#trying to do other stupid adult things like close a credit account i never even used.

[butchviking]

making lots of phone calls today and im so angry im so angry im so angry i want to tear my skin off and set my home on fire.. send smiley rays right away PLEASE!!!

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

Faith, Trust and a Little Bit of Pixie Dust

Title:  Faith, Trust and a Little Bit of Pixie Dust

Summary: It’s cold in the cellar, but then if it isn’t cold it’d defeat the whole purpose of a cellar. This coldness had been fine at first, but the longer Logan and his little brother Virgil stay, the more it worsens. Logan just hopes his mother’s temper wears off soon or else the cold could get fatal. 

The last thing Logan expects is for his father, who he hasn’t seen in years, to show up through golden portal (a magic portal, which should be impossible!) to save the day as if he hadn’t abandoned them to this fate by leaving all those years ago.

Pairings: Brotherly Analogical, Parental Loceit

Word-Count: 3.3k

Warnings: Magic, Child Abuse, Physical & Emotional Abuse, Unhealthy Romantic Relationship, Hypothermia, Alcohol, Death Mention, Morally Grey Janus, Crying, Angst With a Happy Ending

This fic was at times both frustrating and fun to write. I have no plans to continue this fic, but you can ask me questions regarding the ‘verse and I’ll answer them. Janus has good intentions in this fic he’s just bad at expressing them and we’re also seeing this from Logan’s pov.

--

It was cold in the cellar. Then again, it would be rather alarming were it the opposite case. Cellars were historically used to store perishable items such as vegetables and meats in a time before refrigerators existed. Still prolonged exposure to such an absence of heat wasn’t good for any human being. Not without proper clothing or heating methods. Something both Logan and his young brother unfortunately lacked. 

At first with just a t-shirt and jeans it’d been fine. A bit chilly but fine. What Logan hadn’t accounted for was a cold front to settle in unexpectedly. Within an hour, it dropped by forty degrees. His little brother Virgil wasn’t fond of physical touch. Yet the young child clung to Logan for warmth. It wasn’t enough. His skinny frame still trembled, his lips turning blue. Logan himself felt the effects of his body trying uselessly to warm the cold environment around them. Still his bit his lips from shivering, desperate to attempt staying strong for Virgil.

“I-I-I’m s-s-scared.” Virgil cried, digging his head into Logan’s shirt.

I...I know.” Logan said, stroking his brother’s hair gently, “Things are...things will be alright.”

Logan had repeated this statement many times already to Virgil. Each time he grew less sure of it. However, he knew he had to remain strong for his brother’s sake. Ever since his brother was a baby, Logan had to grow up faster. Much faster than even before. Sometimes he resented this fact, but never for long. It was simply the way things were.

“C-c-c-can you tell me a story?” Virgil asked, and of course Logan obliged. For he knew the unspoken words in that request: I’m still scared. Can you make it less scary? 

A story, for both the listener and teller, would be a beneficial distraction. Even though Logan was not a good storyteller. Once he did a short story assignment in middle school and received a C. His heart metaphorically sank at the sight of it and he dreaded going home that day. Virgil always seemed to appreciate his stories. Although praise from a kindergartener wasn’t worth much in the literary world.

Through frozen lips, he told a meandering story to his little brother. Sometimes his brother would ask questions or offer suggestions, abruptly changing the direction of the story. Logan himself barely remembered what it was about. It was as if someone else spoke through him as his mind drifted to other ideas.

It’d been dark for a long, long while. Usually his mother would’ve unlocked the door by now. She’d insist he’d make dinner while complaining of a terrible headache.

 It was an unending cycle. His mother would do her best to stay sober and function as an adult for a few weeks. Then her mood would increasingly sour, little things piling up into an avalanche. It was hard to tell at times what would be the trigger. The one thing that made her slam open the alcohol cabinet and drown a whole bottle of vodka. 

She wasn’t a nice person when drunk; hence the whole being-locked-in-the-cellar. Eventually after a few days of heavy drinking, his mother would come to her senses. She’d lock the alcohol cabinet and claim she’d never drink again. A lie nobody believed but herself.

Perhaps the lie was done in good intentions. His mother always insisted she cared for her children, in ways their father never could. 

“He’s a snake, Logan,” She hissed once, banging her beer heavily onto a coaster, “A dirty, no-good deceiving snake.”

Logan said nothing. He had only a few memories of the man. Once, when Logan was nine years old, he showed up on their doorstep. He held a bouquet of roses for Mother and a much belated birthday present for Logan. It’d been one of the happiest he’d seen Mother. He stayed with them for a few days. He listened to Logan, complimenting him on his extensive knowledge about dinosaurs. The three of them went to a carnival together. For a fleeting moment, Logan had what the others kids at his school had; a family. 

Then it ended with tears, arguing, door slams. Mother yanking him by the arm and leaving everything behind. Nine months later, Virgil was born. His father wasn’t there. Nor did he ever show his face again. A bitter, festering part of Logan despised him for that.

Mother acted like she cared at times. She’d purchase Virgil and Logan expensive gifts. Things she couldn’t afford without a credit card. She treated them to ice cream and insisted on giving them hugs. She never understood that Virgil found tactical touch without permission distressing. She’d brush it off, making remarks he simply needed to get used to it. 

At times Logan allowed himself to pretend these niceties would last. He pretended his mother was a flawed human being who mostly did good by her children. He pretended the slapping and hair-pulling didn’t exist, that the cellar was just a cellar and not a place to fear. It was hard to pretend these things were true, when the reality became increasingly harder to ignore.

Virgil fell asleep in the midst of this. Logan hadn’t realized this at first. His tired mind plunged on, continuing the nonsensical story.

“Then Batsy the Bat escaped the Witch’s dungeon. He flew as fast he could, to warn his friends...ah. Virgil what do you think their names should be?” Logan squinted, the dim light making it hard to see if his brother’s eyes were closed or not, “Virgil?”

His brother slumped against him, his breaths long and labored. Logan frowned, shaking his shoulder, “Virgil?!”

Virgil made a grumbling noise, “What?”

“You need to stay awake. You--you can’t fall asleep right now.”

“I’m tireeeed,” Virgil complained.

“I--I know, but please. It--it isn’t good to sleep right now.”

“Why?”

Logan’s throat constricted, “Be--because well. I haven’t finished the story yet.”

It was a lie. The truth was that sleeping could be a dangerous thing for a hypothermia victim. Sleeping could lead to death. He couldn’t tell his brother that. He refused to let Virgil experience more fright than he already had in his short life.

“Okaaay.” Virgil said.

Logan continued with the story, pulling all his concentration into it. Yet it wasn’t enough to keep Virgil awake. He kept drifting off, unable to keep his eyes open. At one point his brother down crying.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He sobbed, repeating the words over and over.

“It’s alright, you’re okay, everything is gonna be--gonna be,” Logan stammered, struggling to force the word out, “okay.”

It was then that Logan knew they couldn’t remain in the cellar any longer. He’d have to overcome his one true fear for the sake of their safety and survival. What he feared even more than his mother, was losing Virgil. Logan was smart. He knew the odds of a kindergartener and a high school sophomore staying together in the foster system was slim.

He had been selfish to allow his mother to continue tormenting Virgil. It was wrong. Now both him and his brother were paying for it.

Logan could fix this. He just had to pull out his phone and call emergency services. He had to call and resist his foolish fears of his mother and separation from his brother. With one arm still tucked around his brother, he pulled the phone out of his pocket. A battered, beaten thing he’d purchased with his first paycheck. His mother was completely unaware of its existence. 

He pressed the power button on as he gathered up the courage to call. Except the screen remained completely blank. He pressed it again, this time harder, hoping it’d been a fluke. It wasn’t. Again and again, he kept pressing the button, irrationally hoping for a different result. 

“No,” Logan swallowed heavily, “no, no, no this cannot be happening--” “Logey?” Virgil hiccuped, his big glassy eyes staring up as his older brother with concern.

“It’s okay, Virgil,” Logan murmured, “It’s okay, It’ll be okay--”

He couldn’t say the words any longer. Not when a sob wracked his throat, his vision turning hazy with tears. He couldn’t be strong any longer. He was weak. His heart beat faster, the chasm in his stomach deepening. His little brother said something, but he couldn’t hear it. All he heard was his mind mocking his failure. Shrill and scorching like his mother.

StUpID DiD yOU ThINK ThAT wAS GOING TO WORK?

You and your little brother are going to die and it’s all yOUR FAuLt

UsEleSS

Not EVEn YoUR OwN FATHER WAntED YOU--

“Hello? Whoever is contacting me at this hour better not have a good reason.”

Logan’s thoughts jolted to a halt. What? He glanced down at his phone, but it was still battered and dead. Virgil looked just as confused and lost as he felt. He hid his face in Logan’s shirt, whimpering softly.

“Who...are you?” Logan croaked, doing a poor disguise of covering up his breakdown moments before.

“I think that is perhaps a question I should be asking you.” The strange voice replied. It was definitely emanating from the phone, but how Logan had no clue. It made no logical sense.

“I--I don’t know.”

“You don’t know your name?”

“No! I mean of course I know my name! I mean, you can’t be real--I must be hallucinating.”

“Oh?” The voice responded with a touch of some unidentifiable emotion, “this must be your first time then.”

“First time what?” Logan snapped, a headache starting to take form. He regretted raising his voice when Virgil let out a cry. He murmured a soft apology to him, attempting to ignore how cold his brother felt.

“Is there someone else with you?” 

“No,” Logan said, before hesitating, “I mean perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“You still haven’t responded to my question from before.”

“Let me broker a deal then. I’ll answer your question, if you tell me who you and your companion are.”

“Okay,” Logan shakes his head, wanting to laugh hysterically. What in Newton’s three laws of gravity was going on? Surely, he died. He died and this was some last minutes of brain activity occurring. Scientists after all, know very little what happens in one’s last moments of life. Nothing could quite prepare him for the answer the voice gave him, however.

“Well then, to quote a popular misguided piece of media, ‘you’re a wizard, Harry!’” The voice said, the verbal jazz hands evident in the voice’s dripping, dry wit. Something about it was painfully familiar.

“What.”

“You asked, I answered,” The voice chuckled, “now it’s your turn.”

“My--my name is Logan,” He said, blinking rapidly, “and my little brother..ahhh...oh! Vi-Virgil is here with me.”

“Logan, that’s your name? You’re sure?”

Logan frowned at that. Of course he was sure. Or was he? It was getting rather harder to focus. Or to breathe even. The crisp cold air hurt his lungs. Virgil slumped heavily against him, complete dead weight in his unconsciousness. Oh. That was bad. He knew that was bad. 

“Logan?!” The voice yelled. Hmm, it sounded like they’ve been yelling at him for awhile now. He should acknowledge them. He nodded before pausing. Wait. He needed to respond verbally.

“Y-yes?” 

“Finally. You seem like you’re doing absolutely fantastic,” The voice told him. 

“Do I?” Logan asked, “I do not think I’m doing ‘fantastic’.”

“Where are you?”

Logan rattled off the address. Then he very casually added, “We’re locked in the cellar.”

“WHAT?!”

“It’s-s-s-s a punishment,” Logan shivered, his eyelids drooping against his will, “it’sssokay.”

“Yes, because all parenting books recommend disciplining your children by locking them in a cellar.” Maybe it was just Logan, but he got the impression the voice was being sarcastic. 

“I need to cut the invocation call. I’ll be there soon.”

“Wh--how-hy?” Logan said, trying to speak three words at once. The voice didn’t respond. He tried shaking his battered phone as if that would do anything. It did not do anything.

The air frizzled in front of Logan. A golden spark appeared, expanding until it was one big golden shimmery oval. Logan stared at it, blinking rapidly. This was absurd. He most definitely had to be hallucinating. The golden oval ripples as a black fedora emerged from it, followed by a face and then a whole body.

“F--father?” Logan managed.

The man before him was older and dressed in strange clothing. Slivers of silver hair poked out from his hat, nestled among the chestnut hair. An unfamiliar gruesome scar ran alongside the left side of his face. But he recognized those hazel eyes anywhere. He stared at them at the mirror every morning.

He didn’t respond to Logan. He took a few steps before collapsing beside the huddled forms of Logan and Virgil. His gloved hands reached out, but he did not touch them. His mouth opened, but no sound came out of him. Then his gloves covered his face as he inhaled deeply. He removed them from his face, his expression carefully blank.

“I’m here.” He told Logan, extending a hand towards him, “and I won’t leave you or your brother this time.”

Logan stared at the yellow gloved hand before sluggishly panning his gaze up at his father. He didn’t know if he could trust him, let alone if he could trust that this was reality. But god, he wanted it to be real. 

So cradling Virgil close to his chest with one arm, he took hold of his father’s hand. And then, with a bright flash of light, the cellar was empty.

-

Logan felt warm. A drizzling, dribbling, dripping like maple syrup down a fresh stack of buttermilk pancakes type of warmth. He should be alarmed by this for some reason, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be. Instead he made a contented noise, shifting closer to it. Someone chuckled, running a calloused hand through his hair. Logan stilled at the touch, the warmth evaporating from his veins. He waited for the fingers to grow taunt around a tuft of hair. For the harsh cacophony of his mother’s voice to rain down on him like hail. Nothing.

“Are you asleep, Little Tesla?” 

The air in his lungs evaporated. Only one person had called him that and it certainly wasn’t his mother. As much as she expected him to receive good grades, she hadn’t been one to nurture his interests in 20th century scientists.

“Father?” Logan whispered.

“I’m here, I didn’t leave, just like I said I would.”

He opened his eyes to find his father was indeed there. Sitting on a wooden chair with sunken eyes as if he’d been awake for hours. Logan laid on a bed with silky sheets and an impossibly warm comforter. He had just barely enough to cover him--most of the blankets had been stolen by another small figure. Virgil. His little baby brother was with him, asleep and curled up in a small ball.

“Wha--” Logan started to say, until everything hit him. The cellar. The strange bodiless voice. The gleaming gold portal. Father. Darkness.

“Yes, yes, I know it’s not at all a lot to take in, but you have magic. And you found me again, just like I’d hope you would.”

“Found you?” Logan asked, a hardness to his tone, “Assuming this isn’t a hallucination, you left me with h-her, you never came back and suddenly because I possess magic, I’m what? Worth something?”

“Yes, no!” His father cried out with a frustrated growl, “Listen, Logan. My relationship with your mother was extremely healthy, as I’m sure you can agree. Not unhealthy in the slightest. When it ended, your mother left a lovely parting gift.”

Here, he rubs a hand against the facial scar almost absent-mindedly, “I wanted to find you, I searched everywhere, but your mother is smart and covers her tracks well. I’m...sorry I couldn’t find you or your brother sooner. You’re important to me, magic or no magic.”

“How can I trust you?” Logan asked, “How can I trust that you’re not anything like her?”

He expected his father to be upset by the accusation, but instead he just smirked.

“You’re good to be suspicious. It’s a good trait, don’t ever lose it,” He said, adjusting his gloves, “I can tell you, that I will not harm you or your brother. I can say I will teach you magic, if you desire. I can let you know that I will let you walk out the door with your brother, and you won’t ever have to see me or your mother again. But you have no true way of trusting a man that has, from what you know, abandoned you completely until just now. 

“You have two options. Either accept you cannot completely trust what I say is true and proceed with caution, or you can leave with your brother, find a way to support the two of you. You’re smart, Logan. I trust you could figure it out.”

Logan swallowed. He was indeed smart--or knowledgeable enough to know there was little choice in the matter. He was just fifteen. He can’t support Virgil and him--not legally anyway. It’d be difficult to cover it up. Child Protection Services would be on them in a matter of weeks, if not days. 

Good case scenario, they stayed together in the foster system. Bad case scenario, they ended up separated. Worst case scenario? They ended up back at their mother’s, because they don’t believe either of Logan’s or Virgil’s claims and the cycle continues without end.

So, his father. He was the only option, and he knew it. As much bitterness as Logan held for the man, there’s also yearning in equal spades. He used to spend nights crying for him with his mother yelling at him to shut up. Sometimes she’d beat him for it, telling him his father was never coming back. Then he’d snap back that she was wrong and he’d prove Logan right by coming back. Until little by little, he stopped. 

He couldn’t trust his father, the man even admitted it. He just had to hope it’d be better, even though apparently the man believed in magic. Logan was doing his best at the moment to deny it existed. It couldn’t exist, last night had to be a fluke of some sort and even if it wasn’t, it was too much for him to focus on at the moment. 

“As long as I have your word that you won’t intentionally hurt Virgil and I, we will stay with you.” Logan says, before offering his hand towards his father.

Father took a look at the extended hand, eyes softening, before clasping it, “You have my word, Logan, that I will not harm you or Virgil as long as you remain in my care.”

They shook on it. Logan let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in and then--and then, his vision blurred. A sob and then another erupted until he clenched his teeth, holding the rest back. For the second time within twenty-four hours he had shown weakness. First to his brother and now, now to his father who above all he should show no signs to. But like that creative writing assignment in the 8th grade, he completely failed.

Somehow halfway the handshake got turned into an embrace. His father hugged him, a calloused hand softly carding through his hair once more. 

“Shh, Logan, you’ve been so strong, stronger than most. You won’t have to be strong alone any longer. Let it all out.”

Logan didn’t know what to think of his father’s words. It wasn’t like a set of logical propositions or a step-by-step formula for science. He couldn’t know for certain if they were genuine. But in this moment, he was but a little boy with his father back. So he dug his head into his father’s chest and finally cried. His father, in turn, did not berate or beat him for it. Instead, he held onto his son as he whispered reassurances all the while.

[teentitwns]

soooo, as you know i wrote some bbrae fanfictions and, this one, especifically, called “all you had to do was stay” (yes, taylor swift’s song) was published in 2017 but i deleted after sometime because im little lazy and the history always seems easily in my mind.

anyway! i decided to rewrite this fanfiction and the first chapter is already posted on the brazilian website that i use (spirit fanfics), so why not put in here too?

please, remember that im brazilian and my english is a little broken - sorry for the mistakes you’ll find on the text.

well, thats it. im really nervous right now and insecure. i hope you like it and, maybe, i can post the fanfiction on ao3 or another website.

_______________

The protective dome around Raven was totally useless and, like her friends, she knew it.

She was there, standing in the middle of the contraption built by Cyborg, with all her vital signs being recorded on the computers that occupied a large part of the room, beeping together with the devices that showed her brain waves.

Everything had been perfectly assembled and positioned so that she had the best protection that anyone could have in the face of what was about to happen, but all those technological tools made her feel like a laboratory rat, studied in vain to discover that in the end the experience had gone wrong again.

She sighed loudly and propped her elbows on her knees, resting her face in one hand; she no longer cared about floating.

She felt physically and mentally drained to use her powers in something as unnecessary as floating, and she didn't need to be inches from the ground at that moment.

In fact, it was better to have contact with the earth, with the concrete floor. At least she would be sure that she was still alive, that the world was fine and whole.

Raven let out a loud snort and huffed impatiently, her eyes roaming the room until they found the door, waiting, miraculously, for one of the other Titans to enter. She had been inside that dome for hours and she couldn't take it anymore - loneliness was good when chosen willingly, not out of obligation.

