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eand47 · 3 months ago

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Chapter I | Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Cry Baby

Summary: You moved to one of the biggest cities in the world - Grand Line to pursue filmmaking career. Soon enough your path will cross with the vocalist of upcoming band called “The Neighbourhood”. At first you decided to be just friends - because it would be easier, but sadly as everything in life sometimes by taking the easy path we regret a lot of things.

Main characters: Portgas D Ace x Reader (female)

Supporting characters: Nami, Usopp, Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Law, Deuce, Shanks, Buggy, Sabo, Eustass Kid (more to be add)

Description: Modern AU | Musician Ace

WARNINGS: None for this chapter.

Word Count: 4,5K

story masterlist | main masterlist | next chapter ->

NOTE: This is my first time writing a fanfic. English is not my first language so please if there are some mistakes let me know. The whole fanfic was mostly inspired by the song “Flawless” by The Neighbourhood and today as I was feeling nostalgic for the 2014/2016 Tumbler Era I was listening to them and something made me think of Ace (as I think about him 25/8) and I just imagine him singing these songs therefore that is why I named the story “The Neighbourhood”. So I hope you all will enjoy the journey that I will try to write down as good as possible. Most of the chapters will be inspired by songs by The Neighbourhood. I don’t own any of the characters and everything is fiction! This chapter was inspired by the song “Cry Baby” listen to it when you see it mentioned if you want to get to “experience” the story. Enjoy ♡

Grand Line – one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world. Most people who moved here did it to chase a dream, those who were born and raised here carry themselves differently. Autumn has come and the chilly weather could be felt by everyone. The streets were already full of people – some going to work, others to school, and the lucky ones were just enjoying a nice walk around the parks or a warm coffee with a friend. The ringing of my phone woke me up. I picked it up without checking who was calling me.

“What?” I groaned.

“Hey, there.” The voice from the other end sounded cheerful as always. “How is my favorite niece doing?”

“Shanks I’m your only niece, and this line is getting kinda old don’t you think?” I scoffed at him.

“I just make sure you always know this.” He chuckled.

“Yeah, yeah sure. Now tell me why you are calling me so early in the morning?”

“Don’t you have classes?” He asked sternly.

“I do but not until 1PM. So, shoot, why are you bothering your one and only favorite niece for?” I mocked him.

“I hope you don’t have any plans for tonight as I need some extra help at the bar. There is this new local band that is going to perform tonight and they sold out so fast the bar is going to be full, so I would really appreciate some extra help.”

“It’s not like I really have plans, but still can’t you find someone else to help?” I wasn’t in the mood for work tonight, especially in my uncle’s busy bar.

“If I had I wouldn’t have bother to ask you.” He said and then added. “I will pay you double if you come.”

“Oh you should of start with this.” I laughed.

“I should count on you to come then?” He asked me seriously.

“Yes, Shanks I will be there just let me know what time.”

“Well they will start playing around 10PM so be here at latest at 9PM, okay foxy?” he has been using this nickname for me since I was a kid.

“Okay, see you then. Bye Shanks” I didn’t even bother to wait for his goodbye as I hung up.

I looked at the clock next to my bed and it showed me that it’s 9:38AM so I decided to get up and get ready for the day. I have recently started studying Filmmaking as I took one gap year as I wasn’t really sure what I would like to pursue as a career, but I have always loved filming, so I took the chance and got into a Filmmaking program. With taking the program, I also moved from my hometown so now I live alone, and I love it, even though I miss my dad. But at least I have my uncle close to me.

The love I have for movies comes from my dad. He is quite popular comedian known as – Buggy the Clown. His stand-up shows are always sold out and he knows how to make people laugh. Another thing he is quite recognized for is this big bright fake red nose that he always wears in his shows, and he always tells people how much his daughter hates it. On the other hand, Shanks is not really my biological uncle, but him and my dad are like brothers. Ever since my mother left us, Shanks has been always the one to help my father take care of me. Shanks has been like a second father to me, when I moved to Grand Line, Shanks even invited me to live with him, but I declined his offer as I wanted to start living on my own. My apartment wasn’t big - it was just a one room apartment, but it was perfect for a “broke” student. My dad and Shanks loved to make fun of it, calling it “the foxy cave”, but I didn’t really pay attention to them as they have always loved to tease me.

I decided to not waste my time laying in bed, so I started to get ready for the day – after I brushed my teeth and did my make up, I looked around my messy wardrobe thinking what to wear today. It was already Autumn so the weather can be quite tricky. I decided to go for some sheer black tights, with a denim skirt and a black polo shirt as I added a lot of silver jewelries to the outfit – I finished it off with some knee length black boots and an oversized bomber jacket. I grabbed my bag and I double checked if I took everything with me and the most important thing - my laptop.

I still have two hours left before my classes start so I decided to go to my favorite coffee shop. It was close to my university, a hidden gem for people who like to escape the noise from the busy streets as it usually was not very busy. As I entered, I went and left my bag and jacket in my favorite corner in the coffee shop, exactly next to the big windows as the lighting was perfect there and I loved to just sit sometimes with my back facing them as I just enjoyed the cozy atmosphere of the coffee shop.

“One black coffee, please.” I went and ordered my coffee to the barista, who at this point recognized me as a regular customer. I paid for it as they handed me the coffee and went to sit back down.

I took my seat and opened my laptop as I started to think how I should continue with my script for this week’s assignment. I was so deep in thoughts and work as I didn’t realize I’m almost out of battery. When I opened my bag, I realized that my laptop charger was not there and then it hit me that I forgot it at home.

“No, no, no, nooo” I got up from the chair as I started to look around just in case, but I cursed myself for being so forgetful all the time. “Fuck” I said out loud, a little louder than I intended to. I looked up embarrassed to see if someone heard me, only to see this old woman giving me a disappointed look as she heard me cursing to which I mouthed “sorry”. I saw a guy sitting on the table next to my left side, and noticed he had the same laptop as me so I decided to ask him if I could borrow his charger.

The guy was sitting a little slouched as he was humming to himself as he was tapping with his finger on the table. He was wearing this orange beanie with a set of headphones on top of it, but I still couldn’t see his face clearly as his messy black hair was covering most of it. As I approached him, I gently tapped him on his shoulder. He turned around and took off his headphones as he looked questioning at me.

“Hey, sorry for disturbing you.” I apologized as I finally realized that I was just standing there staring at him without saying anything. “I noticed that we have the same laptops, and mine is almost dead as I forgot my charger home and.. um I was wondering if you don’t mind me borrowing yours for just a couple of minutes.” I awkwardly asked him.

“Oh yeah, sure.” He responded to me immediately with a smile, and I smiled back at him. “There you go, just don’t forget to return it.” He said to me with a little smirk as he was handing it to me.

“I-I won’t, I promise” I said as a little blush appeared on my cheeks and nodded.

My heart was beathing fast when I got back to my table and sat down. I looked up to where the guy was sitting and I caught him looking at me as he continued to hum something to himself. Quickly I looked away, back at my computer as I could feel my cheeks getting warmer with every second I kept on gazing at him. After a few minutes when I finally calmed down and continued to work on my script, I heard one of the chairs next to me moving and someone sitting next to me. I looked up from the laptop screen, and it was him.

“Hopefully you don’t mind.” He said it more as a statement than a question with a little smile on his face, I couldn’t find my words as he was sitting so close and unexpectedly to me, so I just shook my head “no”. “Nice. My name is Ace.” He introduced himself as he gave me his hand for a handshake.

“(Y/N)” I replied as we shook hands. His hands were surprisingly so soft.

“(Y/N), that’s a beautiful name.” He repeated it one more time as to make sure he remembers it.

My mouth got dry so I took a sip from my coffee and couldn’t help but wrinkled my nose and furrowed my eyebrows.

“Is the coffee that bad?” He raised an eyebrow at my expression.

“No, the coffee is alright. I just hate coffee.” I scrunched my nose from the after taste of it.

“Then why are you drinking coffee if you hate coffee?” Ace chuckled.

“That is a question I get a lot.” I laughed. “But – you know what. Honestly, I don’t know, maybe I just want to be “different”.” I raised and shook my hands to my head when I said “different” as I was referring to one of my favorite movies “Fantastic Mr. Fox” but I knew he wouldn’t get the reference or the joke.

“I think I have this thing where I need everybody to think I’m the greatest.” My jaw almost fell to the floor as he quoted the movie, as he did the exact same gesture with his hands.

“No way – no way you got the reference.” I couldn't hide the amazement in my voice. “No one, and I swear no one has ever gotten this reference when I’ve done it.”

“There is always a first.” He winked at me, his charming smile growing on his face.

“Yeah, you are definitely right about that.” I chuckled. Our gazes locked and we shared a laugh. I looked at the time and I saw that I had to get going, as my classes were starting soon. ” Well it was very nice to meet you Ace, thank you for the charger.” I said as I gave him back the charger and he flashed me with another charming smile.

“Happy to help.” He replied. As I was about to leave the cafe, he called after me and I turned around to look at him. “See you around?” He raised his eyebrow in a questioning way.

Instead of replying to him I just did the hand gesture again and he just laughed at me as he shook his head and leaned on the chair.

Walking to university I couldn’t stop the big grin on my face every time I remembered the little encounter I just had with this guy Ace in the coffee shop. I really hope we could cross paths again as he seemed very nice, and undeniable handsome, so I wouldn’t mind getting to know him more. When I reached the university I saw two of my closest classmates and friends – Nami and Usopp sitting on the couches in the chill aera.

“Hello guys.” I greeted them. “What are you doing?”

“I had an amazing idea for my character final goal but I don’t know how to develop it so Usopp is helping me.” Nami explained to me.

“No one can beat my imagination, so she came to the right person.” He pointed at him self with a cocky smirk as Nami just roll her eyes at him.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway..” Nami looked at me with mischievous eyes. “Are you free tonight?”

“Sadly, no. I’m helping my uncle Shanks with his bar tonight.”

“No, tell him you can’t. I have a better offer. Our friend Luffy invited us to listen to his brothers band play tonight in this place called “The Red Pirates” so you must come.” She emphasized on “must”.

“Yeah, they are super good. We have been to all of their gigs and those guys are soon going to be big name if they get better at promotion.” Usopp agreed with her. “So you should definitely come with us.”

“Thank you guys for the invitation – but funny enough coincidence, where your friend’s brothers are playing tonight is also where I will be working as “The Red Pirates” is owned by Shanks.” I laughed at the coincidence.

“Ohh, but you will be working it won’t be the same.” Nami whined.

“I know but hey – I can give you some free drinks.”

“Sold.” Both Nami and Usopp said at the same time. I rolled my eyes playfully at them.

“What is the band called by the way? I forgot to ask Shanks.”

“The Neighbourhood. One of the brothers is the vocalist and plays the guitar, the other one is the drum player and there are two more guys. But all of them are very good.” Usopp explained to me. My curiosity piqued. Usopp was producing music himself and he was good at it, so if he says that these guys were good - they were.

“Well I might not be able to enjoy it with you guys but at least I will be able to hear them.” I shrugged.

“Next time they play somewhere you are coming with us no matter what!” Nami pointed her finger at me with a very serious tone as I just laughed at her and agreed. Then we all got up and headed to class as we didn’t want to be late. Walking to class Nami looked at me and smirked.

“What?” I looked at her confused wondering why she was looking at me like that.

“What’s with that grin you have on your face?” She teased me. I haven't realised that I still had it on my face.

“Can’t I be in a good mood without a reason?” I teased her back.

“Of course you can, but there is something in that smile that is telling me that something has happened to you, care to share.” She looked at me with curiosity.

“Maybe, maybe not.” I decided to mess with her a little bit.

“Oh come on, we don’t keep secrets from each other.” She whined.

“But I’m not keeping anything.”

“But you are also not telling us something.”

“Nami just don’t want to see us happy.” Usopp whispered to me, only to get smacked by her.

“If you want to tell me something, say it to my face Usopp.” She hissed at him.

“I think I said enough.” He replied as I could only laugh at them.

As we sat down in class and waited for our professor, Nami and Usopp were having a back and forth as usual. I decided to interrupt them. “Who else is coming with you guys tonight?”

“Zoro – you have met him already. And Luffy and Sanji, but you haven’t met them yet but we will try to introduce you to them tonight.” Usopp informed me.

“Nice, I like Zoro – he is cool.” I said as I have met him already like two or three times. “Nami are you going to be the only girl hanging with them?” I felt a little bad for her, as even though I knew that they all have been friends for a long time sometimes it might suck to be the only girl in the group.

“Maybe – I asked Vivi if she wants to join as well but she already have made some plans so she is not really sure if she can make it tonight.” She shrugged not like she did really care. “I was more looking forward for you to join us – but you chose work over us.” She pretended to be hurt but she wasn’t the best actress.

“Good thing you chose filmmaking and not acting.” I joked with her and we laughed when she pushed my shoulder. We were messing around until our professor entered and the lecture started.

Time passed by quickly and we were done for the day and this week.

“Geez writing scripts is tiring” Usopp announced loudly as we were leaving the classroom.

“At least next week we are in the same group, and we have to do sound.” Nami said.

“Yeah but sound is actually not an easy task guys.” I said and Nami whined. “But I’m interested in what we should base the story on for the sound – I spoke with some people from the second year and they told me last year it was based on some medieval picture where people were portrayed like someone was torturing them.”

“Wait we have to come with a script for the sound exercise as well?” Nami whined.

“Yes, a script based on the picture we will be given so we can create sound after it to match with it.” I explained.

“I don’t know about you girls, but I love working with sound.” Usopp exclaimed happily, his posture relaxed with both hands behind his neck.

“Thanks God you are in our group.” Both Nami and I said. Usopp just laughed at us and he embraced us in a hug.

“What are you two going to do without me?” He cocky exclaimed.

“Probably find someone else to take over your place.” I poked him on the sides and I escaped his embrace. He let a groan as Nami also poked him and he let her go.

“You both are cruel.” He whined as we laughed at him. As we continued to walk and chitchat, I turned to Usopp to ask him how his music producing was going.

“Actually” he started excited. “Luffy’s brother Sabo asked me to help them with producing a new song so I’m quite excited to work on this project with them as believe me when you hear these guys tonight – you gonna become a fan immediately.” Nami agreed with him as she eagerly nodded her head.

“I’m telling you when Luffy first told us his older brothers are starting a band we were all in disbelief as none of us expected them to be so good, and when they dropped their first EP we were all shocked.” It was so strange to watch Nami speak so highly of someone so I guess these guys should be quite good.

“Bro till this day I can’t comprehend how good of a vocalist Ace is, like man really has the talent.” As Usopp mentioned the name “Ace” something in me clicked. I thought of the guy I met earlier today, wondering if it might be the same person. As Nami and Usopp were gushing about how good the band was my curiosity grew more and more with every passing second.

“Do you guys have some pictures or something” I asked casually, but I wanted to see if any of the members was the 'Ace' I met earlier. I remember he was humming and tapping with his fingers, something that musicians do quite a lot even without realising. Both Nami and Usopp shook their heads.

“They don’t have any pictures across any of their band social media." Usopp explained but Nami started to laugh.

“What?” I asked confused of why she was laughing out of the sudden.

“Because they don’t want to be known and get famous for their looks.” Nami continue to laugh. I looked even more confused at her.

“Are you for real? This sounds pretty arrogant.” I raised my eyebrow as I couldn’t imagine the confidence someone must have to say this.

"Don't listen to her." Usopp rolled his eyes and chuckled. "They are going for a certain low profile aesthetic vibe that is why they don't really post themselves."

“Well, Sabo said it himself." Nami defended herself quick.

"Sabo is the least relatable of them all." Usopp laughed out loud.

"True but… even tho I kinda feel embarrassed to say this as I know them for a long time…” Nami started as she got a little blush on her cheeks. “They are very good looking so they should start posting themselves more.” She murmured but we heard her clearly and Usopp started to tease her immediately.

“OHH I’M TEELING THEM THIS” He shout out as he started to run as Nami started to chase him.

“DARE AND YOU WON’T SEE ANOTHER DAY” She screamed after him. I run after them trying to catch up with them.

“Guys stop – wait for me. No one is telling anyone anything.” I caught up to them as we were all out of breath. “Damn all these hours of sitting and editing are starting to catch up to us.” I joked and they laughed. “Can you play something from them, I’m curious to hear them now.”

“Yeah sure.” Nami pulled out her phone to play them to me but Usopp stopped her fast.

“Don’t - let her hear them live fist.” He mischievously suggested to Nami. She looked at him and then at me for a second before turning to Usopp.

“I get your point, but no. So let’s play her one song.” Nami said this Usopp eagerly agree with her, and they both sat me in a middle of a bench – Nami sitting on my left and Usopp sitting on my right side.

“Here put this.” Usopp put his headphones on my head. “Which song do you plan to play to her?” Usopp asked Nami.

“I was thinking of “Cry Baby” as they wrote that one based on one of Luffy’s crushes.” Nami suggested to Usopp.

“I was thinking of “Wiped Out” as it’s one of my favorites – but yeah “Cry Baby” is a good choice.” Usopp agreed. “Play it!”

The song started to play, and the intro reminded me of a nice sunny day at the beach. Then the first verse started.

