#who is like 13 years old and not a HUGE fan but is familiar with star wars

[stars-n-spice]

Younger brother came up with the best thing-

Was out shopping with my siblings and while in stores my younger brother started a "Point out things the Bad Batch would wear" type of game. Forgot what he pointed to but he was like, "This is something Hunter would wear and then go to a gay club." Then he found something else and went, "And this is what Crosshair would wear to a gay club."

Then I was like, "Oh, imagine Hunter goes to a gay club, spots Crosshair across the room and is like, 'What are YOU doing here, huh?? 🤨🤨'"

My brother thought that was hilarious and agreed. He also found a bunch of stuff that he said Hunter would wear, "If he had a sense of style" and I added on that Crosshair probably has killer fashion sense and is habitually ashamed about his brother's lack of a fashion sense because it's a "disappointment to the queer community."

Anyways, happy pride!

[weeeeeekly]

quarter life crisis – ot5 tomorrow x together x afab!reader

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blurb !!! Reincarnation can bring soulmates together despite their time apart. Being a huge fan of TOMORROW X TOGETHER helped you get through the struggles of entering early adulthood. You would thank them personally if you ever could but when you possibly get the chance it’s more than what you could ever hope for.

info !!! txt are still idols, reincarnation au, soulmates au, polyamory, throuple²… they’ll all eventually date each other, mc has mental health struggles, universe assigned lactose intolerance, team no kids, glasses wearer, lives in the middle of fuck nowhere but still a city (just go with it), pet names used are “our love” and princess, & not edited.

wc: 2.4k

WARNINGS !!! NSFW, MDNI, 18+, extremely self-indulgent, soft yandere!txt, mentions of mental health & self-harm (nothing graphic) for entire series

author’s note !!! this is fiction!!! this is made up!!! i do not condone breaking in, stalking, and other ulterior motives to get close to someone you are romantically interested in.

why are there not more ot5!txt x fem/afab or gender-neutral reader… mandatory note that i do not think txt act like this in real life. I also cannot come up with a blurb for the life of me, so please peep the info tags.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Yeonjun remembers living out the rest of his life with them, after you passed. They had to continue on with life. There was no choice.

Every time they passed by the part of the shore where they saw you last; they feel a wave of pain. A bunch of stones set in the form of a circle with a makeshift headstone in the center with your name. There was a proper headstone for you in the village cemetery, but they had personally made this one.

He doesn’t want to think about what happened after – all of them being put into arranged marriages, leaving the village, having kids, growing old, and finally, dying.

All while missing you.

When Yeonjun woke up again, the light was so bright, he was sure he made it to heaven. He couldn’t wait to see his soulmates again, but when he opened his mouth, the sound of a baby cry came out.

Yeonjun was a baby again. He looked around the room to see a set of 2 new faces who he surmised were his parents in this life.

He couldn’t believe this.

The next couple of years in his childhood flew by as Yeonjun went through the usual stages of growing up; walking, talking, singing and dancing for the first time. He did whatever it took to get back on track to finding his soulmates. And the best way to find them was to become famous.

He was enrolled in an academy to practice singing and dancing on his 14th birthday. And before his 15th birthday, Yeonjun stumbled upon an ad for auditioning for an unknown entertainment company that had just put out a boy group not that long ago. He felt the pull.

By the grace of the universe, Yeonjun passed and was accepted by the company to become a trainee under the label to then, hopefully, debut in his own group.

And because the universe bestowed its kindness, after Yeonjun had been there for a year, a new group of trainees came in and he met none other than Taehyun. When Yeonjun saw his side profile that looked somewhat familiar but ran into his arms to weep when he turned around. The staff and other trainees just thought that they were friends that were excited they were together, but it was deeper than that.

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Taehyun had gone through a similar childhood – being born and immediately understanding that things were different, deciding that being famous would bring everyone back to him, and having lessons at academies for song and dance.

It definitely paid off when he felt Yeonjun’s warm embrace 13 years later in his new life. The pair hugged each other to express how lonely they felt apart that not even all the words in the Korean language could properly explain.

Taehyun had dreamt of this moment ever since the day one of the head villagers told them at a meeting that since Yeonjun became of age at 25 without a spouse that he would have an arranged marriage along with the rest of them.

The dreaded memory of Yeonjun, months later, standing next to another girl with her holding his hand in a vice grip. The desperate look in his eyes with an unspoken plea upon his lips as a group of villagers with weapons in their hands threaten Yeonjun to stay still and obey.

Taehyun watching in agony, holding hands with Soobin and Kai as Beomgyu hugs him from behind, as the ship sails off to Yeonjun’s doom. He prays to mother nature to step in and do something so Yeonjun can swim back to them before it’s too late. But, just as before, fate is cruel and mother nature is not able to spare any favors.

She took you away just like Yeonjun was.

His feeling of bitterness washes away from Yeonjun’s warmth as Taehyun comes back to reality. His soulmate is back with him.

They’re going to find the others.

They’re going to find you.

The following year is spent with the duo practicing their craft. Sure, they were friendly to their fellow trainees, but they only needed each other.

They did thank their lucky stars when Soobin walked in after the next round of new trainees.

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Soobin had been lucky this time around.

He didn’t necessarily have that much experience in dancing or singing, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity when he stumbled upon a post for auditions while on his laptop. He filmed his audition in his room and sent it to the email address listed.

The waiting period was terrible.

He checked his email every single day after sending it in. He needed to get in. The pull told him so.

Thankfully, he received a call 2 months later when he was sulking on his way to school. The staff member told him that he was accepted into the company.

Later that week, he walked into the company to find his soulmates, Yeonjun and Taehyun, smiling at him.

Soobin was in awe of how talented his boyfriends were in this life. Yeonjun was consistently ranked as #1 for every monthly evaluation even before he got there. Taehyun had picked up on songwriting and started making his own lyrics for songs for evaluations.

Of course, they were talented, but in seafood related matters. In such a short amount of time, they were able to learn new skills and excel in them. Soobin couldn’t be prouder.

The trio trained together as much as possible to secure their spot in debuting. They needed to. There was no guarantee they would be 6 again without it.

Every spare second was spent practicing.

Free time between lunch and vocal lessons? Perfect time to go over the choreography. Not able to fall asleep at night? Time to get up and perfect facial expressions in the bathroom mirror. Walking to school? Humming the song until they get sick of it.

It paid off when Taehyun overheard two of the dressers whispering how their company boy group was gaining traction overseas in the West and approval for a junior group was confirmed.

Money started trickling in as small things started changing at first better recording equipment, better quality outfits, more staff, and evenly moving to a bigger building.

The move had been good for everyone. They were able to live in a bigger dorm and use an empty practice room to rehearse, especially when some trainees left, and new ones joined.

Soobin had been stretching as Yeonjun and Taehyun were rehearsing the beginning choreography when the door opened to reveal Kai.

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Kai had been blessed into another loving family. A loving family that was also musically talented. They were able to help him craft his singing and dancing abilities to audition for the company where 3 of his soulmates were.

Kai had been extra nervous the day of as every company before had rejected him. He knew it was part of his journey to them, but it stung.

He was relieved when he passed his final audition for this small company that was slowly growing. He was even more relieved when he walked down the hallway following the faint sound of voices only to find his leader and hyungs.

The rest of the practice was thrown out the window as the 4 raced to the dorm for some much needed cuddle time.

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Their dreams of becoming famous were becoming reachable as the next boy group was in the works. All they knew was it would be 6 to 8 members with an opposite concept as their senior group.

Evaluations were more serious than ever as standing out was a must. A handful of trainees had been dismissed last week for failing their evals. It made Soobin nervous.

The 16-almost-17-year-old boy started biting his nails again. A nasty habit you used to scold him for, but he couldn’t help it. The stakes were high. The pressure was on.

It was almost suffocating.

Almost like the exact feeling of helplessness he felt when he sank to knees in the cold ocean water as he screamed for you to come back.

He sighed as he walked out of the practice room, out of the building, and down to the corner convenience store.

As he perused the selection of cup ramen, contemplating if he should ignore his diet to eat his feelings for even if it’s just a minute, Soobin felt someone staring a hole into his back. He turned around to see no one, not even from across the store.

Weird. He thought to himself.

It was after he paid for his ramen when he bumped into another person while exiting.

“Sorry.” Soobin mumbled as he kept his eyes trained on his hands. The nerves eating him alive. A shame since he should be the one eating some delicious ramen.

The mysterious figure spoke up, “You look like shit.”

Soobin looked up from his hands to see Beomgyu’s smirking face. He dropped the cup as he brought the boy into a hug.

“I knew you would find us.”

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The 5 had a year before debut.

It wasn’t magic that they had been selected to form the new team. It was divine intervention – each of them wanting to become idols, auditioning for a small company, passing, and eventually debuting.

They wouldn’t be so sure of their future if they didn’t have memories of their past. The fact that you were out there in the world, waiting for them kept them going.

The final stretch of rehearsing was grueling. They sacrificed sleep for more hours of practice. Cut out junk food. Added working out to their daily schedule. Learnt their debut songs and choreography. Spent time recording and rerecording their vocals. Took media training and idol lessons to prepare themselves for their new life.

No one else was more relieved than them when March 4, 2019, rolled around and they officially debuted as SOOBIN, YEONJUN, BEOMGYU, TAEHYUN, and HUENINGKAI of TOMORROW X TOGETHER.

It was difficult for them to adjust to their new norm, but the amount of buzz on social media TXT got before and at debut gave them the extra strength to persevere.

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Having one’s senior group have major success and popularity years after debut was comforting. The guys were able to have an easier time paying off their trainee debt and when they were finally starting to get paid, they stashed some of their paycheck.

Soobin never felt the pull after Beomgyu.

There was no guarantee that you were even in South Korea or even their side of the world.

The world was vast. There was no way for them to explore it without going on tour, so when the company pitched the idea of a debut showcase in the United States, they jumped at the chance.

The guys worked hard in their English lessons. Being able to have another form of communication was vital besides some of their longing social media posts they disguised as expressions of love for their fans.

The first year as a rookie wasn’t easy, especially when Soobin finally felt the pull again when they took off from Seoul to New York.

They kept their hopes up as they toured, always making sure to make eye contact with everyone in the crowd at their concerts and while walking the streets in hopes of finding you.

Of course, they wouldn’t find you until years later.

Soobin’s institution landed them in the middle-of-nowhere with a piece of paper with your information that they intercepted under questionable acts.

A quaint family-owned diner served as their hideout as they stared across the street while eating burnt bacon strips and sipping black coffee to your apartment complex.

They were going to march into the leasing office and get the apartment next to yours, meet your new self, fall in love, and be together forever.

It was simple really.

20 minutes later, after their bill was paid, TXT crossed the street to enter your apartment complex. The main lobby was cozy; potted plants were in every corner and residents of all ages passed them, none acknowledging their status as idols.

Beomgyu grinned as he knocked on the leasing manger’s door. An elderly man answered the door and welcomed them in.

Taehyun stepped forward, “We are interested in renting an apartment.”

“You’re in the right place.”

After Yeonjun and Taehyun haggled the manager for the apartment next to yours, Kai peeked at the parcel lockers to spot your last name and first initial. The elderly man didn’t budge until Taehyun listed a number in the 5 digits to have them move in right away and relocate a couple that was slotted to live there before them.

The rest played out perfectly as they got a text from their manager that Miami was the break the needed and the cruise was about to set sail. They quickly bought the necessities from a bigger store downtown that would deliver later that day for them. Soobin ran around the kitchen in panic as he wouldn’t be able to bake cookies for you. Yeonjun quickly added that in delivery on his phone. The younger members started unpacking their suitcases to shower.

And they waited for you to get back.

masterlist | previous | next

author’s note heyyyy it's been a little bit since i posted. so sorry!! if you didn't know my computer started acting up so i stopped using it for 2 days then i messed up the charger and had to wait for my new charger to come in while also finishing out the last week of my summer class. everything's okay now!!

i’m not entirely sure of txt’s predebut history that well besides the most known facts that they themselves have shared, so fictionalized accounts!!!

[denimbex1986]

'David Tennant had it all. As the tenth Doctor he was a fan-favourite with a run of episodes that reached more than 13 million viewers in the UK – a record for the modern revival of Doctor Who, which almost rivalled its 1970s heyday. He left on his own terms in 2010 rather than being shoved aside for a younger, cooler star (in fact, the BBC wanted him to stay longer). His legacy set him up for lucrative convention appearances and fan worship for life, while his post-Who career is flourishing. So why risk it all by returning?

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Tennant laughs. “Thank God I made it to this point! It never really occurred to me to worry about that. Perhaps it should have done…but with Catherine [Tate] being part of it, and with Russell [T Davies] writing the scripts, I never actually worried about anything other than my own ability to run as fast as I used to.”

In fairness, while the return of old favourites to a stage they’ve vacated can sometimes tarnish a legacy, Tennant’s Doctor is a special case. Apart from Tom Baker, it’s hard to think of a Doctor Who star who so captured the public’s imagination. At the height of his career on the show, Tennant was plastered on magazine covers and lunchboxes; he was accosted in the street. In 2009, he was the BBC’s Christmas ident. By the time he left, aged 39, one suspects he could have been reading the phone book to a Dalek and viewers would still have tuned in.

Happily this comeback, announced to great fanfare last year, is a little more involved than that. “The first conversation we had about it was very casual,” Tennant recalls. “Russell and Catherine were talking about the notion of: ‘What if we got the band back together for one last special? But David would never do it.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean I’d never do it? I’d do it in a shot. And then suddenly, we were back for three in a row.

“I mean, why not?” he laughs. “It was such a joyous time, and these are people I love as humans, and certainly love as people to work with. And Doctor Who is something that will always be hugely important to me.”

In fact, there’s a case to be made that the 52-year-old Tennant – who’s speaking to us the day after his birthday, ever committed to the show – never really left Doctor Who behind in the first place. Yes, he’s had many successes since – Broadchurch, Good Omens, Des, Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Staged to name but a few – but he’s always kept a foot in the TARDIS door. After all, it was just three years after his dramatic regeneration that he teamed up with his successor Matt Smith for 2013’s 50th-anniversary special.

“I was sort of a member of the guest cast on that, because it was Matt’s show,” says Tennant now. “It’s different when you’re in charge of the TARDIS again. There’s a lot more work to do. I remember on the 50th, going, ‘Oh, this is easy. I used to have to learn far more lines than this!’”

Two years after that, Tennant was back headlining his own Doctor Who stories for a series of audio dramas co-starring – and this sounds familiar – ex-companion Catherine Tate. He’s kept playing the Doctor that way ever since, lending his voice to audio plays and (more recently) video games starring his character.

The Doctor even looms large in Tennant’s personal life. He married a guest actor on the series – Georgia Moffett, who appeared in a 2008 episode with him – which means his father-in-law is former fifth Doctor Peter Davison. He also has a police box cut-out in his garden. Given all this, it’s hard to imagine why Davies and Tate thought this on-screen return would be a hard sell.

“The truth is, it’s a rather lovely, benevolent, generous thing to be connected with. I love it. I always have, and I’m sure I always will,” says Tennant. “I grew up with posters on my wall signed by Tom Baker. It’s very peculiar that I should end up in the show that was, to a greater or lesser extent, the thing that inspired me to be in the profession I’m in.

“It runs through my life as if through a stick of rock, really. As you say, I met my wife on the set of Doctor Who, and I’m now a father. I’ve given up trying to resist the inevitability that Doctor Who will be following me around for the rest of time.”

Instead, he’s embraced it. So, this week he returns as the Doctor on BBC1 – but not the same one he played before. Originally, Tennant says the plan was for him and Tate to return for the anniversary in a flashback episode, set during their shared 2008 series and with a storyline completely different from the specials as they now exist.

“It would have been an unseen adventure from years before,” he says. “Russell immediately had an idea for a story, which I’m not going to mention because I don’t think it’s yet seen the light of day. It certainly wouldn’t have been part of an ongoing story. But I hope one day he does use it because it sounded great.”

But Davies’s return to the BBC fold as the new Who showrunner changed everything. “Then Russell decided he was coming back full-time and the whole thing blossomed,” says Tennant. Suddenly, the one-off had turned into a trio of specials for Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary.

Davies tells me later: “It was simply as many episodes as David and Catherine could do. If they had said, ‘We’ve got time to make 12,’ we would have made 12. If they had said, ‘We’ve got time to make one,’ then we’d have made one. But I think a one-off would have been a disappointment.”

And it was a flashback no longer. Instead, Tennant plays a new (and official) incarnation of the Doctor that follows on from his younger self and the Doctors that came after – Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker – in a way that’s woven into the story of the specials (titled The Star Beast, Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle).

“That’s part of what the Doctor himself is struggling with: why is he here?” says Tennant. “Why has he got this face back, and what might that mean? Though you’re still in a recognisably Doctor Who world, and I think that’s right and proper,” he adds. “It gets you back into those stories that you know and love and recognise, with some elements in there that are unexpected.”

In particular, he says that the second and third specials go in unusual directions. “With two and three, Russell has written Doctor Who like I have never seen it before,” he reveals. “He’s come back to it with a whole new raft of ideas and enthusiasm. I’m just very chuffed to be able to be part of that.”

But of course, he’s not going to be part of it for long. Davies describes Tennant’s new incarnation as a “Magnesium Doctor” – in other words, he burns brightly but not for long – because at the end of the third special, airing on 9 December, he’ll regenerate into new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa. The 31-year-old Sex Education star takes over for the Christmas special, followed by a full series next year (and beyond – he’s already filming episodes that will be shown in 2025).

“I have seen a bit of Ncuti, and he’s magnificent,” Tennant says. “He’s just got such an energy. He’s so creative, and he’s inventive, and he’s funny, and he’s a proper actor. I think he’s going to be great.

“I’ve met Millie Gibson [new companion Ruby], and she seems lovely, too. I haven’t got a chance to see any of her stuff yet, but they seem great together. I’m jealous of the adventure they’ve got in front of them.”

When asked if he has any advice for his successor, Tennant seems vaguely horrified – “What would I say? I mean, literally, what would I say?” I suggest he might prepare Gatwa to return in about 18 years. “Well, he’s young,” Tennant laughs. “He’ll get into the 100th anniversary, probably. I don’t know if I’ll make it that far. Though if I can keep running fast enough –

I don’t know. I never imagined that I would be sitting there for the 60th anniversary, talking about three specials we’d made. This show continues to surprise everyone involved with it.”

Still, it must be hard to hand over the TARDIS so soon after getting hold of it again. Was there a moment, just for a second, where he thought about snatching back the sonic screwdriver, barricading the studio and staying on for a full series?

Even as a lifelong fan, he says not. “It was never on the table,” Tennant says firmly. “The story – well, as soon as I start to talk about this, we get into the area of spoilers, so I’m not going to say any more. All I know is that I’m excited and jealous of everything that Ncuti has in front of him. And I can’t wait to enjoy it as a viewer, because I think he’s magnificent.”

He laughs. “I think they thought, ‘Let the old man run around for a minute – and then we’ll get a nice, young bloke in.’ ”'

[genlossneg]

thank you for this blog im boutta post a lot of my suffering in here enjoy the essay

I’m not a ranboo fan at all, i just heard about a cool horror project from a name i’m familiar with and i was excitedly waiting for perhaps a new kid on the block with cool content and the resources to do so. I’ve seen what people with three coins and a piece of lint can do out of passion, and so i expected that someone that has far more resources out of the gate would be able to really take it out of the park if they were equally as passionate. I’ll just grab a couple of points and elaborate.

Intentionally bad.

