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kissinginkitchens · 4 years ago

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You Bring Me Home — Chapter One: Flightless Bird, American Mouth

a/n: I've been working on this story for mooonths now and I'm so excited to finally share it with the world! It's heavily inspired by Harry's Behind the Album mini doc, except I changed the setting to Hawai'i because I've personally spent some time there and as they say, write what you know! YBMH takes place in the period between One Direction's hiatus and Harry's first album/tour, but with that being said, this is entirely a work of fiction and some events don't follow the true timeline. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my little story, I hope you love it as much as I do! It will be updated every Friday at 5 PM PST. My inbox is open, so feel free to talk to me once you've finished reading! I'd love to hear from you :) Much love, Mel <3

Pairing: Hawai'i!Harry x Original Character

Warnings: swearing

Word Count: 5.5k

May, 2016

Harry watches LAX get smaller through the airplane window and visualizes all of his worries stuck at the terminal gate, their magnitude also diminishing as he takes flight. He sinks lower in his seat and skims through playlists on his phone when a nagging feeling at the back of his mind pulls his attention away from the screen. Looking up from the song choices, he spots a cell phone quickly lowered from his line of vision and a girl with flushed cheeks who quickly averts her gaze. Harry shoots a tight-lipped smile in her direction and goes back to his phone with a sigh. The days when he could roam the streets freely without fear of recognition—or worse, harassment—feel like an entirely different lifetime. He sometimes imagines that he’ll wake up back in his childhood bed as if the past five years had all been a dream, but he never does. In fact, his privacy and anonymity seem to dwindle with each minute of radio play that One Direction receives. It’s a bittersweet pill to swallow, but one he hopes will go down easier with some time in the Hawaiian sun.

His close friend and new manager, Jeff Azoff, had suggested the vacation as soon as the band privately agreed to take a hiatus.

“You’ll go home for a few weeks,” his voice had crackled through the speakers of Harry’s phone. “Visit your mom and Gem, lay low for a while until the smoke blows over,”

Harry mulled it over in his mind, eyes flickering over the rolling landscape outside of the tour bus window.

“Then what?”

“Then you go for a little vacation. The label offered to cover a house in Hawaii so you can start working on the album,”

“Alone?”

Jeff chuckled lightly on the other end before responding. “I mean, if that’s what you want,”

“No,” Harry corrected. “You and Tom should come. Mitch and Bhasker, too,”

“The dream team,”

“And there’ll be a studio there?”

“Yes,” Jeff started, almost hesitant. “But I don’t want you to think about that too much,”

“But you said the label—"

“I also said vacation. Look, Rob said ‘it will all happen in due time,' did he not?”

Harry twisted the rose ring around his finger, tracing over the silver petals and thinking back to his conversation with the CEO of Sony Music, Rob Stringer. Upon the proposal of his debut solo album, Rob had told him that the most important ingredient for a successful debut would be patience. The singer had agreed in the moment, but every day not spent in the studio felt like a test he hadn’t studied hard enough for.

“Yeah.”

“So you take the free vacation,” Jeff suggested. “You go out, live, get some writing material. Maybe mess around with some tunes. And then we come back to L.A. and get to work. But until then, I just want you to focus on taking it easy.”

So take it easy he had. Or at least he had tried to when he was back home in England. Harry quickly grew restless after what felt like the millionth awkward conversation with past friends and acquaintances, all of which eventually led to the topic of One Direction and it’s unexpected hiatus. After one month at home, his mind and journal were full of ideas for songs, things that he wanted to say before he lost his nerve. One night as he tossed and turned in bed, he shot Jeff a text, just two words that would kick off a three month getaway to the Big Island of Hawai'i:

I’m ready.

********

“Sounds great, I'll go put in your order.” Alani offers sweetly, trying not to overdo it with the customer service voice. After waiting on the family at her designated table, she heads back to the kitchen and finds her younger sister, Pua, crouched in the corner taking what appears to be a serious phone call.

“I don’t know, I just saw it!” Her sister cries in a hushed tone. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“Is everything okay?” Alani cuts in with concern.

Pua whispers into the speaker before bringing the phone to her shoulder.

“Harry Styles was just spotted on a plane this morning,”

“Who?”

“The guy from One Direction,” her sister explains with a hint of irritation in her voice. “The band who sings that song you secretly like, ‘Fireproof,'”

Alani vaguely recalls the melody, but she waits expectantly for Pua to elaborate. “And this is news because…”

“Because the band just broke up, so where could he possibly be going?”

"The unemployment office?”

Pua rolls her eyes and returns to her phone call while Alani envelops her in a tight hug.

“I’m just kidding!” Alani apologizes, squeezing tighter despite her sister’s attempts to break free. “I’m sure he’ll be living off of royalty checks until he’s, like, eighty,”

“Get off me, freak!” Pua cries out, finally breaking the embrace.

Alani clutches her chest and pulls out an invisible knife. “Ouch. I’m telling Harry you said that,”

“This is exactly why I don’t tell you things.” the younger sister huffs, storming out of the kitchen through the employee entrance where Alani’s best friend, Maleah, has just arrived.

“Looks like someone forgot to eat their Cheerios today,” she remarks, tying her curls into a high ponytail.

Alani shrugs and leans against the counter. “She’s going through something. Just discovered that boys in pop bands are, in fact, just regular boys.”

“Poor thing,” Maleah frowns. “We all have to learn eventually.”

********

The sky is a blend of cotton candy pink and burnt orange when Alani returns home from the café with a strawberry smoothie in tow. She empties the mailbox and sorts through the various bills and advertisements, but her stomach drops when she sees a familiar return address label. After a quick greeting to her excited dog who waits at the door, Alani bolts up the stairs and quietly shuts the bedroom door behind her. Breathe, she reminds herself before tearing into the envelope and discarding it onto the wooden floor.

Dear Ms. Hale,

We are very grateful to have received your submission to Rolling Stone magazine. However, we regret to inform you—

She doesn’t read the rest, slumping to the floor in defeat. The sixth rejection letter from Rolling Stone lies crumpled at Alani’s feet and she kicks it across the room with a frustrated grunt. She had worked for over two months perfecting her analysis of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi and its allusions to the environmental impact of urban development in Hawaii. As part of her initial research, Alani had even traveled to both the Royal Hawaiian hotel in Honolulu, which is the famous Pink Hotel mentioned in the song, and Foster Botanical Garden that Mitchell referred to as “the tree museum.” She was certain that her effort and persistence would result in at least a consideration. The second third time's the charm! Maleah had joked watching Alani submit the piece. Six articles in the span of two years, each one facing the same rejection despite the increased effort Alani had put in over time. The fact that the rejection letter hadn’t changed over the course of the two years brings an incredulous smile to her face, and her stomach turns when she considers that the editors probably hadn’t even read her work, anyway. All that effort, she thinks to herself, all that time, for nothing.

“It will take time,” her favorite professor, Dr. Hudson, had reassured her three months after the Joni Mitchell article was submitted. “Every great writer faced countless rejection until that one piece. Yours will come. Keep your eyes open and your pen ready.”

Alani sighs and lifts herself off the floor, choosing to crawl into her unmade bed instead of slumping onto the hardwood. She hears a soft scratching at the door before her King Charles Spaniel, Freddie, pads into the room.

“Come here, bubs,” Alani whispers. He obeys and burrows into the duvet, giving her temple a gentle lick before nuzzling into the nape of her neck.

“You still love me, right?” she asks, voice cracking. “Even if I’m a failure?”

Freddie sniffs her ear in response.

********

“Right,” Harry says, his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he reads the map. “No, left, sorry,”

“Do you actually know how to read a map?” Jeff teases, correcting the turn.

Harry pouts in response, his brows furrowing. “In my defense, we’re literally in the middle of fucking nowhere,”

“There are worse places to be,” Mitch pipes up from the back seat. “England, for example, where they say things like ‘litchrally’,”

“Very well said, Mitchell,” Jeff Bhasker adds with a fake British accent of his own.

Harry turns to his friends in the back seat with a finger pointed like an agitated mother. “If you lot don’t shut up, I’m gonna lead us to a volcano and push you in,”

“Where are we even going? I forgot,” Tom complains.

“To get food,” his manager responds from the driver’s seat. “I think,”

“Why can’t we just stop there?” Mitch asks pointing to a café pulling up on their right.

Jeff merges into the turning lane quickly without a second thought. “Good enough for me, I’m starving.”

“Sorry, H.” Mitch pats his friend on the shoulder.

Harry scoffs. “You’re the one who wanted poke.”

The Aloha Nui Loa Café is much more spacious than the exterior suggests, yet it still feels cozy. The walls are painted sage green and adorned with various local art pieces, as described by the plaques that accompany them. A skylight fills the center of the room with plenty of warm lighting, leaving the space along the walls in a bit more shade for an intimate feel. In one corner, a hanging disco ball leaves freckles of sparkling light along the walls where the sunlight hits, making the whole image very idyllic in Harry’s mind. As if he couldn’t enjoy the setting more, he hears the beginning of an Otis Redding song that he’s had stuck in his head drift through the restaurant speakers.

“Welcome in!” a voice calls, which pulls him from his survey of the room. His head whips to the source—a girl around his age with wavy, dark hair and honey skin. “For here or to go?”

Harry takes a hesitant step up to the counter. “For here,”

She smiles warmly and pulls some menus from under the counter. “How many in your party?”

“Five.”

“Great, follow me.”

Harry and his friends follow the waitress to the corner of the room under the disco ball and take their seats at the round table.

“My name is Alani,” she introduces herself, setting the menus down. “I’ll be serving you today. Can I get you started with some drinks?”

Harry continues scanning the restaurant while his group orders. His eyes land on the shirt that Alani is wearing, a white tee with the words “Enjoy Health, Eat Your Honey” in blue lettering that surrounds a picture of a cartoon bee.

“Harry,” Jeff says gently, catching his drifting attention.

The singer turns to his manager, who nods to Alani waiting with a pen pressed to her notepad. Harry feels a rush of embarrassment creep across his cheeks and he clears his throat to cover it.

“Just water,” he says, eyes glued to the menu. “Thanks.”

“You got it.” Alani nods, flashing a toothy grin at the rest of the group before turning back to the kitchen. Harry. Her mind repeats, finding a hint of familiarity, though she doesn’t know why.

When Alani arrives at the drink station, she finds her sister staring at her, mouth agape, while Maleah unsuccessfully conceals her laughter.

“What?” she questions, checking herself for any embarrassing stains or smells.

“You were—and he—” Pua stammers. “He was—and then he—”

“That’s Harry Styles,” Maleah translates, her voice hushed as she peers over her friend's shoulder.

Alani turns to steal a glance at the table she just seated, but Pua and Maleah latch onto her and shake their heads frantically.

“Don’t look!” her sister hisses.

Alani smirks, amused at their reactions. “No shit. That’s One Direction?”

Maleah snorts, clasping a hand over her mouth as Pua huffs. “No, dumbass! It’s just Harry. I don’t know who the other guys are,”

“But the blonde guy? That’s not—?”

“No!” Pua and Maleah giggle in unison.

“Okay, geez,” Alani relents. She manages to steal a quick glance at the table over her shoulder, immediately searching for Harry. Her eyes scan over the long, curly hair kept out of his face by a pair of white sunglasses that she had seen on Kurt Cobain once. All of his features are sharp and striking, from his pointed nose and defined jawline to the bright blue eyes. Or maybe they were grey? Alani wonders, trying to remember the exact shade. He doesn’t look anything like the fresh-faced teeny bopper she’d had in mind, the one from a music video her sister had shown her a long time ago. She would have never guessed that the What Makes You Beautiful singer had so much dark ink trailing down his bicep and forearm, though her knowledge of One Direction was very limited.

“What did he order?” Pua questions, her eyes wide.

Alani quickly snaps back to reality and resumes filling the drinks. “A water,”

“Oh my god,” Maleah swoons. “I’m never drinking anything else ever again,”

“I didn’t even know you liked him,” Alani teases with an eyebrow raised.

Maleah sneaks another peek at the table and catches her lower lip between her teeth. “I mean, I didn’t really think so either but look at him. What a fucking dream,”

Harry was objectively handsome, this Alani could admit, but she personally didn’t see the appeal and had a strong feeling that he was just like every other male celebrity. The fact that he hadn’t even bothered to make eye contact with her only served as further proof of what she knew to be true.

“Okay, well, your dreamboat is waiting for his water. So excuse me,” Alani winks, making her way back to the table.

The singer spots Alani returning out of the corner of his eye and the sight of her causes a strange flutter in the pit of his stomach that makes him want to duck for cover. Instead, he pulls his phone from his back pocket and pretends to be occupied with something on the screen.

“Okay,” she greets, setting the drink tray down. “I have a Blue Hawaii, a Mango Mama, two Loco Cocos, and a water,”

The group graciously accepts their drinks with a chorus of “thank you," but the only one under Alani’s scrutiny is Harry. He still doesn’t meet her almond eyes, and though she figured he wouldn’t, she can’t help the inkling of disappointment that washes over her. After taking their meal orders, Alani heads back to the kitchen, checking on her other customers along the way. Harry’s eyes follow her and he observes the way customers light up at her presence, indulging her conversation with laughter. He watches as she lingers by the jukebox in one corner of the room, a detail he had missed in his initial scan, and waits anxiously to see what song she chooses. Baby I’m-a Want You begins softly and Harry feels the corner of his lip curl ever so slightly. Good choice, he thinks.

********

“He’s still here,” Pua muses, peering through the tiny window in the kitchen door. It had been nearly two hours and the five men were still seated around their table cracking jokes and doing a lot of talking with their hands.

Alani doesn’t look up from her bowl of sliced kiwis, offering a hum in response. “And what do you want me to do about that?”

“Nothing,” Pua shoots back. “Don’t bother him,”

“What kind of girls do you think he’s into?” Maleah asks, attempting to peek through the window.

Alani shrugs, bored of the conversation and of thinking about Harry. “I don’t know, but I’ll bet he’s a real sucker for the ones who stalk him while he’s eating,”

“How does he make eating a salad look hot?”

“Can we talk about something else now?” Alani whines, poking holes in a lone kiwi with her fork.

Pua tosses a wet dish rag in her sister’s direction and cheers when it lands in her face. “Go see if he wants more water, he looks thirsty.”

“I already refilled it,” Alani defends. “Twenty minutes ago. I’ve refilled it a hundred times, I’m surprised he hasn’t peed his pants.”

I’m gonna piss myself. Harry thinks, his right leg bouncing to distract himself. He really wasn’t all that thirsty, but he couldn’t stop himself from finishing each glass of water that Alani placed in front of him. He really wasn’t all that thirsty, but he couldn’t stop himself from finishing each glass of water that Alani placed in front of him. Like clockwork, she would return to fill his glass almost as soon as the last drop had been drained, and so what began as a little experiment slowly turned into a bladder hazard. But if the trend was to be trusted, she would be back any minute and he wasn’t going to miss it; afterall, there were only so many ways to casually linger in a small café without making it weird. Unable to bear it any longer, he heads to the restroom and hopes that Alani doesn’t clear their table before he has a chance to see her again.

Harry pads down the back hallway with his eyes cast down at the floor, which proves to be a mistake when he walks directly into another person.

“Sorry!” they both apologize quickly, Harry’s palm taking purchase on the other person’s upper arm.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” he offers, finally meeting the dark, mocha eyes already looking back at him.

Alani presses her lips into a tight smile. “Me either,”

Harry’s heartbeat picks up when he realizes it’s her, and he isn’t aware of how close they’re standing until he detects the faint scent of kiwi on her breath. He takes a step back and rakes a hand through his hair.

“So I guess I’ll just—”

“Yeah, sure.”

Green. Alani notes to herself. His eyes are green.

********

Shortly after Harry returned from the restroom, him and his friends settled their bill and headed out. Alani cleared their table and her eyes nearly fell out of her head when she saw the hefty tip left behind. The word mahalo was also left behind on the receipt, underlined twice, and she wondered if it was his handwriting.

Later that night, she settled into bed with her laptop and hesitantly typed his name into Google. As she expected, countless articles about the split of One Direction emerged, most of them speculating what was next for each member. To her surprise, however, Harry’s name seemed to be mentioned more than his fellow bandmates as various sources labeled him “the next Justin Timberlake” and rising star of the group. Upon further investigation, she learned that the demand for information about the elusive Harry Styles was high, especially concerning any possible solo music. No news had yet been confirmed by Styles himself, nor anyone claiming to represent him, but she still wondered if his presence in Hawaii had anything to do with a possible solo project. Almost as soon as she thought it, Alani dismissed the theory in favor of the idea that he was most likely just taking a vacation. And from the buzz that she saw surrounding the news about One Direction, she couldn’t blame him.

The more Alani read, the more she wanted to know, and something deep down told her that his was a story worth telling. Of course, the only problem was that she had hardly talked to him, and there were only so many things she could say about the fifteen glasses of water he downed. There was no way of knowing if she would ever see him again, either, or if he was merely stopping in Hilo on his way to another island or somewhere else entirely. Alani sighed, thinking back to her most recent rejection from Rolling Stone. She knew that there was no possible way she would ever see or talk to Harry ever again, and even if she did, why would he bare his entire soul to a stranger? Still, she let her mind wander through the possibility.

Dear Ms. Hale, the letter would read, we are very grateful to have received your submission to Rolling Stone magazine and are pleased to inform you that your piece on Harry Styles will be featured in next month’s issue. Additionally, we would be honored to have you on staff, effective immediately.

It was far-fetched, Alani knew this, but she dozed off that night with endless ideas swimming in her head.

********

By the third day after his visit, the only trace of Harry is in Alani’s search history. She would have completely forgotten about him if it weren’t for her sister’s constant reminiscing and multiple attempts to rename the house salad to the “Harry Special.” As a result, a part of Alani’s thoughts periodically linger back to that day and the subsequent hours spent on Google that she’d rationalized as research instead of stalking. Somehow the knowledge that she’ll never see him again only adds fuel to the questions still burning in her mind, but a customer clearing their throat while she sorts menus below the hostess podium interrupts her thoughts.

“Welcome in!” She calls, standing. “What can I—”

She stops in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes. Harry blinks and waits for her to continue.

“What can I get started for you?” Alani tries again, hoping that he hadn’t noticed her shock. Luckily for her, Harry had been too focused on choosing his next words to register her mistake.

“What’s in the Honu smoothie?” he asks, mentally kicking himself for asking such a stupid question when the menu just inches above her head clearly spells it out.

Alani hums, thinking back to the times she had made the smoothie herself. “Kiwis, spinach, mango, avocado, and a hint of lime,”

“I’ll take one of those,” Harry says, reaching for his wallet.

Alani punches in the order with trembling fingers and nods. “For here or to go?”

“To go,”

Disappointment fills her chest. Sure, she hadn’t planned on seeing him ever again, but the fact that she did felt like a sign. If she wanted to take the chance, she’d have to do it fast.

“Anything else?” she asks, weighing her options while he skims the menu.

“No thanks.”

Alani makes the smoothie quickly, head spinning. She had spent most of the night after their initial meeting planning out exactly the type of questions she hoped to ask him and what kind of article she would write. She was used to writing about what she knew—artists and music she’d admired for years— but she figured that starting fresh with someone she hardly knew would be a good challenge. Not to mention that it seemed like just the thing Rolling Stone would jump for. Alani finally works up the courage as she finishes his smoothie, but when she returns to hand it to him and hopefully strike up a conversation, his ear is pressed to his cell phone. She holds out the drink and he graciously accepts, giving her a small nod as a “thank you” and rushing out of the restaurant.

Two days later he returns and is seated at the counter, typing away on his phone. Alani feels both a rush of optimism and annoyance at the universe for dangling his presence so unexpectedly. She starts heading over to him, but Maleah cuts in.

“Trade me?” she proposes, eyes wide.

Alani blinks. “Oh, I would but I—”

“Please,” her best friend pouts. “I’m leaving to see my grandparents in stupid California for two months. Who knows when I’ll get the chance to see him again?”

Alani sighs, but gives in, reluctantly exchanging Harry for the family of four seated by the window. A strange feeling settles into the pit of his stomach when he sees that she heads in the opposite direction after a hushed conversation with another waitress. He doesn’t know why she traded him for a different customer, but he takes the hint.

A week goes by without another sighting of Harry and Alani has permanently taken on the role of greeting hostess in hopes of seeing him again. Her heartbeat temporarily speeds up when she sees a long haired customer approach the door, but her spirits quickly fall when the face doesn’t match his.

Another week brings another disappointing realization that Harry might be gone for good. One rainy morning when the restaurant is quiet and only two customers huddle together in a booth near the back, Alani hunches over the hostess podium and doodles on a stray receipt— a sunflower, a crescent moon, and two hearts. The bell above the door jingles but she doesn’t look up, too absorbed in her scribbles.

“Do you serve coffee?”

The familiar accented voice stops Alani’s pen dead in its tracks. She lifts her eyes first to confirm, and then straightens up when she sees that her ears haven’t deceived her.

“Yes,” she swallows.

“Great. I’ll take it to go,”

She slightly deflates, but Harry thinks he’s reading too much into it.

“Actually,” he corrects anyway, just in case he isn’t. “I think I’ll stay for a while,”

Alani flashes a warm smile and nods in the direction of the counter. “Right this way,”

Harry sheds his windbreaker onto the back of the seat, revealing a black and white Rolling Stones t-shirt that makes Alani’s blood pressure rise. A sign, she thinks.

“What do you want in your coffee?” she questions carefully.

“Nothing,” he responds, shaking out his damp hair gently. “Or actually, uh, butter...if you have some,”

Alani blinks, not sure if she’d heard correctly or if there had been some transatlantic miscommunication.

“Butter?”

“Yeah,”

“Like the—”

“Spread, yeah,” Harry confirms. “It’s weird, I know,”

She lets out a light-hearted laugh and nods. “It’s a...unique request,”

“I thought the same thing at first,” Harry confides. “It’s not bad, actually. But maybe I’ve just been in L.A. for too long.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

She offers a polite smile and heads to the kitchen where the cook and two other waiters talk amongst each other. Alani is grateful that the restaurant is slow this morning because she knows that it means minimal interruptions to her time with Harry. To ensure this, though, she asks one of the other waiters to cover the podium and returns to Harry with his coffee.

“One butter coffee, free of judgement,” the waitress announces, setting it down.

Harry grins softly, stirring the drink with the spoon Alani provided. “You can judge, it’s alright,”

“I just wanna know why,”

The coffee had been part of a fad diet while on tour in order to boost Harry’s energy on stage and stay trim for the hundreds of photo-ops he would be a part of. He doesn’t know how to communicate all of this to Alani, however, not sure how much she knows about that part of him, so he shrugs and tells a simplified version of the truth.

“I read about this trend a while back, it's called bulletproof coffee. Supposed to get your energy up and I needed it for my job,”

“Which is…” Alani trails off, downplaying the knowledge that she had acquired from Google.

“I make music,” is all Harry says and he takes a sip of the drink to avoid elaborating.

“Anything I would have heard?”

He swallows hard and listens to the faint rumbling of thunder outside before replying. “Possibly,”

“Try me,” Alani challenges.

He narrows his eyes and takes another sip of coffee. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself first?”

“What do you wanna know?”

Everything, Harry responds internally, though he reigns it in. “How you got into waitressing,”

Alani sighs, resting her elbows on the counter across from him. “There’s not much to tell, it’s a family business. What I really wanna do is write,”

“Music?”

“Articles. I’m studying Journalism at UH,”

Harry hums in response, filing the detail away in the back of his mind. “Sounds interesting. You ever publish anything?”

“Not yet,” Alani shakes her head gently, toying with the sleeves of her green University of Hawaii crewneck. “Hopefully soon, though,”

Harry racks his brain for something else to say, but before he can, Alani speaks up again.

“Is it my turn to ask something now?”

He offers a curt nod and stirs his coffee.

“What kind of music do you write?”

Harry chooses to be vague again. “Different stuff. Pop, usually. Been messing with some classic rock, though,”

“Explains the shirt,”

He peers down at the design on his tee and agrees. “Yeah, I guess so,”

“Do you like it?” Alani asks, her eyes begging to make contact with his again. “Writing music, I mean,”

“Yeah,” Harry confirms, tapping his spoon against the rim of the mug. “I really do,”

Alani’s heart pounds. This is her chance, a moment to finally secure her breakthrough piece. She doesn’t know how to approach it, so she opts to dive right in without looking back. The worst he can say is no.

“Can I ask you something else?”

“That’s cheating,” Harry teases lightly. “It's my turn,”

She pouts playfully, but obliges. “Fire away,”

Harry doesn’t know which question to ask first, but when he glances down at the crescent moon inked on her wrist, he decides to start there.

“What’s with the moon tattoo?”

Alani isn’t sure what she expected him to ask and wonders what purpose such a detail could possibly serve him, but she answers anyway.

“Oh, well,” she begins, tracing her index finger over the outline. “It’s kinda the meaning of my full name. It’s Mahealani, Hawaiian for ‘heavenly moon,'”

Fitting, Harry comments to himself. Every detail he learns about her makes him want to learn that much more, from her favorite foods to the last thing she thinks about before falling asleep. Studying her expectant eyes, he suddenly remembers that it’s his turn to respond.

“That’s cool,” is all he says.

Alani doesn’t know what to make of the faraway look in his eye, but she decides to pose her most burning question while he appears to be in good spirits.

“I know this is gonna sound totally out of the blue,” she starts, working past the lump in her throat. “But when you mentioned how you write music, I was just reminded of this assignment I’m working on in my class,”

Harry waits for her to continue, nursing his now lukewarm coffee.

“I’m supposed to write a piece about someone who I don’t know that well,” she continues. “You know, to practice our interviewing skills. And, well, I was just kind of wondering if you might be interested in helping me out—being the subject, I mean,”

Alani had every intention of telling Harry the truth, about how she really planned to submit the article to Rolling Stone in hopes of securing an internship before her college graduation next Spring. But as she started speaking, she quickly realized how it would come off: a complete stranger asking for personal information to submit to a well-known publication. She knew that there was a chance he would shut down and never return, so she lowered the stakes and hoped that this route would be less risky. Was it ethical? Alani hadn’t decided yet, but she would work out the details later. After six failed articles and two years of rejection, she saw a ray of hope and wasn’t going to let it slip away.

Harry ponders her offer for a moment, which confirms that she had recognized him. Normally he would be off-put by such a request, and to a certain extent he is, but there is something sincere in her voice that he trusts deep down. Before he agrees, however, he decides to fish around a bit to test her reaction.

“You know who I am,” he says gently. “Don’t you?”

Alani’s heart drops into the pit of her stomach, not sure what to say next. She hopes with every fiber of her being that she hasn’t upset him, or worse, ruined her chances, so she decides to offer some truth to throw him off her scent.

“My sister recognized you,” she explains. “That day you came in with your friends. I thought they were your bandmates at first,”

This lets Harry know that she isn’t a total stalker, which is comforting, but he wouldn’t have been minded if she were a fan simply engaging in conversation.

“Oh,” he laughs weakly.

“I totally understand if you say no,” Alani offers quickly, trying to smooth things over. “I just thought it was worth a shot. And that it might be more interesting than interviewing our produce guy,”

Harry decides to give her one last scan for any sign of insincerity. He’d always felt that his gut instinct was strong and it hadn’t led him astray thus far.

“An interview?” he clarifies.

“Just one,” Alani promises. “An hour, tops. And you can proofread all of it once I’ve finished, too.”

Harry waits a beat, already knowing his reply, but he wants to see how she will react to his silence. She doesn’t budge, almond eyes set and determined.

“Okay.”

next chapter

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles writing #harry styles x oc #harry styles fluff #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fic #ybmh #she's here she's here she's here!!!!!

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jeogiyall · 4 years ago

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Pas De Deux; H.HJ

Word Count; 9.7k

Genre; Fluff, Childhood Best Friends to Lovers, Reader X Hyunjin

Warnings; Swearing, Suggestive, I would advise against reading if you have abandonment issues? It’s brought up a few times,,

Additional; Featured Chan, Felix, Jisung, and Minho; Ballerina Reader, Dance Partner Hyunjin, Reid once again writing about something that she has no idea how to do, (Sort Of) Slow Burn

A/N; when i tell u guys that i literally have no self control,, THE ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THIS WAS 10.46K ASFDSFS someone save me from myself. i’m sorry if anything’s inaccurate, i haven’t done ballet since i was like five and most of my research is from the unreliable internet,,, so if any ballerinas read this and are repulsed i’m sorry asdfdsa. please leave something nice if you enjoy <3<3<3<3

The last time that you saw Hwang Hyunjin was in fifth grade. You were wrapped up in each other on your front porch, him choking out tears as though it hurt.

“Jinnie!” You cooed while running a hand through his short black hair, “I’m not dying, just going to boarding school!” His cries (along with the ringing guilt in your ears) only grew louder, “You’re really good at dancing, just audition next year!” He shook his head fervently against the crook of your shoulder, wet tears falling onto your skin.

“You know I suck at ballet!” If it weren’t for his palms pulling at his teary cheeks you would’ve giggled, maybe even teased him for the time in class that he almost broke his wrist while warming up at the barre. But he was crying, he was sad, and he was convinced that he’d never see you again. The sight alone was enough to make you pout, which only served to make him cry harder, “You could join my contemporary class for the summer?” He asked with starry, red eyes. It was almost enough to make you say yes.

“You know that I suck at contemporary!” The boy giggled at your counter, a sound that made your heart soar amidst all of the crying.

“Yea, you do...” He brought a hand up to his cheeks, trying desperately to wipe away tears that wouldn’t stop falling, “Just promise that you won’t forget me! I won’t forget you so you can’t forget me!” His pinky finger extended so it was nearly brushing the spot in between your eyebrows, and you were hit by the whispers of your first crush. With the summer days spent riding scooters in your driveway, and the winter ones spent sledding in it. With the long nights spent giggling about nothing underneath a blanket fort, or the endless days spent climbing trees in the bottomless woods behind the boys house. You were hit with the last five years all at once, and you knew instantly that even if he wasn’t standing in front of you with a teary face that you would still promise.

“I promise.” You answered while hooking your pinky in his as if it were a vow.

The school ended up being a perfect fit, your favorite part being the dorm room all to yourself. Even though it was small, and very ugly, it was all yours. Just like the friend group that blossomed out of your first ever co-ed class (which is sadly not a very interesting story. Han Jisung just made you swear to not dislocate his shoulders during partner stretches, and who are you to break a promise? Afterwards you received an invite to sit with him and his friend at lunch, the rest is history. Loud, annoying history.)

Nothing could’ve made it better... Well, nothing except for your sweet friend who had once occupied each thought in your head. Your sweet friend who’s summers were suddenly too full to see you, even for just a day.

Your sweet friend who didn’t keep his promise.

When it was announced that the contemporary and ballet branches of your dance institute would be merging for a year, your mind immediately jumped to Hyunjin. Despite not seeing him for almost six years. He always had such a passion for the style, making you miss out on hours of homework to watch videos of his favorite performers (it’s not like you minded too much, though.)

Han’s, on the other hand, was pure rage. Pure rage which he was letting out from your bed while watching you unpack.

“I just don’t get why they have to take a ballet class too! I have enough trouble getting solos as is.” The boy pouts while resting his head on your orange wood headboard. You’d feel sympathetic if it weren’t for the fact that he was blatantly lying, Han Jisung had gotten nearly every solo since eighth grade. Instead you roll your eyes dramatically and throw him a wadded ball of fabric from your suitcase. Naturally, he screams.

“Shut the fuck up and be helpful.” You scold, earning a childish whine while he sits up to fold the countless leotards.

“Remind me why I missed you?” He grumbles just as your other, much nicer, friend walks into the cramped room.

“Aww, you missed me Sungie?” Felix asks, voice booming deeply through the space. The two of you instantly drop the clothes in your hands and run to the boy, which you should reprimand Jisung for seeing as he just lifted a finger. But you don’t, because Felix is here with more freckles than the last time you saw him and fresh pink hair that’s definitely going to be dyed natural again within the first week.

“Yes.” The energetic boy answers while worming his way into your hug. Felix giggles softly while petting Han’s dark brown hair before pressing noisy kisses all over his cheeks. He pokes Felix’s ribs as retaliation, to which the boy screeches (directly into your ear, might I add,) and it’s back to the normal, loud chaos “I will kill you!”

“Hey! No murder in my room, if you’re gonna do that go in the hallway!” You snap playfully, pushing Jisung away while moving back into the hug, “Help me unpack? Jisung hasn’t done shit.”

“Not fair!” The boy shouts from your bed, which he’s already plopped back down on.

“I’ll help, besides do you even want him folding your clothes?” You look over your shoulder to see Jisung with his hands tangled up in three different leotards, then back to Felix with terrified eyes.

‘No,’ you mouth, eliciting another laugh from your friend. He moves over to the bed as well, then sets Jisungs hands free. The three of you talk mindlessly for hours, rambling on about Felix’s summer home and the month that you and Jisung spent traipsing around the boys hometown.

“How do you feel about the merger?” You ask suddenly, cutting Jisung off in the middle of an embarrassing story about a night spent at his house. Felix sighs deeply while tossing you the rolled leotard (your favorite one, light blue with pearls sewn around the collar,) while Jisung throws a wadded up pair of tights at your face.

“It’s fine I guess, just for a year right?” You shrug while the brunette puts on a grimace, hands suddenly very busy with folding, “They really need that rebuild, building’s falling apart. Ours is way better and we have extra room, so why not share?”

“Tell that to the rat in my mini fridge.” Han grumbles while passing you a pile of black leotards. You laugh and accept, but not before ruffling his stiff hair.

“Okay, I’ll make sure to do that the next time I’m in your room. Are you done bitching now?” The brunette pokes his tongue out at you jokingly, to which you respond with blowing a raspberry, “Felix is right, besides how terrible is it going to be? We’re all dancers right, and stuff like that is meant to be shared. Who are we to say that they can’t come and learn?” The room turns uncomfortably quiet, Jisung gnawing at his lower lip while Felix picks up his phone.