To her despair, in addition to the blatant private prison that was happening there, the kidnapping, or anything else of that level, the situation made terrible flashbacks go through her head, making her remember Slade, the brand of Scath , the end of the world and, consequently, Trigon.

Why did everything have to be so similar? It seemed that karma was acting exactly the same as it had on her sixteenth birthday, creating a tedious and scary looping. She never considered herself a fan of automatic repetitions anyway.

Unconsciously, she took her left hand into the pocket of her midnight blue cloak in hopes of finding a specific object inside it, but this time, she had no lucky coin to cling to and consider as an amulet. She was alone, forgotten, practically left to die, just as she should have been two years ago, on the fateful day when Trigon’s Prophecy almost came true.

The empath, a “witch” as many called her, allowed herself to laugh with mockery. She hated feeling sorry for her own tragic life, but she couldn't escape the pitiful thoughts she was having. She probably didn't think differently from what her friends had in mind - she was just a poor girl, victim of circumstances, who was not to blame for being the fruit of the forbidden, unhealthy relationship between a human and an interdimensional demon. She was not to blame for being “Daddy's darling”, the one chosen to bring him to Earth for the second time, since she was a poorly raised daughter and prevented him the first time.

Now, at eighteen, she wouldn't be as lucky as she was at sixteen.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos… Azarath Metrion Zinthos…”, she closed her eyes and started to meditate, with nothing else to do. “Azarath Metrion Zinthos…”

“Raven!"

She opened her eyes with a start, facing Beast Boy. Awkwardly, he spread his hands on the thick glass of the dome, breathing heavily.

“Great.", She thought. “Of all the people that Robin could send, he chose the most restless."

" What are you doing here?", she asked.

“Dude, isn't it obvious? We’re doing it wrong! ”, Beast Boy waved his hands compulsively. “I mean, it's your father! There is no one better to stop him than you!”

“If I leave here it will be easier to get to Earth."

“I really don't want to be pessimistic, but he's already here, mama."

“Beast Boy..."

“It worked last time, didn't it? What good will it do you to be stuck in that dome? The world will end anyway!”

“Weren't you the one who was upbeat until two seconds ago?"

“I still am!"

“Does Robin know you're here?"

“…yes."

“I don’t believe that."

“Of course I told him,", the shapeshifter scratched the back of his head, causing his newly acquired muscles to start filling his uniform to appear. “I just don't know if he paid attention.”, He gave a nervous smile.

“It doesn't count as a warning."

“Have you never been told that what counts is the intention?"

Raven rolled her eyes and uncrossed her legs, standing up. She walked over to where Beast Boy was, touching the dome with her fingertips. He smiled broadly, running to the nearest computer and typing in the code that would free her.

When the dome barriers disappeared, Raven adjusted the hood on her head, thinking about the possibilities that surrounded her. Beast Boy was right, after all. Trigon was already on Earth, like the first time, and she would not be of much help if she were trapped, safe and sound, while her friends killed themselves to save the world.

“I knew you'd be up for it!" He celebrated, approaching her.

“It wasn't your worst idea."

“I'm smart, you underestimate me too much."

“I must have my reasons for that, right?

“Taking into account my discussions about tofu being the best food in the world can’t be considered as a reason.”

“No?”

“We all have our childish moments.”

“And you have your adult moments.”, she said.

“Nothing for having released you, I’m at your service.

“Where are they?”

“Downtown.”

“Excellent.”

“Raven”, Beast Boy called her when she started to leave. “Are you ready to go?”

“You don’t?”

“It's just… You have nothing to bring you luck.”

“I don't believe in luck.”, she lied, ignoring the thought that she had been wishing for a lucky charm a few minutes ago.

“Why not?”

“I make my own luck.”

“But it's always good to have help, isn't it?”

“Come on, Beast Boy.”

He shook his head negatively and approached her, holding her arm firmly and preventing her from getting away. The difference in height between them remained almost nil, with Raven looking a little taller from a distance because of the hood.

She frowned and looked at him without understanding, trying to pull her arm out of his grip, uncomfortable with the position they were in.

“It's just…”, Beast Boy started to speak. “I shouldn't be here and I know it. You are always so focused and correct that you even embarrass me for acting that way, but, last time, you had the coin I gave you and we won.

“I don’t know where it is.”, Raven lied, lowering her head to hide the blush on her cheeks. Some of her emotions were manifested in Nevermore, reminding her of the small passion she held for him. Passion, that, that she was sure that she would never be reciprocated. He was not a philanderer, he had never dated anyone after Terra, but he was not unaware of love affairs like her. She had a little more experience, even though she was also small. “We can't keep others waiting.”

“I can't let you go without an amulet.”

“There is no such thing as luck, Beast Boy! How many times have I told you that we need to run after what we want?”

“Many.”

“And none of them fixed on your brain?”

“Apparently no.”

“I should have imagined.”

“Why can't you give me a credit?”

“You are acting like a child who believes in Santa Claus.”

“And you're being cruel to me.”, he complained. “I thought you stopped that a while ago.”

“I stopped. Are we going to battle or not?”, Raven asked impatiently. “The world is about to end!”

“I know!”

“Then let me go!”

“I can't let you leave here without an amulet!”

“So give me this shit!”

Raven's words echoed around the room, and Beast Boy smirked, as if he had been waiting for this ever since they started arguing.

Such nonsense fights and quick discussions were not new to them, who were used to being awkward a few times a day, always for stupid reasons. However, that time, the shapeshifter had a purpose and, knowing that Raven would play the game, he put his idea into practice, which ended up working very well, thank you.

Raven shook her head and shrugged, silently asking if he wouldn't give her anything. She was waiting for a frog charm or other coin, but all she received was a warm kiss on the mouth, which made her blow up the nearest computer monitor.

The touch of Beast Boy's lips on his made her close her eyes instantly, her body and mind embracing the fact that she wanted that kiss - she had even been waiting for him for a long time, having fantasized the moment several times in the stillness of his. room.

On the other hand, Beast Boy didn't explode at all, but he felt his whole body vibrating. Her cheeks were as flushed as Raven’s, and it had taken him a long time to have the courage to kiss her.

The kiss could not be considered "worthy of a movie" because the two were too tense to give themselves up completely. They did not know where to put their hands and neither should they do it; A light in their heads blinked incessantly, reminding them that the world was ending while they were kissing, and billions of people were at risk.

It could be considered an ordinary kiss, but for Raven and Beast Boy, it meant much more than that.

They separate after a few seconds, unable to exchange a direct look. Beast Boy cleared his throat and Raven clung more tightly to her cloak, almost disappearing inside it.

“Raven”, Beast Boy smiled, making her look him in the eye quickly. Without breaking eye contact, he simply stuck a five-cent coin in her hand. Like old times. “Good luck.”

—————————————-

ok, i had no idea that the text would lose the diagramming!!! i wrote this on my iphone notes, sorryyyy

[blurry-fics]

#jd

Pairing: Josh Dun x Reader

Warnings: Little bit of angst/embarrassment 

Word Count: 929

Request: Can you do one that’s tumblr themed and y/n has a secret tumblr with a crush tag and the boy sees the tumblr and sees them talking about him. Very embarrassed🤭

Author’s Note: Sorry about my absence, but here’s a fic to make up for it! I hope you enjoy this one :) (picture credit)

You stifled a giggle as you scrolled through your Tumblr account, looking at the things you had reblogged over the past few months. It was mostly memes of various TV shows and games that you liked, but there was an occasional personal post thrown in to update your handful of followers about your life. Most of them were about your “mysterious crush” that you made vague posts about, just to make sure that his identity wasn’t immediately obvious to anyone reading.

Because the #jd tag made it so difficult to figure out.

“What are you looking at?” Josh asked when another laugh escaped your lips.

“Tumblr, as per usual,” you answered, smiling at him.

“I want to see what’s so funny.”

Josh started to scoot closer to you, already trying to peer over your shoulder. You pulled your phone to your chest to hide it from sight, making sure to lock it as an additional security measure. His attempts to get a look at your Tumblr account had been a longstanding joke in your friendship.

“Sorry, Josh, you know the rule.”

“Please,” he said, sticking out his lower lip. Your stomach flipped a couple times at his adorable expression, and for a brief moment you even considered handing over your phone. Flustered, you pulled your eyes away and reminded yourself of all the posts about him you didn’t want to be seen.

“No, it’s too personal,” you said, “But if I find something funny, I’ll text it to you.”

“Fine, we have a deal.”

Josh gave you one final longing look - which you answered with a giggle and a shake of your head - before returning to the other side of the couch, far away from you. You continued to scroll, though it was harder now that you were distracted by the mental image of Josh pouting. Was that worthy of a vague post?

“Josh, you have to see this,” you said, forgetting all about his expression as you hit the share button on a meme that someone had created about the band. You tried to limit the number of posts that you reblogged about the boys - mostly out of fear of people connecting Josh’s identity to the tag on your crush posts - but occasionally something was so funny that you couldn’t resist. This was one of those posts.

“I’m ready,” Josh said, holding his phone up in front of his face. “Is it coming?”

“Yeah, it just takes a second.”

A moment later, Josh was tapping on his phone and laughing as he read the post. The sound of it made butterflies form in your stomach.

“What account is this from? I want to see what else they’ve posted.”

“I don’t remember, click on the name at the top.”

“Y/T/U?”

The butterflies in your stomach disappeared instantly, replaced with a feeling of pure dread. You had been so distracted by sending Josh the post that you had totally forgotten that you had been looking through your own account, meaning that was what he had just gotten a direct link to.

“Don’t look at that,” you said quickly.

Josh turned to you, a teasing smirk on his face. “Why not?”

“Josh, please.”

“Is there something on here you don’t want me to see?”

You decided to go for it and lunged at Josh, reaching for his phone, but it only ended with his hand getting further from you and your chest pressed to his.

“Let’s see what we have here… this looks like a post you wrote. ‘I can’t get enough of his smile. It’s like liquid sunshine.’ Oh, and there’s some more text at the bottom. JD. Hey, those are my initials,” he smiled.

You were still on top of Josh, too scared, embarrassed, and curious to do anything. Was he going to put it together?

“I want to find more posts you wrote,” he said, starting to scroll faster. “Here’s one: ‘Sometimes he puts his arm around me when we walk and my heart melts.’ It has the same letters as the other one. I put my arm around you when we walk sometimes.”

His smile slowly faded and morphed into recognition. Your hands started to shake. You could see the pieces coming together in his head.

“‘Sometimes I want to tell him how I feel but then I think about losing him and that hurts so much more than never telling him.’ Y/N, are these about me?”

“I’m so sorry,” you said. Your body finally moved and you started to pull away from Josh. “I should have never made that public. It was stupid. I should have just told you like an adult.”

Josh caught your arm and gently pulled you back towards him, “I think it’s sweet.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I write stuff like that in my notes about people I like all the time.”

“Right,” you said, forcing a smile even though you could feel your stomach sinking.

“And I have hundreds about you.”

You turned to him, eyes wide. “About me?”

“There’s something satisfying about writing your feelings down somewhere, isn’t there?”

“Agreed,” you smiled. It was real this time.

Josh stared at you for a moment before finally leaning forward and pressing his lips to yours. You rested a hand on the side of his face and held him close.

“Does this mean I get to look at your Tumblr now?” he whispered when he finally pulled away.

“Maybe,” you laughed. “It depends how many other embarrassing things are on there.”

Josh smiled and gave you another quick kiss, “Deal.”

[theunderdogwrites]

2020: The Year I Lost My Ass

Well, we reached the end of that toilet roll only to start another one, because that is what we do for as long as we are allowed to continue revolutions around the sun – we keep going.

2020 was a terrible year for so many. My brain is incapable of processing the number of losses suffered on a global scale. Be it jobs, security, rights, sanity, relationships or life. My brain is not just incapable of these calculations, it has plain refused to entertain those thoughts on behalf of my heart. My heart, that sensitive little blood pumping work horse who not once allows itself to stop. Thank goodness.

I don’t believe the majority of people are willing and able to bring themselves to fully comprehend what was lost in 2020.

Here is a list of a few more losses suffered last year:

- People lost their shit. And over the most ridiculous things like toilet paper, having to wear a mask to secure toilet paper and being held to the consequences resulting from not wearing a mask when asked to while attempting to purchase toilet paper. Pause for a moment and let that last sentence hang around in your mind. 2020 made that happen. I didn’t make it up! Recently I saw a news piece showing a man (40’s) lying down on the floor in a Costco to protest being asked to wear a mask. He spoke loudly, he beat his hands at his sides and wildly kicked his legs when an employee asked him to get up. Now, I am not judging for I too have participated in such behaviour MANY times. Granted I was three, but hey… some of us mature faster than others.

 - People lost their damn minds. 2020 should be dubbed “The Year of The Karen”. For those of you not in the know about the Karen phenomenon, here is a description courtesy of Urban Dictionary:

 “Karen is a pejorative term used in the United States and other English-speaking countries for a woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary. A common stereotype is that of a white woman who uses her privilege to demand her own way at the expense of others.’

 Basically, a Karen is a I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER type person (There is a male equivalent, but it seems no one can agree on the name… Chad, Terry, Kyle, Kevin, Steve). You can often find a Karen on her cellphone calling the police to report a black man who lives in her neighborhood, simply living his life in her neighbourhood. I didn’t make that up either.

 More recently a Karen was videoed in a UPS store claiming that she didn’t have to wear a mask because that space was government property and not a private business. Would it be safe to say that most Karen types suffer from a lack of oxygen to their brain? Possibly. But that would involve science and Karen types DO NOT enjoy hard facts.

 As always when I download my thoughts into reality, I must go within and search myself. Am I a Karen? My immediate answer is: no fucking way. I can honestly say I’ve never once asked to see a manager or called the police to report someone eating their lunch on a park bench. I do not enjoy confrontation. Unless there is a bully involved. Then I will drag that person to hell with me. I much prefer discussion over going straight to the ‘I triple dog dare you!’ approach to the world. (If you got that reference, you are my new favourite) Because that is who a Karen really is… someone who jumps right to the most extreme action in order to satisfy their need to be superior. Truly, we should feel sorry for these people because instead of engaging they’re raging. And how awful must their insides feel… always full of anger, fear and self doubt. I say instead of judging these Karen types or putting them on blast on social media, we should hug the shit out of them. Just grab them and squeeze as hard as you fucking can until they stop talking. Peaceful solutions my friends, peaceful solutions.

 - Pets lost their faith in us. Children a close second. If you are a proud owner of a pet or a child, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ve always operated under the notion that my cat loves it when I’m home and hates it when I leave. 2020 has taught me it might be the other way around. Because our animals are, well, animals we just believe our presence is the greatest gift in their lives. Remember when you were old enough to be left alone by your parents and once you had the taste of that kind of freedom, you just wanted more of it and couldn’t wait for them to go out? I feel it’s like that with our pets now. We might not think animals have a routine or preferences or enjoy some alone time, but we’d be wrong.

I think at first our pets were thrilled. If we are home more it means more time for prolonged petting, walks and the opportunity to ritualistically train us to respond to their caterwauls for more food and treats than normal. But then as the weeks of lockdown and working from home increased, so did our pets desire to kill us in our sleep.

 I’m pretty sure my cat has asked me several times using her feline glare: “why the fuck won’t you just leave?”. It would be naïve of us to assume we don’t disrupt their day with our constant noise making and snacking and scotch drinking that leads to a good buzz that leads to showing too much affection to our pets. To the point where they run and hide when they see us coming. Please tell me I didn’t describe just my own experience.

 There is such a thing as everything in moderation, we know this, so I think it can be applied here. People, get away from your pets. Give them the space you often desire from human beings. Because if you don’t, that random turd in your shoe could be pointing to a much larger, more alarming problem you’re about to encounter.

 I had the absolute blessing of being able to assist in caring for and raising of my three nephews (12,9,6) for the last 11 years. So, when I say: ‘children are always watching us’, I feel I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been mimicked so often by these young boys that I’ve had to pause due to mortification. Children will hold you accountable without even knowing it. I’ve had some behaviours of mine corrected by a 5-year-old and let me tell you, it stings like hell.

 As adults, when our world was thrown into turmoil because of Covid-19, we looked to our medical health professionals and our politicians for guidance. Basically, we searched for those who would lead us. The children – looked to us. And while many adults handled this responsibility the best they possibly could, many more failed miserably and displayed attitudes I can only describe as juvenile, damaging and pathetic. I suppose it doesn’t help if the people the adults are looking to for help are themselves - juvenile, damaging and pathetic.

 When I say we still have not grasped just how much has been lost over the past year, I’m hinting at integrity, compassion and creditability. Three vital qualities you’d hope people want to instill into their children. But if they themselves are unable to display such valuable traits, what does this say for the children who are looking up to them as an example on how to act when life gets challenging?

 For myself in 2020, I gained by losing.

When they locked our gyms down for four months last spring, I came close to being one of those people who lost their shit. While people were moaning about wearing a mask for 20 minutes in the grocery store, I was contemplating if murdering those people could be considered a cardio exercise and would that hold up in a court of law.

To reflect on that time period now (especially since our gyms are closed AGAIN at the moment) the loss of the gyms brought me the knowledge of how important the routine of going to and being in the gym is to my mental health. I won’t launch into how I feel about shopping malls being open and gyms being closed despite their proven benefit to one’s overall health because then I really will lose my shit.

People always say getting to the gym is the hardest part and once they’re there it’s easy to workout. And for many that is the truth, but for me it’s all a part of the workout. Getting to the gym is the psychological effort. Putting in the work at the gym is the physical. You can’t have one without the other. I became so pathetic that I’d often walk to the closed gym from my house, stare at the closed doors and then walk home. 1.5 hour round trip. True story.

Remember a few years back everyone became obsessed with that Netflix show ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’? It is the show where that lovely woman from Japan showed us all how to declutter our homes by getting rid of anything that didn’t bring us joy. Those acid wash jeans from 1989… sit with them… hold them close to your chest… if they don’t make you happy, remove them from your space. Well, the same idea can be applied to people and ideas and even feelings. And 2020 was a great year for simplifying our lives. I’ve heard so many people talk about how they can’t wait to get back to ‘normal’… not me. I’ve already started my ‘new normal’.

The loss of drama has gained me peace and a better understanding of the importance of remaining true to who I am instead of trying to please others in hopes it wins me points. Because it doesn’t. Because its inauthentic and only brings you more loss and more drama. And anxiety. And sleepless nights. And an overall sense of hatred for everyone. 2020 gave me the option to no longer care about the things that don’t make me happy and to embrace the process of letting all that stupid bullshit fade away.

It was a year of gained focus.

It was a year of gained appreciation.

It was a year of gained gratitude.

It was a year of gained love for myself.

