after their auditions with the whole group. It was a solid way to see if they fit in well with the other established Warblers. Blaine fondly remembers vibing along with the older Warblers and fellow potentials to a medley of Pink songs. None of the freshmen had solos but it was still a fun time.

At the time it seemed like all of Dalton fit into the choir room and surrounding hallways but in reality it was the entire freshman class. Improv performances weren’t something any middle schooler had seen before but the upperclassmen of Dalton knew the Warblers had plenty of improvs to come for the rest of the school year. The first one was special. Just for the newbies.

Three days after that performance, Blaine had gotten word that he was to be a new Warbler and two months after that he was granted his first solo. Now, he was slowly becoming their go-to soloist for almost every performance for an audience. Blaine had become a vital part of all rehearsals for the most part. He was honored by their commitment to him honestly and he loved to sing however, a week and half of preparations was a tad excessive. Still, he walked his way to rehearsal positive that the council would have at least five points to discuss before they actually started singing.

He walked into the choir room shaking his shake fondly and smiling at the Warblers already present.

The council were always first to arrive. Together. Then it was a mixed bag of who followed. Usually Trent was there, punctual as always, and Blaine took the seat between Trent and Jeff.

The room was mostly full already.

Nick came in shortly after Blaine and sat across from him immediately asking if there had been a pop quiz in Stanton’s class earlier and was rather relieved to find out Jeremy was a filthy liar, who liked to start trouble. Before Jeremy could get on Blaine’s case about being overly sincere, the meeting began.

Wes banged his gavel and welcomed everyone before gesturing for David to read off last meeting’s notes. Once the talking portion of the meeting was over, they pushed the furniture aside to make room.

...

A week later Kurt was happy to have one musical under his belt but thankful the performance run had been short. If you thought the New Directions were dramatic during competition weeks, it was nothing compared to their musical rehearsals.

Now, Mr. Schue was having the brilliant idea to host a boys vs girls competition. Of course, Kurt hadn’t wanted to work with the boys. They were sure to exclude his musical talents and he doubted he could get them to agree to any of his costume suggestions.

This was hardly a challenge. It was bland and they had done it already.

Kurt was sitting in the back of the choir room pouting. Yes, pouting. Full on arms crossed, head down, and bottom lip puffed out. Until, Mr. Schue had an actual brilliant idea, Kurt’s suggestion of course, to spice things up.

The boys did not appreciate Kurt’s six hours of work putting two posters together. Even with the assignment to bring more feminine qualities into their performance, the boys ignored his input. So, when Puckerman suggested Kurt spy on the Warblers, he was thankful for a reason to leave. He packed up his projects and headed home to change.

When Mr. Schue found out who their competition was, Rachel and Kurt did some googling. He had seen the all-boys school uniform and was fairly sure he could replicate it with clothes he already had.

He pulled some looks from his closet. Once satisfied he looked up directions to Westerville.

Dalton was huge. It looked like a museum. How on earth was Kurt going to find their choir room? He hoped there were signs inside or a map.

As he walked down a spiral staircase much too pretty to be in a school, he decided to just ask for directions. He was going to get lost if he kept walking without help.

When the boy he stopped turned around, all Kurt could think was ‘I’d love to put my hands all over you.’ Which was a ridiculous thought to have because he didn’t know this boy and where had that even come from? Oh right, Teenage Dream was still playing in his head. Thanks, Katy.

If only his soulmate knew he was using this song to fantasize about running off into the sunset with another boy.

…

Blaine loved being in the spotlight. Wes would say it was because he didn’t get that kind of attention from his parents but that simply wasn’t true. Well, unless Cooper was around; he always pulled focus when it came to their parents. Older sibling privilege, he assumed.

But he was running late. He stayed behind in class to ask a question which turned into his teacher rambling. Didn’t he know the Warblers had a performance today in the senior commons and Blaine was their lead singer?

He was checking the time when someone stopped him on the stairs.

A beautiful boy. Unlike anyone Blaine had ever seen before. He almost missed his name because he was caught up in memorizing his face.

There was something said about being new, which Blaine doubted since he wasn’t in uniform, and Blaine mentioned a shortcut he knew of.

It wasn’t really a shortcut. More like the long way to the Senior Commons but less crowded. Everyone was making their way to the Warblers and Blaine wanted as much time alone with Kurt as he could get.

He wanted Kurt’s full attention. It was no wonder he instantly wanted to show off. Teenage Dream fit his vocals perfectly and Kurt was an excellent audience. In fact, Blaine was set on serenading him.

He had no way of knowing that exact song had been playing all day long in Kurt Hummel’s mind.

Afterward, Blaine lost himself in a group hug from the Warblers but Kurt’s beaming smile caught his eye. He pulled Wes and David aside, confirming his own suspicions that Kurt was spying on them first before convincing them to invite Kurt for coffee.

The four boys sat at a table. Kurt seemed very nervous now. Blaine wasn’t sure if it was because he had been caught or something else was going on. In the end, Blaine thought it best for just him and Kurt to have a conversation. Not at all because he wanted alone time with him.

This clearly wasn’t the time or place for romance.

Once they were alone the whole tale seemed to flow out of Kurt: the name calling, locker shoving, his biggest bully. Blaine could relate.

Sometimes he felt phantom pains in his right leg from Sadie Hawkins. At first, Kurt scoffed when Blaine began sympathizing. If he were Kurt, he might not believe himself.

Private schoolboy bullied? Blaine sure didn’t look like someone who lacked friends. It was fairly common knowledge that Dalton had a zero tolerance policy for harassment. So, he explained. As brief as he could about his own experience with public school bullies.

Kurt and he seemed to have more in common than a love for music.

He doesn't have any plans to see Kurt again though Blaine has plenty of ideas on how they could get together. Coffee at the Lima Bean. Old musicals were playing at the revival theater. Maybe another high school was putting on a play this weekend. All Blaine needed was a good enough message to ask Kurt out. He drafted plenty but none sent.

After school, Blaine knew Kurt might need an extra push. He was pretty sure classes at McKinley were done for the day.

He sent a single word. Less second-guessing that way.

Courage.

Then, he walked to the library to start writing an essay on Lord of the Flies for English.

However, he found himself unable to concentrate. Usually after a performance, Blaine had the song stuck in his head for at least a day or two afterward. In addition to humming in the weeks of rehearsals, of course. Instead, Blaine found himself thinking about Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones and oddly Livin’ On a Prayer. Both songs he thought better suited his father or Cooper’s tastes. It was a mashup of the two songs like his soulmate was hearing them simultaneously.

When he started thinking about his soulmate, there was a clear picture of someone. It didn’t take long for Blaine to bring up those blue eyes and the soft complexion of Kurt Hummel. Which was crazy thinking. He had no idea if Kurt was his soulmate.

Soulmates tended to be around the same age but just because Kurt was also in high school meant nothing. By that logic anyone at Dalton could be his soulmate too.

During his brief time with Kurt this week, Blaine heard no music from his mouth. In fact, Blaine had done all the singing. Even with half his brain saying he was nuts to think Kurt was his forever, Blaine couldn’t let the thought go.

…

Blaine’s text comes in in the midst of the girls’ performance. A wonderful mashup and excellent costumes. Tina had texted Kurt about the leather jacket idea early this week. He was very proud of how they managed to pull the looks together in such a short time. It was impressive.

Altogether, Kurt was feeling great. The boys had their rehearsal, apparently their performance was turning into an apology. Kurt wasn’t sure what they had done to Coach Beiste but apparently, she was quitting. He and Blaine were texting periodically now. No one knew it but Kurt was surely developing a huge crush on the Warbler boy.

Then, he confronted Karofsky. He didn’t want to feel the same regret Blaine did—no one messes with the Hummels.

It seemed like mere hours but in reality, it was days, Kurt was enrolled at Dalton and saying goodbye to the New Directions.

He was full on having a Vanessa leaving Troy moment here. Kurt Hummel has got to go his own way.

God was he nervous to start at a new school. In the middle of the school year too. Being the new kid was going to be hard but not as difficult as staying at McKinley would be.

When Kurt was greeted by Blaine’s smile outside the office on his first day, it made Kurt relax. At least he already had a friend here.

It isn’t until they’re walking down the hall together—Blaine insisted on escorting Kurt to his first class—that Kurt noticed Blaine was humming.

“Is that High School Musical?” Kurt asked.

“Oh, um, technically it’s the sequel.”

“What about us…” Blaine sang, “what about everything we’ve been through?”

“What about trust…you know I’ve never wanted to hurt you?”

Blaine chucked. “Cheesy but true. Such a good movie.”

“We should watch it sometime,” Kurt suggested.

Instantly, he wanted to take it back. He’s been told he can come on too strong. Especially around cute boys.

“I’d love too!” Blaine said. “I have it on DVD.”

Kurt doesn’t see Blaine again until their one shared class of the day right before lunch. He sits across the room from Blaine during history but next to him at the Warbler’s lunch table.

Most of the group has the same lunch so Kurt is introduced to them before his audition later this afternoon.

“Nervous?” Wes asked, “you shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah, from what Blaine's told us you're a great singer,” Trent added.

“He’s barely heard me sing,” Kurt replied, poking Blaine’s arm.

He only sang one line of a song to the other boy today.

“Well…” Blaine rubs his neck abashedly. “I might’ve watched some New Directions videos on YouTube.”

“Oh, I forgot Rachel uploaded those.” Kurt tunes to the other Warblers then, “I hope I don’t disappoint.”

After lunch, Blaine walks Kurt to class again. “Between you and me, you’re a shoo-in.”

“Really?” The Warblers were such an esteemed group. Not at all like the disorganized New Directions. They had also been a glee club for far longer.

“Really.”

***

Blaine has had High School Musical songs in his head all day. Whoever his soulmate is, at least he’s got good taste in Disney Channel original movies. Then as the Warblers were preparing for Kurt’s audition, the song switched. An Evita song.

His soulmate sure did love musicals. Blaine was rather happy about that. He could already picture them sitting on the couch cuddled under a fluffy blanket with any number of classic musicals laid out before them. Arguing over if it was too soon to rewatch Moulin Rouge and whose turn it was to make popcorn.

They’d be in a big city apartment. Somewhere where no one cared if they were gay. All anyone wanted to know was how they discovered they were soulmates. Their origin story.

From that point, the daydream grew fuzzy. Blaine couldn’t come up with that meet-cute story. It hadn’t happened yet and nothing his brain could come up with would ever match up with his future reality.

He shook his head, bringing himself back to the choir room.

The room was buzzing with excitement. It wasn’t every day the Warblers auditioned someone mid-semester. Of course, Kurt had special circumstances but the group was notorious for never breaking tradition.

Blaine tried to focus but it was difficult without Kurt at his side. Lately, he had been distracted whenever Kurt wasn’t around. All Blaine could hear, despite the loud room, was the song in his head.

I had to let it happen

I had to change

Then, Kurt walked in and music started to play. For a split second, Blaine thought he was imagining the words from “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” coming from Kurt’s lips. Surely he hadn’t chosen the same song as Blaine’s soulmate had in their head. He knew it couldn’t be his imagination when Trent leaned over and whispered to Blaine how much he loved this song.

Like lightning striking a tree, Blaine had a realization. Kurt Hummel was his soulmate.

Oh god, what was he going to do?

His skin was burning as if it was burned away like bark. He drooped in his seat desperate for water to put himself out with. To put a stop to the tingling sensation bubbling up under his skin.

All he wanted to do was reach out and touch Kurt. Some part of his brain was able to override that thought. He couldn’t ruin this audition for him. There was plenty of time to spend with Kurt after this, Blaine had all the time in the world to talk with his soulmate.

Soulmate.

Never did he think he would find his soulmate this soon. Gosh, they were only teenagers. They had so much life to live together. This was rare, special, to find your soulmate so quickly in life. Blaine would cherish it, he’d be thankful for this gift for rest of his days.

But how in the hell was he going to tell Kurt? It had to be romantic. Blaine always thought it would be when he finally came face to face with his soulmate, his one true love. There was so much work to be done and so little time to do it. Now that Blaine knew, he didn’t want to spend another day without Kurt knowing too.

He used to dream about running dramatically in slow motion towards each other and embracing just as it started to rain, which of course led to a fabulous first kiss in the sudden storm. But Blaine knew how unlikely that would be.

He’d just have to build a new fantasy, which he thought would be easy to do if Kurt was his so-called Prince Charming. Whatever happened was going to outweigh everything his imagination had come up with thus far.

First and foremost, he’d had to sit through a discussion of this audition, which he was barely able to pay attention to. All he wanted to do was walk up to Kurt, cup his face, and kiss him. After Kurt was finished, the council dismissed him. Blaine knew he’d find Kurt just outside the choir room because they had plans afterward but now he had no idea how he was going to sit through coffee with Kurt and not tell him.

“He’s very good,” Trent said, nudging Blaine.

He nodded in agreement. It seems most of the group concurred, Kurt was a good fit for them.

Kurt Hummel was the perfect fit for Blaine too. Even if he didn’t know it yet.

***

Kurt didn’t consider himself to be a good reader of social cues especially when his own emotions were involved. See, Finn Hudson and Sam Evans. Crushes on straight boys never ended well. With Blaine, he swore things would be different.

They were friends, classmates, and hopefully, soon they’d be fellow Warblers. Kurt was not going to mess this up. Even if Blaine was really cute and friendly and super kind and understanding. There was so much to love about Blaine, Kurt found it hard to find something he didn’t like.

He had found focusing on his dislikes of a person kept his feelings at bay. Like how messy Finn could be really shut down any romance fantasy Kurt had drawn up. Except, Blaine didn’t dye his hair like Sam, he was completely organized (Kurt had seen his dorm room; spotless), he was modest and genuine.

It made sense that everyone at Dalton wanted some of his attention. Blaine embodied Kurt’s idea of a gentleman and then some.

After his audition, Kurt sat outside the choir room waiting for his results. The council would discuss with the full group, release them, and regroup tomorrow with a vote. Kurt was waiting for Blaine to be dismissed because Blaine had promised to buy him a cup of coffee.

Some of the Warblers who were leaving had some pretty nice things to say about Kurt’s performance. Just general praise which soothes some of his initial nerves. Mostly, he just wanted Blaine to walk out with a big smile on his face. That boy couldn’t keep a secret. Kurt would know if he was in or not just by looking at his face.

Kurt was joined on his bench by a boy who introduced himself as Duncan.

“I was super nervous after my audition. I just got in at the beginning of this year so I know what you’re going through.”

Kurt felt his shoulders drop in relief. As much as Blaine tried to assure him the audition would be perfect, Kurt felt like he couldn’t relate much as the star of the glee club. Back at McKinley, Kurt rarely had center stage. Here, Blaine always had everyone’s attention.

“That’s actually great to hear,” Kurt said, with a slight chuckle.

“Seriously, Kurt, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’m a little concerned they’ll kick me out just to have your voice,” Duncan teased.

They keep talking about what it’s like to be a new Warbler since Duncan is positive Kurt will be getting good news shortly. He offers up some pointers to get on the council’s good side.

“I loved your song choice by the way, so weird because Evita had been in my head all day.”

It feels like someone’s dropped an ice cube down his back. He sits up quickly.

Oh, Kurt thought, is this it?

“You did?” He must’ve heard wrong. There’s just no way.

“Yeah, I love that musical,” Duncan confirmed.

Could it be this easy? He wondered.

“We should hang out again soon,” Duncan told him, “I’d love to get to know you. Newbie Warblers gotta stick together.”

Kurt gives Duncan his number before the other boy wanders off. Before Kurt can get too deep into any fantasies of his soulmate, wondering if that soulmate has just left him or not, Blaine comes out from the choir room.

