#still wary of a big presentation i have to do in march.

[quaranmine]

literally every time i go AUGH. I HAVE TO GIVE A PRESENTATION OR TALK IN A MEETING! it always goes well so you'd think after a certain amount of time that i would catch onto this and stop worrying about it so bad but, well,

[lycianlynx]

"Oh! Chad, if you don't mind staying behind a second?" It could sometimes be difficult to get the boy's attention after class had ended, so likely to skirt the periphery and disappear as they were. But Igrene took the opportunity presented.

She smiled warmly at them as they approached, a gentle hand on their shoulder. "Don't look so tense, this will only take a moment.

"I know it's been some time since we traveled together, and I don't think we spoke much of birthdays during the march. Though you don't reveal much of that kind of thing, do you?" She winked.

Continuing, she produced a wrapped parcel from a drawer in her desk. When Chad takes it, it would be impossible not to notice the balance of the thing, for inside is a Wootz steel knife with a swirling blade blade inside a leather sheathe, intricately embossed with marigold flowers.

"It should keep its edge through the direst of situations, and you'll find that it should be quite comfortable to wield - and to hide."

Patting them once on the shoulder, Igrene turned and; "Oh! And before you go - would you like this?" She scooped from her desk a strawberry and cream cheese danish. "The kitchens gave it to me with my coffee, but I find these sorts of things rather sweet. You like them, don't you?"

Chad wakes up on his birthday like he does on any other day; At the same time he always does, missing the busywork that usually comes with a morning routine for a house of many. In the absence of the clatter of dishes, the clink of silverware, the sounds of groggy and inquisitive voices both, he glances at his schedule, notes the date, and readies to head out to class as usual.

He's never made a big deal of his birthday, everyone else tending to take care of that for him — Even when the attention mortified him, made him all too aware of his place in everyone's hearts. He's not sure if he's relieved or a bit lonely that noone notices today, and settles on the former; After all, it's not like he's gotten out and around much, even less keen on mingling after the ball.

He could get used to this. (Can he get used to this?)

It's a surprise when Igrene intercepts them on their way out, one half-expected but left by the wayside when she hadn't said a word all class, then all but forgotten; So it is that their first thought isn't how did she know, but am i in trouble. The tension in their frame only grows with the contact, before it drops as she remarks on it, though there's still a wary flicker in their eyes.

Her intentions clear; Right, birthday. They're almost embarrassed for thinking otherwise a second later, and their eyes stray sideways again, scratching the back of their head sheepishly. "I — Yeah, no, Professor... I'm guessing you saw a list?"

When brown comes back to her though, she is doing more than offering them cordial wishes, a parcel in her hands. Their hands curl up a bit defensively, a quick shake of their head; "Saints, Professor, you really didn't have to," but when she insists, they open their hands, palms up, to receive regardless, eyes shining a little as they recognise the weight. It's a heavy parcel for its size. They feel a little satisfied rush as they realise they guessed its contents correctly, alongside regret for the imposition.

... They'll repay her, then, they think with a thick swallow and a bow of the head. It's a promise in their mind; But she doesn't need to know that. "Th-thank you, Igrene. I'll use it well."

And the pastry on top — Ah, fuck it, she had that thing on her desk all class, and they won't see it go to waste. The danish is accepted with significantly less resistance, eyes now visibly lighting up.

"Yes! I mean," They clear their throat. "Yeah, I do." The danish is accepted, carefully cradled in their hands to eat once they're out of the classroom, the parcel slipped into the bag on their thigh. "I'll, um. Head to my next class then, yeah? Thanks again, Igrene. Really."

[ynscrazylife]

Hey !! i love ur writing style <3 i wanted to ask you if you could write a loki x reader where the reader and loki have been best friends for a long time now and after he faked his death in tdw he knocks on their door and the reader and loki have an argument and then they kiss?? maybe like the scene in crimson peak “you lied to me” “i did” “you told me you loved me” “i do” smth similar? :)

The Greatest Deception | loki angst fluff fic

Summary: After Loki reveals himself to be alive, Y/N has some choice words to say. Loki has a question.

Authors Note: Thanks for requesting! Also, I want to say that I fully support and acknowledge that Loki is genderfluid. Seeing as this fic was requested with Loki having he/him pronouns, I will use those pronouns. (Also, I didn’t know which pronouns you wanted me to write since you mentioned they for the reader but typically I use she/her, so lemme know if you want that edited)

Request to be on a taglist (or multiple) here! (Taglists are at the end of the fic)

MCU Masterlist #1 | MCU Masterlist #2 |  Main Masterlist 

PSA: Do NOT copy, steal, translate, plagiarize, republish, etc any of my works on Tumblr or any other platform. Also, do NOT claim any of my works as your own. All of these works are either requests I’ve gotten that people have wanted me to write or original ideas I’ve had for works. If you happen to take inspiration from anything I’ve written and want to write something inspired by that, please a) ask me first and b) IF I say yes, credit me as inspo in your post by tagging me and link whatever work of mine that inspired you. Thanks.

header c @/someiconsx

“Lady Y/N?”

The voice was muffled through the door and the one in question rolled from her side and onto her stomach as she laid in her bed. A low groan emitted from the creature whose limbs were tangled in the blanket and sheets.

. . .

“Lady Y/N?”

A short knock-knock accompanied the repeating words, and Y/N had a feeling of that the lovely woman who she’d love to talk to at any other time wouldn’t stop until she replied.

She pulled herself into a sitting position, smoothed over her unruly hair, and finally pulled the covers up so her pajamas wouldn’t be seen and called out, “Come in!”

The woman opened the door and sent her a sheepish smile. “The All-Father has requested your present, ma’am,” she informed her.

Y/N furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. “Do you know the reason as to why?” She quizzed.

The woman spared a quick, darting glance at Y/N’s window. “Well, the All-Father has requested all of the palace’s royals and higher-ups to gather in the courtyard. He is gathering local citizens for a, ah, play, and more would like, in this words, his ‘most esteemed confidants to enjoy,’,” she answered, subtly bouncing her weight from one foot to the other.

Y/N thought for a moment. This was the first time she was hearing that the King was holding a play — not to mention, the fact that the last play (if you could even call it that, because by Heimdall’s recounting it was horrific) was held before any of the children of Odin were born.

Just thinking about that caused a twinge to hit her stomach and for it to twist up. Loki. Odin’s youngest child and the one that had most recently left her, as he sacrificed herself to save his vaillant brother, Prince Thor. It had been weeks, maybe even a month, since Y/N had heard the news and had been resorted to a lonely, saddened version of herself. Loki was her best friend, the person she trusted more than anything and—no, no, who was she kidding? He’s more than that, and he deserves to be remembered as more than that by her.

He’s also the one that she loves, and has loved for at least the past year when she realized it.

Nonetheless, she had taken many steps to get through the grief of Loki’s dead — as had his father — and she wasn’t going to let all her hard work crumble down on one, singular thought.

“Very well, then. Please inform the All-Father that I will be there shortly, thank you,” she said.

The woman nodded and bowed her head before exiting.

Once the door had been fully shut and she could hear footsteps no more, Y/N crossed over to her window and drew back the curtains, not having missed the look at said window.

The sunlight poured into her room but the stage was indeed sent. Rows of fine chairs sat with rows of fine people in them. In front, Odin stood with a red curtain drawn closed behind him. His arms were gesturing wildly and he had a big grin on his face as he gave his speech.

Despite the curiosity that itched into Y/N’s face, she pushed it aside. She had never seen the King conduct himself in such ways, but alas, everyone grieved differently. So, she closed the curtains and got dressed for the day ahead.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

The moment Y/N stepped outside, she could’ve sworn that there was already long beads of sweat trailing down her skin. She let out a huff but journeyed on towards the courtyard, as this formal royal wear was necessary and she had no intention of pissing off Sir Snotty-Dickhead — as she called him (he had some fancy and long name she couldn’t remember, in her defense) — who was Odin’s right hand man.

By the time she got there, Odin was still rambling on with his speech, but his sudden notice of Y/N saved the guests from boredom.

“Aha, the guest of honor! Lady Y/N, herself,” Odin announced, bringing his hands together in a clap and gesturing for her to come toward him.

She betrayed herself and her cheeks involuntarily reddened as all eyes laid on her. She approached Odin and curtsied out of respect, but her mind was full of wonderings of why she, of all, would be singled out.

“I’m sure you all know who Lady Y/N is, yes?” He began, briefly pausing before continuing. “If you sadly do not, let me tell you. Lady Y/N had been a friend of the royal family, specifically my child, Loki’s—” the name caused her to suck in a sharp breath, “—and she was granted the title of Lady to uphold the image of the palace and to complete very important Asgardian duties.”

Once he stopped talking and the crowd clapped politely, Y/N took the opportunity she was presented before it’s door could close and quickly went and sat in her seat, the only seat not occupied yet, in the front row.

Odin then began speaking against whilst he walked to the side, “Speaking of my dear child Loki, this play that has been put together is one designed to honor him and his heroic sacrifice. Without further ado . . . ” He let his words trail off, and the red curtain pulled open.

Y/N’s face contorted into surprise at the words, not expecting this to take place. Again, she reminded herself, everyone grieved differently, so she decided to give it a chance. However, as the play went on, she was quick to realize that honoring Loki wasn’t the intention here. The horrid acting could be excused but Odin himself allowing this mockery of how Loki died? Of how he sacrificed himself? Well, with every second that passed, her face heated more and more — and not due to the sweat — and she grit her teeth, just barely refraining from yelling.

The worst part for her came though when the actor who played Loki did a dramatic reenactment of his sacrificed and the actor who played Thor did the worst fake crying ever. Y/N turned to the others, expecting them to be just as enraged as she was, but was floored to find that no—they were laughing. And not just that, but Odin was having himself a chuckle as well!

Her fingers tightly gripped the edges of her chair and she forced herself to look straight ahead, just about able to hold in her tears until the play was over and the actors bowed.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

Afterwards, while everyone was standing and giving Odin rounds and rounds of praises, Y/N stayed rooted in her seat. She couldn’t just let this go by as if it were nothing, but she was struggling to compose herself to confront him.

After a couple minutes of going back-and-forth, she decided, screw composure. She didn’t have to be composed. She was allowed to be angry.

So, she stood up and marched straight for him.

“All-Father,” Y/N said through grit teeth, forcing herself to curtesy, “I request your company in private, if I may.”

It took Odin a moment to tear himself away from accepting his latest comment, but the way he quickly glanced over at Y/N, she knew that he had not noticed — or perhaps he did not care — the state she was in.

“My apologies, Lady Y/N, but should I depart now, I fear I shall upset my comrades!” Odin said, ending his comment in a boastful joy, which resulted in laughter and cheers.

He didn’t wait for her response before engaging in another conversation, and Y/N’s lips remained tightly shut until she decided to just go forth and let her stuffed-up emotions out.

“Fine. I will say it in front of everyone, then!” She said, firmly and loudly, gaining everyone’s attention. “That was a pathetic excuse to remember Loki . . . It was an insult! You mocked him, your own child! How could you even— I . . . I just don’t understand . . . He sacrificed himself for your son and for Asgard and this is how you repay him? God. I expected much, much more from you for him because I . . . Let’s just say that we both love Loki, in our own ways, and I-I . . . I am very disappointed.”

Wanting to flee from the tears that were now streaming down her face and from the silence that was pounding, she turned around and she walked away, the realization that she had just confessed her love in front of everyone hitting her.

“Lady Y/N!”

Odin’s words stopped her in her tracks, but she did not turn around. Just stood. Waited.

“He told Thor, before he passed, that he, uh . . . He loved you, too.”

Y/N stared straight ahead, her hand jutting out to grab the pillar next to her to steady herself.

Loki loved her?

She didn’t stop the tears from coming this time. She let them, and the sobs, overwhelm her.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Lady Y/N?”

The voice and the knock were much more stiff than they were this morning.

“Come in.”

Her response was devoid of emotion, much more curt than it was this morning.

The same woman turned the door’s knob and opened it, sending Y/N, who was curled up on her bed, head nestled into her knees, a wary look. “The All-Father has requested your presence at his quarters,” she said.

Y/N let out a small huff, in no mood to talk to the King after what had happened. She forced her head up and gazed boredom at the woman. “Is it an emergency?” She deadpanned.

The woman looked around the room and by her lack of response, Y/N knew that either she didn’t know or didn’t want to say.

She sighed. “I will be there shortly,” she said.

The woman nodded and wordlessly left.

After she did, Y/N stood up and went in front of her mirror, taking in her appearance. Her once brushed hair was now frizzy and in knots and her eyes were puffy and red. Angrily, she practically tore the hairbrush through her hair and dabbed at her eyes with makeup until the red could be seen no more. She had no intention of letting him see her this way.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

Screw formalities, Y/N thought, as she walked straight into Odin’s quarters which composed of a small living room, a bedroom down the hall, an office, and a bathroom. She didn’t bother to curtsy or announce her presence.

When he finally and gradually turned around from whatever he was doing, a slight look of shock crossed his features, before he replaced it with a warm smile. “Y/N!” He said, but quickly corrected himself, “Lady Y/N.”

Y/N frowned and crossed her arms. “I hope that you have called me here to apologize,” she said, an icy edge to her voice.

Odin nonetheless looked at her kindly. “In a way, yes,” he vaguely said, before a magical transformation underwent before her.

His wrinkles disappeared, his beard disappeared, his grey hair turned jet black, and his clothes transformed into his usual wear.

No longer was the All-Father standing in front of her, but her best friend. The one she loved.

Taken by utter shock, Y/N instinctively stumbled back, her jaw dropping and her eyes widening. “What the hell is this?” She gasped out, not wanting to believe it at first. It was a cruel trick — it must be! There was no way.

“It’s me,” the mischievous deity said, a rare softness to his voice and in his eyes. He took a step forward, but then stopped himself. “I never died, I only impersonated my father.”

Y/N stared at him, angry tears coming to her eyes once more. “How?” She forced out, thinking that maybe she was dreaming. “Why?”

Loki looked around, slightly dumbfounded, as if he hadn’t expected anyone to question him. “I wanted the throne,” he answered, as if it were obvious and a perfectly acceptable reason.

Y/N stared at him as if he had grown two heads. To her, he might as well have.

“Oh, really? So you take over your father, trick everyone - me, your brother - into believing that you’re dead, you banish Sif . . . All because you wanted the goddamn throne?” She cried.

The cluelessness left his eyes and replaced itself with guilt, regret pooling inside him. He looked down, shoulders falling with a sigh.

“I’ve felt guilty tricking you ever since it had all went down. I wanted to tell you but, honestly, a part of me didn’t think you’d be that upset over my death. But you were really, so upset and I . . . I was lost. I didn’t know what to do. All I wanted to do was hug you and tell you that it was fine, that I was here, but I thought I’d screw up your emotions and hurt you even more,” he admitted.

Y/N just looked at him, her frown growing deeper. “That’s an awful excuse,” she hissed out, words laced with venom.

Loki immediately snapped his head up to look at her and his gaze held desperateness. “It’s not an excuse,” he said quickly. “It shouldn’t be. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to was to trick you, and . . . I did. But today was the final straw. I couldn’t continue like that.”

Y/N took a step forward, having an inner battle in herself on whether or not to forgive him. “You lied to me,” she reiterated bluntly.

Loki nodded guiltily. “I did,” he agreed in a small voice.

She took a pause, taking in a deep breath. “You told me you loved me,” she added.

There was a brief moment of silence before Loki said, in the same small way but a little more firm now, “I do.”

Y/N kept walking, not even fully sure or convinced of what she was doing, but knowing that she needed to do it, until she was standing just inches away from him. They looked at each other for a couple moments, neither saying anything, until Y/N wrapped her arms around Loki. He returned the embrace.

“Never do that to me again!” She yelled through the tears that were now coming. God, was she tired of crying. Especially today.

Loki hugged her tighter, his own tears falling. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and repeated that over, and over, and over again. “I’m an idiot.”

Y/N leaned back and cupped his face with her hands. The love she had for him overwhelmed her pain, and more than anything she needed him now. Besides, she could see his guilt. She could see the truth shining in his eyes. He wouldn’t do anything like this again, because he loved her. And she loved him.

“At least you’re self-aware,” she whispered through a sniff, taking a page out of his book with her joking remark. Before he could quip back (and she was sure he’d have an excellent one), she leaned forward and captured his lips in his a kiss. Loki smiled against her lips and wrapped his arms around her waist.

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[mimssides]

The Ego, the Wants and the Hope: 2/4

Masterpost | Taglist | Read on AO3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

___

Their walk back was quiet. The Hero walked serenely in front of them. Janus was staring down at his shoes and Remus looked from one to the other again and again. His brother seemed to be gone, his best friend might be cursed to feel pain for the rest of his life. This wasn’t how today was supposed to be going.

Why couldn’t Roman have said something before he had escalated the situation like this? Why did everything have to end in this miserable way?

The bustling of the village was audible again. Both Janus and Remus focused on that instead of their own thoughts. Remus tried to suppress the eerie feeling in his chest as he saw the Hero marching towards it and looking just like he belonged into the landscape. Into the story that was told in this part of the imagination.

“Apparently your friends have managed to reassure each other quite a bit,” the hero said and looked over his shoulder back to them.

Janus could see Logan, Patton and Virgil sitting still at the table they had left them at. They did seem calmer than before, well, Virgil seems calmer, the other two were repressing their emotions anyway so it was hard to tell how much their mental state has changed. With more vicinity to them, he instinctually began to straighten up. It was as if he felt the need to puff out his chest. To pretend to be bigger and stronger than he actually was. Immediately he eyed the Hero from the side. Was that the reason why Roman had walked around like he was the king of the mindscape? Was it something that just happened when the ego was a big part of your very being?

He couldn’t think it over much as they reached the other three. He felt a strange pull towards Virgil and Logan right away. Curiously he looked for signs that they felt the same but didn’t see anything that could have told him that they did.

“You have been gone for quite some time. Is everything in order?” Logan asked and held Virgil by the shoulder.

The Hero nodded and said: “I would think that I managed to give Janus some clearance on his situation. I think I will manage to do the same for you two as well.”

Logan furrowed his brows and Virgil tilted his head in question. Again Janus found himself staring at his feet and gently laid his hand over his throat. The sensitive thing felt as if it was closing up again and he forced himself to take a deep breath. Of course, that didn’t go unnoticed.

“Janus? Do you not feel so well?”

Patton’s voice was saccharine and caring. It didn’t feel as honest as it usually did, Janus noted. It wasn’t that his powers weren’t working, he could very much feel that Patton’s intent was still as upright and sincere as he did before, but doubt he felt was much stronger than it ever was before.

He gulped. Quickly he turned to look to Remus. There was no chaos, but sorrow in his friends eyes. This had become much more complicated, much faster than they had anticipated.

“I believe,” Janus said and cleared his throat with wary eyes, “we don’t need to talk.”

During the whole explanation Remus and the Hero had given them, no one else spoke a word. Janus had begun to explain but his voice soon had broken down too much for him to continue. With a soft “You did very well.” the Hero took over and told them in his stead what responsibility now lay on Janus’s shoulder additionally to what he was doing normally.

Janus couldn’t deny that he felt ashamed. His inability to present his own situation to the others was bothering him more and more. It was even worse seeing how appalled Virgil’s expression became after every other sentence. Patton’s pitying look didn’t help either. Nothing of it helped him concentrate on the facts.

Logan’s question cut through Janus’s train of thought: “And now you feel alright, Janus?”

He blinked. His look darted to his hands, which he had folded on top of the table. If it weren’t for the gloves he could see his veins pop and his knuckles turning white. He closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled slowly relaxing his tense fingers.

“I don’t know.”

Interrupted by his breaking voice Janus stopped and cleared his throat once more. He was determined to get through this sentence though and decided to go on.

“I don’t think that I will be able to get rid of the Ego. The idea of giving it back to Roman- I don’t think it will be possible,” Janus confessed and looked from one side to the other.

All of them stared a him. The slight hint of worry in Virgil’s face was now changing in something akin to anger and Janus braced himself of what would be coming next.

Virgil stomped towards him and growled: “How can you say such a thing? We haven’t even really begun to try and fix this! You can’t give up right away!”

“I’m not giving up, Virgil! I’m being realistic.”

Janus dug his fingers into his arms and tried to ignore the pain in his chest.

“I don’t wish for this to be permanent. The bruises of the Ego are far more vicious than I could have imagined but they also clear up exactly how we failed him. The Ego would not be in such a fragile state, had I not undermined it. If we all had paid more attention, and praised him and supported him whenever he needed it. But we didn’t and now we are stuck with the consequences.”