 I’m going to leave you now, but not before I share one of my favorite songs by the Tragically Hip:

In A World Possessed by The Human Mind

Just give me the news

It can all be lies

Exciting over fair or the right thing at the right time

Everything is clear

Just how you described

The way it appears, "A world possessed by the human mind"

 Then I think I smiled

Then I think you said, "it's fine"

And quietly I dressed, in a world completely possessed by the human mind

 We're in awe of no one

We've none of their fear

Fighting's goin' nowhere and we stay right here

Where everything is quiet

A little super dangerous

"In the shadow of the law and with colours of justice"

 Then I hope I smiled

Then I'm sure you said, "It's fine"

They got no interest in a world completely possessed by the human mind

 Everything is quiet

A little super dangerous

Quiet enough to hear God rustlin' around in the bushes

Oh, but it was you

Girl, I was so afraid

You said, "You shoulda seen the look on your face"

 Then I hope I laughed

Then I hope I said, "it's fine"

And quietly undressed in a world completely possessed by the human mind

 Oh it was you

Girl, I was so afraid

You said, "You shoulda seen the look on your face"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgXphurrsE0

[lovelyirony]

This Might as Well Happen

“So let’s let things come out of the woodwork/I’ll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies” Homemade Dynamite, Lorde 

Tony was a curious little shit ever since he could remember. He remembers trying to sneak into the meeting rooms when Dum-Dum Dugan and Peggy Carter would meet with Dad. (He failed at this because he never really learned how spies actually gathered information.) 

His knowledge was highly encouraged by tutors that could never keep up and Jarvis, who would buy him the most obscure books he could. 

(“Jarvis, this book is in Japanese!” 

“Are you saying you can’t figure it out?” 

“Well, no...”) 

And now this has royally screwed him over because he’s still figuring out how he’s hacking into shit and he just found...something. 

The thing about computers and him is that Tony understands computers on a level most don’t. Hell, he’s built most of the systems that he knows to be better than the commercially available ones. 

This is how he figures out that there’s a hit out on his parents. For the night that he said he wasn’t going to go to because “it was super lame” and the fact that Howard’s already disappointed in him and he’d rather not try to awkwardly bond with him in public because that’s what people expect from him. 

But now he has to go. 

Which sucks, by the way. Because he’s not telling his parents that they’re going to be killed because that’s just...Howard wouldn’t believe him and Mama would probably wring her hands out of their sockets and ring up the president or some shit like that. 

Besides, it’s easy to change what’s going to happen, even if he is only a young adult or however you categorize a twenty year old. 

He simply updates the file. It’s not like anyone can tell, especially when the system that the organization is using was mainly designed by him with minimal input from other sources. 

He says that the Stark family will be leaving at midnight, even though the function carries on much later and his parents often like to stay out quite a bit later than midnight. 

Tony then tells them that he’s decided to go. 

“Why?” Howard asks suspiciously. “You said it yourself that this was supposedly ‘the most boring thing you would ever be doing’.” 

“Teenagers change minds all the time,” Tony says with a shrug. “And it’s not the most boring thing I could be doing. I could be asking Beatriz in accounts how she files paperwork.” 

Tony’s not even surprised that his dad doesn’t know all of his employees. He hires a lot of people, but still. 

“Please wear the shirt I’ve laid out on your bed,” mama pleads to him. “Please. Don’t let it be like last time.” 

“And here I was thinking you liked that I wore a rock t-shirt with a suit.” 

“You looked a mess, darling.” 

“That’s a trend now, mama.” 

“Not for my boy.” 

“Okay, fine. I won’t wear it. By the way, I’m taking a separate car. Just don’t want to be stuck there when you and dad decide to talk to someone for, like, three hours.” 

(He still wears plaid pants. His mother hates him for it.) 

As he’s watching the party, he’s kind of amazed at how much he knows. 

Mama and Howard are having a good time at the gala. So good, in fact, that they don’t notice at midnight when Tony switches keys and takes Howard’s car. 

He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, honestly. He just knows that Howard drives like he wishes he was a turtle and his mama refuses to drive anywhere. 

There’s a motorcycle behind him, and Tony counts on them thinking that he’s Howard. 

And then he turns left. 

- 

Hydra doesn’t know what the hell is happening. They’ve gotten too confident--no one was in the gala or investigated Howard before any of this. He should never have made a left turn 

But Winter Soldier is hunting him down. And Winter Soldier never misses a target. 

...right? 

- 

Tony’s currently panicking and also the Beatles are on the radio--which is weird, by the way, it’s not even a well-known song--and he’s trying to outmaneuver a motorcyclist who has a gun and has fired it once, the bullet whizzing into the front glass and cracking it. 

He has a crazy idea. Well, it’s not the craziest you could have. He could’ve flown the car off a ditch and tried to jump out the window. But he can’t keep turning forever and he can’t keep ducking his head to try to avoid shots that are a little too close to his head to ignore. 

He brakes and he brakes hard. The guy runs into the car, falls, and Tony gets out and runs for it. 

That’s stupid. Very stupid. And it wasn’t supposed to happen. 

None of this was supposed to happen. 

Disoriented and confused, Winter Soldier sits up and tries to refocus on the target. 

Even if he just smashed his head against a bumper and shit, was that a dent? That was definitely a dent, Winter Soldier knew one thing: that that wasn’t the target, and somewhere along the way something got messed up. 

Hydra didn’t know that Howard and Maria were safely exiting the gala at two in the morning and grumbling about taking Tony’s entirely-too-showy vehicle that had the volume blasting and music that was too vulgar for both of their tastes the only sort of music that was programmed into the radio stations or on the CDs of music that were stuffed in the passenger side-door. 

Hydra didn’t know that they were going to have to deal with, mainly because Tony’s a gigantic asshole who knows more than them but also doesn’t know how he’s going to break the news to his parents that they might die? 

He honestly might just make himself a target for them. 

But he also needs to figure out how to shut down Hydra because clearly Cap going down into the ice didn’t just automatically fix it all. 

-

This involves going to SHIELD. And then as he approaches the building, realizing that the only reason he found out about Hydra is because he hacked into SHIELD databases mainly because he just wanted to see what it was like and if he could get into the deeper encryption is because they were probably a part of the organization. 

Tony sighs to himself. This means changing literally everything about his life. 

Honestly, he wishes he hadn’t even discovered this because he has this sense of “something needs to be done” and he just does not care for that shit at all. 

Except he does. 

So instead he calls Rhodey. 

“Only you could ruin Christmas,” Rhodey grumbles. “I’ll meet you at the coffeeshop. I hate you for this.” 

“I know, love you too,” Tony says. “Fate of the world depends on it or whatever.” 

Rhodey has no idea why he’s friends with this crazy fucking millionaire kid, but they meet at a coffee shop and Tony’s wearing plaid pants, the shirt is dissheveled, and he says that he ditched a car and took the subway. 

“Wow, good for you,” Rhodey teases. “Taking the subway like us commoners.” 

They don’t say anything for a beat. 

“Get your coffee. We’re taking a walk.” 

“At three a.m.? Seriously?” 

“Short walk. Don’t be such a baby about it.” 

They get coffee and start walking. Tony links arms with him. 

“So you remember learning about Hydra when you were a kid?” 

“Eh, somewhat. Something about being an offshoot of Nazism?” 

“Not...exactly. They were more of supportive of the Nazi agenda and the Nazis were chill with that. No, they were more proactive on world domination and making sure that they also overpowered the universe or whatever. Yeah, they’re still here.” 

“...fuck. Well, what do you want to do about it?” 

That’s what Tony appreciates about Rhodey. He’s just ready to kick ass whenever. 

“I can’t talk to SHIELD about it. So I’m gonna try to do it with some people outside of it. You ready to infiltrate Stark Industries with extra employees?” 

“Oh my god, so you’re actually gonna take the company at twenty-one instead of letting Obie do it?” 

“Yes, unfortunately. Our trip to Cabo will have to wait.” 

“To be completely honest with you, I didn’t want to go anyway.” 

“Rhodey, you bitch. I even had a good place to stay and everything!” 

“Doesn’t matter now, sweetheart,” Rhodey says, smiling. “Now we have to hire people before SHIELD does.” 

-

It takes a while. Tony has to go to MIT and take business classes for credit (barf) and look at other, scarier parts of the internet. 

He and Rhodey also keep practicing fighting after-hours and Tony’s pretty sure that he could create a flight-suit if he so desired. 

(And if his projects for engineering would Stop Being Due All the Time, things would be better.) 

They meet a girl named Pepper Potts who’s trained in ballet, could kick God’s ass and have God apologize, and was looking at recruitment at SHIELD or joining a sorority. 

“Or, there’s a better option,” Tony adds. “Taking down an organization that’s a conspiracy thread on Reddit with surprisingly solid evidence.” 

“You’re making this sound worse,” Rhodey says with a snort. “Listen, Pepper. We’re going to take down an organization that people say doesn’t exist. Tony survived an attack from an assassin that technically probably should be dead. It’ll go on your resume and you legally could never be fired ever or else it would be all over the news and you would ruin a company without contributing to it. Join or lose the opportunity.” 

“I’m in.” 

“Rhodey, I hate you,” Tony pouts. 

Rhodey is barely over twenty-one and trying to figure out how to tell his superior officer that he should stay at home when he had expressed overseas interest, Pepper’s just celebrated her twentieth birthday and has five cents in her bank account, and Tony’s only nineteen and forgot how to spell ‘experience’ on more than one occasion. 

They’re gonna take over the world. 

[starshinegoblin]

In Your Arms

So, I wanted something soft but also kind of sad. So here’s to the moment in Walking Into Your Love au, where Jin Ling goes to Paris after Jingyi’s parents abandon him. @ruensroad - Thanks for listening to my idea! :D 

He’s stupid. He’s so freaking stupid. He should have known this would happen. Yesterday was too good to be true. How could he have missed the signs? Wasn’t being twenty three too old to be falling for the same tricks?

Jingyi took a deep breath trying to dampen down the wave of anger but also stave off the rising panic. His hands already slightly shaking. He was in a whole different country. Thirteen hours by flight away from home. He closed his eyes leaning back to let his head hit the hotel room headboard. His parents were supposed to fly him back home and now...

“Sir?” The reception desk man’s voice cuts through his thoughts.

“That’ll be all thank you.” Jingyi replied with a crack in his voice, before ending the call. He tossed the cordless phone onto the bed beside him. He pulled his legs up to his chest while his hands moved to cradle his face. He let out a shuddering breath before dropping his hands. He started breathing in and out just like Dr. Ziyi had taught him during their sessions. This was not the place to have a panic attack. 

After what felt like an hour of just breathing and meditating, Jingyi opened his eyes and started thinking. He needed to get back home but how? He didn’t bring the funds with him to be able to fly home because he thought they were taking him home. His next option was the most obvious. Suzhui. He knew that his best friend and many ways brother, would be more than happy to buy a ticket home. But that also meant Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji finding out. He loved them both and knew they loved him, but Wei Wuxian would be on an overprotective warpath. 

He bit his lip as he thought of Jin Ling. He let himself flop onto his side with an exasperated sigh. It would be embarrassing but how could this situation not be? They were supposed to be friends and for everything that's happened between him. The man has never judged him. But this was weak. A weakness that only his adoptive family knew about. Jingyi drew his knees in. Letting him know about this was truly opening his heart to the man he’d come to adore and desire. 

“I shou-” Jingyi started rationalizing out loud till his phone started ringing. He reached over seeing that it was in fact Jin Ling. 

“Hey-“

“You missed our video chat this morning. Fairy and I got worried.” 

“No, I was just..” he paused wondering how to word what had happened. 

Oh, I’m sorry I worried you both, but here I am just freaking out because I let my parents fool me again. I let them talk me into a family vacation only to leave me in a different country. When I could have stayed home and spent the week with you and Fairy. 

“Jingyi?”  Jin Ling called to him stirring him from his internal tirade. 

“Yes…”

“Have you eaten yet?” Jin Ling asked, his tone soft. 

“No…” Jingyi answered honestly. 

“Then I want you to get up and take a shower. There’s this cafe that has the best chausson aux pommes and they’ll have the tea that you like.” Jin Ling stated. Jingyi could feel the other smiling as he spoke. 

“Is that some kind of snail? Wait... you’ve been here?” Jingyi tried to joke but found himself wincing. Of course the man would have been to Paris. He’s the CEO of Koi Tower Industries. They have a branch here. 

“Yes, when I was in high school. I spent a year there.  My jiujiu thought it would be a good experience for me since I wanted to run the company.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah, hold on a second,” Jin Ling said before the line went silent that made Jingyi check to see if the other had hung up for how long he waited. “Sorry about that. Now, get up and go take a shower.”

“How do you know that I’ve not already done that?”

“Because you would have called us afterwards. Remember?” 

Jingyi pouted but also blushed. He couldn’t believe that he’d gotten so predictable that Jin Ling noticed. Well of course he would notice. Jin Ling was more perceptive than he was normally given credit for. 

“Jingyi get into the shower.” Jin Ling pushed again. 

“What’s the rush it’s not like your…” he paused as it dawned on him why he kept pushing for him to get dressed. He quickly sat up. “...are you here?  Oh my god, please tell me you’re not here because of me?”

“I was craving chausson aux pommes.” Jing Ling chuckled.

“You’re not serious.” Jingyi asked, his tone incredulous. 

“I’ve gone to Japan for less.”

“For what?” 

“You’ll have to be dressed and ready to have breakfast with me to find out.” Jin Ling answered before hanging up. Jingyi sat there on his bed staring at his phone with his mouth gaping like a fish. He was like that for a few minutes before he got another text reminding him to shower. 

Jin Ling grinned as he laid the phone down on his desk in his office. He turned to look out at the view from his window. The view being one of the reasons he loved being at this branch. Memories of the past coming to him. He’d had a good time here and would be forever grateful to his jiujiu letting him come to this country. 

His phone gave off a bird’s tweeting sound. He reached for his phone seeing that it was an alert from Jingyi’s mother’s account. She was tweeting about some church in Germany. He rolled his eyes unfollowing her. Since he no longer needed to follow her account to see when they’d abandon Jingyi again. This would be the last time he’d let this happen.

He was glad that he’d heard Sizhui’s dad ranting to his husband about Jingyi’s parent’s habit of abandoning him. No matter the place. When he’d joined them for dinner the night before Jingyi’s flight. Wei Wuxian had vented that he was worried about the trip. That maybe they should go with him just in case. 

That’s when he made the decision to use his own jet to fly ahead to Paris after he’d taken Jingyi home. He wasn’t going to let him be stranded. Plus he knew that Jingyi’s parents had told Jingyi they’d use their private plan to bring him back to visit Lan Qiren from Sizhui. So, that night he told Jingyi that he’d be wrapped up in back to back meetings while he was gone. He’d felt guilty for lying at first but now he knew what he did was right. He looked up as Rayne stepped into his office breaking him from his thoughts. A folder in her hand. 

“Is everything ready?” He asked hand extending to take the folder. 

“Yes, sir.” She answered. 

“Good.” 

The two of them had a good breakfast together at the cafe. Jin Ling had looked really good when he’d arrived. His hair down and in a braid over his shoulder. The brown leather jacket over his white t-shirt and dark wash jeans with converses. The most dressed down he’d seen him in a while. He realized that he mostly seen the man in suits or gym clothes from going to the gym with his jiujiu or evening runs.

After breakfast, Jin Ling had taken him all over Paris sightseeing. It’d been fun but he knew it would have been even better if Fairy could have been with them. Which made him message Sizhui, who said he was the one watching the beautiful puppy while they were gone. 

“I’m so tired.” Jingyi yawned hours later, standing in front of his hotel room with Jin Ling. He’d honestly had a great day despite how it started. Jin Ling had given him the perfect distraction and treated him to great food all day.

“Well then go inside and get some sleep. I have some more places to show you tomorrow.” Jin Ling smiled tiredly at him. 

“Where are you staying?” Jingyi asked as it suddenly dawned on him Jin Ling had mentioned earlier. 

“I’m staying in the suite at the-“

“Don’t you dare say branch office. That’s just sad, A-Ling” Jingyi frowned with a sigh. 

“It’s just—“ Jin Ling stuttered at the nickname. 

“Across town and it’s almost midnight. You’re not going to drive across town to sleep at your work place. Just stay here with me. The bed is big enough for the both of us.“ Jingyi offered giving him, his best version of puppy eyes as he opened the door. A look he’d noticed worked on Jin Ling from him sometimes. He gripped Jin Ling’s wrist pulling him into the room before the other could turn for the elevators. 

“I’ll take the couch.” 

“Bed.” Jingyi countered pointing to the king sized bed that looked like it could sleep four people. “We are adults not animals.” 

“So what’s your excuse for sleeping on mine in my office at home?” Jin Ling asked, eyebrows raised playful in curiosity. 

“Oh you mean the cloud like crafted lounging place?” Jingyi asked, grinning because they both know the answer. 

“Yes.” 

“Simple. Because it actually comfortable. That thing is not comfy. Speaking from someone who knows.” Jingyi answered giving the couch a disgusted look. 

“Whatever, I think you need some sleep.” Jin Ling chuckled “Don’t you normally go to sleep around nine?” 

“Oh shush.” Jingyi playfully snapped as he went to the drawers of the dresser pulling out a pair of extra pajama pants and soft t-shirt to sleep in. He handed them to Jin Ling to be able to change into. So he wouldn’t have to sleep in his clothes he’d worn today. “Here, if you want to take a shower.” 

“Thanks”. Jin Ling said taking off his jacket, tossing over the arm of the couch before taking the clothes. 

He was perched on the edge of the bed flipping through the channels when Jin Ling stepped out of the bathroom. His felt his mouth run dry. Jin Ling had his hands up in his hair with the towel drying it. He was shirtless wearing the navy drawstring cotton pajama pants. Though, his golden eyes focused on purple the blooming lotus on his left sun kissed pec.  

“Uh the shirt didn’t fit.” Jin Ling said bringing his attention back to Jin Ling’s face,”So I left it in there for you.” 

“T-thanks.” Jingyi said snapping his mouth shut before tossing the remote on the bed. 

“Enjoy your bath.” Jin Ling called after him as he headed into the bathroom to shower. If he took a little longer than necessary he wasn’t going to explain himself.

When he finally emerged from the shower. Jin Ling had the television turned off, the curtains drawn, and laying on the side of the bed not directly underneath the vent. Jingyi watched the slow rise and fall of his chest. So, he assumed the other was asleep. 

He was wrong. 

“Are just going to stand there or are you going to come to bed?” Jin Ling asked, tone sluggish like he was about to actually fall asleep. 

“Uh...Yeah.” Jingyi said,  stumbling over his words as he headed to his side of the bed. He laid down on his side with his back facing Jin Ling. Just as he got comfortable and about to fall asleep when his phone vibrated. He opened his eyes to see the phone screen was lit up. Jingyi reached out grabbing his phone to check out who it was.  

The joy of the day slipping away like sand in an hourglass. The notification was from his mother’s instagram account. She was updating her account with pictures of her’s and his father’s vacation spots. And she posted a photo that she tagged him in. However, he wasn’t in the photo. He’d been cropped out and a filter with a frame added to hide it. Jingyi’s throat tightened as his heart ached with an all too familiar pain. He tossed his phone back onto his nightstand. Not caring when it slid off falling to the plush carpet floor. He rolled onto his back letting out a shuddering sigh as he stared up at the ceiling. Jingyi shut his eyes when he felt the familiar burn of tears threatening to form. 

