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excitedlysuffering · 4 years

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How You Met

Feel free to ask for any other characters you’d like to see!

Naruto~

You sighed tiredly as you walked through the woods, trying to find a good place to practice your aim with your kunai and shuriken. It was pretty late and after an uncharacteristically off day during training, you decided to make up for it on your own.

Zing… thwack….zing...thwack. The repetitive sounds of your knife zipping through the air and landing in a tree were the only noises and you were beginning to grow bored. This activity no longer challenged you. With a sigh you turned, ready to go home.

You heard a twig snap and whipped around, shuriken already flying through the air.

“ACK!” A blonde kid with whiskers dodged the knife, a pissed off expression on his face. He had a bowl of instant ramen that now had a large hole and a weapon inside.

“MY RAMEN! You’re going to pay for this, believe it!” Having moved from Suna a few months ago, you only vaguely recognized him. “I’m so sorry! You scared me, and I didn’t think…” His face softened, but his lips were still pursed.

“I’m Uzumaki Naruto, and we’re going out for ramen, believe it! You owe me it.” He nodded triumphantly, causing you to smile. “I’m (L/N) (F/N). Well, I guess we’d better get moving then, huh?” His smile brightened up the night and you couldn’t help but smile back, his joy was contagious.

You two chatted all the way to Ichiraku Ramen and long into the night. It seemed you had made your first friend in Konoha, even if he was a little wild.

Sasuke~

“I miss you, Dei…” My older brother, Deidara of the Akatsuki, smiled ruefully hugging me. “I miss you, too. You know I’d leave in a heartbeat to be with you if I could.” You sighed, willing yourself to be strong as you played with his long hair.

Deidara rummaged around in his bag, causing you to grow curious. “I made you this, a clay cat.” He handed it to you, grinning at my expression.

The cat was gorgeous and meticulously detailed, you weren’t surprised in the least though; it was Deidara after all.

“Dei, it’s gorgeous!” He grew serious. “You have to keep it with you, (Y/N/N), if you ever need me- for anything- just throw it into the sky and I’ll be here.” You threw your arms around his neck. “I will, I promise. Thank you.”

Just as he was about to respond, you saw a familiar tuft of red hair. Sasori, your brother’s partner, nodded to you in acknowledgment. “Hello, (Y/N).” Then he turned to Deidara. “C’mon, brat, we still have a mission to complete.” You waved to the puppet master, sullenly. It felt like you and your brother had just began talking. Deidara pressed his forehead to yours.

“I’ll be back for you.” You blinked away tears as you heard the familiar parting. “I’ll be here when you do.” Then he was gone.

“Why’re you talking to an Akatsuki member?” You whipped around to see Sasuke, a boy you recognized from the academy. His voice cold and accusing. “W-what?” His eyes narrowed. “Are you in a relationship with Deidara? He’s an S-ranked criminal.” Fury ran through you. Didn’t he think you knew that?! It was something you had to live with every day!

“Deidara is my older brother! He’s all I have!” The Uchiha crossed his arms skeptically. “Then why did he leave you for the Akatsuki?” He sat down across from you, making you feel on the spot. “You think he had a choice? They ambushed us and demanded he join. He joined on the condition that they’d never approach me.”

Sasuke’s expression softened by a margin. “Who?” You let out a humorless chuckle. “Your brother, Itachi. He brought us back to their base and that was that.” His eyes darkened at the mention of his elder brother.

“Crazy, huh? Both our older brothers in the Akatsuki.” He ignored your contemplative words. “Would you join them?” You startled. “Would I joi- No! Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Dei would never let me.”

He nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Are you a pyrotechnic to?” You sighed, nodding. “Yes, but Deidara and I look the same already so I suppress it until I’m alone.” Sasuke stood up, reaching a hand towards us. “I want to spar with you so I can see it.” You blinked, surprised.

“Um, okay. Sure.” You accepted the hand he lent you, standing with his help.

Couldn’t hurt right? You had finally found someone you could relate to.

Neji~

You stood in a hair products booth, utterly confused on which brush and shampoo to buy. Why were there so many different kinds!? It wasn’t busy at all, in fact, it was just you and the booth owner, who was reading, so no one was there to see you in the middle of your struggle.

Your fingertips ran across all the different products. You were almost ready to give up. Who knew hair care was this hard? Next time you were bringing your friends with.

“You should try the shampoo with shea butter in it. It’s really good for your hair.” You spun around, coming face to face with the most beautiful lavender eyes you’d ever seen. His hair was long, about the same length as yours, and was, well, luscious to be honest.

“T-thanks… I usually have someone with me, but I had no idea there were this many options.” You grabbed the bottle he pointed to, absolutely relieved.

“You’re welcome. I understand how daunting these stores can be.” You grinned, as you looked at the brushes. “I’m (Y/N). Yeah, I have no idea what these brushes are for.” He cracked a smile as he came up next to you. “Neji. You should grab that hairbrush, the soft bristles will keep your hair soft and untangled.”

The brush was gorgeous. It had a (favorite color) back with a rose on the back. The bristles were indeed soft as you ran your fingers through them.

“You’re a lifesaver, Neji! These are perfect!” You smiled widely at him, your smile widening even more when you saw the pink that lightly dusted his cheeks. “I’m glad I could help, (Y/N).” Just as you were about to respond, a girl who liked the female version of him, stood at the entrance.

“Hey, a-are you r-ready to g-go?” He nodded towards her. “Coming Lady Hinata. Goodbye, it was great to meet you (Y/N).” You waved as he left, mildly disappointed that you didn’t get to talk to him longer.

Then it dawned on you. He hadn’t even been looking to shop for anything. He came in here solely to help you. With a blush that just wouldn’t leave, you paid for your items and left smiling all the way.

Shikamaru~

You sat in your normal spot at the park, on the grass. Your pen scratching against the paper was the only sound as you lost yourself in your protagonist’s adventure. You barely even noticed the boy with a ponytail sit next to you with a sigh.

“Do you ever just pause and watch the clouds?” Your focus was broken as you looked up into his face. The face of pure exhaustion. You set your notebook down, intrigued by him. “I don’t really have much time to just pause what I’m doing…” You murmured.

He laid back, his arms behind his head. “You should try it. It really relieves stress.” You have him a curious glance. “How’d you know I was stressed?”

He shrugged. “Your shoulders are hunched and tensed and you look tired.” I chuckled, a little impressed by his observation. “You got me there. You know, you look pretty tired yourself.” You cautiously laid back beside him, eyes concentrated on the swirling shape of the clouds.

The boy shut his eyes. “What can I say? Life is a drag.” You giggled.

“You’re right about that. This is… nice actually.” A small smirk graced his lips and your stomach fluttered a little. “Told ya. Now, just relax and watch the clouds.” You nodded, doing as he said. Your story could wait. This stranger had fully captured your attention.

You could feel yourself growing sleepy, but you willed yourself to stay awake. You rested your gaze on the boy beside you. The look on his face was one of your pure tranquillity and you hated to disrupt it. You turned your face back to the sky.

You heard a sigh, but instead of it being exasperated it sounded amused. “If you want to say something you can say it.”

You felt heat climbing up my neck at being so obvious. “Oh… I just wanted to know if you came here often?” He nodded, smiling. “Whenever I can in between missions and training. It’s my favorite spot.” You nodded in understanding. “Same. I always come here to write but I’ve never thought of cloud watching.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “Maybe we can come here together and you can show me the wonders of writing since I’ve showed you the clouds.”

Your smile widened exponentially. “I’d love that. I’m (Y/N), by the way.” He looked up at me. “Shikamaru,” was all he said before watching the sky again, but it was enough for you.

Kiba~

You’d crashed at your best friend, Shikamaru’s, house about a week ago after your parents had kicked you out. He’d practically dragged you to his house, stating that his house was your house for as long as you needed it.

“(Y/N/N), my friend Kiba is coming over to watch a movie, do you wanna join?” You put down your book, opting to smirk at the boy. “Ooh, a movie date, Shika? I couldn’t possibly third wheel you guy-” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just come down, I have popcorn and soda downstairs waiting.”

Your face lit up with mischief. “On second thought, I’ll be down to interrupt your date after all!” Shikamaru sighed as if he was over you but there was no use fronting; he loved your antics.

The pineapple haired teen followed you downstairs hands in his pockets.

“Have you met Kiba?” He asked. You shrugged. “I’ve seen him around because we went to academy together but that’s it.” Shika nodded, grabbing himself a Pepsi. “Well, guess you’re meeting him today. And Akamaru, his dog.”

Right on cue, the doorbell rang. You walked to the TV and put in the movie entitled ‘The Conjuring’ as Shikamaru answered the door. You smirked, excited to watch a horror movie. It’d been a while since you’d seen one.

“Hey, Kiba, Akamaru.” You heard a small bark and you turned around, already in love with the dog “This is (Y/N)-” You interrupted Shikamaru as you made a mad dash towards the dog. “He’s so cute!” Akamaru jumped straight into your arms, yipping happily. “This is Kiba.” I waved distractedly, still in love with the puppy.

“People always say having a dog helps you get chicks. Whoever said that is sad and lonely,” Kiba mumbled. You laughed, giving him back Akamaru. “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve always wanted a dog.”

He smiled knowingly. “Not a problem. So what are we watching?” You took a deep breath when he turned away. You always knew Kiba was good looking, but you’d never talked to him before or really looked at him. That was a mistake, you realized, because he was gorgeous, to put it simply.

“We’re watching ‘The Conjuring’. Think you can handle it?” Shikamaru laughed. Kiba sat down, his arms behind his head. “The real question is if the pretty lady behind us can handle it.” You fought a blush at him calling you pretty. “I, for your information, love horror. You, on the other hand, look like the squeamish type.”

