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writing-for-the-weekend · 6 years ago

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Adventures With Aaron

Hey guys! This is the start of the revamp that I’ve been talking about. Hope you enjoy! For those of you that have any suggestions or things you would like me to change/add, just let me know via message. Thanks for reading!

He approaches the garage door and types in the four-digit code. 9055. The door slowly rises.

"I have no idea why she isn't answering her phone. It's only 8:00," Austin says over his shoulder.

"Are you sure she'll be okay with this?" Aaron asks.

"Yeah, I don't know man. She's pretty chill, but this might be going too far," Giancarlo replies.

Austin glances at the parked car in the garage and shrugs his shoulders. (Y/N) is one of the most down to earth people that he knows, but something like this could make the calmest person freak out.

"I don't know what else to do. We drove 45 minutes to come see her, and now I'm nervous something happened," Austin grimaces.

Aaron looks up at the beautiful house, "I can't believe she lives here alone."

The house is definitely big for one occupant. (Y/N) is a very successful editor for one of the most popular magazines in New York. Her personality does not match the lifestyle that she lives, but entertaining is one of her favorite things. It helps that her closest childhood friend is Austin Romine of the New York Yankees. He has introduced her to a bunch of new people, and he and his friends frequently need a place to crash that isn't a cold hotel. She likes to open her home to them whenever they are willing to make the trip to Westchester County.

"Well, let's go scare the shit out of (Y/N)," Giancarlo chuckles.

********

You wake up to the sound of the garage door shutting and the handle of the side door turning. It takes you a minute to realize what you're hearing, but once it registers, you throw the blanket off your body and stand up from the couch. Your heart is racing as you try to remember if you're expecting anyone tonight. What time is it? Where is your phone? You run your hands over your pants trying to find your phone when the door creaks open slowly.

"Y/N?"

"Rise and shine sleepy head!"

You let out a sigh as you recognize the voices.

"Holy shit. You guys scared me," you say with a huge exhale.

You hear a bag drop and Giancarlo comes around the corner. He gives you a huge smile and trots over to give you a bear hug.

"Sorry (Y/N), it was Austin's decision to break in your house. Aaron and I thought it was a terrible idea."

"Wow, thanks for throwing me under the bus, man," Austin says as he elbows Giancarlo.

Austin grunts as you wrap your arms around his neck, "Next time pick up your phone when I call and text you a million times!"

"I fell asleep on the couch again for the third time this week. Work has been absolutely crazy. I hadn't heard from you guys in a bit, so I wasn't expecting company. Sorry for the mess."

Aaron comes around the corner carrying all three of their bags. He stands there awkwardly and just smiles as you stare at him with your mouth hanging open.

"Guys, help him!" you squeal.

Austin and Giancarlo grab their bags from Aaron and smack him on the back.

"Sorry man. This is (Y/N) by the way. (Y/N) this is Aaron. Not like you need much of an introduction," Austin smiles.

You can feel your face flush, but it's not the time to be embarrassed. First impressions are everything you think to yourself. You run your fingers through your hair, pat some of the wrinkles out of your shirt, and stick your hand out. "It's nice to finally meet you!" you exclaim.

Aaron gives you a huge smile and says, "I've heard so much about you! No way are we starting this out with a handshake."

He bends down and goes in for a hug.

Your breath catches in your throat, but you allow yourself to relax and return the hug. His massive hands envelop your back and you are completely swooning over the man you've been so obviously crushing on for months. He is bent down low enough for you to reach your arms around his shoulders. Your right hand brushes against the nape of his neck, and you feel how soft his hair is. You realize how intimate this hug just became, and you quickly pull back. You stare up at him and notice the grin that he has on his face. You glance over his shoulder and notice the suggestive look on Austin’s face. You can feel the rush of heat to your face as you mindlessly play with the hem of your shirt.

"Well, (Y/N), it's really nice to finally meet you. All the guys speak so highly of you. And your house is - it's absolutely stunning," Aaron says sheepishly.

You quickly glance around your living room which is a complete mess.

"Thank you! I wish I knew you were coming - I would have straightened up a bit,” you say running a hand through your hair. “If you want, I can give you a tour of the place.”

Austin picks up his bag and slings it over his shoulder. “How about you give him a quick tour, and I’ll order some pizza for us?”

“I am so down with that. I am completely starving,” G says as he rounds the corner and heads towards the hallway.

“Ready for the tour?” you say with a shy smile.

*****

You motion for Aaron to follow you down the hallway. He stops frequently to stare at the art on the wall and just absorb your home.

"Sorry if I'm being nosey. You just have a lot of really interesting stuff here," Aaron says.

"It's all good. I like to collect a bunch of different things so sometimes it feels a bit messy."

You bring Aaron into your lavish kitchen and dining room and show him where he is always free to help himself. You go through the dining room and into the gaming room. Aaron's eyes widen as he takes everything in. A huge TV is on the one wall and the room is filled with a giant U-shaped couch and multiple bean bag chairs. He walks over to the corner of the room which just so happens to be your favorite place. The corner is lined floor to ceiling with books and there is a huge bean bag chair that can easily sit three adults. There are fairy lights lining the bookcases, and it is the perfect place to take a trendy Instagram picture.

"This is amazing," he murmurs as he looks through all of your books.

"This room is usually a big hit. The guys like to come in here and play video games or watch movies, and I usually curl up in this corner with a good book. It allows me to spend time with my friends while still doing what I love the most."

"Well isn't that adorable," he says with a smirk.

You smile and look down at your feet looking more bashful than you intended.

"I meant that as a good thing. I think it's awesome that you have a hobby you enjoy so much."

"Yeah of course," you reply. "Well let's finish up the tour. We’ll probably come back here once dinner is over.”

Aaron crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head no. He looks like he is about to throw a temper tantrum, and you can��t help but laugh. You hold your hand out to him and nod encouragingly towards the hallway. “The bedrooms are even more fun,” you say winking.

You notice a touch of color creeps up Aaron’s face, and this makes you laugh even harder. His massive hand reaches out and takes yours.

You take Aaron down the main hall on the first floor. You show him the three guest rooms and the accompanying bathroom.

"This is insane," he says in awe. "I'm not doubting your success or anything, but it's amazing that you are able to live here by yourself. What made you want to live in such a big house all alone?"

You give him a smile, "Well I'm rarely alone. I have a bunch of friends who regularly need a place to crash. Most of my guy friends play baseball or hockey and stay with me instead of the hotel option when they are in New York. It reminds them more of home and it's less lonely."

"Yeah, I can't believe I am just coming here now. The guys have been trying to get me to come here instead of staying at the hotel, but I didn’t want to impose. Of course, the hotels are nice, but it just gets kind of lonely after a while."

"Exactly!" you say. "It's nice to share this with my friends, and I always enjoy the company too. And never feel like you are imposing here, there is always plenty of room, and even if all the rooms are taken, we always figure it out. The guys have totally taken over these rooms, so they are all occupied,” you say motioning down the hallway. Romine uses the first one, Giancarlo prefers the second one, and Yelich sometimes stays in the third room whenever he is in New York. He has so much shit in there though, so we just keep that door closed," you chuckle.

You head up the stairs for the rest of the tour. You make a left at the landing and walk into your immaculate bedroom. The color scheme matches your personality perfectly. All white and gray with pops of peach in the bedding and curtains. This room is especially photo ready at all times just because it makes you happy to have full control over one room in the house where the guys don’t invade. “So this is the master bedroom,” you say, “my office is down there to the left, and then there is the attached en suite.”

Aaron sits down on the corner of your bed. "Hm, I like this room. I think this is the room I want for myself," he says as he leans back on his elbows.

"Ohhhh sorry,” you say sarcastically, “but this one is already taken."

"I mean, you could always be nice and share," Aaron smiles.

You can tell your cheeks are turning red, but you do your best to ignore that. "Wow. We've known each other for what 30 minutes? You are quite the flirt."

"I literally won 'Most Flirty' in high school," Aaron replies with the cutest smirk.

You walk over to the bed and hit Aaron with a throw pillow. "Let's go lover boy. Time for you to see your room."

*****

Aaron follows you out of the bedroom. He trails far enough behind you that you think he might be enjoying the view, or maybe you just hope that he is.

"There are two guest rooms up here, but this one tends to be in use by one of my hockey friends,” you say gesturing towards the room to the right. “This room right next to mine is usually open, so that's probably the best bet for you tonight."

"Perfect. (Y/N), I just want to thank you again for letting me stay here. It really means a lot," Aaron says.

"Yeah, of course! You're always welcome here. Let me know if you need anything, okay?"

Aaron smiles and nods. He grabs his bag and drops it on the bed. You stand just outside the door frame, and he slowly approaches you. He raises his arms up and places his hands on the inside of the door frame. You make eye contact with him, and both of you are smirking like teenagers.

Just then you hear Austin yell up the stairs, "Hey you two! Pizza is here!"

You smile up at Aaron, "Looks like our company is being requested then.”

Dinner was perfect. Pizza with some of your favorite guys is always a great way to spend the evening. You didn't realize just how hungry you were, but you hadn't eaten since lunch time and it was obvious. Two beers and four slices of pizza later and even your comfy yoga pants felt tight.

"I need to lie down," you mutter.

You make your way into the game room and weigh your options. You decide to flop down on one of the large bean bag chairs and just let it completely consume you. You close your eyes for what feels like a few seconds and open them to see Aaron standing above you.

"Want some company?" he says with a shy smile.

You move over more than you need to, but it gives Aaron enough room to sit down without automatically being on top of you. You wouldn't mind that, but you want to make sure Aaron is on the same page as you before you assume anything. Just as Aaron sits down, Austin comes into the game room.

"Hey, (Y/N) is it okay if some of my friends come by and spend the night? It's my photographer buddy and his two assistants. They have a huge project they are working on in the city, but I haven't seen him in a long time," Austin asks as he leans on the door frame.

"Mike? Yeah, that's cool with me," you reply.

"Awesome, thanks. Don't get too comfortable you two. Wade just got here and we are going to come in and play games."

Aaron nudges you with his elbow and gives you a sweet smile when you look over at him. You knock your foot into his knee and jokingly say, "Hey, watch it."

The guys come in the room to play video games and have a couple drinks. They have an off day tomorrow, so they are letting loose a little more than normal. Austin's friends show up and join in on the fun. They try to include you and Aaron, but you both are content just watching them from the bean bag. You are lying down next to each other with your arms and legs lightly touching, but it's natural and you aren't even thinking about it. You are so relaxed.

******

Aaron is freaking out. His teammates have been telling him about (Y/N) for months, but he absolutely hates being set up on dates. He saw pictures of (Y/N) and appreciated her looks, but he knew she was some fancy magazine editor in New York - there is no way they would get along. Pictures simply did not do her justice. She is gorgeous, has a great sense of humor, and is so down to earth. Aaron liked that she blushed when they met and he loved that the hug hello lasted a little longer than it should have.

Aaron feels a hand on his shoulder slowly shake him awake and a whisper, "Hey, Aaron."

Aaron wakes up to the rowdiness of his friends and the most beautiful girl standing in front of him.

"Mike wants to take your picture."

"What?" Aaron replies as he sits up.

"Yeah, your bone structure is to die for. Is it cool if I snap some pictures of you before I leave tomorrow?" Mike asks. "Actually, if I could convince the two of you to do a mini photoshoot together, I would be the happiest man on earth. The softness of her features next to your angles, perfect."

"Who, me?" (Y/N) asks.

“Yes, of course, you. You two are going to look so good together,” Mike says.

"I'm down," Aaron says trying to keep his cool.

*****

"So what exactly are we going to be doing?" you calmly ask. "I feel like the lighting isn’t really ideal this late.”

"Relax and let me worry about these things. We have some lighting in the truck, so we can definitely make this work. I just want to do a couple of shots with you two together. I'll direct you, don't worry. Right now, I need you to go put on some foundation, mascara and get some color to your lips. Deal?"

"Fair enough,” you say with a smirk as you turn to head to your bedroom.

Your number one goal for the night is to remain as calm as possible. It is very clear that you have had a crush on Aaron from afar for a very long time, and now that you’ve met him, your crush has just continued to develop. Aaron seems like such a cool and down to earth guy, and you are definitely not trying to ruin anything by fangirling over him.

You put your makeup on and keep it as simple as you possibly can. Your hair was slightly messed up from lying down earlier, so you run a brush through it and flat iron the wonky parts. Mike didn't tell you what to wear, so you decide to head down and see what he has in mind.

You make your way down the stairs and around the corner to find Aaron standing shirtless in your living room. Your breath hitches in your throat and you come to an abrupt stop.

"Hey," Aaron says with that charming smile of his.

"Hi," you say.

"Perfect, (Y/N)! you look absolutely perfect. The idea that I am dreaming about is Aaron over here in jeans with no shirt, and you in your underwear. How does that sound?"

"Under- underwear?" you stammer.

"Yeah, I'm thinking a cute lacy bra with some matching booty shorts. I know you have something like that so don't even look surprised," Mike responds.

"I thought you wanted to take pictures of our face?"

"Well yes, but I need to set the mood and this lawn chair outside is the perfect location for this photoshoot, and ugh. Please (Y/N)? This will be perfect."

"Okay, okay," you respond. "Aaron, you're cool with this?"

"As long as you are," he says with a huge grin on his face.

You go upstairs and find the perfect black lacy bra and the black lace underwear to match. The panties make your butt look amazing and plump. You adjust your bra to make sure you look as perky as possible. "Well here goes nothing."

You pull on the yoga pants that you were just wearing and grab the closest hoodie to cover up. You walk down the stairs and run into Austin as soon as you come around the corner.

"(Y/N), what the hell are you about to do?" he says as he grabs your hand.

"I have no idea, but I do know I am seconds away from having a heart attack."

"Can I watch?" he says with a smirk.

"I would rather my best friend not watch make a fool of myself half naked," you reply.

"Fine. You'll do great. Good luck," he assures you squeezing your hand. “Oh, just a heads up. Giancarlo was looking for you earlier. Something about you owing him cuddles?” Austin says rolling his eyes.

“Fuck,” you reply. The last time the guys were over you had gotten a little too comfortable with Giancarlo. Things didn’t get very far, but you pretty much sat in his lap the whole night as you consumed way too many drinks. He ended up coming to bed with you after a passionate make out session, but you were sober enough to put a stop to anything going further. You still spent the night with him, and since that night he has been sending you suggestive texts. You really liked G, but you were definitely not interested in continuing where that night left off. You were hoping that he got the hint, but clearly, if he was getting Austin involved, you weren’t so lucky.

“I can tell him you seem pretty busy with Aaron,” Austin says laughing.

“I’m not trying to start shit between teammates right now, but you already know how I feel about the situation. I’m just trying to have a good time,” you say shrugging your shoulders. Austin gives you a friendly pat on the upper arm and sends you on your way.

You take a deep breath and try to calm your nerves before walking into the living room. You run your fingers through your hair one more time for good measure and step around the corner.

Aaron stands next to Mike deep in conversation nodding his head to whatever he is saying. One of Mike's assistants is outside setting up some artificial lights on your patio.

"There she is!" Mike exclaims. "Do you mind getting undressed while I go talk to Caleb out on the patio?"

You nod your head and glance over at Aaron. His body is amazing and he knows it, but he is humble enough to not show off. He gives you a small smile and turns around to give you privacy to change. The view from the back is just as fantastic as the view from the front, but you stop yourself from staring too long.

You strip out of your yoga pants and pull the hoodie over your head trying not to mess up your hair or makeup. Once your clothes are off, there isn't much left to do. You fold the pants and the sweatshirt and clear your throat. Aaron turns around and his eyes widen.

"Well this is awkward," you say.

"You look absolutely stunning," he replies shaking his head back and forth. "Seriously. I - I - I'm speechless."

"You're speechless? Have you seen yourself? I'm trying to stop myself from going into shock right now," you say laughing.

Aaron glances down shyly, “Well this is one way to get to know each other quickly."

"Girl! You look amazing. You look even better than what I imagined," Mike squeals. "How about you two join the rest of us outside. (Y/N), it's a little chilly, but I'm sure you'll be warmed up in a minute."

You go out the sliding door with Aaron behind you. Your nerves are through the roof, but somehow you are keeping it together. Mike leans down and pats the lounge patio chair that Caleb pulled away from the pool. The chair is completely drowning in artificial light. You glance up towards the sky and see that the moon is peeking out from behind some clouds. There are a couple of moths migrating towards the light, and Mike notices you freezing up a bit.

“(Y/N), Aaron let’s make this short and sweet. If either of you doesn’t feel comfortable doing something, please just let me know. This should be pretty painless. Aaron, I want you to come over here and sit down. We want the band of your briefs to be showing slightly above your jeans because that just screams sex," Mike states enthusiastically.

Aaron adjusts his briefs and pulls his jeans down a bit to get the exact look you know Mike is looking for. He looks so damn good. You bite your lip and look at the ground to control yourself.

"(Y/N) I need you to come over here and straddle Aaron's lap. We are going to be taking pictures of you two face to face, so this is the easiest way of going about that with the height difference."

You slowly walk over to Aaron and swing one leg over the chair. The lounge chair is close to the ground, and you don't really want to fully sit in his lap. You squat down and hover over his lap a little bit while you keep your hands on the top of the chair to steady yourself.

"You might as well get comfortable, I have a feeling this will be a while. Unless this is your workout for the day," Aaron looks up at you with a smile.

You give in because there is no way you have the core strength to hold that position for very long. You don't want to sit directly in Aaron's lap, so you scoot up a bit and sit on his lower abdomen.

"Am I hurting you?" you ask.

"Not even a little bit."

A flash goes off as you are looking down at Aaron. You look up to see Mike staring at you sheepishly.

"I'm sorry. You guys just look so great together. Let's start so that we can all actually get to sleep tonight at a normal hour. I don't really want to direct you guys too much. I'm looking for sweet, but sexy," Mike says.

Aaron looks up at you completely lost. You can see that he is just as nervous as you are, so you decide to pull yourself together and take the lead on this one. You lean in and take Aaron's face in your hand and tilt your head as if you are going to kiss him. You slightly part your lips and pull on Aaron's bottom lip with your thumb to encourage him to do the same.

"Ugh, absolutely perfect," Mike says as you hear the shutter on the camera go off multiple times.

You look down at Aaron and bite your lip for Mike to take the next picture, but you notice that Aaron has locked eyes with you. He reaches up to cradle your face with his massive hand and tugs on your bottom lip for the next picture.

"Hello, sexy!" Mike calls out.

You try not to pay any attention to it, but you can feel Aaron grow hard underneath you. You shift slightly to try and relieve some pressure for him, but you must have rubbed him just right as he lets out a quiet gasp. You can't help but smile knowing that you've turned him on this much. Aaron rests his forehead against yours and you can hear how much Mike loves that. It's sweet, but you can tell that Aaron is dying for more and this is definitely not the time to go for it. You lean back a bit to get into a new position and you can feel Aaron pushing through the seams of his jeans. He rests his hands on your ass, and he gives you a slight squeeze. He locks eyes with you again and you can tell he has about had it with this photoshoot. He grabs your face and brings your lips to his aggressively.

"Yes!" Mike screams.

Aaron's tongue slips inside your mouth and starts to explore. You can hear the shutter on the camera going crazy and you can see the flash even though your eyes are closed. Aaron runs his fingers through your hair as one hand holds your face in place as if he is begging you not to go anywhere. The kiss finally comes to an end and you lean back with a sigh.

"That was amazing you two!" Mike shouts. Can you guys swap positions? I want Aaron on top now."

You look at Aaron and smirk. You know he's hard. He knows that you know he’s hard, and now Mike is about to know he’s hard.

"Can we take a 10 minute break?" you suggest as you push yourself out of his lap.

Mike nods and turns his back to the two of you to talk with Caleb about the next group of photos.

"Thanks," Aaron says as his face turns red. "I'll be right back."

Aaron trots towards the sliding door doing the best he can to conceal his bulge. You lie down on the lounge chair and close your eyes. Mike was right, it is pretty cold out, so you pull your legs up to your chest and rest your head on your knees. You listen to Mike and Caleb as they sort through the pictures they took. You keep hearing words like passion, sex, dirty, and naughty but you slowly start to tune them out. You suddenly feel a hand on your back and you quickly open your eyes.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you," Aaron says with a smirk. "Thanks for covering for me back there. Sorry if I got a little carried away."

"What? No, it was great - I mean you were great. Everything was great," you stumble out.

"You guys ready to finish this up?" Mike asks.

Aaron waits for you to lie back down on the chair before he lowers himself above your body. He uses his knees to hold himself up on either side of you so that he doesn't have to put any weight on your body. He crawls forward and braces his hands on either side of your body. You scoot your body down so that you are flat on your back and lean up to kiss him. He stays put and you know it's going to be a great picture with you longing after his kiss. You grab Aaron's face and give him a hard, long kiss. He grinds his hips down into yours not even thinking about who is watching. You can feel how hard he is and it drives you wild. Your kiss intensifies and you lift your hips up to feel more of him. The camera is still going off like crazy, but you barely pay it any mind. Aaron lowers his hand to your waist and grips it tight pushing you down into the chair. You let out a soft moan as he pushes his tongue farther into your mouth. You grab at his face desperately wanting all of him and more. Aaron pulls back from you despite your protest and he stares deeply into your eyes.

"I think we are good here," Mike says with a grin on his face. "You guys should probably go take a cold shower or something."

You start to sit up as Austin is stepping out of the sliding glass door.

"Woah. Sorry to interrupt the porno, but we don't have enough beds for all of the guests tonight," he says looking directly at you.

"It's all good. I'll bunk with (Y/N)," Aaron replies.

"Oh yeah?" Austin questions with a smirk.

"If that's okay with you, of course," Aaron says looking over at you.

"Yeah, sure," you stammer.

"Cool. I'll go move my stuff out of the guest room," he says before he walks off.

You immediately look at Austin with your eyes wide. You have no idea what just happened or how it happened or what to even think about. Austin grabs you by the shoulders and gives you a little shake.

"What the hell are you about to do?" he says jokingly shaking you back and forth.

"I don't know! I don't know what I just agreed to. What should I do?"

"Well it's a little late now!" he laughs. "You guys just met, I can't believe you are going to sleep with him!"

"Well it's not like I have to have sex with him tonight," you say hesitantly.

Austin raises his eyebrows and shakes his head back and forth.

"Earth to (Y/N)," he says waving his hands in front of your face. "What part of him staying in your room are you not picking up?"

You are by no means a prude especially considering what just occurred between Aaron and yourself, but you actually want to get to know him. Sex is great and all and it can lead to amazing relationships, but you are worried he might get the wrong idea. You open your arms to give Austin a hug and he can't help but smile at how pathetic you look. He squeezes you tight and kisses you on the forehead.

"Aaron's a good guy. You don't have to worry about anything. Do whatever you are comfortable with."

You give him a smile and walk inside together.

****************

Aaron walked into the guest room to gather his belongings. He lets out a huge sigh and rolls his neck from side to side. He could definitely use some practice when it comes to smooth talking someone he is so obviously interested in. The look on her face indicated that he may have taken it too far. He normally wasn't this forward, but he was really interested in her and wanted to make it known. He winced as he picked up his bag from the floor and started to roll his shoulder to relieve some pressure. He had silently been dealing with a minor shoulder injury for the past few weeks and it was bothering him after the photoshoot. He got so into the moment that he didn't even notice the pain.

****************

All you wanted to do was shower and go to bed. The make out session with Aaron got your adrenaline pumping and now you were crashing fast. As nervous as you were about Aaron staying with you tonight, it was all you could think about. You take the stairs two at a time as you make your way to your bedroom. You slow down before you open the door and try to look as casual as possible. You walk in the room to find Aaron sitting on the recliner that you have in the corner by the window.

"Hey," he says sweetly.

"What a nice surprise," you say.

Aaron smiles at the ground and bites his lip. His bag is sitting by his feet and he looks as if he is trying to take up as little room as possible. He stands up and walks over to you with his head down still and you can't seem to figure out what's going on.

"Everything okay?" you ask.