“What’s wrong?” Jin Ling asked making Jingyi jump. Jingyi didn’t realize how close that the other man was. He opened his eyes, turning his head to find out that Jin Ling was an arms length away.

“N-nothing.” He replied,trying to keep the cracking out his voice, but he knew that he’d failed when he heard Jin Ling huff in disbelief. 

“What can I do?” Jin Ling asked sounding more awake than before. 

“Can I have a hug?” Jingyi asked after a few minutes of internal debate. 

Instead of answering him, Jin Ling moved closer before moving an arm over Jingyi’s stomach. Jin Ling gripped his side rolling him towards him. Jingyi allowed himself to the movement so that he was facing the other man. That same arm wrapping around him. He didn’t want to look the other in the eye. So he leaned down tucking his face into the crook of Jin Ling’s neck and shoulder as he wrapped an arm around Jin ling’s waist. Jin Ling pulled him closer leaving no space between. 

The scent of his soap on Jin Ling’s warm skin and Jin Ling’s hand gently rubbing his back lulling him to sleep before he can even thank him. Jin Ling smiled feeling the other fall asleep in his arms. He pressed a soft kiss to the top of Jingyi’s head before adjusting his arm to keep him close as he too let himself go to sleep. 

[artificialqueens]

Cruising for a bruising, Part 4 (Branjie) - Q-Tip & TheDane

Authors note: Hello everyone. Thank you so much for the comments, love and support on this story from Q-tip and I. We’re so grateful for all the feedback, and we’re having a blast writing it together!

Thank you to ArtificialMeggie and VeronicaSanders for betaing!

If you were a fruit, you’d be a fine-apple

Vanjie shot off the stage as soon as he got the chance, grabbing a towel and wiping his hair down, the stage lights making him sweat, stomping over to the table, Brooke finally finally finally paying attention to him.

“Babe!” Brooke lit up the moment he saw him, Brooke always a bright and happy drinker, Vanjie noticing that Brooke was on his second bottle of beer.

“You finished with the meet and greet?”

“The meet and greet?”

Vanjie looked at the stranger who had just spoken, a tall blonde man who looked about 23. There was not an ounce of recognition in his eyes, and Vanjie bristled. Was he really pretending he didn’t know anything. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing a fan had done to get close to either of them, but Vanjie was onto him.

“Justin and I are just talking about the book I’m reading right now.” Brooke looked at the stranger, Justin, the other smiling and Brooke grabbed a beer for Vanjie, uncapping it and pushing it across the table, the bottle still somewhat cold.

Brooke read, and he read a lot. Old, weird books with wrinkled pages, the things never costing much more than a few bucks each so Brooke ‘wouldn’t feel bad about losing them’. In the beginning, Vanjie hadn’t understood how Brooke would curl up during rehearsals or grab for his bag in airports. There were so many things that were so much more fun than reading, and Vanjie had just put it down as one of Brooke’s idiosyncrasies, some of the weird shit he did just because he was Brooke.

Vanjie’s opinion on it had changed though, when he and Brooke had happened to be in New York at the same time, Vanjie coming in from Mexico with Alexis afterwards while Booke was on his way to Canada for a two week tour. Vanjie had changed his flights last moment, and while Brooke had been ecstatic that they had had the time together, he had also looked almost apologetic when he had told Vanjie he was meeting up with old friends. The friends had turned out to be Brooke’s old company, Vanjie suddenly spending his evening in a bar, feeling like a midget around 6’3 ballerinas who were all reminiscing about their time at Trockadero, all loudly discussing the books they were currently reading in between shows, on flights, and in practice.

Vanjie picked up Brooke’s book, quickly casting a glance at it, “Lord of the Flies” and a lush green jungle filling the cover.

“Is that that long ass movie you used your googly eyes to try and make me watch?”

Brooke laughed, and Vanjie felt a quick flush fill his cheeks, Brooke’s bright smile telling him instantly that he had put his foot in his mouth once again. “That was Lord of the Rings.”

“Same shit, different writer, right.” Vanjie grabbed his beer, taking a sip of it, the liquid tasting just as shitty as it always did, but it gave him something to do with his hands.

“Not really.” Brooke moved, and Vanjie scooched into the booth, Brooke putting his arm around him instantly. “Justin, this is Jose.” Brooke gestured with his bottle. “Jose, Justin, Justin Jose.”

“Hey.” Justin raised his beer in salute.

Vanjie was just about to speak up, when Brooke interrupted. “He’s my boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend? You’re just full of surprises Brock.” Justin smiled, a mischievous glint in his eye that Vanjie couldn’t place. “The mystery truly does grow.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Brooke took a sip of his beer, and Vanjie hated the smirk that was tucked away on Brooke’s face.

“So what do you think of the portrayal of Piggy in the movie?”

“I don’t know.” Vanjie felt Brooke’s arm pull him even closer, Brooke’s hand sneaking under his t-shirt and settling on his chest. “Haven’t watched it yet.”

“You haven’t? But it’s a classic!”

“I tried with this one.” Brooke gestured to Vanjie with his head. “He fell asleep before the opening credits had rolled.”

“No! You have to watch it, I think I have it somewhere on my computer. It’s film histor-”

Vanjie had meant to pay attention, he really had, but it was hard to focus when he didn’t even know what they were talking about, Brooke’s voice warm and sure, his laugh making his entire chest rumble as words spilled from him, his thumb slowly rubbing back and forth, back and forth on Vanjie’s chest.

It seemed like the stranger, Justin, wasn’t actually a fan that was trying to take advantage, just someone Brooke had met and had an instant connection with, and if Vanjie was honest with himself, he had no idea what was worse.

/

“Yes!” Vanjie punched the air, excitement rushing through him as he had finally finally finally found the stupid movie Brooke had been talking about with his new best friend. “Brock!”

“Yes?” Brooke leaned out from the bathroom, toothbrush in mouth, his hair still wet from the shower he had taken while Vanjie had been cockblocked by the geo tracking on their Netflix account, the poor thing not having any idea what country they were actually in, Vanjie finally whipping out his wallet to buy it on Amazon.

“I found the movie! The Lord of the Flies, original edition baby!” Vanjie smiled brightly, flipping back the covers on Brooke’s side of the bed with a dramatic woosh. “Come sit your ass down, and enjoy the show.”

“You’d hate it, trust me. It’s nothing like the Notebook.” Brooke smiled , walking into their room, brush still in his mouth.

“But you really liked talking ‘bout it earlier.”

“With Justin?” Brooke looked confused for a split second. “Babe. I don’t mind that you haven’t watched it. Honestly.”

Vanjie looked up at Brooke, his heart sinking. “Are you sure?”

“We don’t have to have everything in common.” Brooke gave Vanjie a quick peck, his lips tasting like peppermint. “We love each other, right?”

“Right.”

/

“Morning.”

“Mmmh..”

“Don’t forget to take your pills.”

“Shit.”

Brooke turned over, grabbing the little orange container that was sitting on his nightstand. He swallowed them with a gulp of water from the bottle he had left there the night before.

“Thanks.”

Brooke laid back down, Vanjie crawling into his arms, sprawling himself over his chest. They were in their cabin, the morning sun shining through the doors to their balcony. Last night had gone by in a blur, the conversation with Justin so easy Brooke had talked and talked until because both he and Vanjie had been called back on stage, the evening ending with drinks for everyone and pizza after the finished rehearsals, their choreographer finally happy with them.

“No problem, bitch.”

It still felt a little weird to have Vanjie remind him to take his pills; it was intimate. Almost too intimate. It had been too much in the beginning, Brooke bristling whenever Vanjie reminded him that he had forgotten to take care of himself. Brooke had never needed anyone, had never allowed anyone to be close enough that they could help with something so private.  It had been uncomfortable to rely on someone else, the medication and his adult diagnosis of ADD almost too much to handle with the expectations of a relationship. Brooke had happily shared his diagnosis with his fans. Talking about it to them was easy, a joke or a poke easily falling from his lips in public.

In private Vanjie had been wonderful, the other man breaking down Brooke’s barriers as easily as he had everything else, navigating the trenches of Brooke’s mind with him, learning how to manage and what made him lose focus completely. Brooke had been panicked that two people with ADD, their symptoms manifesting so differently, would tear each other apart, but Vanjie had been nothing but patient, his diagnosis decades older than Brooke’s. While Brooke had been quiet in school, Vanjie had been even louder back then, a trouble maker who had managed to charm his way out of any serious problems. Vanjie had told Brooke stories of getting kicked out of the library, of skipping school and road trips to the beach in half borrowed cars, of how he never had any idea of what was going on in his public school in Tampa, but Vanjie’s ADD had been caught, and caught early, Vanjie’s routine of medication as simple to him as brushing his teeth and taking a piss, while Brooke still struggled with remembering every single day.

“Can I have my phone?” Brooke ran his palm over Vanjie’s back, gently scratching him in just the way he knew Vanjie liked. Vanjie had his own iPhone X in hand, scrolling away on Twitter. Brooke’s favorite was mornings like this, neither of them hung over or getting ready to jump on a plane.

“Mmh.” Vanjie reached out, unplugging it from the wall and handing it to Brooke, Brooke groaning when he saw the little red bubbles littering his screen. He tapped onto Instagram, instantly regretting it when the first thing he saw on his new picture was someone asking for vitamin D. Brooke snorted, scrolling through the comments that reigned from innocent “tropic like it’s hot”, to classics like “how about a good lei?” to the downright crazy, “Is @VanessaVanjie gonna deflower that ass later, and can we watch?”

“So which one is your fave?” Brooke looked up from his phone, Vanjie looking at him, an expectant smirk on his face, Vanjie clearly enjoying the entire situation way to much for his level of comfort. “‘Cause mine is ‘If you were a fruit, you’d be a fine-apple’.” Vanjie snickered, looking at his screen again. “It’s keeping it real classy, don’t you think?”

Brooke bit his lip. “You’ve read all of them?”

“You really think my ADD ass would have stayed in bed if I hadn’t had premium entertainment?” Vanjie was laying with his head in his hand.

“This was a mistake.” Brooke groaned, covering his face, his phone hitting his forehead. “I’m going to delete the pic.”

“Uh, this one is good too babe, ‘Love the flowers, when can we see the tree trunk Papi?’” Vanjie cackled, his eyes flying over his screen, almost like he was reading.

“You’re being such a little shit.”

“You love me.” Vanjie moved, nearly kneeing Brooke in the crotch before Vanjie flopped down on his back, Vanjie settling down on Brooke’s chest, Brooke instantly securing Vanjie with a hand on his stomach, holding him tight. Sometimes Vanjie was like a toddler, happily climbing all over Brooke’s body without any regards for his own safety or the protection of Brooke’s balls.

“I do, but I don’t-”

Vanjie lifted his arm, his phone securely in his hand, the camera already open, Brooke spotting himself, morning hair and all. “Smile!”

Brooke had learned that if Vanjie’s phone was out, there was only one thing to do. Pose, and hope for the best. Vanjie posed too, his head turning for a quick peck, but Brooke wasn’t going to let him get away with this behavior. He knew Vanjie had probably planned a whole photo session, his boyfriend hoarding photos of them like a dragon did gold, but Brooke wasn’t in the mood. Not when Vanjie was being so wonderfully bratty.

Brooke grabbed Vanjie’s hair, deepening the kiss, holding him in place, forcing his mouth open with his tongue, Vanjie whimpering as Brooke bit into his lip and he smiled, finally feeling like he was regaining control of the situation, when Vanjie started laughing.

Brooke pulled back, the shit eating grin on Vanjie’s face frankly annoying. “What?”

“We’re live.” Vanjie shook his hand a little, and Brooke looked at the phone, really looked at the phone, for the first time.

“Shit!”

Brooke grabbed Vanjie’s hand, desperately trying to press the disconnect button, the clip of him grabbing Vanjie’s hair now all over the internet. /

“Have you finally fucked Brooke up?”

Vanjie looked up, her eyes catching A’keria’s in the mirror. They were all backstage, everyone getting ready for a day on deck, Atlantis hiring them to host several pool parties. They had all opted for caftans, the flowy fabrics meaning they didn’t have to tuck which was a form of torture in itself in the hot tropical weather. Vanjie was doing her eyebrows, the third layer of powder leaving two bright white circles on her face. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to play innocent.

“Cause she looks real mad.” A’keria pointed her brush to the other side of the room, Brooke sitting with Kameron and Cracker. “You have no idea why she’s brewing up a storm?” Brooke did actually look kinda mad, and she had been in their room, Brooke rolling off the bed and pacing around, clearly upset.

“No idea.” Vanjie touched her face, the powder pressed and ready. She knew she should probably feel bad about accidentally blasting Brooke, but it hadn’t been her intention. She had only wanted a bit of fun banter, maybe a peck and a cuddle, but then Brooke had kissed her like that, and Vanjie had forgotten everything. Her stomach was warm, curling in cruel delight and possession with the fact that she had managed to show everyone just how much Brooke belonged to her, even if the one she truly wanted to show hadn’t been watching. Vanjie grabbed her pencil, ready to draw in her eyebrows, when she was interrupted by Silky.

“No idea my big fat black ass. You know just what she did” Silky grabbed her phone from her makeup bag, A’keria lighting up at the mention of gossip coming her way. Silky quickly found the video, Vanjie briefly wondering how she managed when A’keria looked at Vanjie with a twist on her lips and delight in her eyes.

“She’s going in on that kiss huh?”

“Y’all just mad.” Vanjie snorted, hoping she could distract her friend.

“We ain’t the ones who’s mad boo.” A’keria laughed. “Brooke is handling that one all on her own.”

/

Vanjie was making her way across the room, when she felt Nina grab her elbow, the other queen looking at her with something almost like concern on her face. “So, are you okay?”

Vanjie felt taken by surprise, Nina rarely asking her how she was feeling. “Yeah.. Yeah, I’m good.”

“Are you sure? Because you don’t seem good.” Nina’s voice was low, and Vanjie felt a moment of true love for the friend she had gained from Drag Race, her quite compassion and discretion exactly what Vanjie needed, though she wasn’t going to accept, too unsure of her own feelings to share them with anyone.

“I’m good.”

“Fine.” Nina stood up again, clearly ready to leave Vanjie to her mood. “Just,” Nina touched Vanjie’s shoulder. “Know that you can always talk to me, okay?”

Vanjie nodded, a small smile playing on her lips. “Thanks sis.”

/

Brooke looked at herself in the mirror, adjusting her bra. When Brooke had packed the outfit, it had seemed like a brilliant idea fitting the requirements from the cruise company perfectly, the purple chiffon light and flowy and while she did have to tuck, the regal elegance and how strong she felt in it absolutely outweighed the discomfort. She was in full face and hair, her chest bare, but she was still wearing her sweat pants, the pair slung low on her hips.

She had done her makeup, sitting with Kameron and Cracker. Cracker’s waterfall of a mouth always meant Brooke didn’t have to speak if she wasn’t in the mood, a gift she was more than happy to accept on that particular day. She still felt tingles of embarrassment run down her spine each time she thought of the accidental kiss that had ended up online. Normally Brooke didn’t mind. Had no complaints about a kiss or even a proper makeout session going online from dark club corners, their relationship a central part of what his fans loved about him, but this one was different. Brooke had been aggressive, the possessive, fun and playful part of their relationship their own, something private that was theirs alone.

Brooke grabbed her corset, getting ready to put it on. The process of fastening a corset was  a comfort in it’s simplicity, the constriction, the routine a way to center herself. Brooke loved it for the same reason she loved doing her makeup, the ritual of it straightforward and familiar. The next step however, was tucking, and she was once again confronted with the most embarrassing part of the day. She was half hard in her sweatpants, her dick fat with the memories from the morning, had been since the kiss, since that wonderful kiss. Annoyance and arousal and shame all simmering under her skin.

“Knock knock.”

Brooke turned around, worried she’d see Nina or Detox or even Raja, really anyone who would not only clock but also have no hesitation about teasing her mercilessly for her half aroused state. Instead, it was Vanjie, her boyfriend standing behind her, her face looking like an angel’s with a perfectly painted mug, her body bare except for the black pair of Marco Marco underwear that Brooke knew made her ass look like sin, the only thing falling from her lips the dumbest thing she could possibly say.

“… Did you just say knock knock out loud?”

“You have a problem with that?” Vanjie smiled, and Brooke realised Vanjie could sell her sand in the Sahara. Vanjie took a step forwards, her stuff set up besides Brooke’s at the very end of the long row of racks that had been provided for them. Brooke felt the itch again, the lust, the want, the need to finished what she had started, when she herself had stopped, but what her body so obviously craved, Brooke needing to be sure that Vanjie understood how much she cared for her. “Can I have my outfit?”

“Oh…” Brooke felt like she was pulled back to reality, surprised at Vanjie’s mundane question. “Yes. Yes of course.” Brooke grabbed Vanjie’s outfit, taking the hanger off the rack and handing it to the other. “Here.”

Brooke had expected Vanjie to leave, the two of them never getting ready together, but Vanjie was still there, looking up at her with a strange expression on her face.

“So…” Vanjie bit her lip, the sight beyond distracting, her bright white teeth burrowing into her red and full lips, her voice soft and quiet. “You done being mad?”

“I’m not mad.” Brooke knew she was lying the moment the words had left her lips, or at least leaving out parts of the truth, the arousal still swirling under her skin, making her irritable and annoyed, her entire body humming.

“You’re a shitty liar Brooke Lynn Hytes.” Hearing her full drag name from Vanjie was always an experience, Vanjie almost never using it, the smaller queen moving into her space, Vanjie poking a finger to her naked chest. “You’re mad.”

Brooke grabbed Vanjie’s head, hands on her cheeks, crashing their lips together, Brooke pouring every emotion she had kept inside into the desperate kiss, Vanjie throwing her arms around her neck, instantly accepting, loving, taking everything Brooke threw at her.

Two small steps, and Vanjie was backed up against the wall, a gasp leaving Vanjie’s mouth as she broke the kiss, their bodies shielded from view by their sisters’ dresses.

“Ssh. Sssh. You have to- Just shut up.“ Brooke didn’t know what to do, the sounds of music and chatter so loud Brooke could almost believe they had privacy, at least for a moment. Brooke was just about to tell Vanjie to be quite, the whisper almost over her lips, when Vanjie grabbed her ass with both hands, pulling Brooke even closer, forcing the kiss this time, their chests smashing together, the desperation, the want, the need in the act catching Brooke off guard. There was nothing but instinct, their lipsticks smearing as Brooke grabbed Vanjie’s thigh, hosting her up, her feet leaving the ground, Brooke carrying her weight, their cocks touching, Vanjie breaking the kiss once again, the smile on her face annoyingly cocky, flirty and playful, like she was in control of the situation. Vanjie thrusted her hips, Brooke groaning, instantly biting her lip to keep the sound in.

“That ain’t no two kiss boner I’m feeling.” Vanjie was infuriating, her eyes bright with mischeif. “Is this why you’re such a sour face? Or should I say sour cock. Poor lil Brooke Lynn.”

“You’re infuriating.” Brooke whispered, their faces inches from each other. “I told you to shut up, just, shut up, please, I-“

“Make me.”