I think I try too hard How I look, what I do, what I'm sayin' I spend too much time explainin' myself

So far, the first verse sounded very catchy. Then the Pre-Chorus and the Chorus started, and I loved the song.

I know I'll fall in love with you, baby And that's not what I wanna do I hope you won't ever lie to me And if you do, I know I won't be your cry baby

Usopp was right about the guy who sings the song, his voice was mesmerizing.

Cry baby, cry baby We need to cry And if we do, I know that would be alright

The he song finished and I took off the headphones. Both Nami and Usopp were looking at me expecting my reaction.

“Sooo…” Nami nudged me to say something. I looked at Nami, then Usopp before I said anything.

“They better sound as good as in the record when they performed tonight.” Usopp and Nami gave each other a high-five.

“I knew that you gonna like them.” Usopp said excitedly.

“That is good that you liked them now every time them perform you will be tagging along with us as we never really miss any of their concerts.” Nami nudged me.

“But what did you mean by that this song was written for your friend Luffy?” I asked as I would not have ever guessed that this song was written based on someone’s younger brother’s crush.

“Apparently when Luffy was a kid he used to be a big cry baby and Ace and Sabo used to tease him about it a lot and call him Cry Baby, and there was this girl he had crush on, but she was kinda.. you know leading him on so yeah… apparently, he cried over her and that is how the song came to life.” Usopp explained to me, and I just nodded.

“Is your friend better now?”

“Yeah he is fine. He literally forgot about her after a week or so.” Nami brushed it off as if it was nothing.

We sat for a little bit more talking about school when Usopp received a text from his girlfriend Kaya.

“Okay girls I’m leaving you for now. Kaya needs me to help her with something so see you later.”

“Is she not coming tonight?” Nami asked.

“No, she has some plans with her friends, so she is not coming.” He shrugged as he gave Nami and me a hug goodbye. “See you later.” We bit him goodbye.

“So you are telling me there is nothing you can do to not work tonight?” Nami looked at me pleadingly.

“No, I’m sorry Nami sadly not – you know I can’t do this to Shanks especially tonight. But I will be still there – just behind the bar.” I really wished I could of join them, but I can’t turn up on Shanks in the last moment.

“You better make good drinks or else I will complain to the manager.” She joked with me.

“I promise I will make the best once for you.” We both sat for a little bit longer before we hugged goodbye.

Before I headed to the bar I decided to go home and change. It took me some time to reach my apartment and as I entered, I took my boots off. I quickly changed to some old jeans and sweater I had. I still had like two hours before I started so I just ate something quickly as I was scrolling around social media. As I was scrolling, something piqued my interest and I decided to check these guys band Instagram, so I went to Nami’s profile trying to find them in her following list. I found them but as Nami and Usopp said they really didn’t have any pictures of them posted, I thought about checking their following list as they were following only four accounts and I guessed it was the band members, but I decided not to – as to surprise myself tonight. I contemplated for a second whether I should follow them or not, but I did anyway. I looked at the time and decided to head to work. I put some comfortable sneakers on my feet as I knew it would be a long night. I grabbed my bag, turned my headphones on and left.

writing, format & dividers © eand47 fanart @a_phu14 on IG ©eand47, do not copy or plagiarise my work.

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its-vannah · 2 years ago

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Girl, Put Your Records On | Eddie Roundtree x Reader

A/N: I haven't seen any fics with him, so I had to make one. I love his character so much.

Blurb: Being the daughter of a music producer has its perks, and one of those is meeting Daisy Jones and The Six's Eddie Roundtree.

Warnings: Just fluff and a hit of angst, implied intercourse (no detail)

Daisy Jones and The Six Masterlist

Being the daughter of a music producer had it's perks. For starters, you were able to listen to new albums and singles before anyone else. While the rest of the world waited for upcoming releases, you were already taking the record out of its sleeve and putting it on the phonograph.

Not to mention all the artists and bands you were able to meet. Your father was constantly popping open a bottle of champagne to celebrate his clients to celebrate their upcoming albums and tours.

Although you were too young to drink yourself, it was nice to feel included. Being there with your father, surrounded by new and interesting people with dozens of stories to share.

But being the daughter of a music producer has its downsides, too. On the smaller scale, sometimes your favorite songs wouldn't make the cut. When you were younger, it hit harder. But as you got older, you just accepted it and moved on.

That wasn't the only down that the role came with, however. You were a young, beautiful, kind girl with a heart of gold and a lot of love to give. Not many men in the industry had any problem taking advantage of that.

There was a thrill to it, for them. Sneaking around with their producer's daughter with the possibility of getting caught at any moment. You were sixteen when you had your first love. He told you all the right things, did all the right things. But the night before he left, he tried to convince you to "live in the moment" while leading you to his van.

It didn't take long for you to realize what was happening, so you freed yourself from his grasp, shoving him back and walking back inside your home.

He was too old for you, anyway. He was twenty, and you were still a kid. It wasn't right, but it was the seventies and he was gaining popularity. It didn't matter what he did, he had every girl in America wrapped around his finger. You, however, had made the choice not to be one of them.

A few years later, when you were nineteen, an up and coming group walked inside your father's studio. He was hesitant about letting them record, but he trusted Teddy and gave them a shot, alllowing you to sit inside the sound booth to hear them play.

You could see the nervousness written all over their faces as they got ready to play. They wanted to impress Teddy, and you didn't blame them. He wasn't easy to read.

Reclining in your seat beside Marcus, who gradually increased the volume on the lead vocalist and lowered the sound of the guitars, you smiled as you listened to them play.

By the end of their demo, you were on the edge of your seat waiting to find out whether or not they'd get an offer.

While Teddy went to discuss it with your father, you stepped out of the sound booth and made your way towards the group.

Smiling, you held out a hand to the only woman, who was closest to you when you walked in, introducing yourself, "Hey, I'm Y/N."

Karen gave you a gentle smile, shaking your hand, "Nice to meet you, I'm Karen."

The drummer, who was fiddling with his drum sticks, hollered over her, "That's Karen Karen."

Raising a brow, you couldn't help but release a small laugh, "Karen Karen?"

The blonde shot him a look, "Fuck off, Warren."

Warren grinned, nodding his head as a way of greeting you.

Beside him, the lead vocalist looked over at you, "Is there something you need, Samantha?"

"It's Y/N," You corrected, "And I just wanted to say I like your sound. It's different. I think you guys have a good chance of getting a deal."

One of the guitarists, the one with curly hair who had been ogling Karen for the past half hour, smiled up at you from his seat on the amp, "Thank you, Y/N. Our main focus is creating music that people l-"

"For the love of God, Graham, shut up," The vocalist grumbled, turning back towards you, "Look, it's nice to meet you, but we're a bit busy here."

Graham held his hands up in surrender, returning to fiddling with his guitar, mouthing "sorry" to you.

The fifth member of the group, who had been nervously tapping his foot flashed his bandmate an irritated look, "C'mon, Billy, she's just being nice. At least people actually like our music."

"Eddie, all I'm saying is that we need to spend less time socializing and more time figuring out what we do if we don't get this deal."

On that note, you cleared your throat, "You'll get the deal."

Simultaneously, Eddie and Billy spoke over one another, the former asking if you really thought so and the latter asking how in the hell you knew.

"I know Mr. L/N well, and so does Teddy. Look, the last few bands Teddy has invested in haven't been doing too great. But I really think you guys have a chance. I know you guys do."

Eddie gave you a lopsided smile, "They liked us in Pittsburgh, I don't see how this is any different."

Billy glared back at him, "If you'll excuse us, I think we have a few things to discuss."

Nodding, you turned to exit, giving the band one last smile. But before you could step out the door, Teddy came back in with your father in tow.

Teddy looked at the band, "We're giving you a shot, don't blow it."

The band, who Teddy had earlier referred to as The Six, erupted in smiles, hugging each other and patting one another on the back.

Your dad wrapped an arm around you, addressing the band, "I see you've met my daughter?"

Billy's eyes widened a bit. He thought you were just some random kid. But you had been in the sound booth, he should've known better.

Warren, who was very obviously high, nodded, "Yeah, she's hot."

Wincing, Karen glared at him, "She's been very kind, Mr. L/N."

Your dad eyed Warren, kissing you on the head before congratulating the band one last time, kissing you on the forehead, and walking back to his office.

Once he was out of sight, Eddie took one of Warren's drumsticks out of his hands and smacked him on the head with it, muttering, "Dumbass, that was her dad."

The drummer's mouth formed an "O", "You think he knows?"

"Jesus Christ, Warren," Karen said, shaking her head before turning to Billy, "And you, you need to get the stick out of your ass."

A look of pride settled on Eddie's face. You could tell the two of them didn't see eye to eye just from the small interactions you had with them.

Moving towards the exit, you waved them goodbye, "I'll see you guys around."

Warren and Graham waved happily, Karen and Billy nodded, and Eddie tilt his head to the side with a smile.

Once you were out of earshot, Karen looked back at Eddie, "Jealous, are you, Roundtree?"

"Piss off, Karen."

Warren looked between the two of them, connecting the dots, "Psst, Karen, I think he's jealous."

Rolling her eyes, she flashed him an irritated smile, "Yeah, I figured that out, thanks."

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Billy: As soon as we got the news and packed up, I ran to the nearest phone to tell Camila. She had always believed in us, and now everything was falling into place.

Karen: I think I went back and got drunk in my room afterwards. We may have gone out to eat, I don't remember. We had been living gig to gig, I was just happy to have an income.

Camila: It was the first time in a while that Billy really seemed happy with how the band was going. He had always believed in it, but I really think it helped him to see that everything was coming into place. That we wouldn't be living in a shack forever.

Warren: I don't even remember being in the studio. I was in my twenties, I was doing anything I could get my hands on. Drugs, alcohol, women. I was just along for the ride.

Karen: I could still kill Warren for telling the producer's daughter, Y/N, that she was hot in front of her dad.

Warren: We all thought it. Especially Eddie. I was just the one who said it.

Eddie: There was something about Y/N that was different. She wasn't just a newfound fan, she believed in us from the start. She and Camila were the first people to have our record in their hands. As for Warren's comment to her dad... She was beautiful, still is, I just think he could've handled it better. A lot better. By not saying anything.

Graham: It was nice to know that someone outside of the band and Teddy believed in us. Moving out to LA meant that we were starting over. In Pittsburgh, nearly the whole city had heard of us. At least, the people our age.

Eddie: That day was a turning point for the band.

Camila: There was no going back after that. They started recording and within a month, they were on their first tour.

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

You came to every recording session The Six had, excitedly listening to their songs and giving input. You studied the way Marcus moved the volume and reverb, making a mental note of it. What he did had always fascinated you, and he was willing to teach you. It was one of the perks of being F/N L/N's daughter. People bent over bsckwards to make you happy.

Over the course of their time recording, you went out for drinks a few times with them.

You met Camila, who you adored, and quickly became friends with. You wouldn't have changed any of it for the world.

Well, except one thing.

From the moment you met Eddie Roundtree, your heart hadn't stopped fluttering, skipping a beat every time he walked into the room.

Warren constantly teased the two of you about it, suggesting different ways to release the tension between the two of you.

Karen kicked him under the table, giving him a look that sent fear down his spine.

It made the moment awkward for a minute, but the band could sense it was bound to happen.

Eddie was used to being pushed around by Billy, who was by far the most popular and well-known member of The Six. But for once, he was first place. With you.

The two of you often nursed a glass of champagne, talking to one another at the bar while Graham attempted to flirt with Karen, who wound up finding another guy to hook up with, and Warren fell into a crowd of women.

He took a sip, looking down at you, "What's it like, getting to hear new music before anyone else? Not just ours, but in general."

"It's incredible. Don't get me wrong, being in the studio so much has its ups and downs, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. There's nothing else I can imagine myself doing. That's why I want to work in the sound booth."

"You do?"

"Yeah, Marcus offered to teach me a while back. I just wanted to wait until you guys went on tour. I just want to focus on The Six, just taking it all in."

Eddie bit his bottom lip, "So... You and Marcus...?"

You shook your head, "Are friends. My mother is friends with his. We grew up together, he's just a few years older. He's protective, like how I imagine an older brother would be."

He nodded, "So, are you seeing anyone?"

"No," You let out a shaky breath, not meeting his eyes, "Are you?"

"No, are—I already asked you that," He said nervously, swirling his glass in his hand, "Do you... Have an interest in... You know, seeing anyone?"

"It depends on who it is," You said, heat rising to your cheeks, "And you? Anyone on your mind?"

He set down his glass, looking at you, "There is."

Meeting his eyes, you turned your back to the counter, leaning on it for support, "What's she like?"

"You have a mirror?"

You burst out laughing, "Is that your best line, Eddie? C'mon, you can do better than that."

He put his head in his hands, embarrassed.

Pressing a hand to his back, you used your other to pry his head away from his hands, "Don't worry, you can make it up to me."

Raising a brow, he tilted his head, "And how can I do that?"

"Pick me up on Friday at six."

"That's the day before tour starts."

"I know."

He nodded, "Wear something nice."

"Don't I always," You tease, stumbling into his chest.

He lifted the glass from your hands, "You know what I mean. I do, however, think you've had enough of this. C'mon, I'll drive you home"

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

Warren: I was so happy to see Eddie leaving with Y/N. He was growing up, leaving the nest. It was about time he got laid.

Eddie: I drove her home. She had driven herself, but I was worried with her having three glasses. Truthfully, I just wanted to see her get home safe. And she did. I dropped her off at her door, walked her up, and waited until she got inside before I left. Once I got back in the car, it hit me—I had a date with Y/N.

Karen: I think he was more excited about the date than the record deal.

Eddie: It had just been a big few months. Moving to LA, getting a deal, meeting Y/N. Things were finally going my way.

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

Eddie: Long distance relationships weren't easy by any means. I was the one who had to call, since we were constantly moving around. It strained us a bit, but she was able to go to a few of our concerts and I got to see her, take her out a few times.

Karen: Y/N visited us while we were in the northeastern part of the states. She stayed with us for a week and a half. And I never got any damn sleep while she was with Eddie. They could've been quieter, but I guess it was young love.

Eddie: She had her own hotel room during her time staying with us. Her dad set it up. We'd just stay in mine talking to one another.

Warren: Eddie swore nothing happened in his hotel room when he was alone with her, but I was on the other side of the wall. Look, I was pretty high, but it'd be hard to forget that. I may have been the one to call her hot, but he was the one that took it three, four steps further. Good for him, though.

Eddie: It was only when we got back from the tour that things started to go downhill with me and Y/N.

Camila: After I gave birth to Julia, Billy checked into Rehab. I was on my own for a while. But when the band came back, they were there to help me. Julia enjoyed time with Uncle Graham and Eddie, and Y/N whenever she was off work.

Graham: Eddie and I were there a few times a week just helping out and checking in on Camila and Julia. I loved that kid more than anything. We'd just sit out in the grass and I'd sing to her.

Eddie: Camila needed all the help she could get, especially with Billy not being there. Not that he would've done much anyway, to be honest. I tried to be there for her and Julia in any way I could. I didn't realize that it would tear Y/N and I apart.

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

"Eddie, I barely ever get to see you. Can't you go one day without seeing Camila and Julia? You can stay with me. It's better than that shack."

"That shack is my home, whether it's shit or not, Y/N," He grumbled, "Camila needs all the help she can get with Julia. She's only a few months old."

"Her mother is with her, Eddie. She's got her mom, Graham, the whole band really. It's not that I don't want you to be with them, I just want to see you. I never get to see you."

Eddie sighed, "Y/N, they mean everything to me."

"They're your bandmates, I get it, I just—"

"Y/N..."

It was written all over his face. He wasn't just talking about The Six.

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

Karen: We'd all known, except for maybe Billy and Camila, that Eddie was in love with Camila. We just thought that he had put those feelings aside when he met Y/N.

Warren: Out of all the girls Eddie had dated, which hadn't been much, she was my favorite. She was fun, she kept up with us, she was passionate about music and the band. When they broke up, I nearly snapped the guys neck. And I'm not a violent guy. She just deserved better than whatever the hell that was.

Eddie: Camila and Billy were married. I would never have come in the way of that. At the same time, it wasn't fair to Y/N. I loved her with my whole being, but I still had some unresolved feelings for Camila that started stiring when Billy was gone. It's wrong, and I know that, but it wasn't fair.

Graham: Eddie was an idiot for what happened. I remember when he came back from their first date. He swore up and down that they'd get married one day.

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

When the band broke up, everyone went their separate ways. Karen continued touring, this time without Daisy and The Six. Warren got married and started working on boats, which became a passion for him. Billy stepped away from music and settled into life with Camila and his daughters and Graham continued working in the music industry, starting his own family. Daisy recovered from her addictions, and wound up adopting kids of her own.

These all took years to play out. But not for Eddie.

As soon as the band was over with, the first thing he did was buy a ticket to LA and knock on Y/N's door.

He explained everything and told her he loved her, he always had.

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

Y/N Roundtree: Eddie proposed to me the night he showed up on my doorstep. He told me he couldn't imagine a life without me. I was touched.

Eddie: But she said no.

Y/N: I loved him, but I told him it would take time. We still had so much we didn't know about each other. It had been ages since I had seen him. I didn't even know that the Six had split up until he told me. He was back in LA that fast after the split.