In his ears Janus could hear his ribs crack. He knew they didn’t but it felt like that way and he couldn’t help himself and crouched down with a yelp. Patton cowered next to him in the fraction of a moment and Remus was at his other side. Reassurances and soft words immediately spewed over the Dukes lips and Janus could feel the pain lessen bit by bit. He just glimpsed at Remus and then back up to Virgil. He could see his face getting paler and let himself lean against Remus who held him safely.

Virgil stepped back and shook his head. He kept eye contact with Janus who didn’t shy away under his frighten gaze.

“What- You’re not the one for sacrifices! Why would you let yourself become the martyr!”

A short look to the Hero. Then Janus directed his attention back to Virgil. He didn’t like the answer he was going to give him but it was the only one he had.

“I’m not. And I won’t be a martyr. But even the best liar can’t always lie their way out of the consequences of their actions. And denying that I didn’t have any play in this wouldn’t be helpful here, Virgil. I was part of what broke him eventually and that cannot be changed.”

Virgil shook his head. His hands were stuck in his hair and he frantically paced around. With a jolt he stopped and glared at the Hero.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?!” Virgil cried out and the Hero watched him with sad eyes. “Why do you let us talk about you as if you weren’t here? Why are you letting Janus tell your fucking story? What’s happening with you? Why are you letting us do this to you?”

“Because I’m not him,” the Hero said patiently.

Virgil turned to him in fury and screamed: “But you are! You’re Roman! Take the Ego back! Take the Wants and the Hope back! We’re not made to carry them!”

“Neither am I,” the Hero insisted.

Virgil growled and shook his hands in front of his body. He paced and shook his head as he tried to make sense of it all.

“You don’t get it! I’m worse than I was ever before!”

Electricity prickled in his stomach. Every single muscle in his body was tense and he hated the whole world to an inexplicable amount.

“There is so much more now,” Virgil said and got up close to the Hero again. “I’m on edge 24/7. My pulse is beyond measurement and my blood pressure is so high that I would pop my fucking veins if I was a fucking real human being! Anxiety and Wants?! The most active and volatile aspect of Roman’s? REally?! Given to ME? I fucking freak out when we haven’t checked if the door has been closed FIVE times! How’s that going to work?”- violently he grabbed the Hero by the collar and lifted him easily of the floor - “NO, don’t answer. This was not a serious question. I know it won’t! It can’t! Because I’m me and this is terrible and horrible and I can’t live like this, Thomas can’t live like this and we need to fix this.”

Virgil dropped the Hero. The little smile rested on his face just like it had since he had met the sides. It was gentle, subdued and not like Roman at all. The Hero knew that he wasn’t Roman anymore. And he had seen Janus and Remus understand this fact. Virgil had been on the cusp of understanding as well but needed more time. After all, his new ability needed to be activated first before it would work, unlike the Ego which was just a passive part of Roman’s being.

The stares and glares from Virgil did nothing to scare the Hero away. In contrary, they made him believe that he would do a better job than they all could have expected. He watched him fidget and stim more but it wasn’t enough to get rid of all the energy which was piling up in Virgil’s form and the Hero decided to give him a little nudge.

“I see you know what needs to be done,” the Hero said slowly holding Virgil’s glare, “but what do you want? Is what we need also what you want?”

Virgil stormed towards him and pushed him backwards. The Hero didn’t fall and Virgil didn’t look. He just screeched and pulled at his hair.

“What I want?!”

Virgil’s tempest tongue echoed through the forest and the sides stared at him in disbelief and terror. Leaves were lifting from the ground as the wind pulled up and electric currency flickered in the air.

“I want our Roman back! I want you to be stupid and extra and stand on the couch and act out whole fucking adventures you have here instead of playing this delusional game! I want my friend back.”

With the last word Virgil sunk down to his knees. The world was more in focus again but the hole in his chest was now more prominent than ever. His friend was gone. His friend wasn’t here to help him. His friend wasn’t here to have fun with them. His friend wasn’t here to annoy them all and say stupid things that weren’t actually stupid but real fun and sometimes even clever, almost brillant.

“I understand.”

Virgil wanted to disagree but kept his mouth shut as the Hero went on: “It is hard to lose a friend like this. I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t have left in the way he did, had he known that you consider him such an important friend.”

“What the hell are you talking about? He’s the one who compelled me to come back before ducking out!”

The words had slipped out before he could have thought about them. The suffocating loneliness of his room, his mind, came over him once more. He remembered the monotone feeling of grey and black in the air and his chest. It changed when they came looking for him. The all were talking to him, thinking of him. Focused on him without being angry and bitter about it. They were worried. He couldn’t believe that it was because they wanted him to be back but because they needed him for Thomas’s well being.

Patton was nice because he had to. Logan was convincing and objective because he had to. But Roman was honest. He was sincere and humble in a way that didn���t seem to come naturally to him. And he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to tell him what he thought, what he believed, what he felt.

But he had wanted to.

He had wanted for Virgil to be with them and suddenly everything seemed a lot less grey and heavy. It became manageable.

So how could the Hero claim that Roman hadn’t known that Virgil was his friend? How had it been possibly for Roman not to notice how much he meant to him?

Virgil didn’t get an answer. He also didn’t get the chance to ask the Hero about his words, as a deafening thunderclap boomed over the valley. Patton crouched in shock and even Logan seemed rattled by the sudden loud noises. Virgil twisted around looking for clues in around them and found that for the first time the Hero had lost his composure. As if a bee had stung him, he ran to grab his sword and then sprinted towards the village.

Patton had gotten up again and was about to follow the Hero as Remus stepped in front of them. He held up one arm and summoned his morning star in the other. Death seriously he stared at the village line.

“Something’s off.”

Remus’s voice was just barely over a whisper, but its clearness cut through the air. Worried they all watched him as his eyes stayed glued on the village and the Hero’s disappearing back.

“What is off?” Janus asked after a short moment.

The air was so thick with tension that it could have been cut.

Remus answered in the same tone as before: “It feels like another Split. Which is fucking bad news. Really, really fucking bad news.”

For a moment the world was quiet. It was as if the whole forest, the whole village held its breath. The Imagination waited. Waited for a disaster to strike.

“Split? What-”

No other word could leave Logan’s lips as Remus’s head spun backwards and glared him down. Not ever had Logan feared the duke before but the earnestness in Remus’s eyes was far scarier than any prank the duke could ever have pulled on him.

No time was given for him to think about it. The Imagination was rolling again, and an agonizing scream came from the village. From far away they could spot bright little lights coming through the brushes. Amorphous creatures emerged, an odd iridescent shimmer encasing their forms. They slithered, floated over the floor, through the spaces between the houses, through the cracks of the fences.

Suddenly shouting started. The sound of metal being slashed against metal, wood hitting on wood, bodies falling down in the dirt. They couldn’t stay there. Remus had drawn his morning star and ran to the village without giving any thought to the others anymore. He left them behind anyway as none of them were trained to last in a fight anyway.

But the others got closer too. They could see children running away from the gates, parents cradling their babies and teenagers pulling their elders out of the fray. Patton couldn’t get any closer. Mortified he stared at their panic and next to him Logan and Janus came to a halt as well. Neither could do anything here. Their wits weren’t helping them in a physical fight and getting involved there, would most likely just end in them getting in trouble and needing rescuing themselves. And that wasn’t help to anyone right now.

Virgil had dragged behind them. His legs were heavy. His anxiety was shutting him down. His fear was putting his mind on hold. He couldn’t even follow to where they had gotten.

Energy.

But there was a light. Not physically. Not visibly.

No, but there was a light. It sat deep in his core. It was buzzing. Making Virgil’s skin vibrate with energy.

But Virgil couldn’t move. He couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t reach things when he couldn’t move. It’s always been that way.

But you’re moving.

Virgil looked at his feet. He was still moving. It was slow but he was moving. He hadn’t stopped yet.

Use your momentum! Save them!

The light was still at his core. He could take it. He could do it.

He was doing it.

His legs felt lighter. They gained on traction on the grass, the dirt, the ground. His arms moved and he was sprinting. There was no barrier that his body set him up with at all times. Now he could just go.

He would save them.

Besides Logan a purple blur passed by him. For a second the form didn’t register in his mind, but Patton’s stifled yelp made it click.

“VIRGIL!” he screamed after him.

But Virgil didn’t seem to hear him. He seemed to get even faster. And something else was happening as well. Dumbfounded Logan watched as a silver hue began to glow in the centre of Virgil’s chest. It began to spark like a firecracker and with it the black on Virgil’s clothes turned a dark plum hue.

But soon he was too far away for him to see the rest of the changes. None of the three sides saw how the eyeshadow under Virgil’s eyes got smaller, turning silver as well. The purple patch of hair was turning a bright purple, taking over all of his hair which was beginning to lift up as if gravity didn’t exist anymore.

To Virgil the world singled in and expanded at once. He saw all the iridescent creatures attacking the villagers. Hurting Remus who was surrounded by more than a dozen. They were clinging to him, trying to consume his costume, penetrating his skin, dissolving him. All the dangers, all the people were pointed out by his senses, flashing in his conscious, telling him where he needed to be, where he needed to do something.

His heart felt strong. His core was filled with energy. There was buzzing around him, and it made him feel the raw strength in his veins.

Lightning stroke as Virgil jumped. No thunder accompanied it, no raindrop, or hail fell from the sky.

Now the sky above the village was now preoccupied by another stormcloud. Virgil had taken off. He ran through the air, his legs and arms gathering little electric impulses around them as he moved, and his eyes were sparkling brilliantly with silver lightening. Underneath him he could hear the creatures hiss. He felt their presence hiding within the forest, could feel how far they had already spread and how much damage they could cause if he wasn’t going to do anything.

But he didn’t need to worry or fear. Over the middle of the village his stopped and spread out his arms. He snapped his fingers. Lighting stroke down from the sky, hitting every single creature with deadly precision.

The iridescence flashed and glowed as it came into contact with the pure energy, angry squeaks distorting into short yowls before they dissipated into nothingness. People who had just been attacked, stared at the empty spaces in front of them. Their weapons were still clutched desperately in their hands but there was no need for desperation anymore.

Parents called for their kids. Kids called for their parents. People began to check who was injured, unconscious or worse. They didn’t look up to the sky, to the one who saved them. Not yet at least. Not now that they still had to do things.

The Sides were in a different boat though. Remus had been unable to move due to shock of seeing Virgil up there. But his inability to move didn’t last long. He ran to the middle of the village, watching as Virgil slowly descended and his sparkles and glow dimmed more and more. He could hear other people running behind him as well. He gathered quickly that it had to be the other three, as their energy was different from those of the villagers and the way they panted was enough evidence to let him know that it wasn’t people who were used to do hard work and run around too often.

Above Remus he could see Virgil slowly floating down. He was looking at him. The brown of his eyes was looking silvery and the eyeshadow was less prominent than usually. Without thinking he stretched his arms out and felt his throat getting dryer and dryer as Virgil came closer and eventually ended up sitting plainly in his arms for a second. Then gravity came back and Virgil’s full weight was dropped in his arms. With an “umpf” he managed to hold onto him and let him down after a few more seconds.

Patton, Logan, and Janus were swarming around them and despite their apparent exhaustion the looked worried for Virgil. To their and Virgil’s own surprise, the anxious side didn’t look hurt or exhausted at all.

No, Virgil felt fine. Well, maybe not fine, he didn’t really have the time to think about what he was feeling but was more so focused on the well-being of the people and creations around him. With an unknown calm he looked at Remus and then at the others.

“None of you are injured?” he asked, and they nodded dumbfoundedly. “Alright. Then let’s help those who are.”

The next minutes went by in a blur. Virgil and Remus were carrying away injured people, helped Patton and Logan set up the little house of the village doctor and put-up tents for those who didn’t fit inside but needed a little shelter from spying eyes and the upcoming wind. Children were calmed down, as their parents were getting treated. Some fences needed quick fixes so they would be good for the upcoming night.

In all of this Virgil didn’t have the time to look at himself. Remus noted how his walk had changed as well; it was steadier, his back less hunched and it looked like there was meaning and force behind each step Virgil took. It was probably for the best that Virgil hadn’t noticed it yet. Otherwise, he most likely would have panicked and Remus wasn’t sure if a panicking Virgil would do any good in this situation.

The light was dimming slowly, and more and more people got to rest as they crashed from the high adrenaline from today’s events. The five Sides were no different. Patton and Logan were sitting on a bench a little away from the medicine tents, former resting his head against Logan’s shoulder. Janus was sitting on the floor close by them and Remus stood a little away to keep an eye on the three.

He also was looking out for Virgil who should hopefully join them soon and maybe was finally ready to be informed about his current state. Watching Logan and Janus, he was well aware that they were just as concerned about those changes as he was.

Finally, Remus spotted Virgil heading around the corner of the hut next to them. He looked them all over and his lips were pressed in a thin line. At the edges of his eyes, he could see the worry lines form already and he at once was moving again.

“What’s wrong.”

The three others were immediately alarmed, and Janus tumbled to his feet as Virgil looked at them and then back at Remus. He gulped and looked around once more, his eyes darting all over the place.

“Raccs, what the fuck is wrong?” Remus repeated intensely.

That grabbed Virgil’s full attention and his eyes stayed on him.

“I haven’t seen Roman since the whole thing began. None of the villagers have mentioned him or are looking for him. I-”

Virgil stopped. He didn’t need to say anything else. None of them had thought about Roman, the Hero since they had seen him run into the village. Their Roman could be injured, fatally even, in this very moment and they hadn’t even thought about him.

For a second Virgil thought he saw Remus’s lips quiver, but he turned away too quickly for him to be sure. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter as Remus grabbed Virgil by the hand and pulled him away from the tents. With a yelp Virgil pulled himself away and Remus twirled around and glared at him angrily.

Darkly Remus spat: “What’s the hold up now?! We need to go and find him!”

Immediately Virgil’s demeanour shifted, and his colours darkened. The wildness from many years ago appeared back in his eyes and the predatory hunch made him seem ready to jump Remus’s throat at any moment.

“What did you think I was fucking doing until now!” Virgil hissed as Remus let his arms drop casually to his sides. “I have been looking for him everywhere around here since we finished fixing up the fucking fences! Why should you be better at finding him than me?”

With haunting steps Remus and Virgil began circling each other. Either was ready to spout another jab or jump at the others throat as Logan cut in between them. With out-stretched hands he motioned them to back away, which both did out of sheer surprise.

Giving both a second to calm down Logan just watched before he looked to Virgil and told him: “Remus is the only one who still has a connected function with Roman. While his three main functions are stored in us, Remus and Roman still both share Creativity. Admittedly, he might not have a strong grasp on his powers right now, but Roman still has sparks of it left, otherwise Remus wouldn’t have been able to find him as quickly as he did in the first place. Just now he wanted to pull you in a specific direction, and I assume that this is a pull from Roman’s Creativity. Am I assuming correctly, Remus?”

Remus blinked once. Then twice and nodded. Logan nodded back and motioned into the direction Remus had tried to sprint off to before. The duke didn’t move but looked to Virgil. He observed how his eyes glimmered, how his hands shook. It wasn’t like it used to be. It didn’t look like the Virgil he knew. There was something else in there. It was potent. It was light. It wasn’t what he knew his Virgil to be like.

Virgil caught Remus’s look. He knew. They didn’t need to say more to know that they were in agreement.

Remus began to walk further along the edge of the village until he got to where the forest met the little patch of civilization. He stopped and the others came to a halt as well as they saw the shirt of their Hero stand out from behind a tree.

Virgil stormed ahead. No one protested, no one spoke. They simply hurried behind him and came to see the Hero sitting on the forest floor, leaning weakly against the tree.

With a thump Virgil dropped down on his knees in front of him. There was the smile of the ever-smiling Hero again, but this time it was deteriorated with pain. He held his leg, a long gash was visible on his left thigh, blood gently darkening the brown cloth of his pants.

All the words that had been building up in Virgil’s throat were stuck. Stuck in the view of this bleeding hero. His hands were hovering over the wound and the Hero just grinned and leaned his head back against the tree bark as he watched Virgil stare at him at utter loss.

Just then, for the fraction of a second, the Hero’s form lost its colour and the rough bark of the tree shown through. As fast as it came it was gone again but the moment had been there and an immediate panic arose in all sides.

Virgil shot towards the Hero, gabbed his shoulder as to make sure that he was still here. The Hero gasped in slight pain for a second but calmed at once opening his mouth to reassure Virgil it was alright only for Virgils worries to be faster than his.

“What the fuck was that? What the fuck happens to you?!”

The Hero bit his lip and let out a long sigh. He looked over Virgil’s shoulder, to the others, Virgil assumed. But eventually his eyes were back on Virgil and suddenly, as he saw those brown eyes which were meant to make him feel safe, he wasn’t sure if he wanted an answer anymore.

“It seems that you’ve been taking on the Wants well. Your fighting spirit makes my presence obsolete,” the Hero said oh so gently.

Crickets chirped in the grass and the wind rustled in the forest. The temperature had gone down steadily, unnoticed due to the panicked fighting and then clean up of the damage. But now the world was calmer again. Dusk was approaching and the day was reaching an end.

Just like the Hero.

“No.”

Virgil’s voice was barely more than a whisper. He clutched the Hero’s arms and shook his own head.

“No. No. No. No.”

A tad louder now he pulled the Hero closer, looking frantically for the thing in his eyes that told him that Roman was still there. He needed it to be there.

“No, please. Please. Be here.”

The Hero’s smile was gone. But Roman’s spark wasn’t there either.

“Please, Ro. Don’t do this to me. Don’t make us lose you.”

Virgil’s hands fell to his side. The purple spark had not left entirely but had dimmed away into it’s former black. He was shaking. Shaking like the world he seemed to be losing right now.

“I am sorry that you have to suffer, dear fighter.”

Shivering his hands grabbed his hair and he shook his head helplessly.

“You have been fighting well. Your power and energy have been directed masterfully. He would be proud of you. He would want you to be happy, I think.”

Virgil choked out a bitter snort. He thinks, he said.

“No, I know,” Virgil barked and looked at the Hero’s face again.

He flinched.

“I fucking know that he wants us to be happy. He also wants us to be his audience when he has new ideas. He wants us to cuddle up on the couch on movie night when the scences get too sad. He wants to help in the kitchen too, when Patton and Logan make christmas cookies but never invite him because the fucking kitchen is so small.”

The Hero pressed himself against the tree behind him. Tears streamed down Virgil’s face, black eyeshadow ran down in thick streaks.

“But,” Virgil said and his voice broke under his anger and frustration, “he never fucking asked for it. He never asked for it even though he wanted it. He wanted us to be there for him.”

Virgil punched the ground. Both hands were balled to fists before he opened them and dug his fingers in the earth beneath it.

“He didn’t ask and we didn’t get the message to check on him. No, they didn’t get the message to check on him -” a pained pant interrupted Virgil’s rant and he coughed out a sob “- I knew he wanted more. I know how it feels like, how it looks like to want more and I didn’t do anything. I was so fucking scared to overdo it again, lose my family again that I didn’t go and asked him what he wanted for himself.”

Snot was running out of Virgil’s nose and the world was bleary from his tears and swollen eyelids.

“A-and now I’m losing the other twin too. The other dr-drama queen. The other theatre kid. That’s the exact opposite of what I want!”

The Hero’s eyes were deeply saddened. He watched the crying side in front of him. He knew he was flickering more now. He could feel himself weaken by the minute but that was not of much importance now.

Patton was crying as well standing still on the spot from before. Janus and Remus had rushed to Virgil, the latter was already on his knees to sooth the crying side. Logan stood between them all, looking from one to the other, uncertain on which one to focus and help fist, while slwoly falling into panic himself.

Remus’s hands trembled, the Hero noted with drooping eyes. He didn’t dare to touch Virgil yet. Almost looking afraid of it. But then his hand softly grazed his back. Before he could pull back, Virgil shot up. He turned and grabbed, no hugged Remus fiercely. Squeezed him in his hold, made sure he couldn’t get anywhere.

They were both shaking. Remus stared to the dirt at Virgil’s feet and Virgil had his face hidden in Remus’s neck. A third side knelt down next to them, six hands holding onto ther shoulders, their backs, their heads.

It was a sad reunion. It was a tragic thing that brought them back togheter, the Hero thought.

But out of tragic things, the deepest love could grow. He hoped that they would be able to do so. A little smile came back to his lips as Patton finally got out of his frozen state and hurried to the little group, Logan following him on the foot.

It was a good moment to go.

Muffled sobs barely reached his ears: “N-now nobody i-is getting wh-what they want.”

And with that the Hero lost consciousness.