The challenge was clear, and Brooke wanted to do nothing more than fuck the attitude right out of Vanjie, but she couldn’t, not there, not in that moment, her chest constricted by her corset, her ribs pressed together, their friends, their sisters, their colleagues right on the other side of the thin barrier of racks and racks filled with drag.

“Don’t start what you can’t finish.” Vanjie was loud, a force of nature, something almost impossible to control. She was fire, but Brooke was water, and she was not given an inch.

Vanjie opened her mouth, and Brooke did the only thing she could think of, covering Vanjie’s face with her hand, holding her jaw shut with thumb and fingers, the grip secure from the moment she latched on, and Vanjie’s eyes grew wide, a shiver wrecking her entire body with pure excitement.

“Are you going to behave now?”

Vanjie nodded, Brooke only feeling the movement because she was holding her head. Getting their cocks free was easy, Vanjie’s hands in Brooke’s pants before she could even tell her, their cocks already wet with precum, but Vanjie knew how Brooke liked it, her hand coming to Brooke’s mouth, Brooke spitting in her palm before Vanjie finally finally wrapped her fist around them, Vanjie’s other hand buried in Brooke’s forearm.

The arousal, the annoyance, the burning itch, all of it disappeared as Brooke fucked into Vanjie’s fist, their cocks touching on every stroke, the slick slide delicious, Vanjie hard against her, Vanjie relying entirely on Brooke holding her up, their gaze locked, and Brooke didn’t think she’d ever be able to look away.

What pushed her over was a single moan, Vanjie sounding so desperate, the sound barely escaping between her fingers, and Brooke only had a moment to think, removing her hand from Vanjie’s face, catching her mouth with her own, swallowing every sound as she grabbed a towel from one of the racks, only just covering Vanjie’s hand before she came, Vanjie whimpering into her mouth, a deep groan leaving her as she emptied. Brooke broke the kiss, the rush of oxygen, the pure risk of what they just did leaving her lightheaded, Vanjie’s arm sneaking around her neck, holding her close, the towel wet between them, Brooke’s sweats around her feet, Vanjie’s underwear bunched together on Vanjie’s thigh, the fabric stopped by the crook of Brooke’s elbow.

“That was…”

“That was fucking awesome!”

Brooke laughed, a loud, sharp sound, Brooke taken by surprise by Vanjie’s outburst, the entire room growing still, until it burst into complete and utter chaos, everyone yelling and laughing, Detox screaming the loudest of all that they better not have touched her fucking drag from the other side of the racks.

[wolfpawn]

Once Bitten Twice Shy, Chapter 17

Previous Chapter

Chapter Summary -  Mark's wedding comes and Paige and Tom face a new challenge.

Tag, @wolfsmom1 @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @damalseer @nonsensicalobsessions  @standing-onthe-edge @hiddlesbitch1

anyone else who wishes to be added to the tags, just ask :)

Tom could see why Paige warned him about Fiona’s family. They were a lot like how his family was but the other way around, in that in his family Uncle George was the only ass, in her family, Fiona seemed to be the only nice one. They clearly saw themselves as better than the Winters’ family as their money was longer in the family whilst Paige’s parents had been born to very modest homes, but Tom, they seemed to feel was more to their standard. He looked at Paige who was smirking at him as he listened to an overdramatic sister of Fiona’s who seemed adamant to inform him as many times as was humanly possible, that she was going to make it as a model any day now and more importantly, she was a better partner to have than Paige, more in keeping with his place in society. Tom did everything in his power not to laugh in her face, which was a difficult ask considering he had heard her speaking throughout the meal and to say they were not compatible was an understatement. His years of training as an actor never felt more required than when she said that. When she stated that Paige was boring and unexciting, he stopped her with the statement that if she was such, then he was even more so. She ceased her attention to him after that.

“Dare I ask?”

He turned to see Paige standing behind him after he tried to flee to the bathrooms.

“Caroline...I think?”

“It’s Carolina. She was Carol but it wasn’t fancy enough for the world of high-fashion so she changed it.” Paige laughed. “So, what did Carolina do or say to make you try and break into the ladies bathroom?”

Tom looked at the door and sure enough, the symbol of a woman was there. “Shit...Only how we are so well suited and to ditch you.”

“Odd, she said that when she met Derek too. Though going by the comments she said both at the time and after I dumped him, I think he got a sniff, if not the full shag out of her.”

“Wonderful individual by all accounts then?”

“I am just grateful that I didn’t catch anything from him as a result of everything,” Paige sighed. “That would have been only icing on the cake.”

Tom gently rubbed her hand. “Don’t, don’t think such terrible thoughts right now. Not on the night before your brother’s wedding. Not on such a joyous occasion.”

“You’re right. You’re a hundred per cent right. What would I do without you?” She smiled.

Tom gave a small smile and looked away, not trusting himself not to say anything.

*

When the end of the night came, Tom put his arm around Paige’s waist as they said goodbye, promising to be ready on time in the morning as they did. When they got to the room, they both prepared for bed, both having brought sleepwear as they both knew that at the very least, they would be sharing a room.

“Those look brand new.” Paige laughed as Tom attempted to find the tie for his sleep pants.

“They are. I don’t own too much bedwear,” Tom admitted before looking at her with a raised brow, seeing her in some form of cartoon nightclothes that he was sure his sisters liked as children.

“Judge me, I don’t care.” Paige shrugged as she walked over to her side of her bed and got in. “I will probably crash quickly enough. You don’t need to worry if you want to continue reading or anything. I am not bothered by lights and such,” She assured him as she got into the bed.

“Honestly, I am similar. I had a long week, as I told you already.”

“You should have just gotten some rest, flying to China to the US and then back for this. It’s madness.”

“I wanted to get Bobby ready for quarantine. Besides, how could I ever decline a chance to see what I am missing with Carolina.”

Paige snorted in laughter. “So true.”

Tom smiled as he saw her get comfortable. He watched as she got her book, one of short poems and began reading. He got into the bed too and groaned as he felt his aching muscles from all his travels begin to rest on the mattress.

“You sound like you need this,” Paige commented. “I’m sorry you don’t get to relax fully and instead have me here, annoying you.”

“Darling, the last thing you could ever be accused of being is annoying. No, trust me. Through the years, I have had some annoying bedmates and you don’t even register on the scale.”

Paige turned to look at him. “Okay, I need to know what sort of madness you are referencing. Please tell me it is not just crazy-ex stories?”

“No, all the madness of this job. There was a time during the Thor, Ragnarok tour that I slept on the sofa part of a small airplane groin to ass with Taika Waititi.” She snorted in laugher at that. “Then there was a time when I went away with the college drama society and I drank myself into a stupor, as did everyone else, because, of course, you know…”

“Par for the course.”

“Exactly. Well, I woke up the next day, close to death, in Edinburgh.”

“Where did you start?”

“Manchester.”

Paige laughed but shook her head. “Not the worst.”

“Really? Look, I know I was out of college the time of that infamous urban myth of the Cambridge drama society weekend but this, at least, was real.”

“So was the Cambridge DramSoc weekend,” Paige argued.

“No it wasn’t,” Tom scoffed before he realised her face was entirely stoic. “Was it?”

“Friday afternoon, drinks in the college bar, three am, I am wandering around Amsterdam looking for a place to crash for the night and ringing my Dad to give me his credit card number so I can stay in a hostel with a few of my mates,” Paige informed him.

“Fuck off.” Tom became far more animated at her admitting such. “How did you all get there, what the Hell were you all doing?”

“So, drinking, obviously. And then Brianna, the Soc secretary started giving out that she never got onto the continent, so Piotr, one of the exchange students was saying how England knew how to drink, but the Netherlands knew how to party, and to this day, I have no idea who suggested he put his money where his mouth was but somehow, I am giving my date of birth and associated details to Jack, our society chair and getting a fucking flight from London to Schipol. Cheap EU flights were a dangerous thing.”

“But...We always thought…”

“You thought wrong.”

Tom stared at her in disbelief. “And that bastard had the audacity to accuse you of being boring?”

“Because I was young and stupid when I was young; when it came time to consider being a responsible adult, I was actually looking forward to being such. I had my ridiculous time, I had time to figure me out and what I wanted, and now I get to do exactly that, whatever that entails. Hence why I am not ever bothered too greatly by silly things.”

“You are to be commended,” Tom commented. “If not slightly mental, Amsterdam?”

“We ended up staying the weekend, it was lovely.”

“You are insane.”

“And proudly so.” Yawning slightly, Paige turned and started to settle to go to sleep.

Tom, taking her cue, did similar, laying back and reading a little before trying to get comfortable himself, not wanting to keep her awake with his reading or light.

Through the night, neither slept much. Both facing the opposite wall to one another, their backs almost touching and the heat of the other clear to feel. They both moved very little through the night, both conscious of the other behind them, not certain if the other was awake but both thinking the exact same thing, if they should say anything of their feelings to the other. Not crippled by the fear of their past experience and the rejection of one they loved.

*

The next day was as most every wedding was. Nothing overly exciting in the grander scheme of things. Paige joked and smiled with Fiona through the times she was required to assist in her bridesmaid's duties but the rest of the time she stayed close to Tom, knowing how awkward it was to be a plus one at an event and nothing was worse than being one at a place where you knew no one else.

When Tom bumped into Mark during the evening, both of them in good humour and a couple of drinks in. Mark embraced him as Tom congratulated him.

"I spent too long farting about. I should have asked her ages ago. I was lucky. Not everyone is as lucky. Take you, for example, farting around Paige."

Tom looked around, slightly worried that they would be overheard.

"Taking so long to ask Paige out, I mean, I thought I was bad." Mark kept his comments fairly vague purposely and Tom noted such too.

"I…"

"No, really. Not realising she felt the same and whatnot. If it wasn't heartbreaking to watch, then it would have been hilarious."

Tom frowned.

"I better get back to my wife, Jesus, it's odd calling her that." There was a surprised smile on Mark's face at his small revelation. "And you better get back to Paige, especially if Carol is about. She likes to try and get her claws into other women's partners if they are dumb enough to allow her to or try and imply she did with the ones that decline her and the added thing where she would brag you more than others and probably more publicly too. Honestly, I don't know you deal this sort of shit."

"It's sadly par for the course with my life these days. Honestly, I never thought it would come to this. It's a tad overwhelming, even for me," Tom sighed rubbing the back of his neck. "It's not fair to expect others to endure that for me."

"Yet when someone loves you, then endure it willingly."

Tom said nothing as Mark slapped him playfully on the chest before saying his farewells and heading back to find Fiona.

Tom thought over his words for a moment, both of how Mark felt that perhaps Paige could feel something more got him but also of the madness that was his life and how it was wrong to expect anyone to endure that for him, when he spent so much time working and knowing she would forever have to concern herself with wondering if he would do as her ex had done and cheat on her. She tried to act as though it didn't bother her but there was no denying she had been affected by it. It would never be fair to expect her to endure his work life.

He went back to Paige who was talking with her parents. He had to remind himself that this was all a charade when he wanted nothing more than to show her the affection he so desperately wished to bestow on her. While he sat with her and her parents, he felt as though it was organic, that there was no falseness to how they interacted, making it all the harder when he had to remind himself that her smiles and other acts of affection were merely put on.

When the wedding had come to a close and time came to rest, they bid farewell to her brother, her now sister-in-law and her parents before going back to their shared room.

“Thank you.” Tom glanced at Paige as she walked out of the bathroom in her nightclothes. “For coming to this. You really are incredible and the greatest company. I will be lost when you go to New York.”

Tom swallowed as he thought of the soon-to-be future. “I know the feeling. I will miss our talks.”

“Just remember, I am often reachable if you want to talk. If I go into a writing flow though, please don’t hold it against me.”

“How is the book going?”

“It isn’t.”

“Oh, everything alright?”

Paige could not answer immediately, to say things were fine was a barefaced lie, to say no opened her to admit that she had a countdown on her wall to the day he was leaving and when she looked at it, it made her feel like she was shot in the stomach to think he would leave and she would be alone again. “Writing inspiration comes and goes. I simply have to embrace whatever happens.” It took more than she was willing to admit to keep her voice steady as she said the second sentence. It was as much about the current situation as it was about her writing. Feeling her throat get tight, she cleared it and went to her side of the bed.

Tom, sensing the tension, went into the bathroom to ready himself for bed. When he came back out, having decided to try and speak about what Mark had said and with the few drinks he had giving him courage, he looked at Paige but noticed her even breathing and thought her to be asleep.

As he got into his side of the bed, Paige did everything in her power to keep her breathing steady as she willed her tears to stay at bay.

[welllpthisishappening]

So the stars lost and I’m very sad... if you could write anything fluffy from blue line I’d be eternally greatful. Maybe something with kissing....lots of kissing and maybe kissing that embarrasses their son Tyler Seguin — I mean Matt, I totally mean matt Anyways I love you

I was very sad for the Stars last night. So, I feel your pain here. Also, I realized after I wrote this that you, probably, were looking for something when Matt was slightly older, but that…didn’t happen. Because is it a prompt if I don’t really follow the prompt?

Anyway. Here is the following: Matt being a lil’ shit about sleeping, quasi-smut, cute kids, and wedding rings. I posted this at work.

(Someday I’ll also post all those one-shots I have where the kids are older and still just as scandalized by their parent’s inability to make out behind closed doors. Someday. Really.)

“Ok, Mattie, c’mon, we’ve got to go.”

He gaped at her – all wide eyes and mouth hanging open,breath coming in something far too close to pants, and Emma did her best tokeep her expression impassive. She’d known this was coming. Dropping gloves, orsomething.

But it had been a very long road trip and the western swingswere always the worst. Which was a very strange adjective to use when thewestern swing had ended in three straight victories and points in every one ofthose victories and Matt had spent the better part of the last week dissectingevery single facet of Killian’s game.

With more than a few interjections from Peggy.

Who had several opinions about angles and screening the netthat were, honestly, pretty goddamn impressive.

“I’m serious,” Emma said, trying to infuse as much honestyinto her face. “You should have been asleep, like, two hours ago.”

“I would have missed the last two periods then!”

Emma hummed, a quick nod and twist of her lips because hewas, as usual with most hockey-related things, very correct. She wasn’t surehow it was possible to be more than just straight-up correct, but Emma alsokind of wished she’d been asleep two hours ago.

She would have missed that goal, though.

It was a very good goal.

Matt was never going to stop talking about that goal.

“Yeah, I know, kid,” Emma mumbled. She reached out to tryand grab the stick out of his hand, but he had impossibly quick reflexes andshe’d never resented genetics more in her life. Peggy had fallen asleepsomewhere. God, she should know where her kids were falling asleep. “But it isvery late and—”

“—I don’t have school tomorrow!”

Emma made another noise – biting back an incrediblysarcastic retort her kid did not deserve because he was a kid and his dad wasridiculously good at playing hockey and she could just make out Peggy’s hair inone of the booths at the other end of the restaurant. She had her head restingon Ariel’s leg.

Ariel waved.

“Give me the stick, Matthew,” Emma said evenly, flutteringher fingers in open air. He sighed, but did as she asked, slumped shoulders anda sneer to his lip that they were going to have to do something about soonerrather than later.

“It is—what time is it?” She glanced around the restaurant,not sure what she was looking for, but maybe a more responsible adult and MaryMargaret held up one finger. There was another kid draped over her shoulder.“Oh my God,” Emma muttered, more hand movements and Matt slid off the stoolwithout much prompting. Maybe they were getting somewhere. “Let’s go.”

It took more time than she would have liked to get out ofthe restaurant, but Emma almost expected it at that point – far too many peopleand trying not wake up Peggy while still holding a stick because Matt woulddefinitely start shooting again if he held the stick again. But that alsodissolved into discussion of that goal because it was a really good goal andshe was going to have remember to ask Killian if he was aiming for the postthat way or if that was just luck and—

She didn’t remember falling asleep.

She had no intention of falling asleep.

She had every intention of sitting on that couch, somethingalmost resembling coy, which felt kind of like a lame word, but he’d been gonefor almost a week and Emma always got a little antsy on the western swings.

Falling asleep felt like snapping the win streak.

He laughed when he stopped in front of the couch, and shehadn’t even heard him drop his equipment bag, which meant several things thatEmma could not be expected to think about while she was still half-asleep, fartoo romantic, even after years and slightly petulant kids and—

“Hey,” she mumbled, one eye cracked open. It was enough tosee Killian’s lips turn up, not quite a full smirk because he was probablypretty exhausted too and the words playoffpush had been thrown around more times than she could count in the last fewweeks.

He crouched down. It was stupid. It was not stupid. So, itwas actually kind of nice, and Emma opened her other eye to find several piecesof hair falling artfully over his forehead and his tie already undone, eitherside hanging around his neck and she refused to be held accountable forwhatever noise she made as soon as his fingers grazed the side of her hip.

“Hey. Do we not own several different beds?”

Emma rolled her eyes, burrowing further into the severalpillows under her head. “You’re very funny.”

“That was a legitimate question.”

“Were you trying to hit the post?”

“You think I banked that shot in on purpose?”

“I mean,” Emma started, and she really could not think whenhe looked at her like that. A little incredulous. A little stunned. A littleoverwhelmed at finding her on the couch. Wearing his number. “Isn’t that acompliment?”

Killian tilted his head, which only made the hair move andthat was not fair and something about offside probably. She was losing her gripon these metaphors. “Ah, depends on the context, I guess,” he shrugged, fingersstill moving like they were following a pattern. Or just making up for a weekof lost time. “Although I think you might be giving me more credit than thatshot deserves.”

“Maybe I’m just very impressed by your clear hockey talent.”

“That so?”

Emma nodded, at least tried, pillows twisting and hearthammering erratically against her chest. Maybe western swings weren’t all that bad.If they ended like this. And only like this.

The win streak was back on.

Or, whatever.

“It was a good goal,” she reasoned, voice dropping low ofits own accord and the two sleeping kids a few feet down the hall. Who had onlyargued slightly about actually going to sleep. Peggy had woken up in the caruptown.

They’d watched the replay of Killian’s goal sixteen times.Emma had counted.

“It does sound like a compliment in this context.”

“Weird.”

“The weirdest,” he muttered, and his calves must have hurt,crouched like that, but he didn’t seem all that inclined to stand back up,particularly when he leaned forward to catch Emma’s lips. She made anotherridiculous noise.

She’d blame the time. And the couch. And that goal. God, itwas a good goal.

Killian grinned against her, whatever he did with his tonguealso pretty impressive in context and Emma hoped she didn’t fall off the couch.That would probably ruin the moment. It was, however, a precarious balancingact, Killian resting most of his weight on his heels with one hand in Emma’shair and the other trying to do something completely unfair to her shirt.

She twisted forward, slinging an arm around his neck and herfingers weren’t actually going for the tie, but they curled around the fabricand one of them probably laughed when she flung it across the room.

It landed on a hockey stick.

They owned so many goddamn hockey sticks.

“That aim, Swan,” Killian laughed, widening his eyes whenEmma clicked her tongue at the overall volume of his voice.

“I’m going to fall on the floor.”

“Less of a compliment, I’ll be honest.”