Kiba’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, it’s on.” Shikamaru walked back in, food and drinks in arm, and saw you two having a glaring contest. “Whatever. I’m playing the movie.”

~~~~~Time Skip Brought By Akamaru~~~~~

You sighed as Kiba yelped and jumped a foot in the air yet again at another (predictable) jump scare. “If it’s too much, we can always watch a different mo-” Shika suggested. “No! I’m fine, really.” Kiba insisted. It would’ve been a lot more believable if the dog lover wasn’t pretty much snuggled into your shoulder.

Not that you were complaining, you had taken a bit of a liking towards him. Not only was he cute, but he was also funny and charming. Even though he screamed like a prepubescent girl. Unfortunately, the movie was almost over and you were sure he would scoot away when it was. But that didn’t mean you weren’t going to enjoy it while you could!

Gaara~

When your best friend, Temari, invited you out for a ‘fun’ day at the beach, this was not what you were expecting. You imagined playing in the water, eating the nice picnic lunch you had packed, and gossiping out anything and everything.

Instead, Temari was sitting on a beach chair, reading. You could do that anywhere! Why would you do that at the beach!? You pursed your lips, thinking of ways to get her in the water.

“Mari. Hey. Temari. Hey.” She gave you a look, a small smile on her face. “Yes?” You stood up, grabbing her hand. “C’mon, let’s get in the water! It’s so hot today!” She groaned. “But I’m tanning! Make a sandcastle and when you’re done I’ll get in.”

You scowled. “You sound like my mom. As soon as I’m finished, we’re getting in the water.” She sighed. “Okay, okay.” Truthfully, you liked playing in the sand even if it got everywhere.

“Hey, come back!” “Never! You can’t catch me!” Two kids raced by you, kicking up sand. It practically rained sand all over you, getting in your hair and your eyes. You shrieked indignantly as you tried to get the sand out of your eyes.

“Need some help? Open your eyes real quick.” A deep voice demanded. “Kankuro? Gaara? What are you guys doing here?” Ignoring Temari, you did what he said, painfully blinking your eyes open.

The red-headed boy moved his hands away from you and the sand in your eye flew out, along with the sand that had landed in your hair. You blinked, relieved to have your eyes free of the invasive substance.

“Thank you! That really comes in handy,” You giggled. You recognized Gaara, you’d never really talked to him, but you were always at their house with his sister, so you’d seen him around.

“You’re welcome, (Y/N). Why aren’t you guys in the water?” He sounded just as confused as you felt. “Ms. Boring over here wants to read and tan.” Kankuro turned his nose up.

“Let’s go, (Y/N), the water calls!” You laughed as the puppet master ran towards the water like a child.

“You coming, Gaara?” You smiled at him, slightly confused as to why he was standing so uncomfortably. “You… want me to come?” I nodded eagerly, grabbing his hand. “Of course! It’s too hot to stand around!” A genuine smile lit up his face as you pulled him to the water.

There was something about him that just pulled you to him…

Kakashi~

You snuck through the streets as the sun prepared to rise over the horizon. You made sure that no one could see you as leaped from building to building. All your Jounin training was going into this mission; this was what you were made for.

The book store opened in exactly three minutes. If you didn’t get there on time, who knows when you’d have another chance to complete this mission. But your worry was for nothing, seeing as you made it with a minute to spare.

You watched the store from in a tree across the street. You absolutely could not risk being seen by anyone outside the store.

With thirty seconds until the doors opened, a masked man walked to the doors. No! You recognized him as Hatake Kakashi, the copycat ninja, and fellow Jounin. You couldn’t let him see you. With stealth rivaling that of your now opponent you snuck in the doors when he bent down to pick up his dropped book.

Your hands closed around the spine of the newest Icha Icha book, the feeling of utter triumph filling you. The series had been your (very) embarrassing guilty pleasure, one you’d do anything to keep secret. You turned around to pay, feeling on top of the world.

“What a coincidence, I was just about to get the same book!” A smooth voice from beside you shattered your feelings of accomplishment. You feigned confusion as you looked at the spine. “Oh my! I must’ve grabbed the wrong book! You can have it!”

You gave it to him with a smile even as your inner self screamed profanities at him. He gave you a one-eyed look. “Oh? So you weren’t sneaking all across town so no one would see you buy this book?”

My eye twitched. “Just take the book.” You ground out blushing madly. His laugh only pissed you off more. “You’re an adult, no one’s going to judge for reading these books. But if it bothers you that much, I won’t tell anyone.”

You exhaled, relieved beyond mention. “On one condition.” You kept yourself from lunging at him, kunai drawn. “What is it?” He smirked, taking his time. “Spar with me today. I’ve heard great things about you. I would like to see your abilities for myself.” You gave him a look filled with disbelief. He wanted to fight you?

“Okay, sounds good to me! See you later!” You waved before hurriedly paying and shoving the book into your pocket. You left calmly, trying not to draw attention to yourself, all the while feeling Kakashi’s gaze on you, causing your stomach to flutter with butterflies

~Akatsuki~

Pein~

You wandered down the street, looking for potential targets. You had woken up starving but per usual you had no money. That tended to be the case when you didn’t have a home. Unsurprisingly, the streets were pretty full, giving you plenty of targets to choose from. Seeing as it was a market place, most everyone would have money on them.

You smiled to yourself, going about your usual routines. You ‘accidentally’ ran into a man who was rushing in the opposite direction. His wallet was already out of his pocket and into yours as he turned around. “I’m so sorry!” You feigned embarrassment as he muttered about annoying brats. The second he turned around, you were off to pickpocket your next target.

After an hour you had acquired enough for two meals today. It was enough for you and you were heading to your usual breakfast joint when you saw a man with a flashy ring on his finger. The man had spiky orange hair and piercings all over his face. As much as you didn’t want to try him, that ring called out to your kleptomania and you couldn’t resist.

You drifted that way, hoping he wasn’t as dangerous as he looked. Yeah right, you rolled your eyes. Quickly you pulled out your petition sheet. It was an official petition document that you’d wrote a bunch of names on. This was your usual ploy for stealing rings, bracelets, and watches.

“Sir? Would you like to sign my petition?” The orange-haired man gave you a skeptical glance. “What’s it for?” I gave him my best pitiful look. “They’re trying to close the homeless shelter and turn it into a bathhouse… all the people will have nowhere to go!”

He hesitantly accepted the pen I gave and signed his name simply ‘Pein’. You gave it a confused look but smiled nonetheless. “Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!” You eagerly shook his hand, slipping off his ring and slipping into your long sleeves. He awkwardly retracted his hands.

“Yes, you’re welcome. Good luck.” He walked away not giving you a chance to respond, not that you needed it. You had disappeared behind a corner just in time to hear him shout profanities. You laughed all the way to your breakfast place, ring twirling around your finger. That was easier than you thought. How could someone so intimidating be so easy to fool?

Deidara~

The cover of night hid you as you unpacked your graffiti supplies. Your paints, stencils, and brushes surrounded you. You had settled your sights on the orphanage. It was so bleak and grey. You wanted to give the kids something to look at when they woke up. You knew how it felt to wake up to the same miserable existence.

You picked up a large brush and dipped it in (favorite color). You lost yourself in your art, the way you always did. This wasn’t your first graffiti piece, in fact, you’d made quite the name for yourself as ‘Empress’. Instead of defacing property, you liked to do inspirational messages and paintings. This was no different.

Hours had passed and you were exhausted, but bursting with pride. You had outlined the word ‘HOPE’ with (favorite color) all across the wall and filled in the letters with happy childhood memories. It was your most detailed and gorgeous piece yet.

“That’s art, brat. It’s eternal.” You heard a voice behind you, causing you to flush. “No, it’s not, Sasori no Danna! No one will miss it or think about its beauty for long because it’ll never leave, un!” Your eyes narrowed dangerously. How dare he openly criticize your art as if you aren’t standing right there?

“Oh, yeah? Well, what do you know about art?!” You shouted into the direction their voices had come from. Two guys came out from the cover of the trees. One had long blonde hair in a high ponytail with a piece hanging down in the front. The other was a bit shorter with bright red hair.

“Art is transient! Watch and learn, un.” The blonde took some clay out of his pocket and moved it around his hand. However, your attention was momentarily drawn to the redhead who was staring intently at the wall.

“Don’t look at him, he doesn’t know art!” The blonde exclaimed. In his hand was a small bird, the details immaculate. You couldn’t help but be impressed at how quick he’d made something so masterful. Suddenly he threw it high into the air and put his fingers to his lips.

“Katsu!” The bird exploded, fireworks in its place. It was beautiful and you didn’t bother trying to hide it.

“Wow. That was amazing…” The blonde gave you a smirk and a small bow. “I’m Deidara and this is Sasori, un.” You grinned, wiping your hands off on your pants. “I’m (Y/N). It’s great to meet you guys.” Sasori nodded at you, and Deidara’s smile matched yours.

“Why hope?” I turned towards the wall, my smile falling. “This is an orphanage. These kids wake up every day faced with the same grim reality they had the day before… I wanted to give them a reason to smile, even if it was a small one. That is true art to me.” The sun had risen by now, and you knew it was time to take your leave.

“I have to go, but maybe I’ll see you guys again. Bye!” You rushed off, waving over your shoulder at them as you rounded a corner. You really did hope to see them again, especially Deidara.

#x reader #naruto shippuden #naruto x reader #sasuke x reader #deidara x reader #kakashi x reader #gaara x reader #pein x reader #shikamaru x reader #kiba x reader #neji x reader

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barrysjumpsuit · 4 years

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the dark side - jj maybank x shoupe’s daughter, ch. 1

w/c: 1.9k

summary: catherine shoupe has the perfect life. when she gets hired by heyward to run groceries, she has a new coworker - jj maybank. as the deputy’s daughter, she can’t help but hate him. but when jj decides to bring her to the dark side and woo her over, cat not only has to hide her activities from her father, but also hide who she really is.

warnings: none for this chapter

a/n: i’m super excited for this! making it up as i go.... posting may be slightly delayed/irregular since i’m busy with working and moving but who knows i’ll probably waste my time and work on this more than i should

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Cat’s feet and back ached, and the sun felt good on her cool skin as she stepped out of the overly air-conditioned grocery store she had been in since they opened that morning. She sat down on a bench in a shaded area between the store and a coffee shop, resting and enjoying her fifteen minute break.

The same thing. Every day, five days a week. Cat would be the opener for the grocery store, getting there at four in the morning and working until ten. It was smaller, a hippie fresh market type of place with fresh produce and organic products. Very Kook-y. It drew tourists and locals alike, as well as a bunch of people her age, working for grocery delivery services.

Morning shifts in the summer were nice because they drew more of the local crowd. The working class, like her, though still kooks. Moms grabbing their groceries after dropping their kids off at school, working professionals stopping by for premade sandwiches or donuts for their coworkers. That particular morning, her dad had stopped by for his own lunch and spent entirely too long chatting with her.

Cat enjoyed seeing people, asking them about plans for their days. She often suggested the best surfing spots and restaurants to the non-locals, while striking up easy conversations with the regulars that frequented the market in the mornings. After work she often took her brother out to the beach. It was her mission this summer to teach him how to surf. In the evenings, if her dad wasn’t working, she would help her mom cook dinner and they would have a big family meal. It was repetitive, but perfect and full of things and people she loved.

After her fifteen minute break was up, she went back inside, but her manager pulled her aside before she returned to her checking lane.

“Hey, Catherine, come see me in my office?” Mrs. Lee’s voice rang out.

There was a brief nervousness that made Cat’s stomach roll over, but it quickly vanished once she saw the smile on the store owner’s face. “So you know Heyward, right?”

“Of course,” she answered, smiling at the thought. She knew the man and his son well - they were always in and out, buying groceries for their customers. “He’s awesome. What about him?”

“He and I are partners now,” she continued, obviously excited about the development. “He’s looking to hire some new people to deliver groceries. I know you love being out on the water and talking to people, so I figured I’d ask to see if you were interested. It’ll come with a bump in your pay, too.”

“Yes!” she said, perhaps a little too eagerly. “I’m definitely interested. Does he want an interview?”

Mrs. Lee laughed. “He said if you were interested, you’re on board automatically. He knows you’re a good worker. I’ll call him and let him know and get back at you, okay?”

“Sounds good! Thanks, Mrs. Lee,” Cat said, smiling back at her before leaving her office.

Going back to her checking lane was almost bittersweet, knowing that lane three had been hers for almost two years. As soon as she flipped her light back on, a local came through, eagerly starting up a conversation and letting Cat know how his son was doing in the summer little league baseball series.

After she got off, she cranked the AC on in her car and began the drive home. The place was flooded with tourists, the summer season officially in full swing. She lived right off the main strip, which was fun and convenient, but could get annoying when anyone and everyone was there.

“Hey Cat!” her brother greeted her as she got home. He was sitting on the couch, watching TV.

“Hey Tyler! Want to go out for ice cream later?” she asked, and he nodded excitedly. “I’ll make us some lunch then we can go after that.”

“Okay!” she heard him respond as she jogged up the carpeted steps. She walked past her parent’s bedroom and then into hers, kicking off her shoes and changing into flowy shorts and a basic tee before going back downstairs to make lunch.

The rest of the day was pleasant and uneventful. After they ate lunch, she took Tyler to the ice cream place two blocks away. He got birthday cake while she got peppermint, enjoying the cool sensation on the hot day. They walked on the beach, her brother talking nonstop about the video game he was playing, while Cat smiled and faked listening.

She was really listening to the sound of the waves lapping at the store, and the voices of those who lounged on the beach. Some were playing in the ocean, some were playing games in the soft sand.

Her father was off work at six, so once they returned home, it wasn’t long until her mother got off work and they started prepping dinner. Cat’s mom was laid back, always smiling, which she loved. She left her work at the office, unlike her father.

Being the daughter of a sheriff’s deputy was odd. Cat didn’t mind it. There were rules in place, of course, but she hadn’t any urge to break them. There were people from her school out doing drugs and drinking most nights of the week, but Cat had never touched any of that. She had a curfew, but she didn’t really mind it.

Her dad got home right before dinner was ready. He pulled Cat towards him, kissing the top of her head before kissing her mom on the lips. “How are my ladies this evening?” he asked, grinning. A patch on his uniform read Shoupe in bold letters, and he was still fully clad in his uniform.

“Pretty good,” Cat answered, stirring the sauce that was simmering on the stove.

They made light conversation until her dad went to change out of his work clothes while Cat and her mom set the table and plated up dinner.

“How was work, Cat?” her dad asked when they were sat down and eating.

“It was good. The usual. But, I got a new job!”

“Oh?” her mom asked, taking a sip of wine and raising her eyebrows.

“Heyward and Mrs. Lee are working together now, and Heyward needs runners. So he wants me. I get a pay bump too.”

Cat was smiling, but it dropped when she saw her dad’s face. Her mom noticed too, casting him a glare, and he spoke. “That’s great, honey. But be careful, okay?”

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Her father hated her going near the Cut. Not that she had much reason or urge to, but she knew it could be rough down there. He often worked down there, on the south side of the island, and constantly told stories about shoplifting Pogues and underage drinking. “Dad, it’s Heyward’s. It’s basically Figure Eight.”

“I know, I’m just saying,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

“Can you take me on the delivery boat sometime?” Tyler asked, luckily rerouting the conversation.

The issue was luckily dropped, but Cat still felt bad. She didn’t know why - she was seizing the opportunity, something her parents had always encouraged. Cat had been working ever since she was old enough. Her father always told her, a good work ethic is the most important thing you can have. They were urging her to save up for college, and now she was essentially being promoted.

Mrs. Lee had texted her during dinner. Heyward wants you to start tomorrow! Meet him at 9, wear whatever you want.

She responded to the text before settling down in bed with a book. At ten, before she went to bed, her father stepped into her room after knocking softly on her door.

“Hey, dad,” she said, and he walked over to sit on her bed. Cat pulled her feet up to give him some room and put her book down on her nightstand.

“I’m happy for you, Cat,” he said, smiling at her. “Just be careful, okay? With all the boat traffic now and going everywhere… Heyward’s a good guy. I trust him.”

“I will, dad. You know me. I grew up on the water.”

He smiled again. “Yeah, you did. Have fun tomorrow, okay? Good night.”

“G’night, dad,” she said as her father stood and left the room.

---

Cat woke up early, not used to getting to sleep in since she usually was at the grocery store before dawn. Her parents had already left for work, leaving Tyler in front of the TV as normal. She made a smoothie before changing into shorts and a t-shirt.

“Bye, Ty!” she called as she left the house at 8:30, closing the back door behind her before heading to her car.

It was about a 20 minute drive to Heyward’s from her house. When she got there, she quickly located him on the dock, filling a gas can. As she stepped onto the dock, he gave her a wave, and quickly hurried over.

Heyward gave her an impromptu ‘training’. How to read the orders, how to use the boat’s navigation. It was simple, and she knew most of the people who had put in orders for that day. “Right now I have two people who shop and two of you who run and deliver together, each day,” he was explaining. “Here’s your work shirt, I don’t give a damn what pants you wear as long as your ass isn’t hangin’ out.”

He thrust three t-shirts of different colors towards her, each with the Heyward’s logo printed on it before taking her into the office to discuss her pay and scheduling. Since she was already in the system, it went by quickly, and she ran her printed schedule to her car and slipped into her new work shirt before returning to the dock.

“There’s those sons of bitches getting back now,” he said, waving at two people who stood on a white boat pulling up to dock. “Catherine, go ahead and start carrying over the groceries in the cooler over there, time for your first run.”

She went inside the small building and started pulling bags out of the ice, full of produce and goods from her store. She noticed Heyward’s son, Pope, standing on the boat, and he held out his hands to take the bags from her to load.

“You working here now?” he asked, and she nodded. Cat had always liked Pope; they went to the same school until high school. He was quiet and witty, which she appreciated, and they had even sat together at lunch one year.

As soon as she finished handing Pope the groceries, she took his outstretched hand and climbed onto the boat.

“Hey Catherine!” she heard Heyward call. She turned to see him, grinning at her. “These are your new coworkers. Have fun.”

Pope grinned at her, but Heyward said coworkers. Plural.

A blond boy came into her line of sight, smirking. Cat’s heart sank as she recognized who it was, and she considered getting off the boat, but couldn’t bring herself to move or speak. It was someone she hadn’t seen in quite a while, and she was okay with that.

JJ was the first to speak up, his voice smooth and cocky. “Hey, kitty Cat, long time, no see.”

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daggerzine · 4 years

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Ray Farrell on music and his time at SST, Blast First, Geffen and many more.

Ray Farrell has had a lifetime surrounded by music. First as a fan as a young kid and then eventually working for a series of record labels. He’s obviously a fan first and foremost as you can tell by reading below. It also seemed like he was there at the beginning of some major music scenes happening.

I had met Ray very briefly at one of the A.C. Elks hardcore shows that Ralph Jones put on in Atlantic City in the Summer of 1985 though Ray doesn’t remember it (honestly, a bunch of us were standing in a circle and chatting so I’m not even sure if any proper introductions were done).

Anyway, knowing some of the record labels that Ray had worked for I wanted to hear the whole story. I contacted him and shot him some questions and he was more than happy to elaborate and let us know where he’s been and where he’s going. Take it away, Ray!

Where did you grow up?

RF-Jersey City and Parsippany, New Jersey in the 60/70’s. I have two younger brothers.

What did you listen to first…classic rock or stuff earlier than that?

RF-Rock wasn’t classic yet. My earliest memories of music are my parents’ modest collection of 45’s and grandparents’ 78’s. My mom had a handful of singles on Chess and Satellite (pre-Stax) that she said fell off a truck. We rented our house from a family connected to the mob. The records probably came from them. My mom and her sisters often sang Tin Pan Alley era songs at family gatherings. Harmony was encouraged!

Some records I heard as a toddler stayed with me forever. Lonnie Donegan’s “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor?” is a skiffle classic. Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie” and “Last Night” by the Mar- Keys are still favorites. I remember being spooked by the overblown production of the “Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams” e.p. on Sun Records. In the mid 60’s, my mom had top 40 radio on in the house unless my dad was home. When I was in kindergarten, a high school neighbor in our building babysat me for a couple hours after school a few days a week. Her girlfriends came over regularly. They listened to a lot of doo-wop, which I still love today. The babysitter and her friends taught me how to slow dance, even though I wasn’t nearly a full grown boy. J

My best friend in 7th grade was a Beatles fanatic and we immersed ourselves in decoding clues to the “Paul McCartney Is Dead” gimmick. That was a brilliant scam and a fun short term hobby. It was a deep dive into The Beatles music as a junior music detective. By the time I started buying records, The Beatles were on their way out.

I happily lived for many months on only three albums-

CCR’s “Bayou Country”, Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” and the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper.” I joined the Columbia Record Club. I got the first twelve albums for one buck. That was a popular scam. Those first twelve records shaped my taste because they were the only records I had. I didn’t know what to order but I chose very well in retrospect. After that, I bought a lot of records. I didn’t smoke, but many of my friends did. A carton of cigs cost the same as an lp- 5 bucks.

