#while joe is sitting on the other side of the fence thinking about how lucky cub is that he can't jump over the fence and kill him again | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years ago

Text

Eccentricity [Chapter 11: You Don’t Come Around No More]

A/N: I apologize profusely for the long wait. Thank you all so, so, so much for your support. Every single reblog, message, comment, emotional rant, and/or screech of despair makes my day, and I couldn’t do this without you. 💜 Only THREE more chapters left!!!

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “More To Life Than Baseball” by Petey.

Chapter Warnings: Language, angsttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

Word Count: 7.5k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

The Rain

I wish I felt empty.

I’m supposed to feel empty, right? I’m supposed to feel steeped in grey, oceanic misery; I’m supposed to dip in and out of depressive naps all day and sob delicately over creased photos and fading, wistful memories. I always envisioned heartbreak as a soft and inherently feminine sort of affliction: the hems of nightgowns and bathrobes sweeping along hardwood floors, Kleenex boxes and concave couch cushions, weepy phone calls to friends and aunts and mothers, Queen Victoria wearing black for the rest of her life after Prince Albert’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln sinking into dark and hushed obscurity. Women, hollowed out by despair, cross the history of the earth like lines of latitude.

I don’t feel empty at all. I don’t even feel sad. I feel razored by sharp, red, ceaseless anxiety. I am consumed by thoughts of what I did wrong, what I said that started the wheels of doubt spinning in his mind, if he had known how it would end from the start. I dream of white, clawed hands dragging me down through cold waves. I hear words scream to me as I toss at night in my suddenly too-spacious bed, words that now hit me like knuckles to the gut: Shhh, hey, it’s just me, don’t get up, as Joe slipped beneath the Arizonan blankets, wrapped an arm around my waist, kissed my collarbone as I tumbled back into sleep; I love you to death, as his Subaru idled in Charlie’s driveway; Baby Swan, listen to me, nothing is supposed to hurt, okay, so if anything hurts, ever, at all, you tell me and we stop, deal? as we stood in the doorway of our hotel room at the Four Seasons in Chicago. And now...and now...

And now everything fucking hurts.

It doesn’t make any sense; and yet it does. Look at him. Look at me.

The Polaroid photo from Homecoming was still taped to the top of my full-length mirror. I peeled it free like a layer of translucent, friable reptilian skin, tore it straight down the center, burned both halves over a brand new three-wicked, lemon-scented Bath And Body Works candle—a gift from Renee and Paul—and closed my eyes like a child casting a wish over her birthday cake like a spell. I wished for my memories to vanish with the photograph. I wished to get hit by a truck and wake up in the hospital with no recollection of the past two and a half months. I wanted the Lees to dissolve into distant, enigmatic mystery; I wanted to join the rest of Forks in believing that they were nothing more than bewildering and yet harmless freaks, barely worth noticing, one of those glitches of the matrix that were better off ignored like liminal seconds of déjà vu. I wished to carve out every part of myself that they had ever touched.

And Joe’s voice came rushing back from where we stood by that star-lit fountain outside the Church of Saint Lawrence, accompanied by falling raindrops and a crooked grin: I can make wishes come true.

The three tiny flames flickered in the breeze that sighed through my open window. The bright, citrusy scent of the candle reminded me of Lucy. I couldn’t fucking win. What else is new?

I turned back to the mirror. I flinched when my gaze snagged on my reflection: bloodshot-eyed, swollen-faced, utterly unbeautiful, restless like a caged animal. Look at him. Look at me.

I ripped the last memento off the mirror—Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!!—and watched the yellow square of paper catch fire, curl up around the edges, become unrecognizable, turn to ash. And I wished over and over again, like a poem, like a prayer: Let me forget, oh god please let me forget.

Charlie keeps asking if I’m okay. The answer, of course, is no; but I can’t tell him that. So I wear a serene smile like clip-on fangs, a cheap polyester cloak, crimson smudges of lipstick like trails of spilled blood down the side of my neck. Every day is Halloween for me now. I dress up as someone who isn’t haunted, who hasn’t become a ghost.

And when Charlie turns up the World Series or I’d Do Anything For Love on his geriatric, staticky kitchen radio—the same radio he’s had since my mother was the one joining him for daybreak coffee and Pop-Tarts—I choke back tears like dragonfire.

Missing In Action (Revisited)

Joe wasn’t here. Neither was Ben.

Lucy, Rami, and Scarlett were sipping cups of tea at the Lees’ usual table, their eyes downcast, their voices low and murmuring, their pristine lunches neglected. Lucy and Rami were dressed in matching charcoal grey turtleneck sweaters; Scarlett had come from Fencing Club and was wearing royal purple yoga pants and a black tank top, her duffle bag of gear on the floor by her sneakered feet. Her hair was in a long fishtail braid. Archer hadn’t mentioned her since Joe broke up with me. That either meant that it was going blissfully and he didn’t want to injure me further, or that Scarlett had ended things as well.

Since Joe broke up with me. That sounds so fucking pedestrian.

I stared at the three present Lees, almost leered, commanding them to see me, to acknowledge me, to admit that I had once meant something to them, that this hadn’t all been some transitory delusion to fill the cavernous void of losing my home, my life as I knew it in Arizona. They took no notice whatsoever.

Jess kicked me beneath the lunch table. My attention snapped back to her.

“Sorry, what?”

“You want to go shopping with me and Angela tonight?” Jessica’s hands were folded just beneath her chin, her voice gentle, her eyes large and sympathetic and watery. This was her version of being supportive. I appreciated it...in a perpetually tormented and preoccupied sort of way.

“No thanks.” I forked my cold, sauceless spaghetti listlessly. I’d forgotten to pack a lunch. I didn’t have an appetite anyway. I had deleted the GrubHub app from my iPhone and had no intention of using it ever again in my comparatively short and calamitous human life.

“You could come to temple this weekend,” Jessica pressed.

“Uh.” Mingling with a churchful of sociable, wholesome, marriage-obsessed adolescent Mormons sounded like the absolute last thing I’d want to spend my evening doing. “That’s a really generous offer, but I’ll pass.”

“Well you have to do something,” Angela said. “You can’t just sit in your bedroom alone all weekend and stare at the wall and wallow in self-pity.”

We’ll see about that. I turned to Jess. “How’s Vodka Boy from your Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class? Did he ever reappear? What’s his name again, Elmo? Ellington? El Chapo?”

“Ellsworth.” She frowned as she slurped her patron-drink-of-Mormons Sprite. “And no, he definitely failed out or overdosed or something, because he never came back.”

“Tragic,” I noted.

“But I’m pretty sure Mike’s coming over this weekend, so we’ll see if I can get some Netflix and chill action going.”

“Jess,” Angela chastised, widening her eyes and nodding to me subtly (but not quite subtly enough). No talking about getting lucky in front of the heartbroken single loser, that look said.

“I think I can be emotionally supportive without taking a goddamn vow of chastity, Angela!” Jessica hurled back.

“I gotta go.” I stood, threw on my backpack, discarded my nearly untouched lunch.

“You’ve barely eaten anything!” Angela protested. “You’ve barely eaten for a week!”

“I’ll live.” I picked my umbrella up off the slippery tile floor—peppered with muddy shoeprints and pearlescent drops of water fallen from coats and limp, sopping locks of hair—and headed out into the pouring rain. I hated the rain. I hated it. Maybe I had forgotten that for a while, but it all came hurtling back now like a hurricane, like a hand cracking across my face. I ached for the desert, for blatant and unapologetic heat, for palm trees and cacti and naked stars in the night sky. I had been researching marine biology graduate programs in the Southwest. There were good ones at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, Texas A&M, the University of Southern California, UCLA. I would miss Charlie and Archer—and maybe Jessica and Angela on occasion—and absolutely nothing else about Forks. At least, that’s what I promised myself.

This is a no-giving-a-fuck-about-Lee-boys zone, I thought morosely.

Ben was brooding at our table in Professor Belvin’s classroom. It was the first time he’d shown up to Chemistry since that day Joe met me on the beach at La Push, since the place I’d once occupied in his universe had closed like a wound. I took my seat beside Ben. The window was shut today, the downpour outside torrential. Ben recoiled, just enough for me to notice; he was wearing his oversized black hoodie and practicing his Welsh, his handwriting messy and unbalanced.

“You could have warned me,” I said.

Ben didn’t glance up from his notebook. “Would that have made it any easier?”

“No,” I realized in defeat. I guess it wouldn’t have. I pulled my own notebook, my favorite pen, and a can of Diet Coke out of my backpack.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said. “You really need to know that. It had nothing to do with you. And none of us are happy with the current situation. None of us.”

