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prael · 8 months

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c'est la vie - Kim Minju

Part 3 of folie à deux.

IZ*ONE Kim Minju x Male reader smut. (ft. a sprinkle of Wonyoung)

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

Masterlist word count: 10,553

c'est la vie - that's life

"I'm so fucked."

Fists clenched and eyes scrunched, you’re venting out loud to no one in particular. You repeat it, "I'm so fucked." Louder this time—to the sky. Well, more accurately, to the plastered ceiling of this little hole-in-the-wall. Either way, the solution isn't there.

It isn't at the bottom of a bottle either, but you're determined to find that out the hard way.

"Is there a friend I can call for you?" The woman behind the bar has stopped polishing off the glasses; interrupted by what she would say are the ramblings of a madman.

"There's no coming back from this." You throw your head forward, catching it in your now open hands, elbows resting on the wooden bar top.

"Sir? I'm going to call you a—"

"I don't need a cab." You draw your head from your hands and open your eyes—allowing the light to pour onto you from one of those little round lights above you. The drink sits in front of you, unfinished. Hard liquor in a tumbler just waiting to be thrown back like the three before it—a plea you can’t ignore. The large ice cube rests against your nose as you pour every last drop onto your tongue and swallow. "I do need another drink."

With the glass set back down, your body slouches and sinks. Eyes stare down at the empty glass and your face is cold to the world, cold to the woman across from you. You must reek of self-pity, the smell thick in the air.

Let’s be honest, you've had far better days.

She's got her delicate fingers around the neck of the bottle, pouring you a fresh drink and placing it on a napkin, "you know, you're not the first person to stumble into this bar wearing a face like that."

You slide your eyes over to the glass and reach for it. "I highly doubt it."

"But, few of them show up this early, even if it is a Friday." She has a point: you’re propping up the bar alone and drowning your sorrows solo. In fact, there are only two other people in this whole place, sitting together at a table. "So what’s your story?"

"Does there have to be one?" You grip the glass in your hand, giving the stranger the best smile you can fake.

She steps back and brushes her hand on her trousers as she laughs, "I've seen many broken men and women sit at this bar and spend too many hours drinking their life savings, with hearts broken, dreams smashed and most of all, mistakes they regretted. But you seem different."

"Oh really, why's that?" Your eyes stare into your drink. It stares right back at you.

"You're still young."

"Does being broken have an age requirement?"

She shifts and reaches for something, something you can't quite make out, being locked in the most intimate of stares with your drink. It’s the sound of her placing down another fresh glass that gives it away. "Actually, yes. Because you've still got time to work with."

"That's the irony. All I have left is time."

“Then you have to believe in yourself to make the most of that time.” Her words are heavy, like their meaning holds weight within her too.

She lets you dwell on it for a moment while she pours her own drink. She settles herself against the bar top, across from you, resting her head in one open hand. Her gaze burns into you like sitting in the sun. You can feel something else too, a soft vibration in your pocket.

You finally break away from your staring contest with your drink—one you lost anyway—to fish your phone out of your pocket. The screen alights with Gaeul’s name and is followed by the words ‘1 new message’.

After a swipe, it reads, ‘wtf where are you? what happened?’ but the thought of sending a reply never crosses your mind. And, just in case, you switch it over to silent.

“Is that her?” The woman gently waves a slender finger towards your phone as you put it back where you found it. “The reason you’re here?”

"Do you press all your customers like this?"

“Only the interesting ones,” she returns her hand to her glass, taking a sip of it before continuing, “and there’s sadly so few of those.”

"And if I'm not as interesting as you think?"

"Then I'll buy you a drink.” She tilts her glass at you. "For the trouble."

"And if I'm fascinating?"

"I'll still buy you a drink." Another sip from her glass as her lip gloss stains the rim, "maybe two."

"Then no, it wasn't her." And here's the thing, you don't know who to blame. Yourself? Probably. Wonyoung? Maybe. The mystery cameraman who got it all on video? Almost definitely.

“But it is another woman, right?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m not exactly rushed off my feet here.”

You sigh, unsure exactly where to begin with this whole mess. The complete story is a long one. You could tell her about your family—the trouble at home and why you had to leave—but that’s not for anyone to know.

"I transferred here. Moved here with my brother. He's at work right now, and he will be late into the evening." You pause to take another drink. Another burning sensation. "To keep food on our table and keep me in college."

Even saying so little it weighs on you, the feelings of regret and the feeling that you're saying too much. You bite your tongue and hesitate.

"So why are you here and… you know... not at college?" She pushes you for more. She flicks a finger towards you with her free hand and then brings her glass to her lips.

You drag your eyes up for the first time and finally inspect the woman across from you.

She's your age, roughly—if you had to guess. She's pretty, and that part you're more confident about. She wears her long brunette hair over one shoulder, running in a loose wave, over her slate black blazer, which sits over a small black tee, cropped at the waist. She smiles when your eyes meet hers. And maybe she had no idea, and perhaps it's all subconscious, but the tips of her slender fingers squeeze slightly against the glass now that you're paying her some attention.

"I never got your name," you say with curiosity laden in your voice.

"Minju."

"And why is a young woman like you working here on a Friday afternoon?"

"Were you not the one telling me about your troubles?" She follows her words with a soft laugh.

"Call it quid pro quo. You answer and then I’ll tell you all about it," you say.

"Fine." She stands back upright, adjusting her blouse with a few gentle touches. The way her finger glides across the collar and tugs at it slightly. It's more than a little distracting. She cuts a sleek hourglass shape out of the shelves of bottled booze behind her. "I'm between gigs right now."

"Gigs?"

"Ah." She waves a finger. "My turn."

Minju tilts her head and then rests her palm against the bar—leaning toward you and eyes focused. It’s like an inspection and you instinctively sit up straighter.

"So why are you here?" she asks.

"Expelled. About..." You bring up your wristwatch into view. "About an hour ago."

Her brows go up a fraction and her eyes narrow on you again, almost as if to accuse you of lying to her. But her expression softens almost instantly. You would never notice if not for watching every second in painstaking detail. Her widening eyes reveal to you the thoughts passing through her mind as she racks her brain for a reason you would be expelled.

"You said that you're between gigs, so what is it you do?" you say, shifting the focus back away from yourself.

"I sing. I dance. I model. I act." She pauses with a bitter look. "However, right now, I serve drinks." You get it; she looks the part. That much is clear. She's far too gorgeous to be spending her time polishing glasses and serving screwdrivers to burnouts at happy hour. She looks every bit like a woman who should be so much more, but this isn't Hollywood, and the storybook tale of the waitress who makes it is so cliché.

You swill the last of your drink around in the glass, watching the little tidal pattern inside. The way the ice cube moves with the current, it hypnotises, entrances. You speak, looking down into the amber-hued ocean within your glass.

"And you have the talent to back up the looks?"

"So they tell me." There's no joy in the words or the tone. No pride or smug sense of achievement. If anything, it's dismissive. “It’s just a slow period. That’s life.”

“C’est la vie.” You catch her gaze as you utter the phrase under your breath.

Minju continues despite you, “but things will turn around soon enough. I'm going places."

"Every actor who is going places never seems to get there." Maybe it's the alcohol or maybe it's because, right now, you hate this city and everyone in it, but everything that comes out of your mouth is uncharacteristically curt.

And look, you regret it as soon as it leaves your mouth but that doesn't change the way you just dismissed her. It wasn't meant personally, but it's hard to stop your thoughts from curdling into words right now.

Minju is quiet, and the air becomes heavy. You swallow deep and finally look her in the eyes again. There's something there, some little flicker of emotion untold that gives her away for a moment. She is a woman told repeatedly that she has the world at her feet, but the hard truth of it is that she's here, working away behind the bar because, in fact, life is a lot more cruel.

Absorbed by her vulnerability, you feel the need to backtrack, "that's not—"

"So what, you look at me and see nothing but a girl who couldn't cut it?" There's a flash of fire in her eyes. A burn. A spark that sets the sky alight. A very attractive spark.

The way she fires it back. The passion in her words. The tension building between you as your eyes linger on each other.

You can't explain the attraction, but you can certainly feel it.

"No," you fire back without hesitation, leaning towards her, "what I see is a woman working two jobs just to afford a place to live." Your confidence rises with the alcohol pumping its way through your system and you do your damnedest to rescue the situation. "What I see is a girl with stars in her eyes and a dream that somehow she still keeps alive where so many more have given up. I'm not judging."

Silence.

Sudden, silent, and slightly sinister.

"Yeah, you were," Minju's eyebrows arch in amusement, "but that's fine, I'll take my turn now."

As she leans forward, there are words on her tongue. She looks ready to bite back, but she's looking over you, across the room, watching the only other two people in the bar leave. And for a minute, everything is held in suspense, you are locked together in silence, the clap of their shoes echoing through it. Then the sound of the door, and the brief exposure to the outside world, it's the rain pouring and the cars passing by and then it's the slam shut. It's just you and her, Minju, alone under the dim of the lights.

"So what was it?" she finally breaks the silence.

"Hm?"

"What got you expelled?"

You could lie. There's an opportunity for that. But what's the point? Even though she's a stranger, it doesn't feel like there's a risk if you just come clean and spill your dirty little secret, besides, you owe her one now.

"I got caught fucking in the library." The truth comes out plain and simple. It’s a brazen statement to make in the middle of the afternoon to a stranger. Her gaze shoots down at you. Whatever she expected, it wasn't that.

"I’m sorry, you were caught fucking in the library?" She repeats it out quizzically as if she’s taking time to process. Minju has this way of talking—a lilt in her voice. She has a tone and a pitch that rises and falls with each word. She's amused, that much is clear, by the slight smirk that has curled a corner of her mouth to accompany her sound.

"We were alone, or at least we thought we were, and it’s not like we hadn’t done it before, but apparently, there's evidence." You gesture your empty glass at her, a secondary conversation, unspoken but clear that you need another drink before you tell her anything else.

In doing so you see how she tenses her lips together, holding in her laughter at the thought. She’s holding and you’re watching until she finally cracks, her grin wide and laughter loud.

"Now I am the one judging you. You made fun of me for trying while you're too busy swinging your cock around to even try. So, you tell me, who is the stupid one here?"

"Alright I deserved that one." Your hand had been holding the empty glass to her but now you bring it to rest against the bar top. "In my defence, it's not like I had much of a choice. That girl..."

"Here we go. Let's see how you justify this one." She finally takes your empty glass and when the edge of her fingers brushes across the back of your hand, they linger for far too long. And when she draws back, dragging away those long, delicate fingers from your own, you find yourself suddenly cold.

"It's not like I could turn her down if I wanted to. Also I would never have done it in the library if she didn't make me."

"She 'made' you. Go on." There's scepticism in the words. Her mocking tone teasing you as you watch her turn to the shelves behind her, eyes scanning the possibilities.

"No one says no to her. Never."

"Wow, sounds like quite a woman," she says, ever more playful, as she reaches for the top shelf. Her blazer is pulled up now, ever so slightly exposing her back above the waist of her trousers. Trousers hugging the subtle swell of her hips. Her small, tight, round ass is defined through the fitted fabric. You can't look away.

"Everything comes easily for her. There are literally men fighting for her affections. They would die for her," the words tumble from your mouth, as your gaze lingers.

You must have been lost in the daze and absent-mindedly following the contours of her thighs because by the time you shift focus to her face, she's peering at you from over her shoulder. Eyes sharp as daggers, as if to say it’s a little too obvious.

"Wow she sounds like a real piece of work. I know someone like that too. " Minju turns with bottle in hand, hair swirling around her as she does so. She's graceful. Unbothered and unhurried by anything. "This one is perfect. This bottle is older than me."

She pours two fresh drinks with more ice in each.

"Am I going to regret this in the morning?" you question as the weight of the glass finds your hand.

"You might. But at this moment? No."

You trust her, somehow, inexplicably; you do.

She asks, “so, what will you do now?” it’s a question as funny as it is difficult to answer.

The truth is that you haven’t got the slightest clue. You tell her as much and try to explain it as best you can, and her eyes soften as you share the details. It’s supposed to be a back-and-forth—quid pro quo—but she’s pressing you with question after question: how long have you known her? Is she pretty? Where does she see you in all of this?

“You and her. Still a thing?”

Minju is on your side of the bar now, sitting by your side with little caution about personal space; there’s not an inch of space between you. Her thigh presses against you and her upper arm is flush with your own.

"Me and Wonyoung were never a thing, not really."

Minju stops dead and chokes, holding her throat, and forcing the drink down. Her whole body shifts. She nearly falls off the bar stool and, after steadying herself, she stares blankly forwards.

"Wonyoung? Jang Wonyoung?"

"Yeah, her." The new drink meets your lips and its taste is a hell of a lot richer than the cheap stuff you were pouring down. It’s laden with a smoky taste over sweet tones.

There's a silence even after you finish taking a drink. Something untold hangs in the air. You know it. She knows it. She's here on the verge of telling you something, but what? And you sit here and wait, despite the racing of your heartbeat.

"I should have known." Minju shakes her head, laughing, but without a smile.

"Should've known what?"

"You're Wonyoung's new toy. I should have guessed as soon as I saw you, she has this effect on people."

You stiffen at that. It's always the truth that hurts the most and the fact is you really were just a toy. A convenient dildo.

"You know what you need right now?" She twists on the stool, and suddenly, you've got Minju looking straight at you. Eyes locking with you. Right there. Looking up at you. So close. Right there, leaning back ever so slightly so her chest arches towards you, accentuating her small breasts, straining against her shirt.

"Drinking helps," you reply, raising your glass.

"Yes, but so does fucking."

That’s a line. It’s one that shouldn’t come as a surprise because a girl like this probably has a lot of experience in being wanted, so who is to say she can’t turn the table for once? But in one breath you’re giddy, taken out of yourself and feeling drunker by the moment. Not on the booze, but her. She is intoxicating.

It takes you a few seconds to notice but her free hand slips on your leg, rubbing and caressing as it snakes further and further up.

"What?" You ask as if it needs confirmation and in those long few moments, you think you must have imagined it. And the same way a nervous laughter rises, the laughter spilling out of your throat, she is quick to quench the growing dread inside of you by sliding her palm across your bulge.

"Wait here." Something has switched inside her. You don’t know what, but either way, it's got her standing up and strutting towards the door. With each step, she opens her body language. A growing swagger, letting you see the sway of her hips. Left and right. Just enough to catch the eye. And oh boy, does your eye get caught. You couldn't pull your gaze away now if you wanted to.

She's swiping hands at the door now and flicking the locks. Then she's pulling the blinds shut. A giggle comes from Minju as she spins back to face you. She runs her bottom lip through her teeth and stares right into you.

You feel exposed but, strangely, comfortable. It's so very odd; with no clue as to what happens next. It has your heart pounding out of your chest.

"I thought you were alone tonight because you were upset, but no, I understand it now. You're frustrated. Angry. Stressed. She used you and got away with it."

She kicks off her heels, loses a few centimetres in height, and is walking barefoot across the floor - toward you. Her shoulder rolls to one side and then to the other as her body rises and falls, sashays with the pace of her hips. She can see that you're stuck. You’re rooted to the seat with a dumb look on your face, and yet she saunters ever closer.

“I am a little confused,” you finally say. She's so close that all your senses are lost to the approach of Minju's swaying frame. Her curves, her body, her gentle steps, the way her perfume smells—it's consuming you.

She ignores you and continues, "I’m frustrated too. I'm so frustrated that I'm wasting time in this damn bar. I'm angry at all the auditions that ended up with producers rejecting me. I know exactly what you're feeling. You're angry at the world and everyone in it." Her tone grows raspier. More raw and less stable. "You feel alone. Hung out to dry and in need of attention."

"And you feel the same?"

"Yes, and I'm hungry. Starved of any real satisfaction. You told me I’m going nowhere and I guess it means I need a little attention, too."

You watch her eyes flittering as she looks you up and down. The sultry grin she wears shows she likes what she sees.

"So what are you going to do about it, Minju? What is the solution?" You drop a look down to the soft and slender flesh of her neck.

"No strings. We get this all out of our system." Minju leans in. Lips so close to yours. She stays there. It's torture. "You let all that shit out. Take out your pent-up stress, frustration, anger."

"On you?"

"Exactly. You'll feel better. I will too. Because right now…" Her nose presses against the side of your own. Soft skin. Gentle pressure. "I need it rough."

Her hand lands on your thigh again, rubbing down the denim of your jeans.

The offer is enticing. It has your head swimming with dirty images of everything the two of you could do together, and your cock? Well, that's already twitching in your underwear.

"This isn’t going to help, it will just make things worse."

"Can they really get any worse?"

Minju brings your hand, hers and yours, to her waist. Your thumb feels the soft material of her shirt, and your fingers touch that small patch of skin below it.

"Are we prepared to find out?" Your lips graze gently against hers. The thrill. The electricity in the air.

"I’m ready. More than ready. Just this once, do what you want to do and make me the star of your fantasy. Use me. Make me everything you need." She plants her lips firmly on yours. You both go quiet, muffled by a kiss.

Nothing to do but feel.

Minju's grip tightens on your leg, and yours on her waist. The other hand slides up to her chest, finding her breast, cupping it and feeling her. She opens her mouth. And you follow. Your tongues are colliding and sweeping across one another, eager and desperate.

So you push, guiding the two of you to stand. Minju staggers back, and you're with her every step of the way. Stumbling through a kiss. Hands everywhere. Uncertain. Lost, confused, and passionate. It's an incoherent tumble that takes you both crashing through chairs, pushing them aside until you hit something sturdy. Minju's ass slams against the pool table and she grunts into your mouth.

Her lips drag away and she smiles. "Fuck me."

You grab her by the hips, lifting her onto the pool table.

"I need to see the big cock that’s got Wony all worked up. She wouldn’t settle for anything disappointing." She's fumbling at your waist, struggling with the buckle of your jeans.

"This what you want?" Your words vibrate through her. And when you take a handful of her hair and tug, there's a long, soft, desperate sigh from Minju's parted lips.

"Use me. Abuse me." Her fumbling finally succeeds and the waist of your trousers slackens. "I know how I look, but don't worry, you're not going to break me."

She's pushing at your trousers, your boxers, and when that stiff dick pops out, her smile spreads into a big, stupid grin. It's not an unattractive expression—not really. It just tells the truth. She is excited.

It’s as clear as day that you are too. You’re rock hard, stiff as hell, ready to fuck, and this, this will give you the chance to let it all out. All of it.

"Perfect." Minju grabs your cock in both hands, still warm, throbbing, and strong. "Just look at this thing."

You pull on her hair again, harder, until she breaks away from you, until she gives way—losing the grip on your cock and falling back on the table. And now you slow as if to savour the moment as you’re sliding your fingers under the waist of her trousers. Not often you get afforded a measure of control.

"C’mon, please, don't be gentle," Minju moans out through gritted teeth. The desperation is painted on her face and that’s the difference here: while a girl like Wonyoung wouldn’t let you go slow, Minju is the type of girl who makes you not want to go slow.

So you pull at the trousers of the girl sprawling out in front of you, tearing the button from the fabric, yanking them open and pulling them down those long, slender legs. The flesh is soft. And to touch, so smooth and light. Minju's breathing picks up—becoming shorter and deeper with each touch to her sensitive skin.

"I might leave marks."

Minju stares you down, hands already massaging over her panties. "I hope you will."

The thought is intoxicating, so much more so than the alcohol in your blood, as your hands paw over her legs; you knead soft skin with a kind of aggression you haven't felt before.

Minju is a rare girl.

Beautiful. And by definition, beautiful women have seen it all before.

But her?

The look she gives? Like no man has ever fully satisfied the itch within her. It's deep-set hunger. The kind that she chases endlessly for.

This hunger makes people behave stupidly, careless and forgetful of the consequences. And maybe you know that all too well but even still it's a risk worth taking. Every choice has led you here and maybe that is your solace, that it's not all downhill from here.

And as your hands reach her small satin panties, the warmth embraces you, and the urge within you grows. You hook your fingers inside and draw the panties aside to expose the tight pink flesh of Minju's cunt.

Not that you would expect anything else, but she is clean-shaven. So smooth. Not a single blemish. This is a girl who kept herself neat and pristine, and yet from her mouth spills utter filth, "just look at how wet this pussy is for you."

She's running her fingers between her lips, showing you everything she has to offer between her legs, showing you where she expects you dick will get put to use.

"This tight fucking cunt can take everything your thick cock has to give."

"Minju, you’re so..." You're standing over her, her legs spread wide beside you, blazer falling from her shoulders leaving nothing covering her but that low-cut top.

Minju stares right at you, eyes fixed, wide and eager, her chest heaves with every deepening breath she takes in. She's wild, reaching for you with one hand, stretching to hold you and then pulling at your shirt to draw you in.

"I'm so needy. Please fuck me." She's whining through closed lips as her other hand slips away from her pussy and glides over her taut abs and leaving her cunt ready to be used. She wants it, desperately, and you're drawing it out. Making it build inside her, and you hold your cock in your hand.

You're stroking, and she's watching. And for all her strain to pull at your shirt, to pull you into her, you hold back. You hold just long enough. Enough for her arm to fall limp. Enough for her to almost give in. "Please..." she trails off with a whimper.

You push the head of your stiff cock against her cunt—against her clit. Your hips roll as you run the entire underside of your cock between her lips. She gasps and breathes deeply. She's holding it all the while. All the time it takes for you to draw your cock back, so the tip is right there. Ready.

She let's go as you do. The air escapes her lungs with a sharp squeal. You let your cock sink in. Slow but persistent, you push further and further, feeling her tensing. Then the clench and tightness overwhelms. She gasps and squirms, wriggles beneath you and her nails scratch at the fabric of the table beneath her.

You push again, sinking your cock as far as you can through her wet hole.

There's a loud snap and squeal from Minju. Pretty girl broke a nail. It flew off somewhere across the room, such is her grip onto the table. "Fuck. So fucking full," she manages, barely. It's more the noise you force from her than any actual communication.

You draw your hips back and she's quick to encourage you, "again," she says.

Your hips are driving forward again, pushing every last centimetre back through her.

Minju whimpers. There's this short, sweet purr from deep within her. You feel her stretch, she moves a little, adjusting herself atop the pool table. There's a warmth that swells, tightens, and pulsates. And you feel the breath come easier. It leaves her as though her body has settled to a kind of ease and pleasure, some form of satisfaction.

You refuse to let her rest. It's not what she would want.

It's not what you want.

You run your hands along her inner thighs, past her knees until you finally reach her ankles and pull them together and hold them aloft. You lift and pull her ass up slightly from the table. She's suspended now while you fuck into her.

The shake of her small frame is completely erotic. Watching her ass and thighs jiggle as you fuck into her. That plump little ass taking slap after slap from your hips.

Her perfect skin reddens as her moans louden the longer you last. There are high-pitched squeals and low and gritty growls. They bounce around the empty bar, reverberating and multiplying—echoing back louder than before.

"Harder." She thinks she can take more. Look, Wonyoung was demanding, she wanted to control everything and push your limits, but Minju? Minju is whole different type of demanding. She's welcoming everything you have with every fibre of her being. Her pussy so eagerly taking it all, and it just seems like no matter what limit you push past, or the more Minju takes, the more she craves.

You pull her legs to you, calves on your shoulders, feet in the air, and your hands move firmly onto her hips. You steady her—ready her. Your grip bruises the tender skin (hey, it's what she wants) and then you fuck her like your life depends on it. Your cock pumping inside with reckless abandon.

"Keep going! Just like that! Fuck!" her voice rises over the rhythm of your low grunts, and the crack of your hips slapping against her ass.

Minju's face twists, red and flushed. She's so tense. Muscles tight around the neck and her teeth buried in the soft flesh of her lower lip. Her voice is low and raw, growling, as she pleads for more with words you can't pretend to understand. It's not eloquent or graceful... In fact, it's that incoherence that makes this all the better—so utterly unbothered, unconcerned with anything other than being thoroughly used, fucked and defiled.

She has that hungry glaze in her eyes when you look down upon her, a girl being exactly the kind of filthy thing she promised to be. And those eyes only draw you in, you're pushing over her, folding her legs further against her body until she's truly helpless. Pinned to the table. Bent in two. No ability, nor want, to stop you from dominating her.