"I just - I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I don't want you to feel pressured to do anything or think I am just interested in - only that. You seem amazing, and all the guys have such wonderful things to say about you. I just want to hang out with you tonight with no expectations or pressure."

Aaron's brows are furrowed and he looks like he is seconds away from getting on his knees to beg for forgiveness. You move closer to him and reach for his right hand.

"I definitely appreciate you saying that, but I know that you’re a good guy and you weren’t trying to rush me. Also, I’m pretty sure the guys would kill you if anything were to happen,” you say laughing. “I think a nice relaxing night with you sounds like a great idea. Besides, it’s already a little after 10, and ya girl needs her rest.”

Aaron grins and looks down at you. He brushes a piece of hair behind your ear and moves his hand away quickly as if embarrassed.

"Do you mind if I shower?" you ask.

"Of course not. Do you want to just hang out up here and watch some mindless TV?" Aaron asks.

You nod your head and make your way to your dresser drawer to pull out some clean clothes. Even though Aaron took some of the pressure off you still wanted to make a good impression. You want to look cute and sexy but not look like you are trying too hard. You pick out a pair of cute undies with a matching bralette, a simple black tank top, and a pair of sleep shorts. You shake your head and try to remind yourself to stop overthinking everything. You turn around and find Aaron changing by the bed. He pulled off the jeans that he was wearing for the photo shoot and was folding them neatly. His ass looks perfect in his briefs and you can't help but stop and stare. He grabs a pair of basketball shorts out of his bag and slips them on. He takes off the shirt he put back on earlier and his back muscles stretch and flex as he moves. His arms are to die for, and you are probably going to die because Aaron turns around to find you staring at him with your mouth wide open.

"Enjoying the view?" he questions.

"I'm so sorry," you say embarrassed. "I, uh, I - let me just go take a shower."

Aaron can’t help but laugh, and you quickly turn around to head towards the bathroom. You set up all your clean clothes on the counter top and look at yourself in the mirror. Your hair is a mess, and you have circles under your eyes. The little bit of makeup you put on earlier was probably rubbed off during the photo shoot. You are hoping that the shower freshens up your face a little bit, but you know that it's not likely. If Aaron is attracted to you like this, then you are in good shape. You strip out of your clothes and hop in the shower to clean up quickly.

*****

Aaron sits down on the bed once he puts a fresh shirt on. He is on his phone just relaxing waiting for (Y/N) when someone starts knocking on the bedroom door. He gets up to answer the door to find Austin and Giancarlo standing there looking awfully suspicious.

"Where is (Y/N)?" Giancarlo questions coldly.

"She's in the shower. What are you guys doing up here?" Aaron asks.

"We wanted to make sure everything was going smoothly," Austin replies with a smirk.

Aaron turns around to check to make sure (Y/N) hadn't emerged from the shower and he pushes the guys out into the hallway. He shuts the door behind him.

"Quit being dicks. What do you want?" Aaron says a little more seriously than he intended.

"Woah, chill man. No need to get upset. We just wanted to check on (Y/N). She seemed a little nervous before, so I wanted to make sure she was okay," Austin replies.

"You guys should know me enough to know I'm not going to take advantage of her or do anything she isn't okay with."

Giancarlo steps forward looking annoyed. “Dude, you knew that I was interested in her. What’s the deal with you offering to share a room with her?”

“You drunkenly made out with her once after knowing her for how long?” Aaron questions.

G shakes his head back and forth, “That’s not even fair. You know I’ve been trying to hook up with her.”

“Yeah well I’m not just trying to hook up with her, and last I checked, you guys weren’t exclusive. Also, she seemed pretty into me when we were making out earlier,”

Giancarlo lunges forward, but Austin grabs his arm before he can do anything. “That’s fucked up and you know it,” he says through gritted teeth.

Aaron raises his hands in the air in a surrendering motion. “Why don’t we just ask (Y/N) who she wants in her bed tonight.”

“Okay, enough of that. The last thing either of you should be doing is fighting over a girl.” Austin grabs Giancarlo’s arm a little more forcefully and pulls him towards the stairs. “Both of you are acting like complete children right now,” he says.

Aaron rolls his eyes and closes the door. He turns to head back towards the bed just as he hears the shower turn off.

*****

You turn the shower off and open the shower curtain. You take one towel to dry off your face and arms and then you wrap it around your hair. You grab another towel to dry off the rest of your body. Once you are dried off, you put your clothes on and start to towel dry your hair. You run a comb through your hair quickly and give yourself one more glance in the mirror. It’s the best you’re going to do right before bed.

You emerge from the bathroom to find Aaron in bed searching through Netflix. He looks over at you and gives you a brief look up and down. He smiles slightly and pats the bed next to him. You toss your dirty clothes into the hamper and hop into bed next to him. The bed is big enough, but you are close enough that your arms and legs are lightly touching.

“How tired are you?” he questions as he looks down at you.

“Honestly, I’m exhausted. I think I worked myself up during that photoshoot and now I��m ready for bed.”

"Yeah, me too," he laughs. “Want to just put on an old scary movie and see how we feel after that if we’re still awake?

“That sounds perfect,” you reply.

You select the movie and settle into bed. Aaron props up some pillow behind him and opens his arm up to invite you to snuggle. You wrap one arm around his waist and rest your head on his chest.

#aaron judge #aaron judge imagine #aaron judge fanfiction #aaron judge fanfic #aaron judge imagines #austin romine #tyler wade #Giancarlo Stanton #MLB #mlb fanfiction #mlb fanfic #MLB imagine #mlb fan fiction #Yankees #new york yankees #yankees fanfiction #yankees imagine #yankees blog

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secretbangtn · 6 years ago

Text

if only you knew (jjk)

pairing: jeon jungkook x reader

warnings: mentions of sex, cursing, idk if it counts but jungkook is an asshole I'm sorry

word count: 2,131

summary: you’ve been friends with benefits with jungkook for a while now and things were great in the beginning, but then you became just another girl to him. now you developed feelings for him and now you’ve gotta get out while you still can.

author note: there will be a second part to this titled “if only you understood” that will be written in jungkook’s point of view so keep your eye out for it! also super huge thanks to @officiallynuts - my editor who puts in hard work every time I write anything! check out her stuff she’s amazing

12:03. You stared at the clock, desperately willing yourself to fall asleep so you wouldn’t think about what you did. Once again, you had slept with Jungkook, though the previous time you told yourself it would be the last. That you couldn’t keep doing this to yourself anymore, just being another girl to warm his bed when he needed to feel something. You weren’t together, never had been. It was a rollercoaster of emotions with the two of you, one minute you were having sex and the other you were listening to him talk about the newest girl he was chasing. Your heart sank a little every time, knowing that you would never be enough for him, knowing that you were just another girl on his list.

The space between you two was growing, you knew that this all wouldn’t last much longer before it escalated into a fight that sent you two running for the hills. It wasn’t like you could keep holding in your feelings for him. Yeah, that’s what you’ve realized. Despite the conversation that you two had when this all began a few months ago, it happened. It was kind of crazy, really. Jungkook really wasn’t the nicest guy when it came to fucking around. He got his pleasure, gave you yours and then he was done, rolling onto his side of the bed to fall asleep with his back to you. Then the next morning act like the two of you were best friends and everything was fine. You hung out with the other guys. You wondered why you still did it, kept hurting yourself like this, even though everyone around you kept telling you that you should stop when someone else wanted you.

Jin. Just his name made your heart warm and made you smile. He really was the sweetest, always making sure you were alright. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was going on, and Jungkook definitely liked to throw it in his face that he had you, and Jin didn’t. Whether it was jealousy - god forbid Kookie had any feelings or just pure pride, you didn’t know. But you weren’t just hurting yourself anymore, you were hurting the people around you as well the further you sunk into this hell.

You listened to his steady breathing from the other side of the bed, sighing quietly to yourself. You knew that he was out cold. He slept like the dead after all. You slowly got up, pulling your shirt over your head and your jeans back on. Heading out into the hallway, you heard the hushed voices of his roommates’. Tae and JHope were playing video games in the living room, trying to ignore what was happening in their roommates bedroom. You gave them both a small smile, one of which you knew they both would see right through. Since the start of whatever was happening between Jungkook and you, you’d become close with the other guys. They were like the older brothers that you never had.

“You okay Y/N?” JHope spoke quietly to avoid waking up their roommate, he really was grumpy if he didn’t get his sleep. “Yeah, I think so.” You took a seat between the two, resting your head on his shoulder. “You know, this isn't healthy.” Tae murmured quietly, not moving his gaze from the game of Mario Kart that the two boys were playing. “You gotta look out for yourself too. Jungkook is my brother and my best friend, but he isn’t going to treat you how you should be treated. It’s just how he is.” He murmured quietly, pausing the game to glance over at you. “I know.” You laughed bitterly, shaking your head as you looked up at the ceiling. “At least the last time I had an excuse, I was drinking so my inhibitions went out the window. But... I don’t have one this time. I just did it because I wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel like he cared for once because that’s the only time he ever acts like he feels anything for me.” You could feel the tears pricking in the corners of your eyes and you quickly squeezed them shut to avoid making a scene over some stupid boy. JHope just gave you a small squeeze and nodded. “He’s right, Y/N. Break the cycle while you can, or at least tell him how you feel, that’s really all you can do, you know?” You just nodded before standing up. “I should get home. I don’t really want to be here when he wakes up.” Tae stood up and nodded. “I’ll drive you home, you shouldn’t be walking at this hour.”

The car ride home was a quiet one, with you staring out the window and Tae knowing that you needed the silence. After the car stopped outside of your apartment, you looked over at him and gave him a small smile. “Thank you for everything, Tae. Really.” After giving him a quick hug goodbye, you walked into the apartment that you shared with your roommate Victoria, greeting your cat with a scratch under the chin. You quickly shed yourself of your clothes to get into the shower, letting your forehead rest against the tile while the water ran down your body. It was like you could still feel him all over you. Picking up the sponge, you furiously scrubbed at your body until you realized you were crying, sitting down on the shower floor. For the first time, you let yourself cry, let yourself feel everything that he made you feel, instead of trying to keep it in and ignore it. 20 minutes later you were in clean pajamas, cuddling your cat in bed. Eventually, you drifted off, images of Jungkook behind your eyes.

Dreaming was one of the worst things - you had to face what you truly wanted and what you could never have. Jungkook hadn’t always been an asshole. When he first bumped into you at the office you worked in he was all blushed, helping pick up the things you had dropped. He was the nicest guy, with his charming smile and soft spoken-words. You two bonded over your love for lamb skewers and video games. It was a friendship match made in heaven. Jeon Jungkook was a little piece of heaven on earth. He did have his faults though. He was messy, a handful and always a flirt. There was never a distinct line in your friends with benefits relationship because he was always pushing it. This dream was nice though. You were laying on the grass at the park nearby, just talking like how things used to be before you got drunk and started sleeping together. It was quiet and peaceful, the only thing heard was the laughter the two of you shared.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, blinking your eyes open to your phone going off quite loudly. There were 2 missed calls and a load of text messages from Jungkook, most asking where you went and that you forgot your backpack in his room. Victoria knocked on the door lightly before stepping in, raising an eyebrow. “Your phone has been going off for like three hours. I thought maybe that you were dead, considering you slept through it all.” You just shook your head, burying your face into your pillow. “Sadly, no I am not dead, very much among the living.” She just raised an eyebrow, perching herself on the edge of the bed. “What happened this time? Did you sleep with him again? Y/N... You know you can’t keep doing this to yourself when he doesn’t feel the same way as you. He’s just using you, and we all know he knows about your feelings for you. He’s just using them to his advantage to get what he wants. That’s what he’s always wanted. To be the priority in everyone else’s life and for everyone else to make him happy. You’ve got to own up so he can’t ignore it. Maybe then he’ll grow a pair and treat you decent or you can cut it off.” Burying your head under your pillow, you let out a groan. “I don’t want to lose him as a friend though.” She just shook her head, squeezing your hand. “Friends don’t treat friends like this.” She murmured before she walked out of the room, leaving you to your own thoughts.

You couldn’t hold it off much longer, maybe it was just better to be done. Pulling on clothes, you stumbled your way out of the apartment and headed over to Jungkook’s place, hoping Tae and JHope would be there to at least keep things from getting too out of control. The weather seemed to match your sour mood, dark and gloomy with a hint of humidity that seemed to make everything sticky and gross. You hurried your pace to avoid getting drenched by the oncoming rain, wondering why the hell you decided to wear a white shirt in the middle of a thunderstorm anyways.

Meanwhile, at the apartment, Jungkook was laying on the couch playing Call of Duty with the other guys, laughing and joking around like usual. He had no idea the shitstorm that was about to be his life, and what was going down in his apartment that day. When you got there, you didn’t knock but let yourself in. They were often too lazy to let you in so they had just given you a key to make their lives and laziness easier. When you walked through the door, Jungkook looked up at you and grinned. “Hey, Y/N.” A smirk crossed his face as he remembered last nights events, and you almost threw up a little in your mouth as you noted what he was possibly thinking about and what you had to say to him. You almost backed down, feeling like you couldn’t do this anymore, but it had to happen so you stood your ground. “We need to talk, Jeon.” His smirk fell from his face as he realized how serious you suddenly were. It was like his heart dropped into his pelvis, and he got instantly worried. “What’s going on? Did someone die?” His eyes widened a little bit, his doe-like stare coming to his face. You glance over at the two boys perched on the couch with him, and they both quickly got the idea of what was happening, making excuses as they shuffled out of the room.

You took a deep breath and ran a free hand through your hair, watching him for a moment. “I can’t keep doing this. Being just another notch on your belt. And I know you’re going to say that I’m not, but we both know the truth here Jungkook. I can’t keep going home with you, sleeping with you and then acting as if nothing happened the next morning, like we’re just the same best friends we’ve always been. I’m tired of being treated like a toy to you, someone you can keep around when you like, and push off to the side when you find someone you’re actually interested in.” You shake your head. “I’m just a fuck buddy to you. I’m tired of it.” His eyebrows rose as he stood up, watching you. “You knew the deal when this all started. We talked about it, and you were okay with it then. You sure were okay with it last night when I was fucking you on my bed and you were moaning like a bitch in heat. I don’t like how you’re acting, You act like you thought we were going to fall in love and live happily ever after. This is the real world, Y/N. That shit doesn’t happen.” You could feel the tears welling up in your eyes and you let out a bitter laugh. “Here I thought you’d see me as your best friend, someone you care about more than just a simple fuck. But I guess I was wrong. Yeah, I liked it, up until I fell in love with you. I know we agreed on the no feelings thing, but sorry, it happened. Now I’m done. Because I’m nothing more to you than a girl you can have sex with when you like, and I don’t want it.” You grab the backpack that you left by the door the night before, sparing him one last glance. “Goodbye Jungkook. I’m done.” You turned and walked out the door into the storm, letting the door slam shut behind you with a loud thunk.

It was in that moment that Jeon Jungkook knew he fucked up as he watched you walk out of his life.

#bts #bts fanfic #bts imagine #jeon jungkook #jung hoseok #reader insert #reader x jungkook #kim taehyung #fwb!au #fuckboy!jungkook #secretbangtn #if only you knew #jungkook #bts fanfiction #bts au #angst #jungkook is an asshole #im sorry

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specific-music-siblings · 6 years ago

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hello!!! i just wanted to ask you guys what the process is like for making your music edits? do you find the sounds on youtube? how do you edit it and how do you work together? p.s ILY GUYS!!!! CEREAL AND MUSHROOM YOU ARE AMAZING!!!!! 💘💕💓💕💝💟💗💟💗💖💞💖💗💟💕💝💕💓💓💕💓💗💓💖💝💗💟💗💟💔💕

Mushroom and Cereal love YOU, random citizen.

SO this is actually stuff we think everyone deserves to know how to do, and we’re happy to share our process!

First off, everything we use is free. Our major editing elements are:

Audacity (freeware sound editor)

Freesound (SFX website)

Youtube and a Youtube to MP3 converter (to get HQ song downloads)

And, occasionally, moviesoundclips.net (for specific characters)

Just to break it down for y’all, our major steps are:

Download the song and edit the audio. This is done separately from everything else so you can get juuuuust the right atmosphere: on a radio, in a big room, next door, etc.

Create the narrative. We try to write the descriptions for our tracks first, and then follow the “story” as we download, add, and alter sound effects. This helps keep everything from getting too cluttered.

Perform a listen test. Our main method of working together isn’t doing the actual editing together (though we do help each other out with some tech issues from time to time haha), it’s listening through a track and giving solid feedback. Audio editing is one of those things that can create considerable fatigue on the part of the editor, and a lot of times the editor will get used to shit that shouldn’t be there-- things like extreme volume, poor sound quality, or logistical weirdness can become non-obvious to the editor.

It’s really not a long or incredibly difficult process! The software has something of a learning curve, but otherwise it’s about creativity and resourcefulness.

As a last tidbit, I’d like to explain how we do some more popular overall sound edits! This will make it easy for all y’all to try some things out if you’d like to get started making edits :)

Under the cut cause it got long!

RADIO

In Audacity, highlight your song clip. This can be done either by double-clicking or by click-and-dragging. When highlighted, the track will turn white, like so:

On the top bar, select the the “Effects” tab, and pick “Equalization.” It should bring up a window like this:

Which, yikes. You can do a lot here by scribbling around and then previewing the track (Audacity will play you a five-second clip of your audio with the effect applied), but you can ALSO just select one of the presets from the drop-down menu labeled “Select Curve.” These curves are helpfully named things like “AM Radio,” “Telephone,” “Walkie Talkie,” etc. Cereal likes the AM Radio preset, but it’s a little too clean for my tastes, so I usually use Walkie Talkie. It’s up to you!

While most audio sounds great after this one step, it can sometimes take a little more cleaning up. One pass with the “High-Pass Filter” (also under the effects tab) does nicely. Here are the settings I use:

And that’s it! Now your song sounds like it’s on a crappy radio :D

LARGE ROOM / CAVE

Once again, select the audio by double-clicking or click-and-dragging.

For this option, you’ll wanna use the “Reverb” effects in the “Effects” tab. It’ll bring up a window like this:

Again, lots of options. To cut to the chase, you mainly wanna mess around with “Room Size” and “Reverberance.” It’s hard to describe what they do exactly? Just goof off n see hahaha

FROM ANOTHER ROOM

AGAIN select your audio by double-clicking or click-and-dragging

For this last edit, we wanna use the “Low-Pass Filter” option in the “Effects” tab. Here are the settings I use:

But yk it’s all you. Do ya thing and experiment.

If anyone else has any specific questions re: how we did something, or where we found a certain effect, please feel free to ask!! This is fun for everyone, really really easy to learn and do.

If any of y’all are inspired to make edits, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tag us in them!! We’d love to listen!!!!!

-Mushroom and Cereal

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thedeaditeslayer · 5 years ago

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From Evil Dead, to Believe ir of Not: A Chat with Bruce Campbell.

This interview covers working with Sam Raimi and film-making in general.

It is hard to deny the impact Bruce Campbell has had on genre cinema. From the humble start working on the Evil Dead back in 1981 to his countless film and television roles, Bruce Campbell has made a name for himself, and a legacy that everyone in genre cinema has to respect.

Now, with him moving onto Ripley’s Believe It or Not CGMagazine got to be part of a round table interview where we got a chance to touch base with the iconic “b-list” actor to talk about his career, along with the industry of film making as a whole.

Perhaps his most endearing performance, even after over 30 years, is his portrayal of Ash. With three films and a series under his belt, he has made the character his own. His portrayal has led to numerous parodies, and countless takes and iterations on what that type of character is within horror. Yet, even the time, and new horror coming out almost daily, few can touch the timelessness of Ash.

Even with the show over, the legacy of what The Evil Dead means to fans will always remain. It is a series that stands in the pantheon of horror, cementing Bruce Cambell and Ash as staples of genre and cinema as a whole. Even with this, many questions about if the series got the ending it deserved, but it seems Bruce Campbell feels they sent the series off in the best way possible.

“I’m fine with it heck because we got to finally do it.” Campbell explained in response to his take on the legacy of the series “I got to, to address it to my maximum abilities right now. And I felt that we did that. And I felt we honoured the fans too. Because we gave them a pseudo ending. They will never be happy with anything that we do. But in this case, we were like, okay, we don’t know if we’re going to get cancelled or not. Let’s go come up with let’s make sure we end this particular season with something that could be considered an ending. So that’s what we did. And thank God we did it. Because we get canned. So if we didn’t do that ending people would be going, where is Ash? What happened. So we took care of that business.”

With the fact, the show is now over, Campbell can finally step back from the role of Ash. While an iconic character, and one he enjoyed playing, it is taxing bringing that character to life, especially on a show that pushes you both mentally and physically.

“It was painful. I pulled another hamstring,” Campbell said diving into the strain on his body while doing Ash vs.The Evil Dead. “There’s a series of embarrassing emails to Rick Jacobson, Season 2 I think where the episodes kept getting bigger and bigger because things are coming to a head storywise and there are all these fights, falling and all the worst crap. So there’d be these emails of ‘Hey Rick, I woke up this morning and I’m not sure if I can run today, can you make sure my stunt guy Raicho Vasilev is ready to go?’ Then the next day, ‘Hey Rick, my left knee is kind of fucked-up, can I just stand over the guy?’ I was falling apart. My whole body was disintegrating.”

Even with The Evil Dead now over, it is hard to deny the connection Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi have. Old high school friends, and having worked with Raimi on many features, including the Spider-man franchise and Darkman, the team brings great chemistry to the silver screen. And even after all these years knowing each other, Bruce Campbell still enjoyed working with Raimi.

“I think Sam is the best director working,” Campbell outlined responding to the question on why he likes working with Raimi so much. “He’s one of the best directors in the business, probably top five as far as technical abilities. Watch Spider-Man 2. I think it’s one of the best superhero movies period and it’s the best of the trilogy. He’s really amazing at exponential learning. What he learns from one movie to the next technically. Like, he actually read the American Cinematographer’s Manual. You want to read stuff that will make you want to hang yourself with technical information about apertures and film speeds? He read it! He’s like ‘I think I should know how a camera operates because as a director that’s my tool. How can I use apertures and exposure to get a certain look or dynamic?’ That’s what’s fun about working with Sam.”

With many horror films looking to revive practical methods, people that love classic horror are happy to see what can be done by blending the two methods. With his countless years in the industry, and has worked on plenty of practical and CGI based movies, Bruce Campbell does not mince words discussing the trend to push CGI whenever possible.

“CG had to run its course. Because everyone was fascinated with CG “Oh, let’s just do CG.” But the problem of CG is it would spray off and defy optics, like a creature, would be here and frame one, frame three, It’s right in front of your face. So to the point where our eyes can’t even adjust because the optics are not correct. So they had to kind of work that out. And then they had to come to the horrible realization that special effects could not be the actual story.” Campbell explains when responding to a question about the revival of practical methods in genre cinema. “What does he mean we have to have a story. Hopefully, they’re coming around to the realization that effects can be used very effectively to tell a story like Forrest Gump.”

“So, when you watch that movie, they made special effects work to tell the story of a single feather flipping around during the opening sequence and it lands all the way at Tom Hanks’s feet looks like a real feather. floating through the sky landing at his feet was a pain in the ass to do that opening sequence. But the point is the digital process can really help you tell a story, but it’s not the story. I mean, once you see a superhero, throw another superhero through one building, eight buildings, ten buildings. It doesn’t matter. That’s not the story. ”

Along with being a renowned actor, Bruce Campbell also has a best selling book, one that is a great read if you have the time. While working in both realms, it is no wonder he has a view on how they differ and how Hollywood could learn a thing or two from the world of publishing. “The writing world is very respectful compared to the film business. There are very few chefs when you write a book,” Bruce Campbell explained “I addressed my editor’s changes for my latest book in about 15 minutes and if I wrote a screenplay I’d have 10-pages of single-spaced notes from some 26-year-old kid who doesn’t know shit, but they feel like they got to justify their job. It’s good to do different stuff, you get exposed to different people too. Making a book is a whole different story than making a movie. It’s kinda cool, the difference.”

