#we did eventually play angry catch with the football enough to make it back to the camp

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all, weird question time! Do you have any advice for stretches/exercises to improve finger dexterity/range of motion? This question brought to you by a childhood history of being really spectacularly bad at catching footballs, several instruments I'd probably be better at playing with a better range of motion, and also the fact that I can't raise just my middle finger by itself without my other fingers also going up at least a little bit

[driz-zle]

⌕ JUST IN: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

NOW UPLOADED: EPISODE #1 / EXES AND OH'S! / M.R.

Featuring: Sponsor! Mikage Reo and Actress! Y/n L/n Bonus Appearance: Pro Gamer! Nagi Seishiro Tropes: Arranged Marriage

VIDEO SEGMENTS: ###. WHAT IS YOUR NAME AND YOUR EX'S NAME? (Introduction) #1. Who took the break-up the hardest? #2. What do you miss the most about your relationship? #3. What bad habit about the other did you dislike?

We decided to bring together pairs of ex-lovers, iconic and famous all around the world, for a little Q&A. Welcome to Exes and Oh's! First up, Mikage Reo and Y/n L/n, an "IT couple" for many! The ex-couple debuted their relationship at the Oscars, where actress Y/n L/n dedicated her award won to her then-boyfriend, Mikage Reo in a loving display. Their fanbase grew day by day as they kept posting each other on social media, showed up together at events, and kept being sighted together, so what a shock it was to find out that they had split off!

###. WHAT IS YOUR NAME AND YOUR EX'S NAME? (Introduction)

"My name is Y/n L/n, an actress, and my ex's name is Mikage Reo."

"My name is Mikage Reo. I am CEO of the Mikage Corporation and the Sponsor of the band "EGOIST/S" and my ex's name is Y/n L/n."

#1. Who took the break-up the hardest?

▶ PLAYING: Y/N L/N

"Oh wow, straight to where it hurts huh?" —you chuckle, thinking about it— "I think, the impact it had on us both was enough to make it hurt."

"Can you elaborate on that?"

"Well, Reo is always swamped with work and meetings, and I'm either at events, filming, or preparing to. The selfish part of me wants to say that I took it the hardest, since, we did break it off in the middle of filming a big production. The baggage from my job as an actress and our personal issues, it was— it was just a lot."

"It was revealed soon after your break-up that your relationship was arranged ever since you were children?"

"It was. We met when we were young and we hit it off. Eventually, we were put in an arranged marriage."

"But you two never reached that stage."

"Yes —a sad smile comes across your face— we didn't."

"You stated that you wanted to believe that you took it the hardest, I assume there's a but?"

"I can't fully bring myself to think that."

"Why is that?"

"Because I know he tried to keep our relationship alive just as much as I did."

You don't know what day it is, just that it's morning with the sun peeking through your windows.

There are clothes on the floor, a tub or two of ice cream on your night stand where a polaroid picture of you and Reo sat atop. You're crying again.

Three knocks on your hotel room door. "Y/n L/n! Open up!" You can't even bring yourself to roll your eyes at your manager's attempts. Your head rolls over to the sight of the closet. Eyes catching sight of the extra football jersey with the number 14. You're crying even more.

The mattress and blanket alike are damp. While you don't know what day it is, you do know that you've been crying all night. Why wouldn't you? Every single thing you owned brought back memories. You hate that you can't hide from him anywhere.

Your phone? Texts, photos, reminders, notes, hell even your wallpaper. Your hotel room? His old jersey you always pack, the Polaroid picture of you two you always carry, even some of the fucking clothes you have in your closet were gifts from him.

Your bed dips, and a sigh is pulled out of your manager. You don't know if it's frustration at the state you're in or pity. Either way, you can't bring yourself to care. The extra keycard is in her hand.

"I'm pathetic."

"Hey, come on, you're not."

You're about to retort but she cuts you off, "You just came out of a 5 year relationship. You have every right to be upset, sad, angry, frustrated, or whatever you feel."

"I just don't know what to do." You're full on heaving by now, sobbing in her arms.

#1. Who took the break-up the hardest?

▶ PLAYING: MIKAGE REO

"Y/n. 100%."

"You sound very sure. How come?"

"The break-up was honestly horrible timing, especially for her. She was filming something big and I guess everything just took a toll on both of us. In all honesty, I should've tried to stop it from happening." A bitter smile appears on Reo's face.

"Your relationship was arranged, correct?"

"Yes. Our families were close, we grew up with each other just a call away."

"Did the implication that it was arranged ever deter your relationship?"

"Absolutely not. What we had was as true as any romantic relationship, all the way from start to end."

"Earlier you made it sound as if you were at fault, do you blame yourself?"

He takes a deep breath. "Partly." He purses his lips. "Like I said it was also just horrible timing because everything like the stress, tension, and whatever were all piling up, but I still should've seen the signs. Maybe if I did..."

The interviewer leans forward slightly behind the camera, excited to hear what he is about to admit. But Reo simply shook his head.

"Nevermind."

"Dude. You need to lay off the alcohol."

"Shut up Chigiri." He doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's drunk, all Mikage Reo knows is that he's miserable and that's more than enough of a reason to get black-out drunk.

"The big spender habits still retain while drunk then." Kunigami picks up a bottle from the floor, obviously expensive and with a name he won't even try to pronounce.

"When Nagi told us it was bad, we didn't think it was this bad," Isagi says, glancing around the room which was uncharacteristically messy for someone like Reo. Papers everywhere, bed unmade, closet incredible chaotic.

"Fuck." Isagi's head snaps to his drunken friend who is now trying to stand up. Eventually, he had to be carried by Kunigami to his unmade bed. They're in peace and quiet for the first few moments Reo lays down.

There’s a sniffle, and the group could only look at him in sympathy. "I miss her so much."

#2. What do you miss the most about your relationship?

▶ PLAYING: Y/N L/N

"The moments where we could just be. No CEO Mikage, no actress L/n. Just us."

▶ PLAYING: MIKAGE REO

"The times when we could just breathe. No pressuring business deals, expectations, fans. To me, being with her was my rest."

It's windy, evident from the way your boyfriend was getting annoyed by how his hair kept getting in his face. The breeze is supple and refreshing, accompanied by the quiet splashing of the waves. You can't help but laugh at his frustrations.

"Come here, would you?" He follows, sitting next to you on the lounge chair by the pool. With gentle strokes, you put his hair up, using the extra hair tie you always bring for situations like these. Once you're finished, Reo doesn't hesitate to lay on top of you.

"I love you, you know that?"

"Really? Or are you just saying that because I always have an extra hair tie on hand?"

He scoffs, amused, before carrying you by your thighs. "Reo! Put me down!" You're hitting him the whole time while he laughs and walks toward the pool. Contrary to what you thought, he doesn't throw you in. He carries you as he descends into the deeper ends.

The water level is at his waist while his arms are still wrapped around yours. Embracing him by the neck, you catch whiffs of his signature cologne. "You're annoying, you know that?" All you get is a hum in reply.

His hold tightens as he lifts you up higher, making you have to look down at him. You get a good look at him. Eyebags from days of bad sleep, a sort of tension on his shoulders, and a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "I'm guessing the band is as demanding as always?"

"Not really, throw them enough funds for a concert venue and they shut up." You share a laugh.

You don't think you look any better than his tired state but still, one thing that you can pinpoint is that Mikage Reo looked content.

Eyes half-lidded, it's only a matter of time before the sweet taste of his lips envelops yours. He groans once, and then another. A hand of his lands on your back, not letting you pull away.

Both of you are breathing hard, a satisfied grin on his face and an amused one on yours. "Mikage Reo, you are one needy man."

"Only for you."

By the following week, articles and pictures of you and Reo on the private island were released, leaving netizens in shambles from the loving display. It doesn't stop you from posting a story of your boyfriend tangled in the blankets with you shirtless.

Your PR team won't mind, right?

#3. What bad habit about the other did you dislike?

▶ PLAYING: Y/N L/N

"Reo was an all-rounder in multiple things. Soccer and business for example. That carried onto love languages. Quality time, acts of service, giving and receiving gifts, physical touch, words of affirmation, he could do it all. But he was always heavy on gift giving."

"Reo is, and most likely always will be, a giver at heart. I mean, he literally sponsors his friend's band for the purpose that he wants to be of help."

"So how does it become his bad habit?"

"Whenever we got into an argument, there would always be flowers delivered to my hotel, jewelry atop the nightstand, or a beautiful date to make up for it. But that was it."

"There was no talking about what happened, what was said, or anything about the argument. I think to him, after making up for it in the form of a gift or outing, that was it."

"What about it in particular did you dislike?"

"It got us into more problems because of miscommunication. Most times, there was no communication at all and it put us in a tough spot more than once."

Ruffling comes from the other side of the bed, a telltale sign that Reo is coming to lie next to you. Your right hand is up in the air, the trinkets on your newly done nails catching the light from the lamp beside you.

His body heat makes itself known, with the absence of a shirt, as he embraces you with a peck on your jaw. Reo's purple hair tickles the crevice of your neck as he buries his head. His voice is muffled when he asks, "You like it?"

He gets a satisfied hum, but his head lifts and he knows almost immediately that something is off. His hand brushes your hair, "You okay, love?" You finally look at him, extending your arms out.

He doesn't hesitate to dive into your arms. Your breaths sync and his toned back slowly rises up and down. Reo's just about to fall asleep when you ask oh so quietly, "When are we going to talk about it?"

He blinks. Once, twice, before he lifts himself up, an arm on each side of you. The glint in his eyes is playful and it matches perfectly with the grin on his face. "If you wanted another shopping spree love, you could just ask. Or do you wanna come with me to the band's concert hm?"

"Reo. I'm not joking."

Your stern tone doesn't put him off in the slightest. "Neither am I." He goes back to leaving small kisses on your neck and collarbone, knowing exactly what he's doing. "It's done and it happened right? I'll make it up to you a thousand times more if I have to."

#3. What bad habit about the other did you dislike?

▶ PLAYING: MIKAGE REO

"Y/n has always been independent. Even when we were kids, she would throw fits whenever she was told to stay put because she wanted to do things herself."

"She's always been used to doing things herself, even admitting that she's not used to someone taking care of and doting on her so much. She can push you away at times."

"When something would go wrong at work, or there was a personal problem, she tends to isolate herself. Once it's fixed or she copes with it, it's back to how it was."

"What about it in particular did you dislike?"

"I just thought that after knowing each other our whole lives, she would've let me in."

"Y/n let me in. Please?"

It's been a few hours since you've locked yourself in the guest bedroom. Your take-out order is left sitting cold at the kitchen counter, your bag and keys tidied up next to it by Reo himself.

Something must've gone wrong at filming. No, something most definitely did go wrong. He just called you over lunch and you were perfectly fine back then.

"If you're not going to open this door for me, at least open it to have dinner?"

No response again.

What Reo doesn't realize is that you were sitting on the floor, back to the door, listening to his every word. But you can't bring yourself to open it. An hour passes.

On the other side of the door, he's in a similar position, talking about whatever now just to fill the silence. "—and Rin and Sae got into another scuffle apparently. You know, we're gonna celebrate Nagi reaching 20 million, at that one place that has good risotto."

Not a word, again. He sighs, and the scuffling of his feet reaches your ears. "Goodnight, Y/n."

He leaves you alone for the rest of the night.

###EXTRA EPISODE: THE LOOSE LIPS OF NAGI SEISHIRO

[before-we-get-started]

Dream Come True

Colin Shea x O/C Corinne MacAdam

Multi-Chapter Story - Complete

Summary: Colin Shea and his band Rock the Cradle are finally making it big - until something unexpected happens. When he meets a girl that makes him reconsider his player ways, he thinks his life may be coming together, until she blows it apart.

Warning: Bad language, smut, suicidal ideations - no one under 18, please

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please do not read if you are underage. I do not own the character of Colin Shea; the rest are my original characters. By reading beyond this point, you understand the disclaimers as posted.

Chapter Seven

Cori and Seth fell into a very comfortable rhythm, meeting for dinner, going for walks, catching an art exhibit, getting coffee. He was great company and she felt truly at ease with him.

Her job was starting to pick up. Ms. Robbins was ready to start entertaining. Cori found a confidence she didn’t have when she started, and she credited it to her rebirth – new place, new job, new boyfriend. She felt better about herself than she had in months.

In the meantime, Colin’s life was about the same. Lots of gigs with the band, lots of girls, but the one he wanted was out of reach. He and Cori had spent a few evenings together, a couple of times on the rooftop when he was writing songs. She’d giggled at some of his lyrics until he got them straightened out. The problem was, all she wanted to talk about was Seth. He was amazing. He was great. He was outstanding. He was smart. Colin hated him. He was everything Colin wasn’t or ever would be. He was established and well educated and a grown up, all the things that Colin wasn’t.

One evening when she’d invited him for pizza, they watched the Red Sox game on TV and started talking about when they were in high school. Then Cori shared a couple of college stories, but her mood took a turn and she wasn’t so talkative.

“Ok Debbie Downer, what just happened? I was telling you about how I got taped to the top of a flagpole for high school football initiation and then suddenly, you tell me about college and you’re quiet. What’s up?”

She looked so cute tonight. She had on jean cut-offs and a pink sleeveless button up blouse that tied at the bottom, cut low to show the swell of her breasts and with just enough skin visible around the waist that Colin had to shift a couple of times to get comfy on the couch. Her hair was pulled back with a few tendrils hanging down. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose from being in the sun and her eyes were particularly gorgeous. He kept looking at her from the top of her head to the sweet pink toenails on her bare feet and each time, his breath would hitch in his throat.

“I told you about my fiancée, right?”

“Yeah,” he said sadly.

“Well I started seeing him my senior year of high school and we stayed together during college, even though we went to different schools.”

Colin took a swig of beer. “I think I know where this is going,” he said.

“Yeah. He cheated on me. Of course I thought it was the end of the world, except I didn’t even know what that was yet.”

“That’s tough,” said Colin and she let out a laugh.

“Colin. Seriously. For you, it’s incomprehensible. I know you probably think it was stupid that we even tried to stay together.”

He looked a little hurt. “Hey, I respect people that want a relationship. I think it’s hard at that age, with all that temptation, but I know it can be done. Would it be my choice? Hell no. But it meant something to you. So what happened?”

“I was pretty devastated, but he was very remorseful. He came all the way to see me at my school and apologized profusely. He told me it would never happen again. It took a while but I took him back and eventually, I trusted him again.”

“You must have felt like he was worth giving another chance,” he said.

She sighed. “I thought he was, the best. When we graduated, we got engaged. I could see all of it – the wedding, the house with the white picket fence with kids running around. He and I were so compatible.” Her voice dropped off at the end.

He hesitated. “Do you want to talk about the rest? You don’t have to –“

“No, it’s ok. We had our rehearsal dinner at the hotel where we were getting married on Friday night. We parted for the night and wouldn’t see each other until I walked down the aisle. As I was leaving the bar, I noticed he’d left his credit card. I took it up to his room, excited that we’d get one more kiss. I was so stupid.” She felt the tears coming.

He could see it too. He moved toward the couch to try and get closer to her. “It’s ok,” he said softly. “We can stop.”

“No,” she said a little sob escaping. She took a deep breath and sighed. “I caught him in bed my very best friend. And when everything was said and done, he’d had girls all along. He’d never been faithful to me, not even in high school.” She wiped a tear away from her eye.

He was suddenly overwhelmed by feelings – rage at this guy for hurting her, sadness because she was sad, protectiveness because he didn’t want her to hurt anymore. Her tears truly broke his heart. He knelt down in front of her chair and started to put his arms around her, until there was a knock at the door.

“Great,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. She stood up and made her way to the door, gathering herself as she went. She looked through the peephole and let out a little squeal, opening the door. “Seth! You said you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow!”

He swept her up in a hug, lifting her off the ground, then planted a soft kiss to her lips. “I got an earlier flight. I didn’t want to be away from you a second longer than I had to be.” He kissed her again, this time more deeply and urgently.

Colin suddenly felt incredibly conspicuous. He stood up, dropping his beer bottle in the trash can. Seth eyed him over Cori’s shoulder.

“Hey Seth,” he said with a half smile.

“Colin, hey,” he said.

“Well, I’m gonna get out of here so you two can enjoy the night.” Colin stepped around them and walked out the door as Seth lifted Cori again, kissing her as he shut the door behind them. He stood there for just a second. It was jealousy this time, but there was something else – longing, maybe. He was really smitten with her. In fact, if he was really honest, he was falling in love with her.

This was dangerous territory. Time to take evasive action. He ducked into his apartment and changed, then headed to the bar down the block. Time to find a companion for the night, to make him forget that he wasn’t going to be with the girl he really wanted.

“Colin, you guys have to do this.” Cori was pacing around her apartment, talking with her hands, full of energy.

“I don’t know. It’s not what we normally do.”

“It’s a great way to get your name out to people who wouldn’t normally go to Rap’s or some of the other places you play. And it’s really good money.”

He was leaning against her kitchen counter, beer bottle in hand, the other rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, but this is different. This is a big, stuffy old people event.”

She leveled him with a look. “It is not,” she said. “My job is to broaden the net for her fundraising. She has plenty of big stuffy events for old people. She has to widen her demographic. She says if they’re having fun, they’ll donate. I know lots of young people feel like they are a charity, but it’s my job to bring them in so we can teach them about our foundation.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I don’t make any decisions for the band, we do it as a group. I’ll ask them.”

“Make sure you tell them how much she’s paying,” she said with a smile.

“That’s what worries me. I know they’ll say yes.”

“Why is that so awful?”

“It’s not awful, it’s just – I don’t know, I never pictured us being that kind of band.”

“The kind that makes money?”

He shot her a look. “No,” he said forcefully, “a band that kind of sells out and plays just stuffy events.”

She crossed her arms and gave him an angry look. “Colin. Are you crazy? The biggest names in music play private events all the time. One of the attorneys at Seth’s firm just paid huge money for Maroon 5 to play his daughter’s 16th birthday party. You think Adam Levine was like, ‘oh man, I’m compromising my principles.’ No, he took the money and probably even said thank you.”

He smiled a little, he knew when he was beaten. “Fine. Give me all the details and I’ll talk to them at practice.”

“Great!” she squealed. “You guys are so hot right now, getting you at an exclusive event will be huge. And the venue is so awesome. I promise we’ll take good care of all of you.”

He smiled, trying to hide the fact he’d love to work with her. “Oh, hey, I meant to tell you – Rap’s is closing early Wednesday for an employee appreciation and we’re going to play a set. I thought you might want to come, it won’t be so crowded and crazy.”

“Mm,” she said, taking a sip from her water bottle. “Thanks, let me check with Seth and I’ll let you know.”

“Oh, the invite is just for you. Since it’s employee appreciation, they told us we could each ask one person.”

“Wow,” she said, “I’m your plus one? I’m moving up in the world!”

“Damn right,” he said confidently and they both laughed.

“Alright, count me in. I’d love to come.”

He felt a swell of excitement – he loved every minute he spent with her. He was lucky her boyfriend didn’t mind him hanging around as much as he did. Some guys would get all possessive, but Seth seemed fine with it. Thank goodness.

“Alright, I’m out of here. And thanks for including us in the benefit. I don’t think I even bothered to thank you before I went full diva.”

She laughed, a sound he had come to love. “Well, if you’d said no, it was on to U2. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind being sloppy seconds to Rock the Cradle.”

He grabbed his left pec, laughing heartily. “Bono should be so lucky.”

For just a second, he had an impulse to kiss her. She looked so good, he loved that he made her smile so much. But he stopped himself – he had to do this right or he’d blow it.

“Ok, see ya later gator.”

“Bye,” she said seeing him out the door. As she closed it, she thought how crazy it was that she’d ever been interested in him. She’d always have a thing for him, but he’d never see her the way he saw the swarms of girls that were all over him at a gig, or the ones that nuzzled up to him at parties or the ones that were lucky enough to enjoy a sunrise with him. He’d always be out of reach for her. She was lucky that Seth had come along when he did or she’d spend a lot of nights staring through the peephole, wishing she was with 6A.

On Wednesday, she worked a little late so she went straight from work to Rap’s. The doors were locked and a guy was posted with a guest list. He opened up, saw her name on the list and let her in. He directed her to the green room where the band was prepping.

She came to the door and knocked softly. “The groupies are here!” someone shouted from inside and they all hooped and cheered. The door was opened by a guy she recognized as the drummer. She shoved her hand at him. “Oh man, it’s just Cori.”

She giggled. “Sorry to disappoint you!”

“If you’re looking for Colin, he’s in the bathroom squeezing into his leather pants. He’ll be out in a minute.”

She laughed as he led her to a table with some food and drinks.

“Help yourself,” he said.

“Thanks!” She grabbed some veggies and fruit and a bottle of water and found a chair by Kevin. The other guys were coming and going, getting ready.

“So,” she said, “is it good to be back at it and so busy?”

“Yeah,” he said. “There was a time I wondered if we’d get back but we did.”

“Yeah, Colin told me,” she said.

He looked surprised. “Wow, he must really like you. He never really said much to anyone. I just wish I could find out what really happened with him. Something he just doesn’t want to talk about.”

Cori knew he thought she knew more than she did, so she played along. “Yeah, just crazy. Thank goodness he was ok.”

“Oh yeah, he took a really hard hit. I was terrified. I thought, here we were playing hoops like we always do, and in just a second, he was flat on his back not breathing. Leave it to Colin’s dumb ass to die while he’s showing off a killer dunk.”

Cori’s breath caught in her throat. She tried not to show her surprise.

“We were lucky someone knew CPR. He was so upset we missed the meeting with the record company. Between recovering from being hurt, having a horrible concussion and missing out on that opportunity, he was so down. Colin is never down, but he was almost too far to reach.”

For a second she felt guilty – she’d wondered if it was drug or alcohol related. How could she have thought that about him?

“Good news is here we are, back in the swing. I hear you got us a high-end gig.”

“What? Oh yes, did you all discuss?”

Kevin let out a laugh. “There’s nothing to discuss! It’s great money and exposure, we’re doing it.”

“Oh good! I’m so glad,” she said, still reeling inside about what Kevin had told her. Just then, her golden rock god emerged from the bathroom. He was truly born to front a rock band. When he saw her, he broke into the most beautiful smile. She felt that pull of desire in her belly, but tried to look as normal as possible.

“You made it,” he said.

“Of course!”

Someone stuck their head in the door behind him – “five minutes.”

“That’s my cue. Have a great show, break a leg or whatever you say to a band.” She giggled.

“Thanks Cori.”

She made her way to her seat and sat through an incredible set. All the bar’s employees were having a ball, dancing in front of the stage and partying. She nursed a drink and spent her time watching him. He was so beautiful. He had a good voice, not the greatest but no one would ever notice because his stage presence was incredible. He had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

When it ended and the lights came up, the crowd swarmed the stage. The band’s guests emptied out of their tables and climbed up, hugging their significant others and chatting with the crowd. Just as Cori was about to walk towards the stage, a tall, dark haired girl strode in. Cori stopped and looked at her. She was breathtakingly gorgeous. Long legs in a short skirt, crop top that showed off her tanned skin, her hair perfect, large gold earrings dangling from her ears. She had on designer high heels and as she walked by, Cori caught a whiff of what she was sure was expensive perfume. She walked right up to the stage and looked at Colin, and he froze for a second, then reached down for her hand and pulled her up. She wound her arms around his neck, leaning in to say something to him and then laid a kiss on him that was pure fire.

Cori suddenly felt out of place and was grateful she had a clear shot at the door. She left quietly, no one any the wiser. She walked the few blocks home, locked the door and went in to prep for bed. She looked at herself in the mirror. She’d come straight from work so her cardigan and skirt weren’t cool at all. She looked frumpy compared to the glamour that Colin was kissing on stage. Her phone rang.

“Hey baby,” she said to Seth.

“Hey, you’re home.”

“Yeah, I left soon as the band finished.”

“I figured they’d have a big party after.”

She thought about the great time Colin was having with the gorgeous girl. “Nope, no party, just came home.”

“Aw, well I’m glad you’re home safe. We’re still on for Friday, right?”

“Yes! I’m so excited, I can’t believe you got us a table at Basile. You’re the best.”

“I fly in about 7 and I’ll head straight from the airport, should be there by 8 no problem.”

“Great, I can’t wait.”

They said their goodbyes and Cori pulled on a sleep shirt and crawled into bed. The last thing she thought about was her sexy rocker neighbor and how no matter how much she wanted him, she could never have him, not even a little of him.

Colin kept an eye on Cori as soon as the band finished. He wanted to sweep her up and spend the rest of the evening with her. When Claire suddenly appeared in front of the stage, he couldn’t believe it. She’d appeared just as instantly as she’d disappeared from his life. She was the one he thought might be for good, and he’d allowed himself to fall hard for her. Then, just like that, she was gone. He’d awoke one morning to find a note next to the bed. No explanation, just “Thanks,” and she was gone. Now, here she was again, and her timing was horrible. He looked up just in time to see Cori slip out the front door.

He stayed for the party, Claire catching him up on her travels and telling him she’d missed him and just had to see him. She saw on the internet that they were playing at Rap’s tonight and even though it was a private party, she talked her way in (she was used to always getting her way). He drank too much and took her back to his apartment. He didn’t know that across the hall, 6C couldn’t sleep and was up when she heard voices. She’d peered through the peephole at them, Colin’s hands all over Claire as he fumbled with the door, where they’d fallen into 6A and closed the door behind them. Knowing he was home safe, Cori crawled back in bed and finally fell asleep.

The next morning, Ms. Robbins had an early appointment and told her not to come in until 11. She’d made up for the sleep she lost the night before and was stepping out the door when Colin appeared at his door.

“Hey,” she said.

He hesitated, then “Hey.”

“You guys were great last night.”

“Thanks. Hey – I need a favor, a big one. Can I come over?”

She looked at her watch. “Sure, I’m going in late today, I have plenty of time.”

He walked into her apartment clad in only his boxers and laid down on the couch, arm behind his head.

“What are you doing?” she said with a laugh.

“Waiting.”

“On what?”

“For Claire to leave.”

Cori looked perplexed. “Wait – why don’t you just ask her to leave?”

“She’s not awake yet.” He said all of this as if it was perfectly normal.

“So wake her up.”

“Well, we were up pretty late, I wanted to let her sleep. But I don’t want to be there, I just want her to go.”

She thought about this for a minute. “Why?”

He sat up on the couch and pulled a throw pillow over his crotch, resting his arms on it. “Remember when I told you there was one girl I thought was the one?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s her.”

Cori raised her eyebrows. “I understand. She’s stunning.”

“Yeah, and she knows it,” he grumbled. “She’s the worst. The whole time we were together last night, all I could think was how she’d unceremoniously dumped me, never called or texted, then just showed up last night. Like everything was fine.”