This is the poorest excuse for low quality content I’ve heard. Not a single self-respecting creative that actually cares about their project would make something ACTUALLY bad. Anytime you see something that’s intentionally bad and yet somehow beloved, look DEEPER. Because behind that veil of “bad” is actually often a HUGE amount of effort and care put into something a creator cared about. 

Intentionally bad content is still made with the intention to be fun to watch, to be entertaining. There is very little entertainment found in any of the genloss bad content.

Lack of horror content

The main excuses i’ve seen is that they were scared of Twitch TOS, to which I say lolwhat. You had two whole years to contact twitch and talk it out with them and figure out what part of your project and show would fly and what wouldn’t, and instead you opted to really cut out any horror aspect at all for fear of being banned on twitch? And even then, content more gorey and disturbing than this is allowed on twitch. If Until Dawn flies on twitch, I think gen loss could have gone wilder.

And if they REALLY didn’t want to risk it, for the love of god at least be creative with your attempts to circumvent it? The goofy poor editing of the red in ep2 during the surgery sequence took me out of it entirely and confused me so much. You know what they could’ve done? TURNED THE LIGHTING A STARK RED. THAT’S IT. THE MOST BASIC THING, TO AT LEAST REALLY GET ACROSS THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG.

The acting

I was a theatre kid in highschool and let me tell you even the 13 year olds acted with more passion and devotion to the role than 95% of the cast in gen loss. Even during improv. You can tell that there is basically no script to gen loss and that its purely “X will happen then Y will happen and we need to fill it with conversation and improv” with zero direction on tone or anything. It was so painful seeing how little effort had gone into the acting. Ranboo can’t act for shit and should have gone through some acting classes before taking on a live show. The only ones that were visibly trying were charlie and jerma and the people who were frozen robots during ep3 (because as someone who had to stay frozen in pose hours on end for a play while on-stage, that shit is HARD)

Hetch’s acting was even more laughable, and his fakeout death was… something. An incredibly cartoonish “uguguhh” exiting his mouth- really? Also It was so frustrating to have his voice come from seemingly nowhere. There was no source to his voice.

It sucked so much seeing ranboo actually TRY to be better in his acting in episode 3 because when he suddenly started being intense it felt WRONG and out of character, because there was no natural leadup to him being like that. ep 1 and 2 were so bad that even when ep 3 was better it felt disappointing.

Lighting

Its already been mentioned by film student anon that the lighting is such a huge amateur mistake but I want to touch upon the creative aspect of the lighting a little more.

There was such an utter lack of using colored lighting to really set tones in scenes and it SUCKED. Like, already with the lack of outright horror blood and gore, they NEEDED creative lighting to at least intensify scenes! Add some damn flickering lights! Green lighting? Something- anything. Again, TEENAGERS have been more creative with lighting in a performance and all they had was four colors to work with and nothing fancy.

Camerawork

I wish they would have actually done good camera work. Set up some cameras in locations and acted in front of them instead of having someone follow ranboo around and having some “lore” explanation for it that makes little sense. Having moving cameras that are shaky and constantly cutting people frame-wise is just not pleasant to watch and does not add anything useful. On top of the camera quality jarringly changing between shots constantly it just… ruined the flow. 

in ep3, we had an explanation for why there’s a camera following ranboo, and we got some REALLY COOL ESTABLISHING SHOTS THAT…. made no sense in lore. Why would the “drone” following ranboo take establishing shots? It’s supposed to follow ranboo- but then later it gets dismissed and we suddenly have sharp camera cuts to what im guessing was a prerecorded scene due to the camera quality change and it just felt. So sudden and jarring? Like okay you just dismissed the camera and now we suddenly get a different non-canon camera because they remembered we actually need to still see whats happening.

Lore/Story

The lore and story we have gotten so far is so scatterbrained and nonsensical. + knowing that this project isn’t actually what gen loss was supposed to be (which: Why are you advertising it as gen loss then, ranboo? You’re just staining the name of your passion project). So much of genloss is in the “I guess” category of why things happened. But the consistensy also felt so off. From what I understand, Charlie is the slime demon, and was the guy on the gurney, and was also in ep 3 as  himself. And all those other versions WERE the ep3 charlie. How? Charlie died? twice? According to what has happened? But he’s alive anyway at the end until he gets killed again by a cheap backrooms monster? But supposedly everyone else did actually die? 

I just. Genuinely do not understand what the story here was. What the point was of everything. I’m not gonna ask who the characters were because the characters were just the streamers and nothing special or new. If you know the streamer, thats the “character”. It’s just godawful writing.

Viewer interaction

Viewer interaction was pointless and didn’t matter. Either every choice the viewers made was gonna happen anyway, or ranboo decided to ignore it lol. It felt like there was no impact to viewers doing anything to influence the show and the show probably would have been largely better had viewer interaction not been a thing at all.

also idk maybe making ranboo’s “character” aware of the audience from the get go would have been more fun as they could’ve been trying to get the audience to do anything while we’re just watching quietly. And they could’ve gotten more and more desperate with the audience as things went on. But then again that requires actual acting skills that ranboo barely has.

Just as some final words, this really feels like a case of someone who has never done anything like this thinking they can do this because they’re famous and well-liked online. I know ranboo makes a lot of money, so they certainly had enough money to make something good. Take some film classes or acting classes. Instead they became overambitious and made just a generally unpleasant show that is not going to make me want to watch any future gen loss content in good faith.

The entire show depends on going “MY STREAMER!!! THATS MY STREAMER!!!” and would not survive on its own merit. The hype towards gen loss was misleading on what it’d be, and the fans made amazing fanart that does not live up to the reality of what they got and i feel genuinely sad for them. The fanbase made a better interpretation of what gen loss is WITHOUT EVEN NEEDING GEN LOSS TO BE OFFICIALLY RELEASED.

also a final thing about the merch but why is the merch so bad lol. Its such boring design. The gen loss logo appears barely anywhere in the show itself. The fans could’ve had some sort of cool merch, like masks based off of ranboo’s mask and the showfall robot masks. Shirts and merch based off of the slime demon and warehouse master. 

Anyway sorry for the huge wall of text I have just been going insane abt this to my friend in dms enjoy

————————————————–

i could probably spend hours responding to all of this! thank you for the mini essay, you make a ton of great points. i really sympathize with the “not a ranboo fan” stance because my friends are way more fans of him than i am, and were way invested.

i personally haven’t heard any “it’s supposed to be bad!” defenses but i can totally believe there are people like that out there lol. i definitely in the “there’s no entertainment when it’s bad”. you’re entirely right about the lack of horror! i was so confused after the first stream and everyone was like “it’s not supposed to be horror yet! you don’t understand!” and then it took until the 3rd stream for anything significant to even happen, and even then it was weak.

charlie and jerma did so much for gen loss man, ranboo’s acting was just.. not that great and when it was, it felt so jarring. more interesting lighting would’ve been so fun! so much could’ve been done with that, and that’s especially clear when they switch cameras because they had the ability to film this incredibly and just.. didn’t. i feel like we didn’t get so much lore that we should have, especially with how long the streams were. i hope we get something clearer later on.

the idea of him being aware of chat the whole time would be cool, but idk if it would’ve worked with the “brainwashed” thing he was doing. overall i agree - gen loss was super hyped up and in this form, it didn’t live up to it as well as it could have. once again, ty for the mini-essay, it was a great read!

[rp-partnerfinder]

hello! i am looking for a couple more threads set in the elder scrolls. firstly, a bit more about me: i am 25 year old woman who hails from the USA, and i have been writing for 13 years. i work full-time and also have some pretty meaty projects that i chip away at in my free time, though i am still pretty good at getting at least a few posts out per week. i am pretty private about my personal information, though i am always eager to chat ooc via whichever platform we choose to connect on.

i am highly uncomfortable with the idea of writing with anybody under 21, so please meet that requirement if reaching out -- my characters deal frequently with mature themes, and i prefer for the person i am writing opposite to to be around the range that i am as far as life experience goes.

writing style: i love writing lit, long-form replies in the third person. i am not picky about present/past tense, and honestly i have this awful habit of flipping back and forth, though if you prefer one over the other i am happy to try and accommodate. i really don't prefer a certain length, in fact i think that it's nice to have shorter-form posts for dialogue-heavy scenes and longer-form for stuff that isn't dialogue heavy.

platform: i haven't dipped my feet into these waters in quite some time; i have a few long-term partners that i write with over both discord and email, and so i am very familiar with those. that being said, i really don't mind going one way or the other for platform -- if you are interested in everything else here but want something different just let me know! i honestly miss tumblr rping a lot hahah, so i may be open to doing something with that.

setting: i really don't have a specific preference for exactly where in tamriel our thread takes place, but right now i am looking specifically for something set in the fourth era. my characters tend to be well-traveled versus homebodies, and so they can really be found anywhere. the thread can focus on the events that take place in skyrim, or they could have nothing to do with it at all! the main reason i want to focus on the 4e is because many of the details regarding my muses are contingent on details related to the great war and the third dominion.

content preferences: so, my bread and butter is threads which focus a lot on the political happenings of tamriel. i love political dissidents, corruption, that sort of thing. I am also a huge fan of romanticism and adventure. my writing is usually focused heavily on characters versus worldbuilding or plot; i love to get deep into the psyche of flawed individuals and either allow the course of events that take place to build them up or tear them down further. i love romance, but it really isn't a must at all -- the biggest priority is character development.

character preferences: my characters tend to be heavily flawed individuals whose actions and behavior would at best deem them morally grey. they can deal with issues such as addiction, morality struggles, mental health issues, and skeletons in the closet. i have two in particular that I am hoping to flesh out by writing them: an altmer male and a bosmer female. i usually lean to M// but M/F is great too, i really don't mind as far as this goes BUT i will say that i really don't enjoy determining the relationship dynamic (sub/dom, that sort of thing) in advance -- that sort of skews the focus from where it should be, in my opinion. i greatly prefer to let them figure it out authentically through interaction.

like i said above, i can write adult themes, but romance is not a must and i am just as happy with fade-to-black as well. if love scenes are included, i'd just ask that they are not the main focus, and that plot takes precedence either 80/20 or 60/40.

i'd love to share more about my characters and plot ideas if anyone is interested in getting something put together here!! please feel free to interact with the post if any of it caught your eye!

.

[alittlehurtwithyourcomfort]

whump question challenge by @withalittlebitofwhump! thought it'd be fun to answer these all in one go, it's an old challenge but i found it and said "why not?"

if you're new to my blog, here's some info abt me and whump!

alright, here we go:

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1. Favorite whump trope(s)?

answer: hidden injury or collapse, preferably together! also prefer when it's from an abdominal wound (stabbing, GSW, etc)

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2. Least favorite whump trope(s)?

answer: anything to do with just regular sickness/emeto. or allergic reactions. not a fan of anything that i see as potentially embarrassing (?).

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3. Top 3 whump scenes and why?

answer: this is so hard??? omg. uh, okay:

1. all of the whump scenes in he is psychometric (i can't choose) they're the ones i rewatch CONSTANTLY, jinyoung's acting is amazing and it's got all my fav tropes

2. daredevil episode 2 because damn, they really gave us an entire whumpy episode so early in the series and it's AMAZING

3. the vault scene in be reborn (c-drama), the way it's filmed and also the acting, the length, it's SO GOOD.

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

4. Top 3 characters to whump and why?

answer: (this is so hard lol)

1. buck (911) because he's got the relatability, the found family, and everything

2. keith (VLD), all the good tropes but only in fics, sadly

3. peter parker (MCU) again, because he's relatable and has (had) found family

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

5. Favorite fandom for whump (show, series, etc)?

answer: currently it's gotta be 911! it's a treasure trove for found family whump.

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

6. Do you prefer written or watchable whump?

answer: watchable for sure! though, i'm a huge consumer of whump fics.

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

7. Do you also like hurt/comfort?

answer: i'm mainly a hurt/comfort person, actually! if there's no recovery/aftercare and comfort, the whump falls a bit flat imo.

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

8. What do you think the difference between hurt/comfort and whump is?

answer: i'd say whump refers to the act of the character being hurt, and then hurt/comfort is the trope that includes whump.

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

9. How would you explain whump to someone who’s not familiar with it?

answer: i'd say that whump refers to a character being hurt in some way, rather physically, emotionally, or psychologically. it's a trope that many enjoy, and it adds development and drama to a storyline!

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10. Is there any old whump you particularly enjoy? (say, pre 2000?)

answer: hmm, star wars comes to mind, as well as the OG macgyver, and the karate kid trilogy! right now i can't think of much else.

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

11. Why do you think you like whump?

answer: i think i like it because of the interactions and drama (plus the "whumperflies" lol). i tend to like whump for characters i can relate to!

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

12. When did you realize you liked whump?

answer: oh god, i've always known i liked it! it's such an integral part of my media consumption. when i discovered the community + fanfic, i was around ten or eleven (young, i know!). so probably around seven years ago, almost eight since i've been actually knowledgeable about the term.

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

13. Favorite posts with whump (gifsets, picspams, etc)

answer: gifsets or whumplists, they help me find what to watch!

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

14. Are you “out” to people in real life?

answer: mostly, yeah! my family knows, since my sister also enjoys whump (not as much as me, but still some!) and will recommend shows to me based on that.

some of my irl friends are avid fanfic readers/in fandoms and know the term well. :)

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

15. How did you find the whump community?

answer: 1980's macgyver whump list :)

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

16. Any unusual mediums you like for whump (plays, music, vlogs, etc)?

answer: some kpop music videos have really good whump scenes!

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17. Any meta about whump you’ve been dying to share?

answer: do not have an answer for this one unfortunately!

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

18. Whump fic(s) you’d love to see?

answer: MORE. BUCK. WHUMP. also, to the lockwood and co. fandom, please write more gen lockwood whump with minimal/established romance. i need the fics.

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

19. Whump you’re looking forward to? (Maybe something teased or something you haven’t seen yet?)

answer: AHHH 911 SEASON 6B!!! coma!buck for the win, y'all, i can feel it in my bones.

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

20. Top 3 favorite whump fics?

answer:

1. kindness, what connects us by FandomLife54 on ao3 (911, buck whump, tsunami AU)

2. quintessence blues by SilenceIsGolden15 (VLD, keith whump, magical injuries)

3. of bikes and concussions by datleggy on ao3 (911, buck whump, misunderstandings, concussion)

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

21. Tropes you think are overdone?

answer: car crashes (especially with little to no aftercare or injury)

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

22. Tropes you think we could use more of?

answer: i love the "found" trope, where a character is injured and then subsequently discovered by friends.

i also think we could use more of the "injured character calls someone for help and passes out over the phone" trope. it's so good.

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

23. Favorite sites/archives for consuming whump? (question by @dammittmarie )

answer: tumblr (obv), the whumpapedia is good, ao3 best fanfic site, and that's about all i use!

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

24. Have your whump preferences changed recently? If so, why? (question by @fyeahvulnerablemen​)

answer: my preferences have honestly stayed pretty consistent! i've always loved hidden injury, abdominal wound, and collapse whump. however, i used to be rlly into panic attack-related whump and i don't rlly like it much anymore!

[evergardenwall]

The new Jason liker is back! Honestly-- maybeeee jasico is winning out after scrolling thru some blogs 👀👀👀

If you have a second, love to hear why you love the ship / what drew you to it

oooohh 👀 feel free to share more of your jason thoughts here! i would love to read them :^)

as for my jasico journey. well. there's how i was first drawn to the ship when i was younger, and there's how i actually joined the fanbase and read fics when i revisited my pjo/hoo phase in 2021....which makes not just one but two origin stories!

so. first of all, you need to know that when i first started reading heroes of olympus, i was already obsessed with nico from reading the pjo series before, and also related to him a lot re: the rejection he faced and his feelings of alienation from both camp half-blood and camp jupiter....it's actually mind-blowing to think abut how my eleven years-old baby queer (who didn't know they were not straight yet) self completely latched onto him, both had a crush and projected onto this character, would spend hours looking at fanart and have their friend drawing shippy art of them with him-- yes, this is a thing that happened (and yes, i was one of those younger nico fangirls back in 2014... kind of cringe, i know, but that's part of why i still am attached to him to this day! he is so important to me! and hey, i turned out not to be a girl so 👀). LIKE. hello. younger sam. i know what you are

and then, house of hades happened; the cupid scene and nico having a crush on percy and actually becoming canonically gay had a stupidly huge impact on me. like, yeah, heroes of olympus is objectively the least good series riordan has written in terms of writing quality, but i would not be the same person today if hadn't read it 😞 and it's my favorite rip

i remember reading hoh for the first time back in february 2014, after a day out in paris with my grandmother during which i had dragged her to a bookstore because it had just been published in france, and feeling shaken to my core -- in a good way --, so closely drawn to this character for a reason i could not articulate. and there was jason's reaction, the way he also was drawn to nico, and his support for hades' son, later sealed with the chalice scene in blood of olympus. which was probably one of the gayest jasico scenes. btw (in my opinion, at least. and frank's pov is so fucking funny). so i was like... 'oh my god. jason and nico. [cannot articulate why they love the later beginning of friendship they have going on so much]' and completely latched onto them, but without realising it nor sharing it with other fans this time! because i was too embarrassed!

i already liked jason as a character before the cupid scene, but his chapters in house of hades and blood of olympus as well as his whole identity crisis storyline, torn between greeks and romans, made me love this character even more. imo, his best scenes are in these two books (although after re-reading the lost hero, i have grown to appreciate this book's jason a lot... thinking about when he meets thalia and the moments with leo 🥺)-- and i loved his dynamic with nico. i didn't openly ship them, because i was too intimidated too explore non-canon pairings back then, until i got into jercy on wattpad (it was certainly another time wdxwshdjs). at this moment, not only reading these silly little fics made me more confident in being a jason fan who read him as bi (because i was 13-14 back then, and all my friends at the time thought he was lame and straight), but it inspired me to write a tiny jasico fic, which i never finished but hey, the passion was there :)

after that, i got into so.langelo for a couple of years-- i wasn't familiar with archive of our own, nor fluent in english, which didn't help me finding content besides from minuiko's work (i regularly stalked her blog despite not having a tumblr account) and amvs with stolen fanart on youtube, so i ended up continuing to keep my interest in jasico for myself. seeing nico having a canon boyfriend when toa started releasing had me very excited, although i didn't really care about will..... (whereas i strongly dislike so.langelo but have a lot of headcanons about will as an individual character now. lol.)

fast forward to 2021: for a reason i can't remember (perhaps the first pjo adaptation news? having met my cousin's girlfriend and talked about the books -- and jason! -- with her very enthusiastically? someone putting random fanart on my dash? the world will never know), i decided to start re-reading pjo for the first time in a while, and because i was finally on tumblr, i decided to look at the different tags to see if jasico had a fanbase... and fell into the rabbit hole! and here i am now, sharing conspiracy theories 😞 /j

more seriously, my 2021 obsession with jasico was the first time i actually gave coherent thought to this pairing besides from the Vibes i was getting when i was younger, and rediscovered the things that made me love each character when i was younger. and oh my god, jason... i projected onto jason so much.

it was very comforting, too, like reuniting with old friends, and somehow made me understand a new thing or two about myself. i love the parallels between jason and nico's storylines and how compelling their pairing is from a narrative viewpoint. like. it makes SENSE. on that topic, i will never stop linking this presentation because it analyses the whole thing so well and i wish i could be this articulate instead of just being like.... poetic cinema reaction picture dot jpg. (my mutuals are way smarter than me. go follow them 🔫)

but anyway, long story short: jasico is very Good and i'm glad to see it's kind of becoming relevant again? <- i am unsure of whether we're witnessing a renaissance or if it's just my dash having a mass hysteria event... but i *am* seeing jasico posts getting more notes than usual and it is intriguing so 👀

[yuzukult]

acquitted love || sjn & reader

title: acquitted love pairing: johnny suh x reader genre: fluff, angst, co-workers!au, lawyer!au, one-sided enemies to lovers word count: 8.7k warnings: some language/cursing, brief mentions of sex but there's no actual discussions or explicit conversations of the topic, but generally pg-13 prompt: you absolutely hate johnny suh. but when your boss pairs you two up together for one of the highest profile cases, you’re left working close with your enemy but he doesn’t seem to think that way of you. a/n: tada!! i wrote this for the @/ficscafe fic exchange event!! so @urlocalnctstan​ , hope you enjoy this !! i tried to write it according to what you put as your preferences, but honestly T_T it was so hard bc i was just not getting any ideas!! hopefully this is something you’d like :D enjoy !!