___

@vexelore

@exhaustedfander

@alexisrealgay

@wolfs-feder

@just-a-neoclassical-painting

@winter-jay-official

@a-ghostlight-for-roman

@mychemically-imbalanced-romance

@whattheremus

@regalredrose

@spellingwillbethedeathofme

@sarenicide

For this fic:

@residentfangirl2104

@fangirltothefullest

[the-iceni-bitch]

I Fear We’re Facing A Problem

Pairing: Carol Danvers x enhanced!Fem Reader

Words: sorry, laptop is still being a bitch so it’s another mobile

Summary: You convince Carol to join you on a night out and a good time is had by all!

Warnings: WLW, explicit language, explicit sexual content (spanking, oral sex (f receiving), mentions of using a dildo), violence (but nothing too gory, just standard canon stuff), SMUT, 18+ ONLY!!!!

A/N: Another from my WIP folder and my second WLW fic! (Which I really need to write more of btw cus this was a real treat). I also may have accidentally stumbled on a little something that I had never thought of before but that is most likely going to be coming in the future, see if you can pick up those hints! 😉

Check out my masterlist and join my taglist if you want!!!

Carol dodged a beer bottle as she stepped into the bar, cursing to herself before scanning the room for additional threats.

And boy were there a lot of them.

When you had drunk dialed her 20 minutes ago, noting your intention to start a fight with some chauvinist assholes, she hadn’t really believed you. But there you were in the middle of a full on brawl, punching some idiot in an army uniform in the mouth before grabbing a pitcher and breaking it over his head.

Carol moved forward as one of your victim’s companions grabbed you around the middle and lifted you off the floor. She tossed aside some moron in a leather jacket easily as he came at her with a broken bottle before wrapping her arm around the neck of the jackass that had you in a hold.

He choked and released you, his hands scrabbling at Carol’s forearm. She ignored him as you launched yourself over the table and kicked another of the army boys in the face before turning and shooting her a grin.

“Hey Danvers!” You said, grabbing another assailant by the back of the neck and tossing him across the room with a shrug of your shoulders.

“Y/N, what have I told you about drinking by yourself?” She said, dropping the man she was holding with a thud as he had finally passed out. She ducked as someone across the bar threw a stool, catching it in midair and hefting it back at him.

“I wasn’t by myself.” You said as you ripped a leg off one of the tables and cracked it across some guys back. “Thor was here, and he brought some bomb-ass mead.”

“That asshole left you here by yourself after getting you drunk on Asgardian mead?” She was going to have to have a talk with that idiot next time she saw him.

“Unlike someone, Thor knows I can take care of myself.” You said with an eye roll before breaking a beer bottle and plunging it into the thigh of some new moron.

“You’re not the one I’m worried about, sweetheart.” She scolded as she caught the leg of one of the idiots and threw him across the room.

“Oh, it’s sweetheart now?” You said with a snort before head butting someone.

“I am so not having this discussion with you right now.” She said before punching some asshole in the ribs.

“We gotta have it sometime, though.” You laughed as you caught a fist in your palm and drove your other hand into the idiot’s elbow until you heard a snap.

“Well maybe if you tried asking me out when you were sober, we’d get somewhere.” She said sarcastically, dodging a punch and throwing the puncher one handed into the ceiling.

“What?!? Y/N, I leave to get you sustenance and you start a fight?” Thor thundered, absorbing a couple of blows before picking up one of the army brats with one hand and striding towards you, hefting the grease soaked bag above the fray.

“Thorsie baby, you got my burrito!!!” You said giddily, tossing the man who was trying to stab you aside as you hopped on a table and pounced on the Asgardian, making grabby hands at the food.

“I can’t believe you left her unsupervised after giving her mead.” Carol said as things finally started to calm down as the bar patrons eyed the god who had just strode in with wariness. She slapped down a giant wad of cash on the bar, hoping it would be enough to cover all the damages.

“She was hungry and getting insistent, I didn’t think she could start anything in half an hour.” He said with a bit of a pout as he ignored your eating, your legs still wrapped around him as you moaned around your burrito.

“You’re a fucking enabler, Odinson.” Carol said with a shake of her head. “Did you forget about Helsinki?”

“Ha, that was a good time!” You said around a mouth full of burrito.

“It was an international shitshow, Y/N.” She said as Thor guffawed. “Poor Nat had to do damage control for a month. What am I gonna do with you?”

“You could make me your housewife.” You said teasingly before taking another giant bite of your burrito, slowly unwrapping yourself from Thor as you arrived at Carol’s Jeep.

She rolled her eyes at you as you gave her the most ridiculous doe eyes she’d ever seen. “You’re so fucking manipulative.”

“Please, I’d be a damn amazing housewife.” You grumbled, waiting for Thor to crawl into the backseat. “Isn’t that right, Thorsie?”

“Her pancakes are delectable.” Thor said with an appreciative nod.

“See?! I’d make you pancakes everyday baby!” You whined as you buckled yourself in.

She just shook her head at you as she started the engine and pulled out.

You stuck out your tongue at her before turning to Thor over your shoulder. “Well, since Danvers here has a fear of commitment,” you said, ignoring her scoff. “ you want to make an honest woman out of me, Odinson?”

He threw his head back and laughed heartily before clapping a hand on your shoulder. “I would be honored to have you for my queen, Y/N.”

“Alright, that’s enough you two.” Carol growled. She was starting to get annoyed with your antics.

“Oh, are you jealous?” You said as you turned back to her, grinning like an idiot. “Cuz just say the word babe and I’d leave Mr. Asgard in a heartbeat, sorry Thor.”

He just chuckled at the two of you as Carol finally pulled into the compound, a scowl on her face.

“Let’s get you back to your room, Y/N.” She said resignedly, climbing down from the front seat and shaking her head at you.

“Are you gonna take advantage of me in my inebriated state, Danvers?” You teased as you stumbled out of the vehicle, Thor catching your arm and steadying you as he followed. “Cuz I’m down.”

“I’m gonna sober you up so you’re ready for the shitstorm that’s coming your way once your little bar brawl hits the news.”

“Ugh, lame!!!” You said with a roll of your eyes as you followed after her.

The three of you made your way to the living quarters, Thor holding you steady as you wobbled on still drunk legs, grinning and laughing with him as Carol marched in front of you. She shook her head at you two as you reached the door to your room. You leaned against the wall with a huff and a pout as she worked on unlocking your door.

“I’ve got her from here, Odinson.” She said as she got the door open, swinging it onwards and giving him his own look of reproach. “And don’t think your getting off easy, I already apprised Rogers of your role in this fiasco.”

“Ha, the Captain doesn’t scare me!” He said, doing a piss poor job of hiding the flash of worry that crossed his face. He turned to give you a grin and a kiss on the forehead before turning to leave. “Have a good night ladies.”

You turned to give Carol a knowing grin before she shoved you inside and followed after you, slamming the door behind her.

She finally let her face split into a massive grin now that the two of you were alone, a hearty laugh ripping from her chest that you reciprocated as she stepped into you.

“So, Thor knows then?” She said as she ripped off her leather jacket and tossed it aside, working on unbuttoning her flannel.

“Of course he knows, babe.” You said as you wrenched your tee over your head, moving to unbutton your jeans. “Pretty sure he figured it out as soon as it happened.”

“You didn’t tell him then?” She asked you with a cocked eyebrow as she stepped out of her boots and kicked them aside.

You rolled your eyes as you bent to untie your sneakers. “No, I don’t know why you want to keep it a secret though.”

“Mmm, I just like knowing that I get to do all these filthy things to you and no one has any idea about it.” She said as she watched you straighten back up, wearing nothing but your bralette and thong. “Now bend over the couch.”

“What?!?! Oh c’mon babe, we weren’t serious when we made that deal!”

“I was absolutely serious, sweetie. Now bend over and take your punishment like a good girl.”

You pouted and did as you were told, supporting yourself on your elbows as you presented your ass to her.

“Spread those legs further.” She ordered, tapping her toes against the inside of your ankle until you complied. “There she is. You’re lucky I’m feeling generous, we’re only gonna do 10 tonight, since you managed to keep your antics local.”

“Yes ma’am.” You said grudgingly, a shiver running up your spine as she ran her fingers up the back of your thigh.

The first smack jolted you forward suddenly, almost sending you tumbling over the couch as you dug your hands into the cushions. Carol ran her hand soothingly over the red handprint that she’d raised on your left ass cheek before bracing her other hand over your back and grinning down at you.

“That’s one.” She said, her fingers brushing over your clothed core and making you whine before she slapped your other cheek just has hard. “Two.”

She made the same soothing gesture over your right cheek before spanking you directly above your clenching pussy and making you scream.

“Ooh, three.” She said, biting her lip as she rubbed her hand in a big circle over your sex, feeling the dampening cloth of your panties with a satisfied smirk. “Fuck, baby.”

She gave two more slaps to each cheek in a quick succession that had you whimpering and sinking into the sofa, your knees starting to give out. Her next smack was over your core again, and you whined as a fresh rush of arousal flowed out of you and started to leak down your thighs, the fabric of your panties now soaked completely through.

“Love how wet my baby gets.” Carol cooed before shredding your panties with a quick twist of her wrist and flinging the ruins aside. She sucked in a breath as she got a look at the mess between your legs; plump swollen folds flushed with heat and pulsing with need as juices flowed out you. “Just two more. Think I can make you cum from just a spanking?”

Her ninth slap was right over your entrance and made you twitch as she kept her hand curled over your mound, just pressing against you as she felt the muscles of your core throbbing under her fingers. She took a layer of slick with her when she withdrew her hand, and you peeked over your shoulder to watch her suck your arousal from her fingers.

“Carol...” you whined, your breath coming in needy little pants as you waited for her to give you your last spank.

“Such a needy little baby. You better ask me real nice sweetie, otherwise I might just tie you up and leave you all frustrated. Maybe I’ll make you watch me fuck myself on that stormbreaker dildo you’ve been keeping secret. Would you like that?”

“Fuck, Carol! Please, please fucking spank me! I promise I’ll be your good girl!” You moaned, trying to press yourself back into her hand, desperate for release.

“Aww, but I don’t want you to be a good girl.” She said.

Her final spank was a direct hit to your clit, and you screamed as your entire body spasmed. Your fingers dug into the couch cushions as you squirted all over Carol’s hand, your knees finally giving out as you sobbed with pleasure.

“Oh, I knew you could do it baby.” She said as she started to press soft kisses down your back, her hand still in between your legs rubbing in big, slow circles over your pussy with just enough pressure to drive you crazy. “Love making my bad girl fall apart. Don’t you dare start behaving now.”

“Yes ma’am.” You sighed into the cushions as you came down.

Carol ran her lips and tongue over the swollen marks she’d left on you, her hand an your core starting to press into you harder. You gasped when she suddenly pulled you apart, her fingers spreading your folds and barely giving you a chance to adjust before her tongue ran over your slit in a heavy stripe.

“Shit!” You cried as you thumped your first against the sofa, your cunt clenching around nothing as Carol lapped at your sex like it was the first drink she’d had in weeks.

She grinned against you, slipping a finger inside you and making your keen as her lips wrapped around your clit. You had to fight to stay upright as she slipped in a second finger, scissoring them inside you and stretching you open as she suckled at your tiny button, making you clench around her.

You let out an inhuman shriek when she added the third finger, thrusting yourself backwards into her face and fucking yourself on her hand as her mouth still worked at taking you apart. She shook her head to bury her face even deeper and you lost it, sobbing as your body tried to curl in on itself as your orgasm crashed over you.

Carol brought both hands to keep you from collapsing at the same time she pressed the flat of her tongue over your pussy, moaning as you throbbed against her face and she caught your release as it squirted out of you, swallowing it greedily as her lips wrapped around your sex.

Your body finally stopped shaking and she stood up behind you, curling over your back and turning your head so she could press her lips against yours. She teased your lips with your tongue and you opened up to her, whining into her mouth as you tasted yourself.

“Mmm, how you feeling baby?” She asked with a grin as she pulled away from you, taking your breath with her.

“Pretty fucking fantastic.” You said, beaming back at her. You flipped yourself over until you landed on the couch with a huff, making her roll her eyes at you. “Really wanna make you feel good too, beautiful.” You said with a wink.

“Yeah? How you gonna do that?” She said as she watched you reach under the couch, searching for something.

“Oh, I’ve got a pretty good idea.” You said as you straightened back up, placing a long black box on your lap. “I don’t know how you found out about this, but it’s gonna blow your fucking mind. Say hello to the stormbreaker.”

You opened the box to reveal a massive, pretty realistic looking dildo and Carol let out a guffaw as you wiggled your eyebrows at her suggestively.

“I love you sweetheart, but I’m not letting you fuck me with a dildo based off one of our best friends!”

“Don’t be such a square, baby!” You said, standing up to chase after her as she headed into the bedroom. “He’d be flattered!!”

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[havethetimeofyourstyles]

Chapter One.

a/n: welcome to the first chapter of wtsgd! i’m so excited for you all to read this story and for what’s to come. please please please support content creators bc we’re doing this for free and it takes up a lot of energy to put out stories. so reblog, leave feedback, and send a message to motivate and support them. happy reading everyone <3

SERIES MASTERLIST | word count: 6.4k

come talk to me about wtsgd! i’d love to know your thoughts!

March 4, 2017

The trunk was filled with heavy boxes that were labeled with thick black sharpie, which didn’t seem to leave Luciana’s senses; and one too many suitcases filled with her many articles of clothing that she couldn’t get rid of—no matter how hard she tried—since she was too much of a hoarder and every piece of clothing seemed to have a lost memory in them that she tried very hard to think of, which only meant that it was worth keeping. 

A droplet of sweat leaked down the side of her face due to  her nonstop packing and heavy-lifting from her childhood room upstairs to her dad’s car in the driveway. It didn’t help that the sun was beaming down at her with every move like she was on center stage, in front of the spotlight, but it made much more sense for the sun to do that because that’s where she belonged: on stage. 

Moving to Brooklyn, New York from Cambridge, Massachusetts during, what felt like, the coldest but the sunniest day of March wasn’t the smartest move—to be fair, Luciana was never one to make a smart move, anyways—but it was one that needed to be done. Plus, all the lifting seemed to have warmed her up. 

Her destination, or now, home, in New York was one that she’d been anticipating for a while now. She had auditioned for the role as Kim in Miss Saigon on Broadway in November, and she’d gotten a callback in January for the role as the second Kim, meaning she would be on rotation to perform every week or two weeks, so the main Kim could rest. But she would still have to go to rehearsals and be on the side of the stage watching the show just in case she needed to jump in at the last minute. 

It wasn’t her ideal way of playing the main lead, but nonetheless, she was grateful for the opportunity, and she would take any chance that was thrown at her to not only take another step towards her dream, but also another learning opportunity to make her a better actress. 

Little Luci would’ve been so proud of the present Luci because it’d been her dream ever since she was younger, to be on stage and eventually, be on the big screen. Although she was far from completing her dream of being a face in Hollywood, this was a step that would take her to where she wanted to be in the future, and for that, she was proud of herself. 

As a child, Luci had been in various commercials; from being the kid that played with slime and had no lines but to just put on a big smile while the sticky substance ran through her small hands, to being the daughter in a car commercial with one line that said “Are we there yet?” with a groan and a face of exhaustion as if she were the one driving the car. She hoped that these commercials would have someone recognize her talent, to cast her as a Disney star, but that would require moving to California, which her parents were wary of. 

The commercials stopped when she reached middle school. Her early adolescent years consisted of an abundance of attitude and mood swings; Luci was a very tough and determined kid. Her love for acting had grown into a big balloon that was let go and on its way into the galaxy where no one could reach it—where no one could mess with her achieving her dream. 

She would always stand in front of her white wooden framed mirror—with delicately painted colorful flowers around the border—reciting lines that she heard from a television series or the films that she watched, and she would write them down in her blue notebook. Sometimes, her parents would let her search the script up if it was available online. But oftentimes, she would test and challenge her memorization, and listen to it by ear; testing her mind, and eventually, her memorization skills were immaculate by the age of eleven. 

It was perfect timing because by the time she was in middle school, she was able to snatch the roles she wanted when her school’s drama department held school plays. Her family thought that she would start to hate being on stage since school plays always ran until late evening, but being part of the productions had only enhanced her love for her talent, and it only prepared her for a quarter of what her future may look like. 

All in all, from a very young age, she always knew that she wanted to become an actress. The spotlight or the center of the camera was where she always craved to be. 

And she was finally making that dream come true. 

A black Toyota Camry pulled into the space behind the car that was filled with her belongings. Ren and Beatrice, Luci’s lovely parents, both get out of the car with a pink box of donuts—a snack for the road and for when she gets to her new apartment. 

“Ready, Lucky?” Beatrice asked, rubbing her daughter’s back. She was quite bummed to see Luci leave her childhood home, but she’s proud to see Lucky Luci chase her dreams. She was, after all, twenty-five and was bound to move out at some point, but to see it actually happen made Beatrice quite emotional. 

“Ma, please, don’t cry…” Luci frowned as Beatrice pressed her fingertips to the corners of her eyes. She wrapped her arm around her mother’s shoulder, comforting her. “You’re all coming to New York in a month, right? To watch me on stage?” Luci asked, reassuring herself that she would see her family in a different state to rescue her from her loneliness. 

Luci was an independent woman. She could do tasks by herself, go places alone, and she wouldn’t have a problem with it; she enjoyed the company of herself. But to know that at some point she might be alone—that everyone had left her behind or forgotten about her—was what scared her. She needed to know that the people who loved her unconditionally wouldn’t forget about her. 

“Of course we’re going!” Ren exclaimed with a smile that Luci was going to miss seeing everyday. “We can’t miss our baby on the Broadway stage. If we could, we’d go to every damn show that you’re in, but that would be a lot of gas, no?” 

She chuckled, nodding her head. She felt tears pricking her eyes at how supportive her parents were—they’ve always been. If she could, she would take them with her to New York, but her one bedroom apartment and their work said otherwise. 

“Now, Lucky, don’t cry.” It was Beatrice’s turn to comfort her daughter. Like any parent, when they see their child cry, it breaks their heart and they cry too. “We’re gonna see you real soon. You can always come back anytime you want. We’re just a phone call away and we’ll pick you up,” Beatrice said between sniffles. The mother and daughter were embracing so tenderly and comfortingly—enjoying every last moment together until they got to see each other again. 

“Jeez, you’re both the same—always crying!” Ren interrupted, making the two women laugh; and he was glad they found what he said amusing because he couldn’t handle the sad moment. “C’mon here, my Lulu.” Luci settled into her father’s arms, hugging him tightly. She’s always been her dad’s girl, despite having a close relationship with her mother, her relationship with her father was something that felt like home; he always knew what to say and when to say it. It helped that she was the female version of him. “You’re gonna be the best star out there, I’m sure of it. Now, I want you to have fun, alright? The fame, the fortune, the big city…it doesn’t amount to anything if you’re not having the time of your life” He comfortingly rubbed Luci’s back, holding her in a warm and tight squeeze. 

Luci smiled at her father’s words. She was always a bit hard on herself when she would mess up or forget a line or a movement that correlates to a specific line in her script. When she was younger, she would beat herself up for a sliver of a moment; she would cry into her pillow—sobs loud enough that they were heard from downstairs. Luci would think that she wouldn’t become a well-known actress just because of the minor forgetfulness her mind had presented. But Ren would gently tap on her ocean blue door, letting himself in because he knew his daughter didn’t have the energy to get up and let him in, and he would sit beside her, gently urging her to sit up with him. Once she complied, after many groans of refusals, she would be glad she did because her father looked deeply into her eyes—and it was like looking into the reflection of clear and clean water—and told her she was a star. It was only three words, but those three words reminded her to never give up and get up when she would hit the pavement of what she felt like were her fallen hopes and dreams. 

Ren would then end it with a statement of advice that had always lingered in her mind, resonating to the silent and harshful words that she tells herself. ‘Nothing will amount to anything if you’re not having the time of your life.’

A rush of gratitude settled upon her as her eyes became glossier by the seconds she was in Ren’s arms. Beatrice looked at her greatest treasures fondly, a smile appeared on her face only for it to be replaced by a look of confusion. 

“Where is that damn brother of yours? He said he was going to be here at ten!” Beatrice interrupted the sweet moment she was having with her father, making them disconnect from the hug—just as Ren did with Luci and Beatrice.  

Speaking of the devil, her dear brother was making his way towards home on the side of the street, wearing a grey sweatshirt that was stained with his sweat as his earphones were nestled in his ears, loudly playing music. He loudly sang along to some rap song, breath staggered as he rapped along with his hands. 

Nathan smiled once he stepped foot onto the driveway as he took out his earphones, seeing his family look at him vigilantly. Luci laughed, shaking her head. 

“Hey, there’s our superstar, little Ana!” Nathan opened his arms, ready to hug you but she quickly stopped him, curving her spine backwards to deny his hug. Ana had been one of the many nicknames her family had called her when she was growing up from the second half of her name, but Ana seemed to have stuck with Nathan as no one else really called her that, so it was his own personal nickname for her. 