I learned in 7th grade that if I knew the songs that girls liked, we would have something to talk about. Girls loved Tommy James and The Shondells and The Rascals. I still do! I had a wider range in music taste than most of my high school friends. Everyone in my extended circle loved the Stones, Neil Young and the Allman Brothers. In a tighter circle we were into David Bowie, Lou Reed, Sparks, Todd Rundgren etc. I loved Mountain, Led Zep, Hendrix, Budgie, The Kinks, Alice Cooper, Sabbath. At first, The Stooges seemed too deep and serious for me. A little scary because I thought if teenagers felt like this all over the world, I’m doomed. I bought the album with “Loose” and played that song for weeks before listening to the rest of it. The girl next door had Iggy’ s “Raw Power” album the week it was released. When glam rock was happening in England, there was a weekly NYC radio show that played the Melody Maker Top 30 singles. I was fascinated by T.Rex, Slade, Hawkwind. I don’t recall if prog rock was a tag yet, I knew that I didn’t like songs that rambled on for more than 7 minutes. There were exceptions of course- some King Crimson, Yes, Mahavishnu. I was impressionable. Radio station WBAI hosted “Free Music Store” concerts with local acts. One show was a keyboard group called Mother Mallard that had banks of synthesizers on stage. They were similar to the music of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, who you would only hear on that same radio station. I talked myself into buying their records, but it took years to comprehend them. I was too young to be listening to such serious stuff. I played soccer and ran track for a couple years. During meets at other schools, I made friends. At parties I heard Issac Hayes, Bohannon and James Brown records. Brown was all over top 40 radio. Rhythm guitar was my jam! Soul and funk records were best for that. I spent many nights listening to AM radio. The signal travels farther at night, so I’d listen to stations far away. It didn’t matter what kind of music it was. Some of my relatives had short wave radios. I was more interested in radio production than short wave content. The production quality has not changed much since then. It often sounds like broadcasts trapped in the ether for the last 30 years.

While I was in high school, it was common for local colleges to host rock and jazz concerts for low prices, sometimes free. The schools had to spend the money sitting in the student union coffers. There was a live music club in my town called Joint In The Woods. The venue began as a banquet hall that doubled as a meeting hall for Boy Scout Jamborees and the like. When it became the Joint, it was a disco. The first night of live music was a show with Iggy & The Stooges. The regular disco patrons were pissed! The guys were mostly goombah’s in Quiana print shirts and bell bottoms. Three or four guys smacked Iggy around after his set. Sure enough, he played Max’s Kansas City the next night as if nothing happened. Because of this club, touring bands were suddenly playing in my town. Badfinger, Roy Wood’s Wizzard, Muddy Waters. The NY Dolls were scheduled but didn’t show up. Springsteen was often an opening act. The N.J. legal drinking age had just lowered to 18. It was a great time. I was still in school, so I wasn’t staying out on weeknights.

I was determined to learn NYC music history by hitting all the Greenwich Village clubs and talking to the owners and bartenders. It didn’t matter what kind of music they specialized in- I was into the vibe. There were occasional scary nights parking near CB’s or jazz spots in that neighborhood. Folk music was on FM radio at the time. A high school friend booked a local coffee house called Tea & Cheese. Mostly locals and ambitious tri-state artists. Martin Mull, Aztec Two Step, Garland Jeffries. Some of Lou Reed’s touring band, The Tots, played there. I went to all kinds of record stores, mainly those that sold rock imports and cutouts. I was fascinated by the street level buzz of a record. In ’74, I heard dub reggae for the first time. The only stores to get that music were in Queens because there was a strong West Indian community there. It may have been the “Harder They Come” soundtrack that got me started. There was a “pay to play” radio station in Newark - WHBI. DJ’s had to buy their airtime. Arnold “Trinidad” Henry had a weekly show playing new calypso and reggae. He was more into calypso than reggae. A lot of calypso was political and comical. Arnold was fascinating! There was often a personal crisis he’d talk about on the air. My favorite incident was when he said that his life had been threatened during the program, so he locked himself in the studio.. Someone called the cops. They convinced him to unlock the door. He just wanted more airtime. Arnold played the first reggae dub track I’d heard- full dub albums were a new concept at the time. Most dub was found on the flipsides of reggae 45’s. One of the shows sponsors was Chin Randy’s Records in Queens. I trekked out there by train to buy my first dub records. That was a trip! Randy Chin’s family went on to start VP Records.

What was the first alternative/independent music you got into? How did it happen (friends? older siblings?)

RF-The term “punk” as a music style hadn’t been coined yet. I vaguely recall equating “punk” with the great “Nuggets” compilation or something Greg Shaw might have writ in Bomp Magzine. I didn’t identify labels as independent. I knew that if the label design was simple and the address was listed, it was probably a small company. There were plenty of record stores carrying obscure stuff. I bought import records from a few NYC stores. I took the bus in until I was old enough to drive. One store Pantasia, was up in The Bronx. I went there one Christmas eve day to get the import of the second Sadistic Mika Band album. The clerk talked me into buying the harder to find first album as well. He said it sounded like Shel Talmy produced it. I knew who that was and it was a revelation to talk to somebody in a record store at that level. That is what a record store should be! I read Phonograph Record magazine, Bomp and Trouser Press regularly. Patti Smith and Television self released their debut singles- those are the first “indie” records I bought, followed by the first two Pere Ubu singles. I remember hearing the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner” from the Bezerkley Chartbusters comp on WFMU and thinking that there must be more music like that. It was refreshing.

Seeing Patti Smith and Television perform at CBGB’s changed my life. I connected the dots. I had BÖC albums on which Patti had co-writes. She had a poem insert in Todd Rundgren’s “A Wizard, A True Star” album. She read a Morrison poem on a Ray Manzarek lp. She wrote for rock music mags with distinctive style. I read a brief story about her in the Voice and went to see her do her annual Rock N’ Rimbaud show. Shortly after that she and Television played CBGB’s for six weekends in early ’75. Both bands were really great. Patti didn’t have a drummer yet. Richard Hell was a big inspiration to me. He looked cool. He played bass like he just picked it up the month before. That was a new concept. Television changed bass players in the middle of the residency. Television was the first band I saw with short hair and they dressed like teenage delinquents circa 1962. The CBGB’s jukebox had a good number of 60’s garage records. In my head I conceived Television to be inspired by that music. Made sense to me- Lenny Kaye, who assembled the “Nuggets” comp, is in the PSG. When I went back to see Television headline, The Ramones opened. Seeing The Ramones again, Talking Heads opened. It seemed like the streak of seeing great new bands would not end. They were distinctly NYC sounds. They could not have merged anywhere else. I remember avoiding the band Suicide because I didn’t think the music could be good J. Bands like Tuff Darts, Mumps and The Marbles opened shows but I wasn’t thrilled by them. A CBGB’s band that doesn’t get mentioned much is Mink DeVille. They wore matching outfits like they were playing a low budget Miami dive in 1962J. The club still had the small corner stage. The p.a. was ok and the bands had small amps. The music wasn’t loud in a “rock” way. You could sit at a table right in front of the band. Although we consider the club a birthplace of punk, the club showcased local bands that had been around for a while. I think the club upgraded the p.a. once before building the big stage. I realized at that point that when a band was great or at least interesting live, the records were basic documents of the band’s sound.

What was your first job in the music scene/industry?

RF- Before realizing I wanted to be in the business, I hounded import mail order guys on the phone about non-lp b-sides and albums that weren’t released stateside. I was fascinated by the process. Why were some records not in stores even though they had local airplay? My dad did not listen to much music, but he had an army buddy that made a living in Al Hirt’s band. He came to our house once. He gave my dad a copy of John Fahey’s “After The Ball” album, which he played on. I liked his stories about the session man side of the business. Fahey treated him well. I was generally shy, but when it came to music I would approach anyone I thought I could learn from. I heard horror stories about the music biz in NYC but learned later that those were a mob related labels. At the time, I thought the entire NYC music biz might be that way. I planned to move to California anyway. In high school, I go-fer’d at local Jersey radio stations and talked my way into meeting a few top FM radio dj’s. I thought I wanted to be a professional dj, but my dad wisely talked me out of that. The itinerant radio jock life would not be for me. It was a racket.

In ’76, I took a long low budget cross country trip with my high school sweetheart. Along the way, I stayed in Memphis for three weeks with a cousin who was stationed at the Millington naval base. Got a job at a hip movie theatre that served liquor. I found Alex Chilton in the phone book and spent an afternoon talking with him. I wasn’t yet legal drinking age in Tennessee. It amused him that a fan showed up in his town who was not old enough to drink. En route to Cali, Tulsa, OK was on my route to find Shelter Records and studio , but it shut down and the label moved to L.A. At the time, Dwight Twilley’s “I’m On Fire” was a radio hit. I didn’t think there were still bands like that. Twilley was from Tulsa, but had moved to L.A. by that time.

When I arrived in L.A. I visited small label record company offices. A few offered me jobs or references. I spent two weeks crashing at the Malibu house of a distant family friend. I didn’t want to live in L.A. but I was encouraged by the opportunities. I got a job at the famous record store- Rather Ripped in Berkeley, CA.

Patti Smith told me about Rather Ripped before I left Jersey. In ’75, she and her band went to California for shows in L.A. and Berkeley. The northern Cali shows were set up by the store. She did a poetry reading there. This is well before “Horses” was released. I bought a couple records from the store’s Dedicated Fool mail order service. They had a monthly catalog on newsprint. Thousands of records in tiny font. Every record was described with a few words. This is 1976 and punk rock was just getting started. I worked as a prep cook in a charcuterie associated with Alice Waters’ famous restaurant Chez Panisse. The proprietor knew the record store owners. I wasn’t actively looking to work there, but I talked about music all day every day. They fast tracked me for an interview. Because of a scheduling mistake, Tom Petty interviewed me for the job. His first album just came out and “American Girl” was close to being a hit single. The band came to the store before a local show. Tom overheard the owner apologizing for not being able to do the interview, so he offered to conduct it. It was great. I knew all about his label, Shelter Records. I deliberately avoided talking about The Ramones and Patti Smith because punk was new and against the grain. At the end of the interview Tom told the owners that if he lived in Berkeley, he’d buy all his records from me. The store owner still had to interview me formally the next day, but I knew that I nailed it.

It was owned by two dynamic gents that were connected to Berkeley society and Bay Area journalists. They weren’t typical record store guys. They celebrated the 70’s in the moment. They held court with well known music scribes, musicians, dj’s. They were good friends of The Residents. Perhaps my strangest story is meeting The Residents with the Rather Ripped owners at a S.F. Irish bar that specialized in Irish Coffee’s. I had only recently heard of the group, so I was not cognizant of their marketing myth. At the bar, we were with our girlfriends and wives. One of the Residents tried to convince me and my gf to go back their place for a hot tub session. I laughed out loud and said “geez, what a bunch of hippies”! We didn’t go. In retrospect, I should have gone on the condition that they wore eyeball heads in the tub. At that time, The Residents rarely performed live, but they did in 1975 for the store’s birthday party. The early Bezerkley Records (Jonathan Richman, Greg Kihn) was distributed to stores through Rather Ripped. Their office was a few blocks away. At the store, each employee had unique music taste and expertise. Pop music was changing rapidly with a new energy. Some of us were tapped into it. We all had to know the key new releases in every genre because we were tastemakers. Major labels would beg us to do window displays for new releases. But if they could not find a store employee that liked that artist, it was no go. So, no Pablo Cruise window display. We weren’t against major labels, but we put a lot of energy into selling the ton of music that we loved. Our focus was on imports, indies, promos and cut outs where we could get a good price mark up. We had a rare record search service with customers all over the world. We’d find rare records through trade-ins and by combing record stores all over the state.

There were a few import distributors, but they weren’t hip to many small run U.S. independent releases. That was understandable because bands didn’t often press enough records for a distributor to get excited about. In other words, why spend half your day hunting down records that were only pressed in small quantities. Just as they start selling, you’re out of stock. There gonna sell a hell of a lot more Scorpions’ picture discs! As always, some distributors financed exclusive re-pressings of records that had momentum. The only way to get records like Roky Erikson’s “Two Headed Dog” single or The Flamin’ Groovies’ “You Tore Me Down” 45 was directly through mail order. I wrote to label addresses listed in Trouser Press and fanzines to buy direct in order to sell them in the store with no competition. Major label sales reps didn’t prioritize us because we didn’t shift bulk units of the hits. However, we were so plugged in to the lesser known artists that we were a good place for record companies to try and start a buzz. We could swell 50-100 of a record that all the other stores sold a handful of. Bands showed up at the store while touring. Springsteen bought Dylan bootlegs from us by mail order. Patti Smith’s manager Jane Friedman used the store as a home base when Patti and John Cale came through the area.

Berkeley is in the East Bay of the S.F. bay area. A few months after starting at Rather Ripped, I realized that the city had a rich music scene well before punk /new wave started. There was Fantasy Records, a well known jazz r&b label but best known for CCR; Arhoolie, Solid Smoke, Metalanguage; the contemp classical labels- Lovely Music and 1750 Arch; folk and blues labels like Takoma and Olivia. Of course, bands like Chrome and others started labels to release their own music. Ralph Records was started by The Residents, and they began signing bands. Rather Ripped was also a center for improv, electronic and meditation records.

In ’77 or ’78 I joined the nascent Maximum Rock N Roll radio team. This was well before the magazine. In the early days there were weeks when we didn’t have enough new punk records to fill the two hour weekly show. Tim Yohannon was all about energetic, real rock n roll, so he filled in the program with records by Gene Vincent, The Sonics etc. BTW, Tim applied green masking tape to the three closed sides of every record he had. He gave me a Mekons double single he decided he didn’t like. It was in a gatefold sleeve that he sealed shut with his green tape! Sometimes he re-designed the cover art…never for the better. He made his own pic sleeves for 45’s that didn’t have them. Bands would stare at their own records in bewilderment. Tim was archiving the records of the entire punk and hardcore movement worldwide.

Eventually, Tim brought in Ruth Schwartz, and Jeff Bale as co-hosts- both great people. Jello Biafra was a frequent guest. Tim assembled the “Not So Quiet On The Western Front” lp and later organized syndication for the radio show. I remember hearing the first Disorder ep and thinking -this is the future! J It was exciting. But soon, most hardcore records sounded alike to me. It was like- “Do you want more fries with your fries?” I went to plenty of live shows without knowing a lot about the bands playing them. I was happy when the fashion trended away from jackboots to sneakers…getting a boot kick to the head in a stage dive could be brutal. I didn’t see a lot of skinhead violence at shows, but I know it was changing the scene.

San Francisco and Berkeley were important music centers, activist meccas as well as creative artistic and intellectual hubs. Yohannon had history as an activist. He identified with public protests for causes & social issues. For many teenagers, punk rock was a rite of passage. I think it changed a lot of kids’ lives for the better. The overriding message was to be civically aware of what is going on around you and what affects your life.

Tell me about your time at Arhoolie Records. Where was it located?

Rather Ripped’s owners had a falling out and the remaining owner just wanted to sell records and antiques with his wife. He moved it to a nearby city. Just before the store closed, he told me of an open position at Back Room Distribution, a division of Arhoolie. It was in El Cerrito, a small town north of Berkeley. Chris Strachwitz, the owner of Arhoolie is a legendary record man. He recorded many of his early blues albums with a tape recorder in his car. He owned the legendary Down Home Music store in the same building. Separated by partition behind the store was Back Room. It was an indie label distributor for blues, folk roots music. Rounder Records was still a new label at the time. I gotta admit, when Rounder issued The Shaggs “Philosophy Of The World’ I was in seventh heaven. I worked primarily for the distributor, grooming to be a sales rep but I spent a lot of time in the store. At first, I didn’t yet relate to blues and country music. But there were a lot of touring artists in those styles making a living. It was a strong network of clubs, fans, radio shows and press that fueled it. The store had an incredible selection of obscure 50’s/60’s rockabilly and garage band comps. The Cramps were my favorite band at the time. The rockabilly comps mostly on a the Dutch White Label, were treasure troves of insane songs. My heart was in new music- whatever you wanna call it, punk, new wave, art music. That’s the business I wanted to be in. I used my time to learn more about distribution operations. The people that worked at Arhoolie and in its community were fun music heads. There were a lot of good musicians among them. It was a great time to live in Berkeley.

What was next, Rough Trade and CD Presents? Was that in San Francisco? I went to that Rough Trade store a few times and it was an amazing store.

I knew folks from Rough Trade UK because I bought imports from them to sell @ Rather Ripped. When they wanted to open in the U.S. they contacted me, but at the time the wage was low and there wasn’t enough space to work. I was interested in working in the distribution division, not the store. They speiled something about it being a socialist business. I stayed at Arhoolie for a little while longer. In the meantime, I was offered my own weekly late night radio show on Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley- same station as Maximum Rock N’Roll. I took over a show called “Night Sky”, an ambient music program. My interim program title was “No More Mr. Night Sky” until I settled on “Assassinatin’ Rhythm”. The station’s music director was a contemporary classical composer closely associated with avant -garde and 20th century music. A major segment of my show was for industrial, post-punk and undefinable music. I hosted a few live on- air performances with Z’ev, Slovenly and Angst among others. Negativland’s “Over The Edge” program started on KPFA around this time. KPFA was 100,000 watts of power with affiliate stations covering the Central Valley down to Fresno and Bakersfield.

When the time was right, I moved to Rough Trade’s U.S. distribution company in Berkeley. The record store was in San Francisco. We distributed a lot of British records sent by Rough Trade UK, often in small quantities. Rough Trade US was set up to press and distribute select RT and Factory records by Joy Division, ACR, The Fall, Stiff Little Fingers, Crass. It was cheaper and more effective to press in the U.S and Canada. I also distributed some U.S. labels but there was one Brit on the staff that hated most American music. On top of that, it could be a dangerous place to work. One of the staff was importing reggae records and weed from Jamaica to our warehouse. The local connection was shot on his porch shortly after he picked up a shipment! I was lucky to spend a few days travelling with Mark E.Smith of The Fall. He loved obscure rockabilly and garage band records. I was able to return to Memphis for a while to prep the first Panther Burns album for release. Tony Wilson of Factory put up most of the money to keep RTUS going. He was a brilliant character, but I learned from talking with him how not to conduct business. I often got sample records from bands that wanted distribution. Pell Mell’s “Rhyming Guitars” e.p. was the start of my long association with the band. I enjoyed selling records to stores all over the country. I learned about local scenes, records, fanzines, clubs and college radio stations everywhere. Making these sources connect for touring bands and record sales was exciting. Because Rough Trade is British, we had the benefit of connections with club dj’s. We pressed and promoted New Order’s “Blue Monday” single on a shoestring budget. For a long time, it was the best kept secret from the mainstream. I left Rough Trade for Subterranean Records ( Flipper etc) for a spell while working in a record store. The guy that put up the money for the record store ran guns to Cuba through Mexico. Thankfully, not through the actual store. I booked Cali shows for Panther Burns, The Wipers, Sonic Youth, Whitehouse.

Who owned the CD Presents label? I remember that Avengers compilation.

It was owned by a lawyer, David Ferguson. He had a recording studio as well. I didn’t understand why he wanted to run a label. He did not have an ear for music. But we did release a Tales Of Terror lp! He almost released a DOA album that I thought the band would kill him over. Many years later I got into a fist fight with one of David’s employees in a limo ride shared with Ferguson and Lydia Lunch. We fought through the window separating the driver from the passengers. I would love to recreate that for a film. Good times!

My main role there was to set up the first Billy Bragg record in the U.S. Billy’s manager was the legendary Peter Jenner and both were great to work with. They were using CD Presents as a stepping stone to a major label. In the meantime, I knew a few people at SST. Joe Carducci is an old friend. He was pitching me to move to L.A. and work there, but I resisted for a while. I had just met the woman that I knew would be the love of my life. I didn’t want to move to SoCal. Joe gave me an ultimatum. He sent three advance cassettes that convinced me to go- Meat Puppets’ “Up On The Sun”, Minutemen’s “Double Nickels” and Huskers’ “New Day Rising” That’s an excellent recruiting strategy. I later married the love of my life.

On the side I booked shows for bands I loved. Gerard Cosloy asked me to book Sonic Youth first northern Cali shows. I also booked shows for The Wipers and noise band Whitehouse

Was SST Records next? How long did you last there and what was that like?

I was there for three years. “How long did you last there?” sounds like I was biding my time :) I’m often asked about my time with SST.

Carducci hired me to do PR. That meant publicity, college radio, regional press. Video was a valuable promo tool. MTV’s “120 Minutes” program was a great way to promote our records.

In 1987 we put out more records than Warner Brothers. By that time, I hired people to help.

I’ve done a number of interviews about SST. If you have specific questions, shoot. I recall that my social life was almost entirely with my co-workers and bands on the label. I was nearly oblivious to music from other labels. I was a big fan of Dischord and Homestead. Metallica, COC, Voivod and the Birthday Party/Nick Cave were my non-SST staples.

I think around this time I had met you briefly in NJ at one of the Elks Lodge shows that my old friend Ralph Jones put on. Were you living in NJ at that point or just visiting?

