On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful tale of the climate emergency, which comes out on November 14. Kim Stanley Robinson called it "an unforgettable vision of what could be":
I'm currently running a Kickstarter campaign to pre-sell the audiobook, which I produced and narrated myself (for complex and awful reasons, Amazon won't carry my audiobooks, see the Kickstarter campaign page for details). You can also pre-order the ebook and hardcovers, including signed and personalized copies:
http://lost-cause.org
For the next week or so, I'm going to be serializing the prologue of the book, which gets it off to quite a spicy start. Here's part one!
I thought that I was being so smart I signed up for the over nightwhen pager duty for the solar array at Burroughs High. Solar arrays don’t do anything at night. Because it’s dark. They’re not lunar arrays.
Turns out I outsmarted myself.
My pager app went off at 1:58 a.m., making a sound that I hadn’t heard since the training session, GNAAP GNAAP GNAAP, with those low notes that loosened your bowels offset by high notes that tightened your sphincter. I slapped around my bed for my screen and found the lights and found my underwear and a tee and then the cargo pants I wore on work duty and blinked hard and rubbed my eyes until I could think clearly enough to confirm that I was dressed, had everything that I needed, and then double-checked the pager app to make sure that I really, actually needed to go do something about the school’s solar array at, I checked, 2:07 a.m.
2:07 a.m.! Brooks, you really outsmarted yourself.
Gramps’s house had started out as a two bed/one bath, like most of the houses in Burbank, but it had been expanded with a weird addition at the back—again, like most of the houses in Burbank—giving it a third bedroom and a second bath. That was my room, and it had its own sliding door to the backyard, so I let myself out without waking Gramps.
It was warm enough that I didn’t need a jacket, which was good because I’d forgotten to put one on. Still, there was just enough of a nip in the air that I jogged a little to get my blood going. Burbank was quiet, just the sound of the wind in the big, mature trees that lined Fairview Street, a distant freight train whistle, a car zooming down Verdugo. My breath was louder than any of them. A dog barked at me and startled me as I turned onto Verdugo, streetlit and wide and empty, too.
Two minutes later, I was at Burroughs, using my student app to buzz myself into the school’s gate, then the side entrance, then the utility stairs, and then I jogged up the stairs. I was only supposed to get paged if the solar array had an error it couldn’t diagnose for itself, and that the manufacturer’s techs couldn’t diagnose from its camera feeds and other telemetry. Basically, never. Not at 2:00 a.m. 2:17 a.m. now. I wondered what the hell it could be. I opened the roof access door just in time to hear a glassy crashing sound, like a window breaking, and I froze.
Someone was on the roof with me. A person, glimpsed in the corner of my eye and then lost in the darkness. Too big to be a raccoon. A person. On the roof.
“Hello?” Gramps’s friends sometimes made fun of my voice. I’d hated how high-pitched it was when I was a freshman and had dreamed of it getting deeper someday, but now I was a senior, weeks away from graduation, and I still got mistaken for a girl on gamer voice-chats. I’d made my peace with it, except that I hadn’t entirely because I was not happy at all with how it squeaked out over that roof. “Hello?” I tried for deeper. “Someone there?” No one answered, so I took a step out onto the roof. Glass crunched under my feet. It was dark and it stayed dark when I slapped at the work-lights switch next to the door—they should have been tripped by the motion anyway. I found my flashlight and twisted it to wide beam and checked my feet. Smashed glass, all right, and when I swung the light around to the nearest solar bank, I saw that each panel had been methodically shattered. I took a step back toward the door, and the light beam swung up and caught the man.
He was wearing a head-to-toe suit—a ghillie suit, Gramps’s friends called them—and holding a short four-pound sledgehammer with a handle and head painted in nonreflective black that swallowed my light beam. He was coming toward me. I reflexively hit the bodycam 911 emergency switch on my screen and it sounded its “Warning, bodycam recording” alert in a warm woman’s voice that I’d chosen for its nonthreatening tone. Mostly I bodycammed when I was having an argument with someone and the calm voice was a good balance between cooling things out and satisfying California’s two-party consent rules for recording.
As he raised the hammer, I wished that I’d chosen the cop voice instead.
“Wait,” I said, taking a step back. The roof access door had closed behind me. “Please.”
“Shit,” the man said. He was using a voice-shifter, either a separate unit or part of the ghillie suit. His voice was deep as a diesel engine. “Dammit, you’re just a kid.” He used the hand that wasn’t holding the hammer to flip up his nightscope goggles and peer at me. His eyes, visible in the ghillie suit’s slit, were bloodshot and wrinkled and blue. He squinted at my light and brandished the hammer. “Shit,” he said again. “Get that out of my eyes, dammit.”
“Sorry,” I squeaked, and lowered the beam, casting it around.
It seemed like 80 percent of the panels were ruined. Why had I said sorry? Force of habit. “Shit.” If he could say it, I could too.
“Shit. What the hell are you doing, man?”
“You’re recording this, kid?”
“Yes. Livestreaming.”
“Good, then I’ll explain. You just stay there and we won’t have a problem. I was gonna have to make a video when this was done, you’re just saving me the trouble.” He lowered the hammer and let it dangle. I thought about rushing him, but I’m not a fighter, and he was still holding the hammer. Same for turning and trying to get out the door before he could catch up with me.
“Kay, listen up. This world we’re in, it’s debased. America’s been rotted from the inside. First it was immigrants. You might think I’m a racist, but I’m not. It’s not immigrants I object to. It’s illegals. You want to come to America, you come in the front door, on the terms your gracious hosts here are offering. You don’t skip the line or break in through the window. That’s what a criminal does. You let in a criminal, let ’em become citizens, soon enough they’re voting for other criminals.
“You know just what I’m talking about, don’t kid yourself. The money we’re spending now? This Green New Deal? This Jobs Guarantee? These fuckin’ solar panels? Bill’s gonna come due on this. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Chinese hoaxed us into believing in this climate garbage, then they got us to go into hock to them up to our eyeballs to buy their shiny crap, and then they’re gonna charge us interest, and our kids, and their kids, and their kids. Mortgaging their future? Shit, what future? They’re headed for debt bondage for eternity. Biblical. It’s Biblical.
“All this mumbo jumbo about ‘money users’ and ‘money creators’—it’s just word games. There’s two kinds of people in this world, and it’s not ‘money users’ and ‘money creators’—it’s ‘makers’ and ‘takers.’ The makers create all the wealth, the takers elect politicians who confiscate it and redistribute it.” “Redistribute” came out like another f-bomb.
This was crazy, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. I’d heard versions of this conversation around Gramps’s place ever since I came to live with him, back when I was eight. More, I’d heard these specific words before. I pressed my recollections, tried to put a face to the words. All the faces in Gramps’s living room had a sameness, a whiteness, matching haircuts and the same Maga hats, faded and frayed. Who had said those words? I could bring the face to mind now, the rest of the face that went with those blue watery eyes peering out of the ghillie suit.
Now, the name. Mark. Not Mark. Mike. Mike! Mike, uh.
“Mike Kennedy?”
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:
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
I was tagged by @blu3berrydraws, @erisenyo, and @paramouradrift lol thanks guys!
Relation Status: Married to my best friend and high school sweetheart
Favorite Color: green. any green. give me a green I will show you how beautiful it is
Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Sweet tooth is currently satisfied. Spicy is just kind of a bonus. I think savory is looking good rn.
Three ships: Zukka is the obvious current answer, but I am a habitual multishipper by nature, so here are three ships that I very much enjoy which might not be on your radars!
First is @ablueeyedarcher's fault: How/Piandao. The SS CapyPanda. Are they minor characters who only show up for two or three episodes a piece? Yes. Do I care? No. Let them smooch.
Number two is Jee/Bato. Look. Jee is a tired gay man, He has served his time. Let him get out there and get the good dick. He's not a home wrecker though, he's not gonna get between whatever Bato has going on with Hakoda... unless maybe they invited him to get between them more literally.
Third is Zuko/Kuei. I know the the post canon comics pitted these two sad bitches against each other but listen, here me out. They're both young, inexperienced leaders dropped head first into navigating attempting to deescalate their countries post a century of hostilities with minimal helpful guidance, and they were also both used and betrayed by the father figures they we supposed to trust and rely on. What if when left alone, face to face, they bonded over venting their similar frustrations? What if that bonding turned into an unlikely friendship? What if that friendship tripped and rolled down a rocky hill of something more and they ended up in a secret affair between the heads of two of the world's most powerful states? What if it all came crashing in on them, but they couldn't untangle their very real feelings from their duty as leaders? What then?
First ever ship: Oh snap this is reaching back into Ye Old memory banks here. If I'm being totally honest I think it was the pink and green (later white, much later all the rest of the damn colors) rangers from the original run of the American version of Power Rangers. The internet didn't exist as we know it today so it was just a group of a half-dozen 7-9 year olds G O S S I P I N G on the playground between rounds of pretending to be actual velociraptors.
Last Song:
youtube
(Two Steps From Hell is my go-to writing times tune everything out music)
Last Film: Technically it was me and the rest of the adults post Thanksgiving diner keeping a running background commentary going on the worldbuilding choices in the Paw Patrol Movie that the little kids insisted on watching. Real answer, the last movie I sat down to watch with intention was Across the Spiderverse.
Last thing I Googled: solar chistmas lights. My coworker was complaining that her only outdoor outlet shares a load with an indoor one (which?? rude!) and her partner wouldn't let her put up more Christmas lights. I had to show her. The way her face lit up as she IMMEDIATELY zoomed to Amazon and started filling her cart. Apologies to her poor family and neighbors, but I definitely made her week and possibly her entire New Year.
Currently Reading: Hey did you know that @erisenyo is already releasing stuff for zukki week because she is. you should definitely go read that.
Currently Watching: Rewatching Blue Eye Samurai while spouse watches it for the first time. He's been big into old samurai and wuxia films since I can remember so I'm just sitting here anticipating his reactions to every easter egg and trope call back they've stuffed into this show and also spotting things I missed on the first round.
Currently Consuming: Peppermint mocha and a cheese, egg and sausage tornado. Don't question me.
Currently Craving: My cozy bed. Also a nice big bowl of curry.
Currently Working On: The next chapter of Learn to Carry Love. I'm so so so close to the finish aaargh!
Current Obsession(s): *Gestures at my blog*
And with that I'm gonna taaaaaaag @ablueeyedarcher @rainbowbarnacle @paintsplattere @allgremlinart @saccharineomens @thepioden @siggymcpissyface @curlicuecal and @yandereleorio! No obligation of course, just for a fun time if you wanna :D
“I hear you’re making a movie about a fish,” the cinematographer Bill Butler said to the young director Steven Spielberg when they bumped into each other on the Universal lot in 1974. Butler, then in his early 50s, had already shot two projects for Spielberg – the TV movie Something Evil (1972) and Savage (1973), a pilot that was not taken up as a series. But it was their collaboration on the “fish movie” that cemented their reputations.
Summer was not previously regarded as an optimum time to release a big studio picture, which is why Jaws (1975), which flooded screens across the US rather than trickling out in stages, is considered the first summer blockbuster – though its finesse and skill, not to mention an intimate second half in which the cast dwindles to three men and a largely unseen shark, give it little in common with the sort of crash-bang-wallop productions that followed in its wake.
It remains one of the finest slow-burning suspense movies outside Hitchcock in his heyday, due in no small part to the cinematography by Butler, who has died aged 101. The production was besieged with difficulties but in 2003 Spielberg called him “the calm before, during and after every storm on the set of Jaws”.
Butler shot about 90% of the ocean scenes with a handheld Panaflex camera for greater flexibility and immediacy. Borrowing a trick he had picked up while shooting second unit on the thriller Deliverance (1972), he also made a transparent box into which the camera was placed to allow for shooting at water level. The effect, he explained, was dramatic and instantaneous. “The big advantage is that psychologically you’re asking: ‘What’s right below the water? Is that shark right there?’” Shots of the thrashing legs of oblivious swimmers “made the audience think: ‘That must look good to a shark. It looks like dinner time.’”
Jaws was one of two best picture Oscar nominees that year in which Butler had a hand, the other being Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the eventual winner, based on Ken Kesey’s novel about patients in a psychiatric hospital. Butler was Oscar-nominated for Forman’s film along with Haskell Wexler, who had shot the lion’s share of the footage before being sacked. It was a stormy set, with the actor Jack Nicholson refusing to speak to the director and communicating instead with Wexler and then Butler, who reportedly shot everything from the climactic party scene onwards. A year earlier he had replaced Wexler on Francis Ford Coppola’s brooding surveillance thriller The Conversation (1974).
After Jaws, Butler’s biggest commercial successes were the musical Grease (1978) as well as three consecutive sequels to Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 boxing drama Rocky, beginning with Rocky II (1979). Butler brought a special vitality to the fight scenes in the series, occasionally shooting with as many as eight cameras simultaneously. “As carefully as we planned, there were times when we expected to pan left and something unexpected happened, and we needed to go to the right or zoom instead,” he said. “When an actor slipped, we caught the expression of surprise on his face.”
Some projects even he couldn’t save. Can’t Stop the Music (1980), a vehicle for the disco group the Village People, was a flop that later acquired a cult following. That honour eluded another musical, Graffiti Bridge (1990), starring and directed by Prince. It was shot by Butler, once again serving as an 11th-hour replacement, at the singer’s Paisley Park studios near Minneapolis.
Butler was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado, to Wilmer, a farmer, and Verca, a psychiatric nurse. The family moved to Henry county, Georgia, when he was five, then on to Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He was educated at Mount Pleasant high school and received a degree in engineering from the University of Iowa, where he became fascinated with cameras. He worked for four years as a radio station engineer while also setting up a television station that was later sold to ABC.
Next he got a job at the Chicago-based WGN-TV, where he met the director William Friedkin. Their documentary The People Vs Paul Crump (1962), about an African American man on death row, was screened for Otto Kerner, the governor of Illinois, in rough-cut form the night before Crump was due to be executed. Examining the evidence presented in the film, Kerner changed the sentence to life without parole. “I remember thinking: ‘My God, film has this kind of power?’” said Butler. “That little 16mm film saved someone’s life.”
For Philip Kaufman, Butler shot Fearless Frank (1967), starring Jon Voight as a man who is killed then resurrected as a superhero crime-fighter. He collaborated for the first time with Coppola on the director’s road movie The Rain People (1969), then shot Nicholson’s directorial debut, Drive, He Said (1971).
Among his later credits are the baseball comedy-drama The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars & Motor Kings, the rape revenge thriller Lipstick (both 1976), Demon Seed, in which Julie Christie is impregnated by a malevolent computer, the conspiracy thriller Capricorn One (both 1977), the horror sequel Damien: Omen II (1978) and two military comedies, Stripes (1981) and Biloxi Blues (1988).
Butler was lauded for his television work: he won an Emmy each for Raid on Entebbe (1976), based on a real-life hostage rescue mission in Uganda, and an adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1984) starring Ann-Margret as Blanche DuBois. He was nominated for another for shooting the steamy mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983).
In 1997 he shot a pair of films that echoed his past glories: the monster movie Anaconda owed more than a little to Jaws, while Don King: Only in America, made for TV, utilised his expertise in rendering ring-craft. For the latter, Butler built a box camera that the actor Danny Johnson, who played the world heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, could physically attack. Johnson “pulverised the lens”, said the director, John Herzfeld. “He literally beat it to shit. You’re completely in a subjective point of view.”
Butler maintained that the 1970s were the “perfect time” for him to make his name. “It was a merging of a lot of film styles that up until then had been very staid, very straightforward. There were certain rules you didn’t break, except I was one of those people that came to break all the rules.”
He is survived by his second wife, Iris (nee Schwimmer), their children, Genevieve and Chelsea, and three daughters, Judy, Patricia and Pam, from his first marriage, to Alma (nee Smith), which ended in divorce in 1983.