“Ew, please, do not hug me.” Her face wrinkled in disgust from the spell of her brother’s sweat from his run. Nathan chuckled, playfully rolling his eyes before turning towards his parents. 

“Ooh, donuts-”

Beatrice slapped the back of his hand before he even got a chance to open the pink donut box. “Not until you shower and change. Lulu needs to be in Brooklyn by three!” 

“Ow, mother!” Nathan whipped his hand away from Beatrice’s burning slap, although he was just playing around and being dramatic. “But fine, alright. The star always gets what she wants, am I right?” He dropped his head towards Luci, sighing before he hurried inside the house to take a quick shower and change. 

Luci giggled, telling her parents that she would be right back to go up to her room to check if she’d gotten everything, even though she knew that she had everything, she just needed to reminisce alone for a moment. 

Her feet took her up the wooden stairs, where she, for some unknown reason, always spent her time sitting on as she leaned her back against the wall and read or drew. Nathan always found it weird of her when they were doing homework when they were younger, but it was just one of the many fun anecdotes he could tell reporters if he’s asked about their childhood. 

Pushing open her ocean blue door that she never changed because she loved the color, she was met with the emptiness of what was once her sanctuary. Despite the paint on the wall changing, the replacement of furniture, and rearrangement of her childhood room, Luci could still see the baby pink walls where she hung up various posters of her celebrity crushes when she was eight. She could still see herself walking over to her Cinderella white wooden dresser as she pulled out an inflatable microphone from her drawer before she walked over to her bed to sing her heart out with her cousin. In the corner of her room was her mirror that she painted colorful flowers along the border when she was younger, and she definitely did not want to change or get rid of it; it wasn’t difficult to stir up a memory when she was in front of that mirror because up until now, she was always reciting her lines to her own reflection until the late night. 

All of these memories that Luci held within her heart would help her ground herself—remind her where she came from. No matter where her career took her, she would always be the girl that was firstly known in her room, crying, laughing, and acting within the four baby pink walls until she was sixteen, and then it changed to an ecru white. The feeling of nostalgia clutched her chest, and for the second time today—not even noon, yet—she found herself crying. 

She silently sobbed in her sanctuary. Her chest felt tight, like her heart was grasping onto the memories, begging her to not leave, to not move on. But moving on would mean being stuck, and she didn’t want to feel stuck—she just never wanted to be in one place where the walls would slowly feel like they were closing in on her. She didn’t want to be in one place and eventually hated it, so for that, she had to move on. 

A soft knock was heard from the outside of her bedroom, making Luci turn around hastily. She found Beatrice standing in the doorway, warmly smiling at her daughter, and keeping the tears at bay because she needed the comfort of her mother more than her mother’s tears. 

“My Lucky Star…” Beatrice walked into the room, welcoming Luci into her arms. “You okay?” 

Luci deeply inhaled and exhaled as she calmed herself down from her cries. “I’m alright. It’s just hard saying goodbye to this place—to my room.”’

“Oh, Lulu. You don’t need to say goodbye. I know you’ll be coming back here soon, anyways. I know you love home too much to completely stay away.” Beatrice was subtly trying to remind Luci about her love for her hometown, for her home, but her words also were trying to remind her about that certain love for her home and to never forget that love so she doesn’t stray away because Beatrice was simply afraid Luci would never want to come back once she discovered the luxury of her career. And even though she knew her Lulu wasn’t one to forget about her family, Beatrice would never admit her fear. 

Luci sniffled, wiping her tears away as she pulled away from her mother’s embrace. “Yeah, I know. Just…doesn’t feel real that I’m leaving.” 

“Sure, you’re leaving, but you’re going off to do bigger and better things. You were never one to stay in one place, physically and mentally—you were always moving, always loved learning more. And I’ve always been so intrigued and interested in how your mind works.” 

“Ma…” The waterworks seemed to be the highlight of the move. 

“I’m serious! I’m so genuinely proud of you. You’ve been keeping your talent—and I don’t mean ‘high school plays’ talent. I mean your Broadway, Hollywood, Academy winning talent. Now, you get to showcase your light in front of thousands of people.” Beatrice always had a way of boosting Luci’s self-esteem, making her ego a tad bit more bigger than it already was. She didn’t mind if her self-esteem had skyrocketed into the galaxy of her dreams, but she always reminded Luci that being humble and kind always outweighed being obnoxious and arrogant. “Now, enough with these tears. You’ve got a road trip to New York. C’mon, now.” 

They made their way downstairs and out the door where Ren and Nathan were talking about the latest basketball game of the Celtics. The trunk was closed, and the only thing waiting was Luci herself. 

“There she is! Ready?” 

Luci took a deep breath, turning her head to look back at the pastel yellow house that had kept her safe for the past twenty-five years. From here, she knew everything was going to change. Whether it’d be for the good or if things would go downhill from here? She didn’t know; all she knew was that she was going to be doing what she loved and she was going to have the time of her life doing it. 

“Yeah, I’m ready.” 

The state of Connecticut seemed to pass by quickly from the car as Nathan drove at a decent seventy miles per hour; the state vanished just as quickly as when they entered. 

Luci mindlessly looked out the window, thinking about everything and nothing at once as she drowned out the music playing through the speakers of the car and Nathan’s voice singing along. 

The cars passing by, the bystanders, and the locals filled the streets and highways, making her wonder what all of these people’s stories were—wondering if they lived in this city or if they were just stopping by to visit, or if they’re just going through the state to get to the one next door just as she was. Maybe she’s had an encounter or simply passed by them on the street in a world that seemed too large but small at the same time. She always pondered on whether everyone else thought the way she thought—if they wondered what her story was or the people around them. 

The world is an interesting place and there were so many intriguing people out there, making her more excited by the minute as she takes on this new adventure in her life that would be completely life changing. Luci’s going to be meeting so many new people that, she would hope, have an impact on her personal life or career. 

“Nervous?” Nathan broke the comfortable silence between them. 

Luci raised her brows and curled her lips into her mouth. “A bit.” 

He nodded, thinking for a moment. Nathan was always one to think before he spoke, and it was a quality that some people needed to learn how to do. He quickly learned that lesson when he was in high school; one of his friends, Johnny, and him were going back and forth joking around with one another. And for some odd reason, teenage boys liked to joke around about fucking everything, so Nathan had said “Yeah, I fucked your mom, what about it?” without thinking. Johnny stayed silent, the rest of their friends were waiting for his comeback, but they only received tears that glossed over his eyes before he ran off to a different part of campus, away from the lunch tables. Nathan found him behind the orchestra building with his face pressed on his kneecaps, crying. Later, he found out that Johnny’s mother had passed away before their sophomore year started and he hadn’t told anyone, which left Nathan quite speechless, but it was a lesson that he learned: to think before anything comes out of his mouth. 

“I know you’ll do great. You were born to do this, born to be on stage. Everything you do is to greater your experience and opportunities. All the mistakes you’re gonna make, which we both know you’re gonna make, they’re gonna be learning lessons for you to continue doing what you’re good at doing; the mistakes are there so you can better yourself,” he reassured, occasionally glancing at you briefly before averting his eyes back onto the highway. 

Luci smiled, never taking her eyes off her older brother. She leaned closer to the middle console, where his right arm was resting on the padded console. Hugging his arm tightly and resting her cheek on his shoulder, she accepted and appreciated his advice, his words. They made her heart fill up with so much gratitude and love, insanely grateful and happy that she had such an amazing and supportive family who always knew the right things to say when they could sense her nerves and anxieties powering through the roof. 

“You’re gonna kill it out there. This is just a step towards where you wanna go, where you actually wanna be.” 

She nodded, looking to her right as they quickly passed the ‘Welcome to New York’ sign from the state line of Connecticut and New York, and it was the sign indicating her new home. 

Nathan pulled into the apartment’s parking garage, entering in with the code that the complex gave Luci on the silver keypad as the two watched the automatic gate arm swing up to the side, and Nathan entered the parking structure, parking in one of the many spaces available. 

Luci excitedly got out of the car, rushing to the trunk where Nathan had opened it from inside the car. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to bring the hand dolly to help carry the boxes, which meant that the siblings were going to have to carry the many boxes she packed by her own hand and strength. But luckily, some of them weren’t that heavy; most of the items in the brown boxes were kitchenware and she figured she could just drag those. 

One by one, they took one box each and headed for the elevator, where it took them to her apartment floor—floor four. Luci grabbed the keys from her purse that contained two copper keys hanging on one single silver loop and a small keyless sensor, and she unlocked her navy blue door, revealing her new apartment. 

When she entered, she was met with a door across the entrance that she would use for her coats and shoes, things that she would need when she’s rushing out the door. Going through the small hallway in from the entrance, it led her to another small hallway to her left where her bedroom and guest bathroom was; and to her right, it would take her to the kitchen and living space. With four big windows with black window frames, the natural light really came in, making her place brighter for saving electricity. 

Walking in and putting the boxes against the black cabinets in the kitchen, she immediately fell in love with the space, her space. Despite already taking a tour of the apartment a few months prior to her official move in day, it felt different being there for the second time because she now knew that this place was hers. She saw it in a different light, and she was already anticipating the memories she was going to make in her new home. The place was empty; and with every step and every noise from her mouth, the room would echo, and she loved it. There was something satisfying about the echo in an empty space that was hers, like she wanted to furnish the hell out of it, but at the same time, she didn’t mind the echo. 

“This is your new home.” Nathan put an arm around Luci’s shoulder. He got a bit emotional seeing his baby sister grow up and move away from home, but he was excited for all of the experiences and memories she was going to make. Luci looked up at him, not saying anything but smiling as she was speechless. Nathan could practically feel the excitement run through her and all he did was chuckle at her speechlessness. “C’mon, let’s go get the rest of the boxes.” 

For the next fifteen minutes, Luci and Nathan hauled the boxes from the car, to the elevator, and down the hallway to her apartment. There were about four more boxes left in the trunk, and they would’ve been finished by now if they hadn’t been taking breaks. 

Nathan’s phone rang as he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the cabinets of the kitchen across from Luci who was sitting in the corner where her dining table would be. 

“Hello?” Answered Nathan. “What? Tonight? I’m in New York. I’m helping my little sister move here. Uh, okay. Sure. Bye.” He groaned, standing up. 

“Who was that?” Luci asked, nosy as she was. 

“That was one of the board members at Mass General Hospital.” Luci’s eyes widened. “They just asked me if I could come in tonight to teach and supervise the new residents.” Nathan was a general doctor working in the Emergency Room as Mass General back in Boston. He’s always wanted to teach with all the knowledge he’s stored in his brain—always wanting someone to learn a thing or two when they spoke to him, and this was his chance. 

“Holy shit, that’s amazing, Nate!” Luci stood up, excited for him.

He started to breathe a bit heavily and Luci immediately took notice; she could practically feel the nerves coming out of him, the same nerves she felt while going in for an audition. “Yeah, I actually have to leave, like, right now.” 

“Hey, hey.” She quickly stopped him from running out of the building and out of his mind. “Come here—breathe with me for a second.” She held onto his wrists gently. 

“Luci, I have to-”

He pulled away, but she tugged him back. “You’re going to drive yourself through the highway, and who knows what will happen, you might get pulled over and you won’t make it to the hospital. So, just take sixty seconds to breathe with me.” 

For the remainder of the time that they had together, they took some deep breaths. She spoke encouraging and uplifting words to him to calm down his nerves and anxieties that he seemed to drive himself over a cliff for, and it seemed to work as Nathan’s shoulder’s weren’t so tense and the grip on her hands had loosened. 

The two of them walked down to the parking garage where Nathan took down the last four boxes and placed them by the entrance of the complex. He was adamant on helping her get the last few boxes up to her apartment, but she shrugged it off, telling him that she was able to carry them and that he needed to leave because he’s most likely going to hit traffic during rush hour. 

“Call me if you need anything, okay? I mean it. I will drive here in a heartbeat.” 

“I will, I will-”

“Just not tonight,” he joked. “This is the highlight of my career.” His smile was so bright that it was like he was a little kid on Christmas again who just received a Hot Speed set from Santa. 

Luci laughed, hugging him goodbye. “And call me if you need anything too. I’ll miss seeing you everyday,” she admitted, a slight frown on her face. She thought she’d have the entire day with Nathan, but it was cut short due to his work but she wasn’t mad about that at all because she knew there'd be plenty of times when he would drive down to walk along the New York streets and see her perform. 

“I’m gonna miss you too, Ana. But I love you and I’ll see you next month!” He hurried into his car, and Luci watched him as he pulled out of the driveway, waving at the rear view mirror to say one last ‘see you later’ to his little sister. 

Walking back to the curb where all of the boxes were set, Luci picked one up to test how heavy it was and she barely made it upright without almost hurting her back, so she put the box down to take a proper breather. She decided to drag the box closer to the door of the complex—which saved her a few steps without completely dropping the box that was labeled ‘glass plates’—and pulled the handle of the door, only to find it completely locked. There was a slight panic that flew through her until she realized that she needed her keyless tag that she had to press against the pad on the wall to get inside the complex, so she blew out a sigh of relief before reaching down to her pocket for her key, and with just her luck, her keys weren’t in her pocket or with her at all. Then she started to panic again. 

Luci quickly walked out of the parking garage and to the front of the building where the leasing office was to find them closed, which was odd because it was Saturday, but apparently their servers were down so they just decided to take the entire day off. She rolled her eyes annoyingly, walking back to the garage in a fast manner because she didn’t want anyone to take her boxes, and so she figured that she could just wait until someone left the complex or arrived. She even left her phone at her place, so it wasn’t like she could call anyone to help her, but some sort of entertainment would help the time go by quicker. 

Sitting on the curb in the garage, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, and humming the melody from the Miss Saigon soundtrack, an hour goes by until she sees someone walk past the automatic gate barrier, heading towards the entrance where he opened the door with his tag. Luci sprinted towards the door, calling out for help. 

“Wait, wait!” The man turned around confusingly, taking his AirPod out of one ear. She caught up, taking deep breaths as she waved at the man. “Sorry, I’ve been out here for an hour and I completely forgot my key.” He didn’t say anything but stared at her, wondering why he’s never seen this woman before. The apartment complex really only had four floors, and he’s sure that he’s seen everyone who’s lived here. She noticed that he looked down at the boxes and back at her. “Oh, I just moved in.” He nodded more understandingly. “Do you mind holding the door for me?” 

“Sure.” Was the first thing he told her before stepping aside to hold the door. She took another deep breath, getting into the correct form so she doesn’t throw her back out, and began to lift the heavy box. He noticed her struggling, and he felt foolish for not offering his help in the first place when he noticed the four boxes on the cement. “Here, sorry, let me help with that. Get the door, yeah?” Luci’s heart flipped once she heard his deep, accented voice before she gratefully thanked him and he grabbed the box from her, replacing her hands with his and the slightest brush of their fingers made her flustered; he held the box tightly to his chest without much struggle. 

“Yeah, let me just get this one.” Luci grabbed a much lighter box that had all of her shoes, and held the door for him with her foot as he made his way inside of the building and to the elevator. He pressed the button with the arrow pointing up, and luckily, they didn’t have to wait for more than five seconds before the bell at the top chimed and the stainless steel doors opened. 

With the heavy box in his hands, he still let Luci walk in first, which made her smile and he followed in as she pressed with the bold ‘4’ printed on it. He held the box in between his chest and the other end of the bar on the wall as they waited in silence as the elevator lifted them up to her apartment floor, and she brushed past him when he lifted his arm, gesturing her to go first. 

Her front door was closed but it was unlocked, which only made sense, so she opened her door, putting the box next to the entrance and politely asking the man to put it next to the one you put down. 

“Thank you so much, really. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help.” 

“It’s no problem. I was the same when I moved here too—forgot my keys and was locked out.” He related to make her feel lighter about the situation since it was an honest mishap. 

“Did you go to the leasing office?” She asked curiously. 

“Yeah, but they were closed.” 

“They’re closed today too! It’s like they do that on purpose whenever someone new moves in.” The man chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. 

She hadn’t gotten a proper look at him since she was too distracted by trying to get into her building, but just by one real look at him, he was very attractive—probably too attractive to where she couldn’t think straight. He was wearing a pastel yellow and white striped button down that was a bit flowy and open, showing his white tank underneath that was tucked into his black skinny jeans. His tank top was low enough, exposing a patch of chest hair and his necklace that rested against his skin, in between his swallow tattoos just below his collarbones. Rings hugged his long fingers on both hands as he held two brown paper bags from Trader Joes. He was handsome, that’s for sure, and she felt like she was going to compare his beauty to all the other men that she was going to encounter in the future. 

“They’re not very good at going into work, but if you give them a call then it’s like they’re a 24/7 help center.” 

Luci nodded, chuckling. “Good to know. I’ll keep that in mind.” 

“I’ll help you with the last boxes.” Before she was about to protest and tell him that he didn’t have to help her anymore because she was sure the last ones were light, he made his way towards the elevator and she quickly followed. 

To her surprise, one of the boxes was heavier than the other and she was glad that the man was able to carry it for her. They took the boxes up to her apartment, stacking it on top of the ones that were set down before she thanked him gratefully again. 

“I really appreciate all your help.” She smiled, leaning against the doorframe. 

“Not that I’m doubting your strength or anything, but how were you supposed to get those boxes up to your apartment?” He asked softly, not wanting to offend her by his words. 

“Oh, my brother was supposed to help me, but he had to go back home for an emergency at work.” The man nodded, seeming that was the most acceptable answer, not like he was searching if she was lying. “But thank you for your help. You’re a true lifesaver,” she said with a soft smile on her face. Her tone was a bit flirty than she wanted it to be, but it naturally came out. 

“It’s not a problem. I’ll see you around.” Luci hadn’t closed her door yet, but she found out that he was literally her neighbor on the opposite side of the wall. He didn’t even have to take two steps to get to his place—all he had to do was turn around and he was home. She smiled at the thought of that, glad that her neighbor was already so kind to her. 

As he was fumbling with his keys, he eventually got his door unlocked, and Luci was itching to ask what his name was—maybe make her first friend during her first day living in the big city. The man felt his neighbor's eyes on him, burning through the back of his head, so he turned around at the same time she spoke. 

“Uh, hey,” Luci called out. He was looking over his shoulder, pursing his lips as he raised his brows. “I was wondering if…you’d like to have dinner with me tonight? Y’know, to thank you for all your help and practically saving me while I was stranded.” She chuckled, playing with the tips of her fingers as she looked at him with hope. 

He thought the invitation was nice, but…“It’s okay, really. I, uh, have plans already tonight,” he admitted honestly because he doesn’t make a habit of being dishonest. 

Luci had some thick skin—she grew it throughout the years, and she had always been pretty confident. So many people would think that she could handle rejection well because she’s auditioned for many roles in her lifetime, and had been rejected for most of those roles. But the rejection that her neighbor handed to her so respectfully and politely was one that hit her the most, and she didn't know why. 

Curling her lips into her mouth as she felt the pang of her heart sinking into her chest, she nodded and placed a small smile onto her face. 

“Have fun tonight, then. I’ll see you around.” She grinned, hiding the slight bit of pain that she felt. He nodded, walking inside his apartment as she was in her doorway as well. “Oh, I’m Luci, by the way.” She introduced herself, feeling like she should have done that ten minutes ago, but it had slipped her mind. 

The corner of the man’s mouth turned up into a sly smirk, and she nearly felt herself fall as she gripped the door handle tightly. It was enough to make the pain in her chest disappear, and all thoughts of the rejection that she would think about for the rest of the night vanished. 

“Nice to meet you, Luci. I’m Harry.” 

With that, Harry closed his door, putting a barrier between him and Luci, who was still standing in her doorway. She let out the longest sigh of her life, feeling like she’d been constricting herself from breathing properly for the last ten minutes. 

Luci closed her door and leaned against it, looking down at the boxes that were resting by her feet. She softly smiled, her cheeks were starting to get warm, and she was fully aware that Harry was the cause of it.

come talk to me about your thoughts and feelings! hope you all enjoyed the first chapter, thank you for reading <3 

ty to @sunflowers-styles​ for beta reading!

[dailytomlinson]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[hatterstan-shameblog]

The Best Quiche in Tokyo

Rating: ‼️18+ Minors Do Not Interact ‼️

Warnings: explicit sexuality (it literally takes place at an orgy so like.......Y’know)

Characters: Hatter (Takeru), Aguni, and Female Reader (You)

Summary: When one of your customers invites you to a potluck-slash-orgy, you assume the “orgy” part is a joke—because nobody really hosts a potluck and an orgy at the same time, right?