“Damn it!” The Australian exclaims as his screen lights up. You and Han look at him with furrowed eyebrows before he rolls his eyes and brings the phone up in between your faces, “Administration says I have to fix my hair.”

Han doubles over with laughter, knocking the mountain of leotards (followed shortly by himself) onto the floor. You follow his lead, and before you know it the three of you are clutching your sides and wiping away happy tears. Felix’s hands ruffle into your hair with a hum, “Maybe I can try Jisungs color, hmm?” You duck away with a snort.

“No! I draw the line at matching hair!” The brunette defends, hands moving to cover the top of his head. Felix lunges at him, fully ready to engage in a tickle fight. Naturally, Jisung screams as if he’s being murdered. It should be annoying, any other time you would find it annoying. But these are your best friends, one of which you haven’t seen in over a month, and for some odd reason your heart feels so full that it could explode.

“C’mon Lix, I’ll do your hair. What do you think about blonde?”

And even though tomorrow your school is going to be flooded with new people, and your classes full of students who have probably never done more than basic positions, in the moment it feels okay. Because one of your best friends is screaming ‘NO DON’T TOUCH MY HAIR!’ while the other assures him that ‘It’ll probably most likely be okay! Look, she did mine!’ It’s a perfect chaos that you wouldn’t trade for anything.

There have been plenty of strange coincidences in your life. Like how your first dog was named Felix, and it’s now the name of one of your best friends (who’s hair ended up looking perfectly fine, thank you very much.) Or how your usual waiter at the diner in Jisungs hometown ended up being the cousin of your first kiss. Or how your dorm room is the only one on the hall with painted walls, that just so happen to be your favorite color. Plenty of weird things, but none are as weird as this. Because you’re sitting on the floor of your second class of the day, ‘Intro To Pas De Deux,’ and Hwang Hyunjin has just entered through the side door. Two minutes late.

He’s hard to recognize at first, seeing as there’s more than an added foot of height and black hair that’s creeping down the back of his neck, but the more you look the more you recognize. Pillowy lips, full cheeks, a freckle right in the set of his eye bags. You’re not entirely sold until he laughs, a sweet and breathy sound. The laugh that’s always been three seconds away from turning into a wheeze.

“What’s wrong?” Jisung questions while pulling himself up by your hands, eyes following the line that yours draw to Hyunjin, “Do you know him or something?”

You’re about to answer when Hyunjin finally turns around, eyes scanning the room before settling on you. He thinks that you look different, too. Taller and slimmer, everything that used to be squishy replaced with soft muscle. But there’s also the bridge of your nose, your hands that are barely gripping Jisungs, and of course your eyes that are staring at him like it hurts.

“(Y/n?)” He questions, your name falling from his lips as though it’s meant to do so. You nod, mouth falling open dumbly. The boy takes a step forward then freezes.

“Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on? Or at least help me finish stretching?” Jisungs voice reeks of annoyance, you think that if you weren’t in such a state of shock that you’d flick him on the forehead.

“You go to the contemporary school?” Jisung doesn’t take well to being ignored, puffing loudly while scrambling to finish stretching at the barre. Your brain immediately flashes back to Hyunjins second ballet class in third grade, when you were teaching him your favorite warm up stretches. He ended up tangled in between the barre and the wall, which shouldn’t even be possible, but Hyunjin managed.

“Um... Yea.” Every inch of your body is screaming to stand up and engulf him in a hug, but your legs feel like jello. That, and there’s a small feeling of anger rising in your throat, “L-let me help.” He plops down in front of you before you can say yes. You don’t have to though, Hyunjin still knows that you can’t refuse him. You take his hands in yours, definitely ignoring the pink flush to his cheeks, and pull his torso towards you.

“It’s been six years.” The words come out choked, full of the pain from your first summer without him. When you’d spend hours playing out in the sun, knocking on your friends front door every morning. He was never there.

“Sorry.” You want him to show some type of emotion, let you know that he cares. That he’s actually sorry for breaking his promise, “I tried to come and see you in July but you weren’t home.”

“I was at Jisung’s house, we spend the summers together.” If you were more angry and less hurt you would say ‘now that I don’t spend them with you,’ but he’s still Hyunjin. He’s still Hyunjin, and you don’t think that you could handle the way he would frown at your snide remark.

Jisung flashes you a look from his place at the barre that reads ‘Who is this guy and why do you look so sad?’ You let Hyunjin pull you into the stretch while responding with a gaze that says ‘I’ll tell you later.’ Hyunjins grip tightens on your hands as you exhale deeply into the stretch, the light blue fabric of your leotard brushing against the dance studio floor.

“(Y/n,) I-” Maybe it’s the way that he licks his lips before talking, or the fact that he looks so much and so little like your best friend at the same time, or possibly even how you can feel the way that he hugged you at your last meeting sitting on your shoulders like a winter coat, but his hands suddenly feel like fire.

“I have to go!” You exclaim, popping up out of the stretch and onto your feet in one swift motion. The boy looks up at you with puppy dog eyes that spark a feeling so intense in you that you have to look away, “I have to go, I-I’ll um... I’ll see you around.” You dash off to the spot in front of Jisung, silently thanking every star in the sky that Hyunjin doesn’t have a chance to follow you. Because just as soon as you get up someone else sits down and begins to excitedly ask the boy questions (he’s short, with a petite frame and an unfamiliar face. Probably another transfer student.)

“Did he say something to you?” Jisung asks as you jump into your favorite warm up routine. There’s not really a right way to answer, because did he say anything just now? No, but six years ago he said that he’d never forget you. He promised as much, and then spent every moment doing nothing but that. You exhale while your feet continue to move instinctively, a slight sense of peace washing over you at the comfort of a routine.

“We should focus, class is starting soon.” Jisung whines and argues, but you just ignore him. Similarly to how you ignore Hyunjins gaze on you for the rest of the class.

Ignoring Hyunjin is much easier than you anticipated. In class you can distract yourself with Jisung before the teacher comes in, and lunch is fine enough. While he is there, sitting at a table that’s painfully close to yours, he doesn’t try to talk. Or worse, come and snatch up the free seat across from Felix. But no, he does nothing of the sort. Just laughs with his friends and shoots the occasional glance your way (the one composed of sparkly eyes and lips that are a breath away from pouting.)

But then there’s now, standing in the doorway of your stage chemistry class and Hyunjin is all that you can see. Hyunjin, standing in the center of the room and pressing play on the terribly outdated stereo. Hyunjin, running a hand through his raven black hair and inhaling deeply with closed eyes. All you wanted was to get your jacket, but now you have enough Hyunjin for a lifetime.

Loud, bass heavy music swells in the room as he starts to move. At first the movements are jerky, awkward almost. But then the music decrescendos every so softly and he exhales, then proceeds to move as if the dance is being pulled out of him. As if this choreo is the way that he was programmed to move. When the song peaks you swear that you feel tears prickling the back of your eyes, because this is so Hyunjin. The way he’s dancing with every bone in his body, the way his hair is now dripping in sweat and flying all around him, the way his plump lips suck in air. It’s Hyunjin down to the core, and you’ve missed him so much.

When the music dies you clap slowly, causing the boy to shoot up like a frightened cat. He whips around to where you stand, softening like butter when he sees your frame leaned up against the wooden door frame.

“You scared me!” He shrieks, bringing up a hand to clutch his chest. It reminds you of your last Halloween with him, when the two of you got to trick or treat alone. Hyunjin decided that it would be a great idea to go to a fear farm, in which he screeched and clung to you the entire time. It wasn’t even that scary, he’s just a baby.

“Sorry.” You answer, mouth going as dry as the desert, “You, um... You’re really good.” He laughs flatly while moving over to his dance bag to pull out a towel. You watch as he dabs the sweat away, something stupid and needy churning in your stomach. You write it off as hunger.

“Thanks, I still suck at ballet though.” It’s a joke, you know it’s a joke, but something about laughing feels wrong.

“You don’t.” You take a step into the room, wandering over to where your windbreaker is piled on the floor next to the boy, “I’ve seen you in class, and you’re not bad. Just out of practice.” He lets out another flat laugh while dropping the towel, quickly exchanging it with a water bottle.

“Yea, about nine years out of practice. I barely even remember how to do a pirouette.” He’s trying so hard to make you laugh, just like the old days. The growing tension in your shoulders and lump in your throat is preventing that from happening.

“I can teach you.” You offer while shrugging the jacket on. Within seconds he’s babbling out excuses, which you wave off, “Don’t even worry about it, I need to practice anyways.” You bend down to untie your sneakers before moving to the center of the room, Hyunjin following in quick succession, “So you obviously know the proper foot technique, pointed toes only and all of that. And the retire position is just your foot in the notch above your knee.” You demonstrate it in the mirror, and even though he’s far from being a ballerina he’s done enough classes to know that you want him to copy it, “Yea, good. It looks good.”

“Where are my shoulders supposed to be?” He asks shyly, not used to questioning such simple things.

“Back, always back. Now check that your hips aren’t tilted, I-I’ve always been told to imagine that they’re a fruit bowl.” You steal a quick glance at the boy while he’s adjusting, heart fluttering the same way that it did so many years ago, “Okay, now um... Now put your feet into fourth position, just like that yea, then bend your knees and push off from your back leg.” You do the turn, a motion so natural that it might as well be brushing your teeth, “Like that, easy peasy!” The boy scoffs while bringing up his arms the same way that you had yours just seconds ago.

“Yea, easy peasy for you!” A soft giggle falls from your lips, bouncing off the walls of the empty studio (as well as Hyunjins ears.)

“C’mon!” You tease while moving around to face him, a soft smile playing at your lips, “You see me mess up in class all of the time, just go for it. The worst that could happen is being wrong.” He nods, then exhales shakily. When he does the turn it’s a bit wobbly, but definitely not anything worse than what you’ve seen before.

“Oh my god, (Y/n) that was terrible like genuinely awful-” The words feel harsh, but he’s wearing a bright smile and laughing like there’s not a care in the world. You can’t help but laugh too.

“No, no! It was fine!” You assure through a laugh as he gets back into position. From the corner of your eye you see him mouth ‘liar,’ which earns him a harsh flick between the eyes, “Just bring your hips a little more forward like...” It’s instinctual for your hand to fall onto his hipbone, something you’ve done to Felix hundreds of times. The main difference is that when you adjust Felix he usually tells you to fuck off, then softly knees your stomach. When you do it to Hyunjin he audibly chokes and you feel fire ignite beneath your fingertips, “Like this. Now go into fourth and try again, but keep your hips aligned!” The boy nods before sinking into position and pushing up into a flawless turn.

“I did it!” He exclaims, hands flying up like he’s about to hug you, “You were right, you were right I did it!” Something about his wide, excited eyes makes every wall built around your heart crumble into dust. So you accept the hug, once again allowing yourself to fall victim to the sweetness that is Hwang Hyunjin.

“I was what, I was... Did you say right?!” He rolls his eyes at your teasing, trying desperately to pretend like he didn’t miss it. It’s useless, because the way that Hyunjin’s holding you let’s you know that he’s missed you just as much as you have him, “Alright big guy, let me go. I’ve got studying to do and shoes to break in.” He whines lowly, arms trying to grab you as you snake away.

“Can we get dinner together or something?” He begs, hand briefly tangling itself in yours. You fight down the blush rising to your cheeks while pulling your hand away and stuffing it into your pocket.

“Not tonight, you have to keep practicing those pirouettes! But don’t worry, you’ll be seeing more of me... Partner.” Hyunjin smiles widely at your words, realization settling in as quickly as they leave your mouth.

“Do you mean...?”

“Yes,” You exhale, mentally preparing for another bone crushing hug, “I’ll be your partner for class.”

Hyunjins hug is almost nice enough that you forget about how annoying Jisung’s going to be when you tell him.

It turns out that the friends Hyunjin made are almost as amazing as the ones that you did. Everyone was a little awkward when the two groups first merged, specifically Jisung who was still butt hurt about you switching partners. But then Felix got to talking with Chan (the person who’s been mothering your friend ever since he started at the contemporary institute. From the way they talk, Hyunjin would’ve both starved and failed if it weren’t for the older boy,) and suddenly everyone was meeting in your room on Fridays for a weekly game of uno.

“Absolutely not, you’re fucking cheating!” Minho (the other new face from your stage chemistry class,) shouts while pointing a finger across the card pile and into Jisungs face. The boy moves to jokingly bite at it, causing Chan’s eyes to go as wide as the moon.

“No, no, no! No murder, and no biting what the hell!” You snort at your new friends bewildered expression while passing a canned sparkling water to Hyunjin. He accepts with a smile before mouthing ‘they’re insane!’ Felix sees and proceeds to nail him in the face with your favorite throw pillow.

“Says the guy who sleeps in socks-” Hyunjin throws the pillow back harshly, causing Chan to damn near pass out. It’s all that you can do to not roll over with laughter.

“My feet get cold.” He grumbles with a pout that makes both you and Minho coo from your spots beside the boy.

“Okay, okay, Minho just pick up the cards and let’s keep going? I’m about to finish!” The boy grumbles angrily, all ‘stupid card game’ and ‘I don’t wanna pick up twenty cards!’ You lock eyes with Chan from across the card pile, taking brief solace in the presence of someone else with a functioning brain.

“So we all know that (Y/n’)s about to win, and that she’s my best friend and favorite duet partner,” Everyone answers him with an immediate ‘rude,’ which makes a girlish giggle bubble up in your throat, “which is why it makes me so terribly sad to do this.” You watch closely as he dramatically pulls a card from his hand then places it on top of the deck, a fat draw four staring you straight in the eyes. Everyone goes silent while watching your face fall drastically.

“Hwang Hyunjin, I am going to-” The room bursts into chaos before you even finish the sentence. In the end there are about twelve fresh bruises, six entirely hoarse sets of vocal chords, and one demolished dorm room. Just a normal Friday night.

Except for the way that your heart stutters when Hyunjin mouths a simple ‘love you’ over the bustling group. That’s not normal, but you think that you like it.

“Hyunjin, if you keep your hands there I’m going to fall.” You say to your duet partner, whose hands are wandering aimlessly up your torso. They’re supposed to be on your hips, serving as an anchor for your body while it dips towards the ground.

“Sorry, sorry.” The boy mumbles, not entirely meaning it. It’s impossible to be sorry when he can physically feel your heart speed up beneath his hands.

“Try to sound just a little bit less convincing next time, okay?” You shimmy slightly in a futile attempt to move his hands, which only makes him laugh brightly. If it weren’t for your less than ideal position (halfway bent into a split with every ounce of your weight balanced on the tips of your toes,) you would hit him.

“Do you want me to drop you, because I can drop you if it’s what you want-” The teacher snaps her fingers, pulling everyone’s attention out of the various warm up routines and to the front of the room. Hyunjins hands pull away from your torso so quickly that it burns.

“No dropping dance partners on purpose, that’s the first rule of building stage chemistry.” She chastises, eyes brushing briefly over your friend which causes him to turn thirty shades of pink. You giggle quietly to yourself before sticking your tongue out at him, “But of course, you can’t truly start to build a connection until there’s material. So that’s what we’re doing today, I’ve assigned each group with a pas de deux, or ‘dance for two’. Whoever I think shows the most promise within the next week will be given the opportunity to enter in the regional competition.” She says opportunity, but the stern tone of her voice means that whoever she picks will definitely have to do the competition.

Everyone floods to the front of the class before she even finishes, Hyunjin moving to do so as well before you quickly grip his wrist.

“She didn’t say to go yet, and if we want to qualify for that competition we’re going to have to start kissing up now.” You keep your face forward, chin up and shoulders back, but even then you can feel Hyunjins smile, “What?!”

“You want to do the competition?” He sounds hopeful, nearly childlike.

“Of course! That’s like half the reason I go to school here, the competitive atmosphere.” People are starting to settle back into place, your teacher wearing a look of utter annoyance. Hyunjin doesn’t seem to notice, seeing as his mouth keeps moving.

“I’ve only known how to do a pirouette for a month, and I still can’t really get my double. You’d have a better chance with Han, or-” As soon as the teachers back is turned you whip around to your babbling partner, hands planted firmly on his broad shoulders. It takes a second for his eyes to meet yours, but when they do he nearly melts.

“I don’t want to do it with anyone else, I want to do it with you. And just because your double isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that it’s not good so stop stressing.” He looks down for a second, cheeks growing as pink as your shoes. By force of habit you hook a hand beneath the boys chin and force him to look at you, “I mean it.” He swallows harshly, then nods. With a sigh you let go of the boy and return to your previous (assigned) position. Just in time too, seeing as the teacher turns around right as you settle next to the boy.

“You may check your assignments at the end of class, if you haven’t done so already.” You flash a knowing glance to Hyunjin, almost as if to say ‘I told you so.’ He knows better than to argue.

At the end of class you go up to look with Jisung while Hyunjin gathers your things for you, the short brunette babbling excitedly about the previously mentioned regional’s.

“I thought that you don’t do partner work?” You tease lightly while ducking down to look at the list.

“I don’t, but neither does my partner! So we’ll just be okay at...” He bends next to, head full of brown hair hitting you straight in the eyes, “Romeo and Juliet?” You bite down a laugh while pushing the boy away.

“Don’t try to fight it, you’re such a Romeo. Just like I am such a... Lise!” The boys face contorts with jealousy as he ducks back down, once again knocking your heads together.

“You guys got La Fille mal gardee? And the ribbon dance?!” You giggle back a small yes while pinching the boys frowning cheeks, “No fair! Absolutely no fair, I have to do stupid Romeo and Juliet and you got my favorite ballet, no fair!”

“It’s my favorite too!” You defend, which ends up being pointless because both Hyunjin and Jisung chorus back with ‘not true!’

“Your favorite is swan lake.” Hyunjin states while sliding your dance bag onto your shoulder. Maybe it’s the fondness in his action, or the way that he named off your favorite ballet as though it was a fact ingrained into his brain, but your heart swells so large that you swear it could pop like a balloon.

“Okay,” you exhale, hand moving to the spot where his fingers were ghosting just seconds ago, “one of my favorites.”

At your first rehearsal for regionals you and Hyunjin are given the ribbon to use, seeing as it’s literally the ribbon dance. Practicing without it was honestly getting awkward, which is unfortunate seeing as the boy nearly got it taken away within minutes.

“Look (Y/n,) I’m a present!” He had exclaimed, causing you to whip around to the sight of your partner with a pink silk bow tied around his chin.

“Oh no, Hyunjin!” You whispered through a quiet laugh, moving towards him to untie it, “You are so ridiculous!”

“What? Am I not a gift?” He pouted while trying to pull your hands away, which earned him nothing but a harsh smack on the wrist. You slipped it off his face and behind your back just as the teacher walked in the door to give the ‘your ribbon is not a toy,’ talk.

At the second you describe the plot of La Fille mal Gardee, which proves to be slightly (read: very confusing.)

“Wait wait wait, she doesn’t even like the other guy?!” He asks while shaking his head cutely, black hair bouncing along with the motion. If it gets any longer he’s going to have to start putting it up.

“Nope, not one bit.” His eyebrows furrow as he starts to grumble ‘this is kind of stupid,’ earning a giggle and a push to the shoulder, “No it isn’t! It’s funny, and sweet! I really relate to Lise and her... Character arch I guess.”

“Isn’t she the girl who needed guarding or something like that?” His tilts to the side, teeth catching ever so slightly on his puffy pink lips.

“Yea,” You exhale with a quickening heart rate, “something like that.” There’s silence for a minute, nothing but Hyunjin shaking his head and sighing softly.

“That’s not you. No one needs to guard you.” For some reason your brain flashes back to the third summer alone (that awkward stage where you were too old to make new friends and too young to go see Jisung,) when you spent everyday walking through the woods alone. Sometimes you would just walk until the sun went down and your only company was the stars, but most days you would find a new place to sit down and hum out the motifs of your favorite ballets, “No one.”

For a moment you think that he’s right.

The fourth rehearsal (exactly one week after the first) is when you get to a stage kiss in the choreography, your teacher describing the motions along with a recording that’s projecting on the back wall. It starts with the boy pulling in the girl by the ribbon, then swooping down to meet her lips with a smile. Then she twirls away, leaving your skin hot and crawling.

“We’re um... A-are we gonna do that?” Hyunjin asks through a whisper, leaning close enough that you can feel his breath. It’s warm and smells like spearmint.

“We’ll know when we get there I guess, now pay attention!” You push his face away from yours and back to the projection, watching as the couple wraps each other up in the silky ribbon.

When you do finally get there an hour later he looks so nervous that he could puke. Your teacher shouts out the next move, ‘kiss and then twirl away,’ which only adds to the painful drumming of your heart.

“It’s okay, (Y/n,) you don’t have to.” His voice is low, hushed. Almost like he doesn’t want anyone else to hear.

“No, no! It’s okay, I’ll just...” You lean forward as much as you can with the ribbon hugging your waist and press a feather light kiss onto the tip of his nose. The teacher coos, maybe even praises the two of you on the developing stage chemistry. You don’t hear it. You don’t hear anything over the erratic beating of your heart, “I’ll just do that, okay?” He swallows dryly, eyes flashing quickly down to your lips then back up to your sweet gaze.

“Y-yea, perfect.” There’s something building up in the space between your bodies, so thick that you could spread it over toast, “You should twirl away, right?” You nod, wanting desperately to stay. To kiss him in an earth shattering way.

A part of you thinks that you shouldn’t. That Hyunjin has the power to ruin every part of you, and that wanting to give that to him after your hearts already been broken is foolish. But you do, you want to. Because loving Hyunjin feels good enough that the pain doesn’t matter.

After the fifth rehearsal the two of you feel as though you’ve torn every muscle in your body. Your teacher decided within the first twelve minutes that the two of you would benefit from some conditioning, which resulted in you and Hyunjin holding side by side planks (as well as other terrible positions) and muttering curses for a solid hour.

“I’m gonna collapse.” Hyunjin whines, plopping down onto the hardwood floor beside his dance bag. Something that’s probably supposed to be a laugh falls out of your mouth before you pull the water bottle from your bag.

“At least you haven’t been wearing pointe shoes all day.” You groan while moving the bottle to your mouth. A mouthful of water slides down your throat right as the boys face twists into one of horror.

“Oh gosh, oh no I’m so sorry!” You try to wave the black haired boy away, which only makes him feel worse, “No, no! I wanna help let me umm... Come back to my room? I can set up a foot bath with...”

“Epsom salts.” You answer after swallowing another swig of water, “But I have all of the stuff in my room, I can take care of it.” Hyunjin whines again while rolling over onto his stomach and pushing himself into a sitting position. There’s a bead of sweat dripping down the bridge of his nose, something that you shouldn’t focus on. It catches on the tip before falling delicately onto his collar bone.

“I wanna take care of it,” It feels like all of the air has been sucked out of the room, “just... Here, wear my jacket into the building so no one can see that you’re uh... A girl.” You try to argue again, but then your cheeks are squished in between his hand and his eyebrows are furrowed just enough for it to be cute, “Let me take care of you.”

And really, how could you say no to that?

“Hwang Hyunjin, you are my favorite person in the world.” You sigh, feet dipping into the warm cloudy water. He plops down next to you with a laugh and arms full of snacks.

“Can I get that in writing? You know, just to prove it to Jisung.” Laughter bounces off of his dorm walls, filling the boys brain with childhood memories. Like the time that you two were riding scooters in your driveway and just as the sun started to set you skinned your knee. Hyunjin had thought for a minute that the shaking of your shoulders was sobbing, but quickly discovered by a tilt of your chin and hands wrapped around your sides that you were indeed laughing. Beautiful, clear laughter complete with sunshine dripping from your skin. It was the first time he can remember thinking that someone was beautiful.

“Yes!” You exclaim, effectively pulling the boy from his memory, “But only if you give me food.” He giggles tiredly, a sound so sweet that it might as well be honey, and tosses a bag of pita chips your way.

“You don’t even have to ask.”

You’re supposed to go back to your dorm at eleven, thirty minutes after arrival. But then Hyunjin starts talking about anything and everything, ranging from how he met Minho to the old building of his school. The way he chuckles sleepily while reminiscing on water logged ceilings is enough to make you melt.

Somehow your head ends up pulled against his chest, rising and falling with his breaths. There’s an arm tied around your waist like ribbon, lips softly brushing your hairline as he mumbles endlessly about everything, your leg across his lap as though they’re supposed to be.

“What time’s it?” You slur, clenching onto the fabric of his shirt. It smells like spice and fresh pine and Hyunjin. So much like Hyunjin.

“Midnight.” You think to yourself that it’s time to leave, that if any of the staff found out about this you’d be dead. You also think that Hyunjin smells like fresh pine and that he’s holding you in a way that you’ve never been held.

The sound of his even breathing and the weight of his arms on you lulls you to sleep in a matter of minutes.

When you wake up it’s to the obnoxious blaring of Hyunjins alarm. The boy whines lowly before punching it into snooze. It’s enough to make you laugh, then pull your head away from the cradle of his chin.

“C’mon sleepy, it’s time to get up. What do you have for breakfast?” If it weren’t for your hair tickling his cheek or the way your torso writhes beneath his arm he would be annoyed by your chirping voice. After the hundreds of early mornings school has thrown your way you can’t really help but be a morning person.

“More sleep, that’s what I have.” He grumbles as you crack the curtains open, trying desperately to pull the comforter over his eyes.

“You need food to fuel your body Hyunjin-” Before you can finish lecturing him an arm shoots up from beneath the gray blanket, crashing your body onto his with a sleepy groan.

“M’ just kidding.” He pulls you under the blanket with him, mimicking the first time he spent the night at your house. You two stayed up until the sun was rising, hidden away from the world by the fluffy pink comforter of your childhood bedroom, “Protein bars are in the closet and apples’r on top of the mini fridge.

It’d be so easy to skip classes and stay here all day, not a care in the world besides the sweet boy that you’re currently tangled in. A part of you wants to melt away and give in, but a bigger part knows that doing that is a commitment. Like saying that you’re his to hold and break however he pleases. It’s the scariest thought that you’ve had in months.

“W-we should get going. Yea?” The words sound like you’ve been choking on them. A fact that Hyunjin takes notice of, eyes growing sad and attentive as his arms wiggle away from your waist.

“Yea, yea. Minho will be here in ten minutes, we walk to pas de deux together.” Before you can help it your expression turns panicked, eyebrows shooting up as your jaw drops open, “Sorry! He’s not gonna tell anyone or anything I promise!” Something clenches in your chest at the sight of him sitting up in bed, black hair sticking up every way that it can.

“I know he won’t, it’s just...” You look down at your body, clothed with Hyunjins sweatshirt and a pair of his long socks (turns out that he was onto something with the whole ‘sleeping in socks’ thing,) “I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.” His gaze shoots up to meet yours, so soft and relaxed that you could cry.

“Which would be?” There’s a pounding in your ears that’s quickly recognizable as a heartbeat.

“That we’re together.” It’s barely above a whisper, but Hyunjin hears you loud and clear. From the light tremble to the breathy finish, he hears you.

“We could be, if that’s what you want.” He puts a hand on your shoulder, an action familiar enough that it’s normal yet tender enough that your cheeks are flushing pink, “Is that what you want?”

“I-I, um...” Your heart is screaming yes, that you want to be his and only his. That while you aren’t a girl who needs to be guarded, you are a girl who wants to be guarded. Guarded from everything by Hyunjins thin comforter and strong arms.

But then you think about the promise that Hyunjin broke. The promise that he wouldn’t forget you, and then broke less than twenty-four hours later. You think about how badly you’ve wanted to spend the last day of summer with him every year since. Your mouth opens right as a knock sounds against his door, “Can we talk about this later?” Hyunjin nods lightly while getting up to grab two apples off of the top of the mini fridge.

“I’m so sorry for however he reacts.” The boy groans under his breath, offering you a light green apple along with an apologetic smile. You accept, smiling back before popping out of bed to pull your dance bag over your shoulder.

“It can’t be that bad, Minho’s level headed.” If it weren’t for the fact that Hyunjin still has a question lodged in his throat he would’ve laughed.

You’re the one who finally opens the door, interrupting Minho mid-knock. At first he looks aggravated, ready to launch into a long speech about how ‘timeliness is important’ and ‘you always fucking make us late’ but when his eyes meet you his jaw goes slack.

“What the f-”

If the sound of Minho screeching wasn’t telling enough, you were very very wrong.

The next four days are spent dancing around Hyunjins burning question, constantly talking about anything else or switching the topic when it seems like he might bring it up. At first he barely notices, simply assuming that you need time to mull it over, but then Jisung and Chan sit in on a lunchtime rehearsal.

The dance is coming along perfectly, so much so that the boys don’t even notice your hesitations. Hyunjin sees it though. Sees the way that your hands tremble before planting on his shoulders, the way that your face looks sad after pressing the soft kiss onto his nose. While he hasn’t seen you dance as much as Jisung or Felix probably have, he’s still seen enough to know that you’re never like this. Never uncertain.

“What was that about?” The boy asks after the rehearsal, hands crossed against his chest. You’re going to ignore him, focus on nothing other than getting out of your pointe shoes and off to your next class, but then his dark brown eyes catch on yours, “Seriously!”

“What are you talking about?” You respond, fingers working quickly to undo the ribbons around your ankles. A sigh leaves your mouth as one shoe slips off and into your bag, quickly moving to the other one before Hyunjin can continue the questioning.

Turns out that your friend is terrible at picking up on social cues.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Your head is briefly pulled up from the floor as his voice grows impossibly soft, your heartbeat faltering ever so slightly. There’s a quiet goodbye as Jisung and Chan leave the studio, “Y-you scared me.”

“I’m sorry.” You whisper, throwing the second shoe into your bag while a lump takes form in your throat. If he wasn’t your best friend then he would think that you’re just tired, or hungry, or anything other than deflecting. But he is your best friend, who knows that being tired or hungry only makes you sad. Your best friend who knows that you’re deflecting harder than you ever have before.

“It’s okay, just tell me. Please.” His last word is so hushed that you can barely hear it, but it’s there. Light, and airy, and perfectly there, “Is this about what I asked?” Before you can help you’re nodding, once again giving this boy every part of you that can break.

“Yea, kind of.” It feels like your mouth is full of cotton, leaving you uncomfortably hot along with speechless. A loud sigh rings through the studio as Hyunjin slides down to meet your height, hands burying into his raven black hair. The sight takes you back to the last day of fifth grade; you and him holding each other on your front porch as if the world was ending, your hands tangled into his hair.

“Is it because you don’t want to?” There’s his eyes on yours, your chest heaving, and nothing else in the entire universe. Just (Y/n,) the girl who wants to be guarded, and Hyunjin, (Y/n’)s beloved.

“No.”

“Then why didn’t you say yes?” Right now feels like when you’re at a competition, in the middle of a variation that’s been giving you hell since you started working on it. It’s seconds before the hardest part, the one that you’re still not sure of. It’s the adrenaline rushing through your veins and the words ‘now or never’ echoing with each timed exhale.

“Because. How do I know that you won’t forget about me when summer comes?” Your words hit him like a punch to the gut, causing his lips to part and then heave for air.

“I-I never forgot about you.”

“Yes you did!” There are tears prickling the back of your eyelids, which you quickly blink away before continuing, “I waited for you outside your house every day! And then, when you wouldn’t show up, I-I’d spend every day alone. Doing what we used to do together, but by myself! I was all by myself and I missed you so much, Jinnie. So, so much.” He’s going to tell you that you’re wrong. That while all of those things happened, he never ever forgot about you.

But then there’s that old nickname, the one reserved specifically for family and you. He hasn’t heard it in months, and when he finally does it’s rolling out of your mouth like a plea soaked in honey. Something that’s going to stick with him for forever.

“(Y/n,) please-” You’re up and out of the door before he can even finish.

It’s a dreary Friday morning, rain trickling down your window and painting your room a gray shade of blue. With a deep inhale you realize that everything is finally smelling like fall, which only solidifies the fact that you never want to get out of bed. Unfortunately you have a class in half an hour that you do kind of need to go to.

But it’s not too terrible. Maybe if you were getting up to go take a math class, or run a marathon, but you aren’t. You’re getting up to go to ballet class, and you can wear your favorite leotard again (the light blue one, with pearls sewn around the collar,) and the rain outside is heavy enough to be calming but light enough that you can fend it off with an umbrella. The only thing that could make this morning any better is your favorite childhood breakfast, honey nut cheerios with strawberry milk.

Which is, oddly enough, sitting outside of your door when you open it to head off to the dining hall. A gallon sized jug of bright pink milk next to a family size box of your favorite cereal, just sitting in the middle of the hallway with a folded piece of paper resting precariously on top. Something about this has Hyunjin written all over it. You lean down to pick up the note, reading it about a thousand times over before rushing back into your room to wolf down the breakfast that you haven’t had in months.

‘(Y/n,)

I never forgot you.

Come to my room tonight after rehearsal. Please.

Sincerely, Hyunjin.’

When you two do the first full run through of the pas de deux that night he holds you extra tight. Maybe because he misses you. Maybe because he thinks that after tonight he’ll never have the chance to do so again.

But when he opens the door to his dorm room you see pink fluffy blankets folded on his bed. On top of them is a basket, filled to the brim with every last one of your favorite things. Strawberries dipped in chocolate like the ones your mother would make on hot summer nights, snickers bars like the ones that you two would share after days spent in your driveway, glass bottled lemonade like you would buy from the stand up the street.

“I may or may not have also bought your favorite movie. Well, if it’s still Barbie And the Twelve Dancing Princesses.” A giggle sounds through the room, bouncing around the walls and then back onto Hyunjins burning cheeks.

“It is, but don’t tell Jisung!” Rain starts to fall again, the soft pitter patter mixing perfectly with the boys soft laugh. His hand grazes briefly against the small of your back as he starts to guide you into the tight room, “I’m serious! Him and Lix will make fun of me!” The pout on your face is enough to melt anyone’s heart, which is why Hyunjin doesn’t even think twice when his knees go weak as jelly.