"I'm gonna—" she tries to speak until you press down, right into her. She squeezes your cock inside that tight, creaming hole. Then she whines, loud.

So loud.

Her back would arch high if it could. But she can't break free. You have her completely immobilized with your upper bodyweight. And fuck does she love every second of it. She's got handfuls of her shirt, pulling it, clutching, writhing. Ecstasy courses through her and eyes roll.

And now she's rolling, you're turning her. Ankles in your hands, you have pulled out and you're flipping her onto her front, face down into the table. She’s just… accepting it. Not an ounce of fight in her. Not even a word. Just a throaty moan.

"Be a good girl for me, won’t you?” you’re ordering, “give me your hands.”

She reaches her arms back over her subdued body and lets you take her delicate wrists.

She submits.

Just lying there prone, her delicate body against the table, with that tight little ass perched on the edge of it, and that skimpy underwear still pushed aside for her throbbing cunt. Those slender legs left hanging either side of you. And go on, you're allowed to think it in the simplest of terms; Minju is sexy. In a word, that's it. Sexy. And yet, the reality is there's so much more you can say. Every soft curve of her toned body is alluring, she is magnetic and inviting, and that cute face peering over her shoulder, long hair spilled all behind it. All the words in the world couldn't do justice to describe her—couldn't properly capture the image.

"What are you going to do to me, daddy?" Oh, she says it so seamlessly, slips it in like it's been on her lips for a while - floating in the atmosphere since you took control. And now that it's finally landed, you feel its weight. It has her voice different; smokey and dripping with sex. And it hits you straight between your legs.

She licks her lips and tests it out again, just for good measure: "what does daddy think I deserve?"

One hand holding her wrists against the small of her back, another gripping her hip. Her legs sway lazily, unable to reach the floor. Helplessly dangling, waiting for her fate. And you're not a man to disappoint a girl like Minju.

"I'm going to use the needy little slut in front of me," you say as the head of your stiff cock probes at her cunt, slipping between her wet lips and sliding against her swollen clit. Teasing her.

You draw it back up again and pushing apart her ass cheeks with the length of your cock. Slipping under the thin fabric of her soaked panties.

She bites her lower lip and whimpers through her teeth. The head of your wet cock slides against her tight asshole, and her hips twitch back. "Whatever you need, take it from me." She means that. There's yearning in every word. The hunger and desire in her voice growing thicker.

You push against her, cock sandwiched between her cheeks, pushing your weight down and pressing her against the table. Her eyes close for a moment, her fingers curl into her palms.

"Yes. Fuck," Minju's desperate encouragement spills through clenched teeth.

You pull back your cock and replace it with your thumb, sliding your hand over her ass and slipping it against her puckered hole.

"Please da—" You slip the tip of your thumb just inside her ass and hold it there while she holds her breath.

Anticipation—

Waiting—

Knowing what's coming next.

Minju is completely still as you drive your cock into her cunt again. Sinking yourself in so deep—balls deep. Her hands become tight fists and her whole body is shaking. You withdraw and plunge again, and she hisses, breathing from the bottom of her lungs, ragged and shallow, and fighting to speak.

"I'm a dirty, needy, little slut and you’re going to use me—"

You spit at her spread ass, right onto your thumb, and use it to dig a little deeper. "What are you?" your question provokes an instant answer,

"I'm a horny slut. I'm a fuck-hole. That's what I am."

As if it's a reward for her honesty, you fuck her a little harder. Push your thumb a little deeper. She smiles through a howl of ecstasy, the sound swelling into the room.

"Tell me again," you command with another pump of your hips, stretching her even more with your thumb.

Her words crackle, dying in her throat with each impact of your hips, "I'm just a dumb girl who needs to be full of cum."

No sane man would refuse it. Not you, not anyone. Definitely not you at all. You couldn't resist any part of her, but especially not that filthy demand. Especially not with how you felt watching those gorgeous fucking curves ripple every time your hips slapped against her ass.

It's all so easy, how you continue, keeping pace. Thumb deep in her ass. Balls smacking against her soaked pussy with every thrust. It's a pleasure all too overwhelming—a thrill, a sensation, a powerful sense of utter fucking satisfaction and all-consuming desire—an erotic overflow inundates, a swell, an ever-growing crest inside your balls.

"Minju. I'm. Gonna—"

"Cum in me? Please." She's the hallmark of innocence-gone-wrong; the way such words roll off her tongue with playful ease. And she knows all the right ones. The ones that she knows will bring all the right reactions. To speak to you on a primal level. She's at it again, cutting into you, "Inside— Inside me."

Cutting through you like the blade of a knife, right to your core and you obey—fuck.

"Daddy please."

You're incensed.

Dogged with the pounding you're giving her, you have lost control of just how deep you have your thumb in her ass. This is so Indecent. Obscene, even. For you, or for anyone, to just... enjoy something like this. Your body is roaring with lust as her ass and cunt both squeeze on you, clamping you as you drive yourself to the brink.

"I wanna... feel your hot load," her voice comes shaking through the unabated pounding you're inflicting. "Fill me please," she's begging and it sounds a little clearer now, stronger, a little louder, no doubt because she knows it's almost done.

You tug at her wrists, pulling her arms back and her body away from the table. Her head hangs forward beneath a wave of hair. Face covered by sweat streaks across those pretty sculpted features.

"Please, I'll be a good girl and take every drop. All the fucking cum that daddy has. Make me your stupid dirty little slut," she compels, then yelps with every new slam and stroke of the stiff cock being buried into her again and again.

That tight asshole, and that cock-hugging pussy. All the relentless slamming that you have done and will do. All the desires, with the pent-up frustration, the rage and anger and tension that has built up—you release it. Everything goes as you send your load rushing through your cock to paint her insides.

Pushing everything you have in. Pumping. Driving hard.

Her squeals are like music to the soul. Relief and rapture are overflowing. And fuck. What a ride. What a rush. You pump her full until she's gasping for air, struggling in your grasp and making sure to moan each and every dirty word into the atmosphere as she fights to hold on. What a thrill. And as the two of you hit the limits of physical exhaustion and exhilaration, you pull back. Letting the girl lay there, spent, and filled, on the pool table.

Used.

Satisfied.

Sullied.

Minju to you, today, is a feeling of freedom. Fulfilment. Absolution. As she lay limp, arms out, legs hanging, hair draped over her face and pooling on the table—a girl well fucked and on display. She is satisfaction. And she is dripping with your cum.

She slips her fingers under her panties. That shrivelled piece of fabric that clings, or struggles to. Now she pushes them off her hips and they tumble over her feet.

When this beautiful girl speaks her voice has the distinct scratch of someone whose lungs have had the oxygen stolen from them, her throat sore with moaning, "I need more."

She moves to her back and you can only watch in amazement as she turns to you with that flush face. One of her small, delicate hands falling between her legs and her dainty fingers tracing around her cunt—through her pink folds, and dousing them in your leaking cum.

There's a knock at the door. It rattles in the frame. "Open up!" It's the voice of the young man seeking an afternoon drink. You think that, luckily, hopefully, between the blinds, the posters and the neon lights in the windows along with the dim lighting, he can't see in.

"Fuck off!" Minju shouts. Her chest is heaving, and there are the gentle lulls of a giggle welling in her throat.

You notice she hasn't moved the fingers away from her swollen and sticky cunt. There's a building cackle, almost as if she is going to fall into hysterics.

"Let me in! You should be open!"

"I said fuck off!" Minju's climbing from the table with a wild smile on her face. Cum is trailing from her cunt, pooling, oozing, dripping down her thigh, down her leg. Her tongue slides over her lips, she's eying you up like a tiger.

"I want to ride your thick cock." She's breathing the words out heavy and finally pulling that shirt over her head. Small round breasts exposed. Stiff dark nipples. Hard and taught. That bare torso. Tight and tone. Firm and solid. Every muscle defined under glistening, sweaty skin.

She pushes herself against you until you push between a pair of stools and your ass plants against the bar. "You made me a dirty girl, and now I can't stop."

You find her strength a little unnerving, the way seems so unphased and determined. She's running on pure adrenaline. It's hot, sure, a kind of raw passion is certainly not without appeal, but also maybe a touch too overpowering. The way that she grabs at you, a touch forceful, and the way you come together is perhaps too rough and less than elegant.

So unkempt, un-romantic, yet so insanely gratifying as her soft skin finds yours.

You take her body in your arms, lips on one another, exploring mouths with tongues. Grasping the round cheek of her ass as she lifts her left thigh up to your waist. Hand trailing between the two of you and then grabbing a firm hold of your cock, guiding the thing back to her pussy—and not letting go.

This is it. This is where she belongs.

It’s all so natural for her to be on the end of your cock, so much so that she can casually pull away from the kiss to switch her focus to finding a drink on the bar behind you. She’s taking a drink of it now and some of it spills from the corner of her mouth.There is something undignified in that, but utterly perfect nonetheless.

She's grinding against you now, swirling her hips and cooing like a little kitten, as your hands move over her ass and that silken smooth back.

Minju sets the empty glass back down on the bar, and pulls back to meet your eyes. She presses a finger to her tongue, her eyes gleaming and focused solely on you, as she guides a small, playful trail of drool to run over her glistening tits. "Fuck," she breathes through a grin, taking both her hands and smoothing that drool over her chest.

Another knock at the door. Another fist pounded into its frame.

All these fucking interruptions.

"Ugh! Fuck this. Come on, follow me." And before you know it, she's guiding you across the room. "I'm going to ride you until I can't walk. Until I'm so sore that every step will remind me what it felt like to have you deep inside me."

Your phone rings, on the floor in the pocket of your trousers. Who would call right now? Just as one interruption finally concedes at the door, another emerges.

Minju bends to fish it out of your trousers. Her little ass, one cheek marred with a handprint from your grasp, is so close you could bend forward and eat it (any other time, you would.) but it's not that which intrigues you the most. When she rises, slowly, your phone is in her grasp, screen displaying Wonyoung's name.

"This should be fun," Minju chuckles to herself. She swipes the answer button and raises the device to her ear. "Hello?"

Minju reaches out to hold your hand and pulls you toward the staff only door. "Sorry, he's a little busy right now," she says as she walks through the door with you in tow. Her head pivots. Minju stares, eyes boring deep into yours. That sultry expression. The spark of desire igniting all over again.

Minju turns on her heel, letting you go and taking a step back. Thin fingers stroke over her cum-soaked thigh, up and along her wet lips, higher and past her flat stomach, sliding between her firm tits. "He is really busy."

She points at the couch in the break room, gesturing you to sit. You oblige, a little nervous about the turn of events. She's rubbing at her perky little tits as she speaks, "do you want me to take a message?"

"Minju..." you say with warning, ready to take the phone off her. But it's so hard to ignore how utterly sexy she is, and your hand starts to stroke along your shaft. She turns her body and poses, looking over her shoulder to you, and she grins. Minju affords you all the time you need to admire her while she listens to the ramblings of Wonyoung through your phone.

Minju steps toward you, looking down at you. "You need to speak to him?" She rests a hand on your shoulder, and then she clambers over you, straddles you. Her leaking cunt right above your cock. She licks her lips and rubs her slick pussy over your stiff dick, eyes focused on you, head tilted down. "Give me one second."

She holds the phone against her collar and shifts above you, resting the tip of your cock against her hole.

"Minju, let me—"

She sinks onto your cock.

Inch by pleasurable inch, she takes you. Minju rocks forward and adjusts to settle on the length of your rod. Fully hilted and stuffed. She's a slick sheath of velvet on your stiff rod and you realise then just how perfectly she fits on you. You bite your tongue, trying to not make a noise so you don't alert the woman on the other end of the phone. Minju, however, is careless, and she lets out a soft moan as she shifts on you, readying herself.

Cum still seeps out of her cunt and down your shaft—your own and hers in some messy cocktail. The smell is sharp but unmistakable. It hangs in the air as the unmistakable evidence of what has happened and what will happen again. It’s so potent; invigorating and exciting. A reminder of everything and more, as if you would ever forget it—as if you could ever forget what she has become for you.

Minju draws the phone back to her face and, with a cocky smirk parting her lips, she speaks again, her voice breathy and full of lust.

"He's in a bit of a tight spot right now." She throws you a wink and continues, "give him ten—wait, no—give him fifteen minutes and whatever is left of him is all yours."

There's the sound of a voice coming through the phone, so unmistakably Wonyoung's but you can't make a word of it out. There's another sound, one much dirtier, that fills the air between the two of you. The soft squelching as Minju rocks and rotates those full hips on you.

"Sorry, what was that?" Minju is stifling a giggle and not-really trying to keep the naughtiness of the situation in check. "Yeah, Wonyoung,you’re right. It's me, Minju," she purrs, biting her lip as her eyes fix on you. Then her tongue flits from her lips, sweeping from left to right.

‘It's me, Minju.’

Look, it’s not really a surprise that they know each other well. It was always a possibility that Minju had just heard of Wonyoung but had never really been acquainted. Thinking back, however, the strength of her reaction to the girl’s name should have told you everything. The truth is now ever so clear.

Not that Minju is going to let you process it. She will not allow you to focus on anything other than the caress of her pussy over your sensitive cock. She's elegant with the movements of her hips—the motions subtle and slow. Her pace is sinful. She's running her tongue over her teeth and staring at you, enjoying the quiet grunts that rattle from your throat.

"He showed up in—" Her breath hitches and she catches a moan in her throat before it escapes. "In the bar, drinking alone."

There's a gasp, then another as she strokes her hands through the locks of your hair. "Yeah. He was doing that." She's laughing under her breath and looking you up and down. "That thing with his hand, yeah, it's cute."

“What? No. I wouldn’t.” You’re getting half a conversation and none of it makes any sense.

She reaches out her hand to the side of your face, thumb brushing the line of your jaw and her body leaning in. "He's got a sexy jaw line," she admits and then picks up the speed of her movement.

Her hand slides down your neck and presses into your collar. "His body?" Minju hums as her hips are churning; her body is rolling and her abs are flexing. "Yeah, I think so too."

Minju's back arches and her tiny tits bounce as her movement changes, bouncing rhythmically on your cock. She's adjusting and getting more comfortable on you. As the seconds pass, she's getting rougher and moving ever faster.

Fuck.

"Well, he's drunk, so it's no surprise."

It's been no end of strange situations over the past couple of months, but this may well be the strangest yet. The girls are having a friendly conversation, but one is on top of a cock that's dripping with her mess.You're still trying to piece it together. They're friends—that much is clear. But there's still so many questions unasked: How? Since when? And why are they having their catch up right fucking now?

Her delicate frame moves fast now and the rise and fall of her chest growing sharper leading to short breaths.

"Mhm," she utters, keeping her voice low and words at a premium. "N—No we aren't." To give her credit, she's actually very good at sounding natural. In some twisted way, it's one hell of an audition for how talented of actress she can actually be.

But that image comes crumbling down before your eyes.

Just for a moment, the picture freezes. Her mouth is half-open, eyes wide. She bites down on her lip, silencing herself, and then she drops her hand from her ear. She's hitting her fist, clenched around the phone, against her thigh repeatedly as she fights against her own body. There's another choked grunt as she is being pushed ever so close to the edge.

She draws the phone to her face again, breathing in deep and staring at you with those glossy eyes scanning all across your body, and she swallows.

"We aren't fucking," Minju denies, as your hands creep up from her slender thighs, sliding over those beautiful taut hips, gripping tight and helping pull her back and forth. It's clear, from the way she bites down on her bottom lip, the subtle trembling of her chin, she's hanging on by a thread, ready to lose it at any second.

"No. Don't—" Minju holds the phone out, and she’s looking at it—you can see it too—Wonyoung has just ended the call. "Ah fuck it." Minju throws the phone down on the couch.

She looks at you with a face that's a little lost in thought, considering things unknown to you. All while her body is on auto-pilot, still fucking down onto you.

After a moment, her face changes, an expression of indifference, of calmness. She smiles a little and rests both of her hands on your shoulders. Staring deep into your eyes, she grows ever more serious with a tinge of intent. She shifts from auto-pilot to manual, tightening the grip with her legs and slowing the pace, but fucking you harder.

Minju rides the ridge of your cock. Your whole length is dragged up and down her insides, setting every inch of you on fire. She moans every time she slams onto you.

Every time.

She's falling further apart in front of you—coming completely undone. Eyes rolling and biting that lip again. Hips shifting in all kinds of directions. A cacophony of beautiful grunting sounds that flood the room.

Minju is a woman derailed by pleasure.

"God. Your cock— Your cock is—" She's struggling now and you're only going to make it worse. Using the hands on her hips, you buck yourself up into her, bringing yourself a fraction closer each time.

"The things this cock— the things you— fuck." Minju has no power to string any kind of sentences together, no matter how many words you force from her. They grow less and less like words you can understand until all that remains are these loud and unashamed gasps.

Gasp after sharp and unstoppable gasp.

The rush of exhilaration courses through her, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. She feels it. All over. It's written on her face, in the way that she moves and in the look in her eyes. A look like that is a hard thing to fake, even for her—there's nothing else like it. Minju is cumming all over your cock and every bit of it is evident in every tense muscle, the quiver in the corner of her mouth, the sheen across her brow, the mist in her eyes as she blinks lazily and tries not to be overcome, overawed, with emotion and all the intense sensations, one wave after another, rippling through her.

You're just about there again too. You try to warn her, but you're fucking up into her with so much energy that you're not sure if the words ever left your mouth. But she knows it, somehow, because she has renewed aggression in her. Even through her orgasm, she's bouncing on your cock with such ferocity. Minju takes hold of your head and draws you into her. Nose to nose. Foreheads touch. "Cum in me again."

They're four of the best words she could have said.

She rides you faster still as you pump rope after hot rope into her cunt, your entire length filling her already overflowing cunt. You cum so hard inside her that the world seems to distort, twist, and wane.

"Yes! Yes!" she shouts in a whisper—her voice stolen by pleasure. "Fill my little pussy."

And with every last ounce of strength you have, you continue. Bucking into her, driving deeper with the last throes of your second load. It's too much. It's beyond pleasure and into pain now, as you have nothing left to give her.

You squeeze at her hips and waist, holding her down and doing everything you can to stop her fucking you.

You're panting. Tired. Done.

Done.

Minju raises herself just enough to slip that ruined and swollen cockhead from the depth of her. You watch as your combined fluids flow out of her onto your leg.

All that filth, a dirty combination of the two of you. Two loads of your cum drained into that one pretty pussy.

Minju is stroking a hand up your stomach, your chest, along your neck and jawline. Across your face and to your chin, so slowly, as if memorising your features.

You watch her body, so fucking perfect, flexing and trembling still and her breasts heave beneath sweat and exertion. Her breath is so ragged that a chuckle emerges between the hard, deep inhales and exhales. She's sweating, perspiration painting her body and strands of long hair matted to her head. So beautiful. Always so fucking beautiful.

She looks into your eyes, studying, thinking. "You feel better now," her voice has returned to the softness of before, low and sultry. "Don't you?"

With a smile, your hands move again, wandering further up. They snake their way around her slender waist. There's something strange, something new, about how they explore her—before, you were quick to set them and demand control. But not now. Now, it's tender and grateful and you have a slow, searching rhythm to the touches that skim the skin across her skin.

"Yeah." It's honest. You do. She has done her magic, she has restored the balance, and the release has cleared a space within the self, within the mind. You stare back into her gaze, "thank you."

"No." Minju brings her head forward, her face almost colliding with yours. "Thank you. This is exactly what I needed, I really—" She bites down on her lips and hesitates. She pauses for a second before she begins to move herself off you. Standing up straight, wobbling for a moment on the spot before stepping off and the sticky remains of your fucking cling to her inner thighs, glistening on the flesh, thick and trailing down from her hole.

She stares at you for a moment in some profound silence. You sit on the couch, on that musty old fabric, fully spent and staring. She's searching for something, eyes drifting over the room until it catches her eye, and she heads right for it.

You find the strength to stand and as you do, you’re still watching the sway of her body—noticing each bounce of her perfectly formed butt. Your eyes linger, appreciating the body that was given to you, enjoyed by you, and that gave so much to you. Your strength slowly builds from within, your legs are sore, your stomach and core are aching, your lungs feel crushed.

She's fumbling around on the table for something, she's leaning over slightly, her thighs pressed together. She wears sex like a crown—the pride, confidence, and accomplishment manifesting in her natural glow. Minju radiates. There's always something so electric about a woman in the post coital haze.

"You smoke?" she asks.

"No."

"You should," she says as she turns, fishing one out of the pack and perching herself on the edge of the table, crossing over her legs. "Makes you less nervous. You might need it."

There's an elegance in the way she slips the filter between her lips. An attractiveness in the casual way that she places the box down. With practiced poise, she flicks her wrist with lighter in hand so it flips open and her thumb runs against the sparkwheel. Once, twice, and on the third go the light takes and the flame holds steady. Minju lights the end of the cigarette and leans in, taking a deep draw and holding it.

It's mesmerising to watch. The way her mouth closes around the stick, how the soft glow dances upon her features. A darkness in the hollows of her cheeks as the smoke fills within, while she flicks the lighter back closed and slides it on the table.

Minju tilts her head back as her lungs empty, billows and tendrils escape into the room.

In the silence, you've had some realisation.

Minju is cool.

Like— really cool.

So you stand naked, facing her, in the breakroom of the bar she... works in? Owns? Hell, you don't even know that. Doesn't matter. And you finally ask her, "how do you know Wonyoung?"

For a long moment she just smiles, blowing smoke towards you, teasing with silence.

"We go way back," she says, and that is hardly the complete answer that you've hoped for.

Eventually, she offers more. "High school. We were friends." Minju studies the cigarette, eyeing the burning stub. "Guess you could say we were closer than that. Fuck. If not for—"

Silence.

And yet you wait.

"Well, there was this boy," she continues eventually, offering a soft and resigned smile. "My crush, and then my boyfriend. He was my first. First kiss, first date. First—" Minju looks over to the wall and inhales hard on the cigarette again. She breathes in slowly and you watch the small ember dance, the edges turning amber and glowing bright before she brings the cigarette down and flicks ash in the tray.

"What happened?" you ask, taking a seat alongside her on the table, pushing a cup aside to make space. It's not exactly hygienic, but nothing the two of you just did was.

"Wonyoung happened. Right before we left school, he left me for her and he thought he had a chance, but, well, you know Wonyoung. She's unattainable."

"You blame her?"

"Fuck no. But it didn't exactly bring us closer. He left me for her, she rejected him. What a mess."

There is always something when Wonyoung is in the picture, a messy little tangled web, something hidden behind those silky smiles. She's the reason for many lost loves and many lonely nights. You take a pause to appreciate that fact—to see what's really at the core. She’s the common denominator. Wonyoung—the arrogant heartbreaker.

"So what was all that about? On the phone?" you ask, trying to make some sense of it all.

Minju laughs aloud, tilting her head back and blowing smoke up towards the ceiling. She holds her cigarette between her slim fingers and rests her other hand on your thigh. "I wanted to play with her a little. I wanted her to know. Because well, and no offense, but you’re one of her possessions. She basically owns you. Don't get me wrong, it's kinda hot, but I wanted to see how she would react."

"So you teased her."

"Pretty much."

She laughs a little. There is some spark in her eye, born out of childish fun.

"Don't think she cares," you shrug.

You both turn toward the door that leads back into the bar. You both heard it. Out there. The knock against the front door of the bar.

Minju turns to you, crushing her cigarette into the ashtray beside her. There's a smirk on her lips and amusement in her eyes. In that look alone, there's a lot to unpack; there's an air of knowing, a glimmer of deviousness, and something else lurking beneath the surface.

"Then why is she knocking on the door?"