None of them. That included Joe. “Interestingly, that didn’t stop him from creating it.”

Ben was thoughtful, debating his next words. “We’re probably going to be moving soon.”

“What?” I startled; my turquoise blue pen dropped out of my grasp and rolled across the table. Ben snatched it up and returned it to me. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“And what, just redo this whole college thing?”

Ben shrugged. “We’ll probably start our junior years over again. Gwil will say there was some horrible family tragedy and we needed a few semesters off. I could use the extra time to figure out Calc anyway. Parametric equations make me want to kill myself.”

I just stared at him. It didn’t make any sense. “But...why would the whole family leave Forks? Because of me? One pathetic, aggrieved human? Do you all pack up and relocate every time Joe fucks and dumps someone? That must be exhausting.”

“It’s better for everyone if we get some distance. Put more space between our world and yours.”

“But...” I tried to imagine never seeing any of them again: no Mercy humming merrily as she tossed handfuls of homegrown carrots to the alpacas, no Dr. Lee dabbing away my blood with an ageless sort of patience, no Scarlett or Lucy or Rami, no brief glimpses of Joe as he avoided me in the campus library. It’s exactly what I wanted; and yet it wasn’t. It so, so, so, so wasn’t. It keeps getting worse. How is that possible? My voice was flimsy and quivering, absolutely pitiful. Disgustingly pitiful. “Who will be my lab partner?”

Ben peered over at me with wide, confused green eyes. And then—gingerly, awkwardly, like holding an acquaintance’s baby for the first time—he laid his hand over mine. “I’ll miss you too.”

Professor Belvin lectured about coordinate covalent bonds. I didn’t absorb a word. I conjugated Italian verbs with my turquoise blue pen, sketched disordered whirlpools of ink, tried not to think about whether this was my last-ever Chemistry class with Ben, whether it was my last-ever weekend sharing Forks with the Lees. Those rageful, frantic thoughts were back. What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why did he have to leave?

My nomadic gaze caught on a flier on the wall next to our misted window. I had assumed it was a leaflet for some club or protest or seasonal dance that I would definitely not attend, but it wasn’t. It was a missing poster.

Have you seen this student? the flier asked in bold, businesslike black font. It was urgent, but not quite despairing; not yet, anyway. I could hear a Dean of Student Affairs cajoling some affluent, strings-of-pearls-adorned mother over the phone: Yes ma’am, you have my full attention and I can assure you that we’re very concerned, but I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding...he’s probably gone backpacking or sailing with some friends and forgotten to call home. You know how college students can be. Beneath a large photo of a grinning blond kid—pink polo, flushed cheeks, clever crop job to nix a can of Natty Light clutched in one fist—was a name: Ellsworth Jonathan Griffin.

Ellsworth, I thought, my stomach plummeting. The guy from Jessica’s Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic class. He hadn’t failed out. He was missing. Missing like a 20/20 episode or a true crime podcast, missing like the pregnant stillness before a murder is confessed in some glaringly florescent-lit interrogation room, before a distended and bloodless corpse washes up on shore.

I turned to Ben. He noticed me eventually, crinkled his brow, shrugged in that way that seemed so petulant if you didn’t know him well enough to not be offended.

I pointed to the flier and raised my eyebrows. Ben twisted around in his chair to look. Then he sighed, scribbled a sentence in the corner of a piece of notebook paper, tore it free, and slid it across the table.

Ben’s note read, in atrocious penmanship: Are you seriously asking me if I ate that guy?

Maybe, I wrote back after a moment’s hesitation. Maybe that wasn’t exactly what I was asking; maybe I just wondered if he knew anything about it.

In either case, Ben’s reply was swift and resounding, and underlined three times: No.

Sorry, I wrote, abruptly remorseful. I am a jerk. And I added a frowny face for good measure. Ben chuckled when he saw it, shook his head, gave me a drawn little smirk. His words tiptoed around in my skull, leaving searing imprints like footprints in the sand. I’ll miss you too.

I have to forget about them. I drummed my turquoise blue pen against my notebook as Professor Belvin drew families of molecules on the whiteboard with squealing dry erase markers. I have to find a way to make myself forget.

Jessica was waiting for me in the hallway after class. It was part of her convince-Baby-Swan-not-to-jump-off-a-cliff initiative. “Hey.”

“Okay,” I told her with steely resolve. “I’m ready for you to set me up with one of those guys from your church or temple or whatever. I’m ready to be a nice wholesome wife, pop out like six kids, learn how to scrapbook, give up caffeine and horror movies, do the whole white picket fence thing. Sign me up.”

Jessica blinked at me. There were flecks of fallen mascara on her cheekbones like ashes. “What?”

“You’re a Mormon, right?”

“Girl, I’m not a Mormon,” Jessica said, puzzled. “I’m a witch.”

Lucille

I found Joe where he usually was these days: sprawled on the sofa, engulfed in the same blue Snuggie he’d been wearing for thirty-six uninterrupted hours, gazing catatonically at the big-screen tv. A 90 Day Fiancé marathon was on. Some rodentish guy named Colt was apologizing to his gorgeous, aspiring-green-card-holding Brazilian love interest for calling the cops on her during their last screaming match. He was also apologizing for the fact that they lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother. I didn’t need clairvoyance to see where their future was headed.

“Hey,” Ben said when he spotted me. He was sitting next to Joe and occasionally tried to shove pieces of popcorn into his mouth, which Joe accepted passively like coins plinked into a gumball machine. Ben had been his shadow for the past week; he was perhaps the best equipped of us to understand this degree of melancholy, of hopelessness.

“Ciao.” And then, to Joe: “How are you?”

“Terrible,” he replied, not tearing his eyes from the tv.

“I figured.” I squeezed between them on the couch, curled up next to Joe, rested my chin on his shoulder. He ignored me completely. I could hear Mercy tapping at her laptop keyboard out in the dining room; she was browsing through Zillow listings in Portland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Dear god, please don’t let us end up in fucking Cleveland. “Guess what.”

Joe stared at the tv for a long time before he answered. “What.”

“I had a vision of you. Just now, as I was doing laundry. Crystal clear and very scenic too, I might add.”

“Fascinating,” Joe said flatly.

“What happened in this vision?” Ben asked, far more invested, which I was thankful for.

“It was pretty far away, maybe a year from now. I saw you in the desert at night, under a full moon. There were cacti everywhere. The shadow of the Milky Way was threaded through the sky, and the stars were very bright. I could make out the constellations Pegasus and Cassiopeia. You were filling up a tiny glass bottle with dirt.”

“That’s remarkably helpful,” Joe said.

“It is, a little bit,” I insisted. “It means you get through this. That you have a future. I get nervous when I go too long without a vision of someone in the family. But now I know you’re going to be okay.”

The reflections of the feuding 90 Day Fiancé couples danced in his glassy eyes. “Being alive doesn’t mean you’re okay.”

“That’s dark,” Ben said. “Even I think that’s too dark.” He pushed a handful of popcorn into Joe’s mouth. “Are you gonna hunt at some point or what?”

“No.”

“You’re just gonna sit on this couch and waste away?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to bring you anything? Grizzly bear? Brown bear? Fuck it, I’ll get you a polar bear if that’s what you want. There’s probably some on the black market. Rami would know.”

“He what?” Mercy called from the kitchen. Her typing had stopped.

“Nothing, Mom!” I shot back.

“I don’t want anything,” Joe said. That was a lie, of course. We all knew what he wanted. Rami couldn’t stand to be around him; the thoughts were relentless, smothering.

I linked my arms around Joe’s neck, laid my head against his chest, sighed deeply and mournfully. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I know that doesn’t fix anything. But I’m so, so sorry. And I’ll help however I can. We all will.”

And I had accepted that Joe wasn’t going to respond at all when he finally whispered: “I just wish I could forget.”

Cato

My rolling suitcase snagged on the cobblestone driveway. The tiny spinning wheels bashed against concrete as I scaled the front steps. As the taxi pulled away, I dug around in my suit pocket for my keys, found them, unlocked the enormous front door, stepped inside the palace as my suitcase trolled along the marble floor.

“Cato’s back!” Charity announced as she breezed down the nearest staircase, beaming and embracing me. She was a lovely, innately warm woman from Pointe-Noire, Congo; she still wore the silver cross necklace her mother had once given her around her neck. “Did you have a nice flight? Wait, let me check.” She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to my cheek. I felt the memories rush up like blood to a flushed face: the bite of sipped champagne against my tongue, the thin semi-transparent newspaper pages gliding between my fingers, the husky voice of the bearded, bearish naval officer who sat in the seat beside me, the misted silhouette of Vladivostok as it rose up out of the Pacific Ocean. “Uneventful, but pleasant enough. You flew commercial?”

