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#AND DO YOU KNOW THAT IT ORIGINATED FROM FACEBOOK
free-range-tiddies · 5 months
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The Facebook -> Tumblr -> Twitter -> TikTok meme pipeline is EXHAUSTING. Can you people for the love of God start making memes from scratch again?
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lokigodofaces · 2 years
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studying political science means every day i go online and see people spouting off nonsense and people believing them
#liv won't shut up#after roe v wade was overturned i saw quite a bit of stuff everywhere that drove me insane#& not just anti women stuff no there are people that might have good intentions posting stuff that clearly know nothing about scotus#my favorite was when someone (i dont remember if it was here facebook twitter or whatever) said that scotus cant ever overturn overturning#is illegal. & i'm sitting here blown away by that bc i hate to break it to you but 1 of the most important scotus cases in us history#overturned another case. original case was overturned 17 times. totally legal. happened in the 60s. along with that ppl saying that cases#being overturned is always bad and thats why it is/should be illegal. again. do you not know one of the most important scotus cases in us#history? the cases i mentioned earlier were plessy v ferguson & brown v board. plessy v ferguson legalized segregation in schools. thats#where 'separate but equal' came from. set the precedent for segregation in other public places. reaffirmed 17 times. brown v board overturn#ed it banning segregation in public schools. & you want to tell me overturning a decision is always bad?#just. if this was a not so important case from 1821 that no one really knew about whatever then. but brown v board is 1 of the most well#known cases in us history. how are there people that dont know the history behind it?#'overturning should be illegal' okay guess we're going back to segregation then#& thats just one example. i'm sure there have been lots of other cases overturning stuff that arent as well known as brown v board that#have been good but it's too late/early for me to look into that for now
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jcbmcdrmtt · 9 months
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is anyone else just so tired of how many things you have to do to make the internet a tolerable place these days? like not even a FUN place, just a place that isn't inherently intolerable to humanity??
Like I have 28 Firefox addons enabled, I have 4 mobile browser extensions and multiple userscripts enabled on my phone, I run my own fricking DNS server to block ads on devices/apps where you can't use adblocking software natively, and I'm just. I'm so tired. I should not have to replace a fundamental building block of the internet in order to avoid constant surveillance and intrusive bids for my money and attention. And the only reason I can keep up with all this is because I'm a techy person who genuinely enjoys playing around with software, but if you DON'T have that particular masochistic tendency then it's almost impossible to protect yourself fully because all of this stuff is just so much work and corporations are constantly shifting strategies to stay ahead of you.
So I watch my brother in law browse a recipe site on his phone that is so covered with ads and autoplay videos that only the middle fifth of the screen has the actual recipe visible, and he just suffers through it because he doesn't want to have to mess around with a new browser and learn how to turn an adblocker off if it breaks stuff, the sad part is I get it, because I am fucking exhausted too.
#cw negativity#enshittification#enshittification of the internet#jake's tag rambles#jake talks#idk I just spent like 45 minutes trying to find a way to block reels on mobile fb using ublock origin#and fb intentionally obfuscates their code to make stuff like that as difficult as possible so you can't just use the element zapper#and then last weekend I finally found a working crack for Amazon's newest Kindle DRM#and I spent like 6 hours backing up all of the 300+ ebooks I bought from them in uni before I realized they were a soulsoucking corporation#trying to do everything before they got a chance to change their drm and break the crack again#and then the weekend before THAT i was trying to clear out all the decade and a half of useless facebook pages i had “liked”#you know back when people actually used their likes to convey interests and information about themselves to friends#instead of fb just using them as an excuse to push thousands of useless posts and ads into your timeline#but of course facebook doesn't let you mass-unlike things#and they sent a cease and desist to the person who made a firefox addon to do it for you#and then made the page listing your likes full of dynamic javascript/shifting page elements aka absolute hell to uncheck everything manuall#i finally just went through and unliked/unfollowed 1054 pages one by one#it took me like 3 or 4 hours including the time i spent researching and trying out automated ways to do it#and by the end i was running on nothing but pure visceral spite and a red haze across my field of vision#i am so tired y'all
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writingwithcolor · 5 months
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Naming International POC Characters: Do Your Research.
This post is part of a double feature for the same ask. First check out Mod Colette's answer to OP's original question at: A Careful Balance: Portraying a Black Character's Relationship with their Hair. Below are notes on character naming from Mod Rina.
~ ~ ~
@writingraccoon said:
My character is black in a dungeons and dragons-like fantasy world. His name is Kazuki Haile (pronounced hay-lee), and his mother is this world's equivalent of Japanese, which is where his first name is from, while his father is this world's equivalent of Ethiopian, which is where his last name is from. He looks much more like his father, and has hair type 4a. [...]
Hold on a sec.
Haile (pronounced hay-lee), [...] [H]is father is this world’s equivalent of Ethiopian, which is where his last name is from. 
OP, where did you get this name? Behindthename.com, perhaps?
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Note how it says, “Submitted names are contributed by users of this website. Check marks indicate the level to which a name has been verified.” Do you see any check marks, OP? 
What language is this, by the way? If we only count official languages, Ethiopia has 5: Afar, Amharic, Oromo, Somali, & Tigrinya. If we count everything native to that region? Over 90 languages. And I haven't even mentioned the dormant/extinct ones. Do you know which language this name comes from? Have you determined Kazuki’s father’s ethnic group, religion, and language(s)? Do you know just how ethnically diverse Ethiopia is? 
~ ~ ~
To All Looking for Character Names on the Internet:
Skip the name aggregators and baby name lists. They often do not cite their sources, even if they’re pulling from credible ones, and often copy each other. 
If you still wish to use a name website, find a second source that isn’t a name website. 
Find at least one real life individual, living or dead, who has this given name or surname. Try Wikipedia’s lists of notable individuals under "List of [ethnicity] people." You can even try searching Facebook! Pay attention to when these people were born for chronological accuracy/believability. 
Make sure you know the language the name comes from, and the ethnicity/culture/religion it’s associated with. 
Make sure you understand the naming practices of that culture—how many names, where they come from, name order, and other conventions. 
Make sure you have the correct pronunciation of the name. Don’t always trust Wikipedia or American pronunciation guides on Youtube. Try to find a native speaker or language lesson source, or review the phonology & orthography and parse out the string one phoneme at a time. 
Suggestions for web sources:
Wikipedia! Look for: “List of [language] [masculine/feminine] given names,” “List of most common [language] family names,” “List of most common surnames in [continent],” and "List of [ethnicity] people."  
Census data! Harder to find due to language barriers & what governments make public, but these can really nail period accuracy. This may sound obvious, but look at the year of the character's birth, not the year your story takes place. 
Forums and Reddit. No really. Multicultural couples and expats will often ask around for what to name their children. There’s also r/namenerds, where so many folks have shared names in their language that they now have “International Name Threads.” These are all great first-hand sources for name connotations—what’s trendy vs. old-fashioned, preppy vs. nerdy, or classic vs. overused vs. obscure. 
~ ~ ~
Luckily for OP, I got very curious and did some research. More on Ethiopian & Eritrean naming, plus mixed/intercultural naming and my recommendations for this character, under the cut. It's really interesting, I promise!
Ethiopian and Eritrean Naming Practices
Haile (IPA: /həjlə/ roughly “hy-luh.” Both a & e are /ə/, a central “uh” sound) is a phrase meaning “power of” in Ge’ez, sometimes known as Classical Ethiopic, which is an extinct/dormant Semitic language that is now used as a liturgical language in Ethiopian churches (think of how Latin & Sanskrit are used today). So it's a religious name, and was likely popularized by the regnal name of the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie (“Power of the Trinity”). Ironically, for these reasons it is about as nationalistically “Ethiopian” as a name can get.
Haile is one of the most common “surnames” ever in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Why was that in quotes? Because Ethiopians and Eritreans don’t have surnames. Historically, when they needed to distinguish themselves from others with the same given name, they affixed their father’s given name, and then sometimes their grandfather’s. In modern Ethiopia and Eritrea, their given name is followed by a parent’s (usually father’s) name. First-generation diaspora abroad may solidify this name into a legal “surname” which is then consistently passed down to subsequent generations.
Intercultural Marriages and Naming
This means that Kazuki’s parents will have to figure out if there will be a “surname” going forward, and who it applies to. Your easiest and most likely option is that Kazuki’s dad would have chosen to make his second name (Kazuki’s grandpa’s name) the legal “surname.” The mom would have taken this name upon marriage, and Kazuki would inherit it also. Either moving abroad or the circumstances of the intercultural marriage would have motivated this. Thus “Haile” would be grandpa’s name, and Kazuki wouldn’t be taking his “surname” from his dad. This prevents the mom & Kazuki from having different “surnames.” But you will have to understand and explain where the names came from and the decisions dad made to get there. Otherwise, this will ring culturally hollow and indicate a lack of research.
Typically intercultural parents try to
come up with a first name that is pronounceable in both languages,
go with a name that is the dominant language of where they live, or
compromise and pick one parent’s language, depending on the circumstances.
Option 1 and possibly 3 requires figuring out which language is the father’s first language. Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned national ubiquity of Haile, you will have to start from scratch here and figure out his ethnic group, religion (most are Ethiopian Orthodox and some Sunni Muslim), and language(s). 
But then again, writing these characters knowledgeably and respectfully also requires figuring out that information anyway.
~ ~ ~
Names and naming practices are so, so diverse. Do research into the culture and language before picking a name, and never go with only one source.
~ Mod Rina
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A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza
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Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.
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Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media
The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:
https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf
I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"
Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.
II. Know red flags for bullshit
The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:
High-frequency posting
Emotionally charged framing
Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original
The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)
III. Don't trust screenshots
Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.
IV. "Know your platform"
It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.
V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing
People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.
VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy
TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.
VII. Think before you post
Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.
There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition
The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:
https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html
Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.
It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford
There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html
It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:
https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/28/fog-o-war/#breaking-news
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wilwheaton · 4 months
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This is from Star Trek Wholesome Posting on Facebook.
And because it's a FAQ, here's the story of The Infamous Clown Sweater, as I told someone who asked there:
"I did this fundraiser for EFF in San Francisco in ... 2001? 2002? Something like that. It was at DNA Lounge, and after we were done, this person came up to me with this horrific sweater (jumper, for you non-Americans). They told me it was part of The Infamous Clown Sweater Project. What's that, I asked. They told me they are getting as many people as possible to wear it and pose for a photo, which they would then upload to their webpage -- not website, webpage, because it was 2001 or so -- for all to see.
"Of *course* I was down for it, and that face I'm making in the first photo is my very real reaction to the _awful_ stank that was just infused in the acrylic fibers.
"The second picture is from a con about ... 2014? Something like that, based on how I look. Someone actually made their own version of that horrible sweater for me. One arm is too long, on purpose, the neck is all stretched out, on purpose, and it fits poorly, on purpose. It's so damn funny to me, and it came along at a moment when we were doing this "then and now" thing on Twitter (before the fascists took over).
"I still have the second sweater. I have no idea what happened to the original. Last time I checked, the website that hosted all those pictures -- so old it was manually coded in html, predating even Flickr -- was lost to the sands of time.
"But it never fails to make me smile when this picture comes back around. It reminds me of a specific time, when there was just so much hope for the online future we were all building."
And for those of you who are too young to know what Riker giving Wesley his "fondest wish" is, well ...
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Wesley wanted to grow up to be a blue-eyed blond who I'm pretty sure the costume designer wanted to fuck?
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GEORDI! You're not helping!
Look. I love you, Commander Riker, but ... you're gonna want to try again. Wesley's fondest wish rhymes with "marathon betazoid orgy on risa".
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thatfeelinwhenyou · 9 months
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KINDRED — yang jungwon
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It’s your final year of highschool, and your only goal is to graduate top of your cohort, as usual. Except as student council president, your advisor can’t seem to leave you alone. What happens when you take Decelis Academy’s top student, their star taekwondo athlete and put them in front of a camera?