She sat down on the chair. “A normal person would’ve said, ‘hey Claire, I was really disappointed in how it ended and I don’t want to be with you anymore.’”

He thought about that for a minute. “I mean, maybe. That never entered my mind. She looked really good last night and we had a few beers, probably too many. But that’s it, I’m done.”

Cori shook her head, processing all he’d said. “So let me get this straight. You really, really liked her, she broke your heart and dumped you on your ass, you don’t hear from her for a long time, she shows up out of nowhere and now you want her to disappear without saying a word to her.”

“Yep,” he said, popping the ‘p’.

“But she was ok to fuck last night.”

Colin flinched at the words. He’d never heard Cori use any language like that. “Jeez Cori, where did that come from?”

“It came from someone that got dumped by an asshole who also wanted to come back – again – but I had enough dignity to tell him to go fuck himself instead of setting myself up again.” She could feel the color rise in her face.

“Look,” said Colin, “I think these are two different situations. I never thought about marrying her or anything, I just really liked her.”

“So that’s what ‘the one’ means to you? Someone worth fucking more than once?” Cori could feel her temper spiraling out of control, but she wasn’t completely sure why and she was flying without a net.

He looked down at the floor, then back at her. “I’m sorry if you’re offended –“

“I guess I’m offended that she treats you like shit, shows up out of nowhere, jumps on stage with you and you bring her home and can’t get enough of her. I saw you when you were trying to get in the door while you were attached to each other. So she’s worth another shag even though she treats you like shit and I’m not worth fucking at all. I can’t believe I’ve actually been comparing myself to these girls you sleep with. How stupid am I?”

He was speechless. What did she just say?

“Cori, hold on a minute –“

“No,” she said, standing up. “You need to go. Go across the hall and grow the fuck up. If you don’t want her there, tell her. I’m not letting you hide over here. I’m just another girl for you to use. I guess I should be happy, at least I get to see you once in a while. As soon as we sleep together, you’d disappear. I’m lucky that I have a mature boyfriend who respects women and doesn’t just see them as a good time. You’re no better than my ex.”

He swallowed slowly, not sure what to say. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She did have feelings for him. He didn’t think that was possible. How could she, she was way too good for him. On the down side, she was comparing him to the ex that cheated on her with her best friend. Not great.

“I mean it. Go. Get out of here. Just go.”

He stood up from the couch and hesitated in front of her.

“Go,” she said with venom in her voice. He did as she said.

Cori was so hot, she started fanning herself. Her fists were balled up and she was grinding her teeth. She looked at her watch and saw that she’d better head out or she’d be late. She made sure through the peephole that Colin wasn’t around and hurried out and down the stairs.

[slipping-through-my-fingertips]

Klainetober day 27

Prompt 27: Candy Corn

Summary: Quinn hosts a party, Kurt pines for his best friend, and Lauren is right afterall

Notes: If I wrote glee, this would probably be somewhere in season 2, I guess.

AO3

Kurt was thankful he wasn’t hosting this party. When Quinn volunteered her empty house for a Halloween Bash, he was relieved. Not that Burt and Carole wouldn’t have let the New Directions spend a night watching scary movies in the basement (they absolutely would have) but because Kurt and Finn won’t be on clean-up duty for once. He was also excited for Puck’s promise of alcohol. Though Kurt had bad experiences in the past with drinking he was determined to give it a second chance and limit his intake this time. He would pace himself and hope to God he wouldn’t embarrass himself...again.

Some of the glee club was doing shots (Brittany, Santana, Puck, and Artie) but most were content with the apple cider and caramel vodka mixture Quinn and Mercedes had made. In fact, they enjoyed it so much, the two girls were in the kitchen stirring up a second batch. Having volunteered to be a designated driver, Finn was content with his handful of candy corn.

Unsurprisingly, Rachel had brought her karaoke machine and attempted to convince Finn to sing a spooky duet with her. Except, she was slurring her words and kept saying “spoopy.”

Mike and Tina were half-dancing and half-making out in the center of the living room. Sam was in deep conversation with Blaine and a few other Warblers about the latest Star Wars film.

Lauren came over to where Kurt was standing by the food table.

“Why so glum?” she asked, nudging his shoulder.

“I’m not glum.”

“Are you just a sad drunk cause I don’t need any crybabies tonight?”

Kurt remembered Finn telling him Lauren was an angry drunk. She had torn Puckerman a new one at their last drunk get together.

“No crybabies here,” he swore, “just wishful daydreams.”

His eyes wandered back to Sam and Blaine. They were sitting awfully close together. If Kurt didn’t already attempt to hit on Sam, he’d assume Blaine was interested in the blond. Unfortunately, for both himself and Blaine, Sam was very straight (or so he claimed, Kurt still thought no straight man would bleach his hair) and dating Quinn.

“Lingering feelings?” Lauren questioned, following Kurt’s gaze.

“For Sam?” Kurt clarified. “No, I’m definitely over that crush. It was headed nowhere just like all my other ones.”

“Eh, boys suck anyway. Who needs ‘em?”

Kurt grabbed a soft pretzel and bit off a piece.

Lauren kept talking, “You really have no type then.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused.” Lauren took a sip of her cider from an orange solo cup. “From Gigantor to Southern Surfer to Curly Q. You’ve got me stumped, do they have anything in common?”

“Being nice to me, I suppose,” Kurt told her. “Finn eventually helped with the bullying, Sam was willing to sing a duet with me until Finn warned me not to, and Blaine is like my best friend.”

“You need higher standards, Hummel.” Lauren shook her head. “You can’t just fall in love with nice guys. You need someone who actually cares about you. Who loves you.”

Even tipsy, Lauren gave good advice.

“That’s the thing, I think maybe…” Kurt trailed off.

The front door burst open and in came the remaining Cheerios and football players. Behind them, half of the McKinley population.

“I don’t care what anyone says, there’s gotta be more than one gay at McKinley. You and I, Hummel, are about to find him.”

For the next hour or so, Lauren dragged Kurt around the house and made obscene comments about the party-goers. Kurt’s pretty unwilling to talk to any boy Lauren deems “team gay.” Not because he doesn’t trust her input, he does, it’s just Kurt doesn’t want just any boy, he wants Blaine. They ultimately end up in the living room again and Kurt is back to trying not to be caught watching his crush.

Only Sam is still on the couch talking to Blaine.

“If I get blondie to leave, will you swear to jump in there and talk to him?”

“He’s my best friend. I don’t have trouble talking to him,” Kurt told her.

“Liar. If you didn’t have issues talking, you’d be dating.”

Without another word, Lauren gets Sam away from Blaine. Kurt doesn’t want to know what she said to make him jump up like that but he’s glad for the opportunity. Even though he didn’t really promise Lauren anything he jumps into Sam’s vacated spot on the couch.

“Hi Kurt, enjoying yourself? I feel like I haven’t seen you all night.”

“I was with Lauren,” he explained, “she was attempting to find another gay boy who goes to McKinley to prove me wrong.”

Before they get past how-do-you-dos, Sam is standing on top of a table shouting “Cops!”

At first, Kurt is confused by this but then it all clicks and he understands.

“We gotta go,” Kurt said, grabbing Blaine’s hand.

In no state to drive and thankful Finn had parked a couple of blocks away, Kurt dragged Blaine out the back door and ran. When it came to underaged high school parties, shouting ‘cops’ was like someone shouting fire. That is to say: chaos.

Once the house was no longer in sight, the boys walked to a nearby park to catch their breath.

“Who knew McKinley’s parties were so exciting?” Blaine said.

“I certainly wouldn’t,” Kurt replied. “I thought Quinn was limiting it to glee people.”

“Sam told me she’s already prepping for prom queen. Something about throwing good parties and earning favor with the popular kids.”

Kurt nodded. That sounded like Quinn. Unforgettable parties were a great way to be remembered.

Blaine took a seat on one of the swings. “What were you saying back at the house about finding another gay boy?”

“Oh.” Kurt hoped the cold would explain his red cheeks and sat on the swing next to Blaine. “I told Lauren there’s no other out gay kids at McKinley, it’s just me.”

“And?”

“Pretty sure, I’m still right. We were unsuccessful.”

“Not for long,” Blaine said.

Kurt whipped his head around. “What do you mean?”

“I’m transferring so I guess the out gay population just doubled.”

“Why?” Kurt blurted out. “I mean, you are?”

“Yeah, um, my mom’s had enough of my dad’s BS so we’re moving to Lima. I want to live with her so that means leaving Dalton.”

“Well, I’m sad that you have to leave the Warblers but I’m also glad you’ll be with me. At McKinley that is.”

Blaine ducked his head and chuckled.

“You being at McKinley is definitely a bonus.”

Kurt shyly smiled back at his friend.

“So, I don’t want to make things weird but I feel there’s an opportunity here. I was talking to Wes and Sam earlier and they agreed there’s really nothing stopping me from asking now.”

“Curiosity peaked,” Kurt replied.

“Just promise you’ll say no if you don’t want to. We can completely forget I even asked at all if that’s what you want.”

“Okay…”

Blaine rubbed his hands on his jeans.

“Can I kiss you?”

Kurt’s eyes widened a bit before he started looking around in confusion trying to process this new development. Only in a few of his daydreams did Blaine return his feelings. Was this actually happening? Or was some sort of witchcraft at play?

He must’ve nodded his head because Blaine stood up from the swing.

“You’re sure?” he asked, leaning in.

“Yeah.”

Kurt met him halfway. He wants to say it was a perfect first kiss but it wasn’t. No fireworks, nothing like that, and Kurt had no idea what to do with his hands. Would Blaine feel weird if he ran his fingers through his curls? Should Kurt hold his waist?

It was also brief. A few seconds of lips touching. Chaste and sweet but not mind blowing.

“I really like you, Kurt,” Blaine told him. “Are you busy tomorrow?”

“I’m not busy.”

“Have dinner with me?”

“I’d like that.”

Blaine smiled and sat back down on his swing.

“And Blaine,” Kurt said. “I really like you too.”

At school on Monday, Blaine’s first day and Kurt’s first day with a boyfriend, Lauren met Kurt at his locker.

“Heard there’s a new kid.”

“Yeah, there is,” he confirmed.

“Guess I was right after all,” she replied.

Kurt tilted his head, confused.

“There is more than one out gay kid in McKinley. You can thank me for telling Sam the cops were coming later.”

With that, she walked away leaving Kurt staring after her with his jaw open.

“Hey you,” Blaine said, leaning against the lockets. “What’s going on?”

“Lauren Zizes is not a force to be reckoned with, Blaine,” Kurt told him, shutting his locker. “Don’t test her.”

“Noted. Walk me to class?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

If their hands brushed together a little too long as they walked in the hallway, no one said a thing.

[sweetpeagarbage]

Grief, Gin, & a Bad Boy (Part 1)

Sweet Pea x Reader

Warnings: Death, Depression, Slight Alchololism, Drug Use, Eventual Smut

Reader is Midge’s best friend. After she’s murdered, everyone else seems to have moved on. You still miss her and have trouble coping with it. You meet a tall gang member at party and he seems like a great distraction.

Kevin dragged you to this party and you couldn’t be more pissed about it. Your only saving grace is the cup of jungle juice in your hand. You’d already chugged three and you were feeling it. This one was just to replenish once your buzz wore off. Kevin was off with Betty somewhere and you’d slunk off to hide in the stairwell behind a couple making out.

You can’t help but think of Midge. She used to drag you to these things too with Moose. That seemed like a world away now. Where you were reserved and almost always caught with a resting bitch face, Midge was a smiley ball of sunshine. When she’d first dragged you into the playground with her in second grade you’d been determined not to like her.

Sometimes, when you missed her so much it hurt, you wish she’d never smiled at you that day.

You didn’t realize you were crying until a tear landed on your hand and then into your cup.

“Shit,” you mumbled under your breath and wiped at the tears quickly. You got up and carefully made you way past the couple and to the bathroom where you had to kick out another couple just about to go at it.

You slammed the door behind you and stared at yourself in the mirror. Your red eyes could be explained by the jay you’d smoked off of someone outside but the tear streaks you hadn’t wiped at yet we’re clear. Your shift your expression in the mirror from sadness back to blank and then put on your mask for the rest of the world.

“She’s not half as mean as she looks,” Midge would tell everyone. You can almost hear it in her voice.

With that, you leave the bathroom and run right into a hard body.

“Jesus watch where you’re-“ you begin and then look up to who you’d run into.

Fangs stares back at you, shock written on his face. You’re sure you look that way too until you wipe it off your expression. You turn to leave but he grabs you by the arm softly. You hadn’t seen him since the riots. It had all gone so fast. Midget had just died and word got out she was cheating on Moose with a Serpent. Everyone had gone on a witch hunt and of course came to you demanding a name.

You’d played dumb. Lied about Midge not telling you anything but you knew it was Fangs. You also knew he was in deep with her and wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head. Telling Reggie and his goons would just mean they’d hurt him.

It didn’t make a difference because Fangs got shot anyways. You hadn’t spoken to him since the moments before he’d gotten shot.

You yank your arm free harder than you meant to,”I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you,” he said sincerely,” Just had my last check up. I’m all healed up.”

“Good,” you say, you mean it but talking to him makes you hurt remembering Midge.

“Look, after everything happened I never got a chance to properly thank you for not ratting me out.”

You exhale a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding,” Yeah, well. It’s what she would’ve wanted.”

“You could’ve just given me up but you didn’t. I won’t forget that.”

You scoff, “What difference does it make? Midge is still dead and you got shot. My silence did nothing.”

You stare at the wal behind him, flashes of blood and knives, and screaming going through your head.

“Are you okay?”

You snap your eyes back to Fangs, “Fine.”

“Are you here with anyone? I came with some of my friends if you wanna-“

“There you are!”

You turn to see Kevin coming towards you and taking you by the arm,” I’ve been looking all over. I’m about to do shots.”

Kevin looks between you and Fangs,” Sorry am I interrupting?”

“Nope,” you say quickly and shot Kevin the fakest smile,” Lead me to the shots.”

Kevin pulls you away talking your ear off and you don’t look back. People say hi to you throughout the house and you greet them back. You see several bulldogs crowded around a table with tequila shots and lime.

“Shit looks like the jocks got to them first.”

“You think I’m gonna let Bulldogs stop me,” you say and untangle from him, pushing between two football players and finding yourself across from Reggie Mantle.

He smirks when he sees you and you’re sure you scowl as your eyes narrow.

“Well, well, well Bulldogs it looks like we’ve got a new challenger. You up for it sweetheart?”

You’re suddenly very aware that they’ve created a spectacle of all this. There’s a bunch of Riverdale student cheering it on and you’ve caught yourself in the middle of it.

“What’s the rules Mantle?” You asks, refusing to be unfazed.

“That’s cute. No rules. Shots until you can’t anymore. You vs me. What do you say?”

You don’t hate Reggie. At least you didn’t used to. He was more an asshole in the periphery of your vision. Of course being friends with your best friend boyfriend meant Midge had dragged you on double dates hoping you’d click but Reggie was simple and you were not down to be his arm candy.

Then after Midge had been killed in the middle of your deepest grief he’d cornered you with a bunch of his Bulldogs and demanded you give him the name of the Serpent Midge was cheating with. You’d been crying and screaming and traumatized and his bullshit had sent you over an edge.

You hadn’t really come back since.

“You’re on,” you say and there’s something heavy in the air. Someone starts to count down and once your hear zero you slam back the first shot and then the second and then the third and the fourth and the fifth and Reggie is coughing and sputtering at that point but there’s eight shots laid out and you finish all of them. Everyone cheers around you and you don’t care as they pay you on the back. You’re staring right at Reggie and hoping he sees how much you hate him.

Kevin is the one to drag you away from it, yelling over the music about how much you just drank and asking if you’re okay.

“Fine!” you yell and then Kevin pauses and looks to someone and you follow his eyes to Moose. They both smile.

You knew they were fucking and you had no right to be mad but you were always angry nowadays and Kevin just so happened to be here.

“You two are really fucking obvious,” you say and Kevin snaps his head to you with wide eyes, “You think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Look I didn’t mean for it to happen especially after-“

You yank yourself free of him, “Don’t say her name.”

You’re not sure where you’re going but then you find yourself back in the kitchen with the Bulldogs and getting more jungle juice.

You feel him beside you before you see him. It pisses you off you’ve been around him enough times to know his cologne.

“It was kind of hot that you beat me.”

“Fuck off, Reggie,” you say without looking at him.

“Look I get that you hate me. I do. But can’t we move past it all. We had a lot of fun.”

You didn’t think you could get any angrier but you did.

“I think you think you get just how much I hate you but you don’t. And let me make it clear, I didn’t have fun when we fucked. I was drunk and you were the closest thing with a dick.”

He looks upset for just a moment before he smirks, “Well it looks like I’m the closest thing again. Wanna go for another round?”

You leaned close to him, making him think his charms had worked and then you stopped, eyes fierce,” Fucking me doesn’t count as an I’m sorry I started a panic that made Midge’s mother shoot someone and forget that the reason everything started in the first place was because your best friend died. You might not have killed Midge but you made damn sure finding her murdered became about everything else but her. Everyone forgot Midge and I blame you, you fucking idiot.”

“Everything okay here?”

You don’t look away from Reggie but you recognize Fangs’ voice. Reggie looks from you to him and you know somethings about to start.

“Fangs, how you doing buddy?”

“Fine,” he said curtly as you still stared down at Reggie, daring him to do something so you had a reason to make a scene, “Y/N are you good?”

“Why wouldn’t she be good Fogarty?”

“Because she looks like she wants to kill you.”

You snap out of it then and mumble out that you’re fine before downing more jungle juice.

“You know just because you feel bad doesn’t mean you gotta follow her around?” Reggie said and then tried to protectively put his arm around you. You shove him off much harder than you intend and send him onto the floor

“Don’t fucking touch me,” you slur out as the kitchen goes quiet, watching the scene unfold.

“Why are you so mad at me?” Reggie screamed, pulling himself up from the floor and making you jump back at his anger, “I’m not the one who was fucking Midge!”

It’s a different type of silent now at the mention of her name. Everyone knew The Black Hood went after your best friend because she was cheating on Moose with Fangs, an act deemed immoral by the serial killer. You never judged her for it, pushed her to do right by Moose because he was a good guy, but never judged her.

Reggie definitely was.

“If you want someone to be mad at, be mad at the guy that stuck his-“

Reggie doesn’t have a chance to finish because your fist is in his nose. You’re cursing at him and swinging and you can feel yourself being pulled back from him but whoever it is isn’t strong enough. You lurch out of their grip and tackle Reggie, hitting him again and again.

“Don’t you fucking put it on her,” you’re screaming, “Don’t you dare blame her!”

Before you can register it you’re being picked up around your waist and hauled off, still kicking and screaming.

“Put me down,” you yell, trying to pry the arms that carry you outside into the cool night air.

Finally, you’re set down on the porch and you whip around to see a frantic Fangs and Sweet Pea.

“Jesus you’re stronger than you look,” Sweet Pea mumbles, catching his breath.

“Look,” Fangs began gently, blocking your path back inside, “As much as I’d love to see Reggie get a black eye this isn’t you. You’re drunk and you’re angry and-“

“How about you don’t tell me what I am and move out of my way?” you growl at him, arms crossed.

“Midge wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“Midge is dead,” you replied, voice cold, “And I don’t need you to-“

You stop, eyebrows knitting together.

“What’s wrong?” Fangs asked.

You turn and throw your face over the porch as you violently throw up the contents of your stomach.

“I’m gonna go get her some water. Just don’t leave her side,” you hear Fangs say.

You hate being this girl. You didn’t used to drink this much and you certainly weren’t this angry when you did. It just made things easier.

You finally stop, catching your breath and groaning off the side of the balcony.

“Ew,” you mumble to yourself.

“You good?”

You’d forgotten Sweet Pea was still there to watch you. You had no right to be angry with him...or Fangs. So you resigned yourself to the exhaustion fighting its way into your body.

“Fine,” you throw over your shoulder, straightening up and running your hands back through your hair.

“You don’t look fine.”

You glare at him over your shoulder, faltering back a bit, still drunk, “Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m really fucking tired of people telling me that.”

Sweet Pea chuckles to himself, “You’re fun when you’re pissed.”

You go quiet, making him feel bad. Slowly, he came to stand next to you.

“For real, how’ve you been doing?”

You look to him. You hadn’t spoken to him since Fangs got shot. When Fangs and Midge had first hooked up, you’d found yourself awkwardly with him as both of your best friends made out across the room at the White Wyrm. He’d cracked a joke and made you laugh. You’d thought he was cute back then.

“I just punched Reggie Mantle in the face and threw up. How do you think I’m doing?”

“Well only one of those things sounds like it wasn’t fun,” he teased and you chuckled under your breath, “Oh look she still smiles.”

You half heartedly glare at him and he smiles down at you, all teeth and big, brown eyes and you can’t have the heart to be mad anymore. Vaguely you start to remember the time you’d danced with each other at a party. It seemed like a world away.

“Thank you,” you say hesitantly.

He shrugged, “You didn’t rat Fangs out and you really didn’t have to be there when he got shot...but you were. Makes you alright in my book.”

You scoffed, “Just alright?”

“Well you do go around punching people so I gotta wait before I give you the full okay.”

“Afraid I’ll turn on you,” you teased, the alcohol on your blood and on your breath making you confident as you stepped closer to him and his eyes darken enough for you to hold your breath.

“Promises, promises,” he drawls, and you’re fresh out of air in your lungs.

The door opens and you don’t realize just how close you’ve gotten to Sweet Pea. You take a step back as Fangs comes out with a bottle of water. He raises a brow at Sweet Pea who pretends like nothing had happened.

“I got you some water,” Fangs said and handed it to you. You quickly began to drink it down, grateful. When you’re done you look to him.

“I’m sorry,” you say sincerely, “You didn’t deserve me yelling at you.”

He looks down at his feet, “Not really sure what I deserve right now.”

You know what he means and suddenly you can see the guilt and grief that hangs over you is right above his head as well, darkening you both. All the time you’d been avoiding Fangs and he might be the only one who really, truly understood just how you felt about losing Midge. Sure, Moose was her boyfriend but you and Fangs shared the same guilt in the thing the Black Hood has judged her for. She cheated on Moose with Fangs and you watched her do it, you lied for her, you were by her side when you went to meet him. You weren’t the ones that killed her but it felt like it sometimes.

“It wasn’t your fault.” It tumbled out before you lose the nerve and then you’re reaching out to squeeze his hand. He takes it, giving you a squeeze back and a small smile.

Something bubbles in your chest and you let go more forcefully than you intended.

“Nights still young,” Sweet Pea said, breaking the tension, “y’all still down to party?”

“Fuck it,” you mumble and you’re the first one back into the house

You find yourself at the beer pong table. You slink the last shot right into the final cup in your game. Sweet Pea and you are on the winning team and just beat Cheryl and Toni. Sweet Pea hollers and pick you up, spinning you around. He’s caught up to you in how drunk you are.

He puts you down, quickly and yells over the cheers, “Don’t throw up!”

“Fuck you,” you yell and shove him at his chest playfully. He grabs your hand and holds it there, making intense eye contact with you.

“Got room for another game.”

Your moments broken up by a particularly pissed looking Reggie with a bruised nose. You snort a laugh, too drunk to be angry anymore.

“Not enough that a punched you in the face you want me to wreck you at beer pong too, Mantle?” you call out, laughing and taunting him as you down what’s in your cup.

“I could wreck you sweetheart,” Reggie says, lewdly scanning your body.

“Mantle you wanna fuck off,” Sweet Pea said calmly, arms crossed.

Reggie looks from Sweet Pea to you, his smile unnerving, “Careful, bro. She’s pretty but she might punch you in the face next.”

You recover quickly and drawl, “Oh my god you think I’m pretty.”

Moose comes to his side, pulling him away and looking at you with an apologetic look. It was the only way he ever looked at you now.

“C’mon bro that’s enough,” Moose said, tugging Reggie away.

Reggie pointed to Sweet Pea with a smirk, “She’s a real handful when she’s mad but she’s a great time.”

Luckily no ones paying attention to the drunk Bulldog this time. You know Sweet Pea hears it though because he looks from Reggie to you with a raised brow. Your jaw clenched and you start to walk away but Sweet Pea stops you. You hate that he made you feel ashamed of yourself. You hate Reggie for making you remember this drunk, angry girl is not who you are.

“Wanna get out of here?”

There’s tears pricking at the corners of your eyes and you’re suddenly very aware of how loud it is in here, back leaning against a wall.

You look up at him and wipe it all away to smirk and bat your lashes, “I want you to take me somewhere to fuck me.”

His brows shoot off his head, “Don’t fuck me to get back at Reggie.”

“I’m fucking you because you look like you want it about as much as I do,” you’re pushing it. You know that but Sweet Pea smiles and leans down until his lips are at your ear.

“If you did wanna piss Reggie off look at him right now,” he whispers in your ear, hands coming up to grab at your waist. You find Reggie over Sweet Pea’s shoulder, glaring at the two of you. You smirk at him just as Sweet Pea pulls back to look at your face, forcing your attention to him.

“Was he looking?” he asked though his eyes are on your lips, the last thing in his mind Reggie Mantle.

“Yeah,” you manage as the hulking boy in front of you puts a hand at your jaw, tilting your face up.

“Good, let’s give him a show.”

He kisses you deep, thumb brushing at your cheek and pulling you so close you gasp. In the space of your parted lips, his tongue meets yours. All thoughts other than the Serpent holding you leave your head. He’s a good kisser, a great kisser and he’s everywhere. Your back presses into the wall and you find yourself fisting your hands in his shirt, trying to pull him closer but there’s no more space for you two to close between you.

He brings a leg forward, making you part yours for him. There’s a whimper in your ears and you realize it’s you. He chuckles, dangerous and low against your mouth.

“You okay baby girl?”

You nod, eyes still closed.

“Look at me.”

You pull your gaze to his and if you couldn’t hear your heartbeat before you can now looking into his eyes, pupils blown wide and gaze heavy lidded on you. He puts his fingers under your chin, tilting your head up to look at him.

“When I fuck you, it’s going to be because you want me so bad you can’t take it. Not because we’re drunk and you want to piss off Reggie.”

He kisses you one last time, slow and sweet instead of with the sloppy heat of before. He finds your hand entangling with his.

When he pulls away your gaze at him is soft.

“C’mon let’s get some water,” he suggest over the music and leads you away hand in hand. You don’t even look back at Reggie as he pulls you through the crowd.

[grell-writes-stuff]

A Self Indulgent First Chapter

Enjoy...something

Words: 2,549

Genre: Young Adult / Paranormal

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

Slam!

Gasp!

And then the apathetic yell of “Walk it off, Willow!” from Coach Martin. No stopping the game or running over to make sure I’m not deprived of air or dying or something. Just “Walk it off, Willow!”