“The jets were otherwise occupied, apparently.” Charity could see things with the predictability and precision that Lucy so often lacked, but only the past. I pushed her hand away. “Was that really necessary?”

“You’re not mad,” Charity declared, confident, impish, helping me shed my suit jacket and draping it over her arm. “You’re never mad.”

She was very nearly correct. “Where are the rest of the kids?”

“In the kitchen. Go say hello, they’ve missed you dreadfully.”

“I know the feeling.” I kicked off my Berlutis, ran a palm over the wiry fur of the Irish Wolfhounds that appeared to greet me before they resumed padding watchfully around the palace, and went to the kitchen, my black socks slipping a bit on the marble floors.

I could hear their voices before I reached the door: laughter, teasing, complaints, requests. The scents of pancakes and cold butter and maple syrup were thick in the air. Charity was one of our four newest recruits, and they all still had that energetic lightness of being human, a youthful enthusiasm, a relative normalness. I spent quite a lot of time with them. It was my job—to help with the transition, to keep them happy, to facilitate the welding of their individual parts into the beastly machine that was the Draghi—but oftentimes it felt more like a reprieve. Some would stay close to me as they matured, others would grow in different directions, like ambitious vines climbing the skeleton of a garden trellis. I usually missed them when they ‘grew up,’ so to speak...although there were exceptions. I had never liked Liesl. I had always liked Ben. I opened the door.

“Ah, you are home!” Ksenia cried from where she stood over the stove, a spatula in her right hand, bouncing excitedly in place on her small bare feet.

“Hey!” Max and Austin called together. They were both sitting with their shoes propped up on the unglamorous kitchen table. There was a massive formal dining room that could accommodate up to twenty-five guests, but we rarely used it.

“Good morning,” I said, aware that I was smiling for the first time in days.

Max groaned as he scrolled through his Google search results on a burner phone. “What the fuck. My name is one of the top five dog names again. I think I’m gonna have to change it.”

I ruffled his long blond hair, stealing a piece of bacon from his plate. Max had grown up a trust fund kid in Perth, Australia. His mother was old money; his father was a professional surfer. “Your name is fine.”

“Really, Kato Kaelin? Is it really? How am I supposed to intimidate people when I have a fucking dog name?”

“So make them call you Maximilian,” offered Ksenia in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She’d only been with us for eight months, but her English was coming along swimmingly. She flipped a massive A-shaped pancake on the sizzling griddle. That one was for Austin.

“Seriously?” Max said. “That is just way too many syllables. They’ll be halfway down the block by the time I’m done introducing myself. ‘Hey, come back mate, I haven’t killed ya yet.’”

“At least you aren’t stuck with a basic-white-boy-circa-1992 name for all of eternity,” said Austin Tyler McInerny, originally of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He was chomping on a multicolored Fruit Roll-Up, which swung from his mouth like a lizard’s tongue. He’d been working at an ailing skatepark when Larkin found him. He still enjoyed showing off his kickflips, and kept insisting that he was going to teach me how to ollie. I didn’t have the faintest idea what an ollie was.

“Do you want a pancake, Cato?” Ksenia asked, passing Austin his plate and wiping her hands on her pink apron. Her black hair was tied in a high ponytail with a matching rose-colored ribbon. She looked so young. She was so young, actually. Nineteen. And she would be forever.

“No, thank you dear. I’m alright.”

“I like Alaric,” Max decided. “First king of the Visigoths. Alaric is a name fit for a vampire. Creepy, yet dignified. Or maybe Silas. Or Draco.”

Austin shook his head as he swirled a river of viscous maple syrup over his A-shaped pancake. “Definitely not Draco.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the Harry Potter connection is unfortunate. People will hear Draco and think of that obnoxious white-haired kid from the evil snake-people house or whatever.”

“Oh, right,” Max sighed. “Like I said. Alaric would work.”

“So many A-shaped pancakes!” Ksenia poured a K on the griddle for herself.

“It’s good for you,” Austin replied, pointing at her with his fork. “We’re practicing English.”

“Alaric Luther,” Max mused, scrolling through his phone. I didn’t think he’d find that on any list of trendy dog names. “Alaric Lothaire...Alaric Lucian...”

“I like your name, Max,” Larkin said from the doorway. None of us had heard him arrive. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a deep maroon suit and a ring on every finger, grinning hugely. He was exactly as I remembered him: stunning, captivating, terrifying. The kitchen fell quiet. I could smell Ksenia’s pancake beginning to burn.

At last Max chuckled nervously, pushing soggy pancake hunks around on his plate with his fork, averting his gaze. “Guess I’ll keep it then.”

“I thought I heard you come in,” Larkin told me.

“It’s always a pleasure to be home.”

He nodded out towards the hallway. “Come. Regale me with the stories of your travels.” Then his eyes flicked down to my socks, and he grimaced—slightly, briefly—before turning away. “And find your shoes.”

I followed him through the hallway, the living room, the grand front foyer with the crystal chandelier, into the elevator. Larkin did not speak, but he hummed as we ascended: House Of The Rising Sun.

It hadn’t always been like this. It was difficult for me to pick out the details of what had changed—the tone of his voice, the proportion of wonder and gratitude I associated with him versus fear, the way this palace (or the one in Reykjavik, or Juneau, or Ivalo, or Murmansk, or any of the others) felt when I stepped inside it—but I knew something had. It had begun before Ben left. It was much worse now. Older vampires, in my fairly learned opinion, are something like the stars. They mellow as they age, temper their character flaws, grow wise and patient like Nikolai or Honora or Gwilym Lee; or they rage until they burn away every last atom of humanity, until they destroy themselves and take entire solar systems down with them. Increasingly, I harbored fears that Larkin was a vampire of the latter variety. And we were all his planets.

In his study, Larkin dropped into the chair behind his desk, brought a hand to his forehead, surveyed a disarrayed flurry of papers: letters, notices, deeds and titles, meticulously managed accounts of finances and disciplinary actions. Larkin had a laptop and burner phone, of course, as we all did; but he liked to work in paper as much as possible. That’s how he’d done things for centuries, since long before the name of the inventor of the internet (or harnessed electricity, for that matter) was a whisper on his parents’ lips. The sky outside was clouded and seeping soft rain.

“Things have been busy?” I ventured.

He frowned, gesturing to the cluttered desk. “I’m in purgatory.”

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Can I help?��

“The Lancaster coven says they’ll need an extension for their dues. That’s the second year in a row, now it’s not just an exception, it’s a precedent. If you let one coven bend the rules, others will follow. So something will have to be done. Then there’s Stockholm. Anders’ coven has eaten a few too many locals—including the mayor’s favorite niece—and now the city is launching an investigation. Fucking idiots. They’ll probably all have to relocate. There’s some new territory dispute in Lima between Alejandro’s coven and a group of strangers that just came out of the Andes. We’ll have to make their acquaintance, of course. And as if all that weren’t enough, Rigel accidentally fed on a heroin addict and he’s currently detoxing in a cell in the basement. Would you check on him for me? I’m sure your presence will be a...” He waved his hand distractedly, almost dismissively, searching for the words. “A comfort to him.”

“Of course.”

“How are the Lees?”

“Fine. Typical. Gwil’s putting in a lot of hours at the hospital. Rami’s planning to get another law degree. Ben is, uh, adjusting. Slowly, very slowly. He’s not particularly content. But he hasn’t murdered anyone that I’m aware of.”

“How nice.” Now his eyes darted up to catch mine: focused, luminous, unreadable. “Nothing new at all?”

And instantly, I wanted to tell him everything. I forgot why I had ever planned to blunt the girl’s existence, to conceal her talent entirely; I felt her name rising in my throat. And then I remembered again. I’m doing this for Gwil, for Ben.

I pretended to ponder Larkin’s question, as if it was so difficult to remember, as if there was nothing left to sift through but a trunkful of mundane details from the trip like a grandfather’s tattered correspondence and tarnished war relics. That was something an average family might have squirreled away in their attic, I assumed; I’d never met my own grandfather, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had anything to leave me if I had. “Joe’s got some new girlfriend, but I don’t think it’s serious. I doubt she’ll be around long. You know how Joe is. Scarlett’s seeing someone too, actually. A Quileute kid.”

“Poor boy.” And Larkin grinned like a shark beneath burning eyes. “He’s in for a lifetime of disappointment. Who will ever be able to hold a candle to those memories?”

Larkin had a moderate preoccupation with Scarlett’s beauty, her...tenacity. Her lack of talent was a great disappointment to him, a somehow more egregious fault than Joe or Gwil or Mercy’s. What a shame, Larkin often said. And I believed I knew what came after in his mind, although never aloud: What a partner she could have been.