Eddie: We did get to know each other, though. And I proposed almost a year later. We got married a few months after that. And the rest is history.

Y/N: It was a quiet ceremony. Eddie didn't want Billy there, and thought it may be a bit off putting for me to have Camila there. But I knew how much he cared about her and the girls, so we extended an invite.

Camila: Billy and Eddie never really saw eye to eye, and with Billy finally getting comfortable with family life, I didn't think it would be good to thrust him back into that.

Eddie: Y/N was a little upset they chose not to come, but understood. If you invite half a family, it doesn't exactly work.

Billy: I was surprised Eddie found the balls to get married.

Y/N: It wound up just being Eddie's immediate family, mine, Marcus, Warren, and Graham. Daisy showed up a few days earlier to congratulate us on our wedding, bringing a guitar with her as a gift. She just didn't think being back in that environment would be good for her. There would be too many questions.

Daisy: Just because the band was over doesn't mean the music couldn't continue. Eddie was a good guitarist and Y/N knew everything about managing sound and rhythms, so I figured it was an appropriate gift. I was really happy for them.

Eddie: Karen was touring at the time and wasn't able to make it, but she visited once the tour was over and stayed a few days.

Y/N: I preferred having a smaller wedding, with the people we knew the most.

Warren: They had great alcohol. I wasn't high during the reception, so I was actually able to enjoy it. I even met my wife there.

Graham: It made me long for a relationship, honestly. But it also made me realize I need to focus on myself first. I didn't want to just settle to settle.

Y/N: Our son was born a year and a half after we got married and music was automatically a big part of his life. He'd sit on Eddie's lap at not even a year old while Ed played the guitar. I still have pictures of them back then on the mantle.

Grant Roundtree, Eddie and Y/N's oldest son: I remember when I decided I wanted to pursue music. Dad sat me down and explained what happens when you achieve fame and how to handle it. Mom told me that I needed to take it one step at a time and really enjoy my childhood.

Farrah Roundtree, Eddie and Y/N's daughter: Grant never stopped playing that damn guitar mom gave him.

Grant: Sometimes I played just to drive Farrah and Eli crazy. I never stopped.

Eli Roundtree, Eddie and Y/N's youngest son: I wanted to be just like Grant when I was younger. He was my cooler, older brother. He even taught me how to play the guitar and I could carry a tune, but my stage fright got in the way of anything beyond that.

Eddie: Grant went into the music field, Farrah pursued modeling and is now acting, and Eli is just now graduating from high school, planning to attend college this fall.

Y/N: I'll always be grateful for Daisy Jones and The Six, but I've got to be honest—I'm even happier it ended when it did.

Eddie: Everything happens for a reason, and for me, it couldn't have ended at a better time.

#eddie roundtree #edward roundtree #eddie roundtree x reader #daisy jones & the six #daisy jones and the six #daisy jones fanfic #daisy jones and the six fanfic #fanfic #fic #x reader #taylor jenkins reid #amazon prime

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ohnoitstbskyen · 1 year ago

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youtube

The Heartsteel splash art is very bad, and here's why

I am not a fan of the collective Heartsteel splash art, and in fact, I think it's kinda s***ty. Not on a technical level, mind you, it is every bit as well rendered and nicely drawn as most other Riot art is, but as a way to introduce these characters? As a pitch to get us excited about them? This is genuinely kind of f***ing terrible. First of all, it's copying the original K/DA splash arts, which also had each band member copy pasted in different positions in each splash, with a different character in the spotlight. And that's not a great place to start from, because it feels like a total lack of confidence in the product, like some suit-wearing executive saying "just copy whatever worked the first time!" The splash art should be an opportunity to introduce what's new and unique about the band, and copying K/DA like this completely fumbles that opportunity and invites really unflattering comparisons. Second, the copy pasting is a problem. For two reasons: First, it looks cheap. It just does. There is no way to put out six splash arts with the exact same pixels copy-pasted into different positions that doesn't, on an instinctual level, feel cheap. All that says is "we didn't want to pay for more than one splash art." It looks like corner cutting. Second, it forces every character in the art to be completely separate from one another. A big part of the band's charm in their excellent music video is the interaction and camaraderie between the boys as they get into frat boy shenanigans shooting their music video, but since every character has to be able to be copy-pasted and moved independently in the splash, they can't interact or pose together in any way, making them seem completely disconnected from one another. One of the simplest ways to add a bunch of character and charm to these splash arts would be to have one character up front doing their cool pose, and then the other five boys dicking around in the background, armwrestling or hugging or, I dunno, giving each other piggyback rides. Instead, we just get sterile clip-art of each of them that don't even seem to be aware that the other guys are there. And when they are up front, the poses they do are also… mostly kinda lame? Sett is supposed to be this tough-guy with a heart of gold rapper with a big attitude and he's just, like, vaguely flexing, kinda. K'sante is supposed to be this imposing, powerful vocalist and he's just… standing there. Yone looks bored, Aphelios looks like an emo kid who's being forced to be in a family photo by his mom, and Kayn, who's supposed to be this rowdy chaotic bad boy, is just… doing a peace sign and sticking his tongue out? He gets completely overshadowed by himself: his Shadow Assassin and Rhaast forms in the background, which DO get to interact, which DO get to play with each other, and who are more charming than everything else these splash arts do. It genuinely baffles me that Riot couldn't be bothered to spend the money to get each of them unique splash arts, give these characters an opportunity to show off their costumes and their personality, or at least spend the money to have them drawn a little bit different in each of the six versions of this thing that they put out. This splash art, to me, feels like an active discouragement from investing in Heartsteel, because looking at this, looking at all the corners that are being cut, even Riot doesn't feel committed to them as a project. And like yeah, the music video is great and it's doing a lot of heavy lifting for them, but this splash art is an actual liability, it makes the whole project look worse.

#tbskyen #heartsteel #heartsteel kayn #heartsteel sett #heartsteel ezreal #heartsteel aphelios #heartsteel yone #heartsteel k'sante #heartsteel rhaast #league of legends #Youtube

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kangaracha · 1 year ago

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QUEENMAKER | CHAPTER 2

—

pairing chan x reader

genre ninth member au, enemies to lovers, angst, fluff, coming of age, social media, cancel culture, anxiety, depression, forbidden love,

summary To JYPE, the solution is simple; take the sole trainee that will not debut with your brand new girl group, and use her to replace the missing vocalist in your male group that insisted on starting as nine.

Unfortunately, to the fans and the members themselves, it isn’t that simple.

status ongoing

taglist OPEN

previous | masterlist | next

—

The first thing you hear when you walk in the room is yelling.

You first hear it from down the hall, really, though you don't really realise that it's coming from this room until you reach the door, and you don't appreciate the full volume of the voices until you knock and the door opens, letting the sound escape containment into the hallway. You don't have time to react either - because the face that opens the door for you is strikingly familiar, in the way that faces you see often in photos and on billboards are.

"Y/N?" he asks, pulling the door wider so that you can come in.

"Felix sunbaenim," you reply and bow, though it feels...awkward under the circumstances. You suppose you'll get used to it, now that this is your life. "It's nice to meet you."

He looks uncomfortable too, for a moment, before it is smoothed over with a graceful smile. "You better come in," he says, making room in the doorway for you to step through.

The room that greets you is achingly familiar - a dance studio, like any other in the building, though this one feels a little more personal that the faceless classrooms on the trainee floors. Boys are scattered across the space, practising on the far side of the room, counting out time to themselves, or sitting quietly on their phones.

Changbin and Hyunjin are the source of the noise; sat together in one corner, but they aren't what draws your eye - no, you look right past them to the lanky figure with his back turned to you, hunched over the laptop that he's connected to the sound system. You've already met Stray Kids' leader, in a way - he'd been there for that long meeting three days ago that had decided your fate, though there hadn't been an opportunity to exchange words then. There hadn't been many words to exchange by the end of the meeting either, not when he'd spent the first hour making it very clear that this was not his idea, nor did he think it was a good one.

You're trying not to be hurt by it. You don't think he really realised that you were in the room until the conversation shifted directly to you, and it wasn't really about you anyway. This is an insular, self-made group, and he didn't like JYP meddling with their affairs when they didn't have to, that was understandable.

It still makes you nervous to walk into this room and pretend to be one of them, though. There's no pretending that he wants you here, and both of you know that.

"Sorry that I'm late," you say to Felix, tearing your eyes away from the others before one of them can turn around and notice you.

"You're early, actually," he replies, closing the door behind you.

"Am I?" you question. "You guys are already practising." Your head tips towards the two on the far side of the room - Lee Know and I.N. You kind of wish you didn't know their names. It would be easier to fight off the feeling of intimidation then.

"They've been here for an hour already," Felix says, waving a hand in the air. "Come and sit down while Chan-hyung fixes the music."

Wordlessly, you follow him to the long couch that lines the wall, the same sort of place you'd sat with Minseo in Midnight's studio when she told you that you should do this. The louder boys are both sat here too - somehow, you end up right next to them, Felix slumping down on your other side. There's no avoiding how their eyes turn to you now, or the way their smiles dim as they do, their fun interrupted.

"Is this our new maknae?" Hyunjin asks without preamble, leaning forward to see Felix around you.

Felix frowns in confusion. "Isn't she older than us?" he questions.

None of the three know the answer, silence reigning until Hyunjin's eyes turn to you. "What year?" he asks.

"'98," you answer, and he blinks.

Between you, the sound that erupts from Changbin's mouth is almost loud enough to burst your eardrums. "Maknae-noona," he says, with a grin that gives away just how funny he thinks it is. Felix cracks a laugh, unable to help himself - Hyunjin just looks perplexed, caught up on some implication that you've missed.

"How old are you?" you ask the three of them.

"'99 and 2000," Felix supplies. "Only Chan-hyung is older than you."

"Lee Know is the same age," Hyunjin supplies. Felix shrugs like it doesn't matter, leaning back in his seat.

"This is Changbin and Hyunjin," he says just to you, ignoring the other two the way that you would ignore a pair of hecklers on the sidelines. "Do you know everyone's names?"

"I think so," you say, looking around the room - for each one of the boys you see, a name comes to mind that you're reasonably confident is correct.

"I can introduce you to everyone if you want," Felix offers freely.

"No, that's okay," you say, because you think about meeting all eight of them at once and your stomach kind of drops. "I'll meet everyone as I go...if that's okay." Not that you weren't already nervous walking in, but having to face them all one after another...

"It's a lot of people, huh," Felix says, as if he's reading your mind. You nod, grateful for the understanding.

"Not as many as a trainee class, at least," Hyunjin points out. It's hard to tell if he's trying to be supportive or just letting his thoughts flow straight to his mouth, but at least he's not being mean. You'll take not mean.

"If it's easier to meet everyone now-" you start to say, backtracking as fast as your heart starts to pound. Great start - a whole five minutes, and you've already come off as rude.

"Don't worry about it," Changbin answers you before you can finish, waving away any doubts. "This is weird for us as well."

"Do you have an accent?" Hyunjin cuts in when you don't immediately answer, leaning around Changbin.

"Oh." Unbidden, your eyes cut to Felix. "Yeah. I'm from Australia."

Felix's face lights up. "Hey!" he says, switching easily to English. "Nice!"

Hyunjin grins, his hands clapping together. "Aussie-racha," he says, pleased with himself.

"She's vocalracha too," Changbin adds. "Everyone has three now."

"Racha?" you question.

"That's what we call our units," Felix explains. "Vocal, dance, rap. And now we have three Aussies as well."

Overhead, music blares from the speakers followed by a cry of success from Chan. "He fixed it," Changbin says, pretending to be dejected even as he springs to his feet, stretching his arms like he's ready to dance.

"And broke my ears," Hyunjin grumbles, following along. Felix stands too, and you follow him to your feet - just in time to catch Chan's eye as he turns away from the computer.

"Y/N," he says. "You made it here okay?"

His voice is warm but his eyes are guarded; wary, of what you might say or do. "Yes, sunbaenim," you answer, bowing just in time that it is still polite.

"Oh, don't worry about honourifics," he says quickly, almost before the words are out of your mouth. "Has anyone sent you anything on what we're doing today? Or...the comeback? Anything?"

Wordlessly, your head shakes. His brow furrows.

"I've run over some of your choreography and songs, since-" The meeting, but you're hesitant to bring that up. No need to remind him that he doesn't want you here, even though so far he's been...nicer than you expected. "-well, two days ago."

"Yeah, the timing is..." a hand reaches up to rub at the back of his neck, "...not great. We're doing choreography for the comeback shows today so we'll run you through that and think about formation changes, and tonight I'll send you all the tracks for the new album and the old ones you'll have to learn? There won't be parts for you yet in any of the newer stuff, but I'll figure that out by next week, and then we'll figure out when we're recording and all of that."

"That sounds good," you reply, blowing out a nervous breath as your heart stutters in your chest. It sounds like a lot, actually, but you can't just back down in the face of hard work, no matter how high it piles up or how quickly it reaches those heights. The time for that was three days ago, when you decided to do this.

(The time for that was six years ago, when you decided to leave everything you knew and everyone you loved, but if you think that far back now, the amount of potential wasted time and the blank future ahead is paralysing.)

"I'll look after her for today," Felix offers, a hand patting Chan's shoulder. "I've got most of the song down anyway."

"Thanks," Chan says, and then turns as someone calls him across the room, pulling him away as quickly as he'd come.

"Come on," Felix says, gesturing for you to follow him.

TAGLIST

@kokinu09 @rainfallingfromthesky @lixie-phoria @mysweethannie @chlodavids @hanniemylovelyquokka @tfshouldidohere @lauraliisa @puppysmileseungmin @kalopsian-thoughts @puppy-minnie @readerofallthingss @dvbkie099 @kthstrawberryshortcake-main @acker-night @d-chagi @keepswingin

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cuddlepilefics · 2 months ago

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Homecooked meals @fluff-cember

@hurtcember : 23 bedbound

Fandom: Stray Kids

Sickie: Seungmin

Caregivers: Stray Kids

TW: emeto

No one’s POV.:

“Lix, do you know if we have any tea left?”, Seungmin hummed as he shifted on the couch. Him and Felix were enjoying a quiet evening watching movies but he just couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Shrugging, Felix muttered: “I dunno, why don’t you go check? Do you want me to check for you?” – “Please”, Seungmin breathed. He wouldn’t usually make one of his friends get up but his stomach hurt and had he known for sure that they had tea, he would’ve gone and made himself a cup, but not knowing whether the effort would actually be rewarded made it hard for the vocalist to find the energy to get up.

“Good news is, we still have some peppermint tea, though that’s all we have”, Felix informed, “I turned on the kettle in case you’re fine with peppermint.” – “Peppermint’s alright”, Seungmin mumbled, resting his chin on his knees that he had drawn up to his chest. Taking a seat next to the younger, Felix frowned: “Are you okay? You look peachy.” – “Stomach’s been bothering me since lunch and it’s really starting to hurt now”, Seungmin admitted, nervously palming at his middle. “What did you have?”, Felix asked since they had both spent the day out. Taking a shaky breath, the vocalist mumbled: “Some sort of stir-fry. Gosh, I can still taste it every time I burp and it’s not sitting right at all.” – “I’m sorry. I’ll get you your tea and we’ll see whether that soothes your stomach”, Felix cooed as he got up to head back to the kitchen.

As they resumed their movie, Seungmin slowly sipped his tea. It felt nice initially, until the liquid started to slosh around and he shakily placed the cup onto the coffee table. Curling even further into himself, Seungmin felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Felix reached over to rub his back for comfort but the younger couldn’t bear to be touched right now. A wave of heat washed over him and he felt the fabric of his hoodie cling to his skin when he tried to switch up his position.

“I think, I’ll go sit in the bathroom for a bit”, Seungmin announced quietly, already walking off while Felix fumbled to pause their movie. The dancer was shocked, sure, he had known that his friend wasn’t feeling well but he hadn’t expected it to be this bad. Though, knowing how Seungmin always tried to hide his struggle, he should’ve known there was more to it the moment the younger spoke up about not feeling well. The sound of retching pulled Felix from his thoughts and he followed Seungmin to the bathroom, only to find the door unsurprisingly locked. Of course, his friend wanted his space. Since Felix didn’t remember who Seungmin had been out with, he texted their group chat afraid one of the other members might have gotten food poisoning too.

Felix had expected Seungmin to just shuffle out of the bathroom at some point when he felt like he was done but that didn’t happen. The Aussie had heard the lock click but Seungmin made no move to exit, so he went to check on the younger. “Here, I got you some water”, Felix hummed as he approached the slumped figure on the floor. A soft, pained whimper escaped Seungmin before he looked up at Felix, face ashy pale, his forehead coated with a sheen of sweat. Kneeling down next to the vocalist, Felix brushed the damp bangs out of his face and frowned: “Do you at least want to rinse your mouth? Come on, I’ll help you sit up.” Despite the Aussie’s help, Seungmin shook from the strain and weakly rinsed his mouth before leaning against the bathtub, closing his eyes.