“My lips are sealed.” He says, walking over the boxy tv (that certainly wasn’t there last week) on his desk and inserting the disc, “Now sit back and enjoy.”

It’s not a hard request to fill, your tired body sinking immediately into the fluffy blankets and mouth watering each time you bite down on a strawberry. Rain continues to patter softly against the window, the sound occasionally being replaced by a loud roll of thunder which makes the boy next to you jump. You had laughed at the action, asking softly if he was scared. It was a rhetorical question, you know fully well that he’s always been scared of thunder.

“No! Yes, shut up.” And if you mind that the boy cuddles softly into your side, one arm wrapped around the curve of your waist while the other holds a chocolate strawberry, you don’t say so.

The two of you stay tangled up in each other like that until the credits roll, Hyunjins breathy sigh hitting your cheek as he shifts to get up. You watch with heartfelt eyes as he crosses the dimly lit room, his black hair briefly sweeping across his eyes. You want to reach up and push it away, but right as you manage to sit up straight he’s done with it and headed back to the bed. With a short laugh you realize that your noses are touching.

“Hi.” The word comes at as a short exhale, leaving a taste on your tongue that’s sweeter than chocolate strawberries.

“Hey.” Your heart flutters at the sound, an exhale laced together with a smile, as his arms return to their previous spot around your waist. There’s probably nothing in the world brighter than the smile he wears for you. Stage lights, the sun, every last star in the sky rolled into one. None of it even comes close to the way that his pink lips stretch perfectly from cheek to cheek, “Do you finally believe me?” He brings up a hand to caress your cheek gently, as though to rub away tears that haven’t fallen.

“Believe wh-”

“Do you believe that I never forgot you? That I never forgot any of you, not even the little things like your favorite color or what you liked to eat for dinner. Maybe I pulled away, but I think it’s because even then I knew how badly losing you would hurt. I-I knew that I never wanted to lose you, which is just what I did...” He swallows harshly, tongue darting out to wet his lower lip, “But I’ll never do it again. I’ll never lose you, and I’ll never forget you a-and... And I don’t want to remember you anymore, (Y/n.) I’m so done with remembering, let’s just be.” There’s something stuck in your throat, but it doesn’t hurt the way that tears do. No, this is a release gathering inside of you. One that’s waiting for you to finally give in.

“Hyunjin,” His fingers cradle the curve of your jaw, sending goosebumps down every inch of your body, “kiss me.” And that’s all the confirmation he needs to brush his lips over yours.

At first it’s gentle, almost questioning. Like he’s asking one last time ‘Is this okay?’ But then your hands tangle in his black hair, the way that they’ve been aching to since you first saw him, and he knows that you’re okay. More than okay, you’re in love. With every muscle in your body, you’re in love.

Hyunjin’s hand that was previously holding your face drops back down to your waist and pulls you in softly. They then travel down to your thighs, eliciting a soft gasp from your lips before he picks you up and guides you onto the bed. Every movement is so perfect yet raw, feeling like the stuff of ballets. Until your back hits an unopened glass bottle of lemonade, that is. The sudden cold is enough to make you jump.

“What?!” Hyunjin questions, eyes shooting as wide as saucers, “Did I hurt you?!” A laugh sounds through the room while your hand detaches from his hair, opting instead to reach around your body and remove the glass bottle that’s poking you in the least conventional way possible.

“No.” You answer through soft giggles, bringing up the bottle to lightly tap his forehead, “There’s just a lemonade poking me in the ass.”

He flushes bright pink before answering with a tiny ‘oh’ and burying his face into the crook of your neck. If you were less malleable you would’ve teased him even more, but then there are warm kisses on your skin and nothing in your head.

“I love you.” He whispers, head slowly moving until his lips are against your jaw. You’re going to answer, really, but then there are soft lips on your chin and a smile ripping through your body, “I love you.”

“M-me too.” You stammer dumbly, body going entirely limp as he (finally) presses another kiss onto your lips. The boy pulls away entirely too soon, but it’s okay. There’s something that you need to finish saying, anyways, “I love you too, Jinnie.”

When you fall asleep that night it’s to the sound of pattering rain, with Hyunjins arms guarding you from the world.

The bus back from regionals is quiet, the few sounds that do come about being Chan and Felix whispering softly or Minho giggling at Jisung snoring. You’re about there too, but who can blame you when Hyunjins hands are buried in your hair (which is both stiff and wavy from a combination of hairspray and braided buns.) If you close your eyes and focus really hard you can even feel the rise and fall of his chest where it’s connected with your back.

“Who’s gonna keep our trophy?” The boy questions, lips moving softly against the shell of your ear. It generates a warm feeling in your gut, one that spreads quickly to your cheeks and ears.

“We’ll trade it off on the weekends. Like divorced soccer parents.” He giggles softly, moving forward to kiss your temple.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” If you were a little bit less tired, or a little bit less in love, then maybe you’d joke back. But you’re wrapped up in him like a ribbon on your waist, foot nudging against a plastic first place trophy while his lips move against you in a way that you could get drunk off of.

“Never.” You answer, hand coming up to wrap around his as if it were a vow, “Never.”

#hwang hyunjin #hyunjin x reader #hyunjin fluff #hyunjin angst #writekpop #admin reid #han jisung #lee felix #bang chan #lee know #stray kids #stray kids fluff #stray kids x reader #this might be one of my favorites yet... i really loved writing all of them #and researching!!

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starrynite7114 · 4 years ago

Text

Laughter (Daddy Angel)

A/N: Good morning everyone! Hopefully everyone is having a good Saturday thus far! Just wanted to drop by and give you guys this request!

Snapshots should be updated by Monday!

Little one has a laughing fit - @gemini0410

Masterlist

Request tagged list: @justahopelessssromantic : @ifoundmyhappythought : @carlaangel86 : @woahitslucyylu : @encounterthepast�� : @enamoured-x : @thewarriorprincessxo : @briana-mishell24 : @bribri-82 : @chibsytelford : @agirllovespasta : @twistnet : @everyhowlmarksthedead : @trulysuccubus : @jadert15 : @sammskellington : @cind-in-real-life : @claytoncardenasbabymama : @sadeyesgf : @thickemadame : @summertimesadnesswithadashofsass : @gemini0410 : @elcococruz : @samcrobae : @sesamepancakes : @iambabyharry : @blackmissfrizzle : @soamayansfangirl : @1-800-imagines : @phoenixhalliwell : @lady-pswrld : @dazzledamazon : @getyourcrayoncas : @fvckthisbxtchup : @lukealvxz : @scuzmunkie : @lilac-tea-time : @danie1432 : @cocotheclown : @soaronmywings : @my-rosegold-soul : @buttercup812 : @itskiranbitch : @angelreyesgirl : @sheeshgivemeabreak : @vicmackeybullshxt : @bigcreatorwombatdreamer : @khyharah : @strawberrywritings : @cherry-icetea : @fuzzy-jellyfish : @losolvidad0s : @brownsugarcoffy : @courtrae89 : @prdsdjarin : @blessedboo : @marvelmaree : @enamouravecleslivresetlechocolat : @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead : @thesandbeneathmytoes : @dark-twisted-and-mechanical-mind : @maddie-georges : @pearlkitten33 : @aquamento

If you would like to be added to the tag list, please let me know!

CREDITS TO THE ORIGINAL GIF CREATOR.

You and Angel prided yourself on not only being good parents, but entertaining ones as well. You two currently had a four year old Melina and a two year old Claudia. Your girls are your world and no one adored them more than Angel. The times you four spent together was something both you and Angel treasured since Angel could be gone at times due to runs and you worked as a dentist, which had you working 9-5 almost daily.

But whenever you four were together, there was nothing better in the world.

Lately, you noticed that Melina had been a laughing monster. It was incredibly cute. At first, you thought she got some laughing gas, but your Melina was always a genuinely happy go lucky kid. She always had a smile on, getting her temperament from you, while Claudia was all Angel.

Everything has been hilarious to Melina and hearing her laugh was incredibly adorable. You’re just sad that Angel hasn’t seen one of her laughing fits. It didn’t happen often, but when one thing triggered her, everything was funny.

Currently, the girls were on the floor playing with their new cooking set Tio Taza bought them. You were on the couch, enjoying a Saturday off, just catching up on Umbrella Academy.

The front door opened and it was either Coco or Angel since Angel gifted Coco with a key to your place in case he was gone and Coco was around. All three of you looked up and found Angel. Immediately the girls stood up and greeted Angel, his two princesses getting a kiss from him. Angel plopped down next to you and you planted a kiss on his cheek, hugging him from the side. You took a sniff and playfully backed away.

“Ooh, babe, you need a shower and to be soaked or something.” You teased Angel, pinching your nose together.

He frowned, sniffing himself. “What? What are you talking about? I smell great.”

Melina walked over, sniffed Angel and began to laugh. Angel looked at his daughter, curious as to why she started laughing. This was it, Melina was going to be laughing at everything and anything for the rest of the day.

She giggled, pinching her nose together just as you had a few seconds ago. “Stinky daddy.” She said in between giggles.

Angel playfully narrowed his eyes at you and then looked back over to Melina. “Stinky daddy?” Angel stood up and took Melina lifting her in the air, making her laugh harder. Claudia walked over to you and you sat her on your laugh. “Why is that so funny Melly?” Angel blew raspberries on her stomach, making her gleefully shrieked.

“You got her going now, everything is going to be funny.” You smiled, resting your head atop of Claudia’s as she gleefully watched her sister with her father.

“Everything is funny?”

“Babe, I told you. Melina started it recently, when one thing makes her laugh, everything makes her laugh. It’s super cute.” You explained.

Angel frowned. He was missing so much and it was beginning to upset him. He had a responsibility with the club, but he also had a responsibility with your family. Both times he missed the girls’ first steps, first words, it was disheartening. Even though you documented their adventures well, he wanted to be there in person for all of it. He didn’t want to be that father.

“Slide?” Melina questioned in between her laughs.

“You want the slip and slide mamas? Let’s do it.” He placed her on the ground, Melina running to her room to change. “You gonna change in that bikini or?” Angel wiggled his eyebrows and you rolled your eyes.

“You’re trouble.” You stood up, shifting Claudia so you could hold her properly. “How come you’re home so early?” You both made your way to your room, checking in on Melina on your way there. She was a pretty independent kid and knew how to change herself. It was so cute and just made things easier for you.

“Bish let me go home early, he didn’t need all of us so I took the day off.” Angel was appreciative that Bishop gave him the day off, and he was off tomorrow. He had no plans, but to be with his girls and enjoy the weekend.

“Good, I’m glad you can be with us.” You entered your room, placing Claudia on the bed. Angel went inside the closet to change. You figured you can change after Angel so that he could take care of Claudia. You were exhausted, Angel helped you as much as he could, but you knew his priorities with the club. You were very understanding, especially since the club helped you as well. But at times, you couldn’t help and be selfish.

Once Angel changed, he took Claudia and Melina outside and set up the slip and slide, by the time you came out, they were already going crazy on it. You got the kiddie pool you and Angel got, setting it up for yourself. You filled it with water and once it was filled, you sat inside, drinking a mango smoothie you made for yourself.

As you watched your little family, the smile on your face was permanent. As you predicted, Melina was laughing up a storm. Angel was watching her in awe, laughing along with her due to her laugh being so infectious. Claudia was laughing as well.

“Baby, what is so funny?” Angel sat at the end of the water slide to catch the girls. Melina ran back to the beginning of the slide, sliding down to Angel. “You look like a torpedo coming towards me.”

Melina laughed, Angel laughing along with her. Melina was a joyful kid so her laughter didn’t throw him off, it was the fact everything was so funny. You were easily amused and it seemed that Melina got that from you.

“Melina baby, come join mommy.” You called out to her.

Melina ran over to you, sitting in the little pool with you. “What’s that?” She looked at your drink. Like every child, any drink they wanted.

“Mango juice.”

Melina snorted, a giggling escaping her lips. You laughed, Melina letting out a laugh as well. Angel joined you two with Claudia in his arms. He sat down, continuing to hold Claudia in his arms. Angel took most of the space in the pool and it made you laugh.

Angel looked over at you, raising an eyebrow. “You got a laughing fit too?” He smirked. “She most likely got it from you.”

“Maybe, but you took up the whole space babe.” Angel has been bulking up as of late, which you definitely didn’t mind, especially in the bedroom where you could worship him, but this was a conundrum right now.

“Daddy is a giant.” Melina laughed sitting beside you. “No space daddy.” She splashed him with water, laughing as she did.

Angel handed Claudia over to you as he grabbed Melina, shrieking in laughter. “Daddy you’re tickling me!” She laughed. Angel had an arm around her, tickling her stomach. “Daddy!”

You and Claudia laughed, watching as tears came from Melina’s eyes as she laughed.

“Babe stop, she’s turning red.” You told Angel.

He stopped, holding his baby girl in his arms as she tried to catch her breath, still laughing. Angel chuckled, kissing Melina on the cheek.

“Be careful princesa, if you laugh too much you’re gonna pee your pants.”

You gave Angel a confused look and laughed. Melina tilted her head, looking at you and began laughing as well.

“You two are fools.” Angel looked at Claudia. “Isn’t mommy and big sister silly?”

Claudia joined you and Melina, making Angel sigh.

He thought you were all silly, but there was nothing he would rather do on this Saturday.

You three were his favorite people and he was so happy to just be in your presence.

You and Angel were laying in bed, tired from today’s events. After your little impromptu swim, you four went to play mini golf with Letty, Coco and EZ. It was a fun get together and Melina was overjoyed. Letty was her favorite person and no one made her laugh like Letty. Every story Letty told her was funny and she loved hanging onto her pseudo cousin Letty.

“Babe, I wanted to talk to you about something.” Angel was sitting up with his back against the headboard while your head was on his stomach as you two watched television.

“What’s up?” You turned so that you were not facing him.

“Am I a terrible father?” Angel’s insecurities were a bitch at times.

“What?” You sat up quickly, frowning at his question. “Did someone tell you that?” Much like Angel was overprotective over you, you were overprotective over him.

Angel chuckled at your reaction, leaning forward to kiss you.

You pulled away, smacking his hands away. “Don’t you distract me, who told you that you were a bad father?”

“Baby, no one, I just, I miss so much and it takes a toll you know?” Angel sighed.

You crawled onto his lap, sitting down and wrapping your arms around Angel’s neck. You hugged him, his arms immediately wrapping around you.

Pulling away, you cupped Angel’s face, forcing him to look right at you.

“You, mi amor, are the best father I know. When you come home from a run or work, you never fail to spend time with our girls. If they are sleeping, you make sure they’re all tucked in. You’re also the same father who stayed up with Claudia when she had the cold, made sure that she slept comfortably even if you didn’t.” You began to tear up, thinking of how great of a father he was. “Our girls love you so much, both their first words were dada. Angel, it’s not about the time you spend with them, it’s about what you do with that time. I’ve seen people who spend all these time with their children, but they’re attention is elsewhere. You love our girls and they love you, don’t ever doubt yourself. You’re amazing, if you weren’t, I would have left your butt.” You kissed him, placing kisses all over his face making Angel laugh.

“I fucking love you mi reina.”

“And I love you mi rey.”

“I’m going to take a step back, I want to do less runs and be with you and the girls. I’m done missing time with them.” Angel knew you would support his decision.

You were thankful that Angel decided to take a step back. You knew how much Angel loved the club, but he also loved you three and you would never make him choose. Though you’re glad he chose you three.

“Good, cause we’re having baby number three and I’m gonna need you here to help with the girls.”

“What?” Angel’s mouth dropped. “Baby, you’re pregnant?”

You smiled, nodding your head. “Yes! My doctor called yesterday, I’m three months along.”

Angel pulled you into a hug, his hand resting on your stomach. “God, we’re fucking pregnant. Baby, we’re outnumbered.”

You laughed, Angel’s fingers tickling you. Angel pulled away from you, his hand still on your stomach, tickling you once again. Your laughter was infectious, which was why Angel loved hearing you laugh. He began to laugh as well, as Angel continued to tickle you.

“Yep, Melina definitely got the laughing fit from you.”

#angel reyes #angel reyes fanfiction #angelreyes #angel reyes fanfic #angel reyes fic #mayans mc imagine #mayans mc fic #mayans mc fanfic

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snarkwrites · 4 years ago

Text

ssw | embry call; you don’t have to be gentle. | mature.

NOTES:

So... This is the final part to the little mini story with Embry and Merisa... For now. Mayhaps I’ll revisit them from time to time, who knows. If you’re still with me after that downer of a cliffhanger ending yesterday, I’m happy -surprised, but oh so happy, and I truly hope you enjoy this because I enjoyed writing this.

I had to fight myself tooth and nail NOT to turn this into an alpha/omega + imprinting thing, btw. But I managed not to.

PROMPTS:

Prompts used for these six sexy words one shots are either taken from [here] or [here] at my choosing. I don’t take requests for characters / prompts for these but... If you just want to send me requests, I do take headcanon requests, fluff and filth alphabet letters. [ request rules / fandoms here ]

The prompts I used here are as follows: Claim me. Mark me. Own me + You don’t have to be gentle.

FANDOM/CHARACTER:

Twilight, Embry Call x Imprint!OFC, Merisa.

OTHER PARTS:

For those of you who want to see them... This whole series kinda turned into my own self indulgent thing, tbh? Anyway:

[ he looks down. she looks up. ] | [ let me take care of you ] | [ everything about her turns me on ] | [ when he says your name ] | [ when whispered words leave you breathless ]

WARNINGS:

{NSFW CONTENT. NO MINORS.} consensual but unprotected sex between two adults, oral sex - male giving, biting / marking, body fluids & that’s pretty much it.

Minors, this was not written for you. You shouldn’t be reading it. If you are and you stumble upon something upsetting or that you can’t handle after being clearly warned here... That’s on you, lovelies. Not me. Nobody made you keep reading.

TAGGING:

@kyleoreillysknee is the only person on my Twilight tag list. If you’d like to be added to it, ( I’m gonna be writing more for them most likely, I’ve been feeling it lately, idk mannn..) please let me know or add yourself to the doc linked below. If you’re not on my taglists, you won’t be tagged, fyi.

OTHER STUFF:

[ faq | feel free to send me stuff | sfw masterlist | nsfw masterlist no minors. | taglist doc ]

I haven’t seen Embry in a little over two weeks, since the night of the carnival. I still can’t get my head around what he showed me and what I now know but I do know one thing… Not seeing him has been really, really hard for me.

I’d almost given up on it, if I’m being totally honest. I had to fight the urge to go to him almost daily. I kept telling myself if he wanted to see me, he’d come to me. That I’d probably messed everything up with my reaction.

If I hadn’t before that, going overboard with the flirting.

My grandmother’s voice cut through my thoughts and I looked up from the television set. Pausing the episode of General Hospital I had recorded to see what she wanted or needed. Managing my best smile even though lately, that’s the last thing I’ve felt like doing lately.

“Don’t you get tired of laying around here, moping?” she asked as she stepped into the room. Shaking her head as she grabbed the remote and used it to turn off the little television. “Get out there. Go do something. I don’t care what it is, mermaid.”

I pouted at her, letting my mouth drop open as I pretended to be shocked and hurt by her suggestion. “Are you seriously telling me you don’t love me anymore?”

“You know that’s not true. That’s not what I said at all.” my grandmother sat down. I gave a soft laugh and spoke up. “I know, I was kidding. I just… I haven’t been in the mood lately.” I shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

“If you’re moping over that bum in Seattle, mermaid, he’s not worth a second more of your time and energy.”

“Oh. Trust me, I know. This has nothing to do with that. I’m just kind of… Resting.” my original thought pattern was maybe if I offered up the few injuries and aches I had left up for an excuse, she wouldn’t push for anything more than that.

Because it’s been a little over two weeks and I still can’t fully process what happened that night. Or how badly my lack of an actual reaction and how easily I gave in and let him bring me home might have made a mess of everything. I didn’t even try to push him into talking about everything. Explaining what it all meant.

I didn’t know how I’d even begin to explain anything to my grandmother without sounding like I was losing my goddamn mind if I’m being perfectly honest.

“In order to rest, one needs to actually do something first. What’s really going on, hm?” my grandmother wouldn’t be my grandmother if she didn’t push on regardless. I sighed and shrugged. “ I’m just dealing with everything that happened.”

“Mhm?” she was trying to get me to keep talking but I went quiet. Sighing. Telling her it was stupid and most likely, I was just fully comprehending my mother’s death. Which wasn’t a lie. My memory was almost fully back now. I could remember everything. Including the fact that the years leading up to her death, she and I had a very strained relationship… Because like my grandmother and I tried to do so many times with her over the years whenever she’d get all wrapped up in the actual worst kind of man or circumstance, she was trying to steer me away from Greg and rather than listen to her, knowing she had more experience in life than I did, I chose to isolate myself. I chose to tell her time and again that I was an adult and that Greg wasn’t all the men she’d gotten entangled with during my childhood. So the last few months I could’ve been mending fences and reconnecting with her were spent in tension filled occasional check in texts or calls instead.

Like mother, like daughter. That thought came bitterly and it hurt like hell to acknowledge. Because my mom went to her grave with the relationship between her and my grandmother totally unresolved. Because like she attempted with me about Greg, my grandmother tried and tried again with my mother and her choices. Only interfering one time. And that one time was because it was a question of my safety. And this cost my grandmother a relationship with my mother because nothing was the same after that summer.

I explained all of this to my grandmother and as I finished, she hugged me and sighed. “You can’t hold this in for the rest of your life, mermaid. But I know that is only a large part of whatever has you so down… and given that I haven’t seen a certain mechanic around at all in nearly three weeks, I’m going to assume that things didn’t go well on your date?”

“Oh, they went… Right up to the point where I proceeded to get impatient, want what I want and push the line…” - a half truth was better than nothing.. Because if I hadn’t laid it all on the line, he wouldn’t have felt so bad about keeping what he had to keep from me.

,, stop doing that. You can’t be blamed for everything. You were shocked. You’re still trying to figure out how to react to what you know… But if you wait too long..” the thought came and like usual, I tried to shove it down again.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I went overboard. I told him how I felt. I poured it on entirely too thick and I probably scared him off.” - taking the blame was infinitely easier than explaining the full truth to my grandmother. How did I even begin to tell her what I knew? And on top of that, the fact remained that I wasn’t supposed to tell. And if you’re not his imprint, you’re not even meant to know to begin with.” that thought surfaced.

And it hit me. When he showed me the wolf side that night, he’d been telling me so much more than that.

And my reaction?

While a natural one, probably wasn’t the best one to go with. I should’ve at least made him fucking talk to me. Explain everything. I should’ve pushed for him to tell me everything instead of agreeing to come home that night.

“Fuck.” I buried my face in my hands.

Why couldn’t I have realized that tidbit say, almost three weeks ago? Before it was probably too late to try and fix everything?

“Language, mermaid.”

“Oh, trust me, grandma. This is definitely a situation worth the F bomb.” I muttered, shaking my head as I laughed at my own stupidity.

“Maybe it can be fixed?”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“You say you’ve realized how short life is thanks to your mother dying and nearly losing your own. All I’m hearing is that you haven’t learned anything, mermaid. How will you know if you don’t try?”

I took a deep breath. Mulling over what she said because honestly, she wasn’t wrong…

And then, before I could stop myself, I was standing. Bolting down the hall and into my old bedroom. The first thing I did was take an actual shower. Then I threw on that sundress. And before I could change my mind or talk myself out of it, I bolted out the door, right past where my grandmother sat, watching her soaps. She called out after me, “I won’t wait up, mermaid.”

I didn’t stop running until I stood on his front porch. Banging on the door.

“Open the door you stubborn ass man. Open the door and listen to me.”

Not a sound.

Not even a hint that he might be home.

I sighed and stared at the door for a few seconds.

Sitting down on the wooden bench to the left of it. Laughing at myself because naturally, I’d finally stop dragging my feet and do something to fix this if I could and he wouldn’t be home.

“I am such a fucking idiot, I swear to God.” I sighed, resting my head on the top of my knees.

I sat like that for a few minutes. Then I heard a motorcycle approaching in the distance. And the fight or flight kicked in all over again. But I fought back against it. Rooted to where I sat.

Determined.

Watching his motorcycle get closer to his house. My heart about to beat right out of my chest. But underneath the excitement.. Calm. Like I was doing the right thing, even if it did turn out to be too late.

The motorcycle came to a stop in his driveway. He hadn’t noticed me yet. I knew the second he did because his entire body tensed. His eyes darted around in every direction before finally settling on me. Intent. A little stunned, from what I could tell.

“So..” I called out, going quiet shortly after because I just didn’t know what to say. I had no idea where to even start.

“What are you doing here?” Embry asked the question quietly. Not in an angry or annoyed way, but more or less in a tone of defeat. Like he’d given up on me coming around ever again. “You saw what I am…” he went quiet. Up the stairs in the blink of an eye.

Towering over me. Keeping his distance but I could tell he wanted to be closer. I knew I wanted him closer. Every part of me was literally crying out for it. I needed him.

Wolf form and all, Embry Call is the man I love.

“And I don’t care, actually.” I admitted after a long and heavy pause. “I mean, I care.. But the fact that you happen to transform under the light of the moon doesn’t bother me. It’s.. Gonna take some getting used to.”

He blinked in shock as he processed what I’d just said. As soon as it sank in, he stepped closer. Filling the space between us. His hips pinning my lower body between his body and the wall my back was pressed firmly against. He raised a hand, resting it palm down against the wall as he stared down at me. Quiet.

“I know it’s probably too late and I should’ve.. I don’t know, I should’ve done literally anything but what I did the night you showed me the wolf but.. I’m losing my goddamn mind, okay? I.. I can’t think about anything else. I was really in love with you, okay? And I still am. And damn it, when you absolutely shut down and refused to let me…” my words were cut off by a thick digit pressing against my lips to silence me.

He swallowed hard, his eyes leaving mine and settling on my lips. “Wait.. you love me..” he muttered in a daze. Bringing his eyes back up to settle on mine. His body molding completely against mine as he leaned in closer.

“What part of that did you miss? Because I’ll happily say it. Over and over. Until it gets through your stubborn rock skull. This whole you turning into a wolf thing is.. Look. It’s a lot, okay? But it’s not too much. Not when I need you and I love you... I know what I want. And I’m not leaving until we’ve at least talked.”

“What do you want, huh?” Embry asked. Staring down at me expectantly. Waiting on an answer.

“You. I want you. Wolf and all.” I answered quietly, my gaze dropping. Settling on worn floorboards beneath my dirty and bare feet. Embry followed my gaze down and snickered quietly to himself.

“Woman, where the fuck are your shoes?” he glanced up at me, shaking his head. Grumbling about the fact that I wasn’t wearing any shoes. And I knew him well enough to know that this was Embry, stalling. Because he didn’t know what to say or do.

“Look. I came down here on a mission. I didn’t have time to stop and grab shoes, damn it.”

“Baby, why..” Embry chuckled, the beginnings of a grin forming on his face as he guided my face up so that I had no choice but to look at him. “ I know you came down here on a mission but seriously? There’s broken glass in the road.”

“I’m pretty tough. I mean.. I did live through a pretty wicked car accident.” I bit my lip, staring up at his mouth helplessly. Swallowing hard and getting wet when one glance into his eyes clearly revealed that yes, he’d caught me doing so.

“Yeah, don’t remind me about that, okay? I don’t even wanna..think about that night again.” he went quiet. Ghosting his free hand up and down my side before letting it rest against my hip. Using his grip to pull me against him. I melted into him with zero thought or hesitation. And then, I happened to put my full weight down on my left foot and promptly swear to myself quietly. “Son of a bitch. Ouch.” I raised my foot and the light glistened off of a practically microscopic shard of glass lodged in the skin.

Wordlessly, Embry scooped me up. Carrying me into his house. Sitting me down on his sofa. My eyes darted around the place, smiling softly to myself at all the pictures and the way it felt almost equally as cozy and like home as my grandmother’s little house did.

And before I could stop myself, I was imagining a future with him. Something I hadn’t dared ever do before. Something that suddenly occurred to me, I wanted.

Embry walked back into the living room with peroxide, a wash rag and tweezers and I pouted, shaking my head. “This can wait.” I protested. Tried to pull my foot away, but Embry got a firm grip on it, resting it between his thighs. Holding it still as he looked down at it, inspecting it closely until he found the tiny glass shard.

“Okay, look at me.” Embry guided my gaze up to meet his. Then he looked down. “Don’t stop looking at me, okay? And do not move your foot. Stop moving, Merisa or I’m never gonna get this out, baby.” Embry muttered in an even and firm tone. Stopping to look up at me with one of the most commanding looks I’d ever seen him give.

“It’s..” I hissed as the tweezers scraped over my skin, grimacing. Gritting my teeth because apparently, it was dug in there deep. “It’s fine. It can totally wait, c’mon.”

The way he’s called me baby twice now.

I don’t dare get my hopes up, do I?

The splinter of glass came free and I unclenched myself. It hadn’t hurt that bad at all.

“Was that so bad?” he asked. Staring at me.

I shook my head.

My eyes were lost in his all over again. And the tension was back. Heavy. Filled with things we needed to say.

“Embry.” I muttered after a long and heavy silence. Embry looked up at me, biting his lip. “Yeah?”

“When I told you that I’m yours and all you have to do is try, I meant that, okay? I don’t say things I don’t mean. And all of this.. I mean… Forget it. According to the legends, if you imprint, it won’t matter anyway…” I trailed off because I realized that I’d come all the way down here on a barely thought out whim. In the hope that maybe he’d been trying to tell me so much more than simply the fact that he turned into a wolf at will.

My anxiety was starting to kick in now and I had no idea what to do or say. I didn’t even begin to know where to start. There was so much I wanted to say. So much I needed to get out.

“It will if I imprinted on you.” Embry muttered after a few seconds. Staring down at my foot in his lap intently. Taking a few long and shaky breaths. Waiting.

Now it was my turn to be shocked.

Because that’s what I’d been hoping he was trying to tell me when I bolted all the way down here in a rush earlier. But I’d braced myself to hear everything but that.

“Wait..” I trailed off. My mouth opened and closed as I raised a hand, tousling my hair and pushing it out of my eyes.

,, You were right. He told you what he was that night. He showed you because you were his imprint.” my brain was practically taunting me.

“You sound like that’s a bad thing.” I was confused.

“It’s not. I just… I never thought it would happen. Kind of convinced myself that I’d rather know I love the person I was with without that side of me coming into play…” Embry trailed off.

“Oh.” I started to stand. Thinking that he meant something entirely different than what he was getting at. I was at the front door when he pressed against me from behind. His hand covered mine. Lowering it down from the doorknob.

“Don’t go. Just.. Let me get this out.” he muttered quietly against the shell of my ear as he turned me around to face him. Putting my back against the front door with a soft smack.

“I have been driving myself crazy. I’ve been trying to tell myself that it was just the imprint. But it’s not just that. I love you. I need you, okay? I just.. I don’t want you to think that genetics are the only reason I’m with you. I wanted to take time and like.. Prove that.” Embry fidgeted a little, raising a hand to drag it through his hair. Resting that hand against my face. Dragging his thumb over my skin as he softly pressed his forehead against mine.

When his mouth met mine this time it was deep and slow. Clumsy. Needy. His hands were wandering all over me. Finally stopping to rest across my ass. Pulling me up his body.

“I know it’s not just genetics, okay? I trust you.” I answered as we pulled apart to breathe. My arms wrapped around his neck, my fingers tangling up in his hair. Using my grip to pull his mouth back against mine all over again. “I love you too. And I want to see where this goes. We can figure this out as we go. I just.. I know what I want.” I gazed at him as the kiss broke a second time and we pulled apart, panting for our next breaths. Trying to pull ourselves together.

He grinned bright at my words and I smiled too. Snuggling myself against him.

“I do too.” he answered after a second or two of little pecks and soft kisses peppered on my face and Embry touching me anywhere he could get his hands. Stepping over to the sofa and sitting down. I wrapped my legs around his waist. He pulled me as close as he could get me. Making me barely catch a whimper as I rubbed right against the way his cock strained and pushed at the jeans he was wearing. When I did it a second time on my own free will, Embry groaned. Bucking himself up into me. Fingers digging into my ass. Guiding me over the bulge before either of us really stopped to think it over or calm ourselves down.

And honestly, I didn’t want to.

Every single time I rubbed against him, I could feel myself getting wetter and wetter. Whimpering and whining. Begging. I wound up pressed against the sofa, Embry’s body settling between my legs to keep them spread. He gave a quiet growl as he stared down at me and settled in, pressing into me completely. Pinning me beneath him. But barely pressing his full weight into me, almost as if he thought he’d break me or I was made of glass.

“ You don’t have to be gentle.” I muttered as my lips danced over his neck, leaving little marks behind. He sucked in a sharp breath, gazing at me as if wanting to be absolutely sure I was okay. That I wanted to go farther.

As if I intended to stop him.

“I don’t wanna hurt you.” Embry muttered, his words coming out in labored pants.

“You won’t.” I mumbled, letting out a gasp as rough,warm hands slipped up the bottom of my little yellow dress. His palm settling against my aching wet sex. Massaging me through soaked panties. My fingers dug into the couch and his shoulder as I rocked myself up into him.

His mouth crashed against mine hungrily and his hand started to move faster. Pressing against my dripping core. The little friction it gave was just enough to make me want more. Just as I started to rock against his hand a little faster, breath catching in my throat, he started to slow down. “Easy, baby. Not yet.” he coaxed, making me pout up at him. His thumb rolled over the outline of my lips and I closed them around it, sucking. Making him growl out “Fuck.” as he bucked himself right against me. His nose pressed against my neck as he breathed in deep. My fingers dug into the cushion on the sofa just a little more. His hand settled against my cunt again, cupping. Rubbing slow and careful. So slow that the ache settled between my thighs doubled. And the more I tried to rock myself faster against his moving hand, the more he pressed his hips down into mine to attempt to keep me still. When he stopped again just as I started to get just a little closer to orgasm, I whined. Begging.