“Seriously, not that funny. And far too confident in yourown reflexes.”

Killian nodded, a quick quirk of his lips that was finally that stupid smirk and Emmaignored whatever was happening in the pit of her stomach. “I have veryimpressive reflexes that,” he paused to nip at her lower lip, hand finallyfinding its way under her shirt and Emma arched as soon as his palm flattenedagainst her back, “you are very into.”

“Very into?”

“That’s a fact, love.”

“Yuh huh, yuh huh,” Emma grumbled, but it was difficult tocontinue speaking in coherent sentences when his fingers were driftingdangerously close to the back of her bra.

He flicked the clasp.

She could still feel him smiling.

“Oh, shut up.”

“I didn’t actually say anything.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Ah, of course,” Killian said, rolling his shoulder forwarduntil she was on her back and the room felt like it was spinning. He stillcould not be comfortable, twisted over her until it felt like every inch of himwas touching every inch of her and her shirt was a lost cause. “You’ve got totake this off, love.”

“You are in the way.”

He did something absurd with his eyebrows, a flash in hisgaze that made Emma inhale sharply and she barely got her left arm out of thesleeve before his fingers were dragging over her stomach and drifting closer tothe top of her leggings.

“Tease,” Emma accused, just barely able to see Killian’stongue swipe his lower lip. She knocked a pillow on the floor when his teethfound the curve of her hip, barely grazing the skin.

There were goosebumps there now, though.

“Maybe you’re just a little greedy.”

“That is rude.”

“It’s not an insult, love,” he promised, but the words werehardly that when he continued to move further down her side, fingers splayedout on the inside of her leg. They didn’t seem to move with much purpose, justbarely making contact on the fabric there and Emma kept rolling her hips in thehopes of something, anything,happening, some kind of friction or movement or…anything.

Killian laughed again, darker and a little more determined,as if he’d been thinking about this for the last week as well and Emma couldnot be expected to cope with that. Not when he’d started moving his thumb aswell, tiny circles and a little bit of pressure and Emma’s teeth dug into herlower lip tight enough she was worried she was going to hurt herself.

“I hate you,” she muttered, the worst lie she’d told in, atleast, several seasons.

“That so?” Emma nodded, fully intending to respond, but thenhis hand moved again, and Killian glanced up, smiling like several differentclichés and metaphors that did not matter when his fingers pushed under the topof her leggings. Only to pull back out just as quickly.

Emma bit her lip. “Oh, I’m going to kick you.”

“Swan.”

“Right in the side of the leg. Where you blocked that shotin San Jose.”

“It’s actually not that bad anymore, actually. The oneyou’ve got to be worried about is, like, my lower left rib. I got checked therein the first period and it hurt like hell, but the last bruise is apparently agood color now and Red said—”

“—Hey,” Emma interrupted quickly. “Maybe we don’t mentionbruise color and Ariel while I’m actively trying to have sex with you, huh?”

Killian made a noise – not quite an agreement, but somethingthat was a bit more like hope and a week-long road trip and—“You know,” he saidslowly, dropping his head to mouth at the side of her neck and Emma was goingto permanent damage to her spine. If she didn’t fall off the couch. She wasgenuinely worried about that. “We really do own a bed. It’s bigger than this.”

“That a fact?”

“Swan, you’re really not playing along and it’s not as funthen.”

She might have giggled, but that also felt a little lame,all things considered and his eyes fluttered shut when she let her nails grazethe back of his neck. “Right, right, the winning hockey games wasn’t all thatfun, then?”

“What was that you said to me about being funny?”

“That was sarcastic.”

“Yes,” Killian nodded, nipping at the bridge of her nose andletting his thumb brush across the inside of her wrist. “So, thoughts? Bed? Thepresumed lack of clothing?”

Emma bit back a smile, but that was harder than she expectedand that was…wonderful. Really. “Do you usually have to make things so obvious,Cap?”

She wasn’t sure if there was actually a word for whatevernoise Killian made that time – half a growl and a bit of frustration and aneven larger hint of absolute, stupid attraction which was absolutely stupid andthe opposite. He arched an eyebrow, back on his feet with his tongue pressed tothe corner of his mouth.

“Do not make noise,” he muttered, all the warning Emma gotbefore she wasn’t on the couch, but hanging halfway in the air, a soft gruntout of him that might not have been a compliment and entirely his fault. Shegasped, despite her best efforts, eyes going wide and arms clinging to him likethere was actually any kind of imminent threat.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Impressed?”

“You are an idiot. How many minutes did you play tonight?”

“Ok, but do you not know that?” She did. Always. Or forever.Or whatever. She tightened her arms. “Swan, this isn’t actually going to workif you choke me before we get to the fun part.”

“Oh, my God.”

“You’re charmed, love, you can admit it.”

“If you strain something I refuse to be held accountable forany of it,” Emma said, but they both knew it was a ridiculous lie and it wasn’tall that far too their bedroom.

At least, usually.

At least when there wasn’t a kid standing there.

“Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad,” Matt chanted, running forward beforehis whole expression changed and Emma had to bury her face in Killian’s neck.Mostly so her kid could not see her blushing. Her shirt was yanked halfway upher body. “What are you guys doing?”

Emma’s whole body shook when Killian started to laugh, notquite parental, but it was the middleof the night and they’d agreed. Sixteen replays and then sleep. “What are youdoing out here, kid?” Killian asked, voice still shaking just a bit and Emmatried to move her shirt. “Swan,” he hissed, and Matt’s eyes should not havebeen that wide.

Matt shook his head slowly, mouth hanging open for a totallydifferent reason than it had in the restaurant. And it wasn’t really the firsttime it had happened. There’d been close calls and they were exceptionally badat not making out in a variety of NHLarenas, but Matt was older now and probably understood a few more things andEmma’s face felt like it had burst into flames at some point.

“What are you doing up, kid?” Emma asked, desperate to soundlike some kind of authority figure when her bra was barely staying on her body.“We did this already.”

He nodded that time. The movement was still impossibly slow,as if the moment was imprinting itself on his brain and subconscious and Emmaknew she needed to get back on the ground, but she had some dim memories aboutgravity and she assumed none of them were working in her favor right then.

“Yeah,” Matt mumbled, digging his toes into the carpet,“but, well, then I heard you and Dad talking and—hey, Dad.”

“Hey, kid,” Killian said, smile obvious despite theabsurdity of the situation. Because it was absurd. But it was also kind of niceand as expected as taking twenty minutes to get out of the restaurant. “Notcool coming out here when you should be asleep.”

“You just got home, though!”

“Yeah, that’s not how it works.”

Matt opened his mouth to argue, but Emma didn’t actuallyhave to turn to know Killian’s eyes had gone thin and his brows had pulled lowand that always worked. Even when hemoved her, trying to shift herfurther down his chest and towards the legs he kept rocking back and forth on.

And if she thought about the reason for that for too long,Emma was sure, she was never going to stop laughing.

“It was a good goal, though,” Matt added, quieter than he’dbeen all night, like he knew he was breaking the rules. And possibly ruiningthe moment. “Were you trying to hit the post?”

Emma cackled. Honestly, that was the only word for it.Killian barely kept his hold on her, eyes widening in unspoken warning becauseher shirt was in a particularly precarious position at that point, and he’dplayed nearly seventeen minutes that night, it was only a matter of time beforehis forearms gave out.

“I told you,” she muttered, stabbing the middle of hischest. She could feel his wedding ring hanging there. That felt heavy-handed.And nice. Really nice.

They’d totally scandalized Matt.

“I was not trying to hit the post,” Killian answered. “Butthat would have been pretty cool, right?”

Matt’s eyes brightened, the latest head shake a return toenthusiasm and a complete disregard for his parents attempts at romance. “Yeah,yeah, yeah,” he shouted, and it was really only a matter of time. The footstepsraced down the hallway, Emma’s quiet ohmy God barely audible when her head was pressed into Killian’s shoulder andit was much harder to get back on her feet than it should have been.

“Daddy,” Peggy cried, taking off almost immediately and itsounded as if all the air in Killian’s lungs flew out of him as soon as shecrashed into his chest. He wobbled on his feet slightly, but managed to catchher without much threat of injury or further damage to his ribs, hitching herfurther up his side when his arm found its way under her legs. “Hi!”

“Hey little love. You should be asleep.”

“But you’re home! You’ve been gone forever.”

“That’s not entirely true, Pegs, it’s—” He cut himself offwhen he glanced at Emma, whatever reaction her face was staging entirelyunexpected and not at all planned, because this was part of the deal, literallyand metaphorically, but she hated the western swing and—

“Felt a little like forever,” Emma whispered with a shrug.

Killian shook his head, somehow managing to find a bit moreoxygen so he could immediately let out it, a soft sigh and what might have beenpure, unadulterated happiness. Even when Emma tried to rehook her bra.

“Something about all those wins, right?’

“That’s not even clever.”

“You’re into it.”

Emma couldn’t argue. She was stupid into it. “Yeah,” shenodded, moving back into his space and it wasn’t easy to kiss him with a kidhanging off one side and the one kid gagging like his whole life was beingruined, but neither of those kids had wanted to go to sleep without seeingtheir dad first, so Emma figured it was a wash.

“Can we watch the goal again?” Matt asked, already sprintingtowards the coffee table and the team-provided tablet there. He nearly knockedboth things over.

“Oh my God, Mattie,” Emma sighed. “And it’s probably dead.”He spun on the spot, dangerously close to distraught and she was going to beparental. She was going to be an authority. She was really glad neither one ofthem had missed the last two periods. “My phone is on the kitchen counter.”

Matt sprinted across the apartment.

And Peggy was already starting to fade, curling closer toKillian’s side with her fingers gripping the front of his shirt. “How manytimes?” he asked.

“That confident, huh?” Emma asked. He couldn’t shrug with asleeping kid draped across him. She was definitely asleep again. “This willmake seventeen.”

Killian grinned, careful steps back to the couch and theygot through several rewatches of the goal and a few other highlights beforeMatt’s eyelashes started to flutter, head on Emma’s leg and arm flung acrossher middle and—

“I think we may be stuck, Cap,” she muttered, surprisinglyalmost comfortable despite the knee threatening to push into the generalvicinity of her spleen.

“Ah, not the worst thing. Here,” Killian added. It took a momentto twist, muttering quiet words into Peggy’s hair when she started to stiragain, and Emma’s heart flipped and flopped and possibly exploded as soon as hegot the chain over his neck. “You impossibly charmed, yet?”

“Getting there.”

“A work in progress, then.”

Emma rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t bring herself toactually deny it, the ring back on his finger and her head lolling towards hisshoulder, an exhaustion that was almost as deceptively comfortable as the couchand possibly their lives and winning three on the road like that would definitelyhelp the playoff push that season.

[voracious-pumpkira-starr]

VORE COMMUNITY PSA

False information was spread about me with very little truth. While some is truth, others are either taken from untrustworthy sources or were said by people whom are enemies i made in the past to make me more hated. I dont know if all of you know the post im refering to, i wont link it here but it has been causing me a lot if stress

Now I’m not going to deny some parts of the post because they are factual. But other parts are false. I havent blackmailed people for roleplay, and I dont charge back payments. The charging back of commissioned artwork is only from the artists point of view. And even then its heavily exxagerated. What happened was I spent too much money on porn commissions using a family members credit card on my own paypal, i paid this family member to do this of course bit they didnt know what i was buying. After i spent over $1000 CAD they realized I was spending it on porn and called paypal to charge it back. Paypal charged it back. I tried and tried to get paypal to send the money back but they locked me out of the account and the family member refused to let me send the money to them. Since then I was only able to pay back one artist of many, its not just artists. Paypal took back all payments and I even lost some of my art programs such as Clip studio EX because of this. Ive also lost many mobile apps and more. This caused me a lot of stress and I wasn’t allowed to use a credit card for a long time. Now, You know who. A certain artist who made these claims. Yes I admit I tried to roleplay with them but I will be honest. This is a honest statement from my own mouth. There is many many people in the community who KNOW I’m sumlur and are of age who roleplay with me and I wont name them to keep them same from harassment. Im not innocent but neither are the people like YOU who spread this information. And I will send you this post privately. Yes it is not my place to be in the vore community but because I have it helped with my depression and I learned many things that made me better as a person. I know my mistakes and I understand even when 2021 comes I will be hated in the community or even not let back in at all. But all I’m going to say. Is that yes I was immature and regret a lot of my decisions. But i stopped ban evading and all that long ago. It is now 3 years since this ekas portal drama has started with me, I, because of outdated or false information spread by you and many others have been Doxxed and had my info leaked on 8chan by a user named cloud runner teeny on 12/24/2018. Its been over a year since i was doxxed and I have been struggiling with depression and at multiple times even was suicidal. I nearly killed myself on lean (purple drank). Im not asking for pity because we both know I did aome messed up shit but making a PSA about me and spreading things from your point of view is only half the story. Many people have harassed my social media because of this or even turned me into a laughing stock. So here, if it makes you happy Cham. I’ll make a statement right here right now publically for all to see. If i lose friends for this then whatever it is what it is. It took me a lot of guts and a long time to say this but the stress has gotten to much for me. for the sake of peace I’ll admit to everything Chammy was correct about me ane everything that was false along with some misconceptions about me: so firstly Chammy is right about my age. My birthday is 01/30/2003. I am nearly 17 years old. Chammy is also correct about me asking him for roleplay stuff. However many adults i know who know my age are fine roleplaying with me and I will make this very clear for all of tumblr and the world. Yes I know the underage law and why you think you would be at risk of becoming a sex offender. But hear me out, I’ve actually talked to online lawyers about this and there was never a statement in US Federal law about roleplaying with minors being wrong. The only thing that is bad is if your doing it with malicious intent or send real nudes. As for the age of consent, that is 16 and as far as I know you can legally have sex with anyone within 5 years apart from you as long as its not recorded at that age. So I would assume roleplay would be legal unless its recorded or screenshotted just the same. So yes although it might be risky there is almost a 100% gaurentee your not at risk unless you go bragging about it or the minors parents

Report you. And I don’t have parents, my birth parents abandoned me for a life of crime and my grandparents had custody over me since i was 2 years old. My grandparents know about my vore fetish and although they think its weird they are fine with it to some extent. I can assure you for a fact they won’t report you unless your asking me for literal nudes, which I’d never even give away. Secondly I wanted to bring up the fact I did NOT try to sneak into Cham’s server I was asking if somebody could vouch to let me in so at 18 my friend Andy (WHO KNOWS MY AGE) could vouch for me since he/you closed all invites because of people insulting male predators.

Nextly I want to say this, Chameleonette is not a bad person. They aren’t spreading lies about me on purpose they are only saying what they were told which was spread around by many people who hate me such as aljenserp, AlluringPredation, Reffles, Cloudrunnerteeny, and artists who think i charged back on purpose. Now I also want to bring up the accusations of blackmailing adults who roleplayed with me. This is false, the only adults i ever blackmailed where ones who knew my age and asked for nudes, or were ACTUAL MINORS pretending to be adults which i know for fact.

Now I will admit I exposed some of these friends as minors out of anger and lost friends for this. I regret this so i wont say which ones, But I blackmailed them about exposing their age for some fights in the past.

But I will also admit again I did some stupid shit in the past and I understand the hate I have but its been causing me lots of stress and Harassment on social media. Look cham, if you actually take the time to read this I’m sorry for everything ive done to you and the vore community but I want to say that the adults arent entirely innocent either. I caused these problems by lying about my age, joining ekas, ban evading, manipulating people, and buying art when I shouldnt have. All of it has come back to bite me in the ass. Combined with the stress from real life I couldn’t take things anymore and essentially ruined my life. As of now I dropped out of highschool because the stress was too much and couldn’t work anymore. Now I’m educationless and most likely won’t get a job. For those who are curious in one year and 29 days is when I will be 18. And if any of my friends whom dont know my age read this I want to say I’m sorry for lying. I strongly have issues and am really clingy to people I like so I end up lying to make friends. And i know many people are going to block me for this so in turn I will end up more stressed but its the most mature thing i could think to do. I would love it if nobody blocked me and we just talked like friends and save the vore stuff for when I’m 18, which I do with many of my friends already. As stated before the whole reason i joined ekas in the first place was to join a community i felt like i fit in with after getting depression from losing a friend i really cared about named anatoily

Many times in the past i used anatoily as an excuse for my actions but thats not what im doing. Anatoily if you see this i want to know im sorry for using your name as an excuse for my wrong actions. I originally joined Ekas for that purpose and used that as an excuse, on there i made many friends some of which i have even today. At one point i planned on leaving ekas but then I found somebody who reminded me of anatoily. I had an obsession with them and it led me to well ruin that friendship. Around this time i was exposed underage by Reffles on a minecraft server who had a incorectly dated birth date from a Enjin server about me claiming i was 14 when i was 15 which now i am 16 turning 17 and that link would display 15 turning 16. To explain this I want to say when I made this enjin account I mistyped the age and never bothered fixing it because I rarely used Enjin. I just used it to apply for minecraft admin positions.

I regret many of the things ive done and cant stress this enough that I’m sorry but in all honesty this is the true story of what happened with me and the vore community

In 2017 I joined ekas because my mind didn’t care about the consequences I was upset about anatoily, which isnt an excuse for my actions. I lied about my age and all was fine i was getting away with it. I met the person who reminded me of anatoily in February of 2018 whom helped me grow as an artist. I started working as a artist practicing for when I’m 18. When reffles found me out i was upset and was banned from ekas and the discord Work to Feed. I was upset for many reasons, one even being that i just got the first person ever to commission me and even today was never able to do the art or send it to them making me feel like a thief

So a lot of ban evading and ruined friendships later some problems happened with me and a friend named Aljenserp who like me was a minor. I was watching one of Silent_E’s streams and got banned because Tyrion13 recognized me. I betrayed Aljenserp like an asshole saying he was underage (i dont think he is underage anymore but he was at the time this happened) because he was a staff nobody believed me and i was banned from the stream and lost all trust aljenserp had in me. He became my enemy. Now after this a lot of people started hating me more and more, there was some drama on 8chan about me which i posted on being some idiot as i was younger and didnt know what i was doing.

This caused many people to not even feel any pity for me thinking i was stupid and deserved what i got. This was shortly before the problem happened with paypal. After that i was hated immensely more and many people startee saying some stupid rumors about me

One really dumb one was from the ekas user ExplosiveWaifu who has a Dragon OC named Lydia. Goes by DragonWaifu on discord. In one instance i was talking to Lydia about how one of my friends was a Maoist communist and his beliefs and how i support him because he is my friend. She believed because he had communist beliefs and i supported him that i was a terrorist and ceased all Communication with me for this. Another false rumor about me was spreaded by a friend of Explosivewaifu who i cant name as they are always changing their name. she is a trans woman, me and her used to talk a lot and whenever she got drunk she would well... be really irl lewd with me so i started calling her a pedophille (which is where the blackmail stuff ties in partially though i didnt blackmail her it was somebody else)

Many times this friend while sober would claim that i act to mature and that I couldnt be a minor, thus a rumor spread around that inwas a adult pretending to be a minor to get kicked out of the community for purposfully causing drama to make people think im a believable minor so i could easily prey on minors like a pedophille... honestly this is a really dumb rumor and dunno why it was believed by anybody at all

Next I want to talk about the ID theft accusations. Mettra Tonic gave me a health band from the hospital which in July of 2018 i tried to use as a ID to get me unbanned and it failed, this led to trust issues with Mettra who also spread false information about me which is mostly well known for the accusations of blackmail against her friends who were minors. There was another ID issue with a man named worthylightning and Kobayashi whom I tried to. Let them both help me get unbanned because friendship. It didnt work and i felt bad.