“God, isn’t he just… so attractive?”

Along with a click on your tongue, you feign a hit in Hyeri’s direction, whose reflexes have gotten so much faster in the past couple years of knowing you and it shows when she cowers underneath your arm. She gifts you that not-so-apologetic smile, full of mischievousness because she knows no matter how annoying she can be, you’ll still love her nonetheless.

“Why do you keep talking about Johnny? You know he’s banned as a topic of our conversations.”

Hyeri rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her white frilled blouse. You know that she doesn’t actually inhabit any romantic feelings for Johnny, but she has a problem of thinking without the usage of her brain when she sees a hot guy.

Not that you think Johnny is hot.

No.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t think he’s at least an ounce of smokin’ hot.” She’s unraveled her arms by now, poking your shoulder incessantly to grasp onto your attention as you're tapping on the buttons of the copier machine. “I bet if you asked him out, he’d say yes.”

You briefly glare at Hyeri. “You realize that he and I don’t get along, right? He keeps finding stupid loopholes in the system to win his cases. He thinks with his heart, not his head, and sometimes, with whatever that thing was in his pants.” And, not to mention that he walks out the court with that big grin stretched from cheek to cheek, giving the ‘good news’ to your well-respected boss (who you desperately seek the approval of but that’s a different story for another time). And every single time, she gives him that nod of appreciation, that ‘nod of approval’ if you will, when it should be given to you and not to some asshole who fucks his way to victory.

“But he’s so hot—”

You narrow your eyes at your friend, and with a stern voice, you call out, “Hyeri.”

She shrugs. “Honestly, though, he’s hella smart. He’s got a job here, and works under your boss. It’s Park, Kim & Associates—notice how Park is first, because she’s a fucking genius. She only picks the intelligent ones to work under her. Why do you think I’m still working for Mr. Kim?”

Park Seohyun and Kim Gonghyun—one of the biggest lawyers in the region, decided to join together to build their own law firm from the ground up. They were both highly respected in their field; Kim Gonghyun spent years of his life being mentored by one of the most famous judges, and as for Park Seohyun, she was, simply put, admirable because of the obstacles she has overcome to make her dreams of working in law to be real. Being a woman, young, and beautiful, she’s had her fair share of encounters with people who disregard her potential, that is until she met Gonghyun—who, admittingly is an old man who seems like he’d be traditional, sexist, even, but he proves to also make people realize how wrong they are with their impression of him.

But, as Mr. Kim is getting older, he’s gotten a bit… lazy.

In fact, he’s been slacking so much that he’s gotten a new rep in the office—if he was your direct supervisor, or your supervisor was under him, you were on the side of the office where all the easier, uncomplicated cases were assigned. Which meant that there was a slight possibility that your talents and skills weren’t as sharp and exceptional as you thought they were.

And well, Hyeri works directly underneath Mr. Kim.

Hyeri doesn’t want a heavy workload, despite the fact that there’s a plethora of files on her desk, stacked up one onto another as tall as her PC tower, and they were all open and closed cases—needless to say that she didn’t mind it.

“Okay, but you got offered a position under Seohyun. Do you really think you’re not wasting your potential?”

Hyeri scoffs. “Never. At least, not now. I’m still in my twenties, I’d like to enjoy my youth while I can, for your information.”

You quirk a brow. “And does any of that pertain fucking Johnny? The hot guy, so you claim?”

She immediately has her hand covering your mouth and you scowl. “Shhhhh, he works here!”

You bite the flesh of her hand and Hyeri instantly retracts. “You think I don’t know my archenemy works here? He sits directly across from my office—I get the best view of the guy and I’m not even one of his fangirls.”

“You’re not gonna be one of those girls who claim they’re different because they don’t like him but then end up falling for him anyway… are you?”

Your hand goes up and Hyeri crouches down.

“Stop it.”

“Seriously though! It’s the classic e2l love story,” she has her hands gesturing in front of her like she’s making an imaginary rainbow, “Two lawyers, constantly butting heads, accept each other’s differences and learn to love—“

“The fuck is an ‘e2l’?”

“Enemies to lovers.”

“Are you high? Stop spitting nonsense.” This time, you’re waving the stack of papers that finish printing in front of her face. “Meet me for lunch later. But if you keep talking about my archenemy and I falling in love, you can kiss a free meal goodbye.”

Hyeri gasps.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Maybe. Just maybe, Hyeri might be a tiny smidge right when she says Johnny is handsome. Just a bit though, because she can’t get credit for something like that.

He’s dyed his hair this shade of brunette that sort of reminds you of roasted chestnuts on a cold, winter day, sitting inside of a cooker outside of your childhood home, baking along with some sweet potatoes your mom had gotten from a farmer’s market nearby. Johnny has this focused gaze attached to the screen of his monitor; there’s a dip in the fronts of his brows, lips tightened into a straight line, and constant switching back and forth from the computer while taking notes down in a book that’s laid open in front of him.

You wonder what’s running through his mind, or well, you’re more interested in what files he has sprawled out on top of his desk.

Truthfully, if it hadn’t been obvious enough, you weren’t quite a fan of Johnny Suh and it’s mostly due to his work ethic. He’d been notorious for his reputation of sleeping around—especially with the opposing side—so it’s hard to convince yourself that he didn’t win the case because of his actual capabilities, but it’s because he pulled some strings.

And Johnny doesn’t put much effort into denying it either.

Albeit deep down, you were a teeny bit envious of his confidence. He struts around the courtroom with ease, and when he presents his position, there’s no staggering in his voice—it’s always crisp and clean, weighted with nothing but credence, and never straying from his initial perspective. It’s never a lack of poise, it’s consistently the look he goes for; from the hand gestures and the furrowed brows, to the rhetorical questions in the end of certain statements that has the speculators and jury sitting at the edge of their seat, Johnny had a talent for performing in the courtroom, but that doesn’t mean anything when the way he gets to the success isn’t ethical.

Just at that moment, his eyes lift from the screen and meet yours.

There isn’t any hesitation when you scramble to grab the remote controller, and the shades drop over the windows instantaneously.

“Fuck,” you mutter underneath your breath, tossing the remote onto your desk and shaking your hands after. What if he thought you were admiring him? Maybe he didn’t see. Yeah. It was for a brief second, and with how close your offices were to each other, it would be common to accidentally lock eyes… right?

Interrupting your thoughts, the office phone rings and it nearly startles the living soul out of you. But before you reach for it, your head tilts to the side curiously because the extension number is familiar—it’s Park Seohyun’s, your boss.

What could she be calling for?

You don’t remember fucking something up—but to be fair, half the times, you never really know if you’ve actually fucked up until someone with steaming ears and a crimson face comes storming in. So… did you do something good? Again, you don’t think that’s right either, because other people would’ve made comments about it.

Deciding to swallow your nerves, you pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey!” Seohyun never fails to be bubbly, and you could never mimic her energy. You definitely had to be born with that kind of enthusiasm. “I have a favor. Hop into my office.”

Leaned back in her leather swivel chair, she had her fingers laced with each other while resting over her stomach. Johnny stands beside you (and you do your best to not look directly at him, especially after that weird staring thing), and you both feel like kids being lectured by parents from how still you are. Her office is huge, probably the size of both yours and Johnny’s combined; with ceiling to floor windows, cases of books that line the perimeter, not to mention the humongous ass couch that practically covers the other half of the room, and her desk was so wide, you estimate about four monitors would fit on there with still additional space for work. That wasn’t even the best part—the view of the city looks almost like a generic lockscreen of a Windows computer, and you’re not even sure why she goes home at night when she basically has a penthouse here.

“As you know, I have a favor.”

“Right,” Johnny retorts, mostly as a filler in the awkward silence. “So… what’s the favor?”

She pulls a box from her purse; square, black and made from a leather material with a lock pad stitched into it, something you’ve never seen before, and she slides the passcode in, then it pops the lid open. A key (a… very small one) sits in the velvety cushion, with nothing else occupying the space with it, and it looks comical. She uses this to open the very top drawer of her desk, and as she pulls using the handle, there’s another box inside, but this time, metal instead of leather, but still black.

What the fuck?

It seems Johnny shares the same thoughts, because he sneaks a glance over at you.

“You see,” Seohyun begins, pressing on the digital keys of the box until there’s a beep at the end and the case hisses open. “There’s a lot of security for this. Which means you understand the importance of it.”

Then, she picks up four manila envelopes and lies on the surface of her wooden top desk. “I have a family emergency to attend to this upcoming week. I’m boarding a flight tonight. So I’m leaving the Hwang v. Yoon case to the two of you.”

“Fuck—”

“The what?”

You and Johnny are sputtering out of shock. The Hwang v. Yoon case is the biggest case that the firm is involved in currently, and the only people involved in it have been Seohyun and Gonghyun. It’s been on every social media platform you could think of; from Facebook to Twitter, TikTok to Instagram—there’s even this weird website for emo/grunge teens or strange kids that like writing fanfic called Tumblr, and whatever that is, it’s discussed on there too.

“What about Gonghyun?”

Seohyun scoffs, closing the drawer and dropping the key back into her special box. Where do you even get a box like that? “He can’t handle this alone. So I’m kicking him off until I come back. I thought about letting the two of you work with him, but his ego is so inflated, it’ll get in the way of our chances of winning. It’s easier if it was just me and him, but seeing that things at home aren’t well, I’m going to need you two to step up to the plate.”

The room goes quiet. The only sounds you hear are the muffled noises of a typical bustling office outside the thick walls of Seohyun’s office, and at first, excitement rushes through your blood because Seohyun thought of you taking over a special, high profile case.

Albeit, another realization gets soaked up, and it’s that Johnny also came to mind, and that because it’s such an important case, the two of you would be… working… many… hours… together.

Maybe you should back out of it—but then again, this is such a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Imagine winning this— it wouldn’t be good for just the law firm, it’d be good for you too. Your name, in articles on these big fancy news websites, perhaps even on new channels, talking about how you, this amazing lawyer, won the Hwang v. Yoon case.

But then you’re snapped back into reality when Johnny leans over to take the envelopes from Seohyun.

If your name is on those platforms, so is Johnny’s.

God, this guy just ruins everything, doesn’t he?

“We’ll take care of it, Seohyun. You can trust us,” he says assuringly, a smile tugging on each corner of his lips with that dazzling gaze. “We’ll be at our best.”

Kiss ass.

If you had the option, you wouldn’t be spending your Saturday night here at work, in one of those conference rooms with a long table in the middle, a big projector that displays on the wall, and a random black leather loveseat couch that lines the one corner in case there’s too many occupants.

Especially since the person who’s accompanying you is Johnny Suh.

There’s probably a lot of people who would kill to be in your position (Hyeri being one of them), but you dread it. Not to be that person, but what’s so special about him anyway? What? He’s tall, has some muscles, long luscious hair that he can slick back with that sultry stare—wait, what?

“Alright, moving on…” From what? You guys just started? It’d been clear with Seohyun that the mornings would be dedicated to other cases, but nights would be considered overtime and where you’d zoom in your focus on Ms. Hwang’s justice. “Let’s take a look at the facts here.”

Johnny slips off his blazer, hanging it on the back of one of the chairs as you’re seated in another, leaning back comfortably with an arm resting on the table. He loosens the first few buttons of his dress shirt before folding up the sleeves, and that’s when you notice a little thing in the inner crook of his elbow—is that a fucking sunflower? Is that what he uses to reel girls in? That he’s soft enough to have a pretty little flower etched onto his gentle, silky and supple—

“Okay,” he says, interjecting into your thoughts with a laser pointer in his hand. He taps on the space bar of his laptop that mirrors what’s on his screen, but then, that’s when you realize what’s on the slides.

There’s a collage of pictures, mostly street, casually walking themed ones, but the common factor was that they were of Yoon Changmin, the man you guys were up against. They were all paparazzi-like photos, which begs the question, how did he get pics like this, and why did he get them?

“What’s the point of this?” you ask, voice laced with nothing but suspicion.

“We gotta get into the mind of the enemy.” You wanna get into the mind of your enemy, too.

You gesture to the one image of Changmin with an arm around his girlfriend and a finger up his nose. “Seems like he’s trying to reach inside of his head instead of us. These are just everyday pictures, Johnny. What’s that going to do for us?”

“Well,” he begins, turning to look at the wall of ‘evidence’. “You see—wait, holy shit.”

Freezing in the midst of reaching for your coffee, your head jolts in the direction of your partner. “What? What is it?”

“Holy shit,” he exclaims, “Hoooooooooly shit. Why didn’t I see this before? This changes everything.”

Furrowing your brows, you’ve given up getting your drink and dropped your hands onto the table. “Tell me, what is it?”

“This is a game changer.”

“Johnny,” you call out sternly, and his eyes link with yours before he instantly points to a particular picture with his red laser pointer.

“Look at that.” There’s pride saturated in his words, but when you look at what he’s indicating, your body slouches in disappointment.

Why the hell was he directing your attention onto Changmin’s thighs? Surely, there’s no denying that they were attractive—you recall that his alibi was at the gym that very night of the crime.

“What? He’s guilty for showing off his toothpick legs?” They were lean, you never said they were muscular.

“No,” he retorts, slightly irritated by your response as he rolls his eyes. “Look at his pants.”

“Okay…”

“They’re jean shorts.”

There’s a pregnant pause, but the expression on your face is so loud it can’t be hidden.

Johnny continues, “That’s a fashion crime.” He says it as if it’s an obvious fact known by many. “Not to mention that it’s fucking raw hem. He should be arrested.”

Suddenly, your opinion of him thinking too much with his heart dissipates because it seems like he’s thinking out of his ass instead. Did he win those cases out of pity? How did this guy even pass the bar? How about law school? How the hell did he even get into law school?

“I don’t think—”

“Listen, alright, just hear me out,” he’s got the palms of his hands resting flat on the surface of the table, doing his best to gain your full undivided attention. “Only assholes wear jean shorts. They flaunt that shit around like they own the place, but they’re horrendous pieces of clothing that should not be on a male’s body. I don’t care what you say, what your opinion is, because that is a fact.”

Puffing your cheeks, you feel at a loss. If Johnny is who you had to get this done, it feels like you’re not going to be finding much evidence any time soon.

“Okay, if… if that’s how you want to play it, then show me the evidence—other than those 2012 cut off denim shorts.”

He reaches over to hit his space bar again, then with a wink and a slide change, he leans closer to you and says with that deep, honeyed voice, “Gladly.”

You hate admitting when you’re wrong.

Ironically, you concede and will confess when you actually are, but it doesn’t mean that you enjoy it. For example, when Hyeri claims that the intern Mark had a crush on you, you quickly waved her off, stating something along the lines of, “I’m too intimidating; there’s better chances of him being scared of me than ever finding me attractive.” And then a week later, you owed Hyeri free lunch at that hip ramen place downtown because Mark had approached your desk that very morning with a bouquet of red roses flowers for you, a cheeky grin glued to his face with pools of hearts in his eyes, and ready to ask you on a date because it was the day after his internship had ended. Naturally, it wasn’t fun rejecting that poor college boy.

But, you won’t say you find Johnny interesting or handsome. Or that there’s potential when it came to possibly (just barely the slightest smidge) that you’d ever consider asking Johnny out. He’s your enemy here, you’ve mentioned that a multitude of times, and you stand firm on that very declaration, despite the fact that sometimes when he gets too close, your breath gets caught in your throat and you feel like you can’t get whatever’s lodged in out.

Albeit it’s not the whole “you guys are gonna end up together” comment that Hyeri makes and resulting in you denying it afterwards, it’s that Johnny might… be a decent lawyer.

He’s not the best one you’ve seen; the stupid revelation he had on the first day working on the case about the jean shorts is evidence for it, but it’s the days following that were slowly changing your perspective on him.

When you said, “He thinks too much with his heart more than with his head,” it was 100% correct.

When meeting with potential witnesses, you recognized that Johnny empathizes with people often; when they cry and start panicking from being overwhelmed, he's quick on his feet to put an arm around them, share reassuring words, and have them back to normal in record’s time.

And, well… you? You’re the one making them cry in the first place.

You don’t want to fully take the blame for being the cause of their tears, but people need to hear what’s happening, and the very detail that they can’t even handle this information probably means they’re not worthwhile as a key witness.

Johnny, of course, thinks otherwise.

He believes that these people should have a voice (although you’ve alluded that they might be more useless than helpful), and putting them on the stand with Yoon Changmin there would change the view of the jury to supporting Hwang Naeri.

“Listen, if we get these people to sign the form, we’d get witnesses and it’ll help Naeri,” Johnny claims, frantically moving his arms annoyingly as he talks, trying his best to express the gravity of the situation, “and maybe, maybe, money wouldn’t be how Changmin wins, but how he loses. We can’t have another person with jean shorts walking on the streets of our city like this—they deserve to go to prison.”

You scrunch up your nose. “Why does this always revert back to the jean shorts?”

“It always has to do with jean shorts,” he snaps back matter-of-factly. “Any straight guy wearing jean shorts with that much goddamn confidence has done some wrong in their lives.”

“Right, but I’m pretty sure that the crimes he did are mainly the reason why he’s being prosecuted against.”

“Jean shorts are the windows to the soul.”

“I’m almost 100% sure that eyes are the windows to the soul, but whatever. If you genuinely believe that the women we met today would benefit our case, then… okay. Let’s bring them to the stand.”

On the contrary to you, Johnny doesn’t have a hard time convincing witnesses to testify. You see the way that he works; those kind eyes directed at the participants, the pools of chocolate were sweet, saturated in nothing but tenderness and warmth, then he does that weird thing where he reaches for their hands and cups them before the words that escapes from his lips are enough to swoon them to stand in front of a courtroom.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a method to his so-called madness.

Aggression and bluntness don’t work, it seems, because when you’re the one attempting to convince these people to go against the man that had done them wrong, they’re less willing to do it. Something about ‘moving on,’ and ‘not wanting to relive those memories again,’ but if it was you, you’d want justice. Then again, not everyone is like you, and not everyone thinks like you, and spending this abundance of time with Johnny is slowly getting you to ease into that perspective.

So… the initial impression you had of him may have been wrong.

And maybe, just maybe, you’re developing some feelings for him, just as Hyeri predicted.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

His abrupt personal question is enough to have the coffee spill into your mouth to slide down the ‘wrong throat’ because you’re choking, hand on your chest as you’re tackling to regain your breath again and Johnny only stares in disbelief, blinking blankly. “Are… are you okay?”

You glare at him through a hooded gaze. “Well,” you clear your throat once more. “Now, I am.”

“Cool.” He nods, retracting his hand so he could rub your back soothingly, deciding it’s best to stay away. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Quirking a brow, your head tilts slightly in puzzlement. “Why are you asking this?”

Johnny shrugs. “Isn’t it weird that we’ve hung out with each other for a whole week—stayed here for nights and we both don’t know anything about each other?”