Running a wash cloth under cold water, Felix gently wiped Seungmin’s face and whispered: “How are you doing now?” – “Awful, ‘s so much worse than earlier”, Seungmin groaned, holding his head, “’m so dizzy an’ my head hurts.” – “Should we get you to bed? I’ll bring a bucket”, the older offered, holding out both of his hands. It took him quite a bit of effort to maneuver Seungmin off the floor but even more to keep him on his feet. The room seemed to spin around him and Seungmin desperately clung to Felix to not lose his balance. “I got you”, the Aussie promised, “Just try to put one foot in front of the other and I’ll make sure you end up in your room.”

Seungmin shook from the strain as he collapsed on his bed, stunned that he could go from feeling a little uncomfortable to miserable in such a short time. Promising to be back soon, Felix rushed to fetch their cleaning bucket and Seungmin’s water bottle. The younger had curled up on his side and Felix cooed: “Can I get you anything? I’m sorry you feel so awful.” – “Could you stay and distract me? Please?”, Seungmin breathed, throat raw from being sick. Of course, Felix couldn’t deny him and sat with him gossiping about the protagonists of the movie they had been watching.

With how deeply he had fallen asleep to Felix’ rambling, Seungmin didn’t wake up when their doorbell rang and Felix rushed to open before it would ring again. The Aussie’s face lit up when he realized their friends had come over to help them out and he followed Minho to the kitchen, where the older started making some soup. Chan started the rice cooker and Jeongin picked up some of Seungmin’s favorite tea, knowing the other had run out of it only a couple days ago. “Changbin and Hyunjin are on their way too but they said they’d take a detour to pick up some medicine”, Chan informed softly, “How’s he doing?” – “Got really sick”, Felix pouted worriedly, “He was so dizzy, he could barely walk but he’s asleep now.” – “Oh dear, I’ll go check on him”, the leader sighed, quietly making his way to Seungmin’s room.

From outside the door, Chan could already hear Seungmin cough and rushed to step in. The younger had snatched the bucket off the floor and forcefully choked up a wave of what seemed to be mainly water. Chan was by his side in an instant and rubbed his back, wincing when he felt his dongsaeng tremble. He was quick to take a hold of the bucket when Seungmin was done, the boy’s energy spent, causing him to collapse back into his cushions. It was only when Chan had placed the bucket on the floor that he noticed the younger was full on crying and he gently brushed his sweaty hair out of his face, cooing: “Oh, Seungminnie.” – “’m sorry”, Seungmin whimpered hoarsely, “Wasn’t quick enough.” It took Chan a moment before he understood what the other was talking about. There was a wet stain on his blanket though it seemed that most had landed in the bucket.

Carefully folding the blanket up, Chan placed it on the floor and promised: “It’s okay, don’t worry, Min. Can you sit up for me?” Seungmin shook his head, tearily glancing up at Chan. The only reason he had managed to sit up was the adrenaline but now…. “Here, I’ll help you. You probably don’t want to drink right now?”, the leader hummed as he carefully sat Seungmin up by the shoulders. Shaking his head, the younger closed his eyes against the dizziness. Chan still steadied him by the shoulders and pulled the desk chair closer with his foot, explaining: “Your sheets are completely sweaty too, so I’ll help you move over to your desk chair and quickly change the sheet. With the way you look, you’re probably going to be bedbound for the next couple of days and you should at least be comfortable.”

Seungmin whimpered as he sat in the chair, the upright position not really helping. Chan had handed him the bin from under the desk, afraid the stench coming from the bucket would make him sick again. The leader made quick work of stripping the sheets and replacing them with fresh ones from Seungmin’s closet. When he was done, he carefully lifted the younger out of his seat and placed him back on his bed with the bin next to him. “Try to get comfy and I’ll be back in a moment”, Chan instructed, picking up the sweaty sheets, soiled blanket and bucket. While he started a wash load and rinsed out the bucket, Felix brought Seungmin the fluffy blanket from the couch, heart aching for his dongsaeng.

“Hyun-Bin hyungs will be here with some medicine soon”, Felix promised as he covered Seungmin with the blanket and rubbed his back through the soft material. Wiping his eyes to dry the tears, the younger sniffled: “I’m never eating out again.” – “That’s okay”, Minho chuckled sympathetically. They hadn’t heard the dancer appear in the doorway but Felix smiled when the older hummed: “I’ll gladly prepare homecooked meals for you if it means you’ll eat. We got soup and rice ready, so whenever you feel like you could handle a few bites, let us know.” – “Thanks”, Seungmin whimpered, still far to nauseous to stomach anything. Jeongin joined them with a cup and thermos bottle, whispering: “Your throat must be so painful, hyung. I restocked your tea because you said you ran out during our last vocal lesson.” – “I love you, maknae”, Seungmin slurred, making his friends gasp.

“We really need to worry now, Chan-hyung”, Minho frowned when the leader returned with the bucket. Nodding along, Jeongin explained: “Seungmin was nice and he said he loves me.” – “Oh, fuck off”, Seungmin groaned hoarsely, making the others laugh. “Guess everything’s fine after all”, Minho shrugged, turning to the door, “I’ll let Changbin and Hyunjin in when they get here and then you can take something to calm your stomach.”

Seungmin kept dozing in short intervals with Chan tracing his back, while the others gave them some space. The medicine Changbin fed the younger helped some and Minho could even convince him to have a few bites of rice and a small scoop of soup before going back to sleep. Chan had been right, Seungmin was far to dizzy to get out of bed for the next few days, only spending a few hours a day on the couch when one of the members carried him there so he could get a change of scenery. Minho was able to nurse him back to health though, the vocalist’s trust in him probably being the only reason he let himself be talked into consuming anything at all.

Even after Seungmin recovered, he still preferred homecooked meals whenever he got the opportunity.

#fanfic #fluff #comfort #fanfiction #sickfic #sick #stray kids #skz #tw emeto #emeto #hurtcember2024 #hurtcember #fluffcember #fluffcember 2024

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jokeroutsubs · 1 year ago

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[ENG translation] Rock'n'roll in the blood

An interview with the Guštin family in Slovenian newspaper Delo, originally published 6.2.2022.

Original article is available here for Delo subscribers. Original article written by Agata Rakovec Kurent for Delo; photos by Jože Suhadolnik; English translation by a member of Joker Out Subs, native proof reading by IG GBoleyn123.

If you repost quotes from the interview, please link back to this post! And if you repost the photos, do not crop out the photographer credit.

Next Saturday (12.2.2022), Gušti and young singer Leyre will present themselves at EMA¹, but first, we visited him and his family in Bežigrad².

The Guštins (right to left) Chantal, Maja, Kris, Miha and Maks, were all happily rolling around the house during lockdowns and having a pretty nice time. PHOTO: Jože Suhadolnik/Delo

Just as I was looking at the names on the doorbells and considering calling Gušti about whether I was even at the right address in Bežigrad, the last of the five family members, Kris, came hurrying home. Actually, there are six family members, alongside Chantal and Gušti and their kids Kris, Maks and Maja, there is also Apple the dog, who greeted me with loud barking. Dogs remain with their parents even when the kids start to leave the nest, we agreed as we sat down at a big wooden table.

For musician Gušti and Chantal Van Mourik from the Netherlands, everything started with a teenage seaside romance. After that, nothing happened for ten years, but when Gušti wrote Big Foot Mama's big hit Črni tulipan, he could not imagine anyone other than his teenage love in the music video. He invited her to the filming, she came, and the rest is history. Three decades and three children later, their first-born Kris is following his dad's footsteps as the guitarist of Joker Out, the most popular band among the Slovenian youth right now.

We all know Miha 'Gušti' Guštin as Big Foot Mama's guitarist and the writer of their biggest hits. 20 years ago, he went his own way, musically, and recorded his first solo album Dolce Vita, where his successful collaboration with Polona Kasal³ started. He also did a memorable duet with Zagreb resident Ema Gagro, but let's start at the end.

If not for the good song, then for the laughter…

Next Saturday, we'll see something completely new at EMA, as he has joined forces with young singer Leyre⁴. How did they find each other? "People have been hinting that I should sign up for EMA for years and years and I never did, but this time I told myself that I would sign up if I found a truly good vocalist.

Producer Žare and I started looking, and through Dušan Obradinovič - Obre, drummer of the band Dan D, we got to Leyre. Leyre is Spanish by birth, she came to Slovenia when she was two years old. She's from Novo mesto, she is 19 years old and studies in Ljubljana. It's a one-time musical collaboration, just for EMA, so that I can finally have an answer for everyone who has been asking me for years: 'Why don't you sign up once?'" explains Gušti.

His family, especially Chantal and Kris, were initially pretty sceptical about this endeavour. Because it's a circus, because it's always said to be "rigged"?

"No, not because it's rigged, but because I thought that dad had slight misconceptions about what you can achieve with a song at EMA. My reservation was that if you go to EMA with a bad song, it falls through, no one remembers it, and it all doesn't seem worth the effort to me. Of all the songs that have been on EMA, 95 percent have sunk into oblivion, and I didn't want something like that to happen to dad.

Once we talked things through, however, and especially once I heard the song, I supported him, just like mum did. If you go to EMA, you have to win, otherwise it all passes you by, that's my opinion," says Kris.

Is Eurovision as much of a circus in the Netherlands as it is here? "It used to be, but now it's not like that anymore. For the past few years, they haven't even had a pre-selection. There's a committee that picks the performer who then represents the country at Eurovision. As for Miha, I think it's great that he signed up. The song is fantastic and the singer is truly exceptional.

On the other hand, I find it all amusing. I know Miha, and Miha is not about make-up and image, but with EMA all of that matters, the sound and the look are a package and it's absolutely not just about the song. That part, the fact that Miha is going to clothes fittings, is greatly amusing to everyone in the family," Chantal laughs.

Next Saturday, they will all keep their fingers crossed for Gušti and Leyre at EMA. Photo: Jože Suhadolnik/Delo

So did Gušti have a particularly shiny tuxedo made for EMA? "The styling will absolutely be appropriate for the event. I turned to a stylist, we just ordered everything, but I will wear a nice, elegant suit, which will still be rock chic."

The youngest members of the family, Maks and Maja, are smirking as their dad talks about rock chic. How interested is their generation in EMA anyway? "I don't know, I never asked my friends about it," is the concise answer of the youngest, seventh grader Maja, who is great at artistic gymnastics, as well as being the most artistically talented in the family.

"To be honest, I don't watch it and I'm not very interested in these things, but I will definitely watch it when dad performs, if not for the good song, then for the laughter," Maks' honesty makes everyone present laugh loudly.

History is repeating itself

Kris, who just graduated in chemical engineering, was not too enthusiastic about Big Foot Mama or Gušti's later solo projects at first.

"Everything changed when I got involved in music myself, when the summer before my first year of high school, I took up the guitar. At ten or twelve years old, I listened to what was playing on the radio, and that wasn't like the music that dad was making, so his music didn't interest me. In time, when I started discovering more complex music, rock, I started to enjoy his stuff.

My friends, who I'm still in a band with, introduced me to Big Foot Mama's music and tried to convince me that Črni tulipan was a totally awesome song. Then, for a while, I was like 'Oh, awesome, dad!' At first I didn't even care that he had been with the Big Foots, then I couldn't believe that he had left the band, it seemed horrible to me, but now I completely understand why he did it, and I really like what he's done since leaving," he tells us.

Chantal used to watch fans screaming in front of Big Foot Mama's stage, now she can relive those scenes at her son's concerts. "The screaming never bothered me, I always thought it was fun and interesting to watch. Nowadays, Miha and I often talk about how we're experiencing the same moments from another perspective.

Where Miha used to stand on stage, Kris now stands, where I used to stand in front of the stage as his girlfriend, we now stand together, but everything else is the same - the music, people screaming, girls going crazy, all that. I think that's great and I couldn't be more proud of Kris, of his band, and of course also of Miha and everything they achieved back then. We do sometimes truly feel like history is repeating itself, though."

However, some things did change from the time Gušti was starting out in music to today. Social media arrived, and these days, if you're not on it - you don't exist. "My kids and wife help me with social media, I'm not very good at it. Before they help me out, they always explain how clueless I am and that I should engage with it more and get with the times.

I'm not interested in these things, I can't find my footing in this world, but I know that it has to exist. I have Instagram, Facebook, and after they get done criticising me, everyone helps me out," says Gušti, while Chantal adds: "We have to help him to prevent something worse."

Apple the dog will also keep her paws crossed for Gušti at EMA next Saturday. Photo: Jože Suhadolnik/Delo

Joker Out take care of the social media themselves; "we have the natural advantage of having grown up with this, and it is unfortunately an integral part of the music scene today. We couldn't achieve much without Instagram. Well, after Facebook, Instagram is also almost 'out' now, so we have to start thinking about TikTok, which seems horrible to me," Kris tells us.⁵

His younger brother Maks is also part of Joker Out's story as a roadie. "It started with me helping the roadie, bringing water, putting away the cables and so on. Of course they didn't pay me, it was all in the family. Then I took over the merch, selling T-shirts and other things, which is pretty fun, it's a lot of work, but it pays off," he tells us, while Kris laughs, adding sarcastically: "Well, it doesn't pay off for him, because we still don't pay him."

Joker Out released an album (Umazane misli) recently, while Gušti says about his new one: "To me, having released quite a few albums already, the most important thing is that there is music. And there is music, I release a single or two every year, and once there's enough of them, there will also be an album. When that will happen, I don't know. Since I've never sung, I'm still figuring out the best direction for my vocals.

To put it bluntly…

Even before the pandemic, which devastated our music industry as well, Gušti and Siddharta's singer Tomi Meglič already found a recipe for these weird times, a cycle of 1on1 concerts: "During the Covid times, Tomi and I had 30 gigs, which was probably by far the most among all Slovenian performers. Seated, distanced gigs were possible. They were very well-attended before Covid already, and then it just kept going.

To put it bluntly, we were lucky bastards. It was just a pity that we couldn't put as many seats up for sale as usual and the pay reflected that, but at least we could play." I already joked with Tomi in a recent Nedelo interview that the format suits Siddharta's and Gušti's aging audience, who - judging by myself - finds it harder and harder to stand for two hours and longer. Gušti laughs: "It's true that it's mostly people our age who come, faithful fans of Siddharta and Big Foot Mama, there aren't many young people."

Putting together the repertoire gave them a lot of trouble, because together - they have too many hits. "At the beginning, the format was 14 songs with an encore, seven of his, seven of mine, which we immediately filled up. I chose his hits, he chose mine. The problems are arising now when we should freshen it up, but we don't want to lose any of the songs." At the end of March, the 31st, Gušti is also planning a solo concert in SiTi Theatre with a new team. "I will do a half unplugged, half electric version, and I will keep that up afterwards."

Unlike Gušti, the Jokers were hit by the crisis at the start of their musical journey. "At first, we planned to release the album on the 1st of April 2020, with a concert in Cvetličarna following on the 9th of April. A month before, everything closed down and fell apart. We rescheduled everything for May, then for October, and finally for next October. We also rescheduled the album release. Firstly because we weren't completely happy with it yet, and we also didn't see the point in releasing it, only us not to be seen anywhere for a year and a half.

Then people would come to a concert and wonder where anything new was, because they would already know everything. In a way, we were happy to delay everything. That way, a lot of the pressure was released, or stretched out over a longer period of time.

Covid seemed very inconvenient at first, we felt like we fell off the horse, but when we look back, it was a very productive time for us. We made some radical changes, in the music, in the line-up and in our way of thinking, and it shows. The tension was mounting before the concerts in Cvetličarna⁶ and that's why they were much more cathartic in the end," says Kris.

They have just renovated their rehearsal space and started working on the new album, which they have promised for September. That is also when they're planning a big concert in Križanke, before that they have summer concerts, including some outside of our borders. "We will try to get a gig in Serbia, and we will also release a song in Serbian."

The damage that was done to the music industry is huge, despite some bright exceptions. "The consequences will drag on for years. A huge part of the industry fell apart, and many found work elsewhere. Not musicians, not the people we see on stage, but the people in the background, as well as those who worked for publishers, in the distribution chain..." Chantal reflects.

A nomad in the house

Because of the uncertain situation, she hasn't visited her homeland for two years. "Maja and I are hoping that we can finally travel there on the 17th of February, so we're already half in isolation. The last time we were planning to go there was in September, but then Kris got sick, and then I did too. I'm hoping and knocking on wood that we can finally do it. In the meantime, my sister visited us twice, and at one point, Transavia also cancelled the flight connection between Ljubljana and Amsterdam, and I would've sooner made it around the world than to Amsterdam."

Kris visited his Dutch relatives, as well as his girlfriend and a friend who are studying there, for one week immediately after the Cvetličarna concert. "At that time, he called home to say that there were no restrictions there and he didn't need to have a mask on at the store, meanwhile here, everything was a lot more strict. When he came back, things relaxed a lot here, while over there the restrictions got stricter," says Chantal, who hopes that travelling will soon be something regular again and they will be able to visit their relatives more.

Since Kris just mentioned his girlfriend, I ask him whether it wouldn't be better for sold-out shows if all members of the band appeared single. "I have no reservations about publicly saying that I'm in a relationship, even though other band members might say differently. Our singer Bojan would say 'Kris got dumped by his girlfriend..." at every concert before a song I wrote when I once had a broken heart, but he didn't mention that it was four years ago," he laughs.