🔔 Wilmer Cable Butler, cinematographer, born 7 April 1921; died 5 April 2023
Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com
Let's say Good Omens Season 3 ends with Aziraphale and Crowley becoming mortal. They are born on Earth to human parents, learning how to walk, talk, and experience life without knowledge of the other.
One day, a six-year-old blond boy is facing down a gang of older bullies when another boy with bright red hair zooms in between them on a motorized scooter. The other boy is also six years old and barely tall enough to see over the handlebars, but he snarls at the bullies and threatens to kick their arses. Surprisingly, it's enough of a bluff to make them give up and find something else to do.
"You all right?" The boy with the scooter asks.
"Y-yes, I think so," the blond boy answers, and stands up, dusting himself off. He's never liked getting his clothes dirty.
"I'm Tony," the redhead says. He holds out his hand.
"Ozzie," the blond boy answers, shaking his hand.
"What, like Ozzie Osborne?" Tony grins. "Wicked!"
Ozzie frowns. "It's not wicked!"
Tony raises his eyebrows. "It's not?"
Ozzie shakes his head. "If you must know, I was named after my Uncle Osmond. Only my mum says I'm not ready to grow into a name like that yet, so everyone calls me Ozzie."
Tony gives Ozzie an impressed look, though Ozzie wonders if maybe the redhead is just humoring him. "S'alright," he answers, "you look more like an angel than a metalhead anyway."
"Oh."
"Wanna lift?"
Ozzie looks dubiously at the scooter. "On that?"
"Sure!" Tony moves his feet to the front of the kick board. "Climb on behind me and hold on."
"Hold on to what?" Ozzie asks, stepping on behind him. He reaches for the handlebars, but it's an awkward angle and he's too short to get any leverage.
"You can hold on to me," Tony says. They take off, Ozzie's arms wrapped tightly around Tony's torso like a limpet, speeding down the road of their quiet little English village.
Ozzie can't help but scream when Tony narrowly misses a mailbox. "You're going too fast!" he cries, and buries his face on Tony's shoulder. Tony just grins and scoots them on down the road.
Since then, the two are inseparable -- save only when Tony is grounded (a not infrequent occurrence). They go on little adventures together in their neighborhood. Tony has taken to calling Ozzie Angel, and Ozzie doesn't mind. In fact, he secretly likes it. It's great fun, they both think, having each other as a best friend.
When they're nine years old, Ozzie sits next to Tony's hospital bed and reads to him. Tony crashed his scooter and can't do much else but listen, what with both arms broken and a leg in traction. Tony wrinkles his nose impatiently, and Ozzie gets the hint and scratches it for him. Tony sighs in relief.
It's a rainy day when they're both twelve, taking refuge from the bad weather in Ozzie's treehouse. Ozzy can see Tony's agitated about something, but he can't think what.
"Angel, I've been thinking," Tony says. He fidgets nervously. "How long have we known each other? Six who-ole years!" He waves his hand in agitation. Ozzie nods patiently, giving him the space to say what he needs to say. Six years was a very long time -- half their lives, in fact.
"I can always rely on you. You can always rely on me. We're a team! A group! And we could be -- we could be --" Tony's voice cracks.
Ozzie reaches forward and takes Tony's hand in both of his. Tony shudders in surprise.
"We could be us," Ozzie finishes for him. He smiles gently and plants a small, delicate kiss on Tony's cheek.
"Well, yeah." Tony smiles back. It's a more bashful smile than he's ever smiled before.
And so they continue growing up together, this time as boyfriends. Their adolescence is filled with awkward school dances, high school drama, sneaking off to find moments when they can be alone together, getting grounded when they're out too late, or when, surprisingly, Ozzie's grades slip below his usually stellar record. They meet up in the village park at night and lie on a blanket together, gazing up at the stars and listening to the nightingales sing.
Their relationship is tested when they're accepted into different colleges. It's hard, especially since they have spent almost all of their time together since they were six, but they call and text each other every day and make plans to meet in London on as many weekends as they can.
Everyone tells them that it can't last. People change as they get older, they're both told. Don't expect him to stick around forever. But despite the odds, neither one of them has any interest in exploring other relationships. When asked, they can't explain it. "I'm strictly Tonysexual," Ozzie tells them.
On one of their trips to London, Ozzie drags Tony into a vintage clothing shop. He practically squeals over an old cream-colored coat. "Would you look at this! Isn't it beautiful?" He slips his arms into the sleeves and spins around in delight. Tony can't answer that question honestly without ruining that gorgeous smile on his boyfriend's face, so he settles for stoic supportive mode.
"And this bow tie! Can you believe it?" Tony doesn't even have any reservations about shelling over the money. He's never shared Ozzie's love of vintage, but he'd do anything to keep that smile brighter than the sun.
No one is surprised when Ozzie finishes his library science degree and gets a job in the rare book archive at his university. Tony summons the willpower to get through law school and pass the bar. He's never been keen on studying, but he's found that he likes arguing cases, and it pays well enough for him to take care of his angel, which is all he's ever wanted.
They get married with all their friends and family present. It's cliches, but they both think of it as the best day of their lives. They buy a house, and over the next few years, they're joined by two cats, a dog, and a baby girl they name Muriel. It's a blur of domestic activity, and it's not always pretty -- there are fights over dirty clothes on the floor, whose turn it is to change the nappy, cleaning up after the cat barfs on the sofa. Their dinner dates get less frequent as parenthood saps them of their energy after work.
But they make up and move forward. The moments of joy they share over family picnics and first steps are enough to help them forget the bad times.
"I'm sure it's fine," Ozzie tells an angry Tony, who is sitting on the sofa with his arms crossed. Ozzie can practically see steam coming out of his ears. "But I suppose it is awfully late, isn't it? Should we have some tea?"
"Hrmph," Tony grunts.
The front door cracks open, and a teenage girl tries to slip quietly into the house and up the stairs without being noticed.
"You're LATE," Tony seethes. The girl freezes. She turns to them with a nervous grin.
"Oh, hi, Daddy, hi, Papa, I didn't think you'd still be up. I didn't want to wake you."
Ozzie sighs. Tony leaps up.
"Young lady, do you have any idea what time it is?! We told you to be home by ten o'clock sharp! Now go to your room -- you're grounded until college!"
Muriel bursts into tears. "Oh Daddy, you're so mean!" With that, she runs off to her room.
The years continue to slip by. Muriel goes off to college (she was not, in fact, grounded until then). And then she's getting married, and Ozzie and Tony are both proud and devastated at losing their little baby girl. Then grandkids come into the picture, and they find they're happy to entertain the kids for a few hours and give them back to Muriel at the end of the day. Tony particularly takes delight in getting them all sugared up and then giving them loud, obnoxious toys to take home. The worst of this is at the twins' fourth birthday party, when twenty-four children each get a kazoo.
Ozzie and Tony eventually retire. They expect this to give them more time to do all the tings they put off while they were working -- and in a way, it does, but they manage to fill up their schedules with world travel and volunteering for various charities and the occasional vintage auto show.
They're eighty-five when Ozzie faints as they exit the theater. They had been seeing a play on the West End. An ambulance rushes them both to the nearest hospital. The doctors discover a grapefruit-sized tumor next to his colon. The next two years are a mess of doctor's appointments and treatments. Tony wants to go for the most aggressive options possible, but at Ozzie's age, the doctors refuse to take those risks.
Tony is beside himself with worry. It's a special kind of hell, watching the love of his life get progressively weaker and sicker, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. But Ozzie takes it all with the patience of a saint. He never misses an opportunity to tell Tony how much he loves him.
Tony hangs on for another three years after his angel slips away. He'd have much rather gone sooner, because what's the point, but there is Muriel and a team of nurses who shuffle him around the retirement home and make sure he's taking his pills. And he answers all their care with pure cantankery, grumbling and snarling that he doesn't want any more prunes, and he will absolutely hit them in the head with this bedpan if they try to pick him up again.
"Tony," a familiar voice finally calls to him, rousing him from sleep.
"Hmm?"
"Crowley."
He opens his eyes. His angel is back, and more beautiful than ever, no longer sick or frail with age.
Aziraphale smiles at him. "Crowley, it's time to come home." He holds out his hand, and Tony takes it.
His hand's not withered and wrinkled anymore, either. For that matter, he's not Tony anymore. He's not a demon, either. He doesn't know what he is, but it doesn't matter.
"I've missed you, angel," he sighs.
"And I you." Aziraphale gazes warmly at him.
And just like that, they're together again. A Team. Them.
"Right," Crowley says, "what do we do now?"
"Well, I hear Alpha Centauri is quite nice at this time of year. Shall we?" He gestures forward.
"You know, I've always wanted to go there."
"I do know."
And with that, they both spread big, wide wings and fly toward the stars.
Gentarou was out on the moon, watching Earth and trying to think of a new activity to do that would be interesting for 15-18 year olds that were getting sick of rain keeping them inside for P.E, when two mechas came zooming towards him. Gentarou flung himself to the side, popping up when the dust settled.
Two people, Sentai if Gentarou wasn’t mistaken, were out of the vehicles, which appeared to be an orange…scorpion thing, and a blue bear. The orange guy was of average height, while the light blue guy was tiny.
“Hey! You two okay?” Gentarou called, waving his hands.
“There’s someone here?” asked the orange guy.
“Yep! I’m Kamen Rider Fourze, the guy who’s gonna befriend all the heroes in the whole universe!” He pointed out at them.
“A Kamen Rider, huh? Can you help us, then?”
“Sure! Come on into the Rabbit Hatch, and tell me what’s up!”
The two followed him inside, dehenshining when he did. Gentarou found that one guy was probably around his age and the other was high school aged.
“Name’s Kisaragi Gentarou, how bout you two?” Gentarou asked, flashing a smile.
“Stinger.”
“Sakuma Kotaro. Isn’t this Earth? Why is there a base on the moon?”
Gentarou shrugged with a smile. “Kengo rebuilt it for us!”
Kotaro tugged on Stinger’s sleeve. “I think it’s like when we fought with Ex-Aid.”
“I think you’re right,” Stinger sighed.
“Ex-Aid! He’s my pal,” Gentarou said, grinning. “I’m Kamen Rider Fourze, by the way, for hero!”
“Kyuurangers,” Kotaro said, waving between him and Stinger.
“Oh, you guys were the video game one! But not Pac-Man. Emu-san didn’t get to be in your robo, right? Cause he grew big? I got to pilot a Go-Buster robo, once, that’s why I mention it.”
Kotaro and Stinger stared at Gentarou.
“So, you need to get to Earth or anything?” Gentarou asked. “Or I can call Nadeshiko if you need something here on the moon, the SULU one, not Tomoko’s--”
“Earth sounds good, if we can get back here easily,” Stinger interrupted.
“Oh yeah, super easy!” Gentarou reassured him. “This way!”
Kotaro and Stinger followed him through a door, finding themselves coming out of a locker, Gentarou collecting a little thingamabob after they were all through.
“Are you liking school, Kotaro?” Gentarou asked as they walked through a high school.
“Oh, I’m not in school, I have too many missions,” Kotaro said, making Gentarou stop in his tracks.
“He’s getting an education, don’t worry,” Stinger said with a roll of his eyes.
“And I have lots of friends,” Kotaro said, remembering how Gentarou’s greeting had included the friendship thing.
“Well, that’s good!” Gentarou’s smile was genuine, making the Kyuurangers breathe a sigh of relief. Somehow it felt like disappointing this guy would make you feel terrible about yourself.
“Do you need any supplies or anything?” Gentarou continued. “Cause I can call up anyone, just say the word!”
“No, we contacted Raptor-tachi right before we crashed,” Kotaro reassured him. “As long as we’re back on the moon when they can get to us, we’ll be fine.”
Gentarou nodded, getting out a cellphone. “Let me call Kengo, then, and we’ll grab some pizza or something!”
Kotaro perked up at pizza, making Stinger chuckle and ruffle his hair.
“Yeah, should we eat there or bring it over? Cause I know you have that work, we can crash at the high school or the Rabbit Hatch if needed!”
A silence, then some nodding. “Sure, I can do that, I’ll see you later, then!”
Gentarou slipped his cellphone back into his back pocket. “Don’t let me forget to get some pizza delivered to Kengo!”
“Okyu,” Stinger and Kotaro said automatically, making Gentarou pause.
“Okyu? I like that!”
---
Gentarou didn’t notice that Stinger and Kotaro had stopped on their walk to get pizza until he was nearly ten steps away, finding them frowning at a poster advertising laser tag.
“Why are humans playing with lasers, Gentarou?” Kotaro asked.
“Oh! Laser tag isn’t real lasers, it’s just lights. Wanna play? It’s really fun.”
Stinger looked like he disapproved, but Kotaro was tugging on his sleeve. “Come on, Aniki, when are we gonna get the chance again?”
Stinger sighed and ruffled Kotaro’s hair. “Fine.”
“Sweet! We can get pizza after, then?” Gentarou said, sending Kengo a text about their new plans and getting a thumbs up in response.
“Yeah!”
Gentarou smiled, glad to see that Kotaro was happy being a normal teenager.
---
“Don’t run, except you will, but like…try not to, okay? Rules are rules,” said the laser tag employee. “Everyone ready?”
Kotaro pointed his gun at Stinger, who was on the orange team, as was Gentarou. He himself was on the blue team, with other girls around his age. There were four other teams, red, yellow, green, and purple, but Kotaro only wanted to beat orange. They had been able to choose their own teams, and since Gentarou had treated them to a unlimited pass, Kotaro knew he’d want to team up with Stinger at a later game. But for now: victory to the blue team.
They were released into the actual game area, and Kotaro made his way up the stairs, where he could watch for Stinger more easily. It wasn’t easy to find him, with all the people, but once he did, Kotaro took careful aim and got a hit on Stinger’s vest, granting the blue team 50 points, although Stinger quickly saw him and gained his team 100 points for getting a smaller hit area on Kotaro.
The game was going on but Kotaro and Stinger were just focused on each other, both of them grinning when they managed to get hits. It was a much more unwieldy tool that Kotaro was used to, but it was definitely a lot of fun.
When the timer buzzed, the three of them made their way to the leaderboard, finding that the red team had won, with blue and orange tied for second.
They played several more games, in different combos. Gentarou made instant friends with anyone on his team, while people wanted to be on Stinger’s team if possible. When the three of them were on the same team though, they won so hard that they were awarded with a free gift from the attached arcade, a set of planet keychains.
“Pizza time?” Gentarou asked, hair sticking to his forehead and a grin on his face.
Kotaro nodded, attaching his Saturn keychain to his Seiza blaster with a little difficulty.
“Aniki, are you going to put yours on too?” he asked Stinger once he accomplished it.
Stinger held out his arm and keychain of Jupiter in response. Kotaro grinned and put it on for him.
“You guys sure are brothers,” Gentarou remarked. “I’m an only child, so I always thought it was cool when people had siblings. Ready made buds!”
Kotaro and Stinger shared a glance, then shrugged. Gentarou didn’t need the whole tragic story, and plus, it was almost pizza time.
---
“Liking it?” Gentarou asked the two aliens, getting a nod from Stinger and a thumbs up from Kotaro.
He was about to ask about their adventures of being heroes (Sentais were always fun!) when Stinger got a call on his wrist blaster.
“Our friends are going to be here in an hour or so,” he informed the other two. “We’ll need to be on the moon for that. Also don’t forget you promised to get pizza delivered.”
“Shoot, you’re right!” Gentarou made his way to the register, grateful that Stinger had remembered.
---
“Is that your spaceship? That’s so cool!” Gentarou said, back in his suit. Even though his suit was expressionless, even Stinger could tell that Gentarou was genuinely excited. He was a lot like Lucky, if Stinger was being honest.
“Yes, the Orion,” Stinger said, waving with one arm while Kotaro waved with two.
“I’ll have to tell Yuuki,” Gentarou said. “Ah, before you go!”
He reached out for Stinger’s hand, and Stinger watched bemusedly as Gentarou turned their handshake into a fist bump thing, doing the same with Kotaro.
“We’re buds now! Don’t forget!” he said, pointing at the two of them.