Tapping your fingers against the wooden top table, you sigh. Maybe he’s got a point; after all, “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer,” right?

“No, I’m single.”

Johnny’s face suddenly brightens, ears perked, and his body straightens its posture in his seat at this revelation. “Oh, uh, I didn’t know that. You seemed busy in your personal life, so I, uh… was just wondering.” He looked anxious, but you couldn’t pinpoint why. “I, um, I’m single too, by the way, in case you’re wondering.” You weren’t.

The plethora of cardboard and plastic boxes scattered across the table was a representation of the night. It’s been long, exhausting, and messy, mostly because it’s a Friday night, the hearing was on Monday, and the two of you were nowhere near close to having enough to present to the court. In fear of disappointing Seohyun, the two of you agreed to stay over the office for the weekend to cram work for the case. There’s no denying that the atmosphere is weirder on the weekends, especially since, well, no one really comes here on the weekends. Johnny had to use the bathroom earlier and ran into the cleaning lady and she nearly shit her pants because she didn’t think anyone was here, so she had music blasting in her headphones.

Johnny is… interesting. He makes you laugh—or well, want to laugh, but you don’t give him that sense of satisfaction—and he’s smart but in his own weird way. He’s not like the other lawyers you’ve met, or any of the law students you attended University with because he’s more lighthearted and free-spirited than the rest, taking life in strides instead of just overwhelming himself in the abundance of stress that work brings.

He’s entirely the opposite of you.

And maybe you could learn something from the guy, but there’s something in you that brews hatred toward him. Possibility that you resent how easy he makes being a lawyer seem when you’re struggling in your day-to-day life to make things work.

But it’s way too fucking hard when he’s just… like that.

Despite all of that, he’s very generous and kind toward you. On rough days, he delivers your coffee order, the one you always get because he remembers what you asked the intern to get for you the last time, and he’s good at identifying when you’re just having that kind of day. You eventually learn he has a photographic memory (fucking show off), so when he saw that crumpled napkin with scribbles of what you want in that dumb intern’s hand, it wasn’t hard to remember. Which, by the way, is how he’s able to get into the most prestigious school for undergrad, manage to pass the bar so easily, and get into law school effortlessly.

And knowing this information sort of angers you more.

You know this isn’t his fault—he’s been blessed with a trait that people desire, one that you also yearn for, but the lucky ones get handed a lot of things in life. You wonder if he’s the type of guy who wins girls easily after matching with them on dating sites because of this stupid ass ‘photographic memory.’ Does he sleep with them right after? Does it ever get serious?

You shrug your shoulders and shake your head. You shouldn’t even let these strange thoughts haunt you, especially when you don’t even like him.

He’s a spoiled brat who gets everything handed to him on a silver platter.

So you’re left counting the remaining days until the trial so you don’t ever have to work with Johnny Suh this closely again.

Okay, well, it’s evident that bad luck is glued to your side because after you win the Hwang v. Yoon case for your law firm with that asshole, Seohyun is so impressed. So goddamn impressed that she insists that all the high profile cases are to be given to both you and Johnny.

To work as a team.

Together.

Jesus, this is Hell for you.

Surely, the promotion and raise that came along with it was definitely a plus, but it has you wondering if it’s even worth it. He’s been your unspoken enemy since the first day, and although you think you’re pretty forthright about your hatred for this guy, he can’t seem to read social cues.

When you’re pushing the double doors into the conference room the two of you often spend working on cases in, you expect Johnny to be ready for another day. But strangely enough, Johnny doesn’t have his laptop out or any of the notebooks sprawled across the table.

“Um,” you slide the strap of your bag off your shoulder and onto the spare chair. “Did you come late or something?”

He takes in a deep breath like he’s been holding back something. “We need to talk.”

There’s worry inscribed into his features; from the crease in between his brows, to his pursed lips, and eyes soaked in concern, almost like he’s got bad news to share and it has your stomach in knots. Was it that the case was thrown out? It couldn’t be, right? You both worked hard, presented your stance to the point that the jury and the judge were in awe with your findings. Sure, you had to cover Johnny’s mouth right before he was about to go off in a tangent about jean shorts, but overall, it was a good win, a hard one to go back on and pull out the wrongs of it. So what was it?

“I’m quitting our partnership.”

You blink. “What?”

He gestures to the room with his hands as if there’s anything out to reference. “This thing. Our work. The big profile cases. The famous stuff. I told Seohyun that I won’t be doing it anymore and she can revoke the promotion and the raise.”

You’re still not catching on. “… Why?” Was it something you did? Yeah, you weren’t a big fan of Johnny either, but were you so bad that he decided to not go through with the raise because of you?

“Because,” he pushes his blazer back, hands sliding into the front pockets of his navy blue trousers. “There’s a policy put into place. Those who are on the same cases cannot have any personal relations with each other that extend past friendships.”

“We’re not even friends?” With confusion written across your face, your head tilts to the side. “I’m not… I’m not catching on here.”

“I like you.”

Startled, the words you want to say are stolen out of your mouth. You’re left with a mixture of perturbation and bewilderment, uncertain where to go from there because Johnny asked for the removal of both a promotion and additional money that could be so good for his career… and it’s all because he has a crush on you?

“You quit the best thing that could’ve happened to you because you like me?”

“Yeah,” Johnny states calmly, sucking in his cheeks for a brief moment. “Ain’t that romantic?”

You scoff. “No. Absolutely not. You’re insane! Why would you do yourself dirty like that? Use your head, Johnny, you’re constantly thinking with that stupid heart of yours, and hate to break it to you, but it won’t get you anywhere.” Combing your hair with your fingers, you let out a sigh. “Go ask Seohyun for the position back. Say you made a mistake and—”

“I’m not asking her for the position back.”

Johnny doesn’t make any sense to you. “What? Why wouldn’t you do that?

“Because,” he laughs in disbelief, not because he thinks you’re funny. “I’m not going to force myself to work with a girl that I keep falling for. That’s self-inflicting, you realize that, right? You’re amazing, but you can seriously be so dense sometimes.”

“I’m dense? You just told one of the best law firms in the city that you don’t want to work on the important cases anymore because you have a stupid crush on your partner!”

“If we were on a team with more people, maybe it’d be different. But it’s just us two. You think I won’t fall any harder? That’s not easy. Every time I see you working, I swear I could be hopelessly in love with you one day.”

Your heart stops for a second.

This is Johnny Suh you were talking about here. One of the claimed best lawyers in your office, one of the most intelligent people that Hyeri has ever met, and Seohyun evidently backs this up because she’s given him so much recognition for his work. He’s the guy who worked with you to win the Hwang v. Yoon case, he’s the one who brought up the stupid jean shorts that seemed so far-fetched at the time, but they were a crucial detail everyone missed—it so happened that when Changmin bought those dumb shorts, there was evidence of at least one of his crimes in that store from the security cameras.

Any cis-gendered male who wears jean shorts can’t be trusted, according to Johnny.

And candidly speaking? You couldn’t even deny that. Your past two ex-boyfriends both wore jean shorts and the one cheated on you and the other one was caught money laundering.

“Listen,” he begins, interrupting your foggy thoughts. “I’m not asking you to tell me you like me back. I’m telling you because you should know, and that I can’t go on any further without letting you know. I’ll, uh, be in my office. Seohyun said she’d find a replacement for me.”

Hyeri is his replacement.

She’s great company and does a good job of helping you with whatever you need, but that was just it. Hyeri followed you, she never led with you, just as Johnny does. Agreeing with everything you say, mindlessly trailing behind everything you do—Hyeri was smart, but she couldn’t figure out how to think for herself when it came to these bigger cases because she’s never been given such a responsibility. But you couldn’t even blame her because it’s what she was told to do under Gonghyun.

“You said that you think Maeri snatched the bracelet?”

“No, I said if you watched the security video that the jewelry store submitted, it clearly shows that Maeri snatched the bracelet. Not that I ‘think.’ The proof is right there, Hyeri.”

She nods, resuming back to her work on the computer. Truthfully, Hyeri felt more like an assistant than a co-worker, someone to bounce ideas off of and to see from a different perspective. And as much as you hated Johnny, he had decent points. He had ways of making you put yourself into the shoes of people you never thought you were; although the guy was obnoxious, at least he actually was… good at his job.

Deciding you can’t take it anymore when Hyeri asks for the tenth time that hour about your beliefs rather than her own, you abruptly stand from your seat.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” you reply shortly. “I’ll be back.”

It was just a spontaneous thought. It’s after hours, and although there are some people who stay behind to get some work done, you had your doubts that Johnny would still be here. He seems to have a better grip on that work/life balance thing people talked about (unlike yourself), but it didn’t hurt to check his office, right?

It’s a good thing you went with it. Because right across from yours, there’s Johnny.

There’s one single lamp that shines over the tabletop of his desk, and the other sources of light in his office are from his computer screen and the ones from the city skyline from behind him. It has him seemingly angelic like this, so serene, calm, and collected, only focused on what’s laid out in front of him. The sun has gone down, people have gone home, but Johnny remains, hardworking as always, despite your previous observations that he’s a lazy, unprofessional guy who gets everything handed down to him.

With a knock on his glass door, he flinches, head raising up and eyes meeting yours.

Were his eyes always this sparkly?

Opening the door, Johnny drops the pen in his hand and crosses his arms before leaning back in his seat. “What’s up?”

“You’re here late,” you state the obvious, and Johnny only nods in return, without a rebuttal in sight. “You aren’t normally here late. At least, before the Hwang v. Yoon case.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But Seohyun dropped something on my desk this morning. Wanted to work on it. What brings you here?”

Inhaling in a deep breath of courage, your hands bundle up into a fist by your side. “Please come back.”

Johnny raises a brow. “What?”

“Come back,” you reiterate, this time, it’s less tense and releases with ease. Caving in isn’t usually this effortless to you, but something about Johnny makes you feel… comfortable enough.“Come back and work with me again. Yes, I’m not supportive of how you do things—”

“Then let’s go out on a date.”

You freeze. Legs rooted into the floors of Johnny’s office, you’re left immobile and diffident on how to react next. It wasn’t what you were expecting, although you weren’t quite sure what you were hoping to anticipate, but it most definitely was not this.

“I—”

“I said my terms,” he retorts, shutting the book in front of him before shuffling up from his seat. He’s leaving, you realize, and Johnny’s ready to head home for the night and you’re not sure if you could handle an entire weekend with Hyeri here. “And, I meant what I said. One date, and if it really doesn’t work out, I’ll stay on the case.”

Chewing on your bottom lip anxiously, the next words that come out are out of character for you. “And… what if it does?”

A soft smile tugs from each corner of his mouth. “Then we’ll figure it out from there. Promise.”

This is… awkward. It shouldn’t be, but yet somehow, it remains awkward.

You’ve spent weeks with Johnny before, and those moments were in a room, in the middle of the night, and alone. Hours and hours were dedicated to work, yes, but it was just the two of you and nobody else.

So why is it so weird being in a five Michelin star restaurant with him?

Maybe it’s the atmosphere. The dim lights, the white clothed tables in lieu of the scratched up wooden one back at the law firm, and instead of leather seats, there’s a neutral beige chaise cushion for the dining chair, slightly less comfortable because it doesn’t recline like the one in your office. Instead of an array of photos and evidence disseminated in front of you, there’s a laminated menu with a multitude of options of what to have for dinner.

Johnny gets the steak with mashed potatoes and string beans, and you order something similar but seared salmon for the main protein. The waitress offers wine, babbling on about the age of the red, where the vineyard is located, and the dryness to sweetness—to be honest, you could care less; you’d rather have gin and sprite with a squirt of lime. A couple glasses of that and you can almost guarantee that the night would end with a deep slumber.

Oddly enough, Johnny seems nervous. Ever since he pulled up in his midnight black Audi in front of your apartment complex, he’s been acting strange. He keeps wiping his sweaty palms off the material of his trousers, occasionally swiping off the droplets that fall on the side of his face.

“Are you… okay?” you suddenly ask, adjusting your dress in your seat. Deciding to go with a black silk dress with a slit up the leg and your hair let down, it’s not a look you often sport but since you’re going on a date (one you haven’t been on in quite some time), you figured it would be nice to at least play the part.

“I’m, uh, honestly, I’ve never really asked a girl out before.”

You quirk a brow curiously. “What? You’re telling me you never asked a girl out before?”

He lets out a bashful laugh with a faint nod, making an attempt to swallow his nerves after. “Honestly, I’ve always been asked out and not the other way around. Not to sound like that guy, but I never really had to put effort into trying for girls. They kind of just…”

“—Throw themselves at you?”

He beams. “Yeah! Like that. I don’t really know how to react half the time, but it makes the whole dating scene a little bit easier.” Geez, he called you dense, but he’s over here acting clueless.

Either way, it feels like whatever opinion you had about Johnny remained true. He never had to try when it came to the dating scene, and you could only imagine what that means for work and the relationships he has with the women in your career field.

“Mm, does that usually happen with work too?”

Befuddled, Johnny leans back in his chair. “What do you mean by that?”

With a shrug of your shoulders, you’re poking the meat of your salmon that falls off easily. After the first initial bite, the fish practically melts on impact when it touches the tip of your tongue, smooth like butter and bursting with flavor that couldn’t be described by any common person because it wouldn’t do the salmon justice. Johnny seemed to put a lot into this date, and you’re left pondering what the point of this was. Did he actually like you, or was he trying to get into your head? “Just seems like you get a lot of special treatment.”

“Are you jealous?”

“In what way?” you snap back.

“Are you jealous of me because I’m getting this so-called special treatment that you think I’ve always had, or were you jealous of the girls that seemingly got my attention?”

You’re left without anything to say.

It was a good observation he made because truthfully, you never saw it like that.

In actuality, you often saw Johnny as your rival. He climbed the ladder in the field with ease, and it wasn’t hard to quickly blame his success on the fact that he was a guy in a male dominated industry, but the fact that there’s a possible interpretation for your hatred may be from these feelings you might’ve been harboring for him this entire time… that can’t be it… right?

“I mean, look at where you are now,” you begin, trying to defend yourself. It can’t be true that the reason you’ve been bitter about Johnny was because of the girls that got his attention, and one of them not being you. “You got a high position from—”

“—From hard work,” Johnny interjects with his brows furrowed. “I didn’t get to where I was because I slept around, if that’s what you’re insinuating. I knew you sort of always hated me, but I’ve always admired you. I like your work ethic, I like your style, even though we’re both on opposite spectrums, I like the way you think and I wanted to know what it was like being partners with you. Getting to be on that case with you showed me more than just who you were as a lawyer, but who you were as a person. I like you, but I’m trying to put my finger on why you hate me so much.”

“So you noticed.” Sucking in your cheeks, your eyes trail elsewhere—from the fork that lays beside your plate, to the glass filled halfway with wine, to the little candle that sits in between the two of you that flickers the way he has your heart when he expresses once more how he feels about you.

“Yeah, of course I noticed. If you like someone, it’s kind to miss details like that about them. So… you really hated me because you thought I slept my way to the top, huh?”

“I mean…” shoulders dropping in exasperation, you run your fingers through your disheveled hair. “All those rumors—”

“Again, they’re just rumors. I worked hard to get here, you know. And I’m kind of offended that you thought of me that way.”

You scoff. “They’re rumors, Johnny, it’s kind of hard to ignore all the office gossip when that’s all you hear. Plus, it wasn’t hard to believe either, with the whole flirtatious act whenever you encounter anyone who’s breathing and has a vagina.”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“You need a book for dummies that elaborates on what’s flirting or not, because Johnny Suh, whatever it is you do with your body language in front of that chick who sits by the front door.”

“You mean Siwoo? The pregnant one who’s married to her highschool sweetheart? Also, how do you not know our receptionist’s name?”

You throw your arms into the air. “How am I supposed to know her name?”

He tilts his head to the side, genuinely baffled. “Do you… not talk to anyone outside of Hyeri?”

Your silence answers his question.

“I… honestly, I don’t know if I should be offended or if I should be honored. You think I didn’t earn anything that I have now, you think that everything I have was handed to me. On one hand, it’s flattering that you think my looks and my bedroom skills could do that but at the same time… I’m offended because you think I’m incapable.”

“I never said you were incapable—”

“But you implied it.”

Hands falling onto your lap, it’s your turn to gulp. His words come shooting at you, but you’re without a shield to protect yourself, and with the new experience of working with Johnny, there comes the realization at times that Johnny is a hard worker. There are some things that he says and does that aren’t like the people you’ve encountered, and being put on new cases with Hyeri only proved it. He’s thoughtful in the sense that whenever you’d bring up your stance on something, he challenges you with what the defense might counter.

Johnny makes you want to be better. Not just against him, but to brush off the dust on your skills and enter into the battlefield of a courtroom to showcase them.

“Well, if you’re staying silent, I just want to say that I tried,” the crinkle in between your brows makes another appearance because Johnny is great at leaving you stunned and confused. “I really like you. I love how your head works, and I wanna be with someone like that but I also can’t be with someone who doesn’t respect me.”

Why is it that when you’re in that conference room with him, you’re not afraid and never running out of things to say, but now you’re empty handed?

“I’ll pay for dinner. Grab you an Uber. I honestly thought I could overlook those things, and maybe your perspective for me has changed, but I could see it on your face. It’s the same.”

After that date with Johnny, his life turns back to normal.

Yours? Not so much.

Candidly speaking, part of you missed working with Johnny. You were wrong about him, so wrong, and even when you wanted to apologize at the dinner for what you thought of him, the pride in you was like a vicious plague that blackened your insides, preventing you from ever saying those words.

Oftentimes, you’d still be able to sneak a glimpse of him in his office with that same look on his face—full of concentration and nothing else in his mind other than the task at hand.

The cases you have with Hyeri entail a head like Johnny’s. Someone who could question you, to protest against your stance when there could be flaws in it. It feels like deja vu each time you think about it, each time you open a new case file and Hyeri sits there, perched in that seat beside yours, eyes sparkling with what you have in mind next, instead of what she has going on in hers.

Although you’ve tried convincing yourself that maybe, just maybe, what you feel for Johnny is purely professional but when you see him standing by the water cooler with a couple of your coworkers, eyes mimicking the moon crescents in the skies, replicating the ways his lips curl in elation—it was beginning hard to believe that it was all platonic feelings.

So maybe you should be bold for once. Pull off that exterior that displays you as someone who isn’t just independent and assiduous, but someone who’s stubborn and aggressive in getting what they want—and not in a good way.

This time, you’ll show it in a good way.

Or at least, you’ll try.

Johnny is a routine kind-of-guy—he grabs an iced americano every morning at the coffee shop downstairs at the edge of the street, he does his daily 11:00AM drop-by at the water cooler to refill his Hydroflask (which was his prized possession, by the way), and parked in the same exact spot in the parking garage of your building, despite there being an abundance of places he could choose.

That’s why you decide to stand by his car after work that day. Bouncing on the balls of your feet, hands shaking because it’s your turn to feel anxious. That blazer that once fit so comfortably in the morning suddenly feels tight and hot in the afternoon, and the weather hasn’t even changed. Your bag slung over your shoulder weighs ten times heavier than an hour ago, and you can’t stop your jaw from tightening.

Before your thoughts could spiral off all the possibilities of what the outcome may be when you tell Johnny how you feel, he’s already standing there, feet away from you with that dip in the fronts of his brows that you want to smoothen out the crinkles of with the pad of your thumb.

“Hi,” you greet, faint and peculiarly different from your other approaches. “Um, I just… was waiting for you.”

“Hey,” Johnny says back, the first few buttons of his shirt already unraveled, his blazer hung over his forearm and the sleeves are rolled up. “I see that. What’s up with you?”