“Kindred” a student documentary. Pilot episode airing tonight on TVN 7PM KST.
PAIRING: athlete!jungwon x stucopres!fem!reader
FEATURING: enhypen, yunjin from lesserafim, ryujin and chaeryeong from itzy, chanelle from runext, beomgyu and taehyun from txt, wonyoung from ive, gunwook and gyuvin from zb1 etc.
GENRE: high school au, enemies to lovers, nerd x athlete, forced proximity, slice of life, coming of age, he fell first and harder, fluff, ANGST, teen drama, slow burn ish?
WARNINGS: contains profanities, horrible attempt at humour, urban lingo, probably cringy, kys/kms jokes, depression jokes, sexual innuendos (nothing too inappropriate), depiction of violence, reader can be a little bit annoying at first, family drama, incorrect timestamps/information, no fixed faceclaims, not proofread etc.
STATUS: completed! (01/09/2023 – 18/03/2024)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: please read! story concept is heavily inspired by the kdrama ‘our beloved summer’ other than that the storyline is completely original (or so i assume since i manifested this out from the crevices of my pea brain). i’ll try to keep this one to ard 30 chapters (who am i kidding). chapters with ‘(hw)’ next to them indicates that they are half-written, in case y’all skip over it! as always, the content and depiction of the characters in this smau do not in anyway represent them in real life. also i know how twitter has been rebranded to x, but we’re just gonna continue calling it twitter. lastly, if you do end up enjoying, please do like, comment (love reading your comments btw), and reblog so this can reach!! without further ado, enjoy!
TAGS: #tfwy kindred #tfwy smau
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TEASER
profile. one | two | three
episode 1 - ratatouille and the underdogs
episode 2 - one way ticket to university
episode 3 - do you take constructive criticism?
episode 4 - unsolicited but appreciated
episode 5 - the art of benevolence
episode 6 - taekwondo-anti
episode 7 - beating the mentally ill allegations
episode 8 - can’t help it, i’m a libra
episode 9 - operation we-don’t-really-hate-each-other (hw)
episode 10 - she’s an oscar award winning actress
episode 11 - someone like me (hw)
episode 12 - ‘female-lead-realising-the-bad-boy-isnt-actually-that-bad’ arc
episode 13 - 5 foot 9 garfield meets avatar
episode 14 - yn the heterosexual
episode 15 - the ynwon getting closer montage :p
episode 16 - to the moon and back
episode 17 - eat 2 left toes
episode 18 - you are approved! (hw)
episode 19 - asking for a friend
episode 20 - rediscovering won’s ability to love
episode 21 - beomgyu’s 99999 eq
episode 22 - ynwon get together or else >:(
episode 23 - “hate”
episode 24 - not all problems can be solved with a formula
episode 25 - H.O.M.E.W.R.E.C.K.E.R
episode 26 - collecting facebook milfs like pokémons
episode 27 - you were brighter than the moon (hw)
episode 28 - no matter shrimp or whale, you deserve to flap your tail
episode 29 - the garden is full of surprises (hw)
episode 30 - weapon of mass destruction
episode 31 - the name above me (hw)
episode 32 - no offense but she’s a cockblocker
episode 33 - the bane of my existence (hw)
episode 34 - risky risky wiggy wigi this is an emergency
episode 35 - live my life on my terms (hw)
episode 36 - separation anxiety goes crazy
episode 37 - paparizzki
episode 38 - is it too late now to say Sorry?
episode 39 - everything will work out just the way you want it to (hw)
episode 40 (finale) - her entire being is loveable (written)
epilogue - kindred, signing off part 1 | part 2
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bonus chapters!
yunjin x heeseung
i can fight
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Copyright© 2023 thatfeelinwhenyou All Rights Reserved
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kyra45 · 9 months
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thetreeonthecountryside/thetreepoink is a scam account
They’ve now conned people out of $130 so please share this post to bring awareness that their post is a scam post. (Link removed as the account deactivated.)
The blog is a scammer. They don’t own Elvira and here is how I know. The PayPal address their using isn’t the one owned by the actual owner. The real owner isn’t a tumblr user and their post has been stolen by the scam account word for word. No money donated to the PayPal username kathnicols is going to the cat. Also the PayPal address is in the Philippines and if you pay attention to the vet bill it’s for MA.
The blogs bio is stolen from another blog.
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Which is basically the scammer trying to look like someone’s alt account.
Please don’t donate to thetreeonthecountryside/thetreepoink. They block/delete any reblogs/comments that call them out so you have to do it another way. This scammer doesn’t care about this cat they just stole it off Facebook. Here is the original owners posts.
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The ask being sent:
“Greetings! Hi there! Pardon me for being this direct. But my little kitty needs your help, i know times are tough but please if you have some time to spare, kindly boost/share the post I pinned for her. It would be so meaningful to me as I’m hoping it would reach more people.. please 💔🙏 praying you’d consider, and pls kindly send me a msg for a response or answer the ask privately so I could atleast thank you for doing us a favor! Wishing you good health and peace! 🫶🏽”
Update
They deactivated, but unfortunately that means their post can still spread by reblogs. However, they can’t delete any reblogs that call them a scammer.
Update 2
Remade as tinytreees.
Update 3
Changed to immatinytree
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This makes me incredibly angry.
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[ID: Screenshots of a Facebook post from user Advocatus Peregrini, which reads:
I was conversing with a fully-grown adult a few days ago, born and educated in the USA, who let this little gem drop:
"Well, it's like Shakespeare said, "Love conquers all!""
I pointed out that Shakespeare never said that, Virgil did, (Eclogues X) and Chaucer after him (Canterbury Tales.)
She said, "Oh I'm sure Shakespeare said that. In Romeo and Juliet!"
I sighed. I've been in that play several times, in different roles, and even directed it. That text does not occur in it.
But the real grind-my-teeth moment here was that if Romeo and Juliet can be said to have a message, it is most certainly not "Love conquers all," seeing as the lovers die by their own hands with a trail of their friends and relations' corpses in their wake.
Neither this fact, nor the fact that I knew the play, nor my explanation that Virgil and Chaucer used the phrase long before Shakespeare's birth dented her determination that "Love conquers all" came from Shakespeare.
"You don't know ALL the versions!" she protested.
All the versions?
Alternative Bard?
With every instinct screaming at me to let the matter drop, warning me that some horror that will not soon be absent from my nightmares waited around the next corner of this conversation. I pressed on.
It was a decision I was soon to regret.
I asked when she had first read "Romeo and Juliet." She said she had only read it once, when she was in Junior High. In the version she was taught, Romeo and Juliet survive, are reconciled with their parents, and are married in the church with their friends Mercutio and Tybalt arm in arm in the wedding party.
"Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint."
It turned out that her school had their own "version" of Romeo and Juliet, with an "uplifting" ending. This was printed and distributed by a religious education publisher. And it was the only version of the story that she had ever read. Of course she had HEARD other people say that the story was a tragedy, but she just assumed they were wrong.
And she did not see why MY version of Shakespeare should be considered better than HER Shakespeare, which, after all, had a much more wholesome ending.
I explained, in vain, that "my" version is definitive because Shakespeare actually wrote it (quiet, you Oxfordians. Don't make me stop this car) and the message of the play - that when adult stubbornness meets youthful impulsiveness tragedy ensues - is lost in the ersatz, happy-clappy ending.
She said the ending that had been Frankensteined onto Shakespeare's play by the "Christian Education" publisher was better than the original ending, "if the ending is as sad as you say it is."
At this point, I concluded that this was a person who deserved to go through the rest of her life "...safest in shame! being fool'd, by foolery thrive!" I bid her adieu.
After the conversation, I wondered, darkly, if that was to be the fate of Shakespeare, and all other literature if the happy-clappy people get their way - as harmless and "uplifiting" as a cheerleader's chant.
I wondered what these bowdlerizers would do with "Hamlet?" or worse, "Titus Andronicus" or "MacB-" Nothing wholesome, I'm sure. Oh, that's right, what they can't appropriate, they ban. Or burn.
In trying to protect children, we leave them undefended from "...the slings and arrows" that life will no doubt throw their way. Shakespeare raises the issues of tragedy - the fatal flaw, the last turning, the role of fate, as well or better than any author before or since. He is a gentle tutor, much to be preferred over that stern and dangerous teacher, Experientia Inopinatum.
But, as ever, it really isn't about the children. It's about the adults, and their desire to avoid answering difficult questions from agile young minds, who know no fear and swarm like eager flies around questions that have been boggling our best minds for millenia. To answer the questions that literature raises, you have to have thought deeply about them yourself. And that is something that few dare to do.]  end id
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rad-batson · 1 year
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Here’s some more about the game :D for your reading pleasure @portal-to-oblivion (Based on this post)
Freestyle Checkers: A Tim and Damian Special OR “How can we make talking to people a competition?”
They are sneaky. They are underhanded. They will do anything to win.
Originally, this was a ploy to get Bruce to ban them from the galas. Over the coming months, however, they begin to enjoy attending. A little too much.
Tim starts a conga line and convinces everyone on his team to join before marching them to Damian’s side.
Damian subtly moves the tables just an inch or two to the right all night until the whole room has switched seating arrangements.
After a particularly eventful game, Bruce now requires them both to empty their pockets and walk through a metal detector before entering the ballroom.
Tim uses his role as company heir to befriend everyone on his team and then introduce them to one another. He accidentally started a coup once.
Damian uses his puppy eyes to woo the guests into doing his bidding and avoid punishment.
He also sets fire to the curtains.
They are repeatedly caught giving death glares to each other from across the ballroom…but that’s normal. What’s not normal is the two giving death glares to a seemingly random guest at the same time. (She was only going to say hello to Maxine. Why does she feel like she’s in mortal danger?)
Tim spikes the punch with a hint of laxatives so everybody sticks to the bathrooms on Damian’s side.
Several games in, Damian finds a loophole in the rules. Even if the pieces can’t know they’re in a game, that doesn’t mean others can’t. He pays several catering staff to form a physical barrier between certain guests and places. Tim is livid and demands the loophole be written out.
Damian, after stealing a woman’s expensive watch: “Oh, I think I saw it at table seven! Here, let me take you there :)”
Tim makes a kid cry at table 20 so everyone will avoid that side of the room.
Tim: “To the left now, y’all! Left again! Right foot two stomps! Keep going left!”
Every other batfamily member has joined the game at least once, both as a piece AND as a player. On a particularly boring night, it was Tim v. Damian v. Steph v. Jason v. Duke. Every attendee was an unwilling participant. Including Bruce.
Damian is the reason death threats are no longer allowed for the game.
Tim: “Oh, you don’t want to talk to Nicole. Did you hear what she said about Leandra last night? The drama!”
Damian, tugging a guest’s arm: “Hey, is your blue Mercedes parked outside?” Guest: “Oh, hi sweetie :) Yes, why do you ask?” Damian: “It exploded.”
Damian studies the attendance sheet, makes a mental list of who eats what kind of dessert according to previous galas, then chooses all the guests who he knows like chocolate. Suddenly, there’s a surprise chocolate fountain on Tim’s side!
Tim studies the attendance sheet then figures out their addresses, hacks into their Facebook, stalks their Friends list, makes a chart of who is on good and bad terms, then chooses his team based on that.
Both of the above methods listed fail spectacularly
Damian: “So…I win.” Tim: “Damian, this is a hostage situation.” Damian: “But they’re lined up on your side. I win.” Tim: You know, I’m starting to think you set this up.”
He did.
During one particular night, a Wayne benefactor figures out what’s going on and tries to expose them so they team up, completely ruin his public reputation, and get him banned from all future galas to preserve the game.
No matter how hard he tries, Bruce cannot stop them from playing.