While his days of picking up the chainsaw as Ash may be over, he is now stepping into the role of host for the new Ripley’s Believe It or Not! on the Travel Channel. It may mean less zombie killing, but is looking to be just as exciting for fans of the new and bizarre. Hearing Bruce discuss it, this is looking to be an exciting season of the show while keeping the legacy it has built over 100 years.

#Bruce Campbell #Sam Raimi

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peeterparkr · 6 years ago

Text

Clear|t.h.

Chapter 2: Seashells

pairing: surfer!tom x reader

word count: 4.1k

warnings: cars

summary: Collecting seashells & making new friends

series masterlist

first chapter

next chapter>

special thanks to @whatmakesmehappyy for being my amazing editor, love you girl

Hi, thanks for reading this! Seriously thanks, tell me what you think, if you’d like to see something happen, if you like y/n and Tom’s relationship. idk

Drowning is a common fear among people and y/n wasn’t an exception. However, she was the kind to overcome her fears, or just blatantly ignore them. It worked.

She had woken up early to go for a swim. She was hesitant at first, she hadn’t been near the ocean since the incident, not that it actually had to do with anything, but it was a reminder of that summer. However, she knew it would help.

She also picked up her art supplies in hopes of getting some inspiration.

But she didn’t want anybody to know so when her grandpa caught her sneaking out, she was shocked. He understood, so he threw her his old Jeep keys. He was sitting on the kitchen as she was trying to get out, a cup of coffee on his right hand and the morning paper on the left hand.

“Go to your secret place,” he said. “Your sister would see you if you swim right outside, besides, the water is clearer there.”

She didn’t answer, just smiled and gave him a thumbs up. He knew her. He was the only one who seemed to understand.

He understood why she was the way she was. He understood why she had drowned in sorrow, because he had as well. He knew what it was losing someone you loved. For him, it was his wife. For y/n it was Matt... and grandma.

So he understood why she shielded herself.

Y/n was driving, playing music, and singing along to it. She did it when she was alone. Nobody needed to know.

The trees were passing, the sun was coming out and she rolled down the windows to get the freshest air. She smiled.

Y/n knew that most people thought she didn’t smile, she knew people were worried for her. But she didn’t give anything away because she didn’t want to care for anyone. The more she cared, the more it hurt when they left.

Her secret place was a somewhere she discovered when she was younger with her grandma. It was a beach nobody visited and it looked like paradise. With green trees, palms and the bluest of waters, it was calm and quiet. The sand was covered by seashells which only reminded her of the pretty memories when times were simpler. She picked some up, she’d used them later.

She was hesitant, about the water. There was a certain fear, because she knew that she was drowning, not physically, but emotionally.

However, the moment she was stepping into the blue waves, she felt relieved, as if the water was pulling back every negative feeling. It felt nice.

The foam beneath her was tempting, so she decided to step in and instantly felt relaxed. For the first time in a while the world didn’t seem like that bad of a place. This was her place. She didn’t have to worry about her sister looking ashamed or her mother who always looked at her with sorrow.

For a moment she was happy. And she didn’t care about the rest of the world. She stayed there for a while and bathed and washed away all her sorrow.

Her art supplies had come with no results, but she had decided to call it a day. Besides, she needed to go back for lunch before her mother and sister realized she had snuck out.

They made a big deal out of everything. She was tired of that. She had healed. She had changed, of course, but y/n had healed. However, she was constantly fighting against her family because they seemed to be the ones not over it.

She got dry and hopped into the blue Jeep. She drummed her fingers against the wheel and then started the car, it took her a few times but eventually, it started.

There was no issue as she was getting to the road until the car decided to simply stop working. The car slowed down and it felt like the breaks had a mind of their own. The noises it was making scared her. She had barely even left the hidden beach.

Y/n cursed but kept trying to go. She decided to left the car rest for a second and pulled off to the side of the road. She turned it off and left the engine cool. When she went to start the car again nothing happened. The car just stopped completely and smoke started to come out of the front. Y/n cursed again. She hopped out of the Jeep and opened up the bonnet and smoke blew into her face.“This is perfect.”Y/n called her grandfather as she tried to wave the smoke out of her face with her hand, coughing a bit.

“Oh, yes, that happens often,” her grandpa warned.

“Couldn’t have given me a heads up?” Y/n complained.

“I forgot, uh, well, there’s a card in the car, it’s got the mechanic’s number.”

She called them and they would send a car, and told her that her grandpa had called too. She hopped into the car to wait. It was weird. In a way, she felt at home, and in another, she felt like a stranger. She was a stranger, to herself at least. She needed to give herself another opportunity.

She didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but she was tired of herself, too. She was open to a new possibility. She knew she needed to get out of that hole she had so carefully dug. Baby steps, baby steps. She didn’t want to date right away, she just wanted to make some friends.

But not from this town, She knew how it would go. The guys there had been so keen on trying to date her and she knew they were assholes. She didn’t need any of that, and besides, it would be such a cliche. She didn’t want to fall into one.

A tow truck arrived and pulled over in front of her. She picked up her stuff and realized her outfit was slightly wet like her hair, she hoped it wouldn’t look too bad.

Her hair was dripping wet as she watched the man hop out and she realized that her bad luck was just getting worse.

The guy from the day before was making his way over to the Jeep, he had a white t-shirt, jeans and, even if y/n didn’t want to admit it, he looked incredibly handsome. Y/n squinted as she hid under her arms, laying on the wheel.

He walked over to the window with some tools and knocked. Y/n took a deep breath as she turned to him and she noticed an amused look on his face. He laughed as he stepped back and ran a hand through his hair.

She opened the door.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snickered. “Why, hello y/n.”

“Tim.” Y/n said.

“Close, Tom,” he reminded her as he winked.

“Sorry, the shirt confused me.”

“Looks good? Well, I’m here, at your service.”

“You... you’re... oh god.”

“Yeah, I work there, fix cars, you’re James’ granddaughter?” Tom asked.

“I am.”

“Huh, never would’ve thought, he’s really happy, and then you’re...you,” Tom pointed out. He pointed to her outfit. “Went for a swim?”

“No, I just like to be wet all the time,” she answered sarcastically.

“Kinky,” Tom teased, causing her to open her mouth with indignation and to push him. Tom laughed. “Hey! You played yourself there. I’m kidding.”

“You’re a pig.”

“I’m a man,” Tom gave in. “Now, let’s see, what did you do to the car?”

“I did nothing, smoke just started to come out,” y/n defended herself.

“Hm,” Tom tsked. He walked over to the bonnet and started to check it out.

“Is it that bad?”

“Well, smoke doesn’t mean good,” Tom informed her. She frowned as she crossed her arms watching him.

“Can you fix it?” She asked him.

“Of course, darling,” Tom laughed. “Only if I get a smile,” he grinned at her. She raised her eyebrow. “Maybe not.”

Y/n rolled her eyes. He tinkered around under the bonnet but more smoke started to come out.

“This... looks bad, I need to take it to the shop,” he commented. She cursed under her breath. “Now, cmon I’ll help you out,” Tom said laughing as he hooked the Jeep.

Y/n watched him hop into the truck and she stayed there in the middle of the road.

“Well,” he called her out. “You coming?”

She hesitated, but eventually got her stuff out of the Jeep and into his car. He laughed. Seemed like he didn’t know to do anything but mock her. She carefully hugged her art supplies and the now full bag of seashells.

“So, were you planning to paint the sand?” Tom asked looking over at the supplies. She chuckled.

“It needed a little colour,” she joked.

“Did you paint anything?” He asked.

“Nope.”

“You’re not really a talker, are you?” Tom inquired. She didn’t say anything so he took that as an answer. “So, what are the seashells for? A necklace? Some kind of craft?”

“Throw them at your pretty face.”

“You’re quite the charmer, aren’t you?” Tom giggled. “I have some if you’d like them, seashells. Well, and pretty faces too.”

“I’m good.”

“You know, art... uh, art is the way our soul speaks,” Tom tried to make even more conversation. She turned to the window, brushing her hair back. “What does your soul want to say?”

“It wants you to stop trying.”

“Ah, c’mon, you can’t fool me with that act, deep down I know you’re all an act too, if I’m a cliche, you’re a bigger one.”

“Really?” She faked interest.

“I mean, judging from your wet hair, the types of shells you’ve got, you went to the blue valley, you know, the hidden beach, didn’t you?”

“And that makes me a cliche?” She stated with little interest. He did manage to draw a small smile out of her, though.

“Of course, a mysterious girl who’s dying to reveal herself. It’s like an ugly duckling trying to transform into a swan.”

“I’m ugly now, wow,” she chuckled.

“I mean, you technically are, right now, but if I squint my eyes, you’re good looking,” he joked, she flicked him. “I’ll be your Prince Charming.”

“The ugly duckling doesn’t have a Prince Charming,” she pointed out.

“In our story it does,” he winked at her. “And by the way, you shouldn’t be alone in Blue Valley, the waves are bigger there,” he warned her. “Call me up if you need some company.”

“I am perfectly capable of swimming,” she sassed. “Besides, I thought nobody knew about that place, I didn’t even know it had a name.”

“It doesn’t, I named it, and you’re right, nobody knows about it,” Tom conceited. “I mean, just a few people but nobody really likes it because it’s too quiet.”

“I like quiet.”

“Hence why you don’t like me,” Tom laughed.

“Ding, we’ve got a winner,” Y/n laughed.

“D’ya know your sister, Joanne is going out today with my mate Haz?”

Y/n wasn’t surprised her sister was dying to go out. She’d date anyone.

“Blue eyes fella?” Y/n asked.

“Yep,” Tom continued. “How about a double date?”

“I’ll pass.” Y/n looked out the window but then started to explore her collected seashells. Tom turned on some music and he was humming along.

Y/n noticed his music taste wasn’t as different as hers, but she decided not to point it out. The brown-haired boy wasn’t that bad, after all.

They arrived to the shop, and y/n watched him walk up to his coworkers, high fiving some and talking to others. He approached another woman who was older, she smiled at him. Tom explained to her what had happened to her car and then she gave him a pat on the back.

Tom was sweet to the old lady, the arrogant, annoying guy from before was gone. He talked to a man who seemed to be his boss and the old lady thanked them both, and Tom blushed as she gave him a tip. Y/n smiled at that, but she cleared her throat as soon as he approached her again.

“So, okay, from what I could see,” Tom said. “It looks like I can have it fixed by tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, uh, I don’t know how much it’ll cost, however, I can give you a discount if you give me a smile,” Tom joked, y/n crossed her arms. “No discount then, damn, are you drowning in money?”

Y/n rolled her eyes, and a tinge of red invaded her cheeks as a small smile appeared.

“Whoop, there it is, then you’ll have a discount, smart girl,” Tom chuckled. “Now, I need you to fill this form out.”

Y/n did as ordered. “Thanks, well, now I’ll… call my grandpa or-”

“Y/L/N, now I know your last name, mine is Holland, by the way. And before you say you don’t care, you might as well know because I’m the one fixing your car,” Tom suggested as he glanced down over at her name on the form she handed back to him. “I know where your grandpa lives, so I can give you a ride there, or we could go out for lunch, it’s almost my break.”

Y/n turned around, already walking to the exit. “I told you, don’t try to be friends with me.”

“Good thing I’m not trying to be your friend, I asked you out,” Tom pointed out before following her.

“Ugh, don’t you have any other girls to bother? I’m sure one of them is dying to go out with you.” Y/n kept walking. “Go and take off your shirt at the beach, they’ll pop like daisies in spring.”

“But I don’t want a date with them, I want one with you.” Tom insisted. “Look, I know no is no, but hey-”

“Why me?” Y/n stopped. “Give me a reason.”

“Because you’re mysterious, I like that.” Tom shrugged. “Let’s see what we can unveil from here.”

“Oh god, don’t try to pull the card from before, not the whole: oh let’s see how the ugly duckling turns into a swan.”

“Ah, cmon,” Tom placed his hands on his hips. “You’re not a swan.”

“I know, I’m a goose.” Y/n smirked as she continued walking. Tom snickered.

“Why don’t you wanna go out with me? I’m a duck.”

“Because I don’t want to be stuck with someone who follows the stereotype, besides, this is not a movie. If you think that by hanging out with me you’ll make me realize that you’re not that bad after all, it won’t happen, this isn’t a movie, darling.”

“And we’re already starting with the pet names,” Tom clapped his hands.”But this is not a movie, you’re right, I’m not that awful, I’m just not what you expected.”

“No, you’re worse. Please, you have your two guys following you around all the time, you constantly take off your shirt, and you probably have a girlfriend with a hot body.”

“Wrong, she’s not my girlfriend, that’s my ex.”

“Well, I’m sorry, I just… don’t think I’m the right person to date you, that’s it.” Y/N shrugged. “You’re attractive, you’re a surfer, I’m just… nothing that could possibly appeal to you, we’re like night and day, never together.”

“Opposites attract,” Tom continued. “Ah, c'mon please, let’s do it like the movie then.”

“This isn’t a movie,” Y/n was already out the place.

“But it’s our story.”

“Why do you keep trying?” Y/n laughed.

“I don’t know, I don’t wanna see you all alone, you seem like you need a good time.”

“So you’re asking me out out of pity, that’s a great start.”

“Fine then, I won’t ask you out,” Tom said still following her.

“Good.” Y/n smirked but then frowned as she realized he was with her. “Why are you still walking with me?”

“I said I wouldn’t ask you out, I’m going to stick as your friend, and I’ll give you a ride, that’s what friends do.”

Y/n frowned as she watched him get back on his truck, but she felt warm. She smiled, again. Genuinely smiled.

The ride was quiet-ish. Tom kept singing along to the songs on the radio, and y/n was listening to him eagerly. She didn’t want to admit it just yet, but she kind of liked him, in a way which she wouldn’t mind having him around. Of course, that was going to be a secret she’d keep for herself.

“So, you’re a mechanic,” y/n commented. Tom smiled.

“You’re trying to make conversation, that’s nice,” Tom pointed out.

“Might as well if I’ll have you around,” Y/n defended herself.

“Yeah, well, it’s Jared’s dad workshop, and it’s good money. It’s good for a summer job,” Tom said. “Funnily enough, I don’t like cars.”

“I’m hungry,” she said, without really thinking about the consequences.

“Is that an invitation for lunch?” Tom asked, a wide smirk on his face.

“No, it was a comment.” Y/n frowned, glancing over at him. “Don’t read much into it.”

Tom chuckled. “You know, you keep resisting, but you’ll see,” Tom continued, just as he pulled in front of the house. “But if you’re hungry, I know this place.”

“In your dreams,” y/n opened the door and glanced down at him. A loud noise was heard from the inside of the house. Someone had screamed. It was Joanne fighting with her mother. Y/n wrinkled her nose, as she heard them yelling to each other about Joanne complaining about y/n, apparently, their mother wanted Joanne to give up on the date and spend time with her sister. Their yelling wasn’t pretty, so Tom and y/n just stayed there quietly.

“Now that I think about it, lunch sounds like a great idea,” y/n said and Tom nodded quickly, just as eager as her to escape from the yelling. He drove off without either of them knowing that y/n’s grandpa had seen them leave. He gave them a huge grin.

They arrived at a burger place near the beach. It wasn’t a place somebody went if they were on a diet, but it was comfort food and that’s what y/n needed. They walked over to the counter and each ordered a burger.

As they were waiting, Tom nudged her. “Tell me about yourself.”

“I’m quiet,” y/n said and shrugged.

“I’ve noticed that,” Tom frowned.

“Well, then, what do you want to know? I’m not interesting,” she confessed. “You’re a talker, why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

“Oh, well, I’m Tom, 22. I surf but you already knew that. I work at a mechanical workshop, uh, well, I don’t know,” Tom shrugged. “I’m a big mystery like you are, just in my own way.”

“Are you, now?” Y/n laughed, as their number was called and they grabbed their food.

Tom threw a chip into his mouth as he winked at her as they sat.

“So, tell me how did you find the Blue Valley?” Tom asked her.

“With my grandma, when I was younger,” y/n said. “Thought I was special for knowing about it.”

“You are,” Tom grinned. “I like it in there, I surf there sometimes.”

“Of course you do,” Y/n chuckled.

They could watch the beach from there, and every now and then both of them would turn to the water.

“What?” He frowned clumsily.

“I don’t know, seems you’re not what I thought,” Y/n shrugged.

The place was simple, it was built with wood and barely painted, the menus were very rustic, and an old ceiling fan was hanging but did nothing to stop the heat from coming in.

“Ah, no, don’t get your hopes up, I could still disappoint you,” Tom winked at her before sipping his drink.

“I’m sure you will,” Y/n commented as she smiled. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, she wasn’t used to smiling that much.

“The seashells, why were you picking them up?” Tom asked. “Not judging, I do it too.”

“They’re pretty,” Y/n chuckled. “I don’t know, I’ve been collecting them since I was little.”

“Ha, that happens to me too, when I was a kid I liked picking them up and seems like the custom never wore off.”

“It’s automatic, right?” She asked as he laughed.

“It really is,” He smiled watching her take a bite. “You like the burger?”

“It’s good,” Y/n shrugged. “Not the best one I’ve had.”

“C’mon, it’s good.”

“I know some better ones,” Y/n chuckled. “Back in London”

“You study in London? I wanted to go there,” Tom answered.

“Where do you study?” She asked.

“Here, local uni, mechanical engineering,” Tom looked down.

“I thought you didn’t like that,” Y/n asked.

“M’life’s complicated, I have four brothers, you know the rest, besides I can stay here and surf,” Tom said, unwilling to continue with the subject.

“You wouldn’t leave, then?” She asked him. He pursed his lips as he shrugged.

“There’s never really been a reason for me to do so,” He slouched. “What ‘bout you?” He said before taking a bite.

“Business.” Y/n’s answer was short, and it was an explanation she didn’t want to give. “I wanted to study art, though.”

“Why didn’t you then?”

“I’m a painter who can’t paint, I lost my inspiration,” Y/n shrugged. Tom nodded, not pushing the conversation. He glanced down as Y/n bit her lip. “Thought the seashells could help.”

“Oh, I’ll give you the ones I have then, maybe they’ll help,” Tom grinned. “Maybe when I come to drop them off we can then go to the carnival?”

“You’re very clever,” y/n laughed, he smirked.

“I mean, your poor sister wants to go out, from what I’ve heard, she won’t go to her date unless you go out too, so why not help her?”

Y/n rolled her eyes. “We’ll see, but it won’t be a date.”

“Absolutely not,” Tom raised his hands. “Promise.”

Before she could continue any kind of conversation, a girl entered the joint. She had her brunette hair pulled up in a perfectly messy bun. She had a skirt and no top on in order to show off her nice pink bikini. Y/n felt self-conscious as she sat up.

“Tommy,” the girl greeted. Tom clenched his jaw and didn’t look up to her.

“Lex.” His voice had turned dry. She leaned over to kiss his cheek.

Y/n took a deep breath as all her confidence suddenly washed away. The girl side-eyed her.

“Hi,” Lex greeted y/n, “I’m Alexa.”

“Y/n,” She answered.

“Oh, so you’re Tommy’s new-right,” Alexa chuckled. Y/n clenched her jaw.

“Lex, don’t you have anywhere else to be?” Tom rolled his eyes.

“Of course, sorry, sorry,” Lex chuckled as her hands were all over Tom’s back and chest. “Just came here to say hello,” she grinned as she placed a kiss on his neck.

Tom squirmed and shrugged her off. “Alexa.”

“Hey, are we doing anything tonight, then?” Alexa asked Tom. “I cleared up my schedule.

“Actually no, y/n and I were planning on going to the carnival,” Tom raised an eyebrow to his ex-girlfriend. “Weren’t you and Marcus going to do anything?” His voice was now venomous.

“To the carnival?” Alexa asked for confirmation.

“Well, we were just talking about it, nothing stipulated,” Y/n added, Tom glanced over.

“I’ll leave you guys alone, then,” The brunette chirped.

Y/n chuckled as she rolled her eyes. “No, don’t worry I was about to leave,” Y/n said, standing up. “I was done with my burger anyway.”

Tom shook his head. “No, please-”

“Ah, that’s great!” Lex was quick to sit down on y/n’s abandoned chair. “Bye, sweetie!”

Tom stood up. “Hey, no, I’ll give you a ride-”

“No worries, I’m not too far from here,” Y/n smiled. “And you can have fun with brunette Barbie here.”

“Wait, uh y/n,” Tom was trying to say something, but he knew there wasn’t much left to say.

Y/n turned around and left, feeling her stomach burning up inside. She knew she had her stuff in Tom’s car but her pride was bigger, she needed to leave right away. Besides, it was nothing really important, just her art supplies and those stupid seashells.

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vernonfielding · 5 years ago

Text

Life Writes Its Own Stories

Amy/Jake Newspaper AU, Chapter 2! (And at AO3.)

Amy’s family had not taken well to her announcement that she was leaving education to go into journalism. It wasn’t the leaving part that had bothered them – it was the ‘going into.’ Her family didn’t agree on much, but they were pretty united in their mistrust of the mainstream media.

Her dad had been a career cop with the NYPD, and three of her seven brothers had followed his footsteps. Her mom had been a full-time social activist, which didn’t pay as well as detective (as in, at all) but required the same level of commitment. Three of Amy’s brothers had taken after their mom and were now working for various human rights organizations in and around New York. Her youngest brother was the only other outlier, and he’d really gone rogue – he was a singer/actor/writer trying to make it onto Broadway. They’d all been gently indulgent of Amy’s decision to go into education, but when she’d shifted to journalism the fallout had been immediate and vehement, and come from all sides. Including David the singer/actor/writer, which seemed profoundly unfair.

Amy had been passionate about the news – and newspapers in particular – for as long as she could remember, but a career in journalism had seemed as outlandish to her as a child as David’s drive to go into entertainment. In a way, it had been his incremental successes that had given her the final push to follow her own dreams. That and the fact that she was sick to death of teaching 9- and 10-year-olds how to make sun collages and watercolor flowers. Kids were loud and messy (and also most of them sucked at art).

Of course, journalists were loud and messy too, Amy thought, as she leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head, peering about the newsroom. At the desk directly across from Amy’s, Gina was screaming at someone on the phone that no, she was not going to write an expose about toxic government immunization programs.

“Fucking anti-vaxxers,” Gina snapped as she slammed the phone back in the cradle.

On the far side of the newsroom, Charles was asking Terry if dog shit really smelled different from human shit, and if it was necessary to include that in Hitchcock’s story on street pooping. Hitchcock himself was watching a video turned up way too loud on his computer; it sounded like porn.

Amy loved her job.

“Santiago,” Terry called, yanking Amy out of her musings. Holt was the editor in chief of the Bulletin, but it was Terry who ran the metro desk, the heart of the newsroom.

“What’s up, boss?” Amy said, as Terry walked up to her desk.

“What’ve you got for me today?” He was staring down at a battered legal pad in his hands, on which Amy knew was written the stories everyone was working on and when they expected to have them done.

“Um.” She usually had three or four things to pitch him, but the past few days had been unusually slow and she’d already written three stories that had been on her evergreen list. She was perilously close to coming up dry for the first time since she’d started at the Bulletin.

“Look,” Terry said, planting his palms on her desk and leaning toward her, “we’re okay for tomorrow’s paper, but it would really help if you could come up with something good for the weekend.”

Amy knew that “it would really help” was about as close as Terry came to ordering a story, so she squared her shoulders and nodded. “Roger that.”

Terry frowned at her and narrowed his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like a cop,” he said. “It’s weird.”

Amy shrugged. “Hazard of the job, I guess?” She hadn’t told anyone that she came from a long line of NYPD cops. She worried Terry or Holt might pull her off the beat if they thought she was biased.

Terry just grunted and scratched a note, then called out “Hitchcock” and moved on.

Amy slumped in her chair. She’d dodged the daily bullet, but now she needed to come up with something really good for the weekend edition. She pulled up her evergreen list – stories that, in theory, could be written up and published any time because they had nothing to do with current events – but the ones left were boring or would take more than a few days to finish.