I suffer for a second with the wind knocked out of my body. My inhaler finds its way from my pocket to my hand, and while I hold the one breath I force myself into and wait for my crap lungs to jump-start again, I contemplate the most-likely-illegal play that landed me flat on my back in the middle of the field. Quarterback Tom Styles’ outstretched elbow connecting with my neck at full speed in his chase for the checkered ball and high school sports glory, clearly confusing his claim-to-fame varsity moves with a pickup game of soccer since I doubt he has the brain cells to remember the rules to two sports at once. And probably a little bit on purpose. Because he’s a dick.

My chest wheezes a little, but at least it’s something, and the weak inhales finally start to catch as a sun-freckled face appears above me and blocks out the light. Ivy offers me her hand.

“Did th-that look a-as bad as it f-felt?” I sputter.

Ivy tilts her head from side-to-side like it’s the scale measuring how uncool I am. “Worse. Very pathetic. You will die alone.” She yanks me to my feet and acts like a support in spite of the height difference.

“P-Please stop making m-me take gym with y-you.”

“Nah. It’s too funny.” She ignores my scowl. “Come on. Let’s get you some water and wait for those shitty lungs to work again.”

She escorts me – hobbling like some eighty-year-old man with spine problems and not just what will soon be a terrible, ugly bruise – toward the bleachers, empty except for the water bottles of our classmates. I’m happy enough to sit on the sidelines, not just while recovering from having all of the air robbed from my chest, but for the rest of gym class, and also forever. Ivy is equally as happy, but only because it prompts the girls’ teacher, Coach Caruthers, to scream in her booming voice:

“Hammond! Back on the field!”

Without missing a beat, Ivy responds, “In the event of moderate injury, students are allowed to have a friend or fellow student for mental, emotional, or physical support. It’s in the code of conduct.”

I don’t know if that’s actually something in our school’s rule book, but Ivy has read the whole thing cover-to-cover for the sole purpose of seeing how many provisions she can disregard without getting into trouble through malicious acts of over-compliance or sheer dumb luck. So, she’s either following the rules to the letter or lying about them. As I sit, I see that Caruthers does not look impressed when Ivy plops onto the bench next to me. The whole reason our gender-segregated phys. ed classes collaborate so often is because they’re full of athletes – and me, the outlier – so more often than not, it’s just an extra practice for the varsity players. Even though Ivy was born with the “good at physical stuff” gene, and talented enough to be a forward on our girls’ soccer team, she prefers to rely on the natural part of her ability and not the practice part to the vexation of literally everyone.

“Hammond!” Caruthers screams. “On the field, or off the team!”

Ivy squirts a stream of water into her mouth and quickly swallows before passing the bottle on to me. “Cool. Who’s replacing me?” she retorts.

I focus on downing some water and breathing evenly again and not on the vein beginning to pop out of Caruthers’ angry-red neck. She can’t say anything back because, well, Kinross High School isn’t huge. Pretty much everyone who can play sports is already playing sports, and as far as Ivy’s tendency to disrespect anyone of authority can go, she’s also crucial to securing victory over visiting teams. Caruthers just grits her teeth and returns to refereeing the game where Tom Styles has once again stolen the ball that got away from him, this time without incapacitating anybody since the one guy with asthma has left the field. (Asshole.) I watch as Abby Jefferson starts to gain on him, and Tom makes the choice to skillfully send the ball flying across the grass to the next open player, Drew Young, the only person in our gym class who does even less than I do.

That’s not for lack of talent either. I’ve seen Drew actually try on the rare occasion, and he could absolutely score a spot on a boys’ sports team. But most games, like today, he receives the pass and kicks the ball along to the next open player – it’s intercepted by one of the girls – and continues pacing the field leisurely. Coach Martin yells at him to get his head in the game, but Drew doesn’t bother. If the activity doesn’t involve selling the pens that he stole from the cheerleaders to the football team, the little weasel has no interest.

The game continues on.

Ivy reclines until her shoulders are touching the bench behind us, tilting her head back and staring at the sky. I have to wonder how comfortable it is.

“My dear Sid,” she theatrically addresses me. She likes to be dramatic sometimes. She thinks it’s funny. “I have a proposal for you.”

“I told you I’m not training a messenger pigeon with you. We only live three houses apart.”

“I’ll wear you down eventually, but no, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.” She looks over at me without breaking her questionable position. “I know what we’re doing tonight. I’ve concocted a perfect plan, you see, for this most All-Hallowed of Eves.”

“You can say ‘Halloween’ like a normal person. It’s okay.”

“Let me bring you back in time,” she continues, ignoring me, “to the Kinross of yore. Just decades after its founding, the Salem Witch Trials came about and our town was no exception to the noose–”

“Salem is two hours away, Ivy,” I interrupt with the fact.

“Shut up. The Salem Witch Trials swept across the state of Massachusetts, migrated into Kinross, and thus the most famous trial of Kinross history was set in motion when one Ann Kelly was accused of being a creature of the occult!”

“Can I get the abridged version of this plan please?” I ask her. “Like, the part that takes place in this century?”

Finally fed up with my interjections, Ivy sighs exaggeratedly and rolls her eyes at me. “Blah, blah, blah, she was hanged, she’s buried in the historical section of Riverview, and we’re going there tonight during the witching hour to see” – she switches to her best spooky voice with elongated, trembling vowels – “her haunted grave.”

“Hard pass.”

That makes her sit upright again with a slouch to her posture. She’s wearing a fabricated pout. “Sid,” she whines.

“Ivy, I’m not sneaking out with you at three in the morning on Halloween to go see a ‘haunted grave.’” She opens her mouth, but I follow up with, “Our parents would kill us. Besides, what’s-her-name probably just angered a bunch of Puritans and got executed because of religious prejudice. That doesn’t mean she was a witch.”

“Well, of course. I think angering Puritans was a mandatory activity back then. But come on, Sid! The legend says she’s a witch, and it’s the perfect Halloween thing! I think we are obligated – if not encouraged by the spirit of Halloween herself – to go see a ghost witch.”

“Does the spirit of Halloween have a gender?”

Ivy pushes past that and waits to catch my eye dead-on. “Bet you a hundred bucks we actually see Ann Kelly’s phantom.”

My lips part to say no just a split second before I register the number. “Wait – a hundred?”

Something cocky has taken up her face, and she recites with inflated confidence, “Ten A-Hams. A Franklin. A thousand Roosevelts.”

“You know what? Fine. I’ll take your money,” I tell her. “You’re on.”

Her grin is smug as we fist-bump on it and close the deal, but I decide that I don’t care so much with the promise of an easy hundred dollars coming my way. Ivy ingests another stream of water, and swallows while her eyes quickly scan the grass to catch up with the game again. Suddenly, a yell flies from her mouth:

“Box him out, Julia! Come on!”

Then she’s up off the bleachers and jogging back out onto the field. As unwilling as Ivy is to make an effort and practice, she’s also equally as competitive, even if this is just a gym class where victory doesn’t really matter. I, on the other hand, take my time on the bench. Struggling to breathe isn’t my idea of fun. I need to stop letting Ivy manipulate me into taking phys. ed. If she keeps it up, she might kill me.

 ***

I can nearly be qualified as a mess by the time Ivy and I reach our lockers after final period, and she’s humming like she’s got live wires for veins despite just spending an hour burning off energy. Meanwhile, I’m still recovering from my last bout of airlessness after I returned to the field and ran for maybe ten minutes. And I feel gross. The benefit of having P.E. last period is that I don’t have to shower here and can wait until I get home or to Ivy’s. The con is the window of time in between. I usually try to keep the gap as short as possible, and therefore, my time at my locker brief. I think Ivy and I took enough time getting changed after gym to avoid most people – at least the non-athletes.

“Hi, Sidney! Hi, Ivy!”

A mixture of feelings suddenly rockets through me and don’t add up in the end. While my chest is beginning to slowly overclock, and the hallway seems a few degrees warmer and rising steadily, I’m ready to play dead as Naomi Park opens the locker right next to mine on the opposite side of Ivy’s. Her shoulder is a fraction of an inch from touching my arm which is probably too close when I’m still drenched in gym sweat. Ivy greets her politely with ease while my brain is trying to catch up with the mundane situation and not think about how she smells like some kind of flowery perfume and I smell like crap.

“Hey, Naomi,” leaves my mouth and sounds too drawn-out and weirdly cheesy, so I just try to smile to make up for it. That feels awkward too, but she thankfully doesn’t seem to react to that, and her glossy pink lips tilt up without much effort into a perfect grin.

She puts some books on the shelf in her locker. “Any exciting Halloween plans?”

“Nope,” Ivy says immediately, likely because our actual idea involves a wager and might not be entirely legal – it’s a misdemeanor at the least. I just take the hint and don’t add anything to refute her answer.

“You? Any plans? For tonight – Halloween?” I wish that had come out differently. It could have at least sounded coherent.

“Nothing tonight,” Naomi responds. “But Heather’s having a ‘Belated Halloween Bash’ on Saturday while her parents are out of town so I’m ‘required’ to be there.”

“Oh, cool. That’s…cool.”

“I guess so. Heather’s parties get a little boring after a while though. I bet your plans for Saturday are much more fun.”

“Yep. Pints of ice cream, horror movies, and making bets on how long it takes Sid to hurl when the blood starts gushing,” Ivy interjects.

“Ivy.” I mutter the snap of her name so it doesn’t sound as harsh as I want it to. The temperature in the hallway rises astronomically.

Naomi giggles, which hurts. Well, it would if her laugh wasn’t so musical and twinkly. It’s like a damn harp quartet. “Sounds like a good time,” she comments. Her locker door shuts. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Yeah, totally – tomorrow. See ya’, Naomi!” She’s nearly out of earshot down the hall, and I wait until I know she definitely can’t hear anything before I say to Ivy without daring a look at her, with the heat of embarrassment and shame boiling me alive from the inside, “Please say nothing.”

I can hear the grin on her face when she speaks. “You realize she’s just another human being, right?”

“Are you kidding? She’s at the right hand of Heather Loch. She’s popular. I’m shocked she still knows my name.”

Ivy shuts her own locker with a characteristic slam. “Dude, you’re ridiculous. She likes you back. If you just talked to her, and told her that you like her, you would have a girlfriend.”

“Ivy, she thinks I’m a loser.”

“I think you’re a loser and I still like you sometimes.”

I roll my eyes and can’t say anything to that. I don’t care if Ivy thinks I’m lame. It’s not the same. We’ve been together for as long as I can remember, so at this point, she’s locked into this friendship, no matter how easy it would be for her to hang out with the people at Kinross High who are actually popular and liked.

I close my locker and we start walking to the main exit of the building and eventually across the school’s student parking lot. Some groups linger, but most people seem to be dispersing and heading home for the day. Ivy and I walk straight through the lot as always, avoiding the cars pulling out.

I want to avoid the Styles’ Ford Everest – which is so bright red that it’s an assault on the eyes – but we have to walk past it and the clump of popular kids loitering next to it: blonde, perfect, popular Heather Loch, Asshole Quarterback Tom and his not-as-terrible twin, Ed, and my locker neighbour and secret crush, Naomi. The girls are under the guys’ arms like they belong there, popular with popular. There’s usually not much interaction between our pair and their group because I’m pretty sure most of the popular kids either don’t know who I am or just hate me for no reason, but today Tom decides to rub in his full-contact plays on the soccer field.

“Nice moves out there, Pussy Willow!” he shouts clear across the lot. It makes me feel the bruise on my back, still fresh, but I’m past the point of being mad about it. Really, Tom’s just an annoying jerk, and that’s all he’ll ever be.

I try to tap into Ivy-like sarcasm and passiveness. “I get it. Because my last name is Willow, and you’re insulting me. That’s really funny. It’s original.”

He yells something back that includes one of Ivy’s favourite swear words, but we disregard it and turn out of the parking lot in the direction of our houses. Ivy states that we’re going to my place because, in her mind, it’s easier to sneak out of a single-parent household. I don’t try to refute it because arguing with Ivy when she has her mind made up is like talking to a brick wall.

[julienschuester]

KISSING IN YOUR CAR AGAIN (FT. JULIEN & IVY)

WHO: @ivystjamess & @julienschuester WHERE: ivy’s car / mckinley student lot WHEN: tuesday, post-football game WHAT: ivy and julien meet up after the game for their regularly scheduled ‘secret’ make-out session and things end up going a little too far.

IVY: IT HAD BECOME MORE OR LESS OF A HABIT FOR IVY AND JULIEN TO MEET AT HER CAR AFTER EACH FOOTBALL GAME. of course, they had a hand full of other 'meetings'. like the ones in her basement, in mr.banks' astronomy classroom briefly, and even in her own bedroom once or twice. but ever since jesse st.james gifted his youngest daughter the freedom that came with a borderline luxury car, well, ivy had been making quite the effort to christen it by making out with julien schuester in the passenger seat every tuesday night. this tuesday was no different than the others. it started with the game ending, but truly began with ivy straddling julien, pleated skirt fanned out around them as her arms rested on his shoulders and both her lips and body moved against his with a certain urgency that hadn't surfaced until their little chat about sadie's in mr.banks' classroom. it was business as usual until ivy breathlessly pulled away. for a moment, her mind went blank as to just why she'd parted her lips from his own in the first place. instead, she jumped directly to admiring the slight furrow in his brow that accompanied the post make out haze and the constant twinkle of kindness that danced across his warm eyes no matter the setting. an undeniable grin crept it's way across ivy's face as she whispered, "cmon." before expertly removing herself from julien's lap and maneuvering her way into the backseat. despite this being the first time crossing that figurative boundary with julien and the literal one of climbing into the backseat, it most certainly wasn't ivy's first time in this position. sure, she'd only slept with three guys, which by her count, wasn't really all that many. but more often than not she'd find herself in backseats or bedrooms making out with boys who she'd inevitably thrust off her and call it a night. it was different with julien though. she liked him. a lot. she liked being with him, she liked talking with him, she liked singing with him, and more relevantly, she liked making out with him. so as ivy waited in the backseat, slightly propped up against to door and ready for her lips to meet julien's once again, she smiled softly. eventually, he got out of the car, and came through the door. near instantly, ivy propped herself up just a little more, to press a brief and tender kiss to his lips only for moments later to tease, "took you like. . . long enough."

JULIEN: Julien now measured his weeks by his Tuesday night ‘hangouts’ with Ivy in her car. He hadn’t expected their little meetings to become routine after the first football game of the season, but he definitely wasn’t mad about it. After every home game, like clockwork, Julien would wait around in the stands for fifteen minutes before he booked it to the parking lot and found himself planted in the passenger’s seat of Ivy’s car with her in his lap, arms wrapped around his neck, kissing until their lips got swollen or one of them got an angry text from their parents. This Tuesday was no different than the others. Every interaction he had with her always felt charged, but on this particular evening, that feeling was dialed up to a ten. They hadn’t seen each other all weekend and on Monday, Julien had gotten his schedule mixed up so he’d missed his window of opportunity to drag Ivy into an empty classroom. This meant that while they made out to the sound of ‘can’t believe the way we flow’ by James Blake, they were making up for lost time. Julien’s hat was surely askew and his cheeks flushed when Ivy abruptly broke their kiss. “What?” he asked breathlessly, his eyes fluttering open in time to catch her staring at him with an open smile and seemingly no guard up. It sent a warmth through his chest as he tightened his arms around her and mirrored her adoring grin with one of his own. Before he could process what was happening, she was masterfully climbing over the center console and into the backseat, urging him to join her. “Uh…” Julien started, furrowing his brows as he glanced at the narrow space between the seats that she expected him to pull himself through, “one second.” There was no way he was going to gracefully get himself to her, so he quickly got out of the car and then immediately let himself in to the backseat. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was kind of nervous. If their meeting in Mr. Banks’ classroom was any indication of where this night was going, then they were about to go further than they ever had before. “Hi,” Julien said quietly once he scooted down the seat until one of her legs was behind him and the other was stretched across his lap. He angled his body towards her and met her lips gently, kissing her back until she pulled away only to tease him. “Yeah well,” he started with a chuckle, one arm snaking its way around her back while the other settled on her thigh, “we can’t all be flexible cheerios and stuff.” Julien then brought his lips to hers again and kissed her with the same urgency from when they were in the front seat. It didn’t take long for them to find their rhythm and soon enough, his instinct took over. He moved his lips against hers and when he inevitably pulled away to catch a breath, instead of pulling away completely, he started peppering kisses along her jaw and neck as his hand slowly trailed up her leg and past the pleats of her skirt. When Julien’s fingers touched the edge of her bloomers, he was jolted out of the moment by her hands pushing against his shoulders until he was completely off of her. “Wha—“ he started, very obviously taken aback by the sudden movement. An awkward silence filled the car as an unsavory feeling settled over them. Crap. Had he completely misread that situation? “Ivy,” he started, licking his lips as he felt his face get hot with embarrassment, “did…” did I do something? “are you okay?” A beat. “I’m sorry.” he said anxiously, heart rattling in his chest as he waited for her to say anything.

IVY: THE MOMENT IVY RELENTED WITH HER TEASING, she was happy to find julien's lips planted back on her own. it was like they hadn't spent that minute or two readjusting and they were right back where they started in the front seat. desperate kissing and motions paired with wandering hands, flushed cheeks, racing heartbeats, and all. ivy initially paid no mind to julien's hand slowly creeping up her leg and focused on the invisible trail his lips were leaving across both her neck and jaw. though as his hand travelled further and further along her skin, the delight in her breathlessness quickly shifted into a more panicked one. still, ivy tried to hold out. she liked julien, she liked making out with him, she'd been felt up before, she was probably just being dramatic. it wasn't until his fingertips reached the cloth that sat beneath her pleated skirt that her mind gave way to her hands and she shoved him off of her, frantically sitting up, and breathing heavily. it was like everything from the summer came flooding back with a single touch. being in the backseat of leo's car in the shawnee country club parking lot, driving to dayton with lemon, laying in bed despondent for days. she was panicking. both her thoughts and the world were blurry as she sat up and pressed her forehead into the head rest driver's seat. there she sat frozen, julien's words a mere echo as her pounding heart and ragged breaths flooded her ears. ivy wasn't sure how long she sat there motionless, both julien and james blake fading away while she waited for this shock to go with them. that same, nauseating, out of body feeling from the summer was haunting her as she closed her eyes and tried to get ahold of herself. there had to be something she could muster up and tell julien. god, he was probably so mad at her. guys always got mad when she backed out at the last minute. her and julien had yet to reach this point, so how could she know how he was going to react? from what ivy could figure, no discernable reaction was better than a blatantly angry one. letting oxygen into her lungs left her heart feeling crushed and crumpled like a discarded soda can, but she pulled it enough together to look over at julien with an apologetic gaze and oddly glassy eyes. "i'm. . ." sorry. the metaphorical cat had caught ivy's tongue, but one look at the other assured her that there was nothing to apologize for when it came to what had transpired. somehow, some way, the universe liked to play a funny trick where it brought julien to her side at her most vulnerable moments. this was okay. everything was okay. it was julien. still rattled, ivy sniffled a little and looked up at the ceiling of her car to combat potentially falling tears, "can you just like. . .i'm sorry, um," her voice crackled, sounding foreign in her own body. "can you just like. . . maybe hold me?" September 22, 2020

JULIEN: Ivy untangled herself from Julien with such a quickness that at first he wasn’t even sure what was happening. He tried his best not to make any sudden movements and watched closely as she pulled her legs away from him and sat with her forehead pressed against the head rest of the driver’s seat. There were a million thoughts swirling around his brain and almost all of them asked the same question: was Ivy okay? Despite this being his resounding thought, any and all comforting words melted on his tongue before he mustered up the courage to say them out loud. The playlist he’d put on earlier came to an end and a heavy silence filled the car. Julien had seen Ivy like this before. A few times. His eyes filled with concern and his heart broke at the sight of her. How could he have been so careless? So stupid? He was a teenage boy so of course he’d gotten excited at the possibility of taking their ‘thing’ to the next level, but this wasn’t right. If he was going to be with Ivy, he didn’t want the first time to be in the back of her car after a football game in a vacant parking lot. Before he could kick himself some more for this massive misstep, Ivy turned to look at him and almost instantly, his mind went quiet. He stared back at her with a soft expression and nodded slowly when she started to talk, wordlessly letting her know what whatever she was feeling was okay. “Can I what?” he asked gently, shaking his head once she apologized and opening his arms up for her the way he had so many times before. “You don’t have to apologize.” He scooted towards her until he was close enough to scoop her up the way a shovel does falling snow and whispered, “come here.” There was no urgency in his movement as he settled around her like a safety net and her head found a place to rest between his shoulder and chest. He wasn’t sure how long they sat there for—him hugging her tightly and occasionally pressing his lips to the top of her head while she slowly regulated her rugged breathing. But somewhere in the their silence, Julien discovered a simple truth about himself that he’d been contemplating for months. He was hopelessly and devotedly in love with Ivy St. James. He just was. There was no denying it. Once he felt her shoulders relax, he pulled away from her slightly until their eyes met. “Can I tell you something?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly as a nervous chuckle escaped him due to his newfound realization. “We could just do this,” he briefly gestured around her car with a shrug, “and I’d still feel like the luckiest guy at McKinley…or in Lima…honestly in all of Ohio probably.” That warm feeling he felt whenever they were together spread from his chest through the rest of his body as they gazed each other. “And I know…” he cleared his throat and gulped slightly, feeling his heart rate quicken as he carefully selected his next words, “we don’t ever really talk about all that stuff that happened over the summer…but we can. Or…you can. I’ll listen. If you want.” Julien caught himself rambling and squeezed his eyes shut, an embarrassed but bashful grin finding its way on to his face. “Sorry,” he said, cracking one eye open to look at her, “I’m talking too much.” With both of his eyes open now, he kept one arm around her and brought the other up to her cheek, strumming his thumb along her skin tenderly before he said, “I’m just happy to be here. Y’know…with you. That’s all I care about.”

IVY: IVY LIKED TO THINK SHE KNEW LOTS. she knew what colors best complimented her complexion and that flavored lip glosses were worth paying a little extra for.  she knew she was talented and she knew she was popular. but more than all that, ivy knew without fail that julien's warm embrace was a near instant remedy to whatever might be troubling her on any given day. there was typically a residual feeling of stupidity that followed these kind of miniature breakdowns that ivy got from time to time. but laying in julien's arms, her head to his chest, and his heart pounding in her ear, that feeling never came. more than anything she felt safe. relieved, even, that julien hadn't freaked out at her for freaking out. he was so good like that. as she laid there comfortably against him, her breathing finally steadying, she couldn't help but think how good julien was. beyond being good to her, he always lead with kindness and his best foot forward and all these other qualities ivy admired so deeply, but never quite verbally expressed. making a silent promise to herself that some day she'd find the right words to say, ivy sniffled and readjusted so she could look up at julien. usually when his brown met her blue, a smile would tug up on those perpetually pouty lips of hers and all would feel right in the world. this go around, that wasn't the case, but it seemed her timing had been immaculate seeing as moments after their gazes locked, julien posed a *'can i say something?' to which ivy silently nodded. at first, she didn't exactly see where he was going, but once she did it at the very least broke up that frightened look in her eyes. there were lots of things that made ivy feel good. praise, her cheerios uniform, applause, the warmth of stage lights, and summer time, but none left her feeling both the secure and dizzy kind of good that julien schuester did. though she was still rattled, that distant feeling was being snuffed out by julien's beams of sun reflecting off the moon face of her heart. "don't apologize." she said softly, leaning into the tender touch. she still didn't sound quite herself, but it was better than the despondent shell that julien had been subjected to over the summer. if this wasn't progress what was? "i like when you like. . . talk a lot." ivy admitted, still uncharacteristically meek. "you're like. . . the only person who can keep up with me." she murmured, turning her head slightly to press a kiss to julien's palm. she couldn't quite find it in her to say thanks in the moment, so she figured for now a quick kiss would suffice. despite knowing the night would eventually come to an end, ivy wanted to remain in the backseat of her car with julien as long as she could. after another long period of staring ivy settled back into his arms and rested on his chest before whispering an affirming, "i'm like happy you're here too."

AND SCENE.

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome (again) to the Order of the Phoenix, Amos!

You have been accepted for the role of non-biography character MAURICE CREEVEY with the faceclaim of Tom Sturridge! We really enjoyed reading through your application! The idea of a Muggleborn character who is actually not all that excited about going to Hogwarts is awesome! He’s resentful that he was taken away without a choice - resentful that he can’t go back and be the same person. We’re so thrilled to have him as an addition to the cast!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Amos

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE: GMT

ACTIVITY LEVEL: You already have a pretty good idea of my activity. There is also plenty of time when I’m around and could be writing but I am either caught up on Fab or don’t have quite the right muse for him, so hopefully this new charrie can fill those gaps!

ANYTHING ELSE: nope

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Maurice Creevey

AGE: 24

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Male, He/Him, Homosexual. Gender isn’t something he’s really ever thought about. He’s pretty content in that respect. He is quite unapologetically gay though.

BLOOD STATUS: Muggleborn

HOUSE ALUMNI: Ravenclaw

ANY CHANGES: This is where you can request a FC change or a change from something in the skeleton bio.

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY: 

To sum Maurice up very concisely, he’s angry. He hasn’t always been. He was a relatively happy go lucky child, full of endless energy and enthusiasm. Then he was plucked from his life and sent away to a school to learn magic. At first that was pretty cool, after all, every 11 year old wishes they had magical abilities, the difference being they get to grow up and forget those wishes and live normal lives. He has to live with his childish fantasies for the rest of his life. And apart from that, he appears to be in a world where muggleborns are being hunted and killed by an evil wizard and his crazy cult. To make things worse, they can’t escape back to their muggle lives because of all the damn secrecy laws. So yes, he’s angry, and a lot of his actions are fueled by that. Make no mistake though, Maurice is no Gryffindor, he doesn’t use his anger in brash reckless ways, he is more calculated. You may catch it crackling under the surface occasionally, but it would take a lot to make him properly explode. Even slurs like ‘mudblood’ would only make him roll his eyes and perhaps give a snarky retort.

Maurice is a Ravenclaw. He is a big believer that knowledge is power. He did fairly well at his subjects in Hogwarts considering he didn’t try all that hard. He did not choose this path and as a consequence, resented it. He would often get his brother who was a few years older, to send him muggle textbooks when he’d finished with them. He was fascinated by science and maths and history. Of course he had some curiosity for his lessons at Hogwarts, and the things he and his magic was capable of, but the element of choice was important for him. It felt like by attending Hogwarts, a whole area of understanding was suddenly off limits. As anyone knows, forbidden knowledge is the most desirable.