Lastly the only true case of ID theft is the one with reffles. Reffles gave somebody her ID who gave me the ID and I cropped out the age part of her ID and tried to use it. I since regret this action but i wouldnt concider the age part alone to be ID theft.

There was also accusations that I steal artwork which i dont own which is false. All artwork of Pumpkira is owned by me, either drawn by me, won in a raffle, requested, or given to me as a gift.

Moving on later in the year CloudRunnerTeeny doxxed me and made a group on discord called the Sumlur eradication squad where he blackmailed me and threatened to leak my info (which he did on christmas onto 8chan before it was taken down for breaking ToS) me and my friend tried to mislead him do he wouldnt Dox me and dox a fake person but this failed, made things worse infact. After that me and teeny came to a truce to leave eachother alone if i stay away from him and his friends. A promise I Semi-kept to today.

I already explained the whole issue with the art charged back, false rumors, and blackmail.

But I want to say this. Please stop sending information that is outdated or just speculation about me. Hear both sides of the story.

And yes when I turn 18 in 2021 I know I’ll still be hated and I have come to terms and accept that is my punishment for my mistakes. But please stop sending drama my way as I am very tempted to just delete all my social media at this point. Its gotten really stressful and I just cant...

Also Chammy again you aren’t a bad person i dont blame you for my hate as Its deserved. Although some of your claims were wrong or from your point of view, others were true and It is good you made a statement about me. But please tell people not to harass me and just block me. I’m going to make this post Private for a while before making it public. I want you to read this before it goes public on my Tumblr.

Lastly I heard you were feeling sick and hope you get better.

From artist to artist I have been improving my art and stories which like you one thing i hope for when im 18 is to be a successful artist or writer. Im already planning a large scale SFW webcomic as many people know. Though I feel like it is going to have a negative impact because Pumpkira is the protagonist and i gaurentee at least one person from the vore community would expost past me to everyone who reads future me’s work

Anyways thats all.

Update 2020: now 17

Update: 2021 now 18 as of January 30th 2021

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

[duckbeater]

Duck Beater at Ten; or, The Orphans

[Editor’s Note: I started this blog a decade ago—occasion enough, I thought, for me to reflect on what it’s meant to contribute (in my extraordinarily untimely and narrow way) to a log that has tried (and more often failed) at recording where I’m at and how I’m doing and what I’m thinking and where I’m going. Having this space has not unreasonably kept me in it—I mean, its persistence has kept me reflecting more or less on the period of its inception. I think a lot about who I was at 23, which is idiotic and costly. I read more books back then. I had no money. My best friend was my brother. I thought I would write a novel.] 

Years ago, my brother’s friend offended him when she asked me why I didn’t prefer one brand of paint over another. I was probably in my apartment's kitchen, working on a canvas, and they were probably behind me, eating my boyfriend's food.

I painted then because I was very poor. One way of thinking through your poverty—if you haven't drugs or sex or a brain injury—is to create pointless tasks for yourself, which is what art-making very often is. It's like Vicodin. It's very lovely, costly, addicting, transporting and makes your stomach hurt if you're not full-up already on something else (say, mashed potatoes). I was painting a truly hideous “family portrait”—globs of white and green paint shaped like cast-off “Sesame Street” creatures—and I was painting, besides, for myself. To hold the brush and to fold the colors and to smell the Turpenoid. A.J. had the money for food (our dying grandfather had cosigned on a student loan) and yet there he was with Victoria, in my apartment, peeling back the silvery foil of a Pop-Tart, making crinkling sounds.

I shouldn't say “my apartment” because it was really Cole’s: I had decamped there when we fell hard in love. This was on the corner of Union and Greenwich, across from an intramural field, and beyond that the law school. It was low-income housing: most has been destroyed; and now that I'm on Google I find the places I walked by, the porch I painted bright blue, the rooms I cherished (orange, annoyingly), they've all disappeared. There's odd grassy lots where there were once old, three-apartment houses, their interiors mangled to accommodate the crying fits of off-campus seniors. In the decade since their vanishment, even the indentations of walkways, of their foundations are invisible, and the lawns are as serene and flat and verdant as well-maintained graves. I recall coming off work one night that October, and finding Cole in the stairwell to the second-floor flat. He was crumpled in a ball, on the phone, arguing with his father: I should visit for Thanksgiving; I should be considered family. He was so angry he was bawling, and he hated me to touch him, and I left him in a daze which is also how I finally left him—in a daze, hating me to touch him. (But on better terms with his father.) Well, that stairwell is gone.

A.J. and Victoria, and in fact many of A.J.’s other law school friends, they regularly came into this apartment. (I have written about them before and realized only in editing this piece that the following brief description is a paraphrase of that missive.) They played Mario Kart on the GameCube, recited Moot Court speeches and ate take-out on the sofas. They gossiped incessantly because a small law school is a high school (it even had lockers), and the attendees are as reckless and dispirited and status-hungry as freshmen in a high school. He was a first year then and I was a fifth year finishing my undergrad, and so I saw all of A.J.'s new friends more than I ever saw my old ones because my old friends had moved on. (They went to Austin, Texas. They stayed at most three years and then relocated to either Los Angeles or the Pacific Northwest.)

I want to try to remember Victoria without resorting to her Instagram account. Back then, she took great pains to distinguish herself as a sophisticated New Englander. I see: high socks, long “piecey” hair, a face white-powdered to pore-less perfection. Perhaps because she was changing her life at twenty-eight and not at twenty-three, as other law students were, her look inclined toward the transformative, toward the gothic and the chic-severe. (Why am I describing her as a later-day Wednesday Addams? She was not a Wednesday Addams. She wore colors. She drank Pimm’s with grape fruit slices and soda water. We took day trips to places like Gary, Indiana, listening to Sam Amidon on the Camry’s stereo.) What I think is, she was alarmed and depressed to be at a “fourth-tier law school in the middle of an ugly corner in uglier Indiana,” and so rebelled against the smallness of her new life by having outsized opinions on luxury goods and fine foods and exotic locales. The worst was that no one knew what she was talking about. She felt this and compensated by hosting foreign film nights. She preferred “the scene,” knew of a scene (there was a music one close by, apparently, in Chicago), and she called herself, sometimes guffawing, a “scenester,” but also wanted us to know she was down with whatever. Just, whatever. She nettled everyone but mostly everyone pitied her, so on balance, her gloom and her snobbery were tolerated.

Victoria made mysterious, indelible gestures. Their performances were somehow less memorable than their obscure resonances, and those resonances affected us obscurely, too. An example. She once loaned A.J. a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase, wanting to hook him on Murakami. When he gave it back unread at the end of term, she insisted it was a replacement copy, that he had lost her original. “If I lost your book,” he told her flatly (and not at all to his credit), “I would not have bothered replacing it.” She said, “No, no—you would. And this is proof.” She told exasperated classmates that A.J. had lost her beloved Murakami paperback and tried to replace it with an exact copy, a conviction seemingly borrowed from the phantasmagorical worlds of Murakami. She used this as a wedge issue about trust, about fidelity. “You’re a coward who couldn’t tell me the truth,” she said, slipping comfortably into a Whit Stillman role. “You’re a deceiver.” To this day, A.J. accepts loaned books graciously while maintaining (not, I think, aloud), “If I lose this, I won’t replace it.” He has never replaced a book I loaned and then he re-loaned again, and there have been more than a dozen. Victoria gave him that.

Another example. When A.J. proposed to his wife, Victoria emailed soon after, advising against the marriage. Incredibly, she sent an email to A.J.’s fiancée too, her reasons for either party diametrically proposed. She was not certain A.J. harbored a strong enough attachment to commit to what she thought would be a lifelong and life-destroying folly. And to Tayler, she said that the two did not know each other enough; that, although they met and dated in high school, and all through college, had not found themselves as adults and might try living longer, in other relationships, before settling down. The emails were cruel, stupid, and strange. Their audience did the generous thing: blamed them on the performer's romantic illusions and then dismissed them as curiosities. Yet sometimes A.J. wishes he had kept his “receipts”—that he’d printed out Victoria’s appeals to him and Tayler, to have at hand such shining examples of sincerity. I’ve heard him rueful about it. “I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he’s said, “but I wish I had these things to point to and say, ‘Here is someone who believes she is doing the right thing.’” But all those emails are gone. The law school closed last year—rather spectacularly, given the coverage in the Times. He doesn’t even have an alumni vanity mailing address.

Victoria adopted this business about oil paints from someone else, her “friend who shows in Chelsea,” a factor that compounded  A.J.'s ire. “He uses exclusively, I think, Windsor and Newton,” she said. “Mixing from other labels creates inconsistencies, sometimes chemical clashes?” She opened the fridge and A.J., after scrubbing it with a towel, sat atop the counter. Bluish light came in through bay windows. The law students appeared not only chronically under-slept (they were) but also ethereal, and perhaps very ill. Victoria helped herself to milk. The cords in A.J.'s neck strained as he gazed at the ceiling, lips pursed, white-knuckling the countertop. Some of this was histrionics and some of this was my brother holding onto his sanity.

I said I didn’t I have a preference—or rather, I just didn’t think about it. I had inherited some desiccated oils from my grandma, raided other buttery leftovers from the art building, had bought cheap, thin student sets in the last full years of school—and I got by on what I had. I got by beautifully, actually, elbow-deep in half-tubes and tubes splayed open at the ends, and tubes coaxed open with needle-nose pliers. The mineral reek and vegetal reek from these paints necessitated full days of airing out the apartment. The solvents and extenders smelled of clove cigarettes smoked indoors. I left canvases to dry outside, where they collected tree fluff and tiny, delicate dead bugs. My images were neither hurt nor helped by these environmental additions. I said I was paying down student loan debt, and would practice brand loyalty when I was solvent again. Victoria said, “Oh, but you really should.” I thought to myself, perhaps for the first time, Why did my brother befriend this orphan?

“I really should,” I say to myself, most days on my drive. Wasn't there a performance art piece—a woman, saying 1,000 things she should do, into a tape-recorder? “I really should recycle. I really should call my mother. I really should pay my parking tickets.” I really should honor ritual and superstition, and my gut instincts. I really should read what I buy or at least attend more assiduously to reviews, so as to refrain from buying disappointments. I really should do my part to cut back on carbon emissions, clean the seas, and vote. Everything is in reach. The way Victoria said it—breezy, condescending, hopeful—is the way I hear most advice, particularly the advice I give myself: spoken in the tones of unconvincing conviction. I drank much less then (somehow), still I had a bottle of Bombay Sapphire at hand (somehow), and peered at Victoria and A.J. through its blue glass, tripling their blue-hued bodies. 

Much later I wrote a play where a character unhappy in love does the same thing. In the stage directions, the young man “goes to the wine cooler, pulls out a beautiful champagne magnum, studies it, puts it back and takes out another. Every bottle dazzles his countenance with jewel-like light—emerald and sapphire; amethyst and ruby; garnet and topaz lights, they sparkle across his bare chest and face as he inspects the bottles. He decides on a blue bottle of Prosecco, lavishly foiled, and brings it to his eyes like binoculars and for a moment considers his open hand, his surroundings, even his audience through the dark blue glass, and the stage glows beautifully blue, too. With great delicacy he unwraps and unwires the Prosecco, and uncorks it in a kitchen towel, and pours himself a glass. He drinks alone, picking at his phone, while the stage goes dark.” It was well past midnight in the second act. The kitchen was empty.

[eggson-bren]

Are We Dating?

A McKirk fic, posted by popular request If not in ST fandom please ignore Prompted by @eiseul‘s beautiful art !!!!!!!!!!! 1622 words, takes place in alternate reality pre-ST 2009 I also put my own spin on the timeline of McCoy’s life since the canon doesn’t make financial sense.  Enjoy!

Are we dating?  

The question hung in the air like a baby bird leaving its nest for the first time.  The two Starfleet cadets were lounging at Bones' apartment, watching Godzilla 3 for the twentieth time, when Jim suddenly blurted out something obnoxious, as always.  It wasn’t an unusual scene; Jim's roommates hated him, and Bones had his own place, so the younger had a tendency to crash here more often than not.  Caramel corn littered the space between the cushions on the couch.  Exams were over for the semester, and both of them were burnt out from studying hard. This was supposed to be their time to unwind.  

So why did Jim have to go and ruin the mood?

The boys had known each other for almost two years by this time.  That was two years of hell for Bones; two years of being dragged from the lab in the middle of important research; of having trash and uneaten scraps left all over his apartment; of trying not to look at the drawer where his old wedding band was stowed as he retired to his room each night when Jim finally passed out on the couch.  Why couldn't tonight just be another one of those nights?  

He knew exactly how it would go:  Jim would eventually doze off against Bones' chest, and the older would remove him gently, secretly enjoying touching his unbelievably soft hair, before heading to bed. The next morning, Bones would make breakfast for the both of them—not because Jim couldn't cook, but because he could finally shut the blonde up by putting food down in front of him. Besides, it was nice to have someone to cook for again.  He'd take just about anything over the loneliness he'd endured for nearly four years since his ex-wife had taken Joanna in the divorce.  

He'd never dated anyone but her.  They were so young, barely legal adults when they'd fallen in love.  Together three years and married three more; by all accounts a responsible, respectable relationship.  He still didn't know how it had all fallen apart.  Are we dating?  Buddy, you're asking the wrong guy.  Jim was the one with all the experience.  Six years younger—when Bones was his age, Joanna was already almost three—and yet he was Bones' senior in more ways than one.  Bones didn't know how he managed to pass exams with all the flirting he did. He wasn't even allowed in the apartment in the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day; if any female cadets on or off campus found out Jim liked to crash here, his inbox would be flooded with packages and notes faster than he could bail it out.  

It was true they spent more or less every waking moment together.  He'd even been asked on a few occasions if they were "more than friends," but had always flatly denied it (ignoring Jim's childish "yeah… best friends!" every. single. time).  If Bones didn't look out for the brat, he'd get himself expelled, no matter how much Pike liked him.  Then where would he be, without someone to waltz into his room drunk at 3am and throw up on his floor, crying hysterically about whatever alien chick had rejected him that night?  

To his credit, Jim made things interesting.  Without him, Bones probably would have dropped out already, aviophobia notwithstanding.  Being somewhat older than most of the student body, already a fully licensed practitioner, and a divorcee with a daughter turning nine this year, he didn't have much in common with his peers in the medical school.  Really, he was shocked Jim wanted to be around him at all—they were as different as moonshine and whiskey.  But in a way, they completed each other.  Opposites attract, he shrugged inwardly.  The thought surprised him by how… normal it felt.  

He should be appalled, really.  He had a child, for Christ's sake.  A little girl!  He couldn't just turn around and decide that he was gay!  What would his ma think?  And besides that, since when was Jim at all interested in men?  This was probably just another instance of the blonde baby fishing for compliments—Lord knew that boy's ego was wider than the Mississippi. Sure, he made a lot of dirty jokes, especially when they were alone… and he could be handsy with his close friends… of which Bones seemed to be the only one.  And there was that one time…

Bones had gone drinking with Jim one time in the two years they'd known one another.  He didn't drink, and he told the other boy this, repeatedly. He didn't like the person he became when he was drunk.  But Jim kept asking, and he kept refusing, for over a year.  After that night, he didn't ask again.  

It started more or less innocuously.  The bar was busy, but not full.  The two of them were beginning to loosen up, little by little.  Bones was feeling lighter, like some of the stress from his studies was being lifted away.  God, it had been so long since he'd let go and enjoyed himself.  What had he been waiting for?  He ordered another shot.  

Then suddenly, Jim was there, asking all sorts of questions, rapid-fire.  Aren't you glad you came out tonight are you having a good time can you be my wingman do you wanna get outta here what do you think Uhura's doing right now wouldn't it be hilarious if—

"Jim.  Shut up for a second," he said.  He downed the last shot, then instantly regretted it. It was the tipping point.  He could feel it.  

He stood.  Jim started in with the questions again.  Are you going somewhere where are you going do you wanna hit another bar wanna get food wanna dance wanna talk to some chicks…

"I have to go," he muttered, making a beeline for the exit.  

"Leonard, wait!"

They made it as far as the curb outside the club before Jim stopped him, grabbing the sleeve of his motorcycle jacket.  That jacket was the first item he'd bought for himself since his ex-wife left him.  It was his new life, a shred of confidence he'd clawed back from the failed one, and now his shitty freeloading classmate was trying to tear it away.  

"Don't touch me!" he barked.  Jim's hand dropped.  

"Leonard, I'm sorry. If it's something I said…"

"It's not you, you stupid prick.  You always make it about you!"  Leonard sat down on the cement.  A snowflake drifted past his nose.  That's right—it was his birthday this weekend.  In less than a week, he'd be thirty years old.  He wanted to cry, but thought if he did, he might get sick.

"Len… I don't know what to say."  

Leonard didn't know, either. "She took everything, Jim. Everything but my damn bones."

Jim sat down alongside him. The snow began falling in earnest, so his long eyelashes caught the flakes and glittered like fairies' wings. "Well, she didn't take everything."  

Leonard looked up.  

"You've got your bones. You've got your life.  And you've got me."

Remembering that moment, Bones couldn't help but question himself.  Since that day, Jim had always called him "Bones."  At first, he hated it.  It reminded him of the moment of weakness outside that bar, when he'd stupidly taken that extra drink and cried on the pavement in the arms of his junior colleague.  But the more it stuck, the more he began to realize what Jim had meant back then.  He had his bones.  He had his life.  He had the present.  He couldn't keep living in the past, like a ghost; it was time to wake up and see what was right in front of him.  

Jesus on the cross, are we dating?

Bones suddenly felt electrified.  He wanted to get up, to run, but he didn't dare move.  He had to know the answer.  Acutely aware of Jim's head draped intimately across his chest, he struggled to get his heart rate under control.  

"Are we?" he asked.  

"I think so."

The feeling which shot through him in that moment was one he hadn't felt in so long, he'd almost forgotten what it was like.  Lovesickness—it was so bittersweet, he was almost overcome.  Jim was right; they were dating.  Ever since that night outside the bar, they'd done nothing but support each other. They were already best friends. They made time for each other and thought about one another when they weren't around.  And somehow, Bones wasn't repulsed by the idea of being with the other man… romantically.  If it was Jim, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.  

"So…" Jim continued, and Bones found himself unmoving, hanging on every word, "that means I can do this, right?"  Suddenly, he rolled over on the couch, lifting his head to plant the lightest of kisses on Bones' cheek.  

Bones wanted to scream, What the hell do you think you're doing!  Jim was always being impulsive like that, playing with people's emotions without even realizing it.  Right then, it felt as if someone was dribbling his heart like a basketball.  But… if it was Jim, then it couldn't be helped.  He wouldn't learn no matter how many times he was told.  