“We won’t!” Kotaro said, getting into his Voyager as Stinger did the same.
“Byyyyyyyyeeeeeeeee!” Gentarou said, waving furiously with his whole body.
Stinger chuckled, giving him one last wave before motioning Kotaro to follow him, flying to the Orion and back to the Kyuurangers.
Every day in October, except the days I don't, I am watching a randomly chosen Halloween-themed horror movie for the first time. Or for the first twenty-four days of October bc my list runs out then.
The first two weeks...are below
TRICK OR TREAT
1986 / directed by Charles Martin Smith / written by Joel Soisson, Michael S. Murphey and Rhet Topham (and Glen Morgan & James Wong, uncredited)
A heavy metal-themed Nightmare on Elm Street clone (the villain even does the "hands reaching through the wall" thing, but with a speaker), with cameos by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, the latter playing a Satanic Panic-spewing TV preacher. This one has a strange legacy on the whole: future X-Files scribe (and uncredited co-writer) Glen Morgan is featured in his only acting role, and the director went on to make Air Bud...and then define his career around animal movies. Fair enough! This one's pretty fun, with a long first act of high school bullying highlighted with a energetic chase sequence, though not especially Halloween-y, given its name (though the version I watched was titled Ragman?)
🎃🎃🎃.5/5
TALES OF HALLOWEEN
2015 / directed by [a lot of people] / written by [a lot of people]
The top Letterboxd review calls this "Trick 'R Treat if it was designed by a committee at a horror convention" and that just about sums it up. It has the requisite horror cameos - a litany of 80s final girls are joined by Joe Dante and John Landis, and John Landis is convincing in the role of a terrible person whose son is a monster for some reason. This one has way too many segments, and they're unsurprisingly same-y. Two stories have a twist where a child-sized killer turns out to be a demon, two of them feature gangs of evil kids, and none of them are very fun, though they feature so many of the winking in-jokes filmmakers mistake for fun. This is the type of movie where a candy will have the word "Carpenter" on it, written in the Halloween titles font, because hey. Remember John Carpenter? Remember? Remember John Carpenter? The oddest part is that this movie's format is very close to 2015's better A Christmas Horror Story, but they're totally unrelated?
🎃🎃/5
HELL HOUSE LLC
2015 / written & directed by Stephen Cognetti
Found footage movie that makes decent use of its rundown-Halloween-haunt setting & has some good scares with evil clown dolls, but is pretty routine, and does that mediocre found footage thing where it can't let any of the background scares breathe without a crash zoom and a scare chord.
🎃🎃🎃/5
MAY
2002 / written & directed by Lucky McKee
To call May a slasher movie doesn't really represent it. As a portrait of a loner among urban alienation, it's of a kind with Taxi Driver and the first act of Beau is Afraid, with unbearably real performances by Angela Bettis and Jeremy Sisto. May is psychological and restrained, striving for a queasy discomfort before it escalates into full-on bloodshed. This is the least Halloween-y film so far, but the final act is on Halloween night, and culminates in a shot that's haunting and lyrical in equal measure.
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃/5
HACK-O-LANTERN
1988 / directed by Jag Mundhra / written by Dave Eisenstark & Carla Robinson
Direct-to-video horror classic featuring a deeply apathetic son of the Devil and a musical number featuring deaths-by-magic-guitar. Alternatively tediously padded and gloriously deranged, but then again, that's direct-to-video horror babyyyyyyy. Jag Mundhra had a career directing direct-to-video sleaze in the US, but made prestige movies in India?
🎃🎃🎃/5
DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW
1981 / directed by Frank De Felitta / story by J.D. Feigelson & Butler Handcock, teleplay by Feigelson
A TV movie, but you'd only know it from its 4:3 ratio & commercial break fades-to-black. Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a creepy gem, well-directed by de Felitta - a novelist with a sideline directing TV movies - with an eye towards the details of small town life. The lack of gore is made up with by stark, elemental horror imagery, and the horrors of humanity: a mob murders a developmentally disabled man for a crime he didn't commit, and gets off the hook for it - gets cheered, in fact, by the townsfolk. But soon a mysterious scarecrow is appearing in the fields, and the killers start to die...not a killer scarecrow movie, but something subtler, chillier, the horror of barns and grain silos and farmer's fields.
🎃🎃🎃🎃/5
HAUNT
2019 / written & directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
Extreme haunted houses are stupid.
While some use it as a mere William Castle-ian conceit, others take it seriously. Who could've guessed that if you replace themed scares and actors with people who will literally, actually hurt you, you'd still be scared? Only the Einsteins who act flabbergasted when the actors they hired with the pitch "you can hurt people and they signed something that said they can't sue you" turn out to disregard safe words. In Haunt, an extreme haunted house is a front for a murder-cult, which is more respectable than it being some guy doing the Evermore Park of frights. Haunt is a very pedestrian slasher, but a sincere one, and a modern one (the victims check the creepy house's Yelp reviews), which I'll take over a winking 80s homage any day.
🎃🎃🎃/5
THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
1985 / directed by Jack Bender / written by Bill Bleich
Delightful little made-for-TV number, heavily inspired by Thriller. In 1985, this was trashed for its cliches, but now it's the cliches that make it so endearing. This one has its own musical number, a starring turn for LeVar Burton, some quality zombie effects and a lighthearted air, and excellent Halloween-y vibes to it, of course, courtesy of future Lost director Jack Bender. It also has a weirdly overqualified soundtrack; I really didn't expect to hear The Smiths repeatedly in a made-for-TV Halloween movie, but here we are.
🎃🎃🎃🎃/5
NIGHT OF THE DEMONS
1988 / directed by Kevin S. Tenney / written by Joe Augustyn
Night of the Demons has a gnarly final act, but spends way too much time getting there, and too much of that time is spent with interchangeable assholes bumbling about.
🎃🎃.5/5
THE CHILD
1977 / directed by Robert Voskanian / written by Ralph Lucas
A classical Weird 70s Horror Movie, which means a relatively simple plot told in the most inscrutable way possible, a lot of stark tight close-ups and quick cuts, and a preoccupation with psychics. The last act is a bit of a conventional zombie runaround, but everything before that is chilly 70s gold. By far the least Halloween-y film here, but there's an amazing moment with a Jack-O-Lantern.
🎃🎃🎃.5/5
SCARY MOVIE
1991 / directed by Daniel Erickson / written by Daniel Erickson, David Lane Smith, and Mark Voges
No, not that one; this one is a regional horror flick from Texas, from 1991, and starring John Hawkes as a gormless nerd touring a haunted house - the type so anxious to avoid a snake pit he ends up falling into a snake pit, which, relatable. The wonderful aesthetics of a local haunted house dominate this film, directed with sly attention to detail by Erickson, which follows Hawkes' character as an escaped madman lurks in the haunted house. Or does he? A surreal psychological story more than a slasher, it takes a while to get somewhere, but that a while is full of local atmosphere (similar to Tobe Hooper's classic The Funhouse).
yknow, I really HATE the snide comments on posts about older learner or P plate drivers, here in aus, when they get into accident by simple error. like the other day, I saw a news story about a P plater who accidentally flipped their car onto its roof, while trying to practice parking at a busy beach (bc it was during a hot day).
however, no one had any like empathy or sympathy for the person, who was 30, apparently. "oh. they're a 30 YEAR OLD P PLATER????? that says it ALL doesn't it??? maybe don't be a deadbeat and get your licence earlier???" and "who can't park at a busy beach during a hot day???? did they NOT learn how to park at all during driving lessons??? take their licence away, they don't deserve to drive ever again!!!!" or "who the hell is a P plater AT 30??? get with the times and get your licence as a teen like a normal person!!!! so you're NOT a burden to everyone else!!!"
like im still to read the article. but I feel so much for this person. I only got my Ps in 2019.... at 23/24. I only got off my Ps last november (2022), at 27. I've talked on many posts about my struggles around getting my licence (ie too much anxiety and depression in 2011 and late high school- the perceived "only right time"- to go for my Ls and Ps) and troubles with driving teachers and uni and me having to pay for ALL of my lessons out of own pocket.... and also my parent never wanting to teach me.... bc I was too anxious for them as well, so you might as well just push all off on a driving school anyway.
so yeah me getting my licence was a fucking mess. I HATED myself for getting it so late etc etc. but even on my full licence, earlier this year, i made a stupid asf error right before I left my old job.
basically, a week before I left that job, I had a MASSIVE crash in my works private parking lot. I went up the ramp to the upper level for shade, bc it was a hot day and my car would be cooler at the end of the day (not by much, obvs, but a bit) than me parking on the bottom floor, away from everyone in the sun).... I accidentally scraped on side of my car on one of the concrete pillars. I panicked, stupidly really. what's a little dent on my car??? lmao. anyway. I reversed out of those pillars, trying to fix the position of my car. however, in doing that, I accidentally pressed the accelerator and went zooming (low speed but downhill, terrible combination) down the ramp, and smashed my entire back window, boot (trunk, for americans) and a bit of the right side panel of my car (which the repairs were kind enough to replace the entirety of actually).... also they had to bc thag entire back tyre was ripped off. my exhaust was leaking too.
obvs my old work sent me home that day (thank FUCK) , and I had a hire car through my insurance for nearly 3 months. I got landed with an extra $400 excess for being an "inexperienced driver" bc I'd only had my full licence for 5 months at that point, instead of 2 years. but it's just that easy to make a dumb fuckup mistake.
and no, when it came to learning how to park with both my parent and the driving school.... I didn't get much time learn. I did like 10 mins in one lesson with the driving school on actual parking in a parking lot.... bc that shit didn't matter in the P plate test... only the stupid asf kerb side reverse park (or whatever the fuck it's called) got assessed in the test.... and I fucking resented that SO MUCH.... bc it's the part I ALWAYS forgot the steps to and always did in like 20 steps, instead of the required 3 to 5. the end of test parking in the spot at service nsw (ie the dmv in my state of aus) doesn't get marked.
my parent just straight up refused to teach me parking (and pretty esp the curb side tbh). instead, they tried to tell me that middle-aged american and canadian men (most usually... and none of them were driving instructors- just randos) with go pros were a better resource to learn parking from.... when like THEY DRIVE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE FUCKING ROAD TO AUSTRALIA????? "all you have to do is watch that video before we go put to practice and swap it around in your head??? it's that easy!" no it's not???? how the fuck am I meant to reverse the direction in my head???? it literally makes fuck all sense.
moreover, I feel like it's just australia's laziness on having resources for learner drivers. like not one aussie driving school, while I was trying to get my licence, had instructional videos on how to do a reverse park, how to park normally, and how to do parallels parking. there was ONE British guy. ONE. and not even from australia. everything else was flooded by americans and canadians. like guys, I like you. but trying to learn how to park from Brad in a Walmart parking lot in Texas or mark in Omaha in a walgreens parking lot.... or Tommy from Saskatchewan or Ben from Ontario, both videos from a Tim Horton's parking lot (sorry, it's the only canadian brand that I know lol).... who are all driving and parking from the right side of the road.... DOES NOT help a very confused and anxious learner driver in AUSTRALIA who DRIVES ON THE LEFT, with learning how to park safely or well. under stress, or just even normally for me, it was IMPOSSIBLE to swap the direction around mentally, as I was actively trying to learn to park.
but my point is, the age of the P plate driver has NOTHING to do with the fact that they accidentally flipped their car while trying to park in a stressful situation. they weren't lazy or a burden for getting their licence late. the situation i crashed my car in wasn't even stressful... I was just an anxious, almost sleepless mess at that old job. I accidentally freaked myself out by slightly scratching my car bc I have shit parking and direction skills in that particular parking lot.
my age, 27, and the person in the news story's age, 30 HAS NOTHING TO DO with driving ability and apparently "needing their licence taken off them." I was practically forced to get my licence and buy my car (eventually) to be better considered for jobs.... since NO ONE wants to hire someone without a car and licence these days. like I was so lucky my old job was right across from a bus stop and that they hired me using the bus.
every other place I tried basically automatically tossed me out in the application stage, when I dared to answer "I use public transport" or "I don't have access to my own vehicle." even though HR at my old work kept telling me that employers can't assess or discriminate against that. but they do, ashley, they do. and I KNOW... esp since I've always been interested in doing events. and doing events work is IMPOSSIBLE without a car due to wack ass hours. also, I actively got denied a marketing internship in business college in 2014. all bc the bus took an hour and a half, instead of 25 to 30 mins by car. so don't you dare tell me that workplaces don't discriminate towards lack of transportation (even if they can't say it directly to the applicant) bc some places definitely do.
so I imagine that the above, and the other obstacles I've mentioned in this post, are what probably led to this 30 year P plater getting their licence so late (unless of course they got downgraded bc they had road offences.... but idk bc I still haven't actually read the article lol). but assuming the best of the person in the story, it was an honest, anxious mistake to flip their car while trying to park that day at that beach... like, okay. it's obvs not a small mistake; bc they did flip their goddamned car upside down....
but in stress, you can make stupid ass mistakes, just like I did in march..... and imo that doesn't call for someone to LOSE THEIR LICENCE and be thoroughly condescended to.... all bc some fucking asshole on the internet is all fucking rude about "OH A 30 YO P PLATER???? THAT SAYS IT ALL!!!! they were too lazy to do this important thing YEARS AGO as a teenager, and now they're making our roads unsafe with this!!!! rescind their licence now!!! they're entirely unfit to drive! or at least go back to driving school, darling. so maybe you'll remember your mistakes of safety!!!"
like, brenda or quincey. I highly doubt you've NEVER made a mistake while driving??? or accidentally hit someone???? or maybe you'd be like the middle aged lady I accidentally hit back in july, who tried to force me to stand in a busy local highway intersection FOR AN HOUR ON THE PHONE witb my insurance to report.... so she had PHYSICAL PROOF that I'd done it... bc she was thoroughly convinced that I was lying that I had insurance bc (A.) I dont have an insurance card like she dod.... bc im sure that's a legacy thing, and I've only had my car for a year, so that meant to her that I was a LIAR.... and (B.) I'm young, so then that automatically means that I'm a liar and will never report to insurance that I'd fucked up.... then this woman had the gall to report the incident 3 DAYS LATER (I'm assuming).... after INSISTING I had to do it instantly in front of HER EYES only for truthful reporting all while saying "you BETTER get this FIXED for ME bc my husband has just died".
like thanks, geraldine. but at this point, I don't fucking care about your dead husband. just let me report this accident in peace AT HOME AWAY from you, breathing down my neck saying every 2 seconds that "young people ALWAYS lie to me... so YOU'RE A LIAR and will dupe me out of my deserved repairs. repair it FOR ME NOW! YOU BETTER DO IT WHILE I WATCH, OR YOU WILL RUN OFF ON ME!! I KNOW THIS!!!!" but anyway. I digress. my point is that the people commenting on age sound exactly this rude ass woman, insisting that the older age of the P plater in this story has everything to do with the accident, and NOTHING to do with stress and anxiety around driving.
like ok. I'll admit picking a busy time to practice parking, probs isn't the best decision. but also. if you don't practice parking at busy times EVER, you're just never going to go anywhere during peak busy periods of the day.... much like I do. I never go to the beach in summer bc I hate jockeying for spots. I wait til like 4 to 6 pm to go do some shopping bc then I have less chance of accidentally hitting someone (a car obvs) while backing out.... and am more likely to have an empty spot to drive straight into.
I purposely pick the emptier outside parking lot at one particular local shopping centre, all bc I know if I park like shit (ie accidentally park over half into another spot) I can just leave it like that, bc I have fuck all idea of how to correct it tbh. as long as no one parks RIGHT NEXT TO ME, I'm fine lmao. and that's a problem in summer, when it's like 45⁰C (like 100+⁰F).... so I should really try to park in the overly busy undercover parking, for respite, when i get back to my car. I actively avoid ever driving to sydney bc of this as well. I'll never be able to handle sydney suburbia driving.... let alone the whole ass different beast that is CBD sydney driving is (lol im driving straight into the harbour to avoid any type of city parking and parking fees etc).
anyway yeah. I just wish people had more empathy and sympathy these days when people have a kinda dumb accident like this..... instead of instantly calling for the person to lose their licence.... and also insisting that its all to do with someone getting their licence much later than the perceived "correct and proper" time of 16 to 19.