He likes to ask questions about as much as any other Ravenclaw, but he is also a big observer. He likes to take time to gather information before jumping into a lot of things, especially interactions with other people. He by no means stalks people, but a few minutes, to watch, take someone in, before starting a conversation is quite usual for him. It’s all about making informed choices.  As a consequence, unexpected interactions can throw him, making him more awkward than he’d like.

He can be arrogant, he has a conviction in his beliefs that can come across as condescension if viewed the wrong way. He can get frustrated when someone is not following his thinking quite as quickly as he’d like, which is why he’d make a terrible teacher. However, this works equally in the opposite direction. His frustration can be palpable when he doesn’t understand something, and these moments are when he is least in control. A lot of his acts of protest come from anger, sure, but also the frustration of not being able to fathom how things got so bad, why they can’t just make them better now, why people can’t see it for themselves. But usually he is quiet. Unless he is invited to speak, or is so damn angry the words won’t stop, he can keep his thoughts to himself until someone is listening and his words can have an impact.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY: 

Until the age of 11 Maurice grew up in a very normal, working class family in the midlands. His mother was a typical housewife, loving but somewhat distracted, staring out of windows whilst doing the washing up, leaving the dinner in slightly too long when listening to the radio. Maurice didn’t mind, he barely noticed, and she was excellent at bedtime stories, so what was there to complain about? His father was a miner, a tough, but humorous man. He worked hard, and he always came home dirty, but played football with them in the garden the weekends.

He has one older brother. Not the brightest bulb, but the kindest person Maurice knows. Maurice always thought him brave, in a quiet way. There is no one Maurice has ever looked up to quite like his big brother, even if they squabbled and scrapped as much as any other loving siblings.

Perhaps this happy set up, along with glowing school reports and a nice bunch of friends, was why he has always resented being ripped from that life and that path. 

When he was a child, he dreamed of being an astronaut, an archaeologist, a doctor, a lawyer, and what’s more, none of these were stretches for him, with his brain and desire for learning, he could have done it, he could have gotten out of the rows and rows of back to back terraced houses that he and his family were confined to. He could have taken them with him. But he was torn away and sent to Hogwarts, and his parents only vaguely understood, were proud, but in a distant way. His brother became a milkman, a job he enjoyed, but not one that paid well. He married young, his school sweetheart, and they are expecting their first child. They all seem happy enough, they have the things that matter, enough food to eat, a roof over their head, love, but Maurice can’t help but feel he could have saved them. The terror of living paycheck to paycheck, the mundanity of their terraced hells, or just never being able to treat yourself to that little bit extra. He remembered as a child, when his father would be on strike, the unspoken fear that filled up their home. He had wanted to save them from that.

When he would return home for the summer, he would act like nothing had changed, he wouldn’t speak of Hogwarts, or of his magic. He would pretend like he was no different from them, but something had changed and something had broken, and eventually he realised that something couldn’t be fixed. Getting his Hogwarts letter had been the beginning of the end for Maurice. He hated it when summer would end and he’d have to go back, but he also hated going home in the first place.

OCCUPATION: 

Maurice works as a sound engineer at the Wizarding Wireless Network. It was not something he expected of himself, more something he fell into. A job at the Ministry would have gone against all his principals. A deep hatred for ‘the man’ but also the wizarding world in general, he wasn’t about to go work in a place trying to keep it all ticking over, and bore himself to death in the process.

He considered more academic positions, but he’d had a hard enough time concentrating at Hogwarts. Trawling magical forests for new flora and fauna, or raiding tombs and breaking their curses had no appeal to him. Which largely left working class positions or the arts. It was not a tricky decision.

The newspaper was an option, but the fact that the Daily Prophet seemed to have a monopoly on journalism in wizarding Britain didn’t sit well with Maurice. Without another widely available newspaper to oppose their horribly biased reporting, what was the point? He would not be a puppet for their propaganda. For a while, he tried to write his own pieces, publish them independently, but that wasn’t entirely successful. The pieces were convoluted, preachy, and he had no audience, no one to either agree nor criticise him.

Eventually he wound up at the Wizarding Wireless Network. Again, it irked him that there was only one major company broadcasting, but at least they had a bit more variation, and whilst they did broadcast the news, the purpose leaned towards entertainment. It’s not a cause Maurice is particularly passionate for, but it’s not one he opposes.

As a sound engineer, he’s around for recordings and broadcasts, cleans up pre recorded audio, fixes equipment, just whatever needs doing that seems like it fit within his job title. Most of it he learned on the job, but it was fascinating enough to capture his attention, and similar enough to muggle radio not to infuriate him. It also introduced him to the world of pirate radio.

About 2 years after he started at WWN, his friend and mentor quit, and in his last few days, confided in Maurice that he was leaving to start his own show. Technically WWN was the only official broadcaster on wizarding radios, but if you knew how to get a frequency, you could broadcast whatever you liked. He and some friends were setting up a station out of someone’s garage, mostly to play the music the WWN spurned.

The idea lit a flame in Maurice. Of course, the fact that it was ever so slightly against the rules, and possibly the law, made it exciting. But the idea of broadcasting whatever he liked, even if there was no one listening, putting something out there, finite and unique.

So that’s what he does with his evenings at the weekends, he broadcasts late into the night and the early mornings. The Order gives him a focus, not just long rambling opinion pieces that sounds like the inner thoughts of a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He has found a purpose now. His show, it helps spread news, it helps spread information, it helps spread hope. Of course there is the tricky business of making sure the wrong ears don’t hear it, but he’s a smart guy, there’s a way around everything.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER: 

Maurice joined the Order with best friend, Daisy Hookum. He was at the same Squib’s Rights March, right in the middle of the rioting, and landed square in the Order’s gaze because of it.

Maurice has always been an activist, even before graduating Hogwarts, he would hold small demonstrations, conquering whatever stage fright he might have for the greater good. Standing up on tables at breakfast to make impassioned speeches, chaining himself to statues and refusing to go to class, he even came very close to slashing a painting once before the painting’s occupant managed to talk him out of it.

Maurice has taken a lot of inspiration from muggle strikes and demonstration techniques. He remembers picket lines from his childhood, and grew up with the punk movement. He even had a bright red mohawk once before Daisy told him it really didn’t suit him.

These energies are what he hoped to bring to the Order. He recognises that Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the main enemy, but in his eyes, the Ministry are accomplices, and he feels just as violently about them. The Death Eaters may be the ones directly killing people, but the Ministry are letting them do it, even helping them to a certain degree. The fact that so many squeaky clean Ministry employees come to the Order to ‘do their part’ indicates to him, that there are just as many who are going over to Voldemort for the same reason. He wishes more of their actions were against the Ministry directly, but he can also do that in his own time.

Day to day, Maurice is generally a pretty good foot soldier, he isn’t crazy about the actual violence part, but he’ll do it if he has to. He’d like a louder voice at the table, but he knows how these things work, and he knows too many cooks spoil the broth. The fact that they are organised is enough for him. There is a system, and if he ever feels he needs to take something to the top, then he knows how to do that.

He has also brought his pirate radio platform to the Order. It’s a good way to spread news to people such as those being helped by the dissendium task force, and a good way to organise large groups of people. And also quite simply, it can raise spirits. Assuming that people tune in to listen. Maurice doesn’t think it’s quite being used to its full potential, but it’s getting there. The Order function on secrecy, whereas Maurice wants to inform the masses. There is clearly a conflict of interest. 

(I see this radio show as being very similar to the Potterwatch of the second wizarding war, and if it isn’t quite at that structure yet, then building it up to that during the game.)

I think although he is happy to fight with the Order, and be on the front line of the fight against You-Know-Who, his main motives are doing something about the International Statute of Secrecy, even if he is a little distracted by other things and other causes, it all really comes back to him having the choice to fight, to flee, to live his life where he pleases, taking the elements of both cultures and combining them. And he wants that choice for others as well. A lot of his anger and frustration is on a very personal selfish level, but he does recognise that he’s fighting this cause for people other than himself.

SURVIVAL: 

Being both muggleborn and publicly vocal in his opinions, does put a bit of a target on Maurice’s back. He’s had a few close scrapes in the past, but luckily that’s as much as they were. Making enemies with a lot of purebloods perhaps isn’t the most efficient way to survive this war. He doesn’t move around a lot, thankfully he’s never been traced to his home address and he wants to keep it that way. He rents a little place in Muggle London, clean and comfortable enough, but out of the way and non-descript. He wards it heavily, and takes great lengths to make sure he isn’t followed home.

He isn’t too bad at dueling, but it isn’t his greatest strength. Mostly he relies on quick thinking rather than brute strength. And paranoia. He’s seen what the other side is capable of, and he’s heard enough of Moody’s lecture like speeches to know how to watch his back.

Still, he can lay awake many nights, realising there that if he continues to fight like this, there is a large chance he won’t survive the war. Is it worth it? He usually falls asleep before reaching a conclusive answer. Needless to say, as a 24 year old, he is terrified of dying. He is just also too angry to let that stop him.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Daisy Hookum: Friends since first year, he and Daisy have a special bond. There are very few people who know him as closely as Daisy knows him. Even his family, who he loves dearly, can’t understand him the way Daisy does. They may have been brought together by class timetables and group projects, but what bonded them was their shared views of the world. Particularly as they got older, they could talk for hours and hours about their politics. They didn’t always agree on every point, but respected each other enough to hear the other out. Of course this wasn’t the only thing that kept them friends. They could have fun together, let loose, forget for a little while that things were so bad, forget how angry they were.

They joined the Order together, as they did so much together. But then Daisy left for her year in the muggle world. Since then the relationship has been strained. He understood better than most what she was trying to do, but the reality is still that he felt abandoned, and jealous, that she could go off and live her ‘muggle’ life. It’s become obvious since her return that Maurice’s idea of activism is now split from hers. She wants to take a more passive role, and Maurice couldn’t bear that.

Caradoc Dearborn: Caradoc is someone Maurice begrudgingly looks up to. On the one hand he is everything he despises, wealthy and pure blooded. But the way he conducts himself is something that Maurice admires. He can’t help but want to be in Caradoc’s good books. If he had an issue within the Order, he would most likely take it to Caradoc.

Mary MacDonald: Mary is a more recent friend. They were a few years apart at Hogwarts and so only got to know each other after they both joined the Order. A lot of Mary’s politics match up with Maurice’s, and apart from that they are very compatible on a personal level. She is one of the lucky few Maurice has let in. Of course it helps that she is muggle-born as well, he feels that with so few of them inside the Order, they really have to stick together.

He has never been the most social of people. It is not that he doesn’t enjoy company, more that he doesn’t settle. If he is going to spend time with someone, properly invest in them, he wants to be sure they are the right person. He does not do this consciously you understand, but he is constantly assessing and reassessing the people in his life. First impressions, as he’s found, are often misleading, but that doesn’t mean doesn’t heed them. He’s more inclined to search out the red flags than give someone the benefit of the doubt. The people who slip through the cracks however, get the best of him. The warmth, the wit, everything he’s been desperately been bottling up waiting for the right vessel to pour it into.

Generally, Maurice is going to feel some animosity for the richer, pure blooded members of the order, but he’ll tolerate them. He’s also going to be fairly uninterested in those who aren’t as active in the cause, or any cause for that matter. So maybe he’s made a few enemies within the Order, or at least brushed some people the wrong way. Or perhaps he’s been pleasantly surprised by others.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: No ships or antiships, I’m really open to anything. I do see Maurice as gay, so I think relationships with women would be unlikely, but I’m a sucker for some unrequited love plots, or maybe some confused one night stands. Basically anything is on the table.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

Well Maurice is a white male, so let’s start with that. I don’t think feminism is high up on his rank of causes, or racism, simply because I don’t think it’s played a huge role within his personal life experience. He probably doesn’t even realise a lot of the privileges he has as a white man.

He’s also gay, and whilst he is quite unapologetic about that, his sexuality seemed to be more of an issue in his muggle life than in the wizarding world, so it isn’t something he feels the need to fight about all the time. Again there are more important causes right now.

As a person who grew up in a working class family, he generally just resents the wealthy, and he won’t give them much chance to prove themselves to him either. This definitely stems from growing up poor, but perhaps if he’d been able to make his own fortune and save his family from their poverty, then he wouldn’t feel as strongly. In that sense it’s quite hypocritical. Now it’s also tied to the fact that the wealthy are the ones in control, both in the Death Eaters and their reign of terror, and at the Ministry, making and enforcing the laws that keep them all trapped and helpless. It hasn’t missed his attention that most of the wealthier wizards are pureblooded, so he’ll often lump them in with his disdain.

This works the other way as well. He’s willing to overlook a lot of shit that his working class/muggle born acquaintances get up to, forgive a lot of their sins. I don’t think he realises he does this, but it certainly happens.

He doesn’t necessarily hate the people who work for the Ministry, even if he has a dislike for the establishment and the way it’s run. He understands everyone has to work, and most don’t get the privilege of doing something they like or agree with entirely. There is a bit of time though where he’ll figure out their motives before he really trusts or likes them.

Law enforcement isn’t particularly in his good books either, but that is perhaps more linked to his view of how muggle police act towards protests and demonstrations.

When it comes to the issues of half-breeds, he’ll go along to the marches, he’ll sign the petitions, he’s probably up to date on all the latest views and opinions, but again, it’s not at the top of his priorities.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? You already know I love this roleplay. I’m looking forward to being more active hopefully, interacting with a wider range of characters, playing someone who is quite different to Fab as well and stretching those writing muscles.

PLOT DROP IDEAS: 

I would love to see his pirate radio show have an effect somehow, either positive or negative (but maybe more positive at least at first, I’ve already done a lot of disappointing the Order with Fab).

I would love to see how his bloodstatus affects him. If he is genuinely more in danger for being a loud annoying muggleborn, it might be nice to work that into the larger plot somehow.

ANYTHING ELSE? I haven’t put whether he’s low level or mid level in the Order, I’m happy for either, wherever you think he’d fit best.

EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS:

PAST: 

Maurice Creevey grew up in the midlands, part of a typical working class family. His mother was a housewife, and his father a Miner. The strikes and picket lines his father was a part of were some of his first experiences with activism, and the spark didn’t stop there. Maurice was rudely torn from his happy muggle life by the revelation he was a Wizard and the letter ‘inviting’ him to study at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. With no choice but to follow this path, Maurice has resented it ever since. He didn’t waste his time there by any means though. This was when he got his first taste for activism, protesting in the great hall and demonstrating in classes. These habits followed him faithfully into adulthood, developing until he found real urgent causes. At the top of his list, was tearing down the Statue of Secrecy that traps all muggle-borns in the wizarding world whilst an evil wizard and his cronies are attempting to pick them off one by one, and also prevents the muggles from fighting back on their own terms.

PRESENT:

It’s his activism that brought him to the attention of the Order. He is a good soldier for the Order, willing to do what has to be done and follow orders dutifully. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own intentions. Maurice works for the Wizarding Wireless Network, and a few nights a week he hosts his own pirate radio station. Sometimes his broadcasts can get hundreds or thousands of listeners, all scared but hopeful, wanting to hear what no-one else is telling them, the news the papers won’t print, the the stories the WWN won’t air. The Order value their secrecy, but Maurice knows information is power, and knowledge gives you a choice. He knows he can use his show to the Order’s advantage if only it’s given a chance.

FC CHOICES: top choice is Tom Sturridge, I’m not very good at fcs so if you don’t think he fits I’m happy to go with recommendations!

[victorianoir]

The Detective and the ManFatale, Part 4

Onward!!!! Part 4!!! The end of the ManFatale arc!!!! If you’re like “WTF is this?” you can read all of it by going to my MASTERPOST for The Detective and the Tech Guy. If you want to read this chapter on fanfiction.net, you can do that by clicking >THIS<.

Enjoy!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He'd just had to steal a parking spot from a little old lady who was just barely able to see over her steering wheel, and he felt bad about that, he really did. But it meant he was able to catch up to Sarah fast enough to be able to see her enter the office building she'd told him about earlier.

Just like she'd said, the building was off of Melrose, in SoHo. But he didn't follow her inside. Instead, he moved behind a short palm that was planted in a courtyard off to the side, complete with benches and planters. He leaned against the trunk of it and stared at the entrance.

He was old hat at this now, after a few days of tailing that asshole Fake Cartwright. Robbie. Pfft.

Maybe tailing his girlfriend while she was working wasn't the greatest thing he'd ever done in their relationship, granted. And she would probably be so mad at him if she knew he'd gotten in his car and followed her as best he could without getting too close, knowing she was way too smart to let herself be followed as closely as he wanted to. He'd nearly lost her a few times even, but he'd gotten back on track eventually, not wanting to be directly in her line of sight because she was a damn detective and she knew what his damn car looked like.

But it scared him to death hearing her yell, the dial tone…Seeing those papers scattered over the floor as though she'd had the file in her hand when Not-Cartwright had broken in, grabbed her, and yanked her out. God, the things he'd been unable to keep himself from imagining on the way there.

And then when he saw she was safe, when he held her in his arms, having to watch her leave again to go someplace potentially dangerous, and with no cell phone, no way to contact him, or more importantly, the police. That mean Detective Casey guy. God, that guy was a jerk. But at least he'd be able to back Sarah up if she called him, if she was in danger.

So Chuck had done the only thing he could think of to make sure she was okay. He'd followed her. He did have a cellphone. And a vested interest in her safety, damn it.

And he was going to watch those doors like a hawk. If this Jerald Brown fellow wasn't the upstanding tech guru Chuck had always figured he was in spite of never meeting him face to face, Chuck would take him down himself. He'd played flag football in junior high P.E. He knew what he was about.

He waited, waited…waited some more…

Until he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. He ducked back behind the palm tree as best he could and watched as the man he now knew wasn't Robert Cartwright strolled up the sidewalk towards the building, in his off-white suit, pale pink tie, suede shoes. A chill went through Chuck as the man stopped and took his sunglasses off, peering up at the very same building Sarah had just gone into to meet the man this imposter hired her to investigate.

His phone was in his hand immediately. He didn't have a direct line to Detective John Casey, but all he had to do was press three numbers.

There was no reason why this man should know what was happening in there. There was no reason why this man should know about this building in the first place, unless…well, unless he knew. Had he followed Sarah, too? Or had he followed Brown?

How did he know?

Oh God. God, Sarah didn't have her cellphone. And now he was going up the steps. If Chuck followed him, he wouldn't be able to stop him. This man was a seasoned criminal and possibly a killer. He definitely had a weapon.

God, he was opening the door.

"9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

"There's a woman being attacked inside of an office. A man went in there and he's attacking her. He has a weapon." He gave the address, told the operator she needed to hurry, and he hung up again.

It killed him, absolutely destroyed him, to move away from the building. He felt like he was dying as he spun on his heel and sprinted back to his car. He was leaving her in there, alone, and he was so terrified he was on the verge of a breakdown. He was angry with himself, sick with himself, and still he got into his car, turned it on, and with only a half glance back at the building his girlfriend was currently inside of with an angry, potentially murderous conman, he sped away from her.

God, he hoped he was doing the right thing. He hoped to any deity that was listening that he was doing the right thing.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Sarah's hand twitched automatically, ready to draw and put this imposter on the ground with a hole in his chest, but before she could do anything else, there was a loud bang and the arm of her chair exploded in splinters.

She yelped and fell out of the chair onto the floor, holding her hands up, her life having just flashed before her eyes.

That had been an extremely precise shot, not meant to hurt her…a warning that he would hurt her if she gave him any sort of reason to. He'd just missed her but she had scratches on her wrist and the back of her hand from the splintered wood exploding next to her.

"Stand up, kick your gun over here, Miss Walker," he demanded coolly, the South African accent gone. His American accent sounded practiced, too, however. "And then keep your hands in the air. You move wrong and I'll shoot you between the eyes. I've got nothing to lose now. Don't think I won't shoot a pretty girl…"

Sarah stood up and carefully went into her holster, pulling her gun out, setting it on the ground and sliding it across the tile floor to the conman.

"You stand up, too, ya fat fuck," the imposter said to Brown, reaching behind him to shut the door as much as he could with how he'd broken the handle getting in.

The private investigator and ex-Pinkerton detective felt anger start to rise inside of her. Not only did this fucker take a shot at her, he was going around calling good men 'fat fucks' too? She clenched her jaw, unable to help herself.

"You think you're a big boy now that you have that gun pointed at us," she said, keeping her hands up. But God she could feel that knife at her hip, and the ones strapped to her thigh and her fingers itched for them. But the only safe thing to do was to throw verbal barbs at him, so she kept going. "You can insult Mr. Brown when you've got a gun trained on 'im, but I bet just a few days ago, you were kissing his ass, weren't you?"

"Who the hell do you think you are, bitch?" She narrowed her eyes dangerously. "Sarah Walker, private investigator. Without those legs, you'd be working at an Abercrombie & Fitch spraying perfume at teenagers."

She inwardly smirked. He might be a dangerous conman, and a smart enough criminal to have gotten away with his ruse for this long, but he hadn't done his homework apparently. He had no idea she'd been a Pinkerton detective. He had no idea whom he was dealing with.

"You picked the wrong P.I. to hire, Cartwright," Brown said, his voice a little shaky as he stood behind her, still at his wife's desk. "She's not just good at her job, she has a moral compass, and a nose for sniffing out criminal lowlifes."

"I did all right, didn't I? Who's standing here with the gun?"

"What are you gonna do?" Brown asked, seeming to gain a bit more confidence now. "Kill us?"

"Yes, actually. I am. Nobody knows we're here." That was true, Sarah thought miserably. Chuck only knew that she'd gone to an office building in SoHo off of Melrose. There were a handful of them. And he'd have no way of knowing if something bad was happening to her. God, she wished so hard for his paranoia, his idiotic jealous paranoia, that worried crease he'd had between his eyebrows…Please, Chuck… Maybe she could telepathically project terror at him and he'd feel something. They were close enough, emotionally bonded, weren't they? She'd never been so connected to anyone else in her entire life. Wasn't that how that weird crap worked?

Please, please, please, Chuck…

"What did you do with Cartwright?" she asked. If she could just get him talking, she could stall whatever it was he meant to do with them.

"I didn't touch the rat bastard. It wasn't me," he groused. "Wish it had been. He was a lousy piece of shit by all accounts, swimming in his money, an asshole to everyone, greedy."

"So he is dead, then. Who did it if it wasn't you?"

"He's dead. There was a storm, destroyed his boat probably. Found some wreckage where I was in Point d'Esny. Also found his body. Nobody else was on the beach so I took everything I could carry, took his body out onto the water, and dropped it with a bag of sand. Got rid of his boat altogether. Wasn't until a few days later I found out he was a Cape Town big shot. But he was a recluse, too. Nobody ever really saw him much at all. Perfect opportunity for me." He shrugged, and Sarah watched for any opportunity she might have to catch him off guard, but this obviously wasn't the first time he'd held a gun on someone. And she was sure this wouldn't be the first time he'd killed either…if it turned out he got that far.

And oh God, what would she do if he started shooting to kill?

"How did you even pull this off?" Brown asked.

"Easy. When the guy was alive and had less dead-bloat than he had when I found 'im, we looked pretty similar I guess. His IDs all worked long enough for me to forge new ones. Nobody asked any questions when Robert Cartwright showed up in Los Angeles for business. The checks all worked, the bank tellers all let me walk right in, the credit cards worked. I've made a fortune off of this guy, all because he was a shitty sailor."

He kissed the tips of his fingers.

"You're deplorable," Sarah said.

"Mmhmm. Deplorable enough to kill you two so I can get away with it all."

Brown cursed. "You aren't getting away with a damn thing!"

"I am. I've already destroyed any records that I was ever here. I've sold most of his African possessions, withdrawn every last cent I could from the banks. After I'm gone, they'll probably file a missing persons report." He chuckled and grinned a now twisted version of Alain Delon's smile. She wished she could apologize to the French actor for ever thinking he was similar.

This asshole wished…

ManFatale, Chuck had called him near the beginning of this damn job. She'd made fun of him then, but now she saw just how right he was. There was a good chance she was dying here today, in this office with the knitted pillows. Underestimating this bastard was her downfall.

"You don't think they'll dog your steps no matter where you go?" she asked then, starting to let anger overtake her fear. She liked anger better. It was better than giving in to despair, despair that she'd seen Chuck for the last time not an hour ago, climbing into his fuel-efficient car, after trying to make her take his phone. Maybe if she'd taken it, she could've secretly hit the emergency button on it.

What was he going to do?

What would he do if she died here today?

Oh, God…

No. Anger. Anger was better.

"I've covered my tracks."

"You haven't covered shit. The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, they've all got guys who find pieces of shit like you every single day. You aren't getting away it with no matter what you do to us," she hissed through her teeth.

The imposter angled his gun down suddenly and shot, sending a bullet clattering into the ground at her feet. She screamed and clasped her hands to her mouth, jumping away. He raised the gun and shot again, hitting the desk right next to her hip and she fell to the side, onto the floor. Brown knelt down behind her, a protective move, but this time the bullet that came from the imposter's gun was true.

Brown hit the tile hard, a hole in his shoulder as he cried out in pain.

Holy shit!

Now there was fear inside of her. Abject fear as she acted fast, grabbing Brown's hand and making him press it against his wound. "Just hold it…press down, you'll be okay…"

"Get up," the imposter growled at her, stepping closer. She ignored him as she tried to help the injured man. "I said get up!" he yelled this time, grabbing her by her hair and yanking her to her feet.

She heard sirens in the distance and she knew as his eyes darted to the side in momentary worry that this was her one and only chance to get herself and Jerald Brown out of here alive.

Sarah Walker, P.I. struck fast. She swung her left arm around, clamped her fingers around his wrist and pushed the gun away from her temple where he'd been holding it. He pulled the trigger, breaking the window behind her, and the sound of it startled him enough that she was able to bring her knee up and back and slam her heel right between his legs.

He yelled in pain as she snapped the arm that had the gun down across her knee, hearing the crack of his bone breaking and the clatter of the gun hitting the floor. She kicked it away as he fell hard onto his back and she crawled onto him, slamming her fist down into his face, over and over and over and over again until he put his non-injured arm up and begged her to stop.

Just then the door burst right off of its hinges, police officers racing inside.

"GET ON THE GROUND!" an LAPD officer barked, and in spite of the fact that he might not be talking to her, she crawled down onto her knees and put her hands behind her head. She didn't know who or what had brought the police here but she wasn't about to be shot for trying to explain right away when they were attempting to take control of the situation.

Once the yelling stopped and the police had clambered over to Brown who was still conscious but whimpering, an officer grabbed her by her arm and hoisted her up. "My name is Sarah Walker, private investigator. That man broke in while I was in a meeting with Mr. Brown and held a gun on us. He shot him. Tried to…tried to shoot me, too." She was breathless, and she realized that in spite of being in scenarios with guns, bombs, and other terrifying situations, this had been one of the closest shaves she'd had.

And she had a lot more to lose this time.