His mouth buried in mine, swallowing up the sounds. He moved his hand, growling when it came away wet. “You smell so fucking sweet. I wonder...” he mumbled lazily against my lips as the kiss came to a gradual stop, “If you taste as sweet.” gazing down at me with a hungry look in lust shot dark brown eyes as he licked his lips. I could feel my cheeks heating up. My thighs were so slick they slipped off one another if they brushed together. Embry worked my dress up over my hips. Pulling me up to finish pulling it off. Leaving me in only the pair of red panties I was wearing. He pulled away to stare. A hungry look in his eyes as they moved over my body.

My fingers curled in the hem of a thin gray tank top he was wearing and I started to work it up, letting it hit the floor of the living room once I’d pulled it over his head. He slipped off the couch, standing in front of me. His hand lowered to the waistband of his jeans after he’d kicked off heavy soled boots, letting them settle on wooden floors with a soft thump. He unfastened and unzipped his jeans, letting them hit the floor around his ankles at which point he kicked them free.

My eyes widened as I could see the size of the bulge strained against a pair of dark gray boxer briefs. ,, is he even going to fit?” the thought came, accompanied by a fresh rush of slick as it coated my panties and slicked up the insides of my thighs even more. He was lowering himself back down again, hovering over me. His forehead resting against mine as he muttered quietly, “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“Baby..” I started to argue that I knew he wouldn’t, but he shook his head and repeated himself firmly. I nodded, agreeing to let him know. He settled himself on top of me gingerly, again being too careful. Not wanting to press into me too much. But I wanted friction. I wanted to feel his body engulfing mine. Hard muscles against my soft skin. I grabbed a hold of his hips, pulling him down on top of me even more. He rutted himself against me with a low hungry growl that hung in the air between us, only drowned out by the sounds of his mouth as it worked over my body. Starting at my throat. Working down. His hands roamed up my sides, pushing my breasts together and his mouth latched on. Licking,kissing and sucking. Making me whimper his name and rock myself up into him, the ache building. Throbbing.

By the time his mouth was down to my navel, he was reaching between us, the silent rip of fabric as my favorite red panties came away, tossed to the floor of his living room; torn. I raised my hand, tugging impatiently at the waistband of his boxers and rather than deny me, he obliged, raising to his knees. Slipping off the couch to let his boxers settle on the floor. His cock sprang free, standing at attention. I swallowed hard as my eyes settled on his thick,veiny member, a quiet gasp filling the air.

He positioned himself over me again. Gingerly. Desperate to feel skin against skin completely, I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him down on top of my completely. A moan escaped my throat as soon as I felt his cock teasing at my dripping entrance. His hands were all over me, ghosting my sides. Finally settling on my hips. Rocking me over his thick,veiny length as he stared down at me, dazed.

Leaning in to whisper against the shell of my ear, “Love the way your body fits against mine, baby.” as I nodded, let my lips brush the side of his neck, latching onto skin as I tried to leave a mark, “Me too.” I muttered, gazing up at him with a soft smile. Rough hands caressed my cheek, skimming down the side of my body and Embry’s mouth danced down my neck. Teeth scraping against soft skin before locking around it. Tugging until I felt a mark forming. I moaned out, rocking myself up into him. One of my hands drifting up to tangle in his hair and tug at it, trying to pull his mouth against mine one more time, despite knowing one kiss is obviously not ever going to be enough when it comes to him.

He started to let his mouth roam over my bare body, sending goosebumps raising all over me as I felt his warm,wet tongue drag slowly over my skin. Trailing a lazy circle around my navel as he moved himself down my body. Settling between my legs, putting a leg over each shoulder as he met my gaze again. Licking his lips hungrily. Bucking against the couch in anticipation and practically growling when he glanced down and saw my thighs glistening with slick. His tongue rolled up my inner thigh, sloppy. Warm and wet and determined to lick me clean. My hand tangled in the hair on top of his head and my other hand gripped the couch as the warmth of his breath tickled bare skin. His nose bumped against my pelvic mound and I bit my lip, my back arching as his tongue circled my clit, working the throbbing bundle of nerves. The way he had my legs over his shoulder angled my hips. When his tongue buried deep in my pussy, I moaned out. Begging for more.

“Baby, ah, oh fuck.. Oh. Mmm. Right there.” I moaned out, gripping his hair and the couch tighter. Digging my heels into his back, making him bury his tongue inside my dripping sex deeper. “That feels so good, fuck.” I moaned out, rocking my hips up for him.

“Good girl. Move your hips. Fuck. You’re dripping.” Embry growled, leaving a more harsh bite against the inside of my thigh, right next to my crotch. A bite so deep I could feel the stinging bruise even after he’d backed away, glancing up at me tenderly just to make sure I was okay only to find me moaning, my head falling back as I licked my lips.

My stomach coiled and my body tensed as I started to race right into an orgasm that I knew would leave me shaking. Embry started to slow down and my eyes popped open, locking on him and the way he was positioned between my thighs below. Pouting. Begging him not to slow down. Begging him to let me let go. He rose up a little, making his way back up my body after lowering my legs. Wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Grabbing hold of my jaw as his mouth crashed against mine and he rocked himself against me, letting his cock drag right between my throbbing folds every single time he moved.

I gripped his jaw, making him lock eyes with me. His pupils were shot and the lust filled look in his eyes when they met mine had me whimpering his name. “C’mon… Please?” I begged breathlessly, another well timed rock against me with his cock grazing between my folds and the tip sinking in drew a breathy moan out of me that shattered the silence of the room. “Embry, please. Now.”

“Now, huh?” Embry responded in a husky whisper, his lips latching onto my neck. Sucking another mark into my skin. “Don’t let me hurt you. Because I know I’m going to get carried away, baby, I.. you just feel so damn good.” Embry gasped out as he started to bury himself inside me deep. Going still once I was impaled on his thick,veiny member. Pressing little soft kisses against my warm skin as he let me adjust to the way he stretched and overfilled me. After a few seconds, the feeling of being stretched almost too much subsided and I started to slowly rock my hips into him. Whimpering and moaning as he started to drive into me slow and deep. Nearly pulling out completely with each thrust just to bury himself deep inside all over again. When my stomach coiled all over again, I rocked my hips faster. Trying to chase the orgasm he’d been denying me. Embry’s hands gripped my hips, slowing them almost to a grinding halt and I whimpered, begging.

“Not yet, baby.” he muttered. Raising to his knees. Bringing my legs up to my chest. Both hands on my hips as he pumped me up and down on his cock until I was moaning his name over and over, clinging to him when he came to a complete stop. Frustrated as hell because I’d been so close and Embry stopped again. A tear of frustration trickled down my cheek and Embry caught it with his finger. Licking his lips as he muttered quietly, “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you, okay? Let go for me. C’mon, baby..” he started to pump himself in and out harder, faster.. The smack of skin against skin shattering the quiet. “C’mon. Let go, baby.” as he pushed me back against the couch, pinning me all over again. His hips smacking against mine erratically, the sound echoing off the walls. “That’s it.” he growled as I clenched around him, dangerously close to my orgasm shattering through, “Fuck. you’re so tight. Wet...Fuck, baby.”

My orgasm ripped through me, leaving me a dripping,whimpering mess, clinging to him. Trying to catch my breath. My hips meeting his as best as I could as I let him fuck me through the high of it. My nails caught in his skin and raked down his back, pulling a moan out of him as he buried his mouth against mine, muttering quietly, “You feel so so good. So good, baby. Don’t..” he groaned as his thrusts became sloppier. Slower in a desperate attempt to keep himself from getting off, “Ah, oh god. Mmm.” his hands gripped my hips tight, slamming me up and down on his cock as he bottomed out, striking against my throbbing,sensitive spot, pulling a loud whimper out of me in the process. “Baby.” he panted, locking eyes with me, “I’m so close. So close, fuck.”

“Don’t stop. Embry, please.” my back arched as his thrusts got even sloppier. Faster. So hard they were almost bruising each time his hips slammed against mine mid-thrust. “You sure?” he muttered against the shell of my ear, glancing down at me.

“Embry, fuck. Ah, fuck. Baby, don’t stop. Feels so good baby. Mmm, yeah.” I moaned out, my back arching away from the bed, my chest dragging over his as I clung to him. Trying to rock my hips urgently to keep him moving. Blinded by lust. My nails digging into his shoulder and dragging down his back lightly. Pulling a growl out of him that was swallowed by the hungry crash of our mouths against each others as his hips sputtered and I felt his cock throbbing. Emptying. Filling me full.

After it was over, he planted soft kisses all over my face and neck and I pulled him down on top of me. He flipped us so that he was the one laying below, his arms locking around my body to hold me in place on top of him as I crashed my mouth against his all over again.

His eyes settled on the bites and nips he left behind and he grimaced, gingerly dragging his finger over the deepest one on the side of my neck. “I told you not to let me hurt you.”

“If it hurt, Embry, I would’ve told you. I’m not made of glass, baby.”

He eyed me, almost as if he were afraid I was just saying it. I gave a soft giggle and after wiggling around a little to get comfortable, I rubbed my nose against his, making him laugh. Stare up at me in awe only to burst into laughter when I settled on the couch next to him, purring in content, “I am.. Definitely going to get used to this. Mhm, yes I am.” through a sleepy yawn.

“Me too, babe.” Embry pulled me closer, letting my head rest against his chest. An arm wrapped around me tight after pressing his lips against my forehead...

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carmenxjulia · 4 years ago

Photo

Another Duane interview transcript, coming at you! This one was from a smaller Carmen Sandiego chatroom. There were several interviewers, so that’s why the name of the question asker changes. Get the details below the break! Stay tuned, more interview transcripts coming soon.

Duane Capizzi:

HI EVERYONE! I'M IN!

Sorry I'm late, I got lost on the way haha. Then got lost trying to change my PFP

Thanks for gathering! Shall we get started? Let's do some Q&A!

(as long as they are not geography questions haha)

Fuel:

What characters or plot points were cut from the final product?

Duane Capizzi:

Ooo, starting with a right hook to the jaw!

Let me think about that for a moment: I'm hesitant to give too much away because I'm really hoping we can tell more stories in this world at some point

Which is to say, we tend not to waste anything: if we don't use it when we originally planned, we usually find a way to use something later - and there's usually a "karmic" reason that we waited.

I'll also preface by saying this: I know season 3 was more of a mini-drop and some felt season 4 was rushed. But I wish EVERY season were longer. Season 1: ideally, i wanted the Pilot to be its own event and 10 more episodes after that (but we had to tell the post-Pilot story in 7. At the end of the day, that had its benefits: we got to the Shadowsan turn earlier and I think that's when a lot of viewers realized the ride they were truly in for). Season 2: we initially figured we'd need 5 episodes to have Carmen doing the ACME dance with Chief, and wound up doing it in 3 - mostly because it quickly became clear that Rio needed to be a 2 parter, and the Zack and Ivy backstory a rough 2 parter. So we squeezed 3 episodes worth of plot into 209. It was exhilarating!

So, we had hoped to have more episodes for Season 4 of course. We had a ton of ideas and had to compress things a bit. But honestly in many ways it was for the better. I know we all wanted to live in this world longer, but I think sometimes the flip side is true - when you have big ongoing storylines, it can get frustrating when some things drag out too long. But, we got all the "story" we wanted to tell in Season 4 - we just lost some "incident" if that makes sense. We would have taken longer to get there.

So, all that preface to answer the question: we wanted to do more musical numbers! We had a Bollywood dance sequence in a return to India caper with Paperstar. We wanted to do a famous Elvis suit theft in Las Vegas during an Elvis impersonator convention (Shadowsan's an early elvis guy; Brunt likes the Vegas "jumpsuit" era). We also wanted to do a thread where Gunnar gets captured by ACME so that Julia could interrogate him and he could play mind games with her a la Hannibal Lector and Clarice. CAVEAT TO ALL THIS: these were some ideas that were bouncing around, that may not have seen the light of day if we couldn't get them to work. But they were on our wish list.

re: "other stories" - I could live with these characters for another 32 episodes easily and there have of course been discussions. But alas, that is up to the powers that be. Let's keep fingers crossed - and keep the Carmen love alive online so that someone up there takes note

There is more of course, but those are some things that spring to mind.

Fuel:

Were there any scenes cut for time that were your favorite?

Duane Capizzi:

Not much springs to mind: our directors were amazing at getting everything in the scripts to fit naturally (and in fact, I was the one who was usually suggesting trims to let other things breathe, etc). We were limited to 22 minutes of episode time, NOT counting front and end credits so a little longer than the average show. We have a pretty good idea when the SCRIPT is too long, so the cutting usually happens at script stage before it gets to the board crew so that they don't waste efforts over-boarding material that won't be used.

We had hoped to build out Chase and Carmen teaming up for the first time, meeting at Carmen's hotel lobby etc for more scenes of them together; but had to reduce that to get that all to fit in the VERY packed episode 406. But again, tighter was fine considering. That's one area that leaps to mind. (note that when I say packed, I don't mean that in a bad way: we spend a lot of time pouring over details in editing to make sure everything gets its due).

If I think of anything, I'll circle back at a later point. But the simple answer is that scenes were usually trimmed or compressed at script rather than board or animatic. So nothing comes to mind. I know it's hard to believe, but "shorter is usually better."

except for my answers to fan questions of course

Fuel:

We saw that in s4 episode 6 that Julia's mother(?) is wearing a necklace remarkably similar to the one Julia wears all the time. Is this the same necklace and if so, why was it given to Julia?

Duane Capizzi:

Just when I thought I was detail oriented! Wow! You guys blow me away

I can't take credit for that: it was either the board artist or director who added that. They do slip things in! As I've said before, EVERYONE on the crew really brought their A-game and were as deep thinking and as passionate as I was/am about the show.

It's a nice detail and I would say your interpretation works!

It took me three or four reviews before noticing that the team had slipped in baby Carmen near the play set in Mom's front yard at the end of 408. When I caught it, I was like: bravo!

Fuel:

When they first met, Zack and Ivy said to Carmen that they were the only family they had, do you know what happened to the rest of Zack and Ivy's family?

Duane Capizzi:

I don't. At least, I don't yet until such a time that I might have the opportunity to explore that. It was important to their relationship with Carmen that they be orphans, so they had that common bond (aside from being "thieves who steal from bad guys" - even if it was only gonna be one time for Zack and Ivy).

I know there are writers out there who like to do entire bio's for characters up front but i'm not one of them. It could be a trap in many ways. I like to have a general idea but be open to the demands of the ongoing storyline. You discover things along the way - it's like you're taking a journey with the characters by writing them, and the longer you spend, the better you get to know them (that was not a prepared statement by the way - I just made that up but I'll have to use it again :). So in Z/I's case it wasn't important to the story or Carmen's relationship, we felt. Conversely, we STARTED with Shadowsan's family backstory with 203, but more important to me was that we use it as a platform to explain why he stays with Carmen and crew. He really has no home at that point, so it was relevant to the present ongoing story. Which is what made that especially powerful to me.

Also, there's always a push-pull between telling character back stories while balancing them with ongoing episodic plots. You have to service both. If you just tell back story, then you're writing a biography

Arden:

What was the biggest challenge when designing these characters, especially the pre-existing characters from the series in the 90's?

Duane Capizzi:

This is probably more of a question for Chromosphere, re: challenges. But from my standpoint overseeing that process, the first thing I'll say is that we weren't necessarily trying to be "true" to those characters since we reinvented nearly every one from the ground up. (with the exception of Carmen of course - her trademark red hat/coat weren't going anywhere! But mostly the update with Carmen was in the styling of her "outerwear"

ALTHOUGH: I will admit that I was pushing for Carmen to have shorter hair as Carmen. I thought it would be a cool update. Chromosphere were really passionate about giving her long full hair and I have to see that they were right. The short tomboy cut worked so well for Black Sheep anyway. We had a different hair style for each of her ages.

So about the reinventions: Gunnar is in spirit a similar character to the original (old colleague in Vile and an early mentor if I remember), but his presentation completely different. We weren't trying to be "in canon" with the original. The beauty of CSD is that every incarnation has been its own entity so that freed us to reimagine the characters. THE CLEANERS, for instance: gimme some Cleaner love! There were a pair of janitors from the original game named RICK AND NICK ICK. They were literally janitors, it was too silly for our purposes. But, it's one small step to make them "Cleaners" (in the sinister hit men sense) - and lo, our reinvention.

So to summarize the answer to your question, they weren't really challenges to me so much as FUN to creatively reinvent the original characters (many of which were from the game, so not really "characters" per se with dialogue and inner lives). Whenever we could, we tried to use character names from the originals and update their looks and personalities. Where we couldn't find an equivalent for what we needed, we created characters from whole cloth. For instance, it seemed a miss to do a heist show without a tunnel guy and a high rise climber guy. Hence, LC & ET, everyone's favorite taco truck vendors!

(yes, i've seen some short hair carmen fan art on Twitter - someone did a great one recently!)

Arden:

Are there plans to give us more of the characters in, say, novel/graphic novel form?

Duane Capizzi:

I know HMH has done a bunch and no doubt have more in works. There's currently a novelization of the Pilot with some additional material if anyone's interested. I consulted on the second one, Clue for Clue, because it falls in the timeline while Chase was still Interpol/pre-Acme so was tricky.

And depending on whether another series in this canon makes it to air, I may just approach them about writing one or two myself to get some "further adventures" our there. Anything is possible!

Arden:

If you could go back and change anything about the series, what would it be?

Duane Capizzi:

File under anecdote, but there was what I felt was an important expression on Gray that kept me awake at nights, from his graduation ceremony at Vile. When we revisited those flashbacks in the Gray arc in Season 4, I had them change his expression there (to be more evil less innocent). We had it corrected in 404 so was able to get permission to have Netflix "fix" the Pilot by adding that shot in. I am tenacious!

We really poured over everything, it's the series that I have virtually zero complaints with the end product to be honest. But the simple answer is: I would have gone back to 106 and "un-greek'd" Gray's nametag. It's sort of a rule for international that we scramble signage (which is weird for a show that takes place in many countries/languages, I know I know). It's mostly for localization/translation reasons. And I'm sure there are some countries where Gray's name might be spoken differently. But as a proper name, I think we could have made an exception and seen "Gray" on his name tag. See? Details! But that's about the worst of it

there's also like one small line from Chief in 208 where she indicates she knows Carmen is a good guy (something to that effect) which I felt was too absolute and would have tweaked the line to temper it a bit. It's tiny, but looking back it sort of bugs me and I kick myself for not catching it. But this is absolutely the series I wanted and couldn't be happier.

Carmen:

How did Carmen know she could trust Julia? As far as we know, she has not seen or heard Julia defending her, and in the Fashionista Caper, Julia even held up her gas gun to her, saying she was under arrest. Do you have any opinions on this? Was it just intuition?

Duane Capizzi:

I'm gonna go with intuition

Carmen was raised on an island with some hardened criminal types. I think she's a pretty good judge of character. Poor Julia, trying to be tough with Carmen didn't suit her.

But, great observation! I'd have to mentally step through everything to see if Carmen had any earlier indication but i think you're right there.

Yes, sometimes you just gotta follow your heart

Carmen:

Are there any characters that didn't actually interact that you think would get along well?

Duane Capizzi:

Amazing question! First, I'd have to think more about who DIDN'T meet - you're asking the hard questions haha. But "get along well" is very specific! Hmmm, care to volley anyone?

I'll also add that so many smaller moments get lost in the "binge" of it all, but I am surprised how few fans have noted the first meeting between Player and Julia. THAT was a good one IMO! Very sweet!

Before getting back to your question, I also want to add that we were originally going to find a way for Carmen to lose her earring in Stockholm so that Julia could pick it up and be communicating with Player. BUT, I cut it at treatment stage because I knew we didn't have room in that episode to service it. Circling back to questions 1 & 2, another case where it turned out better saved for later IMO (saving Player meeting Julia, not to mention the earring business in 402 with Ivy).

Oh of course, Julia and any of the other Vile members. It would have been Gunnar for my vote, as mentioned earlier. We probably would not have had Julia meet anyone else and mixed it up more. I like that Cleo sort of became J's personal nemesis.

YES, SONIA & XIFENG (and LUPE PELIGRO, if I can add). The intent was (and is, if we ever get to revisit) to see them again in Carmen's travels. We started to expand Carmen's world but when we finally learned the finite number of episodes we had to finish the story, we drilled back down into the essentials. Would love to see them some day!

I'm hesitant to share too many things I have in mind in this forum for hope that they will see the light of day one day. You know, "spoilers"

Julia:

Do you have any opinions on Zari? Just in general? Some thoughts on her backstory would be nice if possible

Duane Capizzi:

I love Zari! I really don't have any back story on her at this point. She was originally just "Agent B" but when the need arose to give story points to another agent, we chose her because she looked so awesome! And Sharon Muthu gave voice to her so wonderfully.

I love when we finally teamed her with Chase. Hopefully the anticipation was that she would give him a hard time. I love that we defied expectation (organically, of course) and had her respect him by the end of that episode (for believing that he foiled Carmen!)

Julia:

Do you have any thoughts on small facts about any character, major or minor, that you think are fun/interesting to think about, but don't necessarily add to the plot itself?

Duane Capizzi:

Bellum, like myself, likes cats. But you knew that!

I try to put everything pertinent on screen, doing double duty to service any given episode's story but also the overarching story. That "journey" thing I mentioned earlier - we had no idea Chase falling on his own car would be a thing when I first came up with it. But as other characters refer to the incident, it took on a life of its own and made the characters feel more real.

Sorta kinda related to this question and some earlier ones, I will say that I DO think there's more to learn about Shadowsan's past vis a vis Lady Dokuso: it's clear to me that they have a history together, and it's something I hope to explore someday soon (maybe in a book if not another series

Julia:

Are the Carmen Sandiego books a part of canon?

Duane Capizzi:

I only consulted on the first two or three (too busy with series!) and have not read them, so hard for me to answer in a definite way. They are definitely in the universe we've created, but not in the timeline that I know of (which would have been too hard to pull off with our script development running concurrently). But do know that the book team at HMH pays close attention to the series and world so they should be perfectly compatible. Look no further to their clever social media on the series for example.

Kenz:

We saw in season 4 that Julia and Carmen helped each other mid to long term; would there ever be a possibility that Julia would permanently or semi-permanently join team Red?

Duane Capizzi:

Of course there's a possibility. But in a sense, with ACME now finally on Carmen's side, in a sense if Carmen were back in the game Julia, Chase, Zack and Ivy would ALL be an extension of Carmen's crew. But, would J remain with ACME or literally come to Carmen's team at her HQ? As they said in an old radio show: "Only The Duane Capizzi knows ..."

Kenz:

Where do you see Carmen in her retirement (if she retires)? Do you think she would still travel the world or settle down somewhere? Similarly, do you have any thoughts on what some other characters could be doing years down the line?

Duane Capizzi:

That is a big question, and one difficult to answer without some potential future spoilers (and yes, I really want to tell more Carmen stories if you can't tell But I'll answer by giving you one "read" on our open-ended ending as seen in 408 (read no further if you haven't seen it - yeah, right haha). The ending suggests to me that Carmen settled down for a spell to forge that relationship with her mother, to make up for lost time. But, if that is indeed Carmen that we see on the rooftop, I think the ending suggests that Carmen doesn't stay still for very long. If Vile is back, there is work to be done! Carmen has a life mission - she's one determined lady.

But of course, it's deliberately ambiguous: "anyone with your heart, wisdom and courage can be Carmen Sandiego." Is it Carmen? Sonia? Someone we haven't met? I think both endings resonate: Caroline and I always said "Carmen is bigger than a person, Carmen is a movement" would be a great message to end the series on. And I think our ending resolves this chapter of Carmen's journey as a person, but also elevates her to mythic status. Which is why I love it!

And, that seems to me a pretty perfect question and answer to end our chat on. Thanks everyone! Again, I cannot tell you how moved I am to see that we have such a passionate, intelligent and talented fan base. THANK YOU.

Take care guys, thanks again for having me! 'night!

#Carmen Sandiego #CS Crew #Duane Capizzi #Interview #Transcript

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irkenheretic · 4 years ago

Note

⭐ 183 days ⭐

ah this one!! so, this one was actually a bit of a funny story. see, my dad pays me (used to pay me?) for writing- two cents a word if its a fanfic, three if its original.

there was also this giant zim plushie i wanted off ebay- it was $350 and while i had the money, it wouldve taken all my money to buy. so i told myself, i would write enough to cover the cost before i bought it. i sat down and had a major brainstorming session, and this was one of the ideas it yielded! (the others are oc-centric and therefore unpublished)

(and yes, i ended up getting the plushie. once i clean my couch hes gonna be proudly displayed on it)

so i took "what was zim thinking about in those six months in the voot?" and ran with it

gir's singing being an opener for each segment was also kind of an accident? i did it because i couldnt think of a better way to start them and it just kinda worked yknow? same with the five stages of grief motif- i really only cemented it at... the beginning of the second segment? or the end of the first

but onto me waxing poetic about my own stuff!

183 days i think is a tragic thing- the only way zim could realize everything was a lie was if he's left to die, cold and alone and unfulfilled. and then he gets to earth and its right back to denial. sure, it's bad to see him go back to denial- but would him knowing the truth really be better? fucking, he was contemplating calling the tallest and committing suicide in front of them. it's sad that he lives in denial but is the alternative really that much better?

the backstory of his training was a thing i wrote for ANX, honestly- there's gonna be a full oneshot covering his training called invade the system, it'll actually be the second annexed fic to be published. im feeling nice today so ill put a snippet of that under the cut after this whole ask about 183 days is done

speaking of 183 days lets get back to the training stuff in there. my editor, toby, really liked this one line: "If he was taller, would his Commander have told him to stop killing himself, that destroying his body would do nothing to make him a better soldier?" He said "You can't help but wonder if his Commander told him this not because he was a lost cause, but because he /was/ killing himself," which is absolutely not what i intended for this line- but i really like that interpretation.

my favorite segment has GOT to be the depression one, honestly, with acceptance being a close second. thats where it all kind of comes crumbling down. a lot of things i set up in previous segments come back and they come back badly. zim's training memories, the echo of "different," the themes of defectiveness, devastis 2, zim's varying reactions to GIR's song culminating with him accepting GIR as his own, just as he accepts his own defectiveness.

this was kind of meander-y but thats because its kind of impossible to sum up 183 days i think? i always find myself thinking of each segment as a mini-fic on its own haha

and as a side note: i was lurking in a server and i found out that devastis 2 is actually part of someone's personal headcanons now and i think thats amazing. you know who you are... if you're even reading this haha. i know who it is but i dont wanna bother them by @ing them

also yeah as promised heres the invade the system snippet. you thought id forget but i didnt,, pog!

Devastis was cold, and it was harsh, and it was unforgiving.

Shorter Irkens always fared worse— their smaller frames meant that they retained heat worse than Tallers— but, it was important for an Invader to improvise.

Zim was always great at machinery. He felt a connection with it that rivaled the connections Irkens had with other, live Irkens. As a smeet, he was slated to become a Scientist, or perhaps an Engineer. Both respectable positions that would have made a transfer to Invader go much smoother.

But his hopes were dashed when he had one growth spurt, and everyone else in his class had the correct amount of four. It happens to 20% of Irkens, the Medical Drone had told him. There was an implied continuation of and nothing can be done, but Zim refused to accept that as truth. There was always something that could be done about anything, but this was a finicky thing— involving genomes and hormones and, perhaps, a biological defect, and not the Irkens’ dictionary definition of Defect, which stayed contained in the PAK. It was the work of a Bio-Engineer, or perhaps a Geneticist, or perhaps both working together, or an Irken who was trained as both. Zim knew he would excel at it, if he chose to sneak in a Bio-Engineer training ground, but Zim longed to invade, longed to feel the thrill of battle, to think on his feet, risk his life, all for an Empire that did not care about him.

Yet.

An Empire that did not care about him yet, Zim reminded himself. One must earn the right to be cared about, that was how it worked. And Zim’s time would come.

(hope yall liked it. if you didnt then uuhhhh rip lmao! if you did then more to come and also i am hand feeding you watermelon)

#now calling the tallest #anarchisma au #kinda since theres a snippet from an anx fic #should i start tagging asks w the fic names?? idk. i answer a lot of asks abt my shit

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ghostbustermelanieking · 4 years ago

Text

oddly specific memories i have of listening to tma

in honor of the finale, and because i am a sentimental asshole, i bring you this potentially uninteresting and completely pointless list. i'm gonna miss this show a lot

half my original reasoning for listening to the podcast was to motivate me to walk on the treadmill. this did not work. but i did it the first time, when i was going through the trailers and anglerfish, and i remember the room where my dad keeps the treadmill is really dark and the spooky chanting sort of freaked me out

after the treadmill, i ended up listening to the bulk of the first four episodes on the couch, and halfway through i let my oldest cat, winnie, who always lived outside (i know, i was very against actually keeping her outside) in the house. and she jumped up on the couch with me, which she literally never did. (she was very grumpy and not super affectionate.) i had that cat since i was five, and she passed last june, and i really miss her. quarantine kind of gave us the opportunity to hang out with her a lot, because we were home so much. so i'm glad these memories are kind of intersected in my mind. (below: a pic i have from that day.)

my friend sarah relistened along with me the first time around, which was extraordinarily sweet of her, and also led to some interesting interactions. for example: she forgot when it was revealed that sasha was dead, so she accidentally spoiled that for me when i asked when the others would find sasha (and i spent all of season 2 just like. anxiously vibrating over this fact). she also made this post, when i was still in like early first half of season 1, and my immediate thought was "oh no martin is dead." i hadnt even MET martin at this point

back in early quarantine, my mom had this rule that we had to do something new every day (to keep away the depression... ha ha). anyways, all i wanted to do in my free time was sit around and listen to tma (and also watch this show i was into on netflix), so i came up with some lame excuses, one of which was "i'll give myself a pedicure." this led to the memory i ultimately associate with mag 56 (trevor herbert 2) being me sitting out on our roof balcony thing, giving myself a horrendous pedicure

another time, my family wanted to go play tennis, and they brought me along and brought a hammock for me to lay in. there was this excess material from the hammock, and the sun was in my eyes, so i ended up pulling it up and over me to block the sun and creating this ridiculous hammock cocoon thing. one of the episodes i listened to that day? "tucked in."

before i ever started the show, my friend sarah stayed with me while i was pet sitting. i remember when she got there, she'd just listened to 150 and was telling me how freaky it was (she was still trying to get me into the show), and she was like "of course we're staying on a CUL DE SAC." (that was also the weekend she watched us for the first time and was very upset because i slept through the whole thing, which is scary when you're staying somewhere by yourselves.) anyways, i spent the whole show waiting for the scary cul de sac episode

while i was listening to the show for the first time, my step-dad (an artist) started painting an EYE on the door downstairs near my bathroom. a fucking EYE. he didn't finish it til i had finished the show. but still weird!!

i binged like 12 episodes in one day to finish season 4, which is not impressive at all, but it's still my personal record. i just remember staying up late in my dark bedroom (til like.... 11 i'm lame and i go to bed early), listening to like 158 & 159 & 160 and just being knocked on my ass by how good it all was... i was SUPER spoiled by this point, through my own fault, and i knew exactly what was coming, but actually experiencing it was nuts

the second week i listened live was 167, where the public release was delayed by a couple hours by accident. i spent like 20 minutes refreshing spotify, thinking it was broken, before going on tumblr and seeing what the deal was. (and 167 remains one of my favorites of s5 because i remember just going "thank god it was worth the wait.")

this one car ride where sarah and i made some of our friends listen to the first three episodes of the show. it was the middle of the night and we were just like blasting down i40 listening to anglerfish and do not open etc

the night the what the ghost episode publicly dropped was the night after my graduation, and i was sleeping out on the couch in the living room so my grandfather could sleep in a bed. it was super dark, and i am a jumpy person, and i Remember being mildly disgusted with myself because the corny sound effects were actually freaking me out. (i think i mightve actually seen something weird that night, maybe, but that's another story.)

the weekend my parents moved me into college, we couldn't get the cable in the house we were staying in, and we were all sitting around doing nothing, so i jokingly suggested starting tma with them, and they were like ok grace. my step-dad promptly fell asleep and my mom zoned out -- which is probably good, she doesn't like horror and she's super claustrophobic, so it's probably better we never got to do not open

my brief roommate in college talked about how she was into those youtube channels where people just read scary stories, so of course i was like try tma out. so she listened to the first episode on her own, and we were out one night, and she started mag 02 while i went into an ice cream place. she was into it (she kept being like open it, ya pussy) and wanted to keep listening while we went home, and even back in our room. i had only been in town for a couple weeks, and barely knew my way around, but i also didn't want to turn the gps on and be interrupted every five seconds. so i tried to find our way back on my own. it took the entirety of mag 03, and into mag 04, before i did it. so now i will forever associate across the street with all those wrong turns i took in a dark, semi unfamiliar city, trying to get back to our college without a gps

the day of the early drop for 179 was the day i moved back home from college -- a five hour drive by myself. i ended up listening to it on the final stretch of the trip, when i was super tired and it was dark and i knew it'd probably be a crazy episode. just me full blasting down i40, drinking an energy drink (which i never do) through a hole punched in the top, listening to daisy's death

186 early dropped the day after initial u.s. election day (when we still didn't know anything). my mom had set up a "watch party" in the living room with these giant air mattresses, and we all sort of spent the day crowded around the TV watching the numbers. not much of a memory, but i remember sitting on that air mattress and listening to martin's monologue in the midst of that messy week

i had a virtual therapy appointment on the day of 187's early drop, and my dad was home, so i drove to an empty parking lot to do the session in some privacy. i was trying to listen to the episode before the session started, so i ended up listening to the last half sitting in my car, in the pouring rain, just staring at my radio in shock (187 remains one of my favorite s5 episodes)

my friend sarah had just come home for winter break the day 189 dropped, and we decided to listen together, just like driving around in circles drinking coffee and listening and speculating on whether or not that was really martin

i started my relisten right after thanksgiving and was just kind of blowing through fast as i could through the whole of december. i had to go back to college to empty out my dorm, and i went to the beach after, and i ended up listening to mag 11 while just like walking around in circles in the tide pools. the closer it got to christmas, the more christmassy i wanted to keep things, so i would like. listen in the mornings and turn on one of those Netflix fireplaces and get all cozy

my other friend went with me on a mini bagel road trip in december, and he was still trying to get caught up, so we listened to mag 169, 170, and 171 on the drive home. (by this point, i was accustomed enough to s5 and smiting scenes to automatically reach for the volume controls when jude perry and jared hopworth died.)

when i relistened to mag 47, i was sitting with my cat beezus. i paused the episode to write this big long meta, so i was in a different headspace when i pressed play again. jon immediately yelled for sasha and i immediately jumped, and beezus gave me a searing glare and just got up and left

i relistened to piecemeal while i was cooking, which i thought was kind of funny and also disgusting

after christmas, i got into the habit of bringing my cat georgia into my room in the mornings, and she'd crawl under the covers with me while i listened to tma

one story i've always liked to tell from my first listen is how when i first listened to the meat arm grinder episode, my dad asked me to help him cook hamburgers later that day and explained how hamburgers are ground up (to my disgust). i hit meat grinder in my relisten and um. you'll never fucking guess what i made for lunch that day

so i had all these arbitrary rules for myself when i started tma last april, and i've broken like all of them. i started listening to tma while virtually working -- you just pull it up on your computer and it works. (i got the life scared out of me when one of my coworkers started talking over the podcast, wondering who it was that had walked into jon's office and why he wasn't reacting and why i didn't remember it.) i also started listening a lot while driving, which led to several long meta posts i wrote being typed up in a parking lot somewhere

i spent the entirety of 194 anxious-cuddling georgia. (i tried to do this for 198 and then didn't have any anxiety to cuddle her over.) i fully plan on doing this for 200, where i am sure i will need it again

my favorite place to listen to tma probably ended up being the roof room at my mom's, and unless something goes awry, this is where i will listen to the finale. (with georgia, of course.)

this list is super uninteresting, like i said, but here it is. i'm gonna miss this show a lot. i can't wait to return to it, later in life, and make all new listening memories in the process

#the magnus archives #personal #food mention tw #pet death tw

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stressy-enby · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 1: 4 Months Later

Cover made on Canva.com

You were great at running. You’d been running from your problems for year, both figuratively and literally. Before however, your problems followed you, now they simply wait on bated breath for your return. What’s the point in running, though, if no one’s chasing you?