"As young girls, we used to wish that the boys on stage were single, but now I prefer to watch guys like Miha who are in a long-term relationship, because it means that they actually know something and have something to show for themselves," Chantal concludes wisely.

Maks and Maja have not been drawn into the music world (yet). "I did kind of pick up the guitar last year, but I quickly lost interest because I have too many things going on in my life to focus only on one. I can play a few of dad's songs, and I might turn to the guitar again at some point," says Maks, and his proud mum adds: "Maks is very skillful with the computer, he edits music clips and is working with various musicians.

Of course it started with Joker Out and Gušti, but now he's also working with Challe Salle⁷, Nipke⁸, he's making various videos for Spotify and has his own business. He's our businessman. All three of them are very creative, not only in the field of music, which is interesting. Maja, for example, draws incredibly well and is constantly making art."

All three kids are artistically gifted, say the proud parents. Photo: Jože Suhadolnik/Delo

They handled home schooling successfully, and as the family businessman and second year high school student Maks says, "I've found that being at home is better for me. The trip from home to school and back is time-consuming. If I'm at home, I have a lot more time left that I can use for myself."

Kris finished practically half of his studies remotely: "For the first year and a half, I was at the faculty and saw 250 students in one place in large halls, which was fascinating to me. With each new year I progressed to, there were fewer of us, and at the end there were about 40 of us left. Lockdown came at the right time for me.

All the lectures were recorded and I didn't have to get up early, I didn't have to take the bus at half past six in the morning, I could sleep in as long as I wanted and then watch the lectures. Because the professors speak slowly, I could set the speed to 1.5 and I wasn't losing time."

"I think we're all well-adapted to remote work," says Chantal, who is a veteran of it, "I've been working remotely for five years for the international school SAE, School of Audio Engineering, which used to be in Ljubljana as well, but shut down in 2016. Now I work for them in the international space. During lockdown, we were all happily rolling around the house and we were having a pretty nice time.

The happiest one, however, was Apple, who had company all the time." Gušti smiles: "I'm the only one in the house who doesn't have his own room, except for our bedroom. Whenever I needed peace to create, I retreated there, or I waited for example for Maja to go to her gymnastics practice so I could go to her room, or for Kris to not be home so I could go there. I'm the only nomad in the house."

When I last spoke to Chantal and Miha about ten years ago, we also talked about their filmesque love story which, with three small children, wasn't always easy. "I often got home at five in the morning, hyped up, with a good concert behind me, and Chantal placed a baby who hadn't slept all night in my arms. I was searching for that line, how to satisfy my rock'n'roll side on the one hand, and be a good husband and father on the other. I didn't always succeed, but I'm trying," says Gušti, who now sees his first-born backstage at concerts too.

Chantal, who speaks Dutch to her family as well as to Apple at home, has not grown fond of Slovenian cuisine even after 23 years: "I'm sorry, but that is really not for me, cabbage, sausages, blood sausages, dumplings… Luckily I now have kids who, apart from Kris, support me in this. Slovenia is developing though, and you can also get more and more Asian food here, which we really like and used to eat every other day back home, since my dad is originally from Indonesia." She says that Slovenians are very close-minded in some respects: "The attitude towards anything foreign is still pretty problematic here."

Maks adds the finishing touch: "If Slovenia was as developed socially as the Netherlands is, it could make a lot of progress as a country. I'm talking about the relationship between different cultures, who work together in the Netherlands, like water that always finds a way, while here, they are very separated."

¹EMA is the Slovenian national selection for Eurovision

²Bežigrad is a neighbourhood in Ljubljana

³Polona Kasal is a Slovenian singer; her and Gušti performed as a duo called "Gušti & Polona" for a few years

⁴You can watch Gušti and Leyre's performance at EMA 2022 here.

⁵Joker Out have, in fact, had to start thinking about TikTok since then. As you probably know, you can find them on TikTok here.

⁶You can watch the Cvetličarna concert with English subtitles here on our YouTube channel.

⁷Challe Salle, real name Saša Petrović, is a popular Slovenian hip hop singer, known for being very focused on being a good role model for his younger fans. One of his big hits was Lagano.

⁸Nipke, real name Boštjan Nipić, is a popular Slovenian rap/hip hop singer. He's part of the Dravle Records publishing company and collaborated with Bojan in the song Jst mam sam sebe rd.

If you repost quotes from the interview, please link back to this post! And if you repost the photos, do not crop out the photographer credit.

#kris guštin #kris gustin #joker out #miha guštin - gušti

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black-arcana · 4 months ago

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TESTAMENT Recruits NIGHTWISH's FLOOR JANSEN For 'Slower' Song On Upcoming Album

In a new interview with Paul Salfen of AMFM Magazine, TESTAMENT singer Chuck Billy spoke about the progress of the recording sessions for the band's upcoming studio album. The LP will mark TESTAMENT's follow-up to 2020's "Titans Of Creation", which was co-produced by Juan Urteaga, who previously worked with TESTAMENT on "Dark Roots Of Earth" (2012) and "Brotherhood Of The Snake" (2016). Chuck said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We're almost done recording right now. We finished, I'd say, three quarters of the recording before we left for Europe. And we have a three-week break now. And Steve's [DiGiorgio, TESTAMENT bassist] in the studio finishing bass and Eric's [Peterson, TESTAMENT guitarist] finishing up some of the rhythm guitars, but out of the 11 songs, I already tracked eight of 'em. So I just have a couple more songs to sing. We have another break after this U.S. tour in November. We'll finish up all the backing vocals and anything that needs to be — after getting to live with it, which is something nice. We never really get to live with the music after recording. 'It's recorded. Here it is. Let's go. It's done, written in stone.' Which is nice, is now we really get to live with it out on the road and talk about it together and say, 'Hey, what if we did this or what if we tried that?' And we've already came up with so much alternative stuff to try now. Like this week, Friday, I go in and I'm gonna try some new things on some vocal verses. We're talking about tones of guitars and bringing in some string sections."

Going into specifics about one of the songs on the upcoming album, Chuck said: "On this record, I don't wanna say the word 'ballad', but we wrote a slower song like we had back in the '80s and '90s that we wrote on this record. And it's really awesome, really good. We're gonna bring in a guest vocalist, Floor Jansen from NIGHTWISH. She's gonna sing on it with me. And we're gonna put in some string section into the song.

"We're not afraid to take those chances where a lot of bands criticize you, like, 'Oh, we don't write ballads. 'What are you doing that [for]?'" he explained. "But you know what? At this point in our lives and career, we're writing to make us happy first and foremost and what feels good, what feels right, and this song just felt right right now to kind of do this again."

Billy recently told Metal Express Radio's Bryce Van Patten about how TESTAMENT's songwriting process has changed since the band's early days in the late 1980s and 1990s: "Oh, it's night and day. Before, back then, we all lived the same place, we all had to go to the same studio, where now it's by e-mail, sharing the songs. Everybody has home studios to work out demos. Definitely a different writing process, but still Eric is one of the main writers. And ever since we brought in our new drummer, Chris Dovas, he's been here two years — he was 24 when he came into the band; he's 26 [now]. But he's a smart kid. [He] graduated [from] the Berklee [College] Of Music. [He] knows theory [and is] great in the studio with Pro Tools. He's really into modern bands and new and upcoming stuff, and he's got an old soul so he knows the history of the music. But I think him working hand in hand with Eric as long as they did, he really pushed Eric and drove Eric to get challenged. And I wouldn't say 'copy', but I think Chris and what he listens to and the style Eric likes, it brought an influence to the new songs."

Regarding the musical direction of the new TESTAMENT material, Chuck said: "To me, the new songs sound current, they sound fresh. They're touching what a lot of new upcoming bands are making good names for themselves are doing. So, again, it's raising the bar one more time. And I think when fans hear this record, especially new, younger fans are gonna go, 'Whoa. That's TESTAMENT. I know the TESTAMENT I know from 30-something years ago and grew up with, but what is this?' I'm excited for that because I wanna hear what people think. I'd love to see the expression of them hearing it for the first time. That would be great, because it does sound new and modern and fresh, even though we're still being challenged."

Asked if he and his TESTAMENT bandmates have more freedom to do whatever they want now than they did when you were on a major label like Atlantic, Chuck said: "Totally. When we were on Atlantic, that was a big machine. They had an A&R department, they had the radio department, they had tons of departments, tons of money, and they were always influenced by how well their big-selling artists were, which were radio bands and they were pushing radio. So that A&R guy would be whispering in our ears, 'What's the next radio song?' And we're thinking, "Well, we're not a radio band. That's not us.' And even to this day, when I hear some stuff like [on the SiriusXM channel] Ozzy's Boneyard or something, they play ballads by us, and it's, like, that doesn't represent us, but that represents that era in thinking maybe of what TESTAMENT did or what they chose to expose us to the public, which it's misrepresenting us. So, yeah, the freedom's huge now, especially being with Nuclear Blast as long as we have. There's no deadline. It's just, 'When you're ready, you have a record, give it to us.' And that's been really nice. And the beauty about this record is that usually we have Andy Sneap mix our record, so we usually write a record and give it to him and then it's done, written in stone, can't go back. But this record, we had to pick a somebody to mix it, which wasn't available till early next year, January. So we decided, 'Okay.' We tried to get all the tracking done before we went to Europe this June or July, and we got most of it done."

This past September, Peterson told Brutal Planet Magazine that TESTAMENT has tapped Swedish producer Jens Bogren, who has previously worked with OPETH, KREATOR, PARADISE LOST, SOILWORK and AMON AMARTH, among others, to mix the band's upcoming studio album. Peterson said about the LP: "It's, like, 90 percent done. And it's gonna get mixed in December by Jens Bogren. He's a producer from Sweden, and he's done — God, he's done KREATOR, he's doing the new BEHEMOTH right now, he's done IN FLAMES, ARCH ENEMY. A lot of European bands. We usually work with Andy Sneap, but he's [the touring guitarist] in JUDAS PRIEST and he's just, like, 'Bro, I need some time off.' It's a good switch, though. I think Jens will do a good job. And yeah, there's a lot of crazy stuff on this record. I'm excited for everybody to hear it."

In August, Billy told Oran O'Beirne of Overdrive.ie about the musical direction of the new TESTAMENT material: "We always try to outdo ourselves or make a better record or write better songs. It's always a challenge for ourselves, and I think this time we really took a long time to create the record. We kind of got everybody in the same room to really go through the songs and kind of put their two cents in to the arrangements. I think by having Chris — he's a younger drummer, a really great drummer — but I think he brought you know a new fire to Eric in the writing process. And I believe because we're going on 37 years of making records, it's kind of full circle right now. We're kind of inspired by new generation, I guess, of music and metal. And Chris is a big part of that. He's a big fan of that. So I think he inspired Eric just to write some really aggressive, fast, creative riffs. And it really inspired me to really push myself to try to do a little more screaming, death vocals, melodic stuff. We even went as far as writing — I don't wanna say 'ballad', but it's something really catchy that's really slow that's something we haven't done in over 30 years. So I think just the overall songs and the confidence in the writing this time really is gonna stand out on this record."

This past June, Chuck told Nikki Blakk of the San Francisco, California radio station 107.7 The Bone about the lyrical themes covered in the new TESTAMENT songs: "[It's] not as focused [on], like, the aliens, creating mankind and that kind of stuff, but there is some of that. There's a lot. Each song definitely has its own identity lyrically. And again, we're writing stuff that is real, that happens with the environment; we're singing about that again. A.I., we're singing stuff about that. That's a big thing. So, there's always an inspiration for songs. I think it's a little easier. There's so much going on in our world to write about now. It's a crazy world today, so there's a lot of stuff to talk about. And I like singing about what's real and what's going on instead of some fantasy lyrics, because, for me, I think when I sing 'em, I have more conviction, I believe in 'em a little more. And maybe it's easier for me to remember the lyrics live. [Laughs]"

Naming specific tracks, Chuck said: "There's a song, 'Havana Syndrome', which is about the Havana Syndrome. People, look that up. There's 'Infanticide A.I.', which is another song going A.I. direction. And there's actually a slower song. We haven't done a slower song. I'm not gonna say 'ballad', but I'm gonna say a slower song that has a lot of groove and soul, called 'Meant To Be'. And it's like a classic TESTAMENT-type ballad, I guess, if you wanna use that word. But we've got a little bit of everything, but, again, I think it's really sticking to TESTAMENT, having to have some melodic stuff, even though there's some really brutal lyrics and real brutal, more of a death voice. I still put the hook in with more of a melodic hook or something. It's still classic TESTAMENT. If you listen to it, you'll go, 'That's TESTAMENT, but a little more octane to it.'"

Also in June, Chuck told Canada's The Metal Voice that he writes most of TESTAMENT's lyrics with Del James. "Del, he works with GUNS N' ROSES," Chuck said. "He's been working with them and wrote with them a long time ago. I think he had big hits like 'November Rain' with them. And we've been working [together] for over 20 years. So I always go down and work with him because I come up with a lot of the ideas and concepts, but he really interprets and gets the right words, how to say what I'm thinking. And we work fast. When we get together, we'll knock out like two songs in a day. So we don't mess around. We get there, say hello to each other, we sit down and we go right to work. It's about what we do."

Prior to joining TESTAMENT as a full-time member, Dovas filled in for Lombardo on the first six dates of TESTAMENT's summer/fall 2022 leg of "The Bay Strikes Back Tour".

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foxymoxynoona · 2 years ago

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Over the Falls (Part 1: Ch 1)

Sexy Banner & bar by @borabae-gx

Summary: Jungkook sees a lot of things as a pool tech. It’s… fine. It pays the bills between mornings on the water and evenings rocking out with his garage-band. His favorite thing to see on the job has been Grace Birch –older but a hottie, wealthy but nice, and unfortunately very married. At least until Grace learns what her husband has been up to behind her back. Now that she’s free, Jungkook finds himself wondering: what does it take for a guy like him to catch the eye of a woman like that?

Genre: Poolboy Jungkook x Rich Divorcee OC

Tags: Age gap (older woman), socioeconomic gap, Surferboy JK, drummer/guitarist/vocalist JK, Wealthy divorcee OC, househusband

CW: Mature/Explicit, Infidelity (not between JKxOC), language, alcohol, recreational drugs, lots of explicit sex, ageist/racist/classist remarks down the road, outdoor sex, beach sex

Masterlist | Chapter Two

“But you said it was fine for this year,” Grace sighed. Belatedly she remembered the sigh would send her husband. He hated when she sighed, even though it was unintentional. It was just… just breathing. She held so much tension in her shoulders and her lungs and periodically it had to ease out or she’d just die or something.

“Well I didn’t know the board meeting would get pulled up, did I?” Tim didn’t even bother looking at her as he draped his suit bag across the back of the couch and set his rollerboard behind it. “So now I have a week to close this deal before I have to stand in a room in front of the men paying our bills and tell them that I failed. I fucked up.”

“But you didn’t fuck up,” she argued. “You’ve been busting your ass to make this partnership happen–”

“After the last one got yanked out from under my feet. Only a fuckup loses a deal that close to closing.”

“That’s not true,” she said and stepped in front of him. She pressed her hands to his chest. He paused and looked at her for a moment, truly looked at her. She saw in his face the long hours, the hard work, the tight deadlines and high stakes. She saw the years of constant travel, of rushed pitches, of last minute victories that secured first one, then another, then another acquisition. Tim was good at what he did. He was building an empire –an empire for Bang Si-hyuk rather than himself, but being the right-hand man paid well. Very well.

Not that Tim had really needed the money. His father had been very good at this as well and built his own empire. Tim had wanted to make a point of not taking handouts from his father, but secretly Grace knew how much of their home and cars and lavish vacations had been her father-in-law’s gift until Tim got his feet under him. Their elaborate wedding had been her parents’ contribution, though. Nothing but the best for their angel daughter.

But in general her parents didn’t offer as much. Her family were investors and attorneys intermarried with prestige –old money, not the new, bubbly, flashy money that Tim and his parents needed to flaunt. They hadn’t offered her anything except a raised eyebrow when she’d decided to marry Timothy Birch. Was it necessary? Was she pregnant? Did she need money after all? Because if things were really bad–

It wasn’t any of those things. It was love. Grace had seen in Tim a fire, a desire to change the world, a strong moral center, and a safe, comfortable future. And love paid off! They’d been married for ten years now, paid off that first modest home Tim’s dad had co-signed for and traded it for a much bigger Colonial, and Grace worked her high-paying real estate job because she genuinely enjoyed it. No matter how many times Tim or her closest friends and most certainly her parents had suggested that maybe she’d be happier at home. You know. With kids.

But how were she and Tim supposed to start a family if he couldn’t even be home to celebrate this important date?

Tim stepped away and her hands were left hovering in the air as he sighed, “I’m sorry, Grace. But I can’t tell the board members I failed to close the deal because my wife needed me at home for a dinner.”

“Not just a dinner. Our anniversary dinner.”

“So we’ll eat our anniversary dinner next week,” he insisted. “The day isn’t important.”

“I know it’s not, we are. But you already had me cancel the week we were supposed to be in the Bahamas. You already had me cancel the luncheon I was going to throw–”

“That was stupid anyway.”