“Um,” your leg was jittery, hard to control so you spat everything you had to say out as fast as you could before he could see right through you. “I just wanted to apologize. For everything. You’re admirable, kind, and I wish I inhabited those same characteristics you have. I think professionally, you’ve got great ideas, one that could be implemented into mine and what we did together for that case was just… yeah. We could do something big if we put our heads together.”

Johnny nods in agreement. The relationship between you two work-wise was obvious, he knew that much. “And what about… outside of that?”

“I like you,” you choked, barely getting the words out. “More than just coworkers, um, I guess, more than friends but I’m not really sure since you walked out on our first date,” inhaling in a deep breath of courage, you continue on, “and I don’t know how you feel now after I’m standing before you like this, asking for another chance and that I’m sorry.”

He stares at you blankly, and it leaves you unsure whether or not he accepts your apology. “You know why we ended that date early.”

“Well,” you start again, “can we… start over and try again? I promise I won’t tempt you to end the date early this time.”

And with that, there’s the signature smile that Johnny sports that swoons girls, makes their knees weak, and heart clench but this time… it’s just for you.

“I’d really like that.”

[squishneedsahero]

Maybe It Isn’t all Bad

Awesomest of Them All 2.0

Part 2 of 13

Word Count: 1714

Batman x Batmom!Reader

You know what the bat family needs? Someone to pull them together and give them all the love they deserve. Who better to do that than you? An author rising to stardom in Gotham who catches the eye of a billionaire with your standoffish attitude at a huge social gathering. You are yourself and never pretend to be more or less than that. Plus you're the most stubborn person in the world, refusing to let good things go without reason.

This is a rewrite of my story Awesomest of Them All, I wanted to see how much I've improved over 3 years.

It had been two months since you published your book, and it had taken off. Tons of people loved it and even more had read it. Because of this you were suddenly a popular public figure of Gotham, and of course like all other public figures you were invited to one of the many galas that happen in this city. You hated it. You, y/n l/n the nobody who lived in a shabby apartment and just happened to get lucky with your book. What you wouldn't give to go back to being a nobody so you could spend your Friday night watching Netflix alone on your couch.

Unfortunately you weren't sure how the snobby rich people,who thought they were better than everyone else, would take you rejecting their invitation the first of probably many. But this was a charity gala hosted by Bruce Wayne: play boy, billionaire, and one of the few people present that seems somewhat genuine even if you didn't think he had a single thought behind his eyes. So maybe it wasn't all bad cause all the rich people were donating to charity and Bruce usually made sure the money went somewhere good.

You had worn an elegant gown, preferring it to the ones that let your ass hang out the bottom. The dress was fabulously elegant and made you feel like a queen. You had paired it with your your highest high heels, stilettos that you could stab someone with if it came down to it. So far the night had been filled with pointless conversations and lots and lots of introductions, all while dancing a waltz.

Lets be honest you won't remember most of the new people you had met, you could've met the Queen of England and not have known it. You didn't remember not because you had been drinking, even if you had thought about it many times, but because there were so many people that wanted to get you and your new found popularity under their thumb and gain through you.

You had finally gotten a break by standing by the buffet table and eating the food they seemed to be letting go to waste. If nothing else you would singlehandedly make sure the food didn't get wasted. You kept trying to think of an excuse to go home, but so far couldn't think of anything. Your planning was interrupted when yet another person came up to you, except his face is somewhat familiar. "Hi," you say after you hurriedly swallow a bite of food.

"Hello, Miss (y/n) (l/n)," he begins, knowing your name but you not knowing his, "may I have this dance?" He asks, great another dance luckily you were used to being on your feet thanks to waitressing otherwise you'd be worried about them falling off with all this meaningless dancing. Why couldn't rich people be more fun with their dancing, most of them were white, playing some pop songs, and the Cupid Shuffle could only make things better.

"Yes, Mister..." you pause as you try to place him, you know you know him but you'd seen so many faces like that tonight that it was a blur.

"Wayne," He finishes for you.

"I'd love to dance with you Mr.Wayne," you lie through that smile that was plastered to your face. You offer your hand and wish desperately you had taken your chance to escape when you'd had it only moments before.

He takes the hand you offer to him and leads you out to the dance floor, waltzing yet again, at least you didn't have to lead cause you had no idea what you were doing. "My son read your book," he begins, trying to start up a friendly conversation, "he's keeps trying to convince me to read it."

"That's nice," you respond awkwardly, what were you supposed to do? Try to convince him to read it too? Hell no, you are not going to act like an airhead and promote yourself.

"He doesn't know that I've already read it," Bruce says. You laugh before you can stop yourself, you almost apologize but he laughs as well. "I enjoyed reading it, it was very well written." Maybe he did actually have real thoughts in his head unlike how the media portrayed him.

"Thank you," you say a slight blush making is way onto your cheeks. He was quite attractive after all and here he was complimenting you. The smile on your lips becomes more genuine as the two of you continue dancing, making light conversation, and surprisingly it was quite enjoyable.

Before you know it the party is over. And you'd spent almost half of it dancing with one man. "Thank you for the dance."

"It was my pleasure," he says, and you find yourself blushing for the millionth time that night. Maybe these parties weren't all bad, you'd found a friend you could have intelligent conversations with after all.

You find yourself invited to almost every gala that happens in the city over the next few months and every time Bruce is there the two of you spend most of the time dancing and talking with each other. The conversations between the two of you are pleasant, covering many topics, and most importantly they aren't meaningless like all the other conversations you were forced into at galas.

Bruce would get your opinion on things such as how the money he got for charity should be spent since you had been more recently living among the people he was trying to help. Like you weren't bad off by any means but you hadn't owned a car, relying on bus routes to get around the city and working 40+ hours a week to keep your head above water. You had been better off than many in Gotham but you had been closer to the poverty than Bruce had, even considering his night job. The fact that he genuinely cared and wanted your opinion amazed you. He was the first and probably only friend you made among the one percent at those parties.

Of course the two of you didn't only talk business, other more casual subjects came up. The two of you bonding over having dead parents, even if he was more traumatized and your wounds more recent. Then talking about school and how you had decided to skip college in order to pursue writing while he had been homeschooled then traveled the world instead of college, not that either of you were too old for college though. He was was 23-24, still young despite having adopted an 8 almost 9 year old and you were close to the same age as him.

The both of you being young, and single, did lead the two of you to have more than a friendship but that was after nearly a year of just talking at galas. Okay a year of just talking was a lie. It was probably only six months before the two of you found yourselves out in a garden and shared your first kiss. But it was an entire year before he finally asked you out, claiming it was a dare from Dick and to ease the pressure of the press.

You of course called him on those lies and pointed out the fact that there had not been a single other woman in his life since the two of you met. And said the only way you'd go out with him was if he'd, "just admit you like me." Needless to say he did.

That was part of the reason that he was so attracted to you. Despite what he knew about you from the one day he saved you from Joker, you were just unafraid to be yourself. You had never pretended or tried to pretend to fit in at the galas. You'd never been afraid to call him on his shit, even if it had risked your one friendship that made those galas bearable.

To your surprise when you had called him a dumbass for thinking it was acceptable to give a 9 year old unlimited access to the internet he laughed and said you were probably right. Then for some reason he thought it was a good idea to ask you for parenting advice and you told him that was a worse idea. You had less of an idea how to be a parent than he did, the only reason a 9 year old shouldn't have unlimited internet access was because he was a bit young to already get unrealistic expectations from porn. Mainly you had no idea, it just felt weird to turn a kid loose on the internet but then again you'd been a kid who ate mud and called it fun.

So, all the talking and asking opinions and just spending a ton of time together leads to Bruce asking you out. The press saw this coming from miles away and caught you both on your date, not that they didn't have pictures of the two of you hiding from people on a balcony. But an actual date?!? Amazing! All the internet fans were happy for you, the paparazzi loved you and would do anything to get pictures of the two of you.

The two of you became Gotham's it couple overnight but the best thing about it was that it was real. Both of you were blatantly honest, calling each other out when needed and defending each other at other moments. There were no secrets between the both of you and you wouldn't trade that for anything. It was amazing to you that you had finally found a man who saw you as his equal and if anything he was a man known for being a womanizer.

So that's how it all started, in the space of a year the two of you fell in love and were head over heels for each other. Dick played match maker every chance he got, since he adored you for some odd reason. And of course, when you finally met him Alfred approved of you and Bruce being together, the one person able to call him on his shit and have him listen. It was a miracle that Alfred had thought he'd never love to see.

[sylensombrr]

Afterdeath Family Headcanons

No one asked for this, but I wanna talk about it and I don't wanna forget lol. Get ready, this is gonna be a long one. In my head canon, the Afterdeath family consists of Geno and Reaper,(obviously), who are the parents, and their kids Raven, Sorell, Silver, Goth, and Shino(as well as other fan kids like Candy, Momo, Demise etc. but they won't be mentioned. Might make a separate post about them if yall want/if I feel like it). They live in a huge gothic mansion, I don't know where it's located but if it's in an AU it would be next to a graveyard.(They give off huge Addams family vibes, so I had to take influence from that) They also share the house with two pets, a cat named Krueger and a raven named Archimedes, as well as three other people, Lotus, Rurik, and Palette, but I'll talk about those three later.

Geno(He/him) •Geno is in a group called "Triple Threat and Regret" consisting of him, Lust and Dance •They try to go out together every Tuesday, Geno's favorite location being Ccino's café •He's a bit of a hoarder but not much that it's a problem •Super fucking emo •Has a bit of a habit of adopting children he finds, ex. Lotus •Krueger is his cat. He found her in the graveyard. She was too old to live out in the wild, so he kept her •Horror movie fanatic, one of his favorites being A Nightmare on Elm Street •Coffee addict/Likes black coffee Reaper(He/they/it) •Best friends with Bill Sans •He's in a nameless friend group consisting of him, Bill and SD!Dream(Idea by @/_.dxnce.sxns.stan• on Instagram) •Huge heavy metal fan •Archimedes is his raven, which he treats like a familiar •Likes giving advice to his kids •Most of his kids vent to him rather than Geno •Surprisingly good cook •Wants to be or was in a band with Geno, Bill and 404 depending on the timeline/AU •He can play the guitar and scream Raven(He/him) •Loves to go to Comic-Con every time it comes around •Introduced Blueprint to rock •He and Blueprint and sometimes his cousin Gradient go to concerts together •He enjoys getting high with Blueprint and just vibing •Blueprint is a year older than him

Silver(He/it/xe) •May or may not be adopted(idk I read it somewhere, but now I can't find it) •Loves to play with Shino •His favorite siblings are Shino and Sorell •Trans male •He is a bit annoyed by Rogue but doesn't mind when ze stays there as long as ze doesn't talk to him •Has a tiktok and likes to make cosplay videos, mainly anime •Would cut you if you told anyone

Sorell(He/they) (If anyone has or knows where I can his canon info, please tell me I can't find it anywhere) •Afab nonbinary •Big anime and manga fan •Raven and them like to trade manga •He likes to hang out with Tatyana sometimes(They garden and take care of her animals together) •Asexual •Grayromatic Goth(He/they/she) •He knows about Palette and Cray's rivalry, but chooses to ignore it •He was originally pretty cautious around Lotus and Rurik but warmed up to them •Prefers to hang out with Lotus over Rurik •Cray is like a brother to him •Thinks Rogue is pretty weird but still likes zir •He tried to keep Rogue and Rurik from meeting out of fear of them fighting •Wants to wear heels so he can taller, but Geno doesn't let him(he's too young) Shino(She/her) •Loves to play with Sorell, Silver, and Rurik •She keeps trying to get Rogue to play with her and is mad that ze never does (I don't have much to say about her lol)

Miscellaneous Geno and Reaper(mainly Geno) doesn't let any of their kids ages 13 and under be in the house by themselves, so they have either Rogue, Bill, Dance, or Lust watch over them. As of recent, Geno and Reaper also like to have family get togethers with Ink ,Error and their kids(Paperjam and Gradient) as well as Fresh. It usually ends up with Error and Geno fighting/debating over something stupid with Fresh, Ink, and Reaper watching them while the kids play Mario Kart or Smash in another room.

Next onto Palette, Rurik and Lotus which is where I kinda diverted from canon mainly with Rurik and Lotus to the point it could be considered an alternate version of them. Palette(He/they) Because of being busy with battling against Nightmare and his gang, Ink and Dream couldn't and weren't prepared to take care of a child. So reluctantly Dream asked Geno and Reaper to take care of Palette until they could, who was a newborn at the time, which they gladly did agreed to. After that, Palette only saw his Dream twice again and never saw his Ink. They downright abandoned him. •Palette idolizes both Ink and Dream, seeing them more as these fictional action heroes rather than actual people •He refuses to accept that they abandoned him •He wants to go help them fight and reform Uncle Nightmare when he grows up •He didn't even know Ink's name until he met Blueprint's Ink •He has low self-esteem due to him believing he'll never live up to the fictional and unrealistic idea of his parents that he has •He can't use his magic properly due to never being taught by Ink or Dream, can only summon his roller but can't use it •Rurik will give him lessons on his magic later on •He loves and wants to be friends with everyone •Except for Cray •He thinks Cray is annoying but enjoys their rivalry •He's secretly jealous of Blueprint for having contact with his Ink Rurik(He/him)& Lotus(He/they) Rurik and Lotus somehow ended in the Underverse, and now they can't get back to the Fellverse. I have an idea why, but I'm not done with that yet. They didn't have any place to live, so Goth and Palette brought them to Geno and Reaper. Since they were most likely never gonna get back to the Fellverse, Geno offered to adopt them and let them live in their house. Lotus accepted while Rurik declined now but still decided to stay there. •Lotus did not want to go back to the Fellverse while Rurik did •They are the same ages as Palette and Goth(this may change) •They have never dated in this AU, but might in the future •Rurik idolizes his parents similar to Palette and doesn't realize that they are abusive •Lotus has never met Rurik's parents, so he doesn't know what he's going through •Lotus and Rurik have the same powers as Goth and Palette(this may also change) •Rurik refuses to use his roller since doesn't want to be seen as weak with his "girly" weapon •He uses knifes and daggers instead •Lotus hates his parents •Rurik really likes Rogue and later begins to idolize zir •Rogue sees zirself in Rurik and later acts like a parental figure towards him •Rurik likes to play with Shino •Rurik originally started to hang out with Cray just to piss Palette off, but then he actually began to enjoy his company

Okay, that's all my headcanons I have for now. Yall can steal these if you want, but a credit would be nice. Might illustrate or talk about these more in another post if I feel like it.

[undyingskies]

Exposed

request:yes;

“Hi sweetheart! Can I make a request that the reader is dating Charlie but had a crush on Jeremy when he was in adventure time and they find out and tease her for it?”

a/n: I hope you guys enjoy!

warnings: none

tagged: @mah-gah-lee​

————————————-

You walk onto the set of Julie and The Phantoms for lunch, you finally had a break from your schoolwork so you decided to go visit your boyfriend on set today. You may live together but between school and his work, you both were busy so getting time together recently seemed almost impossible.

You walk through all the trailers trying to get to the lunch area, but no matter how many times you visit set you always seem to get lost. It was like a maze and one you couldn’t memorize.

You wander a little longer hoping for some kind of familiar surrounding but it doesn’t seem like you will be getting one. All the trailers look exactly the same and it is very possible you were going in circles and not even knowing it.

“Y/N is that you?” A voice startles you, stopping you in your tracks. You turn to see none other than Kenny Ortega smiling at you.

“Hi Kenny!” You cheerfully say back to him, he gives you a knowing smile. It’s a well-known fact that you got lost on set, it almost became a game between all of the cast to see who could find you first when you got lost.

“Lost again?” Kenny let’s out soft laugh.

“Is it that obvious?” Kenny chuckles again at your words, giving you a soft nod. “I’m trying to get to the lunch area to visit Charlie but as you can tell it’s not going as planned.”

“Well why don’t you follow me; I was just heading that way!” And with a smile you follow Kenny.

It was a short walk; you were almost there but your lack of directional skills just couldn’t give you this one.

Kenny gives you a hug and a smile before he walks off to go get his own food and talk to some of the producers.

You make your way up to the table that was occupied by Charlie, Owen, Jeremy, Savannah, and Carolynn. They all were giggling and staring down at Charlie’s phone. Your presence unknown to them.

“Hey guys!” This time your voice is the one that startles them. They all look up at you and smile while Charlie quickly locks his phone and flips it upside down on the table before he’s on his feet and placing a sweet kiss on your lips.

“Hey baby! I didn’t know you were coming today!” He’s acting weird you think, his moves jumpy.

“Uh ya, I finished my schoolwork for the week early so I figured I would come visit and say hi!”

He smiles at your words and moves to sit down and gives you space next to him to sit. Everyone at the table is oddly quiet and trying to stifle their laughs.

Very peculiar, you think to yourself.

It’s not odd for them to have inside jokes or to be laughing, but this silence and the looks on their faces was just weird.

“Okay so what gives? You guys are acting weird!” You finally say, frustrated by their silence and your lack of knowledge of why.

“It’s nothing!” Owen says, still trying to hold back a laugh. You give him a knowing look.

“Well you see, the fans they, ummm, they found something!” Now your interest is peaked, you weren’t a stranger to fandoms so you knew they could find some interesting things.

“Ooo, show me!” That’s when everyone breaks out into laughter not able to contain it anymore.

They’re all shaking their heads no at you.

“Guys come on! I want to know!”

“Baby, I don’t think you do!” This time you give Charlie the look you gave Owen, the look that lets them know you mean business.

“Fine! Just remember you wanted to see it!” Charlie is quick to grab his phone again and open it up before he slides it over to you.

That’s when you see his screen and you can feel the tips of your ears and cheeks start to burn.

Staring back at you on the screen is screenshots from your old fan account. You completely forgot about its existence.

You look up at everyone, they are already staring back at you laughing hard.

“I can explain!” You say quickly, feeling the embarrassment settle in.

“You don’t have to explain anything! It looks like you’re trying to steal my mans over here!” Carolynn says full of laughter.

You bury your face in your hands trying to hide your face. You can’t believe people were able to find your account.

Years ago, when you were in your early teens. Like 13, you made a fan account for none other than Jeremy Shada. At the time you were a huge Adventure Time fan.

You had the biggest crush on Finn so by default your crush extended to Jeremy as well since he voiced him. Your account was a mix of your love for the both of them.

“I guess we both got some competition Care!” Charlie laughs, leaning over to nudge you. Your face still buried in your hands.

“Guyyyys! I was 13 when I made that! I forgot it existed!” You say with a whine, you just couldn’t believe fans found it. And now the whole cast as seen it.

“I feel betrayed Y/N, you just forgot about your love for me!” Jeremy says laughing along with their jokes.

“Okay first of all, I loved Finn, you just happened to be a byproduct of that!”

“Hurtful!” Jeremy laughs.

“I hate you guys so much!” You say moving to sit up, you didn’t want to be in the hot seat anymore.

Charlie reaches out to grab you and stop you from moving with a laugh. He places his arm around your waist to keep you in place.

“Aw come on baby, it’s cute!”

“It is not!” You move to shove Charlie off of you but he doesn’t budge, coming back in to lean his face into your neck and place a kiss on it.

“I just wish you made a fan account about me, I’m a little jealous!”

“Oh shut it Gillespie!” You laugh.

You roll your eyes at the smirk that had found it’s place on Charlie’s face.

“Okay whatever it’s kind of funny!” You finally admit defeat, knowing that you wouldn’t get out of this situation or joke.

Everyone continued with the joke for a little while longer, you even interjecting with some. Which caused everyone to laugh even harder.