Calmly, he turned to meet the most beautiful pair of eyes this side of Appalachia.  "Then… that means I can do this!"

Bones pounced on the younger man, knocking the caramel corn to the floor, and began tickling him relentlessly, his nimble surgeon's hands flying.  The two of them rolled and fought, laughing like children, as Godzilla blew up buildings across from them on the screen.  And the baby bird safely took flight.  

[findsomeoneelse]

       This might be a very angsty thing to say but I kind of legit hate my dad. He complains all the time that my brother (who i think probably has depression or something rn) and I don’t help him around the house but 1) when we do he’s a huge asshole, literally calls me retarded all the time bc he’ll verbally tell me like 10 things in a row to do and my ADD ass can’t remember it like that and he often  threatens me as well (and there have been incidents with physical violence between him and me). 2) gives us the most useless and asinine tasks i.e. vacuuming a BRICK PATIO or WASHING ROCKS. 3) will ask us when it’s convenient for HIM, my brother and I are 20 and 21 and have either a job or school and for a while I was doing both. 4) he is NEVER satisfied no matter how much we do. 

        And concerning the physical violence shit I have so much pent up feelings about it. As far as I know he’s never come after my brother like that. He may have hit my mom before but I’m not sure. I just know that once they got into a bad argument or something bc he was being really loud bc of a football game and then suddenly my mom was crying (she doesn’t cry a lot) grabbed us kids and went to our grandma’s. He’s also kicked every dog we’ve ever had, literally drop kicked one through a small tree bc it chewed the blinds and then left him outside to run away while he took off to who knows where to sulk. But my point is he has NEVER treated my brother the way he has treated me and it shows. My brother gets away with avoiding so much work and a fuck-ton of lying. My dad almost never invades his space or commandeers his stuff. I’ve almost failed several big school projects in the past bc he’d randomly decide to punish me or that his stupid yard work was more important and that it was my fault for not accounting for his random chores. 

         I literally keep a bug-out bag in my car and a knife by my bed bc of him. I spent my entire junior and senior years of high school with a stomach ache every single day and horrible insomnia from anxiety bc if he wasn’t threatening me with violence he was talking about kicking me out of the house for no real reason. His response to my worsening mental health was to make jokes or just ignore me when I managed to finally muster up the determination to say something. If my mom hadn’t taken action and helped me get help I’d most likely be dead now. I’m still trying to rebuild my self esteem that he destroyed. Then years after I was on medication (that he was opposed to and mocked, my mom was the only one on top of that) and doing better he had the fucking audacity to ask me about how I was doing. Me being like 16 yrs old I lacked the vocab to say that I feel that he forfeited the right to ask me those things so I just shrugged it off.

          He insults and mocks every friend I have in some way shape or form. He also once told me that some older friends I was extremely close to at the time would eventually get tired of hanging out with an annoying little kid so I should get used to them not being around bc they would leave me. I mean he was right about that, and they were pretty toxic for me but that was really fucked up and I’ll never forget it.

          I finally have a good romantic relationship now, with a boy surprisingly, and he’s so sweet to me. Every time he tells me anything remotely kind I almost fucking cry bc I immediately assume he’s lying or somehow delusional. We had our first sort of disagreement, it wasn’t even that big a deal he had just made a few jokes that had upset me, but I was so terrified to bring it up and was so ready for a fight that when he simply apologized for his behavior and promised to correct it I immediately broke down in tears of relief. I’m so terrified for him to meet my dad bc I don’t want him to belittle and invalidate us, or try and take away all our privacy in a weird attempt at policing my sexuality (he has tried something like this in the past with my brother). I’m also so scared my boyfriend will just assume my dad is a normal nice guy and that I’m crazy, bc my dad is good at appearances. We’re well-off but honestly the only reason my brother and I ever see any of that money is bc of our mom, she handles the finances (and p much everything else around here). 

        That’s another thing I hate is that bc I turned out okay everyone assumes he must be a good parent. I had to work so fucking hard to become who I am now DESPITE him NOT because of him. I had to work so hard to become a kinder person, and learn to motivate, comfort, advocate, take care of myself. I’m an intelligent person (at least i’ve been told I am) bc I work to teach myself, both in school and life. I had to learn all my emotional intelligence and social skills myself. I’m working to make my life good and full of the love I never felt from him and to a slightly lesser extent my mom. I’m still working at it. Which is why I’m just as afraid that he’ll be accepting of my relationship and be “proud” or whatever. Thinking he raised a confident and smart daughter. That he has any right to be a voyeur to my happiness or take any credit for it.  

      I work hard so work through so many issues he caused in me on my own. I work so hard to keep myself from sabotaging my current relationship bc I feel unworthy or like it will just vanish. I still can’t fully grasp that this boy could genuinely like me and feel like I’m worthy of his time and effort bc of how stupid and ugly my dad has made me feel my entire life. I have so many things I want to tell my SO but in the moment feel like I physically cannot get the words out for fear of looking stupid when he finally leaves me. I still have so many walls up with him and I really don’t want to but I can’t get them down bc I’m so fucking scared despite all the evidence he’s given me that he cares about me and just wants to know me. It’s honestly incredible how just having someone like him has changed me for the better. He makes me feel smart and capable, like I can have the life I want. He doesn’t see any of the shit my dad seems to see in me and hate. Like fuck the fact that I only seemed to need one stable and loving relationship in my life to succeed really says something I think. 

       I hate feeling like I can’t talk to my own parents, well mostly my mom, but they really make it impossible. My dad bc you never know what will piss him off or if he even gives a shit and my mom bc she will probably tell him whatever you tell her. I have other adults, my aunt (my mom’s older sister) and uncle (tho he’s a newer addition to the family, they married last year.) but I’m so scared to talk to them in case they slip up and let stuff slip to my parents. My aunt also just doesn’t Get a lot of things like mental illness so she can invalidate ppl and be mean. She does encourage me a lot tho, more than my parents EVER have. 

      My SO doesn’t have much of an idea of my relationship w my family other than it seems strained and we barely talk despite all living together. He sometimes half-jokingly tells me I should spend more time with them or make an effort too, and I don’t tell him that I’m not the one who fucked that up for us. I try not to talk about any of this with him yet, and I honestly don’t know when a good time is or how to go about it. He’s gotten little hints here and there before I change the subject. He has a relatively big family that he regularly spends time with, so I don’t know if he’d understand all this. His dad is a little similar to mine in the sense that he always seems to have weird projects around the house that he drags them into but it doesn’t seem like he’s violent. I honestly don’t know what to say about the physical abuse. I’m so scared of how he’ll react. I’m scared he’ll brush it off, I’m scared he’ll get super concerned or angry for me. I just don’t want it to change how he sees me. People seem to get the impression that I’m confident and that I don’t take shit, and it makes me feel so embarrassed that I let myself be pushed around by my dad.

      If anyone actually reads this post and has suggestions for talking to an SO about this stuff (especially in the case of an abuser being good at manipulation/gas lighting) let me know any suggestions you have. I thought by this point in this rant I’d have some sort of clarity but I don’t really. My dad has been slightly better the last year or so, since we moved to a new house that’s bigger and we’re on opposite sides of it. After one of his worst outbursts (at the beginning of my senior year) I gave him a book about male abuse in an attempt at confrontation but I doubt he read it. He’s been better but I can’t let go of all these feelings. Older people tell me that eventually I’ll forgive him and move on but I honestly don’t want to. I don’t want him to just get away with treating us like garbage. Maybe that makes me petty and childish but I am barely 20 so. It be like that. Might make a separate post about my brother might not. I love him but dudes got issues rn.

[koganphrancis]

Gay 4 JT 4Eva

Also: New Writer, Who Dis?

Before I begin my recap of this week’s episode, let me send a sincere plea to TPTB at Shameless: PLEASE HIRE AN ACTUAL LGBTQA WRITER!  It’s nearly the end of the second decade of the 21st century!  Do we really need a bunch of different characters stating one reason (and one reason alone) that makes them gay or straight?  No, no we don’t.  

So, a brand new (to Shameless) writer is thrown into the mix and he gives us what was pretty much universally crowned on social media the most boring episode of this shit show ever, and that’s saying something to all of us that watched Season 6.  

It’s so hard to know where to begin, since I want to save ALL the Ian foolishness for last.  

I guess we’ll start with Frank since he’s very cut and dried this week: Gets a credit card, gets a car, gets fired because the store he works for is closing.  The show tried to make a statement about online driving brick and mortars out of business-which was “news” at least 5 years ago, maybe more.  Frank also had a very (to me, anyway) un-Shameless talk with Liam about being poor.  This show used to wear that like a badge of honor, but now we have Frank hemming and hawing before admitting that they are, but instead of his old rants about fuck capitalism/fuck the establishment/people who work towards material goals are soulless-he buys a car online.  In a nutshell, this is what’s wrong with the entire show now-don’t argue “character development and growth” to me-none of us tuned into this show hoping Frank one day turns into a typical TV dad with a job and a lawn to mow on the weekends.  

Next I’ll tackle Debbie-in yet another brilliant piece of retconning, she’s suddenly 16 years old.  Now, I’ve said it before and you can Google it just like I did: You have to be 18 years old to attend any kind of accredited welding school in the state of Illinois.  Those classes deal with equipment that can kill and maim not only the person using it, but those around them as well.  You have to be a legal, liable adult for anyone to put that shit into your hands.  Did she steal Ian’s ID to enroll in the school?  

Anyway, 16 y/o Debs is on what’s turned out to be a 2 day bender and has had unprotected sex that she can’t remember-multiple times.  Um, I have zero experience with drugs, but from anything I’ve read, Ecstasy doesn’t erase your memory-was she really being fed rufies by that long haired guy?  Anyway, when he informs her they’ve been banging for two days she leaves Franny (who’s been sitting in a bathtub set up with pillows and a blanket presumably all this time?  She didn’t need to be fed or changed?) with the dude and takes off in search of a morning after pill, which she can’t purchase in Missouri because she’s...not 17 yet.  

It was established in the first episode that Lip is 23 now, which makes his Irish twin Ian 22-but Debs is 6 years younger than Ian?  So, for those 3 seasons Ian was 17, she was 11?  She raped Matty when she was 11/12???  She got pregnant at 13 and gave birth at 14?  And Child Services didn’t take her and the baby away from Fiona, but sent her to a parenting class instead?  Yeah, okay, right.  

Anyway, she gets thrown in jail but a parent or guardian doesn’t have to come bail her out, and her storyline for the night ends with a very offensive, not funny racist bit in a drug store.  I don’t care that this is “Shameless”-in real life that guy probably would’ve been shot in Missouri for standing up and shouting like that, and the real life media would have a field day about terrorists.  

Carl-who we now know is 15-is still driving Fiona’s mini SUV around?  Now that we know he’s not old enough to have a license, does that make sense?   His role in the night’s episode is minimal-he basically drives Lip around looking for Brad.  

Lip and Fiona were experiencing parallel storylines-both were deeply, DEEPLY concerned about other people’s lives this week, but not the people themselves.  They both had all these, “I can’t let this happen to ME!” moments of narcissistic bullshit that was really hard to take.  In Lip’s case, he’s running around trying to get Brad back on the path to sobriety because if a guy like that can’t do it, what hope is there for LIP?  Yes, Lip, make this all about you.  And it really sucks, because a very natural concern is right there, but they’re having Lip ignore it: instead of worrying how Brad not being able to stay sober reflects on Lip’s own chances, why not have Lip be concerned for Brad’s son, and pledging to do anything he (Lip) possibly can so that kid doesn’t grow up with a father like Lip had?  There’s a ridiculous line where Lip tells Youens he has to come help Lip find Brad because who better than a drunk to know where to find a drunk?  That line ignored two major points from the series-one is that Lip himself is a drunk, and two is that Lip has spent a lifetime with his family hunting down Frank when he disappears.  They were that desperate to drag Youens into this week’s plot?  

Fiona’s whiny “it’s all about me!” plot centered on her finding a dead woman in her apartment, being eaten by her dog.  The show shocked me by finally having an actual, accurate fact about that-the dog has to be put down, by law, because it ate human flesh.  They even have a man come from animal control and drag it away-but miraculously by the end of the episode, Fiona has the dog.  Dafuq?  And you know they’ll never explain it.  

Anyway, Fiona gets freaked out when she realizes no one cared about this woman, and that that could happen to HER.  So she decides to remedy it by getting Ian to make up with her.  She goes over to the EMT building and walks right in, just like everyone else.  Ian’s there taking inventory on the truck, because he’s always there, because this is the least busy emergency response service in any major city in the USA-did they change their phone number to 912 or something?  Anyway, she’s not there to apologize as much as she’s there to LET Ian apologize to her.  The whole “feud” thing they’ve got going on is stupid and contrived as hell, but her showing up at his place of work and setting him off is cunty no matter what-and not because of his mental health either, just in general.  They just bitch at each other and we’re supposed to think that Ian is sooooooo concerned about those at risk youth when, as has been pointed out many times, Mickey and Yevgeny both fit in that category and he’s written them off without a second thought.  Ian’s comments about Fiona only caring about money and not people are A: something he said in Season 7-and the people he was referring to then were her own flesh and blood siblings, and B: didn’t stop him from leaving Mickey and returning to her house and life, so he needs to nut up and lie in that particular bed he made.  And Fiona-I get that she didn’t have a choice when Frank and Monica left her holding the bag with all the kids when they were young, but then Fiona made the decision as an adult to take legal custody of them-she stood up in court even after the judge begged her to reconsider giving her life over to them, so every shitty putting herself first thing that she’s done since then IS something to hold against her.  Her going to Ian not because she loves him and wants peace between them but to hedge her bets against winding up alone and forgotten was a shitty thing to do.  You know how nearly every season Fiona asks another character if she’s a bad person?  The answer by now is abundantly clear: she is.  The way to not wind up alone is to make sure others aren’t neglected and left by YOU, Fiona.  

Just like last week, Ian has the funniest line in the episode, and once again, it’s unintentional, but he growls at Fiona, “I don’t know who you are anymore.”  This from the character that since before the time he said, “This isn’t me anymore,” hasn’t been consistent for two weeks in a row.  How did this show turn to such shit???

Ugh, then there was the Svetlana/Vee/Kev shit.  After all this time, suddenly Kevin feels insecure about his wife having good sex with another person.  Vee says Svetlana is a woman, so she knows what feels good to a woman’s body.  Kev (who is no longer a redneck this week, in case you were wondering) makes the logical leap that he should have sex with a man, because that will feel as good to him as woman on woman feels to Vee.  (Are we sure the new writer’s name isn’t just a nom de plume for John Wells?)

Kev runs into Ian at Patsy’s.  Ian’s looking at his phone-I’d like to think Cam was sending #BringMickeyBack tweets using his non-public accounts, but he’s not typing, just swiping, so let’s hope Ian was on Grindr trying to find someone to fuck without a lecture first.  Anyway, Kev asks Ian how he knew he was gay, if he was straight and began experimenting and just “decided” he liked being gay “more”.  Ian says he just kinda knew.  Kev says, “So you just always knew you were into dudes more.”  Instead of just saying, “Yes, I’ve always been gay,” Ian has to predicate his answer with a brand new story about how he went thru this “weird phase” with a girl for all of 5th grade because he knew/had been told he was supposed to be into girls.  Plus he DOESN’T mention the fact that a decade later, he had to prove it to himself by fucking a woman.  Oh, fuck you, Shameless.  You’re just never going to let Ian be all the way gay, are you?  

Anyway, Ian says, “It wasn’t until, ah...”  Kev says, “Until what?” and stupid me at home, foolishly thinking Ian’s going to say, “Until I joined Little League and fell in love with the first baseman...”  But, no, he says, “Justin Timberlake” and a lot of people online are praising the writer for having watched old episodes, but I’m figuring he watched a You Tube clip of Ian coming out to Mandy.  I don’t think the guy immersed himself in the show.  

Anyway, then there’s a bunch of flawed logic showing up all over the place.  Kev agrees with Ian that JT is hot, then asks Ian if he’s attracted to him-which is SO WEIRD when you consider Kevin’s known Ian since he was a kid-Ian says no but gets saved from having to get into it further when his to go order is given to him by Snore with her three lines in as many weeks (more about Ian’s thrilling drink order later).  Later Kev finds a gay guy and goes into the Alibi bathroom to give his first bj but he-and the gay guy-decide Kev can’t possibly be gay because he doesn’t have a hard on.  Yes, because gay men can’t NOT pop a boner at all times when they’re in close proximity to each other.  And how did Ian’s attraction to a hetero dude prove his homosexuality?  And then on top of all that, Vee goes to see Fiona and has an epiphany of her own-since she’s not sexually attracted to Fi, she can’t possibly be a lesbian, no matter how much she’s enjoying sex with Svetlana.  And what about the fact that both Ian and Mickey were able to have sex with women?  That means they’re not gay by the logic on display in this ep-altho Vee having sex with Svetlana doesn’t make her gay, so?  All this shit is why I know the latest writer ain’t gay either.  Ugh.  

What is it with Shameless writers that people of compatible sexuality can’t be friends without having sex?  Fucking Sue telling Ian he couldn’t be friends with a gay guy when he met Terror, now all this bullshit?  I’m sorry, I don’t think not being sexually attracted to hot mess Fiona says anything about anyone’s sexual orientation.  

Oh, and Fi tells Vee she likes being dominated by Svetlana, telegraphing an upcoming Fifty Shades Of Ghetto Grey story coming up for Kev and Vee a mile away.

All right, back to Ian.  At the beginning of the episode he’s sitting in the kitchen, isolated from the family conversation, his arms crossed over his chest (and he’s wearing a particularly ill-fitting and ugly shirt-I’m usually down for offbeat wardrobe choices, but he just looks crappy), and he’s fuming.  There’s a bowl of cereal and a coffee mug at his place, but no sign of his pills-is he off them?  Is he manic?  We’ll never know.  Carl is bitching about his tuition, Ian asks him how much he needs, Carl says a little over four thousand, Ian says he’ll pay him five to kill Fiona.

Whoa, hold the phone.  We had to suffer thru the jail visit in 601 where he gave Mickey shit about it being his own fault he’s in there for the “attempted murder” of his “sister”, but now he’s maybe half joking (at best) about doing the same to his actual sister?  FUCK YOU, IAN.  Too soon, Shameless.  Too fucking soon.  

The only thing I was mildly interested in this week was how they were going to handle/explain Ian’s tryst with the old couple-did he really have oral sex with them both, or did he get the money by blackmailing them, and what would he tell Terror about it, and what would that asshole’s reaction be?  You know, other than a lecture-would he freak out that Ian “cheated” on him right after they got back together?  Would he dump Ian’s ass?  

At Patsy’s, Snore gives Ian his order-a soy latte, no foam, extra hot-Yes!  Ian is bringing Terror another crap soy drink at the center, right?  Wrong.  A dream finally comes true and we get another Terror-free episode, but this week I actually wanted to see him, because I wanted shit to go down.  Silly me, I let myself forget that every week Ian is a new character, a practically blank slate.