“Your mother demanded it! And I had to be the one to tell her we weren’t doing it –and I’d already put a lot of work into it! And now you won’t even be home to be with me.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“You’re gone too much,” she tried one more time, grabbing his arm.

“It’s my career, Grace. You know it’s important to me.”

“I know that but… but I thought it was supposed to slow down at this point. You said it would.”

“Do you know what happens to a fighter jet if its propellers slow down?”

She sighed. He glared. She nodded.

“It crashes,” she answered. She’d never forget the day he’d made that demonstration while they were up in his hobby plan. Two years ago? He’d finally earned his license and taken her out for a joy ride even though she hated that fucking plane. She’d made the mistake of asking if he’d be home more now, because between work and golf and flying, she saw more of him at dinner parties than at home.

His response had been to demonstrate a drop.

She hadn’t been back in the plane with him since.

Another of her mounting failures.

“Hey. I love you,” he said, suddenly taking her hand. “I’m really sorry I’m missing everything. I promise I’ll make it up to you, ok? The deal should only take me a couple days to close and then… it’ll be belated, but maybe you and I can take a long weekend somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Wherever you like.”

“Galapagos Islands,” she said, because she wanted to see the turtles. “Iceland,” for the Northern Lights. “Oh, what about that ship that takes people to Antarctica–”

“I was thinking more like Cabo,” he laughed. He patted her cheek and kissed her forehead. “I love that you still dream like a little girl. Don’t ever lose that, sweetheart. See you in a week, I hope!”

He grabbed his bags and headed out.

It hadn’t been a bad fight, all things considered. Neither of them had gone for the jugular because there wasn’t really a point, since he had a flight to catch and this trip was an immovable object. Grace was disappointed about it all but not even a little surprised, so she hadn’t wasted her energy getting worked up over something that she couldn’t change.

The house was quiet without Tim; even though he worked a lot, there was still a marked difference around the place when he was in town or out. She’d obviously done all the designing and decorating, but he had such particular taste about things, and the combination always just seemed so loud when he wasn’t here to balance out the echo of her voice. He had so many things to mark his presence here even though he spent half of each month traveling.

Movement in the backyard drew Grace’s attention and she leaned against the sliding door with a sigh. The pool boy was here again. He must have let himself in. Usually he knocked on the backdoor and waved to let her know he was there –a routine begun after once scaring the shit out of her when she’d come up from the gym to see a figure lurking in the backyard. Her scream had been mortifying, though he’d been kind and apologetic.

He hadn’t knocked today, but he might have picked up that she and Tim were fighting and steered clear. He seemed to have a knack for coming over when they were fighting, or maybe it was just because they fought so much. Every little thing seemed to blow up these days, from her not putting the laundry away quickly enough to him leaving whiskers around the bathroom sink after he shaved. Yes, they had housecleaners, but it was trashy to leave a mess for someone else to clean up. “New money,” Grace’s mother had mumbled when she’d complained about it, looking for sympathy or reassurance that men just are like that or something.

She was mortified if the pool boy had actually seen them fighting and felt that staunch Arison pride take over. If someone saw something that might look poorly on you –like fighting with your husband– you needed to immediately do damage control. Hired help talked. Rumors of domestic unrest were like blood in a swamp; nothing drew the gossiping mosquitos faster.

Grace didn’t know how long he’d been working but decided it didn’t matter. She always offered him a drink and a snack anyway. Pink Lemonade or Sprite, he preferred those to anything else. And he always accepted a bag of chips “for the road,” which had amused her the first time he’d said it. As if he just drove from pool to pool in that garishly painted company truck, tossing back kale chips or spooning tuna salad onto crackers. After a few weeks of her offering the foods she kept on hand, he’d once asked if she had any Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. It had taken all her etiquette training not to laugh –definitely not something they kept stocked! But he looked so sweetly sheepish about making a request, and the whole point of offering was to actually show gratitude to the other person. He kept their pool looking so nice! So she tried to keep a box of chips tucked in the back of the pantry where Tim didn’t go anywhere.

She carried a sweaty Sprite and a bag of chips out with her now. He looked up from spooning something out of the pool with his net at the sound of the sliding door.

“Good afternoon!” she called as she slid her feet into a pair of sandals.

“Hello, Mrs. Birch,” he called back. He had on a pair of dark sunglasses and a big floppy white bucket hat and a tank top with long arm holes that gave him a real beach bum vibe. She carried the tray over to the table beside the pool house where it could rest in the shade.

“I brought you a snack. I hope you aren’t too hot out here!”

“Ah, it’s pretty warm,” he said. She thought she might be annoying him because he turned his back to her and lifted the net out of the pool.

“Ok, well, I’ll leave you to–”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Birch. Wait a moment. Just a moment…” He shuffled along the side of the pool and emptied the net into a trashcan, before setting it on the side of the pool and coming to her. “I’m sorry about that.”

“That’s ok! I know you’re working. I don’t mean to slow you down.”

“I just didn’t want to bother you with that…”

“With… what?”

He swept his hat off and pushed his sunglasses up, revealing hair spiky with sweat along his hairline and a pressure mark on his tanned nose.

“Ah, um… a mouse,” he mumbled. She stared. “It’s ok. I took care of it.”

“There was a mouse in the pool?!”

“Well… a rat…”

“I’m so glad you told me! If we have rats I need to call pest control! I promise we don’t usually have rats–”

His face opened up in a laugh as he assured her, “No, Mrs. Birch. I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t a rat…”

Now she was absolutely confused and demanded, “JK, what was dead in my pool?”

He smiled like this was all very funny. He wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand and lifted the Sprite from the tray, opening it with a quick twist of his hand.

“I didn’t want to scare you, it was a squirrel.”

“I’m not scared of a squirrel…”

“A dead squirrel? Ok,” he shrugged and smiled again. “Sorry, Mrs. Birch. Sometimes the ladies are…” He gave her a sheepish look now. Her heart slowed down with the threat of a rat infestation gone. Why in the world had he not just said that from the beginning? It was kind if he’d been trying to spare her but honestly, she was made of sterner stuff than that!

“Well not this one,” she told him, “but thank you for trying to spare me. Is there sanitation that needs to be done in the–”

“Yes, I’ll definitely take care of it, Mrs. Birch.”

She gave him an apologetic smile, “I know you will, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I doubted your professionalism. It’s just been a day…” She turned her head to the side but glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, testing to see if he’d seen or heard anything. Maybe he had knocked on the door and she just hadn’t heard it?

“Well it’s beautiful outside,” he said. “Nothing a little sun can’t solve, right? I’ll have your pool nice again in no time or you can just…” He gestured to the lounge chairs at the far end, then dropped his face to put his mouth around the lip of the Sprite bottle. He tossed his head back and took a big sip with a sigh at the end, eyes red and watering. He sniffled. “It’s good, thanks.”

Grace grinned. “I’m glad. You know, I honestly don’t remember the last time I laid out by the pool.”

“Don’t you like to?”

“Oh yeah, when we first bought this house, I was out here every day with a Bloody Mary and a good thriller. Take a dip to cool off afterwards and–” She broke off, realizing she was waxing poetic about the happy earlier days of her privileged marriage to the fucking pool guy. Not to mention the rudeness. She was never totally sure what sounded like bragging, but suspected Bloody Marys by the pool on a weekday morning were not a part of JK’s routine.

“Won’t bother me if you give it a go while I’m working,” he shrugged. He set the Sprite down. “I just mean, don’t miss the sun on my account. Supposed to rain tomorrow.”

As tempting as the thought was, she didn’t want to make JK uncomfortable while he was working. She knew plenty of women who leered at their pool boys, who were just young men trying to do an honest job. She didn’t know a great deal about JK, but she knew he worked as a pool boy and a lifeguard and taught swim lessons, surfed in his free time, and that his favorite place he’d ever traveled was a summer he spent in Costa Rica, although he’d also gotten really sick there. Bad diarrhea. He hadn’t said that but insinuated it heavily and then looked embarrassed and Grace had thought that was pretty endearing. He was a nice guy, and he worked hard and did a good job.

He was also rather good looking, so safe to assume he dealt with plenty of lecherous old women. Grace refused to be one of them! She was happily married and also not a predator, thanks!

“I appreciate the thought,” she thanked him now. “But I have some things I have to finish up inside and I need to–” Actually she no longer needed to pick up the dry cleaning with any sense of urgency, because she wouldn’t be wearing that blue dress that Tim liked so much to their anniversary dinner after all. “Finish some things up,” she clumsily finished. “So I’ll stay out of your way. If I’m gone when you finish just please be sure to lock up.”

“Yes, Mrs. Birch,” he nodded. “Thank you for the Sprite and chips.”

He was always so polite. She tried to treat all their household staff with kindness and respect but found it returned in various degrees. JK the pool boy was a good one though.

With nothing further to say or do, she bid him good day and returned inside. The conditioned air made her shiver at the contrast. It was going to be an incredibly hot summer if it was already like this in May. Global warming and all that. Thank god for the pool. She glanced over her shoulder one last time to see that JK was back to fishing things out of the pool, then went to cancel the dinner reservation with a sigh.

Mrs. Birch was not like the other women Jungkook cleaned pools for, that was the first thing he could tell you about her.

Agewise, he thought she was somewhere in the middle of the pack –those rich old dudes were always marrying women half their age, but sometimes they had old cutthroat wives who stuck around. He didn’t know how old Mrs. Birch was but he guessed somewhere in the middle of the range, maybe mid-30s or something? Late 30s? Could be 40s with a great surgeon or whatever, but usually you could tell when a white woman had a lot of work done trying to cling to her youth. Mrs. Birch had laugh lines and slight crinkles beside her eyes and a crease between her eyebrows but she had a youthful vibe and a girlish laugh, so fuck if he had any real clue about her age.

She was definitely younger than her husband, Mr. Birch, who sucked donkey balls. Dude deserved a juvenile nickname but what the fuck could you do with the name Timothy Birch? Dickothy? Jungkook was a professional and tried not to spy or anything but he’d seen Mr. Birch obviously being a dick to Mrs. Birch too many times. Even if he couldn’t hear their arguments, it was always easy to tell who was being a bag of shit and who was on the verge of tears, having done nothing wrong.

Who gave a fuck about Mr. Birch, that overbaked piece of toast?

Mrs. Birch was kinder than the women at any of the other mansions Jungkook cleaned pools for. Some of them came out to say hello. Some of them brought food or drinks. Lots of them asked questions about who he was or how old he was or if he had a girlfriend or if he worked out. It came with the territory, and he’d learned how to handle the bolder ones in a way that didn’t cost him his job and usually got him glowing reviews and an occasional awkward tip. They always guessed that he surfed and giggled when they were right. Sometimes they even guessed he played guitar in a band and there were more giggles at how neatly he fit into this fantasy they were brazenly concocting about him. He actually played the drums. Maybe they’d ask when he was playing or if he gave surf lessons and he’d dodge the questions because he didn’t want these women stepping into those corners of his life.

Mrs. Birch only asked the kind of questions he didn’t mind answering. She was the only one who, when he said he surfed, wanted to know what his favorite beach was. He’d gotten so flustered when she listened intently to his impulsive raving about the beaches in Costa Rica that he’d wound up telling her about getting the traveler runs. He’d left the job that day swearing he could never face her again.

But he had, and he didn’t regret it, because Mrs. Birch never made him feel weird or watched or like he was a piece of dog shit stuck to her designer heels. The ones who didn’t flirt often treated him like that. He’d been called Mexican too many times to count, which was racist in so many directions at once. There were ones who didn’t pay their bill and yelled at him when his boss told him to bring it up. There were ones who left disgusting shit –sometimes literally shit– in their pools for him to deal with. Or dangerous stuff; he’d sliced his foot open on broken glass once after someone’s rager, and when he’d calmly explained it was not his job to clean up the yard around the pool, they’d started chucking all the trash and broken glass into the pool. Thank fuck Jungkook’s boss had been happy to drop that client, but usually you had to just do whatever to get the job done.

Mrs. Birch would never do something shitty like that. Her husband was kind of intimidating, a real entitled rich asshole, but not Mrs. Birch. She never hovered but always said hello. She had told him before she sold houses and seemed really passionate about her job which was cool. She also clearly wasn’t from California, with her sweet little hint of Southern accent –he’d heard from some of the other guys she came from money too. Oil money in Tennessee or something. But she wasn’t a rich asshole at all, she was really nice, and remembered whatever stupid things he blurted out about himself whenever she asked.

Because ok, the other thing was that aside from being really nice, Mrs. Birch was fucking hot. Not in the skinny plastic tanned way most of the other women were. She wore makeup and dressed nice and all that, and she was thin and athletic, but there was a naturalness to her. She carried some weight in her thighs and hips that was sexy. She did dye her hair blonde and he kind of wished she’d just let it be whatever the regular brown color was, but it looked nice on her. She had a really bright, sweet smile even without the lip fillers that seemed so popular, and cute dimples, and she had a really nice ass, if he was going to list the things he liked to notice about her. When she opened the sliding door, she never pulled hard enough and had to bump it with her hip; he always looked over the second he heard the door slide so he could see the way she popped that hip out. Her calves were shapely and he was pretty sure her thighs were too, though she was always wearing too much clothing to really get a detailed view of her body. Tits looked real though, a nice size, not so big he suspected they were fake, and they matched her ass.

Well. Well there was one time he’d seen her wearing slightly less than her regular clothes. He’d only been working at their house a couple months –this was a couple years ago now– and she had clearly been working out in their home gym. The back of the house had tons of windows, windows everywhere, so he could see right into the living room and kitchen and dining room and even a bathroom that connected to the outside with an outdoor shower. So he’d seen her walk past all those windows just wearing a sports bra and tight little workout pants. He’d scared the shit out of her; the way she’d screamed had scared the shit out of him too! And sadly, he’d been so flustered by her rocking bod, he had failed to adequately commit her to memory, a regret he had to live with every day. But he had seen, he was certain he’d seen the dark blur of a tattoo on her lower back. He was sure of it! So that dark blur would also haunt him every day because Mrs. Birch was not someone you expected to have a lower back tattoo and he had questions…

Questions he would never get answers to. Because even if her husband was an asshole, he was just a run of the mill rich asshole, and women like Mrs. Birch never left their husbands. And while there were other women who might have not let that stop them –women who were eager to flirt and Jungkook didn’t know how far they’d take it if he didn’t sidestep their attentions– Mrs. Birch wasn’t one of them. He knew that and respected that a lot. Even if he did secretly wish she could hover a little bit.

Like why couldn’t she just get some sun on one of the lounge chairs while he cleaned the water? She could sit out with a bikini and a Bloody Mary and a book and he wouldn’t mind. It was against company rules to work shirtless, but if she enjoyed the view, he wouldn’t mind risking it for her. He could enjoy the view too, her in a bikini. Was she a black bikini woman? Or a flirty polka dot number? He hoped she wasn’t an animal print bikini person, it didn’t match her style at all, but he didn’t think she was. He could see her as a white bikini woman… damn, those always got a little see-through… Anyway, just looking wasn’t a crime…

But Mrs. Birch was one of those women who loved their husbands even when he didn’t deserve it. She had never shown even the slightest sexual interest in Jungkook. She only had eyes for her shitty, unappreciative, scumbag husband. Maybe Jungokok didn’t really know much about Mr. Birch or their relationship, but he definitely saw them unhappy way more than he ever saw them happy and that was enough for him to feel sure about it. He thought the way Mr. Birch kissed her on the forehead instead of the mouth when he said goodbye was stupid. Mrs. Birch seemed like a woman with untapped passion. She needed someone to really grab her and kiss her, not out of duty but out of need–

Maybe he was paying a little too much attention to Mrs. Birch. But nothing was happening, so he cared? He sure wasn’t going to start anything. Way too fucking shy and way too interested in keeping his job and again, Mrs. Birch wasn’t like that, even towards a pool boy. So it was all just in his head, and he didn’t let it go far in his head or anything. The fantasies. Maybe he thought about it sometimes, if she wasn’t home while he was working so there was no risk of getting caught red-faced and guilty-brained. Maybe he thought about her turning around and sliding her skirt down so he could see exactly what was going on with that maybe-tattoo… or sliding her skirt up so he could see what was going on with those thighs… but he hadn’t let it go further than that. The tease and denial was part of the fun after all.

It was just that seeing Mrs. Birch was one of the best parts of his job, and he just wished she’d ogle him a little bit… The other women thought he was hot but, sadly, Mrs. Birch wasn’t like the other women…

It was a bad day. Long. Annoying. He’d spent the morning fighting with the owners of his first pool who insisted that the pool had been over chlorinated even though he showed them the readout proving the chemicals were on the lower end of normal ranges. They wanted a saltwater pool now because someone else had a saltwater pool, and when he tried to walk them through what the changes would entail, they spoke to him like he was stupid. They couldn’t believe he knew anything about pools. “He just cleans them. I’ll call the manager and talk to him about the work involved to switch it over…”

Seething, Jungkook had left to find a missed call from his sister asking if he could babysit for her on Friday morning because she had a job interview. He understood that was more important than his morning surf time so of course he’d do it, and he loved his nephew, but it was still disappointing.