2K notes · View notes
celabi · 7 months
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tbh, I feel like I’ve been drifting away from the original scummy scara I made when I first made the au, so I would like to let everyone know that he is a BIG freak. the type of guy you avoid because he’s just… so creepy and weird. like, restraining order, banned in fifty states type of weird.
he will steal a pen you’ve been nibbling on in class, and do all sorts of things to it that you don’t wanna know. like shoving it down his throat or something idk.
he goes through the trash and takes the gun you spat out, and chews it as if he were a man on death row. and at this point he might as well be.
he ‘makes’ you home made lunch. (which is just store brought food he put into a lunch box). awe, so thoughtful, right? NO, he passed out after cumming so much to replace the dressing on your salad.
spits in your drink, so it’s almost like you’re kissing in a way, because his saliva is in your mouth yada yada. he’s so delusional, gosh.
this man jerks off to anything. pictures of you in a bikini. pictures of your panties that he snuck a photo of from under your skirt. hell, he has even fapped it to a post he found on one of your family members facebook where you look like the most ordinary person ever. anything.
he acts like an angel around you, but the moment you turn your back, he has this dark, violent glint in his eyes at anyone who isn’t you.
he STANK. like discord moderator who manages thirty different servers. he plays video games 24/7 and eats only fast food + he lives in his mothers basement so minus points.
his mind is SO dirty too. like you could be complaining about this one girl who has been getting on your nerves recently, and all he can think about is bending you over the table and running his hands all over your body. he thinks of you when he shouldn’t, and in ways he shouldn’t, even before you knew his name.
yeah he’s so sweet, and kisses the ground you walk on. but he also would love nothing more then to knock you up and keep you as his cute little spouse who he can come home and make love to every day.
god and he’s a brat too, don’t get me started. like, throwing tantrums when you decide to sit with someone else at lunch. starting fights with people who so much as look in your general direction (ones that he loses cause he is so small and scrawny). screaming profanities at the professors who separate your seating plans in lectures, and so on.
if you’ve been keeping up with my posts, you’ll know that this man has a literal sex doll replica of you he sleeps with at night. it’s so detailed to the point where there is freckles in the exact same spot they are on your skin. (even some moles and beauty marks that you didn’t even know you had, and god knows how he does).
has a shrine of you in his closet. strands of your hair he has collected. lipgloss and chapstick he has stolen from your bag whilst you weren’t looking. accessories like rings and bracelets. nail polish, all the works. and in the middle of this shrine, in all its glory, is a pair of your underwear that he took while you were in the changing rooms. he prays to it. the holy grail.
he has been dating you in his head the moment he saw you, like, gets a little annoyed when you don’t remember your five month anniversary, but the thing is, you didn’t even know you’re dating at all.
I love him. don’t get me wrong, but he is not the man you want to get involved with, like AT ALL.
go for someone like scummy alhaitham, who has (some) self respect 👍
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crtter · 2 years
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List of New Spamton Lore
This post contains all the new information about Spamton revealed on September 17th and 18th 2022 through the Spamton Sweepstakes and the Twitter Q&A, ranging from the most important reveals to small details, in no particular order!
Spamton might be dual typed, with his two elements being Puppet and Cat. It could also be, however, that he merely meant that the Puppet and the Cat elements share the same elemental weaknesses and that his sole element is Puppet.
Spamton once considered Swatch a close friend who always listened to him and was a shoulder for him to cry on.
Spamton seems to be especially fond of the Mike person he mentions in the game, citing him as the only one he’d spare if he got revenge on all of those who he feels have wronged him and declining to give people any information about him in order to protect him from “THAT [Cathode]’S CREW”.
Spamton is aware “haters” want to inflict bodily damage onto him (especially cover him in milk and throw him against a wall) and his official stance on the subject is “[Cool down with a]!!! WHAT IF ONE DAY, YOU ENDED UP [Killed] ME!?” and “WE DON’T DO THAT WITHOUT [A 72 hour paid Appointment]!!”
Spamton met Noelle before her arrival to Cyber World through her replying to his spam e-mails (implied to be about a supposedly “friend finder” website she tried to find her sister through). She was the only one to ever reply to one of his e-mails and, in return, he sent her a code that, when input into the Cat Petterz 2 game, produced a pipis reminiscent to the Bad Egg glitch from the Pokémon games.
The Pipis Spamton sent Noelle is implied to be the only gift he ever gave someone, since he seems unable to give people goods without trading them for money, even symbolically, either because of his corruption or as a trait of his species.
Spamton is aware people find him attractive and attributes it to his “MASSIVE [Ass]”.
Spamton doesn’t know what his Spamton EX form would have looked like.
Spamton claims that first three letters of the hidden, garbled lyrics hidden in BIG SHOT and as a voice line in the Spamton plush are “F I N”.
Spamton recognizes that his speech contains “[Brackets]“ and “[Random sp4m quotes]” to someone who’s looking at it in text form.
Spamton can repeat pieces of phrases he reads or is told, something he does in four different occasions between the Sweepstakes and the Q&A, which implies some of the things he says might be fully copied and pasted together from other sources.
Spamton claims his favorite food is Mexican food, but very specifically from the Pipis “The Original” restaurant, which is a reference present in the original game.
When answering this particular question, he answered it by repeating phrases taken directly from the restaurant’s Facebook page almost word for word.
Spamton considers himself handsome.
Spamton might know about Jockington and thinks he’d disapprove of his “Pipis Big Shot Fantasyship Ring” product, maybe because Pipis isn’t a real sport.
Spamton is in a certain amount of denial about his downfall.
Spamton made two separate references to being willing to be in a three-way relationship.
Spamton doesn’t like people that aren’t very well acquainted with them referring to his Pipis as eggs and calls them “[The boys]”. He considers the idea of them being used as a food source as pretty barbaric but admits it’d look “DELICIS” and “[Cheap]”.
Spamton knows a certain man is responsible for handing white eggs to people.
Spamton doesn’t seem to remember the Knight (or is pretending not to).
Spamton claims the Cungadero is the “[Nation’s Most Popular Car]”.
Spamton has always been shorter than the other Addisons.
Spamton seems to find non-digital painting an interesting concept and dubbed The Mona Spamton as “[History's First Fully Authentic] PAINTING”.
Spamton describes what happened to him as being made “INTO YOUR [living puppet] AND [enslave me] WITH [visions of glory]”.
Spamton implies that, at one point, he was pushed inside the Queen’s pool and given a swirlie in the mansion’s toilets.
Spamton seems to believe he has “died” in the past in some way.
When asked about his sexual orientation, Spamton claims to “LIKE [anyone and anything] THAT GIVE ME [Money]!!” and to be a “[Business Loving Businessman]”.
The little animated sprite of Spamton dancing borrows some moves from the famous Dancing Baby, a CGI animation from 1996 that’s widely considered to be the first meme.
Spamton finds Queen attractive. More specifically, that she has a “[smoking hot a$$]”, something he mentions in two separate occasions when referring to her.
Spamton appreciates his fans, calling them [Fellow Freaks].
Spamton considers Ralsei a “[scringley]”.
Spamton knows what memes are (he spells them as “m3m3”) and referenced around 11 different memes in both the Sweepstakes and the Q&A.
He specifically referenced the everyteenagers4free hot dog husband post when talking about Jevil, which could imply they’re exes.
Spamton considers Berdly’s statue as the best thing he has ever found in the trash.
Spamton seems to have frequent flashbacks about being evicted from Queen’s mansion.
Spamton thinks the Addisons were never his real friends and were embarrassed to be seen with him because he was “bad for business”.
Spamton knows what Neopets are.
Spamton stuck his nose inside a Cungadero’s auxiliary power outlet at least once.
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yeyinde · 9 months
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lavender skies | Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x GN!Reader
Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him.  (And that, maybe, you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)
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tags: friends to lovers (but the type of friends who are basically already dating and everyone knows except them - until suddenly they do), mutual pining. Slight Kent bashing, oops. Golden Girls as a coping mechanism. warnings: none. very tame, considering who I am as a person. Heavy make-out sess, though. word count: 6,6k notes: This has been sitting in my requests forever (I lost the original, but the gist was: Gaz + pining + idiots in love). You can blame a lot of this on summer rain and 80s city pop. Been going to the pier and listening to it while I wrote this. Not my best, sure, but it was fun.
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The Tinder date he warned you not to go on (and seriously, mate, who uses Tinder anymore?) ends like this:
Your date, the biggest gentleman in Kent, as proclaimed in his bio (a red flag in hindsight—there's no such thing as a gentleman from Kent), sneaks his number to the waitress, and then leaves you behind in downtown Manchester to go bar hopping with a group he just met. 
It's not a great loss. All things considered, it's not even the worst date you've ever been on. It was just a spur-of-the-moment whim—equal parts anxiety and megrim: the sudden fear of being single forever (and no, despite what Kyle might say, it has nothing to do with the wedding invitation you'd gotten on Facebook, or the three others that came before it)—and therefore, there isn't much to be upset about. Not really. 
But the world doesn't work on half-hearted lies and shaky truths, and on a dank little corner in Manchester, abandoned by your ride home, your abysmal date who barely looked at you, you can't deny that it hurts. That it's a little bit of a hit to your self-esteem in a way that makes you angrier than you were before, because, honestly—he wasn't even a catch to begin with. 
Stupid. 
You should have listened to Kyle, to his immaculate wisdom and emotional maturity far beyond his years, but you hadn't because—
Well. Sometimes the world should work on little lies. If only to the ones you tell yourself. Ones like:
It's completely fine—really it is—if your friend of nearly eight years is moving on with his life. And it's totally, absolutely okay if your best friend meets some flighty barista in Amsterdam and won't stop talking about her for the meagre three weeks he's been back from his impromptu trip to the Netherlands, then to Mexico. It's fine. It's all fine. 
Because maybe you are, too. 
And maybe that's the reason you went out with David from Kent. 
From Kent? He texted, only hours before your date. (Hours because he'd been busy with this thing for his job—his boss is corrupt and the world is, too, but at least Amsterdam Barista is doing fine). You can do so much better than that, birdy.
You wanted to say, what? Like someone from Amsterdam instead? but you're doing this new thing where you try not to sound as mad as you think you are. Zen, maybe. Internal peace and happiness. So, instead, you say:
He's nice. I like him. 
Words that, of course, have come back to bite you. 
He isn't nice. He wouldn't stop staring at the waitress, and talking over you, or just generally ignoring your existence. He left you downtown, stranded without a way home. You don't like him. You really don't even think you were that interested in him. 
But it makes sense.
Kyle is moving on. Your friends are getting married. 
And where does that leave you? 
Well—
It leaves you stuck downtown with shoes that were intended to be used for aesthetics, the kind that means standing entirely still and immobile, and not walking the fifteen kilometres to your flat because you'd spent all your money on this super flattering outfit and these unfunctional shoes, and can't afford a cab or an Uber. 
Sometimes, you pretend you're a functional adult—one who knows how to navigate everything with ease, and you live in the present, the real world, where time is fluid and unchangeable, and things make sense (maths and geometry and physics) unless they don't (black holes and the vastitude of space and fate)—but moments like these remind you that you don't. That you live, instead, somewhere in the parentheses of both. 
The indigo sky, murky black and void of any stars, seems to grumble along with you as you turn toward the street, readying yourself for the long walk home. Except the groan sounds less commiserating and more ominous. A noise that seems to reverberate through the crowded street, and right into your bones.
Some have the wherewithal to find shelter. A smart move because almost a moment later, the heavens split, and a summer deluge drenches the street. It's unrelenting in its downpour, soaking everything in its path in a shrill roar. 
Caught in the middle of St Peter's Square, there are not many places to duck under for sanctuary, but you find an alcove beside a store, and dart toward it. The non-functional boots are pretty to look at, but with each step, you feel the hard synthetic rubber grind against your heel. Blisters form, break. The burn makes you inhale sharply against the pain, hobbling now on tender feet. 
The wall is slick with condensation, but you lean against it to keep your feet from taking the brunt of your weight. 