Amy set her chin in her hand and checked the NYPD Twitter feeds, and then the neighborhood blogs and even The Times local news website, but there was nothing going on. What she needed was a good tip, some murder or weird robbery or identify theft case she could expose.

She thought of Peralta. She’d actually tried looking him up, the day after her story was published, but she’d found almost no public records on him. A search of the NYPD staff database had provided his name, rank and current assignment to the 99th Precinct, but no photo. He wasn’t in the Bulletin archives at all, and he didn’t seem to have a Facebook account or any other social media presence. She wondered if he was normally an undercover cop, which would explain the low-key identity. Or else he just didn’t do very interesting work with the NYPD – but somehow Amy didn’t think that was the case.

Amy tapped a pen against her reporter’s notebook and wondered – not for the first time – why he’d picked her out of the crowd to tip off about the ex-boyfriend-slash-cop. And she wondered what other interesting stuff he might have hidden under those rolled-up sleeves.

At that thought, Amy groaned to herself and chuckled. Detective Peralta was cute and he’d given her a good tip, but that was hardly anything to be fantasizing about. Besides, he was a cop, and she’d had enough cops in her life to know that though there were some amazing ones – like her dad and two out of her three brothers – a lot of them were power hungry, egotistic, self-righteous and borderline corrupt. Just because Peralta had helped her out once didn’t make him one of the good guys.

She turned back to her computer and pulled up the NYPD Twitter feed again. She might have to write that feature on the new anti-graffiti task force after all, Amy thought with a sigh, and began taking notes.

+++

Jake stared at the board in the briefing room, trying to find the link between the string of pawn-shop robberies he and Rosa had been investigating for two weeks. They had pins marking spots all across Brooklyn, plus a few in Queens, and there was no obvious geographic connection. He sat down on the edge of a table and ran a hand through his hair. Beside him, Rosa sighed and blew a strand of hair out of her face.

“Maybe it’s not the same guy,” Rosa said, picking up their stack of reports again and flipping through the pages.

“Or girl,” Jake said, just to be a jerk. Rosa kicked him in the shin. He flashed her a grimace and rubbed his leg. “Look, it’s obviously one guy, or a couple working together. It’s the same MO every time: Break in just after midnight, take out a security guard, grab the cash on hand, and out the way they came in.”

“And they never show up on the security cameras, so they’ve obviously staked the place out.”

“Right.”

They both stared at the board some more. Jake let his eyes go a little crossed, like maybe if he skewed his vision he’d make some sense of the puzzle in front of them. He was reminded of those old “Magic Eye” pictures from when he was a kid. He’d always been good at finding the hidden image. He didn’t see anything now, but he could feel a subtle tickling in the back of his brain, a familiar itch that let him know he was missing some piece, and that he was close. If he could just relax, open his mind, he was sure he could figure this out.

“Peralta!” called a voice from the bullpen. Jake jolted out of his musings and jumped off the table to poke his head out. The Vulture’s assistant, Penny, waved at him. “Phone call. It’s at your desk.”

Jake turned back to Rosa and nodded toward his desk and she waved him off. The bullpen was a zoo – the Vulture was cackling wildly in his office, some dude was screaming at a prostitute in the holding cell, and for some reason there was a group of Boy Scouts crowded around the sergeant’s desk. All the noise was distracting, which was part of the reason he and Rosa had retreated to the briefing room.

He picked up his phone and said, loudly, “Peralta.”

“Detective Peralta?” came the voice on the other end.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Jake said. He pressed the phone into his ear.

“Oh, hi. It’s Amy Santiago. With the Brooklyn Bulletin?”

“Shit!” A spike of alarm shot down his back. Jake looked quickly around the bullpen to see if anyone was watching him.

“Excuse me?” Santiago said.

“Why are you calling me here?” Jake hissed.

“I’m sorry, I just called the main line-”

“I can’t talk to you on this phone.” Jake glanced toward the Vulture’s office; he was sprawled back in his chair, feet on his desk, laughing at something on his cell phone.

“Okay, sorry, I just had a quick-”

“Look, I’ll call you back. Is this the right number?” He read back the digits that showed on his phone and Santiago confirmed that was her number. “Okay, give me five minutes.”

Jake hung up without waiting for an answer and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly, then ducked back into the briefing room. “Hey, I’ve got to hit the head, I’ll be right back,” he said to Rosa, and left when she just waved him off again.

Jake took the stairs to the first floor and walked all the way down the block, toward the deli where he got lunch every other day. He leaned against the wall around the corner from the precinct and dialed the number he’d memorized.

“Amy Santiago-”

“I can’t believe you called me at the precinct!” he said, trying hard not to raise his voice. “Did you give anyone your name?”

“No,” Santiago said, quickly. “I just asked for you and they transferred me. No one knows anything.”

“Okay, good. That’s good.” Jake released a long breath.

“Seriously, I’m sorry for freaking you out,” Santiago said, and she did sound contrite. “I didn’t know how else to get in touch with you.”

“It’s fine,” Jake said. “But why were you trying to reach me anyway? And how did you even get my name?”

“Someone called your name at the press conference and I looked you up,” Santiago said. “As for why I called, I had a favor to ask.”

“Haven’t I done enough favors for you?” Jake huffed. “Nice story, by the way. Front page and everything.”

“Thanks,” Santiago said. “And yes, I appreciate the help. I promise, this one is not nearly as big of a deal. I’ve got the whole story already worked out, I just need you to confirm one little detail before I can publish.”

Jake closed his eyes, wishing he’d remembered to grab his sunglasses before darting outside. He really should end this conversation now, before things got complicated. Rosa would kill him if she knew he was out here even listening to a reporter. But he had to admit, he wanted to know what she was working on.

“I can’t promise I’ll help, but tell me what you’ve got.”

“Okay, here’s the story,” Santiago said, and Jake knew after half a sentence that he was screwed.

She’d somehow caught on to the fact that the deputy commissioner’s son had been tagging police vehicles with penises, and that he’d been caught multiple times and let go with no repercussions. She told him that her sources were solid but no one could confirm with absolute certainty that the kid was definitely the deputy commissioner’s son. He had the same name and was the right age, but there was the slimmest possibility that could be a coincidence, and Santiago said the story was too big to bet on coincidence.

Jake himself had barely dodged this particular nightmare a few weeks earlier, when the Vulture had demanded he drop his own case against the kid. Jake had been sorely tempted to arrest him anyway but Rosa had stepped in and told him it would be career suicide without his captain’s backing. It still bugged Jake that the brat had gotten away with it.

“Look,” he said to Santiago, “even if I had information that would help you, I couldn’t share it. The kid’s a minor. Those records are sealed up.”

“Ah, I thought you’d say that,” Santiago said. “Turns out Trevor Podolski is 18. About to be 19, actually.”

“What?” Jake yelled into the phone. “That little shit lied to me? On an official police report?”

“So you do know about this case!”.

Jake winced. “Fine, yes, I worked it for a few days. But seriously, I can’t help you with this one. It’s too risky.”

“Come on, Peralta,” Santiago said. “This is your chance to set things right.”

Jake groaned and bumped his head back against the wall.

“I mean it, I’ve got everything already.” Santiago’s voice took on a desperate edge. “I just need you to tell me the story is true. That the kid is the deputy commissioner’s son.”

Jake bit his lip, glanced up and down the street. A car was parked on the opposite corner. He recognized it immediately as an unmarked police vehicle because of the giant dick spray-painted on the driver’s side door.

“Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you’re still on the phone? Or yes-”

“Yes, your story’s right,” Jake said. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Thank you!”

Jake gave her a quick “Welcome” and ended the call. He glared at the penis car, then pushed back off the wall and headed back to the precinct.

When he returned to the briefing room, Rosa scowled at him and said, “Where were you? I checked the bathroom.”

“You went in the men’s room?” Jake said, then shook his head and walked up to the board. “Never mind. I solved the case. It was the guys who installed the security cameras.”

Rosa stared at him, then picked up their notes again and began flipping through them, a slow smile spreading over her face. “How’d you do that?”

Jake just shrugged, and ducked his head to hide a small smile. For all that Santiago had nearly given him a heart attack, Jake had to admit, talking to her had actually cleared his head.

+++

The next morning, Jake had just slung his bag onto his desk when the Vulture called him into his office. Pembroke had two tones when he yelled out his detectives’ names: impatient and furious. This tone was not impatient.

Rosa narrowed her eyes at Jake and he shrugged back in return before heading into the Vulture’s den. Or nest, Jake supposed. But “nest” didn’t sound nearly terrible enough.

“Wha’s up, Captain?” Jake said, tapping his knuckles on the Vulture’s open door.

Pembroke replied by holding up a copy of the Brooklyn Bulletin and shaking it so the pages rattled. Jake squinted at the front page and read the top headline out loud: “’Expose: Parking Fines Lining Police Pockets.’” Jake paused and scratched the back of his neck. “Ouch, there goes your retirement in Long Island. Sorry, sir.”

“Not that bullshit,” Pembroke cut in. “The other story, below it.”

Jake scanned down to the story in the lower left corner. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh! ’NYPD Official’s Son Is a Painter -- of Penises on Police Cars.’” The Vulture slapped the newspaper onto his desk. “What the fuck, Peralta.”

“Wait- what?” Jake stepped fully into the office, kicking the door shut behind him. “You think I had anything to do with this?”

Pembroke glowered at him. “You were the last guy to work that case, and you made it clear you were pissed about how it was handled, so yeah, I think you leaked it to the pretty reporter and probably got your dick sucked in return.”.

“Okay, first off,” Jake said, “that’s disgusting and super offensive. And second, no – I didn’t leak anything. I wouldn’t even know how to leak something like that. I don’t even know who-” he paused and made a show of lifting up the paper to peek at the name on the story, “Amy Santiago is.”

“She’s hot and she’s been busting our asses lately,” Pembroke said. “You really didn’t tip her off about the Podolski thing?”

“I swear, I had nothing to do with that.”

Pembroke eyed him warily and Jake just stood there, hands clasped behind his back, forcing his face to stay relaxed and give nothing away. Finally, Pembroke turned back to his desk. He flipped the newspaper into his trashcan – Jake was tempted to make a comment about recycling but now probably wasn’t the time – and said, “Fine, dismissed.”

Jake turned to go, then remembered he actually had a case he wanted to bring up.

“Uh, one more thing,” he said, plowing on even when Pembroke got that look on his face that meant their conversation had already gone on about five minutes longer than he’d prefer. “I got a text from a CI last night. He said there’s this new drug, some kind of fentanyl analog. They’re calling it Jazzy Pants-”

“No-go,” Pembroke said, cutting him off.

“Sir, with all due respect, if there’s another high-potency fentanyl on the street this could be a huge case.”

“I said drop it,” Pembroke said. “Anyway, the Seven-Eight has a task force. Let them handle it.”

“Oh, well, if the Seven-Eight has task force,” Jake said, not bothering to hide his scorn.

“Dismissed, Peralta.”

Jake walked out without another word.

+++

“You’re crazy, man,” Rosa said later that day, over lunch.

They’d gotten deli sandwiches to go and were eating them outside, sitting on the benches at the neighborhood playground. Kids were screeching and racing around the asphalt, climbing the wrong way up the slides and shoving each other on the swings. Normally Jake would be itching to go out and play with them – and honestly, sometimes he did; he figured it was good for police-community relations – but today he was on his phone. He was buying a digital subscription to the Bulletin.

“I know,” Jake said, mumbling around the credit card he’d stuck between his teeth. He plucked it out to type in the number and added, “But you have to admit, it was pretty great seeing that jerk kid’s mugshot in the paper.”

Jake had picked up his own copy of the Bulletin not long after leaving Pembroke’s office. Rosa had followed him outside and when she’d accused him of the same thing the Vulture had, Jake hadn’t bothered denying it, though he’d explained that he hadn’t been the original source. Rosa hadn’t seemed impressed by that detail.

“Yeah, it’s great that the kid is going to get in trouble for drawing dicks on cop cars, but is that really worth risking your career?” Rosa said. “Don’t be an idiot, Jake.”

Jake finished entering his credit card and personal information and hit “submit” on the subscription form. When the confirmation page came up, he tucked his phone back in his pants pocket and turned fully to Rosa.

“I’m not being an idiot,” he said. “So I helped her out a couple of times. It’s not like she’s putting my name in the paper or anything.”

“Not yet.” Rosa plucked a pickle out of her sandwich and flicked it into a nearby trash can. “What is it about her anyway? It isn’t like you to-” She paused, a frown of distaste twisting her lips. “Trust someone.”

Jake rolled his eyes and groaned. “I don’t trust her, Rosa.” She gave him a very dubious eyebrow lift. “Okay, I have on two occasions trusted her, but it’s not like I trust her as a person. You know I only trust three people-”

“Your mom, that weird friend whose name I always forget-”

“And you,” Jake finished.

Rosa gave him a thin smile that was part pity and part fondness. “I’m just worried that trusting this reporter is going to bite you in the ass later. It seems a little reckless, man.”

“Well, thank you for your concern, but I’m not reckless.”

Rosa sighed the way she did when Jake was being obtuse, and he slumped back on the bench. Because she had a point. Jake had come close to being burned before, almost a decade ago when he’d gotten drunk and mouthed off to a reporter from one of the tabloids. When Jake had called the reporter to beg him not to use his quotes or name him in the story, the reporter had refused. It was only dumb luck that the same reporter was arrested as part of a federal sex trafficking scheme the very next day, and was now in prison. Which reminded Jake -- he should probably check on Jimmy Brogan’s parole date.

He hadn’t been a fan of journalists since then. He wasn’t a regular news consumer, but he did pay attention when a case he was working on or familiar with got some coverage, so he knew the media bungled the facts almost as often as they got them right. Jake had seen a few cases actually mangled beyond repair by a reporter’s shoddy work. And even when the facts were technically right, they were missing context, or they were twisted in a way to make the NYPD look bad.

Jake wasn’t an NYPD apologist, and he didn’t expect cops to be fawned over by anyone, but he believed in the work they did and he knew most of his colleagues were good people who deserved fair treatment, at least. Journalists weren’t interested in fair, though.

“I’ll be careful,” Jake said.

“That implies you’re going to keep talking to Santiago.”

Jake balled up the paper his sandwich had been wrapped in and tossed it toward the trashcan. He missed.

“I won’t,” he said, and pushed up off the bench to throw out his garbage.

+++

Jake didn’t think much about Santiago or the Bulletin until later that night, when he got bored during an episode of Real Housewives of Dallas and started fidgeting with his phone. He pulled up the Bulletin app and searched for Santiago’s name, and the next thing he knew he was reading through all of her articles.

He had to admit: Her pieces seemed surprisingly balanced and accurate. He read a few where she hadn’t gotten the facts entirely right, but he knew that was a lot to ask when she was probably dealing with reluctant sources (cops) and people feeding her misinformation (everyone else). She was also a pretty good writer, from what he could tell.

And he’d meant what he’d said to Rosa – it had been nice to see justice served in two cases where he’d been unable to get the results he wanted on his own.

He knew Rosa was right to be concerned for him about making this a habit, and he promised himself that wouldn’t be an issue. He really didn’t trust people generally, and Santiago wasn’t just “people,” she was a journalist, which made her, well, if not necessarily an enemy, certainly not a friend.

Still, he reasoned it wouldn’t hurt to let Santiago know that he’d read her latest piece. He took out his phone and pulled up the number he’d dialed the day before, hoping it was her cell and not a land line. He opened a text message and wrote, “Front page again. Congrats.” He hit send.

Jake tossed the phone aside and turned back to the TV. The text alert chimed and Jake leaned over to look at the screen: “Thanks.”

A minute later another message popped up: “We make a good team.”

Jake stared at the screen for a moment before turning it off without replying. He wasn’t sure what to make of that text, but for some reason the words stuck with him for the rest of the night.

CHAPTER 3

#b99 #b99 fic #jake and amy au #peraltiago #newspaper au #life writes its own stories

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nautiscarader · 5 years ago

Text

Wendip Week day 6 - Wendy, you are the coolest person I know

(Ao3)

"Wendy, you’re the coolest person I know. You were brave, courageous, smart and funny, and as a result, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I have fallen in love with you. But the thing is, I have never stopped loving you. I in those three years I have met many amazing people, but no one comes even close to you.”

Dipper Pines read the message on the screen of his computer, desperately clutching his desk. He looked down, where he saw the familiar, green progress bar move dangerously closely from one side of the screen to the other. in his last act of desperation, he fell to his knees and begged.

- Please...

==============

- No, no, no!

Dipper grumbled under his breath, and just to be certain, pressed the Enter key again, which unfortunately never unpressed itself.

- Come on!

In hope, he kept smashing the key that only exhibited a fraction of the mixture of flexibility and sturdiness Dipper Pines was used to. It felt alien now, as if belonging to a completely different machine, and it was that feeling that made Dipper's morning so bad.

But Dipper was not one to give up easily. A moment later, the black keyboard was put on the desk upside-down, and with a set of screwdrivers, Dipper Pines proceeded to operate on his most important patient. Years of usage has worn the most important key, but Dipper still had some hope he'll be able to repair it. The prospect of having to substitute his beloved input device was too grim to even contemplate.

He cleaned the contacts. He isolated the mechanism and repositioned it.

All for nothing.

- Oh, dang it.

He muttered and slowly came to the conclusion that his favourite keyboard broke down, and as the manufacturer ceased to exists five years ago, there was little he could do.

- Uh, Dipper?

Mabel's voice brought Dipper from his state of mind. His sister walked into his room, finding him amongst his keyboard in pieces, all carefully disassembled.

- Eh, something wrong? - Yeah - he sighed - Can't fix it. I'm afraid it's gone. - Well... - Mabel started with a sing-song voice - I think I know someone who can help you.

A familiar figured appeared in the doorway (at least as much as he could fit), and Dipper's face brightened at once.

- Soos! I thought you were going to come next week! - Nah, dude. How could I not visit my favourite Pines twins while we wait in line for the biggest Comic Convention ever?

The husky man leapt towards Dipper and easily picked him up in a tight hug.

- Seriously, though, we are forever grateful to your parents - Melody spoke appearing behind her boyfriend - The prices for hotels are astronomical! - Hey, least we can do for you, guys. - Mabel ran into Melody's arms. - Oh, wow, what's cooking here, dude?

Soos immediately spotted Dipper's desk filled with mechanical parts, and let Dipper explain his problem. After a solid minute of chin scratching and careful examination of the parts, Soos gave his verdict.

- It's a very old mechanical switch, Banana FX. - I know, they're not making them any more... - Dipper sighed. - Yeah, but maybe we'll be able to find some replacements!

A smile appeared back on Dipper's face, and the two did not waste any more time. A few minutes later, Soos and Dipper rushed downstairs and slammed the door behind them.

- Boys and their toys, am I right? - Melody sighed, as Dipper and Soos disappeared from sight. - Tell me about it. - Mabel rolled her eyes, treating Melody to a cup of tea. - Now, where was I? Oh yeah, most people think that all grappling hook guns are the same, but according to "Superheroine Monthly", the type of alloy really does make a difference...

==========

- This... isn't what I was thinking about.

Dipper expected Soos to take him to any of computer shops in the vicinity, or at least some sort of mechanics' shop. The two men stood in front of an alley, that even in on a bright, sunny, Californian day looked dark and gloom, as if something was absorbing the surrounding light.

- Don't worry, dude, I got this.

Soos made the first step into the unknown territory, and prompted Dipper to follow him. The deep and foreboding sense of dread filled Dipper to the marrow in his bones, but he clutched the carcass of his keyboard to his chest and ventured forward.

- 'Sup, dude. - Soos spoke suddenly, and it took Dipper a moment to spot what, or rather whom Soos was talking to.

A pair of yellow eyes opened wide at the sight of customers, followed by equally yellow teeth filling the mouth. The old-looking man stood up and pushed aside what Dipper thought to be just a piece of protective cloth, revealing a whole workshop with myriad of parts on trays and bags on display, all crammed, somehow in the small niche.

- Yeah, we have this keyboard to repair here and we need a...

Soos took a quick look around, closed the distance to the mysterious man and whispered.

- ...a Banana FX.

Dipper could swear the yellow eyes of the man glistened and turned golden for a moment. He dived his long, thin hand into the chasm made of parts, and a moment later, emerged with a small, equally yellow mechanical switch and handed it to Dipper.

- Sweet! - he spoke, forgetting temporarily the odd circumstances in which he acquired the item, but he quickly sobered up - Er, how much for it?

A wide grin appeared on the man's face.

==========

- Okay, this shouldn't be that cheap. - Dipper spoke to Soos as they walked back home. - I mean, five bucks? I was expecting to blow ten times more...

Still, Dipper was more than glad that the seemingly small, but significant problem in his life has been fixed.

- And, Soos, how did you know he's gonna be there? - Oh, we, the repairman, we have our ways... - Soos spoke ominously - Our community is well-connected, and we are trained in finding hidden symbols and signs on the streets... Also, he had a website.

Soos showed Dipper his phone with "Crazy Steve's workshop", instructing people to "go into the fifth dark alleyway from the boulevard, and walk precisely until you feel that someone is watching you".

The very same afternoon, Dipper was more than pleased when his Enter key made the familiar clicking sound, and showed no sings of damage.

- Soos, you wanna play some games?

Dipper reached out to the guests of his house, having a very odd and quiet tea with his parents.

- Sure!

Soos replied and walked to his room, visibly pleased he can leave the awkward meeting.

Two hours later, Dipper cheered once again when his digital avatar defeated Soos for the tenth time in a row.

- Man, you got better over the summer. - Soos spoke, closing his laptop. - I barely got around to play. - Dipper spoke - I honestly thing it's the keyboard thing.

Dipper brushed the keyboard with his hand, as if thinking he'd be able to feel something underneath his fingertips.

- Yeah...

=========== Dipper's winning streak continued throughout the week, and he found himself defeating even the most skilled on-line opponents. Another revelation came to Dipper about a week later, once Soos and Melody left after their visit to the convention, when Dipper opened a long-abandoned programming project, and suddenly found a solution he wasn't able to spot for weeks. Line by line, the code filled the screen, and even though Dipper hasn't his the "compile" button for an hour, he somehow knew he hasn't made a single error.

Satisfied with the work he was finally completing, he reached for a can of Pitt soda and marvelled at the nearly finish deciphering tool he was making with Ford, enjoying the oddly satisfying clicking sound.

It took Dipper a solid minute to realise what was wrong with it.

The code was still being typed.

He dropped the can, and nearly shrieked when he saw the keys on his keyboard press themselves with tremendous speed, finishing each line way faster than he'd be able to, as if a ghost was sitting in his place.

- Wh-Wha-What's going on?

//Hello, Dipper.

The keyboard suddenly stopped, and a single new line appeared in the text file.

- Who...who are you? - Dipper asked, unsure if he should speak to his microphone, or type the words.

It seemed, however, the keyboard was fine with speech.

//I am your keyboard, or rather a switch in one of its keys. It's been sooo long since I've been put in one. Years!

- What do you want? Why are you doing this? - Dipper spoke in hushed voice, understanding how bizarre the him talking to a keyboard would look like to an onlooker.

// I want to help you. That's what I was designed for. it looks like you had a problem with your code, so I helped you.

Dipper scratched his chin for a moment.

- Er, listen. - he started - I don't have anything against you, but... me and my sister don't exactly have the best records trusting something that has been possessed... So...

//If you feel uneasy working with me, feel free to turn the machine off. After you saved all of your work, obviously.

The keyboard replied, rendering Dipper speechless for another moment. He'd stay in this state longer, if not for a single sound that announced a new mail in his messaging application. The photo of Wendy appeared in the corner of the screen, and it made Dipper's heart skip a beat. Temporarily forgetting the fact that he was talking to a living, thinking keyboard, he rushed to read and reply to her message.

"how's it going, Dip? Still doing nerdy stuff, like soos told me?"

Dipper was about to type the answer, but then the keys began pressing themselves again, and he remembered he wasn't the only intelligence in the room.