He was still grinning at me. His expression was hollow, vacuous. A shiver clawed down my spine. He was waiting for something. No, he was searching. I stared back, and I willed for that intangible, contagious harmony I carried around like a wedding ring to hit him like carbon monoxide or bromine: undetected and yet inexorable, knocking him off his path of inquisition.

What does he suspect? What does he already know?

“Anyway,” Larkin continued abruptly, turning his attention back to his paperwork. “I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about in Forks. Liesl will be back in the next few days, Rigel will be ready to work again, I’ll come up with a plan to handle all this and my mood will improve tremendously.”

And where has Liesl been? I almost asked; and then I didn’t. It was a good sign that she was coming home. I had looked for her once while I was in Forks. When I made up my mind to find someone—when that switch flipped in my skull or in the tangle of nerves of my solar plexus or wherever it lived—it wasn’t like poking around on Google Earth: zooming in here, scrolling over there. A goldish trail lit up on the floor, a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ Honora and I sometimes joked, and I followed it. And I had no way of knowing how far that trail might lead. A route heading dead east from the palace might stop in the next town over or continue across the Pacific Ocean; my search might last one day or a hundred. In Forks—as I perched in a soaring western hemlock tree in the forest outside the Lee residence on a cool October evening—Liesl’s trail had led north. North to Vancouver, to Victoria, to Dawson, to Alaska? Who the fuck knew. I was just relieved it hadn’t led to the tree next to mine.

“Well, as always, I’m happy to assist however I can,” I told Larkin. “Just let me know and I’ll be on the next flight out of Vladivostok.”

“I appreciate that, Cato.” He smiled, paternally this time. And then he spun his chair around to peer out the window into the episodic flares of lightning that illuminated great dark clouds like neurons in a celestial brain. I hate thunderstorms. They remind me of South Carolina. “But I think you’ve earned a rest.”

After checking in on Rigel—irritable, frenetic, pacing, and yet predictably pacified somewhat by my visit—I trotted up the main staircase to the second floor of the palace. I found her in our bedroom: sitting at her easel, a paintbrush held in one graceful hand, an image like a photograph on the canvas. I promptly pried off my Berlutis for the second time today and tossed them into the closet.

“Ciao, amore,” I said.

“Ciao!” Honora replied, beaming. Her curly brunette hair was pinned up and away from her face; wayward tendrils spiraled down to brush her bare shoulder blades, the back of her neck. “Just give me five minutes...I have to finish the shadow of this tree...”

There weren’t many in the Draghi who survived the transition from Nikolai’s leadership to Larkin’s, but Honora had. She was gentle to a fault, a hopeless warrior, turned into an immortal on her forty-fourth birthday when Rome was still an empire; and she was without any talents whatsoever, except for one which was useless in combat. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures adorned every palace the Draghi owned. Each year, Larkin would ask her to paint all of us together, incorporating any new faces, erasing the memories of those who had proven themselves unworthy. One such portrait, I knew, hung in Gwilym Lee’s home office.

I went to the woman I called my wife, laid my palms on her shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Take your time, love.”

“Everything’s alright?” Honora asked, looking hopefully up at me with large, wide-set jade eyes. No, not just hopefully. Trustingly.

“Everything’s alright,” I agreed, not knowing if I believed it.

Shadows And Spells

“He just...just...disappeared?!” Jessica sputtered, scandalized, gaping at me as she held a Styrofoam cup of spiked apple cider in her clasped hands.

We were on a quilt near the outskirts of the sea of beach towels and blankets that circled the bonfire. Women—wearing flowing dresses or robes or tunics or not very much at all—flounced around the flames banging tambourines and reciting chants that I didn’t know the words to. Some carried torches, beacons of heat and light in the darkness. Jessica was wearing a short black shirt, fishnet tights, and a black crop-top turtleneck sweater; I had opted for a bohemian blue dress patterned with stars, an old thrift shop find and the closest thing I owned to Wiccan festivities apparel. I had a cup of hot apple cider as well, enhanced with a generous splash of Captain Morgan, but hadn’t quite conjured up the rebelliousness to drink it yet.

I suddenly recalled Mercy bringing me an endless supply of virgin autumnal sangrias as Joe and I swam in the hot tub on the Lees’ back porch. As soon as you turn twenty-one, you can have the real thing. I frowned, shuddered, took a bitter and burning sip.

“Yeah,” I replied. “He told his roommate he was going to a frat party or something and never showed up and never made it back home either. The parents are blaming the university, the university is insisting he must be off with a girlfriend or on some hipster soul-searching nature adventure or whatever, it’s a mess.”

“Jesus,” she murmured. “What does your dad say?”

“He’s been helping the state police with the investigation. There’s really no evidence of anything. No witnesses, no footprints, no surveillance footage, no handy anonymous tips...”

“No body,” Jessica finished.

“That’s morbid.” I downed the rest of my cider. Was the world already beginning to list like a ship on choppy waves, or was that just my imagination? I guess it would be possible. I’d barely eaten all day.

“You were thinking it.”

“Well, one’s mind does tend to wander towards homicide under such circumstances.”

“It is the season of the dead.” She grinned wickedly, then took my empty cup. “He’s probably fine. I bet he wants to drop out to become a weed farmer and hasn’t worked up the guts to tell his parents yet. You want another?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. I’ll be right back.” Jess rose to balance on black boots with five-inch heels and staggered off to the foldable table piled high with cans and bottles and snacks. I was getting the impression that her Wiccanism was more of a novelty than a spiritual commitment.

The season of the dead. Now that’s VERY morbid.

There were some guys laughing, smoking home-rolled cigarettes, and toasting glasses of red wine on a nearby mandala blanket, bespectacled intellectual types who were probably getting PhDs in Anthropology or Medieval Studies at the University of Washington. One of them—curly-haired, pale-eyed, wearing a sweater vest and a cautious smile—raised his wine glass in my direction. I waved back without much enthusiasm.

“He’s cute, right?” Jessica asked, plopping back down onto our quilt and shoving a full cup of spiked cider into my grasp. She motioned for me to drink. I did. “That’s Sebastian, but he likes to be called Bash. He’s twenty-three and speaks fluent German.”

“Charming.”

“He’s very...uh...gifted. I’m not saying I know from personal experience, but I’ve heard it from a very reliable source. And his parents own a beach house in Monterey. You could go skinny-dipping.”

“In the ocean?” The world was definitely wobbling now. I was warm all over, numbed, fuzzy; it was becoming difficult to picture Joe’s face, to hear his voice. This was good. I kept drinking. “No thanks. Too many sharks. They have great whites down there.”

Jess tossed her long, loose hair and sighed impatiently. “I’m just saying that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. So you should pursue that.”

“I’ll totally consider it.” I lied. I would not consider it.

She smiled, sympathetically, fondly. “I can’t believe you thought I was a Mormon.”

“I can’t believe I’m out in the Washington wilderness commemorating the Gaelic festival of Samhain, but here we all are.”

Jess glanced over my shoulder. “Oh my god. He’s coming over here.”

“Ugh.” I craned my neck to see. Sebastian—whoops, my mistake, Bash—was approaching. “Please distract him. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Also I’m pretty sure I’m getting drunk and I don’t want to do anything humiliating, like sob uncontrollably about how much I miss my ex-boyfriend.”

“Don’t worry. I gotchu, Baby Swan.”

“Hey Jess,” Bash said, but he was looking at me. He pitched his cigarette off into the trees. What the fuck, who does that?

“Only you can prevent forest fires,” I told him in a woozy, mock-Smokey Bear voice.

“What?” he asked, baffled.

“Ignore her, she’s drunk,” Jess said quickly. “So what’s up? Come on, sit with me. Keep me toasty. Teach me some German...”

As they chatted and giggled and snuggled closer together—I’m starting to think that Jessica might have been her own reliable source—I studied the forest, watching to make sure the cigarette didn’t begin to smolder in the damp brush. The voices and crackling of the bonfire and sharp ringing of the tambourines faded into one muted, uniform drone. The trees reeled in the haze of the spiked cider; the cool wind moaned through them. And then, for only a second: a glimpse of something impossibly quick, something silvery and reedy and sunless.

What was that?

I blinked. It was gone. I blinked again, staring penetratingly. The swarming heat from the cider evaporated from my skin, my blood. There were goosebumps rising all over me.

What the hell was that?

I remembered how Calawah University students sometimes reacted to Ben: flinching, withdrawing, autonomically fearing him on some primal, evolutionary level. They knew he was a predator. They knew they were prey. It was chillingly similar to what I was feeling now.

I have to get out of here. I have to go home.