It reminds you, quite suddenly, of that night in Cardiff with Kyle. When you'd drank three-dollar margaritas at some downtrodden bar with your friends and ate rather limp-looking fish tacos (a mistake, of course, and Kyle still can't look at corn tortillas the same way), and laughed until your belly hurt at something he'd said—the words lost to alcohol and faded with time—and then leaned over, promptly throwing up in a bush. 
You still can't drink tequila without giggling (and gagging) at nothing, a phantom memory, and the thought presses against a tender spot in your chest in all the wrong ways. 
Time is fluid. An unavoidable truism that you can't escape. 
There are people you've known since you were a child whose faces you can barely remember. Ones you promised the world to, to always be together, who you hardly think of anymore. 
Moving on. Moving forward. 
You think, then, of Kyle. Of the distance that lingers between you both, widening each day. It's nothing you've done, nor he; it's just—
Life. Concurrent. Everpresent. 
It hurts to lose a friend, you'd always think. A small moment of grief, of loss. But not like this. Never like this. 
Stuck in a downpour in the middle of Manchester, you realise you miss him. Have been missing him. 
Huddling under an awning, you fish your phone from your soaked pocket, and pull up the only person you want to be around right now, in this moment of vulnerability. Loneliness. 
You send him a quick text, date was a bust. Stuck downtown. Are you busy?
Kyle's reply comes three breaths later. For you? Never. Send me your location. 
You send him your pin. 
Another message pops up: stay put. I'm on my way. 
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You met Kyle Garrick at university. 
It's one of those things in life that just sometimes happens. A happy accident. An eventuality that makes the world feel a little less daunting. A lock and key sliding into place. Sunsets in pretty ochre. 
Someone you knew and someone he knew (two people who are now best man and groom in the upcoming wedding) decided to invite all of their friends out for a night, and it was then, slightly tipsy on cheap ale when you realised the boy in the back—a head taller than everyone else and more befitting inside the glossy pages of a magazine—was different, somehow, from anyone else you'd ever met. 
It started when some stupid kids decided to pick on another. A smaller boy with a blue cap. 
Kyle was the only one who noticed. The only one who seemed to care. 
It was his anger that drew you to him in the first place. Moth to a flame. It's quick—the sizzling flame of a lit match: suddenly burning the wick and nearly uncontrollable. But it's short. A flickering star, burning bright, burning hot, and then being tempered and swallowed down until it's smouldering. Still hot, still dangerous, but—
Managed. 
It was a snap. He was laughing, jovial. Telling jokes, and having fun, but still maintaining that enviable enigmatic persona: reserved but kind. Funny, but mature. And then it crumpled in an instant, folded away into anger. Bright and blistering. He walked to them, eyes blazing, and didn't wait for any excuses when the kids noticed him, just quickly decimated their foundations, and crushed their feeble lies between his teeth. 
"Bullyin'? That's a pretty foul thing to do, innit, mate?" 
And that was that. 
He handed the kid back his hat—the one the others knocked off into the gutter—and told him, clipped, that he was better than them. 
Just keep your chin up, yeah? Fuckin' losers, that lot. Don't go messing about with them anymore. Fucking pricks. That's a nice hat, too. Where'd you get it? Really? Oh, that's mint—
It was that moment when, unprompted and unnoticed, he easily slipped away from the group to help some kid he didn't even know that you realised you were very keen to get to know him. 
"Fancy a kebab, hero?" You asked, smirking up at him. 
A grin broke across his face. Sharp, feral. "I could always go to a lamb kebab."
The rest, really, just came quite naturally. Your best friend. The person you go to for anything—even terrible dates that leave you stranded in the rain. 
You just wish you knew when it all began to change, to fall apart. 
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Kyle meets you near St Peter's Square. 
You spot him first from your hiding spot beneath the awning, catching sight of his form moving through the (now) empty streets, hands shoved in the pockets of his denim trousers, the bottoms tucked, sensibly, into his fawn-coloured boots. 
Even with the hood of his windbreaker pulled low over his brow, you can pick him out of a crowd with an ease that is as warming as it is jarring. 
You wave him over when he stops on the mouth of Mount Street, looking in toward the Starbucks on the corner. 
He finds you just as easily. And oh, his expression makes your toes curl in your misshapen boots. 
Anger pinches the corner of his mouth, and hangs off the furrow of his brow, the divot between his eyes. 
"Unbelievable," he huffs when he reaches you in the middle of the street, and sucks his teeth when you open your mouth to protest. 
"It is what it is," you offer, playing the peacekeeper. You fall into step with him, trying not to wince. "I'm over it." 
"Yeah?" The shadows across his brow deepen. "Are you sure? 'Cause… I'll fuck him up for you." 
Setting your friend on a man from Kent feels entirely too vindictive, despite how much of a rush you get at the thought of seeing the man cowed a little bit. You shake your head, playing the part of a reasonable adult. 
"It's okay. I'm just—I'm just, over this, yeah? Can we—"
Kyle stops you with his hand against your shoulder. "You alright?"
"My feet hurt," your smile is strained. "Terrible shoes." 
"Take 'em off."
"Are you crazy—?"
"I brought slides for you. Figured you'd wear something stupid." 
"Okay, fair. But—ouch? We can't all be crazy good-looking Armani models. Some of us have to work for it." 
Kyle snorts. "Just take your shoes off, yeah? Throw 'em in my bag."
You can't deny it feels blissful when you lean against the slick wall outside of a shop, toeing off your tight boots. Aching feet freed from their prison. The sigh you let out makes him glance up at you from the pavement, bent over the rucksack he brought. 
There's disapproval in his gaze—maybe at your choice. Choices. The date he warned you about. The boots. The socks he spots are stained with blood on the knob of your foot. 
He tuts. A soft admonishment that cuts through the silence of the empty square. But it's all he says. He swallows the rest and drops the shoes he grabbed on the pavement in front of you, slowly pushing them forward with the tip of his toe.
You try not to grin when you see them.
Crocs. The ugliest ones you could find in Schuh. You'd bullied him into getting a matching pair with you. Neon yellow adorned with little clips. 
You slip them on as Kyle reaches down to grab your boots. He pauses with them in his hand, eying them with something that taints the air with his disdain. 
"When did you buy these?"
"On Friday." When he was sleeping off his impromptu trip to Chicago. He brought you home deep-dish pizza, frozen, and promised that it tasted much better fresh. "For the date."
"Why?" Is all he asks. 
You shrug. "They're cute…?"
His eyes stray to your shoulders. The wet fabric of your shirt. His chin lowers slightly, but his eyes stay fixed on your flesh, on the goosebumps that bubble to the surface, spreading over your exposed skin. Eyes flicker, catching a droplet of water you can feel running down from behind your ear, falling over the slope of your neck. It breaks against your collarbone. He watches it all. 
There's tension in the air. Static. The pressure builds and reeks of ozone when it presses into you, knuckles digging into the hollow of your throat. It renders you unable to speak—locked in a paradigm where the world beyond the honeycomb of his eyes ceases to matter, to exist almost. Thick honey ensnares you. Molasses. It clots against reason, logic, and makes you feel weightless. Floating, unmoored, in this unfamiliar abyss that closes in around you. 
Except—
It isn’t. 
There’s something aberrant about it, anomalous, that you can’t ignore; but beneath it sits a preternatural sense of familiarity that bends the paradox into knowns. Into tangibles. Concretes. 
This is the same tension that has been simmering—festering, almost—since before he joined the miliary. In Cardiff when he leaned against you in the taxi, boney shoulder digging into your arm, and said, ‘dunno what I'd do without you, y’know? 
It was the hazy smear of neon from the shops perched on the street. An ethereal gold hue streamed in from the window, cutting across the tenebrous in an asymmetrical chiaroscuro. The light was soaked up by him. Warm honey, the perfect compliment to his eyes, to the soft pink of his lips. 
How could you possibly describe the feeling that spumes in the pit of your stomach outside of undiluted comfort? 
Home.
It feels like like in shades; muted. A soft undercurrent that lingers inside something else, something deeper—
Moments in the foyer when he was heading back home for the evening. When he’d linger in the doorway, shoulder balanced against the frame, arms folded over his chest, and warned you not to watch Taskmaster without him. 
He’d know, he said. 
When you asked how, he just said:
“Because I know you.”
It feels like that. Like that and something more. Everything, all of it, coalesces into this. Into this moment where you can’t stop staring into the flecks of mahogany and charred birchwood in his eyes, and he can’t seem to decide where to keep his, vacillating between the slope of your neck and matching your stare. A lurch, a flash of something in your chest when your gazes meet. The deep sfumato of a bare forest in the middle of winter—rich browns, raw topaz, honey and amber in a sea of white. A sleepy hinterland. Solemnent and peaceful. Dreamy. Hypnogogic. 
The world always seems to shudder into a deep slumber whenever he’s around. 
He dips closer, swaying into you. Gravity, maybe. Tidally locked satellites on the same rung. Something bubbles in your chest. Unwinds from its dormant perch between the gaps in your ribs, and climbs up your esophagus. Ready, you think, to be free—
In the distance, tyres squeal against the pavement. 
—and all at once, the moment burst, breaks. Shatters into a million pieces, cosmic dust, and you watch them fall around you, blinking rapidly, as though you’ve just woken. 
It feels like slowly coming down to earth when you quietly gather your things, words now stuck in your throat. In their prison. 
Kyle tears his gaze away from your bare skin, clearing his throat. 
"Hardly." He murmurs after a moment and slips his jacket off his shoulders before wrapping it around yours. It smells of rainwater, wet rubber. Beneath the polymer, you can smell Kyle—vetiver, cypress, jasmine; sweet and heady—and you bury your nose in the hood when he turns back to the empty street. “Well, uh—”
You can’t speak. Not yet. 
He seems to understand. 
"Yeah," he nods, and reaches out, tugging on the end of the drawstring. "Let's get out of here." 
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The rain lightens into a muted drizzle, soft droplets that fall, almost rhythmless, on the wet pavement. The town sleeps, the streets bare. Empty. The only sounds come from your slick footfalls, a horn in the distance. 
It’s an easy silence that lapses between you—not at all unlike the lulls before, when things were easy and featherlight and endless; when you could talk to him about everything, anything, and all of the worries in your life were saved for something else. Never him. Never, ever him. 
But it tugs at something in your chest. The same pressure blooms at the edges, lingering in the periphery. You think of the spell you fell under—quiet yearning—and shake your head, desperate now to break it. 
It’s just as easy to slip into familiarity. To tease, and taunt. And so, you do. 
"I'm surprised you haven't said I told you so by now. That's so impressive self-restraint."
His gaze slides over to you. "Well, you know, it's implied."
"Oh, is it, now?"
"Yeah, like when you messaged me and told me about it and I said—"
"Who even uses Tinder?"
"—that he's knobhead, and you're gonna get hurt."
You scoff. "He's from Kent, so."
"Even worse," he makes a face, derision contrasted by the jaundiced lamp spilling over the pavement. "A Tinder date with a guy from Kent? What's next? Moving to Bristol?"
"It's a nice area." 
He rolls his eyes. "Sure. As nice as Essex, maybe." 
"The two are not even comparable—"
"'Dunno why you're rushing into anything, anyway,” he angles his chin toward you. “If this is about Carver's wedding, I said I'd go with you, didn't I?"
"Yeah, but…"
"But what?"
"That's sort of—like, you just have your own thing going on. I don't want to get in the way."
"I've always had my own thing going on. So have you. But that's never stopped us before, has it? What's changed."
"What about—" you swallow down something thick, bitter that wells in the back of your throat. "You know. Amsterdam. The Barista, or whatever."
His brow knots together. "And what about David from Kent?"
You sweep your hands out, motioning morosely toward your Crocs, your damp outfit. "This is what happened with David from Kent. Not exactly the fairytale meet cute you have with Amsterdam—" he makes a noise, like he means to interrupt. You cut him off. Bury it. "And besides, you should take her. I'll just—" 
"I want to go with you."