Previous - Next

Masterlist

Haha, funny story guys. This may become an angsty slow-burn. I still have no idea how long this is gonna be or take, but it may be a bigger project than I imagined.

. . .

Your shoes tapped quietly against the white tile as you waved to the receptionist as you passed his desk.

It was getting colder, so the police station interior was conversely getting warmer. You shrugged off your coat, reveling in the delectable, toasty heat.

You passed several more desks on the way to your own. At this point, you didn’t have to look to see who would greet you, ignore you, or just frown disapprovingly for simply arriving at work.

The quiet buzz of chatter blended together in a symphony of voices as you walked through the center of it, only to be intercepted by Taiyo.

“Morning, (Y/N)” The older investigator gestured for you to sit.

“Hey, Tai,” You pulled out the chair, and slid your sunglasses on before your eyes met. He pushed a paper cup over to you. “Thanks.”

“Good to see you didn’t take off on us. It’s nice to see you still in the country.” His eyes twinkled knowingly “Go anywhere exotic this weekend?”

Taiyo Antonov was the stern yet kindly man who was charged with keeping an eye on you. He had been the one to bring an end to your “traveling days” as you called them to people outside of the station. Despite him being the reason you where behind bars for three years in three different countries, he had become your closest friend and confidant. You two where a bit of an odd pair; you, a shifty looking 24-year-old who knew far too much about counterfeiting checks, and he, a 52-year-old police investigator who spoke with a vague Russian accent.

“Pfft, if you consider the grocery store exotic, I guess.” You rolled your eyes, peeling the lid off your paper cup to scrutinize its contents. “You visited your daughter, right? How’d that go?”

“It was good, I had fun. She took me mini-golfing.”

“And?”

“And she kicked my ass.”

You chuckled, then took a cautionary sip of your coffee. “Anything interesting on the bracket today, or am I gonna be bored out of my skull for another twelve hours?”

“Actually, you’re going to have some visitors.” Taiyo slid his reading glasses on and flipped through a file. “Ingenium and Deku should be dropping by at seven.”

“Hold on-” You sputtered in confusion, setting your mediocre coffee down. “Why? What did I do?”

“Do you even need to ask that?” He shot you an incredulous look, which you matched with one of your own.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You grunted, fleetingly picturing yourself strangling your friend. “Taiyo. Why do Deku and Ingenium wanna meet me?”

“They’re the ones who presented the idea of releasing you for parole. They fought with me to get you here.” The balding man pulled a paper out of his file and handed it to you. “This is the proposal they turned in.”

You skimmed the typed document. It was about a whole page long, and was a lot like those argumentative essays you had to write back in middle school. There were several well written points about why you should be released from Tartarus and how you could help the police station, even you found yourself being convinced this really was the best place for you. Your eyes skipped to the bottom of the sheet, to the handwritten signatures, Ingenium and Deku.

“Woah,” You breathed, mildly starstruck. You had originally thought that it was just Taiyo who got you out. You would’ve never imagined that two pro heroes would take this much interest in you. In fact, you found yourself a little hurt that they had taken the time to help you. Two perfect strangers handed you a Get Out of Jail Free card on a silver platter, but Taiyo, the pitying man who had worriedly handed you over to the French police for your first year of imprisonment hadn’t even thought to offer you the same luxury.

“Yeah, they want to check up on you.” Tai smiled a little, a proud dad-like gleam in his eye. “Last time they saw you, you looked like Hell.”

“Imprisonment wasn’t my best look,” You shrugged nonchalantly, pushing that painful twist of betrayal back down.

“I can’t imagine it’s anyone’s.” Your friend replied putting the parole proposal back in the file. “Anyway, I’ve got a few check for you to take a look at.”

He passed a second file over as you rolled your eyes. “So much fun,” You collected it and your drink, standing up. “Don’t you have anything challenging?”

“Our guy has a mix of real and fake checks. That’s interesting.” Taiyo insisted.

“No, that’s boring.” You stated. “If anything, it makes my job easier. This guy’s a real amateur.”

. . . . .

Your bosses seemed to think that giving you a surplus of work would make up for it being incredibly easy. It did not. It just made it tedious, and less fun. The first few days of work were interesting, getting to see different forgery techniques and all, but it had quickly just became monotonous.

You sorted through a pile of checks, easily discerning the fakes. Over years of practice, the identifiers where clearer than day to you. The paper being just a fraction heavier than usual, puckered wording where it didn’t belong, ink that didn’t smell quite right, and so on and so forth.

Your computer dinged, indicating an email, and you eagerly allowed yourself to be distracted. You navigated to your emails, and your eyebrows shot up upon reading the sender’s address.

[email protected]

There were no extra numbers or letters thrown in the address for individuality, so it seemed more likely than not to be the real deal. You were unsure why you were surprised. The hero was already coming to visit you, why shouldn’t he email you?

You shook off the initial thrill of being contacted by a pro hero, and clicked to open the message.

(Y/N) (L/N),

Good morning. I’m just writing to remind you that Deku and I will be meeting you at your workplace at 7:00 PM today. We’re looking forward to the visit, and hope you do as well.

Regards,

Ingenium

Another warm thrill dashed through you as you hit Reply. You fingers hovered above the keys, mentally drafting your response. A few words were typed out, before all being discarded, backspacing all the way to Good moring, Ingenium.

After muddling through your simple email and rereading and rewriting it twice, you finally hit Send, releasing a breath of air you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.

Good morning, Ingenium,

Thank you for your reminder, I’m looking forward to meeting you and Deku in person. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to see me.

See you soon!

(Y/N) (L/N)

“No email should be this stressful.” You reasoned with yourself, rolling your swivel chair away from your desk.

You leaned back, watching the seconds tick by slowly. Each minute seemed to be longer than the last.

8:46

“This is agony.”

#mha #bnha #tenya #iida #tenya iida #tenya x reader #iida x reader #tenya iida x reader #mha x reader #bnha x reader

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farfromparker · 5 years ago

Text

Erotas - Chapter Three | t.h.

Erotas Masterlist

Pairing: Tom Holland x Female Reader

Summary: You land in Greece and after dinner with some of your family the only logical next step is to get drunk in the jacuzzi.

Warnings: Cursing, a little (and by little I mean little) bit of steaminess but the smut will pick up in the next chapter

Word Count: 6.6k

A/N: This fic is trope city; fake dating, there’s only one bed, friends to lovers. Warnings will be added as I continue to write! Possibly looking at 7 chapters.

Special thanks to @worldoftom 💞💞

Five hours later and you’re standing in the lobby of your hotel, bags at your feet, Tom by your side. You haven’t seen your family yet, which is a relief in itself. Your mum texted saying to get settled and relaxed and that they’d find you for dinner and drinks.

You rest your chin in your hand on the check-in counter, processing what the receptionist had said. “Wait, what? We didn’t—”

The woman behind the desk glances at your passport again, double checking the spelling of your name one more time. “You did. This is your room, 2 adults for the Venus Suite for five nights.”

Your phone dings. It’s your cousin.

Get checked in to your suite yet?? 😏 [smirking emoji]

Your mouth pops open and you glance at the woman again. Pressing your lips into a thin smile, you apologize, “Sorry, yes, you’re right. That is our room.”

Tom nudges your shoulder with his, whispering, “A suite?”

You shrug, biting your bottom lip. “Welcome to Greece!”

The woman smiles, finalizing your check-in and hands you the keycards to your room along with a map to find your suite. “To further complement your stay, American Champagne Breakfast will be served each morning in the privacy of your own terrace.”

Your eyes widen, “Oh wow, okay. Thank you.”

Tom nudges you again as you leave the lobby. “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

He smirks when you shove his shoulder. “You have a movie line for every situation, don't you?”

He nods. “Oh most definitely.”

Using the directions the woman gave you, you walk towards your suite. The hotel reminds you of a maze, stairs and turns, the sky a bright blue hanging above you. You can hear the ocean in the distance. You explain to Tom that your nosy family decided to intervene and change your original room reservation and bump you up to a suite. Knowing your cousin, she probably did it the second you left that lunch four weeks ago.

“How much is this gonna cost?” he asks, hesitant.

“My dad covered it. It’s safe to say my family is over the moon I’m here with a boy.” And it’s hard to hide the drop of venom in your voice.

You reach room 12, high, white, stucco walls surround you at the end of a hallway. The key is an RFID card and you slide it against the reader, the light flashes green and the lock clicks. You push it open and step past the threshold.

Spanning out across your private terrace is nothing but the sea and the sky and Thirassia Island.

The door clicks closed quietly behind you.

Tom stands next to you, bags dropping to the ground by your feet. “Holy shit.”

The exterior portion of your room isn’t excessively large, but the space is amazing. Two chaise lounges overlooking a glass balcony railing, staring out into the Aegean Sea, along with a rather large jacuzzi in the corner. There are French doors behind the hot tub, leading into your room.

You nod slowly. “Yeah.”

The room itself could be the size of a shoe box for all you care. You just want to spend any free time you have on this overlook.

Tom picks up his bag, grabbing yours as well that had also slipped out of your grasp when you walked in, and heads towards the doors. He pushes them open and you follow. He sets the bags by the dresser, eyes wide as he takes in the room. He’s smiling, touching everything almost in awe, but you’re staring at the bed. The only bed.

“Oh,” you start, glancing around the room but there’s no couch. The room isn’t really all that big, the king bed taking up the majority of the space towards the back. There’s a fully stocked mini bar to your right and a dresser to your left, along with the TV. The door to the bathroom is on your right as well and Tom has disappeared in there. You can hear him talking, calling your name to come see something.

When you don’t reply right away, he pops back out, looking at you. “What’s the matter?” and he follows your gaze to the bed. It takes him a second, brows furrowed before he realizes. And he starts laughing, gently, but laughing nonetheless.

“Hey, are you really worried about sharing a bed?”

You feel relieved at the ease he’s expressing. “You’re not?”

He laughs again. “No, babe, we’ve kissed. I think we can share a bed. Especially one as big as that one.”

You smile. “Okay, yeah, you’re right, sorry. I’m just —”

“Nervous, I know,” he finishes for you, walking over to take your hand in his, squeezing gently. “What time do we have to meet your family?”

You sigh. “Uh, whenever we’re settled, I guess.” You squeeze his hand in return. You contemplate for a moment, “The sooner we go, the sooner it’s over and we can come back here.”

“And then we can order champagne and get drunk in the hot tub.”

You laugh. “Let’s just do that now, forget my family.”

But he convinces you to just go now. Saying that it won’t be that bad, that your family will be so excited to see you. And although you’re sure they will be, you still know it’s going to be exhausting.

You head to your parents’ room first, room 4. You later find out that most of the wedding party is on the opposite end of the hotel from you. Knowing that makes your room even more of an escape.

Your mum gushes over you when she opens the door, hugging and kissing you before passing you off to your father so she can do the same to Tom. He takes it all in stride, hugging your mum, shaking your dad’s hand and with him here, the heat is off of you. They want to know about him, how you met, what he does. You barely speak ten words on the walk down to the hotel bar. You don’t feel left out, though, because Tom’s hand never leaves your body, whether he’s holding yours or resting his on the small of your back. He keeps you close, smiling at you as he answers questions about your relationship, about your friendship.

You find a hightop table outside with a view over the ocean. The breeze is light and warm against your cheek, and you can smell the salt in the air. It’s late in the afternoon, close to five, but the sun is still warm on your skin.

Your dad pulls Tom along to the bar to get drinks and you’re sure he’s giving him the dad talk. You can only shake your head.

Your cousin and her fiancé, Ava and Alex, meet the four of you down there soon after. And Ava is the reason you’re here. Yeah, she can be a pain in the ass, but she’s always been more of a sister than a cousin. You’re close in age and grew up together. The secrets you share could bring down the government of a small country.

She engulfs you in a hug, practically vibrating with excitement. She hugs Tom as soon as you introduce them and while she’s fussing over him, you give Alex a hug as well, taking the opportunity to catch up. Alex couldn’t care less about the wedding, just wanting it to be over with so they can officially be married. Ava, on the other hand, is stressing over every single detail no matter how minimal it may seem.

And Tom is great with her, offering advice and helping her see things that may not be as important as she's making them out to be, like the color of the tablecloths not being the absolute right shade of white. You can see the relief flood Alex’s eyes as Ava agrees with him.

“So how have you been hiding him since February? He’s amazing, and really, really cute,” she says, nudging you with her shoulder.

You press your lips together. “I didn’t want to jinx anything, you know how this family is.”

She nods in understanding, she’s experienced everything you have, albeit secondhandedly, but she’s always been there to help you say fuck them over drinks later in the night. She knows their comments cut deeper than you let on and she’s tried to help as best she can. You’ve always appreciated that about her.

If the wedding itself would consist of only these four people, you could have survived it alone. But your mum fills you in on the rest of the family’s travel plans. Aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents are all arriving tomorrow. The rehearsal dinner is tomorrow night, then you’ve got the next day off to enjoy Santorini before the wedding on Friday. Most of the family will fly out on Saturday. But you and Tom, along with your cousin and her newly minted spouse are staying until Sunday.

You order dinner but find yourselves talking and drinking more than eating. With more people now, the conversation has broken up into parts and you find yourself talking with your dad, Tom has finished eating and is standing next to your chair now. It’s easier for him to be included in the conversation this way.

“Having fun so far?” your dad asks.

You smile. “Yeah, thank you for the room.”

Tom agrees. “Yes, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.”

Your dad laughs, patting Tom on the shoulder. “She doesn’t bring a guy around often, so I figured I would do something special for the two of you.”

And it would mean a lot to you if that wasn’t all an act. You take a sip of your drink to mask the uneasiness you feel, but Tom doesn’t miss a step. Going into a story about how excited he was when he found out you’d be coming here, about meeting your family, about going on a vacation, someplace so romantic, with his girlfriend.

“Well, hopefully you two can properly enjoy yourselves here. Get some good use of that jacuzzi, yeah?”

“I think we’re gonna order champagne and get drunk in it tonight actually,” you comment, exchanging glances with Tom.

Your dad looks between the two of you. “Well, then what the hell are you still doing here? Go! Enjoy yourselves before you get roped into some responsibility for the wedding.” And he practically pushes you out of the bar.

“What if they need me for something?”

He scoffs. “I can’t remember the last time you’ve come to a family gathering and actually had fun. Please do that for me this week. And for him,” he adds, gesturing to Tom. “If something’s on fire, I’ll let you know, otherwise I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow night. Six sharp.”

You can’t stop yourself from mumbling, “It feels like everything’s already on fire.” Your dad doesn’t catch it but Tom does, pressing his lips together to fight off a grin.

Your dad sends you off with a kiss to your cheek and a handshake for Tom, and then heads back towards the rest of your family. You laugh lightly, heading back to the room.

“I like your dad, and your mum. Everyone tonight was great,” Tom says as you step into your room.

“Yeah, these are the ones I really like, the shit show will start tomorrow. You just wait. That rehearsal dinner might push me to murder.”

He laughs. “Why?”

“Because you’re going to be the only thing my aunts and uncles and grandma will be able to talk about. You and how she’s never brought a boy to meet the family before.” Your voice goes up several octaves as you impersonate your aunt.

“Should I just kiss you all night so that you don’t have to talk to them?”

“Oh, they’ll eat that shit up, you’re gonna have to make a dirty joke to shut them up. Grandma’s very religious and she’ll clutch her pearls if you talk about our, quote unquote, sex life.”

Tom hums, nodding along. “Good to know.”

You shake your head. “Anyway, didn’t my dad say I had to have fun this week? Let’s stop talking about my family and go get drunk.”

“God, yes please. I’ll order room service. You can change first,” he offers, walking over to the hotel phone. You rummage through your suitcase and find your bathing suit, slipping into the bathroom quickly.

The room is empty when you open the door, but you can hear the jets running from the hot tub.

You grab two towels for yourselves and step out onto the balcony. The sun has set, but there are still soft orange hues spanning across the horizon.

“I got you a towel,” you comment, setting them both off to the side to prevent them from getting wet. “Thanks,” Tom says, smiling as you step into the tub. “Champagne should be here soon.”

You hum, sinking down into the water, letting the jets push against your back and shoulders. Extending your arms, you reach out, resting them against the sides of the hot tub. Your fingers knock against Tom’s as he’s in the same position as you and his fingers twitch. You think he’s going to move his hand away but instead, he threads his fingers with yours, brushing gently against your knuckles.

You stay like that for a moment, eyes slipping shut as you enjoy the heat of the water, the warm air on your skin and Tom’s touch on your hand.

The knock on the door startles you both and Tom is quick to get up and out of the hot tub. You watch as the muscles along his back and shoulders work beneath his skin as he pushes himself out.

The champagne comes in on a cart, half submerged in a bucket of ice with two flutes next to it. Tom thanks the man, offering him a tip on his way out. You reach for the cart, pulling it up next to the jacuzzi as Tom locks the door, coming back to get in next to you.

You grab the bottle, peeling away the wrapping from the top. You hesitate when you see the wire twist, biting your lip.

“What? Scared to open a champagne bottle?” Tom teases, taking the bottle from you when you offer it to him, his fingers brushing against yours.

“They make me nervous, have since I was little,” you laugh, leaning away from him as he gets to working it open.

“Clearly, you didn’t grow up with a household full of brothers,” he quips, pulling the wire webbing off so he can get to the cork. “Losing an eye was the least of my worries growing up.”

“Yeah? And what was your biggest? Getting punched in the dick?”

He freezes, locking his eyes on you, “Don’t joke about that. That shit hurts. God, I think my dick crawled back inside my body just from hearing you say that. When I still lived at home, Harry would shout nut shot whenever I would get up and stretch so I couldn't defend myself. It’s astounding to this day that my balls aren’t permanently blue.”

You throw your head back, trying to hold back the laugh fighting its way past your lips because sometimes you don’t want him to know how funny you actually think he is. He’s smiling when you look back at him though, like he knows.

He definitely knows.

Changing the subject is the only escape right now. “Will you just open the bottle, please?”

He does, aiming it out towards the ocean and with one final twist, it pops open, the cork shooting out across the terrace.

“See?! That’s why I don’t like opening them!”

“Hey, no one lost an eye, so I see this as an absolute win.” He fills the two flutes before shoving the bottle back in its ice bath. He hands you a drink before grabbing his own.

You extend your arm to him. “Cheers,” you offer and clink his glass to yours.

“Cheers.”

The champagne is sweet and flavorful, bubbly against your tongue. It’s going to go straight to your head.

Tom settles back into his seat, groaning softly as he moves so the jets press at different areas of his back. “Alright, rehearsal dinner tomorrow, who do I have to look out for?”

You take another sip of your drink. “Everyone.”

He laughs.

“You think I’m kidding!”

“Oh c’mon, I don’t have to worry about your parents. And Ava and Alex love me. So that's four down.”

“They were just the pawns, the big guns come out tomorrow.” You straighten up, rolling your shoulders and making a show of it, Tom just rolls his eyes. “Alright, we’ll start at the top with Grandma Ruth, Nana. She’s very religious, I’m pretty sure I’m sinning in her eyes because I’m not married yet so she’ll love you. But she’s a pistol. And I’m sure she’ll have Peanut with her.”

Tom pushes his lips together, brow bunching, “Peanut?”

“Her Yorkie.”

His eyebrows raise, eyes going soft. “She has a dog?”

“Satan reincarnated as a three pound dog, don’t let the name fool you.”

He laughs. “Nah, c’mon, how bad can a three pound puppy be?”

“Fine, don’t believe me. But don’t come crying to me when she tries to bite your fingers off.”

Tom just shakes his head, “Alright, Nana Ruth and Peanut, check. Next?”

“Aunt Brigitte and Uncle Joe. They’re the worst and you may not believe me now, but it’s the truth. They’re way more invested in my love life than their own, which is why they’re always throwing snide remarks at each other but also everyone else. She’ll make comments like oh your face is so much fuller now, well at least you won’t get wrinkles as easily when you get older or my dear, you haven’t missed a meal have you? or my favorite well if you weren’t so opinionated you’d probably have a boyfriend by now. And Joe is just an idiot.”

Tom contemplates for a moment, “So should I just punch her?”

You snort, taking a long swig of your drink. He continues, “Because I can, should I defend your honor?”

You have to put your hand over your mouth to stop yourself from spitting champagne across the hot tub. You look over at him and he looks so proud, grinning from ear to ear, he can’t even stop smiling while he takes a drink.

“Thanks, Sir Holland, but I think I’ll be okay.”

He shrugs, “Well, just know my services have been offered.”

“Duly noted. Alright, next is my cousin Vinny.”

And he spits out his champagne, not even trying to cover it like you had, spraying it across the jacuzzi and you start laughing.

“You have a cousin Vinny? You’re not shitting me?”

You laugh harder. “I’m not shitting you.”

“Oh my god, can we get drunk with your cousin Vinny? Is he a lawyer?”

“He’s a mechanic, he’d probably be a more successful lawyer than Joe Pesci though. But we can definitely get drunk with him, he’s a good one in the bunch. Doesn’t really give a fuck about anything, which is part of the reason why he’s the best.”

“Cool, so I don’t have to avoid Cousin Vinny.”

“His mum, my aunt Maya, is just as cool as he is. She’s been divorced since Vinny was little, raised him on her own. Nana always gives her a hard time about being single, like she does to me, so Maya’s always been in my corner.”

“I like Maya already,” he mentions, smiling at you, “Wait, so who’s the eccentric uncle? The one I can only talk to about football?”

“Louis. Honestly, you can talk to him about anything except politics. I think my dad would kill me if I didn’t warn you about him. They don’t get along at all. Louis hasn’t been able to hold down a job for over thirty years and it’s mainly because he’s lazy. And my dad has worked really hard for everything he has, everything he’s been able to do for my mum and me. Hence why they don’t jive.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

You twist your lips, spinning the champagne flute in your hands. “But... I think that’s everyone? At least the ones that come with warning labels.”

He chuckles, finishing off his glass and reaching back for the bottle. “Well, good, I feel prepared to defend you in battle now.”

You shake your head, handing him your glass so he can fill it up again, too. “Alright, enough of the defending my honor business. You’re more of a partner in crime.”

He hums, giving you your glass back and burying the bottle back in the ice bucket. “I like the sound of that.”

You glance over at him, watching as he rests back into his seat. The sun has fully set and the sky is dark now, but the soft yellow hues from the lights in the room shine out and span across his face, his neck, the top of his chest. Your eyes travel along his cheekbones, down to the cut of his jawline. His eyes slip close and you take the opportunity to steal more glances.

Moving along the bump of his collarbones, the bulge of his biceps, his bare chest, he really is beautiful. You think about saying it out loud for a moment, but bite your tongue, worried it would sound weird or that you’d make him uncomfortable. You settle back against the jets instead.

“How’s work going?” you ask instead, forcing your mind off of that previous thought. “I feel like we haven’t talked about your life much in the past few weeks because of the current dumpster fire I’m living in.”

He opens his eyes, looking over to you, “I think you’re getting by just fine, besides you’ve got me, and I carry a big hose. I’ll put that fire out in no time.”

There’s no stopping the laugh this time, “Oh my god,” you bury your head in your hands. “You’re ridiculous.”

For a moment, he looks like he’s going to say something, but presses his lips together, suppressing a smile and taking a sip of his drink. “Work is good, it’s always good.” And you know he’s telling the truth, he absolutely loves his job. He works for a nonprofit, a construction company that builds houses for people in need. People whose lives have been turned upside down. He gets to make a difference, and you know there’s a deep sense of gratification he gets from it.

“We’re working on a house right now for a man that was involved in a car accident, a drunk driver hit him and paralyzed him from the waist down. He’s in a wheelchair now but his current house, he couldn’t get anywhere or do anything.”

He goes silent for a moment. “I can’t imagine what that would be like.” He turns to you, eyes soft and you set your glass down on the cart, reaching out to take his hand. He squeezes yours in return. “Like your home is supposed to be a safe place, a place that you go to just — be. And this man’s home... suddenly it’s like he’s trapped there, unable to do everything that was so mundane and easy before.”

He sees a lot of people like this, people so desperately in need but you know they can only do so much. You’ve seen first hand how difficult it is for him.

They don’t have endless supplies, endless people, endless hours. They can’t help everyone. People are turned away by their selection committee, or moreover, the selection committee picks who they do help. But Tom can’t stop himself from getting attached to the applications he reads, how much he wishes he could do more. He hates the selection process, but knows it’s a necessary evil.

“And you’re helping him,” you encourage, reminding of the good in his job, the best part. “You’re helping change that man’s life in such a positive way.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, a soft tone to his voice. He drops his gaze, watching the water swirl around in front of him. “Anyway, my part with that house is done. They’re moving him in this weekend, I think. T said he has the next ones lined up, so I’ll dive into those when we get home.”

You smile, you want to tell him how proud you are of him, but would that be out of place? You smile at him instead. “You’re doing good things, Tom, you’re a good person.”

He returns your smile, eyes twinkling as he looks up at you again. They’re bright, even in the darkness, twinkling under your praise before he bites his lip, shy. “Thank you.”

“Alright.” He rolls his shoulders, demeanor changing as he downs the rest of his glass. You can see the glimmer in his eyes, he’s got something in mind. He sets the empty flute on the cart, noting your glass, and how it’s not empty. “Well, first I need you to finish that,” and he points towards your drink.

You raise your eyebrows, but grab the flute nonetheless. “Bossy.”

He puts his hands up. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to get drunk in this hot tub, I’m just making sure that happens.”

You finish off your glass with a lick of your lips, setting it next to his. “Okay, what’s nex—” and you cut yourself off as he gets out of the jaccuzi. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back,” he calls over his shoulder. You merely roll your eyes, but there’s a hint of a smile on your lips. You busy yourself filling up your glasses, he was right, you did plan on getting drunk tonight and although you were getting there, you weren’t there yet.

He comes back as you set the now full glasses on the cart. And he’s got… an empty plastic water bottle? He climbs back in the tub, raising his eyebrows at you quickly, clearly excited.

“What's with the trash?”

“Now, love, give it a chance.” He reaches over, fiddling with the dials until the jets stop. The water swirls softly, and the bubbles disappear. “We’re gonna play a game.”

You grin. “Awesome. I like games.”

He nods. “I know. Okay, so the goal of this game is to avoid the water bottle touching you, but trying to get it to touch the other person. You can’t use your hands, though. And the bottle can’t touch any part of your body or the other person gets a point. First one to 5 wins,” he explains, letting the bottle go, watching as it floats around the tub. You’re watching him instead.

“Can I use my legs? Or my feet?” you ask. “To like, make it move?”

“You can use any part of your body, just not your arms or hands. Oh, blowing is acceptable and encouraged.” And you can tell he’s trying to get you to laugh again. But the champagne is going to your head, and now you want to be the one throwing dirty remarks his way.

“Oh Tommy, you opened a door for me. I’m very good at blowing.” He doesn’t laugh, just bites his lip and if it weren’t so dark out, you’re certain you’d be able to see the blush sitting heavy on his cheeks.

He clears his throat. “Then, I guess I’m in trouble.”

You simply wiggle your eyebrows. You twist your hands together in front of your body, gripping onto your fingers in hopes of keeping yourself from breaking the rules. Tom does the same, the crease between his pecs becoming more defined. You consider how your cleavage in turn must look to him, but consider any mode of distraction a welcome advantage. He’s only human after all, and you’ve got great tits.

A rush of self-satisfaction washes over you when you watch his eyes flicker down to your chest. Your mind, hazy with champagne, wants to comment on it, wants to let him know he’s been caught, but as you’re about to, he locks eyes with you.

“That’s not fair,” he whispers, voice breathy.

You simply smirk, “I’m just keeping my hands occupied so I don’t cheat. Now, ready when you are, Tommy.” And you wonder if he likes the nickname. He never comments on it, and his body language doesn’t suggest he dislikes it, but you’d like to know all the same.

“We’ll start with the jets off, let you get comfortable,” he continues, counting down from three and you move to the edge of your seat, counting down with him.

On one, you both move forward, creating small waves that crash into each other and send the bottle off to the right. You stand, walking through the water to follow it, leaning over to get closer to the bottle so you can move it with your breath. Tom angles away, pressing his back into the side of the tub so he can bring his feet up to kick underneath it but it moves towards him, not away. You keep following, keep blowing, getting into his space, but your feet tangle together with his. You stumble, falling forward and your hands automatically reach out to brace yourself.

Your palms splay out across the middle of his thighs, but your fall was enough to push the bottle forward and it bumps against his chest. You raise your head, smiling victoriously. “Gotcha.”

He huffs, laughing like he’s out of breath. “Fuck.”

You grab the bottle and step away from him, moving back to your seat. You reach over and grab your drink, taking a long swig and he follows suit, downing a good portion of his drink as well.

You set the flute back down, looking over at him “Ready for round two?”

He licks his lips, moving toward the edge of his seat. “The question is, are you? I was being nice the first round.”

You smirk. “Bring it on, Holland.”

You count down again, hands grasped together, but he doesn’t follow your lead this time. His arms hang loose at his sides and there’s a devilish smirk on his face. You both say one and as you move toward the bottle, he moves around it, coming to you. He reaches for you, fingers wrapping around your elbow and pulling you into him. Something that can only be described as a squeak leaves your lips, and you untangle your hands to try and get him off you. He’s too quick, though. In the blink of an eye, he’s got his arms secured tightly around your waist, your back pressed tightly to his chest and he’s moving you toward the bottle like you weigh nothing.

You reach your hands out but freeze, remembering you can’t use them, so you push back against him to get leverage to get your feet up and kick at the bottle to try and move it away from you. But he’s strong, muscles solid and defined from his job in construction, and he’s got complete control over your positioning. Which means it’s not difficult for him to get you cornered with the bottle trapped between your body and the edge of the tub.

You lock your arms against the side, bracing yourself just far enough away that you’re not touching the bottle, not yet. He’s firm against your back, you can’t move, but neither can he. If his grip loosens, you can slide out and away. The water sloshes with your movement, but it starts stilling as you find yourselves in a stalemate. The bottle rocks gently and you can feel Tom’s jaw on your shoulder. He’s looking down your body, watching the bottle float of its own accord.

“This has to be cheating,” you say, teeth clenched.

He laughs, chest rumbling against your shoulder blades. “Nah, the only rule was that you couldn’t use your hands or arms to move the bottle,” he says slyly. “I can do whatever I want with them as long as I’m not touching that bottle.”

His fingers dig into your sides to emphasize his point and there’s a deep swoop low in your stomach. Your eyes flutter for a moment before you force them back open, glancing down and trying your best to ignore the feeling of his arms wrapped around you, of his chest pressed along your spine. The weight of his breath ghosting over your shoulder. You swallow harshly to keep focused on the game.

The bottle floats towards your stomach and you instinctively push back to get away from it. But pushing away from the bottle means pushing closer to Tom. You feel him, just for a moment, and you’re almost not sure you felt what you think you felt. But he sucks in a sharp breath through his nose and his grip loosens around your waist, and that’s all the confirmation you need.

You slide out of his grip easily and with a well placed flick of your foot, the water bottle bounces forward and knocks against his arm. He tries to laugh, sinking down so the water sloshes up against his collarbones.

“Beginner's luck,” he shrugs, but there’s a new tone in his voice.

“Well, you were more than a little distracted, I’d say.”