“Well I’m just glad I was able to meet Jeremey before Y/N, I think 13 year old her could of owned his heart!” Carolynn says with another laugh. You respond with an eye wiggle that causes everyone to laugh.

“I like to believe that she would have still chosen me but whatever!” Charlie says, again causing everyone to laugh.

“I guess we’ll never know babe!” The look on Charlie’s face causing you to laugh harder, a pout now replacing the smirk on his face.

“Baaaabe.” He whines out, now the one moving away from you. This time you’re the one who stops him.

“You know I’m joking. You’re the only one for me!”

You lean in to place a kiss on his lips, enjoying the feeling of his lips on yours before you pull away and join in with the conversation again.

Charlie just staring at you in admiration. He really did love and adore you with his whole heart.

He leans in and whispers to you, “You should come visit more, I like having you here.” Then he places a kiss to your head.

You smile back at him. You liked being there too, even if it meant that their fans exposed you. You loved being with Charlie and your friends being able to joke and enjoy your time together!

[bna1333]

The “Death Music Festival” incident in the United States is getting worse.

People who couldn’t get tickets broke through the VIP entrance of a music festival concert in Houston, Texas on November 5, causing a huge stampede.

Eight people, aged between 14 and 27, were killed and more than 300 injured, with the youngest just 10 years old… According to the Associated Press, it was the deadliest stampede and concert safety accident in the U.S. since 2003.

Us rapper Travis Scott, who performed on stage on that day, and Live Nation, which organised the show, have been sued for $1m for “inciting the crowd”.

The hashtag “Boycott Travis Scott” was trending on Twitter, characters and content related to Scott were removed from a popular local online game, and the FBI announced an investigation into the incident.

Rabble-rousing fans and persistent, the crazy Scott is responsible for the disaster. The frequent occurrence of “death concert” in the United States in recent years is probably related to the loopholes in the management and emergency response of the relevant local departments.

The music festival, called Astronomy World, was started by Scott and others in 2018 and has attracted a younger audience in recent years. On the day of the stampede, tens of thousands of people gathered at NRG Park.

According to audience members, minutes before Scott’s performance began, the crowd was building; As the show began, people were crushed unconscious and others screamed in horror. “I was squashed by the crowd and felt like I couldn’t breathe. I started yelling for help… I was so scared I felt like I was going to die.”

Houston Fire Chief Sam Pena said on Monday morning that spectators “for unknown reasons started moving toward the front of the stage, causing people in front of them to get crushed.”

The cause of the accident was unclear, and worse, emergency measures were inadequate.

An audience member later posted that two paramedics arrived after a girl fell to the ground in a stampede. “They acted very amateurish, as if they didn’t know anything. One of them just left the scene, and the other one screamed in panic, asking if anyone could do CPR…”

The audience member, who happened to have a medical background, shouted: “Get an AED, or give me a mouth-to-mouth mask.” But the medical staff just stood there because they didn’t have balloons, they didn’t have AED, they didn’t even have gloves…

In the end, the girl could not be revived. “I watched a girl die in front of my eyes because these medical staff were totally unprepared.”

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said 13 people were still hospitalized as of Sunday night, including five under the age of 18. Local judge Lina Hidalgo strongly condemned it as “unacceptable to attend a concert and not be able to return home safely.”

Scott made light of the situation on Twitter, saying he was “heartbroken about what happened last night.”

This is of little comfort to the injured and their families.

One of the victims’ relatives accused Scott of allowing the bloodrapery to take place when the event’s organizers were held responsible for failing to stop the performance when the audience shouted for it to be stopped.

Another injured audience attorney also issued a statement on July 7, accusing Scott and others after the accident, clearly saw the ambulance entrance, but still continued to perform.

This is not the first time the AstroWorld music festival has been held, and Scott is no stranger to stage control, which is why their behavior in the aftermath of the accident has angered the American public all the more. One person even described Scott as a “murderer”, suggesting that he did not care about the lives of his audience. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s advocated violence at a concert…

Scott’s name may sound familiar to those who are familiar with the entertainment and fashion circles in Europe and the United States.

He was born JacquesWebster in Texas in 1992, the son of a wealthy father who founded an advertising agency and was a drummer, and a grandfather who did well in medicine and was a jazz writer.

Growing up in such a household, Scott was also somewhat musical. He later fell in love with rap and hip-hop music and started working on his band at The age of 16. After releasing his first EP, The Gradustes EP, he became famous.

However, just as the 19-year-old dropped out of the University of Texas to concentrate on music, his band friends dropped out one by one. However, the low point did not last long when he was accidentally influenced by t.I., who was considered the “king of rap in the South”. Recognition, join its founding record company.

Since then, Scott’s path to fame has been smooth, with multiple brainwashed hits, multiple Billboard Hot 100 hits, and grammy nominations for best rap performance, making him one of hip-hop’s hottest stars in recent years.

Scott’s other role: “The father of Kylie Jenner’s daughter.”

Kim is a member of the Kardashian family and a huge Internet sensation in Europe and the US. She and Scott met at a music festival years ago, fell in love and had a daughter out of wedlock. But the whirlwind romance soon ended, with the couple officially calling it quits, prompting a twitter trend.

With his work and fame, Scott’s concerts are almost packed out. But instead of guiding his fans in a positive way, he often incites the audience to do crazy things at concerts.

At one concert, Scott encouraged an audience member to jump from a high platform: “I see you. Do you want to jump? They will catch you, don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid!” And then the fan actually jumped…

This way of doing things has already had its consequences. In 2017, a fan attending a Scott concert in New York City was pushed to the edge of the platform in a frenzy and fell three stories from the platform. She suffered multiple fractures and spinal injuries that left her permanently paralysed.

‘After he fell, security carried him off like a potato sack,’ the fan later recalled. ‘There was no neck brace or board.’ “If Scott had learned from past incidents and changed his attitude of recklessly stirring up crowds, this could have been prevented.”

Bizarrely, however, In the face of doubt and criticism, Scott is not self-reflective, but proud.

Also in 2017, Scott stirred up fans so much during a tour in Arkansas that police had to stop the show and arrest Scott for disorderly conduct and causing a disturbance. Amazingly, Scott then used his prison profile photo as inspiration for a T-shirt called ‘Free The Rage’, which sold in The market and made a fortune.

In 2018, he released the song Stargazing. The lyrics remain provocative: ‘It ain’t a mosh pit if ain’t no injuries, I got ‘em stage divin’ out of the nosebleeds.“

In fact, the United States in recent years, there are not less accidents at large events, just concert accidents are many.

In mid-August 2011, at a concert in Indianapolis, five people were killed and 45 injured when wind blew down scaffolding supporting the stage. At the end of May 2016, three people were injured in a shooting at a concert in New York. Just two weeks later, the Voice’s third-place finalist was gunned down at a concert…

And the sensational Las Vegas shooting. In October 2017, a gunman known as Paddock went on a random shooting spree at a concert in Las Vegas, killing 59 people and injuring more than 500.

Paddock continued to fire for nine to 11 minutes, local police said, and officers found 23 guns in the hotel room. Twelve of them were equipped with bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at high speed with near-automatic speed.

Other media reports said Paddock was “more ambitious” and had planned to attack a large open-air concert called Life is Beautiful, but changed his plans when nearby hotels were fully booked. If his plans had not changed, there would have been more casualties…

However, these past tragedies have not alarmed the authorities in the United States.

The stampede occurred shortly after a concert was being held at a banquet hall in northwest Miami-Dade County when three people got out of a white vehicle and opened fire with rifles and handguns, killing two people and injuring more than 20. The three gunmen then fled the scene in a car.

Scott’s “death concert” is a microcosm of what’s happening in America. Behind the chaos, the performers, organizers, as well as the relevant management departments have unshirkable responsibility.

Similar large-scale crisis events have been analyzed from the perspective of criminal psychology, targeting the people who stand on stage and guide the audience – the performers on stage may indirectly encourage the audience’s behavior through body language.

Has a great display, in particular, in concert performers if repeated for a certain area of the audience in the eye, smile, the audience get related will respond after induction, in a noisy environment, the stamp is more common collective feedback behavior, if artists continue to “instructions”, an area of audience, fans may desperately to trample, Thus causing danger.

Scott has repeatedly asked the audience at concerts and music festivals to climb over the railings and rush to the stage: “If you are my real fans, jump over the railings immediately. Come on, flip over!” “I want to party! I want chaos!” “All the [security guards] in green get the f * * k back.” He also encouraged the audience to join him in giving the finger to security personnel.

It is a loophole that should not be ignored that the United States treats entertainers with criminal records lightly. In addition, the serious gun problem in the United States has exacerbated the security risks of holding large events in public places. And the emergency measures after the accident, also again and again to challenge the Bottom line of the American people.

So many lives have been lost, so many families are suffering, and so many “death concerts” continue. When will America learn to stand in awe of tragedy?

[mandoalorian]

hi i’d like max x reader where he’s having very stressful day at work like everything that can go wrong does go wrong and the reader is his gf and bc of all this stuff going wrong he forgets that she’s supposed to visit him at work so she comes in and starts talking about her day and how great it was and then he just shoots up and goes to hug her and starts kissing her and playing with her hair and she’s like ??? cause this never happens and he just lays his head on her lap and he rants about his day and she listens and she tries to comfort him as best she can thank u 🥺

Rough Day At Work [Maxwell Lord x Reader]

Author's note: Oh. my god. This is a long one. I write a lot of Maxwell fluff but this one is by far one of my favourites. It's a journey of pure, unadulterated sweetness with a sliver of comedy. And it's set at Christmas— perfect to get you in the festive mood! Reblogs appreciated because this isn't showing up in tags.

Word count: 6.5k

Warnings: food mention, drink mention, brief allusions to sex, Maxwell is ~stressed~.

Rating: PG-13

Masterlist in pinned! Requests open x

Maxwell Lord had his fair share of bad days. Things almost always went wrong in his line of work, but it was almost never his fault. He could always squander up an excuse or find someone else to blame. But today it was one thing after another.

He was late. He had a meeting with the board team first thing but as the Christmas traffic filled the bustling roads of DC, he had already missed the first twenty five minutes of the conference. He practically fell out of the black limo that drove him to work every morning, plodging his feet through the thick layers of snow. It was so deep this morning, the ice cold water seeped through his leather Armani shoes and even through his favourite cashmere socks. The ones with little purple polka dots. He shivered uncomfortably as the clumps of ice sat in between his toes, melting, and so every footstep made an obscene squelching noise. He didn't have the time to fuss around and change his shoes. The bottoms of his tailored pants were dripping. He bolted through the glass revolving doors of Black Gold Cooperative, trailing a pool of water behind him. His receptionist Anna, and his assistant Raquel, stood up abruptly, their eyes widening as they saw their boss in such a hurried frenzy. 

"Mr Lord! You have your nine o’ clock meeting and it’s now nine twenty-” Raquel raised her hand and called for him, but he didn't bother to stop in his tracks.

"Yes Raquel, I know!" Maxwell yelled after her, already tapping his feet impatiently as he waited for the elevator. "Cmon, cmon…" he grumbled as it slowly made its way down from the 25th floor to the ground floor. 

When Maxwell entered the board meeting, his cheeks were a rosy pink from the cold winter weather. His eyes were glazed and the waves in his dark blonde hair were falling out of place. He had styled it perfectly this morning, the same way he did it every morning. You had even helped him, brushing through his locks when he had hopped out the shower. But now he looked as though he had just run a marathon, breaking out in a cold sweat. He swore if he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, he'd have a heart attack. But surely, the day couldn't get any worse. Right? Maxwell had made it to the meeting, albeit late. At least he was there.

Wrong.

"I am so sorry." he scrambled, plopping his briefcase down on the table and slipping past the many occupied chairs. He slumped down in one eventually, pulling out in a notepad and pen. "Bad traffic," he huffed. "Can someone give me the lowdown?"

He eventually looked up to see his company. Twelve older ladies in pink button down dresses and white frilly aprons, their hair tied back into matching low buns.  Maxwell froze up, his gaze wandering from woman to woman as it slowly began to sink in.

"Mr Lord…" the woman at the head of the table said cautiously. She looked just as baffled. "It's a pleasure to meet  you. I've worked for Black Gold Cooperative for five years now but never did I expect to see you in person." 

Maxwell looked back at the other girls who were all nodding in agreement, beaming with excitement. "Uh." He didn't know what to say, but instead, he placed his pen and notepad back into the inside of his suit jacket pocket and stood up. "I think- I think I'm in the wrong meeting." he announced.

"We are the body of staff who are responsible for the cleanliness and hygiene of your company sir. We spend ten hours a day washing and tidying every surface, every inch of this building. We take great care of it." one of the ladies spoke up and Maxwell became even more confused. Although clearly, on a day like this, it didn't take much to confuse him.

"The cleaning staff have meetings in here?" He wondered out loud, immediately regretting the words as soon as they left his lips. He didn't want to come off as rude. "I mean, I'm your employer. Pft, of course I know that you have meetings. And I'm glad you do so. It's good to take direction!" he was doing that motivational voice he used on television, making the 60 year old cleaners swoon with admiration. "I- I should get going but. Uh, yes. Lovely to meet you all."

"Mr Lord!" A lady with ebony hair and crinkles by her eyes stood up, handing Maxwell his briefcase. He nodded appreciatvely and walked to the door where her hand met his arm and stopped him in his tracks. "Could I get your autograph, please? I'm just a huge fan of your infomercials."

Maxwell checked the time on his wristwatch. Almost half an hour late, but he couldn't deny one of his cleaners. Once upon a time he wouldn't have bothered giving them a second glance yet he leaned over the table and signed his name on a sticky note. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Pamela," she beamed brightly.

"Nice to meet you Pamela, have a good day." he pat her shoulder and went open the door when another voice yelled his name.

"Mr Lord!" a woman with white hair stood up, a grin pinned on her face. "I'm Doris," she introduced confidently, but her voice was shaky with her old age. "I remember when your father was on the television. I used to clean for him too, you know? Oh, he was such a lovely gentleman. And you look more and more like him every day. Such a handsome man, you are."

Maxwell stiffened up, his hand grabbing the door handle so hard he was sure his knuckles might've turned white. "Oh," was the only thing that could really leave his lips. He wanted to leave.

"Mr Lord, your father I mean-, every Christmas he'd give little old me a kiss," she recalled, her heart blooming at the memory. "Of course I wasn't old then. I was young. And beautiful."

Maxwell exhaled and nodded his head, unsure of really what to say or where this conversation was going. All he could think about was the board meeting that he was already extremely late for. Maxwell pushed down on the door handle and Doris let out a long dramatic sigh, making Maxwell pause once again to hear what she had to say. "I haven't been kissed like that, by a man as attractive as your father, in years." she sighed longingly, fluttering her eyelashes.

That was when Maxwell realised. He sighed quietly, his eyes scanning the room. All the cleaners were staring at him, expecting him to make his move on poor old Doris. Then, he turned back to Doris and offered her that familiar Hollywood smile. The same smile that the whole world was used to seeing on five o'clock television. He took her hand and brushed a soft kiss over her wrinkled knuckles before gently dropping her hand again. There was no denying the pink blush that coloured her cheeks. The action earned a few squeaks and squeals around the room and while they were all babbling with excitement about what they'd just witnessed happen to their friend Doris, Maxwell took the opportunity to run.

He did finally make it to the meeting. He squeezed past his business associates, trying to locate his chair around the table. In the process, he knocked over a cup of coffee. It spilled all over Maxwell, and one of his colleagues. Maxwell's pale blue suit jacket was now stained with brown espresso, and he knew it would take more than just a few washes to get the stain out. He muttered a small 'sorry' before finding his seat and taking out his notepad and pen. Just as he finished writing the date at the top of his piece of paper, the director of the meeting called it quits and everyone flustered out of the room.

All this had happened and it was only ten in the morning.

Luckily, that was the only meeting of the day and he knew he was going to be spending the rest of the day in his office doing paperwork. That was easy enough. Maxwell padded into his enormous office which took up the entirety of the top floor at Black Gold Cooperative headquarters. He shut the double doors, finding peace in knowing that there was no need for anyone to come in and distract him. Maxwell tugged off his blazer and hung it on the back of a chair. He unclipped his suspenders that held his tailored pants up, and threw them to one side, along with his shoes and soaked socks. He padded into the closet at the back of his office and shuffled out of his pants, changing into some grey sweatpants. 

He smiled, beginning to feel warm again. Wearing the sweatpants reminded him of you and it made him feel like he was at home. He remembered a few weeks into your relationship; your surprise when you caught a glimpse of his wardrobe. Not a single piece of casual wear in sight. You wondered if Maxwell Lord had ever known the comfort of sweatpants and so, that afternoon, you went out and bought him a pair. They changed his life. Maxwell would always favour his suits, that's just who he was, but he would love to wear the sweats when he wanted to lounge about in the house.

He was tired. His hair was still damp, the dark blonde waves curling at the nape of his neck and falling out of place every time he tried to remedy it. He still smelled vaguely of espresso, and was still haunted by the interaction of Doris the cleaner. He pursed his lips together into a thin line at the memory of kissing her hand.

Maxwell walked over to his desk and sunk into his chair, holding his head in his hands. Finally some peace.

Until there was a loud knock at the door. Maxwell swung his head back and groaned. "Come in!" he shouted, quickly composing himself for whoever wished to see him. It was his blonde assistant, Raquel.

"Hi sir!" she beamed, waving her free hand and placing a glossy catalogue on the table.

"Raquel." Maxwell nodded politely, sitting up and looking at the catalogue she had positioned before him.

"For the Christmas gala," she explained, flicking open the pages and pointing out different things. She'd carefully highlighted and labelled everything she wanted to show him, making it easier for his conveience. "I was thinking huge black and gold balloons with the company name on. Gold confetti. Banners and streamers hanging from every corner. A buffet, and every table cloth will also have the company's name on, printed in small, glitter ink." Her loud and chatty voice was giving Maxwell a headache.

"Yeah, balloons with Black Gold Cooperative written on really scream ‘Have a Very Merry Capitalist Christmas’." he sighed, slowly looking up at her. She blinked a few times. "Well Raquel?" he quizzed, growing irritable. It wasn't her fault, it's just everything was beginning to build up. She blinked again, dumbfounded by his comment. "Is that what Christmas is about to you?"

"W-what do you mean?" she asked nervously, removing her hand from the catalogue and taking a step back from his desk.

"What about red and green balloons? We'll have a Christmas tree in the ballroom. We could even make it family friendly and hire a Santa Claus for the kids to meet." Maxwell suggested. "And no weird company merchandise."

Raquel blinked, not saying a word. It had never really dawned on Maxwell how much you had changed him. His staff realised practically instantly— from the moment he came into work after the first time you had spent the night, it was like he was a changed man. He held the door open for people, he wished people a good morning. And as your relationship with him developed, you opened up a brand new side to him. He became more affectionate and caring for those around him, a feeling he had shut off from the world for his entire life.

He had never cared for Christmas, never cared as much to host a Christmas gala either. His father died during the festive season and it hadn't been the same without him. His mother didn't do much to celebrate. Maxwell had everything he always wanted; all the new toys and fanciest designer clothes. But it meant nothing to him without his father. Christmas meant nothing to him without love. That's why it all changed when he met you. You finally brought love back into his life, and everything felt whole again. You completed him. You taught him how to enjoy events and celebrate. You taught him happiness but most importantly, you taught a cold and broken man how to love and be loved in return.

The Christmas gala was your idea. One night, around a month ago, you and Maxwell were both lying in bed together. Maxwell had expressed to you that he wanted to do something special for his staff at work. Over the past few years since he had met you, he'd slowly been softening with the people around him. Christmas time was no different and his staff were always jolly to receive a hefty bonus from him. But they didn't expect anything more.