"Why?"
Kyle falls to a stop near the Kebab shop you usually go to whenever he comes back from his missions, when he's craving good, hearty food that will rot his insides and clog his arteries. A small comfort from before, when everything he has now was just a dream, and you were struggling students in university who could barely afford a meal each and would split a lamb dinner over ale and terrible movies from the noughties back at your flat. 
The suddenness of it all makes you blink beside him, slowly angling your chin up at him. A questioning noise wells in the back of your throat, but when you finally turn your gaze to him, it does out. A snuffed flame. 
He brings his hand up, finger scratching at the soft patch of skin on the bridge of his nose where it starts to arch up. The look on his face, hidden, slightly, by the night blanketing overhead, but just illuminated enough by smears of neon and flushed street lamps for you to see it clove into something slightly flustered, hesitant. Sheepish, almost, like he hadn't meant to say what he did, and now doesn't know how to proceed forward. Cards tucked tight to his chest. Does he play his hand or fold? 
You blink. Then blink again. Struggling, almost, to take in the suddenness of his flustered state. 
Because the thing is:
Kyle doesn't get embarrassed or sheepish. 
A running gag in your mutual friend group is that Kyle is twenty-eight going on sixty-five. An old man crammed inside the body of a young adult. He runs hot—passionate about his beliefs, quick to temper when he thinks an injustice is being doled out; a disciple of loose stoicism, but of a new age variety that is half parts stereotypical stoner chillness and ripe maturity—but he rarely is ever caught unawares enough to become embarrassed by something. He just has a perfect gauge of himself and those around him, able to quickly make friends with anybody he meets, and self-aware enough to know when he's in the wrong, when he needs to dial it back. 
Being his friend for so long, you know the nuance of these expressions. His mien is ingrained in your head: known and catalogued. Nothing about Kyle is a mystery to you except the things you're barred from knowing (his second life away from home, you often joke: wholly confidential, entirety draped in secrecy). 
But the look on his face is entirely alien to you. An expression you hadn't thought him capable of making. 
It's jarring. It bludgeons into you with a ferocity that takes your breath away. 
You know the man standing beside you, but this, everything else, is so unearthly. So foreign. 
"Kyle," you hedge, taking a small step closer to him. You're not sure why. Maybe to reacquaint yourself with the man standing before you. Maybe to find something of familiarity within him to comfort the sudden crescendo of your pounding heart because even just the heady scent of his cologne—vetiver, amber—quells the sudden bloom of anxiety in the pit of your stomach. "Are you—?"
"No," he mumbles, then huffs out a soft laugh. It sounds mean, in a self-deprecating way, and your heart lurches for him. "Yeah, no. I'm alright. I just—shit, you know? 'Course I'd wanna go with you. Should be kinda obvious, no?"
Sure, you want to say. Sure, no, totally. Very obvious. And maybe had he not stopped, not made this peculiar expression on his face—like he isn't sure what to do when he always knows what he wants, what he's meant to do—you might have said them. Might let them tumble from your lips, equally self-deprecating and a touch forlorn despite never really knowing why, but that would be a lie, now. 
Because you do. 
The look on his face is upsetting—not because Kyle never makes that expression, or because he's never uncertain about anything, ever, but because you don't know it. It's not something you've ever seen before. And it hurts. 
It's stupid. This whole thing. It shouldn't make you feel some sense of loss when he does something you don't expect. He always does. It's his brand, now—jettisoning across the world to catch bad guys and slap the trite American sense of justice and liberty for all across the faces of anyone who tries to oppose it—and you're very much acclimated to this side of him, the one he hides away from you, giving nothing at all about where he's going, what he's doing, what he's done, until he's back in England, safe and sound, and texting you at six in the morning for an English spread because he missed home. And maybe, maybe he missed you, too. 
Those quiet moments are tucked into a cosm where it's only you and him, and greasy food, and reruns of Golden Girls together with your feet in his lap as you sit on the chaise and pick favourites (his is, of course, Rose) until the sun goes down, and he heads home because he has a debriefing in the morning in Hereford, and you have work. It's bereft of unease, of tension. Time slips through your fingers fluidly, and you hardly notice it's been hours since he first arrived. Comfortable, wholly, in his presence and in your skin. 
Soulmates, everyone used to joke. You just get each other. Near finish each other's sentences. 
Except for lately, where there has been this undeniable tension simmering between the two of you—a sense of fragility that you can't comprehend.
Growing apart, you thought. And then: guess it's time to do the same. 
It made sense to make the first move. To download Tinder—much to his chagrin—and start looking for your—
Your Barista from Amsterdam. 
And oh. 
Oh. 
Maybe it's the way the street light frames the angles and plains of his face, or the shadows that run deep lines of tenebrous across the valleys in his eyes, the sharp slope of his lips, the soft pout. The inscrutable expression that rents a jagged divot between his brow, and an unsure twist of his mouth. Maybe it's everything. Nothing. 
But the only thing you know right now is that you know him. Have known him. Deeply. Intimately. In a way that goes beyond the boundaries of bodies, of flesh and blood. Bones and marrow. You know his soul. His essence. The foundations of who he is cobbled together in a lonely kebab shop over cheap ale, commiserating on an endless stream of papers and assignments; the eventuality of ever after when you hand in the final one. Over beans and toast in the afternoon, a whole day spent lounging in your flat watching reruns of Golden Girls, and petty arguments over Taskmaster that always seem to go a little bit too far, and never far enough. Fights that end two days later when he shows up with Greggs and a complete box set of that show you said you wanted to watch but never had the time for. Bargain shopping in Tottenham on an early Saturday morning because there's this chair, you see, one that you saw on their Instagram page and you simply must have it. 
Soft moments in between, brackets where life doesn't seem to wrap its cold hands around your throat. Time spent in each other's company just for the sake of it. 
Climbing onto your roof—a thatched mess of moss and straw and broken asphalt shingles that will one day give under your weight—and watching the stars, always searching for one that rockets across the sky while he murmurs beside you, quiet in this stillness that falls like snow in the dead of night around you. A hushed whisper as he relays the places he's been—all stars, he rasps, hand brushing wide strokes across the raspberry sky, dusted with light pollution: I'll take you there one day to see. Best fucking beer I'd ever had, too, just don't tell my cousin because he thinks the shitty lager he makes for his bar is good—and you try to picture it amongst the grey clouds. A life on the opposite side of the world. Just the two of you. Always. 
And that's what it's always been, hasn't it? Just you. Just him. 
It's sometime past midnight on a street corner in Manchester. Your feet hurt from walking all night, and your clothes are damp from the rain that caught you off-guard. A summer downpour. It clings to your skin in a way that's both freeing and wholly uncomfortable, but you're not thinking about that. You're not thinking about anything at all, not now. Not really. There's a silence in your head as the world falls into pieces, breaking like the jaundiced light that cuts crevasses and canyons in the tenebrous that colours sharp valleys of his face. He turns, then, a gentle list of his head as he takes you in, breathes your silence and questions the wideness of your eyes, the soft parting of your lips. The movement makes the light spill over the arch of his nose, the slope of his brow. The dawning of a new day. A new world. The untouchable of the moon where no light shines now burning hot under the sun. 
Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him. 
(And maybe you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)
So, you say it. You whisper all the words that bubble up, impatiently waiting between your teeth, effervescent and burning white-hot as they throw themselves over bone and flesh to be free. 
Confessing goes like this: 
Molten agony in your guts as the secrets you barely understand yourself dissolve into the atmosphere, spoken aloud and born on cobblestone and petrichor. Wide-eyed shock, uncertainty, as a new quiet falls over your shoulders, louder than anything you'd ever heard. Guncotton in your nose. A million detonations in your ears. 
You've never much liked the silence. You break it, then, with your bare hands. 
"...and that's basically it." 
It isn't much. It isn't poetry. You're not even sure the words were real. A figment of your imagination, broken free because of baristas in Amsterdam and losers from Kent, abysmal dates and the unending fear of being wholly alone in a world you're not prepared for, all without the person who makes you feel a little bit better about the nothingness that permeates around you. 
And sure. Sure. You don't need him. If Kyle decided never to speak to you again, you'd cry and you'd hurt, but you wouldn't be less of a person because of his absence. He doesn't complete you in the same way you've read about in thick books with strong-willed protagonists and an abundance of petty misunderstandings, but he compliments you. Elevates the good and stifles the bad. You want to experience things with him—not because there's some grand force at play, red strings knotted around your fingers that lead you back to him—but because you like his company. His thoughts. His mind. His presence. His essence fills you with joy in the same strokes it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes. Good and bad. You want it all. 
You want it. Want him. 
And he—
He's taking you home a little past midnight where you'll make yourself beans and toast and maybe try and sleep, or turn on the television to watch four women you're intricately connected to eat cheesecake and solve each other's problems. He could be at his own flat right now, playing that video game he said he wanted to try when he got back, or watching that movie he was supposed to with his flatmates, his friends. He could be talking to some barista in Amsterdam. 
But he isn't. 
He's here with you. Still. Still. 
"I just—," you say, or try to. 
But the rest is a muffled gasp against soft lips when he presses his against yours, stealing the words out of your mouth. 
You can feel your heart beating through your lips. Taste him on your tongue when he draws you closer, hands reaching, grasping. Pulling you into him, into his body. You fit against him, tucked safe between the parentheses of his arms. He tastes of cardamom and cornflower. Lavender notes between his molars. Hints of milk on his tongue. You drink him down and know, then, that this is what they mean they talk about love being a feast because you chase this taste for the rest of your life and never be satiated. 
He loops his arm around the small of your back, dragging you closer still. As if any atom between your bodies is an affront. There’s no hesitation in the action, in the way he burrows into your skin. No trepidation. 
And maybe it would be silly for there to be any. You know him—every iota, every inch; secrets whispered at midnight in a shallow breath and dreams uttered at noon. To be known, to know, is a powerful thing. You feel it ghost across your flesh, featherlight, and reach for it with your bare hands. Seeking, searching. You don’t stop until the tips of your fingers meet his warm skin, curling around him. Anchoring yourself to him. Stuck, now, in permanence. 
You find spots that were untouched before. Behind his ears, the dip of his brow, the curve of his nose, and the slope of his jaw. Cupping it in the palm of your hand, a plinth for him to rest his chin. 
Your canvassing makes him groan, makes him tilt down into you as he begins his own exploration, chasing you in a mad pursuit. Sliding over your valleys, your plains. Running over the rugged mountains and the steep cliffs. He scours your topography with eager, nimble fingers. It’s slow, languid. There’s no rush with this, a consensus you both seem to come to rather quickly when he pries open your mouth and tangles his tongue with yours. It’s sweet, soft. His hands mimic his chase, sliding along your body as if he means to commit the entirety of you to memory, searing it in his brain. 
It’s only when he comes to a crossroads at your navel, pushed flush against his body, does he stop. You moan in despair at it, wanting more and more, not ready to give up this taste that curls over your tongue—saccharine sweet, salty—and Kyle echoes the noise with a groan, a quiet plea for air that both of you desperately need but can’t quite make yourself take. 
“Fuck—” he groans again, breath stuttering out in sharp, deep gasps. “Can’t bloody tell you how long I wanted to do this for, fuck—”
His words seem to peel back the dreamy gossamer of a slowly burning sensuality. It ignites in a blaze, not at all unlike the swiftness of his anger. The sharp, sudden strike of a match. The crackle and hiss of flames renting the air. 
The blaze starts at the point where your upper lip touches his, and almost immediately, it consumes you. 
It's frenzied when he kisses you again—feral and wild: all teeth and tongue and nips against your bottom lip but the moment you sink into the fervour, Kyle changes it. Slows down. Chaste pecks to your sore lips amid a sensual onslaught. A languid roll of his tongue, soothing the burn his teeth left behind. 
The way he kisses you feels like a paradox. 