He shrugs, trying to play it cool, but he’s avoiding looking at you directly and his cheeks are so red you can see his blush clearly when he turns towards the lights coming from the room. “I’m 23 and I’ve got a pretty girl pressed up against me. If anything, I mean, it’s your fault.”

And you chuckle. “If I remember correctly, you grabbed me, so you did this to yourself, sweetheart.”

He doesn’t have a smart remark, and he still can’t meet your gaze. “C’mon, it’s probably time we go to bed anyway,” you comment, giving him an escape.

He nods, “Yeah, big day tomorrow.” But he makes no effort to move with you as you get out. You grab the towels, wrapping one around yourself and he starts to wade over to you.

“Okay if I shower first?”

He looks relieved, taking the towel you offer him. “Yeah, course, go for it. I’ll clean up out here,” he says, gesturing to the champagne.

You disappear inside, digging through your bag to grab a baggy shirt and sleep shorts. You close the door to the bathroom, setting your clothes on the counter. Your cheeks feel hot and you can still feel the ghost of his chest pressed against your back. You shake your head to try to clear it and step into the shower, turning the dial down so that the water runs cool.

You try not to take too long, knowing that he’ll want to shower before bed as well and there’s another weird swoop in your stomach thinking about him naked in the very spot you’re standing. You groan, throwing your head back and stepping further under the water, letting the stream wash over your face.

You dry off and get ready for bed, trying to tidy up a little so the bathroom isn’t a complete disaster when he comes in. You look at yourself in the mirror for a moment, trying to straighten your shirt. But then you glance up, catching your own eyes and you scowl. You were going to bed for fuck’s sake, it shouldn’t matter what you look like. It didn’t matter. You huff, turning on your heel, and pushing the door open.

Tom’s sitting in the chair near the bed, towel beneath his butt, nose in his phone… still shirtless. He looks up when he hears the door and he smiles at you, locking his phone and setting it on the nightstand.

“You still had a little bit of champagne in your glass,” he begins, standing up and walking over to the dresser where your glasses sit, there’s still a little bit left in his flute too. The bucket sits next to them, the bottle nestled carefully within it. “I didn’t know if you wanted it or not.”

You grin, walking over to him and taking the glass he offers you. “Yeah, can’t let something this good go to waste.”

He grabs his glass, clinking it with yours. “I couldn’t agree more.” And his eyes sparkle like the champagne on your tongue.

Soon after, he grabs some clothes and heads into the bathroom. You debate for a moment on pulling the drapes closed, but the thought of the sun shining out across the sea in the morning is a view you absolutely want to wake up to. That’ll require an early morning, but then again, how often are you going to be in Greece to watch the sunrise over the Aegean?

An early morning it is.

You turn the lights off by the door, leaving only the lamps on the nightstands on. One jiggle of the handle confirms he's already locked the doors. His phone is plugged in and charging on the right side of the bed so you take the left, plugging in your phone as well before pulling the cord and turning off your light. You pull back the covers, crawling in and as your knees touch the mattress, the exhaustion of the day washes over you. The fact that you were hungover in London this morning feels like days ago, not mere hours.

You groan loudly as you lay down, stretching out under the blankets and letting yourself sink deeper into the bed.

There’s a small chuckle, and you whip your head up to the noise. Tom is leaning against the door frame of the bathroom, shirtless, baggy shorts hung low on his hips and it’s an involuntary reaction when your tongue pokes out to wet your lips.

“Should I give you some privacy?” he teases, a smug look settling on his features.

You roll your eyes, dropping your head back down into the pillow, “I didn’t realize how long of a day this has been until I laid down. And this bed is heavenly.”

He flicks the light in the bathroom off and shuffles over to the bed, pulling the blankets back and crawling in next to you. He leans back, turning his lamp off as well, casting the room in darkness. There’s a soft glow from the sliver of moon in the sky. It’s faint though, you hadn’t even noticed it when you were outside.

He nestles down onto his side so he can look at you. Your eyes adjust after a moment and you find his gaze easily.

“Not a bad day overall, though...” he muses, the question in his voice is obvious.

You turn to him, rolling onto your side so you can face him properly. “Way better than I was anticipating, in large part thanks to you.”

He smiles, genuine, and you can imagine it reaching his eyes. “I’m just glad I could be here for you.” His hand stretches out across the mattress, you feel it before seeing it because the comforter shifts with the movement. His fingers find yours within seconds, and you thread them together.

You hum at the comforting feeling, letting your body continue to relax. “I’m glad you were as well,” you murmur, voice soft.

He squeezes your hand, thumb brushing across your knuckles. “Goodnight, darling.”

“Goodnight, Tommy.”

When you wake up in the morning, his hand is still touching yours.

Taglist (also added a few that enjoyed the first chapters):

@xximaweirdoxx @selfcarecapmain @billythebully09 @cyrusandhiscollaredahirts @honeymarvel @billieishottttttttt @lovinnholland @oh-annaa @little-miss-naill @holland-in-disguise @wordless08 @multifandomgirl-us @tiktok-spideyy @fangirlfree @theolwebshooter @headlights95 @thirsttrapholland @ablazeofhope @hazmyheart @let-the-music-take-c0ntrol @afterglownights @hollandbitch @delicately-important-trash @parkersvibes @averyfosterthoughts @mskatharinawho @crazyfreaker @thsummersoldier @lolobxtch @peterparkoure @hpnjrph @likeit-or-leaveit @spidxrparkxr @caretheunicorn @peterpstuff @spiderdudetom @sltwins @loxbbg @tomshufflepuff @spideyyeet @terrifictomholland @caturdwy @lauras-collection @hollandtomholland @hollandcreep @uncookspaget

#tom holland #tom holland fic #tom holland x reader #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fluff #tom holland smut #tom holland x you #tom holland x y/n #my writing #erotas

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theliterateape · 4 years ago

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I Like to Watch | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

by Don Hall

Mythology is fun.

As a kid I loved reading Edith Hamilton’s book on the Greek gods and the myths. Hercules, Perseus, Apollo, and Hera—this fell completely in line with my love for superhero comics. The strangely petty human traits of envy, greed, and lust combined with the power to level cities make for some great storytelling.

Zeus was basically Harvey Weinstein in the retroactive revision we’re mired in today. If Harvey could’ve changed into a golden animal and boned unsuspecting ladies looking for careers in Hollywood I’m pretty certain he would. The gods and demi-gods of the Greeks dealt with daddy issues, mommy issues, bad relationships, and fighting. Lots of fighting. Sometimes for the good of humanity but more often for the glory of winning.

Zach Snyder is in the business of tackling myths and reframing them with a style all his own. His career has become its own myth.

From Dawn of the Dead (not so much a reboot of Romero's zombie mythology but a philosophical reimagining of the genre that arguably jumpstarted The Hollywood fascination with it), 300 (a borderline homoerotic take on the myth of the Greek underdog), and Watchmen (a ridiculously ambitious attempt to put one of the most iconic takedowns on the potential fascism of the superhero legend machine ever written) to his nearly single-handed hack at answering the Marvel juggernaut with Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder is in the artistic business of subverting and re-envisioning the mythologies we embrace without even seeing them as such.

Snyder's style is operatic. It is on a grand scale even in the most mundane moments. The guy loves slow motion like Scorcese loves mobsters and Italian food. When you're tackling big themes with larger than life stories, the epic nature of his vision makes sense and has alienated a good number of audience members. With such excess, there are bound to be missteps but I'd argue that his massive take on these characters he molds from common understanding and popular nomenclature elevates them to god-like stature.

Fans of Moore's Watchmen have much to complain about Snyder's adaptation. The titular graphic novel is almost impossible to put in any other form than the one Moore intended and yet, Snyder jumped in feet-first and created a living, breathing representation of most, if not all, of the source material's intent. Whether you dig on it or not, it's hard to avoid acknowledging that the first five minutes of Watchmen is a mini-masterpiece of style, storytelling, and epic tragedy wrapped up in a music video.

Despite a host of critical backlash for his one fully original take, Sucker Punch is an amazing thing to see. More a commentary on video game enthusiasm with its lust for hot animated chicks and over-the-top violence that a celebration of cleavage and guns, the film is crazily entertaining. For those who hated the ending, he told you in the title what his plan was all along.

The first movie I saw in the theaters that tried to take a superhero mythology and treat it seriously (for the most part) was Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie. Never as big a fan of the DC characters as I have been of Marvel, it was still extraordinary to see a character I had only really known in pages to be so fully realized. Then came Burton's Batman movies. The superhero film was still an anomaly but steam was gaining. Things changed with Bryan Singer's X-Men in 2000, then Raimi's Spiderman, and those of us who grew up with our pulpy versions of Athena, Hermes, and Hades were rewarded with Nolan's Batman Begins. A far cry from the tongue-in-cheek camp of the 1966 TV Batman, Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne was a serious character and his tale over three films is a tragic commentary filled with the kind of death and betrayal and triumph befitting the grand narrative he deserved.

I loved Singer's Superman Returns in 2006 because it was such a love letter to the 1978 film (down to the opening credits) but by then, the MCU was taking over the world.

Snyder's first of what turns out to be an epic storyline involving perhaps seven or eight movies was Man of Steel. It was fun and, while I had my issues with the broodiness of Kal El, the odd take on Jonathan Kent, and a redheaded Lois Lane, I had no issue with Superman snapping Zod's neck. Darker and more tragic than any other version of the Kryptonian, it was still super entertaining.

Then came Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. By 2016, Marvel had codified their formula of serious characters wrestling with serious issues of power and responsibility peppered with lots of good humor and bright colors. Snyder's desaturated pallete and angst-filled demi-gods was not the obvious road to financial competition.

I'll confess, I hated it. BvS felt half-rendered. Lex Luthor was kind of superficial and played as a kind of Joker. The whole Bruce Wayne wants to kill Superman thing felt undeveloped and the "Martha" moment was just stupid.

When Joss Whedon's version of Snyder's Justice League came out in 2017, I was primed for it to be a turd and I wasn't surprised. So much of it didn't work on any level. I dismissed it as DC trying and failing miserably and was comforted by the coming of Thanos.

Following Thanos and the time heist was COVID. Suddenly, we were internationally sidelined and the movie theater industry caved in. Streaming services started popping up like knock-off smartphones and Hollywood was reeling, doing anything and everything to find a way back. Since Whedon's disastrous helming of Snyder's third act, fans online had been demanding to #ReleasetheSnyderCut but no one was ever really taking them seriously until all movie production was shut down for a year.

The stage was set to remedy a mistake (or at least make some bucks on a do-over of a huge box office failure). Snyder had left the production in part because of the suicide of his daughter and in part due to the constant artistic fights over executives looking for the quippy fun of the MCU but he still had all the original footage. Add to that the broiling accusations that Joss Whedon was "abusive" during the reshoots, the path seemed destined. For an additional $70 million and complete control, Snyder delivered a four hour mega-movie streamed on HBOMax.

Of course, I was going to watch the thing as soon as I could.

The Whedon version opens with an homage to the now dead Superman (including the much maligned digitally erased mustache on Henry Cavill). The SynderCut opens with the death of Superman and the agony of his death scream as it travels across the planet. It's a simple change but exemplifies the very different visions of how this thing is gonna play out.

Snyder doesn't want us to be OK with the power of these beings unleashed. He wants us to feel the damage and pain of death. He wants the results of violence to be as real as he can. When Marvel's Steve Rogers kicks a thug across the room and the thug hits a wall, he crumples and it is effectively over. When Batman does the same thing, we see the broken bones (often in slow motion) and the blood smear on the wall as the thug slides to the ground.

The longer SnyderCut is bloated in some places (like the extended Celtic choir singing Aquaman off to sea or the extended narrations by Wonder Woman which sound slightly like someone trying to explain the plot to Siri). On the other hand, the scene with Barry Allen saving Iris West is both endearing and extraordinary, giving insight to the power of the Flash as well as some essential character-building in contrast to Whedon's comic foil version.

One thing I noticed in this variant is that Zach wants the audience to experience the sequence of every moment as the characters do. An example comes when Diana Prince goes to the crypt to see the very plot she belabors over later. The sequence is simple. She gets a torch and goes down. Most directors which jump cut to the torch. Snyder gives us five beats as she grabs the timber, wraps cloth around the end, soaks it with kerosene, pulls out a box of matches, and lights the torch. Then she goes down the dark passageway.

The gigantic, lush diversity of Snyder’s vision of the DC superhero universe—from the long shots of the sea life in the world of Atlantis to the ancient structures and equipment of Themyscira— is almost painterly. Snyder isn't taking our time; he's taking his time. We are rewarded our patience with a far better backstory for the villain, a beautifully rendered historic battle thwarting Darkseid's initial invasion (including a fucking Green Lantern), and answers to a score of questions set up in both previous films.

Whedon's Bruce Wayne was more Ben Affleck; Snyder's is full-on Frank Miller Batman, the smartest, most brutal fucker in the room. Cyborg, instead of Whedon's sidelined non-character, is now a Frankenstein's monster, grappling with the trade-off between acceptance and enormous power. Wonder Woman is now more in line with the Patty Jenkins version and instead of being told about the loss of Superman, we are forced to live with the anguish of both his mother and Lois Lane in quiet moments of incredible grief.

To be fair to Whedon (something few are willing to do as he is now being castigated not for racism or sexism but for being mean to people) having him come in to throw in some levity and Marvel-esque color to Snyder's Wagnerian pomposity is like hiring Huey Lewis to lighten up Pink Floyd's The Wall or getting Douglas Adams to rewrite Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I loved Snyder's self-indulgent, mythologic DC universe.

So much so that I then re-watched Man of Steel and then watched the director's version of BvS (which Snyder added approximately 32 minutes). The second film is far better at three hours and Eisenberg's Lex Luthor now makes sense. Then I watched Zach Snyder's Justice League a second time.

After nineteen hours of Snyder's re-imagining of these DC heroes and villains, I saw details that, upon first viewing, are ignored or dismissed, but after seeing them in order and complete, are suddenly consistent and relevant. Like Nolan or Fincher, Snyder defies anyone to eliminate even one piece of his narrative no matter how long. With all the pieces, this is an epic story and the pieces left at the extended epilogue play into a grander narrative we will never see.

Or maybe we will. Who knows these days?

#I Like to Watch #Zach Snyder's Justice League

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mirkwoodshewolf · 5 years ago

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The Prankster Queen is dethroned; SPN & Lucifer cast x teen reader

*Author’s note*

Well this was a LOOOOOONG time request from my Wattpad account but I finally got some motivation to write and finish this fic. Now I talked with the requestor about this and some changes were made, originally this was gonna involve Criminal minds cast but I had barely watched the show at the time so I talked with them and they agreed to have this be a SPN X LUCIFER cast crossover. So I hope you all enjoy this little fic and until the next update.

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@platawnic

__________________________________________________________

“Okay guys; here we are back at the Supernatural set ready to start filming the 2nd half of season 14. Before I get into the special prank on Alex day I want to first send a very special thanks to the Lucifans for the #SaveLucifer and thank Netflix for renewing a season 4 and 5 of Lucifer. Yes I am a fan of that show as well. I mean I’ve got to my dad plays the famed Devil himself. No, no, no, no, no I’m joking. I watch the show because I really love what they did with it. The writing is phenomenal and the cast is super friendly. They’re like my second family next these guys here at Supernatural.”

I spoke through my Youtube channel streaming live. I could already see comments popping up along my livestream. Comments like ‘YASS LUCIFERXSPN SUPPORT’ or Winchester sister stans Lucifer.

“Yes I do thank you. Now for the moment you’ve all waited for. I’ve got the plastic wrap, the super glue, feathers, and fan. And of course the star of this prank on Alex, my baby boy Shadow.” I then presented my black German Shepherd who was lying on Alex’s trailer couch. “You ready to prank Alex boy?” he tilted his head to the side. “You ready to prank him?” he let out a bark and I cooed. “Good boy!” I flipped my camera back around and said. “Now Jared kindly set up the camera just a bit ago so I will transition to that in just a little while. For now I’m going to set up the door so please enjoy this fast forward montage of me getting the prank set up.”

I spread the super glue all around the plastic wrapping and tapped it across Alex’s trailer door so that when he would run right into it, he would get trapped with the plastic wrapping before I would attack with the pillow filled with feathers.

“Okay everything’s all set up. Now for the final touch, c’mon boy up on the bed.” He got off the couch and into Alex’s bed and just lay there at the foot of it. “Good boy.” I opened the trailer door and waited for Alex to come around. Once I saw him walking alongside Misha, I cried out. “ALEX! ALEX! SHADOW’S TAKING A SHIT ON YOUR BED!!”

“What!?”

“I’m not kidding I was walking him and he just ran in here and literally shit on your bed! Bad dog!”

“Shadow! Shadow! Damnit Shadow!” Alex then ran up and just like I hopped, he slammed right into the plastic wrap and fell right to the ground. I then pelted him with the pillow till his entire face was covered with feathers.

“BOOM SUCKA!!! That’ll teach you to eat my big cookie.” I told him.

“Okay maybe I deserved that.”

“Wow (y/n), all this for a cookie?” Misha said as he helped Alex back up on his feet.

“Misha you don’t understand. Those cookies were my mum’s special recipe. Plus she makes them so big that you can eat it in the space of a week. I was saving the last bit of it and then this guy decides it’s a good idea to eat the last of it.” I said pointing to Alex.

“You know….one of these days. We’re gonna get you back. Everyone that you’ve pranked, we’re gonna get you.” Alex spoke as he coughed out trying to get the feathers out of his mouth.

“The day that happens is the day J2(I/l) turns on each other. And the boys and I have been doing this for a long, long time.” I sassed as I snapped my finger and Shadow hopped off Alex’s bed and we left the trailer.

Little bit about myself; the names (Y/n) Ellis, the last name sound familiar? Yep you thought right. Tom Ellis aka Lucifer Morningstar is my father. He and I have been in the acting business together for a good amount of years. In fact he’s helped me when it came to running lines or dealing with the pressures of the acting life, especially since I started off as a child actor at the age of 5.

I had a few small roles, but when I was just 9 years old a role on a little show called Supernatural came knocking at my door. As a young British girl I was worried that I wouldn’t get it because this was an American tv show and I had to speak with an American accent. But thanks to a good dialect coach, and 2 test screenings with the boys to see if we were a fit, I got to play the role of Sarah Winchester, the younger half-sister of Sam and Dean who was cursed with witch powers.

But instead of killing her, Sam and Dean actually take her in and she uses her magic for good instead of evil. For years the Supernatural cast didn’t just become an ordinary job, it was like being home, we became a family. Jared and Jensen were like the big brothers I never had (even though they were around my dad’s age).

When things got too tough around set, J2 always found a way to make me smile and laugh. And as the years passed, Misha came on board followed by the 2 Marks, Ruth, Brianna and Kim, Osric, Rob and Richard, and now finally Alexander Calvert. The Supernatural family is a tight bond and we all send out a powerful message that Family don’t end in blood, and to Always Keep Fighting when things got bad.

Then when season 11 of my show was being filmed, my dad had gotten the role of Lucifer Morningstar in Fox’s new tv series “Lucifer” which was basically the story of the devil taking a vacation from Hell and he ends up working with the LAPD alongside a clever detective named Chloe Decker.

When Lucifer exploded every time I went to conventions, fans always ask me questions about potential crossovers or what I thought of the show. And truthfully I loved it. In fact whenever I would wrap on my time on a season, I took the hour and 45 minute drive where they filmed Lucifer and spend time with my dad and the Lucifer cast.

Lauren, Aimee and Lesley became my partners in crime when it came to the subtle pranks on the Luci cast or even my dad. Aimee and I are always making Instagram videos of each other acting like complete nutjobs, she’s like the older sister I’ve always wanted (since I am the eldest of my three sisters).

But that’s my life, and if you were to ask me if I could trade it away for anything else, I would tell you hell no (no pun intended).

After getting Shadow back into my trailer, I decided to see if my dad was willing to talk. I grabbed my I-Pad and went over to Facetime and clicked my dad’s name (of course I added the devil emoji beside his name). It rang about five times before I finally got an answer.

“There’s my little She-devil.” He answered with a smirk.

“Hey dad.” I said with a smile.

“Aimee saw your prank on that Alex chap.”

“She like it?”

“Mini Ellis you are a she-devil genius!” Aimee soon came into the frame. “You got to show me how that brilliant mind of yours works.”

“Guess I learned from two of the very best. I know exactly how to push buttons but not go overly extreme that it hurts someone’s soul. I’m not completely soulless like Jared is when it comes to pranks.”

“I still can’t believe he actually cut one of his credit cards. That’s super low.” She said.

“I know. I’ve been trying to get him to ease back and not go quite extreme. So far he hasn’t done it knock on wood.”

“Anyways you two, what brings on this call my dove?” my dad asked.

“Just wanted to call and see how you were doing. How’s season 4 coming along?”

“Great. Everything is great. Thanks to the Lucifans, and the Supernatural family.” My dad said.

“No sweat. You’re my dad. I’m still pissed that FOX could just cancel your show like that. And the way they would’ve ended it. God that’s literally the worst cliffhanger ever!”

“Tell me about it.” Aimee groaned.

“But it’s all fixed now. Netflix will take good care of us now. Plus we don’t have as much restrictions as FOX gave us.” My dad teased. I then heard a knock at my trailer door which made Shadow raise his head up from his bed and his attention turned toward the door.

“Hang on dad, who is it?!”

“It’s Jared! C’mon kiddo they need us on set now.”

“Alright I’ll be there in a minute.” I turned back to my dad and Aimee and my dad said to me.

“Go on, we’ll catch up later.”

“Alright dad. Give my love to the rest of the cast.”

“You already have my love mini Ellis.” Aimee said.

“Love you Aims!”

“Alright darling love you. Stay safe and have fun filming your next season.” The two of them blew me a kiss goodbye and I waved bye to them and the Facetime shut off. I put my phone aside and quickly refilled Shadow’s water bowl before I took off and raced towards the set.

Although unbeknownst to both Jared and Jensen something was waiting for them. As I walked in on the set I sat down at the spot where my character Sarah was to sit for this upcoming scene.

“Okay guys on cue marks. Cue lighting and roll sound.” I got into the mindset of Sarah and took the prop book in my hands as our director called out, “Okay cue Jensen and Jared. And…..action.” it was then Jensen came down the staircase while Jared came out from the back corridor.

“Hey, so any word from Jodie?” Jensen asked as Dean to Jared.

“No not yet. Hey Sar, any luck with the research?” Jared asked me as Sam.

“Not a damn thing. God even for a witch like me I still can’t figure out the spell to get us to that other place. I’m sorry guys I may be strong, but I’m not Rowena strong.”

“No, no it’s alright. It’s okay. We’ll……find another way.” Then Jared and Jensen took their seats before suddenly jolting upwards and letting out girlish screams of shock and pain.

“CUT!!!” our director called out.

“The hell was that!?!” Jensen proclaimed.

“Oh thank god I thought it was just me.” Jared sighed with relief. I kept my poker face up as I said to them.

“What happened just now?”

“Something shocked us. I don’t know what but whatever it was, it should never have shocked me back there. My butt does not deserve that kind of treatment!” he looked around the cushioned seat until he found some sort of electronic shock pad. It was slightly smaller than the cushioned pad and as soon as Jensen took hold of it and pressed a certain button, it caused another shock to run through his arm as he swore out loud and shake his arm.

“Uhh Jensen why would you do that?” I asked him.

“I don’t know I needed to see if it was real or not don’t judge me!”

“How the hell did these even get here?” asked Jared.

“No idea.” Jensen said. I covered my smile as I tried to act inconspicuous but that’s when the two of them looked at me. “You did this?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I said as I stood up and strutted out of the room sassily to run into Misha and I told him. “Your revenge plot has been successfully played out.”

“I knew I could count on you (n/n). Thanks.”

“No problem, but just know Misha all things come at a price with me. Pranking the kings don’t come without consequence.”

“I know, I know. But still I thank you for doing this for me. That’ll teach Jared to put old cheese in my pillow.” I patted his arm before leaving him to reset the scene again.

Weeks passed and filming continued on up until I was finally done with my scenes which meant that I was now allowed to travel on up to the Lucifer set and pop in and say hello. After bidding everyone goodbye until July, I got into the car and my driver Tommy drove me on up towards the studio where my dad and the rest of the Lucifer family were filming.

After finally arriving on the set, I saw Lauren and Aimee out and about with a Starbucks cup in their hands. As soon as they saw my car, they immediately waved. I rolled down my window and said.

“What up my Luci sistas!”

“Ahhh mini-Ellis!” Aimee proclaimed. Once the car stopped, I stepped out and I raced towards her and she met me in the middle as the two of us embraced each other tightly, rocking aggressively from side to side. “Where’s big Shadow? You usually bring him with you whenever you’re done with shooting.”

“Well for some reason Misha wanted to keep him around set. Guess he must’ve needed the fluffy protection from Jared and Jensen after the prank I pulled on them a few weeks back.”

“What’d you do to them?” asked Lauren.

“Just put a shock pad cushion underneath their chairs. Misha told me to do it to get back at Jared for putting old cheese in his pillow.”

“Wow those guys are relentless huh?” said Aimee.

“Yep. But enough of that now, let’s get going. I wanna watch you guys film some stuff.”

“Alright! C’mon kiddo let’s go.” Lauren wrapped her arm around me before playfully giving me a noogie while guiding me onwards to the set.

I greeted my Lucifer family like D.B, Kevin, Lesley-Ann, Rachael, and of course young Scarlett (ever since the show I officially adopted her as my younger sister).

“So, have you guys seen my dad anywhere?” I asked.

“Last we saw him he was leaving his trailer for costume and makeup.” Aimee said.

“Perfect.”

“What have you got in mind she-devil?” asked Lauren with a grin.

“Ohhh not much.” I grinned as I walked towards the costume and makeup trailers.

Once I got there, I had spotted my dad just getting out from the costume trailer in the full Lucifer suit. I grinned mischievously and slowly stalked towards him. This was something that I used to always do to him when I was a little girl, it’s been awhile but I hope I still got it. Like a tigress on the prowl I stalked behind my dad silent and carefully.

Whenever he turned around, I would hide behind anything I could whether it was the side of a trailer/tent, or even one of the many gold carts/motorbikes. Then when he would resume his walk, I trailed behind him once again. Closer and closer I got till finally I was within strike range.

The mighty huntress has cornered her prey.

I then trotted forward before leaping up but I was foiled when my dad turned around and managed to catch me and spin me around for a moment in his arms.

“Thought you’d sneak up on my again huh my little tigress? After all these years I finally caught you red handed.”

“Took you over 20 years but no time like the present eh?” my dad smirked down at me, the smirk that I had inherited from him, and said as he booped my nose.

“I just know when my daughter feels a little extra cheeky.” He bopped my nose as he said ‘cheeky’ which made me playfully stick my tongue out at him. “And put that tongue away young lady we are not a snake.”

“Wrong. Don’t you remember I got sorted into Slytherin when we went to Harry Potter world.”

“Yes I do recall that. But that’s still no excuse. Stick that tongue out at me again and I’ll give you a good whopping, do I make myself clear.”

“Yes father.” I submitted. He pecked my forehead before releasing me.

“So, you’ve finished with your filming?”

“Yep. Managed to wrap up a little early, at least for me.”

“Now I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about you potentially branching off and getting your own spinoff series?”

“Well I don’t like to brag but it’s still a rumor. Not even I can confirm it. Besides, who knows if the CW will allow it. I mean don’t get me wrong the other two sub-series I didn’t agree with but Wayward Sisters, I would’ve LOVED to see that become something. Maybe have Sarah make a few surprise appearances.”

“Well, if the CW don’t allow it, maybe Netflix will. You never know. I could put in a good word for you.”

“Thanks dad.”

“Tom! Hey Tom! Susan needs you in makeup stat. You’re shooting in ten.” One of the make artists came racing up to us.

“Oh fu—sorry about that Johnny.” My dad wrapped an arm around my shoulders and the two of us walked towards the makeup trailer so that he could get ready.

After doing a quick touch up on my dad, the two of us left for the LAPD set and everyone was already running around getting to their marks or getting the cameras rolling. I sat right next to the director Sherwin as he was calling for cameras to focus and start rolling. Finally he called action and I got to sit and watch the new Netflix: Lucifer finally be filmed.

It was a long day of shooting and filming but it was a very productive day. I even got to learn about directing since (spoiler alert! I get to direct an episode this season of Supernatural!). I was currently right now sitting with my dad sipping a cup of tea.

“Now I know that one episode that witches have familiars. If Sarah were to have a familiar, which pet would she have and who would you want to play that familiar?” I hummed.

“Well. No offense to the women but most of the time when a new female comes on Supernatural she always ends up being a bitch. With the exception of Kim, Bri, Ruthie, Felica, and the rest of the Wayward sisters. So I’d have to say Sarah would want a male familiar. And yes while I do love dogs and would KILL to have Shadow actually be in front of the camera, I think she’d prefer a cat. Now for the actor to play him. Now don’t laugh but—this is my fantasy dream cast…..”

“Oh just get on with it will you little missy! Stop droning on!” my dad whined. I mimicked his whining before I finally admitted.

“Gwilym Lee okay!”

“The Welsh actor from that Midsomer murders series you used to watch?”

“Yeah, why not? I think he’d make a perfect cat familiar. Wise, loyal, good fighter. And—not that bad looking if I may say.”

“Alright down girl. I swear you and Aimee have been fawning over actors far too much.”

“Then you do not want to see me with the young Wayward sisters. We’re a lot worse. Plus it gets awkward when they start talking about you. Especially when it involves the Lucifer cast.”

“Oh my god.” He groaned.

“I know right!? It’s bad enough I hear from the fans about how much of a ‘thirsty dad’ you are. But now I have to hear it at work!” before my dad could say anything else, Lesley came running in with a worried look on her face. “Whoa Les, where’s the fire at?”

“You gotta call the Supernatural set (y/n).” she panted out.

“Why what’s going on?”

“I don’t know something about Shadow.” Without hesitation I took my phone out and dialed Misha’s number. It rang and rang and as it kept ringing I grumbled.

“C’mon Misha pick up your bloody phone already!”

‘Hello?’

“Misha what’s going on!? What happened to my son!?”

‘I’m sorry (y/n) Jared was eating some M&M’s earlier and he left the table for one second and the next thing he saw was Shadow eating the M&M’s he had managed to knock down on the floor!’

“WHAT!?!?!?!?”

‘Just come by over here, he’s been whimpering and we don’t know the contact information to the vet.’

“Okay I’ll be there as soon as I can. Try to make him as comfortable for me as possible. Okay! Tell him mummy’s on her way!”

‘Okay I will. And (y/n). Hurry!’ I hung up the phone and raced off.

“Whoa, whoa mini-Ellis where are you off too in such a hurry?” Kevin said as he and Aimee were walking back from the catering (after I had noticed the chocolate doughnut in Aimee’s hand).

“Shadow’s sick! Ate M&M’s. I gotta go!” I couldn’t even form a proper sentence as I raced outside and phoned my driver to hurry the fuck back to the set and drive me back to the Supernatural set.

Thankfully, he was right outside and the second I jumped right on in, I banged on the back window and ordered him to drive and soon he was off. Oh Shadow baby hang in there baby boy!

Finally after what felt like an eternity (I don’t know why the driver had taken the long way around. Said it was fucking traffic or something like that). But before the car could even come to a complete stop, I jumped out of the car and raced towards the building calling out Shadow’s name.

I quickly raced into the main Supernatural set to see that it was completely empty.

“Shadow!? Shadow! Here boy!” I whistled. Just hearing the way Misha had talked on the phone it made me really worried about my baby boy’s health. And now just not seeing him come on command when he’s supposed to, got me really anxious.

I walked further through the main set (which was the map room of the bunker) when I felt myself slightly trip forward and I looked down to see a tripwire. Oh shit.

SPLASH! I jumped as I let out a shriek when a small water balloon fell right at my feet. A split second later another dropped on the other side of me but still close enough to my feet. I jumped two more times as two more water balloons splashed right by me.

“Really guys? If you’re gonna do something like that at least have good aim.” But I was unaware of the enormous water balloon that was now starting to roll down. When I looked up, my heart sunk as I slowly let out a scream and soon I was drenched.

But it wasn’t water. Well normal water anyway, when I had looked at myself I had seen that I was now covered head to toe in the famed fake blood the makeup artists make from corn syrup, chocolate syrup and food coloring.

My breathing sharpened and I growled out.

“J2. Are without a doubt. The lowest most vile Americans to EVER WALK THE PLANET!!!” This was my favorite shirt and now the boys ruined it. Plus do you know how long it takes to get fake blood out of your hair? Believe me it’s not pretty. Hours upon hours of just brushing through one section of hair.

Soon enough the entire cast came out laughing and clapping but what was shocking was that the Lucifer cast also came out smiling and clapping along.

“We got you good kid!” Misha laughed.

“You—you all were……”

“About time we finally dethroned the Prank Queen. You’ve been stealing our thunder for too long kid.” Jensen said.

“And thanks to your dad and the rest of the Lucifer cast, they gave us the time to set all this up.” Jared said as he held his phone up probably recording the whole thing. I turned to my dad and hissed.

“Et tu Papa?”

“Sorry darling. They were convincing. Plus you’ve been going a little overboard with the pranks. You even placed a dead fish in my car.” Dad said.

“Or itching powder in my underwear drawer last year during season 3.” DW added.

“And hacking my Instagram professing love for the DCEU when you know I’m a Marvel girl.” Aimee said.

“And of course you can’t forget your recent little prank. The electric cushions.” Jared said.

“So we all came together and finally got you back.” Alex said smugly.

“How’s it feel now? You just got Carrie’d!” Lauren proclaimed.

“You all are so lucky I’m not a real witch or a telepath. Cause otherwise you’d all be screwed right now!” I spat out the fake blood that was starting to seep into my mouth. “But I’ll admit. Only I could come up with something like this. I’m impressed. Especially since it was a crossover team effort.”