Two worlds collide when dragon-rider Tyme crashes into regular human Nagi's house & wants her help to find his hero Akuta. Read our quick review of Dragons of Wonderhatch Episodes 1-2 starring Nakajima Sena, Mackenyu & Okudaira Daiken.
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“In my dreams, I am flying…. I realize I’m not flying freely at all. I’m falling towards the sky.”
High-school student Nagi often dreams of a different world where fish fly in the sky and dragon-riding warriors zoom past clouds. Little does she know that this world is real and is called Upananta, which is in grave danger due to an evil villain. Unfortunately,…
This was the fifth day of the Shared Summer School Programme between Singapore, Zurich and Trondheim. We started the session with a group meeting through Zoom to discuss more about the concepts and how we could bring it to life. Continuing with our discussion about our main theme on "distance", we started talking about the headspace of ending a video call versus leaving after a physical meet-up. Our common consensus was that it feels more like a "fade-out" after hanging up a video call while there's an instantaneous cut-off after leaving a physical meeting. We delved into conversations such as the situation with Covid, and how even some people's final moments of life were actually viewed online. Lemuel interjected with how the last time he saw his friend was online before they passed, and the thought that they had past still feels unreal because their death was not experienced firsthand physically. It felt like the person is actually still alive. With that in mind, End in Zurich interpolated analogies such as the stars we view in the night sky have actually died a long time ago, and that are finally perceivable to us. We decided that we wanted our performance to translate some of that death through a virtual space, basically a digital telematics funeral. We wanted to include rituals/chanting of prayers into the show as well and Zurich's side decided to do some video glitching with reverb.
Next up, we discussed that if we were to have different sections, it might be difficult for people of different mediums to pick up the cues that things have changed (such as change in sound, change in colour) as we were unfamiliar with each others' mediums. We proposed to have some guidelines to help pull all of us back to focus. Nasrina from Trondheim brought up potential problems that might occur during the performance and they include: there might be a lag in the start time from the music, and to make sure every element in the performance had been preplanned so that there is no sudden changes during the performance.
Here are some of the notes I have taken during our zoom meeting:
After the meeting, we had one hour in the telematics space to try out our ideas. This was the Singapore's initial set up:
Mia in Zurich wanted us to record the video glitching happening on Zurich's screen and their lectures did warn that their video might crash as it was running on high CPU in order to achieve that effect. We find that rather fitting for out theme so we did not feel like it was a risk for us. I videoed their glitching which was super cool on our screen:
After the our one hour practice in the space, End, Lemuel and I decided to set up an additional Google meet to discuss about the flow of the music throughout the entire piece at 11pm in Singapore time.
We decided to make the distinction clear between the different locations, with Zurich being the "reality" and Singapore being the "afterlife" or "world of dead" (coincidentally it was the hungry ghost month here as well). As Mia in Zurich was the main protagonist, she would be trying to call into the afterlife to connect with a friend who has passed on. I suggested that the phone calling tune could be the repetitive musical motif through the performance during the more abstract part of the music. Here are the notes I have taken for the flow of our soundscape:
Learning Point: I really enjoyed how everyone was so proactive in contributing to the theme and how they could contribute via their disciplines. Everybody also ensured that everyone's opinions and perspectives were respected which is not easy considering we are in a rather large group and communication is also limited due to time. It was quite relieving to see some of the ideas we bounced off coming to life. I am usually a little bit reserved in sharing or interjecting ideas, however, the group made me feel welcomed and that they would listen to what I had to say. I am surprised by how receptive they were to my ideas and continued to layered their ideas on top of mine. I think I managed to witness a very positive collaboration that sometimes might difficult even for people who share the same physical space as us.
Most of my connections and friends in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia call me "Olu" or "Mr. O".
I am 50 years old and, a father of four wonderful and delightful kids.
My eldest child, a daughter, just gained admission into the university to study Microbiology this year and, she just returned with a GPA of 3.95.
I have a very active mind. I always have. What stimulates and excites me the most are intellectual activities and pursuits. I spend practically all of my waking time at the PC working, researching the features of new software and mastering their use and those that I use in my workflow as a graphic and web designer, writer, Microsoft Office advanced user of close to 30 years and trainer providing computer training via Zoom to trainees located in El Paso, Texas and so on.
I was going to study medicine when I was in high school until I had my first experience with a computer when a computer department was set up in my school and, being one of the top students, I was made the coordinator.
I have never looked back since nor regretted it. Computing has brought me so many opportunities that, I truly cannot imagine my life without working with computers.
I am officially retired but, I am still very active both mentally and physically. I am blessed with a superb physical constitution probably thanks to genetics.
I also read very widely when I was younger and still do whenever I can, having read most of the English classics including Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare and, many later authors including John Grisham, Arthur Hailey, Peter Danielson, V. C. Andrews, James Hadley Chase, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Washington Irving and, so, so many others.
If you want someone gifted with the ability to be precise in communication, who makes sure that the intended message is captured with the highest level of fidelity to the idea then, I am your man.
I possess a considerable vocabulary and, a fast and consummate ability to find just the perfect word or words to use in every situation and so, could be a perfect speechwriter for instance.
I would be a valuable personal or executive assistant also if handling correspondence and other forms of communications matters in your line of business or profession.
As a matter of fact, that ability was a major factor in my advancement through the ranks when I was in the banking sector culminating in my de facto position as group head of brand communications for three subsidiaries of one of the most successful banks until it was acquired in 2012.
That, coupled with my uncommon passion for and mastery in computing made me able to do what others seemed unable to.
I am not surprised by it now that I'm older and I look back on those days.
I think it was inevitable.
I hated it when closing time was drawing near while others begin to put their things in order to leave once it was 4:30 PM.
I ended up learning more than most really because I just never got tired as long as I am at the PC.
I constantly downloaded tutorials from Lydia in its early days prompting my journey with Western Digital external hard drives of which I have so, so many now that have crashed, including one which contains my presence in the theatre with my extra pair of hands required to help deliver him because the boy decided to come when one of the nurses had gone out to get an item that was needed. It was only the matron and I who were there when he came.
My designs are authentic because I was first and foremost an artist before I became a graphic designer.
If you want the most original, memorable and visually persuasive graphic designs, I am your man. You don't have to take my word for it though, kindly spare the time to take a look at some of my work for connections, friends and clients from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia to see if you agree at - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BLPhgWKEghEJXVKPkwFWCnZR56g088Pw?usp=drive_link
My Certificates - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rT8513prX5NYdvys7GNORMdFkCRFD_d_?usp=sharing
My DISC Assessment - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nNcvqzSRaInxeK18ApftfJ7wYuipXUqx?usp=sharing
My Myers-Briggs Profile - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KYASHVsqeXoVLPv-qC5-Qg2eECqvlSMJ?usp=sharing
My Tony Robbins' DISC and MOTIVATORS - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LNnYaSRgtcqeqaJiX2ZZG8mgoKM86oU8/view?usp=sharing
My Virtual Assistant Resume - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xhzGxsZFWg1KM5Y-XOLLM-fJUYcALJtV/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117459786796459817936&rtpof=true&sd=true
Some of the sites that I built:
https://www.r-e-b-c-inc.com - for a consulting firm in Roseville, California, United States. I also wrote two of the blog articles on the site.
https://www.unicityautomation.com - for an access control firm in Nigeria
https://www.dallashomesintl.com - for a real estate firm in Nigeria
When it comes to graphic and web design, writing articles or reports, working with Microsoft Office, researching online, providing graphic and web design and Microsoft Office training as individual services or, collectively as a remote administrative, executive, personal or virtual assistant, I am convinced that, no one can bring greater value onboard any business or professional operation than I can.
When all of the above is coupled with my calm ability to approach challenges, and the constant pursuit of more effective and automated ways to execute tasks to eliminate or reduce the potential for errors, that maturity which I am convinced comes with age and, that experience of having worked with a diverse range of people from across the world for close to three decades, I am more likely to have a stronger sense of commitment and loyalty.
My aim is to have more value than is needed for a role I am compensated for based on the capacity of the organization and not necessarily what my contribution is worth because no one truly can measure how much their contribution is worth. And, I don't want to compete for higher-level opportunities such as those of a brand manager, artistic director and so on and then have to deal with the intense social and political dynamics such positions tend to involve.
It's not about the income as much as my capability being underutilized. Too much time on my hands in this day and age when so, so much is going on that requires my specific skill set makes me feel unfulfilled.
My passion can partly be seen from how much I've invested in the related tools and equipment for the roles that I seek. I am as equipped as anyone anywhere in the world to serve remotely with world-class Internet access solutions, an HP ZBook Firefly G7 workstation with Intel Corei7 and 32GB RAM and a multi-monitor setup of three 24-inch Dell monitors including the workstation display which greatly increases productivity across my workflows.
My Tools & Equipment - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UE4FkeipkqJSs_IDaG-vtlN6fVh0ZBHz?usp=sharing
And, it has always helped me to get ahead throughout my life. I always end up being the favourite in every situation because I give of myself without stinting.
I have references in the United States with whom I've worked for years on LinkedIn who are willing to vouch for my integrity as a person, my competence and my relentless dedication to achieving set outcomes within set deadlines and using assigned resources.
If you require a brilliant and committed person to be on your team, do kindly send me a mail at [email protected] or, give me a call at +234 905 743 7659. WhatsApp too works with the same number.
If you don't but, know someone who does, kindly recommend me. I'd be grateful indeed. I'm open to a Zoom chat at any time for anyone to feel my energy as a potential team member.
Please don’t read if you haven’t watched NWH! Thank you!
Also, I haven’t written fan fiction in about 3 years, please be gentle with me. I have hyper fixated on Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker again after years and must write about him LOL.
(Andrew Garfield!Peter Parker x Reader)
Summary: After the events of No Way Home, our reader finds herself in the arms of a villainous green man.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
What I listened to on repeat lol
•
The city buzzes with excitement, flowing around you like waves. And all you want is to get to your apartment, away from everyone’s energies and into your safe space; especially after this last shift at the bar.
You quickly walked into the back alley, the quietest route to home and the perfect time to decompress from that one patron’s antics tonight.
What a jerk.
A loud crash comes from behind you, causing you to turn around abruptly. Two figures were fighting violently; one throwing punches and flying through the alley way, the other floating through the air attacking his opponent.
Your eyes finally adjusted to the chaos in front of you.
Spider-Man?
You gasped, starting to back up from the two men fighting. Before you know it, you fall to the ground - hands harshly meeting the alley’s trash clad cement ground, letting out a hiss.
The terrifying floating man’s head whipped towards your hiss, his deep and empty eyes met your gaze - sending chills up your spine. He zoomed towards you. As he did, you realized he was a man you had heard of when you were in late high school.
The Green Goblin.
You screamed as he approached you on his glider, viciously smiling. Too frozen to move, you shut your eyes and let out a faint yell. You felt your body lift off the cement and into the air.
“Harry!” Spider-Man yelled, shooting a web and flying beside the two of you on the glider. The villainous man clung to your body, his nails digging into your ribs. You let out a hushed whimper, looking directly at the stranger you know as Spider-Man. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this, Harry. It’s been 10 years-“
“Shut up!” The Green Goblin screamed, “I don’t care how long it’s been. I will never be done with you.” He snarled and threw a bomb at Spider-man. As it exploded, the man cackled and tossed you while zooming away.
Falling was like you were in slow motion, wondering how in the world you ended up here so quickly. You stared at the stars wondering what happens once you hit the ground. You start to fly.
You start to fly.
Blinking away from your starry gaze, your head turns to see the red and blue masked hero holding you in his arms as he swings through the bright and crowded city.
Your arms wrapped tightly around Spider-Man as he swings lower and lower, finally dropping you back to the alley way where this all started.
He was panting as he asked, “Are you okay?”
Spider-Man was so tall. You stepped towards him with a whispered, “I think.” You were finally feeling the aftershock of what had just happened.
“Thank you for saving me, sir.” You said with shaky legs.
The hero cocked his head to the side, “Sir? Please - please call me Spider-man.” He reached his gloved hand out and shook your hand.
“I’m MJ,” you smiled, looking down at his large hands.
MJ?
The MJ that Peter 1 from the other universe had?
“Is it possible?” He thought to himself, studying your beautiful face, taking in every detail.
You didn’t look like Peter 1’s MJ.
“Could I ever repay you?” You ask, realizing he had never stopped shaking your hand.
His MJ.
“Spider-Man?” You asked, finally getting his attention.
“Sorry!” He stood up straight, “Post fight jitters get to best of me. Would you - do you need a walk home?”
You smiled looking up at the man in the mask, “I would really like that after what just happened.”
“Would you like to walk or swing?” He asked, pointing in the direction you were walking earlier.
“Would walking be okay for now?” You asked with a small awkward chuckle.
He nodded, walking beside you until the two of you reached your apartment. “Here I am,” you sighed, rocking back on your heels, “ Thank you so much. Could I ever possibly repay you Spiderman?”
Standing up straighter he looked down towards you, wishing he could take off his mask and tell you how you are star-crossed and meant to be. How he has yearned for you since he found out he could possibly have an MJ in this world. How you didn’t ever have to repay him because you were his MJ and that was enough. You being alive was enough.
“Nah,” he laughed it off, rocking back on his heels too, “Maybe I will catch you around the city sometime and maybe you can save me,” he joked.
“Well, you’re totally my friend now Spider-Man, and I still owe you big time; so let me know if you need me,” you smiled, pointing back at your apartment,” I doubt you need saving. You know where to find me!”
“Yes I do!” He laughed, starting to slowly back up from your door step, “And if you need me, just hang around more alley ways.”
“Bye Spiderman,” you said with a smile, “I really do hope I see you again soon.”
You gazed at him, trying to take him in as much as you could take in a masked man.
“I do too,” he said quickly as he shot a web, looking back at you while he perched on the brick wall.
You smiled as you watched him swing away from the brick wall and disappear in the night.
Thank you guys so much for reading!! - here is Part 2 <3 & Part 3 & Part 4 & Part 5 & Part 6 & Part 7
a/n: i literally wrote it in less than a day because i was inspired by a movie... of god, i have issues, but ANYWAYS! this one is a classic friends with benefits to lovers story with so much angst and a grandiose love confession at the end so buckle up, you are in for a treat!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEEASE give feedback if you enjoyed it!!
pairing: Harry X Reader
warnings: some, drinking, sexual content, a hell lot of it, angst and messy emotions, it’s a lot!!
word count: 11.8k
masterlist
If your life was some romantic comedy his would be the moment where the camera would zoom on you, your eyes blankly glued to the ceiling, makeup from last night smudged under them as a muscular, inked arm gets thrown across your chest, a snoozing man beside you as you have the internal little monologue.
“You’re wondering how I got into this situation, right? Completely naked with one of my best friends after a night spent with heavy drinking and ending up fucking in his apartment until we both fell asleep.”
Yeah, this is probably what the voiceover would say as the camera would slowly get farther from you, Harry’s sleeping figure coming into the frame while you’re still lying like a damn statue. This was not supposed to happen. Not that it was bad, because oh God! Harry really is as good as his ex-girlfriends gushed to you when you met them on night outs. You could never blame the women for falling for him, he has the charm, the personality, the humor and definitely the looks. If you weren’t you, you’d be one of those girls who would do anything to get his attention just for a split second. But you’re not.
Growing up with a single mother that was repeatedly fucked over by several men, you were taught to be the kind of independent woman who needs no man. Who only uses them for whatever reason and throws them away before they could even realize what’s happening. Feelings could never be involved in the equations, those are just not for you.