“Hey you,” Blaine greeted with a big smile.

“Are you allowed to give me any inclination?”

He shook his head but was still smiling wide which made Kurt feel like good news was in his near future like Duncan had said. Kurt was telling Blaine how long he had practiced the song over the weekend with Rachel and Duncan reassurances when Blaine blurted, “Duncan Samuels?”

“Yeah, we just met.”

Should he tell Blaine about them being soulmates or wait until he was sure?

But Blaine just nodded. Something was clearly bothering his friend. For now, Kurt was going to let it go because he was sure Blaine would come to him if he wanted to talk. He didn’t want to force it out of Blaine.

Kurt couldn’t even get Finn to talk to him during their warm milk chats at night. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull the information out of Blaine if he tried.

“Anyway,” Kurt said, continuing his previous line of thought, “Rachel has this whole stage setup in her dads’ basement.”

“I don’t find that hard to believe based on everything you’ve told me about her.”

After that comment, their coffee date is back on track, Kurt doesn’t bring up his potential soulmate meeting.

***

Duncan Samuels was his lifelong nemesis. As far as Blaine was considered his life began when he figured out Kurt was his soulmate and if Duncan was going to interfere with that they were now enemies. Since their coffee date yesterday, Blaine hasn’t heard a word about Duncan but he also had yet to see Kurt today. They only had one class together after lunch, which Blaine was on his way to now.

Kurt saved him a seat and delivered the news.

��Duncan and I are going for coffee today.”

Those words were devastating.

In normal circumstances, Blaine would’ve asked Kurt why he wasn’t going to rehearsal but of course Kurt wasn’t a Warbler…yet. Blaine knew the Warblers were going to announce Kurt’s membership at the end of day, which meant this was the last rehearsal Kurt wouldn’t attend.

So instead of a calmly said, normal statement, Blaine spent the next minute freaking out.

Duncan was the worst! He was going to steal Kurt away from him before Blaine ever got the chance. Well okay, the rational side of him thought, Kurt isn’t being stolen he’s going willingly.

“That’s nice,” he finally said.

There was no way for Blaine to stop Kurt and honestly no reason to try since Duncan posed no threat to Kurt. He didn’t need a protector. Blaine knew they were soulmates and he’d find a way to tell Kurt later on. At the end of it all, Kurt was his soulmate. He just knew it.

“Are you free when I get out of rehearsal?”

“For you?” Kurt asked, “of course, I’ll probably still be in the cafe.”

“I’ll come find you,” Blaine told him.

Still, all throughout Warbler rehearsal, Blaine’s attention was elsewhere. He needed to get out of here and meet up with Kurt. Wes knew it too because he pulled him aside at one point while David ushered the guys into a new arrangement.

“What’s up with you?” He asked, “I need you focused for competition.”

“I will be,” he vowed.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Blaine looked back at the other boys but they were already harmonizing.

“It’s Kurt.”

Wes smiled. “Don’t worry about him. He’s in, I can’t believe we have a countertenor on our team now. We’re going to wipe the floor at regionals.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Wesley. McKinley already knows what a talent Kurt is, he won’t be a surprise to them,” Blaine reminded him.

“Ah, but they didn’t utilize his talent,” Wes said, “it’ll shock them to see Kurt in the spotlight.”

Wes patted Blaine’s back and guided him back to the group to finish up rehearsal.

Blaine couldn’t help but check his phone again before he tuned back into rehearsal. He knew Kurt was getting coffee and that’s why he wasn’t answering his phone.

One of the best things about Kurt was when you were with him everything else was put aside. Blaine was sure if things got really serious, Kurt would shut his phone off entirely to prove a point. Right now, it was annoying as hell. Blaine needed to see a reassuring text that Kurt wasn’t running off into the sunset with Duncan Samuels.

What if his phone was turned off because the two of them were standing at the altar? Everyone turns their phones off in church.

He really really needed to talk to him. Blaine didn’t want to be the type of soulmate that holds onto that information too long. It’s like he’s lying to himself not being with Kurt.

Once rehearsal was finally over, Blaine rushed over to the on-campus cafe where he knew Kurt would be. He had to be there.

When Blaine pushed his way through the door, he saw Kurt was sitting alone nursing what looked to be a cup of tea. When Blaine approached him he could tell it was Chamomile.

“Can I sit?”

Kurt nodded but didn’t say a word as Blaine hung his bag across the back of the chair and removed his blazer.

He expected a question about the Warblers, perhaps an inquiry about his status to become one but nothing came. Kurt wasn’t even drinking his tea.

“What’s wrong? Did Duncan say something to upset you?”

“I’m fine, Blaine,” Kurt said, “Duncan didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me as usual.”

Blaine didn’t understand.

“Am I that unlovable?”

“What?”

Kurt was the most kind, sincere person he knew and Blaine had only met him a few weeks ago. He was most certainly lovable considering Blaine fell for him in just under 3 weeks

“I can’t really blame him,” Kurt continued, “it’s not his fault we aren’t soulmates.”

“You thought he was your soulmate?”

Maybe telling Kurt wouldn’t be too difficult after all.

“It’s just he made this comment yesterday that made me think…but of course I got too ahead of myself again and really I should know by now,” Kurt mumbled the last bit, “nothing ever goes to plan.”

“You can say that again.”

This cafe wasn’t a romantic candlelit dinner. He didn’t have rose petals to scatter around. There was no champagne to toast. But he had the most important thing.

Blaine reached across the table to grab Kurt’s hand. “Think of a song.”

“Why?”

“Just do it,” Blaine said.

Kurt’s face was scrunched up in a “I’m confused but I’ll trust you” kind of way.

As soon as the song hit him, Blaine opened his mouth to sing, “this could be the start of something new…it feels so right to be here with you.”

“How did you—?”

Blaine smiled at him. “Pick another song.”

“Your cares and troubles are gone. They'll be no more from now on.”

His mouth opens slightly.

“Your turn,” Blaine said, “ I want you to sing what comes to mind.”

Wasn’t the best way to prove they were soulmates to test each other?

Blaine wanted Kurt to have his own moment of realization even if he engineered it. He didn’t want their “how-did-you-know” story to be him informing Kurt about their connection. Instead, he wanted to tell people about listening to Kurt’s Warbler audition and thinking how odd it was to know the song he was going to sing before it began. Kurt’s story would start with a laugh because he imagined someone other than Blaine as his soulmate the very same day.

And wasn’t that just so silly of him?

Rather than have Kurt just sing to him, Blaine harmonized with him. This was the proof. He’d sing everything Kurt could come up with and vice versa.

“But baby, can't you see there's nothing else for me to do? I'm hopelessly devoted to you.”

“Blaine,” Kurt said. “We’re….”

He nodded.

Before Blaine even realized it, Kurt was out of his seat leaning towards him, they’re kissing. Kurt’s fingers are curved around his chin and his other hand is tickling the curls at the back of his neck. The tiny wisps of hair that always escape the gel by the late afternoon.

Blaine would happily keep his curls loose if it meant Kurt would keep his hands in his hair always. Especially, if it meant they’d never stop kissing.

Eventually, Kurt has to pull away. They’re still close enough to feel each other’s breath.

“Soulmates,” Blaine whispered.

It had been quiet while they kissed like everything else in the world just stopped. All the sounds of Dalton came rushing back all at once. The students in the halls, coffee orders being called out, and the shuffling of chairs as people came and went.

“When did you know?” Kurt asked, sitting down again.

Blaine pulled his seat around so they were closer and Kurt immediately reached for his hand.

***

3 months later.

Blaine hadn’t been upset to lose to McKinley at Regionals. How could he have been when he got to sing with his soulmate in front of a crowd? Their duet was so in sync and the crowd could tell. He doesn’t think he ever received such a loud applause.

Blaine had wanted to just be in that moment forever—staring into Kurt’s eyes hearing the words in his head just before they were said aloud, gripping his hand before pushing him into the spotlight to soak up the audience’s love.

No, Blaine was happy about Regionals. The Warblers had worked hard on the set; their second place trophy sat on the right corner of the council’s table at meetings now. What Blaine was concerned about was Kurt’s leaving.

His dorm room was empty now, the last suitcase zipped up. Blaine was sitting on his boyfriend’s mattress taking in the last moment that Kurt was a Dalton student.

“I’ll miss you too, you know, a lot,” Kurt said from the doorway.

“I know,” Blaine replied, “it’s just sad.”

Kurt took a seat next to him on the bed.

“I’ll sing to you.”

Blaine smiled. “Promise?”

“Everyday.” Kurt kissed his cheek.

They were going to be okay.

#klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #soulmate au #klaine #my fics

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themonotonysyndrome · 4 years ago

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Halcyon Heart

Serving you guys part 5 of the ‘Successors of the Future’ today! Oh god, I procrastinate this oneshot like you wouldn’t believe it! Honestly? I’m not too happy about this piece but the plot must keep moving.

In this oneshot, the names of Leona, Ace and Deuce’s kids will be reveal! I did my best to keep their names within the card games theme and overall, I think they turned out ok. I went with the deep meaning name for Leona’s son. Kudos to anyone who manage to figure out the meaning behind them!

This oneshot can’t begin without us thanking the great @tri3tri for her amazing Second Wive AU. Please drop by at her blog to see even more yandere!Malleus content.

“Well... you certainly are MC’s daughter, Renata-chan.” The headmaster sigh tiredly. Behind his mask, Crowley narrowed his eyes at the three students sitting across his desk. Said girl is at least apologetic (Crowley assumed she is, because she can barely look him in the eyes), the two boys with her - Hoyle Trappola and Rex Spade are just seconds away from passing out from sheer exhaustion, sporting scorch marks on their face, hair and uniforms.

Crowley resists pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation. And to think, his day has been going on so well too. He had finally managed to complete all of his paperwork before the end of the month, the teaching staffs aren’t passive-aggressively bickering with one another for once, and the cook in the cafeteria even left the last dessert of the day just for him!

And then came Professor Crewel kicking his office’s door down, dragging three rowdy puppies behind him and a report about scorched marks on pavements and fountain due to misconduct of magic.

When Crowley leans to the side to see which students were responsible, he could only sigh. Was it too much to ask for this generation of Trappola, Spade and MC/S not to inherit their parent’s ungodly habit of getting into trouble!?

So here there are now, three students waiting for punishments. At that moment, Crowley felt as if he was transported into the past as he stares down at them.

Crowley folded his arms across his chest and said, “Professor Crewel reported your misbehaviours and the damages done. Now, what I want to know is how this happened.” Silence. “Well? Would anyone like to share the story?”

Almost instantly, the young Spade spoke up. “It’s all Hoyle’s fault!” An indignant hiss of, “Shut it, Rex!” interrupted him, but the boy ignored it and pressed on, “He dropped a food tray on MC/S-san when she was eating.”

“Oi! I told you already! It was an accident, alright!?” Young Trappola is quick to defend himself, disgruntled about the whole affair. Beside him, Renata just rolled her eyes. Despite looking so much like her father, she’s surprisingly expressive with a lit fused of a temper.

“An accident? While young Trappola did commit a mistake, does it warrant an... explosive reaction, MC/S-san?” Here, Crowley stares pointedly at the girl.

Renata sigh. “No, headmaster.”

“In the future, please restrain yourself MC/S-san. Now then, punishment.” The three of them groaned, and unimpressed, Crowley tilt his head at them. “Keep that up and I will extend your punishment to a month.”

The teenagers straighten up after that. Good. So he continues.

“The three of you will be cleaning the Hall of Mirrors starting tomorrow, right after your last class of the day. Now, because the damages are only minor, your punishment will only be for a week. If I catch any reports that the three of you misbehaving again, I will extend the punishment. Is that clear?” Crowley demanded.

“Yes, headmaster.” The three of them drone simultaneously.

And with that, Crowley dismisses them. Once the door is click shut, voices are raised outside - the three of them are bickering again - before footsteps carried them away.

The headmaster could only wordlessly shake his head. Looks like he’s in for another rough few years until these three graduated.

Just like old times.

Outside at the quiet hallway, the only noises that can be heard this evening are Hoyle’s heated complaints, Rex’s put out sighs and Renata’s outwardly annoyance (in the inside though, Hoyle’s flying food tray was a pleasant surprise. Sometimes, it’s nice not to use Observer all the time).

“Quit your complaining already, Hoyle.” Rex interjects when he could no longer tolerate his whining. “At least the headmaster didn’t expel us!”

“Yeah, yeah. And you!” Hoyle said and focused his attention on Renata. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow when he glares at her. “This is not just my fault, you know! Got anything to say about that?”

Renata nodded, her face turned serious though her lips struggle not to twitch into a cheeky grin. “Yes. Dodge better next time.”

Rex gapes at her, incredulous and certainly not expecting that comment while Hoyle bristles.

“This is going to be a long week.” Rex muttered as Renata pretend to be nonchalant when Hoyle demanded an apology.

True to his word, their week shaped up to be rather long and busy. Not only did the three of them were reprimanded by the headmaster and their Dorm Leaders, they also had piles and piles of homework and club practise on top of their punishment. By the time Thursday roll by, they were ready to collapse from exhaustion.

Tonight, Rex had to drag Hoyle by his arm as they head towards Heartslabyul’s main mirror that leads to Hall of Mirrors. A few of their dorm members watch their shenanigans with amusement while others snickered; it’s practically known throughout their dorm of their punishment.

“For fuck’s sake, Rex, lemme go! Why can’t we let Renata clean the mirrors tonight for once!?” Hoyle exclaimed, doing his best o wrestle his arm free but surprisingly, Rex is a lot stronger than he lets on.

“Do you want her to complain to the headmaster that we’re slacking off?” Rex suggests. “And extend our punishment? Look, the sooner we can finish off cleaning the Hall of Mirrors, the sooner we can have our free time again.”

“I hate that you make sense.” Hoyle grumbled but decided not to argue any further.

When they step through the mirror, they found that Renata is already there, waiting for them. Her back was facing them, and she’s currently talking to... no one.

“ - was ok. I mean, with all things considered and I didn’t use any of my spells so shut up, Cherry.” A voice - it sounds like a woman - chatter back. “It’s just cleaning the mirrors of the seven dorms, no big deal. Mm-hmm, I promise not to throw fire at people next time, Mama.” The woman - apparently, Renata’s mother - said something, but it’s muffled. “Will do, Mama. Goodnight, I love you too.”

Renata put something - not a phone. It’s too small to be one - into her blazer’s pocket and turn around.

She greets them, “What kept you guys? I already swept the floor and dusted the walls.”

“This one wanted to ditch.” Rex reply, pointing a finger at Hoyle before he grabs the mop and bucket.

“Oi! You didn’t have to tell her.” Hoyle snapped.

“Uh, did you think on how that’s going to be for you if it’s only me and Spade-san doing the cleaning?” Renata asked, looking and clearly judging how many brain cells he has.

Hoyle just told her to shut up and picks up a wet sponge from a spare bucket filled with soap to start cleaning Scarabia’s mirror.

It’s quiet as they clean up the Hall of Mirrors. As Rex mop the floor, he could see Renata focusing on her task in wiping the mirror that he and Hoyle just used. During the Entrance Ceremony, he could only catch a glimpse of her from the back of the crowd, confused as to why his seniors are mumbling and commenting about her appearance.

Only the blind couldn’t see how beautiful the girl is. If Rex is the poetic sort, he would liken the night of a full moon and stars to her. But honestly, other than her pretty face, he doesn’t understand why their seniors tend to give her a wide berth whenever she walks by.

Hell, he even noticed that her own dorm members are polite yet strangely distant with her.

Rex wonders if she’s lonely. “So, uh, you’re pretty good with magic, huh MC/S-san?” He blurted out. He surprises himself at his sudden boldness.