Next Part

#minju smut #minju x reader #izone smut #kim minju smut #kpop smut #male reader #m reader #wonyoung smut

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blondephil · 6 months

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hello (one of the) resident phannie data analyst(s) here with some parasocial stats on dnp’s movie tastes! following: distribution of dan and phil's ratings overall, movies they each rated 5 stars, their lowest-rated movies, and the similarities + differences in their tastes

(lore moment: yes i am a data analyst in my real job. yes i surprised myself with wanting to do this in my spare time. but then i remembered when we read dracula in college (yes i was an english major) and i graphed like, how many times dracula was referred to as vampire versus monster or something. so i shouldn’t be surprised.

first up, their overall rating patterns and by ~special status~ (i.e., wall-e, kill bill, avatar, lmao, plus big hero 6 for the fun of it)

dan’s rated 304 movies and phil’s rated 305. both of them have mean and median ratings of 4 with min 1 and max 5.

both rated kill bill vols. 1 and 2 a 5. wall-e got a 4.5 from dan and a 4 from phil (phake phans). both gave avatar a 3.5. and big hero 6 3.5 (dan) and 4.5 (phil)

rating distribution:

i did analyses here by genre but i need to fix the output (i’m writing all of these based on the markdown document from my phone on the subway, but i need to fix the outputs and i don’t have my computer. so those are pending but there are other genre analyses that i could do & haven’t yet!)

while i was sorting through the data i got the impression that dan overall rated movies higher than phil. so, among movies that they've both rated, here's some information

number of movies dan rated higher than phil: 65

Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Return of the Jedi, My Neighbor Totoro, Back to the Future II, Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story, Phantom Mence, Donnie Darko, Attack of the Clones, Finding Nemo, Oldboy, The Notebook, Batman Begins, Brokeback Mountain, WALL-E, (500) Days of Summer, Up, The Hangover, Drive, The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Life of Pi, Skyfall, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Whiplash, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Room, The Hateful Eight, The Force Awakens, Manchester by the Sea, Deadpool, La La Land, Moonlight, Rogue One, Call Me By Your Name, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2., Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, I, Tonya, Thor: Ragnorak, Phantom Thread, Roma, The Favourite, The Lighthouse, Toy Story 4, Midsommar, Ad Astra, Knives Out, Soul, The Green Knight, No Time to Die, Don't Look Up, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Turning Red, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, Glass Onion, Beau is Afraid, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Poor Things

number of movies phil rated higher than dan: 55

Star Wars (New Hope), Blair Witch Project, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Ocean's Eleven, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moonrise Kingdom, Iron Man 3, Gravity, Prisoners, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Imitation Game, Nightcrawler, John Wick, Gone Girl, Big Hero 6, Jurassic World, The Martian, The Revenant, Nocturnal Animals, Split, Get Out, Baby Driver, The Disaster Artist, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, The Greatest Showman, The Last Jedi, Ready Player One, Crazy Rich Asians, A Star is Born, Rocketman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Joker, The Rise of Skywalker, The Invisible Man, A Quiet Place Part II, Greenland, Tenet, Malignant, Eternals, The Matrix Resurrections, Scream (2022), Nope, Prey, Talk to Me, Avatar: The Way of the Water, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

number of movies they rated the same: 99!

Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Se7en, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Spider-Man, Lost in Translation, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Mean Girls, Howl's Moving Castle, Children of Men, The Dark Knight, Pontypool, Inglourious Basterds, Avatar, Toy Story 3, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Black Swan, The Social Network, 21 Jump Street, The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook, The Conjuring, Snowpiercer, Her, Thor: The Dark World, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Boyhood, It Follows, Guardians of the Galaxy, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Interstellar, Ex Machina, The Witch, Avengers: The Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Your Name., Arrival, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, mother!, It, Blade Runner 2049, Hereditary, Black Panther, Annihilation, A Quiet Place, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, Us, Avengers: Endgame, Parasite, It Chapter Two, Marriage Story, Uncut Gems, 1917, Black Widow, The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, Last Night in Soho, The Batman (2022), Everything Everywhere All at Once, X, The Northman, Top Gun: Maverick, Bullet Train, Barbarian, Pearl, M3GAN, Dungeons and Dragongs: Honor Among Thieves, Evil Dead Rise, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., No Hard Feelings, Saltburn, Priscilla, Society of the Snow, Saw X, Leave the World Behind

i didn't analyse this by genre or anything, but i could -- so if you're interested lmk!

the 5 movies with the most different ratings between dan and phil

- Iron Man 2 (dan: 2, phil 3.5)

- The Greatest Showman (d: 2.5, p: 4)

- Malignant (d: 3, p: 4.5)

- Scream (2022) (d: 2.5, p: 4)

- Beau is Afraid (d: 3, p: 1.5)

Interesting that even though dan has more higher rated movies, 4/5 of these ones phil rated higher.

next, their 5-star movies

dan's five stars: 80

Alien, Empire Strikes Back, ET, Blade Runner, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Stand by Me, The Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Back to the Future II, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Jurassic Park, Nightmare Before Christmas, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Toy Story, Fargo, Scream, The Fifth Element, Hercules, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Fight Club, Magnolia, The Emperor's New Groove, Donnie Darko, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Finding Nemo, Kill Bill, Oldboy, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Shaun of the Dead, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, Revenge of the Sith, Brokeback Mountain, No Country for Old Men, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Tree of Life, 21 Jump Street, The Avengers, Life of Pi, Skyfall, Under the Skin, Whiplash, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful Eight, La La Land, Arrival, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, First Man, The Favourite, The Lighthouse, Parasite, Midsommar, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Oppenheimer, Poor Things

phil's five stars:

Star Wars (New Hope), Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 21 Jump Street, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Arrival, Dunkirk, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, Parasite, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Little Miss Sunshine

overlap: 39

Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 21 Jump Street, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, Arrival, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, Parasite, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick

& their lowest rated movies...

dan: matrix resurrections (1) , thor: the dark world (1.5), the rise of skywalker (1.5)

phil: crimes of the future (1), attack of the clones (1.5), thor: the dark world (1.5), don’t look up (1.5), the matrix resurrections (1.5), doctor strange in the multiverse of madness (1.5), beau is afraid (1.5), black bear (1.5)

not even chris hemsworth could save thor the dark world, i guess (kat dennings, though…)

movies they logged on the same date:

note that this is like, non-exhaustive, because this is only based on their diaries that list the date. i think in reality they've watched most of these movies together. frequently dan logged a couple days after phil which aren’t shown here. procrastination queen

Pontypool, Eternals, The Northman, Nope, Barbarian, The Banshees of Inisherin, Glass Onion, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Beau is Afraid, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Saltburn, Poor Things, Priscilla, Saw X, Leave the World Behind

movies that one logged and not the other:

dan but not phil: 85

The Exorcist, Stand by Me, The Grave of the Fireflies, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Home Alone 2, Schindler's List, Fargo, Romeo & Juliet, Hercules, Men in Black, Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Mummy, The 13th Warrior, Fight Club, The Emperor's New Groove, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Legally Blonde, Monsters, Inc, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Scooby-Doo, 28 Days Later, Matrix Reloaded, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, School of Rock, Matrix Revolutions, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Revenge of the Sith, The Devil Wears Prada, Borat, Casino Royale, No Country for Old Men, Death Proof, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, There Will Be Blood, Tropic Thunder, Slumdog Millionaire, Moon, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The King's Speech, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Tree of Life, X-Men: First Class, Prometheus, Argo, Les Miserables, Django Unchained, World War Z, Pacific Rim, Under the Skin, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Babadook, The Lego Movie, x-Men: Days of Future Past, 22 Jump Street, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Theory of Everything, Green Room, Sicario, Spotlight, The Big Short, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Conjuring 2, Train to Busan, Hacksaw Ridge, Doctor Strange, Hidden Figures, Logan, You Were Never Really Here, Game Night, Isle of Dogs, First Man, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Suspiria, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Glass, Hustlers, Pig, Violent Night

phil but not dan: 86

Jaws, The Terminator, Beetlejuice, Die Hard, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Groundhog Day, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon: The Professional, The Usual Suspects, The Frighteners, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Green Mile, Gladiator, Catch Me if You Can, Elf, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, The Prestige, Zodiac, Spider-Man 3, Iron Man, Juno, Lake Mungo, Twilight, Zombieland, Kick-Ass, Brave, Evil Dead, The Great Gatsby, Now You See Me, Monsters University, Man of Steel, About Time, Dallas Buyers Club, Edge of Tomorrow, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The Boy, Raw, Finding Dory, Suicide Squad, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, John Wick: Chapter 2, Lady Bird, The Ritual, Happy Death Day, Deadpool 2, Ocean's 8, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Bird Box, Booksmart, Crawl, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Platform, Black Bear, Palm Springs, The Empty Man, The Innocents, Titane, Old, Free Guy, The Black Phone, Fresh, Watcher, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Ambulance, Aftersun, Crimes of the Future, Fall, Bones and All, The Menu, Sanctuary, Do Revenge, Smile, Hellraiser (2022), Mr. Harrigan's Phone, Plane, Missing, Infinity Pool, Past Lives, Knock at the Cabin, Scream VI

i’m interested to see how this varies by genre!

miscellaneous non-statistical things that made me parasocially emotional and/or laugh during this process:

they watched nope together on christmas eve 2022 <3

dan rated moulin rouge a 5 <3 nature boy <3

he also rated shrek a 5. of course. (valid).

4.5 from dan and 4 from phil from the notebook

5 from danny for brokeback mountain <3 and a 4.5 from philly

cmbyn, yes, has its issues, but dan rated 4.5 and phil 4

the shape of water got a 4.5 from monsterfucker phil lester (dan gave it a 4)

surprisingly phil rated rocketman higher than dan! surprising because dan liked so many musicals

dan gave hustlers a 3.5. i don't know why i think this is funny, but i do. phil doesn't have it logged or rated, lmao.

a 4 (d) and a 3.5 (p) for barbie!

phil gave twilight a 3. lol.

phil also gave do revenge only a 3.5. tragique.

phil watched a LOT of horror alone in october 2022 (aka while dan was on tour). anyway he's just like me <3

#dan and phil #dnp #phan #dan howell #phil lester #twitter says letterboxd should have been gatekept i say 1) know your phannie history! 2) this is nothing their usernames are so obvious you #think they didn’t know this would be found? be fr!

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turnstileskyline · 9 months

Text

The Oral History of Take This To Your Grave – transcription under the cut

The pages that are just photographs, I haven't included. This post is already long enough.

Things that happened in 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Teen Vogue published its first issue. The world lost Johnny Cash. Johnny Depp appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow for the first time. A third Lord of the Rings movie arrived. Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley released Take This To Your Grave.

"About 21 years ago or so, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop-punk side project of what we assumed was Pete's more serious band, Arma Angelus," Patrick wrote in a May 2023 social media post.

"We were sloppy and couldn't solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it."

"We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would eventually become Evening Out With Your Girlfriend and tactfully said, 'What do you think your best instrument is, Patrick? Drums. It's drums. Probably not singing, Patrick.'"

"We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O'Keefe... So, there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who'd only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean at Butch Vig's legendary studio.

"Eight or so months later, Fueled by Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We'd sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next three years, and somehow despite that, eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn't made it to the session and Joe hadn't dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band."

Two decades after its release, Take This To Your Grave sits comfortable in the Top 10 of Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums, edging out landmark records from Buzzcocks, Generation X, Green Day, The Offspring, Blink-182, and The Ramones.

It even ranked higher than Through Being Cool by Saves The Day and Jersey's Best Dancers from Lifetime, two records the guys in Fall Out Boy particularly revere.

Fall Out Boy's proper full-length debut on Fueled by Ramen is a deceptively smart, sugar-sweet, raw, energetic masterpiece owing as much to the bass player's pop culture passions, the singers deep love of R&B and soul, and their shared history in the hardcore scene as any pioneering punk band. Fall Out Boy's creative and commercial heights were still ahead, but Take This To Your Grave kicked it off, a harbinger for the enduring songwriting partnership between Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz, the eclectic contributions from Joe Trohman, and the propulsive powerhouse that is Andy Hurley.

The recordings document a special moment when Fall Out Boy was big in "the scene" but a "secret" from the mainstream. The band (and some of their friends) first sat down for an Oral History (which doubled as an Oral History of their origin story) with their old friend Ryan J. Downey, then Senior Editor for Alternative Press, upon the occasion of the album's 10th anniversary. What follows is an updated, sharper, and expanded version of that story, newly re-edited in 2023. As Patrick eloquently said: "Happy 20th birthday, Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record."

– Ryan J. Downey.

A Weird, Brilliant Lightning Strike Of A Record. The Oral History Of Fall Out Boy's Take This To Your Grave.

As told by:

Patrick Stump

Pete Wentz

Joe Trohman

Andy Hurley

Bob McLynn - Crush Music

Sean O'Keefe - Producer/Mixer

John Janick - Fueled By Ramen

Tim McIlrath - Rise Against

Mani Mostofi - Racetraitor

Chris Gutierrez - Arma Angelus

Mark Rose - Spitalfield

Sean Muttaqi - Uprising Records

Rory Felton - The Militia Group

Richard Reines - Drive-Thru Records

"To Feel No More Bitterness Forever" - From Hardcore to Softcore, 1998-2000

PETE WENTZ: When I got into hardcore, it was about discovering the world beyond yourself. There was a culture of trying to be a better person. That was part of what was so alluring about hardcore and punk for me. But for whatever reason, it shifted. Maybe this was just in Chicago, but it became less about the thought process behind it and more about moshing and breakdowns. There was a close-mindedness that felt very reactive.

TIM MCILRITH: I saw First Born many years ago, which was the first time I saw Pete and met him around then. This was '90s hardcore - p.c., vegan, activist kind of hardcore music. Pete was in many of those bands doing that kind of thing, and I was at many of those shows. The hardcore scene in Chicago was pretty small, so everyone kind of knew each other. I knew Andy Hurley as the drummer in Racetraitor. I was in a band called Baxter, so Pete always called me 'Baxter.' I was just 'Baxter' to a lot of those guys.

JOE TROHMAN: I was a young hardcore kid coming to the shows. The same way we all started doing bands. You're a shitty kid who goes to punk and hardcore shows, and you see the other bands playing, and you want to make friends with those guys because you want to play in bands too. Pete and I had a bit of a connection because we're from the same area. I was the youngest dude at most shows. I would see Extinction, Racetraitor, Burn It Down, and all the bands of that era.

WENTZ: My driver's license was suspended then, so Joe drove me everywhere. We listened to either Metalcore like Shai Hulud or pop-punk stuff like Screeching Weasel.

MCILRITH: I was in a band with Pete called Arma Angelus. I was like their fifth or sixth bass player. I wasn't doing anything musically when they hit me up to play bass, so I said, 'Of course.' I liked everyone in the band. We were rehearsing, playing a few shows here and there, with an ever-revolving cast of characters. We recorded a record together at the time. I even sing on that record, believe it or not, they gave me a vocal part. Around that same time, I began meeting with [bassist] Joe [Principe] about starting what would become Rise Against.

CHRIS GUTIERREZ: Wentz played me the Arma Angelus demo in the car. He said he wanted it to be a mix of Despair, Buried Alive, and Damnation A.D. He told me Tim was leaving to start another band - which ended up being Rise Against - and asked if I wanted to play bass.

TROHMAN: Pete asked me to fill in for a tour when I was 15. Pete had to call my dad to convince him to let me go. He did it, too. It was my first tour, in a shitty cargo van, with those dudes. They hazed the shit out of me. It was the best and worst experience. Best overall, worst at the time.

GUTIERREZ: Enthusiasm was starting to wane in Arma Angelus. Our drummer was really into cock-rock. It wasn't an ironic thing. He loved L.A. Guns, Whitesnake, and Hanoi Rocks. It drove Pete nuts because the scene was about Bleeding Through and Throwdown, not cock rock. He was frustrated that things weren't panning out for the band, and of course, there's a ceiling for how big a metalcore band can get, anyway.

MANI MOSTOFI: Pete had honed this tough guy persona, which I think was a defense mechanism. He had some volatile moments in his childhood. Underneath, he was a pretty sensitive and vulnerable person. After playing in every mosh-metal band in the Midwest and listening exclusively to Earth Crisis, Damnation A.D., Chokehold, and stuff like that for a long time, I think Pete wanted to do something fresh. He had gotten into Lifetime, Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and bands like that. Pete was at that moment where the softer side of him needed an outlet, and didn't want to hide behind mosh-machismo. I remember him telling me he wanted to start a band that more girls could listen to.

MCILRATH: Pete was talking about starting a pop-punk band. Bands like New Found Glory and Saves The Day were successful then. The whole pop-punk sound was accessible. Pete was just one of those guys destined for bigger things than screaming for mediocre hardcore bands in Chicago. He's a smart guy, a brilliant guy. All the endeavors he had taken on, even in the microcosm of the 1990s Chicago hardcore world, he put a lot of though into it. You could tell that if he were given a bigger receptacle to put that thought into, it could become something huge. He was always talented: lyrics, imagery, that whole thing. He was ahead of the curve. We were in this hardcore band from Chicago together, but we were both talking about endeavors beyond it.

TROHMAN: The drummer for Arma Angelus was moving. Pete and I talked about doing something different. It was just Pete and me at first. There was this thuggishness happening in the Chicago hardcore scene at that time that wasn't part of our vibe. It was cool, but it wasn't our thing.

MCILRITH: One day at Arma Angelus practice, Pete asked me, 'Are you going to do that thing with Joe?' I was like, 'Yeah, I think so.' He was like, 'You should do that, dude. Don't let this band hold you back. I'll be doing something else, too. We should be doing other things.' He was really ambitious. It was so amazing to me, too, because Pete was a guy who, at the time, was kind of learning how to play the bass. A guy who didn't really play an instrument will do down in history as one of the more brilliant musicians in Chicago. He had everything else in his corner. He knew how to do everything else. He needed to get some guys behind him because he had the rest covered. He had topics, themes, lyrics, artwork, this whole image he wanted to do, and he was uncompromising. He also tapped into something the rest of us were just waking up to: the advent of the internet. I mean, the internet wasn't new, but higher-speed internet was.

MOSTOFI: Joe was excited to be invited by Pete to do a band. Joe was the youngest in our crew by far, and Pete was the 'coolest' in a Fonzie sort of way. Joe deferred to Pete's judgement for years. But eventually, his whole life centered around bossy big-brother Pete. I think doing The Damned Things was for Joe what Fall Out Boy was for Pete, in a way. It was a way to find his own space within the group of friends. Unsurprisingly, Joe now plays a much more significant role in Fall Out Boy's music.

WENTZ: I wanted to do something easy and escapist. When Joe and I started the band, it was the worst band of all time. I feel like people said, 'Oh, yeah, you started Fall Out Boy to get big.' Dude, there was way more of a chance of every other band getting big in my head than Fall Out Boy. It was a side thing that was fun to do. Racetraitor and Extinction were big bands to me. We wanted to do pop-punk because it would be fun and hilarious. It was definitely on a lark. We weren't good. If it was an attempt at selling out, it was a very poor attempt.

MCILRITH: It was such a thing for people to move from hardcore bands to bands called 'emo' or pop-punk, as those bands were starting to get some radio play and signed to major labels. Everyone thought it was easy, but it's not as easy as that. Most guys we knew who tried it never did anything more successful than their hardcore bands. But Pete did it! And if anyone was going to, it was going to be him. He never did anything half-assed. He ended up playing bass in so many bands in Chicago, even though he could barely play the bass then, because simply putting him in your band meant you'd have a better show. He was just more into it. He knew more about dynamics, about getting a crowd to react to what you're doing than most people. Putting Pete in your band put you up a few notches.

"I'm Writing You A Chorus And Here Is Your Verse" - When Pete met Patrick, early 2001.

MARK ROSE: Patrick Stump played drums in this grindcore band called Grinding Process. They had put out a live split cassette tape.

PATRICK STUMP: My ambition always outweighed my ability or actual place in the world. I was a drummer and played in many bands and tried to finagle my way into better ones but never really managed. I was usually outgunned by the same two guys: this guy Rocky Senesce; I'm not sure if he's playing anymore, but he was amazing. And this other guy, De'Mar Hamilton, who is now in Plain White T's. We'd always go out for the same bands. I felt like I was pretty good, but then those guys just mopped the floor with me. I hadn't been playing music for a few months. I think my girlfriend dumped me. I was feeling down. I wasn't really into pop-punk or emo. I think at the time I was into Rhino Records box sets.

TROHMAN: I was at the Borders in Eden's Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. My friend Arthur was asking me about Neurosis. Patrick just walked up and started talking to me.

STUMP: I was a bit arrogant and cocky, like a lot of young musicians. Joe was talking kind of loudly and I overheard him say something about Neurosis, and I think I came in kind of snotty, kind of correcting whatever they had said.

TROHMAN: We just started talking about music, and my buddy Arthur got shoved out of the conversation. I told him about the band we were starting. Pete was this local hardcore celebrity, which intrigued Patrick.

STUMP: I had similar conversations with any number of kids my age. This conversation didn't feel crazy special. That's one of the things that's real about [Joe and I meeting], and that's honest about it, that's it's not some 'love at first sight' thing where we started talking about music and 'Holy smokes, we're going to have the best band ever!' I had been in a lot of bands up until then. Hardcore was a couple of years away from me at that point. I was over it, but Pete was in real bands; that was interesting. Now I'm curious and I want to do this thing, or at least see what happens. Joe said they needed a drummer, guitar player, or singer, and I kind of bluffed and said I could do any one of those things for a pop-punk band. I'd had a lot of conversations about starting bands where I meet up with somebody and maybe try to figure out some songs and then we'd never see each other again. There were a lot of false starts and I assumed this would be just another one of those, but it would be fun for this one to be with the guy from Racetraitor and Extinction.

TROHMAN: He gave me the link to his MP3.com page. There were a few songs of him just playing acoustic and singing. He was awesome.

WENTZ: Joe told me we were going to this kid's house who would probably be our drummer but could also sing. He sent me a link to Patrick singing some acoustic thing, but the quality was so horrible it was hard to tell what it was. Patrick answered the door in some wild outfit. He looked like an emo kid but from the Endpoint era - dorky and cool. We went into the basement, and he was like, trying to set up his drums.

TROHMAN: Patrick has said many times that he intended to try out on drums. I was pushing for him to sing after hearing his demos. 'Hey! Sing for us!' I asked him to take out his acoustic guitar. He played songs from Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. I think he sang most of the record to us. We were thrilled. We had never been around someone who could sing like that.

WENTZ: I don't think Patrick thought we were cool at all. We were hanging out, and he started playing acoustic guitar. He started singing, and I realized he could sing any Saves The Day song. I was like, 'Wow, that's the way those bands sound! We should just have you sing.' It had to be serendipity because Patrick drumming and Joe singing is not the same band. I never thought about singing. It wasn't the type of thing I could sing. I knew I'd be playing bass. I didn't think it'd even go beyond a few practices. It didn't seem like the thing I was setting myself up to do for the next several years of my life in any way. I was going to college. It was just a fun getaway from the rest of life kind of thing to do.

STUMP: Andy was the first person we asked to play drums. Joe even brought him up in the Borders conversation. But Andy was too busy. He wasn't really interested, either, because we kind of sucked.

WENTZ: I wanted Hurley in the band, I was closest to him at the time, I had known him for a long time. I identified with him in the way that we were the younger dudes in our larger group. I tried to get him, but he was doing another band at the time, or multiple bands. He was Mani's go-to guy to play drums, always. I had asked him a few times. That should clue people into the fact that we weren't that good.

ANDY HURLEY: I knew Joe as 'Number One Fan.' We called him that because he was a huge fan of a band I was in, Kill The Slavemaster. When Fall Out Boy started, I was going to college full-time. I was in the band Project Rocket and I think The Kill Pill then, too.

MOSTOFI: After they got together the first or second time, Pete played me a recording and said, 'This is going to be big.' They had no songs, no name, no drummer. They could barely play their instruments. But Pete knew, and we believed him because we could see his drive and Patrick's potential. Patrick was prodigy. I imagine the first moment Pete heard him sing was probably like when I heard 15-year-old Andy Hurley play drums.

GUTIERREZ: One day at practice, Pete told me he had met some dudes with whom he was starting a pop-punk band. He said it would sound like a cross between New Found Glory and Lifetime. Then the more Fall Out Boy started to practice, the less active Arma Angelus became.

TROHMAN: We got hooked up with a friend named Ben Rose, who became our original drummer. We would practice in his parents' basement. We eventually wrote some pretty bad songs. I don't even have the demo. I have copies of Arma's demo, but I don't have that one.