For a while you thought you weren’t even capable of feeling anything at all. But the way you cried when your hamster you got for your sixteenth birthday died changed your mind and you realized that you are just saving yourself the time of allowing people to make you develop feelings for them and then give them the chance to break your heart. You’ve seen that happen to your mother enough times to know that you don’t want to go through that. It’s not worth it and why would you risk it all when you could easily get what you need and move on to the next one?
Your friends always joked how you’re gonna be the single aunt to their children later who would take them to clubs and honestly? You’re just fine with that. Because you always thought that while your married friends will be busy with keeping their marriage together with whatever pathetic man they chose to marry, you’ll be living your best life without a worry on the world. That sounds pretty good for you.
There’s no need to make it prettier than what it is, you’ve had a lot of hookups the past years but you always tried to keep yourself in check, have some kind of rules to follow so you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else in the process. One of those were that under no circumstances would you ever sleep with a friend. No matter how badly you want to, no matter if they are begging, it can never happen.
But you broke that rule.
Turning your head to the side you look at Harry’s sleeping face squished into the pillow and you almost wince, because you know that when he wakes up, this gonna hurt like a bitch. He’s gonna freak out, or what’s worse, he’ll want to take it further, take you out on a date… be in a relationship with you! And you’ll have to break his heart because none of those will ever happen.
You and Harry went to high school together and he is one of the very few people you stayed in touch after graduation. Though you grew a little apart when you went to different universities, later on you both somehow ended up in New York and while you’re working as a graphic designer at a magazine, Harry is making good money from writing music for other artists. He’s been one of your closest friends these past years and while you’ve always found him attractive, you should have never let this happen, because it will mess everything up and you didn’t want to lose such a good friend.
Harry stirs in his sleep next to you, his hand squeezing your side before his eyes blink open, green irises finding your wide eyes. He stops for a moment, looking around, taking in his surroundings before his eyes fall closed again.
“Wow, must have been one wild night?” he mumbles into the pillow before a raspy chuckle falls from his lips.
Last night, the two of you and a couple of your mutual friends celebrated that Harry has gotten his biggest deal so far, having to write an entire album for an up-and-coming artist, so you all got pretty wasted, especially you and him. It’s a little blurry how the two of you ended up like this, but you do remember wildly making out hidden somewhere behind the bar before he asked if you wanted to come to his place. You stupid little thing, should have said no…
Groaning, Harry rolls to his back, his arm falling from you as he lies sprawled out next to you.
“The tequila shots. Shouldn’t have had them,” you rasp out, a smirk tugging on his lips at your words. “So, um… we both can agree this was a one time thing, right?”
Harry peeks at you, pushing himself up a bit so his head rests against the headboard. The sheets slide down a bit lower on his body, revealing his toned chest and his several tattoos. Memories of you kissing them eagerly last night flash into your mind and you can only hope you’re not blushing like a school girl.
“What if I don’t agree?” Harry cocks an eyebrow and you almost groan. You knew this was going to happen!
“Harry, I’m not going out with you. You know me, I don’t do that. It’s nice that you think that it could work between us, but I don’t do relationships and I’m not changing my rules, not even for you.”
Harry starts laughing, as if you just said the best joke of the century, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. You give him a puzzled look as you sit up, holding the sheets to your chest.
“Who talked about dating, Y/N?” he then asks. “You said last night was a one time thing. We fucked last night. What if that wasn’t the only time we did that?”
You start to put the pieces together, though you’d definitely be sharper if you already had your first coffee of the day.
“Are you trying to start a… friends with benefits thing with me?”
“I mean, you could call it whatever you want. I personally really enjoyed last night and judging from the way you were screaming my name, you did too.” Now you’re for sure blushing. “Why not do it again?”
“This is not a movie, H. I don’t think it’s manageable without ruining our friendship.”
“Have you ever tried something like this?” You shake your head no. “Then how could you know?”
“Have you tried it?”
“Never,” he chuckles. “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. We are both cool, smart people. I think we can give it a try and whenever someone is feeling like they had enough, we’re just gonna stop.”
“What if you catch feelings?” you ask, raising eyebrows at him.
“Oh, but what if you fall for me?” he throws the question back with a cocky smirk and you smack his naked chest.
“You know I never do that!”
“I don’t think you can just decide that, but alright,” he chuckles, holding his hands up in defense. “I promise you I won’t catch feelings for you, Y/N. I swear on my…”
“Your mom’s and sister’s life!” you point at him. It’s clear that he thinks it’s silly, but you just keep staring at him until he gives in.
“I swear on my mum’s and my sister’s life that I will not catch feelings for you, Y/N.”
“Alright. And we can end it anytime?”
“Whenever you’ve had enough of me,” he smirks back, so pleased with himself that it’s clear he doesn’t think that could ever happen.
“If you keep that cocky look on your face it’s gonna be a very short deal, Styles,” you warn him, but he just laughs before he quickly pulls you back down to bed, getting on top of you, his hips sinking between your legs and you gasp when you feel that he is already semi-hard.
“Why don’t we get a head start on it then?” he offers, his lips crashing against yours before they travel down your body and soon enough he gives you something that’s a thousand times better than a coffee in the morning.
At first you’re clearly hesitant about it. Not sure if it was a good idea or you just ruined everything between you and Harry, but soon enough you realize that it wasn’t as bad of a decision as you thought it to be.
Harry is the one to call you for the first time, two days after the night you drunkenly hooked up. You’re just leaving the office when he hits you up, asking if you have plans for the night or you’re free to go over to his place. An hour later you find yourself pressed up against the wall of his apartment’s hallway, both of you eager to get each other out of your clothes. Now that it all happens without either of you being drunk, you actually have the chance to think about how good it is with him. He is just the perfect mixture of dominant and soft, knows when to be the boss and when he has to slow down a bit.
He makes you cum three times. Three mind-blowing times, and you also give him two orgasms. You try to make it equal and make it three, but he respectfully says no.
“If you touched my dick again I think I would start crying,” he chuckles jokingly, so you don’t even think about pushing it.
Instead, the two of you order Chinese, have dinner together, talking like you always used to before the deal and then you go home. There’s no awkwardness, no weird situations, not even when you leave. Harry leans closer and for a moment you think he is gonna be corny and kiss you goodbye, but then you feel him smack your ass before pushing you out the door, just like he always did before, joking about how he is gonna charge you rent if you stay any longer.
Nothing has changed, only that you now spend a good chunk of your time together naked, moaning each other’s name before you get back to your usual.
So after that you don’t shy away from reaching out to Harry as well. It becomes a regular thing, the two of you meeting up about two of three times a week. You fuck, hang out a bit and go your separate ways. Slowly, you start to forget about times when you stayed dressed up for more than ten minutes after meeting Harry.
You keep switching between your and his place, but sometimes meet somewhere in the middle. You’ve had sex in a restaurant bathroom, in his car in a parking garage and even in his cousin’s place in Brooklyn. That was a bit odd but still quite pleasing.
Tonight is going to be the first time you’re gonna be out with all your friends and Harry since the deal was made. No one knows about it and you intend to keep it that way.
Once you’re done at work you head home, texting Leticia, another friend from high school to meet you at your place to get ready together. She was Harry’s friend at first, what’s better, she openly hated you at first for some reason.
“You just had a punchable face at fifteen, you can’t blame me,” she used to tell you. It was actually Harry who made the two of you friends and you’ve been close ever since.
You get to your apartment almost at the same time. Leticia starts rambling about her asshole of a boss at the law firm where she works at as you open a bottle of wine to start the evening while you roam through your wardrobe for an outfit.
“Is Leo coming? I owe him a few bucks from last time,” Leticia wonders, digging into your dresser for a pair of tights she can borrow to pair with her leather skirt.
“I think he is, but he is going to be late. He is coming from Staten Island from his dad’s,” you muse, checking yourself out in the red dress you just tried on, not quite pleased with the look, so you quickly work down the zipper and look for something else.
“Um, whose is this?”
Turning around you see that Leticia is holding up a shirt Harry left at yours a few days ago. She is clearly confused about the men’s clothing between your stuff, because you are not one to steal them from the men you sleep with since you don’t really want anything from them to remind you of them.
“Oh, um, that’s… That’s Harry’s. He left it here a few days ago,” you shrug, not making a big deal out of it, but Leticia is nosier than that.
“And why is Harry leaving his clothes around your place?”
“Is that a crime?” you snort, trying to play it cool.
“No, but in what kind of situation did this shirt come off of Harry and end up in your dresser?”
You can’t think of a good answer that would stop her from interrogating you, and the way you’ve just gotten silent is telling her more than words could. She drops the shirt, eyes widening at you and it’s clear that she put two and two together.
“Oh my God! You’re sleeping with Harry!”
“No! I’m… I just—We…”
“You two are totally fucking! What the fuck!” she gasps in complete shock as you pinch the bridge of your nose.
“Let me explain it, alright? W-We hooked up on the night when we went out to celebrate his big album deal.”
“When I couldn’t go, right?”
“Yeah. So we were both very drunk and it just happened. And I really thought it would ruin everything but we somehow ended up making a deal.”
“Jesus, you guys are acting out the Friends With Benefits movie? Who are you, Mila fucking Kunis?”
“It’s not like that!” you defend yourself quickly, but then you realize that it’s just like that so far. “Well, it kind of is, but the ending won’t be like that.”
“Do you really think you can just do it with absolutely no strings?” Leticia sighs, her hands coming to her hips as she stares back at you.
“It’s been going great, so I really think it’s doable. And if any of us decides they had enough, we’ll just call it quits.”
“Yeah, because it’s that easy,” she rolls her eyes. “One of you will catch feelings and someone is gonna end up crying, Y/N.”
“No, that’s not gonna happen,” you shake your head stubbornly. “He promised it won’t happen.”
“Feelings don’t give a shit about promises! I hope you really know what you’re doing, because I don’t want to have to choose between the two of you,” she grumbles before throwing Harry’s shirt back into the drawer, grabbing the tights she’s been looking for.
Leticia doesn’t hold a grudge for the news she just found out, but she surely has gotten you thinking. Is it really gonna end bad? Why can’t there be a scenario where it goes perfectly fine and no one gets hurt? Harry promised it’s gonna be alright and he has been proven right so far, so why are you having second guesses now?
Arriving at the bar the majority of your friend group is already there, including Harry. You sit across him in the small booth, just exchanging a quick smile before the first round arrives and the evening starts. You allow yourself to take a better look at him while he listens to Mitch’s story and you can’t say that you don’t find him hot. He is wearing a vintage, floral printed shirt, the first few buttons left undone, so you have a nice view of his chest and his necklace you’ve felt under your lips so many times before when you were kissing down his body. He keeps twisting and playing with his several rings and it makes you stare at his hands for a tad bit longer than you intended to. God, he looks so damn good, you really just want to fuck him here and now.
You keep changing who goes up to the bar to order and the third round is yours, so sliding out of the booth you go to the bar and wait for your turn. A young, handsome guy is making the drinks and you clearly catch his eyes.
“And what can I get for you, beautiful?” he smirks at you when it’s finally your turn.
“Two vodka sodas, a martini and three vodka cranberries,” you smile back at him with a hint of flirting in your tone.
It’s kind of second nature to you, a few charming smiles and winks have gotten a lot of free things for you in your life and you never miss a chance to use your advances.
“All that for one pretty girl?” he teases you.
“I would be all over the floor if I drank all of it,” you chuckle, pulling your card out of your wallet, tapping it on the terminal as he finishes up the drinks, kindly putting them on a tray so you can easily bring them over to the booth.
“Don’t worry, I would surely pick you up then,” he winks at you, placing the last drink to the tray before you thank him and head back.
As you take your previous seat you notice that Harry is watching you intently.
“What?” you mouth him over the conversation at the table.
“Nothing,” he shakes his head, turning his gaze away, grabbing his drink and focusing back on everyone else.
You go up to the bar two more times, once to ask for some chips and once for some napkins after a drink has gotten spilt onto the table. Every time you exchange a few words with the bartender and you have to admit, he has a great sense of humor paired with his looks.
Sometime later in the evening you decide to switch to water, so you go up to the bar a fourth time, the bartender coming to you right away at this point. As you wait for him to grab you your drink you feel a hand on your lower back. Turning to the side you see Harry standing next to you.
“Hey, want to come to my place after this?” he asks, leaning closer to your ear. His hot breath hits your exposed skin on your neck and a shudder runs down your spine, especially with his hand still on the small of your back.
“You want a rerun of your first time?” you smirk back at him, referring to the drinks you both have had, though it’s definitely not as wild as that night was.
“No, but this dress is making it hard not to want to rip it off,” he bluntly tells you as you glance down at yourself. At last you decided to wear a black bodycon dress that surely shows every dip and curve of your body and apparently Harry has been enjoying the show.
The bartender arrives with your water, his eyes falling on Harry and you see that he is a little taken aback by his presence.
“Hey man, can you get me another one as well? I’ll pay for both,” Harry nods at him and there’s something foreign in his tone that you can’t really put your finger on. The bartender just nods back and goes to grab another water.
“What if I wasn’t in the mood?” you tease him, continuing the discussion where you left it a moment ago.
“Oh, please!” he chuckles smugly. “I saw you eyeing me from across the table, Y/N. I know you are definitely in the mood.”
He is right. So damn right. You’ve been crossing your legs under the table for a while now, feeling your arousal growing every time you saw him run his tongue over his lips or whenever his finger played with the lip of his glass, imagining him doing the same with your body.
Biting into your bottom lip you need to take a deep breath, but when Harry sees your teeth digging into your lip, he loses his patience.
“Or we can just do it now,” he growls lowly, grabbing your hand before he starts pulling you towards the restrooms. You don’t even have the chance to protest, not that you want to.
He is quick to pull you into an empty restroom, locking the door behind the two of you before his lips attack yours, pushing you against the door with vigor and hunger. His hands are already bunching your dress up around your waist and you moan his name when your hips meet and you feel his hard length through his jeans.
“We have to be quick, so no one notices we disappeared,” he pants as he helps you up to the counter, your back hitting the cold mirror behind you.
“Then shut up and just fuck me,” you challenge him and it makes him absolutely feral.
You don’t have time to enjoy it the way you usually do in bed, but the excitement of the situation alone has gotten you so wet that you’re already dripping when he pushes your panties to the side with one hand while his other works on his own pants.
“Fuck, already so wet for me, huh?” he breathes out, his lips brushing against yours before they kiss you fully.
“Just like how you’re rock hard for me,” you grin against his lips, a hand wandering down to his cock as you pull it out of his boxers, stroking it a few times before he pulls a condom out of his back pocket and wraps himself up. “Were you counting on this quickie, Styles?” you ask when you realize that he just had a condom ready on him.
“I knew for sure I’m gonna fuck you tonight, but wasn’t sure how long I’m gonna last,” he grins, capturing your lips again before he pushes himself inside you with no warning, making you both gasp.
“Fuck! Harry!” you moan as he starts moving rapidly, definitely not taking his time like he usually does. He is pounding into you without mercy, panting against your lips as his ring clad fingers are digging into the flesh of your thighs.
“You like that? Like it when I fuck you somewhere public?” he growls, making your legs curl around his hips.
Your hands move up his chest and neck, fingers tangling into his curls and you give them a tug, earning an animalistic grunt from him as he starts going even harder and faster. You’re rapidly getting closer to your orgasm.
“You close?” he pants and you nod. “Come on, cum all over my cock, Y/N.”
A few more thrusts and your walls tighten around his dick, squeezing him as you gasp, riding your high, your head falling backwards, meeting with the mirror behind you. Harry follows you a few pushes later, moaning your name repeatedly before his movements come to a halt and you both take a moment to catch your breath.
When he pulls out you both just quietly clean yourselves up, fixing your clothes and hair so you don’t entirely scream sex with your appearances.
“My offer to come to mine after still stands,” he smirks, running a hand through his hair before you head out.
“Tempting, but I have some work to do in the morning, so no,” you turn him down, stepping out to the dark hallway that leads back to the bar. Harry grabs your hand and pulls you back, his lips smashing against yours, surprising you with his move. He kisses you deeply, sucking on your bottom lip hard before he pulls back.