Thankfully Renata didn’t find it strange or awkward. “More or less. Magic always fascinated me, even when as I was a kid. I’ve been testing the limit of my magic ever since.” Pleased at herself when Heartslabyul’s mirror gleam under the bright light, she moves on to Savanaclaw’s.

“What about you, Spade-san?” Renata threw his question back.

“It’s alright, MC/S-san! You can call me Rex.”

“Ah, then please call me Renata. Since you extend the same courtesy and all.”

An easy conversation flow between them after that. Occasionally, Hoyle would join them, his brand of sarcasm or snarkiness here and there but overall, it was nice to talk to him. And when he threw a rather malicious teasing to Renata, she threw right one back. It strangely morphs into a playful banter between the three of them.

Cleaning felt less like a punishment after that.

When they finally reach the final day of their punishment, something happened.

While Hoyle and Rex shared the same class - 1-A - Renata is in 1-B. And it just so happen that her negligence came to bit her in the ass.

After History lesson ended for class 1-A and Hoyle was the last one to leave due to Professor Trein holding him back to talk about his recent subpar assignment, a Heartslabyul student from 1-B called him out.

“Extra assignment? This is the worst...” Hoyle sigh in dejection once he finishes reading the piece of paper given to him by the teacher. Dangling the piece of paper in low spirits, Hoyle resigned himself to many, many trips to the library so this extra assignment can boost his grade from F to a D.

So lost in his thought, he completely missed that his name being called. It was only when a student - his dorm member - grab his shoulder that he broke out from his train of thoughts.

“Hey, you’re Hoyle Trappola, right? The one that was nearly flambé alive, yeah?”

Hoyle bristle. Is that what people are calling him now? The flambé dude? Urgh, this is seriously all Renata’s fault! “What do you want?” He snaps. Unfortunately for him, the Heartslabyul student was unfazed of his bad mood.

“Listen, I need you to do something for me. I shared the same class as that Diasomnia girl, 1-B. Earlier today she left this in class.” Hoyle’s dorm member explain and showed him a plain-looking journal. “She left quickly and when I saw her at the Main Street, she was with Bakari Kingscholar. Anyway, I just thought that since you and Rex are cleaning the Hall of Mirrors with her, you can give this back.”

“Why are asking me to do it? You just said that you saw her at the Main Street!”

“Yeah and with Kingscholar. I couldn’t approach her; not when that guy glared at me and my legs froze up. So here you go!”

And with that, he shoves the journal into Hoyle’s arms, making him fumble with the paper and journal before they could drop. “Oi! I’m not doing your fucking errand - ” Hoyle shouted, but by then, his dorm member had long jog off with a cheerful wave goodbye. “Seriously... this is so not my day...”

As Hoyle made his way to the library, he absentmindedly flips through the pages of the journal. Not all care that it was rude to rummage through others’ belonging. Notes about various classes mostly filled the pages; others are just mindless doodles that the girl probably drew out of boredom.

“Isn’t there anything good in here? Something that can knock her off her high horse maybe.” Hoyle murmurs to himself as he continues to flip the pages. Rex might be willing to let it slide that it was Renata that landed them in trouble with the principle but not him. Hoyle felt that a prank would even the score between them.

By the time he scored himself a nice, quiet table in the corner of the library, he reaches to the last page of Renata’s journal. His eyes widen at the sight of a strange rune that took up the entire white page. There were even some notes written around it. “Well, well, what is this? Communication rune? This looks interesting...”

Later that night as Rex was about to step through the mirror, he felt something... not quite right. Perhaps he ate something bad during dinner. His uneasiness is not going to dampen his high spirits though. Finally, tonight is their last day of punishment! Tomorrow they’ll be free humans!

“Yo, Rex! Glad to see you show up before MC/S.”

Hoyle greets him with a wide grin, standing in the centre of the hall.

“Oh, you were here first, Hoyle? Did you start cleaning?” Rex was surprised that Hoyle actually took the initiative to start their chore before them. Rex’s heart is touched. Maybe Hoyle isn’t all that bad -

“What? Forget about cleaning, check out what I have!”

Nevermind. Rex takes it back.

Hoyle didn’t hesitate to drag the unimpressed Rex close to him and shove a piece of folded paper in between his eyes. When he unfolded it, Rex is confused. Someone had drawn a rune. Now, Rex doesn’t know all that much about runes and their inner workings, so he has no idea why Hoyle has this with him.

“What is this? Your homework?” Rex asked, his face scrunched up. “I don’t remember seeing this in class.”

Hoyle rolled his eyes. “It’s not homework. I found this in MC/S’s journal this morning and tried to checked all the books about runes and stuff in the library but nothing came up. How crazy is that!” He excitedly explains, eyes shining brightly.

Rex didn’t share his enthusiasm, however. “You stole Renata’s journal?” His eyes are wide in disbelief. He threw the piece of paper back at Hoyle who easily catch it. “Do you want her to burn you again!?”

“What she won’t know, won’t harm her. That is, if you keep this between us.” Hoyle reply, narrowing his eyes at Rex in a threatening manner.

Rex just throws his hands up in exasperation. “She’s going to find out when she realised that her journal is missing! Look, just put put that thing back and - ”

“Hell no. I want to test this out. Aren’t you curious too?” Hoyle demanded, and that’s when Rex notices that he has a marker pen in his other hand. “And beside, I’ll give the journal back to her once we find out what this rune does.” He then walks around him towards the Heartslabyul mirror and starts drawing.

“W-Wait! It’s against the rule - ” Rex stammers out, but Hoyle quickly interrupts him.

“Rule 809: One should not vandalise Heartslabyul’s mirror. Yeah, yeah, I remember. But this - ” Hoyle stops drawing to gesture at the marker pen in his hand “ - is not a permanent. So I’m not technically breaking any rules if I can just clean it up later.” He answered with a nonchalant shrug.

Rex paused to ponder. Well, Hoyle put it that way... More than that, Rex is baffled that Hoyle remembers that particular rule of their dorm.

“Done!” Hoyle huff proudly before taking a step back to admire his handiwork. He briefly glances at the paper and then back to the mirror - it’s a perfect copy. The two boys watch as the surface of the mirror ripple once before the rune vanishes, and the mirror becomes pitch black.

“Whoa... I’ve never seen any mirror in Night Raven College look black before.” Rex said in awe. He gently and carefully presses his fingers on the surface, and it pushes through. “It feels like any other enchanted mirrors though.”

“It’s not suppose to lead anywhere. According to the notes, it’s a communication rune.” Hoyle explains. “But there’s no such thing as communication runes so this must be something that MC/S came up.”

Rex’s eyes widen at Hoyle’s theory. Runes are notoriously one of the hardest subjects ever in all of Twisted Wonderland. She mentioned that she’s been experimenting with magic, but Rex didn’t expect that she could do something like this!

Suddenly, Rex’s awe quickly turns to horror when something yanks his fingers into the mirror.

“What the - ”

“Rex!” Hoyle shouted and grabbed his arm to pull his back. Rex’s arm is inside of the black mirror! A powerful tug completely yanks the two of them into the mirror and the surface return to normal.

The next thing they realise is that they’re now in the mirror.

And that’s how Renata found them; a piece of paper with her rune on it and rex and Hoyle pounding furiously from the inside of the mirror and screaming at her to get them out.

“For fuck’s sake you guys - ”

Needless to say, the three of them are in for a long night.

“So you finally decide to show up? You kept me waiting for an hour. I love to hear your excuse - why do you look like shit?”

“Shut up, Kingscholar. I don’t want to hear it from you.”

“...Right. Any reason why there’s Heartslabyul students in my mirror then?”

“Whoa, so this is how it looks like inside of the Savanaclaw dorm!”

“I, uh, didn’t expect that you like to do homeworks in, uh, Kingscholar’s bedroom, Renata-san.”

Bakari glares at Renata who just look tired and supporting heavy, black eye bags. The girl in question refused to look at him.

And there we go! This is the start to Renata, Hoyle and Rex glorious friendship and shenanigans. Their friendships mirrored their parents except the kids are lot stronger; magically-wise. I’m fleshing out their characters and Unique Magic as we go along the series but so far, I have a pretty good idea how I want them to turn out.

#twisted wonderland #fanfic #Draconia Family series #Second Wive AU #tri3tri #Renata Draconia #Hoyle Trappola #Rex Spade #Bakari Kingscholar

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isitreallyok · 4 years ago

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Therapy, Medication, And Mental Help

I’m gonna level with y’all here. This post will likely not be quite as articulate as some of the other ones. It’s been a really rough morning, but I wanted to address this issue while it is still fresh in my mind. I have yet to ask for advice or feedback on a single one of my posts, but if anyone has any I’m definitely not opposed to receiving it on this one.

Uh oh. That doesn’t sound great. What’s going on?

I’m going to attempt to keep this as brief as possible, and it likely will still be quite lengthy, but I’m going to have to give a bit of context here as well. My current life situation has been radically altered in the last year. 2020 has thrown so many wrenches in my plans and Covid isn’t even the biggest of them. However, lets take this from the top.

When I was 9 years old my parents divorced. Not a huge deal. It happens to a lot of kids as sad as that is to say. I grew up with my mother, brother, and sister in a single parent household with a skewed picture of who my father was and didn’t want too much to do with him. Fast forward a few years, my dad moves to Idaho and remarries and has a wonderful relationship with my stepmother. I wasn’t able to visit too often, but it wasn’t horrible when I was able to make it out there. As much as I minimize the normalcy of being a child of divorce though it still had a horribly impact on my emotional well being and my mental health as a child. Many other kids throughout school came were content with their home life. They were able to enjoy being children and did not have to worry about the pressures of caring for their siblings started at a young age. I, on the other hand, was not content with where I was at in life and wanted desperately to change it.

My mother was incredibly supportive of us kids as best as she was able. She made sure that we had routine trips to the doctors, that we had what we needed in terms of food and shelter, and even got us therapy and psychiatric help. I was blessed to have that available to me as a child. Many children going through similar situations do not have access to that level of external help for a myriad of different reasons. However even though I had these things I still ran into trouble. As I was growing up my father discredited mental healthcare as a practice so I always had that rattling around in the back of my head. By the time I was 15, I decided to stop taking my bipolar and depression medications because I didn’t feel like they were helping me. This is honestly the biggest mistake I’ve made in my entire life. I continued to see my therapist, until I not longer had insurance at age 18, but I didn’t feel as if I was making any real strides there either because I had also adopted the mindset that nothing was working and therapy and caring for my mental health was a joke.

Wait. Isn’t this a place where you talk explicitly about your mental health and how to manage and cope with various aspects of it?

Why yes. Yes it is. I’ve been handling my manic depressive bipolar disorder unmedicated for the last 13 years. It has been absolute hell most days. A few years ago I hit rock bottom and realized that I needed help. The girl that I had been dating for a few years, was living with, and planned on proposing to cheated on me and I ended up moving back in with my parents because of the situation, I slept on a futon mattress on the floor for months before we ended up moving, and due to this my mental state deteriorated to the point of suicidal ideation with intent.

This is when I realized that I was wrong in my views on medication and therapy. I had been putting myself in a position where I was running people out of my life due to the fact that I was using my friends as free therapy and they drew a line and I had to respect it. There was only one problem with finally accepting that I needed to get help. That problem is that help is expensive. I had been uninsured for mental health since I was 18. I accepted the fact that I needed to get help, but the fact that I could afford it drove me even deeper into despair about my circumstances.

So what did you do? Did you get the help you needed? Clearly you didn’t give into your suicidal tendencies.

Well. Yes and no. I didn’t get the help I needed, but I managed to find a way to distract myself from the troubles of the real world. I poured myself into my job and decided that that was the time to go to college. I do understand the irony or going to college after complaining that therapy was too expensive. Believe me that is not lost on me. The difference is you can’t get student loans for learning how to take care of yourself.

Rather than allowing myself to begin working through the existing trauma in my life, I decided to put myself in a position to where I could start to try to live a “normal” life again. Whatever the hell that means. I had a routine, albeit a poor one, I was socializing, albeit minimally in my classes and typically only for group projects, and I was too distracted by other pressures to reminisce on how much I hated my life. I started taking steps that I felt like a therapist would tell me to and began working towards chasing a dream again. This felt different, but I don’t think I’d venture as far as to say it felt good. It was just a different kind of stress that I was piling on myself. I still felt like I needed help handling the day to day. Learning to cope with my bipolar unmedicated took years and the singular trauma of living with my family again meant that all the coping mechanisms I had worked to develop became even more difficult to manage and I had to once again learn different strategies to handle all the new challenges.

Instead of schooling and attempting normalcy on your own wouldn’t it have been easier to get help?

Easier? No. More beneficial? Absolutely. The hoops that one has to jump through even to get seen by a therapist nowadays is challenging enough and that doesn’t even include financial ramifications for those without health insurance that covers mental health, which most workplace insurance plans don’t. With that in mind, the benefits of getting the help that you need often are not able to outweigh the cost.

Realistically, even if I had been able to afford to get myself the care that I need I likely wouldn’t have. I have always been the type of person to do everything on my own until I have exhausted all of my options. This is not something I recommend. One of the biggest things that I want to learn to do is ask for help when I need it instead of asking after I am already at the end of my rope. Even as I’m typing this I am beyond frustrated and want nothing to do with with the stress I’m under from today and it took me hitting that point to finally open up about talking about it even though it was among the first topics I decided to address when I first started this blog. Asking for help at appropriate times is a topic all on it’s own so we’ll save that conversation for another day.

So I’m starting to see a bit of where you’re coming from, but what happened today?

So this part of the background info I plan to address more in depth in the future and will keep the context of this very brief. Remember how I said that my dad and I had a strained relationship even after he moved? Well that changed once I was about 20. We reconnected and for years spoke nearly every day and he became a close confidant and more of what most people with a healthy relationship with their father have. We disagreed on a lot of things, but we were able to understand each other. A few years ago my stepmother passed away. Even before she passed my dad was diagnosed with early stage dementia. He had been having memory issues and it felt like he was a completely different person. At the start of this year he moved back in with my family and that has been a challenge having my divorced parents living under the same room without the ability to properly communicate with each other.

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up to both my mother and father bickering with each other about something related to Dad’s socks. Rather than handling it like adults they were both fighting like toddlers from what I could hear in my bedroom. This has become an increasingly common occurrence. One gets frustrated with the other, situation escalates, I feel pressured to step in and deescalate the situation, I typically end up frustrated and my mood is shot. Dad feels more comfortable talking and listening to me, Mom backs off because I get what needs to be done done, I wind up once again in the middle of a weird situation between my parents. I tolerate this because of the fact that I am able to assist in my father’s care in a way that is beneficial to his understand of what he needs and it eases the burden on other people that are trying to convey the same message with zero results. However over time this would wear anyone down and that point is where I finally reached this morning.

Rather than being able to calmly handle the situation with a level head I ended up snapping at all partied involved. I snapped at Dad for not wanting to do anything to mitigate the problems he complained of, I snapped at Mom for escalating the situation, I snapped at my sister who was just checking it see if I was okay, I ran the gambit of getting frustrated with people. Instead of handling the situation the way I normally would with patience and dignity, I mismanaged the situation and likely made it worse.

This is where we get back to the topic at hand. I have finally managed to actually get myself on some half decent health insurance that has wonderful mental health coverage. This kicks in at the start of the year and I will be able to finally get some help with handling the fact that this entire situation has been traumatic and has left some serious scars. I’m excited but this also got me wondering about the part that I need help on.