It's organised chaos. Refined madness. A cluttered mess of finesse and deliberate suckles; an artist's masterstroke. 
You can't keep up. His rhythm is fierce and uncatchable. 
Each step seems to stutter. An avartan you can’t keep pace with. Elongated taals, dips. A crescendo of harmony that is matchless, unreproducible. You struggle along with his swift current, his unerring tide that sweeps you away; unmoored, adrift. The tentative exploration ends. He knows you, now. All of you. And this is his summit. His scramble to the top. It’s biting passion; roaring flames. 
You cling to him, holding tight to the liferaft he offers in a slow huff, a gust of mirth across your lips and into your lungs, slowing down to accommodate you. Malleable, now, he lets you lead, lets you take over, and move seamlessly with him. In tandem, parallel. Equilibrium brings you to heel, and you sigh into his mouth—a deep exhale of everything that has been building and building, tipping the scales around you until it was unbalanced and precarious. Teetering on the edge a precipice unknown. 
His hand roams across your known geography—hills and streams, rivers and canyons—until he reaches your hand still bracketed around his cheeks, slowly peeling it away from his flesh to slide his fingers between yours, holding tight, and—
Kissing is immaculate. Bending at an altar, and making an offering to something bigger than yourself. It’s the spark of lightning flashing overhead, static in the air. Magnets drawing closer and closer until they snap together in the middle.
But holding his hand?
It feels like coming home. 
The world tipping back into place. Amber warmth in your veins; the softness of a jasmine petal. You suck in a deep breath at the shock of it all. 
You think of missing puzzles and loose sea ice drifting alone in the vastitude of the ocean. You think of a life where he isn’t in it and find yourself shuddering at the wrongness that emanates from it. 
You want him. Want him—
It’s Kyle who pulls away first, resting his forehead against yours. You blink slowly, eyes catching dark amber, honeycomb. It draws a smile from you, full and deep. Giddy on the taste of him, of this. 
The only thought in your head is finally, finally.
You see his lips curl in response, eyes lidded and heavy. Blooming with want, affection. Adoration. 
"What, ah—," he laughs a little, then, breathless and happy, and the noise anchors itself to your breastbone, pressing into the hollow of your ribs. A place you'll keep it forever. "What now?"
He hands you the starless sky, and places it into the cup of your palm. Breathes laughter in the air, paints the moon with his joy. You think about the places he wants to take you, and the ones he swears you'll never go. You think about aeons from now when the world is gone and the stars all die out, when there's just the hazy lavender of endless abyss you can't make sense of. You think of him, and you think of you, and you wonder when it started to just make sense for there to always be two. 
Maybe that night in Cardiff when he held your shoes and gave you his coat. When he draped his arm around your shoulders, laughing at something stupid you'd said. A year before he joined this task force he makes cheeky remarks about but never goes too deeply into detail. When it was just endless summers spent working and drinking and eating good food. 
He'd asked the same thing, then, half slumped over in the taxi, and three sheets to the wind. It made his eyes darken, endless pits. Black holes. The expanse of the sky is framed by brown lashes, and drooping lids.
And you'd said—
"Beans and toast?" It feels right. It feels good. "We can—"
He huffed, too, just like he does now, and squeezes your hand once, tugging you along. 
"We're not watching Golden Girls."
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You watch Golden Girls. Kyle wraps his arm around your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his side. He steals kisses from you when Sophia says something that makes you laugh until you're breathless and trembling. 
When David from Kent texts you, he grins wide, and whispers in your ear, think I've always been a little bit in love with you, you know? 
Yeah, you say, and kiss back until the taste of him is etched into the space between your teeth. Since Cardiff. For you?
"Since Uni for sure." He smiles again, sheepish and a touch flustered. It glitters on his brow and nips the apples of his cheeks. "You stole my heart when you devoured four lamb kebabs and then ate my tabbouleh. Said to myself, yeah, that's the one for me, innit?"
"On second thought, what's that Barista's number? Might try my luck instead."
"Nah, you're smitten," he presses his lips into the hollow of your throat, nips his teeth against your pulse point. "And you're all mine. No take backs."
"Ah, for fuck's sake—"
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Ahhhhhhhh. Sappy romcoms are my kryptonite and it shows.
COD MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION
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shadowfoxsilver · 1 year
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eeyore-pg is a scam account
Update 2/13/2023 - The scam account is finally down and removed! I’ll still leave this alert up though as a reminder to anyone who sees the scam post floating around. Below is the original warning contents.
Update #2 - You can help Eeyore here!
Hi! You may have received this ask from an account called eeyore-pg:
“Hi there, im really sorry for this cause I know its kinda inappropriate to ask for a favor at a time like this, but I just wanted to try and ask if you could possibly share or boost the post I pinned for my cat Eeyore since we're in desperate need of help right now. I hope youd consider, if not I understand and pls dont worry. Be safe always! Pls do send me a msg or answer this ask privately if possible <33”
This is actually a scam ask. This ask has been specifically catered to sound very urgent, but also asks you to answer privately even though the post is very public. It is well known asks like this want to be hidden so searches wouldn’t find them but they get spammed so much that asking to answer privately is kinda pointless. In fact, this ask is about a cat called Eeyore.
While Eeyore is a real cat, he is not owned by the supposed Pamela Galvan. In fact, their email, pictured below from their public post, is not the email run by the real owner. I’m posting this because it is not private info; It is seen in a post accessible to anyone who looks.
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You may ask yourself who the real owner is. Well, good news! They do have a tumblr account now and even have their own post explaining that this account I speak of here is not theirs and has stolen their post from Facebook. Below is the owners post with their own photo of Eeyore that the scammer likely will save and use to prove they own him. The owner is more used to Facebook, so sorry for the kinda bland blog appearance. They were in a hurry.
So please, do not share eeyore-pg’s post unless you are warning people it’s a scammer. I know the account linked above is run by the owner; I have contacted them by Facebook DM’s and confirmed they run the linked account and not eeyore-pg.
Please share this post to bring awareness of the scammer and share it to anyone who has shared the scam post.
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hungermakesmonsters · 7 months
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Catch Me If You Can
Plot summary : When your friend interviews for a position at Anvil, you have a chance encounter with Billy Russo. He takes you for coffee and, by the time you’re done , Billy decides he’s anything but done with you.
Pairing : Billy Russo x Reader
Story Rating : R 
Chapter Rating : this one is pretty PG
Warnings : [This is a fic for 18+ only, minors DNI] Nothing in this chapter is warning worthy, but the story in general is going to turn pretty smutty from chapter 3 onwards and there will be strong language throughout. I’m not going to list all the different ways things get smutty unless I think it’s something that could be considered triggering. Please check the warnings on each chapter if you choose to follow this story. 
Word Count : ~4.5k
A/N : this started life as an original piece that I couldn’t finish, so I decided to make a few little changes and turn it into a fanfic. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a tumblr, so sorry if I fuck this up. The story as a whole is going to veer recklessly between cute fluff and some much darker things with themes of obsession, will-they-won’t-they, and running from past trauma. Both Billy and reader are messy AF.
CHAPTER ONE
You checked your phone for what had to be the hundredth time. A measly two minutes had passed but the August heat made it feel longer. You found yourself thinking about how you were going to kill your roommate for making you chauffeur her around in the height of summer, trying to ignore the way the sticky New York heat made your tank top cling to your body beneath your unzipped hoodie.
You’d given up on waiting in the car after the first ten minutes - the AC in the old VW was busted, making it even less comfortable than sitting on the hood of the car under the glaring sun. Still, the parking lot was nicer than some of the places you’d found yourself waiting for your roommate over the years. That was the thing with Tammy; everyone around her lived on her schedule, did what she wanted to do. And you were no exception.
Actually, this whole thing was your idea. A friend, albeit in a very loose sense of the word, had told you that ANVIL were hiring office staff, and you’d passed the message along to Tammy who’d - well, she’d turned her nose up at it at first, she’d even laughed at you. But Tammy needed a job and ANVIL had a reputation for paying well.
So, you agreed to drive her to the interview and even agreed to wait.
Every now and then someone would appear - honestly, it looked like a steady stream of models leaving the building, the sorts that Tammy fit well with - but, for the most part, it was just you, mindlessly scrolling Instagram, trying not to think.
Until you saw him.
He came out the door and just stopped. It looked like he was breathing a sigh of relief at being out of there, and you couldn’t help but smirk a little at that. Poor guy.
Despite the weather he was dressed in a suit, dark hair slicked back, tall and slender. You suddenly felt out of place, like you shouldn’t be there, like you shouldn’t keep watching him, but the longer it went without him noticing you, the harder it was to try and tear away your eyes. He answered his phone as you watched, even without being able to hear a word, you knew he wasn’t happy. When he turned you got your first glimpse of his face and -
Fuck. 
Your eyes dropped back to your phone, knowing that he’d seen you watching him. Fingers swiped across the screen, jumping from Instagram to emails to Facebook, looking for anything to reply to. Your eyes stayed fixed on the phone even as you heard the shuffle of boots on gravel moving towards you, trying to act like you hadn’t been staring at him even as his shadow fell over you.
“Do you make a habit of hanging out in parking lots or are you here to interview?” His voice didn’t sound quite the way you’d imagined - though you weren’t really sure why you’d been imagining his voice to begin with. There was an edge to it, something that sent a shiver up your spine.
“I’m waiting for someone,” you answered, squinting as you looked up and the light seemed to halo around him.
“Friend?” he asked.
“Roommate,” you answered awkwardly before shaking your head, “but, yeah, she’s my friend too.”
You weren’t expecting him to laugh at that, for him to smile the sort of smile that probably had women all across the five boroughs ready to drop their panties. (And that was another thought you weren’t sure you should be having.)
He didn’t move, for a few moments he just looked at you as if he was taking measure, and all you could think about was how there was a bead of sweat rolling down your back. You probably looked completely gross while he was standing there in what looked like a professionally tailored suit that probably cost more than you could make in a year, with not a hair out of place despite the oppressive heat. 
“Does she make you wait around for her a lot?” He asked as if it was the strangest thing he’d ever heard, like he’d never allow anyone to put him in your position.
“She doesn’t drive,” you shrug, “anyway, this is nicer than most of the places she drags me to.”
“Yeah?” he prompted with little more than a raise of his eyebrow.
“Tammy’s an actress - at least, she wants to be. So I end up waiting around while she auditions.”
The look he gave you was surprisingly sympathetic. “Actresses can be hard work.” You didn’t think to ask how he knew that.
“Yeah, I’m just glad she gets to keep her clothes on for this interview,” the words slipped out and you instantly grimaced but if he noticed that, he didn’t let it show. “Not like - I mean, she’s not doing porn or anything. Not that there’s anything wrong with women wanting to -”
You could see him fighting back a laugh the more flustered you got.
“I mean, it’s not the nudity that’s a problem - you should read some of the scripts, they’re just so bad.” You finally managed. “It’s like ‘oh no the serial killer caught me with his knife and now my tits are out’.”
Silence fell again and you watched him glance away, daring to hope that he was done with you. He’d walk away and forget all about you, and you’d spend the rest of the day replaying this moment in your mind, cringing at how ridiculous you are.
“I was going to grab a coffee, your friend is probably going to be another hour or so, so if you want you could always join me?” 
You quickly started coming up with reasons why you couldn’t, why you shouldn’t. But, it was just coffee, it wasn’t like he was asking you to leave the country with him. And, besides, you weren’t sure you could stand the heat much longer.
“There’s a place nearby that does amazing iced coffee,” like he was reading your mind. And that sold it.
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great,” you decided, sliding off the hood of the car in a less than graceful manner.
Once you were standing you could really appreciate the height difference between the two of you; you almost had to tilt your head to look at him. You pushed the thought away, taking a moment to check that your car was locked up, following after him when he started to leave the way.
As you walked, it dawned on you that you still didn’t know his name, so you clumsily introduced yourself.