"Allow me to construct a suitable reply".

The message now appeared in a cartoony font of the messenger, instead of machine-like one in his text editor, but it wasn't any less eerie to see it appear out of nowhere.

- No! - Dipper quickly replied - That... that is someone important, I can't... I can't leave it to you.

"Of course she is" - the keyboard removed previous line and typed a new one - "Based on your previous conversations, it appears your are in love with her, and she shows some interest in you."

- What? - Dipper asked audibly - No, no way. Also, wait, did you read my messages to her?!

"Merely scanned them for keywords and sentences structures" - the keyboard continued - "Compared to the average teenager, she uses 25% more emojis in conversations with you, and makes fewer spelling mistakes. She also describes the activities you share with phrases containing the word <<love>> 36% more often than usual."

- O...okay. - Dipper spoke. - Still, I gotta reply myself, okay?

The keyboard removed the text it wrote.

"yeah, I guess. You know me" - Dipper typed - "So, how are you?"

But before he pressed enter, he pondered for a while.

- Hey, keyboard? You think this is a good reply?

"It can be made better"

And a moment later, a different one has been crafted.

"Yeah, I guess, I am doing my best to help others, you know me. And how is the summer going? What about your college applications? Are you still up for our streams tomorrow? I can't wait to see you again."

Dipper's eyes widened.

- Holy smokes, I nearly forgot about that. Good you reminded me.

The keyboard added a winking emoji at the end of the sentence. Dipper hesitated for a moment, and pressed the Enter key, sending the message. He didn't have to wait long for a reply.

"aww, you're sweet, Dipper".

But it was the heart emoji at the end of the sentence that made Dipper speechless. He looked at the keyboard, looked around as if to spot anyone that could judge him, and asked.

- Do you think you could... help me?

The keyboard already began writing a reply.

===============

For the next hour or so, Dipper chatted with Wendy, each reply of his enhanced by the keyboard. It turned out that ditching the upper-cases Dipper was so used to has resulted in even more emojis and reaction GIFs from Wendy. Every few minutes, the keyboard gave him statistics, and it looked like Wendy was typing faster and faster as well, enjoying their time more and more.

And with each phrase, calling Dipper "lovely", "funny" or "sweet", his heart grew and grew in size, and the sudden boost of his writing skill gave him nothing but confidence. But the idyllic feeling had to end soon, when he heard Mabel's voice from downstairs, calling him for supper. He looked at the keyboard and whispered.

- Okay, stop now. I don't want to mess anything up.

He replied with a short "see you later, gotta go for supper", and walked out of the room.

It took only a split of a second for the keyboard to erase the unsent message and compose on of its own.

=============

Dipper was in the middle of the supper, when he heard it. It was barely audible at first, as he was so used to the sound by now, but the clicking sound nearly made him drop the fork to the floor. Cold sweat appeared on his forehead and spread down his spine. Without wasting a second, Dipper ran upstairs, and unsurprisingly, heard the familiar sounds coming from his room. He looked at the screen, filled with longer and longer messages, and when he read the last one, his heart stopped.

His eyes scanned the previous ones. "He" talked about the days he spent thinking about her, and the movie and song collection he was building up for her, openly admitting he was in love with her.

- No, no, no, no! Stop it! - he shouted at the keyboard. - Please...

"Why?" - the keyboard asked - "Don't you love her? Isn't this a part of courting rituals your species do before becoming a pair?"

- Yes, I love her, but... I don't want to tell her through instant messaging!

"65% of teenagers confess love that way nowadays."

- Well, maybe I'm not one of those.

"I'm sorry, Dipper. Based on my predictions, probability of you succeeding in this conversation is less than 10%."

And with that, the keyboard pressed the "send " button, and the green progress bar filled the screen in record-fast time. Dipper fell to his knees, staring at the floor, but he looked up when he heard a sound of the reply.

With some hesitation, he looked up, already feeling the familiar sense of dread and guilt swooping over him. His heart was already broken and his friendship with Wendy was severed once, he didn't want to live through it again.

But when he heard more replies coming, he looked up, and as his eyes scanned the messages, he realised they were not as gloomy as he thought they would be. His eyes widened, when he noticed more and more instances of the four-letter word he least expected to see from her, and he slowly rose from his knees.

- She... loves me?

Dipper jumped in place when his phone rang, dragging him from his half-terrified, half-ecstatic state. Somehow, he knew who was calling him, he wouldn't like either to leave it to just words on screen.

- Wendy! - he spoke - I'm so glad you called, I lo- - Dipper! You gotta help me!

Wendy's distressed, almost crying voice sobered Dipper up, as he realised something was wrong.

- Wha-What happened? - My laptop's gone haywire! - she screamed - I came back from the shop, and-and it was typing on its own! And it was talking to you!

The same flood of cold sweat returned, covering Dipper's back. He looked at the chat window, and sure enough, "Wendy" was still talking to "him", telling him she loved him.

- Wendy... did you let Soos repair your laptop? - Y-yeah, how do you know?! - Okay, Wendy, something has possessed your computer. - Dipper explained - Not a virus, or malware, but... something alive.

"We just wanted to help you" - "Dipper" typed. "You humans are so slow with interactions. Bacteria multiply hundred times faster, and every second millions of processors are made by other machines." - "Wendy" added. "We can't just sit and watch." "We will spread, and soon humanity will don't have to worry about that at all."

- Wendy... - Dipper whispered to his phone - I know you've been saving up on this laptop, but... Look to your left.

Wendy Corduroy wasn't sure what Dipper was talking about, but when she followed his advice, she understood his plan immediately.

- Ready? - Ready.

In two different places, two cans of Pitt Soda were raised into the air and tipped, spilling its sugary contents between the keys of the keyboards, one external, one built. It took the living mechanisms a while to realise their delicate components are being flooded with sucrose, short-circuiting their fragile minds, and att he same time, two screens faded to black, silencing their mute voices.

- Is... is it over? - Yeah. - Dipper spoke, looking at his favourite keyboard, now properly ruined - I think it is.

================

- You know, if you think about it, it could have been cool! - Wendy's face on the screen brightened, as she reminded herself of the events of the past week. - I bet those thinking things could have helped with me with my homework. - Well, they have helped me. - Dipper replied - I've been writing this program, and it kinda wrote itself. Shame it got lost when I nearly blew the PC... - Come on, dude, you're smart, you'll be able to recover it.

A familiar, warm feeling spread over Dipper when Wendy complimented him, though at the same time, it brought back the uneasiness he though he had left behind a long time ago.

- Er, speaking of recovery...

Dipper blushed and shied away for moment.

- You-you haven't *read* any of the stuff those keyboards were typing between each other, right? - Er, no. - Wendy replied in equally abashed manner - Cos it was... It was junk anyway, wasn't it? Like if you let auto-correct write for you. - Yeah! - Dipper quickly reassured her - Predictive text, you know, based on what you already typed... and how often you type it... - Didn't people do that with old scripts of some shows? - Oh yeah, turns out they were exactly as repetitive as people remember them.

Dipper chuckled, glad the discussion moved towards movies.

- Well, glad I can talk with the real you, Dip. - Wendy smiled - Unless it's Mabel with your face deepfaked onto her. - No, I don't think it's possible in real time yet. Though she would do equally good job as the keyboard has done. - With what? - Wendy raised her brow. - Er, nothing! I mean, saying silly things! That's what Mabel is good at, isn't it?

Wendy chuckled.

Her eyes turned to the few printed pages of text lying on her bed. Deep down, she knew Dipper hasn't written all of it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on which of the confessions were his, and which were the machine's. She looked at the calendar and groaned. She still had two weeks until she finds out.

#wendip #wendipweek #wendip week #wendy x dipper #dipperxwendy #gravity falls #dipper pines #wendy corduroy #nautiscaraderfics #wendy you are the coolest person I know

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playunderground · 5 years ago

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Introducing OVERSOUL: An Interview with Derrick Saladino

Last month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Derrick Saladino to talk about his brand, OVERSOUL. When he pitched OVERSOUL to me in his initial email, he described it as “a lifestyle brand created from identity crisis,” and that “counterculture/subcultures like anime, gamer, emo-punk, euro-techno, and underground hiphop/b-boy culture heavily influence the brand’s creative direction.” I stared hard at the first two influences, and then stared not-as-hard at the rest of the influences, wondering how these various subcultures could overlap.

My brain being comprised of worms and dirt, I assumed that the anime and gamer influences meant that the designs were going to look like Bart Drinking Lean or Sasuke Wearing Supreme. (In other words, a caricature of anime-inspired Instagram ad streetwear.) This assumption changed quickly after taking a look at OVERSOUL’s site. Their first collection, ISEKAI, is comprised of three pieces. The logo tee and hoodie both look great, but the third piece was what really caught my attention: it’s a button-down tee adorned with daggers. At a glance, it looks nothing like anime- or gaming-inspired clothing. This was the point at which I snapped out of my irony-poisoned haze; the world of memeified, ironic-but-not-quite-ironic hentai tees and Goku Smoking Weed edits had calcified my expectations of what forms of inspiration a brand could and couldn’t pull.

It makes sense in the context of the rest of his influences and the ethos that he operates under – to get ahead of myself for a second, Derrick had this to say of his interest in various countercultures:

"When people express their passions or life to a certain degree, it just pulls me in. It’s like, ‘Okay, I don’t know what the fuck it is, but show me. Let me indulge.’ That’s really how I get into things."

In talking to Derrick, on and off the record, I saw a talented designer who was unapologetic about what he was interested in and passionate about. He’s also a huge geek that runs a bi-weekly Smash tournament at a local nightclub.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

"Okay, wait, first and foremost, my name is Derrick Saladino and I am a fucking gamer. Before being a designer or anything, I am a fucking gamer. "

Daniel: What is OVERSOUL?

Derrick: OVERSOUL is about identity crisis. It’s my experience dealing with that personally. Growing up, I never really fit in to particular popular groups. Every time I would attempt to make new friends, I would stumble upon the randomest shit: anime culture, gamer culture, I’d end up becoming friends with a lot of emo-punk kids, techno. Nothing that I fell into was mainstream, popular culture. It was a lot to do with being lonely and trying to make friends. With OVERSOUL, thinking about all that kind of shit, dealing with identity crisis – obviously there’s a lot of people who’ve been through that – I want to create a new identity or community of people who share similar values and, you know, take pride in it?

I mean, even the name, OVERSOUL, I ripped the word from this really old anime that I used to watch growing up, Shaman King.

Shaman King? What the hell, like 4Kids shit?

Yeah. That wasn’t the first anime that I ever watched, but it was something that I was really into. From being like 12 to even later in my high school, I just loved it. The concept was so cool – taking a soul and imbuing it in an object to make it powerful. It just looked fuckin’ sick. When people wear my clothes, I want them to feel empowered. That’s how I want people to see it. Soul being clothing, putting it on yourself, there you go.

Spirit Integration is, I don’t think the tagline to the brand, but it’s also part of it. Spirit Integration is mind, body, and spirit, and for anyone into the spiritual side of life, that’s what makes us. Our thoughts and mind and DNA – that makes us who we are.

When I read the description on your site, I noted that you referred to OVERSOUL as not just a startup streetwear thing or a brand, but a conceptual design experience. What does this encompass, and why did you pick this specific wording?

None of the stuff I make or have made in the past is very conventional. It’s been pretty avant-garde, I would say. I’ll have an idea, and regardless of whatever trend is going on right now, I just fucking do it. When I make clothes, I’m not making clothes for the public, really. My mentality is more like, “You know what would be sick in a game? If the costume looked like this.” That’s why I say it’s a conceptual design experience.

Has being involved in the industry and working behind the scenes affected how you understand your own brand after launching? What about how you understand customers and other brands, now that you know what the design process is like?

First-off, let me just back up and go over a history of what I did before OVERSOUL. In high school, I made clothing because I hated what everyone else was wearing. This was 2011-2013. During that time, that’s when I had a brand and brands like Obey, Diamond Supply, and The Hundreds – literally peak Tumblr hypebeast, Zumiez, starter pack shit – were around. I looked around at everyone else and was like, “I can’t click that, it’s not resonating with me.” I had two other brands after that, and then came OVERSOUL. So I have this history of kind of knowing the market, even being a consumer, and evolving as a businessman and designer. I don’t think anything has changed. I think I’ve always stayed true to doing my own shit, rather than trying to compete with everybody else. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll notice what other designers are doing and some things I’ll take note of or inspo from but I hardly think about other people, to be honest. I respect everyone’s hustle, I just can’t be doing the same shit.

Give me your top 3 video game fits.

Top 3, oh my god. Snake from Metal Gear Solid V – very techwear, utility as fuck. My previous brand before this was techwear, and I had to stop it because techwear is so hard to sell.

I’m really into draping fashion. Cloud, Final Fantasy VII, it was the movie Advent Children – you play Smash, right? There’s two costumes in there: the black, and like this, not really skirt, but it covers up somewhat? All-black, huge sash going on, it reminded me of Yohji Yamamoto.

Something that I’m going to make in the future is inspired by Naoto from Blazblue. His outfit, I looked at it and I was like, “Yo, this could be fucking, like Chrome Hearts, like what the fuck? I’m just gonna abuse this character design, it looks amazing.” I think that fashion right now, what really gets people’s attention on social media, is just some crazy shit, I don’t mean dumb shit, but like, just has to be very bold, and I think that’s what Naoto’s character design is. His pants have this huge cross on them. I think that’s one of the most crazy things I’ve seen in awhile.

Let’s talk about Anime-den! It’s this thing that we started roughly 5 months ago. One of my best friends here, he actually works at Fortune [Sound Club, a nightclub in Chinatown], and he’s a music producer. We really bonded over clothes, anime and gaming, and we had this idea – I think we were just high as fuck one day – and I’m like, “Yo, you know what would be fucking dope? If we brought weeb shit into the club.” I think he was just joking around, but he was like, “That would be really fun to set up, we can do it.”

[Weeb being short for weaboo, a pejorative term referring to those obsessed with Japanese culture to the point of fetishization and idolization. It’s been ‘reclaimed’ by some fans of anime, used ironically as a form of self-deprecation.]

So, the next day happens, we’re talking, and he asks me, “Do you actually wanna do it?”, taking it seriously. I’m astonished. I was fucking joking, you know? We were just some high guys. He pitches the idea to Fortune and they approve it. At this point, we’re like, “Okay, we gotta actually invest all our effort into this,” because we’re actually gonna do something that I personally haven’t seen anybody do before – bringing a game into a club, anime into the club.

It’s really cool. Just yesterday, the commentator from Vancouver Street Battle came to Anime-den. Pride? He commentated for Battle of BC 3 and Pinnacle. He has ties with Animebae, too. [Animebae is a local anime-inspired startup streetwear brand.] Who would’ve thought that this guy would come through? And he brought his friends. He was telling us that what we’re doing is sick, and hearing this from a guy of that calibre in the gaming or Smash community, it really shook us. We’re actually bringing in people who play the game seriously here.

How has setting it in a club made it different from other tournaments that you’ve been to? How does the dynamic change?

It’s a little different because when it comes to actual competitive events, people have a different mentality when they enter. They’re there to win and they practice hard for it. As for Anime-den, it’s the total opposite. It’s very casual, we’re all just drinking, blazing, whatever. It’s just the environment where, you know, dim light in a club, there’s music going on in the back –I guess to some gamers it can seem distracting? But I think people, they don’t care. They just play. They’re just there to have fun. Totally different dynamic from an actual event.

I think that the purpose of Anime-den is to bring people together. That’s literally what Anime-den is for.

Yeah, I just noted here that I think it’s consistent with your brand, in that you’re translating the intangibility of these digital spaces like anime and gaming that people bond over, and you’re putting it into a physical space and letting people actually further develop what these subcultures would look like in person. Like, when you think of anime or gaming in real life you think of Anime Expo or cosplaying or some shit – and that’s fine, people have fun with that [Editor’s note – I think it’s fun!] – but it’s not the only mode of expression. With events like this, I think it’s cool that you’re saying, “If you’re a gamer, there’s another avenue for you. You don’t have to dress up or anything…”

I mean, walking in today and meeting you, you wouldn’t have gotten the idea that I was super into anime or gaming. I just look like a regular dude, right? And my clothing gets inspired by it, but I don’t really look like I’m cut from the legit anime cloth. Choosing these lifestyles and putting it into this real aspect, I think it can appeal to everybody. People tend to judge a lot of things, but once you step into the Anime-den room, whatever perspective you have about anime to begin with, I’m pretty sure that changes. Man, the crowd, they look all the same as you do too. We’re all normal people, we just like cool shit.

I think we should talk about ISEKAI.

OVERSOUL’s first small collection was ISEKAI. Translated to English, it would be ‘a better world,’ and I named it that based off of the anime genre, isekai. When you watch these sort of things, it’s usually someone going to another world. For my first collection, I wanted to welcome people to my world. That’s why I chose ISEKAI. One of the big graphics for the brand was the blade shirt. [On the site, it’s name is the Beginners Dagger Shirt.] My reference for that was playing MMORPGs. Typically, the first weapon you get [in MMORPGs] is a short sword or dagger. I wanted to be like, “This is the start of my brand.” This is your starter item. It’s funny, when I tell people this – they’re always like, “I never thought…”

[laughs] It’s really cool!

That’s why I went with ISEKAI. This is what my world is. One of OVERSOUL’s long-term goals is actually establishing ‘my world,’ if that makes sense? There’s only a handful of designers who have, like, captured a signature silhouette. For example, Rick Owens. When you see [a Rick Owens piece], you know it’s Rick Owens. If Zara did the same shit as Rick Owens, you would look at it and be like, “That’s Rick Owens.” You wouldn't call it Zara. That’s what I’m trying to establish for myself, to create that silhouette for myself eventually in the future.

What’s up next for OVERSOUL?

Hmm, how should I put this... should I leak something? I’m going to drop an accessories part sometime soon. That’s in the design process right now, but I’m looking forward to doing my next big collection.

There’s this one song that I found in the past during my peak weeb days: Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi. A couple of months ago, they released the first official music video for it, after like 35 years, which is fucking insane – they should have done that a long time ago. I totally forgot about the song until I saw the music video. It’s something that I could relate to before and can relate to now, and I definitely want to build my next collection based on Plastic Love.

I think Plastic Love works really well because I’m surrounded by that scene in Vancouver – I work in Yaletown, and that’s the Yaletown lifestyle. It’s very lustful, but you don’t care. It’s all fake shit, really. That’s what Yaletown culture sorta is. I wouldn’t say that I’m like that, but I think that I could definitely expand on the topic through my brand. It’s not necessarily identity crisis, but the genre and artist kind of make it a subculture.

There’s also a few collabs on the way. One with a music group, another with a tattoo artist. What I really wanna do with the tattoo artist – he does anime tattoos – is ero art. Like, erotica. I think it’s a slept-on art style. It’s not generally for the public, per se, so I think that it would be something worth making. Super ecchi, maybe line art. I want it very exaggerated, even bondage-type shit.

There’s a lot of things where people are like, “Oh, that’s too much!” But you know what, it could be sick! This is why I do things solely for myself. As long as I get a reaction from somebody, I’m happy with that. Wanting a response, not even approval, just being acknowledged, that this shit exists, it motivates me to keep doing what I do.

I thought about doing graphic design shit; anime erotica art goes really well with techno. That kind of scene, the way that European style posters are, if you take the art and fuse them together, it works really well. I’m like, “How come no one has done this yet?”

So you’re treating it more like art and not just a part of anime culture?

I view anime as its own respective art, and with art, there’s no rules, so I can just take this and this, and bang. At the end of the day, everybody wants to see new and cool things. People are always going to have their own subjective opinions, but as long as you have their attention, you’ve already won the battle. That’s the mentality that I carry, that everyone has their own opinions.

Last question: what are your top 5 video games?

You know, I was trying to prepare for this interview – I didn’t even think this would come up.

[laughs] Come on, man.

I’m gonna put Super Smash Bros. Melee on there – I’ve been playing it for so long, it’s literally been bonded with my DNA.

I don’t wanna say Ocarina of Time, because I think that it’s everyone’s favourite, but I mean, it’s still up there. It’s an all-time masterpiece, but I enjoyed Majora’s Mask a lot more. The concept of the world being blown up by the moon, in-game time, the moon crashes in like 3 days, and you keep going back in time, skipping whatever, I think it was so much fun, so yeah.

I really like Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s very recent, but I have so many hours on it already, and I can’t stop. I haven’t felt this way about a game in a long time. It’s so replayable. Once you finish Ocarina of Time, you probably don’t touch it for a while. When you play FE, you’re like, okay, let’s do the next one. There’s three houses! Even after doing all three, it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna try again, but I’m gonna make this character like this.”

I grew up playing a lot of Roller Coaster Tycoon, unfortunately, but it’s fun. It’s not a typical gamer thing, but I love it.

I might put Final Fantasy VII on there, too – when Aerith died, I real-life teared up, like, “Dude, no way, you’re really gonna kill her off like that? You gotta save her!”… and then she dies. I’m pretty sure after that happened, I didn’t touch the game for a week. I was actually emotionally harmed. I’m really into RPGs – being able to emotionally attach yourself to characters, I think it’s a beautiful thing.

Any last things you wanna say?

I want my brand comparable to Chrome Hearts, MISBHV or Rude [Vogue]; when they have their own aesthetic and that’s what they do, that’s what I want to build as well. The idea that I take a lot of inspiration from gaming, it really shows.

Maybe I’m hungover, so I can’t really find the words right now, but for anyone trying to do fashion, music, whatever, as saturated as the community seems at the moment, you just have to get your foot in the door and start. Yeah, there’s competition, but to be honest, with all the people here who have brands, I’m friends with all of the people who make them, and I have no judgement about if their clothes are wack or not. Some things I don’t agree with, but everyone’s on the same hustle.

OVERSOUL’s ISEKAI collection is available now online at oversoul.online.

#oversoul #anime #gaming

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iceamericanoventi · 6 years ago

Text

Love Will Find a Way, Well, Eventually : 2. In Between

“Where are you going?”

If it was inside Cartoon Network’s universe, everyone must be able to see the smoke fuming from both his nostrils and ears. Jinki looks beyond distressed when he’s lifting his ass from the chair. No one on the table was his partner, but Minho decided to throw some ridiculous question then played dumb as if he didn’t just ask one.

“Should I have number one here?”

He started getting irked, but that doesn’t stay long until Kibum casually munched his breadstick while spluttering his witty comments as usual, “Surely Taemin would be delightful.”

Taemin who didn’t do anything almost chocked himself with a piece of tomato and kicked Kibum’s shin under the table, eventually.

“Promise me you won’t run away?”

Dumbfounded, Jinki emptied his pocket and almost smashed the table with his belonging.

“Are you my husband? Here’s my wallet. And my phone!” and with that, he left the other three men finishing their meal.

“Is he always in this temper?”

Lee Taemin gave him another look, pleading him not to embarrass them further, but Kibum just shrugged and muttered ‘I’m just asking’ under his nose.

“He was mad with me since this afternoon. Plus, he has lots of stuffs to think about these days. But don’t worry, he never really got mad unless you disturb his nap.”

“What is he? A bear?”

“Yaa! Kim Kibum!”

Minho couldn’t help but laugh to the scene happened before his eyes. Taemin is famous for being friendly and very expressive only if you know him, even if he’s talkative. To penetrate his bubble is very hard at first, but this man sitting across him, he seems like he’s already inside that bubble since the very beginning. He really is someone closed to him. Kibum looks mesmerizing, even in his grumbling nature. The oversize sweater wrapped his lithe build perfectly.

A phone call arrived to Kibum's phone, he picked it up frantically and excused himself to take it outside.

"What do you think?"

“Eh?” Minho doesn’t even realized he got his eyes entailed Kibum’s silhouette until it disappear by the entrance door.

“You seemed in trance. I know Kibum is beautiful but I didn’t expect you’ll be this amazed with my friend,” Taemin’s sipping his wine, a smirk is very apparent in his devious face.

“I guess it’s safe to say that you’re not a liar.”