My bipolar and resistance to most psychotropic medication had to come from somewhere, as it’s a disorder that is tied to genetics, and my mother is not bipolar. This tells me that my father, who exhibits clear symptoms of having bipolar depression, is where I got my proclivity for the development of this condition. That being said, with my father’s resistance towards getting psychiatric care, and being medicated to balance any chemical imbalances, puts me in a weird state for doing what is best for him and his care. Do I force this help on him? Do I accept that he’s not ready for it and sit idly by and continue to watch him deteriorate? With his dementia he’s less likely to be able to receive the care he desperately needs due to his inability to create a coherent thought in regards to what his needs are for the large scale rather than just being fine in that exact moment. So I truly am at a loss. This is the part where I ask for advice. If anyone who has read this far has any experience with dementia and psychiatric care I could really use some advice on how to best have these conversations with my dad. This has been one of the biggest hardships I have faced and I am getting to be at a proper loss for words in how to help the situation which as you can tell by the verbosity of this post is difficult to do.

You’re totally fine in not knowing how to handle this situation. This is a difficult situation to be in regardless of who you are. You’re doing well.

Thank you. All of that stuff is an absolute nightmare to handle and life has been absolute hell, but I hope that that helps you to understand where I’m coming from when I encourage you all to once again remember the three reminders! I know most days, including today, I need to remember them to so lets run through them together before we end things for today. You are so much stronger than you think, you are beautiful inside and out, and jinkies you are worth love, kindness, respect, admiration, and all those things you think you’re not worthy of. Lets turn today around together and kick some butt and take some names.

#suicidal tendencies #suicide #dementia #mental health #bipolar #bipolar disorder #depression #help #i need advice #three reminders #self help #Psychiatry #Therapy #Medication #cognitive dysfunction

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peachymhaechan · 4 years ago

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“Are you sure this is legal?”

Genre: fluff, a tad bit of angst, you already know the fuckin vibes; best friends to lovers! au

Warnings: swearing, breaking into a closed pool i guess ??? honestly p tame compared to what i normally write

Pairing: na jaemin x female reader

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1OT332LXdqZmRE28NxPRzg?si=OGJL7n3KQYmcpfCwVFhRQw

A/N: i hope the ending doesn’t translate to me not knowing how to end this too badly lol,,, also- not to be political or anything but,, here are some petitions to sign if you haven’t already :) https://blacklives.help/?url=https://blacklives.help&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9b_4BRCMARIsADMUIyqCSaXuMx89tawp4m0X8HiGhh8gGI_jWIO-aWY72f8TKaLdF0GHh3YaAmnAEALw_wcB#petitions

Being friends with Jaemin was always an adventure. Having met him in preschool and growing up down the street from him, you had plenty of memories from early childhood all the way to adulthood. You experienced just about every big milestone moment together- losing your first baby tooth, entering middle school, being heartbroken for the first time, getting your license, even opening your college acceptance letters to your dream college together. From the moment you two met, you were both attached to the hip and inseparable ever since. Luckily, you both had the same dream college and both were accepted, so not even post-secondary education could get you two away from one another.

The summer before college, however, life seemed to change.

You and Jaemin had been through so much together, and you both had felt like nothing would change that. There had been many late night talks discussing your future plans; you’d find your significant others, get married (with each other as the best woman and man of honor, of course), have kids, and have your kids be best friends. Simple as that, no other way of thinking about it.

It was a few days after graduation, and you went over to Jaemin’s house in the evening, already expecting to walk into his house and find a living room full of teenage boys playing video games since Jaemin didn’t respond to any of your texts. Kicking off your shoes and throwing on a pair of slippers by the door, you found your suspicions to be correct. Jaemin, Jeno, Renjun, and Haechan all lounged around Jaemin’s living room, completely focused on the television screen broadcasting their game of Call of Duty. They all spoke amongst one another, switching between discussing the game at hand and other matters- specifically, Jaemin’s love life.

Or, you should say non existent love life, as Haechan so lovingly reminded him.

“Jaemin, are you ever going to ask Y/N out? Or are you going to keep leading on that girl you took to prom. Crap, what’s her name? Isn’t it like Kim or something? Ah, fuck, Jeno, why’d you shoot me?” Haechan whined out, stopping you on the spot. I’m sorry, fucking pardon? you thought, not sure if you heard correctly.

“Dude, I’ve thought about it and I just- I don’t know. I wanted to take her to prom and ask her out afterwards, but then Y/N was asked by Mark and… the timing was never right, and it never feels like it ever is right. I’m just going to push it off until college, I think,” Jaemin mumbled, fingers aggressively jabbing at the controller in his hands. At his words, your mind went blank and your body started running on autopilot. Jaem liked you? Like, like-liked you? No way. No fucking way.

“Jaemin, you gotta ask her out, dude. You let Mark swoop in for a bit, and you’re lucky she ended it before it went anywhere. Are you going to let the same thing happen in college? What if she doesn’t cut the guy off before things get serious, and you never get it off your chest?” Jeno asked, raising a few solid points. You hated to admit it, but he made sense. It was still weird to hear out loud, though. You had never thought of Mark as ‘stealing you’ from Jaemin, and truth be told you did enjoy all the times you had with Mark, but you didn’t want to get into something serious when he was about to leave for a college that was all the way across the country. Long distance relationships work all the time, but you didn’t want your first serious relationship to be long distance. As always, Jaemin was there to cheer you up after your first heartbreak, lending you his shoulder to cry on. And ever the gentleman, he didn’t even complain when you got snot all over his shirt from crying so much.

But hearing all those things made you wonder why Jaemin was there for you to cry on; in the past you had wondered how Jaemin was always such a steady and strong person in your life, but now you were doubting how and why.

A couple more seconds of silence passed, and then Jaemin’s mom noticed you before Jaemin and the rest of the boys did, and she yelled, “Jaem, Y/N’s here!” to which she received no response.

Sighing, you strolled over to where Jaemin was sitting and stood in front of him, trying to get his attention, but to no avail, as he simply just stood up and looked at the TV screen over you.

“Jaem, you’re lucky your mom is in the other room, otherwise I’d be cussing you out right now,” you told him, putting your hands on your hips and scowling at the boy. The previous conversation ran through your head, and it took everything in you to force those thoughts back and just act like everything was normal. Unbeknownst to you, Jaemin and the rest of the guys were secretly shaking in their boots and wondering how much of their conversation you overheard.

He stuck his tongue out at you in response, saying, “We’ll be done in just a minute.” Sighing, you flopped down into his spot on the couch, further incentivizing him to finish up his game and pay attention to you. To annoy you, of course, he sat down on you.

“Jaem, what the hell,” you yelled, voice muffled from his back being right on you. The rest of the guys were too focused on the game to even notice the antics going on between you and Jaemin. Slapping his back, you tried to get him off you but in retaliation he bounced back on you, making the situation even worse. Thank God they finished that round shortly after and he got off you.

“You suck,” you said, pushing Jaemin off and making him fall on the floor. He looked up at you from the ground and pouted, sticking his bottom lip out so he looked like a baby. All the guys stood up, setting their controllers down and stretching. “You lowkey deserved that, Jaemin,” Renjun announced, arms raised over his head in a stretch. Jaemin suddenly got a smirk on his face, and you could practically see the gears turning in his head, making your eyes widen in fear.

“Na Jaemin, don’t you dare-”

The next thing you knew, you were being pulled onto the floor by your legs, a scream leaving your throat but quickly dissolving into a laugh. How you didn’t see that coming you didn’t know.

“Ew, gross-”

“They’re doing couple shit again-”

“I just threw up in my mouth-”

Rolling your eyes at the comments of the guys, you pulled yourself up off the ground and pursed your lips in annoyance. “What are you guys, twelve?” you rebutted, not tolerating their childish behavior.

“I will have you know, I just turned thirteen!” Haechan quipped back, making everyone snicker a bit. “Yeah, you sure as hell act like it, too,” you replied, making him scoff. “Anyways, I’m bored. Entertain me,” you announced, dramatically sighing and flailing your arms around.

“Dude, summer just started. How are you bored already?” Renjun asked you, skeptical as to how you could be so bored in such a short amount of time. “Uh, hello? You guys are basically my only friends, and nobody has answered their phones all day. Yeah, I’m bored, give me something to do, talk to me, ask me to hang out, whatever,” you explained, slightly guilt tripping them. You were only partially lying when you said they were your only friends. You had other people, too, like Chenle and Jisung and Mark and a few others, but they weren’t as close as you were with Renjun, Haechan, Jeno, and Jaemin. Well, Jaemin, specifically. You were certain that if you needed an organ transplant or something, Jaemin would be at the hospital in a matter of minutes and ready to donate. The same couldn’t be said about the others, but you get my point.

“Okay, fine, let’s order a pizza or something and have a movie night in my backyard. Sound good?” Jaemin suggested, appeasing the group. Naturally, at the mention of pizza, all the boys got excited and aggressively nodded their heads, signalling they were in. Jaemin’s parents bought a large projector for the backyard a few years ago so that whenever he had friends over they could all hangout in the backyard and not disturb the adults inside the house. Smart thinking for them, plus all of Jaemin’s friends had fun with it, so it was a win-win situation.

You guys all got to work setting up the projector and blankets on the ground in the backyard, trying to hustle so it would all be done before sunset. Luckily you guys succeeded, and Jaemin came back outside with a few pizza pies, the swarm of teenage boys surrounding the pizza before you could even think to get any. Over the years you had learned that if you wanted food, you had to act quick, otherwise all the guys would eat it all without any remorse. So, like always, you jumped into the mayhem and managed to get away with a few slices. Content, you retreated to one of the blankets and sat down, happily chewing away at a piece of pizza, listening to the guys all chatter in the background. Faintly, you heard Haechan and Renjun bickering over something trivial like always, while Jeno and Jaemin stood by and mediated the whole thing.

“Pepperoni is totally a saturated fat, dumbass!”

“Nuh uh, saturated fats are liquids at room temperature, wise one! Unsaturated fats are fats like pepperoni and other meats, like, I don’t know, salami!”

“Actually, according to Google-”

Someone sitting down next to you pulled you out of your stupor, and you found yourself being surprised by Jaemin sitting next to you. He flashed you a grin, knowing that you secretly enjoyed listening to those two fight like an old married couple as much as he did, though he’d never admit it, either.

“I’m sorry none of us responded to your texts today,” he said, finishing the last of his pizza and wiping his hands on a napkin. You shrugged, not sure how to properly articulate your true feelings.

“It’s okay, it just sucks feeling like I’m the only one left out, ya know? And I want to hang out with you guys as much as I possibly can before college. I know that we’re going to school together and will see each other regularly- and if we don’t then I will hunt you down and force you to hang out with me, by the way- but that’s not the case for the other guys, and I want to make the most of this last summer. This is the last summer that we can still be kids and have fun and not have to worry about how much debt we’re in or how much our student loans are. Let’s live a little while we can.”

Jaemin narrowed his eyes at you, abruptly laid down on the blanket and stared up at the sky, and then quickly shot back up to a sitting position. For once in your life, you couldn’t read the expression on his face, concerning you a tad bit.

“You’re right,” he told you, standing up and going to his phone to pick a movie for the projector. “You’re right, I hadn’t thought of it that way, to be honest. We should be having fun, though, while we can, because it’s not like the past however many years we’ve known the rest of the guys where they’ll be a five minute walk away. Let’s do some dumb shit this summer while we can still get away with it,” Jaemin said, swiping through Netflix before eventually stopping on the Bee Movie.

“I mean, I agree with you for the most part, and I’ll do whatever. As long as it isn’t illegal, that is. Your parents would kill you if you got caught and so would mine. They’d tag team it and kill us both, Jaem,” you said, not sure what exactly he had in mind when he said dumb shit. Jaemin, however, and your group of friends in general, seemed to be experts on dumb shit so you couldn’t even imagine what he had up his sleeve.

He turned to look at you with a sly grin on his face and said, “I guess we better hope we don’t get caught, then.” On that note, he came and sat back down next to you again, tugging you down to lay on the blanket next to him. You chuckled at how clingy he was, pinching his cheeks and cooing at him to annoy him. It didn’t work, though, because the next thing you knew, Jaemin was trapping you in his arms and pulling you to his chest, where he cooed down at you and pinched your cheeks. That seemed to catch the attention of the other boys, because they all shut up their argument about saturated vs. unsaturated fats and turned their eyes onto you two. The three of them got shit eating grins on their faces and one of them discreetly took out his phone, taking a video of you two without you guys even noticing.

From that point, the three of them silently made a pact to do whatever they could within their power to finally get Jaemin to confess to you. So, after a series of aggressive head nods in different directions, they decided to quietly tiptoe back to the house and leave you two outside alone.

And, the sad part is, you and Jaemin didn’t even notice that the guys were no longer there until about thirty minutes into the movie. “Ya like jazz?” Jaem quoted with the movie, then noticed that you were the only one laughing. “Wait, where’d everyone else go?” he asked, looking around and finding absolutely nobody else in the yard with you two.

“When did everyone else go?”

“No clue,” Jaemin responded, shrugging his shoulders and staring at you. He narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips in thought, and stared at you.

“Jaem, you’re giving me major creeper vibes right now,” you told him, making him laugh. Standing up, he reached his hand down for you to grab so he could pull you up. Sliding your palm in his, he gave you a huge smile and pulled you up, immediately jumping up and down. Giggling, you asked him, “What are you thinking about up in there?” and gently knocked on the side of his head.

“I’m thinking that we should do something fun, go live a little,” he explained, grabbing his phone and your hand in his then pulling you into his house. His mom was in the living room, watching Jeopardy and drinking tea, fully invested in the show.

“Mom, where did everyone go?” he asked, leaning against the wall and looking at the TV. “Oh, Jeno said he had to go feed his cats and the others said they needed to help him. Didn’t know it took three people to feed two cats, but you learn something new every day, I suppose,” she informed you two, a glint in her eye that said she knew more than what she was letting on, but you and Jaemin decided to just let it be.

“Ah, okay. Well, anyways, we're going to go on a drive,” Jaemin told her, surprising you. Somehow you managed to keep your face under control and not display how shocked you were. Living in such a small town, it wasn’t unheard of for teens to go on drives to the local Walmart or the shitty gas station chain for entertainment, but usually you were aware of the plan before it happened. Not when Jaemin was telling his mom he was taking the car.

“Okay, honey. Stay safe, make good decisions, don’t drink and drive, wrap it before you ta-”

“MOM, WHAT THE HELL?!”

You had to agree with Jaemin on that one.

“I’m just saying! Have fun!” she exclaimed, laughing lightly at his outburst and your disgusted face.

“Bye Mom, love you,” Jaemin said, slipping on a pair of slides and grabbing the car keys from the dining room table. “Bye, Mrs. Na,” you told her, waving before you left the house.

“So what’s the plan?” you asked, hopping into the passenger seat and picking a playlist from Jaemin’s phone. A while ago, you had made a playlist full of songs that reminded you of how hanging out with Jaemin made you feel, and after hearing it once, Jaemin fell in love with it. So, anytime you two were going on a drive somewhere or even just having a dance party in your room, that playlist would be the go to.

“We,” he said, grabbing your headrest to see the driveway and road behind him, “are going swimming.” Naturally, you were confused for quite a few reasons. One: it was almost eleven o’clock at night. Two: none of the other boys or you had a pool. Three: you were wearing jean shorts.

“Um,” was all you could say, too many things running through your head to properly articulate them, but the one big one was simply ‘What?’

Reaching out, he turned the music up and started dancing a bit in his seat, making you relax a tiny bit. Jaemin seemed so carefree, you figured that you had trusted him enough thus far in your life, might as well trust him on this one, too.