So he’d opened his messages to see if maybe– but no, he couldn’t make plans with Corri for Friday night to still have something to look forward to because she’d told him it was better if they just stayed friends. There were other girls he could try to message but he kind of didn’t see the point because they kept ghosting him. Did he really want to message Vic, who had once asked him how long he planned to keep cleaning pools? Or Deeda who said she didn’t think they had anything to talk about anymore just because she was in grad school now? Or Mara, who thought he spent too much time with his family and should “cut the umbilical cord already”? Teona disagreed, she thought Jungkook ought to spend more time thinking in the family way; time to grow up already because who still lived with their friends after college? Um, people without family inheritances funding their surfer influencer lifestyle maybe? At least Jungkook didn’t live at home anymore, right? That had certainly cost him a lot of dates before he moved out, like girls who didn’t even want to give him a chance just because he was an economic king? Fuck that! But he did move out, and now he still got shit about having roommates and his parents didn’t get the bonus rent he had paid whenever he could.

Dating sucked. Women his own age didn’t like him. Older women liked him too much. His friends had suggested he just go for it more than once. What’s wrong with a sugar mama? Jimin always asked, hitting his arm. Doesn’t that mean everyone’s happy?

Everyone except Jungkook! He wanted more than that in the grand scheme of things, so what? More than just to be some boytoy for ogling and flirting with when their husbands’ backs were turned… More than just a drunk fuck on the weekend, skin salty from a day on the waves… More than a hopeful second or even third date with a pretty woman he met on an app, only for her to suddenly decide it was going nowhere because he was going nowhere… Where was he supposed to go? He was happy! Except for the lack of girlfriend part.

He pulled into the Birch’s pool house driveway already cranky. At least this was the next house. He saw Mrs. Birch’s car in the open garage, though that didn’t guarantee she was home. If she’d bring him out the usual lemonade and chips, at least it would be one little bright spot on his otherwise miserable day.

Not knowing when she might come out or if she could see him, he tried to look less like an angry asshole than he felt as he dragged the things he needed out of his truck and from their pool house. The sun was bright today; his skin glistened with sweat before he even started. He pulled on his wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off his face and neck as he grabbed the net to start fishing out the leaves that had fallen in and evaded their filter. Mr. Birch refused to have one of the automatic pool cleaner robots because the cord annoyed him, but it meant weekly or sometimes twice-weekly visits from Jungkook so whatever, not his money.

He’d reached the deep end of the pool to scoop out a cluster of leaves huddled under the diving board as if they’d been seeking shade when he saw her. Mrs. Birch in the kitchen. Crying.

She leaned against the counter looking at something in her hand and clearly didn’t realize he had arrived. Only strange coincidence had them look at each other at the same time and he could tell by her expression she hadn’t expected him to be there. Because he hadn’t knocked like he usually did, fuck.

Quickly Jungkook dropped his gaze and concentrated as hard as he possibly could on the pool. Pool guys were definitely not supposed to be looking into the windows of a house; they were supposed to be unseen, unheard, unremarked upon staff. But Mrs. Birch had definitely just seen him looking into her kitchen, watching her cry against the counterlike a fucking creep.

Shit.

Shit, not so much because he’d been caught –while it wouldn’t have been the first time a nice-seeming client turned asshole the second something went wrong, or even the first time a woman turned on him because a vulnerability got exposed, he wanted to believe Mrs. Birch was better than that.

But shit because something had made Mrs. Birch cry. Obviously he had no actual idea what it was. Maybe her childhood dog had died. Maybe her favorite salad place had closed down. Maybe her favorite character had finally left whatever daytime soap was popular among older women right now. Maybe it was that time of month and a really emotional Coca Cola commercial had played –that always got his mom going.

Jungkook’s money though was on Mr. Birch being a dick. Once again. Mr. Birch was a rich asshole. Rude, impatient. Apparently he was a really talented businessman, which Jungkook assumed meant incapable of kindness, softness, or passion –all of which of course a nice woman like Mrs. Birch would need and deserve. Besides, Jungkook did know they fought sometimes, and he couldn’t imagine Mrs. Birch actually doing anything wrong. Mr. Birch was the obvious culprit. He’d put his money on it.

The fantasy came into his head without permission: Jungkook, striding through the sliding door into her house, opening his arms and calling, “Hey, pretty girl, what did that asshole do this time?” She’d fall into his arms sobbing but he’d hear her out and talk her down and ask if she wanted him to beat down the prick husband. Which he would and could, obviously. Something about calling an older woman “pretty girl” just seemed nice, like for a moment he could just erase the age difference with her or something and be the strong, mature caretaker. Mrs. Birch needing him not only sexually but emotionally too seemed pretty bitchin’. Obviously she’d need him sexually, but to look up to him and admire him and rely on him too? Yeah, sweet…

Aside from the obvious reality checks (Mrs. Birch was married and had never expressed any interest in him sexually or otherwise), he realized Mrs. Birch might find it hella offensive for Jungkook to call her “pretty girl.” That might not actually be something older women liked. Women his own age were divided on it, based on his personal research. And when it didn’t land well, it really didn’t land well.

He would have liked a raunchier fantasy to play out but none immediately came to call. Fuck his bad day, it was making his mind-dick limp too? He stabbed at the water and tried to dredge up filth but instead he thought of sitting down beside Mrs. Birch and laying his head in her lap and feeling those tits press against the side of his head as she leaned over to comfort him… ok, that was something, he could just turn his face a little, maybe catch a nipple with his teeth–

Fuck it.

He was having a shit day and could use some ogling. Mrs. Birch was having a bad day and deserved some eye candy. He was eye candy, other women clearly thought that! Maybe just this once Mrs. Birch would notice.

He doubled back to strip off his shirt. He tossed his hat aside too and took a moment to apply sunscreen –for safety, obviously, but also so his skin would have that shiny glow to it. He looked himself over, just to make sure everything was oiled and in place. Without the hem of his shirt to cover it, his boardshorts hung low, showing off the shallow cliff of his v-line and the ridges of his abs. He wished he was a bit taller and bulkier but his chest and shoulders and back were fire, so whatever. His muscles came from surfing more than pressing iron and he didn’t exactly have the time for body-building but he was fit and toned. Who the fuck could afford a personal trainer anyway?

Shit, why was he second guessing his own looks? No! Fuck it! Older women thought he was hot. They liked the combo of his baby face and washboard abs –their words, not his. Ah, too bad the board shorts hid his thighs, his thighs and ass got him compliments from those blessed enough to see him naked… He was hot! Women said so!

He reached into the pool to wet his hands and splashed water onto his hair so he could push it back. Maybe she’d be inspired by his shoulder tattoo to show off her own…

He’d never felt so naked at someone’s house before, but he did his best to look sexy as he worked. Actually the cool water looked sexier on this hot day than anything he could do. It was a nice big pool, rectangular and deep with lane-markers in the tile, so one of them must have been a swimmer. Wider than a lap pool though and there was a fountain on one side. If he had a pool like this, he’d be out in it every morning for a dip.

He kept trying to look in the window without it being obvious he was looking in the window. Having his shirt off… it didn’t look desperate, right? It was just a thing pool guy’s did. Yes it was against the rules but he knew plenty of guys did it anyway in the hopes of a bigger end of season tip or, even riskier, cougar bait.

He paused on the edge of the pool with the test strip. Was he… cougar baiting? But it wasn’t going to go anywhere. He wasn’t doing anything. There was nothing wrong with looking, if Mrs. Birch wanted to look at him. That’s why he’d taken his shirt off! Nothing was going to happen!

Unless… unless what if it did? What if this was a signal for action he hadn’t meant to send? What if Mrs. Birch had simply been polite but he’d now set a train rolling that wouldn’t be stopped… they were both in a weak place today. She might seek comfort and... And obviously he couldn’t go through with that, she was married for fuck’s sake, and he could lose his job, and honestly he didn’t put it past Mr. Birch to fucking shoot him or ruin his life or something… and there was the emotional part too that he didn’t really want to be the other guy, he wanted to be the guy for someone–

The door slid open behind him. He spun, definitely not looking as cool and casual as he had hoped.

“Hello,” Mrs. Birch greeted, carrying the tray of chips and a cold pitcher of lemonade over to the glass-top table. “The lemonade is fresh and I added extra ice. If it’s too miserable out here, you can turn those cabana fans on. It’s a real scorcher today, isn’t it?”

He walked over, trying not to overthink his saunter.

“Ah, yeah, it’s brutal today,” he agreed, reaching for the glass. She’d… she’d noticed he was shirtless, right? That’s why she was talking about how hot it was? Did she mean him? If not, she wasn’t reacting at all. “I’ll have your pool nice so you can enjoy it later; perfect day for it.”

“Thank you so much,” she smiled at him. “I have to run out to meet a client soon but I look forward to it later today. I really appreciate all your hard work keeping it nice out here.”

Not sure how to respond to her kindness when he’d been trying so hard to be ogled, he awkwardly pointed out, “That’s what you pay me for.” Wait, did that sound too dismissive or too flirty? Was he trying to flirt? Not really but… but if she wanted to flirt, he’d flirt! If it would cheer her up! She didn’t look like she was crying anymore so maybe it had worked? Quickly he added, “But I try to keep this pool particularly nice.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Well I appreciate your hard work and… thanks. Just please make sure to close the gate on your way out.”

“I always do.”

She didn’t say anything else, just gave him a watery smile and retreated back into the house. Usually they talked for at least a couple minutes, so that had been remarkably short. She had said she had errands to run, but she wound up not leaving the house for a long time yet. And he already knew she was having a bad day, but he saw her in the kitchen and she didn’t seem to cry again.

Or… had she been nervous talking to him when he didn’t have a shirt on? Could that be true, had he left her too flustered for smalltalk? Could Mrs. Birch be shy?

He whistled to himself as he left.

Why was the pool guy shirtless?! Was it really so hot out there? She felt bad if he was that miserable –they had fans with misters that could help! He knew that, didn’t he? But honestly it wasn’t that bad out there… but he was probably running around working by pools all day while she was inside her crisply air conditioned home, crying her eyes out because of that stupid argument with Tim–

Whatever. It wasn’t a good time for the pool guy to be shirtless. Did he have to look like that?! Sure, she already knew his arms and shoulders were toned, and likely the rest of his body as well from all the surfing. His shoulders and cheeks were always sunkissed. But she wasn’t in the business of objectifying people going about their day, so she’d noticed without noticing. He had such a charming smile, that’s what she had always let remain fixed in her mind, but now she couldn’t unknow. She knew too much! She had seen way too low down his happy trail, like his board shorts were going to slip off at any second and leave nothing left for the imagination.

Not that she was imagining! Just… noticing. Was it wrong to notice the muscular curve of his shoulders, and how toned his back was and how his chest actually pillowed as he dragged the net through the water? Probably! But she was married, not dead. How could she not notice? Jungkook was a hunk and he was probably only going to get even more handsome as he aged. Lucky woman who got to–

No, no, stupid line of thought. Just because she was cranky about her own marital troubles didn’t mean she should go down that salty path. The grass was always greener. Hopefully he did have a happy life going on outside of tending to rich peoples’ pools. And anyway, wasn’t she lucky to have Tim? Handsome, successful, enamored(ish) with her…

She took out snacks to try and be normal but found herself a bit tongue-tied talking to him. God, men like him had never paid her much attention when she was younger unless they were after her family money. Suddenly she was fourteen at summer camp again, enamored by the cool surfer boy lifeguard who only ever looked right through her… Except Jungkook didn’t look through her, he kept grinning like he knew he was fucking with her head. Were reviews coming up or something? Was he working shirtless this week, hoping everyone would put in a good word? She refused to be worked!

She fabricated a meeting with a client as an excuse to keep their chat short. The crooked grin and dimples beneath the dark shades were bad enough but then he slid his sunglasses up to rest in his mop of dark curls and arched his eyebrow –she wasn’t even sure what they were talking about, the weather?-- and she thought for sure he was about to quip my eyes are up here, Mrs. Birch. His skin looked warm, like molded sunlight, like summer vacation in the form of a man. Damn, he had the kind of natural glow and ageless beauty she knew plenty of people spent top dollar trying to emulate.

It was good she kept the conversation short. A bad day was not the right time to harass the poor pool guy just here to do his job! She fled quickly inside, but forgot to follow through on leaving for her non-existent errand at first, until she realized she needed to go by her office anyway. Maybe she dragged her feet… just looking wasn’t a crime, right? Maybe? If he didn’t want someone looking, why had he taken off his shirt?!

No. No no she didn’t want to be this kind of woman! This wasn’t who her parents had raised her to be. She shouldn’t be crude about a real person just because she was having a bad day and it didn’t make her feel better anyway, it made her feel worse. Was Tim right about her? One fight with her husband and she slid right into being a lecherous old cougar…

So she grabbed her purse and keys and fled her own house.

Mr. and Mrs. Birch weren’t always fighting when Jungkook came over.

In general it wasn’t unheard of to be working on a pool and accidentally notice things going on inside the house even when you really didn’t want to. To people with money, the staff was invisible until you fucked something up. And some people just had no shame about what the help saw. He’d gotten an unwanted eyeful plenty of times, or turned on music to drown out the fucking floating out of an open window. Lucky bastards, fucking in the middle of the day like that while some people had to work…

Such was the case when Jungkook came over to clean the pool one Wednesday afternoon.

Usually he came by at the same time each week so he could maximize the likelihood of running into Mrs. Birch and minimize the likelihood of running into Mr. Birch. That day when he pulled up though, he could see every spot in the garage filled with a car. Four cars. Mr. Birch had two old ones that were pretty fucking cool, the kind of cars old rich men bought to drive on the weekends up the coast. The kind of car his dad would have loved to drive but had never been anywhere close to. God, he would have loved to buy his dad a convertible for his fiftieth birthday a few years ago but that definitely wasn’t happening on a pool guy’s salary and neither of them knew the first thing about fixing up an old junker.

Jungkook was already brittle with jealousy about the cars as he began his work and then gradually realized that the distant sounds of sex were maybe not so distant. His face jerked towards the source, an upstairs window of the Birch’s house. Honestly, he’d never heard a man that loud during sex before, grunting like an old lawnmower that wouldn’t start. A repetitive lighter gasp, like an alarm no one was bothering to tend to, sat on top of the grunts, so consistent that he didn’t even register it first.

Jungkook’s ears went red. Shit.

Look, Jungkook had fucked around plenty. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been around other people fucking. For fuck’s sake, he lived with two other guys, so he’d had his morning cornflakes to the annoying sound of an early-risen roommate.

But the second he realized he was overhearing Mr. and Mrs. Birch fucking, mortification consumed him. Maybe it was because he had that funny kind of crush on Mrs. Birch. Maybe it was because he thought Mr. Birch was so vile. Maybe it was because the idea of that shriveled old guys’ raw dick being anywhere near the nice and pretty Mrs. Birch was just a bridge too far and now it was confirmed. Ok, sure, they were married, they’d probably had lots of sex in their lives together. Maybe? But he’d never seen or heard it before, and since he saw them fighting, he’d sort of assumed they didn’t do that. Obviously Mr. Birch couldn’t be good. He was selfish and way too old for Mrs. Birch. He looked all wrong next to her, there was no way he looked better on her.

This dose of reality was an unwelcome one: Mr. and Mrs. Birch were married and had sex and Jungkook’s happy fantasy that they were miserable and on the cusp of divorce and she’d turn to him for comfort was slapped in the face by reality. He didn’t actually know anything about them. For all he knew, they were wildly in love and he, as the pool boy, just wasn’t privy to the realities of their marriage. For all he knew, he just managed to always see them at the wrong time for the two and a half seasons he’d cleaned their pool. Or maybe he misunderstood the emotional charge in those moments; maybe something else was upsetting Mrs. Birch and Mr. Birch was her champion. Maybe Mr. Birch was somehow a great husband! She sure seemed to be, um, enjoying that… maybe? That wasn’t how he’d imagined she sounded when he sometimes– look, it wasn’t personal, but she was hot and his mind went to a desperate, embarrassing place when he was jacking off

At least they finished up quickly. He must have arrived at the very end of it, thank fuck. Or maybe Mr. Birch couldn’t last long. He was old, after all. But that didn’t put Jungkook in any better of a mood when Mr. Birch wandered into the kitchen not long after, pouring two glasses of ice water. Mrs. Birch wasn’t far behind, but while he had only a robe on, she had pulled on leggings and a t shirt, like she’d just been working out or watching TV or something casual…

But Jungkook knew what they had just been doing. Usually he didn’t give a shit but now he felt weird and unhappy to be here. It was confirmation of an obvious thing: Mr. Birch fucked Mrs. Birch. Wow, alert the media. A husband fucks his wife! So what that Jungkook didn’t like that? Now he knew they fucked in the middle of the day sometimes. Cool. He could have died happy without knowing that but ok.

He sulked as he cleaned the pool. He contemplated taking his shirt off again, because it was a hot day, and maybe in the hopes Mrs. Birch would notice and think about what Mr. Birch didn’t look like, could never look like… but he didn’t.

That was for the best, since when Mrs. Birch came out to bring Jungkook ice water and a bag of chips, Mr. Birch came with her. It was less than she usually offered, and Jungkook thought she looked apologetic about it, but maybe he just imagined that.