MOSTOFI: We all knew that hardcore kids write better pop-punk songs than actual pop-punk kids. It had been proven. An experienced hardcore musician could bring a sense of aggression and urgency to the pop hooks in a way that a band like Yellowcard could never achieve. Pete and I had many conversations about this. He jokingly called it 'Softcore,' but that's precisely what it was. It's what he was going for. Take This To Your Grave sounds like Hot Topic, but it feels like CBGBs.

MCILRITH: Many hardcore guys who transitioned into pop-punk bands dumbed it down musically and lyrically. Fall Out Boy found a way to do it that wasn't dumbed down. They wrote music and lyrics that, if you listened closely, you could tell came from people who grew up into hardcore. Pete seemed to approach the song titles and lyrics the same way he attacked hardcore songs. You could see his signature on all of that.

STUMP: We all had very different ideas of what it should sound like. I signed up for Kid Dynamite, Strike Anywhere, or Dillinger Four. Pete was very into Lifetime and Saves The Day. I think both he and Joe were into New Found Glory and Blink-182. I still hadn't heard a lot of stuff. I was arrogant; I was a rock snob. I was over most pop-punk. But then I had this renaissance week where I was like, 'Man, you know what? I really do like The Descendents.' Like, the specific week I met Joe, it just happened to be that I was listening to a lot of Descendents. So, there was a part of me that was tickled by that idea. 'You know what? I'll try a pop-punk band. Why not?'

MOSTOFI: To be clear, they were trying to become a big band. But they did it by elevating radio-friendly pop punk, not debasing themselves for popularity. They were closely studying Drive-Thru Records bands like The Starting Line, who I couldn't stand. But they knew what they were doing. They extracted a few good elements from those bands and combined them with their other influences. Patrick never needed to be auto-tuned. He can sing. Pete never had to contrive this emotional depth. He always had it.

STUMP: The ideas for band names were obnoxious. At some point, Pete and I were arguing over it, and I think our first drummer, Ben Rose, who was in the hardcore band Strength In Numbers, suggested Fall Out Boy. Pete and I were like, 'Well, we don't hate that one. We'll keep it on the list.' But we never voted on a name.

"Fake It Like You Matter" - The Early Shows, 2001

The name Fall Out Boy made their shortlist, but their friends ultimately chose it for them. The line-up at the band's first show was Patrick Stump (sans guitar), Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, drummer Ben Rose, and guitarist John Flamandan in his only FOB appearance.

STUMP: We didn't have a name at our two or three shows. We were basically booked as 'Pete's new band' as he was the most known of any of us. Pete and I were the artsy two.

TROHMAN: The rest of us had no idea what we were doing onstage.

STUMP: We took ourselves very seriously and completely different ideas on what was 'cool.' Pete at the time was somewhere between maybe Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski, and kind of New Romantic and Manchester stuff, so he had that in mind. The band names he suggested were long and verbose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I was pretty much only into Tom Waits, so I wanted everything to be a reference to Tom Waits. The first show was at DePaul [University] in some cafeteria. The room looked a lot nicer than punk rock shows are supposed to look, like a room where you couldn't jump off the walls. We played with a band called Stillwell. I want to say one of the other bands played Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath in its entirety. We were out of place. We were tossing a few different names around. The singer for Stillwell was in earshot of the conversation so I was like 'Hey, settle this for us,' and told him whatever name it was, which I can't remember. 'What do you think of this name?' He goes, 'It sucks.' And the way he said it, there was this element to it, like, 'You guys probably suck, too, so whatever.' That was our first show. We played first and only had three songs. That was John's only show with us, and I never saw him again. I was just singing without a guitar, and I had never just sung before; that was horrifying. We blazed through those songs.

ROSE: Patrick had this shoulder-length hair. Watching these guys who were known for heavier stuff play pop-punk was strange. Pete was hopping around with the X's on his hands. Spitalfield was similar; we were kids playing another style of music who heard Texas Is The Reason and Get Up Kids and said, 'We have to start a band like this.'

MOSTOFI: The first show was a lot of fun. The musical side wasn't there, but Pete and Patrick's humor and charisma were front and center.

TROHMAN: I remember having a conversation with Mani about stage presence. He was telling me how important it was. Coalesce and The Dillinger Escape Plan would throw mic stands and cabinets. We loved that visual excitement and appeal. Years later, Patrick sang a Fall Out Boy song with Taylor Swift at Giants Stadium. It was such a great show to watch that I was reminded of how wise Mani was to give me that advice back then. Mani was like a mentor for me, honestly. He would always guide me through stuff.

MOSTOFI: Those guys grew up in Chicago, either playing in or seeing Extinction, Racetraitor, Los Crudos, and other bands that liked to talk and talk between songs. Fall Out Boy did that, and it was amazing. Patrick was awkward in a knowing and hilarious way. He'd say something odd, and then Pete would zing him. Or Pete would try to say something too cool, and Patrick would remind him they were nerds. These are very personal memories for me. Millions of people have seen the well-oiled machine, but so few of us saw those guys when they were so carefree.

TROHMAN: We had this goofy, bad first show, but all I can tell you was that I was determined to make this band work, no matter what.

STUMP: I kind of assumed that was the end of that. 'Whatever, on with our lives.' But Joe was very determined. He was going to pick us up for practice and we were going to keep playing shows. He was going to make the band happen whether the rest of us wanted to or not. That's how we got past show number one. John left the band because we only had three songs and he wasn't very interested. In the interim, I filled in on guitar. I didn't consider myself a guitar player. Our second show was a college show in Southern Illinois or something.

MCILRITH: That show was with my other band, The Killing Tree.

STUMP: We showed up late and played before The Killing Tree. There was no one there besides the bands and our friends. I think we had voted on some names. Pete said 'Hey, we're whatever!'; probably something very long. And someone yells out, 'Fuck that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!' Then when The Killing Tree was playing, Tim said, 'I want to thank Fall Out Boy.' Everyone looked up to Tim, so when he forced the name on us, it was fine. I was a diehard Simpsons fan, without question. I go pretty deep on The Simpsons. Joe and I would just rattle off Simpsons quotes. I used to do a lot of Simpsons impressions. Ben was very into Simpsons; he had a whole closet full of Simpsons action figures.

"If Only You Knew I Was Terrified" - The Early Recordings, 2002-2003

Wentz's relationships in the hardcore scene led to Fall Out Boy's first official releases. A convoluted and rarely properly explained chain of events resulted in the Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket split EP and Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. Both were issued by California's Uprising Records, whose discography included Racetraitor's first album and the debut EP by Burn It Down. The band traveled to Wisconsin to record their first proper demo with engineer Jared Logan, drummer for Uprising's 7 Angels 7 Plagues.

TROHMAN: This isn't to be confused with the demo we did in Ben's basement, which was like a tape demo. This was our first real demo.

STUMP: Between booking the demo and recording it, we lost Ben Rose. He was the greatest guy, but it wasn't working out musically. Pete and Joe decided I should play drums on the demo. But Jared is a sick drummer, so he just did it.

TROHMAN: We had gotten this great singer but went through a series of drummers that didn't work out. I had to be the one who kicked Ben out. Not long after, our friend Brett Bunting played with us. I don't think he really wanted to do it, which was a bummer.

STUMP: I showed up to record that demo, feeling pulled into it. I liked hanging out with the guys, but I was a rock snob who didn't really want to be making that type of music. The first few songs were really rough. We were sloppy. We barely practiced. Pete was in Arma Angelus. Joe was the guy determined to make it happen. We couldn't keep a drummer or guitar player, and I could barely play guitar. I didn't really want to be in Fall Out Boy. We had these crappy songs that kind of happened; it didn't feel like anything. Joe did the guitars. I go in to do the vocals, I put on the headphones, and it starts playing and was kind of not bad! It was pretty good, actually. I was shocked. That was the first time I was like, 'Maybe I am supposed to be in this band.' I enjoyed hearing it back.

SEAN MUTTAQI: Wentz and I were pretty tight. He sent me some demos, and while I didn't know it would get as big as it did, I knew it was special. Wentz had a clear vision. Of all the guys from that scene, he was the most singularly focused on taking things to the next level. He was ahead of the game with promotion and the early days of social media.

STUMP: Arma Angelus had been on Eulogy. We talked to them a bit and spoke to Uprising because they had put out Racetraitor. At some point, the demo got to Sean, and he decided to make it half of a split with Andy's band, Project Rocket. We were pretty happy with that.

HURLEY: It was kind of competitive for me at the time. Project Rocket and Fall Out Boy were both doing pop-punk/pop-rock, I met Patrick through the band. I didn't really know him before Fall Out Boy.

TROHMAN: We got this drummer, Mike Pareskuwicz, who had been in a hardcore band from Central Illinois called Subsist.

STUMP: Uprising wanted us to make an album. We thought that was cool, but we only had those three songs that were on the split. We were still figuring ourselves out. One of the times we were recording with Jared in the studio, for the split or the album, this guy T.J. Kunasch was there. He was like, 'Hey, do you guys need a guitarist?' And he joined.

MUTTAQI: I borrowed some money to get them back in the studio. The songwriting was cool on that record, but it was all rushed. The urgency to get something out led to the recording being subpar. Their new drummer looked the part but couldn't really play. They had already tracked the drums before they realized it didn't sound so hot.

STUMP: The recording experience was not fun. We had two days to do an entire album. Mike was an awesome dude, but he lived crazy far away, in Kanakee, Illinois, so the drive to Milwaukee wasn't easy for him. He had to work or something the next day. So, he did everything in one take and left. He played alone, without a click, so it was a ness to figure out. We had to guess where the guitar was supposed to go. None of us liked the songs because we had slapped them together. We thought it all sucked. But I thought, 'Well, at least it'll be cool to have something out.' Then a lot of time went by. Smaller labels were at the mercy of money, and it was crazy expensive to put out a record back then.

MUTTAQI: Our record was being rushed out to help generate some interest, but that interest was building before we could even get the record out. We were beholden to finances while changing distribution partners and dealing with other delays. The buck stops with me, yes, but I didn't have that much control over the scheduling.

WENTZ: It's not what I would consider the first Fall Out Boy record. Hurley isn't on it and he's an integral part of the Fall Out Boy sound. But it is part of the history, the legacy. NASA didn't go right to the moon. They did test flights in the desert. Those are our test flights in the desert. It's not something I'm ashamed of or have weird feelings about.

STUMP: It's kind of embarrassing to me. Evening Out... isn't representative of the band we became. I liked Sean a lot, so it's nothing against him. If anybody wants to check out the band in that era, I think the split EP is a lot cooler. Plus, Andy is on that one.

TROHMAN: T.J. was the guy who showed up to the show without a guitar. He was the guy that could never get it right, but he was in the band for a while because we wanted a second guitar player. He's a nice dude but wasn't great to be in a band with back then. One day he drove unprompted from Racine to Chicago to pick up some gear. I don't know how he got into my parents' house, but the next thing I knew, he was in my bedroom. I didn't like being woken up and kicked him out of the band from bed.

STUMP: Our friend Brian Bennance asked us to do a split 7" with 504 Plan, which was a big band to us. Brian offered to pay for us to record with Sean O'Keefe, which was also a big deal. Mike couldn't get the time off work to record with us. We asked Andy to play on the songs. He agreed to do it, but only if he could make it in time after recording an entire EP with his band, The Kill Pill, in Chicago, on the same day.

MOSTOFI: Andy and I started The Kill Pill shortly after Racetraitor split up, not long after Fall Out Boy had formed. We played a bunch of local shows together. The minute Andy finished tracking drums for our EP in Chicago, he raced to the other studio in Madison.

STUMP: I'm getting ready to record the drums myself, getting levels and checking the drums, pretty much ready to go. And then in walks Andy Hurley. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to play drums that day. But then Andy goes through it all in like two takes and fucking nailed the entire thing. He just knocked it out of the park. All of us were like, 'That's crazy!'

WENTZ: When Andy came in, It just felt different. It was one of those 'a-ha' moments.

STUMP: Sean leaned over to us and said, 'You need to get this guy in the band.'

SEAN O'KEEFE: We had a blast. We pumped It out. We did it fast and to analog tape. People believe it was very Pro Tools oriented, but it really was done to 24-track tape. Patrick sang his ass off.

STUMP: The songs we had were 'Dead On Arrival,' 'Saturday,' and 'Homesick at Space Camp. There are quite a few songs that ended up on Take This To You Grave where I wrote most of the lyrics but Pete titled them.

WENTZ: 'Space Camp' was a reference to the 1986 movie, SpaceCamp, and the idea of space camp. Space camp wasn't something anyone in my area went to. Maybe they did, but it was never an option for me. It seems like the little kid version of meeting Jay-Z. The idea was also: what if you, like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie, took off to outer space and wanted to get home? 'I made it to space and now I'm just homesick and want to hang out with my friends.' In the greater sense, it's about having it all, but it's still not enough. There's a pop culture reference in 'Saturday' that a lot of people miss. 'Pete and I attack the lost Astoria' was a reference to The Goonies, which was filmed in Astoria, Oregon.

HURLEY: I remember hearing those recordings, especially 'Dead on Arrival,' and Patrick's voice and how well written those songs were, especially relative to anything else I had done - I had a feeling that this could do something.

WENTZ: It seemed like it would stall out if we didn't get a solid drummer in the band soon. That was the link that we couldn't nail down. Patrick was always a big musical presence. He thinks and writes rhythmi-cally, and we couldn't get a drummer to do what he wanted or speak his language. Hurley was the first one that could. It's like hearing two drummers talk together when they really get it. It sounds like a foreign language because it's not something I'm keyed into. Patrick needed someone on a similar musical plane. I wasn't there. Joe was younger and was probably headed there.

HURLEY: When Patrick was doing harmonies, it was like Queen. He's such a brilliant dude. I was always in bands that did a record and then broke up. I felt like this was a band that could tour a lot like the hardcore bands we loved, even if we had to have day jobs, too.

"(Four) Tired Boys And A Broken Down Van" - The Early Tours, 2002-2003

STUMP: We booked a tour with Spitalfield, another Chicago band, who had records out, so they were a big deal to us. We replaced T.J. with a guy named Brandon Hamm. He was never officially in the band. He quit when we were practicing 'Saturday.' He goes, 'I don't like that. I don't want to do this anymore.' Pete talked with guitarist Chris Envy from Showoff, who had just broken up. Chris said, 'Yeah, I'll play in your band.' He came to two practices, then quit like two days before the tour. It was only a two-week tour, but Mike couldn't get the time off work from Best Buy, or maybe it was Blockbuster. We had to lose Mike, which was the hardest member change for me. It was unpleasant.

TROHMAN: We had been trying to get Andy to join the band for a while. Even back at that first Borders conversation, we talked about him, but he was too busy at the time.

STUMP: I borrowed one of Joe's guitars and jumped in the fire. We were in this legendarily shitty used van Pete had gotten. It belonged to some flower shop, so it had this ominously worn-out flower decal outside and no windows [except in the front]. Crappy brakes, no A/C, missing the rearview mirror, no seats in the back, only the driver's seat. About 10 minutes into the tour, we hit something. A tire exploded and slingshot into the passenger side mirror, sending glass flying into the van. We pulled over into some weird animal petting zoo. I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen for this tour.' Spitalfield was awesome, and we became tight with them. Drew Brown, who was later in Weekend Nachos, was out with them, too. But most of the shows were canceled.

WENTZ: We'd end up in a town, and our show was canceled, or we'd have three days off. 'Let's just get on whatever show we can. Whatever, you can pay us in pizza.'

STUMP: We played in a pizza place. We basically blocked the line of people trying to order pizza, maybe a foot away from the shitty tables. Nobody is trying to watch a band. They're just there to eat pizza. And that was perhaps the biggest show we played on that tour. One of the best moments on the Spitalfied tour was in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local opener wasn't even there - they were at the bar across the street and showed up later with two people. Fall Out Boy played for Spitalfield, and Spitalfield played for Fall Out Boy. Even the sound guy had left. It was basically an empty room. It was miserable.

HURLEY: Even though we played a ton of shows in front of just the other bands, it was awesome. I've known Pete forever and always loved being in bands with him. After that tour, it was pretty much agreed that I would be in the band. I wanted to be in the band.

WENTZ: We would play literally any show in those days for free. We played Chain Reaction in Orange County with a bunch of metalcore bands. I want to say Underoath was one of them. I remember a lot of black shirts and crossed arms at those kinds of shows. STUMP: One thing that gets lost in the annals of history is Fall Out Boy, the discarded hardcore band. We played so many hardcore shows! The audiences were cool, but they were just like, 'This is OK, but we'd really rather be moshing right now.' Which was better than many of the receptions we got from pop-punk kids.

MOSTOFI: Pete made sure there was little division between the band and the audience. In hardcore, kids are encouraged to grab the mic. Pete was very conscious about making the crowd feel like friends. I saw them in Austin, Texas, in front of maybe ten kids. But it was very clear all ten of those kids felt like Pete's best friends. And they were, in a way.

MCILRITH: People started to get into social networking. That kind of thing was all new to us, and they were way ahead. They networked with their fans before any of us.

MOSTOFI: Pete shared a lot about his life online and was intimate as hell. It was a new type of scene. Pete extended the band's community as far as fiber optics let him.

ROSE: Pete was extremely driven. Looking back, I wish I had that killer instinct. During that tour; we played a show in Colorado. On the day of the show, we went to Kinko's to make flyers to hand out to college kids. Pete put ‘members of Saves The Day and Screeching Weasel’ on the flyer. He was just like, 'This will get people in.'

WENTZ: We booked a lot of our early shows through hardcore connections, and to some extent, that carries through to what Fall Out Boy shows are like today. If you come to see us play live, we're basically Slayer compared to everyone else when we play these pop radio shows. Some of that carries back to what you must do to avoid being heckled at hardcore shows. You may not like our music, but you will leave here respecting us. Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to give a shit. But you need to earn a crowd's respect. That was an important way for us to learn that.

MOSTOFI: All those dudes, except Andy, lived in this great apartment with our friend Brett Bunting, who was almost their drummer at one point. The proximity helped them gel.

STUMP: There were a lot of renegade last-minute shows where we'd just call and get added. We somehow ended up on a show with Head Automatica that way.

MCILRITH: At some point early on, they opened for Rise Against in a church basement in Downers Grove. We were doing well then; headlining that place was a big deal. Then Pete's band was coming up right behind us, and you could tell there was a lot of chatter about Fall Out Boy. I remember getting to the show, and there were many people there, many of whom I had never seen in the scene before. A lot of unfamiliar faces. A lot of people that wouldn't have normally found their way to the seedy Fireside Bowl in Chicago. These were young kids, and I was 21 then, so when I say young, I mean really young. Clearly, Fall Out Boy had tapped into something the rest of us had not. People were super excited to see them play and freaked out; there was a lot of enthusiasm at that show. After they finished, their fans bailed. They were dedicated. They wanted to see Fall Out Boy. They didn't necessarily want to see Rise Against play. That was my first clue that, 'Whoa, what Pete told me that day at Arma Angelus rehearsal is coming true. He was right.' Whatever he was doing was working.

"My Insides Are Copper, And I'd Like To Make Them Gold" - The Record Labels Come Calling, 2002

STUMP: The split EP was going to be a three-way split with 504 Plan, August Premier, and us at one point. But then the record just never happened. Brian backed out of putting it out. We asked him if we could do something else with the three songs and he didn't really seem to care. So, we started shopping the three songs as a demo. Pete ended up framing the rejection letters we got from a lot of pop-punk labels. But some were interested.

HURLEY: We wanted to be on Drive-Thru Records so bad. That was the label.

RICHARD REINES: After we started talking to them, I found the demo they had sent us in the office. I played it for my sister. We decided everything together. She liked them but wasn't as crazy about them as I was. We arranged with Pete to see them practice. We had started a new label called Rushmore. Fall Out Boy wasn't the best live band. We weren't thrilled [by the showcase]. But the songs were great. We both had to love a band to sign them, so my sister said, 'If you love them so much, let's sign them to Rushmore, not Drive Thru.'

HURLEY: We did a showcase for Richard and Stephanie Reines. They were just kind of like, 'Yeah, we have this side label thing. We'd be interested in having you on that.' I remember them saying they passed on Saves The Day and wished they would have put out Through Being Cool. But then they [basically] passed on us by offering to put us on Rushmore. We realized we could settle for that, but we knew it wasn't the right thing.

RORY FELTON: Kevin Knight had a website, TheScout, which always featured great new bands. I believe he shared the demo with us. I flew out to Chicago. Joe and Patrick picked me up at the airport. I saw them play at a VFW hall, Patrick drank an entire bottle of hot sauce on a dare at dinner, and then we all went to see the movie The Ring. I slept on the couch in their apartment, the one featured on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. Chad [Pearson], my partner, also flew out to meet with the band.

STUMP: It was a weird time to be a band because it was feast or famine. At first, no one wanted us. Then as soon as one label said, 'Maybe we'll give 'em a shot,' suddenly there's a frenzy of phone calls from record labels. We were getting our shirts printed by Victory Records. One day, we went to pick up shirts, and someone came downstairs and said, 'Um, guys? [Owner] Tony [Brummel] wants to see you.' We were like, 'Did we forget to pay an invoice?' He made us an offer on the spot. We said, 'That's awesome, but we need to think about it.' It was one of those 'now or never' kinds of things. I think we had even left the van running. It was that kind of sudden; we were overwhelmed by it.

HURLEY: They told me Tony said something like, 'You can be with the Nike of the record industry or the Keds of the record industry.'

STUMP: We'd get random calls at the apartment. 'Hey, I'm a manager with so-and-so.' I talked to some boy band manager who said, 'We think you'll be a good fit.'

TROHMAN: The idea of a manager was a ‘big-time' thing. I answered a call one day, and this guy is like, 'I'm the manager for the Butthole Surfers, and I'd really like to work with you guys.' I just said, Yeah, I really like the Butthole Surfers, but I'll have to call you back.' And I do love that band. But I just knew that wasn't the right thing.

STUMP: Not all the archetypes you always read about are true. The label guys aren't all out to get you. Some are total douchebags. But then there are a lot who are sweet and genuine. It's the same thing with managers. I really liked the Militia Group. They told us it was poor form to talk to us without a manager. They recommended Bob McLynn.

FELTON: We knew the guys at Crush from working with Acceptance and The Beautiful Mistake. We thought they'd be great for Fall Out Boy, so we sent the music to their team.

STUMP: They said Crush was their favorite management company and gave us their number. Crush's biggest band at the time was American Hi-Fi. Jonathan Daniels, the guy who started the company, sent a manager to see us. The guy was like, "This band sucks!' But Jonathan liked us and thought someone should do something with us. Bob was his youngest rookie manager. He had never managed anyone, and we had never been managed.

BOB MCLYNN: Someone else from my office who isn't with us anymore had seen them, but I hadn't seen them yet. At the time, we'd tried to manage Brand New; they went elsewhere, and I was bummed. Then we got the Fall Out Boy demo, and I was like, Wow. This sounds even better. This guy can really sing, and these songs are great.' I remember going at it hard after that whole thing. Fall Out Boy was my consolation prize. I don't know if they were talking to other managers or not, but Pete and I clicked.

TROHMAN: In addition to being really creative, Pete is really business savvy. We all have a bullshit detector these days, but Pete already had one back then. We met Bob, and we felt like this dude wouldn't fuck us over.

STUMP: We were the misfit toy that nobody else wanted. Bob really believed in us when nobody else did and when nobody believed in him. What's funny is that all the other managers at Crush were gone within a year. It was just Bob and Jonathan, and now they're partners. Bob was the weird New York Hardcore guy who scared me at the time.

TROHMAN: We felt safe with him. He's a big, hulking dude.

MCLYNN: We tried to make a deal with The Militia Group, but they wouldn't back off on a few things in the agreement. I told them those were deal breakers, opening the door to everyone else. I knew this band needed a shot to do bigger and better things.

TROHMAN: He told us not to sign with the label that recommended him to us. We thought there was something very honest about that.

MCLYNN: They paid all their dues. Those guys worked harder than any band I'd ever seen, and I was all about it. I had been in bands before and had just gotten out. I was getting out of the van just as these guys got into one. They busted their asses.

STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: they wanted to hear more. They weren't convinced we could write another song as good as 'Dead On Arrival.' I took that as a challenge. We returned to Sean a few months after those initial three songs, this time at Gravity Studios in Chicago. We recorded ‘Grenade Jumper' and 'Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy' in a night or two. 'Where is Your Boy' was my, 'Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your hit song, jerks!' But I must have pushed Pete pretty hard [arguing about the songs]. One night, as he and I drove with Joe, Pete said, 'Guys, I don't think I want to do this band anymore.' We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, 'No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band, and then leave it! That's bullshit!' Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parent's house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, 'Don't break up your band over it.' I said, 'It's not my band. It's a band that you, Joe, and I started.' He was like, 'OK, I'll stick around.' And he came back with a vengeance.

WENTZ: It was maybe the first time we realized we could do these songs titles that didn't have much do with the song from the outside. Grand Theft Auto was such a big pop culture franchise. If you said the phrase back then, everyone recognized it. The play on words was about someone stealing your time in the fall. It was the earliest experimentation with that so it was a little simplistic compared to the stuff we did later. At the time, we'd tell someone the song title, and they'd say, 'You mean "Auto"'?

JOHN JANICK: I saw their name on fliers and thought it was strange. But I remembered it. Then I saw them on a flyer with one of our bands from Chicago, August Premier. I called them and asked about this band whose name I had seen on a few flyers now. They told me they were good and I should check it out. I heard an early version of a song online and instantly fell in love with it. Drive-Thru, The Militia Group, and a few majors tried to sign them. I was the odd man out. But I knew I wanted them right away.

HURLEY: Fueled By Ramen was co-owned by Vinnie [Fiorello] from Less Than Jake. It wasn't necessarily a band I grew up loving, but I had so much respect for them and what they had done and were doing.

JANICK: I randomly cold-called them at the apartment and spoke to Patrick. He told me I had to talk to Pete. I spoke to Pete later that day. We ended up talking on the phone for an hour. It was crazy. I never flew out there. I just got to know them over the phone.

MCLYNN: There were majors [interested], but I didn't want the band on a major right away. I knew they wouldn't understand the band. Rob Stevenson from Island Records knew all the indie labels were trying to sign Fall Out Boy. We did this first-ever incubator sort of deal. I also didn't want to stay on an indie forever; I felt we needed to develop and have a chance to do bigger and better things, but these indies didn't necessarily have radio staff. It was sort of the perfect scenario. Island gave us money to go on Fueled By Ramen, with whom we did a one-off. No one else would offer a one-off on an indie.

STUMP: They were the smallest of the labels involved, with the least 'gloss.' I said, 'I don't know about this, Pete.' Pete was the one who thought it was the smartest move. He pointed out that we could be a big fish in a small pond. So, we rolled the dice.

HURLEY: It was a one-record deal with Fueled By Ramen. We didn't necessarily get signed to Island, but they had the 'right of first refusal' [for the album following Take This To Your Grave]. It was an awesome deal. It was kind of unheard of, maybe, but there was a bunch of money coming from Island that we didn't have to recoup for promo type of things.

JANICK: The company was so focused on making sure we broke Fall Out Boy; any other label probably wouldn't have had that dedication. Pete and I talked for at least an hour every day. Pete and I became so close, so much so that we started Decaydance. It was his thing, but we ended up signing Panic! At The Disco, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship.

GUTIERREZ: Who could predict Pete would A&R all those bands? There's no Panic! At The Disco or Gym Class Heroes without Wentz. He made them into celebrities.

"Turn This Up And I'll Tune You Out" - The Making of Take This To You Grave, 2003

The versions of "Dead on Arrival," "Saturday," and "Homesick at Space Camp" from the first sessions with Andy on drums are what appear on the album. "Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy" and "Grenade Jumper" are the demo versions recorded later in Chicago. O'Keefe recorded the music for the rest of the songs at Smart Studios once again. They knocked out the remaining songs in just nine days. Sean and Patrick snuck into Gravity Studios in the middle of the night to track vocals in the dead of winter. Patrick sang those seven songs from two to five in the morning in those sessions.

STUMP: John Janick basically said, ‘I'll buy those five songs and we'll make them part of the album, and here's some money to go record seven more.'

MCLYNN: It was a true indie deal with Fueled by Ramen. I think we got between $15,000 and $18,000 all-in to make the album. The band slept on the studio floor some nights.

STUMP: From a recording standpoint, it was amazing. It was very pro, we had Sean, all this gear, the fun studio accoutrements were there. It was competitive with anything we did afterward. But meanwhile, we're still four broke idiots.

WENTZ: We fibbed to our parents about what we were doing. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did.

STUMP: I don't think we slept anywhere we could shower, which was horrifying. There was a girl that Andy's girlfriend at the time went to school with who let us sleep on her floor, but we'd be there for maybe four hours at a time. It was crazy.

HURLEY: Once, Patrick thought it would be a good idea to spray this citrus bathroom spray under his arms like deodorant. It just destroyed him because it's not made for that. But it was all an awesome adventure.

WENTZ: We were so green we didn't really know how studios worked. Every day there was soda for the band. We asked, 'Could you take that soda money and buy us peanut butter, jelly, and bread?' which they did. I hear that stuff in some ways when I listen to that album.

HURLEY: Sean pushed us. He was such a perfectionist, which was awesome. I felt like, ‘This is what a real professional band does.' It was our first real studio experience.

WENTZ: Seeing the Nirvana Nevermind plaque on the wall was mind-blowing. They showed us the mic that had been used on that album.

HURLEY: The mic that Kurt Cobain used, that was pretty awesome, crazy, legendary, and cool. But we didn't get to use it.

WENTZ: They said only Shirley Manson] from Garbage could use it.

O'KEEFE: Those dudes were all straight edge at the time. It came up in conversation that I had smoked weed once a few months before. That started this joke that I was this huge stoner, which obviously I wasn't. They'd call me 'Scoobie Snacks O'Keefe' and all these things. When they turned in the art for the record, they thanked me with like ten different stoner nicknames - 'Dimebag O'Keefe' and stuff like that. The record company made Pete take like seven of them out because they said it was excessively ridiculous.

WENTZ: Sean was very helpful. He worked within the budget and took us more seriously than anyone else other than Patrick. There were no cameras around. There was no documentation. There was nothing to indicate this would be some ‘legendary' session. There are 12 songs on the album because those were all the songs we had. There was no pomp or circumstance or anything to suggest it would be an 'important’ record.

STUMP: Pete and I were starting to carve out our niches. When Pete [re-committed himself to the band], it felt like he had a list of things in his head he wanted to do right. Lyrics were on that list. He wasn't playing around anymore. I wrote the majority of the lyrics up to that point - ‘Saturday,' 'Dead on Arrival,' ‘Where's Your Boy?,’ ‘Grenade Jumper,' and ‘Homesick at Space Camp.' I was an artsy-fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band, so I was going really easy on the lyrics. I wasn't taking them seriously. When I look back on it, I did write some alright stuff. But I wasn't trying. Pete doesn't fuck around like that, and he does not take that kindly. When we returned to the studio, he started picking apart every word, every syllable. He started giving me [notes]. I got so exasperated at one point I was like, ‘You just write the fucking lyrics, dude. Just give me your lyrics, and I'll write around them.' Kind of angrily. So, he did. We hadn't quite figured out how to do it, though. I would write a song, scrap my lyrics, and try to fit his into where mine had been. It was exhausting. It was a rough process. It made both of us unhappy.

MCLYNN: I came from the post-hardcore scene in New York and wasn't a big fan of the pop-punk stuff happening. What struck me with these guys was the phenomenal lyrics and Patrick's insane voice. Many guys in these kinds of bands can sing alright, but Patrick was like a real singer. This guy had soul. He'd take these great lyrics Pete wrote and combine it with that soul, and that's what made their unique sound. They both put their hearts on their sleeves when they wrote together.

STUMP: We had a massive fight over 'Chicago is So Two Years Ago.' I didn't even want to record that song. I was being precious with things that were mine. Part of me thought the band wouldn't work out, and I'd go to college and do some music alone. I had a skeletal version of 'Chicago...'. I was playing it to myself in the lobby of the studio. I didn't know anyone was listening. Sean was walking by and wanted to [introduce it to the others]. I kind of lost my song. I was very precious about it. Pete didn't like some of the lyrics, so we fought. We argued over each word, one at a time. 'Tell That Mick...' was also a pretty big fight. Pete ended up throwing out all my words on that one. That was the first song where he wrote the entire set of lyrics. My only change was light that smoke' instead of ‘cigarette' because I didn't have enough syllables to say 'cigarette.' Everything else was verbatim what he handed to me. I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss. The sound was always more important to me - the rhythm of the words, alliteration, syncopation - was all very exciting. Pete didn't care about any of that. He was all meaning. He didn't care how good the words sounded if they weren't amazing when you read them. Man, did we fight about that. We fought for nine days straight while not sleeping and smelling like shit. It was one long argument, but I think some of the best moments resulted from that.

WENTZ: In 'Calm Before the Storm,' Patrick wrote the line, 'There's a song on the radio that says, 'Let's Get This Party Started' which is a direct reference to Pink's 2001 song 'Get the Party Started.' 'Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today' is a line from the movie Rushmore. I thought we'd catch a little more flack for that, but even when we played it in Ireland, there was none of that. It's embraced, more like a shoutout.

STUMP: Pete and I met up on a lot of the same pop culture. He was more into '80s stuff than I was. One of the first things we talked about were Wes Anderson movies.

WENTZ: Another thing driving that song title was the knowledge that our fanbase wouldn't necessarily be familiar with Wes Anderson. It could be something that not only inspired us but something fans could also go check out. People don't ask us about that song so much now, but in that era, we'd answer and tell them to go watch Rushmore. You gotta see this movie. This line is a hilarious part of it.' Hopefully some people did. I encountered Jason Schwartzman at a party once. We didn't get to talk about the movie, but he was the sweetest human, and I was just geeking out. He told me he was writing a film with Wes Anderson about a train trip in India. I wanted to know about the writing process. He was like, 'Well, he's in New York City, I'm in LA. It's crazy because I'm on the phone all the time and my ear gets really hot.' That's the anecdote I got, and I loved it.

O'KEEFE: They're totally different people who approach making music from entirely different angles. It's cool to see them work. Pete would want a certain lyric. Patrick was focused on the phrasing. Pete would say the words were stupid and hand Patrick a revision, and Patrick would say I can't sing those the way I need to sing this. They would go through ten revisions for one song. I thought I would lose my mind with both of them, but then they would find it, and it would be fantastic. When they work together, it lights up. It takes on a life of its own. It's not always happy. There's a lot of push and pull, and each is trying to get their thing. With Take This To Your Grave, we never let anything go until all three of us were happy. Those guys were made to do this together.

WENTZ: A lot of the little things weren't a big deal, but those were things that [felt like] major decisions. I didn't want 'Where Is Your Boy' on Take This To Your Grave.

JANICK: I freaked out. I called Bob and said, 'We must put this song on the album! It's one of the biggest songs.' He agreed. We called Pete and talked about it; he was cool about it and heard us out.

WENTZ: I thought many things were humongous, and they just weren't. They didn't matter one way or another.

"Our Lawyer Made Us Change The (Album Cover)" - That Photo On Take This To Your Grave, 2003

STUMP: The band was rooted in nostalgia from early on. The '80s references were very much Pete's aesthetic. He had an idea for the cover. It ended up being his girlfriend at the time, face down on the bed, exhausted, in his bedroom. That was his bedroom in our apartment. His room was full of toys, '80s cereals. If we ended up with the Abbey Road cover of pop-punk, that original one was Sgt. Pepper's. But we couldn't legally clear any of the stuff in the photo. Darth Vader, Count Chocula…

WENTZ: There's a bunch of junk in there: a Morrissey poster, I think a Cher poster, Edward Scissorhands. We submitted it to Fueled by Ramen, and they were like, 'We can't clear any of this stuff.’ The original album cover did eventually come out on the vinyl version.

STUMP: The photo that ended up being the cover was simply a promo photo for that album cycle. We had to scramble. I was pushing the Blue Note jazz records feel. That's why the CD looks a bit like vinyl and why our names are listed on the front. I wanted a live photo on the cover. Pete liked the Blue Note idea but didn't like the live photo idea. I also made the fateful decision to have my name listed as 'Stump' rather than Stumph.

WENTZ: What we used was initially supposed to be the back cover. I remember someone in the band being pissed about it forever. Not everyone was into having our names on the cover. It was a strange thing to do at the time. But had the original cover been used, it wouldn't have been as iconic as what we ended up with. It wouldn't have been a conversation piece. That stupid futon in our house was busted in the middle. We're sitting close to each other because the futon was broken. The exposed brick wall was because it was the worst apartment ever. It makes me wonder: How many of these are accidental moments? At the time, there was nothing iconic about it. If we had a bigger budget, we probably would have ended up with a goofier cover that no one would have cared about.

STUMP: One of the things I liked about the cover was that it went along with something Pete had always said. I'm sure people will find this ironic, but Pete had always wanted to create a culture with the band where it was about all four guys and not just one guy. He had the foresight to even think about things like that. I didn't think anyone would give a fuck about our band! At the time, it was The Pete Wentz Band to most people. With that album cover, he was trying to reject that and [demonstrate] that all four of us mattered. A lot of people still don't get that, but whatever. I liked that element of the cover. It felt like a team. It felt like Voltron. It wasn't what I like to call 'the flying V photo' where the singer is squarely in the center, the most important, and everyone else is nearest the camera in order of 'importance.' The drummer would be in the very back. Maybe the DJ guy who scratches records was behind the drummer.

"You Need Him. I Could Be Him. Where Is Your Boy Tonight?" - The Dynamics of Punk Pop's Fab 4, 2003

Patrick seemed like something of the anti-frontman, never hogging the spotlight and often shrinking underneath his baseball hat. Wentz was more talkative, more out front on stage and in interviews, in a way that felt unprecedented for a bass player who wasn't also singing. In some ways, Fall Out Boy operated as a two-headed dictatorship. Wentz and Stump are in the car's front seat while Joe and Andy ride in the back.

STUMP: There is a lot of truth to that. Somebody must be in the front seat, no question. But the analogy doesn't really work for us; were more like a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these different attachments, but they are all part of the same thing. When you need one specific tool, the rest go back into the handle. That was how the band functioned and still does in many ways. Pete didn't want anyone to get screwed. Some things we've done might not have been the best business decision but were the right human decision. That was very much Pete's thing. I was 19 and very reactionary. If someone pissed me off, I'd be like, 'Screw them forever!' But Pete was very tactful. He was the business guy. Joe was active on the internet. He wouldn't stop believing in this band. He was the promotions guy. Andy was an honest instrumentalist: ‘I'm a drummer, and I'm going to be the best fucking drummer I can be.' He is very disciplined. None of us were that way aside from him. I was the dictator in the studio. I didn't know what producing was at the time or how it worked, but in retrospect, I've produced a lot of records because I'm an asshole in the studio. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not the nicest guy in the studio. It's a lot easier to know what you don't want. We carved out those roles early. We were very dependent on each other.

MCLYNN: I remember sitting in Japan with those guys. None of them were drinking then, but I was drinking plenty. It was happening there, their first time over, and all the shows were sold out. I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, ‘You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy.' Patrick laughed. Then I turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. Because really, they're yin and yang. They fit together so perfectly. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision, Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. Patrick, how he can sing, and what he did with Pete's lyrics - no one else could have done that. We tried it, even with the Black Cards project in 2010. We'd find these vocalists. Pete would write lyrics, and they'd try to form them into songs, but they just couldn't do it the way Patrick could. Pete has notebooks full of stuff that Patrick turns into songs. Not only can he sing like that, but how he turns those into songs is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two guys that make Fall Out Boy what it is. They're fortunate they found each other.

"I Could Walk This Fine Line Between Elation And Success. We All Know Which Way I'm Going To Strike The Stake Between My Chest" - Fall Out Boy Hits the Mainstream, 2003

Released on May 6, 2003, Take This To Your Grave massively connected with fans. (Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend arrived in stores less than two months earlier.) While Take This To Your Grave didn't crack the Billboard 200 upon its release, it eventually spent 30 weeks on the charts. From Under the Cork Tree debuted in the Top 10 just two years later, largely on Grave's momentum. 2007's Infinity on High bowed at #1.

WENTZ: I remember noticing it was getting insane when we would do in-stores. We'd still play anywhere. That was our deal. We liked being able to sell our stuff in the stores, too. It would turn into a riot. We played a Hollister at the mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. A lot of these stores were pretty corporate with a lot of rules, but Hollister would let us rip. Our merch guy was wearing board shorts, took this surfboard off the wall, and started crowd-surfing with it during the last song. I remember thinking things had gotten insane right at that moment.

HURLEY: When we toured with Less Than Jake, there were these samplers with two of their songs and two of ours. Giving those out was a surreal moment. To have real promotion for a record... It wasn't just an ad in a 'zine or something. It was awesome.

MCLYNN: They toured with The Reunion Show, Knockout, and Punch-line. One of their first big tours as an opening act was with MEST. There would be sold-out shows with 1,000 kids, and they would be singing along to Fall Out Boy much louder than to MEST. It was like, 'What's going on here?' It was the same deal with Less Than Jake. It really started catching fire months into the album being out. You just knew something was happening. As a headliner, they went from 500-capacity clubs to 1500 - 2000 capacity venues.

WENTZ: We always wanted to play The Metro in Chicago. It got awkward when they started asking us to play after this band or that band. There were bands we grew up with that were now smaller than us. Headlining The Metro was just wild. My parents came.

MCLYNN: There was a week on Warped Tour, and there was some beel because these guys were up-and-comers, and some of the bands that were a little more established weren't too happy. They were getting a little shit on Warped Tour that week, sort of their initiation. They were on this little, shitty stage. So many kids showed up to watch them in Detroit, and the kids rushed the stage, and it collapsed. The PA failed after like three songs. They finished with an acapella, 'Where is Your Boy,’ and the whole crowd sang along.

WENTZ: That's when every show started ending in a riot because it couldn't be contained. We ended up getting banned from a lot of venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage. It was pure energy. We'd be billed on tour as the opening band, and the promoter would tell us we had to close the show or else everyone would leave after we played. We were a good band to have that happen to because there wasn't any ego. We were just like, "Oh, that's weird.' It was just bizarre. When my parents saw it was this wid thing, they said, 'OK, yeah, maybe take a year off from college.' That year is still going on.

MCLYNN: That Warped Tour was when the band's first big magazine cover, by far, hit the stands. I give a lot of credit to Norman Wonderly and Mike Shea at Alternative Press. They saw what was happening with Fall Out Boy and were like, 'We know it's early with you guys, but we want to give you a cover.' It was the biggest thing to happen to any of us. It really helped kick it to another level. It helped stoke the fires that were burning. This is back when bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and No Doubt still sold millions of records left and right. It was a leap of faith for AP to step out on Fall Out Boy the way they did.

STUMP: That was our first big cover. It was crazy. My parents flipped out. That wasn't a small zine. It was a magazine my mom could find in a bookstore and tell her friends. It was a shocking time. It's still like that. Once the surrealism starts, it never ends. I was onstage with Taylor Swift ten years later. That statement just sounds insane. It's fucking crazy. But when I was onstage, I just fell into it. I wasn't thinking about how crazy it was until afterward. It was the same thing with the AP cover. We were so busy that it was just another one of those things we were doing that day. When we left, I was like, 'Holy fuck! We're on the cover of a magazine! One that I read! I have a subscription to that!'

HURLEY: Getting an 'In The Studio' blurb was a big deal. I remember seeing bands 'in the studio' and thinking, Man, I would love to be in that and have people care that we're in the studio.' There were more minor things, but that was our first big cover.

STUMP: One thing I remember about the photo shoot is I was asked to take off my hat. I was forced to take it off and had been wearing that hat for a while. I never wanted to be the lead singer. I always hoped to be a second guitarist with a backup singer role. I lobbied to find someone else to be the proper singer. But here I was, being the lead singer, and I fucking hated it. When I was a drummer, I was always behind something. Somehow the hat thing started. Pete gave me a hat instead of throwing it away - I think it's the one I'm wearing on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. It became like my Linus blanket. I had my hat, and I could permanently hide. You couldn't see my eyes or much of me, and I was very comfortable that way. The AP cover shoot was the first time someone asked me to remove it. My mom has a poster of that cover in her house, and every time I see it, I see the fear on my face - just trying to maintain composure while filled with terror and insecurity. ‘Why is there a camera on me?'

JANICK: We pounded the pavement every week for two years. We believed early on that something great was going to happen. As we moved to 100,000 and 200,000 albums, there were points where everything was tipping. When they were on the cover of Alternative Press. When they did Warped for five days, and the stage collapsed. We went into Christmas with the band selling 2000 to 3000 a week and in the listening stations at Hot Topic. Fueled By Ramen had never had anything like that before.

MOSTOFI: Pete and I used to joke that if he weren't straight edge, he would have likely been sent to prison or worse at some point before Fall Out Boy. Pete has a predisposition to addictive behavior and chemical dependency. This is something we talked about a lot back in the day. Straight Edge helped him avoid some of the traps of adolescence.

WENTZ: I was straight edge at the time. I don't think our band would have been so successful without that. The bands we were touring with were partying like crazy. Straight Edge helped solidify the relationship between the four of us. We were playing for the love of music, not for partying or girls or stuff like that. We liked being little maniacs running around. Hurley and I were kind of the younger brothers of the hardcore kids we were in bands with. This was an attempt to get out of that shadow a little bit. Nobody is going to compare this band to Racetraitor. You know when you don't want to do exactly what your dad or older brother does? There was a little bit of that.

"Take This To Your Grave, And I'll Take It To Mine" - The Legacy of Take This To Your Grave, 2003-2023

Take This To Your Grave represents a time before the paparazzi followed Wentz to Starbucks, before marriages and children, Disney soundtracks, and all the highs and lows of an illustrious career. The album altered the course for everyone involved with its creation. Crush Music added Miley Cyrus, Green Day, and Weezer to their roster. Fueled By Ramen signed Twenty One Pilots, Paramore, A Day To Remember, and All Time Low.

STUMP: I'm so proud of Take This To Your Grave. I had no idea how much people were going to react to it. I didn't know Fall Out Boy was that good of a band. We were this shitty post-hardcore band that decided to do a bunch of pop-punk before I went to college, and Pete went back to opening for Hatebreed. That was the plan. Somehow this record happened. To explain to people now how beautiful and accidental that record was is difficult. It seems like it had to have been planned, but no, we were that shitty band that opened for 25 Ta Life.

HURLEY: We wanted to make a record as perfect as Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. A front-to-back perfect collection of songs. That was our obsession with Take This To Your Grave. We were just trying to make a record that could be compared in any way to that record. There's just something special about when the four of us came together.

WENTZ: It blows my mind when I hear people talking about Take This To Your Grave or see people including it on lists because it was just this tiny personal thing. It was very barebones. That was all we had, and we gave everything we had to it. Maybe that's how these big iconic bands feel about those records, too. Perhaps that's how James Hetfield feels when we talk about Kill 'Em All. That album was probably the last moment many people had of having us as their band that their little brother didn't know about. I have those feelings about certain bands, too. 'This band was mine. That was the last time I could talk about them at school without anyone knowing who the fuck I was talking about.' That was the case with Take This To Your Grave.

TROHMAN: Before Save Rock N' Roll, there was a rumor that we would come back with one new song and then do a Take This To Your Grave tenth-anniversary tour. But we weren't going to do what people thought we would do. We weren't going to [wear out] our old material by just returning from the hiatus with a Take This To Your Grave tour.

WENTZ: We've been asked why we haven't done a Take This To Your Grave tour. In some ways, it's more respectful not to do that. It would feel like we were taking advantage of where that record sits, what it means to people and us.

HURLEY: When Metallica released Death Magnetic, I loved the record, but I feel like Load and Reload were better in a way, because you knew that's what they wanted to do.

TROHMAN: Some people want us to make Grave again, but I'm not 17. It would be hard to do something like that without it being contrived. Were proud of those songs. We know that’s where we came from. We know the album is an important part of our history.

STUMP: There's always going to be a Take This To Your Grave purist fan who wants that forever: But no matter what we do, we cannot give you 2003. It'll never happen again. I know the feeling, because I've lived it with my favorite bands, too. But there's a whole other chunk of our fans who have grown with us and followed this journey we're on. We were this happy accident that somehow came together. It’s tempting to plagarize yourself. But it’s way more satisfying and exciting to surprise yourself.