“HANDS ON THE WHEEL, JAEM!” you yelled when he grabbed your wrists to make you dance. He laughed and put his hands back on the steering wheel, navigating the streets so that you were on track for the community pool. You looked over at him, turning in your seat to face him, and sat there in awe. It looked like something out of a movie, really; the street lights illuminating the highs of his face, the bright smile spanning his entire face, wind blowing his hair around. In that moment, you could feel your heart skip a beat and your throat get tight. There were so many things that you wanted to say to him, like how you knew he was your best friend but your feelings were suddenly very much so not best friend-like, or how you don’t know why your palms start sweating when he smiles at you, or how the casual hand holding he always did with you had you weak in the knees. You weren’t sure exactly when all those thoughts started popping into your brain, but the couple months prior made it increasingly difficult to be best friends with him. Normal best friends don’t think about kissing each other, but there you were, wondering how his lips felt.

“Enjoying the view?” Jaemin teased, noticing your gaze on him and blushing. “Eh, it’s not too bad, if I’m being honest,” you teased back, a smirk on your face. You wondered why he was blushing so much, but you chalked it up to the humidity despite it cooling down. “Well, you should take a picture of it so you can remember it forever.”

The statement made you scoff, and you hoped it came off as an exasperated, you’re so full of yourself kind of scoff, but in reality it was a much different scoff. It was truly an exasperated, how could you even think I’d forget something as big as this? kind of scoff.

“You’re ridiculous sometimes, Na Jaemin,” you stated, leaning back against the car door to fully gaze at Jaemin as he drove. He had one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the middle console, completely at ease while driving you to the pool. His lips were curved up, obviously pleased with the situation at hand.

“Yet you keep coming back to me, Y/L/N Y/N,” he shot back, trapping you in a corner. Clicking your tongue, you shook your head in mock disappointment.

“That I do. Not entirely sure, why, I should probably start working on that,” you mumbled, feigning disinterest. Right as you said that, Jaemin pulled into the parking lot of the closed community pool, the street lights illuminating the lot and providing you light to see.

“Am I supposed to swim in my jean shorts?” you asked, pointing down to your legs. You doubted Jaemin’s parents would have been thrilled with the idea of you sitting in his car on his leather seats with wet jeans on. Yes, the car might have been his, but his parents contributed a hell of a lot of money to buy it, as well as the general upkeep occasionally, and upkeep definitely covered wet jeans on leather seats.

“Do you even have towels with you?” you asked, Jaemin turning the car off and getting out to go to the trunk. He pulled out a duffel bag with gym clothes in it, sorting through it before taking out two towels and a pair of shorts.

“Here,” he said, holding out the pair of shorts to you. “There’s a drawstring in the waistband, so you’ll be fine.” You took the shorts from him, holding them up to your waist to try and get an idea on how large they’d be on you. The answer was very, as they went down to your shins. The sight made Jaemin lightly laugh, giggling at the fact that those shorts were on the brink of swallowing you whole.

“This should be interesting,” you mumbled, trying to calm the blush taking over your cheeks. It was hard to not blush whenever Jaemin laughed like that, the mere sound of his voice enough to drive you crazy.

“I think so,” he hummed in agreement, a giddy gleam in his eyes. Jaemin was genuinely excited, and as were you. However, you couldn’t help the ball of nerves in the pit of your stomach from forming at the thought of getting in trouble. With a smirk on his face, Jaemin led you over past the entrance and to the side of the pool that was surrounded by a chain link fence. In theory, maybe having a chain link fence was not the best in regards to security, but the pool always had cameras on the property to prevent breaking and entering.

Jaemin looked around a few times to make sure nobody was around, then tossed his towel up over the fence, and started climbing. Your eyes widened, not sure what to do in that situation. He must have been really confident in everything to be so nonchalant about breaking into the community pool, that was in the middle of the community park, that was regularly patrolled.

“Are you sure this is legal?” you asked Jaemin, eyes frantically flicking between Jaemin easily scaling the fence and the rest of the park, making sure nobody else was around. He looked down at you from the top of the fence, swinging his leg over to the other side and smirking.

“Relax,” he said, using a calming tone and climbing down. “Chenle said that they’re in the process of installing new security cameras, and the park security usually don’t go out for their nightly patrol until one in the morning.” He landed softly on the ground with a light thud, peering through the fence to meet your eyes. There was an impish glint in his eyes, and you knew what you had to do next.

Taking a deep breath, you tossed the shorts and towel over the fence (which landed on Jaemin’s head to your satisfaction), and started to go up. At the top, you looked down at Jaemin, who gave you an encouraging thumbs up, and realized that holy fuck that fence was a lot taller than what you previously perceived. All it took to get you to keep going was one look at Jaemin. A couple seconds later, you had your feet on the ground, hand wrapped around Jaemin’s upper arm to balance yourself.

“Ready?” he asked, the shorts and towels in his hand, a crazed grin on his face. Seeing how excited he was made a small smile work its way onto your face, and you tried and failed to not show it, but he knew. You grabbed the shorts from him and ducked inside the women’s locker room, changing into the shorts as quickly as you could and then walking back outside to find Jaemin sitting on the side of the pool with his feet in the water. He looked oddly peaceful, watching his reflection on the surface of the water. The sight put a smirk on your face, making you cross your arms and lean against the entrance to the locker room. You wanted the moment to last longer than it did, because the second you sighed out in content, Jaemin turned around and noticed you.

His face automatically lit up into a beam, clearly relieved to see you. “I thought you fell into the toilet for a second,” he informed you, standing up and walking over to you. You met him in the middle, gazing up at him. “Haha, very funny,” you counter, rolling your eyes. “I’m pretty sure these could be pants on me,” you pointed out, gesturing to the shorts that went down to nearly your ankles.

As expected, Jaemin started to uncontrollably laugh at the spectacle of you wearing his gym shorts. “You look so stupid,” he wheezed out, legitimately tearing up from laughing so hard. “You’re such a jerk!” you exclaimed, scoffing in disbelief and punching his arm. He rubbed his arm where you hit him, but he did not stop laughing, only pissing you off more.

“You better watch yourself!” he warned, mockingly pointing his finger at you. Tossing your shorts and towel onto a chair, you stuck your tongue out at him, egging him on further. Bad decision, you realized a second too late. Without any warning, he charged towards you, wrapping his arms around your waist. He swung you up onto his shoulder, your legs on the front of his body and fists slamming against his back.

“NA JAEMIN! LET ME DOWN!” you demanded, legs swinging wildly. You figured that with enough thrashing he’d set you down on the ground, but you were oddly mistaken. You could hear the smirk in his voice as he answered, “As you wish.” The next thing you knew, you were tossed into the air and then breaking through the surface of the water, the cooler temperature sending goosebumps up your arms and legs.

Your feet hit the bottom of the pool and you stood up, rubbing the water out of your eyes to glare up at Jaemin, who stood in front of you outside the pool and laughing at you.

“You’re such a jackass!” you exclaimed, only fueling him and convincing him to do what he was thinking of. Aka, cannonballing right in front of you. The water that you just rubbed out of your eyes was splashed back at you, successfully ticking you off. Jaemin popped back up with a grin, shaking his head to get the wet hair out of his eyes.

“Are you happy now that you threw me in?” you asked, lightly splashing at him.

“Very,” he admitted, the smirk not leaving his face.

“Is my misery funny to you?” you fired back, hands landing on your hips.

“Very,” he repeated, smirking even bigger now. Reaching your breaking point, you swam over to him and quickly dunked him under a tiny bit before he could react. He came back up with a significantly smaller smirk, mumbling something along the lines of, “I probably deserved that, to be honest.”

“Uh, you think?” you jabbed, swimming away to the deep end. You floated there on your back, staring up at the sky and smiling at the stars. In that moment, you felt complete peace. In all honesty, your life was pretty nice. Aside from that awkward, not knowing where you two were in a relationship with you and your best friend.

Speaking of him, said best friend came swimming over to you and looked over at you, an unknown gleam in his eyes. He rested his chin on his hands on the side of the pool, looking over at you with admiration. You stopped floating and looked back at him, scanning his face for any signs about what was going on inside his head.

“What are you thinking about?” you asked, genuinely curious about what was going through his mind. You used to be so good at telling what he was thinking about, able to communicate with each other with just a glance. Somewhere in senior year, though, he became a little more… hesitant, to say the least, when it came to sharing his inner thoughts. At first it hurt, but then it made you take a step back and reevaluate things. If you were being one hundred percent transparent, the same day that Mark asked you to prom with a dramatic sign in his shaking hands, a nervous lilt in his voice, was the day you came to terms with your feelings for Jaemin. ‘Will you…. Will you go to prom with me?’ Mark had asked, a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead from being so anxious about confessing his feelings and having them be so on display in front of his peers. You so vividly remember thinking, ‘I am in love with Jaemin,’ but stubbornly saying yes to Mark. It’d be a huge lie to say you didn’t think Mark was a sweetheart, with his boy next door aura and guitar playing and innocent church boy vibes, but he just… didn’t have your heart. Your heart belonged to the boy you grew up with, the boy you hung out with on the playground in elementary school, teased in middle school for his peculiar interests, and who you had so desperately wished would have asked you to prom instead.

“You,” Jaemin simply replied, sending your heart aflutter. He really knew how to mess with your feelings.

Quirking an eyebrow, you kicked off the wall of the pool and swam to the shallow end again, fight or flight kicking in against your will. You weren’t one to run from your problems, per se, but for the past couple of months, you had worked so hard to not let your true feeling show and tarnish your relationship. For fuck sake, you had been best friends since as long as you could remember. Every big event in your life, Jaemin was always there. The last thing you wanted to do was to fuck it all up because of your selfish feelings. (It’s worth pointing out, I think, that those are feelings you couldn’t help.)

“All good things, I hope,” you called out, not having to look over your shoulder to know he was already making his way back to you.

“Very confident of yourself, aren’t you?” Jaemin shot back, a teasing tone lacing his words. You let out a tiny giggle, saying, “Look at me, how can I not be? I am me, after all. You should be grateful I’m even gracing your presence.” He made it too easy, sometimes. But at least he was able to bounce off you, playing with your humor.

“You’re right,” he told you, surprisingly serious. That got you to look over your shoulder at him finally, spinning around to stand in front of him. The expression on your face was essentially one big question mark, not expecting to find him standing there with his heart on his sleeve, completely vulnerable to you.

It was common for Jaemin to be so open with you, but this was a different kind of open…. His expression was something you’d never been shown by him before.

“Are you finally going to tell me what you’re thinking about?” you asked, hands itching to find purchase on his chest, or his arms, or run through his hair. Every nerve in your body yelled out at you to do something, touch him, but you fought it. After all, your relationship could have been destroyed with one touch, one impulse decision, one sentence, three words.

“Are you sure you want me to?” he whispered, peering down at you through his lashes. The lashes that you had always admired, been so jealous of, but somewhere along the way started to wonder what it felt like to feel them on your skin as you two kissed.

“Why not?” you jokingly breathed out, dry humor disguising the gravity of it all. For the longest time, you had been so caught up in covering your true feelings to salvage your relationship that you forgot that Jaemin had the exact same power you did; one sentence and he could destroy the fourteen years of friendship you had.

“I am in love with you,” he gushed, that statement coming out in a rush. He brought his hands to brush some of the hair out of your face, and the tremor gave away how nervous he was, but the strong look in his eyes stood as contradictory. Gazing into his eyes, you finally placed what that unknown gleam he that always had was. It was the same one you had when you looked at him.

“I know that me saying this jeopardizes everything we have, and I’d hate for one sentence to ruin what we have, what we’ve known the entire time we’ve known each other,” he told you, voicing exactly your own concerns. Wow. “But I feel like I can’t go on pretending anymore.” Again, wow. Despite the seriousness of the situation at hand, you couldn’t help the bubble of laughter that left you.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled, hands finally placing themselves on his chest. Jaemin looked down at you in confusion, having laid his true feelings out for you to only laugh. “I’m not laughing at you, dear God I’m not, I just…. You put into words everything I’ve been feeling for months now,” you clarified, meeting his gaze, a small smile on your face. “If I’m being honest, as cliche as it sounds, I’ve been fighting the same battle in my mind for months now. I actually only went to prom with Mark to try to get over you, because I was scared to face my feelings for you head on. I didn’t want to ruin what we had,” you admitted, cupping his face in your hands. The blush dusting his cheeks ignited a warmth in your chest, the feeling spreading.

“God, are we stupid,” Jaemin said, his hands resting on your hips and pulling you closer to him.

“I know, we are such dumbasses sometimes. I guess it was meant to be,” you replied, getting the nerve to do what you had dreamed of for the longest time. Standing up on your tiptoes, you connected your lips with his. Even though he tasted like chlorine (and you were sure you did, too), you wouldn’t have changed anything in the slightest.

At that moment, everything was right. The stars aligned, the cosmos was in your favor, everything was as it was supposed to be. You both smiled into the kiss, so incredibly relieved that it was finally happening. Breaking away, you both kept your foreheads together and lightly laughed, eye contact being held still.

“I guess we owe Chenle a thank you,” you said, lacing your fingers through Jaemin’s.

“Yes, we do,” he hummed in agreement. You wished the moment could have lasted forever, but the headlights of a park security guard’s car put an end to the dreamlike moment.

“Fuck,” you two hissed at the same time, jumping into action.

“The thanks can wait until we get out of here without getting in trouble.”

#nct #nct dream #na jaemin #nct imagines #nct dream imagines #jaemin imagines #nct fanfictions #nct 2018 #nct 2018 scenarios #nct 2018 imagines #best friends to lovers

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asktheghosthost · 5 years ago

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Tagged by: @unofficialpinkbrideofthemansion

Tagging: @flannalamb @impysprite @crazypercheron @rebornghostgirl @theheadlessgroom @unto-myself-together @askthehatboxghost @asktheallygal @askdrossy and anyone who wants to do this!

► NAME

Beauregard Solomon Ghast

► ARE YOU SINGLE?

Happily taken!

► ARE YOU HAPPY?

For the most part... Usually.

► ARE YOU ANGRY?

Not so much anymore. In the past, I could be downright wraithlike. I have become much more laid back in recent decades.

► ARE YOUR PARENTS STILL MARRIED?

Yes, although in their last visit, mother and father's relationship seemed... shall we say... rocky. But they're adults and they will do as they will

💕 NINE FACTS!

► ‘BIRTH’ PLACE

On the outskirts of the Black Forest in Germany.

► HAIR COLOR

As white as a full moon.

► EYE COLOR

The right is green, and the left lost its color with its sight back when the Cat attacked me.

► BIRTHDAY

January 29, 1856.

► MOOD

Generally pleasant, I'd like to think, if maybe at times a little sporadic.

► GENDER

Male

► SUMMER OR WINTER

Of the two, winter; however, I prefer fall overall.

► MORNING OR AFTERNOON

Morning, pre-sunrise. The land is still in slumber, and the world is bathed in hues of gray... It's as if time moves in slow motion, caught in-between night and day. Sigh... It's beautiful.

💕 EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE!

► ARE YOU IN LOVE?

Hm hm, six feet deep.

► DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?

Hmmm... Perhaps infatuation at first sight, but not love... Correction: True love I do not believe happens at first sight, anyway. I think that develops with time, as you create a connection with another soul.

► WHO ENDED YOUR LAST RELATIONSHIP?

I did. It was a mercy killing. I was pushing for something that wasn't truly reciprocated to begin with, and... Erm, I don't really wish to discuss it. Moving on.

► HAVE YOU EVER BROKEN SOMEONE’S HEART?

I certainly hope I haven't. Uh... I haven't, have I?

► ARE YOU AFRAID OF COMMITMENTS?

Not at all. I'm nothing if not loyal.

► HAVE YOU HUGGED SOMEONE WITHIN THE LAST WEEK?

Oh, I've hugged someone within the last hour. I'm quite affectionate when I want to be.

► HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SECRET ADMIRER?