“What was that for?” you ask out of breath.
“If you’re not coming over, I needed something to have a good night,” he shrugs with a smug smirk before you return to the bar.
You catch the bartender’s look as you finally get your waters and Harry pays for them. You catch the two men eyeing each other for a moment before you and Harry return to the table and you forget about the whole thing.
A Sunday afternoon you’re lounging at Harry’s. You jumped at each other’s bones when you arrived, but now you’re chilling on his couch, watching a series you both wanted to start so you decided to give it a go together. Your leg is lying across Harry’s lap, his hands absentmindedly kneading your thighs. It feels nice, like a massage, especially after how sore he made you earlier, stretching you out more than he usually does with a new pose you tried out.
Your phone chimes next to you and tearing your gaze away from the TV you check to see who just sent you a text. It was one of your coworkers, Anthony, he sent you a raging text about how he still has no idea what to wear to the company party that’s gonna be next Saturday and you realize that you totally forgot about it.
“Shit!” you curse under your breath.
“What?” Harry asks, pausing the show.
“I have this stupid work party next weekend and I totally forgot about it,” you growl, checking your calendar quickly if you can squeeze in a quick shopping spree before Saturday or you’ll have to find something in your closet.
“Aren’t those things nice with a lot of free food and drinks?” Harry wonders.
“Yeah, but I don’t like it, because all my colleagues bring their partners and I’m usually the only single one and they keep trying to set me up with someone,” you roll your eyes even at the thought of having to suffer through another one of those awkward conversations about your love life. Like it’s any of their concern!
“I can go with you if that helps,” he offers and you give him a look over your phone. “What? I’m sure if you brought someone they wouldn’t bug you.”
“But we are not together,” you remind him narrowing your eyes at him.
“They don’t have to know that. It’s a win-win, Y/N. Your colleagues would stop nagging you and I can eat and drink for free,” he smirks, clearly pleased with his little plan.
“I mean… you’re not wrong,” you sigh.
“See? Then it’s settled,” he pats your legs, smirking widely at you, but you’re still not entirely convinced. “Come on, Y/N. It’s gonna be fun!”
“This is so cliché, Harry!” you groan, your head falling back against the arm of the couch. “Pretending to be a couple? Straight out of a damn movie.”
Harry lifts your legs up so he can get out from under them, placing them back to the cushion before he climbs over to you, half of his body pressing onto yours as he squints his eyes at you.
“We can fuck in the bathroom, if you want,” he bluntly offers and you just start laughing at his dirty mind and technique of convincing you. “What? There’s literally no better offer out there. Free food, free drinks and free sex. Really good sex, if I may add,” he points out and you smack his chest lightly.
“Didn’t know you were thinking about charging me for the sex,” you joke.
“Might as well do, baby. Especially if it’s the best you can get,” he smugly huffs and you’d retort something funny, but you get caught up on the name.
“Baby? Since when are you calling me baby?”
“Since we are gonna be a couple next week. Gotta rehearse, baby,” he repeats the nickname and a foreign feeling bubbles in the pit of your stomach. Why is this one little word making you feel things you haven’t before? “And you know what else we can rehearse?” he continues, oblivious to your inner dialogue.
You don’t get to answer upon feeling his hand slide between your legs, fingers gently pressing onto your clothed clit and though you can’t stop a moan from slipping through your lips, you still grab his wrist and pull him away.
“My legs are too sore, I wouldn’t enjoy another round of you pounding into me,” you tell him and you can see the proud glimmer in his eyes that he was the one who got you into this state, though he luckily doesn’t comment on it.
“It doesn’t have to be pounding, then,” he smirks and leaning down he kisses you, taking his time as his hand frees itself from your grip and slides under your shorts and panties, fingers meeting your already throbbing bud.
He repositions himself so one of his thighs are between your legs, his lips never leaving yours as his fingers start drawing circles on your clit, sending pleasure down your body in waves.
“Fuck,” you breathe out against his lips when two of his fingers tease your entrance before pushing all the way inside, curling them between your clenching, wet walls.
“No, we are not fucking right now,” he smirks, never missing a chance to joke around and you want to retort to his comment, but words get caught in your throat when his thumb starts playing with your clit, fingers sliding in and out of you in a steady rhythm.
“So, are we on for Saturday? It’s gonna be fun, hm?”
The little shit is using his fingers to convince you and he has the audacity to ask you questions when you are about to see stars. Sometimes you really do hate how big of a smug fucker Harry is, but it’s hard to feel hatred for him when he is about to make you cum again.
“I-I don’t… Harry!” you gasp when he abruptly pulls his fingers out of you, right when you were so close. “I was about to fucking cum!” you growl, raging eyes meeting his green irises.
“I know,” he chuckles. “Say that you’re in and I’ll make you cum.”
“You motherfu—“
You don’t get to finish, his lips smashing against yours as his fingers return, moving faster than before, quickly pushing you towards the edge again.
“Say it. Say it, Y/N,” he mumbles against your lips as your chest is heaving and you start buckling your hips to meet his movements.
“Fuck… Okay! I’m in, just please make me cum!” you whine, hands gripping his shoulders like your life depends on it.
“Good girl,” he smirks and finishes you off without any more teasing.
You cry out his name, fingers digging into his muscles as you push your thighs together, trapping his hand between them while he keeps fingering you oh so perfectly. He makes sure you ride out the last waves of your orgasm before he pulls his fingers out and without batting an eye, he just licks them and fixes your panties and shorts before returning to his previous position with your legs across his lap, starting the show like nothing really happened.
Saturday morning you’re able to quickly get your nails done and Leticia comes with you, the two of you having brunch together afterwards. You go to a new place near the nail salon and as the waiter arrives with your orders, you notice that he slides a napkin onto the table with a small smile.
Grabbing it you see a phone number scribbled onto it. Normally, you send back a smile and tug the napkin into your purse, but this time you just leave it on the table and decide to ignore it.
“What the hell is up with you?” Leticia asks and glancing up at her you see her gesturing towards the napkin. “You don’t seem too thrilled about the approach which is very unlike you.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m just… not interested,” you shrug, reaching for your fork.
“Not interested? The dude looks like the lovechild of Chris Hemsworth and Johnny Depp. He is exactly your type, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m just not seeking another hookup right now, that’s it.”
“Oh my God!” Leticia gasps and you give her a puzzled look.
“What?”
“You don’t want other men because of Harry!”
“What? That’s crazy,” you laugh, because she has clearly left her mind at the salon for even thinking that.
“Have you hooked up with anyone else than Harry since you’ve made your little deal?”
“I, uhh… Flirted with the bartender when we were out together.”
“Flirting doesn’t count, not even in relationships.”
“I don’t think many would agree with that, Tish,” you huff.
“Okay, but did you have any interest in fucking someone else?”
“I don’t get it why you are making a big deal out of it. Why would I seek anyone else if I’m perfectly pleased by him?”
“Honey, that’s like… how relationships work.”
“That’s not true,” you shake your head, though what would you know about relationships? Your first and only one was when you were seventeen and it lasted twenty-one pathetic days.
“Are you fucking with anyone else?” She asks, eyebrows raised at you as you shake your head no. “Are you fucking him?”
“Obviously,” you scoff.
“Do you spend time together that doesn’t include sex?”
You are almost quick to say no, but then you realize that would be a big ass lie. Every time he comes over to your place or you’re at his, it’s never just the sex. That’s always primary, but not everything you do. All the dinners, the movies and shows you’ve watched together, when you sit on your tiny balcony with a bottle of wine, talking and laughing like you always did before the deal, something always happens after the sex.
Your silence once again answers Leticia’s question. Reaching over the table she takes your hand in hers, giving it a soft squeeze.
“Girl, you are totally dating Harry.”
Leticia once again manages to put a flea in your ear about this whole Harry thing. You wish she didn’t say a thing, because now you can’t think of anything else than the fact that you really are doing all the things with Harry that people who are dating do.
You get so riled up that you almost cancel on the evening, but you’d hate to have to sit through the evening with your colleagues alone when you said you’d be bringing someone. That would make their usual nagging a hundred times worse. So instead, you suck it up and decide to ignore the issue just for the time being and you get ready.
You were able to find a new dress beforehand, the yellow dress is truly a sight to the sore eyes with the corset-like top and very subtle lace details here and there. It’s a little daring, but everyone goes all out for these parties usually and you definitely don’t want to be underdressed.
Harry texts you that he is in front of the building a little before seven, holding up the taxi he came with so you quickly grab everything you need and head out.
You’re the first one to see him through the glass entrance doors of your building, he is standing next to the car in a simple black suit and a soft yellow shirt underneath. It was actually your idea to match your outfits and he surely understood the assignment, especially seeing his also yellow nails.
Part of you is still hung up on what Leticia told you, but a bigger one is so excited to see him and also very into his look for the evening, that you push your doubts to the back of your mind and step out of the building with a shy smile on your lips as his eyes fall on you and you see his lips part.
“Wow! This dress is… wow!” he breathes out, his eyes raking your frame up and down shamelessly as you walk closer.
“Do you know any other words than wow?” you tease him, biting into your bottom lip.
“Yeah. How about: I would love to bend you over this taxi and take you here and now in this dress?”
Your face heats up immediately, slapping his arm, but then you leave your hand on his bicep and give it a squeeze as your answer: you’d definitely love that if it wasn’t kind of illegal to have sex out on a busy street.
The ignorance in you is so high that you don’t even mind how Harry keeps a hand on your thigh in the car, what’s more, you’re quite liking the warmth of his touch on you. His fingers are gently tapping against the music the driver is playing and he even hums a little along the songs.
“Hey, how is the album writing going?” you ask to break the silence a little.
“Great! They asked for fifteen songs until the end of August, so I have plenty of time, but I’m already done with six,” he beams, and you smile back at him proudly.
“That’s amazing. Can I hear any of them sometime?”
“I mean… if you buy the album?” he chuckles, making you roll your eyes at him. “I’ll see what I can do about that,” he then adds, giving your leg another squeeze before turning towards the window.
The party is just the same as it always is. A luxurious evening to celebrate the company’s success in the past six months, a way to give back to the employees and make them feel appreciated with all the free stuff. It’s nice, but you don’t feel like it’s necessary, people would be happier with a raise after all, than one night of free food and drinks.
Harry holds your hand as you walk in, the majority of the guests already present, music playing and there are several open buffet tables and bars in the gigantic ballroom that was decorated in a forest-like theme just for tonight.
“So you did not lie about bringing a date!” Anthony beams as soon as he sees you, his boyfriend, Pete following him right behind, both of them wearing matching burgundy suits.
“Have I lied to you about anything?” you chuckle awkwardly.
“Plenty of times,” he points out before turning towards Harry. “Hello handsome, I’m Anthony, Y/N’s favorite coworker, and this is my boyfriend, Pete.” They all shake hands, Harry smiling back at them warmly before his hand finds yours again, his fingers lacing together with yours in an instant.
“Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you, I’m Harry.”
“Oh my! The accent!” Anthony gushes, clearly already a fan of Harry’s. “I was really afraid Y/N just said that she is bringing someone so we would get out of her hair this time.”
“I feel offended,” you give him a look, but he just shrugs it off, even though he is more right than he knows.
“Come on, let’s get you guys a drink, we are all sitting over there!”
Joining all your coworkers at the table, you get a head start on the food and drinks, not shying away from stacking everything you like onto your plate. Talking, mixing and mingling, Harry stays right next to you, charming everyone the two of you meet, earning you some approving looks from your colleagues that usually try to set you up with someone they know. This time, you’re left in peace the moment they see Harry with you, his hand always somewhere on you, holding your hand, the small of your back, your hips or waist or, your personal favorite, the back of your neck under your hair. His presence is uplifting already, but his tiny touches just warm you even more on the inside.
“I have to say, Y/N, you are absolutely glowing!” Dianne, one of the editors compliment you when the two of you are at the bar waiting for your drinks to be refilled. Harry stayed back at the table, deep in conversation with Pete about guitars, from what you could understand from their conversation.
“Oh, thank you!” you chuckle softly.
“This man is for sure treating you well. It’s so great to see you finally finding your person.”
She meant well with her comment, but it’s what brings everything you kept hidden in the back of your head out to the front. Tonight was supposed to be all pretending, making everyone believe something that’s not even there, but then why do you feel like it’s real? Like you fooled yourself with everyone else as well?
Your eyes fall back to Harry at the table, who is intently listening to something Pete is telling him and as if he had a sixth sense, his eyes snap at you, a smile stretching across his pretty face at an instant that makes you stomach dance again, heart beating oddly fast.
What is happening to you? This cannot be real, you can’t be having feelings, especially not for Harry. No, you do not allow that for yourself, emotions are off limits for you, because if you fall for someone that gives them the chance to leave you and break you and you’ve seen what it does to a woman. You got enough of the suffering through your mother and you vowed not to let it happen to you. And not even Harry Styles will change that. This is about sex and nothing else, no feelings are involved and that will not change. You won’t let it.
Excusing yourself from Dianne you quickly go back to the table, the refills long forgotten as you take your seat next to Harry. His hand instantly finds your leg as he looks at you with a sweet smile at first that turns into slight confusion.
“Thought you went for a refill?”
“Forget the drinks,” you shake your head, leaning closer to his ear. “You promised me bathroom sex.”
You feel the shift in him right away, how he bites into his bottom lip, his bright green irises darkening at your words, his hold on your leg tightening. His gaze flickers to your eyes and you want to devour him, you want him to take you here and there to prove you that this is all it’s about: sex.
Clearing his throat he mumbles a lame excuse as he pulls you from your chair, tugging you towards the restrooms, you try to keep up with his pace in your heels, but you also can’t wait for him to slam you against the door and fuck you quick and hard.
As soon as you’re locked away from the party in one of the bathrooms, your lips collide with his as he pushes you up against the door, a leg coming between your thighs and you can’t stop yourself from grinding on him.
“Fuck,” he rasps out, hands cupping your jaw as he angles your head just right while your hands are already traveling down his body to reach his pants, eager to get them undone as fast as possible.
However the sudden rush and desperation catches Harry’s eyes and he grabs your hands, stopping you mid-action.
“Hey, everything alright?” he asks, out of breath, concern filling his eyes.
“I just need you to fuck me,” you bluntly reply, but he doesn��t move.
“Okay, but why do you look so shaken up? Did something happen?”
“Harry, stop babying me! I said I’m fine, I just want you to fuck me!” you snap, losing your patience. Not sure if it’s with him or with yourself though.
“You’re obviously not fine! You are snapping at me for being decent and making sure you’re okay!” Harry steps away from you, the moment completely ruined as all physical contact ends with him, his eyes staring back at you in disbelief and you feel like a ticking bomb that’s about to explode.
“It’s not your concern if I’m okay or not. We have a deal, just go with that and leave the rest to me!”
“But above the deal we are friends too. I’m not gonna just… fuck you senseless when you’re obviously upset about something. You’re not in the right mindset.”
“Oh my God, stop being so fucking nice! Stop making these grand gestures and stop pretending like you give a fuck!” You raise your voice and it surely surprises him, but he is still more concerned than angry at your outburst.
“What do you mean pretending? I do care about you! Is that a fucking crime now?!”
“It is because it is for the wrong reasons!” you retort, feeling your throat closing up at the same time. Oh God, you hope you won’t start crying, that will make it even worse. “I think you are taking this pretending a little too far tonight. We are not a couple, this is not real, Harry,” you remind him.
He stares back at you for what feels like eternity and you wish you could read his mind, because you can’t read anything from his eyes, he just stands there like a statue and you feel panic crawling up your spine, slowly digging its claws into your flesh.
And then he finally breaks his silence.
“And would it be so bad if it was real?”
You can’t help a sob that emits from you, feeling like your guts are in a tight grip by his words. This is exactly what you didn’t want to happen.
“No, take that back!” you whine.