She had to press her lips together and blink a few times to keep the rush of terrified tears at bay.

"All right, miss. Just come over here and sit in this chair. Your name again…?"

"Sarah Walker," she murmured, trying to take deep breaths. "I own Walker Investigative Enterprises. I've-I've got a P.I. license."

The two officers exchanged flat looks. "A P.I., huh?"

This had been too traumatic for her to find the willpower to give them dirty looks for that.

"Get an ambulance here, we've got two men in need of medical attention," one of the cops said into their walky-talky. "One gunshot wound. Another with abrasions to the face, broken arm."

Sarah thought about how badly she wished she could've given him more abrasions to the face, and she thought maybe she was starting to feel more like herself now that the danger had abated. Though her ear was ringing bad from that gun going off so close to it.

"You're Sarah Walker, that's Jerald Brown…and who is this guy?" The cop gestured to Fake Cartwright.

Paramedics rushed in then, tending to Brown first and getting him lifted onto a gurney.

"A criminal," Sarah said. "If you look up Robert Cartwright, you'd find this man's picture. But he-he isn't Robert Cartwright."

"Huh?"

She explained the situation to them for the next three minutes, accepting the strong coffee one of them gave her, and the blanket the other one wrapped around her shoulders. She didn't know when she'd begun to shiver. And it wasn't from the cold.

As she realized she was just barely keeping from slipping into shock, suddenly there was a shuffling of people at the door and Detective John Casey was there, his hulking figure taking up the entire doorway practically. "Whatever she said about him, it's true," he said, pointing over her shoulder. "Cartwright's an imposter." He pulled his badge out as he walked into the room and flashed it at the officers. "I'll handle the questioning from here, officers."

They both nodded and moved away.

And that was when she looked up to see Chuck step out from behind the detective, his eyes finding her immediately.

"Sarah…"

"Chuck!"

She left the coffee and the blanket behind, surging to her feet just in time for his body to crash into hers, his arms so strong as they folded her up against him, so warm and safe and everything she'd needed the moment this had all ended.

Sarah felt her boyfriend's lips against her hair, and then her temple, and her cheek, and he just held her so tight. She didn't ever want to let go. Ever.

And she heard him curse, his hand coming up to brush over her hair. "Are you okay?" he asked finally. "Did he hurt you? I'll kill him."

"Maybe not the smartest thing to say in front of the LAPD, idiot," Casey grumbled from where he was standing over Chuck's shoulder.

She ignored him, though, burying her face in Chuck's neck and letting herself cry just a little. She'd been so scared she'd never see him again. So scared she'd never feel this. Or eat one of his waffles he made that were never thick enough or cooked as much as she wanted them to be because he didn't put enough batter in, and didn't leave it in the iron long enough. Because he was too impatient, like a little boy.

"I'm okay," she gasped out, trying to hold back still and not doing a great job of it. "I'm okay. I love you."

"I love you, too," he said immediately, holding her even tighter, pressing his lips against her temple and keeping them there.

She finally pulled back, letting him cup her face and kiss her properly, and then he kissed the remnants of the few tears she'd shed away. "What—How?" she asked.

"I…" He winced. "I was worried. Super, super worried. I had this weird feeling in my gut letting you drive off to this meeting with no cell phone or anything. So I…gah, I followed you. I know you—you probably…" He huffed at her impatient look. "You're right. Let's table that. I was waiting outside, 'cause I'm your man and I wanted to have your back in case things got cray. But then while I was waiting, I saw that fake-ass mother fucker walk up with his cheesy as hell B-List sunglasses and that shit-eating smirk, and I knew right away that you were in trouble." A smile began to grow on her face as she watched him start to get riled up now as he told his story. "I was going to run after him and strangle him or roundhouse kick him in the jaw or somethin' but then I figured I'd most likely get shot and you'd never forgive me if that happened. So I called 9-1-1 instead and got in my car to come find Cas—Casey—Detective Casey." He cleared his throat at the glare the older man sent him.

"You're insane," she breathed, swallowing another sob and throwing her arms around his neck, letting him lift her enough that her feet were dangling a few inches off the floor, and they stayed like that for long enough that Casey finally cleared his throat.

Chuck set her down and she resisted the urge to kiss him again, longing in her gaze as she peered up at him for a moment…And then she turned to John Casey and nodded.

"Yeah, well…S'a miracle we even got here when we did what with this moron driving like a fuckin' grandma."

"What?!" Chuck spun on his heels to face the LAPD detective. "That's not even true! I was going fast! Things were whizzing past my window!" He let go of her arm with one hand and mimicked swishing his hand back and forth past his head manically.

"Right. Sure. Walker, I'm gonna need you at the station. Your secretary here only gave me the highlights. He can't talk and drive at the same time." Casey turned and headed for the door.

"Are you serious right now?" Chuck asked, his pitch getting a bit higher. "Secretary? How many times do I—?" They both began to follow after him then, Sarah's fist twisted in Chuck's sleeve, pulling him along. "Oh. He's messing with me, isn't he?"

She heard the amused grunt from the cop as he pressed the button to call the elevator, and she saw the small smirk on his face. It made her feel so glad to be alive.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

It had only taken twenty minutes for Detective Casey to eject Chuck from the room where he'd taken them for questioning. She'd had to watch as he interrupted one final time—"Sarah, tell him about…"—then Casey's patience, which had been wearing thin already no doubt, snapped. He stood up, grabbed Chuck by his arm, and escorted him out of the room, shutting the door in his face.

She'd had to smirk inwardly at the cute, offended sounds of confusion that her boyfriend made until he was locked out on the other side of the door where he could no longer interrupt.

Casey'd finally sat down across from her again, and she'd told him every last detail she could, even letting him have the files she'd kept in her briefcase that she'd had during the meeting with Brown, in case he'd needed convincing.

"So what made you so sure of Jerald Brown that you ended up focusing most of your efforts on investigating your client, rather than investigating the guy he was paying you to investigate?" Casey asked, forty-five minutes into their meeting.

"Part of it was the fact that I spent three days tailing him, going through his background, his financial records, combing through his personal life, and I'd found absolutely nothing to make me think he was anything other than a good businessman, and a good man in general. Not that he was without faults, but none of it was illegal or reprehensible. No illicit affairs, no fraud, nothing untoward." She shrugged.

"And the other part?"

"Chuck insisted he was a commendable man."

Casey scoffed. "You took him at his word?"

"I always do," she said, holding her chin high. "He knows who is who in his own industry, and he's a commendable man himself."

"Don't get defensive, Walker."

"I did my homework. And on the other side, I had this guy who, for all intents and purposes, was very smooth, seemed to know just what to say to every question or comment I had during our meetings, and…this was the key…the more time I spent in these meetings with who I thought was Robert Cartwright, the more I got the feeling he wanted me to find something wrong."

Casey grunted, thunking a pen against his chin a few times, thoughtfully. Then he narrowed his eyes. "I get where you're going. Instead of wanting you to just check and make sure this potential future business associate was on the level, and being relieved when you kept coming back with confirmation that he was, Cartwright seemed like he was digging for some dirt on him instead."

"Exactly. It was sneaky. And it made me super suspicious."

"Hmng," Casey tossed the pen on the table and pushed his chair back. "Don't blame ya. That was pretty good work, Detective. Don't take this the wrong way," he started, which was always a stellar way for another person to start a statement, she thought wryly, "but I'm curious as to why ya didn't just take the money and let this lie."

Sarah crossed her arms and stood up from her chair, nibbling on her bottom lip. "I'm not that kind of P.I., Detective Casey. I want to make a living off of this P.I. business I'm building, but not at the expense of innocent people, and not to aid and abet criminals. I'm operating on the right side of the law."

"So no adultery cases, huh?" He grinned a bit lecherously and she glared at him.

"If someone comes in offering me the right amount of money to try to catch their partner with someone else, depending on the person and the case, I might accept. But what business is that of yours?"

"It ain't. Lighten up. Yeesh." He held his hands up defensively, one of the gestures that infuriated her the most when men did it at her.

"Is that all you need from me?"

"Yeah. But make sure to stick around for a week or so while we work on this case. We may need the FBI in on this if he's committed crimes like this before, and they'll be bringing the South African and Cape Town authorities in, I'm sure."

"I will," she said, getting up and walking towards the door. "Oh. Here." She came back and set all of the work she'd done down on his desk. "I'm sure you folks'll need this." He deserved the snarky smirk she sent him, and the look on his face told him he probably knew he deserved it, even if he wouldn't admit it out loud ever in a million years.

"Thanks. And uh…make sure you take care of that hand. Don't think I didn't see you trying to hide the scratches. Was that his face that gave you those?"

She looked down at the scratches on the back of her hand, and now on her knuckles from his face, just as Casey surmised. "Yes and no. His face, but also, he shot at the arm of the chair where I'd just been and the wood sort of exploded and caught me."

Casey winced. "You gonna be okay?"

"I'll be fine. Just a little home first aid is required. Nothing deep."

"Good." There was silence between them then as she nodded and went for the door. "Walker."

She stopped and looked at him over her shoulder, her hand on the doorknob. "Yeah?"

"We've got officers watchin' him now where he was admitted to the hospital, and when they've set that arm and gotten his face fixed up," she noticed a particular thread of pleasure in his smirk at that, "they're takin' him to his own cell here where I'll question him personally while we wait for FBI to send someone. That is to say…you did some damn fine work."

She smiled. "Thanks. Oh. Did Jerald Brown…?"

"He's gonna be fine. I'll email you where they took 'im if you want to visit tomorrow. He'll be kept at the hospital for a few days."

"Good. And yes. Please do. Thanks."

He nodded and she stepped out of the room, finding Chuck sitting a bit dejectedly in what she thought might be a perp chair at the end of someone's desk. Thankfully, whoever's desk it was seemed to be gone for the day.

She gestured for him to followed her with a flick of her head and a smile when he lifted his chin from his chest and met her eyes.

And she clung to him as best she could while still being able to walk to the elevator.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

She was quiet the whole ride back to her apartment, curled up in his passenger seat, having kicked her heels off and pulled her legs against her chest, her forehead leaning against the window as she gazed out on the late afternoon street.

And the sun had finally set, the sky still light out but darkening by the time he pulled into a parking spot in her apartment complex. They'd left her car in free street parking where she'd left it before her meeting with Brown a few hours earlier and they'd get it later, tomorrow most likely. She hadn't seemed as worried about it as she was about finally going home, so he'd promptly driven her from the police station to her place with no stops in between.

Now they sat in the comfortable warmth of his car, the engine off, silence permeating…

Until Sarah turned to look at him, smiling softly, and then she reached out and took his hand, not looking away for even a moment as she breathed a quiet, "Will you stay with me?"

He felt everything inside of him crumbling and never in his entire life had he ever wanted to protect anything or anyone as much as he wanted to protect Sarah Walker. Not trusting his voice, still shaken up from what had nearly happened, he nodded vigorously instead, and she smiled a bit harder.

They got out and headed up to her apartment, his arm around her shoulders the whole way, and he used his key to let them in, turning on the lights for her as she tossed her purse onto the entryway table and kicked off her heels again, shrugging her jacket off.

It was then that he saw her hand. There were bloody marks on the back of it, cuts on her wrist, and red welts with dried blood and most likely bruising underneath on her knuckles.

Nothing else mattered as he made a beeline for her and gently picked up her arm, cradling her hand and wrist in his comforting grip. "Sarah…"

"I know, I know…but it's fine. I've had worse."

"You've let this go for hours."

"I've had worse, Chuck. It's okay. I'll just ice it—"

He shook his head vehemently and pulled her through her apartment to the bathroom. "You have first aid?"

"You know where it is from where you burned yourself on the coffee pot."

"Oh…oh yeah. Um…remind me, though."

Seeing blood on her hand, her own blood, knowing she'd been hurt, knowing she could have been worse than hurt, was starting to catch up to him suddenly. And he was trying so hard not to let her see. He didn't want her thinking he was going to be a basket case about her chosen profession. That every little cut she got made him crazy and sick with worry. But this had felt like a big deal. A really big deal. And he had no idea what would've happened if the police hadn't shown up, if he hadn't called them.

"Hey," she breathed suddenly, and he cursed himself a little, knowing he'd let it all show on his face anyway. "Hey, look at me." She cupped his face and forced his gaze to hers. Her blue eyes reassured him immediately and he had to resist the urge to melt into her, hold onto her for dear life. "Chuck, are you spiraling because of this?" she asked, presenting her injured hand to him.

He nodded, putting his hands on her hips to keep himself steady.

Her good hand stroked his jaw and his eyelids fluttered. "Please don't. I'm okay."

"Help me maybe not spiral by telling me where that first aid kit is and I can clean you up a bit."

"It's right here, in the cupboard under this drawer." She shifted to bump her hip against the drawer she was talking about. "But…before you do that, would you mind if I took a shower?"

He shook his head and leaned in to kiss her on the forehead, a slow, long kiss. He understood the request at a deeper level, but he wouldn't say it out loud. She needed some time alone after everything. She'd almost been killed, watched Brown get shot right in front of her, and had cops swarming her, and finally the questioning at the station and being trapped in the car with him as he drove her home.

"Thank you. It-It'll be a quick one." She slid past him, dragging her fingertips over his abdomen as she went to the shower and turned on the water.

"Take your time, baby. I'll have a martini ready for you when you're done." On second thought, as she gingerly started to unbutton her blouse, he waited for her to realize he was still there and turn to meet his gaze before he said it again. "Take your time."

Understanding dawned on her features and her shoulders drooped a bit. He thought her chin might have quivered and he just turned on his heel and left before he was tempted to gather her up in his arms and hold her some more. She needed to be alone for a bit, though, so he went into her kitchen and started preparing a few martinis, two to start with, one for each of them. He didn't know how many of these she was going to need, but he'd make her as many as she asked for.

And he waited, enjoying the texts Ellie had sent him throughout all of this, the one about Clara pushing herself up to sit for a few seconds before falling again. The look she gave her mom like she didn't know if she should cry or not. It warmed him from the inside out. And he'd been so cold before. Unable to get rid of that terrifying sensation he'd had when he'd screeched to a halt next to the office building, seeing the police cars haphazardly parked, lights still blinking, the ambulance there, someone being wheeled into it…

He'd seen it was Brown, that he'd been shot, and he tried to tear into the building, only to have Casey and two other officers have to grab onto him and nearly take him down to the ground. When they got him to stop, Casey barked, "He's with me", and he yanked on Chuck's tie, pointing in his face with a "Slow down, kid".

That was all it took for him to gain control, afraid this detective might knock him out altogether if he didn't take a breath. And he let Casey take point, shaken to his core until the moment he stepped into the room and saw his very own detective sitting there, alive, no bullet holes in her like the man downstairs'd had.

He felt a chill go through him as he stood there peering out into the courtyard of Sarah's building, watching an older woman take down a few shirts she'd hung on a clothesline and toss them into a basket. Her tabby cat made a figure-8 around her legs in the meantime, finally following her inside as she hobbled up the steps and into the building.

Chuck let himself get lost in everything for a few minutes, going through all of the worst scenarios that thankfully hadn't happened. Sarah was alive and well, currently in the shower, washing off the remnants of her harrowing ordeal.

He'd heard everything that had happened to her in Mrs. Brown's office while she told the grumpy detective—before said grump kicked him out. He supposed he couldn't blame the guy for it, though, because he'd caught himself interrupting too often. No matter how many times he apologized, he never learned, and his punishment was sitting out by himself for the remainder of the conversation.

But Sarah had been shot at multiple times, and every time Not-Cartwright had purposely missed her, his intent being to scare her. That made Chuck Bartowski angry. There was an extra level of pathology to lord your power over someone in that way, terrifying them before you kill them, making them suffer… It made him feel so disgusted, and then he thought Sarah must have come into contact with psychopaths like this guy before in her line of work.

She was an incredible bad ass, the coolest, strongest person he'd ever met. And he was sure no matter how often she'd come face to face with these crazy assholes, it didn't make being shot at any easier to handle, especially when it was so cruelly done to terrorize her. By the shakiness in her voice when she'd told them about him shooting her chair and then at her feet, and finally at the desk next to her hip, before sinking a bullet into Mr. Brown, the man she'd been attempting to protect, Chuck could tell it had gotten to her. Genuinely.

Maybe he shouldn't announce it in front of the LAPD, but deep inside, Chuck wasn't sure he'd be able to hold himself back from murdering that guy if he'd had a crack at him when he first got into that room and saw Sarah there, her face so pale, the blanket around her shoulders, the bun she'd had in her hair when he'd seen her last half pulled out… He'd discovered later that the man had grabbed her by her hair and yanked her up to her feet by it.

Chuck thought he'd like to do the same to him, but instead he'd pull his spine right out with one hard yank. Mortal Kombat style.

"Thought I'd bring the first aid kit with me because I already know you'll refuse to take no for an answer."

He spun on his heel, letting the curtain fall back into place and cover the window to see Sarah had wandered in, her step light like a cat's so that he hadn't heard her come in. Granted he might've also been a bit distracted.

But then she set the first aid kit on the table and frowned deeply. "What's wrong?"

"Huh? Wrong?"

"You turned around and looked like a rabidly angry gorilla or something for a second."

He just shook his head and sniffed in amusement. "It's nothing."

"Chuck…"

"I was thinking about what he did to you, and maybe imagining myself doing one of the Mortal Kombat fatality moves on him. That's all." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged, slowly wandering over.

She widened her eyes. "I don't know what those moves entail but you said the word fatality, so that sounds a little serious, buddy."

At least that shower had made it so she seemed a little more like herself. Less shaken, more settled. The almost-unnoticeable shiver she'd had before was gone.

"It is. I have to be honest with you, Sarah. Part of me is angry with myself that I didn't just follow him and body tackle him into the ground then and there."

Her eyes flashed, concern and even a bit of frustration in her face. And then she put her hand on his chest, her fingers curling against his shirt as she shook her head. "Chuck, don't say that. Please never do something like that. He had a gun. He would've killed you."

He clenched his jaw and looked away.

"I-I'm not trying to make it seem like you're weak or incapable, baby. I'm really not. Just—Listen to me. I'm trained in combat, I have extensive training and years of experience using guns. I had a gun with me, as well as the knives I always have strapped to me. Hey, look at me. Please." She put her good hand on the side of his face and pulled his eyes back to hers. "I was nearly powerless in there. He had me, Chuck. If he hadn't slipped, let his guard down for that one second…" Her voice drifted off. "My point is that someone trained, like me, could have easily died doing whatever it is you might've done in that moment instead of what you ended up doing." She stroked her hand through his curls. "Which was the right thing."

"I know." He gently slid his hand around her waist and pulled her a little closer. "It just felt…terrible. Watching him go in there, knowing you were about to have him burst in on you. And knowing now what he ended up doing, that you were hurt and Brown was shot. What if I could've stopped all of it?"

"What if you couldn't have but you tried anyway and ended up being shot yourself?" Her eyes searched his. He couldn't come up with an answer to that. "What would I do, then? What would I even do if you were shot, Chuck? I can't even begin to think…" She let out a harsh breath, shaking her head. And he held her tighter.

"I ran away from you. I left you behind."

"You saved my life," she said in a much steadier voice, her features hard, willing him to understand. "What you ended up doing wasn't just the right thing, Chuck, it was incredibly brave."

He winced a little. "It didn't feel very brave."

"You could've let your worry for me, your fear, overtake you and you could've run after him, tried to stop him, and ended up getting all of us killed…but instead you called the police, knowing that they'd have more of a chance of stopping him than you ever would. And you went to get Casey involved, which…" She paused. "Why did you get Casey?" She blinked, her brow furrowed as though the question had just struck her at that moment.

Chuck swallowed thickly. "I was afraid they'd believe the wrong person unless you had someone they trusted vouching for you. And I knew Casey would be the perfect person to be there for that."

She beamed at him so suddenly that his heart felt like an insane amount of weight had been taken off of it. And then she hugged him tightly, and he hugged her back similarly. "You're brave and brilliant, Chuck Bartowski."

He felt so much pride in that moment, hearing how proud she was of him, how grateful she was, how impressed she was, in her voice, feeling it in the way she squeezed him, kissed his cheek.

"And you're a bad ass and the best, Sarah Walker. So I guess we make a good pair. Maybe I can be your assistant."

"No," she giggled, kissing his cheek again and then pulling back. "I will let you take care of me, though."

"Oh, gladly," he said with as much warmth as he was capable of, and then he gently pushed her to sit in the chair at the table and went to grab a bowl, putting some warm water and soap in it, then wandering back with that and a cloth in hand.

He scooted close to her and let her drape her hand over the bowl as he silently cleaned the cuts that didn't look so bad now that she'd showered. She only winced a little at the cuts on her wrist when he was gently rubbing ointment over them, and then he wrapped a light bandage around all of it.

"I look like the bride of Frankenstein's monster," she said with a giggle once he finished.

"She wishes," Chuck answered, watching as Sarah turned her arm a bit to look at his work. "What?" he asked when she gave him a quiet, searching look.

"You did a pretty good job here, actually."

That made him smile. "Listen, I grew up with a big sister who's wanted to be a doctor ever since she found out what a doctor was. Do you know how often I got wrapped up in bandages through all the years I spent under the same roof as her?"

She laughed. "Was it often?"

"Often enough." He chuckled. "She got better at it when she was actually in med school and I guess I picked up some things, little tricks of the trade. Don't ask me to stitch a wound shut, though, because I will faint."

Sarah snorted. "That's cute."

"Is it?" he drawled dubiously. He got up then and straightened his back, feeling a few pops, then put the bowl away, the bandages and the first aid kit, and when he came back out, Sarah had finished her martini.

She held the glass up towards him and pouted a little.

"Another?" he asked, receiving a smile in return. He chuckled and took her glass, leaning down to kiss her forehead, then went back to the kitchen to make her another. "Hey, you want a flavor in it this time? Maybe some lime? I saw a lime in your fridge."

Sarah was standing next to him suddenly—those cat-like silent feet of hers—and he nearly jumped. "Sorry. Didn't mean to sneak." He shrugged at her wince. "You just…You've never put flavors in a martini for me before. It's always just been a traditional, perfectly dry martini. What's gotten into my Chuck?"

"If you want me to make it like I always do, I can." He shrugged again. She was looking at him steadily, that look of hers that saw right through him. And he sighed. "It has nothing to do with the martini, but-but I guess today sort of put into perspective for me that you're not…"

"What?"

"Immortal. Indestructible." His throat was dry then and he looked away, swallowing.

"Did you…think I was? Like some kind of comic book character?"

"No. Of course not." He sniffed in amusement. "But what you do is dangerous and it's something I'm going to have to come to terms with. I hadn't before this because I guess I…haven't had to yet. But I have to now."

"Chuck, I'm okay."

"I know you are. So am I. We're okay. And that's not something that's gonna change, no matter how many ManFatales try to take you away from me."

Sarah smirked at that and gave him a side-eye. "No fucking way anybody is taking me away from you. And vice versa," she added, pointing at him a bit threateningly.

"I didn't just mean romantically." He chuckled. "I meant…uh…you know."

"Oh." She sobered significantly. "That, too. And yeah…maybe this time we can try some lime in the martini. I have some pineapple slices, too. Maybe some of the juice…?"

"Splendid idea," he said, giving her a warm smile. And they stood side by side as he prepared more martinis for them to enjoy.

They eventually found their way to Sarah's bed, stretching themselves out over it and leaning back against her headboard. She'd since fallen asleep, her harrowing ordeal earlier on in the day knocking her out soon after she curled herself up on his chest.

He just held onto her, looking down into her face. She looked younger when she was asleep, so at peace, without any worries to speak of. But then his eyes latched onto her wrapped hand and wrist that was slung over his chest and he frowned.

She was a private investigator. And as awesome as it was, as hot as it was that he was dating someone so damn cool, he couldn't let himself forget how serious it was, too. How serious it could be. He'd never want her to give up what she wanted to do, who she wanted to be, so that he had better peace of mind when she went to work, the way the boyfriend of an accountant might. His girlfriend wasn't going to stop being a private investigator, whether he was awful enough to want her to or not.

And so…Chuck Bartowski was determined instead to support her. To be here on the hard days like today. To protect her when she needed him to. To bandage her cuts, hold her, make her martinis, and let her fall asleep in his arms.

Because being with Sarah Walker, P.I. was so much better than being with some accountant who sat in an office all day. The worry, the nerves, the adrenaline, and even the fear, were all worth it because she was worth anything and everything.

This was her, he realized, looking down into her face.

These cases with genuinely bad dudes wanting to do her harm because she was good at her job, because she was working to take them down, were all part of what made her…her. The danger, the chase, the high stakes…that was all part of her.

He loved her.

That included everything that made her who she was. That included this. And those moments of fear, the danger…

No matter what this career of hers brought them, this wouldn't ever change. He was ready for the bumps and bruises he'd get in the meantime himself. He was ready for the hurdles and hardships ahead. He thought he was ready for just about anything.

Because this was their life now.

And he wouldn't trade it for the whole universe.

[s-horne]

25. “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer” (Steve/Tony)

this is a follow-up piece to this high-school reunion piece that I wrote - warnings for past bullying and homophobic language apply 

 Tony hummed, his gaze drifting from Steve’s face. “Oh yes. The delightful football team. I did wonder when they’d catch you.” He paused and readjusted his grip on Steve’s shoulders, his hands absent-mindedly drifting up to play with his hair. “Why are they all staring at me like you’ve turned purple?”

“Huh?” Steve said distractedly, before he followed Tony’s eyeline over his shoulder. “Oh, them… right.” He dug into his pocket and lifted up $100. “Fancy dinner?”

Tony’s mouth fell open and he laughed in disbelief. “They didn’t!”

“Oh yeah,” Steve grinned, “those fucking idiots just gave me $100 to make out with my fiancé. Champagne? It’s on them.”

Tony threw his head back and laughed loudly. “They look like they’ve just found out Santa isn’t real. Oh my God, did they really not know about you?”

Steve leant forward and pressed a kiss to the hollow of Tony’s throat. “Apparently not. Are they still looking?”

“Yeah.” Tony grinned and slid his hand down to cup Steve’s neck. “Don’t think they know how to look away, to be honest, babe. Pretty sure Chad’s just choked on his drink. Anyone know CPR?”

Steve nipped Tony’s neck lightly before he pulled away and straightened up. “Does it matter if no one does?”

Tony grinned and smacked Steve’s shoulder. “Stop it, you. You’re better than that.”

“Not when it comes to you, I’m not,” Steve replied and leant forward to catch Tony’s lips once more. “You should have heard what they were saying about you.”

Tony tangled his fingers in Steve’s hair and tugged ever so slightly. “Hey, stop it. I don’t care. They can’t hurt me anymore, alright?”

“No, it’s not alright. Tony, the stuff they said – it’s disgusting. It’s vile; hateful, even. It’s not true, either.”