I--I don't think so, aside from my darling wife before she confessed her feelings to me, if that even counts. I've never recieved flowers with anonymous notes, or that sort of thing.

► HAVE YOU EVER BROKEN YOUR OWN HEART?

Um, y-yes... Yes... That's... That's all I'll say on the matter.

💕 SIX CHOICES!

► LOVE OR LUST

Love. Lust is fun, don't get me wrong, but it is a temporary, corruptible state.

► LEMONADE OR ICED TEA

I like to mix the two together, actually. Earl Grey lemonade is one of my favorite drinks.

► CATS OR DOGS

That's difficult. I love most animals. You may find this peculiar, but my encounter with the One Eyed Black Cat has not put me off any affection towards felines. I've taken care of more dogs than cats, though. I suppose that's an answer?

► A FEW BEST FRIENDS OR MANY REGULAR FRIENDS

A few. Quality over quantity. Although with my current un-living arrangement, I'm certainly at no shortage of fiendish friends.

► WILD NIGHT OUT OR ROMANTIC NIGHT IN

Romantic night in. A comfortable couch, a low fire in the hearth, two bottles of wine, and the gentle tapping of rain drops on the window...

► DAY OR NIGHT

Night, of corpse, hm hm.

💕 FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS!

► BEEN CAUGHT SNEAKING OUT

On more than one occasion. Mostly innocent excursions, I assure you. The ones that weren't so innocent... Those were the days I tried escaping from The Acropolis Asylum. Punishment was swift and brutal.

► FALLEN DOWN/UP THE STAIRS

Both, actually. How do you fall up the stairs, you ask? Trip on the upside down staircase.

► WANTED SOMETHING/SOMEONE SO BADLY IT HURT?

... Yes.

► WANTED TO DISAPPEAR

More times times than I care to count, especially in my youth. Nowadays, however, I can simply vanish at will.

💕 FIVE PREFERENCES!

► SMILE OR EYES

You know, if you get into this sort of debate with a ghost, you can get fairly horrific results. I recall a young lady in Japan who-- I'm getting off topic. A-hem.

Is it fair to say a mixture of the two? Allow me to explain. I love when a smile reaches the eyes. When someone is truly happy, you can see that little crinkle at the edges of their eyelids. True joy is difficult to simply imitate.

► FAT OR SKINNY

I've never given it much thought. Looking back, however, I definitely do appreciate-- how do the mortals phrase it?-- 'a little meat on their bones,' hm hm.

► SHORTER OR TALLER

Either or, I suppose. It's rare I've had a mate taller than myself. There is something sinisterly fun about looming over a loved one before slipping down for a kiss, hm hm hm.

► INTELLIGENCE OR ATTRACTION

I find intelligence attractive. Granted, kindness is higher up on my list. That said, I generally won't find someone physically attractive until I get to know them as a person.

💕 FAMILY!

► DO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY GET ALONG

So long as the in- laws aren't involved, yes. I never got along with my sister's husband and his ilk.

► WOULD YOU SAY YOU HAVE A “MESSED UP LIFE”

Hmm, indeed. Well, "had," anyway. Past tense. It's what led to me taking "my way." Existence has gotten far more tolerable in the past few decades.

► HAVE YOU EVER RAN AWAY FROM HOME

No. Life, I wanted to run away from, not home. At least home was safe... for the most part.

► HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN KICKED OUT

If you count my father taking me to the asylum when I was a teenager, then yes.

💕 FRIENDS!

► DO YOU SECRETLY HATE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS

I did once... I consider it one of the lowest points of my entire existence.

► DO YOU CONSIDER ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS GOOD FRIENDS

Yes. Die-spite our occasional bickering, I have no doubt of their loyalty or the goodness in their hearts... Erm, please do ignore the fact their physical hearts were eaten by worms ages ago.

► WHO IS YOUR BEST FRIEND

My dearest, deadest Caiti.

► WHO KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU

See above please. Although, who knows what Madame Leota could uncover in a one-on-one tarot card reading.

#asktheghosthost #meme #long post #Beau

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mooleche · 5 years ago

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GIMME DAT WHOLE OTP LIST FOR PIOTR AND NINA (although I already know that Nina's the one to basically wear no clothes and Piotr's the one to tell her to put clothes on, lol).

MY TABLET ISN’T HERE OTHERWISE THERE’D BE A DRAWING W/THIS ABOUT THAT LOL

It will come later Ψ( ●｀▽´● )ΨAs always I’m sorry for mobile users please don’t hate me - THIS WAS FUN TY!

1: Who spends almost all their money on the other?Probably Colossus, though they both end up pooling their money together a lot of the time to buy Venom a lot of chocolate delicacies to keep him happy. Nina usually spends a good chunk on surprising Piotr with art supplies which end up costing a pretty penny, while he swears up and down that he has to be the gentleman and pay for their dinner dates despite her being stubborn and wanting to help. 2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap?Nina usually, but it depends on the time. Colossus is far too large to sit in her lap (despite her brave offerings), but catch him trying to stay up late at night with Nina sitting in his lap and he'll end up resting his head against hers as he finally gives in to rest. Nina on the other hand will often curl up against him while he's reading in the daytime and rest her head against his chest so she can listen to his heartbeat (she always gets a giggle out of it because it beats a little faster when he realizes this).3: Who walks around the house half-naked and who yells at them to put on some clothes?You guessed Nina and you were RIGHT. She's shy about her ink covered hands and some battle scars but that won't stop her from revealing the goods under the clothes (especially on hot summer days). She usually relies on Venom to transform into her clothes so on days that she's no longer his host or she's running late and forgets Colossus is ready to scoop her up and drag her back into their room or home to make her put on some clothes (but not before she tempts him back to bed for some fun).4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway?Nina is very much the night owl in the relationship while Colossus is the old man and calls her before bed to tell her not to stay up too late. This unfortunately goes in one ear and out the other as the night is when she fights crime the most and also when she works on her college studies because she procrastinates until the very last minute. On nights that she's working extra hard he'll often wake up to find her passed out on the couch to which he gently wakes her up with coffee and a kiss so she's not completely dead during the daytime.5: Which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies?Colossus is definitely the better cook of the two, but damn if Nina doesn't try. With two parents who often cooked their meals together Nina likes to think she can do the same but usually ends up messing up burning the dish because she gets distracted by one thing or another (ie Wade calling to dish the deets on his latest murder fest). This results in Colossus usually shaking his head and preparing a nice dish for them instead if he's got the time. If not they usually settle for takeout somewhere and laugh over it.6: Which one reads OTP prompts and says “Oh that’s us!” and which one goes “Eh, not really”?Colossus doesn't usually spend a lot of time on the internet so when Nina sends him one and goes 'This is us!' he usually has to have to explain it so it makes sense sdsjgksk7: Which one constantly wears the other’s clothes?Nina, hands down. Even though the size difference is LORGE she loves wearing his hoodies out and his shirts to bed. Colossus never complains though, because seeing her in his clothes turns him into the goofiest little lovebug because she looks so darn cute in them. As a result his wardrobe suffers quite a bit because of this. He tried to turn the tables once by wearing one of her shirts and needless to say Nina calling him the Hulk for a short while after was entirely justified. 8: Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?”Nina will usually run errands for Colossus due to his hectic schedule at the mansion (and inability NOT to take forever when reading the nutrient labels), which he appreciates but often has to send her reminders because she's so forgetful when in a hurry. In the end she still manages to forget SOMETHING and they end up taking a more leisure trip later on to retrieve the items.9: Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions?Due to Colossus' size he's usually forced into the passenger or backseat, so Nina is the driver most of the time. They tend to bicker when she's at the wheel because she goes a little too fast and he's worried she'll get pulled over, but also because Colossus will slip into Russian if he doesn't know the proper english term for some signals which leads to chaos. He tries his best though and she appreciates his navigation for that.10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws?They both take usually take turns since they enjoy drawing and painting, Nina a little more though due to her class projects. He's usually a bit shy about the whole thing because Nina has a permanent mischevious smile on her face when he's posing. Colossus often rolls his eyes and chuckles when she poses for him because every time he looks back she's making a new pose/face to surprise him with.11: If they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips?Nina's definitely the one to be a super sleuth through the lasers while Colossus waits in the wings because he's 100% not for this idea and was dragged along to be the brawn if need be.Let's be real though she absolutely trips the wire after being smug and saying they wouldn't have any issues pop up during the heist.12: Which one of your OTP overdoes it on the alcohol and which one makes the other stop drinking?Due to being Venoms host Nina has an incredible alcohol tolerance so she can outdrink a fair number of her peers, including Colossus. She usually has to stop him from drinking too much at the end of the night because he turns into a big loveable lush that is hard to control (though it'd be a lie to say she didn't love the PDA he gives while sloshed). By the time the morning rolls around Colossus swears off drinking for a long time while Nina spends the morning showering him in water, aspirin and a big greasy breakfast to help soak up the booze while recounting all the crazy night events.13: Which one likes to surprise the other with a lot of small random gifts?They both do! Colossus usually buys some type of flower or fancy chocolate for Nina when he's out and about, or a trinket from wherever his last mission takes him while Nina usually scours old record stores to look for Neil Diamond vinyls or paintbrushes while out restocking her own inventory. They both usually try to surprise one another with coffee at least once a week and eventually decided to make it a usual thing so they could have a small date on the go.14: Which one keeps accidentally using the other’s last name instead of their own?They usually don't have an issue using the other's name unless its something like one of them being in the hospital and needing spouse visitation. Nina will sometimes tease Colossus by calling herself 'one of the Rasputins' as a joke but it just makes Colossus want it to become a reality even more every time she does.15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside?Colossus usually is the hero of the day and will take the spider outside while Nina screams blood murder and will launch herself against the wall in an attempt to get away from it. Piotr usually is quick to call out the irony in her being scared because she has spider senses due to Venom sdgjskjs16: Which one gives the other their jacket?Colossus. Nina hates being cold so he always ends up wearing one on their outtings just in case she starts feeling chilly. This usually gives him a good laugh because she disappears in his jackets due to how much bigger he is.17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling?Illyana often goes between being Colossus' little snowflake and debating on whether to sell his soul for a cornchip and Nina's 'sister' is a retired assassin who would gladly go out of retirement if someone even looked at her the wrong way, so I would say Ania.18: Who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other?OHO BOY. The setup for this is going to be an absolute hoot, all I will say is that it's Nina and she does it after Venom gets fed up with her pining over him so hard that he literally does the big 'Fuck It' moment. She's had feelings for him since she first saw him at an interview after Russell is taken in for the Ice Box so it's been a long time coming. Colossus on the other hand only realizes his feelings after she almost dies and it grows into this big ugly crush. She laughs at something? There's that familiar knot in his stomach. A smile? His feet suddenly don't work so well. And literally everyone BUT Nina notices how strange he's beginning to act kgfjkdgd19: How good would your OTP be at parenting?Definitely a bit rocky at first but power parents fo sho. Nina is high key nervous about being a parent because she's not very fond of children, but Colossus reassures her that they can overcome anything together and dotes on her constantly to make sure she's comfortable. They work together to make sure the baby room is painted with little animal murals and spend nights singing russian and french lullabies to her belly before bed.When the baby actually arrives? Nina turns into a full momma bear and would gladly kill everyone in the room and then herself if anything happened to their child. Colossus is the proudest papa in the world and basically turns into Hughes from FMA where he carries a dozen photos of their child in his wallet to dish out whenever someone even looks in his general direction. All in all they work hard to help one another out to make sure they're not both zombies but also that their little detka is happy and healthy.20: Which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters?Although he's usually proper with his english vocally, Colossus is definitely the one to type with numbers as letters and shortens what he can when texting because he struggles to use anything that isn't a beeper. Nina suffers greatly because of this.21: Who gets attacked by a bully and who protects them?Nina is usually the one getting bullied by bigger/stronger enemies on missions and Colossus is always quick to come to her side to protect her. He usually teases that HE should be named Knight instead of her because of this, but she's quick to get up and repay the favor to him for his heroic efforts. There ARE some instances where the tables are turned though and she's able to save Colossus from bullies, and she usually demands a 'victory kiss' in repayment after pbppbt.22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun?Colossus is definitely the one to make the bad puns while Nina attempts to smile at it and fails every time. But she tries, good god does she try.23: Who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy?Colossus pbpbpt. He comes home to a lot of little surprises and is often thinking 'what will I come home to today' because of this, so he's pleasantly surprised when he comes home one day and a puppies head pops out of Ninas hoodie to greet him at the door. 24: Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired?Colossus sjdgks Piggybacks aren't uncommon between the two. Nina uses her spider grip to climb up his back on many occasions and sit on his shoulders, especially during briefings before missions and after the more difficult missions. While he thinks it's a bit silly Colossus doesn't mind because he enjoys feeling her wrap her arms wrapped around him.25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering?Nina is usually the overzealous cheerer when it comes to Colossus getting into fights on missions that they're on together. Showdown between Colossus and Juggernaut? You bet she's on the sidelines rooting for him to kick him in the balls. He says he doesn't mind it but it DOES make him very bashful after.26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder?Nina. She's big on taking photos as mementos and this situation is no different and loves catching little moments like him sleeping or painting unawares to look at later when they're far away from one another. 27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked?Nina. Colossus has a fairly bland wardrobe so getting a request like that isn't farfetched for her, and although he hates going shopping for new clothes (hence the scarce variety) he trusts her to pick a few good outfits for future date nights and the like, which she definitely does no problem along with some ~special~ intimates that he has to model off for her later in the night.28: Which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of?HEHEHE. Venom technically isn't a pet but Nina often coddles him like one and Colossus is absolutely mortified by him for a very long time. Between finding out that he enjoys eating people and seeing the level of madness he can create when paired with the wrong host he thinks that the sassy little symbiote is a ticking time bomb with Nina until they bond over how much they both care for her. He eventually realizes he's not SO bad and sneaks chocolate to him at night when Nina is sleeping to keep him content.29: Which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains?Colossus. Nina tried once but she was much too short for her attempts and they both got soaked in the process. Now Colossus keeps her close in one arm while holding the umbrella in the other.30: If your OTP went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? Who would take the pictures?It's a toss-up! They both have their own designated places they want to take the other. Colossus wants to take Nina to Russia to visit his homeland while Nina wants to take Colossus to Paris to introduce him to her French relatives and childhood. Since Colossus' family farm is in ruins due to his family passing, they pay their respects and then go sight-seeing around Moscow and the local art museums.In Paris they would visit her grandmother and relatives who instantly go nuts over Piotr like he was one of their own and they give them a grand tour of the area and special sights. Piotr definitely surprises her (because we all know he would pull this type of thing) and splurges to get a hotel room that overlooks the city and Eiffel Tower because she wants to be extra romantic and boy howdy does it w o r k. They would probably both take pictures. Nina would take most of the scenic pictures and catching Piotr admiring the artwork while Piotr would be in charge of taking selfies because of how tall he is sgjdskgs

#long post #oc shit #tosses more mini comic ideas onto the pile #master-sass-blast

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acsversace-news · 7 years ago

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By now, it seems clear that the most compelling characters in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” are neither the slain fashion designer, shot to death outside his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, nor Andrew Cunanan, the psychopath who killed him.

Instead, that distinction belongs to more transient characters: in Episode 3, Marilyn Miglin, the widow of a Chicago real-estate developer whom Cunanan murdered; and now in Episode 4, David Madson, a semi-closeted Minneapolis architect who has the misfortune of attracting Cunanan’s amorous attention.

Unlike “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” this second season of “American Crime Story” lacks larger-than-life characters like Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran, with their operatic personalities, ambitions and clashes. Cunanan’s homicidal outburst captured headlines, but largely because of the fame of his final victim. His earlier victims remained mostly obscure.