You came up with the idea of a gala, and Maxwell couldn't help but smirk a little when you mentioned it. He knew that your suggestion was deeply rooted into the fact you had always wanted to attend a gala, wear a beautiful dress and have your hair and makeup done. More importantly, you wanted to go to a gala with Maxwell and have him by your side looking as handsome as ever. The prospect excited you so much. With Maxwell, you knew that you wanted for nothing. That he could give you anything and everything. But you would never ask. You wanted him to know that for as long as he was with you, you had everything you needed.

Normally for Maxwell, gala’s were a place for adults only. Bars that served the best alcohol and a place where men who were just as rich as him would meet and schmooze. Before you, gala’s were a fine opportunity for Maxwell to meet a lady and take her home. That's all he enjoyed them for. But you had taught Maxwell that there was more to life than wealth, women and good champagne. He was so sure you'd love the idea of turning the gala into a family friendly party, and he was certain that his employees (the likes of the cleaning staff, for example) would love the ability to bring their families to such a high class event.

"Don't worry Raquel," Maxwell smiled. "Forget about the party planning for now. I know someone who would love to organise the Christmas gala." Today was tough, but everytime he thought about you, he couldn't wipe the grin from his face. He was one lovesick puppy. "Could you bring me a coffee?"

Raquel nodded and picked the catalogue back up, padding out his office without saying another word.

At around twelve o’clock, Maxwell was about to take his lunch break- but the phone on his desk began to ring. "Maxwell Lord." he introduced himself, holding the phone to his ear. It was the CEO of Powergrid Electrics, an electrical company in Rome. Rude and unhinged, the boss man reminded Maxwell of a version of himself that he had left in the past.

Maxwell had almost sealed an amazing deal with the company, but it had seemed that the CEO hadn't received a vital part of the contract. Trying to regulate the anger that was building up inside of him, Maxwell shakily put the phone back on the hook and called his second assistant, Emmerson, into his office.

"It's impossible," Maxwell furrowed his eyebrows together in bewilderment, after explaining the situation. He scrambled amongst the papers that were stacked mountain high on his desk. "I put it in the envelope and had Raquel send it off to Rome last week. I remember… I know I didn't forget. I never forget." he said, trying to sound as composed and confident as possible. There was no mistake in the worried little warble in his voice, though.

Emmerson, Maxwell's second assistant, wasn't sure if he was going to regret his next move. "Sir," his voice was timid and small. Maxwell's eyes snapped up to meet Emmerson's and Emmerson felt his heart rate increase rapidly. Emmerson reached over Maxwell's desk, picking up a folded piece of paper with a sticky note on top that read 'For Raquel: give to Rome'. "Is it possible that this is the missing part of the contract? That maybe, you might have just, forgotten to give it to Raquel?" he said slowly, trying to beat around the bush as much as possible.

Maxwell slowly reached over to the slip of paper, unravelling it like he was scared to see what the contents would reveal. He sighed out loud when he realised he had, in fact, forgotten to give Raquel the document, and there was no one to blame but himself. He ran his fingers through his hair, contemplating what to do next. He didn't want to believe he was out of options. He wasn't one to give up, especially when it came to the sanctity of his business.

"I need you to go to Rome." He said immediately and Emmerson's jaw dropped.

"I- I'm sorry?" Emmerson quizzed, confused and still slightly afraid of how impulsive Maxwell was being. "With all due respect, can't you just call Rome and ask for an extension on the deadline?"

Maxwell scoffed. "Call Rome? I can't just call a country," Emmerson was about to interject to explain that wasn't exactly what he meant but Maxwell didn't allow it. There was something about the way Maxwell's brain worked… he didn't get where he was today from taking the advice of his assistants. "You will go to Rome and give Powergrid Electrics the remaining part of the contract yourself. I trust you."

"But sir-" Emmerson raised a shaky hand.

"Oh, I see, you're worried about accomodation," Maxwell assumed, chuckling lightly. "I'll get you a five star hotel and give you a spending allowance of three hundred euros a day, how does that sound? No need to fret. Hurry along now."

"Mr Lord," Emmerson deadpanned finally, causing Maxwell to look up at his assistant in bewilderment. Emmerson was still afraid of his boss, of course, but he knew he had to stand his ground. "I can't go to Italy."

There were a few beats of silence. "What?" Maxwell questioned. "Don't be ridiculous. It's a free trip of a lifetime. You have an easy job to do. You can spend the rest of the day souvenir shopping. I don't care. Just get the contract delivered." He ordered.

"No." Emmerson put his foot down.

"No?" Maxwell repeated, raising his eyebrows like he was due an explanation.

"Mr Lord, I didn't want to say anything because it seems… you've had a lot going on today. But my girlfriend, Katherine, she's due our baby. See, we're having a son. I'm not sure if you knew… I mean, you probably didn't know. But, I promised Katie- uh, Katherine, that I'd meet her at the hospital after my shift. I wish I could help you sir, I really do. But I love my girlfriend and I've been waiting nine months to meet our son so if you please-"

The old Maxwell Lord would've burned red with rage, firing poor Emmerson on the spot, right then and there. How dare he question Maxwell. How dare he deny Maxwell. How dare he choose his love life, his family over his job. But right now, Maxwell couldn't help the small smile creep upon his lips. He was overjoyed, just wishing Emmerson had told him of the amazing news before now.

"Congratulations," Maxwell said, his voice quiet but his eyes gleaming. "On the addition of your family. That's really great."

Emmerson stood as still as ever, blinking a few times. He waited for Maxwell to snap and finally lose it. He was waiting to get the sack. But nothing. "Uh, thank you, sir." Emmerson replied hesitantly, like he wasn't sure what to expect from Maxwell.

The following few moments of silence, Maxwell spent thinking about you. He thought about how radiant you glowed this morning and how he wished he didn't have to leave your side. You were the love of his life and quite frankly, since meeting you, he understood the priority of choosing love over wealth. He finally had someone he could hold onto during the dead of night, someone to ramble to about his feelings, someone he could kiss and love and cherish forever.

Maxwell Lord finally loved something more than his business and that was you. Emmerson coughed awkwardly, breaking the silence and Maxwell flicked his wrist up, checking the time on his gold Rolex. It was almost twelve thirty.

"Why are you still here?" Maxwell grinned, swinging his hand to point a finger towards the door. "Go! You have a son to meet!" 

"Sir, I don't finish until five o’ clock." Emmerson replied, stiffening up.

"No no no! Go home, go see your girlfriend, please." Maxwell stood up and shook his assistants hand. "I have no doubt you'll be an amazing father," he said genuinely. "And I'll have Y/N send over some flowers and a donation after the birth."

"You- you're really letting me off work early?" Emmerson beamed and Maxwell nodded his head enthusiastically. "Oh how can I ever thank you?"

"I hear Maxwell is a popular choice of name for baby boys right now," the CEO charmed and Emmerson let out a small but genuine laugh. "Now go! Tell Katherine I send my love."

"I will do, thank you sir." Emmerson grinned, grabbing his jacket from the coat rack and merrily running out of the office.

Maxwell sunk into the plushness of his leather chair, still unable to escape the smile that played on his lips. He imagined the possibility of you, the love of his life, carrying his child. He thought about how beautiful you would look, how you'd glow, and how he'd simply give up everything to take care of you. Make sure you had everything you needed during your pregnancy. He imagined building the nursery with you and picking out some books on parenting, studying with you so he could ensure that he'd be the best father ever. He'd never wanted kids. In fact he hated the idea of having little mini Maxwell’s running around and causing fuss and torment, but the idea of you raising them alongside him made his heart flutter. He was certain of the unconditional love you’d have for them. Similar to the unconditional love he had for you.

His eyes darted back to the unsent report on his desk and he sighed. Guess I have to call Rome after all. He thought.

Maxwell was counting the minutes until he could go home and see you. He wanted nothing more than to curl up on the sofa with you, the fire on, and watch one of those cheesy Christmas movies you liked so much. He heard the doors to his office open, frustration racing through him as he prepared himself for the next bout of 'things going wrong'. He'd normally yell at someone if they entered his office without knocking but he was so tired. So so tired.

When he saw you, he swore his heart stopped. There you were, his blessing in disguise. His angel. You were wearing your red winter coat and knee high brown boots, and you plopped your purse and a bag on one of the many side tables in his office. You took off your gloves and pulled off your wooly bobble hat, stuffing them lazily in your pocket and offered him a happy smile. He scrambled to his feet, not taking his eyes off you for a second and ran up to you, sweeping you off your feet and spinning you around. You squealed, grabbing onto him for your life and he put you down, pulling you into a tight warm hug.

"You're freezing cold." he grimaced, pulling your hands into the pockets of his grey sweatpants in hope they'd warm up. 

"It's snowing again." you whispered happily, smiling into his neck. He was delighted, having you in his arms and being able to smell the familiarity of your shampoo and perfume. He knew for sure now, he was going to be okay.

"I can see." he replied, moving one of his hands up to your face and padding out the pearly snowdrops that were balanced in your hair. "I am so glad to see you sweetheart." he hummed, sending vibrations through your body. You felt your heart blossom in your chest at his sentiment.

"I told you I was coming this morning," you giggled, eventually pulling away from him and taking your arms out of his pockets. You cupped his face and ran your fingers through his dark blonde hair, fixing it as best as you could. "I brought us lunch." you told him, fishing into the bag and bringing out boxes of pastries and cakes. "From that bakery we like."

Maxwell gasped and you looked up at him confused. "Baby, I completely forgot you were coming." 

"I hate to say Max but you do look a little disheveled," you folded your arms across your chest and checked out your boyfriend's appearance. "What's with the sweats and… where is your tie and suspenders?" Your eyes met his feet on the floor and they widened almost comically. "Max! Where are your socks and shoes?"

He sighed, shaking his head. "Long story." he took your hand and pulled you over to the couch, pulling you onto his lap. You wrapped your arms around him and he placed a hand on your thigh, pushing under your skirt and rubbing comforting circles into your skin.

"Tell me everything." you replied and he looked up at you with nothing but adoration in his brown eyes.

"Traffic jam on the way to work because of the snowstorm last night, and the streets were so busy with it being so close to Christmas. We couldn't get parked out front so I had to get out of the car and walk through five inches of snow to get into work. I was already late for my meeting. Soaking wet and uncomfortable," you let him ramble on, watching intently at the way his expression would change as he recalled different events in his day. You began to play with his hair, seeing that he was getting flustered at the memory of it all. "I was late for the meeting, I ended up in a whole different meeting. I didn't know the cleaners in this building even had meetings!"

"The cleaners?" you chuckled, shaking your head in disbelief. "You sat in on a meeting with the cleaners?" Maxwell nodded sollemnley and you nudged him playfully. "I love that." 

"Well, I didn't. They're all lovely women. But this one cleaner, Doris…" he fumbled around with his fingers. "I ended up kissing her." you pulled away quickly, knotting your eyebrows together. "No! No not like that," Maxwell said quickly, pulling you back onto his lap and wrapping his arm around you. "She's like 90, said she used to work for my father and every Christmas he'd give her a kiss. She'd start talking about how she's never had a kiss from someone as handsome as my father in years. So I gave her a polite one, on her hand. And baby, I ran. As fast as I could, I had to get outta there."

You smiled. "Max, you probably made her day. That was really sweet of you."

He brushed off your comment, taking a dramatic exhale and continuing his story. "Finally got to the meeting, spilled coffee over myself and one of my associates. But by the time I had finally settled, the meeting was over. So I went back to my office and changed out of my wet, cold, coffee stained clothes and sat down. Raquel came in. She was planning the Christmas gala but it all sounded so… corporate. Not what Christmas is about at all," he explained and you nodded in agreement. "Anyways I suggested that we change the gala this year so it's family friendly. In the spirit of Christmas."

"Oh Max!" you beamed, snuggling into his chest. He smiled to himself proudly, knowing that he had made you happy. 

"You good with that?" he chuckled, running his fingers through your hair.

"Yes!" you squeaked, pushing yourself back up and giving him a quick kiss on the lips. "I have so many ideas."

"That's great honey," he laughed. "Because I told Raquel to forget about the gala. I figured you could plan it. You're great at stuff like that, and I know how much it means to you. I want the gala to be perfect for my staff and their families, and I trust you more than anyone else in the world."

"I can't wait," you smiled merrily, already weighing up the different ideas you had in your head. "Was Raquel okay with you taking the party planning duty away from her?"

"I think so," Maxwell replied. "She has a lot on her plate, being my assistant and all. It's a busy time of year and I think she'd appreciate having less to do."

"Well, it really does sound like you've had an eventful morning."

"Oh, I'm not finished," Maxwell grimaced and you braved yourself for the impending chaos. "Rome called and told me that the CEO of Powergrid Electrics only received half of the binding contract. So I was going to send Emmerson to Rome because I needed that contract in the hands of the CEO by midnight tonight. But Emmerson told me he couldn't. His girlfriend is having his baby today. A little boy. So I let him go home early."

"Emmerson's going to be a father?" you gasped and Maxwell nodded. "That's so wonderful! I should send him some flowers."

"I already told Emmerson you would." Maxwell grinned. 

"Oh a baby boy too! How lovely. We have to go meet the baby when he's born. Please please please." you whined, fluttering your eyelashes. 

"Okay darling." Maxwell pressed a kiss into your cheek.

You stood up and brought the bag over to the couch, taking out the little boxes and handing them to Maxwell. You opened them up and started to eat, as you told him how your morning had gone.

"After you went to work, I cleared up and did the dishes that you had left from breakfast. Max, I was soooo tired from last night," you blushed and his mouth twisted into a proud smile. "So I went back to bed and slept for another hour. Then I got up and took a bubble bath. Oh!" you scrambled around in your purse, taking out a fresh Polaroid and showed him it. It was a photograph of his white long haired cat, Lady, with bubbles balancing on her head. "She kept me company while I was in the bath." you smiled and Maxwell laughed.

"She looks so funny with the bubbles on her head." Maxwell took the Polaroid from your fingers and admired the cat. He was never particularly fond about animals, or having pets, but you loved them. In the first year of your relationship, Maxwell asked what you wanted for your birthday. As always, you told him that you didn't want anything materialistic, that he was all you needed. But you did tell him about an animal charity that you were so passionate about. He remembered leaving you at home and telling you that he was simply 'heading out'. He had planned on visiting the charity and making a donation in your name, as part of your birthday present. But he didn't leave the shelter empty handed.

A white fluffy cat with long whiskers and big blue eyes. Her eyes reminded him of sapphires. She mewled and padded towards him, her tail waving happily as she rubbed her cheek on his leg, circling around him. "Ah, she's a darling," the lady who was showing Maxwell around told him. "Unfortunately, she's been here with us longer than any of the other cats. She's not that good around people. But I must admit, she likes you a lot. In fact, I've never seen her so confident around another person before."

Maxwell dropped to his knees and tickled her head. She began purring erratically, rubbing her face along the edges of the rings on his fingers. "Nobody wants her?" Maxwell asked, not taking his eyes from the happy kitty. He picked her up, ignoring the white cat hair that malted onto his suit. She rubbed her soft face against his cheek and sniffed his cologne.

"No." the lady replied sadly. Maxwell smiled.

"I'll take her."

And that night, Maxwell came home with a new addition to the family. You were overjoyed, but no one was happier than little Lady Lord who had found her fur-ever home.

He placed the Polaroid on one of the side tables, promising you he would find a frame for it. "How was your bath darling?" he cooed, pressing his lips along your jaw.

You giggled, nuzzling your head into his shoulder. "Relaxing, lit some candles, done a little reading. After my bath I got dressed and tidied up the bedroom. I turned on the radio and they were playing Christmas songs. Oh! WHAM have just brought out a new one, it's really good. Hmm, me and Lady played for a little while and she let me brush her hair. Jeeves offered to drive me to the bakery but I really wanted to walk in the snow. Get some fresh air. And now I'm here! With you!"

It was safe to say Maxwell's morning was a lot more chaotic, but he was comforted knowing that you had been relaxed while he was going through all the antics.

"Your morning sounded amazing, darling." he kissed your forehead and you felt butterflies erupt in your stomach.

You let his lips brush over your skin, fall down to your nose, and eventually take place on your own lips as he leaned his forehead against yours. You giggled, his hair falling out of place again slightly and tickling you as he kissed you. You pulled him closer, encouraging him to deepen the kiss and laced your fingers in his hair. He pulled away to catch his breath but peppered small yet passionate kisses along your jaw and down your neck.

“You’re being so affectionate,” you smiled, eyes sparkling with love.

“What can I say? I like to kiss you.” Maxwell exhorted and leaned in again, pressing another kiss into your lips. This time he swiped his tongue along the plumpness of your bottom lip, begging for entry. You pulled off him and he moaned. “Whaaat?” He pouted playfully and you rolled your eyes, earnestly laughing at how cute your boyfriend was.

“We shouldn’t do this at work,” you giggled.

“Baby we’ve done a lot worse than just kissing on this sofa, if you remember.” Maxwell charmed and you felt your cheeks heat up as you nodded slowly.

"The highlight of my day though, is being here, with you." you promised.

"Yeah," Maxwell hummed. "Me too."

"I'm proud of you." you said out of the blue, putting your sandwich down and wiping your mouth. Maxwell looked at you, confused. "You've had a bad morning. But you acted so selflessly today. Everything from signing autographs in your office to kissing that old maids hand, giving Raquel less work to do and letting Emmerson be with his girlfriend. You… you surprise me everyday Max. And I fall in love with you more and more everyday." 

"I remember when we first met… I would've never dreamed of doing any of this." Maxwell admitted sheepishly.

"I know, I remember," you recalled. "I fell in love with the man you were then, but I somehow think I love you even more now."

And with that, Maxwell pulled you into a kiss. The curve of his nose nudged against yours and his hands pulled you into his lap, knocking the boxes of food onto the floor as you straddled him. "I love you so much." he announced.

Maxwell rarely said I love you's. But that was okay because you knew he loved you from his actions. You knew he loved you from the small kisses he'd give you on a morning, and the way he'd pull you into a hug every evening after work. You knew he loved you from the way he'd shelter you from paparazzi and squeeze your hand tight whenever you felt overwhelmed. Actions spoke louder than words. But coming from Maxwell Lord, hearing those three words struck you like a bolt of lightning. They were just words, but they meant everything to you.

He meant everything to you.

Permanent taglist~let me know if you want to be added: @supernaturalgirl @phoenixhalliwell @ah-callie @luvzoria @stardust-galaxies @wickedfrsgrl @goth-topic @nerdypinupcrystal @wonderfulfluffer @kiwi-the-first

[longitudinalwaveme]

Another Weird Flash/Rogues AU

Awhile ago on AAO3, I read a story with a basic premise of “What if the Kryptonians had left Krypton before it was destroyed, traveled to Earth, fallen under the leadership of Zod (or another group of evil Kryptonians) and enslaved the human race”? The story mainly focused on Bruce Wayne and Kal-El (the latter of whom quickly came to realize the wrongs that the Kryptonians were perpetrating), but, being a huge Flash nerd, I thought: What if I used that same basic idea, but focused on the Flash characters instead? This is the result. 

This AU is comparatively very early in the timeline; Barry Allen is 20 years old, Wally is about five, etc. 

-Barry Allen was about seven years old when the Central/Keystone area was taken over and its population enslaved. His mother, Nora, was sold away from him shortly thereafter. He and his father (and most of the familiar Flash characters) are owned by some unpleasant Kryptonian, as are most of the characters detailed below. (Superman fans who know the names of evil Kryptonians other than Zod, feel free to make suggestions.) In this universe, Barry’s rather timid and submissive overall. He’s very kind and wants to help people, but unlike Iris (whom he has a massive crush on), he’s not brave enough to stand up to the overseers. 