MCILRITH: Fall Out Boy is an important band for so many reasons. I know people don't expect the singer of Rise Against to say that, but they really are. If nothing else, they created so much dialog and conversation within not just a scene but an international scene. They were smart. They got accused of being this kiddie pop punk band, but they did smart things with their success. I say that, especially as a guy who grew up playing in the same Chicago hardcore bands that would go on and confront be-ing a part of mainstream music. Mainstream music and the mainstream world are machines that can chew your band up if you don't have your head on straight when you get into it. It's a fast-moving river, and you need to know what direction you're going in before you get into it. If you don't and you hesitate, it'll take you for a ride. Knowing those guys, they went into it with a really good idea. That's something that the hardcore instilled in all of us. Knowing where you stand on those things, we cut our teeth on the hardcore scene, and it made us ready for anything that the world could throw at us, including the giant music industry.

#long post #lke. VERY long post #fall out boy #fob #take this to your grave #tttyg #patrick stump #pete wentz #joe trohman #andy hurley #if theres any typos lmk and i'll fix em this. hust took fucking forever to transcribe.

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aluraveil · 1 year

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♡ Poly relationship with Yandere Fyodor, Nikolai, and Sigma!! ♡

If you were the darling of 3 of the 5 members of the Decay of Angels, it would be pretty bad luck for you.

All 3 of them are very possessive of you just like any other yandere. All 3 of them aren't very strict with you, the only rule is that escaping isn't allowed. Fyodor, Nikolai, and Sigma all know that there's no escaping from them with their vast connections and excellent combat skills plus the thousands of people under their command. They're confident that even if you somehow manage to escape, they can easily bring you back. If somehow they still can't find you, they might even pay a visit to Fitzgerald and "borrow" his Eyes of God.

Fyodor is the scariest one out of the trio. Unlike Nikolai, he doesn't necessarily give off a very friendly vibe. Fyodor gives off a don't-piss-me-off-or-you-will-regret-it vibe. It looks like Fyodor is always staring at you and judging you secretly with his challenging and cold gaze.

Fyodor often likes testing you, such as leaving the front door unlocked or even giving you an opportunity to escape. The first time you took the opportunity you were immediately caught and dragged back. Fyodor was dissapointed with you and you certainly didn't want to see him angry.

Fyodor sometimes even flirts with you just to mess with you and to see your reaction. It makes him laugh whenever he sees you blushing or getting nervous.

Fyodor can be pretty sweet with you sometimes and he loves giving you gifts! For your birthday he got you cake and flowers which made you happy. Fyodor glanced in awe at you as you happily ate cake without a care in the world.

Fyodor often calls you his Myshka (little mouse) as a nickname for you. It's only right for him because he's the leader of the Rats of the House of the Dead.

One time you even went with him into the underground base and you saw him typing away with a huge computer setup. Whenever you're at the base, Fyodor wants you to be in the same room. Under different circumstances, he would let you roam around but the underground tunnels were easy to get lost in and he wants to be able to have you at arms length.

This other time you were walking with Fyodor when he was giving out instructions to some of his underlings. You remember when you met some guy named Ivan and he gave off a pretty weird vibe.. you also heard from Pushkin that he was a "total nut case"..

Nikolai is the chillest one out of the trio. He's funny and he shows you tons of magic tricks. You could even fall for him if he wasn't a terrible person plus him being one of your captors.

Nikolai is pretty entertaining and there's never a dull moment with him. You entertain his silly theatrics and he always knows when to make you laugh. Nik's always messing with you by using that stupid coat ability of his. One time, he even grabbed your leg as a joke and he started tickling it. You bursted out laughing both from it being funny but it lowkey creeped you out. Especially with the look he gave you where he grinned really widely and started lifting his eyebrows up and down in a way.

One time, you tried escaping from Nikolai by running into a store and he contacted Fyodor and Sigma letting them know of the instance. Next thing you know, Fyodor and Sigma are laughing their asses off behind a computer screen on the security cameras at the way Nikolai messes with you by having random objects fall on top of you. You're scared shitless when Nikolai decides to drop a random mouse on you..

This other time Nikolai had wanted to show you something during one of his missions that he dragged you along too. Nikolai was recording some video in a meeting room with government officials. You couldn't help but laugh your ass off when Nikolai messed up during the recording session especially since it was live.

"Oh no! An on-air-oopsy! Quick stop the camera, I can't go on any longer!"

You couldn't help but feel bad for the "tiger boy" (as Nikolai referred to him as) when he got hit by a pole as a result of Nikolai's ability..

Sigma is the most lenient one of the trio. For instance, he grants you more freedom than the other trio members and he forgives you a lot more if you make a mistake and you're sincerely sorry about it.

Sigma often has you sit on his lap while he's busy at his desk at the Sky Casino. Whenever Sigma is busy with other things besides paper work, he'll even give you some money and let you roam around the casino.

You have fun playing with the machines and Sigma might even rig one of them to have you win the jackpot. He might even be watching you through the camera and smile at how happy you look when you win.

You're gonna be pretty confused when you see random explosions plus some weird people claiming themselves to be "Hunting Dogs".. especially when you head back to Sigma's office and see a random hole in the wall with Sigma panicking. Who knows what was even going on? Being around the Decay of Angels had its fair share of strange experiences so you weren't surprised when weird things happened in the Sky Casino..

Should you be worried when you spot a pink haired girl who could magically age herself up?..

Hm.

Nah.

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drarryspecificrecs · 4 months

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2024.05 ~ Top 10 longest fics posted on AO3

1. Extraordinary Labor by Miershooptier [E, 259k]

►Set long after the Battle of Hogwarts. Draco Malfoy is abruptly and unwillingly called home after spending the last twenty years living and studying abroad. It seems that there are things at Malfoy Manor which need to be put to rest, and the Ministry of Magic has determined that as the sole remaining Malfoy by blood, Draco is the only one who can do it. But curse breaking is not Draco’s area of expertise, and so the Ministry has found someone willing to help.

2. Saviour by @whumpitlikeyoumeanit [E, 204k] *typo

►Several years post-War, Draco is found wandering, incoherent, and ill, in the aftermath of an extended bout of the Imperius curse. Harry Potter brings him into his home to protect him while the rest of the world thinks he's dead.

3. A Dark and Savage Magic by @tessacrowley [E, 124k]

►They say that the earliest spells were cast without wands, that they were bargains made with the earth. They say that the magic was theoretically limitless, equal only to the price the caster was willing to pay, strong enough to move mountains and reshape the sky. They say that omegas were pioneers of that magic, its scholars and its stewards. But that was many thousands of years ago. Ages have come and gone since the last of the druids drew breath. Their knowledge, and their power, has slipped from history to legend, from legend to myth. Omegas are now an underclass, and druids a relic of an idealized but unattainable past. Draco Malfoy, an omega himself, has a natural skill in the old magic that will do him no favors.

4. The Rehabilitation of Draco Malfoy by sayschu [E, 119k]

►Harry Potter spent the first year post-war being the hero everyone needed. Draco Malfoy was abandoned in Azkaban, where a plot to punish Death Eaters has left him more vulnerable than ever. Now they're both returning to Hogwarts, and while Harry aches for a connection, Malfoy can't bear to be touched.

5. Mute series by Wendy_Noire [T, 106k, 2 works]

►While the wizarding world were led to believe that Harry Potter was treated like a prince, the reality was much worse. It was a shock for Draco to realise the other 11 year old in Madame Malkins' wasn't simply uninterested in him, but couldn't speak. He was even more shocked to discover that this child was none other than Harry Potter, someone he had been expecting to be as cocky as Snape had told him James was, not this small, shy, mute boy. From that moment on, Draco swore to himself that he would protect the smaller of the two, even if his parents disagreed with his decision.

6. Follies of an Ornamental Hermit by @mallstars --- ART by @itsphantasmagoria [E, 103k]

►Potter still wasn't looking at him. Instead he faced the windows, watching the snow and the sunless sea. Behind the welcome desk, standing tall amidst the wisdom and glistening magic, Draco controlled the spheres of restless light and the flustered books, all with gentle flicks of a wand that had once served Potter without a beat of hesitation. If Potter were to look, Draco would be ready. He had a right to be here. The library was his, if only after hours.

7. Harry & The Slytherin Six by @youhavemyswordandmybow [M, 100k]

►Three things happened after the war. Hermione lost her memory. Ron didn’t handle it well, started to wear lots of black, work-out relentlessly, fix up Sirius’s motorbike and sleep around. And Harry let homeless, ex-con Slytherins move in with him until their homes and Gringotts accounts were released. Because, he's a f--ing idiot. Oh, and Andromeda made him take parental classes - in order for him to have Teddy overnight.

8. Protego Obscurial by @sightedkarma [E, 90k]

►As the Founder of Protego Maxima, the top-rated Mixed Magical Security Firm in England, Harry is a busy man. He has a policy that states he no longer takes on clients personally, as he, Ron and Hermione continue to grow the business. So when Pansy Parkinson appears in his office requesting he takes on a special case, one would think he would reject her. You would be right, if that special case didn't include a huge donation to his charity and the opportunity to work with his favorite band. But when he finds out just how familiar the men behind those masks are and how personal this case will be, he may wish he had stuck to policy.

9. An Exercise In Forgiveness by @pepperpaperpopper [M, 74k]

►Seven apologies in seven years. A down and out Draco is on a quest to become a better man while trying to find his moral compass. Meanwhile, Harry struggles with regret and resentment and is unable to leave the war behind. Can they find grace and forgiveness? [...]

10. The Future Is Guaranteed by iima_k [T, 40k]

►Over two years ago, Harry and Draco made big life changes: Harry moved away and Draco ended his marriage. Now pessimistic about life, a chance meeting has them learning about love, purpose, and family. For once, they begin to honestly question, what is it that they want?

—

※ Word count: 1k ~ 10k

※ Word count: 10k ~ 40k

At least I'm trying. by carelesspeaches [E, 17k]

An Eight-Headed Snake by Otherain [T, 30k]

Goodbye Pond by @handledwithgloves [G, 18k]

How do you spell ‘love’? You don’t spell it…you feel it. by skotini [T, 20k]

How to live with Malfoy by ProseMary [T, 16k]

Mordax Afectium by maxallover [M, 14k]

The Risk of Falling by @siobhanhazel [T, 19k]

Tastes Like Commitment by Reloumi [E, 21k]

that's the beauty of a secret (you know you're supposed to keep it) by @autisticnightfury [E, 39k]

The Third Son series by Runner3434 [E, 31k, 3 works]

Walked In and Dream Came Trued It for Ya by CheatsatUNO [G, 12k]

—

Ongoing Fest/Exchange

※ Fics would be listed elsewhere.

HD Mpreg 2024 | @harrydracompreg

Lights Camera Drarry 2024 | @lcdrarry

#drarry #drarry fanfic #drarry fic rec #harry potter #draco malfoy #monthly review #2024

251 notes · View notes

thexsilentxwordsmith · 10 months

Text

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem!Reader

Fandom: Call of Duty

Character(s): Simon Riley, Reader

Summary: Being the leader of your platoon and fucking you at the same time isn't something Simon wants paraded around, for both of your benefit as trouble could come from such a relationship. But keeping it a secret has become a problem as you've been out on a mission for a couple months with no physical contact to be had. The moment you return Simon has to have you...even though you are both filthy as fuck.

Authors Note: Nothing can stop me from getting at this man... Nothing.

Word Count: 5 k

Warnings:

Adjusting himself lower in his seat to get more comfortable, Simon spread his legs a little wider while stretching one out straight to hide and accommodate the growing bulge between his legs. The stiflingly humid air of the cabin inside the aircraft was not helping his predicament. Hungry eyes surveyed his team inside the plane one by one, moving from face to familiar face until he landed on the one he had been secretly looking for: yours.

On the opposite side, towards the cockpit of the aircraft was where you sat as that starving wolf caught you in his sights. The cool and collected Lieutenant shifted again restlessly as his gaze lingered on your face with only one thing going through his mind, the same thing that had been there the entire fucking duration of this mission. Lucky for him that his mask afforded him the luxury of keeping his eyes covered in shadow so that he could watch you without looking too suspicious to those around.

Your lips upturned into a smile as you chatted with the private to your left, passing the time until you all returned to base and Simon could not help but feel a twinge of jealousy. It should be him that you were sitting next to, close enough that he could reach a sneaky hand across his lap to squeeze onto your thigh or lean in and whisper all the filthy things he wanted to do with you the second you both got the chance, but secrecy was the name of the game so that wasn’t an option.

Still, it wasn’t as if he was complaining about getting to look at you from afar. As he watched you go about business as usual, his mouth began to salivate as his amber eyes followed the curve of those full, plump lips through their movements as you spoke, that gnawing hunger growing stronger by the second as he wondered how fucking good they would taste against his own once he got them again. So lost in his own thoughts, daydreaming scenarios of how it would happen he became oblivious to the world around him.

Suddenly that cold awareness that he was being watched brought him back into the interior of the plane and as he refocused his eyes he was met with yours staring straight back at him. Taking your bottom lip into your mouth you bit it coyly before shooting him a smirk sly enough to match a foxes, causing the Lieutenant's pulse to quicken in his veins. Turning his head as he cleared his throat, he tried to focus on something else, but his heartbeat continued to pound heavy in his chest.

Were you thinking the same things? Were you burning for him just as much as he was burning for you?

It’d been a hot fucking minute since he had felt your touch and the ache in his cock was beginning to keep him at a constant level of agitation that left him with a short fucking fuse his team was beginning to notice. Sure his hand was fine, it did the trick in a pinch, but to really sate the serpent he needed your moist, tight cunt to bury himself in and the agony of having to wait to have you all to himself had been on his mind even more lately.

Ten weeks, ten goddamn weeks that he could look, but not touch; fantasize, but not indulge, crave, but never sait and fuck was it damn near impossible now to dismiss those visions of you breathless and naked, whimpering under him in his bed that ran rampant through his mind. Focusing on the task at hand was top priority of course, but Simon was a master at multitasking and being in such close proximity to all that temptation while trying to remain professional and hide away the fact that you two were involved had caused his mind to constantly wander back to you.

Who gave you the goddamn right to be such a delicious distraction?

It had taken a herculean effort on his part to divert his gaze and steady his mind and though he had a modicum of success up until today, he found that he could not maintain that calm any longer. The mission had been lucrative and through the haze of adrenaline, something inside Simon had awoken in a fury so severe that enough was enough; he had to have you as soon as physically possible no matter what.

There was no more time.

ETA ten minutes till return to base the update hit his headset and Simon took a deep breath; the agonizing torture was almost over and the gears began to turn on just how he would get you alone because waiting a minute more than necessary was no longer an option. Careful not to draw attention, he adjusted the crotch of his pants with his hand; good thing his uniform was on the baggy side or else he would definitely be giving a fucking show right about now.

The second the craft landed everyone was itching to get out of that stifling atmosphere and make their way outside where they could catch a breeze. As the back of the plane lowered, people were already scrambling out and into the evening sun. One by one Simon watched as his squad deployed from the craft until only a few stragglers remained, one of which was the exact person he needed.

“Specialist Y/L/N,” he called out to you as he made his approach, trying to meter his gruff tone so that he would not sound too excited while there were others still present.

“Sir?” you returned in proper fashion as you turned to face him, heart skipping a beat.

So close, so fucking close. Just a little more and he’d have you again. “Need to have a word with ya, in private,” he stated plainly.

You gave him one short nod. “Of course, sir,” you said, giving the private you were speaking with the go ahead to leave you two alone and off they went with the last of your team to leave you both in seclusion completely unaware of what was really going on.

…as if they couldn’t see how the Lieutenant’s gaze always seemed to linger a bit too long on you or how whenever you two were near there was a noticeable tension in the air.

Simon clocked the area, watching as the last of the privates and other personnel moved on further into the base and as soon as he was sure you two were alone, he closed the respectful distance between your bodies as his hand clasped on the buckle of your uniform to pull you in close.

“It’s been a long fuckin’ while, sweetheart,” he said, that gruff tone dripping with need.

You stared back up at him, the heat perking in your cheeks as your heartbeat thudded in your ears. “Too long,” you agreed.

“Gettin’ harder and harder to contain myself when I’ve gone that long without ya,” his fingers slid around just over the inner edge of your waistband causing tiny pinpricks of cold sweat to tingle along the back of your neck. “All ‘a this just out of my fuckin’ reach; too many eyes watchin’ us constantly that I can’t even touch ya without some bastard catchin’ us. It’s been hell.”

“I’ve been squeezing my thighs together all flight, but…” you admitted before you turned your head to the right and then the left before coming back to his face, “...seems we’re alone now.” Your breath hitched in your chest as you waited for what he was gonna do next.

The day was warm, but as you both stood there with weeks worth of pent up sexual tension the air seemed to thicken until it was too hard to breathe. Simon paused as if weighing out something in his mind, his eyes drifting down your face slowly along four distinct points to stop and focus on your mouth before coming back up and meeting your gaze.

Without warning that 6’4” wall of muscle was on your body and shoving you by the hips until your back hit against the interior wall of the plane. Lightning fast, Simon wrenched the bottom of his mask up just over his nose, catching your chin in his grasp as he jerked it up and met your lips with a fiery intensity that instantly made your knees buckle and your mind short circuit. Sloppy embraces of his mouth against yours aggressively stole kiss after burning kiss while a thick layer of light brown stubble that covered his cheeks and along his jawline, a product of weeks without a razor at hand, pricked against your face as he pressed his firmly against your own.

All you could taste was the sharp bite of tobacco as his thick tongue thrust past your lips and into the interior of that warm, wet cavern where it slithered over your tongue and towards your throat. Mouth open, eyes closed, he completely filled you full until you nearly choked on that determined bit of muscle, a kiss that was all encompassing and rough. His cracked lips ground over the surface of yours until they were raw and bruised to match.

With his body pressed into the curves of your own, you repositioned your right leg so that your thigh nestled up into the crotch of his pants. God he was hard, throbbing and straining into the meat of your thigh. He grunted heavy into your mouth as his grip tightened on your jaw, tilting his hips inward so that he could ground his bulge against your leg, his cock so stiff he was about to rip a hole straight through the fabric.

“Can’t wait, need ya right fuckin’ now,” he panted desperately through the breaks in your mouth’s connection, drunk on your taste. The hand that was free slithered around the small of your back and up under your uniform jacket through the perspiration coating your skin to find its way inside your pants.

“We’ve been baking for a couple days now, wouldn’t you rather I had a shower first?” you questioned and punctuated it with a moan as his palm found purchase on the curve of your ass and gave it a hard squeeze with as much as he could grab.

There was no hesitation, not a single fucking second passed where he even had to think about it. “Fuck gettin’ clean; no need for what I plan on doin’ to ya.”

Christ he was filthy; honestly you both were. Not much showering out in the field this time around and it had been a good few days of sweating on the tail end that culminated in a distinct scent that radiated off his skin, mixing with the pungent aroma of gunpowder and the spicy sting of cigarettes on his breath; it was an olfactory experience that should have made your skin crawl, but you found the opposite.

You were just as needy for him even if he was absolutely disgusting. Maybe even more so.

“Where?” you groaned, needing him to make up his mind quickly.

Ripping his mouth away from yours, he watched a string of spittle glisten as it was pulled from your lips before concealing his face again so that you could move. No words needed as he took your hand and led you out into the evening sun, his booted steps fast and heavy. The munitions depot was barely a two minute walk from where you were now and that was about all the waiting could tolerate.

It was a goddamn miracle that the place was empty for the moment and quickly he used his clearance to enter, the sound of the door thudding open as he flung it while pulling you inside rang through the quiet space. The latch had barely clicked before he was picking you up and setting you on the nearest table, swiping away anything on the surface that would get in his way. You matched his speed as your hands were on the cloth of his mask to pull the damned thing off so you could finally see him properly for the first time in months.

You tossed the damp facial covering to the ground and stared back into that face you’d missed all this time. Soggy dirty blonde locks clung to his head, plastered down from a combination of his mask and the sweat glistening over his face. The black rimming his eyes shimmered wet-like as it collected moisture from his forehead. Even in this state he was a goddamn gorgeous specimen. It could very well have just been you, but shit did he make filthy look good.

“What are you waiting for?” you questioned back with a cocky raise of your eyebrow.

Simon smirked and dove right back in; he didn’t need to be told at all, let alone twice to get his fill. Heated kisses burned your raw mouth as he pressed your lips together hard so that your nose was buried in his face. As your lips danced, those large hands pawed harshly at your body to go up and under your uniform, ripping through the buttons to reach the t-shirt underneath, parting through the fabric to search for any bare piece of skin that he could find. Gloves already off, the pads of his calloused fingertips drug across the smooth flesh of your stomach, abrading the skin as they moved up towards your chest, tugging your t-shirt to stretch it to its limits. His blunt nails nicked you a few times, making you hiss into his mouth as they left red, raised marks behind.

A little souvenir to take with you the next few days to remember him by. Good, you’d cherish them until they’d dissipate; it had been too long since you’d worn his signature.

Feeling around up under the fabric was nice, but these clothes had to go; your body had been hidden by them for far too long and he was tired of knowing exactly what lay under there but not being able to see it. He jerked off the outer layer of your uniform before tearing your shirt up and over your head. Free of the barrier he pushed you back down onto the tabletop, your legs wrapping around his hips as he gripped into yours to pull you flush against him so that you were being pierced by his cock through his clothes.

One more quick rough kiss before his lips were trailing down the side of your neck and across your chest, stopping so that he could fill his mouth with as much of your tits as he could fit without suffocating. The sweat made your flesh salty to the taste and as he sucked hard on the fullness of your breasts, one after the other, it filled his mouth.

That agile tongue of his flicked around each nipple, circling around the areolas until that pleasure center in your brain lit up and had your back arching to push your tits further onto his face. Simon snarled into your chest so that you could feel the sound vibrate through you as the feeling of being enveloped by all that supple, yielding flesh made him even more feral. Goddammit, the more he sucked in the more he wanted until the pressure made the roof of his mouth sting and yet he held out longer still just to be sure he had had enough.

No sense in rushing…

Emerging from you gulping for air, eye black smudged across his eyes and nose, he did not stop as he continued down the line of your body with his exploring lips: down your chest and over your stomach to just below your belly button. “Ya feel so fuckin’ good, baby,” he stuttered with a groan low and guttural. “So fuckin’ good.”

But it wasn’t anywhere near enough for him yet. With a grunt he wrestled the clothing off of his top half, thick chest and torso speckled with perspiration glistening through the hair covering him as he stared down over top of you, those strong hands making quick work of your belt until it hung loose from the loops. The scent of his heady musk intoxicated you now that it was no longer contained by his clothing, something in the zesty notes made your mouth water uncontrollably.

Flicking his eyes back up to your face he licked his lips before bending over your lower half. “I need more,” the primal growl made your body shiver as he took the bit of cloth around the button of your pants into his teeth and ripped at it until he had them undone.

Simon pulled them off and threw them down to the ground and out of his fucking way to then again bend over your torso, placing heated kisses to your hips as this time his mouth took hold of the waistband of your panties and keeping them secure in between his lips he lowered himself onto his knees, taking them with him until they were down around your ankles and he could slip them off.

Immediately one of those large hands palmed your right thigh to bring it to his mouth as he leaned his face to it, teeth ready to gnaw at the tender, plump meat. Bites sunk in firmly, but not too hard and his unkempt stubble rubbed over the indentations as he went along until you felt like your skin was on fire.

“Fuck,” you whimpered into the air as a rush of contradicting sensations flooded your body to overload your senses. Your hips writhed wildly the higher he went up that tender inner thigh until he stopped right at the top of your leg. You knew what was coming, knew what he was going to do, and though you may have been hesitant due to your lack of proper hygiene, if Lt. Simon Riley wanted something he was going to get it no matter what.

Your untamed bank beckoned him toward it, a tempting treat no matter what state it was in; once he had it locked in his sights there was no backing away. He was feral for it, starved for it, and with his hand on your thighs he held them apart in a firm grip as he moved in without hesitation. Simon was used to wearing things to cover his face and though there were certain things that he enjoyed more than others, wearing you would always be his favorite.