Notes: One time, @nessinborderland (happy belated birthday btw) gave me the brilliant idea of Hatter hosting an orgy and serving really good food and I just......ran with it. This ended up being part comedy, part character study—and mostly features Aguni, if you can believe it! I don’t know, I just let the story take me where it wanted to go! (Also, this is definitely the longest thing I’ve written on here, so get ready to dig in!)

It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon in March, and you’re standing in front of a hat shop. Well, technically, you’re slightly to the left of a hat shop, peering down a skinny alleyway in search of a door or a set of stairs—something to indicate that there is, in fact, an apartment up there and this is not just an elaborate prank.

There is a very good chance this is a prank—after all, the eccentric man who walked into your stationary store two weeks ago seemed...off. Not in a bad way, just. One-of-a-kind. Unique. Entirely himself, in a way that people usually aren’t.

Was he flirting or was he just overly friendly when he leaned in just a bit too close to see the various fonts available for his choosing? It’s difficult to say. He did seem genuinely interested to know the difference between serif and sans serif, which doesn’t much thrill your customers on the regular. Does asking for an extra business card ‘for his personal records’ count as a pick-up line? It’s hard to say. Not that it matters much, of course—you are a professional, he is a customer, and there’s nothing more to it.

And you really are a professional, because when he told you that he wanted—in metallic gold, 30-point, center aligned—to say, quote, “The Third Annual Springtime Potluck and Orgy: Presented by Danma Takeru,” you didn’t so much as bat an eye. Partially because he was very insistent that you spell his name correctly, and partially because. Well. How does a person respond to that?

In truth, he ended up being one of your better customers—he showed a genuine interest in the process while still deferring to your expertise—and when one of the printed invitations arrived in your mailbox, you figured you might as well go see what the fuss is about. It could be an opportunity to meet some new friends, maybe drum up a little business if you’re lucky.

And besides—a potluck-slash-orgy? Who would even do that?

The merry little jingle of bell catches your attention, and you turn your head to see a solemn-looking man peeking his head around the hat shop’s glass door. He looks at you. He looks at the plastic-wrapped pie in your hands. He looks back at you.

He frowns.

“Hi,” you say, putting on your most charming smile in the hopes that he’ll stop looking at you like you just slapped him across the face, “I’m, uh, I’m here for the party!”

You shuffle over to him, careful not to scuff the white of your sensible-yet-pretty patent leather heels on the sidewalk. Maybe you’re dressed too formally—he’s wearing a plain white t-shirt and a pair of jeans while you’re sporting a calf-length chiffon dress dyed in a lovely array of watercolor blues and violets.

Oh dear, what a faux-pas! There was no dress code listed on the invite, but maybe you should’ve dressed in a more casual fashion. You don’t live far, you could probably run home quickly and change...

“Do you...have an invitation,” the man asks, crossing his arms across his chest and furrowing his brow. Is he annoyed? No, no. He seems. Confused? Wary? How very strange.

“Oh, of course,” you answer, reaching a fumbling hand into your purse to search for the little pink envelope, “I almost forgot it walking out the door, but I remembered at the last second! I can be a bit scatterbrained sometimes!”

The man doesn’t say anything, but leans forward to inspect the invitation once you manage to produce it from the cluttered mess that is your handbag.

“I know the time said it started at three, but the pie took a little longer than expected. It takes time for the chocolate to set, and—“ you gasp, covering your mouth with your invite-laden hand, “I haven’t kept you waiting, have I? I’m so sorry, Mister...?”

“Call me Aguni,” he says, and his eyes narrow slightly when you give him your most chipper ‘thank you’ and apologize for not being able to shake his hand at the moment. What a strange man.

“You,” he asks slowly, “you read the invitation, right?”

“Of course I did! I’m the one who made them,” you explain, puffing your chest up with pride, “and our host was kind enough to send one to me! He must have really liked my work!”

“...Yeah,” the man called Aguni says, “I’m sure that’s it.”

But, to your pleasure, he steps aside and holds the door open for you to enter. Such a strange man, but at least he’s gentlemanly enough to hold the door for you as you step inside.

“Oh, wow,” you say, “this place is amazing!”

And maybe it sounds silly, but you’re being entirely honest. There are hats in shelves, hats hanging on the wall, hats on faceless plastic heads on the counter and placed atop a long wooden table to the left—all of them in different shapes and colors, embellished and feathered and ribboned to the nines. There’s a certain magic to a little place like this, a kind of whimsical charm you want to bottle and keep on the kitchen windowsill.

“Walls could use some paint. Floor needs polished, too,” Aguni says, “but...yeah, I guess it’s nice enough.”

You follow him as he leads you towards the back, your eyes drinking in all the details of this fascinating little shop.

“No, no, the walls and the floor are perfect,” you assert with a wide-mouthed smile, “it gives it character. Makes it feel...like home, I think.”

“Takeru says the same thing,” Aguni answers with a chuckle, “although I also think he just doesn’t want to put in the work. He’s...not very handy.”

There is a second door at the very back of the shop, and once again, Aguni holds it open for you. Perhaps his original air of discontent was a simple case of shyness—maybe he just takes a bit to warm up to people. Well, just wait until he tries your homemade triple-chocolate silk pie; you’ll be best friends in no time!

He leads you into a tiny courtyard, which is just barely big enough to hold a steep set of metal stairs and a handful of plant pots, which remain empty due to the early spring cold. But, oh, it must be so lovely back here when the plants are in full bloom! You say as much to your companion, who actually manages to smile a bit in your direction as he leads you up the stairs.

“Those are mine, actually,” he tells you, his boot-covered feet thunking up the stairs at a leisurely pace, “He lets me garden back here.”

You picture it—this tall, stoic man, kneeling on the ground, his gloved hands tending little green sprouts as the morning sun shines gold and warm on the cold stone ground. The thought of it warms you. Does he know anything about succulents? You’ve always thought they would look so cute in the shop...

“Look,” Aguni says when the two of you reach a very drab-looking door, “I’m not trying to be a jerk, but...you sure you’re ready for this?”

What an odd thing to say! Maybe you’re acting more nervous than you originally thought? It is rather daunting, walking into a party of strangers; but, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

“You’re sweet for worrying about me,” you respond, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, “but if everyone is half as lovely as you, I’m sure I’ll do just fine. I will probably stick with you for a while—if that’s okay, of course!”

“Alright, then.” Aguni says—and is that a hint of a blush you see creeping up his neck? All this time, you thought he was just being strange, but he’s just a little shy! You give his arm a knowing pat before withdrawing your touch, and he quickly turns around to unlock the door.

Are all of Takeru’s friends this adorable? You hope so. You follow your bashful escort inside—the genkan is already full of shoes, but you manage to squeeze yours in between a pair of snakeskin wedge heels and the wall. Aguni also removes his boots, and you’re happy he isn’t going to stay down in the hat shop the whole time. He can introduce you to everyone, and maybe—

You hear something. Was that...? No, no, you must be imagining things. You definitely did not just hear a woman moan on the other side of the wall. You stop and angle your head towards the door slightly to get a better listen. It’s all rather muffled (it must be well-insulated!) but there’s definitely some kind of music playing. Maybe it’s part of a song?

It happens again. This time, it’s deeper, and more of a prolonged “ah” sound. And then laughter. Aguni is looking at you in that concerned way of his again.

Instead of waiting for him to open the door for you a third time, you decide to take initiative and open it yourself—a show of confidence, to put his mind at ease. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to try and stop you, but he instead just crosses his arms and watches as you open the door to the rest of the house.

The first thing you see is candles. Little flickering spots of yellow-orange flame, winking inside clear glass votives. A trio of them on the kitchen table to the left, surrounded by a mismatched variety of trays and plates and bowls, each holding a different delicacy.

There’s a candle on the kitchen counter, next to the refrigerator. One on a bookshelf, which is filled to bowing with vinyl LP’s. Two on either side of the television, and a cluster of them on a coffee table next to a fishbowl of shiny gold squares and—

Oh.

Oh, dear.

There are limbs. Moving, writing, reaching. Hands grabbing. Mouths kissing. Mouths...doing things other than kissing. Oh, God, there’s boobs. And somebody’s butt. Aw, geez, there goes another one. How many naked people are there in here, anyways?

“Oh, hey!”

A familiar voice calls out from the fleshy throng, and your stomach drops. Like Venus emerging from the surf, you see Danma Takeru rise up from the crowd, hair mussed and smiling mouth smudged with at least two different colors of lipstick. While he does appear to be wearing some kind of brightly-patterned robe, the more he stands, the less confident you are that it’s actually covering anything.

You spin on your heel, unwilling as of the moment to become visually acquainted with your host’s penis, and you’re met once more with Aguni’s concerned stare. This time, though, you understand why he’s looking at you like that, and it makes the burn of embarrassment creeping up your neck that much hotter.

“Do you want to leave?”

This is. Oh, boy. This is a lot. Aguni must be able to sense your discomfort, although you imagine it’s rather palpable at the moment.

“I,” you say, “I don’t...know.”

And you say you don’t know because you truly don’t know what to do. Was it really so naïve of you to think that the ‘orgy’ part of the invitation was some kind of weird inside joke? Is there some kind of social protocol for these things?

You feel two hands descend upon each of your shoulders, and you try to convince yourself that they are slightly damp with sweat as opposed to any other kind of aqueous material.

“You made it,” Takeru exclaims with genuine excitement as he gives your person a gentle shake, “I’m so glad you decided to come!”

“He’s covered, don’t worry,” Aguni says to you before directing his attention over your shoulder, “I take it you didn’t tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

The hand on your right shoulder stays while the left slips away, leaving room for Takeru to stand at your side and squeeze you against him in a weird little half-hug. In another situation, you might enjoy the way the silk of his robe whispers against the skin of your arms, perhaps smile at the warm comfort of a lazy arm thrown about your shoulders like a heavy scarf, but. Well. Right now, it’s just a little...awkward.

Aguni rolls his eyes.

“About that,” he says, gesturing impatiently at the debauchery behind your back, “I mean, just look at her face.”

“Mori-chan, how could you be so rude to our lovely guest? Darling,” Takeru says, turning your face towards him with two fingers under your chin, “don’t listen to him, you’re...ah, I see what you mean.”

Is your expression really that bad? It must be, because Takeru very slowly and very carefully withdrawing his arm from around your shoulder and taking a generous step to the side. His mouth is twisted into a rather comical gaping frown, his eyes nervously darting side-to-side.

“In my defense,” he says, putting his hands up like some kind of fucked-out traffic cop at a four-way intersection, “the, uh, the orgy part was very prominent. Big letters, right at the top.”

“I,” you reply, “I thought it was...a joke?”

“This is why we don’t just hand out invitations,” Aguni grits through his teeth, “for fuck’s sake, Takeru, we’ve talked about this!”

“I know, I know. I am humble enough to admit when I’ve fucked up, and this time, I have fucked up in a truly spectacular fashion,” Takeru’s gaze shifts from horrified to quizzical as he scrutinized you for a moment, “Unless...you’d like to stay?”

You look at the pie. The slowly-warming chocolate is beginning to sweat beneath the thin film of plastic wrap you so lovingly secured with lilac ribbon.

“Or you could slap him on the way out,” Aguni offers, “he’s very slap-able.”

“It’s true! And when you slap me,” he whips his head to the side suddenly, “my hair does that and it looks really cool!”

Yeah, okay—it did look pretty cool. But, does he deserve to be slapped? Probably for something else, but not for this. It’s a simple misunderstanding, and honest mistake on both your parts.

“I want...” you start, and the way they’re looking at you, wide-eyed and breath-bated, reminds you of the final rose ceremony on The Bachelorette.

It’s kind of hilarious, actually.

“I, uh,” you continue, “I want to...to put this in the refrigerator, if that’s okay? It’s, uh, starting to melt...”

To say that Takeru’s face lights up is an understatement. With a mega-watt smile and a sparkle in his eye, he swoops his arm back around your shoulder and begins leading you towards the kitchen.

Although you have (almost) gotten used to the sea of strangers fucking and moaning in the background, you still choose to politely avert your gaze as you pass them by. You instead focus on Takeru, who has taken this opportunity to explain the inner-workings of...whatever this is.

“...And I personally see to it that these events remain exclusive,” he says, “Although I do occasionally invite outsiders, such as yourself. You were just so sweet and helpful, I couldn’t resist trying my luck and sending you an invite.”

“Thank you,” you say, “although, I, uh...”

He opens the refrigerator door and motions for you to place the pie inside. Luckily, it’s mostly empty, save for a collection of bottled water and a tin of what looks to be cat food. You’re grateful to not have to carry it around anymore, and thank him for his assistance.

It’s finally time for you to acknowledge the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’—except, you’re not exactly sure how to begin.

“I,” you start, stopping to bite your lip, “I, uh. Is it okay if I...don’t, y’know, do the whole...uh...sex thing?”

“Oh, do you prefer to watch?”

“No! I mean, no, uh,” you laugh nervously, “I’m just...”

Takeru chuckles.

“I’m only teasing. You’re more than welcome to skip the sex and go straight to the food. As long as you’re on the kitchen side, nobody will touch you. It’s one of our rules.”

He motions for Aguni to come over with a wave of his arm, smiling when the tall man comes to lean against the kitchen counter.

“Mori-chan also prefers to abstain from the more salacious aspects of our little gathering, so the two of you can keep each other company.”

“I’m usually in charge of the food,” Aguni adds, “and I try to make sure the candles stay lit.”

“I, uh, I noticed those on the way in. They’re nice.”

Takeru leans towards you as if he’s about to share a secret.

“I don’t mean to be indelicate,” he says in a low tone, “but there is a certain stench that comes with these events. Sweat, musk, various secretions...it all really adds up in the end.”

“It’s awful,” Aguni concludes, “but candles help dissipate the worst of it.”

“Oh, and the ambiance,” Takeru exclaims, “there’s just nothing like candlelight to really get people in the mood for—“

A sharp ding! makes you jump. From what you can gather, it came from the small oven to Aguni’s left.

“Hold it right there,” Takeru growls towards Aguni, who had been in the middle of donning a pair of floral-printed oven mitts, “she needs thirty more seconds.”

Aguni looks at you and rolls his eyes. You stifle a giggle behind your hand, hoping your host doesn’t notice.

“I saw that,” Takeru snips towards Aguni, “honestly, Mori-chan, you get one new friend...”

And even though he’s mid-scold, there remains a joviality to Takeru’s tone—a testament, you believe, to what can only be a long-standing friendship between him and Aguni. It’s hard not to feel jealous of their easy back-and-forth, their banter like a well-matched game of tennis.

“Now you can take her out,” Takeru says, “but, so help me God, if you don’t let her rest for seven minutes–“

“–They’ll never find my body, I know, I know,” Aguni finishes, gingerly placing a metal pan on the stove, “Look, we’ve got it handled. You can go back to your side of the party and I’ll call you when it’s plated.”

“Fine,” Takeru answers with a false pout, “but only because I know she’ll keep you honest.”

And just like that, it’s just you and Aguni once more—but, this time, he seems much more at ease to have you around. Happy, almost. It must be kind of boring, sitting alone in a kitchen while everyone else is...well, busy.

“So,” you say, moving to Aguni’s side to peer into the baking pan, “looks kind of like...a quiche?”

“Not just any quiche,” Aguni answers, opening the drawer to his right and digging a hand inside, “the best quiche in Tokyo.”

He pulls out a shiny silver chef’s knife and places it on the counter. Next comes a pair of dainty forks, delicate little things one might use for tea cakes at a French-inspired bistro. Knowing what you know about Takeru—which, granted, isn’t very much at all—it doesn’t surprise you in the least.

“You’re in front of the plates,” he says, tapping the cabinet directly in front of your face, “grab us some?”

“But we’re supposed to wait seven minutes,” you protest, all while following his instructions, “it’s only been...like, three.”

Aguni’s eyes take on a glint of mischief.

“Only a problem if we get caught.”

Honestly, it looks divine. Pillowy-soft and the perfect pale-yellow hue, delicate tendrils of steam billowing out as he drags the knife through. You hadn’t ever seen a non-rectangular quiche before, but you suppose it makes sense; there are a fair few people in attendance, and the standard circular composition wouldn’t quite feed everyone.

He serves you first. A corner piece (which he insists are the best), speckled with herbs and studded with little pieces of what you assume to be some kind of ham. Little strings of cheese stick to the blade of the knife, and Aguni scrapes them off with the side of a fork, which he then hands to you.

“Takeru doesn’t cook much,” Aguni explains, playing his own small square, “but when he does...”

The sound that comes from your mouth as you take your first bite of quiche could rival any of those happening in the orgy across the room. Oh, that is so good! Buttery crust, the salt of cheese and ham, the subtle bite of onion—and there’s something else there, something you can’t quite place, but you know it tastes absolutely heavenly. Immediately, you take another bite.

“Grew the herbs de Provence myself,” Aguni mentions, “He refuses to use store-bought.”

“Makes all the difference,” you respond, “I could eat the whole pan by myself.”

“I did that for my last birthday, actually,” Aguni chuckles around a forkful of quiche, “Takeru insisted on putting all thirty-eight candles in before carrying it to the table—you know, like a dumbass. Part of his hair caught fire, and I had to give him a haircut at two in the morning because he was so distraught.”

The two of you laugh—Aguni at the memory, and you at the idea of a tearful Takeru sulking as Aguni snipping the fried locks with a pair of kitchen shears.

“He forgave me, even though I took a whole two inches off,” Aguni sets his empty plate in the sink and looks out of the small window above it, “He’s not a bad guy, you know. Doesn’t always make the best choices, sure, but he’s got a good heart in him.”

There is a sadness here, something in Aguni that speaks to a troubled past you haven’t quite unearthed yet—and you know better than to press him, especially here, especially now.

“Well, I can’t say I’m an expert,” you say, handing him your plate, “but you two seem like decent people. Orgies aside, of course.”

“Of course,” Aguni nods, “though I don’t suppose you’ll come to the next one, will you?”

For the first time since your arrival, you allow yourself to watch the festivities happening across the room. It isn’t that bad, you suppose—it’s just a group of people having a fun time together, laughing and gasping and enjoying each others’ bodies in a safe and comfortable place. It’s not something you necessarily want to do yourself, but...well, the ‘weird’ factor of the whole thing has gone down exponentially over the past hour or so.

“And miss out on the best quiche in Tokyo,” you say, nudging against Aguni’s arm with your shoulder, “not a chance!”

[stylesnews]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[luckycheesefoodie321]

CAN WE ADDRESS THAT THE ANTAGONISTS OF BOTH SEASON 1 AND SEASON 2 STUCK BY KIPO’S SIDE I ADORE THIS WITH ALL MY HEART JAMACK AND SCARLEMAGNE MY LOVES

I’m still not over Hugo, but I am eternally grateful for how happy Jamack is...

But you gotta love that everyone who seemingly has always been on the good side (albeit previously wary and antagonistic towards anyone outside of their group) continuously questioned Kipo’s vision of the future... yes that vision did lead to some losses, as is wont to do when enacting change, but the two people who had been shown time and time again that Kipo’s optimism and her burning passion to make the world a better place and her compassion for others is what would save them all, never wavered in their belief of Kipo...

Let’s not forget that Jamack, while imprisoned by Emilia, CONSTANTLY REASSURED THE OTHER PRISONERS THAT THEY WOULD BE OKAY BECAUSE KIPO WOULD COME FOR THEM, and when she did HE WAS SO GODDAMN HAPPY

And also Hugo, after finally doing the big apology and hanging around everyone and having everyone get a bit used to his presence, finally stopped fighting Kipo’s determination to have his redemption arc XD he stopped trying to escape and when the opportunity presented itself in helping song, all he asked was for a piano... and then when Emilia came marching in with her motley army, he never went back into the cage bc he was finally fully at Kipo’s side...

I couldn’t tell you if Hugo and Jamack had Zuko levels of redemption arc perfection, but they got damn near close...

And I love that for them. Jamack and Hugo my two boisssssss

[mccall-me-maurice]

In Hopes You’re on the Other Side, Talking to me too

Pairing: Jack Merridew/Ralph

Word Count: 2016

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol

Jack was trying his best to be Ralph’s everything. But in the end, it wasn’t enough. So every night the redhead finds himself talking to the moon to try and win Ralph back through words that he’ll never really say to the boy. All in hopes that perhaps a certain someone is doing the exact same.

Jack hates himself more than he hates anyone else in the galaxy. Okay, maybe that’s a lie. Maybe there are a couple people worse than him but it really can’t be all that many. It’s probably one of the shortest lists to ever grace this planet, but for now he’s focusing on the fact that he just lost the best thing that has ever happened to him.