Both castmates from each show came around me and that’s when all the selfies and self-promotion of dethroning the “Prank Queen” has officially happened. Of course I couldn’t help but chase after J2 as well as my dad so that I could smear the blood on them as payback for what they did to me.

Yep the life of an actress on Supernatural who happens to be the daughter of the current ‘hot’ Lucifer Morningstar, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. So while the entire cast and my family got their victory out of the way, I began plotting my next ultimate prank.

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uncle-americas-haas-of-meat · 4 years ago

Text

two neat creative things I worked on last night:

I have a general plot synopsis (+ a character-development heavy scene!) written for a surprisingly wholesome/meaningful fic based on that drag-queen!Shayne n recovering-addict!Damien idea I had last night!

it turned surprisingly wholesome since I unexpectedly became emotionally invested in these characters, lmao!

most of what I’ve fully written so far has involved D ruminating on how the unexpected yet delightful semi-sexual kink encounter he had with S interacts with his trauma and the work he’s done in recovery, but less depressing than that might sound.

it’s not whump, moreso like “oh my GOD this is actually an option?? how do I NOT ACTUALLY HURT ANYONE THOUGH?? waaaiiit… how do I make sure that I’M not the one that gets hurt by my own fuckin’ choices? goddddd. his shoulders though…”

like, recovery has helped him recognize codependency & other maladaptive coping behaviors so now he pulls the reins HARD on anything sudden that feels excessively thrilling so soon, but that doesn’t mean he won’t still be thinking about how hot it was 24/7 lmao

it also has the start of S’ drag performance which includes bantering with the as yet unnamed trans masc drag king MC! if this (somehow) becomes an actual Full Story I’m gonna need a character who understands both D’s trauma-informed analysis of the situation as well as the performance- & party-focused world S is enmeshed in.

I have already started fleshing out other character details for the MC so I have effectively created three original characters that I have to finish developing, so I’m planning on writing a bunch of drabbles and setpieces until I know them (and the setting, cos I know fuck-all about gay clubs in California that would host a queen as popular as I imagine S to be) well enough for a full plot to flow

I’m gonna repurposed the mini-binder I barely used at my old job for this, cos why not??

————————————

the second thing is that I am almost finished editing my podfic/narration version of an EXTREMELY TRASHY and UTTERLY HILARIOUS Shaymien smutfic. I actually recorded it in mid-February but got so caught up in getting ready for, being at, and recuperating from that fucking job that I never edited it! but it’s on the way.

I don’t know if I’ll directly share it here because I might post it under a different name since it could benefit my personal sexual content-creator persona more than it could my Smosh one, ya know? I’d be fine with the few fandom people actually interested in that kink to possibly find something labeled with my other name bc it be directly on the other socials, plus I will likely delete this part of the post (& any others about it) lol

but anyway, it’s hilarious and Smosh-related, and I am proud to have actually worked on a creative project like that for as long as I have!

#wip fic #s & d #I need a fuckin’ working title for this thing #podfic shit

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marvels-writings · 5 years ago

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Hi! I had an idea for a Carol x R mini series. R has known Carol for 10+ yrs-Carol came back to Earth briefly after leaving to help the skrulls. R has powers, 1 of which slows her aging. A strong connection when they met but both had other obligations. R misses Carol and decides to write letters to her (including pics): everyday life, the Avengers, changes on Earth, adventures/interests, how much she misses Carol etc. The snap-R dusted, Carol finds R's letters to her/determined to get R back.

Letters to Space (1)

Series Masterlist

Carol Danvers Masterlist

A/N: if anyone has a better idea for a title PLEASE drop something in my ask box or sm (and i spent half an hour on the collage, thoughts?)

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1 month ago

“Promise me you’ll come back to me?” You pleaded softly, touching your forehead to Carol’s outside Maria’s home. You hadn’t known Carol for that long, but something just clicked when the two of you met, it just made you want to be with her all the time.

Everyone had just got done sorting out the problem with the skrulls, Carol was about to go help them, you were a recruit for SHIELD and somehow managed to tag along with Fury and everyone else.

The only reason you were with SHIELD was because of HYDRA’s experiments on you, thanks to them, you could create fire from your hands, had super strength, slowed aging, and a lot more agility than most other humans, it also turned you into a fireball.

“I promise y/n.” Carol answered softly, holding your hands and gently squeezing. You quickly tore your hands away from hers and wrapped them around her neck in a tight hug, Carol’s eyes glistened with unshed tears as she wrapped her hands around your waist in return, squeezing tightly before letting go and flying off.

You smiled softly and sighed before heading back into the house, seeing Fury fidget with the pager and talking to him about some protector initiative he was planning to set up, he wanted you to help him, you agreed, it might help use up your time away from being tested on.

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2 weeks ago:

“Who’s there?” You asked sleepily, walking to the door of your apartment in your pajamas while using a towel to dry off your hair. The water dripped onto your sweatshirt, you sighed and quickly tied the string on your grey sweatpants before standing in front of the door.

“It’s me.” A voice called out behind the door, the voice was distinct, it was definitely Carol.

You opened the door with a huge grin on your face, towel still in your hand. Carol looked at you, matching your grin, you pounced at her, hugging her softly then pulling away, a grin still on your face.

“You’re back quickly.” You said excitedly, pulling away but bringing Carol inside by taking her wrist gently. You used your other hand to continue drying your hair.

Carol gulped, even though you were in casual clothing, your wet hair just made you look gorgeous.

“I had orders.” Carol joked, standing slightly uncomfortably on the edge of the counter, you noticed how uncomfortable she was and shrugged, it was a weekend, you didn’t have work.

“The shower is down the hall on the left, there should be some hot water left, I’ll drop off some clean clothes outside.” You instructed, Carol was a bit taken aback by how quickly you welcomed her into your home.

“I’ll make something to eat, any preferences?” You asked, switching on the coffee machine and leaning back against the counter next to it.

“Something sweet, I’m sick of space food.” Carol answered, “Thank you for this by the way.” Carol said, gesturing vaguely to the shower and everything else.

“Yeah of course.” You answered, smiling and putting the wet towel next to the coffee machine. “Now go shower, you’re stinky.” Carol laughed and headed where you had told her.

You went to your room, took out a navy blue crew neck sweatshirt, some black leggings and a few other things before setting them outside the door, yelling to Carol that they were there before heading to your kitchen, switching on some music and you started making chocolate chip pancakes.

Carol stepped outside after taking a shower, wrapped up in one of your spare towels and hair dripping onto it. She tripped over the pile of clothes you’d set out for her before yelling a quick thank you and changing inside, she heard your laugh and then whatever music you were playing.

She smiled to herself while changing, she loved this, the act of just being human, instead of some great hero. With everyone else she had to be a hero, someone who would always do the right thing no matter what. With you, all of that faded and she was human again, she was able to enjoy the day to day pleasures everyone else takes for granted.

Carol grinned at the thought and stepped outside, relaxed music and the smell of fresh coffee and pancakes filling her senses. She walked over to the kitchen, spreading her arms and looking at you.

“How do I look?” She asked timidly, you turned your head while pouring the batter onto the pan and gave her a quick glance before turning back to your task.

“Why does everyone look better in my clothes than I do?” You joked, finishing pouring the batter and turning around, hastily wiping the pancake mix off of your face before looking at Carol, she actually did look much better than you in those sweatpants and sweatshirt.

“There’s coffee and a table, make yourself at home.” You offered cheerily, turning around only for the gas to go off. “Dammit not this again.”

The room started smelling of gas, Carol quickly opened a window to let the smell out and turning around just in time to see you use your finger as a lighter for the gas, it flamed up instantly and Carol frowned, she didn’t know you had powers, all she knew was that you were a good fighter.

“You’re a matchstick?” Carol asked curiously, pouring herself a mug of coffee from your fresh coffee pot.

“Very funny,” You mocked, the topic was still a bit sensitive even though it was many years in the past. “It’s a long story but I have fire powers and enough strength to beat Captain America in an arm wrestle.” You explained while carefully flipping a pancake.

“Well we have time, as far as I know.” Carol commented, sitting down on one of your barstools in front of the counter, resting fer faeon her elbow as she observed you make food.

You sighed, putting 3 pancakes on a plate and pouring maple syrup in a small pourer and giving it to Carol, turning back to make some for yourself.

“Well, when I was 7, I moved to California from (place of origin),” You started explaining. “Then when I was 14, I moved to Ireland because of my dad’s job, not the best I’ve had but far from the worst. Then one day, for work experience for my school, I took an internship at some new science facility.”

You inhaled sharply as memories rushed into your head, gently flipping the pancakes still.

“The science facility ended up being HYDRA, they experimented on me, gave me these powers” You lifted your hands, turning around as small red and orange wisps emanated from them, watching Carol’s eyes widen before turning back to the stove.

“Moved me back to California because they had a better HQ, then their facility got taken down by SHIELD. SHIELD found out about my powers and recruited me, now, almost 10 years later, I’m still working for them.” You put the pancakes on a plate, hand shaking as you pour maple syrup onto them.

“Trying to prevent that from happening to anybody else.” You muttered, walking to sit beside Carol, putting on a fake smile to pretend everything was still okay.

“And your family?” She asked, putting some pancake into her mouth.

“Oh, I still visit my parents in Ireland, the rest of my family in (place of origin)” You answered, starting to eat with still shaky hands. “I actually just got back from (place of origin) after visiting my family when all of this outer space shit happened.”

“I’m so sorry.” Carol said softly, resting one hand on your free one, wincing when she saw you flinch at the simple action. You scooped food onto your spoon and ate it, looking into the distance.

“Not your fault,” You answered with your mouth half full, you chewed and swallowed before continuing. “It’s in the past anyway, what about you?” You asked, changing the topic. Carol took her hand from yours before answering.

“I think you already know,” Carol said quietly, you did know, you just needed to change the topic. “I need to tell you something.” Carol stated, you turned to her after putting another bite into your mouth.

“I’m gonna be gone for longer this time, we just found a planet and I need to defend it.” Carol stated weakly, looking down at her feet. Anxiety bubbled in her chest the longer you didn’t answer, she heard a large gulp and looked up.

“Sorry I was chewing.” You said, Carol couldn’t help but chuckle despite the situation. “But hey thanks for flying across galaxies to visit me.” You joked, a bit sad she was going but you knew it was for a good reason.

“You’re not mad?” Carol asked timidly, still surprised you weren’t.

“Two, well, three things,” You stated, lifting up three fingers then gesturing to your index finger with your other hand.

“First, I can’t possible be mad at you for helping an entire alien race find a home,” You gestured to the other finger before continuing. “Second, I’m just happy you came to visit me to eat pancakes and shower.”

“I didn’t just come to eat pancakes and shower.” carol laughed, you were honestly taking this really well.

“Third, I’m not your girlfriend that I’m gonna get mad at you for not spending enough time with me.” You and Carol both froze slightly at that statement, you ignored it and finished your food, putting your plate in the dishwasher.

“True.” Carol admitted, not saying anything else as she followed the actions you made.

“Well, since you’re not gonna be staying long, let’s make the best of what we have, right?” You asked, starting to do the dishes.

“Definitely.” Carol answered, walking over to help you with the dishes, you grinned and flicked soapy water in her face, she laughed and did the same to you.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

You were incredibly bored as you sat in the Avengers compound, you decided to add another letter to your shoebox. The small box was already almost overflowing with letters you had written to Carol. Her visits to Earth had grown more sporadic, the two of you talked once in a week, sometimes even once in a month through holograms.

Carol hadn’t seen you physically in almost a year, it was tearing her apart, she didn’t know about the shoebox, and you’d like to keep it that way. You sighed, you missed her a lot, you had developed feelings for her in Carol’s last few visits, you kept them to yourself, scared to lose your friendship.

You wrote another letter, filled it with some pictures you’d taken with the camera Carol had gifted you on one of her visits.

There were maybe 50 letters in the box, all of them filled with normal things, a coffee bean, one of your favorite pens, some art, some army patches you’d found in Cap’s things. It was filled with everything you’d done while she was gone.

You wished she was here more than ever, after the civil war, you hadn’t talked to cap, wanda, vision and even Nat for a few months. They were the only family you had and now they were gone. You often visited Tony and Pepper, but it wasn’t the same. You wrote another letter to her.

This letter was you wanted her with you, it was simple, exactly like a confession but on a letter. Halfway through, you got a call from your phone, it was from Rhodey, you picked it up to find out everyone was back in the other room of the compound, you shoved the half done letter to finish it later.

Later wouldn’t be for a while now.

Tag list: @capcarolsdanver, @versdan, @lesbian-girls-wayhaught, @lovebotlarson, @dhengkt, @5aftermidnight, @hstoria, @natasha-danvers, @veryfunnyal,@xxxtwilightaxelxxx , let me know if you’d like to be in any of my tag lists!

A/N: Sorry to leave on a sad note but it will get better, and angstier but generally better too!

| Part 2 |

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leverage-commentary · 5 years ago

Text

Leverage Season 2, Episode 1, The Beantown Bailout Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode of Leverage.

John: This is John Rogers, Executive Producer and Writer of this episode of Leverage.

Chris: This is Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this the Beantown Bailout Job.

John: Season two, first episode. Chris, how badly did we bone ourselves at the end of the first season?

Chris: Oh, we really wrote ourselves in a corner, didn't we?

John: A massive corner.

Chris: In a massive corner.

John: We wrote- understand, we didn't- because of the way season one aired, we had no idea if we were coming back for a second season. So we really wrote the first season as if- with no idea, but really writing a complete ending to the show.

Chris: If we had cork ceiling tiles, there would've been a lot of pencils hanging from it before this episode was broken.

John: Exactly. And so we really- so we just- this it the way we came back in. We decided to pick up a year later, everyone's been separated and-

Dean: -and here we see Nates character trying to go back-

John: Exactly.

Dean: -into who he was, originally, in the world of insurance, and suddenly the whole world just isn't what it was. You can't go home again.

Chris: Right.

John: Yeah. And this really sets up this very first scene that Dean constructed in this beautiful office, thank you Portland.

Chris: Yes.

John: It constructs the theme for the entire season, which is Nate’s quest for identity. He- who is Nate Ford now? He's not the guy he used to be. And a perfect example of great Portland actors.

Dean: Yeah. Two local actors, just terrific as we've said on some of these commentaries already. The level of talent that we've found in Portland was extraordinary. We thought we were gonna be flying a lot more people up than we did.

John: And this is- did we shoot this with the Ex1, or we shot-?

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah, this is all shot with the Ex1 Pro Level camera. One of the great- a great little workhorse.

Chris: Interesting, too, this season we worked a lot with younger actors.

John: Yeah, we used kids.

Chris: We used kids a lot this season, and she really just-

John: Really set the bar.

Chris: I think just- she really set the bar.

John: Yeah, fantastic.

Dean: Speaking of bars...

[Laughter]

John: Very sudden. Now, nice ninja zoom through the window of the bar, nicely done.

Dean: That was Dave Connell’s idea, and I just thought it was great to bring back our tricks from season 1 to season 2 right off the bat.

John: Yeah. And then the brakes go and I like that little move, that actually wasn't scripted, he reached- just reached across to protect her as they fall apart.

Dean: And this sequence in the car was directed entirely by Marc Roskin.

John: Yeah, and this was really the first day we realized what a find Portland was, because now, like, do we wanna close down a block? It’s a hundred cops, you don't always get and it’s impossible. Portland’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah shut down a big chunk of downtown. We’re gonna be crashing cars? Alright, just don't break anything.’

Chris: And it made the local news, didn't it?

John: Yeah it did.

Chris: [imitating a reporter] ‘Today in Portland, they shut down the center of town to do a fantastic car crash.’

John: Now that's a CG shot, and that was one of the things is, now knowing what we do, we probably would just flip the car now. Cause this was, like, the first day we were there and we really- we wanted to be, like, nice, new visitors to the city.

Dean: I think the mistake I made with that flipping car is that I designed that car to be a slow motion flipping car, but when we saw it in slow motion, it lost some of the impact. So we sped it up, but since it wasn't designed to be sped up, it always had a little bit of a CG feel to it. I think I could do that shot better today.

John: That's alright. Look, it’s a car on fire in the middle of Portland for God's sakes.

Chris: Oh he's always beating himself up.

John: I know. I mean, I think there's some- We really rolled from one season to the next; there was no hiatus. We were picked up for the summer; we were originally a winter show, which meant we rolled straight from season 1 to season 2, so even I'll be the first to admit I probably would have struck the opening of this a little more aggressively. It sounds insane when there’s a car crash and flipping and exploding.

Chris: Yeah, aggressively. There's too much self flagellation; this is a great episode. I gotta say, guys, being on the other side over here, this is one of my favorite episodes of the year. I know people talk about, you know, The Two Live Crew job; I like this episode better.

John: And that's a real blow in downtown Portland; that was a great explosion.

Dean: It was frightening, cause all the glass in the surrounding buildings started rattling and I was so terrified that all the glass was gonna blow out and we were gonna start our adventure in Portland by destroying all this property, but luckily everything held.

John: And so- and it was interesting that at this time, when we really launched season one- you can see the influence of what was happening in the fall of 2008 by the- what was in the first two or three episodes of Leverage, and particularly the bailout-

Chris: Yeah, we were really reading a lot about the TARP money, and not to pat ourselves on the back, but when we looked at the amount of money that was being given to bailout banks and other financial institutions, our first thought, being crime writers, was this is a massive opportunity to grab-

John: -for fraud. Yeah there's no way $700 billion just floats through the economy and nobody steals some.

Chris: And pretty soon after we started breaking this story, the first news articles hit that-

John: And they made the first arrests the week this aired.

Chris: Yes, that's right.

John: And so- and there's Charlie.

Dean: Now, by the way, those of you who have the entire season, this particular hospital actually appears again in the season finale.

John: So are we doing the split, or we doing the-?

Dean: I don't know yet.

John: There you go. So you may have all the episodes, or we may be teasing you. I don't know yet.

Chris: Yeah, well. What was behind casting Charles Martin Smith in this? Cause it’s a departure.

Dean: We had worked with Charles Martin Smith on a mini series called The Triangle, and he was very good friends with our DP Dave Connell. And aside from being a wonderful actor, you may remember him from American Graffiti or The Untouchables, but aside he's also a really accomplished director. So when his name came up it was such an unusual choice for the role, but he was game to do it. And I got very excited cause I love working with him and he just did us a real big, solid favor by coming down from Canada and doing the part for us.

Chris: He’s fantastic.

John: Yeah. She's fantastic in this scene. This breaks my heart. I mean really. And the fact that Tim’s a dad, actually, really comes through here. I mean, he really, you know, when we were shooting this late at night, it was a very moving sequence-

Dean: And Tim really worked with her; he was very generous to her, and was doing a lot of off camera improv.

John: Well she punched her to get her to cry.

Dean: That was a little over the top.

John: That was a little much, but, I mean, it got us what we were looking for.

Chris: Welcome to show business.

[All Laugh]

John: Welcome to show business, Portland actors. It's actually interesting, too, this is the first example of a configurable set. That hospital room is basically every other set.

Dean: Oh after- this is the single most complicated shot I've ever done. I’ve ever seen done. This whole sequence is all one shot.

John: Yes. And this sequence, that the thing we do where we speed up, and then we turn around, we speed zoom through, is all done in post. Right. But when we get people to freeze, we don't freeze them. We tell them to freeze, and then we zoom the camera towards them at normal speed. That's Gary Camp walking. So this is four times in a row, getting 75 extras to freeze in place.

Chris: How many times did we shoot that?

John: With crosses. Just three times.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah, cause the first time Dean described the shot to me, I was standing next to him on the set.

Dean: Then it turns into a 180- I mean 360.

John: Then it turns into a 360. The first time Dean described this shot I said, ‘You think this'll work?’ He went, ‘Yeah...ahh...I got a pretty good idea. It'll work’. I said, that’s like Moses standing at the red sea going, ‘I think we're in good shape here.’

Chris: Did you give Gary an epidural for [unintelligible] this? I mean, that was long time to walk this steadicam-

John: This whole thing is Gary Camp doing steadicam. This whole sequence, from when Nate walks into steadicam shot.

Chris: Yeah, steadicam is giant apparatus.

John: A 70 pound rig.

Chris: A rig that you're wearing.

John: Yeah, and not a lot of actresses would appear their first shot back in season 2 in curlers. That was very nice of Gina to do that for us. There's a lot of very good subtle stuff going in here. It was very interesting to really play the awkwardness. These are people who have not seen each other for a year, you know? And the family wants to get back together, but doesn't- None of them have the emotional equipment to do this, you know, which was a lot of fun. And this is where we establish the bar. And coming up- sitting around and coming up with the worst possible reviews for Sound of Music was good; it was a lot of fun. This is the first time we've seen a bar, and we establish that this is where Nate lives, right above. And this is the bar, and what was great, cause we talk about in a couple other episodes - the bar was really the secondary set and became our favorite set. I mean it really- it shoots well. It's interesting to move around in; we wanna meet clients there all the time.

Dean: One of the things that John always gives me grief about and always teases me, is that I really always like to shoot every scene that I direct like it was a feature film, and try to come up with these complicated moves and complicate blockings. And I had a whole other way of doing this scene, but in the first rehearsal, clearly, it was not possible to do in the time we had. And so Tim actually came up with this really great idea that they all sit around the bar, so I tried to come up with these wild camera moves around the bar and it just was self conscious and stupid and bad. And then finally in a huff I just went, ‘Alright, fine, I'll shoot it like television.’

John: And I'm sitting behind him, I'm like ‘Oh God help us we should shoot like a television show, Dean. God help the audience actually hear what the actors are saying and pay attention to the words for, like, a whole half a scene. Nooo. Rather than the camera flying around.’

Dean: But of course even then Gary Camp, our operator, and Dave Connell found a way to get little subtle movements.

John: Throwing them behind the L, and around the bar.

Chris: Yeah, always moving. Well the little elbow here, I think we shot, we probably had this shot in almost every episode.

John: Some variation of this.

Chris: I mean, we really- some variation of them sitting right around this corner.

John: And this is really where you see them start to fall into the family relationships, the rhythms. If you notice, it goes from Eliot to Hardison to Gina to Beth; it hops, like, right around and they're all right back in.

Dean: And it also immediately flips the dynamic from season one. In season one, Tim is trying to keep this team together and they're always ready to split apart. Here, we start the season with the team wants to get together, but it's really Tim that's not sure- Nate who’s not sure if he wants to be-

Chris: Now let me ask you, Dean. What’s the challenge when the actors haven't been together? I mean, for you as a director, how do you get them back into it?

John: Yeah, cause they hadn’t seen each other for like six months.

Chris: There's no training camp like the NFL.

Dean: I tell you, it's one of those things you really worry about, because you have the rhythm down so well at the end of the year and there'd been this long separation. But I think because we decided to shoot this season in Portland, it created that bonding just from the first couple days. Cause all of them were in a new city, all of them didn't know other people, so they immediately clung onto each other, and within seconds their dynamic just came right back.

John: Yeah, and this is where we establish the apartment. And who came up with the shiny-? The kettle is how we see the reflection, cause this was originally blocked differently.

Dean: Yeah I think- I actually think it was the stunt guy who came up with it.

John: Yeah, and this is murderous intent, if ever there was one.

Chris: Oh there it is.

John: It's a nice fight. You know, an awful lot does happen in the first act of this.

Chris: Oh, it's packed.

John: I will go back. And then- and what's interesting here is that when this aired, right after Sophie- Gina's Sophie does the headbutt, she says something in an accent, and a lot of people were like, ‘Oh Gina fuged the accent.’ It’s actually a subtle clue to what Sophie's real voice sounds like.

Dean: Right.

John: Also, Gina really hit Tim once. Remember she really popped him? She really popped him with the tray once, it was pretty funny; he went down like a sack of hammers. And this may be my favorite act opening in the season.

Dean: And in the script, we originally started with her pouring soda pop into her- into her cereal.

John: Yeah, the orange soda.

Dean: Which is a funny idea, but when we went to shoot it, we just thought it was so great to start on Tim; his eyes opening and just seeing a nun eating.

John: Yeah. It’s disturbing. And this is the first time we really found- and again, this is the first time we shot in these sets, and look how quickly we gravitated to that back corner.

Dean: Yeah.

John: You know, you really-

Chris: That’s the family part of the set. I mean the kitchen, the table right there, that's really where you feel it.

John: And this is a little thing there, too, where the- this is where it starts is, he never controls his kitchen again once they've moved in. Is that the fact he's got nothing but coffee in there. Again, it's the implication he's just trading addictions; he's not in any way, shape, or form dealing with stopping drinking right. He's just not good at it because he's too much of a control freak to go through the process. I like the little golf clap there, the little ‘good for you, you're a hero.’

Dean: This was also, you know, a situation where our first episode back in, and when Gina had returned to the show she was pregnant, and we had not yet decided whether or not we were gonna make the pregnancy part of the show or not part of the show. So in this episode we decided, well let's hide it until we make a decision. So part of the whole blocking of these scenes with her and wardrobe was always to conceal the pregnancy.

John: What Frakes said was the strike zone. It’s just, you're just working around the strike zone.

[All Laugh]

John: And there's a lot of info dump - a lot of clues here. This is a fairly complex one. I will admit that that's- in mine I really kinda go back to my failed attempt as a mystery novelist. There's always a long clue path in here. Yeah, and this is the ATM security camera stuff was great, too.

Chris: Yeah, its all-

John: Cause what it calls back later is the fact that London is the most highly surveilled one, but Boston is the same thing.

Chris: And they- our graphics guy did a great job with the stuff.

John: Yeah graphics did a great job

Dean: One of the relationships that really developed over the course of this year, more so in the back half, is the brother/sister relationship of Eliot and Parker. And, for me, this was the very beginning of it, is just the way he accepts-

John: “It’s Parker.”

Dean: “It’s Parker.”

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: You never know why she might be dressed as something.

Chris: Yeah, and wasn't-? The model of this was like, the kids have gone to college and you finally- mom and dad finally have the house back, and then all of a sudden they're back?

Dean: They show up.

Chris: That's it. That was kinda the model.

John: Yeah, he got the place to himself-

Dean: He doesn't want to be involved. He doesn't want to be part of it.

John: And this is another- we talk about it in a couple of the other episodes, the Sophie/Eliot relationship became kind of one of the a nice [unintelligible mumbles] acts this year, and this was one of the first beats of it.

Dean: And this was an all improv little section here, which was fun.

Chris: Oh, look at this bank vault.

John: Look at this vault. Wow. Thank you, Portland.

Chris: Wow.

John: I can't say ‘thank you, Portland’ enough.

Chris: I know.

Dean: OK, so this is a scene, I have to say as a director, that I get on my hands and knees and thank John Rogers, because-

John: We've saved each other a bunch of times.

Dean: When we went to-

Chris: Tell us what happened here.

Dean: OK, that big giant vault door. This is a real-

John: This is a real safe deposit vault.

Dean: -safe deposit vaults and that door shuts every day and locks at a certain time. When we got in to shoot this, I didn't know that. So I start to block the scene, I'm lighting it, I'm getting ready to shoot the sequence, and suddenly they tell me you have 20 minutes before that vault door shuts and we can’t open it again until tomorrow. And I went into a full blown panic attack. I literally had no idea how to shoot this scene in 20 minutes, and John starts pacing behind me, he starts shuffling the dialogue around, shuffling- and was like, Here. Here's how you do it.’ I'm like, ‘thank you.’ And this whole scene was shot in 20 minutes.

John: Well it's one of the reasons you have a writer on the set.

Chris: Wasn’t there something with locks? Didn't you flip locks upside down?

John: What happened is, when you actually look at this, right? Those locks, you need keys to open this - you can't pick them. And the problem was, they don't close if they're not locked.

Chris: Right.

John: And so we had no way of faking one of these doors closed, but then I realized that those are two key bolts, right?

Chris: Right.

John: If you go on the inside of the door, and you take it off and flip it-

Chris: Right.

John: -the bolt side is now on the inside of the door, and the flat side is on the edge, so all Beth had to do was hold the door closed.

Chris: So they-

John: So it was just rotating objects in three-dimensional space.

Dean: Talk about-

John: That was a good day. That really justified me drinking, that was.

Dean: Talk about the writing. Because we had set up this relationship between the two of them that got a little hot and heavy at the end of season one, and you found a way to get a balance of it in this scene.

John: Well it was basically to reset. Because we- you know, to me one of the big mistakes of shows like this is progressing those relationships too quickly and you burn it out. And so it was really going back and looking, how would- Parker walked away. She spent six months on the road. Why did she do that? And it's because she thinks there could be something real here; she knows she's broken, and so she’s trying to explain why she needs that time. And the- Hardison will give that time to her. And it won't interfere with their friendship; it won't interfere with anything else and- but it allowed us to sort of restart this on a pace that was a lot, sort of, hotter at the end of season one. Cause, again, we didn't know if there'd be a season two, you know? We really wanted to go out of season one thinking, maybe they get together in the imaginary second season of Leverage, not realizing we'd be writing the imaginary second season of Leverage.

Chris: Almost instantaneously.

John: Almost instantaneously. Why is Tim in a towel here? This is- [Laughs]

Chris: The shirt/towel is an interesting combo.

John: The shirt/towel is an interesting combo.

Dean: Well originally I wanted him to come down in his underwear, and the thought was, is that he thinks that he's rid himself of them, and he thinks he’s alone, and his privacy is ruined.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: But towel seemed better, at the end of the day, than skivvies.

John: Yeah. Yeah, really, especially, since you're shooting down that spiral staircase. It’s like not that, Tim Hutton doesn’t have a lovely set of legs, but I'm gonna go with you here. I also like how the wall of evidence is slowly taking over Nate's house.

Dean: Yeah, it keeps growing.

Chris: Well this is interesting, too, because I think we kind of early in this season, wanted to do things a little more low tech. We wanted to have cork boards and clippings and photos.

John: Well its cause how much we liked how the mansion looked in season one finale...

Chris: Yeah, we really liked that.

John: So probably, season three, you'll see a blend.

Chris: Maybe it’ll be a little more of a blend.

John: More of a mix there. And this is Eliot's first fight with the local stunt guys. This was a lot of fun. This, I think, is one of the first things we shot.

Dean: Yes. In fact, the day we shot this we had bright sun, we had dark rain, and then we had the worst hailstorm I had ever seen in my life, all within 15-

John: The city tried to kill us for, like, 15 minutes.

Dean: And I thought ‘This can’t be like what it’s like to shoot in Portland.’ But, of course, we never had another day like that again.

Chris: And guess what, Dean? Aren't we shooting in March?

Dean: Yeah. Good luck, season three.

[All Laugh]

John: A lot of interiors, a lot of bottle episodes.

Chris: A lot of gloom.

John: Always wanted to do a baseball bat fight, ever since I had a- The bartender that taught me to bartend in Montreal spent a good 20 minutes how to properly use a baseball bat in a bar fight. It's- the whole thing is, it's the inside and the outside; you block with the inside, but the bat’s really only effective for about 4 inches. Anything inside that is good. Ahh and the orange soda returns.

Chris: And I love a good refrigerator shot.

John: Me too!

Chris: Any shot from the inside of an appliance.

John: The inside of a microwave last year. That’s good.

Chris: I love that. I like that.

Dean: I love the fact that they're a mess; these people cannot clean up after themselves.

[All Laugh]

John: This is his house. HIS house. Nate Ford is a control freak, and look what they're doing to his house. And this was basically just giving them props and letting them go.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Like I’ve- what the hell is that? I would've never written that in a million years, but Beth just did. Coming up with the different 80’s references, that was a lot of fun and Nadine, our costume director-

Chris: Oates takes it on the nose.

John: Oates really takes it on the nose, doesn't he?

Chris: He really does.

John. And he’s the more successful one, isn’t he? He's the big songwriter.

Chris: There's nothing wrong with Oates.

John: Nothing wrong; just give Oates a little love, that's all we’re saying. This- how they’re sucking him in here, by the way, is actually something Dean does to me on a regular basis. Where he tries to trick me into working on something, go ‘just how would you solve this problem’ ‘I'm not helping you!’ About 20 minutes later-

Chris: It's an actual flip joke.

John: It’s an actual flip joke.

Chris: When you go into Dean's office, the screen flips. ‘Oh no, I'm not writing a pilot for you. No way, no how!’

John: ‘Alright, here's something you do.’ Cause he knows I can't- I'm obsessive compulsive. Much like Nate Ford, I can't help it. And what they're doing is, they know Nate Ford well enough that if you leave an unsolved problem in front of him-

Chris: This is very Rockford, too, right? Is that what this scene was?

John: Richie Brockelman was always doing that to Rockford.

Chris: Richie Brockelman was always coming to Rockford and Rockford was always saying, ‘Get out of here! Alright, lemme tell ya. If you wanna do this, this is how you do it.’

John: And the- Beth- That’s the first beat there, Parker realizing that Nate sober is actually more of a bastard, which is something that was in your episode last year, 12 Step. ‘Maybe when I'm sober, I'm more of a bastard.’ And this is where they realized, yes he is. He's a really unpleasant, vaguely sadistic human being. And as our protagonist, nicely done. And this is where he lays out exactly what you'd want to do- wind up doing. A con they've probably all agreed that they will do. And I love the looks. And this is also interesting, you had done the staging as the varying degrees of physical separation from Nate through the episode.

Dean: Right. Always trying to keep him separated until he finally joins up with them.

John: Yeah, so he's always back on the desk, or he's always by the fridge if they're by the table. No, it's like you put some thought into this.

[All Laugh]

Dean: Sometimes you get lucky.

John: Yeah. I do- we really made her wear the coat for the whole scene; that was nice. And they're, oh they're just sad.

Dean: I love the-

John: Yeah, the “oh if only we had 5” and there he knows. He knows he's screwed. No, it’s- it was kind of, also, on that day was kinda the day we felt like we were back. You know?

Dean: Yeah.

John: And- yeah and-

Dean: All the dynamics start kicking in again.