I shot to my feet. Oh, wrong move, that was too quick. I swayed, and Jessica reached up to steady me. “Are you—?!”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I gotta go home now.”

“What?! We just got here! Look, chill out, let me get you some vegan samosas or something—”

“No, seriously, I have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” Jessica conceded. “I’ll finish my drink and we’ll call an Uber, alright?”

“Really?” Bash asked, crestfallen.

“I’ll call an Uber,” I told Jess. “You stay, I’ll go.” Maybe she shouldn’t stay, I thought foggily, irrationally. Maybe it’s not safe.

“I can’t let you go alone. I got you drunk and now you’re a mess and if you end up murdered it would be my fault. There are unsolved mysteries going around, you know.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Girl, there’s no way I’m gonna—”

“I’ll call you as soon as I get in the Uber and I’ll stay on until I’m physically inside my house, okay?”

Jessica considered this. Bash leaned in to nibble her ear. I could smell the red wine and nicotine and animalistic lust sweating out of his pores. And unexpectedly, agonizingly: a biting flare, a muscle memory, Joe’s fingertips skimming down the small of my back and his scent like winter nights saturating the capillary beds of my lungs. Stop, stop, stop. “Okay,” Jess agreed at last.

“Awesome.” I was already opening the Uber app on my iPhone.

My driver was a Pacific Northwestern version of Santa Claus: wild grey beard, red flannel, L.L.Bean boots, rambling about his upcoming trip to hunt caribou in British Columbia. I honored my promise to Jessica and kept her on speakerphone for the duration of the twenty-minute drive. I rested my whirling head against the seat, let my eyes dip closed, watched the intermittent streetlights appear and disappear through my eyelids. I let myself into Charlie’s house when I arrived, wished Jessica goodnight (and reminded her not to get pregnant), and meandered clumsily into the kitchen for a glass of water and a cookie dough Pop-Tart to ward off a possible hangover. Charlie was snoring quietly on the living room couch. I watched him for a while, smiling and achingly grateful, before heading upstairs to my bedroom.

My window was wide open; that’s the first thing I noticed. I didn’t remember leaving it that way. I was always neglecting to lock the window, sure—I kept forgetting that there was no one to leave it unlocked for anymore—but I hadn’t left it open when I went to meet Jessica this evening. Icy night air flooded in. The stars were bright and furious in an uncommonly clear sky.

“You trying to give me pneumonia, old man?” I muttered, thinking of Charlie. I tossed my iPhone down onto my bed and crossed the room to close the window. And as it creaked and collided with the sill, I heard my closet door open behind me.

Someone’s here. Someone’s in this room with me.

I turned, very slowly; it felt like it took a lifetime. She was standing in the doorway of my closet, sinuous and white-haired, wearing black leather pants and stiletto heels and a long-sleeved lace blouse the color of blood, the color of her eyes. And she was harrowingly beautiful; not like Lucy or Mercy, not like Scarlett. She was beautiful like a prehistoric jawbone, like a serrated crescent moon, like a blade.

The owl. The goddamn albino owl.

I recognized her immediately. I heard Joe’s words as he introduced each vampire in the immense painting hanging in Dr. Lee’s upstairs office to me, though I desperately didn’t want to: She’s literally Satan, only blonder.

Her name tumbled from my trembling lips. “Liesl.”

“Wonderful, we can skip the introductions.” Her voice was like windchimes, cutting and brisk, with a hint of an Austrian accent like a shadow. Now she was at my bedside and picking up my phone, scrolling through it with lightning-quick and dexterous thumbs. “Hm. No texts from any of the Lees in the past week. So we don’t have to worry about them dropping by, I suppose. Joe got bored with you already, huh?”

“Evidently.” My own voice was brittle, anemic, weak; just like my ineffectual human body.

“That’s quick, even for him. How sad.” She sighed, tucking my iPhone into her red Chanel purse. “There’s a private jet waiting at the Forks Airport. Pack a bag. You have five minutes.”

“Please don’t hurt my dad,” I whispered, scalding tears brimming in my eyes.

“Of course not,” Liesl replied with a savage, saccharine smile. “Not yet, anyway.”

53 notes · View notes

mistymazzello · 5 years ago

Text

Cruel Summer | part viii

high school!joe mazzello x reader

summary-they used to be best friends, but now that y/n has a boyfriend (that everyone hates), joe and y/n can’t seem to come to terms with their feelings, but it’s no secret to anyone how they truly feel.

warnings-cussing and maybe a teeny bit of angst

word count-2.4k

taglist- @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @briarrose26 @mrsmazzello @im-an-adult-ish @iamthebeth @cobaincreates @almightygwil @timmvrphy @free-pool-trash @inlovewithaxlrose @findingillyria

a/n-this is the second to last chapter! there will be nine chapters in total and then an epilogue after that. so sad this is coming to an end and i’m so pleased at the feedback this is getting. i love all of you!!

based off of cruel summer by taylor swift

“Joe, how many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” Ben pleaded.

Joe ignored him as he walked into the dugout of the baseball field.

“Can we at least talk about it?” He asked.

Joe sighed as he sat down on the bench. “Talk about what? The fact that you’re literally in love with my girlfriend?”

“It’s not even like that!” Ben defended.

“What’s it like then?” Joe shouted.

They were lucky that they were the first ones there, the baseball field almost deserted except for a few members of the opposite team in their own dugout. “I just liked her, okay? I wasn’t going to do anything about it and I wasn’t even going to tell her, she just kind of figured it out herself and made me tell her.”

Joe shook his head. He had been completely blindsided by all of this. With not very much time to process it all, he had freaked out. Everyone was hoping all of this could be forgotten, but that’s kind of hard when this is the least forgettable thing to ever happen in the friend group.

That’s why Joe was hoping for some normalcy while playing baseball. Summer baseball had always been one of Joe’s favorite things about June. It wasn’t serious, there was no pressure, he could just relax and play the game that he loves.

Relax. Ha. That’s funny.

Nothing was relaxing about the tension in the air that was thicker than the heat of Summer. Ben and Joe sat squished together, thigh to thigh. Joe’s leg bounced, his arms crossed over his chest as they announced the line up.

Ben felt bad, he really did. He didn’t want Joe to be mad at him for the way he felt, but at this point, there was nothing he could do. He had already told you about his feelings, and it was mortifying to have to sit next to your boyfriend while you watched in the stands.

Joe and Ben could both see you, sitting between Gwil and Lucy. Joe’s heart skipped at the sight, while Ben’s sunk. They both thought you looked beautiful, your elbow on your knee with your chin in your hand.

“It’s not your fault, Y/N.” Gwilym stated.

“But it kind of is, I should have told Joe.”

“Yeah but Joe needs to understand why you didn’t.” Lucy piped up.

You sighed, crossing your legs.

“I promise it’ll work out. You’re just in an awkward position.” Gwilym said, rubbing his hand over your back. You nodded and took a deep breath.

A beat passed and Lucy giggled, causing the two of you to look at her. “How awkward do you think it is in the dug out right now?”

“Oh my god. It’s probably horrible.” You said, looking over at Ben and Joe, who were sitting next to each other. You all watched as the boys stood up and started clearing the dugout to go onto the field.

“Carter, look, your bitch is here.” Aaron Thompson said, leaning against the wall of the dugout and gesturing towards you.

“Yeah I saw her staring at me when I got here. God, she’s so fucking obsessed. Follows me everywhere.” Carter said.

Joe heard from across the bench and looked over at him. “Carter she has you blocked on everything.” he said very matter-of-factly.

Carter's head whipped in Joe’s direction. “The fuck do you know?” He sneered. Joe shook his head, holding back the whole ‘she left you for me’ insult.

“You know they’re dating, right?” Ben spoke up, tying his shoe on the bench and not even bothering to look up at Carter.

“Yeah. I heard.” Carter said. “She can’t be single for longer than a day, can she. She’s got abandonment issues.”

Joe could feel his face getting red with anger. “No, I don’t think that’s the case here.” He said. He knew very well that you had terrible abandonment issues, but the entire baseball team didn’t need to know that.

“So what’s the case then?” Carter asked.

“Carter, are you stupid? She left you for Joe.” Ben said, still sitting on the bench. Joe looked over at Ben with appreciation, his lips slightly upturned.

Carter turned to Ben and laughed out of embarrassment. “I bet she’s giving you the same treatment she gave me.” Carter said to Joe. At this point the entire baseball team was listening and the dugout was so silent, you could practically hear Joe’s pounding heartbeat, quickening by the second.

Joe laughed. “Right.” He said. He didn’t want to be in this situation anymore, and he knew that he was above Carter. He wasn’t bothered.