You’ve mentioned that before and I don’t recall the specific show. I moved out of NJ permanently in ’76. I came back for annual summer visits to NYC, north Jersey and Philly. Some high school friends went to Upsala College, then the home of WFMU. On my first visit back in ’76 I met Irwin Chusid and R. Stevie Moore. Some high school friends were connected to Feelies before they took that name.

Was Blast First! next? I met Pat Naylor once and hung out with her at a show and she was really sweet.

Yeah around the time I left SST, the folks in Sonic Youth called saying that they had left as well. They wanted me to be involved with Blast First! in the U.S. I knew Paul Smith because he released their albums in the UK. Blast First UK released a number of Touch N Go and SST records. The label was a division of Mute which had a U.S. deal with Enigma. My job was almost entirely “Daydream Nation” promotion. It was so much fun to be able to go deep with one album. We issued Ciccone Youth shortly afterward, which augmented the overall Sonic Youth story. The only other active touring band was Band Of Susans and on a limited level, Lunachicks and Big Stick. It was only one year of work before Enigma cut Mute/Blast First loose. I went on Sonic Youth’s Soviet Union tour and I had a few memorable meetings with Sun Ra. David Bowie called a few times asking about recording studios that Dino Jr and Sonic Youth used. Bowie had a brilliant idea to record Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” with Glenn Branca’s large guitar group. We tried following up on it but Bowie was immersed in Tin Machine and other projects.

Was it on to Geffen then?

Yes, Sonic Youth had good meetings with the label. I had recently met Mark Kates who was championing the signing. He suggested that I come in to meet the entire company. He brought my name up with David who said, “we need someone like that here”.

I had fleeting thoughts that working for a major was “selling out”...punching corporate clock. I wanted to apply what I knew on a larger scale.

What was that like, working for a proper major label? Was David Geffen still involved?

On my second day there, David called me into his office. He is down to earth, street smart. Like many of the best in the biz, he didn’t have an attitude. He had met with the Meat Puppets. He sensed that Dinosaur Jr. was important. I reminded him that I was not hired for a&r.

He said- “I don’t assign job titles. If you find something else you’d like to do here, you can pursue it ‘after 5pm’ ”. I found reissue projects like the Pere Ubu box and Raincoats catalog. I recorded a new Raincoats album. I signed Southern Culture On The Skids, Garrison Starr, Skiploader. I assembled and recorded Rob Zombie’s Halloween Hootenanny comp. With Sonic Youth, I pondered making records with John Fahey and Townes Van Zandt. After ten years, it was time to move on.

Tell us what you do now, didn’t you get involved with digital music at some point?

Geffen Records was folded into Interscope in 1999 and I was bored with the limitations of the business as it was. Digital music was gaining ground solely through illegal file trading on Napster. I knew there would be a major shift in the business moving to digital. I worked for the download site. eMusic.com, signing distribution agreements with labels. This was years before iTunes and YouTube. Major labels would not work with us because mp3 files are open source files that could be traded freely without control. They saw eMusic as a facilitator of illegal file trading. Like marijuana use leading to hard drugs! In the big picture, I knew that digital downloads weren’t “sexy”. But at some point, digital music would develop into something easier to track and use. We skipped the major labels. The bigger independent labels understood that digital music would be the future. It was a great place to be. I knew a lot of music, but I had no idea there were so many labels in every country. One label owner told me that I had the best job in the world. I knew that to explain this new unproven music format it could be an uphill climb. So I took the time to research label websites for song samples. That way I could find common ground with label owners. There’s surf music in Brazil? There’s a young female cellist duo in Prague that make energetic music? There’s archaic royalty rules connected to opera arrangements? Bring it on! It certainly changed how I listen to music.

It was a time when business rules and legal rights had to change in order to deal with digital income disbursement. For example, digital downloads could be sold by the song while royalty payments were based on album sales. eMusic was at the forefront of those changes. When iTunes launched, digital music was “legitimized”. Borne out of eMusic was RoyaltyShare which provides a royalty accounting platform for labels. It is now a division of The Orchard and I divide my time between The Orchard and RoyaltyShare.

Who are some current bands you are into?

A loaded question! I listen to a lot of new music. I spend a lot of time listening to records and cd’s in my collection. Of current artists, I really like Steve Gunn’s music. I listen to the projects involving members of Sonic Youth. Bill Nace, Kim’s partner in Body/Head is a guitar genius. Body/Head’s music is a cathartic experience for me. London is lucky to have Thurston Moore living and working there. I think the music they make separately is far more exciting that what Sonic Youth would’ve made if still together.

Lately I’m digging Melenas from Spain, Hayvenlar Alemi from Turkey. Quin Kirchner is a Chicago based drummer that put out a great jazz record in 2018 called “The Other Side Of Time”. I think he plays on Ryley Walker ‘s records.

Because I’ve spent so much time with the music of Sonic Youth, Branca and Rhys Chatham, I crave the occasional dive into instrumental symphonic guitar army and tonal stuff. Current favorites in that vein are Bosse De Nage, Pelican, Sunn O)))

Given the chance I’ll see any performance by Mary Halvorson, Ches Smith, Marc Ribot or Mary Lattimore.

It took me years to get it, but I’m now a big fan of Keiji Haino’ music. Dean McPhee is a British guitarist I really like. I just bought a couple of Willie Lane lp’s on Feeding Tube.

I research music history and the development of the industry. There are historical and social components of every type of music by culture, country, time period. I love stories about riots at premieres of new avant garde works. I read a book about famous classical composers in the 18th Century playing home concerts (salons) where people are talking the entire time…but they are paid handsomely for the performance. Streaming music sites and YouTube are vast repositories of music and cultural documentation.

Do you still make it out to many shows?

I go to two/three shows a month when I’m home and more when traveling especially NY/London. I start work early in the morning so I’m not out late often. I understand why people see less live music as they get older. I’m done with music festivals. The Big Ears Festival is the only Stateside event that might inspire me to stand for eight hours.

I always hear music by new artists that I really like. I don’t always go to see the live show. Sometimes I hear a new band that sounds like a band I liked 20 years ago. I wouldn’t deliberately see a band that uses another band’s sound as a template.

What are your top 10 desert island discs?

I cannot do 10. It’s 20 or nothing. If you say sorry Ray, it will be nothing. FineJ If I’m on an island, I’ll listen to the ocean waves and sounds of nature. If I’m relegated to a desert, I’ll listen to the blood coarsing through my veins.

Miles Davis- Kind Of Blue

Television- Marquee Moon

Peter Brotzmann- Machine Gun

Sex Pistols -Never Mind The Bollocks

Rolling Stones- Let It Bleed

Soundtrack – The Harder They Come

Billy Harper – Black Saint

Kleenex/Liliput- First Songs

Patti Smith Group -Easter

Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers- Houserockin’

Led Zeppelin- Houses Of The Holy

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

Elvis Presley- Sun Sessions

The Cramps- Songs The Lord Taught Us

Pell Mell -Flow

Procol Harum- A Salty Dog

Sibelius- Complete Symphonies

Lou Reed -Coney Island Baby

Meat Puppets- Up On The Sun

The Kinks- Kinks Kronikles

“Hmm....Flow or Star City?”

Any final words? Closing comments? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask.

I’ve been involved off and on with the artist Raymond Pettibon for a music project called Supersession. He has made records under this moniker before. This project began in 1990 and stalled for many years. We revived it a couple years ago. I play bass. Raymond wrote many pages of words and lyrics that he passed to the band, encouraging us to write music behind them. It’s different from Raymond’s other records because it is not improvised. Rick Sepulveda, our guitarist is a great songwriter and he wrote music for Raymond’s words. Rick sings a bunch of the songs because Raymond loves his voice. We did a NYC performance in November that was really fun. So now of course, I’m thinking we should play monthly in L.A. We are nearly finished with the album that we recorded at Casa Hanzo, the San Pedro studio Mike Watt owns with Pete Mazich. Raymond is a brilliant man; fun and inspiring to work with. When I practice with Rick, he’ll often break into a cover song deep in the recess of memory. Like John Cale’s “Hanky Panky Nohow” ,Kevin Ayers’ “Oh Wot A Dream” or the Doors “Wishful Sinful”. We may cover a Harry Toledo song. It’s a blast. I hope to have the album finished in July.

Tav, Bobby, Pell Mell and Ray

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voemae582 · 5 years

Text

Marichat May: Kittens

@marichatmay

“Are you okay?” Alya said concerned for her best friends emotional state. It looked like Marinette was on the verge of tears.

“It’s just so sad!” Marinette said with her hands on her cheeks.

Nino had his hand on Alya’s back and awkwardly scratched the back of his head. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.” He tried to comfort Marinette.

The trio was walking home from a movie when suddenly they heard a noise in the alley way. Upon further inspection discovered next to a dumpster was a box of kittens. It struck a chord with Marinette.

“Listen girl, I know you, and I know you want to find them a home, but the best we can do is bring them to the vet or pet store, come on.” Alya said while Nino picked up the box.

“Why would someone leave them!?” Marinette put her hand in the box and softly pet a kitten with her finger and it licked her. “Oh my god. I’ve been chosen.”

Alya laughed, “No offense Mari, but you can’t even make it to class on time, you don’t have time for a cat. Plus you haven’t asked your parents.”

“Yeah, I guess your right.”

………...….

Chat Noir landed on Marinette’s balcony and pulled out his staff to look at the message Marinette sent him.

Marinette: Chat I need your help, it’s an EMERGENCY.

Chat Noir: I’ll be there as soon as I can!

He knocked on the window and slowly entered the room. He saw her back facing him while she was fiddling with something on her desk. “So what's the problem, Puurincess?”

She turned around holding a box of kittens. “I did something...”

He looked at all the little kittens meowing and stumbling over each. “What did..?”

She put the box down and pointed to one, “This one’s Bastille, and these two are his brothers, Cesar and Andre. Over in the corner is their sister little Belle.”

Chat’s eyes dilated and he was in love. “Little Belle’, our precious babies!” The two of them doted on the small babies for about an hour before realization hit. “W-wait, princess, as much as I love them and would die for our kids, where did you get them? I didn’t know you wanted cats.”

“You see, the thing is...” She told Chat how her and her friends found the kittens and brought them to the animal shelter and went home, but when she got home all she could do was think about was if they don’t get adopted and how they were left in an alley way. Chat Noir must’ve rubbed off on her because she never felt this attached to cats before him. She had ran out of her house took the box back and snuck them into her room. “And that's why I have these kittens.. Basically, I blame you.”

“How admirable and touching...”

“Stop.”

“Well, what do you plan to do with them?”

“I-I don't know, I should’ve just left them but I don’t know, I’m not thinking rationally, they’re just so precious.” She pet Cesar while he slept on her chest. “And I can’t take care of them but I didn’t want them to go to a home that didn’t love them or have them be strays.” Chat nodded and they shared ideas of what to do. “I have to bring them back don’t I?”

“Yeah...” He said in a defeated way, “Honestly I’d take them if I could, but...”

“It’s okay, I understand perfectly.” She gave him a weak smile. “Well it was good while it lasted, being the proud parents and all.” She put them back in the box.

“You know what, Mrs. Chat Noir, allow me to make sure out kittens get back safe.”

“Really? Thanks, I guess you’re the only cat I can handle.” She said as she scratched under his chin.

“And who knows, maybe you’ll have a litter of your own some day.” He chuckled.

…………..

That night in Adrien’s room was chaos. The pet shop was closed already so he had to wait until the next day to bring them in. Meaning they had all night to cause trouble for their foster dad.

“Bastille, Andre is not a scratching post! Belle? Belle where are you? Here kitty, kitty!? Cesar, you’re on top of your sister, she’s too small to do that!” Adrien was running around the room frantic.

Plagg was obviously annoyed floating as high as he could with his cheese. “Why on earth would you bring them here!?”

“Instead on complaining can you give me a hand, Plagg?”

“As far as I’m concerned I’m the closest thing you need to a cat.”

“Jealous?” Adrien smirked.

“W-What!? No!” An embarrassed Plagg flew away.

…………..

The next day a famous Chat Noir visited the animal shelter, “A-and Belle’ likes her milk warm, and make sure Bastille doesn’t bully his brothers, but he’s not mean he just has a lot of energy, Cesar doesn’t do much but he is clumsy so watch him carefully, I think Andre is catching a cold so if you could get him a check up as soon as possible that would be great, and they don’t like sleeping alone! O-oh and make sure-” He was cut off by the owner.

“Monsieur, I assure you, if you, the hero of Paris, vouches for them then I promise you I will personally find the perfect home for all of them to be together in.” She smiled and took the box.

“O-okay, thank you so much.” he looked at the kittens and felt a stab in the heart, “Good luck little guys.” He watched them meow as they were taken from the back and rushed out before he took them back.

…………..

Marinette was laying in bed holding a clearly heart broken Chat Noir.

“D-do you think the owner will remember-”

“Yes, yes, we did the right thing.” She comforted him.

“Do you think they’ll remember the fond memories we had?”

Marinette giggled, “You were the best dad they could ever have in just those few hours.”

“Yeah I was.”

They laughed and talked about the kittens some more before falling asleep.

@marichatmay

#marichat #marichatmay #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #miraculous ladybug #ml #my fanfiction #chat noir #ladybug and chat noir #miraculous ladybug au #kitten #@marichatmay

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mysteryartisticwriter · 5 years

Text

The Boy From the Record Store // Stefan Butler X Reader

A/N: I have news! Before Tumblr, I had a Wattpad account and since I haven’t updated there for a while, I decided to put all of my ‘Bandersnatch’ one shots all in one book on my Wattpad account. My Wattpad name is “Artistictia”

Stefan might act a little OOC at times of this but not much. I used a prompt that I saw somewhere on Tumblr but idk who made it but creds to them.

PROMPT: “Yeah, being pretty must be tiring.” “Then you must be exhausted.”

REQUESTS ARE OPEN BTW

Requested: Nope

Warnings: Cussing, SOME ADORABLE STEFAN BUTLER MOMENTS

Not my gif!! (Please tell me if you, the owner, would like me to take the gif down!)

For the past few days, you’ve been going to this local game and record shop that wasn’t too far from your home. Your mum and dad never really minded you going to the shop on your own, considering you got exercise.

Your work at a coffee shop was stressful sometimes, so you usually came to look at the newest released records and games to relax. The times you came were after work, usually at sunset. But only recently have you started to go a lot more during the day because of one specific boy.

His cute ruffled dark brown curls and light freckles that covered his face seemed to attract you right away. But your favorite detail about him was his beautiful and almost sunflower looking, green eyes. They always seemed to switch back and forth between two records or two games. But the way his gaze always flowed between them, his eyes focusing on them, it made you crazy.

Needless to say, you had a small crush on the boy from the record shop.

How could you not though? It was almost like everything about him was fascinating! From his physical features to the few words you’ve heard him quietly speak. The way he barely talks and walks around shyly, it makes him even more attractive and mysterious!

Unfortunately, you’re sort of like him. You were pretty shy at the same time talkative, then again, you only talked a lot when you got anxious and nervous. So trying to find a way to talk to him wasn’t going to be easy.

Here you are now, wandering the record store like an idiot, glancing back and forth between the boy of your dreams and your hands. You had a habit of fidgeting with your hands, sometimes biting your nails at times.

Thinking back and forth at what you should do at the moment, your mind almost broke.

‘Come on (Y/n)! It can’t be that hard! Just make a conversation. Oh god, what do I say? What do I start with?’

Finally, you worked up the courage and made your way over to him. You noticed he was looking through a list of records that he had written down, most of which you knew.

Looking through a box of records next to him, you saw the boy pick up two different record albums. He looked like he was having a tough choice to choose between which one to get, so you decided to take your chance to speak up.

“If I were you, I’d pick ‘The Bermuda Triangle’. It’s uh... pretty neat.” You told him, and your voice caused him to look over to you confused.

‘Neat? Neat?! That’s the fucking word I use?! God dang it, he probably thinks I’m weird.’ You internally screamed at yourself.

“Y-You listened to it?” The adorable looking boy asked, gesturing to the album he was holding. You sighed in relief in your head.

“W-Well uh...yeah! I-I noticed you were having some trouble trying pick which one to buy so I just thought I’d give you some insight on it. B-But of course you don’t really need to listen to me. I am just some r-random stranger you met in a record store anyway...” You rambled on, anxiety filling the hole where confidence once was.

To your luck, the dark haired boy gave you a small, shy smile. You returned it of course but looked at your shoes almost immediately, feeling embarrassed of your rambling.

“Th-Thank you for the insight. I have a list of several albums and music to pick from but I-I just never know which one to pick.” He admitted.

“No worries. I know that feeling.” Your courage started to build up once more.

An awkward silence made it’s way between the two of you, but you were too focused on the boy’s gorgeous, colorful hazel eyes. As for him, the boy was still trying to take in your beautiful appearance, himself.

It wasn’t until almost a minute later that you finally broke from your trance and stuck your hand out to the boy across from you.

“I-I’m (Y/n).” You greeted with a large smile. He mirrored it back to you, showing his white, pearly teeth and taking your petite hand in his slightly large ones. The hazel eyed man shook it firmly.

“Butler...St-Stefan Butler.”

‘Oh heavens, even his name sounds beautiful!’ You dreamed in your head.

Suddenly, Stefan started to yawn a bit. And even when he’s yawing, you can’t help but gawk at his features. Without thinking, you said something you would later regret.

“Yeah, being pretty must be tiring.” You added.

Finally realizing what you had said, you quickly covered your mouth with your hands. You could already feel your face burning to a bright red.

But Stefan kept quiet but his mouth soon formed into a smirk, a damn sexy smirk. This was literally the most confident that you’ve ever seen him, even though you’ve only seen him inside the shop.

“Then you must be exhausted.” Stefan’s slight smirk was still peeping through his lips.

Instantly, your face began to turn a brighter red and you failed to even stutter out random words. Stefan found this as a negative reaction and his smirk faded into a frown.

“I’m sorry! I-I was just...actually I-I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m really sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” Stefan apologized.

Breaking out of your flustered state, you waved him off.

“N-no no no! I’m the one who should apologize! I-I’m not very good at flirting and I didn’t even realize what I had said in the first place.” You explained, fidgeting with your hands once more.

The stunning smile appeared back on his face.

“I guess we both suck at flirting.” The both of you laughed at the joke.

After chatting for about half an hour, you looked outside to see that it was growing dark. Your parents would be expecting you home and you had work tomorrow in the morning as well.

“As much as I would love to keep this conversation going, I must be getting home. My parents will be expecting me home soon.” As soon as you told Stefan, his smile defaulted a bit.

“Oh well, should I be seeing you tomorrow then?” He asked, hope in his hazel eyes.

You thought about it before having another idea.

“Actually, how able you meet me at the café that’s a road down. I work there from 8:30 to 3:30, maybe we could have a coffee once I get off?” You offered to him.

Almost instantly, his face started to burn a light pink.

“Y-yeah. Sounds perfect.”

“It’s a date then.” You winked at Stefan, making him fluster his words much like you before.

Before leaving the shop, you gave Stefan a small wave. He watched as you left, your luscious (h/c) hair bouncing on your shoulders. Stefan let out a big breath that he didn’t even know he held in.

Stefan then noticed he was still holding ‘The Bermuda Triangle’ album in his hands. After all that talking, he didn’t notice at all. Stefan smiled to himself.

He couldn’t wait for that date.

TAGGED:

@creativedogs

@sugarfloss

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robinrunsfiction · 5 years

Text

In the Middle of Summer - Chapter 1

Pairing: Ryan Ross x Reader, mentions of past Brendon Urie x Reader Rating: Teen Requested By: None Author’s Note: With regards to the AOL screen names, according to my research those are Brendon and Ryan’s old livejournal screen names. The dialogue in the instant messages? Real. Saved by weirdo me in 2006 on my external hard drive because I knew that it might make something interesting one day.

Spring 2005

“Hey (YN), how’s it going?” Ryan called when he spotted his friend sitting on the porch of her parents’ house.

“Hey Ryan, things are good. What’s up?” She asked, putting down her book as he walked up.

“Did I see Brendon walking down the street from this residence late last night?” He asked with a sly grin.

“Ryan, shut up!” She said in a hushed tone, hopping off the step and smacking him in the arm. "My mom is home! I can’t get grounded before prom!”

Ryan laughed at her reaction. “We wouldn’t want that because it’s gonna be awesome.”

“Did you finally ask Melissa?”

“Yea, I’ll get to it,” he said rubbing the back of his neck

(YN) laughed. “Uh huh, better get to it. Brendon asked me weeks ago. Bought me flowers and everything.”

“Oh yea? Did he bring you flowers last night when he gave you that hickey?” He asked with a laugh. (YN) gasped and pulled up the collar of her jacket.

“Shut up!” She squealed.

“(YN), who are you talking to? Oh hello Ryan!” Her mom called from the open front door.

“Hello Mrs. (YLN). You look well rested.” Ryan replied as (YN) glared daggers at him.

“Oh, well thank you Ryan,” she replied with a puzzled tone as she walked away from the door.

“You are such an ass!” (YN) said hitting him on the arm again as he cracked up. “I’m going to go finish my homework.” She said turning back toward her house.

“You already got in to college, what do you care about homework for?”

“I have advanced placement tests soon. Not all of us are gonna be famous rock stars.” She replied rolling her eyes.

“Alright, I’ll see you later. Oh, will I be seeing Brendon around tonight?”

(YN) flipped him off as she walked in the house and heard him laughing as he headed home.

“(YN), what did Ryan mean when he said I looked well rested?” Her mom asked as she walked into the kitchen to grab a soda.

“I have no idea mom, he’s weird.” He said as she rolled her eyes and retreated to her room.

“Ok, we have to get one of everyone together,” someone’s mom called from the group of parents that stood with cameras ready to snap photos of the teenagers in formal wear waiting anxiously and awkwardly for the night to commence.

Everyone shuffled into position for the photos. In the middle stood (YN), wearing a sky blue strapless dress, her hair pulled into an up-do for the night and a white rose corsage for her wrist. Brendon wore a tie that matched her dress, and looked downright dapper in his suit.