John: And they're all doing the banter. It is tough, six months down, you know, when you do 13 episodes. I mean, I'm glad we're on cable schedule, cause 22 would kill us.

Chris: But it's true, when there's a big lag like that, you know, you get out of rhythm. Everybody does.

John: Yeah.And that's why, probably, I'm glad we killed- Oh, never mind, that’s- you'll see that later.

[All Laugh]

John: Yeah, and there’s- yeah and again, there's that sort of Sophie/Eliot axis kicking up. Oh this is a ton of fun. I cannot get enough of them as FBI agents.

Chris: Yeah, I love this.

John: And this is again, streets of Portland. Charlie Martin Smith, by the way, little trivia bit for you, is the father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Charlie directed the original-

Chris: Is that true?

John: Yes, he directed the original presentation. The original dead pilot.

Chris: Oh, wow.

John: So, and this is something we do with Eliot a lot, we actually have him cross the background, cause he's terrifying. And so, just to give you-

Chris: We get a lot of mileage out of his looks. Both comedic and menacing.

Dean: And an unintentional connection in this show is in the previous scene, they were talking about how they got Al Capone [mumbles] and Charlie Martin Smith, of course, played the guy in The Untouchables who figured that out.

Chris: Oh yes, yeah.

John: Yeah. This was a lot of fun, was the- was talking about the micro explosives that they wound up using here; cause they exist and we were gonna try to get them. And then we realized that would put us on a lot of watch lists. And this is also one ofmy favorite things is Parker, yet again, not sure she behaved like a normal human and getting reassurance from Hardison or Eliot. That's who she always goes to for that. It’s like ‘was I normal?’ and then the little happy smile when she’s like, ‘I passed.’

Dean: Right.

John: And this is where-

Chris: Oh, this is a great comedy beat.

John: And again, locked-

Dean: These two guys together? Always fun.

John: Always fun. And this is a big comedy beat, too, this has got two or three takes. He’s fishing around in his pants, you know.

Dean: The idea of him blowing up Eliot's crotch is somehow funny.

Chris: And great- and great reactions to the car.

John: This take, this is- the thing is, we’re very lucky - and that’s a locked off comedy frame folks - is that we have all actors who can do comedic beats. And at any point, any one of them can land a joke.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And here we have a real Rockford moment, is him getting-

Chris: A real Rockford moment, gut punched into a chair.

Dean: This also shows you, right here in this next shot, why Portland was such a great choice for us.

John: Look at that, that’s huge!

Dean: We get so much production value there.

Chris: That was great.

Dean: And even in a large set like this, in the time we had, Dave Connell just knows how to light this.

Chris: Yeah, what's the challenge when you have something like this?

John: The production value ie-

Chris: This is a real crumbling warehouse, but in terms of lighting it-

Dean: That’s always a big challenge. Wut who joined us in season two is our gaffer, Neil Holcomb, who had worked with me on Stargate and some of my biggest films.

Chris: Oh cool.

Dean: And he lives up there, and so to put him together with Connell, suddenly we were, again, going feature film in television world.

Chris: Yeah.

John: But also, I remember because of the weather and stuff the first day, we shot all the stuff in here in two days. The second day, we had four crews going. And it was- it was like- you know, ordinarily, there's one camera and a B-camera, maybe, going. We had four camera crews running simultaneously just- and it was- and the- it was- the Portland crew was great, because people going and going up there, they don't have any experience doing television. They were scrappy, man, they were into it.

Dean: And Gina showed up with this character of Annie Kroy. We fell so in love with this character, it has to return.

John: Yeah, Annie Kroy comes back.

Chris: Now Kray being the-

John: The Kray brothers.

Chris The Kray brothers.

John: It was a reference to the Kray brothers. We always wanted to, and we never did it first season, let her play, like, a really hardass, scary British gangster. You know, the whole idea- and she's chilling in this - I really like this character, you know. I would watch Gina play this character on another show.

Dean: Gina brought her game this season. She really was on top of every scene she did.

John: Just bloody ruthless. I love her hair in this, too.

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's just cold. Also, the beat Tim does here, where maybe she is gonna throw him to the wolves, just to maybe give him a little bit of an example; that's nice.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Now the- and setting the hook, there's like five plots in this one, too.

Chris: Oh, yeah. Sure.

John: It's like the- there’s the bank con, there's the murder, there's the- there’s this, where it's basically they're buying out the businesses.

Chris: Yup.

John: You know, what they're basically doing here is a collateralized debt obligation on- it's a metaphor. It's not really much of a metaphor.

Dean: And fans of the show Brotherhood may recognize our gangster here from that show.

John: Yeah.

Dean: I fell in love with him on Brotherhood and when he was available to play our Southie here-

John: Chappie? Yeah, he was fantastic.

Chris: Yeah, he's great. I mean, I thought that our bad guys- every cast, top to bottom in this one, was fantastic.

John: And in, yeah, in this one little bargaining scene, the little look he gives her there, the look she gives back, she's playing a totally different character at this point.

Chris: And she totally- The great thing is, she totally takes over the room. I mean, that's a big crowd of gangsters and she makes an entrance.

Dean: And the little hint of Belushi here, where these go off.

John: Just a little bit, yeah.

[All Laugh]

Dean: And by the way, that laugh of Eliot's - he was watching the actual playback of it, so it was a completely genuine laugh.

John: Yeah. And then we scare this guy and then there's the flip. My God this thing seems insane.

Chris: Oh yeah, you forgot this.

John: 42 minutes. How was there-? What was I thinking?

Chris: How many twists and turns there are in this one.

John: And this scene I love. I will give our network credit for this. Michael Rice, [person], [person] and Lou McCartney- McCarthy are all like, you know, we'd like to see the little girl again - she's a great actress. But even, like, she’s a great character. They were reading the script, and we'd like to reset why they're doing it. And I bitched and moaned cause I'm a writer, and then wrote this scene and it's a great scene. It’s-

Dean: Yeah. And it really resets why they're doing everything they're doing.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And that idea, there are wolves in the world, is something that Tim and I have been talking about on the phone before the season started, talking about the fact that Nate Ford is just a wolf who hunts other wolves. That's who these people are. That's what you need in a dangerous world. And the fact that we were able to turn it in dialogue was great. She's also, I think as a reference being in this scene - she's chewing on a Saint Bridget medal and- that was chosen for a specific purpose. Saint Bridget is the patron saint of wanderers. And so, you know, when she gives it to him at the end of the episode, that's sort of a sign of exactly what his role is in the world: is to wander is to never have a home is to- you know, basically walk the earth righting wrongs. You know. And this is a nice, you know, again, a nice reminder of why we do this.

Chris: And this-

John: People just get away with stuff.

Chris: This was another change from season one, you know, these plots are so complicated that we tend to- They were like a boulder rolling downhill, and we would tend to lose kind of track of the victim in season one. And we- in season two we made an effort to make sure that there's a moment in the middle of the episode where we saw them.

John: Yeah, to make them really present. And to reset the tech again, just for new viewers, exactly how the earbuds worked.

Dean: Now fans of steadicam will appreciate, this is a particularly difficult steadicam shot. It's not that elaborate, but it has to go through a circle, then around a circle, bullet time out. This is actually a pretty complicated shot.

Chris: In terms of folks focus pulling, too.

Dean: Exactly. On a technical level.

John: Boom. And then you're out. That's basically Gary backing the hell up and keeping everybody in focus and then we speed it up in camera.

Dean: And then he follows Tim around as he makes his phone call. It was quite a difficult move. Maybe not the most impressive that you see on screen, but on a technical level, very difficult. And that shot, I think, is just absolutely gorgeous. Dave Connell at his best.

John: Well that's the shot Tim and I were standing- cause that was our first shot in Portland, is Chappie standing on the water there. Tim and I were standing there going, ‘I know exactly where we are in Boston. We’re on Quincy, we’re on Houseneck, we’re looking across.’ It really helped convince us that, you know, this was the right choice.

Chris: Yeah. Look at that, that's production value.

John: It's gorgeous.

Dean: These are two phone conversations going on simultaneously where the camera literally never stops moving.

John: Yeah. And you're welcome.

[All Laugh]

Chris: And then, I mean, Dean, are you-?

John: I love writing those cross cut scenes.

Chris: Are you cognisant- I mean, in this case the camera's always turning around. Do you try and orient the people when one’s on one phone, that they are facing one way and the other person’s facing the other way?

Dean: Absolutely. And that's the hardest part of it, is we try to keep track of at what point he's looking right-left, so that when I’m on the other side he's looking left-right. And this is one of the few times that John actually wrote in the script, ‘the camera is moving around the people. You're welcome Dean.’

[All Laugh]

John: You love a good 360, Dean. You love a good 360. I know, I actually called this one out for yeah. Yeah, and then this is the- in theory what we've done is, we've planted the seed and knowing that he would call him and summon him.

Chris: That's great.

Dean: And, again, an amazing looking bank.

John: This was in- the vault we shot in was downstairs.

Chris: And I love this shot, too, I mean, here we've got this beautiful movie shot.

John: A suitcase full of money, you know, where. You know, yeah, full of money that’s from the bank, that actually ties together. You forgot about that.

Chris: You forgot about that.

John: I was pretty drunk the whole time.

Chris: Just literally towards the end you think it's over and then there's a whole other 10 minutes.

John: I know the whole scaring the guy to go to the warehouse would be the end of a lot of shows, but we've got like three more plot twists.

Dean: And this is the big twist, that the guy that they thought was the main villain is not the main villain, and now they've gotta rethink everything they're doing.

John: Yeah, they've gotta call on the fly. That'- When things go wrong on Leverage, that's the rule. It has to be something unexpected yet believable, or they've succeeded too well.

Chris: You think it's the- and the great casting of Charles Martin Smith is that you think- you know, he plays-

Dean: Nebbish-y

Chris: Nebbish-y characters. You think he's in the pocket of the mobsters. Well little did you know, the banker’s calling the shots.

John: This is Nate calling the audible. We do this in the finale, Nate calling the audible and you have no idea what it is.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah. At this point, the show becomes a closed mystery. Good lord. The- but what's interesting, also, is that we weren't making a very subtle comment about the fact that, you know, guys like this, Charles Martin Smith's character, the banker, they stole hundreds.

Chris: Who’s the real bad guy?

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right. I mean, that's really what this episode is about. Is it the mob guy that does rackets of-?

Dean: Hundred grand a year? Or the guy that steals hundreds of millions?

John: Yeah, exactly. And gets away with it. I mean, writing this evil speech of evil was- and this is the big first big Evil Speech of Evil for the year- was a delight because there's nothing he says here that's wrong.

Dean: That's true.

John: You know what? He's a good guy in his world view. And he's right in the way the world rewarded these guys. No man, when we were writing these-

Dean: He really nailed it as an actor.

John: Yeah.

Dean: He just delivers this scene.

John: And just from a directing standpoint, we ran out of time, so how did you shoot this whole sequence?

Dean: Multi-cameras in locked shooting. This was what happened was - we had two days here, and the first day we fell half a day behind because of the rain and the hail. So the second day, which was supposed to be a 7-page day, suddenly became a 12-page day.

Chris: Wow.

Dean: So we were running and gunning like never before.

Chris: Wow.

John: So yeah, rather than splitting this up into small sequences, which we'd originally do, we ran this scene from beginning to end, from Nate arriving with the briefcase, all the way to Chappie running away, to the reveal and just kept moving the camera. And ran it again and again and again with you moving the camera around to pick up the different angles.

Dean: And we didn't stop moving the camera either, so we always were in danger of one camera shooting the other camera.

John: Yeah. And oh, by the way, that's brutal on the actors. The actors basically have to deliver, without screwing up, an act's worth of dialogue here. Not a scene, an act.

Dean: It's almost like shooting a play.

John: Yeah, it was fantastic; they were just fantastic. And the blocking was- and then we see, yeah, you know, put a bullet in him and he's sick of doing his dirty work.

Dean: One of my favorite act outs.

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, this is a great act out.

Dean: And really because of how Christian sells it. If you look at Christian’s face right here, he really sells that like he has no idea that was coming.

John: Yeah, and then the look to Nate like he's been-

Chris: Oh great.

John: Like, Nate fucked up. Yeah, it's a great act out.

Chris: Yeah, this is great. I mean, you know, and you think aren't convinced. People- when we screened this, people gasped.

John: Oh I love that reveal of Sophie. I love that reveal of Gina with that moment with the gun; and the smoking gun is so noir. To totally geek out, that's a totally Donnelly Dook moment right there. Yeah. and the secondary line, ‘We usually do it with a razor blade.’ You can totally see her standing in an [something unintelligible] somewhere cutting some dude’s throat.

Chris: Sure.

John: And it's hot. Yes. and then the phone- the phone it's funny, the phone is planted- Jesus-

Chris: Oh, the planted phone.

John: Yeah and getting him to do- this is one of Apollo's favorite things, by the way, is everything's set up, and he lets you do the last stage of the trick, so you have forgotten that he has handled the object.

Chris: Right right, that's true.

John: You know, and he's- give him something, give it back to you, it's all a matter of just getting people's attention span. We talk about this sometimes in the show, outside of the 15-30 seconds. Anything outside of that 15 seconds, they forget.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

John: And then pinning swinging the blame around on him. No. It was really nice. And this was- basically we did research into the Whitey Bulger case and the whole idea that- and we played around with that idea for a while, that it was actually the mob guy who was the Fed.

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: The federal informant, was a real federal informant, not we fake him into it. Because the Boston mob was basically broken out by a mob boss who was a federal informant, but the feds protected him.

Chris: And he disappeared, right? He's still-?

John: He did disappear.

Chris: He's still out there.

John: And then elements of that show up in the finale. No it’s- and I love the bolt, just the aaahhh get him. And the-

Dean: And the gloat.

John: -the gloat. That's Dean’s big rule. His big rule is there has to be a gloat and also the villain must suffer. You must see the villain suffer.

Dean: Yeah, it's not enough to win.

John: And then punching holes- this was great, too. We just bought this truck- you see this truck get shot up a lot this year. We bought this truck and really just shot the shit out of it.

Chris: Is that true?

John: Yeah we did-

Dean: Well actually, we bought that truck and it was riddled with holes so we just covered the holes.

John: When you see it look good, it's actually been gimmicked.

Chris: Oh, that’s great.

John: And then we just kept- we put in the squibs.

Dean: How to do a lot with a little.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: Beth is great in this scene.

Chris: She's great.

John: She's really terrifying. And so’s- and Aldis doing the Samuel Jackson. Every now and then he brings it out; it’s very nice.

Dean: This is also when we first establish Parker’s love of the taser gun. Which you will come to see again in later episodes.

Chris: That's true. That pays off later.

John: Well it’s like Parker’s found something that allows her to put people down without getting other people angry at her, and that's like a loophole in human behavior. Also, her enthusiasm- I don't know if we got the most gleeful look with the duct tape; there's one there that's kind of a weird mix of scary and dirty.

Dean: And this is my favorite steadicam shot of the episode. And again, whole scene done: one shot. And there's a lot of information that has to get tagged. You need all of this dialogue; we need these three; then we have to establish the body on the ground; we have to establish the gun on the table; we have to establish the money in the briefcase.

Chris: Was this steadicam a product of our time crunch?

Dean: Absolutely.

Chris: You see, sometimes when- sometimes when you're under the gun-

Dean: Necessity, mother of invention.

John: Yeah and then the whole, “clean up your own mess” - he's out. He takes the money. And that's another thing. That's one of the rules - the villain’s always undone by some version of his original sin. In this case, it's trying to kill the guy, but it's his greed. If he had left his money behind, he would've had a chance.

Dean: And I love- because they had to do this on the fly, he actually had to use ketchup packets.

Chris: Yeah.

John: That was a lot of fun.

Chris: And also making things pay off from act 1. That's, you know-

John: And Gina's glee there? That was really- that was really- I have to admit that's not how I imagined that line delivery, but seeing it in dailies, it was such a nice little ‘and we're back’.

Chris: Yeah.

John: This season two, we’re having fun!

Chris: I like to think she was channelling, you know, Gina the person, that she's back on the show and she's saying that-

John: Yes, exactly; a lot of fun. And the reveal. And-

Dean: This is also when we fall in love with-

John: Bonanno.

Dean: Bonanno. Who you will see a few times this season.

John: Multiple times this season. We actually found him really useful - to have a character who was a cop, who we could use as someone we threw cases to. You know, not really friendly, but kind of a neutral. Kind of a force for good within a system we say is pretty corrupt.

Dean: And frankly we found an actor who was so good, who was local, and we thought ‘well gosh, we got a guy this good in town, we gotta get him back again and again.’

John: Yeah, he was fantastic. He was very Columbo.

Chris: Was he a Boston native, or was he kinda just-?

John: No, no he was a Portland guy and he was doing a great Boston accent, and he was really Columbo-ing it up here. ‘I’m not a really smart guy. See if you can help me understand this.’ Yeah, he's really nailing it. And then we do the flashback, sort of, revelation.

Dean: I love that shot.

John: Yes, and this particular bit where she kisses the money, just a reminder that she has a distinctly unhealthy relationship with physical cash. And all of the evidence that he was trying to hide is in the briefcase you grabbed, cause it has money, it all falls together.

Dean: Hoisted on his own petard.

John: Exactly. That's the theme. And also, this is where we hang a lantern on the impossibility of this much evidence in one place because then it must be real; no one could put together a frame up this good.

Chris: Right. No one- nobody would frame you like this.

John: Yes, it’s a lot of fun.

Dean: And bringing back the briefcase-

John: Exactly, exactly. Wow we- there’s a lot of flashbacks in this one.

Chris: It’s a lot. And right now you're thinking the episodes over. Well you're wrong my friend; there’s a lot more show left.

John: There's, like, five more minutes to go. Yeah. I also love the choice there, that- cause I think the way it’s originally written is: he comes in, Bonanno comes in behind him. The way you blocked it is: he pulls back the curtain and Bonanno’s just there. This guy is dead from the second he walks in the hospital; he’s got no chance.

Dean: Right.

John: John McRory's place. And you actually see the waitresses recur; we got a lot of great locals to kind of establish continuity.

Dean: And I thought this scene ended up being surprisingly emotional, and really from the performances-

Chris: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, yeah. It was- again, the trick we were facing this year was we had a lot of new viewers and we had to, kind of, re-establish what they did, but outside the context of the first season, which is where they had the actual law firm patina. So this scene had to kinda help establish this is what they do. They come in, they put the bad guy away, they help fix your life. And then they disappear. Yeah. And this is the- she really did a nice job here. It's sort of nice- you know, cause he had a son. He'd be about this kid’s age, you know? It’s a very paternal moment there.

Chris: Yeah. Right.

John: And handing over the cross.

Dean: And the path of the wolf’s line.

John: Yeah. We should've had- we should've brought the Saint Bridget's medal back in the finale. I should've thought of that.

Dean: There's plenty in the finale.

[All Laugh]

John: There is. There is. It's packed.

Chris: There's a lot.

John: There is a lot. Yeah, it's bigger than last year which makes me- which bothers me.

Dean: So season three, boy.

John: Yeah, no, season three. I think it's kind of a return to classicism.

Chris: Oh boy, what did we do?

John: When you go big, you go the other way - you go very small. Yeah, that's a saucy little-

Dean: Oh, and this was another element we brought into the season. We talked about changing the dynamics of relationships. Because in season one, clearly Nate and Sophie have had a history together. They- there was no reason for them not to be together, but yet they couldn't be together, so how does the next season begin?

John: Oh yes, with the boyfriend.

Chris: Yeah.

John: The boyfriend, which wound up truncated because- I think we were shooting this day when Gina found out she was pregnant. Remember? She told us during rehearsal.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And so the boyfriend was supposed to be a seasonal runner.

Chris: Was gonna to recur.

John: He was gonna recur.

Chris: But it's a great scene here that I just love.

John: Yeah it is.

Chris: I just love the -

John: -the look on his face.

Chris: Finally he's there, and he's happy.

John: Cause you know what? She’s right; he’s too fucked up to be

Chris: I'm happy for you one of those moments-

John: But he's right; he's not- he wasn't there, he's not emotionally available. He’s not, you know-

Dean: And this is what also brought in Andy Lang’s song which we loved so much, and we- and which comes back again because it actually becomes a character in their relationship.

John: The song?

Dean: Yeah.

John: The song is sort of the- the symbol of their relationship. And then this is the temptation. You know, to drink. And what I love here is, people go ‘oh that's great, he didn't drink.’ And what they miss is, speaking as someone with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, this is absolutely the wrong way to stop drinking - just through sheer force of will, you won't win. Pardon me as I reach for my Guinness.

[Laughter]

John: The thing is- but Tim really dug in on this just to smell. Cause that's something we talked about, was the fact that- cause I was a stand up in New York, in bars, a lot. It's the smell. It’s really the smell of the bars, the smell of booze, that's the really evocative-, yeah.

Chris: Sure.

John: And then he just leaves the bill, walks away. It's a great ‘and the look and I'm done’. And he’s out.

Chris: And look at- look at the symbol, the Christian symbolism here, if I may get post-grad on you. Look at the cross, the catholicism of it all. And you think that the episode’s over, but it’s not! There’s still more story!

Dean: And just when you're thinking they're getting a little too soap opera here, and then-

John: The laughter.

Dean: Bring the fun in.

John: What I love is, this got exactly the response we wanted from the fans, which wass - ‘we know those screens!’ We know exactly what those are supposed to be. And again, this is, again, and this is-

Chris: And this got a great laugh, too, here.

John: Yeah when she brings back- And this was an improv, if I remember correctly. ‘I'm old Nate and I live here too.’ Yeah, no, they really dug in here. They love scenes where they get to torture Tim. They do.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Because it really is- he's a great straight man. Look at that glare. He's a great straight man. And that-

Dean: And I love bringing back the painting.

John: The painting pays off later. The painting pays off later in the season. And this was a lot of fun because we actually had to just cut through the wall. He hadn't really thought this out clearly. So that’s Chris Kane with a chainsaw-

Dean: Actually cutting through the wall.

John: -cutting through the set.

Chris: That's great. That's an iconic shot right there.

John: Right there, with the chain and the laugh. That's nice. That’s a nice moment, that’s the family back together.

Dean: And that is the beginning of season 2.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh, great episode.

Dean: Thank you for joining us.

John: That was a lot of fun, I gotta admit. That was a little crazy doing it; it was good to watch it again. Dean, anything to say before we take off?

Dean: Just that it was so good to start it off that way, and especially have you writing it. And this turned out to be a really great season. Not the season we thought were gonna make-

John: Not at all.

Dean: -but in a way even better.

John: Man, we have a lot of stuff for season three, let's put it that way. So thanks for joining us.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 1 #Season 2 Episode 1 #The Beantown Bailout Job

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shaekingshitup · 5 years ago

Text

unintended

A/N: Okay. So, this was supposed to be a completely different story with more thot antics than romance. But then this idea came and I decided to choose this one instead. I’m still just practicing over here. So, any feedback is appreciated. 😊 This is my first and most likely last fic that will be with a real celeb. So, I hope y’all dig it. It will be a series. So, expect more! I'm just not certain how I feel about writing for real humans that exist. AS ALWAYS, shout out to @glittermakesmesmile for always reading first and making things make sense. She’s wonderful. Be on the look out y’all. 👀

Pairing: Trevor Jackson x Black OC

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2265

“I WANNA FEEL THE HEAT WITH SOMEBODY! YEAAHHHH I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY. WITH SOMEBODY WHO-” Jayden stopped belting out the Whitney lyrics as her music paused and her Trey Kennedy ringtone filtered through her car’s speakers.

RING RING RIIIIIIING. RING RING RING RIIIIING RING!

She looked at her screen and the unsaved number which was staring back at her.

“Hello?” she asked trying not to let the aggression creep into her voice towards whomever had ruined her jam sesh as she weaved through the madness that was LA Traffic.

“Hey girl, how you doing?” greeted her with a sweet Southern twang

“Oh shit! It’s Terrell” Jayden thought automatically as she began gushing. All aggression was temporarily forgotten.

“Hey boo! I’m just circling the block trying to find a spot. I’m makin’ a pit stop at Blue Bottle. What’s up? Can I grab a coffee for you?”

“..bring me their Single Origin?” Jayden heard coming through in the background.

“Nigga” Terrell chuckled in an incredulous tone without losing his good humor.

“Who’s that? Is that Matt?” she asked trying to piece together what was going on. She was supposed to be meeting Terrell in 45 minutes. She was barely 3 miles away from his place. She’d planned the day out perfectly so that she would be on time, for once in her life. You only win the Shits & Giggles Song Association once. I mean, how could she be late for THAT?!

It sounded like there was some sort of disagreement happening on the other end as Terrell’s voice came in high pitched and strained “No. That’s not Matt, it’s-,”

“Wait, it’s my fault. Let me tell her” said the mystery person on the line. Jayden was confused as she put her car in park and grabbed her headphones so that she could continue to have this conversation while she stood in line at Blue Bottle.

“Ugh. Okay,” Terrell relented.

“Hey Jayden. It’s Jayden, right?” spoke an unfamiliar male voice on the other line.

“Yes.. and this is?” Jayden questioned as she opened the door and was blindly greeted by a barista.

“Well hopefully, the one you grab a Cold Brew for.” chuckled out of the other end of her phone.

“NIG-GUH. Where is my henny? Cuz I can’t wit yo ass,” Terrell hollered in the background and Jayden heard some generous pouring being done.

“Okay. Can someone please explain to me what’s going on? I’m fourth in line so if you want anything I need some answers first. Who is this?”

“Damn. Straight to it. She’s kind of feisty. She gotta be a fire sign.” Jayden heard this come in muffled as if the person was trying to communicate out of her earshot. She sighed outwardly. Typically, she had more patience than this. However, LA traffic really brought out the worst in her.

“Third in line.” she said, “and about 10 seconds away from using some choice words with you myself.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let me explain. My name is Trevor. Trevor Jackson” he paused. Jayden waited for some further explanation. This name wasn’t ringing a whole lot of bells for her and she didn’t see the point in him being on her line. She was still confused; although, having a name did cause her to simmer down a little. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket while he spoke and was getting ready to Google “Trevor Jackson” but she was bombarded by all of the texts she hadn’t received while her phone was in drive mode.

“Okayy, Trevor who wants me to bring him coffee. What’s going on?” she asked in a genuinely curious tone and without her previous bite. She made her way through the barrage of “Congrats”, “Good luck” & “Don’t Fuck Up!” texts her family and friends had showered her in.

Trevor took his time providing her with an explanation. He was measuring out his words and how he would respond “Look, I know that you’re scheduled to shoot your Song Association episode with Terrell soon and that’s great! Congratulations on the win, uh, by the way! But, I had a mix up on my end. I thought that I was supposed to meet him today at 2 pm. Instead of next Saturday at 2 and I’m actually going to be unavailable at that time. So, I was thinkin maybe I could go first since I’m already here. Then, Terrell can just shoot yours afterwards? Plus, my mom’s here to watch me do this because she’s a big Terrell fan and it would mean a lot.”

Well when you play the mom card. Jayden thought

The boy was lucky there was only one register at this Blue Bottle and that the person ordering right now had a lot of complicated orders or his lengthy answer may have caused him his Cold Brew.

“Okayy. That makes sense,” Jayden says, “ I blocked off the rest of my day to be here so I can hang around. I get to watch yours right? I mean you’re not gonna just ask me to bring you coffee and then make me leave?” she giggled as a way to relieve the nervousness she felt about the situation and then she waited because she was certain this Trevor guy nor Terrell would ask her to leave. Right?

She was met with silence. Absolute and complete utter silence. There was no sound whatsoever on the other end.

“Hello? Helllo? Did y’all put me on mute?” Three seconds later there was roaring laughter and she stepped forward. She would be next in line real soon.

“Yes! I’m sorry I accidentally put you on mute. But thank you! Thank you! My mother and I truly thank you.”

“It’s okay! Does your mama want anything while I’m here?” Jayden asked.

“Oh, yeah. Uh please get her the tea. I promise I got you when you get here.

“It’s fine,” Jayden responded. “Well, I guess I’ll see y'all soon. It’s my turn,”

“Thank you Jayden. I really mean that.”

“Not a problem” she said.

17 minutes later Jayden was sitting in her car in the Guest Parking garage that Terrell had told her to park in when she arrived.

“Here” she texted.

“Meet me at the elevator” was her reply.

Jayden grabbed the drink carrier and her mini black backpack and headed for the elevator. By the time she made it to the door, Roxy was there to let her in.

“Hi Jayden” she said.

“Oh my goodness, hiii” Jayden said as she gave Roxy a hug with her free hand. It was just sinking in that this was real. She was really about to be on Song Association. She loved watching the series & was ready to come for Miss Amber P Riley’s perfect score. She definitely didn’t have the perfect vocals to match. However, her competitive nature was not going to let her miss out on this opportunity to fuck this game up.

“Hey girl, thanks for being so cool about today,” Roxy said as they stepped into the elevator. She pressed the button for the fourth floor. “We’re going to be doing lots of filming today so we can get this content out on schedule.”

‘Yeah, it’s no problem,” Jayden responded, “ Like I said,I already set aside the rest of my day for this. So, it’s really not a problem. Plus, this way I get to say I saw this Trevor guy on Terrell first!” she laughed.

“You’ve really never heard of him before?” Roxy inquired.

“Mm-mm” she shook her head in the negative.

“Wellll, you are definitely in for a treat,” Roxy smirked. The elevator dinged to let them know that they had made it to the fourth floor.

She took a right out of the elevator and led the way down the hallway until they made it to unit 414. Roxy opened the door and Jayden was immediately met with fresh air. After the heat of the LA sun, the cold air was refreshing.

“Miss JAY-den!” Terrell called out to her once he heard his front door shut. He set his glass down on the table. She couldn’t help it. She broke out into a full faced grin. She couldn’t even see anything but his hallway and all of her teeth were already on full display. She followed Roxy deeper into the apartment and when she saw him she was so overwhelmed that she wasn’t sure what to do. Terrell hopped off of his stool, removed the drink carrier from her hands by placing it on a nearby table and greeted her with open arms. In that singular moment, Jayden felt welcomed and as if she was the most valued individual in that room. So, of course it was at that time that she made the fated mistake of looking over Terrell’s shoulder and got a real good look at a well-groomed and delicious piece of chocolate. Trevor gave a slight wave which she returned with a smile.

“MM. I am so glad that you’re here.” Terrell said as he rubbed circles in her back and gave her all of the reassurance she needed to be there. She was still nervous. But she was starting to think that this was all planned and for a purpose.

“I’m so glad to be here!” she replied as he released her from their embrace.

“And BIIIIIIIIIITCH. This is a WHOLLEEE ASS LOOK! We gone talk about this later boo. But can I get a twirl?” Jayden did one better. She retreated back towards the hallway and came back in full runway flair. She strutted into the room, twirled and looked over her shoulder as she headed back towards the entrance. Finally, she strutted back one last time and gave Terrell a smirk. His energy was contagious. She had nearly forgotten that there were other individuals in the room.

“Oh yeah. Definitely a fire sign,” Trevor commented as he reached for whatever concoction Terrell had prepared for him prior to her arrival.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. Where are my manners?” She reached for her drink tray and provided him with his Cold Brew, “Trevor, I presume?” she asked as she stretched the drink out to him. He responded with a smile of his own.

“That’s me.” Trevor verified nodding his head. He took the drink with his left and shook her hand with his right. “Thank you Jayden. I really do appreciate everything. What do I owe ya?”

“Oh no, that’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.”

“Nah, I got you. What’s your venmo? Cashapp? Zelle? I got you.” Jayden ignored his queries and responded with his own.

“Where’s your mama?” Just then, an older Black woman with tight skin, a tight body to match and some of the kindest eyes Jayden had ever seen came from around the corner. She was really out here showing that Black don’t crack and she wasn’t even on camera!

“Hi Mrs. Jackson, my name is Jayden.” she smiled and handed the older woman her tea, “here’s your drink ma’am. I got some sugar too just in case you’re like me and like it sweet.”

“Thank you so much sweetheart. I love sugar. I need just enough to keep the diabetes at bay” Mrs. Jackson responded as she too embraced Jayden in a hug. “Your timing is perfect actually. I was just heading out.” she said.

“Oh no, is everything okay?” Jayden asked hoping she wasn’t being too nosey in her first impression.

“Oh yes darling. Trevor’s brother Ian has an event today too and I told him I would be there. But, I refused to miss the opportunity to meet this young man and see my baby boy get a few songs in on this game.” Mrs. Jackson clarified. “Thank you so much for this tea. Trevor, did you pay this young woman for this?” she asked sharply. Jayden could tell two things about Mrs. Jackson off the bat: 1) she was kind 2) she was no nonsense . The look she gave her son spoke volumes. It said “I know I raised you to be polite. I don’t care who you singin for but you better be respectful and don’t expect nothin from no one. Not even a damn coffee.

Damn. Jayden thought.

“I’m working on it ma.” Trevor told her. “Okayy baby” Mrs. Jackson said while continuing to stare at her son. The lecture left her eyes and was replaced with a knowing look while she smiled at her son.

Well Miss Jayden, I mean it. I do appreciate it, and good luck to you on your game too. I’m sure you’ll be wonderful,” she said as she hugged the young woman one final time. Mrs. Jackson continued around the room saying goodbye and hugging everyone. “Terrell, make sure you don’t go easy on my baby boy. He got this. We been practicin’, ya know.” .

Jayden watched the woman, enamored by the similarities between Mrs. Jackson and her favorite aunt. Jayden was so caught up in her thoughts, she initially missed Mrs. Jackson’s final goodbye to her, catching only enough to ask the woman to repeat herself.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Jackson, what did you say? Jayden stammered out flustered as she had gotten so in her own head.

Mrs. Jackson paused before scurrying out the door to support her first born “ I said I’ll see you soon baby”, giving the young woman a wink and mischievous smirk before disappearing out the door.

Jayden stared at the door, mouth opening trying to figure out what the woman had meant.

………………………………

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