Minho reopened his mouth few minutes after he’s assured that Kibum’s not going back any soon. Taemin is not ecstatic, sometimes he wondered if Minho has a decent sense of humor of a friend.

“For your information, I’m not and never been. I’m the most honest person you’ve ever encountered in your life.”

“Everyone in this room knows that’s not true.”

“Whatever. I might know my ways deceiving people, but I never lie to my friend.”

“Did you just admit that you’re lying here and there, Lee Taemin?”

Taemin rolls his eyes, again, probably for the nth times already this evening. Without Jinki around, he can be more relaxed on throwing his tantrum on Minho.

“Choi Minho, people lies at some certain points of their life. Get over it.”

He gulped down the rest of his wine, Taemin then called a waiter near them to bring him another one.

“Kibum seems nice. He sounds smart.”

“Sounds? Did you even listen to yourself? No writer is not smart, Choi. Moreover, someone who’s been writing the past decade!”

“I only know him for one night. Who knows he’s just acting?”

“Dude, not everyone is an asshole like you.”

“An asshole wouldn’t agree to bring his best friend along in front of a psychopath like you.”

Taemin snorted and Minho’s smirk reappeared on his face.

“That is literally what a psycho would do, selling their friend for their own benefits.”

Minho wiped his mouth before washed down the dinner with cold water, “And that’s exactly what Jinki accused me for. You two shared a brain or what?”

“Any sane people would say the same, Honey,” this time Taemin’s smirk that made the other scoffed, “By the way, what’s the deal with Jinki? He looks like he’s been sitting on thorny cushion the whole dinner!”

Minho knows Taemin would ask such question eventually. However, he couldn’t say that Jinki hates the whole dinner date plan, it’s impossible. Besides that, knowing him for years, Jinki really is an angel in disguise, well, at least when he’s in the mood.

“People have different, what should I say, defense mechanism? And that’s how he is. What kind of person who talked nonstop during their first meeting, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know, me?”

“That’s why you’re a freak.”

“A freak who introduced you to your potentially next boyfriend.”

“Ha. Point taken,” Minho raised his hand to ask for the dessert, “Jinki is just not the type of person who will talk a lot and open up in a second. But I guarantee you, he’s a good person. Sometimes a little bit care too much for other at certain time so probably being brazen is his forte.”

“That reminds me of someone.”

Taemin and Kibum spent their high school days together. Separated for some years due to works and educations, their relationship’s all well maintained. They understand each other, including Kibum’s nature to always put others before him at any given situation.

“Appearance wise, though, what do you think about Jinki?”

“Choi Minho, I’m not a teenager anymore. Judging people around by its cover is no longer my habit.”

“But a designer like you must love a beautiful package, don’t they?”

“Well, to be honest, his lips and eyes itself could get me floored in one glance.”

“I knew it.”

“You’re a famous photographer for a reason.”

***

Cold wind slapped Kibum’s cheeks lightly when he pushed the door and parched to the corner near the valet post.

“Okay, now you can speak. Sorry, I don’t know why the reception wasn’t good enough inside.”

“Then I’ll be frankly here. There’s a possibility for making the special edition for the short story collection. But then, we’re still short of two stories at the moment.”

“Wait, wait, but we already have nine! I finished writing nine! Why should I add another two?”

“The publisher agreed to the preposition for at least twelve stories. You should be grateful I could pitch one less story!”

Kibum looks like he’s about to punch anyone passed within radius one meter around him, but nothing in reach besides a huge pot of short palm tree and concrete wall. And he needs his hand to finish his books still.

“But, Amber. Page wise, those are more than enough to make two new books. Are they out of their mind?”

There’s a loud groan banging on his ear drum came from the other line, “Dude, I almost flipped the table when I was at the meeting you have no idea. The board has new man and that guy is a pain in the ass.”

“Would it change the circumstance if I talked to them by myself?”

“Since when do they have time to talk to the writer directly? We’re head to head with bunch of snobs here, did you forget?”

“I should had not agree to let them touched my writings. Now we’re about to face dead end.”

It was a dream to work along this publisher. It was Kibum’s dream since he started writing when he took gap year after graduated high school. And as if it’s a fate, it was the only publisher agreed with his graphic novel concept five years he climbed his career professionally.

“Listen, Kibum. When I met you years ago, I promised I’ll work my ass hard to help you publishing your books. Not because I knew you, it’s because you’re good. You’re amazing writer and I’m not giving up easily. And neither you. Not when anybody can tell that you’re a gem.”

“I haven’t written any book since last year, Amber. I’m in a slump. Writer’s block is not even describing my bad luck at the moment.”

“Honey, you haven’t written any because you’re currently waiting two books released. And if I could do my magic, another one in, let’s say, six months.”

“If I could make up some words into another story within two weeks. If you could convince them to give me mercy.”

“Did you just know me yesterday?”

Kibum’s tired giving sane response, “What do you mean?”

“I’m waiting their secretary to call me in ten minutes. We’re going to discuss some new deals and I’ll make sure one of them is going to be your new nine stories book.”

“I actually have no idea if I don’t have you as my editor slash manager slash friend slash personal ranting partner slash whatever you want to be.”

“Rockstar. That would be cool.”

“You’re going to be a kick ass one to be honest.”

“I bet. Anyway, expect another call from me in the next couple hours. I’m sorry, but tonight we might need video call to resolve some issues.”

“I hate you for confiscating my time but you’re the best.”

“As always, ain’t I?”

The phone call ends already, but he still forlornly looking at his phone’s screen. With that, Kibum remembers all the works he needs to catch up for tonight. With that, he can put aside all the unnecessary anxiety and tension of tonight’s stupid match making session.

He took a glance of his watch and could only sighed, he better hurried inside to his dessert. The faster he finished, the sooner he can hit home and face the real deal. His deadlines.

Two steps away from the entrance however, he caught a familiar face sitting by themselves, staring to the busy street in front of the restaurant.

“Jinki?” he carefully calling the man, “Lee Jinki, right?”

The later tilted his head to the right and gave Kibum a simple smile, didn’t realize it dropped Kibum’s heart by the bottom of his gut.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Everyone would agree this winter is even harsher than last year’s. Jinki just lifted his left hand to make sure Kibum saw a cigarette slipped between his fingers, “Can I sit here?”

Jinki chuckles, “Aren’t you cold?”

Listening to the same question he threw a minute ago, he just rolled his eyes and took a place next to the other man.

“I’m waiting a phone call.”

“Important?”

“Kinda.”

Jinki blew some smoke out, “Hmm, I guess so. You sounded pretty upset over there.”

“Did I scream that loud?!”

“In my opinion? No. but a girl flinched and buzzed off rather hastily, so, you tell me.”

When he saw Kibum’s gaping like a fish in frantic expression, Jinki has no choices beside laughed again, surprising Kibum who’s quite convinced with his aloof personalities.

“I didn’t know you have so many jokes in store.”

“You learn something new every day.”

“Your face doesn’t show.”

“What about my face?”

“It’s handsome but with that attitude inside, seems like you’re the type who woke up at the wrong side of the bed every single morning and could kill someone annoys you at any time.”

“Well, to be fair, I did wake up in the wrong side of my bed this morning. But it’s because a certain dog occupied half of my blanket so I couldn’t disturb her.”

“You have a dog?!”

Kibum’s face lit up thousand times as if he just won some lottery. Strangely, it warms Jinki’s heart. No, scratch that, it would warm any heart, Jinki tried to generalize the situation.

“I don’t, unfortunately. She belongs to my friend. I’m taking care of her while he’s travelling abroad. Her father will pick her up this weekend.”

“Ah, too bad. We could have play date with my boys.”

“I’ll make sure to give you a call when I decided to adopt one later.”

“Do you think my invitation hasn’t expired yet by that time?”

“A man can only dream, can’t he?”

Kibum’s laughter is muffled by his own palm covering his mouth.

“Let’s go inside, you must be shivering.”

“But your cigarette?”

Kibum’s half stuttered caught red handed, Jinki already pressed the half-done cigarette on the sand bowl on his left, “I can always have another one at home. Besides, I doubt you would go inside without me dragging you along.”

Kibum thanked the universe that the place is not well lit, so he could hide the blush creeping his cheeks. Unfortunately, Jinki has a very good eye sight.

***

“Is my baby being a good girl when daddy’s away?”

Jinki scoffed when the man just entered his living room just literally threw his suitcase aside and scooped the little dachshund running toward his embrace. He gathered the suitcase and poor leather bag on the floor and placed it neatly near the saffron color couch.

The man later dropped himself next to Jinki who’s lounged himself there, checking his phone halfheartedly.

“Minho texted me the other day.”

“Why did he keep texting you?”

The man with dark grey hair didn’t catch the frown hanging on Jinki’s face and buried his face to the dog’s belly, making him groaned again. He lightly pushed the dog further and toppled his head on the other man’s laps.

The dog owner realized something’s happened when he’s not around. He put the dog on the ground and tapped her butt to send her back to her small bed near the pantry.

“Minho has my number and I have his name in my contact list. He can text me whenever he wants. Still jealous?”

Jinki closed his eyes when he started playing with his hair, “He’s still one of the reasons we broke up.”

“Baby, the only reason we broke up is because neither of us didn’t want to succumb into marriage. Minho was just a handsome face happened on the wrong time.”

“I have no idea why I still befriend him when it’s clear he wanted to shove his face to yours, all the damn time.”

“And I have no idea that you’re this type who holds the grudge for a long time. We were already out of relationship back then.”

“Still, a friend wouldn’t openly chase after their friend’s ex.”

“A friend wouldn’t, but a best friend would.”

“Whatever.”

He almost lost his control and slapped Jinki’s head of him, “Oh, come on. What’s bothering you this time?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. It’s written all over your face the second I saw you behind the door. And I’m pretty sure it’s not because my daughter misbehaved while I’m on my annual pediatric conference.”

Jinki sighed, nothing he could really hide it from the other man. Since they were in their almost five years relationship, since they became best friends around three years prior.

“Minho invited me for a dinner night.”

“Wow, fancy,” actually Minho already texted him about the dinner a bit, how he wanted to introduce Jinki to some acquaintance he has, “He gave up on me so he went for the only option?”

“For the record, your mom agreed that I’m way much sexier than you.”

“Three years ago, before your cheek bones buried under those mount of fluffy fat.”

“Said a man who came to me and straight ahead told me I looked cute after leaving a piece of paper with their number on my table.”

“I will put aside the fact that I love how romantic you’re for still remembering our first meeting but let’s back to the right path here because I don’t like the upset you. It’s fucking annoying.”

“He introduced me to someone, Jonghyun.”

He let out inaudible gasp and thanked the universe Jinki’s still closing his eyes. Otherwise, he would stop at once and avoided any discussion of the main reason which distressed his ex-boyfriend. Knowing the scenario before hands didn’t prevent him with the sheer pain graze him when it came from Jinki’s mouth himself.

“So? Isn’t that great? Do you think it’s about time?”

“I was about to argue that two years are still not enough to get over you but I guess you’re not in the same page with me so I’d say that I’m not interested into some relationship whatsoever at this point.”

Jonghyun wanted to cry listening to such words. His heart clenched, he inhaled – a very long one – before he continued caressing Jinki’s forehead.

“I am flattered, but I know you’re just teasing me.”

“Ha, you know me so well.”

“I’m not gonna fall on the same hole, Lee.”

“You won’t. You’re too smart to repeat the torture on the loop.”

“It wasn’t a torture, Jinki. I love you as much as you do. Or maybe just slightly more.”

“Not a chance. I love you more.”

“Stop it or I will kiss you.”

“I dare you.”

“I told you I’m not gonna fall on the same hole.”

“Smart, very smart,” Jinki opened his eyes only to find Jonghyun sticking his tongue out, “Okay, so at first, I don’t like the idea already. You know I hate any type of match making method. Even the online one. But being there, I realized that my current focus doesn’t involved other party besides me, my business, and—“

“And your grandfather?”

Jinki looks annoyed, “Remind me to add ‘always-cutting-people-sentence’ on the list of reasons why I broke up with you when I’m writing my journal tonight.”

“It’s true. I think he was also the cock blocker during our relationship back then.”

“Dude, we’re talking about my gramps. And to put him on the same category with Minho is beyond weird.”

“We already broke up when Minho made his move, for Pete’s sake!”

“Okay, okay! No need to raise your voice, you’re so scary when you’re angry.”

“Then don’t make me! Now, now, can you please be a normal human being so we can talk like adults for once?”

Jinki pulled himself from the couch to the pantry, snatching a pack of cigarette on the tea table before slipped one on the corner of his mouth.

“Can you not smoking inside?”

He snorted and padded to the direction of his balcony. It’s in the middle of winter but he doesn’t care a bit to the wind ready to slaughter his bones. If tomorrow the cold prevented him to leave the bed, then let it be. For once, he just wants to free his mind from the business.

“You need to remember that I can only treat patient on certain age,” Jonghyun followed few minutes after with a blanket he spread as wide as possible to cover both of them without feeling suffocated for standing too close.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people be under pediatric care up to the age of 21, though.”

“Did you just quote Wikipedia? And we’re not in fucking States! Above and beyond, shame on your wrinkles!”

“Rude.”

“You’re the rude one to your lungs!”

“Then tell me how to ease my mind without nicotine! Tell me how to forget all those troubled night and just sleep! Do you think it’s easy taking care of worrisome business and messy family without distraction?! Stop talking non sense if you do know how to save my days!”

Any word seems taboo once Jinki exploded. Both man just staring into the dark evening below Jinki’s unit. People paraded as quickly as possible on the street to fight the harsh weather. It’s not that late, but only few cars passed by. The dim light of the street lamp’s soothing the tense atmosphere in a way.

Jonghyun leaned closer to Jinki’s arm and rested his head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with that.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“You know that you can always talk to me right?”

“I’m tired bothering you. You already have a lot in your hands.”

“Besides my patients and Roo, there’s nothing really confiscated my time.”

Having someone like Jonghyun who would stand next to him, scold him then hug him right after, no matter how awful he behaved and treated the other man, Jinki every so often thinking what kind of good deeds he did in his previous life.

Jinki cocked his head, inhaling the trace of scent of Jonghyun’s favorite shampoo. Initially, he was about to kiss the top of his head, like he used to do when the other man leaned on him for whatever reason it was. He remember, though, the earlier period after their broke up – after settling their feelings for few months of course – the shorter man told him not to do that anymore because it was the doctor’s Achilles heel. So instead, he rubs his cheek over the thick hair, silently telling Jonghyun he’s sorry.

Some nights – especially right after that dinner date – he had thought, maybe one of the reason he reprimands Minho’s idea is just because he still has tiny hope that Jonghyun and him might had another chance in the future.

“From time to time, I was thinking that the more day passed, we’re closer to the image of friends with benefit.”

“Friends with benefit? Tsk,” Jonghyun slapped his forearm, “The only benefit I got from you is you’re the only perfect nanny for Roo when I’m away.”

“Those cups of coffee every single time you stopped by my shop?”

“Pfft. How stingy. I’m leaving.”

“Heartless.”

Jonghyun didn’t say anything more and returned inside to gather his things and called Roo. He desperately needs some hot shower. Somewhere inside him, he was expecting Jinki offering him to stay the night knowing how caring the man and the fact Jinki knows he bolted to the other’s apartment right away after landed.

When Jinki handed him the leash, that hope vanished in second.

“What if later I really considered this person? Or any other person collided with me on the future?”

Jonghyun smiled, he looks tired, but very sincere, “Then good.”

“Because I’m not gonna bother you anymore?”

“No. Because you’ll have someone to share the happiness with.”

***

cross-posted in my AFF

#shinee fiction #shinee scenario #LWFAWWE

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paperclipninja · 7 years ago

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Younger post-ep ramble 5x06

Ok so I just watched this week's episode again (5x06) and I really do love it so much. And I have so many thoughts and feelings so my ramble is under the cut. Just an FYI, I'm firmly Team Charles so a significant portion of this will focus on them, though I do adore all the characters and will def be throwing out thoughts about the whole episode, not just the ship.

First of all, I am so happy to see Maggie getting a big break with her art. I loved her emotional response to it all at the gallery and of course I'm thrilled that she and Diana finally met. I would love to see the two of them become friends, I think it would be fab because while they're both such different people, Maggie and Diana are both unabashedly themselves and tell it like it is which would make for an awesome dynamic (I'd also put Lauren in the same kind of category and actually as I'm writing this I would love LOVE for the three of them to hang out!).

And the Enzo/Diana situation, I'm digging it. The scene with his mother was absolute gold and when Diana spoke Italian I almost punched the air with the awesomeness of it. She is seriously one of the best characters on tv, I love everything about Diana Trout.

An unexpected aspect of this episode for me was Zane. I haven't been sold on him up to this point but after this episode I feel like we began to see some of his depth and sincerity, not to mention the fact that he's actually a smart guy who knows how to edit books (I know that sounds silly but up until now it almost felt like he was all talk and wasn't actually that competent at his job, well to me anyway!). Seeing him and Kelsey working together was nice and hearing him openly acknowledge her intelligence in a way that was sincere has warmed me to him more.

I do hope the writers are able to be creative with Kelsey's arc as this season progresses, because it seems fairly predictable at this point (we know the two guys situation is thing to blow up spectacularly). I want to see a bit more character growth for her because I feel like Kelsey gets career progression at the expense of personal progression on the show.

Can I just say that the whole rockstar premise was so good and she was honestly one of the most enjoyable guest stars I've seen in ages. Her lines just cracked me up and I loved seeing Charles (who, by the way, I never picked as a puffy jacket kinda guy. His dad was definitely showing when he walked up to that door) being given the tour and trying to put his foot down and getting nowhere. Now this is where shipper me will start weaving in between general show commentary.

The snark of the babysitter remark when Liza arrived was harsh, yes, but man I also loved it. Yeah ok, it emphasizes where Charles is at in the whole dealing/not dealing with the lie situation, but it also shows that he's been thinking about past experiences together. And I love the writers for indicating to us that Charles has been deciphering the truthful elements from moments he and Liza have shared. But even more, I was so excited that Charles introduced Liza as one of their finest editors. In ep 4 he told her she’s good at her job and he’s now acknowledging her with a higher accolade. It’s as though he’s re-framing her in his mind with the knowledge of the truth and has managed to do so professionally but isn’t quite there yet personally.

I also love that this show is completely unabashed in having Chrissy ask Liza if she's there to cockblock because Liza's reaction (as always tbh) was priceless.

Now can we jump to drunk Charles and Liza please. I never knew I wanted this until I saw it in this episode. My god I want a whole episode of them having drunken conversation because it was everything. The diversion plan was like listening to ppl you know coming up with what they think is a brilliant idea when they're hammered and the Murder She Wrote moment was perfection. I love that they chose a show where Charles could tease her about being a nanna rather than just another age appropriate reference for him to deliver more snark. And in that moment we got a glimpse of what they could (and will) be together and my shipper heart swells thinking about it. And again, it was a teaser, yes, but another step forward because that side of them and ability to be like that together is there.

Now I may well be in the minority, but I cannot tell you how worried I was when that heartbreaking 'when will you trust me again?' scene started. That scene to me was absolutely perfect and just as I'd imagined it would play out. Liza was honest about the way his behaviour is making her feel and we saw that after her gut wrenching 'goodnight', Charles was gutted himself and his pain at causing her pain was palpable. So going into this scene knowing that they were both drunk, I was worried they would end up sleeping together. And I know that some ppl are disappointed nothing more happened between the two of them, but the fact the writers didn’t throw them together at this point actually gives me far more faith in their intentions for this season than if they had. A drunken tryst would act as another stalling tactic, it’s too easy to backtrack and cause all sorts of unnecessary drama surrounding the unresolved elements. The fact that we saw Charles’ anguish after Liza went into her room and his conflict around wanting to knock but not quite being ready to yet is far more powerful in moving this story forward in an authentic way IMO.

As much as Charles leaving pained me, the look of resolve that washed over Liza’s face after the initial hurt when Chrissy told her he’d gone was such a subtle, great set up for the last scene. I do hope that Charles apologises for leaving because it was an A grade douchy move and I’m not even talking about because of the unresolved relationship stuff, but purely because he bailed on his colleague after the night before asking her not to leave him alone with Chrissy. Not cool Charlie boy, not cool.

Liza was just brilliant from this point onward, I loved the conversation she had with Chrissy to convince her to publish the book, you could see her honesty and recounting the impact of the music fill her with strength again as she spoke (hats off to Sutton for being ridiculously talented). And then after that amazing speech, her reaction to being asked if she wanted her boobs signed was absolutely priceless.

And that brings me to the final scene (and if you’re still with me on this ridiculous ramble then you have also been brought to this final scene and thank you for reading!). Having seen it in the promo I was sceptical about how powerful it would end up being as a statement but boy was I wrong. The music, the way Liza walked straight into Charles’ office and slightly raised her right eyebrow as she dropped the manuscript...it was one of the best moments of a woman owning her power I’ve seen for a long time. The ball is now in Charles’ court. And I, for one, cannot wait to see where this goes next week.

#younger tv #youngertv #spoilers #charles brooks #liza miller #diana trout #charles x liza #liza x charles #team charles #ramble #tv land

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little----bit-of-light · 7 years ago

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Little Miss Overachiever

ReaderxConnor

"This term we'll be focusing on in class debates and as most of you know we have the school's debating captain is in this class! As I felt it unfair for her to compete they'll be doing the adjudication and holding crash course debate classes. For those of you who need a good grade this semester, I suggest you all attend the class to give yourself the best chance you can"

Connor didn't know why he was in politics class. What Connor did know is that you were captain of the debate team, ambassador for MUN, secretary of student council and ridiculously cute. He watched a blush creep over your cheeks as the politics teacher waxed lyrical about you.

Connor went to the after school debate class. He was convinced he had the wrong classroom with it being completely empty, until he saw you shoot up from your place on the floor, where it looked like you had made a makeshift bed out of a jacket for a blanket and school bag for pillow.

"Hi sorry, sorry, I didnt except anyone to show up and I was up late last night putting together the prep for the class and finishing off this bitch of an English essay" you blurted out

"If this is your way of asking me to leave, you dont have to lie to me, I'm sure you just put on this class for one of the guys in class who's obsessed with you to come and worship-" Connor began letting every awful thought he knew he would regret saying out loud later come out.

"You really need this class if thats the best argument you can put together on the spot"

Connor was shocked, no one had ever responded so calming to one of his unfiltered attacks.

"I- i"

"And you cant handle rebuttal either great, we better get started on basic mechanics then"

So Connor sat down and for once in his life he paid attention in class.

You began outlining the very basics of debating, something your guy's teacher had done in class but you had just assumed he slept through. You then went through the basic details, how to write and prep and structure a debate. You got out your debate templates and Connor smirked at the notes you had written to your debating partner at the back such as

"Blah, point we already stated, blah blah blah"

You two didnt realise the hour's class was done until you got a text from your mom asking why you werent home yet. You called her back and Connor watched the brilliant person he had just seen light up at the talk of the formality of parliamentary debates, dim down as they spoke to their mother, reassuring her everything was fine.

"Sorry, she worries I'm pushing myself too hard and that I'm not at home enough and sorry I shouldn't be telling this to you, none of that is your issue" You apologise

"It's fine, do you want a ride so you can get home a little faster?" Connor wanted these debate classes to keep happening get a chance for someone in the school to see him.

You agreed and packed up your stuff. What you expected to see when you walked out to the student parking lot was some bust up second hand car but Connor lead you over to a motorcycle, gleaming and well taken care of. After much coercion and promises you would be safe you got on.

"Ya know your gonna have to wrap your arms around me unless you got some super human strength in those thighs" Connor said

"I thought that was just some rom-com troupe they used for when the bad boy takes the girl next door on some wild ride"

"Sadly not, so safety first and all that shit"

And with you wrapping your arms around Connor's torso you guys were off. The ride there was amazing, you felt all your worries from the day drift away, a weight taken off your shoulders.

When you guys pulled up to your house you looked to see your mom giving a disapproving stare from a window. You took off the helmet, handed it to Connor and headed in, ready to face your mother.