Carter smiled. “Does she still have that thing with hair-pulling? That was weird but you know, it was kinda hot.” A few boys laughed and some slapped their hands over their mouths. He was just trying to get a dig at Joe, and he knew it worked when he looked at him, completely speechless.

Joe’s vision went blurry with pure, unadulterated anger. Ben had seen that look in Joe’s eyes before. He recognized it from the night at the party before Joe hit Carter. He knew they were close to recreating exactly what happened that night. He stood up and grabbed Joe’s arm. “Don’t even bother. It’s not worth it.” He muttered to him.

Joe glanced at Ben. Ben shook his head and Joe sighed, giving into Ben and turning around. He stormed out, Ben following close behind.

The game started and it was pretty slow at first. Your team started in the outfield, Joe playing second base and Ben playing centerfield. You could tell within the first 5 minutes that Joe was having a bad day.

Joseph Mazzello had never had a bad day in baseball. Even the days that he would consider “bad” were good. He was the star player on the team and everyone knew it.

When the second inning came around, Joe was 2nd up to bat. He struck out within the first 3 pitches. He threw his bat on the ground and stormed into the dugout.

“Yikes.” Gwilym said.

“He’s never like that.” Lucy noted.

Watching him intently as he sat down on the bench, you sighed. You knew he was pissed off, you could tell by how he was over-swinging. As he scanned the crowd you locked eyes with him and gave him a sympathetic smile. He looked away.

You watched in agony as the game went on, Joe doing worse and worse. Joe knew he had never fucked up this bad before and he was humiliated to say the least. Every time he saw you in the crowd, or remembered you were there, he let it get under his skin. He was letting his personal life and personal problems seep into his baseball skills.

In the 5th inning, the bases were loaded. The sun was high in the sky and the field was quiet as the next player stepped up to bat. Joe was in the outfield, punching his hand into his glove, trying not to lose his mind.

A loud crack let everyone know that the ball had been hit. It flew across the field, straight in Joe’s direction. It bounced once on the ground and he caught it. He turned towards home and wound up, throwing the ball as hard as he could. The second he let go, he knew he had made a mistake. He felt something rip in his shoulder, pain overtaking his whole left half. Soon he was on the ground, holding his arm.

“Oh, fucking christ.” You breathed, standing up to run to the fence.

At first, not many players noticed. A few walked over to him, bending over to ask if he was okay.

Ben saw the commotion from all the way across the field as the umpire called a time-out. Ben ran across the diamond and weaved through players of both teams to kneel at Joe’s side.

“Holy shit, Joe, what happened.” He asked.

“My fucking shoulder.” Joe groaned through gritted teeth. The coach was crouched on the other side of him, all of them equally confused as to what to do.

You clung onto the fence, trying to figure out what was happening. “I think it’s his arm or something.” You said.

“Looks like his shoulder.” Gwilym added, standing next to you.

The coach lightly took Joe’s hand away from his arm. “Yeah, it’s dislocated.” Joe groaned again and sat up.

“We’ve got to get him out of here.” The coach said to Ben, the only other person really trying to help.

“Joe, can you stand up?” Ben asked. Joe nodded and, with a wince, stood up. You all sighed in relief as he slowly walked off of the field, Ben right by his side.

You, Gwil, and Lucy all ran to the dugout that Joe had sat down in. Gwilym was the only one to hesitate to go in, not knowing if you were allowed. You practically ran in to see Joe sitting on the bench, the coach crouched down in front of him.

Joe looked up and met your eyes, and the second he did, he started crying. “Oh my god, Joey, are you okay?” You asked, walking over to him.

He shook his head and continued to cry. “I fucked up my shoulder.” You moved to where the coach was previosuly, crouching down in front of him on the bench. You looked up at him and put your hand on his cheek to wipe his tears that were mixing with his black under-eye facepaint.

“We’re gonna call an ambulance.” The coach said.

“We don’t have to do that.” Joe spoke up.

“Do you want to drive 20 minutes to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder?” The coach asked. Joe shook his head sheepishly.

You pulled your phone out and went to his mom's contact. “You wanna talk to her or do you want me to?” You asked as it rang.

“You can tell her.” He sniffed.

“Hello?” His mom said.

Standing up, you scratched the back of your head. “Hey, Mrs. Mazzello. I’m at Joe’s baseball game right now, and don’t worry, he’s okay, but I think he dislocated his shoulder.” You said.

You paced in the dugout while you were talking to his mom and Ben sat down next to Joe. He put a hand on his back and rubbed it a few times. Despite the current situation, you were still a little bit shocked by the way they were getting along.

Sirens sounded in the distance as you hung up the phone. “She’s meeting us at the hospital.” You stated.

As Joe was being put into the ambulance, you all watched. None of you were allowed to go in the ambulance with him since you weren’t family and he wasn’t in critical condition.

“Okay, let’s follow the ambulance.” Gwil said, setting a hand on your shoulder.

“Yeah we should probably go now, then.” Ben said.

You turned to him. “You don’t want to stay and finish the game?” You asked.

“Are you crazy? I’m going to be with Joe.” He said. “Now, let’s go.”

The rest of the day felt like a blur. You remember having to leave the room when they were going to snap Joe’s shoulder back into place, not being able to stomach it. At the end of the day, right before he was going to leave, you and Joe were left alone in his hospital room. You sat in the small cushioned chair next to his bed and sighed.

“I guess this is what I get for playing like shit.” He laughed.

You shook your head, giggling. He reached out his hand, opening it for you to grab. You took his hand in yours and he smiled smally.

“I don’t know if this is the right time to do this, but I’m sorry for the way I reacted the other day.” He said.

Tightening your grip on his hand, you locked eyes with him. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you, I should’ve told you sooner.”

He sighed. “I know it’s not his fault or anything.”

You nodded. “I just feel so bad.”

It was silent for a moment, the cool hospital air almost making you shiver. “Just promise me you’re mine, okay?” He asked softly.

“I promise, Joe.” You said. He lifted your hand to his lips and kissed it.

Coincidentally, Ben entered the room. “Hey.” He said, standing in the doorway. “You good?”

Joe nodded. “As good as I can be after tearing 5 ligaments in my shoulder.”

He laughed. “Okay, well I’m gonna get going.”

You both said okay and he started to turn around, only paying a little attention to the fact you were holding hands.

“Thank you, Ben.” Joe said. Ben turned back to look at him. “I know you didn’t have to help me today or come here or anything, and I would understand why if you didn’t, but you did. So thanks for that.”

“Of course.” It was quiet again. “You’re my best friend.” He said, immediately holding his breath after saying it, scared of Joe’s response.

Joe nodded. “Yeah.”

Ben smiled and turned around, finally leaving the room. After kissing Joe goodbye multiple times, you left the hospital. When you got home, you flopped onto your bed and pulled out your phone, texting Joe (per his request) that you had made it home safe.

You opened Instagram and saw that Ben had posted. It was a picture of Joe in his hospital bed, Ben sitting in the chair beside him as they both gave the camera a thumbs up.

The caption read, “When life gives you lemons, you throw the lemons so hard that you dislocate your shoulder.”

You let out a small laugh at the caption and liked the post, then scrolled to the comments.

Joe commented, “I have the best friends ever. (I am typing this with one hand.)”

You couldn’t help but smile. Things were normal.

#joe mazzello #joe mazzello imagine #joe mazzello x reader #borhap boys x reader #borhap boys imagine #joe mazzello fanfic #joe mazzello headcanon #fan fiction #borhap cast #cruel summer #joe mazzello x y/n #joe mazzello one shot #joe mazzello x you

86 notes · View notes

cooperjones2020 · 8 years ago

Text

What’s Past is Prologue, What to Come

The first in a series of interrelated vignettes from Jughead Jones’s obsession with Betty Cooper. Can be read with Marked, part 1 and part 2.

Starts in childhood and will go partway through season 1. If I don’t get bored.

Dark!Jug, Creepy!Jug, Stalker!Jug, generally Sociopathic!Jug

TW for implied abuse, and, as always, gratuitous Shakespeare references

(ao3-->http://archiveofourown.org/works/11394858/chapters/25519734)

The day he met Betty was the day he discovered the monster in his chest.

He stared at her through the boughs of the shrub he’d been sitting in for the last five minutes.

Now that the sun had sunk below the eaves of the house, the underside of the boxwood hedge was dark and cool. The shiny leaves brushed against him, tickling his skin and snagging on his hat. He heard Archie, still counting, through the open bedroom window, but he knew the other boy wouldn’t find him here. Even then Jughead Jones knew Archie Andrews wasn’t very smart. For starters, he hadn’t actually meant that Archie should count to a hundred when he said count to a hundred. Archie kept messing up thirty-three and thirty-four and having to go back.