Ryan had finally mustered up the courage to ask Melissa to go with him and she accepted happily. Brendon, Ryan and a few others pooled their money to rent a limo to drive them to the event.

Once the parents were satisfied with the photos, they piled into the limo and headed to dinner and then the dance. On the way there, flasks were slipped out of jacket pockets and passed around.

When they walked into the rented hotel ballroom, they immediately ran into Spencer and his date, as well as their friend Brent. They found a table to sit down at where they watched people dance.

After a few fast songs, “You and Me” by Lifehouse started to play and Brendon offered (YN) his hand. They went to the dance floor and swayed together to the music. He smiled down at her and kissed her sweetly. She was so happy to be at their last high school dance with him under the balloons and streamers that decorated the room. After the song ended they danced to a couple more songs before retreating off the dance floor. Brendon went to the bathroom and (YN) found Ryan leaning against the wall in the back. He had shed his jacket and his tie, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

“Having fun?” She asked as she leaned against the wall next to him.

“Yea, it’s a good time,” he replied. “I heard Brendon got you guys a room.”

(YN) rolled her eyes at her friend.

“Wait, really? That’s so cliché, (YN)” he teased.

(YN) gave her Ryan a look and was about to sass him back when suddenly there was a flash which drew their attention.

“Hey guys, look over here for a photo” Spencer called and snapped another photo of Ryan and (YN) leaning against the wall. “Oh that will be great, I’ll get ya a copy.” He said before running off.

“Ryan, can we go dance?” Melissa asked as she approached Ryan, leaning into him.

“Sure,” he replied as she headed back to the dance floor. “(YN), have a good night, be safe.”

“You be safe,” she retorted in a sarcastic tone as Ryan walked away.

“Wanna get out a here?” Brendon asked when he came back, discreetly holding up the room key card.

“Sure, let’s go,” she said taking his hand and heading out.

Summer 2005

The end of the school year was filled with celebrations for the senior class. (YN) was preparing to leave for college, but before she could start to focus on that, she had to throw her annual Fourth of July party. She had been throwing Fourth of July parties for her friends since middle school when her parents started to let her buy fireworks from the stand at the corner store. It was an event she looked forward to every year.

That afternoon of her party, (YN) put out coolers full of soda, snacks and her parents fired up the grill as she waited for her friends to arrive. Brendon and Ryan were the first ones there. She greeted Brendon with a big kiss. Ryan gave her a dejected look once she and Brendon had separated from their kiss, so she gave him a hug as well. Not long after, more people showed up and everyone was having a great time talking, laughing and eating. Once the sun started to set, it was time to go to the park to watch the city's firework display.

"I can take 4 in my car,” (YN) called as the group gathered up blankets and coolers.

“I can take a few in my car” Spencer announced as well.

“I have my mom’s minivan” another girl called out. The convoy made their way to the park and staked out a large open space. Some of the families sitting nearby looked on disdainfully as the group of loud teenagers descended upon them.

(YN) found herself sitting on a blanket by Ryan, as she couldn’t find Brendon around at first. She kept glancing around and eventually spotted him talking to some other girls. She shot Ryan an annoyed look and he just shrugged in response.

“We aren’t going to make it to the end of the summer.” (YN) said out of nowhere as she stared into space.

“You’re going away for school, are you surprised?” Ryan replied.

“No, it’s just annoying. He doesn’t have to act like he’s already single.”

“He’s making a mistake, but that’s his problem.” Ryan said with a reassuring smile.

A few minutes later Brendon finally rejoined them and settled in to watch the fireworks display. Brendon wrapped his arm around (YN)’s shoulders, but she looked over at Ryan and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to forget what Brendon had been doing minutes before.

A couple weeks later Ryan had just gotten home from hanging out with Spencer and Brent and was turning on his computer in his room when he glanced out the window and saw Brendon walking down the street from (YN)'s house. He signed in to AOL Instant Messenger and saw (YN) was online. He hadn’t talked to her since the Fourth of July, so he felt he was due to give her some crap.

i_amclandestine: did I just see Brendon leaving again? you crazy kids

(YSN): yea, actually he just dumped me

i_amclandestine: ouch, sorry.

(YSN): whatever, I knew it was coming

(YSN): I should have done it myself when I had a chance :(

i_amclandestine: doesnt make it any easier

(YSN): you’re telling me.

Ryan did his best to try to change the subject and get her mind off the heartbreak. She appreciated the gesture, and after chatting for about an hour she went to bed feeling much better than she was before.

The rest of the summer the friends spent as much time together before the gang went their separate ways. On a Friday night, they found themselves in the bowling alley for a sendoff party. (YN) was in front of the claw machine game, loading it with quarters in an attempt to win a stuffed green tiger.

“Damnit!” She yelled, hitting her fist on the glass of the machine as the plush toy fell just outside the shoot. Ryan noticed and walked up next to her.

“You want me to win it for you?” He asked.

“No!” She shot back. “I wanted to win it myself, but I’m out of quarters.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out some change. “Here, try again.”

She took a quarter from his outstretched hand and put it in the machine and started maneuvering the claw above the stuffed cat. She pressed the button, dropping it and it grabbed the toy, pulling it in the air. Ryan watched (YN) as she held her breath as the claw moved the stuffed toy over the shoot. As the timer ran out and the claw opened, the stuffed cat fell into the opening and she pulled it out triumphantly.

“Yes! I did it!” She shouted, holding the cat in front of Ryan’s face.

“Nice job! Although some would argue that I’m part owner of it since I did finance this.”

“Fine, I’ll let you have weekend visitation.” She said with a grin. He grinned back and a flutter went through her stomach. Was she starting to feel something for Ryan? He was Brendon’s best friend, she wondered if that would make any of this weird.

They went back to bowling and he sat down next to her and started playing with the stuffed cat. “Ya know, if you take this off to school with you, I’ll have to come visit you to get my visitation.”

“Well then sounds like I’m going to be that weirdo with a stuffed animal in her dorm,” she said with a smile.

The rest of the night at the bowling alley, she found herself flirting with Ryan whenever she got a chance. It felt good to be getting some attention for the first time since Brendon dumped her a few weeks before.

Ryan was working on a new song when he heard the phone ring and saw it was Brendon. The friends made small talk for a while until Brendon got to the point of his call.

“So I was talking to Gabe about his going away party. He said you and (YN) were kinda all over each other.”

“I don’t know why that matters, you’re the one that dumped her," Ryan retorted, irritated that Brendon would even bring this up.

“Come on! You know that’s kind of weird. Besides she’s gonna be going away to school soon, do you really think it’s gonna work out?” Brendon asked.

Ryan sighed. He really had hoped Brendon wouldn’t find out, and if he did that he would be ok with (YN) and him going out. The guilt started to eat at him. It’s not like things had gotten off the ground between (YN) and him yet. He ended the call and went to bed that night with a sick, sad feeling in his stomach. The next day he had resolved that he had to talk to (YN). That evening when he signed on to his computer and saw she was online.

i_amclandestine: (YN), are you busy?

(YN) was going through her clothes and deciding what to take with her to school, but was more than happy to take a break to talk to Ryan.

(YSN): not really, what’s up?

i_amclandestine: so, the relationship between us

(YSN): yea

i_amclandestine: are we only a short term thing for you

i_amclandestine: till you find someone in college?

She was taken aback. What was he trying to say? That he didn’t want to pursue anything these last weeks of summer?

(YSN): If that's what you want

i_amclandestine: well i was wondering what you were thinking

(YSN): I really have no idea

i_amclandestine: k, so i was thinking

(YSN): yea

i_amclandestine: i figured that soon as you go to college that we wouldnt be seeing each other for awhile maybe on hoildays and stuff but thats the only times i guess

i_amclandestine: and im sure that you would find someone in the school year

(YSN): I'm actually gonna be back more often than that

(YSN): but I guess I'm wondering where we stand then

She sighed, she felt that nervous feeling in her stomach again. She knew deep down where this was going.

i_amclandestine: I don’t know if i want to anymore

She felt the tears welling up in her eyes. How could she be so upset over something that never went past flirting?

(YSN): That's what I thought you'd say

i_amclandestine: ok, but friends still

(YSN): duh

i_amclandestine: good friends

(YSN): right!

i_amclandestine: better than friends

(YSN): where are you going with this?

i_amclandestine: nowhere, just checking

Ryan sat back and sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. He knew it sucked now, but she was a pretty girl with a great personality. She was smarter than he could ever hope to be, and it was in his own best interest to let her go off to school without him tying her down from a distance.

(YN) dried her eyes and put a My Chemical Romance CD in her player before turning back to her computer. Ryan was still online, but it seemed like the conversation between them was done for the night. She saw Brendon was online and felt compelled to talk to him. She needed a different male perspective. She filled him in on everything that was going on, not sure if Ryan had talked to him or not, but she wanted him to hear her side of the story.

(YSN): so now I have another "good friend"

part_time_lovah: you’re gonna be alright

(YSN): yea, I'm just disappointed and bummed out

part_time_lovah: yeah, but he's a good guy

(YSN): Brendon, I met you because of him. I’m aware he’s a good guy, I’m just thinkin I’m gonna take him out of my myspace top 8 for a while

part_time_lovah: right

part_time_lovah: well i gotta go to bed, night (YN)

(YSN): night, and thanks for being a good friend

part_time_lovah: you bet...i promised you that I’d always be there for you when needed

After that night, (YN) spent the last few busy days of summer packing and cleaning her room to leave for college. She spied Ryan around the neighborhood but decided to just leave him alone. After a few days she wasn’t mad at Ryan any longer, but she was still disappointed that he wasn’t willing to try with her. She was looking forward to the fresh start that college would provide.

Chapter Two

#in the middle of summer #ryan ross x reader #ryan ross fan fic #previous brendon urie x reader #ryan ross #brendon urie #spencer smith #panic! at the disco fan fiction #panic! at the disco fan fic #ryan ross imagine

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thequeenofcronuts · 5 years

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Uncertainties - A Royal Romance AU Story Chapter 1 Brothers and Sisters

AU Summary - Career life is busy for a group of six friends when they meet a captivating woman with a beautiful soul. New friendships are forged and new romances revealed. All the while hearts are torn and closets are cleared of skeletons. True love always wins in the end, right?

AU Warnings - This AU Stand Alone will include the following 18+ subjects: Language, NS*W, Verbal Abuse, and Abortion. If ANY of these subjects will cause pain or hardship in reading, please skip reading Uncertainties. That being said, each chapter will include its own specific warnings.

AU Uncertainties Pairings and Characters: Pairings and Characters: Drake x Riley / Liam x Riley / Liam x Olivia / Drake x Olivia / Maxwell x Savannah, including Hana, and Madeleine; plus OCs

*** All characters from the Choices Book: The Royal Romance are owned by Pixelberry Studios (Any other characters are the product of my brain…I probably should apologize now. 🙃😉)

Series Tags: @client-327 @dcbbw

————

Chapter 1 Summary - Meet the six friends…plus one more.

Chapter 1 Warnings - None

Chapter 1 Word Count: 2,700-ish

————

The Present

The private VIP suite of all private VIP suites in the Silicon Valley was most certainly at Club Peacock, owned by one Maxwell Beaumont. The ultimate of exclusive settings was constantly booked by the rich and famous, tycoons of various industries, the giants of the technological world, and an unlikely group of six, far from famous, friends. The last Saturday of every month Hana, Olivia, Savannah, Drake, Liam, and Maxwell took over the massive suite which held all the bells and whistles.

The three girls and three guys met in college when the ladies’ Sorority held a joint party with the guys’ Fraternity in celebration of surviving rushing their Freshman year. The University of South California grads were a family always putting each other before any blood relatives, and kept their promise to live in close proximity of each other after school. With the exclusion of Maxwell, well because he was Maxwell, the others used their talents to work in various children related industries. They were an excellent fit for six very different, but perfectly matched, friends.

This particular Saturday night Liam and Drake are sipping on a whiskey which is the type dreams are made of while sunken back in one of the specially commissioned Italian leather sofas, while Maxwell and Savannah were heating up the dance door. Hana was sitting with Olivia in oversized chairs with their drinks chatting up a storm. Olivia was leaning in to share her phone screen with her friend when Maxwell smoothly dances his way over to their corner. He shakes his head as he saw Olivia’s screen. “Ladies, what is the only rule the six of us follow in my club?” Maxwell still moving to the groove of the music while Olivia rolls her eyes and answers flatly, “ ‘The one rule of Club Peacock is no one talks about anything outside of Club Peacock.’ You know Maxwell, that is a sad, pathetic, and ridiculous attempt at a “Fight Club” reference.” Hana pipes in, “Maxwell, I kinda have to admit that you quote that movie way too often while this isn't even a secret club.” Maxwell, unfazed, does a spin and faces back to the ladies. “Don't make me have to kick you two out.” He gives a playful look. “Now nix the work talk and dance, or you’re outta here. That's an order from your club owner.” With a huff Olivia puts her phone in her purse and hits the dance floor with Hana.

Sunday morning finds the friends sleeping in pullout beds located throughout the suite. A collective groan fills the room as the “VIP Party - After Morning” staff, a staff Maxwell created for the club’s VIPs of VIPs, turn on the low lights while bringing in water and aspirin. Everyone pops their aspirin and raises their glass as Maxwell toasts, “Until our next Saturday night partaaayyy!” They barely clink their glasses to avoid unnecessary, painful noise and pick up their belongings as they head to their respective homes to crash. Hoping that the less than twenty-fours they have will be enough to get them through Monday.

***

Monday morning Liam steps out of the elevator and meets his assistant who is at the ready with coffee, a bagel, and Liam’s in office tablet opened to related industry news, and Liam’s daily calendar app. Liam grabs the items with a thank you entering the study portion of his office. His office, which occupies the entire top floor of the building, includes a full ensuite accessible through a set of massive modern double doors which are located behind the desk and to the left of a fully windowed wall. To the right of the windowed wall is a door that leads to his private conference room containing every technology needed for meetings, as well as bar to entertain for any occasion. The decor throughout the top floor is modern with touches of nods to the 1950’s ideas of the future, which have been lost to history. Certainly an office fit for a CEO of a multimillion dollar technology company.

As Liam sips his coffee and snacks on his bagel he reads the daily report from the company’s Head of Patent and Technological Security Department. The department gathers any potential breaches from other companies on the exclusive intellectual properties of Innovative Toy Box; the company Liam has built from the ground up. Today there is no information reported of concern and turns his attention to the articles of interest his assistant has lined up. Looking over his meetings for the day he sees his one o’clock and visibly cringes.

***

Besides the building’s security team, Drake is the first one into the office, as always, regardless of his hatred towards early mornings. A hatred which still runs strongly through his veins since college, or ever really. He never had an eight a.m. class while in school, and he avoided nine a.m. classes whenever possible. Yet, here he is behind his desk at six a.m. opening his large thermos of strong black coffee as he begins to look over his staff’s previous day reports. He sifts through looking for any possible intellectual or copyright infringement threats and finds only a few small items, but no real potential problems. Had there been any the conclusion of his report would recommend those that needed to be brought to the legal department.

He writes up his report with his final recommendations and attaches it to his daily email to the CEO. He then gets ready to assist his staff identify information they should spend their day researching while he sits back taking a huge gulp of his coffee. The job is a great one and he enjoys it immensely. Drake has always felt the best when he is doing something that makes a difference, and working for his best friend to protect what Liam has built is an honor. Drake smirks as he can hear Liam's exasperated voice in his head, “You don't work for me Drake, you work with me to keep this company strong.” Drake sighs, I just wish I didn't have to be here at “0’dark thirty” every day.

***

Not too terribly far away Savannah heads to the College Preparatory Academy she works at, stopping for two coffees on they way, and soon finds herself in the Teachers Lounge for the daily morning staff meeting. As she makes her way to sit with the other kindergarten teachers she quickly sets the second coffee at the head table. Seven a.m. on the dot Olivia walks in and grabs the cup of coffee looking over the room as her eyes stop on Savannah for just a brief second as her thanks for the morning caffeine. She opens the staff meeting with announcements of new upcoming events, reminders of school policies which she feels her teachers are neglecting, and ends with the reminder that the quarterly Parent Night is next Friday.

With a fierce look and voice conveying a subtle threatening tone, she reminds them that every employee reflects on the kindergarten through high school level College Prep Academy, as well as on herself, the Head of School. She will not tolerate anything less than perfection on parent night as these nights are one of the main reasons the most prestigious parents in the Valley send their children to Scarlet College Preparatory Academy. Olivia dismisses the group to go about their day, and Savannah makes her way to her classroom. She loves her friend, but sometimes she feels the Head of School is defending a fortress. Savannah chuckles to herself as she sees some of the sweetest faces come running to hug her and start their day.

***

Hana glides into her studio Monday morning with tea and fresh fruit for her small group of designers. She started Petits Dessins Doux with just herself and a sketchbook designing and creating pieces of specialty couture clothing for babies and toddlers. Soon her brand was being discovered by eager clients much faster than she had originally anticipated, and before she could fully comprehend it she needed to employ a staff of designers. It was a difficult task as they each had to have Hana's same level of passion and talent, but in the end she created one of the best teams in the industry.

It wasn't long until her company partnered with exclusive small boutiques in her little area of the sprawling Silicon Valley. Small chain stores also contacted her, but Hana refused to compromise quality for volume so she declined the offers and the company stayed small. She wanted her business at just the right size to reach her goals while keeping herself grounded.

While her designers handle the business with the boutiques, Hana takes on the projects for high profile clients, as well as projects for friends. Currently she is working with Olivia creating new uniforms for the Prep Academy, and she is also working on Savannah’s wedding gown. Most recently Hana learned that Petits Dessins Doux is nominated for one of the most prestigious fashion awards in their area of California, The Ruby Award. Hana is deeply honored as fellow local members of the industry nominated the company for the award in the small businesses category: “Excellence in Ingenuity and Quality”.

***

The six friends did have one more college alum who was not, thank god, in their tight-nit group. Unfortunately, they had no way to shake her off no matter how much they desperately wanted to. She wasn't in any Sorority back in college believing they were a ridiculous waste of, well, everything. Even to this day she thinks Olivia, Hanna, and Savannah were idiots for rushing. In addition she absolutely cannot stand all the brotherly, sisterly feels the six friends share just because of their days playing beer pong at drunken parties. Yet, here is she, not going away anytime soon, much to everyone's chagrin.

————————

The Past

The lamentable story behind this woeful business arrangement was due to the fact that Liam, originally being from New York, had infuriated his father by choosing the University of South California over his father’s alma-mater, Cornell University. Liam's father, Charles, had built a very lucrative Securities Lending Business and expected his son to take over.

The man was on quiet a few boards and in groups of financial support for Cornell with his college best friend whose only daughter also attended USC. She was determined to work in the successful area of Silicon Valley and as Liam's company grew he needed a Public Relations Director. Liam had been “asked” by his father to hire his college best friend’s daughter, and “asked” meant Charles had already promised her the position without talking to Liam.

Madeleine wasn't at the company very long before Liam realized he couldn't stand her. Her voice made his skin crawl, and any time he had to talk to her he knew what being trapped in hell must feel like. Much to his dismay, and that of all the employees she came in contact with, she did her job. Even if she hadn't he would never be able to fire her as long as his father was around.

————————

The Present

It's exactly one p.m. and Liam's assistant knocks on his study’s door, but the gentleman can't even announce Liam's one o’clock meeting has arrived when he hears her shrill voice and heavy foot steeps fill the study. She pushes the assistant out of her way and walks directly to one of the chairs on the opposite side of Liam's desk and with a look of expectation, slams herself down. Liam looks over the woman’s shoulder and gives his assistant an apologetic look while the gentleman quickly exits closing the door. A few moments later Liam begins to speak. “Good afternoon Madeleine. Please won't you come in and take a seat. Oh, I’m sorry I missed that you already have.” Madeleine rolls her eyes and exasperatedly begins despite his sarcastic comment, “Liam, I don't time for that attitude as I am swamped. You won't let me get rid of your incompetent employees and let me hire an acceptable staff. I need staff that have any sort of clue how to do there jobs.” Liam dramatically leans back in his chair and places his hands on the back of his head resting them there. “Oh yes Madeleine, you're incredibly busy while I have tons of free time to just relax at this desk all day playing app games on my phone.” He chortles at the vexed look rapidly coming over her face and radiating from her body.

He sits up right as he figures that's enough torture, for now at least. “Make all the little jokes you want, Liam, but you can never fire me.” She smirks maliciously while he stares right into her eyes. “Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what happens to businesses in this industry. Now, why are we having this meeting? Please enlighten me as, per usual, you scheduled a meeting with no subject or goal mentioned.” Madeleine slams a massive report on his desk clearly in agitation while tossing him a look of disbelief. “Are you really not thinking about the time of year it is? You're hopeless! How does this company continue to exist day after day?! The deadline for the company to choose the cause to support for this fiscal year is almost here. I’m sure the board of directors would just love for the company to completely miss the largest philanthropy move of the year. Not to mention the financial implications.” Liam folds his arms over his chest trying to keep an even tone.