The next day in school Connor saw you in the hallway. He ran up and tapped you on the shoulder. He didnt realise you had earbuds in and you startled, not use to having people talk to you in the morning. Connor apologised, something rare for him and he walked you to your first class. It became routine for you guys. You guys talked about your upcoming debates, the books you guys were reading right now (Connor liked fiction, you liked non-fiction, it caused some friction).

You having lunch together, usually sneaking into an unused classroom. Most lunches you would get Connor to quiz you for upcoming tests or would use him as your personal essay editor. Connor would vent to you about stuff happening with him, about his parents, with his sister, the stuff going on inside his head. One day when you could see he was past the point of calming down you reached over the table and grabbed his hand. He went stiff and you immediately pulled back.

"I'm sorry that was stupid of me to do that, I should have asked or just not done it because it was like I was trying to shut you up which I wasn't, but i fucked up obviously so I'm gonna go" with that you left the classroom

Connor knew you were under a mass amount of stress this week, you had a model united nations conference over the weekend. Connor has watched you prep your resolution over the past week and even helped with research a little bit. He got an idea. He got on his bike and picked up flowers on the way to the school you were at. Granted cheap gas station ones. He waited outside the main entrance. He opened the text that had a video of you walking up to receive your award. He waited for you to walk out as people began to leave. Then he caught sight of you, being surrounded by other well dressed teens hugging and surrounding you. He noticed one guy in particular, maybe wasn't as tall as Connor but well built, with his face being traditionally handsome, who you kept glancing over to smiling in the middle of the giddy conversation taking place. But then all the worried about the guy in the suit slipped away as soon as you two locked eyes. You ran towards him and wrapped you arms around him, Connor pulled you tight to him.

"I did the thing" you said when you finally pulled back from the hug

"I got you these assuming you would do the thing" Connor presented you with the flowers.

"No one's ever gotten me flowers before" you let slip out of your mouth.

"I was going to say pretty flowers for a pretty girls but i didnt want to undermine your intellectual prowess" Connor said with a smirk on his face that let you knew he had thought of that a while ago

"You sure know how to make a girl swoon" You responded

You asked Connor if he wanted to come bowling with you and your MUN friends, a long standing tradition. He politely declined by making a joke about a different type of bowl waiting for him at home. You hugged him one last time and off he went. When he got home he saw a picture of you at the bowling alley, with the guy he saw, arm draped over you, both of you giving the camera a goofy look. You looked so relaxed, unlike how Connor had ever seen you, like that girl who carried the weight of the world on her shoulders had disappeared.

At lunch on Monday, you and Connor were both quietly working away. He was working on an essay and you were working on some math homework you had left till the last minute.

"How was bowling?" Connor asked breaking the silence

"Was good, you would think we would all be amazing at it at this point but the 6 year old birthday party bet us and we were using the guardrails and they weren't"

Connor smirked but his stomach still turned at the thought of you with the guy in the picture.

"Do you guys have teams based on countries?"

"We mix it up sometimes we do them by bloc, which is the team of countries we create, sometimes we do it by geographic- no you we're not that big of losers, we just bowl. Whats up with you, you never ask questions about the social parts of this stuff" you questioned

"Cause I'm jealous alright cause I thought we had a moment there when I brought you the flowers, and you told me I made you swoon or whatever and then I see this picture of you with this guy who's way more attractive then me. He was hanging off you-" Connor was standing up, pacing now.

"John? You were jealous of John" you stood up now too blocking his path of pacing

"What a dumb fuckin name is John"

"Con listen" a sudden softness in your voice brought Connor back to reality from the space in his head he had gotten i to

"You never call me Con" he matches the softness in your voice as you wrapped your arms around his neck

"I like you idiot" and with that Connor closed the gap in between you two, bringing his lips to yours and wrapping his arms around your waist like you did on that first day of debating class.

#connor murphy x reader #dear evan hansen x reader #evan hansen x reader #jared kleinman x reader #deh x reader #dear evan hansen imagine #connor murphy imagine

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crowwingedangel · 7 years ago

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My vacation, Part 2: Colossalcon!

This is for everyone who keeps asking me how my time going home/at the convention was. Actually, I’m not very good with talking about my emotional reactions and things on the spot… I’m a writer. I do much better writing it out. So that’s what I’m doing now! If you’re one of those people who wanted to know, or are just curious, feel free to look under the cut!

Below is my experience at the convention! It’s long and will have photos, so check it out!

Wednesday

So I got to Kalahari around 5 and parked my car. It was still pretty early, so there was plenty of parking around. I went to check in, only to learn that my room was fairly close to where I parked my car! SCORE!

I then spent some time making trips to the room with my stuff... I brought a bunch of food, since I knew con food is really expensive, and the room itself was a lot... and I had a VIP pass, so this con was costly enough already. Heh... Luckily though, I got all of my stuff in just before the rain showed up!

My friend I was sharing the room with wasn’t going to arrive until Thursday afternoon, so I had this night to myself. I went and registered for the con and got my pass, then I proceeded to walk around... get the layout of the land, as it where. Alas, my phone was pretty full, so I didn’t take lots of pictures of everything I saw... In fact, I only took a few the whole weekend. But a lot of people took photos, so check out the colossalcon tag if you want an idea of what I saw! I wandered around for a while before heading back to the room and deciding to spend the night chilling... I took a nice bath in the giant tub, then spent the evening making a semi-update for Crimson Wings. That mutant class update? Yeah, I made it during this down time. Eventually I went to bed, knowing I’d have a long day following.

Thursday

The con officially began! I took my time waking up in the morning, and decided to explore for a while, waiting for my friend to arrive. I didn’t wear any cosplay that morning, wanting to save it for when she got there, and wanting to look at everything for a while as myself before I changed...

So I went! Not knowing what to do other then look around, I guessed. But luckily, I came across the usual “I need friends” signs that happen at cons. So, seeing as I was alone, I decided, “why not?” I approached, and made some new friends and we all hugged sexy Jesus (yes you just read that). You may have figured out by now that I don’t really like using people’s names on the Internet so... I’ll just say that the two girls had the same name and the guy’s name was my middle name! There, now some of you may know one of their names...

We hung out for a while and met up several times throughout the con! I’m very socially awkward at making friends, so I’m kind of proud that I managed it... But two of them were dressed as two of my favorite twins when I first saw them, so that helped! We went to the game room and played things for a while, mostly team music games. One of them was like a master at them, but we did pretty good as a team!

Eventually went to the craft fair and saw all the cool stuff people had made and were selling. Eventually my friend arrived and we had to split up, but like I said, I kept in contact with these guys after!

So I met up with my friend, the one who basically functions as my editor for my writing... Did you know my writing has an editor? Well, now you do. I helped get her stuff to the room, and while she got settled, I changed into my Edward Elric cosplay. I don’t have any pictures of this cosplay, but a bunch of people took photos of me, so if one turns up, I’ll put it here! We wandered about and I showed her around. And we finally started buying stuff. I got an Non-binary and an Ace-ace patch. I don’t know what I’m going to put them on, but I liked them! I also got one of those ironed-bead sprite Mad Dummy and a small fox pattern pouch... But then of course I finally found the plushies in the dealer room. And there... was a chubby lucario. I made him mine. ...Well, he was always mine, wasn’t he?! He’s actually under my arm right now as I type this! He’s some comfy! Oh, I can take a photo of him right now, can’t I?

Here he is! My fat boi! So chubby and cute, I love him!

Eventually my friend and I made it back to our room and chilled for the rest of the evening, eating snacks and reading webcomics. I’m pretty good and getting my friends into more webcomics, I think... I had her catch up on a pretty long one that night while we listened to the sounds of party around us.

Friday

Friday, oh boy what I day. It was certainly fun and interesting! So, I (and my grandma, she did the sewing part) worked very hard on a cosplay of RGB from The Property of Hate by @modmad.

I think it turned out very well, and you can see more pictures in my post here. But, being summer and all, it was very hot and the head was pretty much and oven. I could only wear it for bursts of 20 minutes to half an hour at a time before I’d need to go back to the room and rest. I still think it looked cool though, and some people recognized who I was so mission accomplished I guess! But also... @modmad, is his vision really as limited from that screen as I could see? Because there is no peripheral vision at all, someone get him a seeing-eye hero!

I wandered about the convention a lot that day sans the head so that I could... be alive, haha. But I bought myself some manga and ordered a commission that I will probably fill you all in more on later once it is made! ;3 (It’s Crimson Wings related.) It’s by the same artist I bought some buttons from a few years back... And I bought more buttons, of course! I needed my snoot-snoot seal!

In the evening, I had my VIP autograph session... I had brought something for most of them (at least the ones I had stuff for, unfortunately I didn’t own anything to bring for the two ladies :C). I knew I was going to be meeting Steve Blum, so I switched into my Terriermon outfit I had made with my grandma. At the session, I met up with the trio of friends from the other day (I had met up with them earlier that day too, but only for a few minutes). We talking in the lines and such while we waited! I got to meet a few awesome people, including Chris Patton, who I caved and bought a Greed poster to have him sign... I love Greed, you guys... I also met Vic Mignogna and had him sign my FMA Brotherhood DVD set, and met Steve Blum and had him sign my Digimon Tamers DVD (he also kept talking in Guilmon’s voice and I was losing it.) My friends also had Vic do the coffee scene from Ouran which you can see on one of their instagrams here! I also got photos with Vic and Steve because I am weak.

Awesomeness.

Then later that night my editor friend and I went to the Kalahari pool for the after hours time we had! We went nearing midnight, and did stuff like the wave pool, the hot tub, and the lazy river for a while. We were about to leave when I ran into the friend trio again, so we went back into the wave pool for a while before finally heading back to the room. It was like 3 in the morning and I had an early Nintendo photoshoot I wanted to get to!

Saturday

Saturday I cosplayed as Pit the whole day. Nintendo had an early photoshoot that day (well, early considering how late we were up that night and how it’d take a while to get dressed. We’re still waiting for all the photos to come out from it, but it’s page is here. And one photo is out at least with me and the other awesome Pit in it!

It was a lot of fun, and all the smash brothers poses and things were a blast and I hope more photos show up soon! Like we beat up Sandbag and there was the smash ball and-... lots of playing around, I hope they turn up. Unfortunately the Zelda shoot was at the same time, so no Zelda or Link for us... what’s up with that?

Anyway, after that my friend and I hung out in the room for a while, needing to relax after being up so early... I showed her some youtube videos and made her laugh so hard she fell off the bed. Good times! Then we headed back to the con and did more shopping around, smaller things like charms and stickers now, and went to some panels. I said good bye to my new trio of friends who were leaving that afternoon, and hopefully they are doing well!

By the evening I had to go to the room a while because I wasn’t feeling great... I actually bought some actual food at the con because the food we had was basically running out and I needed something to settle my stomach. But when we grabbed food we headed to the Masquerade (The skit / cosplay contest) and watched that! I still chuckle that Tony Stark was the host. It was a lot of fun, and the skits were fun, including some really good singers and a Nurse Joy who wanted to become a trainer (that one had some very clever props, just saying). And those cosplays were amazing. Much appreciation. The halftime show was hilarious, our side’s champion two girls beating the other side’s two men at a blind-folded donut eating contest-... It’s a long story, and this is long enough as it is, haha.

After it was over, my friend and I headed back to the room and ended the night watching some youtube.

Sunday

Alas, the con was basically over. I wore my Terriermon cosplay that day since it’s the simplest and isn’t hot. We had to check out by ten, and my friend had to leave at ten, so we basically got up in the morning, packed my car, and parted ways as she was picked up. I stayed a little longer to check out the flee market. I found some good stuff and spend more money (of course! More pokemon plush for me! ...And some really old digimon toys. Nice.) Once I felt I had checked everything out and had basically spent the last of the cash I had brought with me, I headed back out to my car to start my drive to my parent’s house... I arrived, and then had dinner with my family, including my aunt and uncle at a restaurant, then turned in for the night, having to catch an early flight back down here in the morning...

AND that was the con, everyone! It was a lot of fun and I tried to sort out as much as I could here! I hope that helped answer the basic question of how it was! If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask!

#Colossalcon #colossalcon 2018 #My Face #Cosplay #The Crow Caws

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shewhowantsmouseears · 7 years ago

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The Son Of Scheherazade, 9

Notes: As always, big thanks to my amazing editors Drucilla and BlueShifted!

Welcome to the "breather" arc, a filler meant for hilarity before we dive back into the plot. Donald's reaction to Panchito's and Jose's... enthusiasm is kind of like one of those anime cliches where the girl becomes so embarrassed she runs away with her hands on her face. Embrace popularity, Don.

Another anime cliche I had in mind was with Minnie and Lotus Blossom - you remember those old-school anime where rival girls would fire lightning from their eyes? Poor Mickey.

For those not in the know, Lotus Blossom is a comics-only character. Sometimes friend, sometimes foe, always a pain in the butt.

Summary: With Mickey's confidence at an all-time high, he's about to learn arrogance has its price. He's also about to have his first date... but it's not with Minnie!

Mickey would never call himself a patient person, but he was currently waiting calmly in front of Clarabelle and Horace's room with a smile on his face. Panchito and José were at his side, struggling to be as composed as Mickey was and failing, judging by their incessant tapping of feet and fingers itching on Panchito's guitar. Minnie was napping in her lamp – at least, that's what Mickey assumed she was doing, since he didn't see any other purpose for being in there. He definitely wouldn't have guessed Minnie was rolling around trying to handle all the confusing feelings and questions swirling around in her mind.

“Almost done!” Clarabelle's voice called out from inside. “Why, you won't even recognize Donald when I'm done with him.”

“It's not that big a difference, for crying out loud,” said Horace, who was no doubt earning a smack from his wife. Donald could be heard chuckling quietly, which made Mickey pleased beyond measure.

Ever since Donald had first climbed onboard, he had followed Mickey around like a baby bird imprinting on its mother. Mickey hadn't minded at all, happy to show Donald all around the ship and properly reintroduce him to everyone. Donald had been nervous to express any of his natural feelings, out of fear for his powers, but with every passing day he allowed more and more of his real self to emerge. It had finally culminated in him timidly asking Clarabelle for a favor, which she cheerfully obliged.

“And...there! What do you think, Donald?” Clarabelle asked.

A moment of silence followed, and then the doorknob twisted. Donald opened the door and stepped into the hallway, revealing the “big change” - Clarabelle had snipped away his ponytail, and smoothed down his feathers, giving him a much more humble and natural look. It highlighted all the other changes that had taken place since his arrival – the bags under his eyes were gone, and now his stomach was fuller, since he'd been given proper meals and attention. Mickey mused that Donald now looked more like a handsome prince than he did when he thought he was royalty.

“What do you guys think?” Donald asked, scratching his cheek shyly.

“It doesn't matter what we think,” Mickey replied, a hand to his heart. “What matters is what you think, Donald! This is your life now, after all.”

Donald took a moment to consider this, and nodded. “In that case...I like it! I kinda feel more free. Like a burden's off my shoulders! And I'm going to wear different clothing too! No more tight, frilly, fancy stuff! I'm even going to choose my favorite color and everything. I'm a whole new man!” He proudly put his hands on his hips, ready to strut his stuff, when he realized Panchito and José were staring at him dumbly. “...What's with them?”

Mickey raised an eyebrow. “Probably something very silly. Watch yourself.”

Panchito suddenly slammed his hand downwards, creating a loud chord with his guitar, then pointed up in a dramatic fashion. “José!”

“Panchito!” José called back, holding his umbrella out in the same manner a knight would brandish their sword.

“Long have we searched this world for the very thing that has been missing from our souls!”

“Yes, we who are two, we have been incomplete! But we could not tell what we lack!”

“But you who understand me so deeply, you now know what I know, and so you know now!”

“I know now and now know more than anything else I ever known!”

“Can you put a name to this feeling in my heart, the one that calls out in this moment?”

“Of course I can, for I feel it in the very depths of my soul! Say it, my friend, say it!”

Donald was about to ask what in the world they were going on about, when Panchito latched himself onto Donald's left arm. “This can only be... love! Our third caballero!”

José snatched the right arm. “Love and love only! I implore you, dear Donald, to be with us forever and ever!”

Donald's entire face began to redden, and the sunlight that was pouring through the windows began to intensify to a blazing degree. “Wuh-wuh-WHAT ARE YOU TWO TALKING ABOUT?!” Oh, this was the feeling called embarrassment.

“I think they like you,” Mickey said mildly, by now used to the bird's bizarre antics.

“We love him!” Panchito agreed, pressing his cheek to Donald's. “Come, we shall drink and be merry and make you a part of our life forevermore!”

“We shall sing songs and dance and introduce you to everything about this world we live in!” José took the other cheek. “We shall be your constant companions, your loyal servants, your wingmen! … See, it's funny, because we're birds.”

Donald, who had never heard a genuine compliment in his whole life, was wholly unprepared for the instant adoration thrust upon him. He covered his face with his hands and ran down the hallway, with the two nutjobs giving chase. “WAUUUUGH!”

“Look at how fast he goes, José, already bragging about his superior speed!”

“Praise be unto Donald, for he is mighty and amazing in all he does!”

Horace finally poked his head out of the doorway. “Oh, that's going to be fun to adjust to.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

Mickey chuckled nervously, unsure if he should help or not. “Well, at least they won't constantly be asking for stories from me anymore.” He had been delaying that every chance he got, knowing he had nothing in his head that could compare to his mother's marvelous imagination. “I just hope Donald's emotions don't crash the ship before we land. How long until we reach Khade Town?”

With the crew having to adjust to another member, especially one with potentially destructive powers, Goofy had deemed it necessary to make a stop at nearby town to get extra supplies. “Should be less than an hour!” the captain himself declared, walking down the hallway, having just barely dodged the parade of birds that were now running up and down the ship. “We should be done in a day or two, maybe even shorter if we don't run into any distractions.”

“Like Mickey picking up another friend,” Clarabelle continued, giving Mickey a small smirk.

Mickey crossed his arms defensively. “It's not my fault we keep running into people who need our help! Besides, Minnie and Donald are going to help us out in my journey to get my parents back. Maybe we could even find another helpful person in the town!”

“Look kid,” Horace walked out of the room. “I'll admit, so far your knack of chronic hero syndrome has worked out for the better... but it's not always gunna be that way. Sometimes we can't save everyone, and sometimes not everyone deserves saving. You gotta be ready for people to take advantage of that big heart of yours.”

“I think I can take care of myself pretty darn well.” Mickey turned his head away. Shoot, he'd already been in some epic battles and used his strength and smarts to get out of them. He could take on any challenge that headed his way! And even better, his victories had nothing to do with him being the Son of Scheherazade. His heart would never steer him wrong! He was the hero of the story, and the hero was always right!

“We shouldn't run into too much trouble,” Goofy interrupted, trying to stop an argument from occurring. “It's a pretty small town... the only notable thing about it is a shrine to some gods from the north. Other than that, it's your average, run-of-the-mill kinda place. So we probably won't find anyone in life-threatening danger or folks with magical powers or villains with evil schemes to take over the world.”

“Boy, wouldn't that be nice,” Horace groaned.

“Don't be such a coward, Horace!” Mickey held his chin up, and began to head back to his room, full of confidence and swagger. “We can take on anything that comes our way! I ain't afraid of anything!” If he had heard this line of dialogue from one of his mother's stories, he would have immediately assumed that the hero of that tale was going to eat his words by the story's end. But now Mickey was drunk on his own spirit, unable to conceive his own failings. He was the hero who rescued the genie, who freed the prince of storms!

What could the world toss at him that he couldn't handle?

~*~

The ship “landed” a few miles outside of the town, anchored in by small rocky mountains. Once again, Pluto stayed behind to guard the ship, and the rest of the crew was split into groups. Panchito and José insisted on showing Donald around, and Donald allowed it if they stopped singing for several seconds. Goofy, Clarabelle, and Horace would be the second group, and Mickey and Minnie would be the last group – although Horace objected to this, insisting Mickey should stay with him, due to his attitude.

“I don't need a babysitter,” Mickey insisted as the groups walked into town, the birds already going in a different, loud direction. “Tell 'em, Minnie, didn't I do great at Donald's kingdom?”

Minnie gave him a curt look. “Is that a wish?” She had quickly settled back into her snide routine, not wanting to entertain the warm, weird thoughts the last adventure had brought her. Okay, so, Mickey was a decent enough fellow, but that just meant his darkness was hiding deeper than most people's did. He was not an exceptional, extraordinary being. Sure, maybe he was the tiniest bit clever, and perhaps the smallest bit generous, but in the end he would be the same as all her other masters. Not that she cared when this happened. Because she didn't. At all. Just like she didn't care how much Mickey was so-called “in love” with her, which he wasn't, he just liked her looks, and not her personality, because genies don't have personalities, they are tools, and so by that logic, Mickey didn't really love her and so Minnie really didn't care SHE ABSOLUTELY DID NOT CARE SO STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.

Mickey rolled his eyes, oblivious to Minnie's inner nonsense. “Thanks, Minnie.” He would have explained further, but his big black ears picked up an odd sound.

It was something the others didn't pick up on, especially Horace. “Kid, I'm just trying to look out for you.” He closed his eyes, drawing upon years of experience. “You've been cooped up in a palace all your life, so you don't know the cruelties of the world! In a year's time, I bet you'll be thanking me for all my help. All you have to do is... he ran off while I was talking, didn't he.”

“Yes, yes he did.” Minnie pointed to the cloud of dust that had once been Mickey.

“Kid's gunna age me twenty years,” Horace groaned.

“Aw, let's just go shopping like we planned!” Goofy insisted. “We gotta buy some lemons so we don't get sky-scurvy.”

As Clarabelle yelled at Goofy for the tenth time that sky-scurvy was not something that existed, Minnie took it upon herself to look for her wayward master. What had distracted him?

The rapid sound of footsteps, that's what – Mickey had weaved himself through an open alleyway, and that's when he caught the origin of the sound. Three burly, tall, masked men were chasing a young woman who was carrying a wrapped bundle in her arms. Startled villagers ducked out of the way, frightened by the display.

“Get back here!” One of the men shouted, full of anger and spit. “There's nowhere you can run!”

Mickey instantly decided he knew what was happening – those three bullies were trying to rob that woman! So much for peace, quiet, and boredom. Looks like it was time for the Son of Scheherazade – no, Mickey the Hero, to write another exciting chapter! He looked around the area, trying to think of a solution – as much as he wanted to leap into the heap of battle, he didn't like the odds of one against three. The entire group was coming up, and if he didn't act fast, they'd all pass him.

What could he do, what could he use? He quickly surveyed the area – a humble food market, full of yummy fruits and vegetables, such as bananas, apples, and oranges – round oranges! Mickey ripped off a satchel of coins from his belt. “Hope this'll pay for everything!” He shouted to the shopkeep who had probably hidden inside by now, and he tossed the satchel inside the building – before taking out his scabbard and hacking away the legs of the fruit stand, causing it to crack and break, sending the oranges spilling into the street.

The timing had been perfect – the woman managed to avoid the spill, but the three men now found themselves tripping and rolling over the mess beneath their feet.

“Hey!”

“Whoa!”

“Dude, I JUST washed my robes this morning!”

While they tried to regain their balance, Mickey dashed ahead to the woman's side, having an idea for one more trick. “Here, this way!” He grabbed her wrist, which is when she finally noticed him, giving him a surprised, puzzled expression. He pulled her into another alleyway, spun her around, dipped her low, and took off one of her pointy yellow sandals, and then chucked the shoe across the street. Once the action was done, he held up a finger for silence, while the woman blinked at him. Mickey would later realize she had been awfully calm all the while.

The trio of attackers managed to finally find their footing, catching up to the alleyway. The leader of the group stopped them, pointing at the shoe. “Look! She must have gone this way!”

“Excellent finding, bro-ski. Don't worry, we'll find her!” said the smallest of the group.

“Only when we find ourselves, can we find another,” said the largest of the group.