Tony surged forward and kissed Steve on the corner of his mouth, hard and long. “Stop it,” he murmured, his hot breath tickling Steve’s lips. “I don’t want to hear what they said; I don’t care about them or their opinions.”

Steve sighed and looped his arms around Tony’s shoulders. “I still want to punch them in the face. All of them. Multiple times.”

“Well, you’re going to have to suppress that urge, babe, cause they’re coming over and I don’t want a scene.”

“What?”

“Mhm,” Tony pressed one last kiss to Steve’s slack moth and pulled away, dropping his hands to his sides. “Brace for impact in 3, 2 1…”

 “So,” Chad started when the group arrived, breaking the awkward silence with his dulcet tones. “Science nerd.”

Tony clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and lifted a hand to rest against Steve’s chest, almost holding him back from surging forward and decking the prick.

“I tend to go by Tony now,” he said smoothly, holding out his hand.

Chad just stared at him blankly, but Adam stepped forward and accepted the offering. “It’s been a while, Tony.”

“Hm.” It was obvious that Tony didn’t trust any of these men, his eyes darting from one to another in quick succession.

“Managed to bag the Captain, then,” Callum said, his eyes glinting dangerously as he took Tony’s hand next, his own grip visibly too strong. “Finally.”

Steve’s lips pulled back into a snarl, but Tony just shrugged lightly.

“Only had to get on my knees once and he was mine. Shame you never got to try me. Might have loosened you up.”

“Oh, you little fucking–”

Before Callum could finish his reply, Steve stepped forward, half-blocking Tony from the man’s sight.

“Don’t try it,” he said lowly, almost praying that his ex-linebacker was drunk enough to actually throw a punch. Callum had always been one of the quickest to resort to anger; his vocabulary not as biting as anyone else’s for him to win an argument that way and Steve could have done with the excuse to start something. Of course, Steve wanted a punch that he would easily block. If so much as a feather actually hit Tony then someone was going home in an ambulance – and it sure as hell wouldn’t be Steve’s partner.

“So this is actually a thing?” Adam cut in, voice incredulous and eyebrows raised. “You and Steve? Our Steve? Captain of the football team and the captain of the… what were you again? The nerd squad.”

“The Decathlon team,” Tony replied smoothly, not rising to the bait and ignoring Kyle’s snort. “Who knew that football players could be gay, right? Oh, and he was never your Steve.”

Steve grinned and turned to press a kiss to Tony’s temple. Once upon a time no one would have ever believed that Tony would stand up to the entire football team, not even to one of them let alone the whole group all together.

Tony caught sight of the looks on the faces of the men crowding him and rolled his eyes. Steve could feel his heart pounding away in his chest due to his proximity, but Tony made no show of it on his face.

“Why don’t you just take a picture?” he snarked, shoulders tense and mouth twisted. “It’ll certainly last longer. Maybe even long enough for you to get home and bea–”

“You’d better fucking watch it–”

“I swear, Cal,” Steve said, his voice almost a growl. He thought back to the one time Callum had actually been put in his place and lifted his chin, pulling out the one threat he knew would work. “Buck taught me a few moves if you’d like a demonstration. Take one step closer and I swear you’ll regret it.”

Callum let out an angry curse, but eventually let his shoulders fall as he straightened up, his eyes still throwing daggers at Tony.

There was a tense beat of silence before Tony patted his hand against Steve’s chest and coughed lightly, turning away from the group before he had finished talking.

“Well, as wonderful as this trip down memory lane has been, we really must be getting home.”

“How much did you pay him? Cause we paid him $100 to kiss you, so you must be offering something pretty good in order to get him here to fake this whole fucked up thing.”

Tony froze and Steve saw red as Chad’s voice rung out above the music, each word bitingly cold.

“Because there’s no way we actually believe this. Even if Steve did turn into… one of your kind, there have to better choices than you.”

Steve didn’t even take a breath before he spun on his heel and his hand shot out, twisting in Chad’s blazer as he glared with as much venom as he could muster.

“Don’t you ever, ever, insinuate anything like that again,” he swore, taking so much pleasure in the glint of fear he caught in the man’s eyes. “I won’t let you do this anymore. Not now, not ever. I love this man more than any of you would ever be able to un–”

“Oh, there you are.”

Steve cut himself off when a blonde woman came tottering over with a cocktail in one hand and a beer in the other. She draped herself over Isiah’s back as she pushed the beer into his grip, smiling at the group and seemingly oblivious to any tension.

Or maybe she was just used to it, Steve thought as a bitter taste filled his mouth.

Steve fell silent and uncurled his hand from Chad’s jacket, stepping back and feeling Tony’s hand smooth over his hip. As angry as he was, he wasn’t one to swear around women if he could help it and he relaxed into Tony’s touch, taking comfort from the barest hint of warmth seeping through his shirt.

“Who are these?” the woman asked, her smile too wide for her to be entirely sober and her neck so covered with jewels it was a wonder she could even stand up. “I haven’t met you two, yet. Did you go here too? Oh, are you two,” she lowered her voice and leant forward almost conspiratorially as her eyes zoned in on Tony’s hand creeping back up Steve’s heaving chest, “together?”

Steve stared at her with derision and could almost feel Tony’s lifted eyebrows and judgemental stare.

“Yes. Have been since we left here,” Steve answered as politely as he could manage with the red mist still blurring his vision. Reliving the memories of his relationship with Tony had him softening ever so slightly and he allowed his jaw to relax minutely so that his next words weren’t as bitten.

“As soon as we were away from this place and the people,” he said, throwing a glare to his side and watching as Adam shrank away, “we reconnected at MIT.”

Kyle muttered something under his breath to Chad and it took every ounce of strength in Steve’s body not to rearrange his face. It was only the woman’s impressed gasp that kept him in place; that and the sudden surge of pride that flowed through him.

“Yes, Tony completed two degrees there before he went to Columbia for his second PhD. I followed him back to New York and we got married the following fall.”

Tony hissed his name, but Steve wasn’t deterred. He loved any chance to brag about his partner and these tossers deserved to know exactly how smart Tony was. The whole fucking world did.

“Oh, how wonderful,” Isiah’s wife cried, beaming up at her husband and curling into his side despite his grimace. “Our darling niece has just applied to Columbia. We’re ever so proud of her.”

Isiah saluted them with his beer, a look of pride taking over the discomfort in his expression, and Steve saw a wonderful opportunity fall right in his lap.

“So has my daughter,” Kyle butted in smoothly, his first genuine smile of the night growing on his face. “She’s on track to get in as well. About to graduate; from here, actually.”

“That’s great,” Steve enthused, suddenly all smiles and bright eyes. He wrapped his arm around Tony’s waist and squeezed his fingers into Tony’s hip once, twice, three times. Waiting until Isiah lifted his beer to his lips, Steve nodded conversationally, “you know, Tony’s actually on the admissions board at Columbia. Gets to read all the applications and have a say in the final decisions.”

Isiah spluttered on the sip he’d taken and Kyle paled dramatically.

“Right,” Tony said and clicked his fingers loudly, “I knew I recognised a few of the names on there.”

“Isn’t it just so wonderful when you know someone in admissions?”

Isiah’s wife lit up at Steve’s words and she bounced on her dangerously-high heels. “Oh, darling. You never said your friend was working at Columbia. Oh, gosh. You know, we’d never ask you for anything,” she simpered, batting her eyes and leaning against her husband’s shoulder, “but as you and Iz are such great friends…”

She trailed off with a hopeful bite of her lip and Steve nodded, his grin sharpening as he met Kyle’s eyes. “Mm. And thank God that there aren’t any grudges or old feuds holding the process up.” Steve let his smile drop as he tugged Tony even closer, voice sharper than steel, “because that would really fuck things up for everyone, wouldn’t it?”

Another silence fell over the group, this one thicker and even more tense. All of the men looked between each other until Tony leant closer to Steve and dropped his gaze to the floor in embarrassment.

“This time, we really are going,” he said, his voice soft and unsure, barely finishing his sentence before Callum stepped forward menacingly.

“You’ve overstayed your welcome,” Adam spat out, “get the fuck out, you disgusting fags.”

Steve held his breath, trying desperately to keep himself out of jail, but Tony just shrugged, lifting his eyes back up and meeting Kyle’s stare dead-on. When he spoke again, he had gained back some of his fire and a sudden burst of confidence that warmed Steve’s chest.

“Fine by me,” he snapped back, voice calm and strong. “I wouldn’t want to feel welcome in a place that you felt accepted anyway. Please pass my best wishes on to your daughter, Kyle, and your niece, Isiah.”

With that, Tony grabbed at Steve’s hand and pulled him towards the exit, striding out with his head held high. It wasn’t until they were out of the school building completely and standing by their car that Tony deflated like a burst balloon and his knees gave out.

Steve caught him and held him tight to his body, one hand curled around the base of his neck and the other around his waist, swaying them both slightly as Tony clutched almost desperately at his shoulders.

“It’s over,” Steve muttered lowly, “you don’t ever have to see them again. You did so well, sweetheart. So, so well. God, I’m so proud of you.”

Tony let out a shuddering breath and sniffed loudly, his body trembling in the crisp air. Neither men said anything more until Tony gave one last, sharp inhale and straightened up. Steve cupped his cheek and gave him a soft smile.

“You were amazing,” he breathed, his thumb wiping away any trace of a tear on Tony’s cheek before he leant forward and gave him a long, slow kiss.

“I’m nothing to do with admissions,” Tony murmured, tilting his head when Steve started working his way down his throat and opening his legs to let Steve crowd him up against the car door, “and even if I was, you don’t see names on the applications anyway.”

Steve grinned and ground his hips against Tony’s, pressing a kiss to the shell of his ear and blowing lightly. “I know that and you know that, but it’s pretty much a rule that everyone lies at reunions. And anyway, did you see their fucking faces? Let’s let the dickheads stew for a bit. They deserve it.”

“You’re awful.”

Steve hummed as he started leaving a trail of kisses along Tony’s jawline, nipping lightly at his chin before catching his lips for a deep kiss. “I didn’t protect you nearly enough back then, so let me start now.”

Tony smiled softly and tugged Steve closer. “Baby, you did everything you could without hurting yourself. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Steve whispered, catching Tony’s hand and lifting it to his lips, his eyes falling closed as he relished in the cold metal of Tony’s wedding band against his mouth. “It’s not and I regret it every day. Say the word and I’ll go in there and shout from the stage how much you mean to me and how little they mean to the world.”

Tony laughed brightly and took his hand back so that he could catch Steve’s lips with his own.

“Or,” he murmured without pulling away so that his lips moved against his partner’s, his voice low and husky, “you could take me home and show me.”

[seven-oomen]

Okay, I’ve managed to scrape back up some of the thoughts that were drifting in and out yesterday.  I was trying to think of stuff I remembered from high school (what hasn’t been lost to an ADD haze at this point anyway) that might be interesting/cute to see crop up in the prequel.  For example; we know Peter played basketball, but did he or anyone else participate in any other extracurriculars or sports?  Student council?  Debate team?  Academic team?  French club?  Band/orchestra/choir?  Cross country/Track?  Ecology club?  Gay/Straight Alliance?  Martial arts?  Science club?  Softball?  Pagan Student Union (I think that might have been a college thing, but whatever)?  Art club?  Cheer/gymnastics?  Other things I’m forgetting right now?

Speaking of Peter and basketball- Did the gang ever go to his games?  Did he have supportive sports boyfriends; did they make cute signs or run to hug him if Beacon Hills won?  (Did we ever find out Peter’s jersey number?  I legit can’t remember.)  Did he bother to get a letterman jacket?  If so, did he give it to either of the boys?  (Or did he just get two?  I forget how/when you got patches, I wasn’t much for that sort of thing.  I think maybe I got one for softball at some point?)  I love him with the leather jacket, I just thought it was a cute image.  Did they get class rings (and exchange them)?

Also, yearbooks.  Who all actually had their picture in the yearbook?  Did Peter shake his hair over his eyes to block the weird reflective thing (and would that work)?  Did they pop up in any group shots or candid pics?  I had a mental image of a shot from some sort of home game, maybe for football, or girl’s basketball, or something, of the group of them clustered on the bleachers; Peter between Chris and Noah, with an arm thrown around each’s shoulders, his smiling face pressed into one of them’s hair (I can’t decide which) partially to prevent any reflection, partially just because; Chris holding the hand Peter has wrapped around him with one hand and with the other stretched across to rest on Noah’s knee, smiling in the genuine yet vaguely stilted way of someone who’s not used to being this happy yet; Noah with one arm wrapped around Peter’s waist, his other hand resting on the one Chris has on his knee, staring at the camera with an amused grin that’s flirting right on the edge of a smirk; Claudia cuddled up to Noah’s side, both hands wrapped around the top his nearest arm, head leaning against his shoulder, grin clear and bright and open; Melissa next to her, arms enveloping Claudia in a loose hug, camera catching her mid-laugh.  (God, I really wish I had something approaching passable art skills at times like these.)  Maybe the kids find a copy of that yearbook in the school library, and make framed copies of the picture for Melissa and their dads for a gift.

Do you have any plans to cover Prom?  Or any school dance (Homecoming, maybe?), really, Prom is just the big one.  Because part of me with never be over the ridiculousness of that scene with Peter and Allison at Macy’s (as cute as it is).  Random middle-aged dude walks up to teenage girl and starts offering her unsolicited fashion advice (as part of an intimidation tactic against her boyfriend, no less), and she not only is not worried or weirded out in the slightest, but she actively takes his advice and buys the dress he suggests.  (I legit laughed so hard I snorted when I realized it was the same dress.)  (Momentary segue: Do you think she ever described the encounter to Chris?  Peter just gets a random angry text one day from an unknown number that just says “Stay the hell away from my daughter!” and he just knows, so he sends back “Don’t blame me, her selections were utterly abysmal.  Didn’t your wife run a boutique or something?  You’d think she’d have taught her better."  Chris never does answer back.)  But anyway, yes, school dances with that group could be entertaining.  Sneaking off (for various reasons), special song dedications, spiking the punch with assorted substances, inappropriate dancing under the cover of semi-darkness.  Lots of potential shenanigans.

Also can’t wait to find out more about how everybody met.  One of the things I love about long-running series is being able to go back and compare where characters began their relationships versus where they end up.  We’ve seen how Chris met the boys, but not Claudia or Melissa.  (Did he already know Melissa?  Was she still a hunter at that point?)  We know how Noah and Claudia met, but not how Peter and Noah met, or Peter and Claudia, or how any of them met Melissa.  Plus all the potential bonus drama because of the supernatural issues involved.  When did Claudia and Peter realize what Elias was really like?  (Did Claudia ever give either of the other boys a "shovel talk”?)  How did Melissa’s relationship with Rafael develop?  How did the rest of the gang get along with the assorted Hales (or did they know them at all)?  And re: the preview for it you posted - what kind of car does Peter have, and can you comfortably fit three growing boys in the back seat?  (I do occasionally remember to ask the important questions, lol.)  Is the Jeep still Claudia’s here?  What kinds of vehicles, if any, do the others have?  (Can you tell I’m excited about the prequel?)

Bonus thought from last night -  

Me: *trying desperately to fall asleep so the day can just be over*

My brain:  So what about a vaguely, very loosely Breakfast Club inspired Chris/Noah/Peter fic?  Like, Chris could be Emilio Estevez’s character, and Noah could be Judd Nelson’s, because Andrew’s damage is more internally focused (I can’t live up to my father’s expectations because I’m not good enough), where as Bender’s is more externally focused (I’m pissed that my dad treats me this way because he’s an asshole, but also secretly worry I actually deserve it).  Peter could be Claire; popular, charming, probably more intelligent than they let on, emotionally distant and neglected.  Claudia’s probably the best fit for Allison, although you could maybe make Melissa work.  Finstock is totally Brian.  Could we shove Harris back in time to make him Dean Vernon?  It’s fic, you can totally do that sort of thing, right?  I mean, you’re already planning to completely redo the relationships, so who cares, right?  Who would be Carl, though?

Me:  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BRAIN, NOT NOW!!!  PLEASE JUST SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP ALREADY, I’M BEGGING YOU!!  NOW IS NOT THE TIME!  WE CAN THINK ABOUT THIS TOMORROW!

My brain:  …okay but seriously; Peter in a peach colored v-neck and overly snug khakis, Chris in that wrestling top, Noah in the trenchcoat and plaid…  Do you think Peter could do that lipstick trick with a chapstick?…

Me:  AAAAUUUUGGHH!!!

(Thankfully, sleep was at least eventually had.)

I’m glad you’re feeling better today, and hope that work was busy enough to pass the time quickly without being overwhelming, and blissfully free of excessive stupid people.  As someone else stuck in the world of heat, storms, and humidity, you have my sympathy.  Sending hugs and cooling vibes!

Alright so I finally got some time to sit down (or lie down technically) for this and go through it. I’m excited!

we know Peter played basketball, but did he or anyone else participate in any other extracurriculars or sports?  Student council?  Debate team?  Academic team?  French club?  Band/orchestra/choir?  Cross country/Track?  Ecology club?  Gay/Straight Alliance?  Martial arts?  Science club?  Softball?  Pagan Student Union (I think that might have been a college thing, but whatever)?  Art club?  Cheer/gymnastics?  Other things I’m forgetting right now?

Speaking of Peter and basketball- Did the gang ever go to his games?  Did he have supportive sports boyfriends; did they make cute signs or run to hug him if Beacon Hills won?  (Did we ever find out Peter’s jersey number?  I legit can’t remember.)  Did he bother to get a letterman jacket?  If so, did he give it to either of the boys?  (Or did he just get two?  I forget how/when you got patches, I wasn’t much for that sort of thing.  I think maybe I got one for softball at some point?)  I love him with the leather jacket, I just thought it was a cute image.  Did they get class rings (and exchange them)?

I think Chris was a cheerleader at some point. He wanted to join gymnastics like in his old school, but BH didn’t have a separate gymnastics team, so he joined the cheerleaders instead. His dancing skills are abysmal, but he makes up for it with gymnastic skills, strength, and agility.

Peter’s on the student council I like to think he would do well as the secretary but I also feel like he’d definitely try to run for president.

Noah’s on the Martial Arts team (couldn’t resist) and I like to think he’d participate in the  ROTC, as he served in the military in canon. (Obviously due to having children at 17, he never enlisted in this Au.) But the prepping definitely happened.

Chris would also join the swim team, which is a nod to Jackson joining later in Once Upon a Time.

And oh yeah, they went to every game. Chris as a cheerleader and Noah was up in the stands with signs for every single game. Claudia and Melissa often came with. Whenever BH won, Chris would run out and ‘cheer’ the star player, which was almost always Peter, and lift him up on his shoulders.

I don’t think there’s a canon answer for Peter’s Jersey Number. I’ve seen some places sell a shirt with 01 on it, but I kinda wanna say it’s 15. Due to his birthday being May 15 in this au. (Chris’s is July 22nd, Noah’s is September 14th.)

I feel like Peter got a class ring, maybe Noah, but Chris didn’t bother. It would just be one more thing his father could potentially take from him and he wouldn’t need something like that to remember the other two by. He already has the Triskelion necklace. As for the letterman jacket, I think Peter definitely got one, as did Noah. Chris once again skipped it, probably because he still felt like they might move at a moment's notice and he didn’t want to bother with all of these things.

Also, yearbooks.  Who all actually had their picture in the yearbook?  Did Peter shake his hair over his eyes to block the weird reflective thing (and would that work)?  Did they pop up in any group shots or candid pics?  I had a mental image of a shot from some sort of home game, maybe for football, or girl’s basketball, or something, of the group of them clustered on the bleachers; Peter between Chris and Noah, with an arm thrown around each’s shoulders, his smiling face pressed into one of them’s hair (I can’t decide which) partially to prevent any reflection, partially just because; Chris holding the hand Peter has wrapped around him with one hand and with the other stretched across to rest on Noah’s knee, smiling in the genuine yet vaguely stilted way of someone who’s not used to being this happy yet; Noah with one arm wrapped around Peter’s waist, his other hand resting on the one Chris has on his knee, staring at the camera with an amused grin that’s flirting right on the edge of a smirk; Claudia cuddled up to Noah’s side, both hands wrapped around the top his nearest arm, head leaning against his shoulder, grin clear and bright and open; Melissa next to her, arms enveloping Claudia in a loose hug, camera catching her mid-laugh.  (God, I really wish I had something approaching passable art skills at times like these.)  Maybe the kids find a copy of that yearbook in the school library, and make framed copies of the picture for Melissa and their dads for a gift.

Omg, my heart...

yes to all of this. Seriously <3

Do you have any plans to cover Prom?  Or any school dance (Homecoming, maybe?),

I do. In both stories. The canon school dance in Once Upon a Time. And the prequel will feature either a homecoming dance or prom. The potential for drama there is too good to pass up on.

Also, Peter giving fashion advice to the girls is way too funny because of course, he would. And to some of the guys as well. Seriously McCall... that’s what you’re going with?? Wear a fucking tux for Mel, jfc...

I feel really bad, but I actually never saw the Breakfast club, though it sounds like a really dope movie. And those visuals are very nice visuals ^^

I’m also writing all of these questions down for the prequel. XD This is awesome writing fuel <3

No but seriously, I don’t say this often enough, but you are awesome and I adore you <3 

Thanks for sticking with me and this au for so long already, I love talking to you.

[artificialqueens]

Take Me Back to the Start (Chapter 3) - Joley

(read on ao3)

After a couple of weeks, Brock and José found that working together was a second nature for them. They worked in sync, they listened and learned from each other, and while Brock was still unsteady about choreographing for a group, he felt that as a duo, they could actually come up with something that would win that qualifying position.

It was their fourth or fifth meeting - this one on their own time - and they were pretty sure they’d laid the groundwork for their routine. And they were pretty damn proud, if they did say so themselves. “Hey, what time is it?”

Brock reached around and grabbed his phone. “About a quarter to six. Why, you got somewhere to be?”

“Yeah, kinda.” He’d promised Kyle they would go see a movie that night, and he tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach that begged him to flake out. As José got up to leave, he turned back towards Brock with a soft, apologetic smile. He hesitated just a bit before speaking, almost as if he were willing away his nerves. “Listen, uh, my birthday’s coming up soon. I’m not goin’ wild or nothin’, but I’m having a party. And you know I can turn up at any party. Anyway, I want yo’ ass there.”

Of course, Brock knew exactly when his birthday was - he always felt especially lonely on that day. Early on, he used to reminisce on the birthdays they shared together, but lately it had become much easier to simply ignore it entirely. Either way, he brightened right up at the invitation. “Yeah, I’ll be there. Promise.”

José’s smile brightened. His heart was beating a little faster whether he liked it or not. “Yeah, you will,” he confirmed with a light laugh before they said their goodbyes. And he must have still had that smile plastered on his face when he reconvened with his boyfriend because he was getting an odd, borderline angry look.

“You enjoy your ‘practice,’ babe?” he asked with a suspicious raise in his brow.

“Why you gotta say it like that, huh?” His cheeks flushed red, which he could only hope didn’t come off as guilt. “It is practice. This shit’s important. You know that.”

Kyle rolled his eyes, “I also know you guys were a thing for years. And no, I don’t care that you were kids. Years are years and you can’t deny that.” Having known both boys for almost as long as they knew each other, he had witnessed tiny snippets of their relationship firsthand, leaving no room for denial.

José glared and grit his teeth. “The fuck are you accusing me of, huh? Tryna make me look bad to take the heat off yourself?”

The accusation earned him an annoyed scoff and a lack of eye contact. “Oh, cut the fucking temper tantrum, José. I’m just not gonna sit around while you have some Step Up fantasy with someone you’ve already had feelings for.”

“Don’t you think if I was tryna make that happen I woulda left yo two-timin’ ass already? You didn’t do shit to earn a second chance but beg and cry for it. And now you wanna point the fucking finger at me? Don’t even go there, boo.”

His rant must’ve made the impression he’d hoped for, as Kyle went silent and hung his head like a scolded child. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come at you like that, I do wanna have a good night with you.” He offered his hand out to the smaller male, waiting in anticipation to see if he’d still take it.

And he did, despite the fact that the nagging sense of doubt inside him was still there. But that was the first sincere sounding apology he’d ever gotten out of his boyfriend. That had to count for something, right? He would certainly keep telling himself as much if it meant he would be able to enjoy their date night.

——

“What do you mean you don’t know what to get him?” Courtney furrowed her brows, shaking her head incredulously. “I thought he used to be like, your entire world.”

Brock grimaced. “And we haven’t spoken in five years. I don’t know about you, but my tastes have changed since middle school. He could be a whole new person in that way, and I don’t wanna look like an idiot in front of him.”

Steve had his hands shoved into his pockets as they walked past store after store in the mall. “Why don’t you just get something like chocolates? Everyone loves chocolate, you can’t strike out on that,” he suggested.

But he waved that off, shaking his head. “No, no, that’s a cop-out. I’m not some distant relative that only comes around for the holidays. I want something that tells him that I care about him… but not like, overly so, you know?”

“Not really.”

“I just don’t want it to seem like I don’t give a fuck. Because I give several fucks. Constantly.”

Courtney placed her hand on his shoulder as they walked into a Macy’s. “I think it’s sweet that you want to show you care. But you shouldn’t overthink it so much. He’s probably just going to be happy that you’re there.”

Brock exhaled deeply as he looked around the store, then coughed a bit on the inhale as he was hit with an influx of various perfumes and colognes that filled the store. “Let’s just start looking for shiny things. I know he still likes shiny things.” He’d been able to ascertain that much from the time they’d spent together recently.

As it turned out, something adequately shiny and something within budget seemed to be incapable of existing within one object. It’d been at least fifteen minutes of wandering through the jewelry department, and the trio had started to become frustrated.

“What about a watch?” Courtney suggested. “My dad says that’s usually a go-to.”

“The only watches anyone under forty wears are Apple Watches,” Brock retorted, and it took another few minutes of circling around before something finally caught his eye. “What do you guys think of this?”

When the other two came up to see what he was looking at, they exchanged looks before both giving a thumbs-up in approval, and not a moment too soon.

——

Brock had been staring at himself in the mirror for a good couple of minutes. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was hoping to see - maybe a sudden burst of confidence that would assure him that he looked and felt ready to go.

Instead, he had to rely on his mother, who was losing her patience. “You’re going to be late, and not even fashionably late. Get a move on, I’ll be in the car.”

After another look in the mirror, he decided it was as good as it was going to get. He grabbed his jacket and the present and made his way out to the car, spending the entire ride completely silent. If he spoke, he’d just end up psyching himself out and making her turn back home.

“You’re going to have a great time, I’m sure of it. Call me when you’re done, but if you’re still out by midnight, take an Uber.”