“I’m not taking it back! Y/N, what we’ve been doing these past weeks is exactly what a relationship is like and you didn’t seem to have a problem with it until a label was put on it. It doesn’t have to change anything!”
“But it is! And you know I don’t do this!”
“Don’t do what? Feelings? You don’t get to choose that!” he chuckles bitterly.
“I do! I fucking do! And I chose not to have them so… this is ending here, because you clearly caught feelings,” you pant in desperate need of getting out of the bathroom, but when you are about to open the door Harry’s hand snaps against it, keeping it closed. You rest your forehead against the cool surface of it, feeling Harry stand so close to you behind, his chest is touching your back.
“Don’t just walk away, we are in the middle of a conversation,” he growls, his voice filled with anger and warning.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” you whisper, shaking your head as you turn around and face him, your back pressing against the door.
“But I do,” he simply replies. “Why do you think you can just run away from feeling anything for the rest of your life? Why would it be so bad if you fell for someone, huh? I know you do have feelings, I know you well, Y/N. You’re not some cold hearted jerk, you are a caring and loving person, so why won’t you let yourself be happy?”
“I am happy the way I am, have you thought about that?”
“No, you’re not. I’ve known you half my life, I know that you want to be cared for, you want to be loved and cherished, yet you push away everyone who wants to give you that.”
“Because it’s not that easy, Harry!” you snap at him. “It’s never just the lovey-dovey shit! Feelings come with hurt and pain and heartbreaks and I don’t need that! I can’t handle that!”
“It’s not always the case! But if you never put yourself out there, you’ll never find the happiness you’re seeking!”
“Well, for me, it doesn’t worth it! I don’t want to fall for someone, plan my future with them and open up to them completely only for them to fall out of love with me one day and decide they don’t want anything to do with me! I don’t want to give anyone the chance to hurt me like that, because I’ve seen what it does to a person! I witnessed it all, Harry! I will not be a victim to that!”
You’re full on shouting, tears rolling down your cheeks at this point. You are letting everything out that’s been bottled up deep inside of you all this time. Nothing can make you believe in the fairytale that will never become your reality and you rather save the time and pain than experiment with it.
What really hurts is that now you are losing your friend. Your best friend. Because the way Harry is looking at you makes it obvious that you’ll never be like before the deal. The hurt, the shock, the panic and the anger, it all mixes in his wide-eyed gaze and it’s like a knife into your chest.
“You promised me, Harry,” you sob, voice now barely more than just a whisper. “You swore you wouldn’t catch feelings but you lied!”
“I didn’t lie,” he simply answers clenching his jaw. “I said I wouldn’t catch feelings for you, but truth is… I already had them. I was already in love with you, have been for a while. And you know what? I think you love me too, but you’re just too afraid to admit it. I know it because I can feel it. The way you touch me, look at me, the way you talk to me, it’s written all over you, but you choose to ignore it.”
“You don’t know shit,” you shake your head vigorously. “You think you know it, but you don’t.”
“Stop denying it, Y/N! You can’t just switch it off! Loving is not as horrendous as you think it is! Yes, it comes with pain too, but the good is always there to make you forget about it. You have to give it… you have to give yourself a chance!”
“I don’t have to do anything, Harry,” you sass back, pushing him away so you have the chance to sneak out of the room before he could stop you. But he doesn’t let it end that easily. Running after you he catches your wrist before you could get out of the hallway, pulling you back.
“Don’t just fucking walk away, Y/N! We need to talk about this!”
“No, we don’t. And I’m done with this. Done with… you.”
It hurts. The words rolling off of your tongue hurt, but you choose to ignore it once again as you shake his hand off of yourself, marching back to your table to grab your bag and leave.
“What do you mean you’re done with me? Don’t do this, Y/N! Let’s just fucking talk!”
Harry keeps trying to stop you, but you’re determined to leave. Your coworkers notice the little scene, but you don’t pay it any attention as you head out of the room, knowing well they’ll talk shit about you behind your back as soon as you’re out of the building.
“Y/N for fuck’s sake just stop already!” Harry snaps, grabbing your arm once again when you’re outside, pulling you back, but you’ve had enough.
“No! I’m not stopping, you need to stop! Stop trying to make yourself believe this is anything more than just the deal we made! It’s not and it will never be, because you don’t get to have the privilege of hurting me, nobody gets to do that!”
“Who said I want to hurt you?! That’s the last thing I would want to do! It’s not as cruel as you imagine it, Y/N. I know that your mum had a terrible love life when you were younger, but that’s not the only side to love! There are so much good about it, so much to fight for and endure with the bad sides, you can’t just throw all of it out the window because you decided love is just not for you!”
“I can and I will. Watch me!” you bite back, tearing your arm out of his hold as you step to the side of the pavement and wave a taxi down.
“Please don’t get into that car, Y/N, let’s talk!”
“We talked enough,” you huff as the car stops in front of you and you hop inside, but just as you are about to close the door Harry once again stops you.
“Y/N, I love you. Please don’t do this!” he begs, so much sorrow and pain radiating from his face and for a moment you fall weak. You almost reach out to him, because part of you hates seeing him like this, especially knowing that it’s because of you. You just want him to be happy, but you know it’s not gonna be with you. You can never give him what he wants and needs. He’ll be better off without you.
“I’m sorry,” you choke out before pulling the door closed and the car drives away. Turning around you see him stand on the pavement, completely broken and shaken, his hands tangling into his hair as he angrily kicks at the dirt before the car melts into the traffic and he falls out of your sight.
You did it for your and Harry’s sake. It had to be done and you are both better off this way. At least that’s what you’ve been trying to convince you to believe.
But why does it hurt so badly then?
Harry tried you calling a million times after you left him at the party, he even came after you and banged on your door for thirty minutes straight, begging you to let him in and just talk, but you didn’t even answer him. Just waited until he left before you curled up in the shower and cried for about an hour.
The calls and texts kept coming in the next few days, but after a while he gave up. He got nothing but silence from your side and one last, long ass text that you didn’t even read because you knew you’d just start crying again, he finally gave up.
You were left alone with all the pain and emptiness and you realized how big part of your life Harry played before. Somehow, everything reminded you of him and you couldn’t do anything without wishing he was with you.
You truly believed that time will heal you, that soon you’ll realize that you made the right decision, but days turned into weeks and nothing changed, you just learned to live with the pain. You stopped going out with your friends and not just because you were afraid of seeing Harry, but because you genuinely couldn’t get yourself to leave the house. Your evenings consisted of binge eating all the ice-cream you could find in your freezer and watching reruns of your favorite shows, but nothing could really take your mind off of Harry.
Day after day you cancelled on Leticia as well until she had enough of your hermit life. She got fed up watching you sink into your pit of sorrow and decided to take things into her own hands and not let you run away from her.
A Friday evening you’re doing what you’ve been doing for weeks now, lying on your couch in sweatpants, scrolling through Netflix when there’s a knock on your door. You wait, hoping whoever it is will think you’re not home and go away, but another obnoxious knock rips through the apartment and you growl.
“I know you’re in there bitch, open the fucking door!” Leticia shouts from outside and you curse the day you became friends with her. Maybe you would have been better off as enemies.
“I’m busy!” you call out, but make your way to the front door anyway, opening it to reveal her.
“Yeah, I can see that. Busy with being a bag of trash,” she comments on your appearance, walking inside without an invitation.
“Jeez, you really did wake up today and chose violence,” you mutter under your breath as you shut the door closed.
Leticia is quick to turn the TV off and open up the windows as you just stand there, not sure what she is doing here.
“When did you clean this place? And when was the last time you took a shower?” she asks, her nose scrunching when she takes a better look at you.
“Okay, did you come here to offend me? Because I don’t need that so please leave.”
“No, I’m here to beat some sense into you.”
“Good luck with that,” you scoff, taking your spot on the couch once again. You reach for the remote with the intention of turning the TV back on, but Leticia stands in front of the screen, blocking the device completely as she stares down at you with a disapproving look, arms folded on her chest.
“You’re acting like a child, Y/N. Avoiding everyone and being mad at the whole world, are you an emo teenager now or what?”
“I’m not mad at the whole world!”
“Okay, then you’re mad at just Harry, still, it’s a mistake.”
“I’m not mad at only Harry either,” you admit truthfully.
“Who else then?”
“Myself?” you mumble, eyes falling closed as you slide lower down on the couch.
“That makes the two of us, but why are you mad at yourself?” she asks, finally moving from her spot in front of the TV as she sits next to you on the couch, crossing her legs as she waits for your answer.
“Because…” you start with a sigh, opening your eyes, but you avoid looking at her, instead, you stare at the wall across you. “Because I can’t fucking stop thinking about him,” you admit and your lips start trembling instantly, just like every time you think about him. “I miss him so fucking badly, Tish! I miss our conversations, I miss his stupid jokes, I miss him raiding my fucking fridge and I miss…”
You bite your tongue, not wanting to admit the next thoughts loudly. Because you miss kissing him, you miss holding him and be held by him. You miss sex too, but you miss the tiny things even more, the way his lips feel against yours, how he smiles against them when you whimper his name and you miss the awkward little things the most. When he accidentally bumps his head against yours or when say random shit right before he pushes into you just to make you laugh, or when he leans in for a kiss but misses it and ends up kissing your nose or just the corner of your mouth. You miss everything about him and you hate him for that, but you hate yourself even more. It feels like your own conscious has betrayed you.
Shutting your eyes closed you let the tears roll down your cheeks as Leticia scoots closer and wraps her arms around you, cooing soothingly at you.
“It’s alright. It’s totally normal, Y/N.”
“It is not! Not for me at least!” you protest pulling back, wiping your cheeks with the back of your hands.
“Stop with the bullshit already!” she growls in annoyance. “You are not some kind of ice queen who is incapable of loving! You love me, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” you roll your eyes.
“Not really. You love your other friends as well, right?” You nod. “And you love your mom,” she adds and you nod again. “Would you do anything for these people?”
“Of course.”
“Do you like spending time with them? Do you care about them in all kinds of ways?”
“Yes,” you sigh, fumbling with the hem of your shirt.
“Do you feel the same way about Harry? Do you care about him, would you do anything for him to make him happy?”
“Yes,” you whisper truthfully.
“Then don’t complicate it. You love him, no big deal! And he surely loves you back, because he told you, right?” You nod. “Then pull your head out of your ass and just let yourself be happy for once.”
“Why are you coming with this too? I was happy on my own too!”
“No, you were getting by,” she points it out. “You were doing good, but you weren’t… a whole. Harry gave you everything you missed, but for some fucked up reason you think it’s the end of the world to depend on someone else partially when it comes to your happiness. Which can be a smart thing, it’s important to be your own person and be independent, but sometimes we need some help from others. From people that love us and we love them back. It’s not a crime, Y/N.”
“No, but it’s gonna end up with me being heartbroken.”
“You already are,” she ruthlessly replies, bringing your attention to what you’ve been trying to ignore all this time. “Hate to break it to you, but this is what that feels like. So why not just go with it, you already felt the pain, now you could go for the good parts as well.”
“I don’t know if I can do it, Tish,” you breathe out, resting your head against the back of the couch. “Even if I did it, I know I would mess it up and hurt him or maybe he’ll do something stupid and hurt me and I don’t think I can handle that.”
“So what? It’s part of the deal. And besides, you’re already hurting each other, so you better get your shit together,” she scoffs, poking your side playfully.
It’s part of the deal. Are you ready to make a new deal? One that you’ve been avoiding your whole life? Are you ready to cut yourself open for someone else and just hope for the best?
Probably not. And probably you’ll never be. But your tactics didn’t succeed so far, you still ended up in pain so why not give it a chance? Even if it’s gonna be the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
“Do you think he hates me now?” you ask quietly, peeking at her scared of her answer.
“He is a bit mad at you for shutting him out, but he could never hate you. That man loves you so much, it’s almost disgusting,” she admits, making you chuckle. “Just… be honest with him and talk to him. You need it. You both need it.”
Harry’s fingers strum against the chords again, trying to get the tune right, but he fails again, a frustrated growl leaving his lips as he lets his head fall forwards. He’s been trying to finish the song for hours, but it still hasn’t come together the way he imagined and his patience is running short.
It’s been hard for him to focus on writing, with you on his mind all the time, everything seems like a hard task. He has written plenty of songs since the night at the party, but he could never use them for his job. One, because they are so fucking sad and depressive and they asked for upbeat hits from him, and two, because they are all so personal, he could never give them to someone else. He can’t let anyone else sing the lines he wrote to you, but you’ll probably never hear them.
Giving up on finishing the song today, he puts the guitar aside and calls it a day. Walking into the kitchen he opens the fridge and realizes that it’s completely empty aside from a bottle of ketchup and a single banana. He’s been such a mess lately, he forgot to go grocery shopping yesterday. Huffing to himself he grabs the banana and reaches for his phone to order something right when his doorbell rings. He is not expecting anyone, but Mitch has been popping in every few days to check in on him since everything that went down with you, so Harry is convinced it’s him again.
“Great timing, do you want Italian or Chinese?” he asks, walking up to the door, but as he swings it open he freezes when he sees you standing on the doormat. “Y/N…” he breathes out as if he was seeing a ghost.
“Hi! I-I hope I’m not bothering you o-or anything…” you ramble nervously.
“No! No, come on in!” He snaps out of his trance and steps aside, letting you walk inside. A feeling of nostalgia hits you right away as you think back at the last time you were here. Just a few days before the party, when everything was different.
“I’m sorry I came without asking, I just… I would say I was nearby, but that’s not true,” you chuckle anxiously as the two of you walk into the living room. You notice that his place is a little messier than usually, but it’s not nearly as bad as yours was before you did a deep cleaning yesterday after Leticia’s comments on it.
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. What… What brought you here?”
“I, uhh… I’ve been thinking. A lot. And I have a few things I need to tell you.”
For a moment Harry’s stomach drops, because he thinks you came here to tell him off one more time for breaking your deal, for everything that happened at the party. He is already bracing himself to just let you lash out on him, but it never comes. And when you speak up again, he nearly faints.
“I love you.”
It’s a strong start, definitely a surprising one. Harry’s lips part and his eyes widen, his look almost comical, but you’re not laughing, not now. You have a lot to tell him and you can only hope he won’t throw you out after everything is said.
“I love you and I’m sorry it took me so long to stop ignoring it, but I promise you I’m done with that. And I’m sorry for everything I said to you that night, I was… mad and confused and I didn’t know how to deal with everything at once. I was delusional and ignorant and… a fool for thinking that I could just choose to never have feelings, especially for you,” you add with a tiny, nervous chuckle. “You were right. About everything. That I can’t live without ever putting myself out there and risking it. And I think deep down I knew that, but I was so afraid of getting hurt that I made myself believe I’m good on my own, but I’m not. Not entirely, to be precise. Because sometimes it is worth risking it and… and I realized that you are the person for me who is worth this risk.”
The tears are already blurring your vision, for the millionth time these past weeks, but it feels right now. Opening up to Harry and telling him all of this is hard, but with every spoken word you feel lighter and more relieved.
“I’m sorry if I made you think that I don’t love you, because I do. I really do. You are my best friend and these past weeks have been hell for me without you. I was so keen on avoiding a heart break that I ended up breaking my own heart,” you chuckle bitterly, the first tear running down your cheek.
Harry reaches out and wipes it away with his thumb and you involuntarily melt into his touch. You’ve been starved for it and now it feels like home. When you look up and your eyes meet his, you see that they are red too and it just makes you want to cry even more.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just thought that I was doing the right thing, but I was so far from that. So I’m really sorry and I understand if you don’t want to see me again for the way I acted. I was… a horrible friend and… an even worse girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah. Because you were right, we were more than just the deal and… if you choose not to throw me out after this, I would… I would love to give it a try with you. I want to be the girlfriend you deserve and though I’m sure I’ll mess it up a lot of times, I promise I’ll try my best, becau—“
He makes your rambling stop in the best way possible, lips smashing against yours as he cups your tear-soaked cheeks in his warm palms, pulling you close to him, your arms curling around his waist immediately.