“Madeleine, we give to worthy causes consistently all the time, and while I know this is our largest contribution of the year I will not just pick a cause because of your pressure. I am fully aware of the financial benefits the company receives, and as I’ve mentioned probably over a thousand times, that isn't, and never will be, a factor in my choice. I choose a charity because I believe in it after completing my due diligence. Also, I am completely aware that the upcoming deadline is so we have enough time to plan the company’s gala for the charity chosen. Finally, while I ‘appreciate’ your concern, understand that when I do decide, I will have the proper departments work with the company’s gala committee. All issues and events that require press statements, invitations, etc will be sent to the Public Relations Department as your department is the one it handles those types of items. Though I thank you for this informative meeting.” Madeleine sits fuming with her arms crossed while Liam looks over emails. “Good day, Madeleine.” She stands and mutters under her breath while slamming the study's door behind her, which is currently the most beautiful sound in Liam's ears. He drops Madeleine's novel size stack of information in the recycling bin and finishes out his day.

That evening Drake heads over to Liam’s penthouse for after work drinks. Pinching the bridge of his nose Liam relates the entire conversation to Drake that he had with the ever present poisoned thorn permanently located in everyone's side. Sipping their second glass of whiskey Drakes asks if Liam wants to look up charities now figuring two people searching will make it faster than one. Liam mulls over his friends offer, but he really just wants to relax after his day. Except it's not like he has a ton of extra time at the office and he is not sure when he will see the out of office “extra helpful” side of Drake again anytime soon, so he decides it's best to take Drake up on this offer.

Hours later Drake finally has a group to show Liam that seems to be perfect for Liam's personal and professional desires in an organization to partner with. Liam loves the idea and jots down the name and number of the charity’s Philanthropy Director so his assistant can call tomorrow and set up a meeting. He sticks the piece of paper with Riley Brooks’ work number in his messenger bag as Drake leaves and Liam heads to bed.

#the royal romance #choices the royal romance #choices trr #trr hana #trr madeleine #drake walker #trr drake #trr liam #liam x mc #drake x mc #liam x olivia #drake x olivia #maxwell beaumont #trr maxwell #maxwell x savannah #trr olivia #savannah walker

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idontlikesummer · 6 years

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Japan Trip 2018 (Kansai)

Back from Japan again!

This time I went with my family went to Kansai!!

There were so many things we did in the span of 10 days that everything had passed by in almost a blur. The entire vacation was quite thrilling because we landed in Japan right when the flooding was taking place in Osaka. We stayed at my hometown in Nagano for about three days, and by the time we reached Kansai, most of the flooding had disappeared!

As with the previous travel post, I took pictures of almost EVERYTHING I saw. Some of my brother’s and dad’s photos will be in this log, and I will highlight them accordingly!

Please enjoy!! :’D

(Warnings: Lots of photos of pretty things, my sparse commentary and my occasional photobombing totoro)

Day 1: Travel to Nagano

ACK. I ate salted salmon with rice on the plane but everything was shaking and I forgot to take a picture.

We arrived in Japan but I could only take a photo from the middle seat! The ride was crazy – the pilot said there would be clear skies but the rain was near torrential so the landing had a lot of drops. The woman behind me screamed, so naturally I, being terrible with turbulence, screamed as well.

The floor was wet so the plane skidded a little when we landed!

NARITA EXPRESS to Tokyo station. Unlike the previous two trips, we managed to be on time for the train, so we didn’t have time to stop by the Starbucks ;w;

I napped throughout the flight since I didn’t manage to sleep a wink during the plane ride, therefore missing most of the awesome view. Totoro’s enjoying it in my stead but he’s separated from his natural habitat by a glass panel.

We reached Tokyo Station and went past GranSta!

There was an AI robot called Pepper greeting us there! This is my first time seeing an AI, but I didn’t have much time to find out what he was used for

Eventually, we stopped by Beer Hall to eat (this restaurant was located right next to Character Street!) I tried their mentaiko spaghetti and I was blown away by how light and delicious it was! This is something I can eat two helpings of before I become full!

Time to go to Daimaru, the place I can’t afford unless I’m with my parents. We bought Tops cake from there before heading off to my grandparents’ house!

I’M LEAVING TOKYO STATION AND I DIDN’T EVEN EXPLORE HALF OF IT. (Spoiler alert: I’ll be back here a few days later)

My brother ate some Shumais we bought from Tokyo station along the ride! I dozed off because the seats in the bullet train are better than my bed

Dropped off at Sakudaira! Since we were surrounded by mountains the weather was freezing despite it being mid-summer. Even though it’s only been a year I missed this place so much

COUNTRY ROAAAD TAKE ME HOOOME to the PLAACE I BELOOONG

(the car ride back to my grandparents’ home was super enjoyable since my brother kept blasting 70s music that my parents love)

On the way we stopped by a Seven Eleven! I got carried away with buying the cup noodles (Santouka and Ippudou) since they only cost 4USD while they would have caused 18 USD if you ate them in a restaurant in Singapore!

[First photo by my brother] Home away from home I missed you so. Most of what we had to do for the next few days were family stuff that I won’t go into detail about. But basically we had a whole lot of relatives to greet and a ceremony to prepare for! So there was a lot to do

View from my grandmother’s garden!! I love the mountains and I wish I could plant one where I live. I hope the tectonic plates in Singapore converge in five years

[Last photo by my brother] Like a good girl, I slacked off from cleaning duty to walk around the neighbourhood. This place always calms me somehow. If I lived here permanently I would probably want to walk at least twice a week! Here are some of the stuff that I photographed. I’ve always associated this place with good things and I feel like I go through some sort of emotional and spiritual cleansing each time I come here.

Here’s what we ate for dinner [photo by my brother]! Loads of protein and no carbohydrates. The chicken in particular was really nice and it was from this restaurant called Big Ben!

[First photo by my brother] Since my grandparents’ house was pretty much completely occupied, we stayed at our uncles’ place instead! It was so huge, almost like a Ryokan, and could afford at least 3 guest rooms. I can’t believe they live in something so grand it’s like a hotel

Day 2: Nagano

Honestly I live in an apartment so for this entire section to be the guest room just blows me away. IT’S HUGE.

We went back to my grandparents’ house for breakfast and ate matsutake gohan with fish! I’ve always loved eating cheap and healthy food. The fried eggplant was probably the best eggplant dish I ever ate! Countryside food is so different from Tokyo food

Ate this for lunch during the ceremony! It was really filling!!

We had more time in the afternoon so I went to scale one of the mountains to a satisfying height!

Our grandmother came to join us in the afternoon, and before we knew it, it was dinner time and many of our relatives joined us with their food! [photo by my brother] It felt a lot like the Summer Wars sort of dinner gatherings, where everyone just sat along a long table and drank alcohol while chatting

We went back to my uncle’s place and our aunt made us mango pudding! She’s a really good cook.

Day 3: Nagano

The next morning she gave us cherries and grapefruit! Today we would have to leave her house for good, and it makes me a little sad. But I hope to return one day!

The next day was a day of loafing around at my grandparents’ place, but we did find some goodies! Namely my dad’s baby photos and we teased him relentlessly about it. We also tried the Ippudou and Santouka noodles and it was really good! The soup tasted just like the way it did in the restaurant!

Later in the afternoon, we went to a friend’s house! I haven’t been here for five years so it was really nostalgic to come back here! It always had a really western-decorated interior which I was fond of.

We had really delicious cake! The cream was super fresh and sweet *p*

It was blueberry season so we went to pick some blueberries from the garden! The one I picked was pretty but sour lmao. I have no green thumb

Mini eggplant! Too young to eat!

These were leeks!

Some of the flowers I really liked in the garden!

Good old chimney I always know where I stand with you

After that, we came by this area to buy our train tickets for Ise! [First photo by my brother]. I used to eat at a ramen shop here nearly ten years ago. I’m amazed how it’s been so long and everything still looks the same!

EON MALL I MISSED YOU SO [Photo by my brother]

Even the stores are the same as five years ago!! I’m on a nostalgia trip

They ACTUALLY sell uniform sweaters here! I really wanted to buy the red one but they were so expensive!! I will reserve my gakuen dreams for another day

Each time I step foot into a supermarket I realize how fortunate I am that I don’t live here, because I’d probably be bankrupt within the first week or so from attempting to buy half the stuff in the market. I mean, LOOK AT THAT BEEF.

Obon festival lanterns!

I’ve been eating at this Yakiniku house all the time since I was a kid. Until recently, I haven’t been able to return to the village, so I did miss this place a lot. Up until today it has the best yakiniku I’ve ever eaten ;w; For the curious it’s called Chikumaya (千曲屋)!

I’d probably make it a point to come by here every now and then! My favourite beef was the Karubi beef!

Cozy Corner cake for supper!! I was so full that when I lay down on my back, I felt like a turtle

That night I saw a starry sky for the first time in my life!!

[photo taken by my brother]. The phone camera quality does the scene no justice. But it was REALLY amazing, since all around, the silhouettes of the houses and mountains were actually blacker than the night sky. There were so many stars that the sky seemed more GREY than anything. The clouds also parted in a way that almost made it seem like there was a galaxy in the sky.

We counted loads of constellations, including Virgo, the Summer triangle, and we also probably saw Mars, Jupiter and Mercury or Venus. My brother studied astrology as a module in university, so he was telling me which constellations were which. And we sat there for hours by the roadside, just talking about how to read stars, which constellations were which etc. It was a really refreshing experience!

[Photo by my brother] This gave me a lot of Totoro vibes (the part where the Catbus appeared for the first time while Satsuki and Mei were waiting for their dad)

Day 4: Travel to Ise

The next day, we had to leave early, but my dad brought us to a place we frequented in our childhood since we had a bit of time. There was this mega-large slide which took approximately one minute for us to slide all the way down. We had to climb a large hill just to hitch one ride on it!

We left for Sakudaira station after this to go to Tokyo for a transit to Kansai soon after, but I’m sure I’ll be back here before long!

There was a really long queue for this ramen shop in Tokyo station, so we decided to try it! Apparently, it’s quite famous! It’s called 六厘舎 (Rokurinsha), to those interested! The broth was really good! The egg tasted like it had alcohol in it, but my absolute favourite was the CHASHU.

HARRY POTTER POP-UP STORE (anime style). I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EYES. I wanted to take the entire stand home!!!! They had many of the popular characters, like Draco, the Marauders, and I think even Regulus Black! I was hoping to get Luna, but they didn’t sell her, so I settled for Hermione and Ron! I think the store owner was amused because I kept running back to the shop to buy new things

CHARACTER STREET! I have come back for you. Since we only had about two hours before the next train ride, we couldn’t really explore anything in detail. So I decided to loiter in the Ghibli shop!

This medal reacts to “Barus!” (words of destruction). The product makers have an interesting sense of humor

The match boxes were AESTHETIC

I WANT EVERYTHING

There were some OSomatsu-san stuff in one of the shops, but I didn’t have time to stay and look! ;w;

Self control….. self control…..

[First photo by my brother]. I ate at Italian Tomato Cafe Jr. a really long time ago at EON Mall (but that outlet has since disappeared), so I was happy to see it in Tokyo Station! Their shortcake was just as good as I remembered!

Hoho. Komeda Coffee. I’ll be back for you one day…

Some of the things that fascinated me in Tokyo Station. Yes. That is a chandelier made up of kitkats, and that is PORK JERKY

TIME TO GO TO KANSAI! We hitched a ride on the Hikari bullet train! This one was slightly bumpier than the one we took to Sakudaira because of the terrain. It was interesting because our ride took place along the Toukaidou, which connected Kyoto to old-time Edo (Tokyo). Apparently, Tokugawa created this system that made the feudal lords move from Kyoto (the emperor’s place) to Edo (Tokugawa’s residence), so the economy of Japan boomed along this area. Stuff like Woodblock art and Kabuki became famous along the road.

We passed by Shizuoka, and we suspect the mountain blocked by clouds is Mt Fuji!

Well, if I can’t see Mt Fuji today I’ll just have to settle for the picture on this bottle

We’ve hit Nagoya!

We took another train to Ise! It seems like we’ll be travelling the entire day today! So I got a Café Latte to stay awake!

On the way we passed by Tsu: a station with only one syllable

The sky has become a lot prettier!

By the time we’ve reached Ise it was evening! This place feels really mystical—all the street lamps had windchimes in them, so each time there was a breeze you get this really lovely chime in the air. To the curious, Ise is where the shrine of Amaterasu (The God of the Sun) is located.

My brother took a really nice photo of the lamps and the sunset, so I’m showing it off

[last photo by my brother]. This is the first time I’ve ever eaten in an Izayakaya and I ordered…. ORANGE JUICE. But the food was super good! My personal favourite was the omelette! Everything tasted home-cooked and the bill was really cheap! For those interested, the restaurant is called とばっこ (Tobakko).

We stayed at a really neat AirBnB! The furniture was sparse (if you ignore our laundry), and it was at a very good location. Our hostess was really helpful in helping us to find places to visit as well!

Found this in the nearby Family Mart! I would buy you if I lived here, Hijikata… At this moment I’m eating five meals almost every day..

Day 5: Ise Jingu

We set off at 5am the next day I was near Death. From hereon we would repeat the cycle of waking up at 5-6am and arriving home at 11pm for the rest of the vacation. The good thing about it is that the streets are completely empty

It was a nice walk to the shrine! One nice elderly man on a bicycle said “Good morning!” to us and that brightened my mood for the rest of the day!

[last photo by my brother] Here we are at 外宮Geku shrine! This one is dedicated to Toyoukeno Oomikami, who takes charge of Amaterasu Ookami’s food, clothing and shelter! The place was really quiet and serene. It felt a lot different from Meiji Jingu, which was always filled with people. There were multiple offering spots in the shrine, and the main gate bans us from taking photos. The vibe here is really mystical and it feels powerful

We waited for a taxi to get to naiku! That’s Amaterasu Ookami’s shrine. The taxi on the sign looked like it was smiling. Our driver spoke in Kansai dialect – I was a little surprised to know that it’s not just the words, but the intonation had also changed!

This was a lot bigger than Geku! Like Geku, we were forbidden from taking photos of the interior shrine. One of the offering places was to the Wind God, Fujin, who apparently helped to expel the Mongols from the Japan seas in the 13th century! There were more people here than at Geku, but it still had that really mystical aura. I might come here again when the weather is cooler!

Well, since we left the house at 5.30am we were finished with Naiku by 11am HAH. We had lots of time to explore Oharai Machi, which is located right outside Naiku. But because of the hot weather, the fact that we didn’t eat breakfast, and the little rest we had, I was about to drop dead at this point

So Oharai Machi used to be a purification and dance/singing centre dedicated to the Gods of Ise Shrine, but today you can find loads of food shops and goodies. The vibe of the place feels super retro and I love it! I caught one or two Halal shops that sell Japanese oden and kushi sticks!

[last photo by my brother] We ate some sweetened ice to cool down after the Naiku trip! They were really generous with the portions and their red bean snacks were DELICIOUS. I don’t usually like this sort of traditional sweets but I couldn’t stop myself from wolfing this down. The restaurant is called Akafuku (赤福) - at least, that’s what the signboard seems to say!

Yeah, I really like the aesthetic of this place. I live for street Udon tbh

We chose to eat at Ise Udon Soba Okadaya (岡田屋)! A sparrow flew into the shop the moment it opened so I guess we were the second customers for the day lmao. THE UDON WAS REALLY REALLY GOOD. It had a really chewy and soft texture and it became more and more delicious the more you ate it; it was surreal. It didn’t taste like all the types of Udon I’ve eaten before. I’m so sad that I can only eat it in Ise and not where I live. I will definitely be back for more argh. 110% WILL RECOMMEND. It’s pretty cheap too and in my opinion, it’s best to eat it without too many toppings. Maybe just an egg with garnishes will do

(The store had a retro telephone booth)

[Photo by my brother] We ate Matsusaka beef and ONE STICK COST 9USD. INSANE. But it was really good and chewy and I’ve never had better beef in my LIFE

Okage Yokocho is an area in Oharai Machi! It looked a little bit like a festival! They had a rifling booth which I wanted to try, but I was trying to save money so I decided against it. Lots of fancy buildings here!

We went to Kaminogo Station because our host recommended another shrine! The weather made me feel like I was swimming in a volcano, but the clear skies make it worth it! I could take photos with my eyes closed and it’d still turn out pretty

Here’s a bit of what was inside of the shrine! It was significantly cooler in temperature than Naiku and Geku. There were bees buzzing around here and there. The walk was less intense than Naiku and Geku but I was starting to get tired around this time

So we returned back to the apartment to pig out.

Only for us to leave about two hours later so we can eat… AGAIN. The sky was really pretty. I guess one good thing about summer is that you get really pretty skies

Guess what we’re having: Matsusaka BEEF! Apparently it’s one of the THREE BIG BEEF along with Oumi Beef and Kobe beef. Which means it’s expensive as hell but you only live once I guess. The restaurant was called Ishikawa 石かわ and it’s famous for Matsusaka Beef!

The restaurant had a really quaint feeling you would get from a sleepy little town. The chef pan fried the beef on a sizzling stove. I WISH I HAD A BIGGER PIECE. The beef was so chewy and the sauce was so good I made it a point to keep the meat in my mouth longer than necessary. The vegetables were also really fresh so it added to the taste! EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT. This was probably one of my favourite things I ate along the entire trip. Top 3 for sure

Ise is just as mystical at night time!

Aaaaaand we went to eat ramen for supper. This is the same restaurant as Tobakko, except it was a Ramen booth instead of an Izakaya. It had the roadside street stall feeling to it, and the ramen tasted really nostalgic! There was only one man running the shop so he must have been very busy

Day 6: Nara and travel to Osaka

The next day we woke up early to go to our host’s café! It was located deeper in the alley where the apartment was situated. I REALLY liked her decorations!

She cooked for us Ise Udon and many other side dishes like salad, omelette, and tofu pudding! It was REALLY cool because we were the only people in the café at that hour, so we could spend a lot of time chatting with her. I’ll miss this place and our hostess when we’re gone! ;w;

We traveled to Nara on a one carriage train called Yamashiro Reccha! [photo by my brother] All the blinds were drawn so the carriage was dark and my dad kept making murder mystery jokes

WELCOME TO NARA. You can almost tell from the staircase what this place is famous for; I’ve never seen wild deers before in my life so I’m really excited!! Unlike Ise, Nara seems to be a town instead of a countryside, so the vibes are pretty different

Here sells nothing but melon bread. I want to live in this stall

[Last photo by my brother] The tourist center recommended that we try 天丼まきの (Tendon Makino) for Tendon since it was a popular tourist destination. I swear to God, this is the BEST TENDON I’ve EVER eaten in MY LIFE. I’m not fond of octopus but I ate everything up in one go. There was a fried egg in the bowl you could crack open and spill all the yolk everywhere. Literally this is something I’d never get sick of. I could probably eat it everyday for the rest of my life.

MISTER DONUT. I will have you one day….

One of the stalls had a sparrow’s nest near its opening gate! While the sparrow chicks were cute as sin, I sort of pity the poor sparrow for making its nest in the middle of a tourist district

We stopped by Kofuku-Ji Nan-en-dou 興福寺 on the way to Nara deer park! The architecture of the tower seemed really old! It seems there are lots of old buildings (dating to before 16th century) in Kansai

A really nice looking hotel called 菊水楼Kiku-sui-rou. It seems they have a very high rating for their hospitality and their food!

We arrived at the gates of 春日大社(Kasuga Taishi)! And I SAW MY FIRST DEERS. I didn’t dare to approach them since I thought they would run off, but silly me, they were probably already accustomed to having people around.

More deer and shrine stuff! The deers are literally everywhere. And there are lots of tourists too! The awkward part was that there were tonnes of deer droppings everywhere, so you could step on them if you’re not careful.

There was a rest stop at the shrine, so we sat here to cool off a bit. Then this deer appeared out of nowhere and started sniffing my dad’s bag. He was sniffing every single human he came into contact with. Then he came up to me and began to sniff my plastic bag.

THEN HE RIPPED IT APART AND ATE OUR MAP.

I hope it was at least a little bit nutritious but now we hae no directions

We had ice-coffee and ice-cream at the rest stop after that!

So we walked down from the hill after that and played with some deers! This one kept following me. I’m sorry, I don’t have a biscuit for you but I can give you attention if you’d like!

Deers crossing the road! And the bus gave way to them

On the way to 東大寺Toudaiji!

Toudaiji houses the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana. The statue was at least ten times taller than me without exaggeration!! I also really liked how old the building seemed to look! It seemed really ancient

We headed out of the temple and this deer stuck his tongue out. What message are you trying to relay, friend?

We returned to Nara station soon after that and took the train to Osaka! We’ve been taking so many trains that the JR Pass is adequately used!

HELLOOOOO OSAKA

We arrived at our new AirBnB destination and I slept so soundly here!! Maybe it’s because I had my own room, but I love that we had the entire floor to ourselves! I also really liked the decorations she put all over the place! It’s really close to the station and Namba City so it was pretty convenient! Here’s the link if anyone is interested!

By the time we reached Namba it was already rather late! So we scoured the place in a rush. There was a Takashimaya somewhere in there which sold nice cakes!

The store Rope Picnic sold lots of cute clothes at 70% off because of summer sale! I felt like I held myself back from spending money just for this moment!! I would be coming here repeatedly over the course of the next few days!

Meanwhile my brother ate some Milk Ice-cream that’s so smooth it looks almost like a toy [photo by my brother]

We decided to eat at 百十Momojuu since it’s a crime to go to Osaka and not eat Okonomiyaki! That is, we ordered Monjayaki instead because we didn’t know there was a difference. THE BEST DISH WAS THE TONPEI (Omelette with meat inside)! The Okonomiyaki (second last picture) was not ours, but the cook accidentally placed it on our grill. Overall the meal was pretty affordable! If I were to go back to Osaka, I’d definitely come by here again.