Brock nodded in confirmation and gave his mom a quick hug before getting out and going into the restaurant. It was a nice place, the kind you would go to if you were treating yourself, but not somewhere that needed to be booked months in advance. The hostess was cheery as she guided him to the back room that was closed exclusively for the party, and there was no turning back from there.

There had to have been at least thirty or forty people in the room, talking and dancing amongst themselves, or eating and drinking off to the side. No one really acknowledged Brock’s presence, so he weaved his way through to set his gift down on the table along with the others, looking around in hopes of crossing paths with José one way or another.

And he did, eventually. José had managed to untangle himself from the group around him to make his way over to Brock. “You really showed up.”

“I promised I would.”

Despite the loud music and shouting teens, there was a sudden calmness between the two of them. The onslaught of indescribable noises faded into the background and for a moment it was like they were back at the roller skating rink, or any of the birthdays they’d shared together.

“I’m really happy you’re here.”

There seemed to be more that José wanted to say, but he was suddenly whisked away by a group of three girls that Brock recognized from the cheerleading team.

So, with a content smile, Brock turned to make his way towards the food when he bumped into someone blocking his path.

Kyle. Great.

“Can I help you?” He did his best to seem nonplussed, but he just couldn’t hide the irritation that seeped into his words. Even without an answer, he was trying to figure out how to maneuver around the jock.

“Oh, cut the shit.” Kyle shoved him back, effectively keeping him from slipping away. “He might be too stupid to catch onto your game, but I’m not. And I’m putting an end to it right now.”

Brock stood upright, puffing out his chest and narrowing his glare. If looks could kill, he’d be an effective assassin. “Don’t call him stupid,” he hissed. “Maybe if you treated him better, you wouldn’t be so paranoid.”

At this point, a few onlookers had gathered out of casual curiosity. Kyle had an aggressive reputation, after all. And although Brock didn’t have much of a reputation period, the fact that he held his own on a physical level was enough to pique some interest.

“You’re fucking delusional if you think he’s gonna run back to you just ‘cause you two used to play house,” he stepped closer, trying to intimidate him — which proved to be a bit difficult considering they were about the same height. He then tried to further the attempt by making a sharp, threatening motion towards him.

But Brock’s reflexes were fast — he pushed back with both hands to his chest, enough to send him stumbling back a couple of steps. Which, in retrospect, might have been the wrong move, as the next thing he knew, he had 185 pounds of football player lunging at him.

Now, Brock wasn’t a fighter, especially not a physical one. But his only other option was to lay down and let José’s boyfriend wail on him, and that simply wasn’t going to happen. So, he pushed back with all of his might, doing his best to hold his own while a crowd formed around them.

It was all a bit blurry — there was a loud ringing in his ear and his head was throbbing, and he was on the ground, down for the count. In the distance, though, he swore he heard a distinctly familiar voice shouting ‘what the fuck just happened?!’

José was out of breath when he caught up with the melee. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

Kyle grunted, also splayed out on the floor and not in much better condition. “Ugh, yeah, think I just–“

“Shut the fuck up, I ain’t talking to you!” The absolute fury in his tone was enough to make everyone in earshot take a step back. But he wasn’t paying the crowd any mind as he dropped to his knees and crawled over to Brock’s side.

“How bad you hurtin’?” His voice had completely switched to a soft, gentle one — it was jarring to everyone around them. “You need me to call an amberlance or something?”

Brock groaned as he managed to sit himself up. His face hurt like a bitch, but he wasn’t bleeding or more than a little swollen. He was dizzy, enough to not even realize how much he was relying on José to hold him up, but was slowly managing to come back to reality. “No, just ice. Advil, maybe.”

“You heard the man! Ice and Advil! What’s the fucking hold up?” José wasn’t shouting to anyone in particular — just whoever got the job done the fastest.

And, sure enough, Brock did find himself on a couch with ice on his head and Advil in his system not long after. How long, exactly, was unclear. His mind was still a little fuzzy on the details.

The one detail that was clear, however, was that José had never left his side, and that fact made Kyle livid. Even with depleted energy, he was huffing and shouting as his friends escorted him out. “Does he blow up like that often?” he asked once he was feeling a bit more himself.

José gestured vaguely. “He got a temper.”

“He’s never hit you, has he?”

“Never, though sometimes I’d take that over his shouting rants. Motherfucker makes me look like one of them silent French clowns.”

“A mime?”

Despite everything, they both laughed at that. “Yeah, a mime.”

There were a few beats of silence before Brock turned to face him. “Why’s a guy like you with such a creep like that?”

José tilted his head, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “A guy like me?”

“Well, yeah,” Brock shrugged. “Someone kind, funny, thoughtful…” He could have gone on for so much longer, but he didn’t want to come on too strong. That, and he was still a bit out of it and knew that if he started to ramble he wouldn’t stop. “What’s he got going for him other than an athletic scholarship?”

It wasn’t that José never questioned his relationship; it was just easier to not think about it. This was how it was supposed to go – the head cheerleader and the quarterback, it was the classic high school romance, wasn’t it?

“It wasn’t always like this. He was good to me, treated me like a queen, his ride or die. I don’t know what happened,” he sighed and looked down. “I know I look the fool for even thinkin’ bout defending him, but I can’t just feel nothing for him just like that.”

Brock pressed his lips into a fine line and stared straight ahead of him. “I don’t think anyone expects you to stay with him after this, so the choice is really yours.” He was sure people filmed the fight, that it was already making the rounds on social media. His phone was bound to blow up any minute now, and he had no idea how he would tackle that. He couldn’t even think about that – he was still hung up on José‘s take on his relationship with that bully.

“Anyway,” he continued after what felt like an hour of awkward silence. “I’m gonna text my mom, should still probably go get checked out by a doctor.”

José stood right up. “Let me go with you,” he insisted.

Brock shook his head. “You’re not wasting my birthday sitting in the ER to see if I have a contusion.”

“Well, I’m not doing that because I don’t know what a contusion is. But I am going to make sure you didn’t get all fucked up.” He chewed on his lip and bounced uncomfortably on his feet. “‘Sides, this is kinda my fault anyway. He prob’ly wouldn’t have gone after you if he didn’t think you was gonna try something with me. I-I told him the truth, but he ain’t hearing it.”

Brock sighed softly and gently placed his hand on the shorter male’s shoulder. “None of this is your fault. The guy’s a psychopath and you got caught in the cross-hairs.” He gave his shoulder a light squeeze. “And I know you, and how stubborn you are. So I’ll let my mom know you’re coming with us.”

Despite his insistence on joining, the drive to the hospital was still filled with tension. It was dead silent, to the point where even Joan had given up any attempt at small talk within the first five minutes. And their stay in the waiting room proved to only be more silent torture. The worst part, perhaps, was that all of that was only to find out that Brock had sustained nothing more than a minor concussion, along with some scrapes and bruises.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” José remarked as they made their way back the way they came.

Brock looked at him with a weak smile. “Could’ve been a lot worse, I know.” His gaze shifted straightforward. “Are you going to check on him?”

“I mean, I should, right?”

“No!” He stopped in his tracks, causing José to come to a screeching halt. That was it. That was what made the dam burst. “Jesus Christ, don’t you get it? This is essentially the same boy that pushed us around while shouting ‘faggots,’ the only difference is now you’re letting him fuck you!” He took a breath, the last thing he needed to do was cause a scene in the middle of the hospital.

José found himself in a bind. He knew Brock was right, he didn’t need to think twice about that. But he wasn’t about to stand and get lectured and leave with his head hung low. His pride simply wouldn’t allow for that. “I took care of myself then, you don’t need to keep talkin’ at me like I’m still a child.”

“Then maybe you should stop acting like one.”

——

“Dude,” Courtney stared at him blankly. “What the fuck?”

Brock groaned, sprawling out on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I was just… I was so angry. It wasn’t even about wanting to be with him, it was… How could that not be enough to break up with someone on the spot?”

“It sounds like it was a lot happening at once,” Steven chimed in. “Maybe he just needs to, I don’t know, process all of it.”

He sat up and furrowed his brows. “So, what are you saying? That I overreacted?”

Both of his friends shook their heads. “Honestly, I’m with you. I can’t fucking stand Kyle,” Courtney admitted. “But you said it yourself, José’s the most stubborn son of a bitch any of us have ever met. Maybe he’s in denial about it.”

“Give it a little time. He’ll come to his senses and be all yours before you know it.”

Brock ran his fingers over the bruise on his arm, still tender to the touch. “If that’s even what I still want by then.”

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 120: Storm in the Room

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s even you up there.”

There are certain episodes of Steven Universe that act as culminations to multiple stories from the past. Pseudo-finales like The Return and Earthlings rely on tons of backstory to show how far we’ve come in the series, and big showstoppers like Mr. Greg that do likewise for specific characters rather than the show as a whole. But as our saga continues, we’re blessed with stories that have the same vast reference pool as these payoff episodes without the finality; at this stage, so much has happened that “regular episodes” can also be riddled with nods to how small elements of Steven’s overall journey have shaped his universe. Storm in the Room isn’t about solving problems, but acknowledging them, and because the problem at hand involves the past catching up with the present, I love how much this episode looks back.

We start right as The New Crystal Gems ends, making this the seventh episode in a row documenting a very long day in Steven’s life (granted, one of them is him listening to what his friends were up to on Earth, but he’s still stuck in the Zoo uniform). Connie, glad to relinquish her guardian duties, gets nervous when Dr. Maheswaran doesn’t answer her phone, and Steven tries to relieve the tension in a way that seems insensitive at face value. His insistence on playing games when she’s clearly upset is awkward as hell, but he eventually acknowledges Connie’s feelings in a way that shows that in his own flawed way he was trying to help. The problem is that his version of help involves ignoring problems instead of facing them, and if this seems familiar, Connie completes the reference by practicing a calming breath from Mindful Education: she learned that episode’s lesson, but just like his mother, Steven’s instinct is to push his issues away.

Connie’s reunion with the good doctor evokes the ending of Nightmare Hospital, with Steven gazing from a distance at a mother and child embracing after a scare. But this time we don’t get the bittersweet imagery of his big smile slowly fading as he hugs Rose’s sword; he’s just alone, a background character to something he’s never experienced, all bitter and no sweet.

The tonal shift when Connie departs is stark and sudden. So far the episode has been full of Steven’s chattering, Aivi and Surasshu’s subtle score, and the ambient sounds of crashing waves as Steven says goodbye, but as soon as he shuts the door we’re met with crushing silence. It’s not hard to guess that his cheer has been forced, but it’s still brutal to see the act drop all at once before an extended and largely wordless routine of taking care of himself because nobody’s around to take care of him. We might not know it until A Single Pale Rose, but just like his approach to problem solving, his double life as an outwardly chipper hero that’s secretly suffering is another way he’s his mother’s son.

From the start of this quiet period, we see his discomfort with the portrait of Rose that’s graced his room for the entire series. The last time it’s been this prominent was Rose’s Scabbard, another eye-opening episode about her past, but now it haunts Steven as he makes his way through an empty home, magnified to show how small he’s made to feel by the cosmic scale of his burdens.

Steven briefly heads outside to avoid the picture staring at him through closed eyes, and we get a moment of pleasant rain that earns some murmured approval, but it morphs from the baptismal drizzle of The Answer and When It Rains to the harrowing downpour of Alone At Sea. Only when he’s back inside, with his dinner ruined and nowhere else to turn, does he truly speak. And for the first time in ages, since the era of An Indirect Kiss and Lion 3, he speaks to Rose.

It might be enhanced by the silence preceding it, but Zach Callison’s performance here is tremendous, even for him. Steven doesn’t even have the energy to be angry, he’s just cold and weary as he finally starts verbalizing his negative thoughts. They’re enough to make his mother’s door glow, and he knows as well as we do by now that Rose’s Room is a place of horror as well as wonder, but he steps inside anyway.

It’s so important that Steven admits right off the bat that none of what he's about to see is real, not just because it’s been a while since young viewers saw this place, but to preface the emotional illusion with his mental awareness of its fakery. He isn’t being fooled like he has in the past, but he’s so desperate for this connection that he’s willing to take questionable means to get it. When he asks to see his mom (rather than asking to see Rose Quartz), the clouds form into another image of her with her eyes closed, but unlike the portrait, she can open them right up.

Steven is already nervous when he enters the room, and gets even more flustered at the voice of his mother coming out of the simulacrum. But the illusion is so real that he composes himself, and despite his earlier nod to reality, he’s clearly drawn in no matter how much his head might tell him not to be.

There are tells, of course. Fake Rose Quartz Rose Ersatz is all about what Steven wants to do, lets him win at his video game with a patronizing “Hooray,” and gives a dramatic speech about the value of sports because the only reference point Steven has to her voice is the similar tone of her message from Lion 3. But beyond the appearance factor, there are tricky ways Faux Quartz seems more real than Connterfeit from Open Book: she’s inquisitive about the video game, she’s willing to pull pranks on her kid, and she provides a compelling rebuttal to Steven’s anger that suggests that maybe, just maybe, her room has a good enough grasp of the genuine article that this is more than a simple fake. After all, back in Rose’s Room, the most detailed deception was Greg, the person Steven encounters that Rose knew best.

But before we get into that conclusion and rebuttal, let’s look at the prank. There’s a certain mythological power to yanking a football away from a kicker: Charlie Brown isn’t that different from the likes of Tantalus or Sisyphus in this metaphor for futility, and while it’s obviously a funnier gag than trying to push a bolder up a hill, the inherent sadness of classic Peanuts is inextricable from the laughs. The glimmer of hope has to be built up every time, only to be dashed when Lucy betrays Charlie Brown’s trust, and it’s not hard to see the parallel with Steven trying again and again to understand the truth.

(While I loved my Peanuts growing up, my favorite iteration of the football gag is this spoken word reenactment starring Paget Brewster as Lucy, John Moe as Charlie Brown, and two of my comedy heroes, Paul F. Tompkins and “Weird Al” Yankovic, enjoying the show between them. It’s brilliant both as a tribute and a deconstruction of Charles Schulz.)

Given the setting, it’s inevitable that the situation turns dark. But despite the turmoil Steven endures, there’s a sense of catharsis as he unloads all his angst after spending so long bottling it up. As with Joy Ride and Steven vs. Amethyst, our hero reveals new insights into what’s going on in his head in a way that can’t be done right without saying it outright. His anger is sold by its specificity, and Callison again proves his chops in a damning monologue about all the ways Rose failed the expectations that have been built for him.

Out of the gate he connects her lie about bubbling Bismuth with the hypocrisy of her shattering Pink Diamond while punishing her friend for suggesting it. It’s a problem that was at the forefront of my concerns when the news of the shattering was first told, and while I felt vindicated in the show talking about it at last, it sucks that this didn’t lead to freeing Bismuth to continue the conversation. He’s just getting revved up, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get past how Bismuth was left high and dry for so long when I assess the show as a whole.

The real meat of the rant involves Steven isolating Rose’s biggest flaw. It’s visible from the second episode of the series, which revolves around Steven looking for a cannon that Rose could’ve told her friends about before passing: she has trouble telling the truth. Sometimes it’s negligence, as with the cannon, but often it’s deception. It was so ingrained that Pearl interpreted it as a sign of great leadership in Rose’s Scabbard, and Garnet’s obfuscating attitude before her character development kicks in could be read as an influence of the old boss’s style. So it’s about time that Steven out and calls her a liar.

I love that after so long worshiping Rose, Steven does a full swing in the opposite direction when forced to confront her imperfections. He’s not interested in seeing anything from her point of view, but assumes the worst possible intentions: we go from her causing harm (which is certain) to her intending to cause harm (which is probably not the case) to Steven worrying that he only exists as the ultimate escape option (which is definitely not the case). Even though Rose Quack counters this last point with calm grace, and Steven seems to accept that the tape was telling the truth, it’s hard to trust a character defined by mistruths. We’ll see in Lion 4 that even though he lets her off the hook at the end of the conversation, his doubts persist.

Regardless of the details, Steven’s fate is set. Whether or not she meant for it to happen, he did inherit Rose’s messes, and because his martyr complex has taken root, he’s all set to sacrifice himself at the end of the season. He took the big step in addressing how awful his situation is, which is better than letting it fester the way it’s been doing for sixteen episodes, but the step is perhaps too big. There’s a balance he has to reach for him to truly be happy, but it’ll be a while yet before he finds it, because he’s a fourteen-year-old kid.

After such a heavy episode, it makes sense that we end with some hope. Steven sorta oversells a sense of surprise that all four members of his immediate family have returned, but he’s been through a lot so I’ll cut him a break. We get pizza with the wrong topping, but as Greg predicted in Keystone Motel, Steven has learned to accept all pizza.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Storm in the Room is that it actually sticks. Mindful Education seems to be the start of a new outlook, and Steven does start looking for more answers after futzing around for a bit, but a more apparent shift takes place here that it’s gonna take a while to pull out of. He’s not trying to find the truth anymore, because the sheer scale of untruths surrounding Rose makes real answers seem impossible; plus, the last time he tried his dad was almost stolen forever. So for now, he’ll have to settle with sulking. Thank goodness the show makes it interesting to watch.

Future Vision!

Steven’s discomfort with Rose’s portrait never really goes away; after a couple of years, he decides to store it in Lion’s mane at the end of Rose Buds.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

A heavy episode, gorgeously paced and directed, but honestly it’s such a bummer that I don’t watch it that often, and the conclusion with Steven’s living family feels just a bit too cute for this to crack the top of my list.

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

I Know A Guy

Request: May I please request two fics? There are two songs I think would make great Dean fics: “Radio and the Rain” and “I Know A Guy,” both by Chris Young.  For “I Know A Guy,” maybe a fic where the reader and Dean dated when they were young and meet again later on when he’s on a case and get back together?

Pairing: Dean x reader

Word Count: 1,300ish

Warnings: none

“Thanks for the save back there,” said Dean, standing up and brushing himself off. You pulled down your hood and glanced back at him, offering a smile that made his whole face drop. “Y/N?”

“In the flesh,” you said, tucking your blade back in your pants. “S’been a while.”

“It’s been...I haven’t seen you since like two months after I grabbed Sammy from Stanford,” he said.

“Time flies when you’re hunting,” you said with a laugh. “That was just a quick drink in a bar too.”

“We were catching up for old time’s sake,” he said, looking a little sadder than you remembered. “Let me buy you one for taking out that ghoul for me.”

“One? You owe me at least two, Winchester.”

A few hours and drinks later, you saw Dean getting quiet, playing with the straw in his whiskey, watching a couple slowly dancing off in the corner of the bar. He was the same man but then again, he was so very different. Physically he’d grown into his body, put the muscle on his tall frame. He’d always looked good but now he seemed a bit more comfortable in his own skin.

His flirty nature and cockiness had changed a lot. It was there, a slow simmer but something was off about it. As he watched the couple dance, you knew it was that that he wanted, no more hookups and one night stands. He also looked too sad at the scene in front of him, like he knew it didn’t work for him.

“You dating anyone?” you asked, snapping Dean’s attention to you.

“No. No. You know how it goes with this gig. Relationships don’t really work,” he said.

“I dated another hunter once. Great guy. He needed his dad more than he ever needed me though,” you said.

“Yeah,” said Dean with a laugh. “He had a lot of issues. He’s got way more nowadays, trust me.”

“Did you ever work things out with your dad?” you asked.

“Yeah. Some. Some I forgave him for, some I just let go. I got tired of being angry,” said Dean.

“You seem gentler and harder all at the same time,” you said. Dean shrugged, playing with his drink. “You know, I almost asked you to take me back at that bar. But your dad was missing and Sam was going through Jess and I figured I’d let you be.”

“You said if we ever needed help to give you a call,” he said.

“Never got a call,” you said.

“Lost the number,” said Dean with a smile. “You didn’t really want me to call though.”

“Why not?” you asked.

“We dated when we were both basically kids, Y/N. I was 23, you were 22. It was only for three months and I broke it off the night after we had sex. I was pretty sure you never wanted to speak to me again,” he said.

“That was shitty but I always knew you did it to protect me. I got in close and you didn’t want me involved in the revenge hunting your family was so focused on and I forgave you for the way we left things. Why you never picked up a phone all this time later...that’s harder to swallow,” you said.

“If I wanted you back, what would I have to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know if it’s that simple Dean. We haven’t seen each other in years. I might be a completely different person now,” you said.

“I get it,” he said, no malice in his voice. “It was good catching up with you but I got a long drive home I should start on.”

“Take care of yourself,” you said.

“I’ll try.”

One Week Later

“Hi Sam,” you said, following him down a set of stairs into their bunker. “You said you need my blood for a spell since Dean is sick?”

“We worked a case and he basically is stuck in a nightmare and he keeps calling out for you but I can’t get in his head with dream root. I found a cure but I need something connected to the nightmare to break it and I’m hoping that’s you,” said Sam.

“S’no problem,” you said, following him over to where he’d been working. Ten minutes later you saw Dean groggily make his way into the library, Sam sitting him down in a chair and promising to go make something to eat for him. “How you feeling?”

“Crappy. Like I slept for three days but got no sleep,” he said, rubbing his hands against his face. “Thanks for helping out.”

“Need anything?” you asked.

“Could you stay tonight? Just in case,” he said. You gave him a nod but really weren't sure what he wanted from you. You made small chit chat with Sam over dinner, Dean out of it a few times. Sam sent him back to bed to rest and eventually showed you a spare room you could crash in for the night. You weren’t too tired for bed yet though and started to wander around, finding an open door with Dean sat on his bed, staring at pictures.

“Hey,” you said softly.

“Would you sit with me?” he asked quietly. You hummed and walked inside, sitting on the other side of the bed. You leaned back against the headboard, Dean handing over a picture to you. You had your own copy tucked away in your hunting journal. “We went to that football game that day.”

“You told me you loved me that day,” you said.

“You too,” he said, taking it back, putting in the pile of the few ones he had of his family. “I don’t get you back.”

“I don’t need a guy to try and save me from hunting, Dean,” you said.

“You never needed saving. I did,” he said.

“There’s a spark in you that’s…” you said.

“Gone. Dead,” he said.

“It’s hiding in some safe little place in there. It’s scared to come out and I don’t blame it. Life hasn’t been kind to it,” you said, taking his hand.

“Can I have one more chance? Please?” he asked. The room was dark but the emotion on his face was clear. This man was grasping at straws and looking for you to save him from what you weren’t sure yet but you knew what he was like back in the day. He probably had so much guilt swirling around inside him at this point he was drowning in it. “I missed you so many times.”

“I have a condition,” you said.

“Anything,” he said.

“This time you talk to me. About all the crap you used to keep from me,” you said. “I’m not doing this half assed again.”

“I can try. I can’t promise I’ll be good at it though,” he said.

“Trying is good enough for me,” you said. “I’ll be honest too, starting with the fact I wish I had said something last week and kept you from leaving the bar. I just didn’t know how to say that I’d missed you too.”

“Stay with me and we’ll figure out the rest. It was never hard, that part. It was the getting close part that scared me,” he said.

“What about now?” you asked.

“I think it scares me even more now. But it’s worth taking the chance,” he said, giving your hand a squeeze. “I hope.”

“It’s not as big of a risk as you might think. Trust me.”

[tommyparkerr]

Like a Date | Peter Parker x Reader

I GOT ANOTHER REQUEST DONE! I am so sorry for it taking so long! School has been a little hectic lately! But anyways, here you go! And to the others who requested something...I haven’t forgotten about you, I promise! I’m on it! And I’ll try to get it done as soon as possible!

Requested by @tomhollandholland: “Can I get a Peter Parker imagine where he asks the reader to prom but someone beat him to it. I don’t care if the ending is sad or happy. I LOVE YOU!!! ❣️💖💗💓”

Side Note: AWWW I LOVE YOU TOO!!!! This request was so darn cute thank you so much for sending it in! 💕

Words: 3.8k

Warnings: Insane amounts of fluff (In the words of @yoinksholland)

-Masterlist-

L I K E  A  D A T E :

“Dude, just ask her already!”

Peter shook his head at Ned, shutting his locker door and readjusting his book bag straps. “No, Ned. She’d never say yes.”

“And you know that...how?” Ned pointed out.

“Look at how last year went,” Peter said glumly.

“Last year you didn’t even ask! You just stood in front of her and sputtered until she smiled and walked off!”

“Yeah, exactly! I couldn’t get myself together enough to say hi, so what makes you think I’d be able to land her as my date?!”

“It’s our last year, Peter,” Ned said softer. “It’s your last chance.” Peter was going to retort, but at seeing the sincerity in his friend’s eyes he stopped. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he finished.

“She says no, I get humiliated, and I’m forever known as the nerd who tried to get Y/N Y/L/N to go with me to prom,” Peter quickly spewed off.

“Forever as in the next two months until we’re all done with this school and moving on to college?” Peter opened his mouth again but Ned beat him to it, rolling his eyes and adding on, “Well, some of us. Not all of us have Avenger-level jobs.”

Peter hated to admit that Ned had a point. He’d made it through almost four years of Flash’s harassment, so what was two months more with just a little extra taunting? And if Y/N did say yes, which was doubtful but technically plausible, then those two months would totally be worth it. Maybe they wouldn’t bully Peter at all if he got the insanely beautiful, wildly intelligent, unbelievably kind girl he’d had a crush on for two years to go to prom with him as his date. Surely it couldn’t be any worse than his last experience with Homecoming; he didn’t have an arch nemesis at the moment, but even if he did, he’d seen Y/N’s family—spoken with Y/N’s family—and knew they weren’t capable of any evil whatsoever.

“You really think I should?” Peter asked Ned, eyes hesitant but shining with hope.

“That’s only what I’ve been saying for the past year!” Ned exclaimed a little too loudly, surely attracting the attention of all the people around him. But what surprised Peter was that no one—not one single person—had looked their way. And, with a sinking heart, he soon found why.

“Never mind,” Peter mumbled, turning away from Ned to shut his locker. “Forget it.”

“What?” Ned said, confused at his friend’s sudden change of heart. What alarmed him even more was that the determined shine he’d just seen was completely gone now, replaced by disappointment and dejection. “Why?!”

“Because,” Peter said, pointing over Ned’s shoulder but making a point not to look, “I’m already too late.”

Peter walked away then, leaving Ned to spin around and take in the sight of no other than Flash Thompson holding some cheesy promposal sign and a bouquet of roses, kneeling in front of Y/N and asking her to be his date—for the second year in a row.

Not waiting for the rest of the inevitable scene to play out, Ned ran to catch up with Peter who was already out the front doors and headed to the nearest alleyway. Because Peter Parker was heartbroken and disheartened and everything in between, but Spider-Man...Spider-Man wasn’t.

His mentor’s words ran through his head, the dreaded but true: If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it, but he still couldn’t bring himself to connect his two identities tonight. No, he wasn’t Peter Parker tonight. Tonight he was Spider-Man. Tonight he was an Avenger.

Tonight he would ignore the shattered pieces of his heart.