Harry has kissed you several times before, but none of them compares to this. It’s messy and salty from both your tears, but you wouldn’t change a thing about it, the way his lips move against yours, tongues meeting, devouring each other, making up for the lost time and full of promises for the future. You hold onto his shirt at his back for dear life as he just keeps kissing you over and over again until you both run out of breath.
“So, does this mean you’re not throwing me out?” you joke, breaking the silence once you’ve pulled back.
“Fuck no,” he laughs, pecking your lips a few more times before his lips meet your forehead. “You are not leaving this place, ever. You’re trapped,” he adds to the joke and you break out in a relieved laughter.
“Wait, so I’m stuck with you now?” you whine playfully, but all you get is another kiss on the lips, hard and demanding.
“Yeah, forever, baby. You won’t get rid of me now, not after the speech you just gave me,” he smirks down at you, his arms coming to curl around your shoulders as he keeps you pressed against him tightly. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” you reply, your heart soaring as you hear those words again from him, this time, not even trying to dodge them in any way. In fact, you just want to hear him say it every minute over and over again for the rest of your life. “And I’m happy to be stuck with you,” you add with a shy smile as his grin widens at your words.
“Yeah? So we have a new deal then?” he teases, kissing the corner of your mouth.
“Absolutely.”
Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed it!
mie….could we please get college au eren headcanons👉🏽👈🏽
Of course. I’m always thinking about his big head anyway <33 might as well put it good use.
One thing he learned in college is how to make his hyperfocus/fixation episodes work for him; that’s why he schedules all his classes as close together as possible. He’d rather have class back to back for 5 hours, than have it spread out with hours in between lectures, because that increases his changes of cutting.
You can always tell when he’s in class and/or what class he’s in by how much he responds to your messages. If he doesn’t text back at all, he’s in a class that hard or one he enjoys, or both. But if he’s sending you iMessage games, then you know he’s in his elective that he couldn’t care else about (and is probably cheating in someway somehow lmfao).
He usually puts his phone on dnd when he’s in a class that’s important, but you’re in his favorite contacts, so your messages always ring through. What if it’s an emergency and you need him for something? Advanced Roots of Human Biology can wait.
Some days there are one or two our breaks between his lectures, that’s just how the scheduling works out. When that happens, he usually sneaks into one of your lectures, or goes to your place to take a nap. Your roommates have become accustomed to him, honestly they’ve been considering giving him a key.
Once, he didn’t realize that your lecture was basically a seminar, with you, the prof and maybe six other students. He still stayed lmao, and the prof was so amazed by his dedication, that she didn’t even mind. Occasionally, you’ll catch the two of them talking after lecture. It’s pretty cute the way she’s adopted him into the class even tho he’s not on the roster.
You... have to show him where the library is lmfao. He genuinely has not stepped foot in one until you bring him to one. He likes it tho lmao once he gets used to it.
Speaking of which, do not give him standard directions to find your classes on campus because all you’ll get is, “Babe, I’m gonna keep it real with you, I’ve never heard of the ‘West Quad’ a day in my life. What building are you near.”
He usually comes to see you in the library after all his lectures are done for the day. Sometimes he does homework, sometimes he’s just fucking around on his computer, sometimes he’s just bothering you. When you have to leave to go to class, he stays behind to watch your stuff so you don’t have to pack everything up and come back.
Very protective when it comes to keeping your seat for you. No, you cannot take that chair to your table you good for nothing freshman; it’s reserved for you.
He’ll drag you out of the library if you’ve been cooped up all day, tho. Eren will use his height and his strength against you to get you up. Placates you with kisses when he sees your angry expression, and promises to buy you food.
He takes your backpack for you when you’re walking together,m. His backpack is frustratingly light all the time, even during midterms. You swear all he’s got in there is a pencil and some flashcards.
If you have night classes, he sticks around to walk you home after, especially in the winter when it gets dark faster. If he’s not already on campus, he’ll walk/drive back to meet you; he just doesn’t like you going home alone. Even if your friend/roommate is in the class with you, Eren will walk or drive the both of you home for his own sanity.
He plays sports, so he usually has practice most evenings, but he’ll find a way to make time. If practice was particularly brutal, he’ll probably crash at your place.
He loves it when you come to meet him after practice. His whole face lights up and he waves obnoxiously, before he gathers up his stuff and all but sprints towards you. You get a cold water bottle to the face, or a bit of water splashed on you usually, which he takes immense amusement in.
He knows it’s not possible for you to make it to all of his games, and usually it doesn’t bother him much; you’ve got your own life, and work to worry about. All he asks is that you wear his jersey, or any item of his sports apparel/merch on game day (he’s partial to hoodies).
By the time junior year rolls around, he’s not all that interested in attending parties that aren’t hosted by your friends; so, unless it’s at Connie, Jean, or Reiner and Bertholdt’s place, Eren will usually decline. Even team parties, he’s not crazy about unless it’s to celebrate a championship or something. He’d much rather celebrate with you.
He does get excited about hosting parties though, and he and Jean become pretty damn good co-hosts. They don’t throw ragers, and that’s probably why Eren likes it so much. It’s usually your friend group and a couple plus ones, some good music, games, weed, and take-out.
He’ll buy you coffee whenever you ask for it. The first time, he just orders something plain, not really knowing the difference between anything; but give it two or three tries, and he’ll get it perfect. He becomes so good that he can order you something new/different and you’ll love it.
That’s kind of the start of his own coffee addiction, and more often than not, when he buys you a cup, he’s on his second or third of the day himself. The flavor has really grown on him, okay.
He much prefers your apartment, but on occasion, he’ll ask you to come to his. You’ve been studying for so long, a change of environment should do you good, he claims. He’s a fucking liar tho because that’s all Eren Talk for “I do genuinely want you to come over, but my plans are to coerce you out of doing your assignments and doing me instead.”
Lmfao he adds you on Apple Watch Rings just so you can see him close his rings every day and laugh at you. Even if yours get closed by virtue of walking around campus or working out or whatever, his numbers are stupidly high because he fucking has practice at least 4 days of the week.
Of course when you’re running on a soccer field for 2 hours every day, you close your Move Ring five times, Eren. Leave the rest of us alone.
He buys you guys matching accessories for your keychains. It’s something pretty cute, and slightly random, but it reminded him of you. It also serves as a reminder to himself to take his fucking keys with him when he leaves his house.
He sleeps like a fucking rock, so do not let him fall asleep in the library. Waking him up is a mission, and he’s never happy to be woken up. He looks kinda cute tho.
He schedules dates for you and his friends. Usually by accident, but hear me out. Sometimes he’ll make plans with Armin, then forget that he has class or a test or something; so his solution is to text you, “hey, i forgot min and i were supposed to go some aquarium tomorrow but i have a midterm so here’s the pdf of my ticket, go with him for me, thanks babe love u” then, boop, you and Armin have an aquarium date Friday evening.
The same thing happens with Mikasa, though, she usually catches the scheduling conflict before Eren does, and invites you out herself. You and Mikasa hang out quite a bit anyway, so it comes to the point where she tells you when she’s gonna hang out with Eren, so you can make yourself free for when he inevitably remember he has a game that day.
Mikasa is most amazed that you’ve put up with Eren this long lmao. You’ve certainly lessened her Eren & Armin babysitting hours, and for that she’s eternally grateful. Also, she’s just happy to have another close friend. She loves Eren and Armin, but they’re not the most social beings, and she was literally their only friend besides the other for all their childhood PLEASE she’s so happy you’re around.
It’s Mikasa, however, who babysits you and Eren whenever you both get too drunk. Says you guys are two peas in a pod (affectionate<2)
If you tell Eren something important that happened, like an internship you got, or a good grade in a class, or something, he usually relays that information to his mom pls. He texts her every day, and if she doesn’t ask for an update on you first, he gives her one.
Carla calls you sometimes, too. At least once every few weeks, just to check on you herself. She really likes you for Eren, and is grateful someone is willing to put up with her hotheaded son.
Eren’s always using your fucking chapstick. Always. You know he has his own, so why he needs to use yours is beyond you. Finds time to make some dumbass comment about how it’s an “indirect kiss” every time he uses it too. Like bro, we’re dating, and have had many direct kisses why are you like this.
He posts on Instagram every few weeks or so, but you’re on his story every few days. Usually, it’s just a video of you minding your business and doing your work while Eren slowly zooms in before making some loud noise to surprise you, all so he can get your reaction on video and laugh at it. He’s annoying.
He’s a bit of a copycat when it comes to the products you use. He’ll buy the same brand of pens as you (for that matter, all of his school supplies mirror yours because what does he know about the difference between A4 and A5 notebooks?), put a little hand sanitizer on his backpack like yours (and a lotion, too, for good measure), he even copies your Starbucks order until he finds one he likes for himself. It’s one of his love languages <3
If you’re wondering where your eyelash curler went, Eren stole it to try it on himself, hurt himself, vowed to never use it again, went back because he wanted to “do it right and not give up,” liked the results when he didn’t pinch his eyelid, and now it’s his.
That being said, stop trying to put your Fenty lipgloss on him, it’s never going to happen. Eye makeup, maybe, only if you sit in his lap and he can have his hands on your ass while you do it.
What he does love is letting you do his skincare. He will set aside dedicated skincare nights, he adores it. Easily one of his favorite things ever.
You have his wallet. Not because he’s your sugar daddy or anything (although, if you want something, he’d definitely let you use his card to get it; and even if you bought something without asking, he wouldn’t think twice about it), but because he put it in your bag once and never took it out.
When you tried to give it back, he just shook his head and told you to keep it, “I have my ID in my phone case anyway, and you’re less likely to lose it. Plus I put all my cards on Apple Pay, so I’m good.”
When you do make it to a game of his, he’s all over you when it’s over. Not in a cocky athlete boyfriend kind of way; in a very sleepy boyfriend kind of way. He’s usually got ice on at least one part of his body, and he’s got half his body weight on you as you walk to the car.
By the time you guys get back to your place, he’s practically sleep walking. The only thing on his mind is taking a hot shower to soothe his muscles, and heading to bed. The aftermath of game days aren’t all that bad though, because even if you didn’t show, you’re always there to kiss him when he’s home and massage his shoulders, and cuddle him to sleep; and that’s his favorite part.
Some #Only in Gotham posts because I’m stressed and this is my coping mechanism
Guys guys guys
So I was in Central City today visiting some friends earlier this morning, and then the city gets attacked by these... aliens? Weird reptillian cryptids?? Who knows, but they were not happy nor friendly. We were all at this nice cafe just vibing in the outdoor area when this bipedal, green-gray reptile thing pops out of the manhole outside the cafe and goes absolutely feral. He was super close to my group so I grab my croc repellant (for non gothamites, its’ basically pepper spray but really bad-smelling to ward off croc if he ever shows up) out in an instant and I sprayed it right in the face.
Then I grabbed the nearest thing—some poor old guy’s metal walking frame—and whacked the reptile in the back of the head and it crumpled basically instantly.
And after the JL had stepped in to deal with the rest of them (not many, from what I’ve heard, but better safe than sorry I guess), heaps of people were freaking out about it because, well, this is Central City, they don’t get this kind of crime, they’re not prepared for this, yada yada.
Then that manhole pops up and everyone freaks out again because “oh god they’re back” but it’s just Batman dragging a bunch of tied up reptiles out of the sewers using some kind of winch set-up. It was almost comical—a daisy chain of reptiles being lifted out of this manhole in Central City by our favourite Goth Cryptid.
The cops were completely floored. The civilians didn’t know whether to be more scared of Bats or the reptiles. I mean, it was literally the middle of the day, and it’s rare to see Batman in daytime in Gotham but I guess this was an extenuating circumstance, so I guess I see why they were scared.
Batman just looks down at me standing over an unconscious reptilian holding the can of croc repellant and he’s just like “I’m guessing you’re from Gotham.”
I was like “yeah. Can’t escape the damn cryptids wherever I am.”
And tHEN he LAUGHS. Like, it was a small and quiet snort but it happened and I’m still shook. I have officially joined the “I made Batman laugh” squad. I can ascend peacefully now.
He seemed super embarrassed but asked if my friends and I were okay before he turned on his heel and stalked over to Flash and Woner Woman, a daisy-chain of reptiles in tow.
I just heard this Metropolis guy try and trash Bruce Wayne to his friend at this diner and like five seperate people (myself included) turned around to roast the hell outta him. Like, yeah, he’s a billionaire, which is a whole can of worms I don’t wanna open right now, but he’s basically the only reason this city’s still standing and functioning (especially after the quakes and the no-man’s-land bs). His kids—most are poc and would not have thrived in the system—are all successful and work with their communities to better other people’s lives. Bruce Wayne is basically the only reason I got through high school (and am now in college); a scholarship is the only reason most of my friends have enough money to make rent. He “accidentally” spilled wine on Lex Luthor when he made a sexist remark. Also, didn’t it come out recently that he’s basically been funding the JL o at least is a major financial backer? An icon. You can shut your mouth, Jeremy.
One girl Instagram lived the whole exchange (she was filming beforehand I think) and it was magical.
Later on, Robin (the newest one, with the swords) shows up and he’s like “thank you for defending the honour of Mr Wayne”. I was like “kid,,,, you don’t need to thank me but you’re welcome”. he just kinda looks at me for a second and says “you eat free tonight” and chucks a bunch of dollar notes at me and disappears into the wilderness (ie. an alleyway). It was so surreal.
Yeah so....... I just saw some of Two-Face’s goons about to enter a bank, weapons drawn, and I’m scared because their boss is in Arkham, and the Rogues’ most loyal people always get antsy and trigger-happy when their bosses are off the board. I’d dialed 911 when I first saw them and ducked into an alley.
But then I see one of them stop dead in their tracks—Goon A we’ll call him—and says “hey, Wayne’s in there”.
Goon B: “Oh, we’re not meant to go after Wayne. Pack it in fellas.”
Goon C: “Huh? why not?”
Goon A: “Boss-man said so. Wayne used to be his best bud. Helped him campaign to be DA and stuff. Went to college together. Nice man.”
Goon B: “Got no problem wth that. Wayne’s the only reason my boys got through school. Besides, we mess with Wayne, the boss and Harley will be on our asses.”
Goon C: “Huh. Fair enough. We’ll go to the other location then.”
Today I was in a Zoom call with some of my coworkers on the other side of the world, sitting in the kitchen facing the living room, when Red Robin comes crashing through my window. I just kinda turned around to see if he was badly injured (he wasn’t, couldn’t even see any blood) so I just continued on with what I was saying and he sheepishly left through the same window.
My coworkers are looking at me like “Jacob are you okay??” And I’m like, “yeah man, that was just Red Robin, he has unfortunate luck with windows. Soon enough one of the other Bats will come knocking with a replacement or a cash refund. Though, I should probably just invest in plexi-glass.”
One of my coworkers went on a bit of a rant about “vigilantes causing property damage and disrupting the peace” and i’m like “Mark I’d rather Batman crashing through my door or window once a month to getting buried in my twenties in his abscence,” and he was like “yeah, fair enough” so we just continued with our call.
After my call, Blonde Batgirl shows up and apologises for the window. I ask about plexi-glass and if Red Robin is alright.
She’s like “yeah he’s fine but he’s getting Bat-Lectured for being reckless which is why I’m here. Also from what Oracle can tell you should be able to get plex-glass installed within the week.”
So, Red Hood piggy-backed me up to my apartment yesterday because my heel broke when I was fleeing from these guys trying to mug me (or worse) and I sprained my ankle. He carried me up four flights of stairs and helped me get into my apartment and wrap my foot properly.
I told him to take some of my nana’s lasagna (because our local vigilante needs to keep his strength up! Man’s gotta eat, and from what I hear he’s not swimming in cash) and he got real quiet for a while before saying “yeah, sure”.
So he ate some lasagna while I called in sick to work (who were very understanding, surprisingly).
Then after a little while he’s like “bye” and jumps outta my window.