But that was okay. Archie always had new comic books and he didn’t mind sharing his legos. Plus, when they went over to the Andrews for dinner, there was always enough for seconds. Usually thirds too.

In his green and dappled fortress, Jughead hunkered down for a nice quiet wait. He had a dead frog in his pocket that he’d picked up on the walk over.

Then the gate opened and what he could only describe as a cartoon character come to life walked through. The little girl had curled blonde pigtails, a stiff pink dress, and saddle shoes with ruffled socks. She was the cleanest thing he’d ever seen. She actually glowed.

She also had a tupperware container.

Jughead debated whether or not to come out. On the one hand, Archie was almost done counting and if he came out, he’d almost certainly lose. On the other hand, if he didn’t come out he might not get to eat whatever was in the tupperware. He’d already eaten two hot dogs but he also knew he’d eaten the end of the cereal at their house that morning.

Then the back door opened and Archie ran out, his orange head almost as strong a beacon as her yellow one. “Betty, you came!”

“Of course I did, Archie! And look, my mom sent us brownies!”

Brownies. Okay he was coming out.

He emerged from his crouch in the hedge and the girl—Betty—looked startled.

“Wow, that was a good hiding place, Jug! I never would have found you.”

Jughead shrugged at Archie, but stayed in his place in the bush, his hand around the frog in his pocket.

“Come meet Betty! She’s my new neighbour and she has a sister and a cat and her parents are putting a swimming pool in their yard!”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Archie, I said that was a secret!”

“Jughead’s my best friend, Betty. Secrets don’t count with best friends.” Jughead didn’t think that was true. He was pretty sure there were things his dad hadn’t told Mr. Andrews. Like for instance, he was pretty sure Mr. Andrews didn’t know about the stuff his dad brought home from work. But this didn’t seem to be the moment to point it out.

She moved forward. “Hi Jughead, I’m Betty. Do you want a brownie?”

“Yes.” He stepped out of the shrub and reached up a hand to make sure his hat was on tightly.

He ate three brownies and drank a glass of milk while Archie and Betty argued about what they should play. Archie insisted girls couldn’t play with GI Joes. Betty insisted he was wrong. GI Joe looked exactly like Ken so if Archie wouldn’t share a GI Joe with her, she’d just go bring one of her Ken dolls over. And maybe she’d bring Barbie too.

Archie’s eyes widened in horror. Jughead watched their exchange. The sheer speed with which words left her mouth was disorienting. He didn’t think he’d ever heard either of his parents talk that fast. Or that much.

But he was also fascinated by her hands. She kept making fists and releasing them. They curled so tightly he knew they had to be hurting her. But she kept them by her sides. She never raised them like his father sometimes did late at night.

Archie called him back to the present. “Jug, tell her a Ken doll is not the same as a GI Joe. Ken is for girls.”

Jughead had never seen a Ken doll, but he also didn’t want Betty to leave. So he sided with Betty. Archie only looked hurt for a moment before shrugging and running upstairs for the basket of toys.

He didn’t understand why he couldn’t stop staring at her.

He watched her from his place to her left on the grass. For all Archie’s complaining, as soon as they’d started playing, he’d let Betty take charge of the game. She was currently collecting rocks from around her and ordering Archie to fetch extra food. The GI Joes were going on a stakeout in the desert.

She turned big green eyes on him and asked if he wanted to help her build their fort. He scooted a little bit closer.

When her mother called her home, a sharp Elizabeth traveling over the tall, white fence, Betty had looked scared. Immediately, Jughead had a vision of her mom as a fire-breathing dragon. Or as the evil stepmother wanting to lock Betty away in a tower. Something black and foreign clawed its way up his throat and for a moment his vision tunneled. The thing roared in his ears. Jughead had never wanted to play knight before, but he wanted to protect Betty Cooper. He wanted a sword to swing and charge and whack at her mother.

He watched her slip back through the gate and into her own yard. Through the slats of the fence, he could see her mother yelling, saying things like You knew what time you had to be home and where is my tupperware and how did you get grass stains on your dress. Betty stared at her shoes. Jughead wished again for a sword. He wished the thing inside him could come out. Archie kept playing with his GI Joe.

That night, when Archie fell asleep, Jughead rolled out of his sleeping bag and crept to the windowsill. Her curtains were open. A nightlight illuminated a tiny figure hunched on the bed. If he didn’t breathe, he could hear the strangled sound of her crying.

Without thinking, he pulled the head off the GI Joe that had been on the floor next to him.

He wanted to hit whoever made Betty cry. He wanted to hit Betty so she’d keep crying.

When his mother left for Toledo the first time, taking a black eye and a ten month-old Jellybean with her, when his father said he was too young to be left alone and dropped him off at the Andrews for a couple hours that turned into five days, Betty Cooper baked him cookies.

By then, he was used to her feeding him. The instances in which Betty appeared at the Andrews house unaccompanied by baked goods were few and far between. She seemed to use them to unlock the magic door that kept her imprisoned. She used them cut a path in the tangled forest that isolated her tower. She used them like an excuse so her mother would let her come over.

The times Archie wasn’t home, the times his parents would fight and Jughead would sneak his way past them or out his window, and would run and run and climb until he could fling himself into the treehouse in the corner of Archie’s yard, Betty’s blonde head would appear, quickly followed a small plastic bag or a tupperware container. When he was really lucky, she’d also bring a sandwich.

On the third day of Gladys and FP’s absence, when Jughead was beginning to wonder if he was an orphan, Betty had arrived.

Betty told him these cookies were special. Polly, older than them and so infinitely wise, had helped bake them. Archie was made to promise not to eat any. They had chocolate chips but no walnuts, which her mom normally put in. They had reese’s pieces. They had pretzels. And they were as big as two of his hands.

He ate four while Betty took off her coat.

As usual, he noted how clean she was. He wasn’t sure if pink was her favourite color — he’d never asked her — but she sure wore it a lot. Today, though, she had a white gauze bandage wrapped around her right forearm.

Polly the infinitely wise hadn’t been able to find the oven mitts. “So I used a dish towel, only it didn’t work as good. So when my hands got too hot — well I’m not sure cause it happened so fast — but I think I must have tried to balance the tray on my arm instead and then I burned myself.” Tears sprung to her eyes and her lower lip wobbled. “Juggie, it hurt.”

The black thing in his chest, the monster, shifted in its cage. He hugged Betty, because that’s what you were supposed to do. That’s what Mrs. Andrews had done the day before when Jughead had stubbed his toe and said a word that made Archie turn as red as his hair.

Betty sighed and turned her face into his neck.

“What if I sign it? We can color it and draw pictures.”

“It’s not a cast, Juggie.”

“So? It looks the same. And then when you look at it, you can remember how much fun coloring is instead of how much it hurt.” She looked at him the way baby Jellybean sometimes did.

Betty had been right, though. A gauze bandage was not the same as a cast. He’d picked a red marker and Betty had picked a pink one — maybe that really was her favorite color — but soon after they started, the colors began to bleed together, and Betty winced and then she started to cry for real. Something darker than the red marker reached up and swallowed the letters of their names.

Mrs. Andrews wasn’t mad. Mrs. Andrews was never mad. Jughead had never even heard her yell. She just took Betty into the bathroom and sat her on the toilet and pulled out a first aid kit.

Jughead hovered in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. His eyes bugged out when she unwrapped the bandage.

A red, shiny patch as big as a baseball covered the inside of Betty’s forearm. But in the middle of that, old, brown blood had crusted, and something yellow and oozing seeped around it. The red of the fresh blood flowed in and through the the raised yellow bits, making tracks like water between tiles. Tiny blisters ringed the whole mess. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

It was made up of brighter versions of the same colors Betty’s fists made when she clenched them.

But soon enough, Mary had it rewrapped, with a fresh layer of neosporin under the bandage. Betty smiled at him through the droplets that clung to her eyelashes.

“It’s probably time for you to go home now, Betty. We don’t want your mom to be mad.”

“Okay,” said Betty in a small voice. She hugged Jughead and ran out.

When Betty left, Jughead retreated to the treehouse with his cookies. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews had been making Archie leave him alone unless he said he wanted company. He didn’t.

He’d discovered he could see into Betty’s room. She’d forgotten her Nancy Drew binoculars the week before and he could use them to see through her window to the mirror above her dresser. And then he could usually see her sitting on her bed. It wasn’t as good as the view from Archie’s window, but it was good enough.

Jughead took the red and yellow markers out of his pocket. He used his right arm to draw on his left.