As “Versace” moves backward in time, it attempts to draw out those victims’ lives — and in the case of Miglin’s husband and Madson, their closeted sexuality is a unifying theme. Whether the portrayals are accurate is for others to decide — several relatives of Cunanan’s victims have criticized the series and “Vulgar Favors,” the book by Maureen Orth on which it is based. But I admit, almost grudgingly, that it has worked powerfully as a narrative frame for portraying the victims, even if their killer’s motivations remain a mystery so far.

Just as Judith Light, portraying a widow in denial about her husband’s homosexuality, was the breakout star of the last episode, so Cody Fern, as David Madson, stands out in this one. His journey of self-discovery is both literal — Andrew coerces David into joining him on a road trip after killing David’s secret lover — and symbolic. David realizes who he is, and what he is running from, only when it is too late. It is the stuff of tragedy.

The episode begins in Madson’s warehouse-size loft apartment, which is lined with gray-metal shelves. David and Andrew have been bickering, and while their relationship isn’t exactly explained, a romance gone sour is implied. The buzzer rings; downstairs is a man named Jeff, whom Andrew has asked over, much to David’s irritation.

Andrew sends David downstairs to let him in. In the lobby and elevator, we learn a lot:

• David tells Jeff that Andrew proposed marriage, calling David “the man of his dreams” and “his last chance at happiness.”

• David says that he declined, noting that gay marriage isn’t legal, but that Andrew thinks Jeff is “the reason I said no.” Jeff is surprised that Andrew knows that Jeff and David have been together. “He has this feline intuition,” David says.

• Jeff says that Andrew took a gun from Jeff’s apartment, and that he has come to get it back.

As we are processing all this, the two men enter the apartment, and what happens next is a murder with a claw hammer too vicious and grisly for me to watch.

Terrified and stricken, David seems to go numb. He asks why Andrew killed Jeff; Andrew replies, “I lost control.”

David calls 911, but Andrew compels him to hang up by saying that if the police arrive, they will both go to prison, disingenuously eliding the fact that it was he who set all this in motion. He goes on to argue that homophobia makes justice impossible anyway. “When the police open the door they’ll see two suspects, not two victims,” he says. And when David insists he is no killer, Andrew replies: “They won’t believe you. They hate us, David, they’ve always hated us. You’re a fag.”

Queer people have a term for such self-serving cynicism: Chutzpah.

As he’s forced to flee with Andrew, David comes to see the journey as a symbol for a life of evasion: “I’m playing over everything the police are going to find out about me, and I realize I’ve been doing this my whole life: playing over and over the moment that people found out about me.” On the road later, he adds: “Was I really afraid, when I got in this car with you, that you were going to kill me? Or was I afraid of the disgrace, the shame of it all. Is that what I’m running from?”

In David’s hometown, Barron, Wis., his stunned parents learn from the Minneapolis detectives that a stranger named Jeffrey Trail was murdered in David’s home, with 27 blows from David’s steel claw hammer. The detectives tell them about another stranger, named Andrew Cunanan, whose friends in San Francisco have described as reliable, intelligent, generous. David’s father insists his son is innocent.

“I can see with certainty, there’s a great deal you don’t know about your son,” the detective says. But as we soon learn in a heart-wrenching scene, he probably knows more than the detective assumes.

In one of several flashbacks, David is shown speaking with his dad in the garage. It’s a workingman’s garage (in an earlier flashback, the two of them had gone hunting), and David has graduated from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, at the top of his class. He tells his father he is gay.

“I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t make a difference,” the father responds. “You know what I believe. And maybe this isn’t what you wanted to hear. Maybe you wanted to be told I don’t have a problem with it. I can’t say that. But what I can say is I love you more than I love my own life.”

It is a bittersweet moment, one that in its overall contours many lesbian and gay people may recognize. That someone with reasonably tolerant parents in the mid-1980s could nonetheless feel such shame and self-loathing says a lot, by implication, about those who lacked such emotional support.

We get another look at how crushing that shame and self-loathing might be, when Andrew and David stop at a roadside bar. As David ponders escaping from the bathroom, Andrew is brought to tears by a singer’s rendition of the Cars’ 1984 song “Drive,” a rare moment of true emotional vulnerability from him, his pain brimming to the surface. David, whether because he feels he can’t escape or won’t be believed, forgoes the chance to save his own life and returns to the table with Andrew. Perhaps their need for human connection is mutual.

In a diner the next day, David recalls how Andrew dazzled him when they met at a bar in San Francisco, a year and a half earlier. “What’s this man going to see in me, a small-town boy?” he remembers thinking. They ended up in a $1,000-a-night room at the Mandarin Oriental. David continues:

I remember thinking: How hard do I have to work to live like him, like Andrew? ’Cause I’ll do it. Except it was all a lie. You’ve never worked for anything. It was an act. Is that why you killed Jeff? You loved him. It was so obvious. But he figured you out in the end, didn’t he? It took him a few years but he finally saw the real you, and you killed him for it.

Andrew tries to change the subject, promising David that they’ll lead a glamorous life in Mexico. He can’t stop lying.

Back in the car, David arrives at a further, belated discovery — that Jeff was set up, that Andrew planned all along to kill him in David’s presence. “Why are you always talking about the past?” an enraged Andrew asks. “We had a plan. We had a future.”

They pull over. David’s fate is sealed.

Episode 3 argued that denial could be a tool of survival. Episode 4 points out that recognition — of oneself, of the true character of others — can exact a lethal price.

#acs versace #the new york times #2.04 #recap #review #article #february 2018

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imagine-valhalla · 7 years ago

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BEING RAGNAR’S AND LAGERTHA’S DAUGHTER WOULD INCLUDE:

(anonymous said: being ragnar and lagerthas daughter?)

(a/n: heya lovely! thanks so much for requesting. we hope that you enjoy what we have come up with! - admin kat 🌙❣️ & admin wenzel 🌲💖)

◾ Being this power couples daughter would be a blessing in itself; for your parents would love you unconditionally, no matter if their relationship tarnished.

◾ Your parents would be extremely proud of you whenever you would accomplish anything - great or small -, particularly if you did so within regards to your goals.

◾ They would also be proud of what would be in store for your future, supporting you through everything.

◾ Constantly praying to the God’s for your well being. For they wish nothing more for you than true happiness.

◾ If you had a desire to become a very adept and proficient shield maiden like your legendary mother Lagertha, be aware that she would teach you all the ways of becoming a shield maiden before hand and without you realizing it.

◾ Even if you wished not to become a shield maiden, you would be taught more than just the basics to keep yourself and your home safe.

◾ When hearing of this news, your father Ragnar would be authentically proud of you for stepping up and finding something that you took great interest in.

◾ He would thus end up teaching you a thing or two in training.

◾ Your father would practice with you, wishing to be soft with you, but if you were not learning, he would demonstrate many of the dangers that could become possible upon the battlefield.

◾ Please be aware that your parents would support you with anything that you truly desired; doing their best to nurture that and help you to achieve your dream.

◾ They would definitely keep their eyes focused on you, even when you think that they do not, they are. They would not wish to lose you.

◾ Your parents would make sure to tell your Uncle Rollo or older brother Bjorn to keep a very close eye on you when they are gone or when they are too busy.

◾ Your father and mother would try their best to make time for you, if it were to be one on one or just in the form of a loving family moment. They would cherish each and every second with you and would treat it like it were to be their last.

◾ Your mother Lagertha would take yourself and your sister Gyda on fishing trips, teaching the pair of you how to catch fish the proper way. She would also teach you how to prepare fish the right way, also.

◾ With that said, your parents reminding you to one day teach your own children the techniques and joys of farming, so then your children will know. Thus hopefully your own will carry it through the future generations to come.

◾ Your parents would teach yourself and your siblings the ways of farming, sometimes telling you stories of what they both went through, giving you tips on how to look after the farm the proper way.

◾ Rollo spoiling you rotten, as well as your siblings, which would make you all smile.

◾ Your parents telling you old tales of the Gods and old legends that their own parents had told them when they were growing up.

◾ Your father taking you on trips to see Floki the famous boat builder and his wife Helga, which ends up with Helga teaching you how to make convenient medicines and what different herbs can cure what, etc.

◾ Since you visit Floki so much, the boat builder would end up teaching you the ways of building a boat and would let you help him with carving wood pieces for the boat that he was building at that moment in time.

◾ All of your family members and family friends being extremely protective of you and making sure that no harm were to come your way.

◾ Training with your father whilst your mother watches with a proud look, only for Bjorn and Gyda to join in.

◾ Sticking close with your siblings.

◾ When your parents split up, you find it very hard to pick whether to stay with your father, Ragnar, or going with your mother, Lagertha. In that way, you share the confusion and inner-conflict that Bjorn does.

◾ When you tell your mother that you bleed for the first time, she would be so proud, helping you through the entire process.

◾ Being extremely close to Athelstan and the other citizens in Kattegat when the plague hit and mourning your late sister.

◾ You and Gyda would be close, being the only girls and losing her would cause you to mourn her loss in such a hard way that it would worry those who love you, especially your mother and father.

◾ Athelstan would comfort you during this time, causing you to be much closer to him than your siblings.

◾ Bjorn would inadvertently be the one to pull you out of your depression, forming a closer bond between their pair of you. Your mother and father would smile at this, telling you how proud Gyda would be that you two are sticking together.

◾ Being utterly loved by your family and the family’s close friends.

◾ Having your parents temperament at times; which often causes humorous bickering between them.

◾ “Our beloved daughter has the temperament of a wild beast. I wonder where she inherited such a quality from.” Ragnar would sarcastically remark to Lagertha as he gets ready to drink his ale.

◾ “Oh, I’m not sure, dear husband...” Lagertha would state sarcastically. “Something tells me my love, that the God’s have blessed this world with another beautiful young woman who just can’t digest the stupidity of men who do not think before they speak.” She would say as friendly as Ragnar had began before she almost growled the rest out; resulting in Ragnar nearly spitting out his ale.

◾ If you were to suffer from night terrors just know that your mother and father would try their best to calm you down and comfort you whilst this happened.

◾ “There is no reason to be terrified our dear daughter...” Your mother uttered out as she softly moved the damp wet messy hair that clung to you forehead away. “It was only a bad dream...” Your father began as he made his way over to where your bed was. “We would never let a phantom go near you, dear child.”

◾ If you stayed with Ragnar, you would miss your mother desperately. You would have ill feelings towards your father at first, but you knew that he would need you. At least you had Athelstan during this time.

◾ You wouldn’t really like Aslaug all too much, but you would tolerate her. You may even eventually grow closer to her, but reminding her that she would never replace your mother.

◾ If you were to go with your mother, you would miss your father, your uncle Rollo, everyone in Kattegat and Athelstan. You would long for the day that your family would be reunited once again. And due to the circumstances of Lagertha’s new marriage, you would be heavily protected by her and Bjorn.

◾ When, and if possibly, you reunited with either of your parents, there would be tears shed and many celebrations set out and experienced.

◾ People would often look at you and Bjorn and see greatness, as your parents were so famous.

◾ When going on raids, your family would fight together, and what a strong unit it would be.

◾ Even though you are only the half-sister’s of Ubbe, Sigurd, Hvitserk and Ivar, you would love them as your full brothers. They would love you immensely and be protective over you.

◾ You would mourn your fathers death as you may be more sensitive, but you would accompany your brothers upon seeking to avenge him.

◾ When your half-brothers attempt to kill your mother, you would not settle for it, nor would you settle for Astrid threatening your brothers, or your mother for that matter. You would feel caught in the middle in such a situation.

◾ Even though over the years your family had been broken up and become dysfunctional, you would be happy to have parents as you do, no matter the mistakes that they have made.

ragnar & lagertha gif : source - 🏹

hope you enjoyed! please follow for more, lovelies.

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sleepymarmot · 8 years ago

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DS9 season 4 liveblog

[Season index: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PS]

The Way of the Warrior

they changed the music! I liked the original arrangement better. I guess they decided that if they have to change the opening titles, better redo them from scratch?

I love how the Klingon general dramatically cuts his hand. It's like looking at the origins of an ancient ritual which real and very important meaning has long been forgotten. Tbh I thought the crew would do the same in the previous episode, but they went for the less dramatic blood tests :D

How was the Obsidian Order destroyed? The Dominion destroyed the fleet that the Order wasn't even supposed to have. What about all of their normal agents, infrastructure, gathered intelligence?

"Not like you? Impossible" (note: as I prepare to publish this post, having just finished season 5, it seems this line was the last time they ever shared a flirty moment... rip garashir 1993-1995)

finally!

please stop reminding me about that awful movie thanks

Poor Worf is so awkward as usual

"And I find you offensive. Now hold up your arm, or I'll have the security do it for you"

"Captain Sisko bet me that you would thank him for the rescue before you started complaining." "I lost."

The Visitor

I have a hard time becoming invested in stories like this, when I know that the entire timeline would be undone by the end. The final scene did manage to make me tear up a bit, but overall I'm not impressed. At least it's not outright terrible like The Inner Light...

Hippocratic Oath

Wait, did Bashir get promoted between seasons?

I don't think that joke about Keiko was very good :\ But this is the second time Miles comes really close to confessing his love for Julian... what's up with that

seriously, why does the new theme have such a messy rhythm? it's as if the beat is out of sync with the melody

Odo is such an unusual security officer, of course there's conflict between him and Worf. I'm glad they're addressing this!

of course O'Brien does a transporter trick

oh come oooon O'Brien do you really need to be such a jerk this week

Sisko is nicer to Worf than I expected

the last scene between Bashir and O'Brien is very poignant

Indiscretion

The runabout scene with Kira and Dukat is unsettling because this rhetoric is too real...

The Worst Field Trip(tm)

Julian & Jadzia's Judging Corner: priceless

honestly the absolute last thing i expected was for Dukat's butt to get so much attention...

Ziyal looks much younger than someone who was 13yo six years ago

halfway through the episode I thought Ziyal would be that Cardassian girl from season 2, I mean there was a reason for that scene, right? right?

great episode

Rejoined

Oh, Dax got promoted too

Trill society sounds dumber and dumber with each episode

Kahn is so beautiful, charming and well-dressed. damn

how did my mom manage to walk into the room just as they kissed? is that a special parent talent

;_;

"your work produced the first artificially created wormhole in history" not counting, you know, THE wormhole

welp. a romance episode finally made me cry :(

Starship Down

Wait, is the alien played by Odo's actor?

this is like a really boring version of "Disaster"...

Dax knows Bashir now better than a year ago? He hasn't changed much over the past year, the difference is rather between seasons 1-2 and later ones, plus they seemed pretty good friends in season 1 already, not like "she was avoiding him" -- in fact, I thought she was his only friend at the time. Their body language is cute as hell though.

Damn, I could hardly keep track of the plot in this one... or why the characters were saying what they were saying... how dull

you know what was the selling point of The Disaster? characters in unusual combinations and roles! I see none of this here...

Little Green Men

ew using someone else's tooth sharpener

omg Odo! :D

what, Klingons and Vulcans didn't have warp drive by 20th century?

The Sword of Kahless

what, this was the little boy we saw in TNG? Klingon children sure grow fast...

is this sword telepathically infected or something?

So, when Worf was acting OOC he wasn't under outside influence? okay... I enjoyed this episode, but under the assumption that Worf's dishonorable actions would be explained

Our Man Bashir

Bashir's taste is about as lame as Picard's...