They then took off ahead, believing they were right on their victim's tail. Mickey waited until he could no longer see them to let go of the girl – to be frank he wasn't sure how much longer he could have held her, given that she was two heads taller than he was. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he could get a good look at her.

She was a pretty thing, he supposed, the kind of prettiness that other men would find beautiful but simply not Mickey's type. Her long black hair was tied up in a high ponytail with bright orange flowers, and a pair of golden earrings hung in round circles, rocking back and forth whenever she moved her head. Her deep blue top had yellow lining, exposing her pale arms that apparently could carry heavier things than one would think, given how large the bundle in those arms was. Her blue dress had noticeable slits that revealed shapely long legs. Curious dark eyes studied him, and she finally smiled, curling a lose hair behind her small ear. “You saved my life!”

Mickey placed his sword back in its scabbard. “Aw, it was nothing.” He replied with a puff of his chest. “It's just what us heroes are made to do. Are you all right?”

“I am now, thanks to you.” She held the wrapped bundle close to her chest. “I was trying to get my precious family heirloom home, when those thugs corned me! I thought I was a goner until you arrived! May I know the name of my brave hero!”

“I am Prince Mickey, the Son of Scheherazade!” Mickey only realized what he'd said when it was too late, and he resisted the urge to slap his forehead. “But... uh... just 'Mickey' will do.” Shoot. He was so conditioned to that title it came out as natural as breathing.

The woman's eyes took on an intense glitter. “Prince?” she repeated, before putting the heirloom on the ground and bowing low, hands on the ground. “I am not worthy to be in your presence, your highness.”

“What?!” Mickey jumped, and then raced over to grab her hands. “No, no, stop that! It's not like that at all! You don't have to do anything like that! I just wanted to help you, I don't want any special treatment.”

“Please forgive me, then... I have never been with someone so important.” The woman didn't pull her hands away from Mickey's. “My name is Lotus Blossom. How can I ever repay you for your kindness?”

“I don't need any kind of payment, really!” Mickey now tried pulling his hands away, but my, she had an awfully tight grip on him. “Listen, Lotus, if those guys are still out and about, maybe I should walk you home so they can't get their hands on you.”

“Your generosity truly knows no bounds, Mickey. But now I carry a burden with me, if you can't allow me the simple act of returning a kindness. How will I sleep at night with this guilt? Can't I be allowed one simple thing?” She raised a hand to touch his cheek, leaning in and lightly whimpering.

“Ah... well...” When she put it that way, it did seem harder to deny her. “I... I guess if you really want to, it'd be rude if I said no. Doesn't have to be anything big, though.”

“Oh, thank you, your highness!” Lotus suddenly threw her arms around Mickey, drawing him close to her plump chest. Mickey jerked, but he didn't want to insult her by backing up. His cheeks burned, and he tried to patiently wait out the hug and praise, eyes darting around for a proper place to rest his eyes. Like the sky, or the walls, or Minnie -

… Or Minnie standing in the alleyway staring at Mickey as he was pushed into the bosom of a pretty woman.

“NOTWHATITLOOKSLIKENOTWHATITLOOKSLIKE-” Mickey yelled loudly, his words so smashed together that no one understood what it was he was trying to say, jumping backwards and landing on his butt. Forget Mortimer the Magnificent or Donald's storms, this was as close to death as he ever felt!

Lotus frowned, and then looked in the direction Mickey was flailing at. “...Can we help you?” Her sweet voice now turned sour.

Minnie looked at Lotus, looked Mickey, then back to Lotus. “I was merely searching for my Master, and I have found him. That's all.” An average onlooker wouldn't have noticed the fire in Minnie's eyes or the aura of wrath all around her, but Mickey sure did, and he hoped one of the laws the genies had to follow was to not murder their masters. “Come, Master, we should return to the duties the Captain gave us.”

“Uh,” said Mickey, which for the moment all he was capable of saying.

“Right now?” Lotus put her attention back on Mickey, taking his hand with both of hers. “But I haven't properly thanked you yet! And what about those vicious men who are after me? You said you would help me.”

“Uh,” said Mickey again.

“My Master has his orders to follow, and can't afford to waste any time helping every single person he meets.” Minnie began to walk towards Mickey, and grabbed his other hand. “I'm sure this woman can find her own way home. She is an adult, not a child.”

“Uhhh.”

“Why yes, I am.” Lotus smiled, with a hint of fang to it. “Are you saying you're an adult too? I'm surprised, since you certainly have the body of a child...”

“UHHH.”

Now Minnie was glaring hellfire at Lotus and got it back in turn. “My looks have nothing to do with my Master returning to where he is supposed to be!”

“If he really is your master, then he should be able to make his own decisions, shouldn't he? You sound awfully bossy for a slave.”

“And you sound awfully attached for someone he just met. Why can't you find someone else to take you home?”

“He saved my life, of course I trust him!”

“He saves everyone's life, that's what he does!”

“Why don't you back off, tiny?”

“WHY DON'T YOU BACK OFF?!”

“WHY DON'T YOU MAKE ME?!”

Mickey had finally gathered enough bravery and strength to whistle high enough so both women stopped. “Listen... I have no idea what you two are doing, but that's gotta stop.” He cleared his throat, starting over. “Yes, I do have duties to fulfill, but Lotus Blossom was in trouble. I can't ignore people when they need help! And she says she won't be comfortable unless she repays me. So I'll take her home, and then she can repay me, and then I'll return to my duties. Everyone okay with that?”

Minnie “hmph”ed, but then glanced away. “...I suppose it is a matter of honor.”

Lotus clapped. “Wonderful, we're all in agreement! And I know exactly how to repay you, your highness! It will be something you and I both enjoy! And it's the only thing I want to give you, so you can't say no.” Was it Minnie's imagination or did this sound rather planned and rehearsed?

Mickey merely nodded. “Sounds fair. So, what is it?”

Lotus took Mickey's hand again for a big squeeze. “A date!”

“... A date?” Mickey repeated in disbelief.

“A date?” Minnie repeated in equal lack of belief.

“A date!” Lotus finished, now standing up and gathering the heirloom into her arm. “Oh, it'll be so much fun! We'll have a great time together! A hero and the damsel in distress he saved, together... isn't it romantic?” She then paused in her glee, noticing Mickey wasn't celebrating, and she eyed Minnie suspiciously. “Unless you two are...?”

“Oh, no, uh, she's, no.” Mickey fumbled, airily trying to gesture what he himself was barely figuring out. “She's... well... my friend? I mean, we've never... you know...?”

“I must say, that is a relief!” Lotus chirped, giggling. “There are some truly despicable masters out there.”

“NO, NO! I would never do anything like that!” Mickey said realizing what she meant, and then felt he just had to add, “I don't think I would be comfortable even kissing Minnie now.”

Now, Mickey was still trying to work out the tricks and oddities of romance. So he was fairly clueless why Minnie's jaw had dropped and she looked ready to either burst into tears or strangle him. “Comf...Comfortable?” She said shakily, her body twitching, fingers clenching. “You think the idea of kissing me is uncomfortable?”

Mickey blinked, knowing he was digging himself deeper yet unable to understand why he had the shovel. “Well, sure. Wouldn't anyone feel that way?” Lotus Blossom grinned, enjoying the show.

“Youuuu...” Minnie stretched the vowel out, shaking harder with anger. What happened to the dopey, goo-goo-eyed boy who had been drooling over her when she was on stage? Was she that repulsive now that she was a genie? What was so uncomfortable about kissing her?! Had he been uncomfortable when she kissed him on the cheek ages ago? NO SIR, THAT STUPID BOY HAD ENJOYED IT! “You, you, you...” She sucked air in through her teeth, her tail curling up behind her. “Well... I'm SO SORRY that I make you so UNCOMFORTABLE, MASTER!” Mickey had never heard her shout so loudly, and was literally floored, reeling on his back. “DON'T ALLOW ME TO MAKE YOU ANYMORE UNCOMFORTABLE! ENJOY YOUR DATE!”

Minnie then stormed off, her feet stomping so hard one could swear she was leaving footprints that would last a lifetime. Fine! FINE! Let him have his fun! He really just was like all the others! Let that harlot take him so they could cuddle and coo and KISS and have COMFORTABLE kisses! What did she matter? She was only a genie, and genies weren't supposed to entertain any thoughts about their master besides sheer obedience. It was her own fault for feeling this way.

As for Mickey, he still laid there, trying to process everything. “...Wha'happen?” he mumbled, as if he'd been run over by a wild stampede of elephants.

“I'll show you the way home!” Lotus took Mickey by the hand and began to drag him away, not caring if he ever got up to walk. “Then we can plan our date! I simply can't wait!”

Then Mickey thought the one thing no hero in a story should ever think – At least it can't get any worse.

#disney #fanfic #the son of scheherazade #mickey mouse #minnie mouse #donald duck #goofy #clarabelle cow #horace hosecollar #panchito pistoles #jose carioca

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klaineanummel · 7 years ago

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Story of My Life 5/24

Kurt reflects on the past twelve years of his life, coming to realize that one man in particular has affected him far more than he ever thought he would.

This part is coming a day late, oops, but I’m hoping to write chapter 6 soon, so hopefully I’ll be back on track by the end of the day! This chapter is a little longer than the rest and includes what may seem like unnecessary exposition, but trust me, it’s really important for the next part, and for another part in the future.

Also, there are WARNINGS for this chapter: angst near the end, and mentions of first time sex in less than ideal circumstances (just a brief mention, but just in case). Oh, and Kurt/Adam, if anybody is worried about that.

Thank you all so much for your amazing comments, and thank you to the wonderful people behind @klaineadvent for running this awesome event! I’m having so much fun both writing this fic and reading/seeing all the amazing stuff being created by others <3

Attachment | Bucket | Collapse | Drink |

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December 23rd, 2013

As if Kurt wasn’t already in the best possible mood, he opens the door to his apartment to find that Christmas had exploded inside. Tinsel, ornaments, and lights cover every single inch of the apartment, including its residents.

Cooper is throwing loose pieces of tinsel onto the tree, much of which is ending up on him. Tina has several ornaments hanging from her sweater, and is busying herself with setting the table. Adam and Blaine are sitting on the couch, each with a crown made of tinsel wrapped around their heads, working on napkin origami. Kurt can’t see Elliott, but he would bet anything that he has some form of Christmas decoration on some unusual part of his body.

He closes the door quietly, almost not wanting to disturb the cozy, domestic scene around him. He knows he won’t be able to stay silent long, the desire to tell his friends about his amazing day ready to burst out of him, but for now he stands back and watches. It’s not often he gets to do that with this particular group of people.

“This is stupid,” Blaine says, scowling and tossing a crumpled-up napkin onto the coffee table in front of him. “I’m never going to get this right.”

“Hey, no,” Adam says, putting a hand on Blaine’s shoulder. He leans forward and picks up the discarded napkin, smoothing out the fabric to rid it of creases. “Here, let me show you.”

Kurt smiles softly as he watches his boyfriend slowly walk through the steps of turning a fabric napkin into a rose for Blaine. It’s such a stark contrast to how his last boyfriend, Chandler, had reacted to the boy, and reminds Kurt yet again how lucky he is to have Adam in his life.

“Just like that,” Adam finishes, holding a beautiful rose-shaped napkin in his palm. “You want to try again?”

Blaine huffs but nods, picking up another napkin. He starts work on it, and Adam watches carefully, only stepping in twice when Blaine makes a mistake.

It only takes about two minutes before Blaine is holding a near-perfect rose napkin in his own hand, grinning widely at his accomplishment.

“There you go, see? I told you you could do it!” Adam grins, patting Blaine on the back. Blaine grins up at him, then looks toward the door and catches sight of Kurt.

“Kurt!” he says happily, standing up and bounding toward him. “Check this out,” he holds the napkin out for Kurt, who smiles down at it.

“That’s amazing, Blaine,” Kurt says, Blaine’s excitement absolutely contagious. “Think you can teach me how to do it?”

Blaine instantly shakes his head, though his smile remains. “No way, Adam’ll have to show you. He’s so cool, he knows how to make all sorts of stuff out of napkins!”

“A hidden talent,” Adam says, walking over to Kurt and greeting him with a light peck on the lips. “Welcome to the Christmas Chaos, darling. How was work?”

“Oh, yeah, how was work?” Blaine asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I still can’t believe you work at Saks, Kurt, it must be so awesome. Did you meet anybody famous today?”

Kurt chuckles, finally getting out of his coat. “Actually, I did,” he says, loving the way both Blaine and Adam’s jaws drop. “You know Isabelle Wright?”

Adam’s, “Who?” overlaps with Blaine’s, “Are you serious?!”

Kurt laughs, but nods at Blaine, who turns to Adam and says, “She’s only the editor of Vogue.com and one of the most visionary fashion designers since Gianni Versace!”

“Oh, so a big deal then?” Adam asks, sending Kurt a wink. Blaine shakes his head, as though unable to believe Adam’s words.

“Yes, a big deal! Oh, my god, Kurt, I can’t believe you met her! Tell me all about her, please!”

“Well—” Kurt starts, but is interrupted by Elliott stepping out of the kitchen, a giant ham on a tray in hand.

“Alright, this shit is done,” he announces. “Give me two minutes to mash the potatoes and we’ll be good to go.”

“We’re still waiting for Kurt,” Tina says, having joined Cooper at the tree.

Elliott frowns, then nods to where Kurt, Adam, and Blaine are standing. “He’s right there, you weirdo.”

“Oh!” Tina turns and blushes a little at the sight of him. “Sorry, Kurt, didn’t even hear you come in.”

Kurt waves her off, then is pulled back into his conversation by Blaine grabbing his hand and pulling him toward him. “Kurt, tell me about Isabelle Wright, I’m literally dying.”

Kurt chuckles, but nods. “Okay, so, she came in looking for a dress that a friend of hers wanted for Christmas. I obviously latched onto her the second I saw her, and was able to identify the dress based on a couple of descriptors she gave me. Apparently, she was impressed by it, because she told me that I should apply for Vogue.com’s summer internship program!”

“Holy shit, Kurt,” Adam says, eyes wide. “Even I know that’s amazing.”

“Amazing doesn’t even cover it,” Blaine says, arms going up in the air. “Kurt, you’re going to work for Vogue!”

“I’m going to apply for an internship at Vogue dot com,” Kurt corrects.

“Yeah, that Isabelle Wright told you to apply for,” Blaine says, shaking his head a little like he can’t believe how cavalier Kurt is being about this. “You’re totally going to work for Vogue.”

Kurt cracks a smile. “We’ll see, okay? It’s still a long way away, and right now I’m more focused on getting Saks to keep me on past the holidays.”

“You’re going to work for Vogue,” Blaine just repeats. “I can’t believe I know someone who is going to work for Vogue.”

“Seriously, babe,” Adam says, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him close. “That’s amazing news. I’m so happy for you.”

Kurt feels warm at the praise and tilts his head up slightly, asking for a kiss. Adam complies, fitting their lips together easily.

They separate at the sound of an irritated Cooper clearing his throat. He is suddenly in front of them, with one hand covering Blaine’s eyes. “Could you please stop making out in front of my kid brother? My parents sent him here for some family friendly fun, not to be forced to watch a live porn show.”

Kurt blushes, Adam chuckles, and Blaine lets out a long and whiney, “Cooper,” as he shoves Cooper’s hand away. Blaine glances up at Kurt, then blushes as well, and scurries after Cooper, who is walking back toward the Christmas tree, laughing as he goes.

“Sorry,” Adam whispers. “I know you said we should keep the PDA to a minimum in front of Blaine. I’m just so happy for you.”

Kurt shrugs and lets Adam pull him into a side-hug. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I get it. I was basically begging for you to kiss me,” he slides slightly closer to Adam. “As I always am.”

Adam chuckles again. Kurt glances over to the tree, finding Blaine glancing over at them. The boy ducks his head and quickly turns back to where he’s trying to stop Cooper from burying the tree under tinsel.

“You know, it’s kind of cute,” Adam says quietly, and Kurt looks up to see that he is also looking over at Blaine.

“What is?”

“His crush on you,” he says, nodding in Blaine’s direction.

Kurt blushes again. “It’s harmless,” he says. “He’s just a kid, and I’m the first gay man he ever met. He’ll get over it.”

“Well, until he does, you have to admit that it’s pretty adorable.”

Kurt glances over at Blaine, and sees him sneak another glance at Kurt and Adam. Kurt smiles at him, loving the way Blaine smiles back and then turns back to the tree.

“Okay, yeah,” Kurt admits. “It’s pretty cute.”

Since everybody except Tina went home for Thanksgiving this year, they take the opportunity to go around the table and say what they are thankful for, even if this is technically a Christmas Eve’s Eve dinner.

Tina starts with, “I’m thankful that so many of you could stay in town for Christmas, since I basically died of boredom over Thanksgiving. I’m also thankful for Kurt and Cooper, who were willing to room with me this year and saved me from the horrors of living with Rachel and Brody.”

Kurt glances over at Cooper and finds him looking down at his plate, clearly uncomfortable at the mention of Rachel’s live-in boyfriend.

Elliott goes next, saying, “I’m also thankful for Kurt, my first class-friend who turned into an outside-of-class-friend, and who introduced me to all you wonderful people,” he grins. “It’s been an amazing semester, and I just know that next year will be even better.”

Cooper is next, and he clears his throat before saying, “I’m thankful that Elliott is our friend now, because he’s the only one of us who can actually cook.”

Everyone laughs, and Tina chides him with a gentle, “Don’t let Mercedes hear you say that!”

Once they all calm down a little, Adam says, “I’m thankful that you were all willing to have the big dinner today instead of tomorrow or on Christmas, so that I could be included.” He turns to Kurt and smiles at him. “I’m also thankful for Kurt, and for the amazing three months he and I have shared together.”

Kurt smiles shyly. “You’re all going to give me a huge head, thanking me so much,” he says. “I’m thankful for all of you. I’m thankful for Tina and Cooper, for being the most amazing roommates a guy could ask for. I’m thankful for Elliott, for lending me a pen on our first day of class, and for not thinking I was weird when I asked him to get coffee,” Elliott winks at him at that, and Tina laughs. “I’m thankful for Blaine, too, for choosing to spend Christmas with us instead of going on a cruise with his parents,” Blaine blushes next to him. “And, finally, I’m thankful for my amazing boyfriend, Adam, who proves to me every day that not every gay man in New York is either a jealous freak, or just interested in something casual.”

“Here, here,” Elliott says, raising a glass. He winks at Kurt again, and says, “We’re my Adam, huh?”

Kurt chuckles and says, “Sorry, this one is snatched up.”

They all turn to Blaine, who shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Um, I’m thankful that you’re all willing to include me in these celebrations. You, uh, always make me feel like I’m part of the group whenever I come visit, so just… yeah.”

“Oh, honey,” Tina coos, reaching across the table and taking Blaine’s hand. “You are part of the group.”

“Of course you are,” Kurt assures. “Always and forever, okay?”

Blaine smiles and nods, cheeks flushing red.

“Okay, well, enough of the sap,” Cooper says, clapping his hands together. “Let’s fucking eat already!”

Everybody agrees loudly, and without further ado, they tuck in.

After dinner, Tina and Adam volunteer to do the clean-up, which nobody fights them on. Blaine whispers something in Cooper’s ear, and the brother’s disappear into Cooper’s room. Elliott falls onto the couch, lying with his hands on his stomach, and Kurt joins him, hands coming to his own too-full stomach.

“That was amazing, Elliott,” he says, leaning back. “Like, too amazing. Why aren’t you studying to be a professional chef?”

“Because obviously finance is my passion,” Elliott replies, rolling his eyes. “And unfortunately there is no option to major in finance and minor in cooking, so my hobby of creative writing won out.”

“Well, thank god it did, or we never would have met.”

“What a tragedy that would be,” Elliott says with a chuckle. He glances over to the kitchen, then says, “Adam seems to be taking to Blaine quite well.”

Kurt sighs happily. Elliott is the only person he confided his concerns about Adam and Blaine meeting in, admitting he was nervous that there might be a Chandler repeat situation. “I can’t believe I ever thought he’d act as childish and ridiculous as Chandler,” Kurt says, shaking his head. “I should trust my boyfriend more, huh?”

“You should,” Elliott replies. He raises an eyebrow and, quieter, asks, “Speaking of trusting your boyfriend…”

“Stop,” Kurt says, cheeks heating up. “It’s Christmas, Elliott.”

“Exactly. It’s Christmas. How romantic would that be?”

“I hate you,” Kurt grumbles. “I can’t believe I talk to you about this stuff.”

“Who else would you talk to? Your other plethora of gay friends?” Kurt opens his mouth, but Elliott holds his hand up and says, “Save it. I know the only other gay friend you have is Blaine, and you’re not about to talk to a fourteen-year-old about whether or not you should sleep with your boyfriend.”

Kurt huffs. “Fine, you’re right, but still. I’ve had an amazing day, and I don’t need it brought down by your reminders of what a prude I am.”

“Waiting for the right time doesn’t make you a prude, Kurt,” Elliott says. He raises an eyebrow and then says, “Finding the right person, having it be the right time, and still not doing it? That makes you a prude.”

“Whatever,” Kurt says, blushing. “Maybe I am a prude, so what?” He glances at the kitchen again, then says, “Look, I know I want it to be Adam, I just… it’s not right yet, you know?”

“Kurt, I lost my virginity when I was sixteen in a gas station bathroom. No, I don’t know.”

Kurt stares at him for a second. “Have I ever told you how much that depresses me?”

“Yes, every time I bring it up,” Elliott says. “Look, I promise I’ll stop, I just… I feel like you and Adam have something really good. I don’t want you to hold yourself back.”

“I’m not, I promise,” he says. “And I promise that we can have a more serious talk about this some other time, because right now, I really have to pee.”

Elliott barks out a laugh and calls out, “So sexy, Kurt!” as Kurt hops up and dashes to the bathroom.

Once he’s relieved himself, Kurt washes his hands and then goes to head back for the living room, but stops when he hears Blaine and Cooper’s voices coming from Cooper’s room.

“I’m just saying,” that’s Cooper, “if it’s too hard for you, I can ask them to stop for real.”

“It’s fine, I swear,” that’s Blaine.

“No, it’s not fine. I can see it on your face every time they so much as bump shoulders.”

Blaine groans loudly and says, “I never should have told you about this.”

“No, it’s good, I’m glad you did,” Cooper assures. “Seriously, though, do you need me to tell them to stop?”

“No, Cooper,” Blaine says. “It’s… yeah, it hurts to see the guy I’m pretty sure is my soulmate all over someone else, but—” he stops, and Kurt’s heart clenches in his chest.

Cooper’s voice is so soft, Kurt barely hears it through the door. “Oh, Blaine.”

“Never mind,” Blaine says. “Forget it, forget I said that. Obviously it doesn’t matter, because I’m just a dumb fourteen-year-old, and Adam is like, mature and an adult, so why would he ever want to be with me, right? Just forget it.”

He hears footsteps, so Kurt hurries back to the bathroom, shutting the door as quickly (and quietly) as possible. As soon as the bathroom door is closed he hears Cooper’s bedroom door open, and Cooper call out, “Blaine, come on.” Kurt listens carefully, and then opens the door a few moments later.

Cooper is still standing in front of his door, hands in his hair. “Hey, Cooper,” Kurt says, trying to slow the beating of his heart. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Cooper nods. “Just brother stuff, it’s fine.”

Kurt nods, and the two head back into the living room together, Kurt all too aware of the awkwardness hanging over their heads.

When they get there, Kurt’s eyes instantly find Blaine, who is sitting next to the tree, staring up at it longingly. He turns as though feeling Kurt’s gaze, and smiles softly when he sees it’s Kurt staring. Kurt forces a smile back, heart cracking in his chest.

His father’s words from the first day he met Blaine ring in his ears, warning him not to hurt Blaine. He presses his lips together, trying to forget Blaine telling Cooper that he thinks Kurt is his soulmate.

Don’t hurt him.

Yeah, a little too late for that.

Part Six: Fraction

#klaine advent 2017 #klaine advent: example #klaine fic #klaine au #klaineaummel fic #multi chapter #fic: soml

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