When it had been nine days, FP returned. He smelled and his beard had grown in and Jughead was pretty sure he was wearing the same clothes. Mr. Andrews had given him a look, a look Jughead had noticed passing between the two men increasingly often, but ultimately, Jughead had been bundled into his coat and sent back to the trailer park.

He went inside but his dad stopped to sit on the steps. When Jughead came back to check on him a while later, he had fallen asleep. Jughead sidled around to his front. There was a small, familiar lump in FP’s front shirt pocket. He reached in and removed the lump gingerly, then snuck back inside with it clutched in his hand. Curled up in his bed with his back to the door, he cupped a palm around the lighter and flicked the flame on and off.

#bughead fanfiction #bughead #riverdale fanfiction #dark!jughead #jughead jones #mine #betty cooper #riverdale #wpip #the beast within

27 notes · View notes

fashiontrendin-blog · 7 years ago

Text

The Barbershop Guide To Getting The Faux Hawk Hairstyle

http://fashion-trendin.com/the-barbershop-guide-to-getting-the-faux-hawk-hairstyle/

The Barbershop Guide To Getting The Faux Hawk Hairstyle

We’re going to assume that you’ve heard of the mohawk, that pointy, green thing that lived on the heads of punk rockers and which has also been co-opted in other forms by men as diverse as Travis Bickle, Mr T and David Beckham. It’s a strong look. You may not, however, be as confident identifying its second cousin twice restyled, the faux hawk.

Much more practical and a lot less threatening, the faux hawk will let you pass through door frames unobstructed and won’t be a barrier at job interviews, either. For visual cues, think late 2000s Beckham, pre-shorn Zayn Malik and current ageing-like-a-fine-wine-era Brad Pitt – they’ve all donned the faux hawk and done a good job of it.

You can too – because we’ve got all the tips and tricks that you need to make this punk-inspired style rock your world.

What Is A Faux Hawk?

Where a mohawk involves a shaved head with a dramatic strip of hair left in the middle, the faux hawk takes some of the same rules and applies them in a way that doesn’t leave OAPs tutting. More versatile and accessible, it won’t obliterate your chances of pulling outside of a spit and sawdust pub, either.

“The defining features of a faux hawk are a short back and sides but with longer than usual hair on the top – not as much length as a pompadour, but long enough that the hair can be spiked up or formed into a point,” says Jason Collier, a celebrity hair stylist who has tended to the heads of Justin Timberlake and Damian Lewis.

“It’s much more of a crowd-pleaser, less dramatic than a mohawk and has a sleek, urban sophistication to it that makes it a far more wearable look.”

In layman’s barbershop terms, the faux hawk is longer than a short back and sides with a bit of spike action going on in the middle, usually at the front of the head. How dramatic the peak is up to you. It’s a cut that’s not painfully boring but nor will it leave a trail of raised eyebrows in its wake.

How To Choose The Right Faux Hawk

There are two crucial things that you need to consider if you’re thinking of getting the faux hawk installed on your head: your face shape and your lifestyle.

Those with a longer face (rectangular, triangular) will need to make sure that their faux hawk doesn’t have too much length on top and the sides aren’t taken too tight, as this will add even more length. Those with a wider face shape (heart, round) should follow the opposite advice by adding height on top and going shorter on the sides. Like with any cut, you need to think about what will provide balance to your mug, apart from oval-faced guys – who can pretty much do whatever the hell they want.

Here’s another head’s up: those artfully tousled faux hawks seen on the crowns of celebs are not the result of rolling from bed to red carpet. The longer your faux hawk is on top, the more effort it will take to get it into the right position and stay there. If you’re time short, go short.

How To Style A Faux Hawk

Making this punk spin-off stand to attention doesn’t call for slathering your head with industrial-strength hair gel, Collier says. The key to getting it right lies in preparation as well as product.

“To style the faux hawk, keep it simple,” Collier says. “If you have fine or straight hair, you can leave your hair to dry as normal before styling, but if you have thicker or wavy hair, you might want to blast it dry and brush it through to get a sleeker finish.”

Apply product with caution. Too heavy handed and you’ll be rocking rock-hard spikes instead of a strategically messed up mound. “A strong-hold hair wax is the best product to use on this kind of style; use an amount the size of a pea and warm it between your palms, spread it across your hands and get some heat into it.”

Because the faux hawk is designed to be quick and messy, you won’t need a lot of mirror time or styling tools to get it right. “Simply use your fingers to push the lengths of the hair up, and tweak it until you’re happy with how the area looks,” says Collier. “You could go completely spiky and separate each area, but the best finish for this kind of look is all pulled up, a little messy, nothing too ‘done’.”

The Faded Faux Hawk

Like the mohawk in its purest form, the faded faux hawk bares a bit of your head but does it in a way that won’t make little old ladies cross the street as you approach. It’s still clutching onto just the right amount of the original style’s punk swagger.

Ria Smallwood for The Bluebeards Revenge

How To Get It

“To achieve a faded faux hawk, ask your barber to set the clippers on 0, then the hair should be faded into a grade 2, using 0.5 to 2 grades,” says hair stylist Joseph Lanzante, who runs one of the UK’s best barbering training academies.

“On top, hair should be of uniform length but layered. To finish this style use paste to define and separate the hair.”

The Short Faux Hawk

This short haircut is ideal for men who want to give peak punk as wide a berth as possible. It’s got plenty of textural interest up top, but you can still wear it to your office without getting a passive-aggressive email from Sarah in HR.

How To Get It

“A clipper fade will achieve a sharp uniform look for a short faux hawk: the shorter the fade the greater the overall contrast will be,” says Josh Thorner, a stylist at London’s Manifesto Barbers. Agree with your barber on the maximum length through the middle, asking for a round shape to be cut into the connect at each side.

“Length on top should be graduated from the back to the front, retaining length at the fringe. To style, a surf spray will help create lots of texture – apply to your hair when damp and dry with a diffuser hair dryer, then finish off with clay for a matte look.”

The Shaggy Faux Hawk

For men whose hair is most often in a natural state of disarray, the shaggy faux hawk is a cut which will smarten things up while obediently co-operating with the hair’s natural curls or waves. Big on texture up top with not much going on at the sides, the shaggy faux hawk walks the line between groomed and woke-up-like-this with some swagger.

How To Get It

“Ideally the the top should be at least 4 inches long and shaved at the sides: I would recommend having the top chopped into to add texture as this will help the peak to not fall flat,” says Joe Mills, hair stylist and owner of Joe and Co.

“To style, use some sea salt spray and apply to damp, clean hair. Then use a hair dryer to blast it dry, using your fingers to lift the front to create a messy quiff then finish with a matte paste.”

The Medium Faux Hawk

Usually, we’d call bad form on commitment-phobes. However, in the case of those who want to play it safe with a medium-length hairstyle, we’ll allow it because fence sitting rarely looks this good. Less extreme than a long or faded faux hawk but edgier than a short faux hawk, it’s one of those perfectly well-rounded styles that can also become something else without much drama.

How To Get It

“To get a medium faux hawk hairstyle requires using hair clippers at the back and sides from grade 3 up to a grade 4,” says Lanzante. “On the crown of the head hair should be layered in uniform length and defined and textured using a medium shine paste.”

The Long Faux Hawk

Ideal for guys with a lot of time on their hands and a perfect oval face (aka lucky gits) the long faux hawk is the pretty much the follicular antithesis to the buzz cut: it’s dramatic, loud and requires maintenance to stay in peak condition.

How To Get It

“For a long faux hawk ask for a clipper fade at the back and sides of your head, but one which isn’t too short,” says Thorner. “Ask your barber to keep the top disconnected from the sides; the top should be cut from the back to front and the back should be the shortest point. Ask for lots of length at the fringe.

“Texturise when dry with a styling cream. Apply this to damp hair then use a hair dryer to blow dry it upwards and backwards. If you need added hold, once dry, blast the hair with cold air, which will seal the cuticle to help keep it upright.” Finish with a hairspray if you find your style still doesn’t last the day.

The Undercut Faux Hawk

The undercut faux hawk is a feat of follicular management, so you’ll need to very happy in your barber’s company if you opt for this style. Long and messed up on the top and faded (but disconnected) at the sides, it’s another high-drama, high-maintenance style.

How To Get It

“This is a slightly shorter version of the shaggy faux hawk, but the underlying idea is the same. The top is still disconnected but with less length throughout,” says Mills. “However, you do still need enough length so the finished style doesn’t look like an accident.

“I’d recommend a minimum of a couple of inches. The whole concept of this haircut is that it has a slightly DIY feel about it. Use a texture spray on clean damp hair (five pumps throughout) and then blast dry with a hair-dryer. Finish with a grooming cream and add some texture with your fingers.”

0 notes