(The air ventilators seemed to suck smoke up in the air, so people could smoke in the restaurant without bothering the other customers!)

Day 7: Kyoto

Some things I noticed and liked on my way to the station. Today we would be going to Kyoto. I haven’t been there since I was five but I remember bits and pieces of it!

THE ESCALATOR AT OSAKA STATION IS SO TRIPPY. Apparently people in Osaka seem to stand on the right hand side of the escalators rather than the left? That’s really interesting!

The escalators in Kyoto station have handles which are actually decorated!

We’ve reached the gates of the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine(伏見稲荷大社)! This one’s well known because of all the red gates and the impressive climb you need to take to the summit of the shrine. Inari is the God of rice, and you see lots of fox statues throughout the climb. Each of the gates have been donated by a Japanese businessman apparently.

It seems that at each of the gates, the fox on the left has a scroll in its mouth, while the fox on the right has a ball.

[Photos taken by my brother]. At the base, there were tons of people, but the numbers dwindled as we hit the summit. I had to stop at every rest stop because I was just that unfit! But the climb was good and hitting the summit made me feel healthy! One thing I was surprised about was how un-summit- like the summit seemed. We didn’t realize it was the summit until we had to climb down the stairs on the opposite end of the hill!

Down we go!! My legs hurt. I probably won’t be able to stand tomorrow agh

We reached the base and ate some oden and shaved ice to cool down! The lady in charge of the shop told us that tourists only came by Fushimi Inari about four to five years ago. It appears that the shrine was a pretty recent tourist destination!

Eventually we headed back to Kyoto station and checked out the restaurants in Isetan! There was a restaurant which specialized ENTIRELY in omurice! Naturally, I was very excited!!

...Though we ended up eating at永寿案 “Washoku” Restaurant Eijuan since we were at Kyoto!

They serve really fresh and delicious grilled fish dishes with tons of mini side dishes on the tray. The restaurant is also located on the top floor of the shopping center so you’re treated to a killer view of Kyoto! For Washoku, this restaurant is pretty affordable and the quality of the food is really good! It’s something to look for if you like light meals :’) The service staff were also really helpful in helping us to find places we can visit in Kyoto.

We took a bus from the station and headed to Kiyomizudera Temple! We have to walk up a hill again but thankfully it wasn’t as insane as Fushimi Inari. We did a lot of walking today and my legs are tired

SCENIC

We paid about 400 yen to see the rest of the temples, but I thought it was really worth it! Most of the trees in the mountain change colours really quickly when it hits autumn, but for now all the trees are green since it’s summer. The view is really breathtaking and worth the climb!

It was a long way down from the temple, but there was a shopping district with aesthetic houses nearby!!

I’m marrying this Ice cream melon soda shake you’re invited to our wedding

TOTORO SHOP KYOTO STYLE. I LIVE

This No-Face Piggy Bank will EAT YOUR MONEY so WATCH OUT

Some other things that caught my eye!

We took the bus to Gion-Shinbashi next! Gion’s the Geiko district with lots of Geiko and Maiko (geiko apprentice) running about!

The street is really pretty! I think you can’t enter any of these shophouses since they usually cost a bomb to go into. Lots of the second-storeys of the houses are covered with some sort of curtain. I wonder why

I MANAGED TO CATCH SOME MAIKOS

Before they boarded a taxi

I wonder if they’re used to tourists gawking at them each time we pass them by..

There’s a Lipton café at Kyoto station I don’t believe my eyes

I wanted to eat here but our train is departing soon!

We’ve arrived back at Namba!

Don Quijote is going to be my best friend for the rest of my days

There’s literally an alcohol called “Do your best, Daddy!” I can’t stop laughing

In the end, we decided to eat at a Yakiniku store since Osaka seems to specialized in grilled and pan-fried foods! We ate at牛角 Gyuu-Kaku, which is apparently expensive where I live, but pretty cheap here.

[second last photo by my brother]. The meat was really good! I swear everything we’ve eaten on this trip is good. The dish in the last picture was especially good—they put some sort of cotton candy and boiled the meat in sauce, and the cotton candy just melted into the sauce after that. I have no idea how it works. All I know is that it was GREAT

THEY HAVE GRILLED MELON BREAD WITH ICE CREAM. I went to town on this one. You grill the melon bread, cut it open and shove ice-cream into it. It’s SO GOOD I can die. This is the highlight of my trip

Then we ate takoyaki after that! We eventually headed back to Don Quijote for grocery shopping

ATTACK ON NOSE HAIR

We had dessert when we went home again! This one came from CRAMERCY New York!

Day 8: Osaka

My dad went to 高野山Koya-san while we rested at home for the day. Apparently, it was first built by monk 空海Kukai, who founded the Japanese calligraphic system! Here are some of the pictures he took!

Apparently, you would sit on a monorail that wasn’t shaped horizontally to get to the top of the mountain like you see in the last picture! It seemed really cool!

Guess what we had for breakfast the next day!!

1. Cake

2. Cake

3. Cake

I can’t believe they made Takoyaki cream puffs and sold it in Takashimaya

We headed to Namba City and ate a buffet meal at GOOD SPOON! I really enjoyed the décor of this place. Apparently it specialized in Italian food, especially their cheeses! The huge bag on the bolognaise in the fourth picture is in fact a huge chunk of cheese! Honestly, everything we’ve eaten on the trip has been really worth it and delicious!

On our way to Osaka Tower!

There seems to be tons of Billiken motifs in the tower. He was dreamt up by an American artist, and is said to bring good luck!

A scene from Osaka tower! Apparently you can see Universal Studios here somewhere!

The history of this place seems a little interesting. Apparently it was built and opened in 1912 along with the amusement park, Luna Park, which included arcades and rides. Unfortunately the original Tsutenkaku and Luna Park burned down in the 1940s, but they rebuilt it under Hitachi in 1956, so the tower is still around today!

The Tower also hosts the Glico museum! Glico was the company which made Pocky!

I’m honestly scared of how much weight I’m going to put on

Eventually we headed back to Namba Area as a cut through to Dotonbori!

[last photo by my brother] Doutonbori has so many lighted billboards I LOVE IT. The giant crab in the first picture actually MOVES. It reminds me of Tokyo a little, but has more of a night life feeling to it! Lots of shops that I love here, but I only had four hours to run through the place before everything closed!

There was a festival taking place along the river while we were there

We eventually went to eat Kushiyaki at だるまDaruma because that’s another thing Osaka is famous for! It was really good! My favourite dish was the Dotemiso and the quail eggs! So far, it seems like Tokyo has a larger variety of food, but Kansai’s food is more flavorful!

Gintama sale at Marui. I’ll patronize your store another time, Elizabeth….

Day 9: Kobe

We’ve arrived at Kobe! The weather was CRAZY HOT today! I really like the port towns in Japan since they seem to have a lot of delicious Western food, history and architecture! It reminds me a lot of Yokohama in a way! Plus it’s located on a hillside facing the ocean, just the sort of thing I like!

We went ahead and took the Kobe City Bus! It looked really fancy and there was an announcer giving us a rundown of the historical importance of the routes we were taking.

Our first stop was Ijinkan! AKA the street with all the old Western houses that rich foreigners used to live in or use for their recreational activities! The street here was REALLY pretty! Since Kobe was a hill, we would have to climb around to get to just anywhere. The England House apparently had a Sherlock Holmes exhibition on the second floor, and I could see Watson’s silhouette through the curtains!

We bought the tickets to go to the Trick House! Albert Einstein greeted us from the window it was surreal

Many art pieces would look REALLY TRIPPY if you took a photo with a person in it, but I’m camera shy. Here are just some of the exhibits which don’t require you a person to be in the picture. The third one was probably my favourite since it looks like a mirror but actually isn’t! They arranged two rooms to look perfectly symmetrical and you could only tell if a person is walking on the other side. It’s a lot like that one room in the Witch’s House…

You have paintings like these too.

It was fun to walk on air :^)

Next we had to climb a steep hill to Uroko House!! It was a struggle in the hot weather but at this point I’m so used to sweating. I wonder how the staff come here to work everyday…

Kobe tiles!!

Uroko House! …..’s café

There’s a wild boar in front of it called Porcellino which brings good luck if you touch its nose! I kept getting distracted by its name because of Porco Rosso’s nickname…

The REAL Uroko house! Apparently they named the house as such because the tiles used to decorate the mansion look like scales (uroko). This house used to be luxury rental houses for wealthy foreigners. The exhibits include not only the rooms, but also antique utensils, tableware, and a small art museum!

If I were a doll and these houses are completely furnished I’d live in them.

Some of the stuff we ate in the café! I really liked the ice-cream. We accidentally spilled our drink and the waitress was nice to refill it for us for free

Here are some of my favourite rooms!! I’m glad I came here. It looks a lot like the dollhouse in The Secret World of Arrietty

The view and some of the nice artworks in the museum!

Now we’re off to Yamate 8Ban Kan

Yamate 8Ban Kan! It’s oriented to the sea with trapezoidal bay windows in a row. Inside the building, the “Saturn’s chair” which is believed to grant your wishes if women sit on the right and men on the left. I was having a stomachache so I might have wasted my wish by wishing it to be gone

FUJIKO MINE CLORETS! I love her she’s such a role model

Now we’re going to try Kobe Beef at Steak Land! While we were taking a lift to the restaurant, a man stumbled into the elevator with us. We suspected that it might have been someone important since the restaurant continued to serve him after its closing hours

I’M SO EXCITED!

THE BEEF WAS REALLY GOOD! They cooked the vegetables first and saved the beef and beansprouts for last!! I can’t help but think that everything that we’ve eaten on this trip was really delicious! As far as Kobe beef goes, this was one of the more affordable options!

SCORCHING SUMMER SUN. You can see how hot it is. I could write a song about how much the weather makes one suffer

We continued to take a bus trip around and passed by the maritime museum! I didn’t manage to go in this time, but there will always be future trips that I can plan for :P

Kobe is so scenic!!

Nishimura’s Coffee looks really fancy and I really like the exterior décor despite not eating inside.

We headed to Mosaic Mall! Which seemed to be an outdoor shopping centre!

We meet again, Donguri Garden.

SMILING TOTORO BAG. How can something so perfect exist

My brother tried some chocolate ice-cream from Frantz! Though I didn’t manage to try it to tell if it was good or not

We took the bus back to Kobe station and headed to Namba again!

MY FIRST CREPE ON THE TRIP. I have found you at last

I seem to come across a lot more kittens than full grown cats while I’m in Namba, but this brave warrior didn’t seem afraid in the midst of all the people walking around.

Lmao R18 gacha-gachas

We headed back to Namba City for dinner! There’s this shop called C3 Baked Tiramisu which is ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. I’m not sure if you can find it in Tokyo but this is hands down the best Tiramisu I have ever eaten in my entire life. We bought a dozen back home to finish

MIX FRUIT JUICE SHAKE IS GREAT! I should make this on my own next time! It probably had mango and orange inside, maybe even pineapple, but I’m not too sure

Eventually we headed to Shabu Nabe Udon Noraya のらや, which specialized in Udon and Shabu-Shabu. I had the Udon and tempura set while my brother and mother shared the Pork Shabu Shabu. HOW CAN SUCH A PINK PORK EXIST. I guess the reason why the food here’s so great is because of the quality of the ingredients as well. I really like non-greasy food so this has to be one of my top 3 meals in the entire trip! Definitely would recommend this! And it’s pretty affordable as well. They are really generous with the portions!

We had more cakes for supper

Day 10: Leaving Japan

Tiramisu for breakfast! It’s over so soon and I don’t want to leave Osaka so soon ;w;

We stopped by Tully’s Coffee at Osaka station and my mother tried a pancake! It would take a few hours before we reach Tokyo…

We had lunch at 矢場とんYabaton at Tokyo Station!! The Pork cutlet was really good since they cooked it with their own miso! The staff were really nice too! They helped to warm up my food since I took such a long time to eat because of my stomachache ;w;

We took a Monorail to Haneda Airport! I didn’t know that monorails would tilt to the side when they turned!

Might that be rainbow bridge?

Amuro Tooru seems to be really popular in Japan now! It’s probably because of the new Detective Conan movie in Japan but he’s always been intriguing! I hope they release more on his backstory soon.

Agghh I don’t want to leave but I will definitely be back

The sky was really pretty! Overall the ride was way better than the initial one, since much of the rainy season has cleared up. I actually managed to sleep so that was impressive!

It’s good to be back!!

I guess on the whole Kansai has a pretty different vibe from central Tokyo. Both had their fair share of cultural landmarks and city areas, but Kansai used to house the really old capital of Japan, so they had much older monuments compared to Tokyo. Osaka’s city also seems to be a lot more night life-ish compared to my experience with Tokyo! In terms of food, I’d say that Tokyo has more variety, but I really think Osaka’s food has more flavour. Literally everything I’ve eaten on this trip is delicious and worthy of a recommendation!

On the other hand, I’m really proud of myself since I managed to control myself from overspending this trip :^)

If you make it a point to visit the cultural landmarks instead of going to shop, you really can save a lot of money when travelling in Japan! There are also many more Halal food options compared to what I’ve seen last year, so it should be possible to find good Japanese food for those who have to adhere to a religious diet!

#japan #kyoto #osaka #food #ghibli #photography #travel #scenery #other stuffs #ise #kobe

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peachenle · 6 years

Text

parted clouds (2) - jungwoo

genre: rich kid! / bookshop owner!au | fluff

member: nct’s jungwoo x reader

word count: 5200

༄࿔˚✧ synopsis: It was a different bitter winter wind, one that traversed continents, that brought certain circumstances to bring two people together, but at a small cost.

note: Inspired by @stormae‘s rich kid!au stories, found here. Thank you again. || I hope you enjoy, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Part: one | two | three | four(?)

A couple days later, your phone rang and displayed an unusual contact name. It was probably the first time your mother had called you personally in at least three months. Most of your communication was one-sided, basically. Her personal assistant would respond “for her”, but some of the words that you received couldn’t possibly be from your mother. For one thing, your mother never would have told you, “Good luck on your exams!” like what was sent two weeks ago. Nonetheless, you held no resentment for this fact, it's not like there was any other option anyway. Your parents were chronically busy, and time for their only child wasn’t something that fit into their business schedule.

You were laying on your stomach in bed, in the midst of jumping between a French dictionary and a French novel, with a hand propped under your chin, when she called. Her tone was always formal and politely foreign, the distance between you two so painfully evident in her voice. It’s like you were just centimeters above the stranger level, not quite at the end of the spectrum, but far, far away from what a mother and her child probably deserved to be.

“Your father and I have been invited to Zagreb to meet with other pharmaceutical chairs. We would like you to attend.”

You felt your stomach drop. Your brow was laced with worry in response to the apparent gravity of the situation. Now this wasn’t uncommon, you’ve attended plenty of meetings and conferences before, but this one was probably extra important if your mother had to call you. Her assistant already arranged your flight and stay, you were to leave in two weeks.

It was a bit frustrating that you didn’t have time to relax for break, you were kind of fine with lounging around with your books and maybe taking a trip down to Boracay or something to escape the snow for a moment. But most importantly, while you couldn’t ask her why, you wondered why your mother had been the one to call in the first place.

With that thought and the difficulty of French, you became fed up with reading. This novel was not one for people who had zero background in the language, even if you already knew the story. It got you thinking about Jungwoo’s bookshop and you decided that returning would be a good break from the frustration that clouded your mind and tensed your shoulders. You slipped on some dark pants and a comfy sweater and dialed your driver.

The same faint jingling of the door’s bell and the cold breeze from outside brought a wave of noise in the, again, empty bookstore. Jungwoo was not in sight, and you worried that maybe he wasn’t in for today and someone else was in his place.

But your thoughts were dispelled as the same boy emerged from behind the shelves, or rather from a room in the back, to greet you.

“Welcome back, Y/N! I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said in his usual happy and soft voice. He beamed at you, but you noticed a slight fall in the curve of his pink lips as he noticed your exhaustion.

In an effort to deter him from your usually short lived frustration, you joked, “I’d like to apologize, I cannot read the book you gave me. I would prefer to learn the language from a tutor before taking on a full novel.”

He chuckled, “Honestly, exactly what I was expecting, but I’m glad you still tried! Do you want something to drink?”

After you asked for some tea and Jungwoo scurried off to the back room, you began to sift through the books on the coffee table and a nearby unlabeled shelf. Most of them were aged and the collection here was a jumble of alphabets that were foreign to you. You admired the quality of the binding of each book, while you couldn’t recognize the title, you knew Jungwoo had his hands on some really nice editions. It was bittersweet that this store wasn’t hustling with life. Bitter in the sense that it seemed like there was little business, although it’s probably not like Jungwoo needed it. Upon coming here a couple times already, you knew the alleyway the store was located in had some movement, but passerbyers never took much notice. But the fact was sweet in that you had this store for yourself, or at least in this moment. You could relish in the cozy crampedness of shelves lined with pretty books that aroused a bit of curiosity in you. You were careful to leave the opened books on the table in their prior state.

His voice broke you away from a small red book you were setting down. “Here you go,” Jungwoo handed you a small brown mug. He followed your gaze and pointed to the little shelf, “These are the books I plan on reading, also on sale by the way, and those,” the ones on the coffee table, “are ones I am currently reading. A customer told me I should clean this up,” he scratched the back of his head, “I’m definitely still getting used to running a shop.”

You moved to sit on one of the comfy looking armchairs by the cold and barren fireplace. “Yeah I get it, my father left me in charge of a pharmacy in Itaewon last year for an entire month. He thought it would be good experience for me to see what it was like on the ‘common man’ tier of work as he said,” you rolled your eyes and sighed at the memory. You were still young and inexperienced for that little test from your dad. You knew how to act in business settings and how to exchange deals, not how to oversee one of largest pharmacies in Seoul. “My parents are always testing me and throwing me into trials to wager my abilities for the future - always looking down on others and I from their high pedestal,” you took a long sip of the hot tea. “You know how it is, right?”

Jungwoo listened to you intently from his seat behind the front counter. He held an iced Americano, a straw poking near his chin, and an incessant curve at his lips ever present. His bangs shook each time he nodded as he listened to your words. You were comforted in the fact that he really seemed to understand, but you also realized that you were venting to a boy you barely knew.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to unleash my frustrations out on you! My mother just called and is forcing me to go to Croatia for a meeting and it made me very worried and disappointed even? I never seem to get a decent vacati- oh. I’m doing it again,” your cheeks flushed and you awkwardly laugh as you look at Jungwoo. He wore another charming smile, and he was quiet as he seemed to just be relishing in what you were saying.

He was careful in picking his words, “Our parents have high aspirations for us, and it would make sense for them to invest a lot into their child to help curate them to uptake something as important as their business. They want to make sure we can handle things like that.” Jungwoo held a handsomely stoic expression as he talked about these serious matters. “It’s annoying and difficult now, but they’re really only trying to do what they think is best.” You felt the furrow in your brow and the tenseness in your shoulders soften as he spoke to you.

You two chatted swiftly through the evening, with only a sprinkle of customers to interrupt your conversation. It was lame to say, but you two really did “hit it off.” Jungwoo eagerly listened to you tell him your library stories, with brief and excited comments in between. You were flattered to learn that he too had his fair share of library visits and was able to let you in on his adventures too.

“The National Library of Malta is so underrated!” he exclaimed. “It started off as a deposit for books from dead knights; how cool is that? It has this great collection of incunabula, too. I haven’t been there in a few years, but I would love to return. Malta and Italy,” he held up his hand in an OK gesture, “are some of my favorite countries to visit.”

You raised your eyebrows, with thoughtful surprise. “I adore the Mediterranean, but I don’t think I’ve been there before. Call me lame, but if I’m that close to Italy I usually tend to just flock to Venice.”

Jungwoo smiled at you, “I would never call you lame.”

For each day of the rest of the week, you found yourself tracing your steps back to Jungwoo’s bookstore. He tried to gift you more books to read, but you insisted that you would pay for them. You collected enough books for this break and maybe for the following couple weeks. He even showed you some of his editions of Romeo and Juliet, but you didn’t have to heart to buy a new one and cheat on your current copy.

Naturally, as you two began to talk more, you were both able to share more about your aspirations in life. Jungwoo rarely talked about his family, only citing that his parents were still in China and that he was happy to be alone in Korea for the winter anyway. Still, you learned that he loved to write, but he planned to take up international business at school next year. “I’m taking a gap year before I transfer in.” You told him you were in pharmacy and business, and despite him calling you crazy, he had an understanding of organic chemistry, which wasn’t half bad (far better than what you were capable of) and he enjoyed helping you.

In addition to that, he tried to help you with French. He repeated sentences very carefully and slowly and nodded encouragingly as you mumbled the different conjugated forms of verbs. You enjoyed hearing him speak, and while he would sometimes get self-conscious - citing that his pronunciation wasn’t the best - you told him you could listen to him for hours.

At this point, you had really only known Jungwoo for a week and two days, but you were glad to have met someone with so much in common, and someone actually so genuine. Last evening, while you were side by side peering over some French book he pulled out to help you with pronunciation, you could confirm you felt him leaning into the friend side of the spectrum, a range only a few people could manage to reach.