Once Simon got nestled against you, there wasn’t a goddamn thing that could pry him away. Hot, muggy moisture coated his face from between your thighs as he lapped and lapped at the silky inner walls of your pussy with a weighty tongue, starting with the tip and then using the pad to press firmly up against your clit so you’d buck over his face. With his hand, he pushed down on your pubic bone as he worked until he had you mewling like a kitten.

“Mmm,” he pleasantly hummed against you, that circling tongue being coated in the sharp tang of your juices as it took its sweet time to draw you closer and closer to the edge like a man obsessed. When it came to making your squeal, there was nothing else on his mind except whatever he could do to make you come harder.

Shifting below you, he knew what needed to be done about that. Your legs were on the move then as Simon situated his shoulders under your knees, staying locked to you as he sat up taller now that you were completely strapped to him to tilt your pelvis up. In this position, as his tongue focused solely on romancing your clit, his fingers could enter you and stroke that bundle of nerves inside as well.

Fuck he wasn’t playing around with you this time. If a complete mess was what he wanted to make of you then this was the way to do it, overstimulating you to the point of insanity. Minutes passed without a single sign of him losing stamina or wanting to surface, so lost in the ecstasy of being encapsulated by your thighs pressing around his ears as you squirmed and jerked each time a new point of pleasure was plucked. There was no one here that knew your body better than him and each second that ticked away that warmth in your abdomen gathered.

Sticky and wet, breathless and vibrating with the euphoria of being overwhelmed with that hulking man, it wasn’t long after that you had finally made it to the ledge. Simon could feel it around his fingers, the walls of your cunt becoming engorged and contracting the longer he continued to stroke them deep inside you as your legs began to shake and hit his ears- exactly what he was looking for. It wouldn’t be long now and his face would be dripping with your cum. Steady was the name of his game from this point, making sure not to make a move out of place or rush to reach the finish line. Your body knew the way and with each flick of his tongue and stroke of his fingers it brought you to the precipice just as designed.

And then you fell silent and he knew it was there. The warmth in your abdomen exploded and shot towards the top of your head as you fell back flush against the table with eyes shut tight and you cried out as your body wriggled and writhed over Simon’s face. Slipping his fingers out of you he gripped hard into your hips to hold you to his face as he sucked on your clit until you rode out the pleasure to its end.

Only then did he let you go.

Standing back up Simon wiped away the moist sign of your orgasm from around his mouth with the back of his hand, a proud gleam in his brown eyes. Screw anyone who said that man couldn’t eat; he could devour you for hours and never have enough. That would be revisited later when time was more available and he could have you relaxed in his bed to make you come multiple times without coming up fully for air. Now he desperately needed to be inside of you.

“Ya ready for me sweetheart?” he said as the sound of his belt buckle jingling hit your ears and you picked your head back up to look at him.

“I need it Simon, please,” you pleaded through shaky breaths.

You watched with a hungry gaze as he pulled his pants down enough to hang loosely around his hips so that it would release that beast of a cock. A bit of precum sparkled from the tip and he used it to coat himself with a few strokes of his hand; too much and he might lose it. Then he pounced, moving back in between your legs and taking one to place on his shoulder as he aligned the head with your entrance.

It poked near the sensitive hole as he slowly began to insert it. The tip slipped in with a groan from both of you; fucking hell he had missed how you were so tight. Even just that tiny bit pushed harshly at the walls of your core as it stretched you out to accommodate him. You’d missed how big he was and how full he’d make you soon enough.

He took a breath to calm himself, too much sensation too quick. “Goddamn baby, forgot how fuckin’ amazin’ ya feel,” he sighed. “It’s been a minute, ya think ya can still take it all?”

You nodded your head as you swallowed hard to prepare yourself to take him.

“Good girl, just breathe for me,” he grunted as he pulled your body down onto his cock all the way to the base. “That’s it, breathe. T-that’s… fuckin’ hell.”

Your fingertips dug into the muscles along his back as you were filled to the brim, your walls struggling to accommodate such an impressive object after this extensive break. The sudden, overwhelming pressure even caused Simon to stagger where he stood.

“Goddammit, sweetheart, I fuckin’ missed this,” he groaned, head falling back a moment. “Why can’t I ever get enough of ya? Ya got me under your spell baby. Christ, I gotta to fuck ya raw.”

Taking it easy and slow was not something Simon had in him anymore, not now that he had gotten that first feel of your cunt in all its warm, wet glory. He was consumed and wasted no time in beginning to thrust recklessly in and out, feverish and rough, and all you could do was hold onto his shoulders for support as you both devolved into dirty, stinking creatures seeking for that ultimate high.

Goddamn the snap of his hips shoved that fat fucking cock so far into you that he bottomed out at the back of your cervix, making you whine pathetically the harder he pounded until you gagged with each rough thrust. You were so fucking full of him there was no way you weren’t going to feel those bruises tomorrow. Tears stung the rims of your eyes as they rolled back into your head, the discomfort slowly giving way to overwhelming euphoria.

“Fuck, ya take me so well,” he praised.

Your tits bounced up and down with the force of his thrusts, the table beneath you squeaking as it shook in time with the rhythm and threatening to break the harder he pushed. Christ he had missed this: the fucking ecstasy of your tight cunt gripping onto his cock for dear life as he pounded hard and desperate into it, the way all thoughts outside of the pleasure of your body seemed to vanish into thin air, the build of that release he knew would satisfy him completely… Well, for the moment anyway.

It was heaven in a sinful package.

The longer he went the more his sanity waned until there was not a single thought left except for the animalistic need to rut into you until he came. You could see the change wash over his face and through his eyes, making you grip onto him tighter; you’d never get tired of making him lose himself like that.

You were completely at his mercy, his hulking size overwhelming so that he could do with you as he pleased and he used that to his advantage. Fingers reached between your bodies to again stroke at your clit; he was getting close and he needed to get you there just as fast. Those digits hit the spot just right and through the pounding of his cock that warmth again found itself growing in your stomach.

“Right there, right there,” you repeated as your hips joined in on the movement, rolling with his strokes and thrusts to enhance the stimulation as you panted open mouthed into his face.

His grip on your leg tightened harder as his release drew even closer, his swollen balls ready to spill his seed with just a bit more friction. God, he could feel it, that tingling pressure jolting from zero to one hundred as the muscles in his stomach contracted; his legs were shaking just trying to keep it together until he could have you finish.

“Fuck,” you winced as your breath hitched in your chest. Just a little more…

He pumped with everything in him and that was it; with a shudder your orgasm rocketed through you fiery hot, making your body writhe in his grasp as you fell back against the table. God, it wouldn’t stop, second after second it just kept coming with relentless intensity. Simon did not let up either and soon you were crying from the over-stimulation.

Successfully reaching his goal, it was now his turn to let go and get his; nothing would ever be easier. In and out, in and out, he thrust and thrust until finally he could feel that ledge creep up and with a deep breath in he released control. That was it.

At the last possible second he ripped his cock out of you and nestled it between your clenched thighs as he milked out all that warm cum along your stomach, coating you with all that pent up tension he had been holding on to the entire time you were away. His abdominal muscle contracted hard, heart pounding out of his chest, body writhing as a shiver ran up the length of his spin while he squirted out every last drop that he could give.

The room reeked of sex and sweat and cum but fuck did neither of you care. You lay there on your back with his warm, pungent semen coating your stomach and dripping into your belly button, panting to catch your breath as he stood hunched over top of you, lightheaded. All he could do was breathe until feeling returned to his limbs and he could talk again.

“Christ you do look good like this luv,” he said with a smirk on his lips as his panting slowed. “Now that we’re back, ya better get used to bein’ on ya back covered in my cum cause I’ve only just started makin’ up for lost time.”

“Lucky for you that’s my favorite place to be,” you chuckled as he went off to find something to clean you up with.

Coming back holding a random piece of cloth, he wiped away his mess and you sat up to give him a thankful kiss. As he handed you back the pieces of your clothing so you could redress, you finally checked your watch and realized that you were in fact late for debrief… for the third time. “Think they’ll buy that we got held up just talking again?” you questioned as you slipped everything back on as best could.

“With how flushed your cheeks are luv, ya better fuckin’ take a minute to collect yourself,” he picked.

You rolled your eyes. “And who was the one to put me in such a state?” you returned. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Very,” he whispered as he stole one last kiss from you while pulling his pants back up and redoing them. As his lips parted he stayed in close a moment.

“Though I wouldn’t worry too much about how ya look cause if someone gets a little too close they’re gonna fuckin’ smell me all over ya,” he whispered as he slipped the mask back over his face and you both made your way stealthily back outside.

Well, guess nothing to fret over now.

1K notes · View notes

amirasainz · 5 months

Note

Hiiii! I love this series and can you write where Amira and Dominik Szoboszlai (He's so fine🤭) go on a date and paparazzi was stalking them or something and Carlos and the grid go crazy and go on protective mode. After that every time she wants to go out someone has to go with her

Hi loves! I hope you enjoy reading my writings. My requests are always open.

-XoXo

The Szoboszlai case

Charles couldn't believe it. He had his phone in his hands, a picture of Amira and Dominik Szoboslai open on his Instagram. The two of them at lunch. Her, wearing a pretty blue of the shoulder summer top with shorts. Her hair done in beautiful summer waves. A light make up, that highlights her warm chocolate brown eyes. A content smile resting on her face. And then there was him, with his stupid smirk. And stupid hair. And his stupid hand resting on her perfect arm. How. Dare. He?!

When Charles first arrived at the conference room, he found himself alone. Seeking a moment of respite from the impending chaos of the Ferrari garage, he pulled out his phone. Instagram beckoned, and he hoped to catch glimpses of his beautiful girlfriend or their pretty babygirl. But fate had other plans.

Suddenly, Charles’s screen flooded with images of Amira Sainz sharing dinner with that infuriating footsy player. His mind raced, emotions colliding like race cars on a tight circuit. The room, once empty, now teemed with drivers, FIA employees, and officials. Max, seated next to Charles, leaned in. “Charlie, mate, are you alright?” he asked, concern etching his features. The other drivers followed suit, their collective gaze fixated on Charles. Carlos chimed in, “Yeah, Lord Percival. You look really pale.” The chorus of agreement echoed around him, a symphony of curiosity and worry.

When Charles remained silent, Lewis laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Charles, hey buddy. Talk to us. You’re kind of scaring us.” Encouraged by Lewis’s words, Charles turned his phone toward the others. The room erupted with various reactions. Carlos looked as though he’d seen a ghost, while Mad Max made his first appearance in five years. Pierre let out a blood-curdling “Nooooo,” Alex and George scrambled to catch a fainting Lando, and even Yuki dropped his Dino nuggets—a sure sign of shock.

After five tension-filled minutes, Daniel broke the silence. “We can’t let anything happen. This can’t turn into something,” he began. “Hell, boys, we won’t let a stupid football—” “Um, you mean soccer,” Logan interjected. “Shut up, Logan,” Max retorted. Daniel continued, carefully navigating Carlos’s presence, “Steal our … friend.”

Carlos, lost in his own world, grappled with the image of his perfect baby sister spending precious time with a stupid football player—someone who didn’t even play for Real Madrid. How could she? So imagine Carlos’s surprise when he was suddenly slapped across the face. All eyes turned to Charles. “Sorry. Are you with us again?” No one—not even the nice lady tending her Greek garden in Italy—expected the kind Monegasque to snap Carlos out of his panic with a resounding slap. “Always, Percival,” Carlos reassured. While the other drivers still reeled from the unexpected incident, the two Ferrari boys had already begun plotting how to keep Amira away from Domi—no, from Szoboszlai. (He didn’t deserve to be called by his first name.)

And boy, planning, they did.

The drivers constructed a kind of timetable for spending time with her. For example, Oscar would have the honor of spending every Monday dinner with her, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. George, on the other hand, would enjoy Wednesday mornings in her company—a fact he promptly shared with Carmen, who was more than delighted. Kika and Pierre were allowed Thursday lunchtime visits. The two of them had initially hoped for overnight stays, but Carlos put his foot down. The mere thought of them manipulating their way into sharing a bed with her… Well, Carlos didn’t even want to entertain that idea.

During Qualifying, Red Bull had the privilege of calling her their VIP guest. The race would be watched in the Ferrari garage, with her seated between their cousin and their Papá—or perhaps cuddled up between Rebecca and Alex.

So imagine Baby!Sainz’s surprise when she returned from her lunch with Dominik, who had been so friendly as to gift her a Versace necklace. She was immediately surrounded by Alex and Fernando. And the revelation that the two of them were friends? Well, that was a twist she hadn’t seen coming.

So everyday she would spend every hour of every day with either a driver, a wag, or both of them. And for some reason, Pierre and Kika always insisted on taking a shower during Thursdays lunch time. Together. But who was she to deny the princess treatment from them.

And Dominik?……. I'm sorry, who?

#formula 1 #baby!sainz!sister #carlos sainz x sister!reader #charles leclerc x alexandra saint mleux x reader #charles leclerc x reader #max verstappen x reader #lando norris x reader #oscar piastri x reader #daniel riccardo x reader #lewis hamilton x reader #george russel x carmen mundt x reader #george russell x reader #alex albon x reader #fernando alonso x reader #pierre gasly x reader #yuki tsunoda x reader #dominik szoboszlai x reader

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elizais · 6 months

Text

arguments and make ups

when he realises he fucked up,, -dazai x gn reader warnings: nothing too specifically mentioned that you are arguing over

proper fallouts with dazai were uncommon. little bickers were bound to happen yet this had spiraled a little from something you just wanted to ask about. you were asking a genuine question over god knows what, it had been a long day for the both of you and sarcastic answer after sarcastic answer had put you both on your last straws.

stood in the kitchen, he was still joking around and it was frustrating. he's a man too smart for his own good, yet he hadn't realised that you were tired and didn't want to drag anything on. sighing, you pinched the bridge of your nose for a moment and looked at him.

"no, osamu, it's not-" you spoke, yet he only heard those 4 painful words. you don't call him that. you don't call him osamu. you call him 'samu or something sweet only he can hear. he became instantly lost in his own thoughts, staring off into space and you saw he wasn't listening to your point.

groaning, you walked into the bedroom. neither of you even remembered why or when this started. he stood there, knowing his sweet nothings wouldn't get him out of this situation. he should have just given you the answer straight up and not wind you up like he would for amusement any other day.

nobody ever called him osamu, at work he was dazai, chuuya called him an array of insults and at home he was 'samu. for someone so clever, and who always has a plan, he would have never planned to upset you. his mind began a competition of what voice inside his head could say 'no' the loudest to every possible solution he came up with.

if he was thinking rationally, he would have known you just wanted two peaceful minutes after a stressful day. he waited until he could hear you turn the shower on before quietly leaving the house after taking some leftovers out of the fridge for you to see when you come out to eat.

he wandered up and down yokohama's streets a little, feeling regretful. he knew you wouldn't hold a grudge but he wasn't going to forgive himself. you always treated him so well, never making him feel like a 'demon prodigy' or half of the 'double black' duo, and you unknowingly proved odasaku wrong. he always thought of how oda's words that claimed "there is no place in this world that can fill your loneliness" died the moment he met you.

osamu checked the time, thinking he should head back. he knew it would take more than a silly keychain of toro inoue to save his case yet he still bought one as he passed a corner shop.

arriving back home, you walked out of the bathroom door as he took off his shoes. he quickly shrugged off his coat and rushed towards you, pressing a chaste kiss to your hairline with a whisper of "give me 5 minutes, love." and hurrying to the bedroom and bathroom to get changed and have a shower - knowing it will boost his chances of getting you to cuddle with him as he apologises.

scrolling on your phone on the couch, you heard soft footsteps plodding over. a man who resembled an ashamed dog with his tail between his legs carefully sat down next to you. not looking up from your phone, you could feel his sorrow radiating off of him.

"darling, you know i-" you cut him off, "'samu, it's just been a long day." you responded calmly, looking up at him before a faint smile tugged at his lips. he could tell you were feeling better and wrapped his arms around you. falling down so that his back was laying on the couch and holding you on top of him.

"i'm sorry" he sprinkled in hundreds of times through peppered kisses on your head. giggles filled the room as he wriggled you around, smiling and forgetting about a silly frustration.

whoops!! accidentally forgot this is a blog with silly little fanfictions - consider this an apology pretty pleaseeee also: sorry for not chatting with my mutuals recently! life got in the way and shit hit the fan for a second!!

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs x reader #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #bungo stray dogs x reader #dazai x reader #dazai #dazai bsd #dazai osamu x reader

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daechwitatamic · 3 months

Text

Vice;Grip || chapter 5 || chs

(banner by @itaeewon)

Vice;Grip (masterpost) NSFW - minors DNI Genre: angst smut fluff, fuckbuddies!au Summary: Make it not hurt, you could have asked him. Or, at least, make it hurt in a way I choose. A/N: infinite thank you's to @sailoryooons and @eoieopda for beta-ing!!

Warnings: Frequent depictions of depression, depressive episodes, panic attacks, and substance abuse (alcohol, weed, and pills referenced). PLEASE know that these characters’ relationships with drugs and alcohol are not healthy and should not be emulated. If these topics are triggering to you, please consider sitting this one out.

Section Specific Warnings: language, depictions of depression and depressive episodes, mentions of doctors' offices and medication, angst, mentions of attending therapy, recreational drinking, kissing

wc: 6.9k

Playlist: you can call me in the middle of the night / you can leave before i wake up in the morning / and it could feel so wrong / but i'll still hold on

Now - Fall

Vernon’s watching his ceiling fan when his phone chimes - a noise he isn’t fond of: incoming email.

For the last few months, his emails have all been from recruiting directors and head-hunters - either thanking him for his interest but regretfully informing him they’ve gone in a different direction, or head-hunters pretending they found him a great opportunity when it was really an underpaid, short-term position where he’d spend more on his commute into the city than he’d ever earn.

It’s been real fun. He sucked it up and finished grad school, threw his diploma behind a cheap frame, added the degree to his resume. Quit going to classes (because there weren’t any), quit spending whole nights on assignments (none of those anymore either), and still - he finds himself no happier than he’d been before, even with all the free time in the world. So maybe, he considers, grad school wasn’t the problem, and he’d done the right thing to just push through and finish.

On top of this - on top of the fact that he was still bored with life, still unenthused to be here - the break-up has sucked, just to make things even bleaker for him.

Can he even call it a break-up? You were never together. But it’s been nine days since he made you cry in his car - not that he’s counting - and all nine of them have fucking sucked. He’s wrestled with indecision for all of them - did he make a mistake? Should he try to undo the damage? Wasn’t what he had with you still better than being alone?

But he knows this will be better for him in the end. He knows that what you two were doing together wasn’t real, wasn’t a relationship. It couldn’t grow with him - it was stagnant by nature. So, even though something in his bones screams at him to take it back, in the end he doesn’t regret the decision to try and do something better.

He does regret that he can’t do something better with you. He regrets that he lost his temper and yelled, regrets that he was cold in his last moments with you.

Regrets that he spent two years walking towards a dead end.

Still misses you, despite this.

He picks up his phone and scrolls to his email, already feeling the frown take over his face in anticipation of another rejection. As expected, the email is from a company he’d interviewed with last week - he’d even gotten to a second in-person round, which was rare. Still, he hadn’t wanted to get excited about it. He knows how unlikely it is that they’ll want him.

Dear Mr. Chwe,

Our team was delighted to meet with you last week. We found your background impressive, especially your internship experience with -

Vernon’s eyes skim the page, so fast the words are a blur.

…Would like to formally offer you the position of… annual salary of… additional opportunities within the company including traveling to… working with… reporting to… expected start date of… we are looking forward to having you on our team!

Vernon’s heart thuds and he turns the screen off and stares at his ceiling again. He’ll answer it later, accept it graciously, call his eomma, probably shop online for some button-downs and maybe some ties. Later, though. Later. For now, he reaches for his lighter.

He kind of wishes he could tell you - hey, I got a job offer. hey, guess who gets to wear a suit five days a week now? hey, all that bullshit paid off in the end.

Would he have texted you any of that if he hadn’t ended things? You’d never talked about this kind of thing - that had been part of the problem.

Still. As illogical as it is, you’re the one Vernon wants to tell first. It aches a little, like sore muscles but somewhere inside him, behind his brittle ribs.

He wonders if you’re doing okay. He wonders if you care at all, or if you’re fine. He turns his lighter over and over in his fingers, and then realizes he’s just read the words contingent on... drug test…

“Fuck,” he grumbles, then picks up his phone again. Maybe he’ll call his mother first, after all.

—

You were never a big fan of autumn. A lot of your friends are - the season shifts and everyone starts posting about sweater weather and PSLs, the aesthetics suddenly revolving around pumpkins and ghosts.

You have plenty of ghosts, but not the right kind.

Your phantoms haunt your phone, mostly. You feel it buzz in your pocket, hear it vibrate on the table from the other room. Sometimes you even wake up from a dead sleep, sure you’ve heard it going off, reaching for it frantically, only to turn on the screen and see nothing.

No missed calls, no new texts.

You dream about him, too. In some of them, you’re still fighting, yelling at the top of your lungs in a way you never had in real life. In some, he isn’t even present - you just know he’s missing. In some, you’re trying to get to him, but never can - stopped by nonsense laws of dream physics.

In one of them, you tell him you love him, and he staggers backwards, breaths starting to rasp the way they had when you’d talked him through a panic attack, like he was just as scared of the admission as you had been.

Maybe he had been just as scared about it, back when it had mattered. Maybe he was just better at handling it than you are.

You never see his whole face in your dreams - only glimpses, fragments. You don’t want to examine if that means anything.

You fucking hate your brain.

You’re starting to hate your phone, too.

—

You lose November to grey - the whole month, a wash. You miss three days of work, unable to do anything - unable to cook, unable to get dressed. You feed the cat because you have to, and it’s the only reason you leave your bed except to pee.

When the grey days break as December dawns, you follow an impulse and schedule an appointment with your primary physician through their app. As you click the button to confirm the appointment, you burst into tears, loud and embarrassing. You cry with abandon, pulling your hoodie up to cover your face, to muffle the noise that you can’t stop.

You should have gone to a doctor years ago, and you know it. It feels like a big deal. It feels like a potential mistake - like opening a can of worms and now you have to deal with them. It feels like admitting something is wrong when you’ve worked so hard to look like nothing is. It feels like a farce, like nothing that bad is wrong with you, and you’re wasting everyone’s time.

But you keep the appointment anyway. You make yourself small in the chair on the other side of your doctor’s little table, and you admit, eyes on your hands, “I want to talk about my mental health. I think I’ve been dealing with depressive episodes. For… a long time, now.”

It’s so damn scary. As scary as loving and losing someone - like, yes, Vernon - had seemed. And you’re somehow surviving both.

Something to think about.

You buy yourself good job you did the scary thing ice cream on the way home. You go inside, put it away, and then scoop Nana off the couch, burying your face in his belly and cooing, “How is my favorite boy today?” He tolerates your nonsense with aplomb, as always.

Chan has never forgiven you for naming a cat “Banana Bread”, and you think that’s why Nana has never warmed up to him.

Nana loved Vernon, but you don’t want to think about that.

You kind of want to text him. You think he’d be proud of you for what you did today. You think he’d tell you good job.

(Chan would tell you good job, too, and will, when you call him later. But it doesn’t feel the same.)

You wonder if he’d answer if you told him. You wonder if he wouldn’t answer, but be proud of you anyway.

You fill the prescription, you leave your contact info with a therapist as advised by your primary physician. You don’t text Vernon.

You take your pride and your sadness, your fear and your hope and you channel them into greens and yellows. As late autumn grips the leafless trees outside, you paint something that looks like spring.

Now - Winter

Winter howls through your life like you personally pissed it off. You and Nana huddle under thick blankets with your tablet night after night.

Sometimes you close your eyes and remember Vernon’s hands slipping underneath his own hoodie on your skin; it helps you feel warmer.

Sometimes you think about the way he’d said the word wasted about the time he’d spent with you; it makes you feel cold all over again.

You click through all the tabs you’ve had open for days - different universities with decent visual arts programs, all advertising admission for the spring semester.

None of them are big name schools, not like the one you’d turned down all those years ago. But they aren’t nothing.