“We’re having people over this weekend,” Mr. Birch said, walking along the side of the pool with his hands in the pockets of his robe. He curled his toes in a weird way when he walked, and Jungkook wondered if the concrete was too hot on his little wealthy feet.

They weren’t little actually. They were big, ugly and wrinkly and Jungkook wondered if maybe Mr. Birch was actually an honest-to-god gremlin.

“Make sure the pool is perfect,” Mr. Birch said because he was still talking. “None of the leaves in the bottom like last time.”

Mrs. Birch looked uncomfortable as she said, “Those happened after he was here last week because the O’Connor’s cleaned their yard and blew all their leaves our direction–”

“Those fuckers need to fix that shitty fence or I’m going to start throwing shit right back,” Mr. Birch grumbled.

“Tim…” Mrs. Birch gave him a look that must have been fond. Jungkook could not for the life of him figure out how someone like Mrs. Birch could be fond of Mr. Birch. It ruined his brief high that Mrs. Birch had defended him.

Jungkook was still holding the net and trying not to look at Mr. Birch in the hopes he’d fuck off, but he didn’t miss the nod in his direction that Mrs. Birch gave her husband, like he was saying something he shouldn’t. Now Jungkook didn’t think she looked fond –she was embarrassed, he realized. Of course she was. Mrs. Birch was a saint and wouldn’t shit talk her neighbors like that, she’d just been stating a fact about the O’Connor’s and defending Jungkook’s work. He smiled at her before he could stop himself, then hurried to cover it with,

“Mr. Birch, if you’re concerned about debris in between cleanings, I could install a pool cleaner robot for–”

“No, that’s what we pay you for,” Mr. Birch interrupted. “You’re the pool boy. Don’t farm out your own job,” he scoffed. It took great self control from cleaning rich peoples’ pools for years to not snap back and point out that the robot wouldn’t remove dead squirrels or check the chemical levels, it would just slurp up the pine needles in between his thorough care.

“A pool technician manages many things to keep your pool nice,” he suggested evenly. “If you don’t want the robot, I could come out twice a week, or you could always call if you need a cleaning ahead of an event–”

Mr. Birch actually laughed and pointed, saying to Mrs. Birch, “Yep, there’s that upsell!” Jungkook felt hatred deep in his belly for this asshole. He was doing his job.

It was clear Mr. Birch sailed through life because he had a woman like Mrs. Birch to clean up the shit he stepped in and tracked everywhere.

“He’s a professional, of course he knows the answers,” she laughed gracefully. “I can run the net around if I need to before everyone comes over on Saturday, Tim,” she added. Jungkook wanted to box Tim’s ears that’s your job, fucker, don’t make her do it! At least let me do it! She continued, “Anything more than that, you’ve lost me. Chemistry was not my best subject in high school…”

Without missing a beat, Mr. Birch laughed, “Well you didn’t need chemistry after all anyway, huh? No science to selling houses.”

“Economic science,” Jungkook suggested, unable to help himself. He wasn’t even sure that was a thing but he blurted it out because it sounded like Mr. Birch was disparaging Mrs. Birch, who worked hard (probably) at her job even though she (probably) didn’t even need to and could just sit at home on her ass spending his money like a lot of the other wives (probably) did.

Unfortunately Mr. Birch just laughed.

Mrs. Birch smiled too, like she appreciated his effort, and suggested, “We’ll leave you to it but call if you need something, as always.” She gestured to the snacks on the table with one hand and nudged Mr. Birch back into the house with the other.

Jungkook waited until Mr. Birch had stepped inside ahead of her to call after, “Hey, if it’s bad before your party, the O’Connor’s clean their yard again or whatever, just call and I can come clean up as a one-off. S’not a problem.”

“Thank you, JK. I’m sure we’ll be fine though. Saturday is surf time, isn’t it?”

The fact she remembered that he liked to go surfing Saturday mornings flustered him into saying nothing in response. He just dropped his gaze and stared at the pool. Sure, that was a low fucking bar for people but still! How could a woman who so kindly remembered he spent his Saturday mornings surfing be married to that limp-dicked troll? She deserved so much better than that. Someone like him, right? Someone who thought her real estate work was cool and impressive and wanted to spend lazy evenings swimming together in this nice pool and who understood how to really take care of that body of hers. No way had Mr. Birch been good to her upstairs. She was faking it, he was sure of it. She’d never need to fake it with him, he’d fuck her so good–

Fuck, he wished Mr. Birch would just drown in this pool. He’d just do a full cleanse after and the pool would look great and Mrs. Birch’s problems would be solved.

Grace carried the two glasses of rosé to join Megan in the living room. Usually Megan was wandering along the gallery wall, admiring the art or peppering Grace with questions about the framed photographs of holidays and events tucked in among the paintings and prints Grace had collected over the years. She only ever bought small paintings because Tim thought big paintings were tacky and they cost too much to convince him otherwise, though she did have one large one her grandparents had gifted her currently hanging in the dining room. She wanted it in the bedroom but it wasn’t worth the fight.

Tim also didn’t like rosé –he considered it a bastardized wine– but Tim wasn’t here right now, so she took great delight in handing Megan the glass and lifting her own to her lip.

“Hey, does your pool guy always work shirtless?”

Grace swallowed some wine down the wrong pipe and had to pound on her chest to free it. Once able to breathe again, she could see that JK was in fact shirtless by the side of the pool, sunlight shiny on his tanned arms and shoulders and back.

Holy hell, not again.

“No, not usually,” she said, sounding cool and calm.

“Damn. My poolboy doesn’t look like that… what service are you using again?”

“Oh, I don’t know the name, I think it’s printed on his truck,” she lied, waving her hand. He’d crouched over to adjust something with the net and his board shorts hugged his frame tight, so low she suspected she might see ass if she looked closely. There was so little to his torso! Maybe she had noticed before how narrow his waist was compared to his shoulders, but from the side she was scandalized by the reminder that his pecs had actual volume to them and his stomach, in fact, did not.

“God, I’d be out there sunbathing if my poolboy looked like that,” Megan continued. “That’s a young man in his prime. Look at that tan, it’s real! And those muscles… I bet he’s insane in the sack…”

“Megan!”

“What! I’m lonely and horny. Adam’s been on site for a month now… Oh don’t look scandalized, I’m not actually banging the help. A girl can dream, can’t she? No harm in looking. I adore Adam… but he’s definitely not outperforming someone like that in bed.”

Grace sighed and insisted, “You can’t tell how someone performs in bed just by looking at them.”

“Maybe you can’t…”

“Stop,” she laughed. “Stop gawking at my pool technician. If he looks over and sees us– Megan!”

He had, in fact, looked over. He waved at them, so there was no hoping he hadn’t seen them peering out the window at him. Grace was good at smoothing over awkward situations but couldn’t see an easy way out of this one except to wave back and grab Megan’s arm and drag her away from the window. She’d already taken his snacks out earlier before Megan got here. He’d been wearing a shirt then…

“Does Tim know you have a hot stud like that around here every week?”

“Oh please,” Grace laughed. “Like he has anything to worry about.”

“I know, I’m just teasing. Good-girl Grace, definitely the last person anyone expects to fool around with the poolboy. Which means…” Megan wiggled her eyebrows.

Grace just rolled her eyes, “Yes, the last person. He’s very young and definitely not looking to be harassed by a couple of old married women while he’s just doing his job.”

“If he didn’t want us to admire him, he wouldn’t have his shirt off.”

“Meg! That’s crass victim blaming, even from you–”

“He’s not a victim, is what I’m saying! Poor boy is probably desperate for you to notice him every week. He’s rubbing one out every night wishing you’d march out there one day and mount him on the lounge chair–”

“MEGAN FERRERO!”

“Ugggh I’m reading too many romances lately,” Megan sighed. “I’m going to tell Adam he can’t ever leave me alone this long again. I can’t be trusted.”

Grace didn’t want her friend to see how flustered that little scenario had left her. Not because she was thinking about that sort of thing with JK. But just because it was suggested and– honestly, he was just a guy doing his job!

“That’s right, you can’t be trusted!” Grace teased to cover herself. “From now on I’ll have to schedule your visits when I have no staff around the house–”

“Oh god do you only hire really attractive people? See, this is why it helps to be friends with people who like art. You have an appreciation for beauty!”

“I do but that did not get utilized when choosing a pool cleaning service…”

“No wonder you wound up with a handsome man like Tim. You have a good eye.”

“Hm, I suppose so…” Grace smiled. Things with Tim seemed… off lately. Which wasn’t saying much because they’d always had their highs and lows, and this wasn’t even really low compared to previous lows. He just seemed strange lately, bouncing between standoffish and more ardent than she’d seen him in years. He was closing in on a big deal. He was traveling less but to more interesting places. He’d even suggested she could go on the trip to St. Bart with him next month, maybe they could make a longer stay of it. That would be nice, right at the end of the season, once the Europeans were done with their obscenely long summer holidays. Probably the place would be rife with people they knew, as close to the “trip to the sea” holidays that showed up so often in the old English novels Grace liked to read on a rainy day.

“Or more like Tim has a good eye,” Megan corrected, nudging her with her toe.

Quickly Grace slid decorum back into place and nodded with an arched eyebrow, “Yes, we both made quite the acquisition.” It made Megan laugh and Grace suppressed the sigh of relief. If there was anything her parents had taught her, it was never to show your belly, even to your friends. Especially to your friend who seemed to accumulate any bit of gossipy trivia about everyone. With any luck, the pool business JK worked for was going to see a surge in business soon, right at the end of the summer pool season, with probably particular requests for JK… But dear lord, how would Megan figure that out? Grace hadn’t said his name. How would Megan describe him– oh, she realized, probably as “the young man who cleans the Birch’s pools.” Probably the requests would be good for JK career-wise, though she hoped no one bothered him actually. Was it ok to ogle your handsome staff? Grace really didn’t think so. And so she didn’t!

“Now I didn’t bring you over here to prey on my pool guy, we’re supposed to be talking about what we want to pitch for the benefit to the committee–”

“Before those skanky hoes Trish and Nancy scoop us again,” Megan instantly sulked.

“Adam will be back before the vote, right? It’s ultimately the men on the board who decide–”

“Oh I’ll make sure he’s back, and you keep Tim here too. Just because we aren’t blowing the rest of them doesn’t mean we can’t find other ways to sabotage–”

“Or we could just have the best idea.”

“Oh Grace,” Megan laughed. “Sometimes I forget you’re so much younger than me. You’re not even forty yet! A fresh babe.”

“You’re only forty-three.”

“Yes, and so worldly. Trust me. This is important. This is about establishing ourselves! Those old bitches need to roll over and die, it’s our turn to take over, the younger generation. She doesn’t look a day over sixty but Nancy is definitely in her seventies. Might just take one good jump-scare…”

“You are incorrigible,” Grace laughed, shaking her head. Megan was new money, lavish, ostentatious, a gossip, overly blunt –literally everything Grace had been raised not to be. It was shocking! And yet, despite the dent it likely caused on her impeccable social card, Grace found herself seeking out Megan’s company time and time again. In a sea of masks, Megan let hers slip sometimes. Usually when she was throwing it off because someone had pissed her off…

“But you love it. Ok. So I’m thinking… exotic dancers–”

“Meg!”

“Sorry! Your poolboy inspired me! Fine, I forgot, that’s only what the men do on their own, we’re supposed to pretend not to know. What about… Old Hollywood?”

“Does it seem out of touch? It’s to benefit starving children…” Grace tactfully reminded her.

“All right, let’s refill our wine glasses to think, I need more rosé.”

Mr. Birch had complained to the pool company about his pool. He’d felt there were too many leaves in it within days of cleaning. Fortunately Jungkook’s boss Bob understood these kinds of complaints and had said all the right things and then carried forward zero of the reprimands. When asked if he wanted a different pool technician, Mr. Birch had said he “didn’t give a fuck, I just want it done right.”

But Mrs. Birch had also called, Bob explained further, to apologize for her husband and insist that Jungkook did a fantastic job taking care of their pool and there was no need to replace him unless he was uncomfortable working at their house, which she would understand. Mrs. Birch was a class act. His boss told him the calls happened close together, and Mrs. Birch’s voice sounded like she was upset, so he suspected there was a fight. Probably the pool wasn’t the important thing they were fighting about and Mr. Birch’s anger just got passed down the little guy, that’s how these things went.

Jungkook thought it was possible Bob told him all this to make sure he wasn’t getting into something he shouldn’t, because Bob stopped laughing and had that look on his face. Jungkook would not be the first guy to get fired for fucking someone’s wife on the side. Jungkook easily and honestly reassured him that was not an issue here. He was not involved with anything but cleaning the pool.

How could he be when Mr. and Mrs. Birch were suddenly so busy fucking like rabbits on the afternoons he came by? The sex noises were even louder this time and it was so fucking obnoxious he almost just turned around and left. Was Mr. Birch trying to prove a point or something? Fuck that guy. Mrs. Birch shouldn’t be married to that piece of shit and either it was a money thing or a magical tongue thing but Mr. Birch didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d eat pussy so probably it was a money thing. Well… Jungkook couldn’t offer anything when it came to money but his tongue was a different story and which really led to a happier life?

Ok honestly probably the money…

He decided to stay, in the hopes it would grate on Mr. Birch’s nerves to see him still working there after his complaint. At first it was fine, he just put his headphones on. But eventually the noise got too loud to be drowned out, and it was pissing him off to hear, “Oh Tim! Oh Tim!” chanted through music he loved.

He ripped the headphones out just as the woman gave an actual scream of pleasure. The mixture of anger and embarrassment that Mrs. Birch could sound like that froze him in place for a moment. That had apparently been the end of it because sudden silence followed. Thank fuck.

His blood was still boiling though, a nauseating mixture of horny and angry. What the fuck? He always came on Wednesdays. This didn’t have to happen on a Wednesday afternoon with the windows wide open. Didn’t they have any fucking decency for the neighborhood?!

Also what the fuck had Mr. Birch done to make Mrs. Birch cum so hard? Jungkook had found some comfort over time in convincing himself that sadly Mrs. Birch’s sexlife was a pleasureless one and he could be so much better for her. But he’d never made a woman scream like that… not that he didn’t work hard to satisfy anyone he landed in bed with but that scream was unreal. In fact, it had to be literally unreal, right? It had to be fake. It had to be! He thought he’d be able to tell as soon as Mrs. Birch came down and remembered he was here and brought him his usual snacks. Maybe she’d just been in a hurry to get Mr. Birch to stop poking at her with his skinny hot dog dick.

Nonetheless, his ego was threatened. It was the one area he’d felt superior. It was bullshit if this pimpled-asshole got to be rich, lazy, married to someone like Mrs. Birch and actually had good dick game. It wasn’t fucking fair. Assholes always got ahead in life and meanwhile decently-ok guys like Jungkook were stuck cleaning their pools and fantasizing about their wives bent over the side of the pool when they jacked off in the shower because another girl had ghosted after only a couple of dates. Not to mention living to paycheck to paycheck and arguing with the landlord about whether they were in their right to install a basketball hoop over the garage or not. Probably he wouldn’t have even noticed if it hadn’t ripped the gutter down the first time Jungkook hit the backboard…

He texted the loudest woman he’d ever fucked who he was also still on friendly terms with to see if she’d be willing to chill this weekend. Fine. Mrs. Birch wanted to get fucked so hard by her husband? He could fuck a woman even harder! One who wanted to be fucked by him! He didn’t care if he was being crazy right now!

But when he realized there was movement in the kitchen and that he was standing here on his phone, he nearly dropped it in his panic. Mr. Birch already wanted him fired, it wouldn’t help him if they saw him on the side of the pool on his phone. He hurried to shove it into his back pocket while also glancing at the window to make sure no one had seen him.

They had not. Because in fact they were fucking again. The woman was sitting on the kitchen counter wearing a silky robe spread open while Mr. Birch clearly tried to guide his dick into her, staring down as if he wasn’t sure how to work his own junk. He had a robe on too, thank fuck, but that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was that that was not Mrs. Birch.

Without even thinking about it, Jungkook raised his phone without moving any other muscle of his body, like they couldn’t see him if he didn’t move. He took several photos.

Illegal? Yes. Immoral? Probably. Likely to get him fired? Definitely. But he wasn’t thinking about that right now. His brain was too busy rocketing around his skull because A.) if Mr. Birch realized Jungkook was here, he was definitely going to get him unjustly fired and B.) Mrs. Birch deserved so so so much better than this fucking piece of shit limp dick who had his head so far up his own ass he’d have an affair while the pool guy was here.

Where was Mrs. Birch? She was usually here at this time! Why wasn’t she? Why was Mr. Birch here instead?

Jungkook ducked down beneath the window and ran as fast as he could out of the backyard, leaving supplies scattered. He’d go to the next house and come back later. Right now, everything in his gut told him not to be at this house a minute longer. He’d say there had been an emergency and he had needed to go, if Mr. Birch even noticed the half-done job outside. He didn’t seem interested at the moment in noticing anything except that woman who was not his wife with her lips wrapped around his dick.

Heart pounding, Jungkook peeled out of there like a bat out of hell.

Masterlist | Chapter Two

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