-Nora Allen passed away a few years after the Kryptonian takeover, far away from her husband and son. After mourning for a few months, Henry Allen remarried to a widow named Martha Scudder, and adopted her son, Samuel Joseph Scudder, as a second son. Martha and Henry are devoted to both Barry and Sam. 

-Sam Scudder-Allen is 16 years old, four years younger than his older brother. He was three years old when the Kryptonians arrived and was crippled at the age of seven when a heavy piece of farm machinery fell on his leg. He uses a crutch to walk and works as a tailor, since he’s not able to work in the fields. He is rather self-conscious about his “bum leg”, since it means that escaping slavery would be almost impossible for him. He’s also much more willing to stand up to the Kryptonians than his older brother currently is, mainly because he figures that, as a crippled slave, he really can’t get much worse off.

-Iris West, age 19, lives with her father, Ira (her mother died before the Kryptonians arrived), and her nephew, the five-year-old Wally West (both of his parents were sold away shortly after he was born). Fiery and rebellious; she’s been pushing boundaries ever since the Kryptonians arrived and is determined to learn how to read. She thinks Barry is very cute, but refuses to date him until he grows a spine. She won’t allow her children to grow up enslaved to a bunch of aliens. 

-George “Digger” Harkness, age 17, was sold to the Central City area from Australia when he was 14 years old. His stepfather, Ian Harkness, hated him so much that he actually volunteered to have him sold away, and Digger found himself living and working alongside total strangers. He’s mouthy and stubborn, but is afraid enough of the Kryptonians that he’s not openly rebelllious.

-Evan McCulloch, age 6, was sold to the Central City area from Scotland only a few months ago. He’s terrified and misses Miss McCulloch badly. He’s also been semi-adopted by Henry and Martha Allen. 

-Claudio and Marco Mardon, aged 18 and 17, respectively, and their parents, Paloma and Mattias, immigrated to the United States from Guatemala a few years before the Kryptonians conquered Central City. Surprisingly, the family was not separated and has remained together ever since. Marco, the younger of the two, is clumsy and awkward, but generally keeps his head down and doesn’t cause trouble. As a result, he, ironically enough, is actually the golden child in this reality. Claudio, with his passionate love of learning, rocks the boat too frequently and gets into trouble too often-he’s even taught himself how to read, something that humans aren’t allowed to do under Kryptonian rule. Paloma and Mattias have tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. Marco, on the other hand, greatly admires his older brother and wishes he had his courage, and the two are very close. The family speaks as much Spanish as it does English. 

-Roscoe Dillon, age 16, lives and works in his Kryptonian owner’s estate alongside his mother, Rosa. (His father, Reginald, was sold off when Roscoe was nine.) He and Rosa are isolated from most of the other humans; as result, Roscoe has few friends. He’s also more than a little odd (thanks to being on the autism spectrum), but, fortunately for him, his love of routine and organization mean that no one can find fault with his work. He still loves tops and has created dozens of them to play with when he’s not required to work. 

-Mick Rory, aged 22, is a soft-spoken gentle giant. His family was killed in the Kryptonian invasion, and he still mourns their loss, but otherwise his life hasn’t changed as much as most of the other humans’. Having grown up on a farm, he’s used to working in the fields and adjusted to the farm labor the Kryptonians required much more easily than did most others. He is friendly and helpful to everyone and has taken in a 7-year-old girl named Linda Park, whose parents were sold off.

-Giovanni Giuseppi, aged 10, lives with his mother, Helen. He and his family, used to a migrant lifestyle from their time in the circus, managed to evade the Kryptonians for quite some time, but, when the Kryptonians finally captured them, his father, Alessandro, was killed; being dropped from a high height. The six-year-old Giovanni, already terrified of heights, was traumatized by this event. He and his mother were then sold to the Central City area. Giovanni is terrified of Kryptonians; as a result, he never disobeys orders. Once lively and energetic, Giovanni is now rather timid and reserved-but he’s still incredibly intelligent. 

-Joan Garrick is the widow of Jay Garrick, the Flash, who was murdered by Zod in order to prevent his speed from becoming a threat. She is determined to carry on his work by educating as many people as she can; in the hopes that this will enable them to escape and eventually overthrow the Kryptonians. She is very close to Iris and Claudio, and hopes to teach them everything she knows.

-Hartley Rathaway, age 9, lives with his parents, Rachel and Osgood Rathaway. When the Kryptonians first arrived in Central City, Mr. and Mrs. Rathaway struck a bargain with them; giving them all the knowledge they would need in order to take over the city with ease in exchange for being able to maintain their own wealth, freedom, and power. The Kryptonians used the information provided by the Rathaways to take over the Central/Keystone area...and then enslaved the wealthy couple along with the rest of the city’s populace anyway. Needless to say, Mr. and Mrs. Rathaway are not particularly well-liked by their fellow humans. Not at all accustomed to physical labor or powerlessness, they often get into trouble with the Kryptonian overseers, and aren’t likely to receive much help from any other humans. As a cruel joke, Rachel was allowed to keep her jewelery, and, when the Kryptonians hand out the yearly supply of clothing, they always receive the finest clothes...which are, of course, of no use at all for hard physical labor. Hartley is better-liked than his parents, but he’s deaf and mute, and, since no one had the time to teach him sign language, he struggles to communicate with anyone other than his parents. It also means that the Kryptonians use him for their own amusement, rather than having him work in the fields or in a trade; mocking the obvious inferiority of the human race that he represents. That being said, he has grown suprisingly close to Giovanni Giuseppi. 

-Leonard and Lisa Snart, age 18 and 13, respectively, are unusual. Of all the humans of the Keystone/Central area, and perhaps the planet, they are the only ones who are not enslaved. When the Kryptonians arrived in the area, Leonard was 5 years old, and his sister was a newborn. His biological father, Larry Snart, was an abusive father and husband, and regularly beat both his wife and Leonard. One night, in a drunken rage, Larry accidentally killed his wife and was preparing to brutalize his son when several Kryptonians broke into the house. Larry attacked them and was promptly killed, but, fortuitously for Len and Lisa, Zor-El and Alura arrived on the scene and adopted the children as their own, in the hopes of saving them from the slavery they knew Zod and his allies had planned for humanity. To avoid raising suspicion, they claimed that they had adopted the children because of both children’s icy blue eyes, which strongly resembled the eyes of most Kryptonians. The children had the eyes of Rao; they said. They had been blessed with civility and intelligence that was unlike that of other humans; they deserved the chance to be raised as Kryptonians. The argument was broadly accepted, and so Lenonard and Lisa Snart became Len-El and Lisa (pronounced LYE-za) of the house of Jor-El. They were raised as Kryptonians, and, although Zor-El and Alura refused to own slaves and secretly helped many humans escape to freedom, they could not allow the children to spend time with members of their own species, lest it raise suspicion about their work. As a result, both Len-El and Lisa think of themselves as Kryptonian, and, since they are surrounded by Kryptonian children and taught by Kryptonian teachers at school, both of them firmly believe that humans need to be controlled by Kryptonians. Lisa thinks of other humans almost as cute pets, having never met another member of her species, but she is curious to learn more about them. Len-El despises the fact that he’s human. Thanks to his horrific experiences with his human father, Len-El believes that humans are cruel and barbaric, and he wants nothing to do with them. He wants to be Kryptonian, just like his loving parents. He and Lisa also have a little sister, Kara Zor-El, who is 7 years old. They adore Kara, and she adores them. They’re also both quite fond of their cousin, Kal-El (age 19). 

[dailytomlinson]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[vcg73]

FIC: Kurt Birthday Drabbles

Earlier this week @elledelajoie left a comment on something I wrote all the way back in 2014.  I had genuinely forgotten I ever started it, but the original idea was to write 21 Kurt Hummel birthday drabbles. I had written just 7 of them, but after we chatted about it, I decided to go ahead and finish.  

If you’re not familiar, a drabble is a scene of exactly 100 words, not counting title headers. Since Chris Colfer and Kurt Hummel’s co-birthday (May 27) is coming up this Thursday, here they are. This goes definite AU at Birthday #19. Because you know I would never sentence my beloved Kurt to a life of being a doormat to people who did not appreciate and value him.

Never underestimate the power of feedback!

~*~*~*~*~

Birthday #1

Kurt’s blue eyes went wide as a frosted cupcake was set upon his high-chair tray, a single candle ablaze on its surface.  

When Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Andy, Grandpa Curtis and Grandma Eileen started singing to him, he smiled and clapped both hands hard around the tempting pile of frosting.

Kurt laughed when the sugary topping went flying and a big splatter of white abruptly decorated Daddy’s surprised face.

Everyone else started laughed too, including the startled father, who retaliated by giving his birthday boy a sticky peck on the cheek and then helped him to blow out a new candle.

Birthday #2

Kurt looked between his presents, confused.

Mommy had given him the pretty dolly he had begged for at the store. Daddy had given him a truck, not big enough to ride but too big to live with the little cars Daddy gave him at Christmas.

His parents seemed to be mad at each other.

Kurt looked at the doll, then at the truck. He smiled and placed Dolly inside the truck and began to drive her around the carpet.

Mommy and Daddy seemed surprised by his actions, but then they laughed, and Kurt knew he had figured out the puzzle.

 Birthday #3

His shoes were black and shiny, buckles on the sides and 1-inch heels on the base. He clomped over the hardwood floors, listening to the click-tap-click-tap in delight. They went perfectly with his dove gray coveralls with “Kurt” sewn on the pocket in black sequins. Mommy had made the outfit for him.

Spotting Daddy watching him, Kurt threw himself into waiting arms. Daddy’s smile looked like he had an owie but was trying to be a big boy and not cry.

Kurt hugged him. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

Burt looked surprised but hugged him back. “Yeah, buddy. I think it is.”

 Birthday #4

Ballet girls were nice. When they heard it was his birthday today, they threw him a party. Kurt puffed up with pleasure when presented with cookies, a sparkly wand and a tiara that read ‘Happy Birthday’ in shiny letters. He was not as fond of the kisses they gave, but four was very grown up, so he screwed up his face and allowed it. The teacher even let him wear the special puffy pink tutu over his little black leotard! 

 He saw Mommy and Daddy up in the gallery taking pictures, so he waved.

Kurt hoped today would last forever.

  Birthday #5

“Can I have cupcakes?”

Kurt’s mother looked up from her book. “I don’t think we have any, sweetheart.”

“Can we have some Thursday?  My birthday is the last day of preschool.”

“It is?” she said, looking surprised. “Is it your birthday already?”

He nodded seriously. “Don’t you remember, Mommy? You were there.”

She laughed. “Well, you have me there.  What kind of cupcakes would you like, sweetie? And don’t say cheesecake. Those are two completely different kinds of dessert.”

Kurt’s hopeful expression fell. “Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. Then his face brightened again. “Chocolate?”

She nodded. “That we can do.”

   Birthday #6

“Daddy!”

Burt sat up just in time to catch the little body that launched at him. “What’s wrong, slugger?”

“It’s my birthday!”

Grinning despite the way his heart was hammering at the abrupt awakening, Burt asked, “Yeah? I like birthdays. Do I get a present?”

“No,” the boy scoffed. “I get presents!”

 Burt squinted at the clock. 3:15am. “Not until morning, you don’t.”

Kurt pouted and tried, “It’s almost morning.”

“Not close enough, kid. C’mere,” Burt pulled him into the warm bed between himself and his wife.

Kurt snuggled down and went right back to sleep.  

Burt was less lucky.

 Birthday #7

Kids had started treating him funny this year. He was too fancy, too girly, holding hands was weird.

Nobody was coming.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“Am I too late?”

They jumped as a little black girl with pom-pom hair popped out of nowhere.

“I’m Mercedes,” she greeted. “We just moved here. Mom said you would have invited me if you’d known.”

“I’m Kurt.” He smiled. “Do you like tea parties?”

“Is there cake?”

Mrs. Hummel beamed. “Cake, ice cream, and Kool-Aid.”

Kurt shrugged. “Nobody else came.”

She grabbed his hand like she’d known him forever. “More for us!  Happy Birthday, Kurt.”

 Birthday #8

Kurt took a deep breath, thought for a moment, and carefully blew out the candles. All but the extra one that his parents always put on his cake.

“Aren’t you gonna finish, bud?”

He looked from Daddy over to his mother, home again, but so frail he was sometimes afraid to hug her, worried she might pop like a fragile soap bubble. He offered her the candle. “Here, Mommy. Blow it out. Maybe you’ll get another year to grow on.”

The eyes of the two adults met, then Mommy nodded. The three of them blew out the final candle together.

 Birthday #9

Barely daring to hope, Kurt came down the stairs.  Birthday cakes and presents had been Mommy’s specialty.  Daddy had forgotten his own birthday and had nearly forgotten Christmas.

Kurt gasped when he saw it, waiting, shining and spectacular against the front door.

“A bike!”

Bright green, sissy bars with foil streamers, and a banana seat. Perfect!

Burt smiled. He had scoffed a such a “girly” bike when Kurt spotted it at the toy store. But now, looking at the all-too-rare joy in his son’s eyes and feeling the approving smile his wife would have given, he nodded. It was perfect.

 Birthday #10

Buying gifts was tough when your kid always clammed up on you. A dad had to be observant.

Ten years old. A landmark like that needed something special, but the only thing Kurt seemed into was clothes. He had enough of those for ten kids.  

He’d probably like a Barbie he could change in and out of different outfits, but Burt cringed at the thought.

He did doodle pretty good though. Sure, it was mostly pictures of clothes, but that was a start.

A fancy sketchpad with a case and a hundred different colored pencils. Yeah, that was the ticket.

 Birthday #11

“Dad, where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Kurt sighed with exaggerated impatience. He had come home from school to find Dad waiting at the truck, ordering him to get in, then not saying another word. The suspense was killing him.

“Ta-Dahhhh!”

They had pulled up in front of a nondescript brick building. “Columbus Culinary Arts?”

“You like to cook right?  Well, we’re gonna fix your birthday dinner this year with the help of a real chef. Lessons are once a week for the next couple months.”

Gourmet cooking lessons!

“Oh wow. Dad, this is amazing!”

Burt grinned. “Happy Birthday, kid.”

 Birthday #12

Last year’s surprise had gone so well that Burt had decided on a repeat. But when he saw the excitement on Kurt’s face at finding a pair of tickets inside his birthday card turn to disappointment and horror, quickly masked with a fake smile, he knew he’d goofed.

“I know baseball isn’t your thing,” he said, almost pleading. “But you’ve never seen a live game before. It’s a whole different experience. It’s a home game. We can yell and scream, and cheer our team on with thousands of other fans.”

The stiff not-smile never wavered. “Sounds . . . fun.”

 Birthday #13

Dad had bought out one of the partners at the garage this spring and now owned a majority share of the renamed “Hummel Tires & Lube”. Kurt wanted to snicker at that name, but he was proud too.

His birthday this year coincided with Friday Night Dinner. Dad had invited all the mechanics over for a potluck. They’d had Mary’s special fried chicken, Cassius’s homemade cornbread, and Davy’s mac’n’cheese. Now Dad brought out the cake.

Kurt laughed. A sheet-cake with a tow-truck and two little plastic mechanics for decoration.

“You and me kid. Partners.”

The mechanics cheered and everybody dug in.

  Birthday #14

Kurt froze when he saw tickets peeping out of his card. Not again. Noise, sunburn, unhealthy food, tacky uniforms, and Dad trying so hard to make a boring sport seem like fun.

He sighed and pasted on a smile, which quickly transformed into shock.

“Wicked?” he squeaked, staring hard at the little papers as if the printing might change if he dared to look away.

“Embassy Theater is giving regional business owners a discount this year,” Burt said apologetically. “It’s just a traveling production, not real Broadway, but I …”

His apology was cut off by a joyful teenaged hug.

 Birthday #15

“Don’t worry, son, you got this.  Just remember everything I taught you.  You got a whole year to get ready for the practical test.”

“I know.”

“And it’s okay if you don’t get it right the first time. Not everybody does.”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“I’ll be right here waiting for you when you’re through.”

“I know that, Dad. I’ll be okay, really.”

At that moment, Kurt’s name was called and he sprang from his hard green plastic chair. His dad’s repeated reassurances were making him jumpy.

Twenty minutes later, a brightly grinning Kurt was waving his freshly minted driver’s permit.

 Birthday #16

Burt patted the giant blue bow the dealership had provided over the hood of the shining black Lincoln Navigator.  

Kurt was gonna flip! He’d passed his DMV test with flying colors and was no doubt showing off his shiny new license to all his friends at school.  

He paused. Did Kurt have any friends to share this accomplishment with? He always seemed so alone.

Maybe that’s why he had decided to spoil his son with a huge birthday gift.

It wasn’t right for such a good kid to be all alone. Maybe having his own ride would help change that.

  Birthday #17

A dozen teens gathered in Kurt’s basement to celebrate the end-of-school, non-disbanding of Glee, and Kurt’s birthday, all in one.

“Not like ten years ago,” Mercedes said to Kurt, as they watched Mike and Brittany dance.

“Ten years?”

“Your seventh? It was just you, me, your mom, and lots of chocolate cake.”

Kurt was astounded. “That was you?”

“You forgot?”

“I remember a little girl who showed up and invited herself to my party.”

“And I remember a little boy who needed a friend as much as I did.”

He squeezed her hand. “Thanks for coming.”

She squeezed back. “Always.”

 Birthday #18

Kurt stared at his birthday cake, unable to think of anything to wish for.

He was 18-years-old today, a legal adult. He had new family in Carole and Finn, his dad was on the mend, he would be back at McKinley for senior year, he had made his first visit to New York City, and he had a boyfriend! One who had just told Kurt that he loved him for the very first time.

‘I wish for next year to be as good as this,” he thought, taking a deep breath and blowing.

The flames flickered out, all except one.

 Birthday #19

Senior year had been a disaster, and now he had not gotten into NYADA, despite his well-praised audition.

“Blaine wants me to spend another year here,” he whispered. “I just can’t.”

Burt’s callused hand squeezed his neck. “Then don’t. You’re 19 now, a man. You got talents galore, work experience from the garage, enough drive for ten kids, and your mom’s life insurance money to give you a start.”

“But…”

“No buts,” Burt said firmly. “You go on to New York and grab life by the balls.”

Kurt felt his optimism rise. “Help me look for apartments?”

“You got it.”

 Birthday #20

What a difference a year made.

He’d dumped Blaine after being cheated on less than a month after leaving Lima.  He was enrolled at FIT and sharing a shoebox apartment with a fellow design student and a Broadway hopeful, but both were young gay men from small towns, and they had a lot in common.

“Happy Birthday!” Elliott shouted, tossing a handful of glittery sequins at him.

Adam came in playing the birthday song on a kazoo he had gotten from who-knows-where. “Ready for Callbacks? $20 on who gets the first hot guy’s number!”

“I already have yours. I win!”

 Birthday #21

“I have the honor of presenting your first official grown-up drink,” Adam said, smiling lovingly at his grinning boyfriend of nearly a year. He set down a martini glass with a cherry floating on top. “A Manhattan seemed appropriate.”

Kurt beamed and gave him a kiss, then took an experimental sip. “I’ve had alcohol before,” he admitted. “Mostly wine, though.  Mm, this is good!”

“I thought you’d like it. Happy Birthday, my love.  May the future bring every good thing you wish for, and never more heartache than you can handle.”

Kurt could not have asked for a better sentiment.

THE END