Ralph and Jack never really got along until 2 years ago. They had a horrible past of bloody fights and words that chilled the other to the bone. They were so used to painting old school tiles with each other’s blood that they didn’t really get the time to know each other much further than hatred. Until 2 years ago, on the last day of their senior year. Ralph had finally held his hand out to Jack, letting the redhead take it instead of trying to maim him. That was all that it took for the boy who previously was his rival to become fascinated with Ralph in a way other than what he initially thought. Of course, it was supposed to be a horribly inconvenient time for both of them and if he had to guess, Jack would’ve said Ralph planned it so he wouldn’t have to face the freckled boy again. However, fate had different plans for them and on their first day of college, the two had been shocked to figure out that they were located in the same hall for the next four years.

Flash forward 1 and ½ years and Jack and Ralph were helplessly in love with each other. Nobody had suspected the pairing of an easygoing business major and finance major to pair up with each other. Jack himself didn’t really notice when the shift from friends to boyfriends occurred but before he could blink an eye, he was abandoning homework assignments to be with Ralph and staying up hours past when he usually drifted off to sleep to hear the tired voice of his boyfriend giggle about people he had seen in class. 20 years old and Jack really believed he had found his soulmate. He really believed that they would be together for as long as they lived. As long as the sun burned in the sky, his hand would be in Ralph’s. Even once they passed, they would be dancing together as ghosts.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was March 3rd, the weather had shifted to overcast and Jack was slammed with studying for exams. Ralph’s exams had passed a week prior and the boy had flopped on his boyfriend’s bed, eyes scanning through a phone screen. Every so often he would hammer Jack with a series of questions and the redhead would be so tired he wouldn’t really give coherent responses. Late nights studying pages that were swimming with words and an excessive amount of monster energy drinks really turned someone’s brain to absolute mush. Not to mention Ralph had been sickeningly sweet to him, as if he could persuade Jack off of his swivel chair and onto the bed. As much as he wanted to be over there, running his fingers through Ralph’s hair and whispering the boy to sleep, all he could do was let the red ink of his pen slide across paper knowing that he was one sentence closer to the warm embrace of the blond.

“Jack…”

“What’s up?” Ralph sounded wary, like the news he was about to break would simply crush Jack. Little did he know, it would.

“Jack we need to take a break.” Jack choked on his spit. “Not forever. I don’t want to be away from you forever… Unless it has to be that way. Just for a couple weeks, a couple months. However long it takes for you to realise that there’s so much more to life than what lies in those textbook pages. I mean… You have been straight up ignoring me lately and I talked to Simon about it… He agreed that what's best for us is to just take a break. I suppose I’ll see you around.”

Which leads Jack to the present day, lying on the bed Ralph once laid on, scrolling through the text messages that Ralph once sent with tears in the corners of his eyes. He wants nothing more than to have the boy back, the heat of the soccer player's body warming Jack as he presses his cheek against blond hair. The energy of the night has been doing this to him recently, the darkness shrouding him as he lets himself sun quietly into the pillow. He can’t imagine that it’s not his fault. He gave Ralph his everything but even then the boy deserves so much more. He deserves the best and Jack clearly isn’t that for him. He will never be.

Jack shuts his phone off, placing it on the nightstand that lies to his left. The only thing that lights up the room is the beam of moonlight through his awfully cheap curtains. The flimsy white fabric barely blocks out anything, but even the inanimate object seems to be trying harder than Jack. The clock on his nightstand reads 23:57, signalling to the boy that even though exams are long over, he will still be up for at least another 3 hours. Not studying like he used to. No, he stopped studying the day that he took his final test, body filled with too much sorrow to even review the content properly. Recently the redhead has picked up the hobby of sitting cross legged in front of his window on the second floor of building B and he talks. He talks to the moon, to the stars, but most importantly he talks to Ralph. Whether the blond listens or not, he really isn’t sure. It’s not like his ex-boyfriend would ever be able to hear his cracked voice stumble over words as he spills his heart out to the endless night. Normally Jack wouldn’t even let himself be weak enough as to think about a head of blond hair for one more minute of one more day. And he does play a very clever façade in front of Roger and Maurice. He acts like Ralph doesn’t exist, like the hole in his heart doesn’t ache every time tan skin and ocean blue eyes filled with joy cross his path. On the days he isn’t sitting in his room, all alone, he’s out with his friends letting sweaty bodies press up against him as music blares. Drinks spill from red cups and onto the floor and all Jack can think about is how none of the people that choose to plaster themselves to him are Ralph. None of the people who cover his mouth with theirs, only to be quickly shoved off and sworn at, are the boy who he wishes would drunkenly kiss him. As much as he prays that Roger will show up empty handed with a party invite, at least once a week the raven haired boy is smirking at him with a bottle of booze clutched tightly in his fist. In order to seem like he’s the same sick person he was before he dated Ralph, he gives his friend an equally mischievous smile and takes the bottle.

Perhaps all of these emotions that Jack is feeling are Ralph’s fault. Or at least a byproduct of the fair boy. Before he let the boy ruin his life with ease, he was so cold hearted and had no fucks left to give. But for once, he had something to fight for that wasn’t himself. For once in his 20 years of life, Jack had someone who loved him just as much as he loved them. Which is why Ralph had always mattered more than a stupid party or nagging from his mates. He would’ve dropped the world to hold Ralph. Yes, that has to be it. All the crying had been because the blond’s soft heart had destroyed Jack. It had left him in a million pieces and as much as he didn’t want himself to be weak, as much as he hated himself for crying, it was happening.

Jack lets his body move over to the window, legs almost giving out underneath him as he falls into the place he’s become to know so very well over the past months. Roger didn’t invite him out today, but he doesn’t exactly blame the boy. There’s at least one party Roger attends every night, but bringing the heartbroken finance major who shoves off anyone who tries to make a move probably isn’t the best look for him. So instead Jack is sitting in the oversized pullover sweater with the college’s name plastered across the front that he got at orientation. He doesn’t need a mirror to know that his hair is all mussed and he probably looks like the human embodiment of death.

“Hey Ralph. I know you’re not talking to me… And you probably can’t even hear me. But I miss you. A lot. It’s really not in my character to miss people so that’s probably why this feels so weird.” Jack can’t help the sad laughter that bubbles up in his chest and escapes his lips. It just happens as naturally as breathing. “You know, I never thought that it would be you that I fell in love with. But here we are. I would’ve torn apart galaxies with my bare hands and rebuilt ones that would shield you from any pain. I don’t know how you’re feeling but I do know how I am. I miss the big smiles that you would give people when they said something hilarious, I miss the genuine laughs that you only did when we were alone. I miss the way your eyes mimic the ocean waves and dance like the sea. I miss the soft press of your hand against mine, and how they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. I miss you.” The same words that have been rolling off of his tongue for weeks come easy now, eyes not watering with tears quite yet. This is always the easy part. Simple things that anyone would miss when they lose their lover. However, Jack isn’t even close to finished and he knows his freckles will be stained with tears sometime soon.

“I miss the way you used to jump into my arms after you won a game despite being hideously dirty. I miss how you used to drag me out to look at every sunset because you wanted to find a beautiful part of every day…” His voice cracks at the end, memories swarming around like bees to honey. Every simple thing the fair boy did, probably without thought, now haunted Jack. The sweet gestures lived behind his eyes now, only as memories. A part of him wants to stop missing Ralph and just get on with his life. Live like a normal human being instead of one who can barely function without someone else there. He knows that eventually it will happen. It always does. Ralph has probably already moved on, found someone new to waste the days away with.

“Hey Ralph…” Jack starts tracing a pattern onto the knee of his sweatpants with his finger, eyes locked on the stars. Everything about the moment slows, the dancing lights in his peripheral, from a party in another building, the twinkling of the stars, the rush of wind against his face. Jack lets his heavy eyelids flutter shut, praying that one day, at some point, he’ll finally have an answer to the question that lays heavy on his tongue. All the sleepless nights and words that only he can hear lead to the same place. Like a winding road that always spits you out right where you began. All he can do is hope Ralph hears him, hope Ralph is right there with him whispering words to the moon that sits high in the sky.

“One day, will you love me again?”

[hlupdate]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom. 

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars. 

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible. 

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.” 

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.” 

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[land-of-classpects-and-analysis]

Hiya, might I get a maid of time analysis? Please and thank you! ^v^

As always, I can only give a little sneak peek! ;3c But I always make sure to cover the most important and/or big parts of it!

~~~~~~~

Now, the Maid of Time is a fascinating Classpect; and is one that many are aware of! It is a person who embodies so many things all at the same time, that their presence is one not short of being highly magnetic and electrifying. They are made of Time and all of its forms; literal, metaphorical, and emotional. For the literal Time, they are someone who most likely is highly attuned to the ever forward march and flow of time. Not a moment passes them by where they are not aware of their present moment, but also of their past decisions and the ones to come in the future. They are the most aware of Time when it comes to their friend group, and as such will often make sure that events to come will be seen through. Making sure appointments, dates, destinations, and other important events are met; they help to usher everyone to their places on the universe’s stage before the curtain has a chance to be pulled back. They are not the playwright, but more so the director who holds the script.

They are also someone who is drawn towards the macabre; of death, decay, and all that comes after it. When they see a skeleton on the road, they do not see tragedy, but instead a creature’s cycle come to a close. They find solace in two words; The End. Because although everything around them is always changing, for better or for worse, there is that certainty that it will eventually come to a stop. And with it, a new cycle shall begin. Maids of Time are surprisingly philosophical people, sometimes giving a few Mind-bound a run for their money when it comes to their logic and philosophies. They see the beauty that comes in death, because they know that every end creates room for a new story to start. One could argue that the Maid of Time is one made of death and/or decay; perhaps they themself have experienced a tragic loss of some kind, but did not go through a normal journey of recovery and grieving. Perhaps in that tragedy, they saw a grace that so few people are capable of comprehending. Not that the Maid of Time cares what other people think, of course.

Of course, the Maid of Time is also one who is made of a fiery, fighting spirit. They are one of the first people to spring into action when injustice is brought to their attention, and they are the most likely to see to it that such a thing is fixed. After all, they are trying to make sure that everyone is at their peak performance; if one person is slacking, or making it difficult for others to perform, then they would surely be one crummy director to simply ignore these problems.

However, don’t let this fool you; this attitude is one that the Maid of Time carries, but they also are still one who is greatly at war with their Aspect. They are aware of the passage of time and as such make sure everyone is where they need to be, yes, but they are one who constantly lives in stress because of it. They love the macabre and fawn over death, but only because they are not a stranger to it. The Maid of Time is one covered excessively in scars from wounds long since past, but will surely have many more to come. They seek out ways to fix injustice, yes, but rarely do they ever pay attention to or care to the injustices dealt to them. They are still fighting against their Aspect, and they still hold a sense of wariness towards it.

During the Maid’s journey, they may try to neglect their duty as a director, or leave it up to someone else to fix and create. The reason why this plan cannot be sustained is because no one can do it like the Maid of Time can. Their Classpect is unique, and so nothing could ever completely replace them and their place in the story. Therefore, something drastic needs to happen in the Maid’s life that would bring them closer to their Aspect. Perhaps a loved one is in danger or experiencing an injustice so harsh that only the Maid can fix it, or they themself are in dire need of their Aspect and its functionality to remain intact.

No matter what, as much as some Maids of Time may desire to see their Aspect be torn apart, and the sands be free of their glass prison, they would have to learn that there is a time and a place for allowing such things to happen. By the time they would come to this epiphany, though, Time would already be left in quite the state of disarray. Timelines would be a mess, the order of events would be wrong and all over the place, and the morale of all their friends would be quite low. Because of this, the Maid would have to work towards learning how to create their Aspect.

Creation of Time is a power very many wish to achieve, yet very few are actually granted it or are even able to handle it. This is actually for good reason, as Time is a surprisingly delicate Aspect. Too much of it, and it all is put at risk of collapsing in on itself. Too little, and everything will slow down to a standstill, as well as feeling extremely one-track. The Maid of Time is meant to help keep Time in check, making sure that there is not too much but also not too little.

They are someone who can create timelines on a whim, as much as they so desire. They can also create Time in small pockets of existence - making the flow of time slow down to a complete halt in one place, while speeding things up in another. In order to do this, the Maid of Time would have to be quite the chaotically organized individual, with levels of knowledge and awareness that may rival even the greatest Mind-bounds, Light-bounds, and Void-bounds.

As for more realistic powers of creating Time, the Maid is one who would seemingly always have the chance to sit down and talk with someone or even multiple people! They always have time to spare in their schedule, or at the very least are good at making a bubble of respite amidst the rush of life. A Maid is very capable and excellent at starting something, stopping it, and then starting it back up again. They are near masters of rhythm and beats, one might even say; always remaining on the key they need to reach and the page they need to be on.

There are many other ways for a Maid of Time to create Time, but that will be saved for the much more official analysis!

Now, creating through Time is when one is when the role of Stagehand and Director truly come into play for the Maid. By creating through Time, they are setting up the dominoes needed in order to create a massive, narrative chain reaction so that order is maintained throughout the flow of time. If someone needs to check the mail at a certain time, the Maid will do all they can to ensure that the mailman gets there on time.

More realistically, a Maid of Time who creates through Time is one who creates through perseverance. Which is to say, once a Maid of Time begins a project, they are most certainly going to see it through to the end; even if it’s all on their own. Every moment counts when it comes to a Maid of Time’s creation process, and while they certainly are capable of messing around with their schedule, it’s something they find quite disruptive to their very own wants, needs, and flow. When that inspiration starts to die out, the Maid may feel very guilty for not being creative; but what’s important for them in this moment is to allow their Aspect, and themself, to recuperate. Even though they are made of their Aspect, it is and always will be a finite source - no flame can burn forever.

The Maid of Time is a fiery, passionate, and justice-bringing friend and ally to have. They are full of life, and also a love for death and all things macabre. They can see the beauty in a bakery full of sweets as much as they do the moss and flowers blooming through the skull of an animal. Mystery, yet often alluring, people find the Maid of Time fascinating and off-putting; the two often going hand-in-hand to draw people closer to the Maid. Yet no matter how many people surround them, the Maid ultimately cares more about their own personal projects than anything else. They strive for completion of cycles, for the story to have an ending, for the curtains to be drawn on a story in which they put their hands in.

The Maid of Time is a force to be reckoned with, and an ally - perhaps even friend - to be had.

~~~~~

This has been in my drafts for a WHILE oops jdfnvjdn sorry about the very late response, nonnie!! But I do hope this does help to give a better understanding on the Maid of Time!

[peach-the-owl]

Child of the Nein

When you first meet (Mighty Nein & Child!Reader) Part 2

Finally here’s part 2 like promised :)

Again not 100% accurate but I tried to keep it as close as possible

Fjord

Walking along the shores of Port Damali was a common activity for you, the sound of the waves and seagulls brought a sense of calmness to you. Today however proved to be a bit different when you saw a body laying on the beach (I’m guessing this is where he had ended up, if not feel free to correct me), waves lapping around the unconscious half-orc. You proceed cautiously not entirely sure how to approach the situation, were they dead? Alive? You couldn’t tell at first glance, so doing what any reasonable kid would you find yourself a nice long stick and start poking the body. When they let out an irritated groan you flinch back waiting for something to happen, when nothing does you resume your poking. "Hey! Are you dead!?" The words slipped out before you knew what you were saying, however the half-orc stirred once more.

When Fjord first regained consciousness he was surprised to find himself back on shore a sword in hand. The strange poking sensation while mostly irritating did help him get some focus back as he recoiled from the source. A small yelp pulls his attention to a kid, maybe 10 or 11 years of age, who’d stumbled to the sandy ground at his sudden action. A small staring contest ensues as neither say anything.

"Are you ok? I thought you were dead." You had decided to break the ice first, albeit in a rather odd fashion.

"I’m… fine?" You quickly noticed the shift in his tone of voice from a softer british composure to a heavy southern drawl. "Now what’s a kid doin' out here all alone? You should be getting back to yer parents."

"I would if I had any." You say nonchalantly.

"Oh, I’m sorry to hear-"

"It’s fine, can’t feel sad over people I never met. I’m (y/n) by the way." You quickly change the subject, holding out your hand for him to shake.

"Uhh… Fjord." He accepts the handshake, after which you help pull him to his feet.

"So, Fjord are you going to stay in town long?"

"What’s that supposed to mean?" He crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow at you.

"Well…" You let the word drag for a second, before deciding to come clean. "It's just that you look like a man on a mission and I for one would like to join you. I’d do anything to get out of here." You flash him your big puppy dog eyes in hopes of enticing him to agree. Sure it was a little selfish and possibly unwise on your end to ask a stranger such a bold question, but you were desperate to leave and he didn’t seem like a bad guy.

"While I don’t plan on staying long, I’m not sure I feel all too comfortable with a kid taggin' along either." He shifts a little, scratching the back of his head before looking over to you. You weren’t ready to give up so quickly.

"Oh please, the people here are awful, they don’t even care that I’m all the way out here without anyone looking after me. Look, I know the worlds a dangerous place but I’ve gotta face it eventually, and what better way to face and learn about it then with someone who already has experience." As you spoke you could see his resolve slowly break, you kept pushing. "I want to prove myself better then the dirt these people say I am, haven’t you ever felt the need to prove yourself?" It's not like you were lying about any of this and Fjord could see that written on your face. He felt pity for you but also hesitant at first, trying to think this through, your little puppy dog stare kept getting in the way however. He sighs in defeat.

"It may not be all bad to have some… company along-" He spoke slowly, almost trying reason with himself. You don’t let him finish as you practically squeal with joy and give him a quick hug.

"Thank you! You won’t regret this I promise." You let go and flash him a bright smile, in return he gives an amused side smile. As the situation fully dawned on Fjord, one part of him still wasn’t sure about this while the other hoped he made the right choice. You seemed like a smart kid to him surely you’d be able to learn quickly too. What could possibly go wrong?

Beau

Beau gave an exasperated sigh while trudging down the halls of the Cobalt Soul, she had been summoned for some "important training and experience" which wasn’t specified when she questioned them about it. Once she enters the sort of meeting room she sees 4 individuals, one being Archivist Zeenoth with two others from the Cobalt Reserve and the last looking to be a child, about 10 years old.

"The hell's all this?" The words came out before Beau could catch what she was saying.

"Language Miss Lionett, there are children present." The archivist scolds while gesturing to them. "Regardless, I’ve called you here because from this point forward you shall be this child’s new teacher."

"I’m sorry what!? You do realize that this is a bad idea, right? I haven’t even finished my own training." Beau was taken aback by his words, surprised they even considered her to be teacher material as it were.

"I’ve… considered it. However, as per mentioned earlier, I do believe this will make for a good exercise not just for this young one but for you as well."

"… I really don’t have much of a say do I?" She lets out a sigh as Zeenoth shakes his head. "Fine, whatever."

The archivist leaves the room with the two other monks that had escorted you in, leaving you alone with your new mentor. The two of you just standing in a silence that feels as though it’ll last an eternity.

*Sigh*"So, you’ve gotta name kid?" You could hear the annoyance in her voice.

"Yeah, I’m (y/n) (l/n) and if I’m not mistaken your Beauregard Lionett."

"No need for the formalities, just Beau is fine."

"Right, ok…" Your voice trails off as an awkward silence now takes over. After a moment or two you decide to try speaking up again.

"So what should we do first?" You ask, hoping your question leads somewhere. Beau stares off into space for a moment, scratching the back of her neck. You could tell she wasn’t used to this.

"I guess we'll start with the basics. Come on, there should be a more open room to spar in somewhere." She starts heading out of the room, you following close behind. From what you could gather so far, the passive aggressive tone was just a default for her and nothing to be taken too personally. After all she was your teacher now so you’d have to take everything in stride. What could possibly go wrong?

Yasha

You sat by the alter, you don’t remember much, just that you were guided here, HE had guided you here. When you had first arrived you saw a woman laying unconscious before the alter, you didn’t know what to do so here you now sit, waiting, waiting for something to happen. The woman begins to stir a groan escaping her, you scramble back a bit and hide behind the alter.

Yasha pushes herself off the ground and looks around, she didn’t know where she was or what was going on all she knew was that she was here at this alter. She decides to approach the alter, seeing two medallions. Confused she picks up both, as she does there's a soft but somehow comforting sound of distant rolling thunder. She then looks back to the alter, catching a set of curious eyes watching her before ducking out of sight. She readies herself for a fight.

"Who's there?" Her tone sounded both threatening and a little scared, she was surprised to see a child step out from behind the alter, their hands up as a way to show they meant no harm. Her stance relaxing just a little as they now stood before her.

"I’m not here to start a fight. I was guided here, like you." You could see her trying to process whatever was going on, honestly you still were too. You try to think of something else to say, thinking it best to simply introduce yourself. "Ummm… my name's (y/n). What’s yours?" You give a slight bow.