“Billy,” he responded with a smile, realising that he’d made the same mistake you had, “come on, it’s just across the street.”
You both fell into silence as you left the parking lot, but it wasn’t long before it got to be too much for you in an awkward, uncomfortable sort of way. It struck you that he didn’t look uncomfortable though, in fact you were already pretty certain that he wasn’t the kind of man to get uncomfortable easily. 
“So, do you work at Anvil?” You asked him, wanting to fill the silence but also wanting to know a little bit more about him. You weren’t sure what he found so funny about the question but the smirk he shot you left you feeling like you were missing something obvious and he found your ignorance amusing. You started to fiddle with your sleeves, gaze dropping from his.
“Yeah, I work at Anvil.” And then silence fell again.
When you looked up again you were outside a little coffee shop that was so small and non-descript that you’d completely missed it when you drove by it earlier. He held the door open for you and let you slip inside before following, watching as you breathed a sigh of relief as the cool air from the AC hit. When you moved towards the counter, you realised he was only a step behind, towering over you almost possessively.
The girl behind the counter smiled at him first before bothering to spare you a glance.
“What would you like?” He asked. You quickly realised that he was intending to pay and that just unsettled you further.
“I can get mine,” you were quick to tell him. You didn’t need him paying for you and you’d never been the sort to accept drinks from men you didn’t know, not even coffee. So, you ordered your drink, your favourite iced coffee with syrup, before he ordered his, an americano with an extra shot of espresso. But before you could pay, he reached over and tapped his phone on the reader, flashing you what you could only describe as a darkly mischievous smile.
“You didn’t have to -” you started to tell him.
“I know, but I wanted to,” Billy shrugged, “besides, I owe you for keeping me company.”
The girl behind the counter shot you the sort of look that made you think that she would have been more than happy to keep Billy company herself and that she saw your presence there as an annoyance. You guess that was probably the effect he had on a lot of women.
“Here you go, Billy, just how you like it,” she smiled as put your drinks on the counter, leaning and fluttering her eyelashes at him, completely ignoring you. Billy gave her a muttered thanks and you had to bite your lip to keep from laughing as you reached for your drink. 
As you turned, Billy placed a hand on your back, leading you towards a table by the window, far enough from the counter that it felt a little more private. You sat on the edge of your seat, eyes nervously wandering towards the door for a second and, when you looked back, you found him watching you. There was a confidence about him that was getting harder and harder to ignore, he was clearly a man who knew what he wanted and exactly how to get it - so, what did he want from you?
Company? Or maybe you were being used to make the barista jealous? No, that didn’t feel right, he’d barely even looked at her, anything between them was obviously one-sided. Maybe you were there to keep her at bay so he could drink his coffee in peace? Though from looking at him you knew he had to be used to women fawning over him, with those dark eyes that looked right through you and the shirt that fit so perfectly you could make out the muscles beneath as he shrugged off his jacket. 
“What?” 
Shit. You realised that you’d been staring at him and your cheeks started to warm. He didn’t look bothered, in fact he was still smiling at you, amused, almost as if he wanted you to look.
“Sorry,” you apologised, dropping your eyes to the table, quickly thinking of a way to move the conversation along, “so how long have you worked for Anvil?”
“Too long,” he answered and, again, there was that little laugh, that little smirk telling you that you were missing something. Billy obviously didn’t want to talk about himself though. “What about you? What do you do?”
“Bike messenger, mostly...” you shrugged awkwardly knowing how guys like him looked down on people like you. You weren’t ashamed of what you did; it paid the rent, put food on the table, you just hated having to defend it to someone like him who probably made money in his sleep. He surprised you by not reacting - there was no look of superiority, no pity, just a nod of his head.
“Mostly?”
“What?”
“You said mostly,” 
“Oh, right, yeah. I do some work as a photographer. Just freelance and a couple of exhibitions,” you shrugged again, “it’s actually how I found out that Anvil were hiring.”
“Really?” It was hard not to notice how intently he was looking at you, like he was hanging on your every word. You started fiddling with your sleeve again.
“Yeah, sometimes I do work for The Bulletin if someone is out sick, and my friend Karen knew Tammy was looking for a job, so -”
“Karen? Frank’s girl?” 
“Yeah,” you’d never met him but Karen had been talking about him a lot since they got together, “we were talking and I guess I let slip that we might have to move to a smaller apartment if Tammy can’t find a job…” 
“High rent?”
You nodded. “Higher than either of us can really afford, but Tammy’s parents pay half and we split the rest.”
“Her parents still pay for her?”
“They’re loaded and I guess they didn’t want her having to live anywhere that might be ‘dangerous’,” you offered, but you knew how it sounded. You and Tammy were both in your thirties , it was strange that they still went out of their way to provide for her, but you didn’t fault them for wanting to look after their child, something that your own parents had never seemed inclined to do. The thought sent you down a rabbit hole and had you falling silent, wondering how he’d look at you if he knew the truth about you.
You took a drink, letting your eyes drift to the window and the street beyond. His eyes stayed firmly on you and you could almost feel him watching you. It made you tense and shift uncomfortably.
“What kind of photography are you into?” 
“Mostly candids, but since I moved to New York, I’ve been really getting into urban stuff and I’ve been playing around with architecture shots.” Billy listened, looking interested in everything you had to say in a way that had you smiling again.
“And you put on exhibitions?”
“Little shows sometimes, yeah.”
“I’d love to see one sometime.” He kept smiling at you, all his focus completely on you, and you found that you didn’t entirely mind it. It was nice talking to someone who seemed to care about what you were actually saying. “Did you study photography in college or -”
“No, I never got to go to college.” It wasn’t until you’d said it that you realised how much it gave away; that college wasn’t your choice, that you’d been stopped from going.
“I never went to college either,” Billy offered, as if he sensed your sudden discomfort. You nodded, eyes dropping to your fingers, tugging at your sleeve again. “Do I make you nervous?” He asked suddenly, pulling your attention back towards him. He was still smiling, still looking at you in a way that made you feel like he was taking you apart in his mind, piece by piece.
“What? No - that’s not -” you stumbled over your words, embarrassed that he’d caught on so easily. You took a second before letting out a sigh. “It’s not you, I just don’t do this a lot.”
“Which part?”
“The whole going for coffee with a random guy I’ve never met before.”
“Is that because guys don’t ask or because you don’t normally say yes?” He asked but didn’t give you time to respond. “Don’t worry, I’m sure I already know the answer.”
An eyebrow raised, unimpressed by the assumption; the situation might have been making you nervous but you weren’t going to take shit from a stranger. “Oh yeah, and how’s that?”
“You’re too attractive for men to ignore.” Billy shrugged and your eyes rolled. Yikes, what a fucking line.
“Maybe I’ve got a boyfriend,” you retorted, “or a girlfriend.”
Billy laughed. “You know that wouldn’t stop most guys, right?”
“Would it have stopped you?” You were pretty sure you knew the answer to that.
“I dunno, do you have a boyfriend?” He asked. “Or a girlfriend?”
“Do you?”
“Have a boyfriend?”
“Or a girlfriend.”
“Would you be here having coffee with me if I did?” He asked, turning the tables so effortlessly that it made it seem like flirting was an olympic sport and he was a gold medallist.
“Would you have asked me if you did?” You answered back, trying to fight back a smirk of your own at how ridiculous this was becoming.
“Do you always answer innocent questions with more questions?” It was obvious he was enjoying whatever this was, his dark eyes practically shining with excitement as he watched you from the other side of the table.
“You call that an innocent question?” You retorted, letting out a snort of laughter.
Billy let out another laugh, holding up his hands and signalling surrender.
“Maybe you should come work for Anvil, I bet you’re a pro at interrogations.” And that really made you laugh, and the sight of it had his gaze fixing more intently on you and his smile widening. 
“I don’t think I have the necessary qualifications to work somewhere like that,” you shrug, “besides, I like my job.”
“Really?” Usually his question would have pissed you off, but there was something in the way he asked that made it seem like he was genuinely curious to hear your reasons rather than it being some kind of judgement.
“Yeah, I get to see the whole city, there’s no office politics to deal with, and I get to listen to music all day,” you found yourself shrugging again, and his eyes were still fixed on you, like he was fascinated. So, it felt like your turn to ask; “what?”
“Nothing,” he sat back and lifted his mug, taking a long drink, “I think it’s great that you like your job, there’s a lot to be said for enjoying your work.”
“Do you? Enjoy what you do, I mean. With Anvil?” Whatever that was.
“Some days more than others,” he smiled at you.
“And today?” You asked stupidly, before considering the implications and how it might sound.
“Today’s definitely getting better.”
Your eyes dropped to your drink again, teeth running over your bottom lip. He wasn’t talking about you, he couldn’t be talking about you, but some part of you wished he was. But you wouldn’t have known even if he was, you’d never been good with those sorts of things, flirting and separating a little bit of fun from something more. Billy was an enigma to you in the same way that most people were, but there was something about him that made you almost want to break all of your rules, just to see what might happen.
“What do you do for Anvil?”
“These days I mostly deal with the bureaucracy,” and the look on his face told you just what he thought of that.
“So you don’t - I don’t know, go on missions, all Seal Team 6, kicking down doors?”
Billy let slip a laugh that was equal parts amused and offended.
“Seal Team 6?”
“What?” You laughed, awkwardly.
“You know a lot of Anvil are ex-Marine Corps, right? I’m an ex-Marine.”
“Is there a difference?” You knew there was though, honestly, you couldn’t remember exactly what it was, and the look on his face was priceless enough that you didn’t regret asking.
“Okay, wow, you’re really going to make me explain it to you?” You nodded in response. “Okay, it’s -“
Before he could start on whatever lecture he was about to give, your phone started to ring, loudly - loud enough to make you almost jump out of your skin. (You must have knocked the volume while you’d been frantically trying to look like you hadn’t been spying on him earlier.)
“Fuck, it’s Tammy,” you tell him before answering.
Moments later, you’d wish that you hadn’t. She was at the car waiting for her ride home and you were nowhere to be found, which was apparently so inconsiderate of you. You finished the call with a sigh and looked at Billy. 
“Guess her interview didn’t go well,” you took one final drink before pushing back your chair and getting to your feet. “I’ve got to go, if I leave her standing around out there I’ll never hear the end of it, it’s been -“ you stopped as he got to his feet.
“I’ll walk you back.”
“No, that’s fine, really, you don’t have to.”
“I insist.” His tone making it clear that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I’m sorry, she’s just -“
“You don’t have anything to apologise for.”
When you started towards the door, he was right behind you, again staying close to you. Outside the oppressive heat hit you again and it pissed you off; you’d been having a nice time and Tammy just had to ruin it. Now it was over and you’d never see him again. 
Billy didn’t say anything, even as you picked up the pace. You wanted to get this all over and done with, you wanted to drive Tammy back to the apartment and - you didn’t know. All you knew was that you didn’t want to be around her, you didn't want to have to deal with her bullshit, and you didn’t want to think about the man walking a step behind you. 
You didn’t see him frown at you, you didn’t dare look back because it just felt childish. You’d met him forty minutes ago, he’d probably forget you by the end of the day. 
You rounded the corner, about to cross the street when you felt his fingers around your wrist. All it took was one gentle pull and you were turning back towards him, stumbling into his arms. It felt like a moment pulled from some romcom; you spilled forward into his arms, your hands against his chest. And then you looked up, finding those impossibly dark eyes staring down at you.
Billy looked at you like he was trying to decide something, fingers still wrapped around your wrist. The, less than a second later, he was kissing you, pulling your body against his. And you let him. Later you’d tell yourself that it was shock but, in that moment, you wanted him to kiss you for no other reason than he was nice; you’d had fun getting coffee with him. It took you a moment to return to your senses, to use the hands on his chest to gently push him away.