XxX

Whispers were everywhere—on the streets, out in the schoolyard, in the hallways, in class, at lunch—everywhere. And no matter where Peter went, he couldn’t escape them.

“Did you see Flash’s promposal? So cute!”

“I wish Flash would ask me to prom!”

“Those roses were so beautiful! I wonder how much money he spent on them?”

Eventually Peter learned how to tune them out, but he was already too crushed for it to do any good. It only confirmed that he messed up, that he should’ve listened to Ned, manned up, and asked her sooner. But he didn’t, and the fact that it was Flash who’d beaten him to it made him both angry and miserable: angry because out of all the people to beat him asking Y/N to prom it just had to be Flash (again), and miserable because he knew he could never compete against someone like him. Flash had the looks, the money, the popularity, but Peter…well, Peter just...didn’t. And he’d been okay with that. He was Spider-Man—he was an Avenger. He had way more going for him than Flash ever would, but the problem was that no one but Ned, May, and the other Avengers knew that. He couldn’t boast, he couldn’t taunt, he couldn’t fight back, he couldn’t get the girl.

Because sure, he’d love to play football, but he couldn’t then so he shouldn’t now.

Ned had been trying to get Peter to talk all day, but it was to no avail. Peter didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to listen, and most certainly did not want the subjects of Y/N or prom to be brought up which would have been impossible if he opened his mouth or ears now. So Ned obediently trailed along in silence, letting his friend sulk in peace.

“Are we still on for movie night?” Ned spoke up when the final bell rang.

Peter nodded. “Sure.”

“Same time as usual?”

“Yeah.”

Ned awkwardly shuffled, unsure of what to say to get his friend out of his sulking mood. Eventually he asked whether or not Peter was headed home right away to which Peter shook his head and told him to go on without him, that he had to grab some materials from Mrs. Lowski’s room for the upcoming research project.

The older lady wasn’t in her room when Peter walked in, but he’d already talked to her about borrowing the supplies earlier in the day so he knew she wouldn’t mind. He was able to fit two of her books in his—may he add—brand new backpack, but he had to balance the rest of the supplies in his bare hands. It was difficult to keep the stack upright as it kept wobbling and was in danger of falling at any misstep, but he was managing.

That was until he ran blindly into something and fell to the floor, the pile of books, loose-leaf paper, and brightly colored pencils flying everywhere.

Peter’s blood ran hot and he looked up with fists clenched, expecting to see Flash sneering down at him, but his anger quickly turned into shock when he saw the familiar Y/H/C head of hair scrambling to gather everything that had dropped.

“I am so sorry, Peter! I didn’t think anybody else would be here so I wasn’t watching where I was going!”

Luckily she wasn’t looking at him, too distracted by the scattered materials to see his wide eyes, red face, and open mouth. Peter couldn’t believe that she was the one he’d bumped into, that Y/N was the one who’d knocked him to the ground.

His brain was panicking for a response as it tried to process everything she’d just said in his state of shock, and Peter just knew that it was going to be last year all over again—that he would sputter and stare until Y/N smiled and walked off—until it wasn’t.

It’s your last chance. What’s the worst that could happen?

Suddenly Peter’s eyes were narrowing back down, his face was cooling, his jaw was lifting, and a small, “It’s okay,” was spilling out of his mouth.

“No, it’s not! I should’ve been more aware of my surroundings! I’m such a clutz,” Y/N groaned, guiltily shifting to meet his stare. Peter was surprised when the sight of her beautiful Y/E/C eyes didn’t make him freeze up all over again, instead just making the corners of his lips turn up.

“Really, it-it’s okay,” he said. “I should’ve really figured out a better way to carry all this.”

Y/N stubbornly shook her head, turning away again to pick up another book. Peter helped, grabbing whatever paper he could and organizing it into a neat little stack.

“What do you have all this for anyway?” Y/N curiously asked.

“It-it’s for the math project,” Peter explained. “Mrs. Lowski said that I could-that I could borrow some stuff.”

“Right. I forgot about that,” she sheepishly said, ignoring his stutter. “The one with optional partners?”

“Y-yeah,” he affirmed.

“Are you working alone?” she frowned, taking note of his solitude. “I figured you and Ned would be together.”

Peter decided not to dwell on the fact that Y/N knew his best friend’s name, furthermore that she knew Ned was his best friend, because if he did he’d probably clam up and turn the situation right back to where it began and ended last year.

“He’s, uh, he’s not in the same period I am,” he explained, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck. “Ned’s fourth, I’m fifth.”

“Oh,” Y/N said, her eyebrows pulling together as if disappointed in herself for not remembering that fact. “Yeah, all of my friends are in fourth period too so I’m working alone as well.”

“Really?” Peter asked surprised. “I figured you’d have a bunch of people asking to be your partner.”

“I do,” she admitted. “But the problem is that none of them want me as a partner because they’d like to get to know me better; they want me because they could simply leave the project in my hands, never show up to work on it, and it would still be done. An effortless ‘A+’.”

A wild blush spread across Peter’s cheeks as he blurted, “I wouldn’t do that if I were your partner.”

Instead of screwing her face up in distaste and quickly fleeing the scene, Y/N smiled and said, “Well, in that case, would you like to be partners?”

Peter’s heart skipped a beat, and he took a moment to respond. “Really? I mean—yeah! Yeah, I’d love to.”

“Great!” she said as they stood up. “Now, can I help you carry any of this stuff? Seeing as you are kinda my partner now and everything.”

“Oh, no, it’s-it’s okay. I-I can get it,” Peter stuttered, carefully adjusting the tower of supplies.

“You can’t even see over the top of that!” Y/N laughed, and Peter swore he’d never heard anything more beautiful. “Here.”

Suddenly his books, the stack of paper, and the pencil box all came off his pile and went into Y/N’s arms. She slowly lowered the skyscraper to the ground and loaded whatever she could into the same book bag she’d had for years, leaving just one book each for her and Peter to carry.

“There. Now you can see where you’re walking without having to worry about balancing anything,” Y/N said as they exited the school. “When do you want to work on it?”

“Oh, um, any night really,” Peter answered. “I’m not too busy.”

Y/N eyed Peter suspiciously. “Don’t you have that Stark internship, though?”

Peter resisted the urge to ask her how she knew about that and instead focused on what he was going to say to get himself out of the hole he’d dug.

“I-well, Mr. Stark said that I’ve been working a lot lately, so he told me that I could take a day off when I-whenever I needed it.”

“Oh,” she quietly said. Silence, then, “That’s nice of him.”

“Y-yeah,” Peter agreed. “Real nice.”

“Would, um, would tonight work for you?” Y/N asked. Peter almost said no, but he quickly stopped himself; he and Ned could reschedule. Besides, when he told Ned why he was canceling he knew his friend would be nothing but supportive.

“Sure! Uh, yeah! Tonight’s-tonight’s good,” Peter said, his heart skipping another beat. “Your place or mine?”

“My mom usually works a couple hours after I get home from school, and she works from home so I don’t want to disturb her if I can help it. If it’s okay with you and your aunt, your place might be the better option,” she said, biting her lip after all the words left her mouth.

“Oh, it’s more than okay with me, and-and it’s always okay with May, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” Peter rushed on.

“Great.”

Y/N smiled, ducking her head back down. They fell into a silence, but instead of the awkward one Peter had expected, it was rather comfortable. There was something comforting about being the silence in the storm—something comforting about hearing the whirr of voices and the purr of engines, the honking of horns and the crying of babies, but doing nothing to contribute to it. The only noise they made were their steps on the cement walk, but even those were drowned out by the blur around them.

When they finally reached a point where things were a little more quiet, Peter decided to finally bring up the dreaded subject of prom. Not that he really wanted to, but he knew if he didn’t now then he would spend the entire night distracted and unable to get much work done; and if that happened, he was afraid Y/N would think Peter was just like the rest of their peers who asked to be her partner, and that was much, much worse than him not being able to stutter out a simple ‘Hi’.

“So, uh, you and Flash, huh?” Peter lamely started.

“What?” Y/N asked, being pulled from her thoughts.

“You and Flash,” Peter said, feeling the tips of his ears burn red. “You know—prom.”

“Oh,” she said, understanding. “What about it?”

“Well, um, I guess...are you, ya know, happy about it?”

“My friends all think I’m nuts, but I’m actually really happy. Maybe even a little more confident in myself,” Y/N said with a genuine smile, making Peter’s heart sink like a rock. He was about to say something to quickly end that particular conversation, but Y/N continued to speak. “Last year was an absolute mess. First he showed up half an hour late to pick me up, then he got the corsage all wrong and managed to blame it on me, took me to dinner at this fancy restaurant I told him I couldn’t afford when he mentioned dinner plans earlier on but made me pay for my half anyway, and to top things off he only danced with me once! Once!”

Peter blinked in shock at her outburst; Y/N was known to always have a cool head, so to see this side of her was shocking to him. Shocking...but relieving. Not that it made her any less perfect in Peter’s eyes, but witnessing her rant did make her a little more human—a little more approachable. But there was still something he was confused about.

“If it was such a mess last year, then why did you agree to go with him again?” Peter asked, feeling stupid. Surely there was something he was missing.

“Agree?” Y/N repeated with a confused scrunch of her brows. “What do you mean, why did I agree?”

Peter blushed; yes, there was definitely something he was missing. “Yesterday, in the hall after school. Flash asked you to go with him to prom.”

“He did…” she slowly confirmed. Then it dawned on her. “You didn’t watch, did you?”

“Uh-,” He anxiously chewed his tongue, trying to think up a reason as to why he would’ve left. “Uh, no, I didn’t. Internship stuff, you know. Had to go.”

She pursed her lips. “I told him no, Peter,” she softly said, paused, then went on to say, “I turned him down.”

He blinked once. Twice. Three times. “Why...why would you do that?”

“Did you not just hear me?” Y/N giggled, cupping a hand over her mouth.

“Well, I mean-yeah, I-I heard you, but I...yeah, okay,” Peter sputtered. It was all he could do after finding out Y/N Y/L/N was still date-less to the senior prom—after finding out he stood a chance.

Y/N giggled again, making Peter turn an even more embarrassing shade of maroon. “Besides,” she said a little more seriously when her laughs died down, “I was hoping someone else would ask me.”

“Oh,” Peter said, disappointment shining through his tone. Just like that, his hope had diminished once again; as quick as it had come, it had gone. He supposed that was good in a ‘rip the band-aid off’ sort of way, but the initial sting still hurt.

They were quiet again as they crossed the street onto Peter’s block, as they climbed up the stairs to the apartment, as Peter knocked on the door, as he waited for May to let them in. Just like he’d expected, his aunt brought Y/N in without a problem, only asking if she was staying long enough for dinner to which she politely declined. They had to break the silence when they got the project started, but even then the speaking was minimal, only relaying information they thought could be potentially useful in the books they’d each chosen to skim through.

At about a quarter ‘til six, Y/N announced that she had to go if she wanted to make it home for dinner like she’d told her mom she would. Peter insisted on walking her home and wouldn’t accept it any other way, so after a hurried goodbye to May with a promise to be back soon, they set off again, another silence between them. And this time it was awkward.

“Do you wanna work on it again tomorrow?” Y/N quietly asked, keeping her head down. “I mean, you don’t have to since it is the weekend and all, but I’m free if you are.”

“Uh-—yeah,” Peter stumbled. “Yeah, I’m free. My place again? Same time?”

“Sure,” she agreed, and the rest of the walk was finished in the same silence they started with. Y/N went to let herself in her apartment building when they got there, then stopped. She stood frozen for a few moments as if contemplating something, then turned and looked Peter in the eye as she said, “It’s you, Peter.”

He frowned in response, not knowing what she was referring to. “What’s me?”

“Who I was talking about earlier—the someone I was hoping would ask me to prom,” she answered quiet and cautious, as if she were afraid to hear the words exit her mouth. “It’s you.”

Now it was Peter’s turn to freeze; he didn’t move, didn't speak, and the only thing he could hear was the rapid beating of his heart. He blinked and breathed—well, at least he thought he was blinking and breathing—but that was it. He was too much in shock to believe what he’d heard come out of Y/N’s mouth was really true, that it was how she really felt. In fact, he was half-expecting Flash to jump out from behind the corner of the building waving a camera and taunting Peter for actually falling for it.

It wasn’t until Peter saw the hurt dance across Y/N’s face that he knew it wasn’t a prank or a nasty trick; plus, if Flash really was recording the whole thing, Peter knew him well enough to know he was too impatient to still be hiding at this point.

“But now I know I can flush that hope down the toilet,” Y/N hurriedly said with the unmistakable shine of tears in her eyes.  “Goodnight, Peter. We can just pretend this never happened, okay? Okay.”

Peter wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to pretend, that this was quite possibly the best thing that had ever happened to him, that he’d been so helplessly in love with her ever since she first stepped foot in Midtown—but he was drawing a complete blank. Y/N was not so subtly wiping her cheeks as she was desperately trying to unlock the door, and Peter couldn’t think of a single thing to say to make her realize he felt the same. The words just wouldn’t come.

So, he did the next best thing.

Grabbing the sleeve of her sweater, Peter tugged Y/N back, spun her around, and, before she could process what was happening, pressed his lips against hers. She was surprised but quickly caught on, placing a hand on each of Peter’s biceps to keep her rooted to the spot as she kissed him back. It was hurried and desperate and tasted a bit like the M&M's they’d snacked on earlier, but it was better than Peter could’ve ever imagined.

“I-I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” Peter tried to explain when the kiss was over, panicked at the thought of Y/N not particularly liking his spontaneity. “I-I hope that was okay. I guess I didn’t even think to ask you before I kissed you, and—oh no, I completely messed this up, didn’t I?” he groaned, shaking his head and tugging on his curls.

“Peter,” Y/N giggled, “it was perfect.”

“Really?” Peter asked, a bit skeptical.

She reached to plant another, softer kiss on his lips. “Really.”

Peter lopsidedly grinned and a curl fell messily out of its place and down his forehead, reminding Y/N of a young puppy. “I don’t have flowers or a sign or anything, but would you maybe like to, uh...would you like to go to prom with me? Like a-like a date?”

A smile broke out on Y/N’s face, and her teeth found her bottom lip in an effort to tone it down. “I’d love to.” A short pause, then, “Like a date.”

Peter turned a bright shade of red. “And maybe you’d...maybe you’d like to get coffee sometime…?”

“Like a date?” she teasingly asked.

Peter smiled, holding back an awkward laugh as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Well...yeah. Yeah, like a date.”

She grinned. “I’d love to.”

Two short kisses later and Y/N was back at her door again, this time with a rosy red on her cheeks instead of tears, but before she shut it she peered back out at Peter to wave a bashful goodbye. She watched out the window as he walked off, a triumphant grin on his face. She couldn’t stop her grin as she amusedly repeated, “Like a date,” to herself and left the window, already daydreaming of the boy with brown eyes, pink lips, and a heart of gold.

Permanent Tag: @lemirabitur @my-meant-to-find-blog @jongindeepbreath @tomspideyweb@farfromjustordinary @tomsstarlight @delicately-written@catstielanddeanthedog @tom-holland-and-textposts @spiderman-n@wtfholland @hollandandi @starsholland @holland-haven @beautiful-holland@spideycentral-1 @laurfangirl424 @yoinksholland@casuallytumblingdownthestairs @smexylemony

Let me know if you want to be added!💕

[amnachil]

The College Society Chapter 2 Part 1

I’m a little late but... here we are !

Chapter 2 begins ! It is shorter than chapter 1 (I counted 8 parts) but I hope you’ll like it anyway !

Liam Saturday November 25

"Dude, whatever is the problem, you should stay away. You already have enough to think about."

The freshman agreed, reassured by his bestfriend on the line. Yeah, he's right, Pete and Theo's relationship is none of my business. To be honest, he feared the team captain... He probably was an ogre who fed the poor blonde freshman as much as possible and would soon eat him. (It could be a little exaggerated but... Liam didn't want to be the next). (After all, he already noticed Theo's sharp teeth).

"I need to go." stated Nate. "Gwendoline's waiting for me."

"Still not your girl ?"

"Hell no. She call us 'friends with benefits' so I'm not complaining. Anyway, I'll call you later, see ya."

Liam hung the phone up with a smile. He loved these discussions with his bestfriend, and couldn't wait to see him again. As much as he can say, when they met during holidays, Nate was doing fine, even if Gwendoline refused to be his girlfriend. I wonder if she's as beautiful as he pretended. They agreed to say she was a fairy, but the young lad never saw a fairy before. (Yeah, they were in the same delirium). (That's probably why they were bestfriend). Lost in his mind about fairies and unicorns, the boy didn't realise the nurse called his name. He missed two times in a row his turn, too distracted. Eventually, once Prince Liam defeated the terrible Ogre named "have your heads in the clouds", he walked in the nurse's office. (Let's be honest, "Prince Liam" is a perfect title, isn't it ?).

"You asked for a check-up." declered the blonde apprentice. "Undress yourself please."

He obeyed distractedly and followed her instructions. Since he had met Raphaël one week ago, he had done two other stuffing session. Nothing too excessive, only enough to feel a bit bloated, but he wondered if his friend had poisoned him. I stayed clean for months, but he succeeded to make me an addict again. (Yeah, it probably wasn't his former captain fault at all but...). (The mutant could have a project for him). Anyway, the nurse, called Chelsea according to her badge, brought him back to reality when she assured :

"You are in a perfect shape. Maybe even one the best I ever saw. You can be proud of yourself. We'll do some measurements, but I'm not worrierd at all."

He thanked her, a bit disappointed (a 8yo boy would have loved to be poisoned by a mutant), and left the nursery after the control. To be honest, he wasn't worried about his condition. He wasn't even sure if stuffing his face was a bad thing anymore. The bad memories were fading with time.

The freshman joined Nick for their macroeconomics lesson at the amphitheater. His friend was staring at Rebecca and Emilio with an angry look. When Liam came closer, he mumbled :

"She totally forgot to come for the project yersterday. She doesn't care anymore."

"Everyone forgets things from time to time." reasoned the taller lad. "You forgot to close the fridge's door at noon for example."

"That was you."

"You got the point."

(Liam didn't even remember going to the fridge at noon). (But he wasn't stupid for all that). Nick headed towards the tier quite pissed, and once slumped, got his gameboy and started to play. His friend sat down next to him thoughtfully. Under his open jacket, the angry boy wore a singlet which show some curve at the belly level. As always, he ate too much. (Liam was well aware of his roommate's love for junkfood and between us, he felt a bit jealous sometimes). (But this is a secret).

"What are you staring at ?" asked Nick. "I'm just stuffed. I ate at the cafeteria."

He closed his jacket prudently, but in fact, Liam was already gone miles away. He had glanced Barbara in the first row, and got lost in his memories. I wonder what she's thinking... I really need to know what she heard about me... Yeah, I'll ask her as soon as the lesson is over.

Rebecca Tuesday November 28

In two weeks was taking place the first qualifiers for the National University's Championship in March. The team was competing against the universities around the state, and needless to say, they had to train. At least for the relay race. The black girl finished a lenght, quite satisfied, and headed towards Bob, who watched her from the side. Her coach seemed a bit odd since she pit herself against him. However, he accepted Emilio, which was the more important.

"You did good." he declared once she was closer. "Your team can't lose the qualifiers as long as you're running."

"Thanks."

She sat next to him, and watched the other who were still running. Her boyfriend was the fattest : with great splendor, he crossed the finishing lane a few minutes after her. Then came Chelsea, who had been appointed captain, but Rebecca caught sight of Nick and couldn't help but staring at him. He was going with Laura towards the pool, probably to prepare the field before this evening training. I need to put an end to our argument. He's too childish to come, but I'm not that proud. With shame, she remembered Liam had told her these exact same words several weeks ago. He might be simple and scatterbrained but sometimes he was right. Nevertheless, when she stood up, Bob stopped her and whispered :

"Think wisely champion. You need to stay far away from bad influences and this lad, despite not being fat, drunk or high, is a bad influence. He's a nerd without any desire to be better nor any will to work on himself. An average guy like him isn't worth your time. Don't waste your energy for nothing."

She nodded slowly. I know it's wrong but... She could not desobey Bob a second time. And after all, Nick wasn't that important, was he ?

Later this day, when the black girl reached the pool for the training, she glimpsed Pete, clumsily hidden in the bush next to the door. Since he left the team, his physical condition went worse and worse. Around a month ago, he could have been considered like a bit on the chubby side, as someone who indulged a little too much. It hadn't been really noticeable, except when he had been wearing his tight pullovers, and pants one size below. Nevertheless, over november, he had packed on the pounds pretty fast, especially this last week. Several time, she had saw him and another boy at the cafeteria, pigging like two ravenous beast. Consequently, the blonde freshman definitely became pretty tubby. His features had rounded and his arms and legs were softer. His belt dug into a flab roll of fat, and his ass grew larger. She noticed with revulsion his too tight shirt, compressing his stomach. With wider clothes, it would be barely conspicuous, but... When Rebecca came closer, he looked at her, and she forced herself to smile. He looked like a crazy psycho, his eyes twinkling with madness.

"Can I help ?" she asked.

According to Laura, Theo didn't like slackening within his troops, and fired Pete without a second thought. To be honest, I kinda approve it... He's stict, and that's good.

"Yeah, you probably can." answered the lad quietly. "I just wanna know if Theo's here. Can you tell me ?"

"Why ?"

The captain probably hadn't time for this craps. And I'm losing time too. As the freshman hesistated, she sighed, and just went in, ignoring his calls. Seriously, get back in shape and everything'll be fine.

Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey Thursday December 1 – Friday December 2

A bunch of swimmers passed in front of the junior laughing about a stupid joke. Four girls were cheering the black athlete on. This one was doing lenghts at a ridiculous pace, like a big carp. As for her, Laura was classifying the team's speedos with a young freshman who looked especially idiot. On a corner, the sophomore Matthew and his crew were ploting some craps. Last, but not least, a handsome brown lad was watching the roof at the water's edge. He seemed completely stupid. Swimmers... We all hear about them, but eventually, they're the most pathetic.

"Lookin' for a prey ?" whispered an unctuous voice in Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey's ear.

Slowly, the lad turned towards Theo, and nodded. This university counted almost ten thousands of students, but only a few deserved his respect. Luckily for him, the swimteam captain was one of them.

"I visited the football club, the hockey club, the basket club, and as many tedious clubs as possible, but everytime, I ended disappointed." he confessed. "Steven Callagan offered me the most beautiful chick he had in stock, but she was so backwards she didn't even understand my name."

The swimmer faked indignation.

"That's gross. God knows how much you love your name."

Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey outlined a smile.

"It's the only one which doesn't sound silly to my ears." he replied. "Anyway, tell me you have something better for me than a braindead whore ?"

"To be honest, my only eligible candidate might be a little simple-minded himself, but he has the kind of body you like. Well shaped, malleable if needed and... he's well-endowed."

"Don't dare tell me you are offering the dreamy freshman over there ? Is it the only one you failed to catch for yourself ?"

Theo smile grew larger. Ah, don't push it too much. There were only a few hunters among the crowd of students. The swimteam captain could be proud to be one of the best. The head of the University's grandson shrugged.

"Fine. I'll take it. I'm starting this week. Be ready to see me often."

"You know it's always a pleasure."

Liar.

New prey meant several changes in Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey's life. First of all, a little personnal enjoyment. The lad headed towards the cheerleading's permises, and went in. Natacha, his actual girlfriend, looked at him and a glint of joy lit up his eyes. She had beautiful hair, almost orange, which shined with the sun. However, I don't really understand why I chose her. She's blind like a mole. She needed to wore hideous glasses, and he almost vomited the first time he saw her.

"Hi Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey." she greeted softly. "What can I do for you ?"

Oh yeah, I remember now. She had this submissive tone he had been liking since the first listening. The captain of the cheerleader had promised Natacha was ready to do absolutely everything to please, and well, she was. I would almost jerk off just by listening to her voice, but sadly, she's definitely too ugly.

"I guess you'll be sad, but let's be honest, I don't care." he declared. "Our relationship is over. I'm committed to someones else."

The dumbass stared at him silently for a while. He could have left her right now, like he did with the last one, but he didn't want to miss the "realisation face" this time. Damn, her brain work even slower than I thought. Eventually, she understood what he meant, and frowned. Her eyes filled with tears, and she shivered, in shock.

"Why ?" she stammered. "What did I do wrong ?"

The lad nearly laugh. Damn, she's so devoted. She repeated the question, again and again, now crying. In other circumstances, he would have an erection, but she was way too awful. For real, Amber, the team captain, ripped him off. Once he finished to enjoy her tears, he left the premises, rather satisfied. It's not like if he was exclusively seelping with her anyway.

Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey headed towards the cafeteria in order to take his lunch. Usually, he would have eat with his grandfather, but he was too excited by the hunt to be polite. And for God's sake, his grandfather didn't need to suffer his uncouthness. Thus, the lad entered in the canteen, and served himself some food. He expected so much from his new prey. He sat next to Summer, the head of the student union, and started to eat. I wonder how long he will last... To be honest, the hunt was always too easy. For three years now, he had tried both men and women, and everytime, they had succumbed to his charms like mosquitos attracted by body heat. So pitiable. Teams captains and club chiefs had tried everything to find the rare gem, but never succeeded. Eventually, he had started to get bored, and went almost directly to the second part : submission and sex. A lot of sex. Of course, with Natacha-the-mole, he was used to put a blindfold. I wouldn't be able to cum while seeing her face. However, this time, it was Theo's gift. The swimmer was a selfish little asshole, and a real cocky stud. He obviously tried his luck with this freshman, and failed. It promise a real challenge for once.

"Looks like you have a new prey ?" asked the head of the student. "Who's the lucky person ?"

The junior realised he didn't even know his name. Not yet at least... He had a good feeling this time. It would be fun.

"Tell me Summer, shall I tell to my grandfather you're sleeping with two professors of his university ?"

She stared at him, terrified.

"No ! Please don't."

"So be nice, and shut the fuck up."

There were only a few hunters among the crowd of students. Damian Nicholas Smith-Carrey could be proud to be the best of their community, above them all.

To be continued

Liam thinks he had been poisoned but we all know the truth... Our cinnamon roll loves to be stuffed that’s all ;) How long will he deny the truth I wonder ?

Rebecca, our dear Rebecca, you’re narrow-minded ! But don’t worry guys, she has room to change.

Aaand he is here, Damian Nicholas Smith Carrey, our new main character ! He’ll be very important count on me for that ! I already like him :) Take care, since we have his pov now, there’ll be a lot of vulgarity, smut and some pining.

The weight gain stuff will be long to come, but don’t worry, I’m not forgetting it at all. Liam just has many things do deal with before he can freely enjoy himself as the glutton he truly is ;)

Also, I’m preparing a side story more kink-related for you all... It should be ready soon :)