"… My name's Yasha… uhhh… I think this is yours." She kneels down and holds out her hand with one of the medallions in it, you carefully take it from her, examining the beautiful design. The silence that soon falls between you feels awkward yet comforting all at once. Neither one of you knowing what to say or do next.

"What happens now?" You ask, breaking the silence. Yasha looks to you and shrugs. "Yeah I’m not good at this either." You scratch the back of your neck feeling a little sheepish for asking. Another chorus of distant rolling thunder breaks you both away from your thoughts, this time seeming to call both of you to follow it. Sharing a look and finding no other options, you both set out to an unknown future. What could possibly go wrong?

Molly

Your legs felt as though they were on fire after hours of walking and your stomach growls at you in hunger. You march forward nonetheless, not sure as to where you were going, but just going. The burning slowly turned to a biting feeling until eventually your body forced you to drag yourself somewhere safe and out of sight to rest.

As you let the evening air blow past you a very faint scent of sweets hits your nose, looking in the direction of the scent you could make out thin pillars of smoke still a distance away, most likely the source of the sweet smell. You tried to get up but your legs wouldn’t allow it making you stay put until the pain subsided. Hours seemed to pass, you fiddled with some grass to entertain yourself, feeling the ground shift a little as you did so, strange. Ignoring that and shifting your gaze up to the sky you watch the night take over, stars dotting the darkness and a beautiful full moon seeming as if it was looking right back at you. By now the pain subsided, you now being able to start heading for that town, or what you hoped to be a town anyways. However when you try getting up this time it isn’t your wary legs that hold you back but something gripping onto you. Looking down you see a lavender hand clinging to your pants. You yelp in shock and try to pull away, tugging at the fabric to get whoever or whatever this was to let go, but to no avail. Soon another hand emerges from the ground then the top half of the body, the individual gasping for air as their head breaks past the soil. You stumble backwards, not getting far as they still had you in their death grip, all you could do was stare at them. Where they undead? No that didn’t seem right, they were breathing and defiantly looked to have all their skin intact. Maybe it was a resurrection spell? No, you seemed to be the only one around from what you could observe and you certainly didn’t know any powerful magic like that.

Dozens of questions swam around your brain as you tried to decide your next course of action, this somehow not dead person amazingly didn’t seem to notice your presents or that they were still holding onto you, their eyes fixated on the sky. You shuffle a bit to get into a more comfortable position, when you do you see the mystery man had finally moved their gaze away from the sky and onto you. Red eyes beating into you, yet you no longer felt fear from them as you could now see, much like yourself, the fear and confusion in their own eyes.

"Uhhh… hi?" You really weren’t sure how to approach any of this, and when they don’t respond you could only assume they didn’t know what to do either. They do however release their grip on you, retracting their hand to their chest. You could run, but should you really just leave them here? They were a stranger that just popped out of the ground (like daisy's) but that didn’t mean they were instantly bad. You slowly rise to your feet, and with a deep breath hold your hand out for them to take. You see the hesitance in their face as they just stare at you.

"Come on it’s just a hand. I don’t bite, promise." You offer a welcoming smile, and after a second they accept the offer, you helping them up. "I’m (y/n) by the way. What’s your name?" They look at you but their voice was so quiet you weren’t even sure if they were actually talking. It’s then that your stomach rumbles again, making your hunger known after being ignored for so long.

"It’s ok, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna. Let’s just get moving, I think I saw a town not too far away. We can go there, maybe find something to eat and then figure this out." You give another reassuring smile hoping to calm your new mystery friend enough to focus a bit more. While still holding onto their hand you gently start tugging them along, they follow you like a lost puppy toward where you’d seen the pillars of smoke earlier. You tried to stay optimistic in your assumption and hoped to find somewhere to stay soon. What could possibly go wrong?

[quietlyimplode]

Whumptober2020 - Day 15 - Into the Unknown.

Day 1 - Waking Up Restrained // Day 2 - Kidnapped // Day 3 - Manhandled // Day 4 - Caged// Day 5 - Rescue // Day 6 - No More // Day 7 - Support // Day 8 - Isolation // Day 9 - Take Me Instead // Day 10 - Blood Loss/Trail of Blood // Day 11 - Psych 101 // Day 12 - Broken Down // Day 13 - Oxygen Mask // Day 14 - Alternative Prompt - Comfort // Day 15 - Into The Unknown

Natasha’s POV on therapy, and her first therapy session.

Therapy not a foreign concept, having received it before in the early stages of her journey into Shield but the unknowns of voluntarily going, is making her wary. It’s weaknesses that she can’t abide by.

If her handlers saw her now, she’s be six feet under or in prisoned for re-education; mind wiped, start again. Sometimes it’s a consideration and feels almost preferable to working through what she has to.

——-

Clint convinces her to go. After finding her passed out in a bolt hole in Alphabet city, bleeding all over her sheets and having visions of her team mates telling her, her worst fears, her worst imaginations, he’s not wrong in saying that something has to give. Cognitively, she knows this.

Therapy not a foreign concept, having received it before in the early stages of her journey into Shield but the unknowns of voluntarily going, is making her wary. It’s weaknesses that she can’t abide by.

If her handlers saw her now, she’s be six feet under or in prisoned for re-education; mind wiped, start again. Sometimes it’s a consideration and feels almost preferable to working through what she has to.

The whole day she’s on edge. Avoiding Clint. Screw him. This is his fault.

She can work through her own damn triggers.

Clint’s found his old therapist, Tony’s hired her.

She’s coming to the tower at 4.

Natasha spends the whole morning in the gym, ribs be damned, bruising and cuts make the session more painful but almost cathartic to work on. She can only hide in here so long.

She goes to her room and tries to read.

Heads to the kitchen. Sees Steve talking with Clint. Leaves.

Heads back to the gym. Maybe a run will help.

Clint and Steve find her in the Gym, panting her way through her third mile. Clint has the concerned look on his face, one of ‘what happened’ and ‘how can I help?’. She gets off the treadmill, pushes past both of them and leaves. Goes back to her room and showers.

Restlessly, she tries to read again. Stuffs around on her phone, looks at the time. Tony did say four right?

She heads down to check with him, the only one she can stand being around, the only one who’s not hovering, walking on eggshells and being a general pain in the ass.

She opts for a different tact when she gets there.

“How does this work?”

Tony looks up, surprised.

“What do you mean?” Natasha takes a deep breath. She hates this so much.

“I mean how does this work? I need…” she takes a pause and thinks what she’s actually asking; “a therapist and you just happen to get one that Clint knows and trusts, that will come to the tower? What did you do?”

Tony side eyes her, “I made some calls, paid some salaries. It’ll be fine.” He smiles, Natasha stops listening, waits til he finishes talking, rolls her eyes and stalks out. Stays just outside the room remembers why she went to Tony in the first place, walks back in again and waits til he turns around.

“God you’re like a ninja.”

“You just don’t pay attention.” She snaps.

“My hyper vigilance works differently to yours.” He retorts.

She pauses.

“When does she get here?”

“I don’t know, Nat, soon? I said 4, so I assume she’ll be here at 4.” She glances at the clock 3.50. Feels her breathing quicken, chest heavy. Nerves are now at an all time high. Leaving quickly she heads for the only space with air, the roof.

Clint’s already up there, she turns to leave but he spots her, “Nat, wait.” He calls.

She’s having difficulty getting her breath under control, feels more of a heaving, she needs to sit, buckles first.

Clint's running over and she holds up a hand. A warning, don’t talk; don’t touch.

She gets back to her feet. Looks at him in the eyes, the fucking eyes of worry. Makes a decision then and there.

“I’m not going.” She says.

“Tasha..”

“No. You don’t get to decide this for me. I went with it, saw some merit in it; but you know as well as I do; this is not how we work on things. This is not how we work through things. Send me on another mission, get back on the horse, who cares? So I have another trigger - who on this team doesn’t? Bruce is triggered by being fucking angry, and he doesn’t have to go? Why should I?”

He lets her finish her tirade.

“You promised.” He says in Russian for emphasis.

“I’m not going.” She replies in kind.

Staring at each other they’re interrupted by Tony swaggering towards them.

“Nat?” He calls out.

“She’s here.” Clint says.

Natasha is pissed. Traitor.

“I’m not going.” She informs Tony.

“Nat,” Clint tries.

Tony doesn’t even pause before heading into a lecture, it makes Natasha think that he’s been thinking about it all day.

“Natasha, the Doctor is waiting, you agreed. Give it ten minutes - five even, if you don’t like what she’s got to say you can leave.”

Clint's nodding.

Natasha scowls. Pissed that this all feels so targeted.

“Come on. If you don’t go, you have to hang out with me and Clint. And you know the whole time, we’re all going to be thinking that you should have just ripped the bandaid off and gone. Plus, if not today; then I’ll ask her to come back tomorrow; or the next day; or the one after. You get me? We aren’t letting this go. You need someone, that’s not; well, us.”

Well fuck.

She doesn’t want to be around them. She doesn’t want to be around anybody now. She feels like she’s them down already and feels betrayed. They’re supposed to have her back.

And then.

What if it doesn’t work, and she’s beyond saving? What if she lets them down?

She watches as Clint walks towards the door, holds it open.

“Come on.” He says, “put on an alarm and suck it up.”

She shoots Clint a look that she hopes conveys, fuck you and the high horse you rolled in on, and rolls her eyes. Follows Clint through the door. Tony is behind them. She counts her steps trying to alleviate panic.

They all but frog-march her to the office. Stand next to her.

All the feelings in the world are telling her to run. Leave. Never come back. Screw them; she doesn’t need them.

But.

She promised.

Taking the step inside she’s met with the kindly looking therapist that Clint told her about.

“Hello,” the woman says.

“Hello,” says Natasha.

The woman introduces herself, explains a bit on how she works. Natasha meets her with silence.

She is standing in front of the door, shakes her head when the therapist offers her a seat.

“So, do you have any questions?”

Can I leave? She thinks.

“What happens now.. Today?” She clarifies.

“Usually I’d ask why you’re here but your bandages and bruises tell me stories I feel you’re not ready to tell yet. So maybe we’ll start with strategies.” She pauses. Thinks.

“What do you know of grounding?”

“Some.” They’ve used it before, techniques that help pull you from flashbacks. Works but often hit and miss.

“Grounding helps us when we are experiencing big emotions, when reality doesn’t feel real or you just can’t get that breath under control. It helps us refocus on what’s happening in the present moment. You can use grounding techniques to help create space from distressing feelings in nearly any situation.” She pauses. “We’re going to be more targeted in our use of these. I get the feeling that you’re a woman of few words. How do you feel about just answering me with single words?”

Natasha feels positive about it.

Nods.

The therapist continues. “Ok, great. If you were to use a technique would it be mental, physical or soothing? Before you answer, a mental technique might be doubling numbers or thinking in categories, a physical technique might be putting your hands in water or a smell or touching something nearby; lastly the soothing techniques are those like teaching yourself to use words of affirmation or listing your favourite things or planning an activity.”

Natasha thinks.

Definitely not the last one. Likes the idea of mental games but physical is the one she lands on. Tactile prompt is what she’s always used, it’s harder to fake and doesn’t rely on her brain to function, easier for those around her to help her tune into. Doesn’t say this out loud. Replies.

“Physical.”

The therapist smiles. “Ok, great. So I’m going to suggest some ideas; maybe tell me one that you think might work for you, or that you’d feel comfortable letting someone know what to do when a flashback comes or your body or brain doesn’t feel like your own. Is this making sense?”

Natasha nods again.

“Ok, so hands in water noticing the change in temperature and the flow, or touching or picking up something around you, using your breath - breathing deeply, holding a piece of ice, a scent - like perfume or something that’s familiar, maybe moving your body, or listening to what’s going on around you, feeling your body, and then there’s the 5/4/3/2/1 method of 5 things you see, 4 things you touch and so on.”

She pauses. Waits. Expects a response.

Natasha looks at her feet, realises she’s still standing. Wants to sit. Pulls the chair out so the back is against the wall and curls inside.

“Hearing and touch.” She says. “harder to fake.” She elaborates.

The therapist nods.

“Ok, good. Good to know. Hearing is easy but sometimes needs another to tune us into it. Is there someone that can help you with that? That you’d feel comfortable with disclosing this?”

Natasha nods. Thinks of Clint. Knows instinctively that all she’s learnt from him, he’s learnt from this woman.

“Ok, if they’re not around then I want you try and acknowledge when you’re on the cusp of panic - put on music you know, like, know the words or tune to. Can you think of anything that would fit this?”

Natasha nods again.

“Ok; touch. Do you have any issue with people touching you, when you’re in panicked states?” Feels personal. But not wrong. Natasha looks up, sharply. Makes eye contact.

“Then this is going to be a bit different, prompt your body to tune into whatever it’s touching, sitting on, holding; take note of the temperature , the colour - anything you can think of. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Natasha says.

“Ok. So here, if you’re ever feeling or looking unsafe here I’m going to prompt you. Like practice, right? I might say something like the air conditioning is on or that I am talking to you. What I will also tell you is that sometimes you need to let the thoughts come.”

Pauses. Continues.

“Have you ever stopped trying to think about something and the more you try to stop it, the more the thought becomes repetitive til you can’t stop thinking about it? I’m going to remind you to let the thoughts come; but let them go too. Let it flow through you. Lastly I might tell you you’re safe. But as safety is a concept of the mind I might not always tell you that. What I’ll say now is that your words, your thoughts are safe here in the room, with me. So if you ever feel like talking through something that’s happened or going to happen or anything from the past, this is somewhere where you can do that. I’ll let you know that Mr. Stark has placed me on retainer so you call I come, easy right?”

Natasha rolls her eyes and the therapist gives her an easy smile.

“So, here’s where I tell you let’s give this a try. If it works it works, if it doesn’t that’s ok too, we just try something different. Just remember when you’re working through it, and things are ok keep working. If you feel yourself struggle - take a break. If you’re having a tough time; frustrated or overwhelmed with yourself, remove yourself from the situation. Our goal is to protect yourself and stay safe,” she smiles.

Natasha gets up.

“Natasha, would you like us to touch base daily or every second day?

Ahh the illusion of choice. The therapist is lucky that she seems competent, Natasha knows why Clint had referred her, the intelligence in her words and being able to read her is skilful.

“Second day,” she responds. What the hell, Tony’s right, what has she got to lose?

She side steps to the door, but the therapist isn’t finished yet,

“Last thing, do you have any questions?” Huh.

She doesn’t think so.. Hand on the doorknob she shakes her head.

“Ok, thanks for coming today. It’s lovely to meet you.” Natasha turns to acknowledge the woman. Gives a small smile

——-

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 22

“You come…here again?”

“I know we said we wouldn’t,” the Sergeant says slowly, putting great care into his enunciation, “but it’s important.”

“Im…por…tant?”

“Yes. We have –“

“This…many more,” the copepod says, waggling three massive fingers at him. The Sergeant is silent for a moment.

“I don’t understand,” he says finally.

“You kill…this many…more,” the copepod grunts. I can hear it breathing, vast wheezing noises like the space in between notes on a bagpipe. “This many more…since you said…you would leave.”

The Sergeant sighs. “They attacked us outside of the barrows. The ones they attacked had no choice but to defend themselves.”

“This…the…end, four-arms?”

I frown, glance over at Elena. “Four-arms?” I mutter. She leans in closer to me.

“Their word for us. They haven’t got any legs so they don’t really grasp the distinction between a leg and an arm.”

I nod, staring down at the screen on my camera. The copepod looks far too glossy but with the gloves on the suit I don’t really have the dexterity to fiddle with it and I don’t want to take them off presently, so it’ll just have to be glossy. I look over at the two copepods that had come in earlier, still lurking behind the Big Guy like statues, clinging to the wall in positions that look as though they could push off and dart at us with absolutely minimal effort.

The rest of the team seems very relaxed, though; nobody, not even Crookshank, has their rifles up to cover the copepods. “Do y’all come down here often?” I ask.

Elena shakes her head. “I’ve only been down here once before, and that was about a year ago.” Her eyes flick over to Peter. “Investigating a missing person.”

I think of several possible responses to that but bite them all back. None of them would be helpful, and at any rate my impulse to defend Peter has withered a little over the last few days. Probably just the hormones talking. Maybe if I didn’t get such a big damn case of the warm fuzzies whenever I so much as look at Elena –

“The end of what?” the Sergeant asks. The copepod gestures, a vague, open-handed, sweeping motion. It’s a terrifically human gesture and for a moment I stare, wondering, then its segmented mouthparts judder to life again and that horrible, inhuman voice issues forth from them again and some poor pattern-recognizing part of my brain gets whiplash from the disjointedness of it.

“How we…end. Many…spawnings since we…meet, four-arms, and now…there is not…enough…to eat. If we…leave…to hunt, you…kill us.”

The Sergeant starts to say something, but the copepod slams a fist into the ground. Next to me I feel Elena flinch, and on the far wall of the chamber one of the other copepods cocks its head.

“We are hungry,” it tells the Sergeant, and something about the way it says those three simple words strikes me like a lightning bolt, passing all the way through my stomach and out my tailbone. My hands are shaking lightly and part of me wants to panic, wants to be out of here right now, but I close my eyes and swallow hard and force myself to be calm.

The Sergeant, to his credit, doesn’t even blink. “We’re here to talk about that.”

The copepod is silent. It reaches up with its hand and rubs at its face lightly, in a motion that reminds me of a fly cleaning its compound eyes. “Don’t…believe you,” it wheezes eventually.

“We are. We’re planning to start bringing food down for – for your people. But we need something in return.”

I glance over at the crystal again. It’s a good thing we brought Joker; I don’t know how we would have gotten it out of here if he weren’t here to carry it.

The copepod rolls its head back and makes a strange, scratchy, rhythmic noise, that I recognize after a moment as laughter.

“You make…us starve, then…come with…solution…to problem…you made? And…you want…trade…for it?”

I hear the Sergeant sigh, watch him look up at the ceiling. I’m impressed at how well he’s doing so far, especially considering (unless I have egregiously misread him) that he’s a soldier, not a diplomat. But now the copepod has handed him a real zinger.

“We never meant to hurt you,” he says. The copepod shifts lightly, the spongy floor creaking under its ponderous bulk. “There has been a long and bloody history between us and I wish it weren’t that way. I wish that things had been different, so many years ago when the first one of us had met the first one of you. I wish we had known to leave you alone and not interfere with your way of life. But the past can’t be changed, all we can do is try to right what wrongs we can.”

“What…you want?”

The Sergeant points to the crystal. “That,” he says. The copepod looks over at it and then reaches out and drags it, one handed, using what seems to be practically no effort, out from behind the pile.

“Not…for trade.”

“Not even for regular supplies of food?”

“Not…for anything.”

“Nothing at all?”

The copepod stops and looks at us. Its eyes seem to fix on something.

“Give me…that,” it says, pointing, and we all turn and stare at Crookshank, who the Sergeant had given his rifle to and who is now carrying both of them, somewhat awkwardly, beneath his armpits. He looks perturbed for a moment before he realizes and unlimbers one of them and sets the stock of it into the floor. I can see the muscles in the great knotty bulge of the Sergeant’s jaw working before he turns back around.

“Absolutely not,” he says.

“Too…bad.”

The Sergeant very clearly doesn’t know what to say, and then after a moment throws in the towel. “Alright,” he says. “Give me a minute, I have to ask.”

Then he turns around and takes a couple of respectful steps away before reaching down to his radio and calling Makado.

“They want what?” she groans, after he’s told her the news. The rest of us, listening in over the squad link, cast glances at each other but remain silent.

“One of the slug rifles,” he repeats. “I told him that we’d bring them regular shipments of food instead but he didn’t go for it.”

I hear Makado curse under her breath.

“You told them we’d bring them food? Goddam it,” she mutters. “You didn’t have any authority to –“

“Veret,” the Sergeant snaps, his voice barely edging on civil. “We don’t have time for this –“

“You expect me,” she hisses, her voice mingling with the static, “to give you the go-ahead to give them a fucking slug rifle? Why don’t we also turn off the sonic traps and leave the seal unlocked on the way out?”

“What do you want me to do, then?”

The copepod is watching this one-sided conversation with interest. The Sergeant’s voice is low and sharp but I’m sure the copepod can still hear some of what he’s saying. Its vocabulary seems fairly good but as for how much it understands…

“You said there’s only three of them in there right now, right?” Makado asks. I see the Sergeant shake his head.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “No way.”

“Sergeant,” Makado starts. I can hear a note of steel buried somewhere deep in her voice. “We need that crystal.”

“I’m going to give him the damn gun,” he tells her. Somewhere miles above us Makado slams her hand on her desk.

“Do not –“

“I am not,” the Sergeant says, very quietly, “letting any more of my people die down here today. There are three copepods in here, and fifty within two hundred yards, and a hundred within a mile, and they all are going to come running the instant we fire one of these guns.”