“Billy —”
“Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I’ve been thinking about doing that for the last thirty minutes.” He grinned. “Go to dinner with me.” You couldn’t tell if he meant it as a question or a command, but it definitely sounded more like the latter. Maybe he was just that used to women doing what he wanted them to do.
“I think you’re supposed to ask that before kissing someone,” was all you could think to say with a nervous laugh.
“Well, now I’ve asked…” And a second later, his lips were on yours again, tongue running against the seam of your lips, desperately wanting to deepen the kiss, and you let him. For a few sweet moments, you gave yourself over to him - to a random stranger you’d known for all of forty minutes.
Finally, you pushed him again, taking a step back, out of his arms and back to reality.
“I can’t,” is what you told him once you’d managed to find your voice again.
“Can’t or won’t?” He dared to try and take a step closer, forcing you to take another step back.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?” Honestly not sure you even wanted an answer from him.
“So I can figure out how to change your mind.” He explained, like he thought it would really be that simple
“You can’t.” But that just made him laugh.
“Sweetheart, you’ve got no idea what I’m capable of.” And there was something dangerous in that; you didn’t know what he was capable of. “And I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
“I told you; I don’t do this.”
“This can be whatever you want it to be. I’m very adaptable.” He reached for you again, fingers brushing your cheek before you managed to pull away.
He looked ready to say something else, like he had some line on the tip of his tongue that he was sure would convince you, his lips even parted ready, but nothing came out. You weren’t sure why until a moment later.
“Oh my god, there you are! Do you know how long I’ve been standing around waiting for you?”
Tammy. You didn’t know whether to be glad of the interruption or pissed at the tone she was taking with you.
“Sorry,” Billy stepped around you, towards Tammy, “I distracted her.”
“That’s -“ and then the impossible happened. Tammy actually fell silent. You decided that it must just be the effect that Billy tended to have on women.
“I’m Billy,” he offered out his hand and Tammy was quick to take it, no doubt falling for his charms already. And Billy, well, obviously he’d managed to get over whatever momentary insanity he’d been suffering from when he kissed you and had moved onto the next victim.
Only that wasn’t exactly what happened.
“Oh, I know who you are, Mr Russo. I’m Tammy.”
“Wait… what?” If anyone heard you, neither bothered to respond. How did Tammy know who he was?
“I hear you’ve just been interviewing to come work for me,”
For him. Not with him.
Your stomach dropped, remembering something Karen had said about a Russo, about how Frank called him a pretty boy and Karen thought he was a bit of a womaniser. He kept talking to Tammy but you barely caught a word, too stuck on everything that had happened and how you’d let it. 
“Come on, Tammy,” finally, you snapped out of it and started to walk, “if you want a ride home we need to go now.” 
You didn’t even wait for an answer, you just let her say her goodbyes to Billy.
“Let me know when you’re free to go for that dinner,” Billy called after you, You chose not to answer, some part of you hoping that Tammy wasn’t going to follow because you knew what would come next.
Fumbling for your keys, you had them in hand before you got back to your car, not daring to look behind you. What had just happened? Your lips still tingled from his kiss, you could still taste him, could still feel his hand on your hip. And some part of you was inexplicably still annoyed that the moment was over.
Tammy followed behind you, calling after, barely making it into the passenger seat before you started the car.
“Oh my god,” she exclaimed and you steeled yourself for the oncoming argument, “you are the best friend ever.” 
There was no sarcasm, no anger - she was actually smiling at you. What the hell did she think you’d done?
“What?” Throwing the car into reverse and trying to ignore the fact that Billy was there, watching you as he made his way back towards the office building, his office building. There was something unknowable in his dark gaze as it followed you and, again, you found yourself thinking about how you had no idea what he was capable of.
“Flirting with Billy-fucking-Russo to get me a job at Anvil.”
CHAPTER TWO
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END NOTES : if you made it this far, thanks for sticking around. Like I said, this is something that started out as an original piece and I was struggling to find the energy to finish it. I’ll be trying to release a new chapter at least once a week, though the second part will probably be up in a few days time because the first two chapters are really just to help set things up, and I know that’s not what people are interested in. I already have the first five chapters pretty much written, they just need some editing before going in the queue and, in total, I have around 20 chapters planned. I’ll be working on this through NaNoWriMo too, so how much I get done might change the posting schedule a little.
Likes, reblogs, and follows are appreciated, though this fic will be posted regardless of engagement because I just need to get this story out of my head once and for all.
Anyway thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are!
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pepsiboyy · 18 days
Text
HEARTSTRINGS. - p1
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masterlist ⚜ p2
pairing: chris sturniolo x fem!reader summary: after moving to massachusetts from florida, y/n lives with her half brother, nathan doe, who is part of a small garage band. their sassy guitarist, chris sturniolo, can't help but get on her nerves. but there's something about him. warnings: use of y/n lol, mentions of drugs, cursing a/n: rewrote the FUCK out of this, i hope this one is SO MUCH BETTER. love u guys. <3
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"chris?"
"phone charger girl!"
"the fuck is he doing here?" my voice boomed in the garage, causing nathan to flinch slightly.
"woah, you two know each other?"
"sort of." chris responded with that stupid smug smirk on his face.
"not at all, actually." i responded quickly, immediately shutting down chris' disgusting expression.
my heartbeat was racing. i couldn't feel anything but anger in every fiber of my being. i couldn't help but remember to myself earlier today.
i had been living in massachusetts for about three days now. very interesting place, very different from florida.
after my mom's drug addiction became a major issue, cps was informed and i was sent to my dad's in boston, where i was completely unfamiliar with everyone and everything.
my dad's side, they weren't complete strangers if checking his status on facebook counted as being close.
shortly after i was born, my mom took me and left my dad in boston while we fled to live in florida. and as i get older, i can't help but feel more hatred towards the woman. my dad was a great guy, never deserved the way she treated him. he definitely did not deserve his first child being ripped away from his grasp a few months into my life.
when my mom and i moved to florida, my dad met another woman and had a child with her, whose name is nathan.
he seems like a really cool guy, an awesome brother to have, so i was looking forward to this move a lot, more than i probably should have.
the feeling of fresh air was appealing to me and the feeling of finally being there to reassure my dad that i want to be with him was even more exciting to me.
nate and i clicked pretty quickly, talking about our music taste on the way home from the airport. we talked a lot about video games, and he told me he was involved in a small garage band and plays the drums.
"that's so fucking cool!" i exclaimed with a bright smile, and nathan nodded.
"yeah! we mostly do covers now, but i plan on releasing some new and original music soon."
i nodded as i stayed focused on nate as he spoke, playing with my hands in my lap nervously.
the fact that this kid was my brother was so mind blowing to me. i couldn't wait.
the doe family had left to go to an event they had only bought three tickets for. i reassured them over and over that i was okay with staying at the house and continuing to settle in. and with that they left.
i dug through my bag and frowned when i came to a tragic realization.
"fuck." i cursed under my breath as i stood up and slid on my shoes.
time to go to that one gas station down the street we stopped at on the way here from the airport.
i left the house through the front door and slid my earbuds into my ears, playing my favorite playlist as i walked down the street.
boston was a lot more close together than florida. it genuinely made my heart happy.
about fifteen minutes into my walk and i find the gas station, pulling the door opened and look at the employee at the counter, smiling faintly to greet him. his eyes were glued to his phone though, so i turned to make my way up and down the aisles and look for the phone charger that works for my phone.
"eighteen dollars is fucking bizarre." i muttered under my breath at the charging brick box that i now have between my fingers. i carefully took it off the bar and grabbed a six ft long cord, making my way to the counter.
this is great. no job, new place, and i was already burning a hole into my savings for a fucking phone charger.
i set the two boxes on the counter and began digging through my pockets to find my wallet, the boxes hitting the counter a little harder than i had intended.
"woah there, sensing some aggression from 'ya. boyfriend start an argument with you or what?"
i finally found my wallet, but my eyes shifted quickly to the boy at the counter. "excuse me?" i asked, my face flushed at the thought. "it doesn't-" i blinked a few times. this kid was insane. "just ring me out please." i sighed as i inserted my card in the cardreader.
"relax sweetheart, just yankin' your chain." he stated defensively, skipping through the prompts on his screen. his hair was a little longer than average, and fairly wavy. he had a silver cuban link bracelet on one wrist and a few small handmade ones on the other, a ring or two on each hand. he had silver hoops in his ears and a plain black t-shirt on over his blue baggy jeans.
i stared at him in disbelief before i put my pin into the pad, yanking out my card as soon as it beeped and quickly shoving it into my wallet. chris set the charger boxes into a small plastic bag, placing it on the counter between us.
"i'm not your sweetheart," i narrowed my eyes at the nametag on his shirt, sucking in through my teeth, "chris."
i gripped the bag and left the gas station, and never turned back to see chris with his arms raised, and that disgusting smirk on his face.
my music was playing extra loud in my headphones in a desperate attempt to drown out the sound of nate slamming the drums in the garage.
i carefully sat up, my hand moving to run through my hair as i slipped on my shoes and stepped down the stairs. i was just wearing some pajama shorts and an oversized hoodie, but who even cares, right?
my hair was thrown into a messy bun, and i had one earbud in as my eyes were glued to my phone. i turned the doorknob to the garage carefully before stepping in and lifting my head as the music came to a halt.
and with that, my eyes widened.
and that's how we got here. with a finger pointed to my face.
"the fuck is he doing here?" my voice boomed in the garage, causing nathan to flinch slightly.
"woah, you two know each other?"
"sort of." chris responded with that stupid, smug smirk on his face.
"not at all, actually." i immediately barked back, crossing my arms.
nate looked between us both and shrugged it off quickly before he pulled a chair beside him. "come listen, y/n. i think you'd like it a lot." he told me.
i couldn't say no. i really was curious to hear nathan play. "okay, sure. just for a bit though." i reminded him of the time, and he smiled brightly and sat down in his seat.
i felt chris' eyes burning into the back of my head the whole time, his shaggy brunette locks perfectly draping over his forehead, which was a bit damp, while his eyes shifted to focus on his guitar again.
nate turned to me with a bright smile, grabbing his drumsticks as he glanced to the other two, making sure they were ready.
i watched the three and smiled as they began playing.
they were really good, actually.
better than i had expected them to be.
with nathan slamming the drums with his drumsticks and the boy i didn't know yet playing the bass, chris actually knocked his part out of the park.
chris glanced up for half a second, where we locked eyes. my eyes widened as he turned back to his guitar and a small smile grew on his face.
i hate this kid.
the song came to an end, and i turned to nathan, applauding happily.
"you guys sound great, genuinely. have you guys worked on any original stuff?"
nathan chuckled and shrugged, glancing between the other two. "a bit. chris writes phenomenal lyrics. we're working on it."
i glanced to chris for a moment, who was now gently strumming the strings of his guitar. i gulped as i stared at his hands, then turned back to nate. "i'm excited for you guys. let me know if i can do anything to help?"
nate nodded happily, and i stood up.
"alright, i'm gonna try and go to sleep. good luck to you guys." i waved at the three, and smiled at nate, my eyes quickly glancing at chris who waved softly back, no clear expression on his face anymore.
and with that, i opened the garage door and shut it, before taking a deep sigh and leaning against it.
"dude, you didn't tell me your sister was bad as hell," an unfamiliar voice rang, which i assumed was the bassist.
"wh- ben, gross! shut up dude," nathan quickly stated.
i cringed at the boy's comment, shaking my head quickly as if he could see me responding or something.
"invite her more often." chris stated blankly, standing up from his seat as he adjusted his guitar strap.
nathan turned to chris and narrowed his eyes.
i quickly stood up and made my way back to my bedroom, laying flat against the bed and turning up the music playing in my earbuds.
chris playing guitar and writing some lyrics.
it made me genuinely curious about whether or not this guy actually wrote good lyrics.
i hated being curious about him.
but i needed to know more.
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masterlist ⚜ p2
comment to be added to taglist!! taglist;; @sturnioloshacker
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