"I think I joined the wrong intelligence service"

"This is more than I ever wanted to know about your fantasy life" same tbh... it's enough to remember these gross tropes exist somewhere out there, I don't need them in Star Trek reenacted by my faves

This just made me remember how much I dislike James Bond... We just had a cheesy 20th century pastiche two episodes ago, but at least I don't have anything against that genre. Not to judge what people do behind the holosuite's closed doors, but it's pretty offputting to see a 24 century man so enamored with this sexist fiction. And I have pretty much the same reaction to kisses with not-Kira and not-Dax as in the Mirror Universe episode, though to a lesser degree; that was pretty gross and exploitative. It's as if someone decided that the show wasn't straight enough after Rejoined and decided to compensate...

Also I think this was the first time ever that Bashir wasn't happy to see Garak. It feels strange and sad...

I expected Garak to spend all episode making fun of silly tropes, but the little he said was pretty weak. Though I liked the confrontation in the end and the way Bashir repeated Garak's speech.

And I don't think they even took advantage of the J. B. initials. Come on! :D

Homefront

"I prefer Klingon beliefs. Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth." I think I prefer Klingon beliefs too...

Why did Sisko put on TNG-type uniform?

Is that Leah Brahms?

Very relevant story about security vs civil rights, and it's very fitting for Odo to be here -- not just because of the plot. I really like the thematic unity between the changeling storyline and Odo's personal issues as a character.

Come on, it's so easy to deprive the entire planet of power?

Paradise Lost

This title is very ominous...

Cadet Shepard haha

I think I've heard this boast... "We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?" "Four." "You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?" "We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek!"

So, Earth and DS9 can communicate in real time? But in the previous episode, DS9 "received a recording of a high level diplomatic conference that took place on Earth a few days ago". I assumed the delay was due to the distance, but apparently not -- was the recording just classified before someone decided to send it to Sisko?

Wait, what President's speech? Did I miss something?

I liked the first part better. So, the changeling terrorist attack on the same week was just a coincidence? Everyone seemed to forget about that...

Crossfire

Odo/Kira scene is cute instead of irritating for once

"You could hear that?" "*points to lobes* Hello?"

"I have reason to believe someone is planning to assassinate First Minister Shakaar" and by someone you mean Winn?

Odo and Worf discussing security and order!

are they replacing Odo/Kira/Bareil with Odo/Kira/Shakaar? How many nice but bland Bajoran dudes can be in love with her?

"Frankly, I don't care whether you and Major Kira end up living happily ever after or not. I just want to see the situation resolved" same

ok, I get it, falling in love makes you very upset, bad at your job, and is sad and frustrating to watch on tv screen. nothing new here

Return to Grace

"Is that what you kept track of during the occupation? No wonder you lost"

"It bothers him, you know. Very much. He talks about it sometimes" crocodile tears... literally

some men just won't take a hint...

wait, since it was previously mentioned that Cardassian flirting is bickering, does Dukat genuinely misinterpret Kira and think he's got a chance here??

so much for keeping Klingon secrets from the Cardassians...

There's something about this dynamic I really appreciate, but I can't yet articulate it. The way Kira confidently and unflinchingly deflects all the bullshit he sends her way? How she is allowed to be right in her unforgiving stance? That being civil and working together with someone and seeing their better side does not mean all their past (and present) misdeeds are forgotten and they're suddenly your friend? Maybe this is the infamous "grey morality" done right -- not the indiscriminate tolerance and moral relativism, but allowing the other side to plead their case without losing sight of what made them "the other side" in the first place.

Sons of Mogh

Jadzia has a great "I'm gonna fuck that" face

"Charged with murder?" Have these people never heard of assisted suicide?

"I don't give a damn about Klingon beliefs, rituals or custom" ohhh so when we talk about Bajoran religion we all have to be tolerant and culturally sensitive and understanding, but Klingons are not allowed to perform their own rituals among themselves?

Wait, did Kurn consent to this or?...

A second good Klingon episode in the season that is tainted by the heroes' inexplicable immoral decisions. Last time Mr. Honor attemped murder in the most dishonorable day possible; this time ritual assisted suicide was deemed outrageous but likely nonconsensual mindwipe is an acceptable solution. The former can be headcanoned away with the assumption that the sword had some curse on it. My headcanon for the latter: people other than Sisko wouldn't have objected to the ritual (Dax canonically, O'Brien was implied to), so they accepted Worf's other solution on the same grounds.

Bar Association

Haha, Odo brings up Rascals, one of TNG's most ridiculous security failures :D

"Have you have any idea how bored I used to get sitting in the Transporter room waiting for something to break down? Here, I've a half dozen new problems every day. This station needs me" Damn, I hoped he got to do something interesting that we just weren't shown...

Wait, O'Brien got into a physical fight with Worf of all people?!

"If this was Ferenginar, I'd have you all taken to the Spire of the Tower of Commerce, displayed to the crowds in the Great Marketplace below, then shoved off, one by one. Small children would bet on where you would land, and your spattered remains would be sold as feed mulch for gree-worms" lol remember Quark's little speech about Ferengi not being barbaric?

I really care about this messed up family...

Yaaaaay I'm so happy for Rom! :D

Ferenginar sounds no less oppressive than Cardassia. I want a revolution! You know what, now that the Dominion has kindly disposed of the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order, can it take the FCA next? I, for one, would welcome our new gelatinous overlords in this case...

(I'm not a fan of that Leeta/Bashir background noise, thank you very much.)

Accession

"Quark, did you hear? Chief O'Brien is having a baby!" "I thought your females carried your young."

people from the past should stay in the past... apparently only 50 years ago Bajor was a pretty oppressive place too...

"Maybe you never realised this, Captain, but we would've tried to do whatever you asked of us when you were Emissary, no matter how difficult it seemed" well that's creepy

oh come on Kira, don't follow your religion so blindly...

O'Brien and Bashir is the real love story of this show istg

oh god they have an untouchable caste too

and of course the aliens can't tell which is the true Emissary because the word "first" isn't in their vocabulary lol

The aliens say "First. Later. They have no meaning to us." -- and in the same conversation use grammatical tense to indicate the order of events: "This IS the one that WAS injured." "He WAS injured" "We KEPT him with us" "The Sisko TAUGHT us" -- so they must have some perception of time

"We are of Bajor" oh? since when do you even know that word? did the poet teach you?

these two are so awkward that poor Keiko has to play matchmaker for her own husband :D bless her

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the direction of this story... Sisko was completely right to feel uncomfortable as a saint for a religion he doesn't believe in of planet he's not from, but it turned out he's so awesome that the Prophets chose him over the man from this culture who fits the descriptions in the sacred texts. Because only an enlightened human can lead the silly natives -- by following one of their own they'd go back to the dark ages! Yuck.

I've seen more than half of the show now... time flies fast.

Rules of Engagement

Courtroom episode!

I like the clever cinematography & editing

Hard Time

Poor O'Brien...

Well. This was really upsetting. I've been crying for several minutes now.

TNG repeatedly failed to show the recovery after a character's traumatic experience -- specifically, Picard's loss of time in The Inner Light and imprisonment and torture in Chain of Command. DS9 finally delivers an episode just about that -- even if the next week the status quo will be restored and I'll have the same complaint.

What Miles goes through is completely horrific -- so much that I can't imagine how one can survive that. Even as a viewer I want to wipe this from my memory and pretend it didn't happen... For my own peace of mind I'm gonna pretend O'Brien's friend was a part of the simulation, and later he managed to erase it all from his mind somehow.

Now I kinda want a story where the characters become self-aware and O'Brien decides to get away from his sadistic writers (and Bashir helps him, sacrificing their friendship for O'Brien's well-being).

Shattered Mirror

Always nice to see Worf's hair loose

Well, at least Dax is angry at Sisko for the rape by deception...

Why is Kira still wearing that shit...

at this rate you won't have any characters left for the next episode

The Muse

will this adult woman leave Jake alone

poor Sisko

Odo: "Actually, I have some free time and I was wondering if you wanted to take a walk." Worf: "I would." Odo: "I meant Lwaxana."

"Well, just don't go do what I did. Look for someone to fix your broken heart then end up pregnant and on the run." "I don't think there's too much danger of that happening."

aah Odo makes her a blanket! (well, I guess he owed her a night of sleep on his lap...) this entire scene was so sweet

eww not the pedo woman again

why must I watch this

Odo and Lwaxana playing hide-and-seek!!! this is the best thing ever

oh my god this is such a fanfic trope

ew can I just fast-forward through this?

"If you don't mind, this is a very special moment for me"

"You know, for a minute there, I really believed you wanted to marry me" ahh poor Odo's face :( even when he literally declares he wants someone in his life, that person thinks he didn't mean it...

aaaaaah! the goodbye scene!!! Lwaxana is so good! this is so significant and beautiful, this is Lwaxana recognizing and preventing her biggest negative trait/habit (pursiung and harassing disinterested men) with one of her more rarely shown positive traits (compassion and emotional intelligence)

i don’t know what to say about an episode where the main story is 0/10 but the side story is 10/10

For the Cause

Finally, some info on replicator sharing policy! "The Federation only gave Bajor two CFI [industrial] replicators”

"If she's really a Maquis, then she's no longer a Federation citizen" wait what?! I thought this was the entire reason Starfleet had to keep them in check -- because they were Federation outlaws! have they proclaimed their own state while I wasn't looking?

have they recast Ziyal? she looks different

I don't appreciate all this UST

"I would not become a terrorist. It would be dishonourable" "I wouldn't say that around Major Kira if I were you"

she... invites him... to a SAUNA??! ohhh my god whyyyyyy who wrote this

You go Kira!

okaaay I definitely missed something major about the Maquis formally leaving the Federation

well at least Cardassians enjoy their saunas fully dressed, that's a relief. the idea of lizard people lying around on heated rocks for relaxation is actually really cute, though

To be honest, I was dreading Garak's scenes in this episode. It seems that the writers ran out of Mysterious Past and Unclear Motivations to hint at, and stripped of that he's just... not particularly interesting. Plus, this episode confirmed my unpleasant impression that starting with this season, the producers/writers decided to forcibly drag Garak and Bashir away from each other and throw girls at them no matter how random and/or inappropriate it looks. At least they recast Ziyal so now she actually looks 19 instead of 13! (The problem is, in the previous episode she acted like a child, too, and you can't forget that she's a generation younger, so it's still pretty gross.)

Eddington's point about assimilation would have worked better without the rest of that inane speech. "Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you" -- They're obsessed because you're a threat to their foreign relations, what's so hard to understand about that? "We've left the Federation" -- When? When?! Left Starfleet, sure, but the Federation?! Isn’t that the entire reason Starfleet is pursuing them -- because the Federation is responsible for handling its citizens and stopping them from committing crimes against its neighbor!?

To the Death

Iconians -- that's from "Contagion", right?

I like this guy...

"What is the point of doing battle if you cannot enjoy the fruits of victory?" "You mean sleep?" :D

I love how Whatshisname casually gives out the white, rolling his eyes and barely moving attention from his plate -- so different from the Jem'Hadar perspective we saw in Hippocratic Oath!

"I didn't know that was public knowledge." "You told Commander Dax." "Well, that explains it."

O'Brien's answer to the Jem'Hadar! "I am Chief Miles Edward O'Brien. I'm very much alive and I intend to stay that way"

The Quickening

bwahaha

whoa, a city? if it the first one we've seen in the Gamma Quadrant? lovely matte painting

of course they make everything worse. Because being Culturally Advanced and Civilized won't always instantly solve any problem, and hospices and euthanasia aren't evil.

"I was so arrogant I thought I could find one in a week." "Maybe it was arrogant to think that. But it's even more arrogant to think there isn't a cure just because you couldn't find it." Good one, Dax! We're really going back to the pivotal traits of his character in this episode. (Someone on the writing staff: "Hmm, we haven't mentioned Julian's arrogance and hero/savior complex for a couple of months...")

He swallows his pride and decides to stay! I'm proud

I did have a suspicion that the pregnancy would solve everything...

I'm really glad the local doctor wasn't villainized! When Bashir was setting up his clinic I was afraid that he'd raise the townspeople to destroy it or something.

Bashir has more luck with medical episodes than Crusher and Pulaski...

Body Parts

Jadzia's female solidarity!

Alright, how is this one episode going to fit in Keiko's pregnancy (and presumably childbirth?), Quark's condition, Brunt, and Garak?

Federation technology is amazing...

Second time someone calls DS9 a "Cardassian monstrosity". That would make a good tumblr url... Wait, it's not even taken -- I'm very tempted...

of course Brunt bought him, why else would he be in the opening credits? :D this is so beautifully malicious

finally an episode that makes Quark look like a good person

Garak's face says "Killing you sounds like a great idea" :D :D

This is the most delightfully bizarre way to handle an actress' pregnancy :D

QUARK SHOPPING FOR MURDER-SUICIDE OPTIONS WITH GARAK = AMAZING

(not to mention very relatable...)

This is Garak's best outing in the entire season, tbh :D

Don't forget to undo your contract with Garak...

aww

This was a blast! This is a huge step in Quark's character development: following Nog and Rom, now he decides to break his society's rules. I'm very happy. ...But what about Garak, though?

Broken Link

Poor Odo...

aw encouraging Quark

"I'm thinking of asking Julian to come live with us. Even things up a little" Is that the only reason? ;)

"Captain, I want to be judged. I'm the only changeling who's ever harmed another. I've spent most of my life bringing people to justice. Now that it's my turn, how can I run away?"

"Don't tell me you'd object to a little genocide in the name of self-defence?" This is such a Cardassian line...

Why human and not Bajoran?

Oh Odo, just as he got comfortable with his identity as a shape-shifter... :/

General impressions:

Bashir in season 4, a summary: "Friendship ended with Garak, now Miles O'Brien is my best friend" Seriously, though... O'Brien and Bashir's relationship has become one of my favourite parts of the show. They got lots of good content this season: countless casual/humorous scenes, conflict in Hippocratic Oath, need for each other's company in Accession, talking down from suicide in Hard Time... And Garak was the most underwhelming part of the season for me, both himself and his relationship with Bashir -- or lack of it. I'm not even asking for shippy stuff, I know it's not going to be canon, but can't they just share screentime and enjoy each other's company, like they did before and Bashir does with O'Brien now?

And while the writers seem unsure what to do with Garak now, Dukat continues to be incredibly entertaining. Need a personification of Cardassian oppression? An unwanted ally the protagonist(s) would barely tolerate? A pompous prick to make fun of? A dangerously charismatic speaker -- or a windbag who thinks himself much cooler than he is? A relatively sympathetic opponent to provide "grey morality"? Well, here's all of that in one character! And my favourite thing is that despite being so immoral, he's not actually an enemy plot-wise (at least so far), so instead of fighting, defeating, and getting him out of the picture, the heroes just keep telling him how much he sucks. An interesting antagonist with a decent amount of screentime -- the dream. But all of that was about the character in general, and my favourite thing about his two episodes in this season is that he's self-aware of his status as a Complex Antagonist and completely overestimates the "complex and sympathetic" part, and (mis)casts himself as some kind of sexy byronic antihero whose deep and rich inner world will eventually win over the feisty heroine. Meanwhile, Kira is really not into villain/protagonist pairings and just wants the creepy guy responsible for genocide against her people to leave her alone. This was filmed twenty years ago but looks like a parody/deconstruction of currently popular ships like reylo or solavellan -- I find it really hilarious. (Maybe I’d feel more grossed out than amused if his behavior disturbed Kira more -- but she seems so gloriously unimpressed!)

I generally like Klingons and was glad to see Worf again, all of his episodes had something that stopped me from fully enjoying them.

It was my impression that Kira’s screetime got reduced because of Nana Visitor’s pregnancy -- and it was actually a good thing for the show! I feel bad saying this about one of the only two main female characters, but Kira is obviously the writers’ favorite, and got the most attention over the past seasons, so stepping back a bit let other characters shine more.

#star trek #ds9 #blah blah blah

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