Makado is silent for a moment. “Fine,” she says. Her voice is hard enough to cut glass. “One rifle, no mags.”

“Fine.”

The channel cuts out with a resounding click. Elena and I trade glances; I can tell from her face that she’s never heard Makado that angry before.

The Sergeant reaches out for Crookshank’s rifle wordlessly and Crookshank hurries forward and hands it to him. The copepods on the walls draw in a little closer. I can see them practically twitching with anticipation, waiting for one of us to make the wrong move. The Sergeant turns, the slug rifle held in one hand, the barrel toward the ceiling. The copepod reaches out for it and the Sergeant places it gently in the thing’s hand.

Next to me I feel Elena shift her grip on her own rifle. The copepod looks down at the rifle in its hand for a long while.

“You should have taken the food,” the Sergeant tells it. The copepod in turn makes a snorting, chuffing noise. Then it closes its fist over the gun and with a sound like a groan of relief it bends and breaks. The bolt pops out and whizzes off somewhere in the darkness and the slugs pour from the ruined breach of the rifle like marbles, five of them clunking dully to the fleshy floor and rolling someplace out of sight. It tosses the bent frame of the rifle aside, and it clatters into the pile of junk and detritus and causes a small avalanche. The Sergeant steps back, eyes wary.

Then the copepod reaches over and shoves the crystal towards him. Its sharp spikes stick in the floor a little and leave bloody gouges in their wake. Whatever is inside it casting that green glow shifts lightly, with a kind of exaggerated slowness to it like it were floating in oil, and I glance down at the camera, make sure it’s in focus.

“Take…it,” the Big Guy tells us, and I can see by the look on the Sergeant’s face that he has a lot of questions he wants to ask, but instead of asking them he turns and gestures to Euler and after a little bit of prodding Euler manages to walk Joker forwards and find a decent place to grasp the crystal firmly, and then it picks it up.

One of the robot’s joints groans under the strain and Euler quickly prods at the joystick and it freezes, but after a few moments for he shrugs and continues twiddling, and Joker hefts the crystal like it were nothing and marches, a little unsteadily, back to us.

The copepod, meanwhile, has turned, rolling its enormous bulk delicately past us, and, with the assistance of one of the other copepods, which puts its arms on the Big Guy’s sides and is helping push, slithers out of the room. The audience, apparently, is over.

We all look around at each other but nobody feels any need to speak. There’s nothing to say. Crookshank is looking wistfully at the rifle on the ground, the barrel twisted like a piece of straw, but as we all begin to file out of the organelle and back into the snaking outer vent that got us there, Elena squeezes my hand firmly and I believe for a moment, just a moment, that everything might work out alright.

 * * *

 Elena twists around sharply and stares back into the darkness, her rifle low and ready. I peer backwards anxiously, then glance at her.

“What is it?”

She shakes her head, holds a hand up to me. “Shh,” she tells me.

Behind us the rest of the group marches onwards. There’s a distinct sense of relief in the air. Many of them, I realized belatedly, had expected that we were going to our deaths, that we were going to have to try to take the crystal by force. Ellis thought so for sure; his smile is unbearably bright and the Sergeant has had to tell him to shut up multiple times on the journey out, but his enthusiasm is so overflowing that he can’t shut up, he just keeps babbling on about whatever is in his head, what he’s going to do when he gets back to the surface, how nice it’ll be to have fresh air, so on and so on.

Elena is standing there quite still, her head cocked to one side. I listen but I can’t hear anything, and I start to tug at her sleeve, thinking that –

Wait.

I thought for a moment that I might have heard something, something very far away, but it was the sort of quiet, subtle noise that is hard to notice even in dead silence, and our current environment is very far from that. Everything down here seems to make noise; it’s a little like being in a forest in the middle of a windstorm. Instead of trees creaking and groaning and leaves scattering and wind rushing, you have the tramp tramp tramp of metal-plated feet, and the corresponding squelches of cleat sticking into the floor and the equally horrible meaty slurping sound with each step as they come unstuck. Then on top of that there’s groans and moans and straining noises. If you put your ear to someone’s stomach after they’ve just eaten you might get a sense of what it’s like, except fifty times louder and without anything in the way. The hallways shift around you, little wriggles of convulsive muscle movement going through them, and the noise is concurrent with the size and force of the muscles doing the moving. But there is a difference between the shrieking of a taut muscle and the shrieking of something in pain, far off in the distance, perhaps…

Elena leans in very sharply and reaches out with a balled fist and smacks the quick-release on the side of my helmet. The visor jets up and instantly the fetid smell of the Pit assaults me. My eyes start to water. “What the fuck,” I start to blurt, but Elena puts a gloved hand over my mouth. Her eyes are very clear and very bright; she’s already popped her own helmet so she can talk to me clearly.

“Listen to me, Roan,” she says, her eyes glancing over to the side and back the way we came before flicking over to me again. “If something happens down here, you stick to me like glue. Got it?”

I start to say something but she gives me a dangerous look and I swallow hard. “Got it,” I say.

“Okay, good,” she says. She flashes me a quick grin but I can tell she’s just giving me lip service, just from the way her eyes jump like roulette balls, scanning the surroundings even as she reaches over and flips my visor back into place. I had started to ask – well, I don’t know what I was going to ask. Probably something useless, some infantile plea for assurance that we were going to be okay. Clearly we aren’t if Elena is spooked like this. I look ahead of her at the rest of the team; they’re wary but not as wary as she is.

“Elena, what’s wrong?” I ask her, taking a hold of her arm, and she looks over at me and starts to answer, and then everything goes to hell.

Behind us I hear the sound I thought I had heard before, except much louder and clearer – a chittering shriek of either pain or rage, or perhaps some of both. Something about the tone makes me think it’s a copepod. The scream is cut off halfway through, and then we hear other screams, loud gurgling ululations, echoing through the vents. Everyone is yelling, everyone’s rifles are coming up very quickly, heads are whipping around and scattering the broad angry cones of headlamp light across the wet, glistening walls. The shrieks and cries are reaching a crescendo and it seems impossible that we can’t see any copepods at the present moment.

The side of the vent bulges inward suddenly and I see a long tapered mass move by, like a throat swallowing, and I realize that it must have been a copepod, sliding past as quickly as its resin-coated carapace will allow.

Elena has her hand under my arm and is tugging me along as quickly as we can go. I am deathly afraid I’m going to trip and fall and splatter face-first into the wet, bloody floor; I’m not digging in the cleats all the way, there isn’t time to with the way she’s rushing me. I want to reach down and pull out my sidearm but I don’t trust myself to keep ahold of it if I were to.

I can see a flickering glance of Euler’s face, bringing up the rear behind us, feverishly punching buttons on the controller and working the joystick. He looks frightened and I feel suddenly and incongruously bad for Euler, because he clearly has hated this place from the second he came down here, and it’s only his job that’s making him do it, and now he, and probably all of us, are going to die because of it.

I remember Makado very seriously considering us just opening up on the Big Guy, on the king of the copepods or whatever the hell the hierarchy is down here, just because he wanted a gun instead of just giving us the crystal. The wan green light is still pressing tightly against my back from where Joker has the damn thing clenched tight in his metal hands, and I feel my lip curling and realize that maybe Elena is right, maybe Makado is out of line, maybe she’s let her – her obsession with making sure that the Pit doesn’t hurt anything and anyone else lead her to some bad decisions. Or maybe –

There’s a shriek behind us, sounding terribly close now. Elena and I look back, as does Euler, but we still can’t see anything.

I have never felt so helpless in my life. If a copepod comes out of nowhere and snatches me right now, that would be it, I’d be done for. I don’t want to even pretend that Elena would turn everyone around and get them to come charging back into certain doom to save my skinny ass. I can imagine the conversation now: “Oh yeah, El, sure we know you were getting your pussy eaten by that frail little skeleton girl from admin but no way in hell we’re risking our neck for her, capisce?”

All it would take, I figure, is for one of them to dart up from behind, where our visibility is the worst, grab my leg, and then reverse and zoom out of sight. They can move so quickly down here it doesn’t seem real. It’s like the way seals move, fluttering around on the ice on their bellies, tucked down and torpedo-shaped, their arms slicked back against their sides unless they’re reaching forward to dig in with their blunt, ichor-caked fingertips, adding momentum, whipping around hairpin turns.

A crazy thought strikes me as I stumble again and Elena wrenches me back to my feet – being a copepod must be like living in a funhouse where everything is a slide. I almost start to laugh but I shove it back down, deep down.

It happens very quickly. There is a loud chittering screech from ahead of us and we both whip around. There in front, clinging to the ceiling of the vent, is a slender copepod, slithering towards us hand over hand. When someone’s headlamp – I think it’s Fumi – strikes it in the face it shrieks and falls on him and one of the guns roars and even though my earplugs are in it is louder than loud, the flash from the muzzle is like the sun, and I think I shriek in terror and surprise and then I really do fall, but Elena, angel that she is, is there to pull me back to my feet.

While I’ve been face-down on the floor someone has shot the copepod a little off-center, and a hole as big around as my fist is half-heartedly gushing a chunky, glutinous white ichor. The copepod’s arms and fins are fluttering and we all give it a wide berth, hustling towards the exit.

It is such a long way off, though, and that copepod was only the first of many. Once we shot the first one there was no going back, and the air quickly turned smoky and foul with the cordite stench of gunfire. It’s impossible to hear anything besides rage-filled animal screeches and the great pounding thud every time someone fires off one of the guns. The pounding and the sharp crackling report melds together in my head and it sounds as though there is an idiot child pounding on a giant drum, having a temper tantrum, right next to me.

Elena tugs me onward. A copepod breaks into the center of our formation and brings its titan fist down in an arc, and though it is pinioned by rifle fire and dies twitching its fist still hurtles downwards and impacts square on Ellis’ head. He falls like a tree and there is cursing over the radio link and someone very close is screaming Ellis’ name and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s me, that I’m the one heaving out his name like it were vomit and staring back at his body, splayed spread-eagle on the ground, his visor shattered, part of his spine jutting through the thick fabric at the back of the neck of the suit. The copepod had hit him so hard that some part of him broke, and his head was forced downward, crushing his neck.

After that I consciously observe very little. It’s like my mind retreats into some dark corner of the inside of my skull and sits there in a huddle weeping while whatever animal, lizard part of me takes the reins is utterly unfazed by everything. I remember little flashes here and there, lit by gunfire; I remember copepods like enamel-white cruise missiles, darting in from barely-seen slits in the walls, their hands reaching for me, Elena slashing at them desperately with her knife; I remember Fumi’s bearded face, drawn and ashen, down on one knee slamming another magazine into his rifle and the sound it made when he pulled the bolt back was like glass shattering; I remember vast white fingers wrapping around Crookshank’s thick waist and jerking him off of his feet and whisking him away into the darkness while everyone twisted and shot haphazardly, trying not to hit him. His face I remember particularly, for it was wide and frightened and for a moment I thought I could see the little boy he’d once been, peering out at me from inside the man’s body and wordlessly begging me to save him, but of course I couldn’t. I had joined in, snatching the pistol from my waist and squeezing off every shot in the magazine back into the darkness behind us. I don’t think I hit anything, other than the walls of the vent, leaving bleeding puncture-marks and a haze of smoke. Then Elena yanked me off of my feet again in her hurry to get us out of there and I had dropped the gun. I cried out for it but there was no helping it, we were long gone.

Our numbers dwindle one by one, first Ellis then Crookshank. I don’t see Klaus get taken; he just disappears in the frantic haze of gunsmoke and flashlight blur, and everyone is calling out for him. I remember the Sergeant barking, his voice like sandpaper, that Klaus is gone, his vitals aren’t registering, just go, and us all going.

I remember seeing Joker, seeing snippets of Joker, rather, caught strobelike in the lights, battering aside a copepod, flashing a gunmetal-grey arm out to block one from reaching for Euler, the crystal set aside on the ground for a moment to give the machine a greater range of motion. I see its fingers fix around the wrist of the copepod and then twist and with a piercing cry of rage the thing draws its hand back, clutching at the bloody, spurting stump where its hand had been, the shock of it giving Joker the moment of hesitation it needed in order to bound towards the copepod and slam its metal fist through the tough but brittle exoskeleton and submerge up to its elbow in the copepod’s guts. It pulls out a handful of slime and then closes its mechanical fist and pounds the copepod in the head and silences its screeching. Then –

“Roan, we have to go!” Elena screams from next to me, but I don’t hear her, I’ve stopped, or almost stopped, turned half around, walking precariously backwards.

There is something looming in the darkness behind Joker, something decidedly not a copepod. Joker’s head whips around, some sort of sensor or scanner detecting the movement, and the floodlights built into the machine’s face illuminate the writhing, terrible bulk of the Leechman, standing there in a slump on two wormy, leech-filled feet, shiny and slick and horrible. I let out a wordless cry and Elena looks back at me and sees it too and stops, I can hear her words die in her throat.

The Leechman is enormous, its height and bulk so immense that it seems to fill the entire breadth of the vent with a solid wall of squirming leeches. Joker cocks its arm back as Euler goggles up at the monstrosity lurking, head cocked at an inquisitive angle, staring down at the metal toy in front of it.

Then before Joker can throw the punch the Leechman reaches down and envelops the machine in one massive appendage. I can see metal cracking, rivulets of rust and slime trickling down Joker’s armored legs. It manages to grab one of the leeches and crush it in its fist but then the Leechman tightens its grasp and one of Joker’s arms pops off, sparking all the way down until it thuds on the corridor floor. Elena is tugging at me but I can’t move, I can’t think, I can only watch, mute, praying the camera is getting all of this, as it scoops up Euler as well in the other arm. He tries to run but doesn’t get anywhere, the arm stretching out after him and nabbing him, tendrils of leeches knotted or grown together slipping over him. I can see them biting into him, forcing themselves into him, and when he opens his mouth to scream they pour inside and he chokes and sputters and then they close over him and he is gone.

The Leechman tosses Joker to the side and he clatters to the ground like a mannequin, the roll-bars on his ribcage bent and shattered, his head dented and compressed. He rolls once then lies still.

Then, with barely a glance in our direction – if it even has eyes, if it even has anything to sense with as I understand the word – the Leechman reaches down and picks up the crystal, and stomps off down the vent. It is such a banal, normal motion that I almost burst out laughing, but I get the feeling that if I let myself laugh I will keep laughing and laughing until everything falls out of me and I’m left empty and echoing.

Ahead of us someone shoots again and a copepod screeches. I turn to see it, darting in, fins streamlined and tucked against its body, spewing ichor from one double-fisted hole in its carapace, a grazing wound, apparently, as it tugs Peter off his feet and down beneath it. I scream his name and start to rush forward but Elena blocks me, then steadies her rifle, but before she can fire the copepod pushes off and bears him struggling into the darkness.

“Goddam it!” I shriek and start after him, but Elena tugs me back and pushes me forward so hard that I go sprawling onto my knees. I cast her a furious glance and scramble to my feet but before I can say something cutting and hurtful that I’ll probably regret, even if Peter’s just been fucking snapped up by a copepod, the Sergeant calls from ahead of us to hurry the fuck up, it’s time to leave, ladies, and I look ahead and see something that makes my jaw drop and my heart do flips in my chest – there ahead of us is the vast metal retaining wall that blocks off the barrows from the rest of the Pit, and there in the center of it is the great reinforced door, standing open and letting a flood of light pour in.

I look at Elena and take her offered hand and she has tears in her eyes but she isn’t faltering, not even for a moment, and in that instant whatever anger I could have felt at her is gone, utterly gone.

Behind us a copepod shrieks and then Fumi – oh, thank god, at least Fumi made it – fires at it, and the slug passes so close to me that I can feel the wind even through the suit, and then we, Elena and I, her arm around me urging me forward and keeping me upright, make it to the door in what feels like an instant, and once we’re through the Sergeant slams it closed and spins the wheel to lock it.

And then, having nothing else sensible to do, I fall to the ground and start to cry.

 * * *

I’ve got my helmet off and my sleeves rolled up. My gloves are lying on my stomach. Elena is running her hand softly through my hair and my eyes are a little puffy and sore but I’ve stopped crying. My nose, also, is becoming a little less stuffed, but that means I can smell the Pit again, so it’s a mixed blessing.

Elena’s been crying too but somehow I think she’s pulled it off more gracefully than I have. Instead of bawling and letting it all out in one go she’s managed to keep it down to a mute trickle. Every now and then she wipes at her eyes again and I squeeze her hand tighter for a moment and she squeezes mine back.

Ten minutes ago she’d leant in and held me very tight, even at the awkward angle she could manage, there on the ground, and I could feel in her a shuddering relief, an ease of tension. The copepods had stopped banging on the door ten minutes before that, and we had heard soft slithering sounds as they had retreated, and then we were alone in the silence.

I don’t feel like I’m alive. I don’t feel like I really made it out of there, I feel like a ghost, like I’m looking down from a great height at this slim, dark-haired girl in an ugly orange suit laying on the fleshy floor, looking beat-up and tired and done with this shit but not in a determined way, more like a resigned, given-up, “okay just keep rolling over me, fucking whatever” kind of way.

The Sergeant is quietly arguing with Makado about ten feet away. I’ve turned off my radio so I can’t hear her, just him, one-sided and quietly serious, his face like an Easter Island statue. Moa? Moai? Maui? I should look up the word. I should know something like that.

“Klaus, Crookshank. Ellis is dead for sure, we saw it. Euler. Fumi is okay, Roan’s okay, Elena is okay.”

A pause, then he closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

I can hear a tinny scream from all the way over here, of terrible rage that turns to grief partway through, and I know from the sound of it that she’s asked about Peter. I look at Elena and she looks at me.

“Are you okay?” she mouths at me, which is a question so incredibly dumb given the situation that my immediate instinct is to roll my eyes at her. Then it strikes me how incredibly understated just rolling my eyes would be and I nearly start crying again, and she sees it on my face and immediately her whole face shifts. She leans in and the sheer amount of care there does a strange thing to me and I bite my lip hard and reach out for her and put my hand to her cheek, and she kisses my palm despite how sweaty and gross it must be and I allow myself the indulgence of one brief moment to feel utterly, stupendously, selfishly relieved that her and I both are okay.

I again want to tell her something I know I shouldn’t but I stop myself. “No,” the Sergeant is saying, meanwhile. “No, we didn’t get the crystal.”

I hear another, quieter outburst from the other end, and the Sergeant holds the radio a little further away from his ear. “Joker’s fucked,” he says patiently. “As is Euler.”

“The Leechman got the crystal,” I call. My voice is scratchy. I cough, clear my throat and then repeat myself. “I saw it,” I add.

“Me too,” Elena nods, glancing at me. “Roan’s right, it was the Leechman.”

The Sergeant glances at us for a moment, probably wondering if our judgment can be trusted at the present moment, then nods and repeats what we’ve just told him to Makado. I hear a tiny sound of something shattering as if thrown and then the radio clicks off with a screech. The Sergeant sticks it back into his belt holster with a sigh and looks over at us. Fumi hasn’t said a word since we made it through the barrier; he’s slumped against the wall with his head in his hands. He looks up and when I can see his face it’s as though he’s a different person – that aura of impenetrable cool he’d maintained so elegantly up until now is utterly shattered.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” the Sergeant tells us, and after a moment Elena nods and gets to her feet and helps me up and then we get the fuck out of there.

We make our way through Oyster’s Shame and up the Cord. It is, insanely, four in the afternoon, which seems so banal and impossible to me that I nearly start laughing when Elena tells me the time. It feels like it’s about 13 in the evening or so.

We take frequent breaks, rest our legs and our hearts. There is less of a sense of urgency now, and the Sergeant doesn’t care as much what we do as long as we all stay together. Even so we don’t talk much. There’s nothing to say, or maybe there’s too much.

When we get to the top of the Cord the Sergeant looks back at us, pausing before he opens the door. It looks like he’s going to say something, but he stops, shakes his head minutely, and throws it open. The light from the harsh fluorescents pours down on him and for a moment all I can see is a silhouette.

Then a gunshot rings out from the vent behind him and the Sergeant takes one step forward, totters and falls. He lands hard on the metal grating of the floor and doesn’t move. A red pinprick brightens in the middle of his back, just on the other side of where his heart would have been.

I hear rattling from the staircase below as Fumi somehow manages to spur himself into action and sprint down it, taking the stairs two at a time. Before Elena or I can force ourselves to move, a figure steps into view. It holds a very big revolver and it’s aimed straight at me. Elena and I glance at each other and then raise our hands shakily into the air, and the figure cocks its head lightly, and as my eyes adjust to the light I can see it grin. Then I can see more of its face and I feel my mouth drop open as I start to say its name.

“Surprise,” Erica Walken says.

Continue with Part 23

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