You’d brought it up to your therapist last week and she’d encouraged the idea - accepting that you can’t unstitch the mistakes in your tapestry, but you can control what new patterns emerge.

This was the plan: start classes. Open social media accounts to showcase your work. Network through school, look for job opportunities at galleries or for collectors. Open commissions, maybe.

On your best days, this seems like a list of goals to shoot for. On your worst days, this seems like a list of things you’ve already failed at before you’ve even started.

You text options to Chan, ask him, which school colors can you see me in?

Your best friend sends back, all of them. any of them. look at you go!!

You sit in your living room and watch snow fall lazily outside the window. You daydream about what classes might be like, if you get in. You take pictures of the snow in the park, then try to paint something similar once you’re home again.

You wonder if Vernon’s doing okay. You worry that he’s going through his hard days alone. You worry that maybe he’s not - maybe he found someone who helps him better than you did, maybe he’s so happy with them that he doesn’t have hard days at all.

(You know life doesn’t work like that.)

You paint Nana, just for shits, and post it on instagram. It gets the most engagement you’ve had so far. Someone messages you asking if you do commissions for pet portraits. You frown, looking at the message.

Maybe I do, you think.

Your apartment is cold. You burrow under blankets, rub your legs together like a cricket to warm them up, and think maybe after I’m a cicada, I could be a cricket next.

There’s no one to share the joke with who’d get it. Just another of the thousand ways you feel Vernon’s absence in your life. You hadn’t realized how much space he took up until he was gone.

—

Everywhere Vernon looks, all he sees are circles. The hands on his kitchen clock circle each other, align, move on again. They tell him he has two minutes to get out the door before he’s late.

He checks his appearance in the bathroom mirror, straightens his tie, smooths back his hair, then grabs his crossbody bag and heads for the bus.

The hands of the clock in his office mark his passage through his schedule: one circle until his 10:00 meeting will end. Two more after that and he can take a lunch break. A circle and a half until his one-on-one with his boss, to discuss his first few months here.

On his lunch break, Vernon rides with two of the guys he works with to some nature trails nearby, as they usually do. They swap suits for joggers and zip-ups, pop in airpods, and head out. Vernon didn’t run before this job - didn’t exercise much at all, really. He’d gone along with the guys the first time there had been an unseasonably warm day, just to be out, and he’d found it felt good to get fresh air and some endorphins before returning to his desk.

It’s cold today, the air brittle as he inhales, but the rest of his body feels warm as he works to keep up with the other guys. It’s not as hard as it used to be, keeping up.

The trail is a circle, too, passing a small, man-made lake before looping around back to the changing facilities. On his wrist, a fitness app closes circles to quantify his steps, his speed, his progress.

At home again, he runs his thumb around the edge of the circular joystick as he waits for Seungkwan and Wonwoo to sign in and join him for a round or two before he figures out dinner.

“Some of us were going to the bar tonight, you in?”

“Shouldn’t,” Vernon says. “But maybe this weekend?” Unfortunately, his new nine-to-five forces him to make decisions like this - better decisions. He kind of likes his job. He kind of doesn’t want to feel like shit in the morning.

His mind, a circle - always coming around back to you when it gets too quiet.

He opens his messages.

how have you been? … are you doing okay? … hey, i’m - … I think I’m sorry … what if we did it differently …

Of course he doesn’t send any of them. Instead, he searches for your instagram. You’d never followed each other in the first place, and he considers it a win that you didn’t block him when it was over. But you haven't posted anything that he can see in the last eight months.

Except - one post. It looks like your cat.

He clicks it and realizes that it’s not a photograph, but a painting, and the caption links to another account. He clicks that, too, and finds himself on a page that seems dedicated to posting paintings only.

Yours, apparently. He scrolls through slowly, rolling to his stomach so he can look more closely. He never knew you painted, let alone that you were good - great, even, to his untrained and certainly unbiased eyes.

Part of the problem, his mind chimes in.

Somehow, despite understanding each other better than anyone else in your lives, at the end of the day you hadn’t known each other at all.

Now - Spring

happy hour after lecture???

plsss can we

bestie YES!!!

The sender of the original invite - a girl close to your age called Juri - eyes you from two rows up, expectantly. Normally, you’d go straight home after class. But you’d been talking to your therapist about almost this exact situation - the way you closed people out, squandered friendships to the point that only Chan managed to hang onto you for more than a year. (Vernon had made it about two years, a sick voice in your head says, and then answers itself with, but you weren’t friends, anyway.)

So, you send the group chat, sure!

(You’d also been talking to your therapist about that last fight with Vernon. I can’t get that conversation out of my head, you told her.

I’ve been caring about you way more than I should, he’d said.

You’d been talking to her about how your brain had skipped like a flat stone right over that detail and had sunk deep on I don’t want to do this anymore.

“What did you think he meant?” she’d asked you, watching you carefully. “When he said do this, what did you think this was?”

Me, you’d whispered. Anything with me - hook up, sleep, spend time together, talk, anything.

She’d helped you see the context of the fight - that maybe by “I don’t want to do this” he’d meant “be with you but not with you”.

“Sounds fake, but okay,” you’d joked. She hadn’t laughed. Negative ten points at Therapy.

You were still working on trying to believe it.

You still weren’t sure if it fucking mattered what he meant, because instead of asking him, “what do you want, then?” you’d gone defensive, had greedily grabbed at the excuse to push him away, hard and careless. He wouldn’t want you back now, even if that’s what he’d wanted at the time. You were sure of it.)

Happy that you’ve agreed to go out, Juri flashes you a grin and then turns around in her seat to watch the board again.

The bar Juri chooses is cute, not crowded or noisy yet this early in the evening. You sip at a beer and talk with the girls about upcoming projects, about the professor you all can’t stand, about the term paper you all feel you shouldn’t have to do.

It’s nice, and honestly when you glance at the time and decide you’d better get home to feed Nana, you regret that you have to. Still, you make your way to the bar to pay for your portion.

You don’t even notice the lean, handsome man who sidles up next to you while you wait for your check until he speaks.

“What’s your drink?”

You look over at him, surprised. “Oh,” you say, which isn’t really an answer. “I’m leaving, actually.”

He gives an exaggerated frown. “It’s so early!”

You shrug. “Sorry. Places to be.”

He’s cute, you consider, as you pay your bill and head for the door. Two years ago, you probably would have picked up what he was putting down.

At home, you feed Nana, then collapse on the couch, pulling a throw blanket all the way over your head. Your stomach churns with discomfort.

You open your phone, find Vernon in your contacts.

You sit on his contact page, thumbs hovering over his number, for so long that your screen goes black twice while you stay locked in indecision.

Don’t call him don’t call him don’t call him.

But you’re lonely, and you miss him, and going out made you think of him, and you wonder what would happen if you did it, if you called. Would he even answer?

Eventually, you let reason win this time, and get up from the couch, the blanket falling from you like you’d shed a skin.

In your spare room, you eye the last painting you’d finished - mostly black but with a fractured, fragmented view of a tabletop littered with empty glasses and half-finished drinks, all the liquids a toxic, piercing neon pink. You hadn’t posted that one; it felt too much like an admission.

You stare down the empty canvas, tapping your mouth with the wooden end of a brush, deciding how to begin. You close your eyes and see the beast that’s followed you these last few years - even before Vernon. The embodiment of your shame, your regrets, your failures. It’s never left your side for long.

When you finally begin to paint it, you start with the claws.

—

you up for a 1v1?

arent you on a date???

obviously not.

you didn’t go? bro.

i went. it was just. idk.

it was just what?

idk dude.

you didn’t like her?

she was fine?? she was funny, and hot, and it was fine

so why are you home alone at 8:30 asking me to come online

Vernon rubs at his face in irritation. He doesn’t know what to say, how to explain to Seungkwan why the date had felt flat.

What could he say? It was fine. It just wasn’t… enough.

He could still remember how he’d felt the first night he met you. He wanted to feel that.

idk, he told Seungkwan. lack of chemistry, ig.

Now - Summer

You think you’ve learned a lot over the past few months - between starting classes again and beginning therapy, you’re just bursting with new knowledge.

Something you’re working on is appreciating the shadows.

In class, you work on shading, on adding darks even when you think an area should all be light. Sometimes, somehow, shadows are exactly what you need to make it right on the canvas.

You think about this concept for your whole drive home from therapy - how the shadows under trees change the way you see them, how the darks affect the lights, how the shadows in your own life are natural and maybe, in the end, not so catastrophic.

At home, you duck your head into the shadows under your bed and drag Nana out by the middle.

“Come be social,” you scold him, plopping him on the couch.

After dinner, you go back to work on what you were painting. You’d been stuck for a few days, not happy with any change you made, but today you have an idea.

You create a palette of black, grey, navy, and deep purple. For two hours, you work meticulously, adding the midnights, the bruises, the shadows. They belong here, too.

—

Chan tells you he’s proud of you, the next time he’s over, and it makes you cry even though you’re only one your second sip of wine.

“Stop it,” you scold, avoiding his gaze, burning up under the attention.

“I mean it,” he says seriously. “I’m so happy that you’re painting again, I could throw up. And going back to school? And therapy? Damn. The glow-up.”

“Ew,” you frown at him, because this feels safer than acknowledging that you have been working hard on yourself, on your life. “What year is it, 2017?”

He gives you a look to make sure you know that he sees through your bullshit.

“It’s not all perfect,” you admit quietly. You feel like it should - like you’ve done the work, and now you should get the happy ending. But it hasn’t worked that way. You’re still working at a job that feels like a waste of time, painting on the side. You’re accumulating some debt for the classes you’re taking. The grey days still come and go, though admittedly their grip is less intense.

And you still think of Vernon, near daily.

Chan shrugs. “That’s normal. Perfect isn’t real. It’s unattainable. If your therapist hasn’t told you that, then you’re wasting your money.”

You laugh. She had told you that. Another thing that was easier to say than to put into practice.

You recork the bottle after a second glass, put it in your fridge for another day. Returning to your spot by Chan’s side, you tell him, “I keep thinking about him.”

Chan cocks his head, probably unsure if you’re talking about who he thinks you are.

“The guy I was hooking up with.”

“Ah.” He inclines his head knowingly.

You recount what he already knows - that you’d been whatever you were for about two years, that it had ended. That it was your fault.

“I think,” you say, taking a deep breath mid-sentence to steel yourself for the truth, “I think I could have loved him. I don’t know… maybe I did.”

“Either you did or you didn’t,” Chan points out, which is fair.

“It’s just…” you say, thinking about it. “We kept our boundaries so tight. We didn’t talk during the day, didn’t meet each others’ friends or families… barely got to know anything about each other. But it was like… even so, I think we just understood each other. It was like a lot of it just went without saying.”

Chan considers this, face serious. “Sounds like the potential was there, at least. If nothing else.”

“Yeah,” you said sadly, tracing the bottom of your wine glass with your finger. “Potential.”

Wasted potential. You’d heard that plenty before, just not usually about your love life.

Chan reaches out and shakes your knee playfully. “It’ll happen again,” he promises.

You don’t know what would be worse - if it never did, or it did, but it wasn’t Vernon. You’d never believed in there only being one right person for you - like soulmates or shit like that. But looking back at your time together, you’re not sure anyone will ever have a hold over you the way Vernon did. The grip he had on your life was unshakable.

Before he leaves for the night, Chan hesitates by the door.

“Hey,” he says, “this weekend? A bunch of the guys are driving down to the beach for the day. Wanna join?”

Something else you would have said no to, before. You’re trying to say yes more, plus you can’t deny that the sea air and sunshine sound like heaven.

“Sure,” you say, shifting to block Nana from slipping out the front door as Chan opens it. “Text me the details.”

Later, you ask what you should have asked first. who all is coming?

Chan sends back the list - six of his friends, ending with, seungcheol-hyung and his friend hansol. i think you’ve met him once or twice at the bars? he’s a good guy.

Something in you knew this was going to be the answer. You counted your breaths, tried to talk yourself down from immediately bailing on the plan.

Sleep on it, you told yourself. See how you feel in a few days.

You followed your own directions, but for days your mind spun around the question, buzzing and frantic.

Are you ready to see Vernon? To be around him, and act normal? Is it a good idea? Will you fight? Will you fall back into old habits? Will he bring out the worst in you?

Actually, you consider, that isn’t fair. Vernon never brought out your bad habits - he just coexisted peacefully with them, never tried to kick them out.

You’re scared that seeing him will undo the work of getting over him. But that isn’t true, either - because you don’t think you moved on from him at all.

In the end, you do slip into old habits - you let yourself make a potentially bad decision. You decide to go.

A twisted, quiet part of you is kind of excited.

The louder part is scared to death.

—

The day is perfect - blue sky, barely any clouds, hot and bright. Chan drives you and two of his friends; a second car with the others is somewhere en route, will meet your group once you’re there.

Chan’s car arrives first, and you help the guys unpack the trunk. Loaded down with beach bags, chairs, and coolers, you make your way unsteadily through the sand, pausing at one point to take off your flip-flops, tired of how they slow you down in the dry, loose sand.

You pick a spot and lay the towels out, unfold the chairs, get the umbrella anchored down in the sand so it doesn’t fly away.

The whole time, you can’t stop watching the parking lot, waiting for the other group to arrive - waiting for the moment of truth. What will happen when Vernon sees you?

Once everything is set up, you lay out, trying to enjoy what is admittedly beautiful weather. It’s so bright that when you lay on your back, you want to throw an arm over your eyes to block out the light, to really relax.

It feels like forever when you hear a distant shout and sit up, blinking against the glare of the sun, returning your sunglasses to your face as you get your bearings. A group of Chan’s friends approaches, one of them - Mingyu, you think - shouting hello and waving like a fool.

You stand to greet them, waving hi when they get close enough. You bite your lip nervously and glance at Vernon. He’s near the back of the group - their car had brought four people, just like yours - and his face is absolutely unreadable as he looks at you. It reminds you of the beginning, when you noticed how hard he works to keep his expression blank.

He’d stopped doing that with you, near the end. You’d almost forgotten.

Meeting and holding his gaze, you give him a solemn nod. I can be normal if you can, you try to promise, silently.

The moment is tense; you aren’t sure how he’ll react. Then, he gives you his own tiny nod back.

Relief melts through you like butter. Seeing him aches, but it isn’t unmanageable. You can do this - you’ll both be okay. You’ll both get through the day.

You help set up a second umbrella while a few of the guys move a few yards away to set up a volleyball net.

For a few hours they play volleyball. You sit on your towel with airpods in and watch, trying not to notice Vernon, trying to keep that part of your brain locked tight in its little box. But the sunlight streams down, not half as blinding as his smile as he jokes and laughs with Chan and Seungcheol, nowhere near as glittering as his laugh when he doubles over, elbows on his knees.

The sun is almost directly overhead when you get warm enough to brave the ocean.

“I’m gonna swim for a few,” you announce, standing and brushing some loose sand from your thighs.

Chan collapses on his towel, next to yours, pushing his hair back and heaving a deep breath, exhausted from volleyball.

“Maybe in a few,” he wheezes. “I need a minute.”

“I’ll go,” Soonyoung says, tossing his sunglasses onto his towel so he doesn’t lose them in the ocean.

You head down to where the waves are breaking onto the wet sand, foamy water dancing up to your ankles before retreating into the deep sea again. It’s cold, but under the midday sun the cold is welcome. You wade until you hit the awkward point where it’s hard to stand without being constantly battered by breaking waves, and then you duck underneath the surface and swim past the breaking point.

Treading water, you turn to see if Soonyoung made it out with you. He’s still back a bit, jumping each time a wave comes through. Beside him, Mingyu splutters, having taken a wave to his face. A few feet back, the water only at their knees, Vernon and Chan laugh maniacally.

You missed those goose honks.

The guys take their time catching up to you until all five of you are treading.

“Do you think there are jellyfish?” Soonyoung asks, peering into the water behind you.

“Probably,” Vernon deadpans, and you laugh, then immediately wonder if you shouldn’t. Luckily, he grins at you appreciatively as, behind him, Chan points out that there could be sharks, too.

“I’ll probably go back in soon,” Soonyoung says, trying to sound cavalier, but his unease shines through.

“We’re fine,” you promise. “You don’t have to out-swim the shark. You just have to out-swim Chan.”

Chan curses and splashes water at you as the others laugh.

You talk and float for a little longer until you consider the goosebumps on your limbs, the growl in your stomach.

“Anyone interested in lunch?” you ask.

Mingyu raises his arm and squints at his watch. “It is one,” he says. “I could eat. What did you guys bring?”

Chan starts rattling off what’s in your coolers as you start to make your way back to shore. You reach the point where your feet touch the sand, only to get slammed in the back by an incoming wave. You stumble a little, and someone holds your elbow steady, helping you stagger through it without completely tripping.

You give Vernon a grateful smile as he retracts his hand, but your stomach is swooping and your arm is burning where he’d held you.

Rejoining the others, you plop down on your towel, suddenly exhausted. The ocean water drying on your skin under the sun makes you shiver as you dig through the cooler. You pass out drinks to the guys closest to you, toss a bag of chips at Seungkwan when he asks for them, then settle back on your own towel to eat.

After, full and happy, you flop backwards and put airpods back in. Seungkwan and Soonyoung head back to the volleyball net. Mingyu and Chan seem content to bake in the sun, like you, and beyond them the others have circled up and are playing a card game, open cans of beer in the sand beside them.

You feel truly at peace, and you take a moment to ask the universe - can I hold onto this? Can I remember, when things go grey, that these moments exist?

Once you’re warm again, you pull your shorts back on and whack Chan on the arm. He startles awake, pushing his sunglasses up to glare at you.

“I’m going to walk up the beach for a little,” you tell him, pointing, just so somewhere will know where you are. He nods, his head sinking back down to his towel, eyes closing again.

You walk where the waves flood over your feet every few minutes, never getting higher than your ankles. You search for shells as you go, carrying one or two, but mostly stopping to take pictures of them and leaving them where they are, wanting to paint them later.

There are four shells in your hand when you hear someone call your name. You turn, surprised, and your stomach swoops again; Vernon approaches, hat twisted backwards and sunglasses perched over the top of it, one hand reaching out to show you a shell he’d found.

You hold still, you let him come to you. When he’s close enough, you hold open your hand and let him drop the shell there. It’s a mostly-white spiral top.

“Thanks,” you say, looking away from the shell to meet Vernon’s eyes.

He looks down at the other four in your hands. “You gonna paint them?”

You feel yourself physically take a step back in shock. “What?”

Embarrassment darkens his face just slightly. “I’ve been following your art page,” he admits, shoving his hands into his shorts pockets. “I didn’t know.” Then, “I feel bad that I didn’t know. You’re really good.”

You shake your head. “I wasn’t painting when we… I used to. I stopped for a long time. Just started again, after…” You trail off. After you left me. After I pushed you away.

He nods, licks his lips. “Does it help?” he asks, and you know exactly what he’s asking - does it make the rocks weigh less, does it make the grey lighter?

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. “In general. It’s been… kind of cathartic.”

You both stand there, the shells on your palms between you, a decision teetering between you.

You should be the one to mend it, you think, since you were the one who’d ruined it before.

“Do you want to walk with me?” you ask, a little tentatively. “You don’t have to - I’m fine on my own -”

“I’d like to,” he says, voice quiet, and something about it makes you want to well up - that he’s willing to give you his time, that he doesn’t hate you as much as you deserve.

You walk quietly together as the sun starts to sink a little, casting everything a bit orange.

“What’s new with you?” you ask, finally.

And he tells you - new job that he actually likes despite how stuffy the nine-to-five thing sounds in theory, new mile time on his daily run, new friends through work.

“And you?”

You fill him in, telling him about taking classes part-time around your job, the commissions that aren’t enough to sustain you but aren’t nothing - you even shyly admit that you’ve been seeing a therapist.

It was the most either of you had ever talked about your real lives, you thought. It struck you how normal it felt, like it wasn’t something new or novel.

“Sounds like things are coming together for you,” he says.

“You, too,” you return.

Everything between you sits heavy, weighing the moment down, pulling towards the ocean’s depths like an anchor.

Then, at the same time, you break.

“It’s good to see you again.”

“Vernon, I’m really sorry.”

He stops walking, turns to face you, aglow as the golden hour inches closer. The sun is warm on your skin, the sand is warm beneath your feet, and you are dying to make it right with him.

“It’s good to see you, too,” you whisper. You’re scared of this moment - scared it will burst, like a bubble, like waking up from a dream that you can’t get back.

“Don’t be sorry,” he counters. “We both screwed up.”

You shake your head, feeling your throat tighten with emotion. “No,” you say emphatically. “You had every right to be mad. You were right that you were wasting time.”

He glances down, mouth pulling into a frown. “I’m sorry I said that to you. It wasn’t a waste.”

“Maybe not entirely,” you allow. “But you were right. I was never going to give you what you wanted - not back then, not with… how I was. That last fight we had… it would have been so easy for me to just let you in, and everything would have been fine. And I just… couldn’t.”

He listens seriously, watching your face carefully. You look at your feet in the sand, feeling the beginning trickles of shame down your spine. But you remember that the beast can’t get you - you’d locked him on a canvas. You don’t succumb to him in these moments anymore - you take a breath and remember that you’ve grown since then.

“And -” you swallow, take a breath, “- and I’m sorry. You deserve so much better than that.”

He nods, slowly, his eyes suddenly on the ocean. You watch his throat work, and your stomach clenches in regret. Then, he says, “I should have been clearer with you - way sooner than I was.”

“I’m not sure it would have changed anything,” you admit sadly.

He nods again, agreeing. “Still,” he says.

Still.

“I really like your paintings,” he says, and then laughs at himself before you can respond. “Sorry, that sounded so lame. I don’t know the art terms or anything. I just… like them.”

You smile despite how serious the conversation had felt only seconds ago. “Thanks,” you say shyly.

“What’s the best thing you’ve learned in your classes?” he asks, stepping a little closer.

You don’t even have to think about it. “Shadows,” you say simply, looking up at him. “Even the brightest painting is nothing without the shadows.”

His smile grows slowly, and you know he gets it. Of course he does. He’s been in the trenches right alongside you.

“I thought about you a lot,” he admits, and you realize how close you’re standing. Had you been standing this close the whole time?

“I did, too,” you murmur, heart hammering.

His fingers brush up your sun-warmed arm, and you shiver despite the heat.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, voice low, a little unsure.

He’d never asked before.

You nod, unable to speak, lifting up to meet him halfway. He kisses you like he never had before - featherlight, gentle, like you’re the most fragile thing.

Neither of you say anything after, but as you start walking back towards the guys, you slip your hand into his, and he gives it a squeeze.

You’re still hand in hand when you reach the towels, and you watch Chan clock it out of the corner of his eyes. He doesn’t call you out, and you promise yourself that you’ll give him the conversation you owe him - later. When you’re alone.

You stay a few more hours; the guys play a little more volleyball, you sit on the towels and fill pages in your sketchbook. You draw Vernon - all angles, so sharp, so beautiful.

When the sun sinks low enough, the guys start packing things up, and you help haul everything back towards the cars.

As you slam the trunk of Chan’s car shut, you turn to find Vernon waiting.

“What about now?” he asks.

“What?”

“You said not back then,” he explains. “You said back then you couldn’t give me what I wanted. What about now?”

The question lands like a mine. “I don’t know,” you say, as honest as you can be. “Vernon, I don’t know. I’m scared - I’m scared I’ll hurt you again, mess it up again. I don’t know what I can promise you.”

He considers this. “Okay,” he says finally, in that easy way of his. “What if I don’t want a promise? What if I just want to know… what’re you doing next Saturday?”

You and him, you’d existed only at night. You’d never done this before - considered dating, considered giving him more than just the hours between midnight and three am. You’d never considered letting him be him and not just one of your many vices, one of your distractions, one of the things you used to hide from how broken you felt. But here, now, with the summer sun beating down on your shoulders, you take in his whole, unfragmented face and see how open it is, how willing he is to meet you where you are.

You’ve been missing out on so much, you think. It’s about time to stand in the light - with him. With him, you could try.

“Nothing,” you say, smiling up at him. “You got a suggestion?”

“Yeah,” he says, sending you a wink as he starts to back away, the car keys jingling in his hand. “I know a place.”

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