Though the bookshop was small, you two found yourselves relaxing in every corner. You even learned that the backroom had a bed (he told you that he would get lazy and sleep in the shop anyway, so he purchased a bed a few weeks ago). Or sometimes you two squished into the loveseat and he would jokingly lean into you as you read to distract you. You would push him off with your shoulder, but you wouldn’t forget the burn of the contact as you continued to flip the pages of the book. Or you and Jungwoo talked with shelves separating you, or most of the time you followed him as he shelved books after customers had ruined his organization progress. You noticed that Jungwoo did everything with a gentle grace, and an inherent cuteness, as corny as it may sound.

It was the morning, exactly two days before your flight to Zagreb, and before the conference. The time you had spent with Jungwoo seemed to erode the worry you held when your mother first called. You walked in with two hot green teas and apple pastries for the two of you. You found him between the English and the Japanese shelves. Despite the dust that clouded the few streaks of light in the shop, Jungwoo shined. He resonated this indescribable aura of delicacy and eloquence. You guessed he didn’t hear you enter since he was so at peace as he brushed two fingers along the spines of the books on the shelf, ignoring how he caught specks of dust on his fingertips, and looking for the spot to sandwich the book he had held. He carefully pried two books away and slipped the book into its rightful spot. “Welcome home,” you heard him whisper.

You couldn’t help but bite your lip to contain your smile. You couldn’t pinpoint the right word to describe him at this moment. Jungwoo was so quietly effervescent, so meticulous… so soft? You exhaled a soft laugh and he turned to the sound, confused as you finally broke into a grin.

You learned that Jungwoo was never afraid to compliment you, even if it was in a teasing manner. In the week and a half that you had known him, he found a new thing to compliment you on (yesterday he told you that your scarf framed your face in a flattering manner and that he loved it on you). So you worked up the confidence to tell him, “You’re so cute. I don’t think that’s fair.” He quirked an eyebrow at you and grinned.

“Don't tease me.”

“Am I not allowed to return the favor?”

He paused, “Nevermind, I think I do like hearing those kind of things from you.” His eyes held that playful glint again, and his lips seemed to curl into a smirk instead.

To try to hide the rising heat that was climbing up the sides of your face, you cleared your throat and said, “Well, I don’t think you’ll be hearing more of that for a while. I’ll be in Croatia for a few days this week.”

“Hmm. Zagreb?”

“Yeah, for a conference.”

He frowned a little, “Your parents?”

“My mother personally called me to tell me I was going.”

“A rare occurence I presume?”

“Right you are,” you held a bitter smile. “I love Croatia, I just wish I could be going on my own accord.”

Jungwoo tsked. “One conference can’t constitute for an entire ruined vacation.” He finally took the, now slightly above lukewarm, green tea from you. “Make the most out of it.”

You jokingly groaned, “What’s up with my guy friends giving me advice for my winter break?”

Jungwoo fondly ruffled your hair, “Aw. You think of me as one of your guy friends? That’s cute. And maybe it’s because you’re too busy seeing the negatives in the opportunities that a lack of school give you, and overlooking its possibilities.”

You sighed and walked to the front of the shop to sit on the loveseat that held far too many decorative pillows. “Maybe I can visit our old house in Dubrovnik, I haven’t been there since high school.”

“That’s the spirit!” He cheered, whilst stuffing a pastry in his mouth. “I’ve actually never been to Croatia. Been next door to Bosnia though.”

Maybe it was the stress from this impending conference that you had to attend that plagued you to do this, or maybe it was just this enveloping fear of expectations that you parents had bestowed upon you throughout your life, or maybe it was this inexplicable pull you felt from Jungwoo - like you wanted to really understand who this bookshop boy was. Either way, you said, with a blank but serious expression, “Come with me.”

And that he did.

Now you haven’t been on a trip with a friend in a few months, last time you and some of your acquaintances partied in Barcelona. You returned to Korea with a flu in your stomach and a groggy regret in your heart. So you were having some good ol’ fearful expectations for this trip. Jungwoo told you that a friend of his from China, Yukhei or something, would be overlooking the store for him.

“Boy has never worked a day in his life, but he obtains passion for anything he puts himself into. So I think my store will be fine.”

“You don’t have any other workers?”

“No, just me! Sole owner and worker. I get all the gratuity from it - best benefit,” he joked. You were originally not supposed to be seated together on the plane, but a petite old woman couldn’t resist Jungwoo’s cute and polite begging and she traded spots with him. You, of course, slapped his shoulder incredulously. “How could you ask an old lady to get out of her seat?!” “Well, I asked nicely, so what’s the problem?”

The 14-plus-some hour flight flew quickly, but you did get to snap an image of a silly sleeping Jungwoo in the process, right before the plane began to descend. At the same time you questioned why you invited a boy you’ve only known for two weeks and why he would even agree. But you thought of all your side trips with the cliques of friends you were in. Your parents’ careers were truly the only things that binded you all together, so they were far stranger-like than what Jungwoo was.

While you still couldn’t say you knew him well, you enjoyed his presence. His French and chemistry tutoring were helpful and his knowledge of literature was an unfathomable ocean in which you couldn’t help but want to lose yourself. Jungwoo was so intelligent, but goofy and playful at the same time. He was like this walking contradiction. Jungwoo handled books with such admiration and care, and yet he wore a bandage on his right index finger from the many paper cuts he accidently gave himself. He could rant about how Benvolio and Horatio were the side characters that we didn’t deserve one moment, and then the next moment you would find texts from him, saying:

hey can you come back you left your phone at my store

oh wait

He was this playful and flirty personality, as well, and you weren’t quite sure if you could take that side of him too seriously. Jungwoo was a warm glint of summer sun that you needed in this frozen month of December and you, grudgingly, admitted that you were thankful Doyoung led you to him.

Your mother’s assistant was at the airport to meet you, and was very surprised to see a boy trailing next to you.

She leaned into you, “Your mother told me you weren’t allowed to date someone from a family we didn’t know.”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, and opted to clench your fists, “He’s a friend. And his family owns a Chinese publishing company. I plan to go to the conference and spend a couple days in Dubrovnik with my friend,” you emphasized.

You were taken to the not-so-little house that you adored growing up. It was exactly as it had been years ago, with a chalky cobblestone driveway and a frozen over fountain in the front. The bedroom you chose was lined with wooden beams, and decorated with white furniture that you used to hate. You found books shoved in the armoire, realizing that they were children’s books that your parents hated and never allowed you to read, but the maids that cared for you passed you the contraband anyway.

The room you chose for Jungwoo was a few doors away, and it was your usual bedroom that boasted a faded pink door. The large bed adorned with your favorite yellow bedspread and the room’s walls covered in books. When you walked into show him around, you smelled the familiar must from the hundreds of books around you and couldn’t resist the desire to jump on the ladder against the shelves. You had a decent collection of books in your high rise, but it could never amount to the greatness of a house with as much space as this one.

It was well half past midnight and the conference was in a few hours. You bid Jungwoo a good night and walked to your room, slipping on silk sleepwear, to again ponder the closeness you shared with him. Two weeks and two days you had known him. At this rate you were afraid of the closeness you might have in the coming weeks and maybe months if fate allowed it. For better or for worse, you couldn’t say, but you decided to just relish in the friendship you had. In the morning ahead, you had to leave for Zagreb for the conference and leave him behind; Jungwoo insisted that he would be fine in the city alone, as you took a day trip to the capital, citing, “I’ll be allowed to explore with zero bias!”

To which you squinted at him, “I would never try to sway you either way. Dubrovnik will have its own effect on you, even if I would be there with you, I couldn’t make you like something.”

His lips turned upwards and he said, “Ah, but you already have before.” You didn’t understand the meaning behind his words, somewhat usual from him since he spouted nonsense at times.

You woke up with a start. You were late, and found a multitude of calls and messages from your mother and her assistant, who were at the venue waiting for you. You only had a short sleep, but it was enough to miss your flight and make your drivers for the day absolutely resent you. The spots were filled for the next flight, and you were forced to beg and plead to buy off a ticket from a passenger.

By the time you reached the venue in Zagreb a few hours later, your stiff black blazer over a crisp white button down paired with heels and a tight skirt were reduced to wrinkled messes. You flurried your way around, and judging by lack of people you encountered, the conference had began already. You spotted your mother’s assistant outside a pair of grandiose doors, tapping her toe impatiently. She who wore a chic pantsuit and you trotted over to her.

She bid you a glance, and without saying anything, you could feel your parents’ disappointment through the assistant’s eyes. You were an hour late and it would be impossible and quite frankly, disgustingly rude to try and join. You plopped down a nearby cushioned chair and sat, ungracefully, with your head in your hands as you waited for the conference to finish.

An hour or so later, your parents exited and looked at you with a weight and malice of a thousand swords. They expected a single thing from you on this day, and a pathetic amount of jet lag ruined it for you.

Your mother uttered a single sentence, “You have no purpose to be here anymore.” You wished she didn’t look you in the eye, because when she did, it took all your willpower to avoid

You opened your mouth to try to usher an apology, to attempt to excuse yourself from your mistake, but the way your mother clenched her fist made you flinch.

Her assistant led you to another car and you were driven to the airport and you took the closest flight back to Dubrovnik. You felt numb. Your commute back was constituted with so much guilt and frustration towards yourself. You felt so undeniably stupid. Part of you tried to comfort yourself, that this was such a human mistake and it wasn’t something to be so beat up about. But you would never hear the reason behind your mother’s personal call, and why this conference was so important, and that fact constricted your heart and the weight on your shoulders crushed you.

When you returned to your villa by mid afternoon, you found Jungwoo in the kitchen, singing along to an American pop song and cooking. Visibly disheveled and eyes puffy with tears, you stumbled to the couch in the living room across from the kitchen. You heard the music pause and Jungwoo’s footsteps approach you. He took your arm and pulled you into a seated position and he kneeled in front of you. Jungwoo offered you a smile laced with pity and you felt tears well up in you again. He silently stretched his arms wide and you tumbled into him for a hug. His long arms held you tightly and through your soft sobs, he smelled fresh and clean with the slightest hints of the lavender soap you knew was in each of the house’s bathrooms.

He ran his fingers over your hair a couple times and whispered, “You don’t have to tell me what happened, but whatever did happen is fine and minuscule and your parents are just being too hard on you. They’re too busy to see your greatness.”

This precious moment lasted for only a few seconds before he pushed you off with an apology and ran back into the kitchen to tend to what he was making. But his words and the return of his sudden silliness brought a tiny upturn on your frown and you wiped your eyes. You changed into sweatpants and a thin t-shirt and entered the dining room to see a single sad looking steak with a bowl of some sort of potato mash in the middle of the table.

Jungwoo tried to look enthusiastic, but your stare and slight disbelief that was plastered over it, made him sheepishly grin and run a hand through his hair. “I went to a market and picked out these potatoes. I’m really not the best cook, but I felt like trying!”

And through your guilt and tear sodden voice, a small smile rose to your lips and you responded, “I’ll call someone to cook us food.”

“That sounds perfect, thanks.”

After a hearty meal and a lighthearted conversation during dinner, you felt your guilt from the morning wash away. Jungwoo and you sat in opposite arm chairs in front of the fire and quietly read. In actuality, however you two were exhibiting symptoms of your victimization of jet lag, unable to sleep just yet. He read some Faulkner novel, in English, while you were reading a collection of Shakespearean sonnets with a pen in hand to annotate at the same time. There was this slight paranoia that someone’s eyes were on you and you pried your eyes away from the page and met Jungwoo’s.

“I kinda wanna see what you’re reading.”

“Shakespearean sonnets.”

“No, like, I want to read along too.”

“But I told you I’m very slow at reading.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just reread,” he moved to stand behind your chair, his gaze peering over your shoulder and making you shudder with discomfort.

“I don’t like this.”

“Me neither. Can we sit together?”

And you found yourself, shoulder-to-shoulder with Jungwoo, half the book on your lap, and the other half on his. Now you’ve read together with Jungwoo before, just a few nights ago while you practiced French, but you felt stiff and a bit self conscious over the way you felt him lean in closer to you as he read. The space between you was minimized and you realized how oblivious Jungwoo was. He radiated warmth and it burned the right side of your body. As you read Jungwoo would sometimes take a sharp inhale, and trace a line with a finger - obviously rereading.

After a few poems, the clock read a quarter to three in the morning and you couldn’t hold in your yawns. You pushed him off and ushered him to his room. He hugged you tight and whispered, “Don’t worry about today.”

And while you laid in bed you planned out tomorrow’s festivities in an effort to follow his advice and completely erase your mind of the embarrassment of the morning’s affairs. You fell in a deep sleep.

You awoke to a burning smell and threw on a thick sweater over your camisole and silk shorts. Jungwoo was in the kitchen, again.

“Haven’t you learned your lesson?” You opened a window and shuddered when a breeze flew through you.

He was rinsing a baking pan under water, “I’m good at making coffee, but I want to learn to cook. I can’t live off of drinks,” he whined with a pout.

You patted his head and pushed him out of the kitchen, “Get dressed! Let’s go out.”

You two scurried outside into the cold, with a driver outside waiting for you to take you to old town. You and Jungwoo shared a few plates at a small cafe and tried to chat with locals. Afterwards you took a walk through town and admired the buildings and limestone paths. You bumped shoulders as you walked, but when you tried to push him away as a joke, he fell miserably and you learned that he was probably just as clumsy as you were.

The brisk air induced shivers in your shoulders, but being with Jungwoo ignited an incredible warmth inside you and made it bearable. He couldn’t help but try to enter every store on Stradun and marvel at their inventory, or place his hands against the glass windows of a candy shop as he tried to peek inside. Jungwoo was so youthful and you didn’t have the heart to pull him away.

You stopped by Rector’s Palace and offered to take portraits of him, but he stared at you with a confused look and took your pictures instead, much to your dismay, but it’s not like you could really resist.

After a few hours of running around old town and admiring the beautiful historic buildings, you found yourself seated at the edge of the port with your feet dangling above the water. The winter painted a thin layer of grey over the sky and dampened the view of the afternoon sun. The repertoire of the waves against the port flushed a peacefulness within you and you closed your eyes to take in its sounds and the breeze. He stood next to you and inhaled the cold ocean air.

“It’s lovely here.”

“It really is, I wish we could stay in Croatia for longer. Dubrovnik is incredible in the summer, too.”

“I’d love to see it.”

And with bright red noses and full stomachs, you returned to your family house. You read with Jungwoo again, but this time he took out a copy of Brave New World and told you how he was coming to the conclusion that dystopian novels were possibly his favorite. He held a more relaxed position as you read, with an arm draped behind your back - resting against the sofa’s cushions. He let you flip the pages, since he read far faster than you, and tapped your right hand whenever he finished.

You couldn’t remember much about the rest of that evening, since you fell asleep and woke up in the same location you had been.

For once you woke up first and got ready for the day, sporting loose pants and a fitted blouse. You again ordered food and realized that you and Jungwoo would be a horrible pair in the kitchen. When Jungwoo stumbled in wearing a plain white shirt and messy hair, you found your breath hitch and a pumping in your chest, which made you nervously smile.

You spent the day like the last, joking and running as you passed Baroque churches and probably became public disturbances. The sounds of your pattering pairs of feet echoed down stone alleyways. It was an unusual feeling, but you enjoyed how close you felt to him. Escaping the country during a school break made you feel so much more free and your responsibilities disappeared, but it seemed to be only because of him. You had run off to all corners of the world alone, or for business, but it never quite felt as freeing as this tiny trip with Jungwoo. In the midst of your exploring through old buildings and seeking through crowds of people, you joked that you should bring more strangers to Croatia to befriend them faster.

On your final evening in Dubrovnik, you and Jungwoo ate local cuisine and it was in the dim lighting where you realized that you had never really seen just how stunning Jungwoo was. He smiled with perfect teeth. His skin looked as soft as his hair seemed and as smooth as his voice was. You were flattered to be in the presence of such a beautiful person.

It was probably the warm cider, which ignited a buzz in your pulse, that allowed this, but you let him know what you saw. You told him he looked ethereal.

Jungwoo grinned like he always did, let out light laughter, and reached across the table to pat your head and then rest his hand over yours.

“I think you’re seeing your reflection.”

#nct #nct scenarios #jungwoo #jungwoo scenarios #jungwoo scenario #nct fanfic #jungwoo fanfic #nct fluff #jungwoo fluff #nct u #pc

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ronniesshoes · 6 years

Text

Keep Yourself Alive

Hands occupied with two steaming cups of to-go coffee, he escapes the London drizzle by nudging the door to the second-hand bookstore open with his shoulder. At the sound of the bell above the door, the store owner appears from the back room, but upon seeing him merely fixes his coffee a pointed look before disappearing again, completely ignoring Roger's dazzling smile. Not fazed, he directs it at the two other customers instead, puts down his coffees on the counter, and makes for the stairs.

He has always thought it rather creepy how the oxygen seems to leave the air the further down the stairs he goes, and by the time he has reached the foot of the staircase, he is struggling to breathe properly. The air is heavy with the smell of old books, and the single customer in the room is something of a fossil, skin paper thin and hair a wisp of cotton.

Smiling politely to the old man, Roger walks into the adjoining room, immediately spotting Brian towering high above the ground on a step ladder, slotting books into one of the cases, his back to Roger.

He is about to say something wonderfully witty about ladders and long-limbed guitarists, but Brian beats him to it.

"Give me a minute," Brian says, not turning to look at him.

Feeling somewhat deflated, Roger picks at the worn cover of a book in the bookcase next to him, slightly put out by the less than warm welcome. "How'd you know it was me?"

"I could sense your obnoxious personality long before you entered the room."

"Gee, thanks."

Brian doesn't reply, but he starts climbing carefully down the ladder, and when he turns to Roger, a smile is playing on his lips.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, then?"

"Well I was in the area, and—"

"You were in the area," Brian interrupts, voice flat.

"Yes, picking up strings for John's bass," Roger says with patience, lifting his arm demonstratively so the plastic bag around his wrist dangles, and continues, "and I happened to remember that you didn't have time to pack a lunch this morning, and I also know that are you left to yourself, you’re going to convince yourself that it's not worth spending money on, and because you really must eat, I thought we could have lunch together!"

"I'd be flattered by the amount of care if I didn't happen to know that there quite conveniently lies a Wasabi just around the corner," Brian says, moving the ladder so it’s not blocking the bookcase.

"There does?" Roger says, feigning thoughtfulness, "that is convenient ..."

Brian snorts. "Alright then, let's go before I change my mind."

Once presented with a cup of coffee, Brian's already unusually good mood brightens, and Roger is almost feeling brave enough to ask the question he’s been dying to ask ever since Brian forgave him five days ago.

He doesn’t, though, and Brian speaks instead. “Are you going with Freddie and Deaks later?”

“No,” Roger says regretfully, “I’ve got some readings to do.”

It isn’t that he usually bothers to do more than skim the provided pre-lecture notes, but with exams just around the corner, he has decided he might as well prepare for the last lecture of the year.

“What about you?” he asks, secretly hoping that Brian stays at home as well, because otherwise he’ll have to ditch his readings. His social life is undeniably more important to him than school, and no way he is staying home reading if everybody else is out having fun.

“I think I’ll stay home as well,” Brian says, and Roger hopes the relief he feels isn’t showing too much, “been a rather busy week.”

All of Brian’s weeks are rather busy, but he usually agrees to at least one pint come the weekend. Roger glances at him, wondering if this is where he asks him if something is wrong. Then they reach Wasabi, and he can’t speak because he is downing the rest of his coffee before throwing the cup in a nearby litter bin.

Brian holds the door open for him, and as he sees the rows of sushi boxes, he promptly forgets all about the questions he wants to ask. He wants to buy everything, and pores over the boxes for what he thinks must be at least five minutes, but in the end it’s a tie between the Hana set and the Harmony set.

“Bri, I need your help,” he says, just as Brian finishes paying for his brown rice Yasai set, and holds up both boxes, “do I want the Hana set or the Harmony set? Or perhaps the Rainbow set, but it only has 14 pieces. Unless I buy the chicken yakisoba as w—where are you going? I’m speaking to you!”

“Just choose something,” Brian says, sounding bored. He has situated himself at a nearby table, and is now opening his box to begin the slow, meticulous process of spreading equal amounts of wasabi and pickled ginger on his sushi.

A bit offended, but determined not to show it, Roger turns away from Brian and walks up to pay for the Harmony set. He lingers by the snacks long enough to bore the cashier, and promises himself to stop by a Tesco later.

He sits down next to Brian. “Are you staying home tomorrow as well?”

“What’s happening tomorrow?”

“One of Tim’s friends is hosting a—you know, party thing,” he says between mouthfuls of sushi, “how can you not know this? Tim even mentioned it when he was here. Oh, and a few from Freddie’s gay crowd’s coming as well.”

“Don’t call them that,” Brian says, not for the first time.

“Thought you were looking to get laid,” he says, reaching for Brian’s soya.

“How—”

“Freddie told me. And he’s right, you’re seriously tense these days.”

“I’m not tense, I’ve just been—you know. Busy.”

“Which makes you tense.”

Brian puts down his chopsticks in favour of taking a sip of coffee. Then he watches Roger for a long moment, so long that Roger begins to feel slightly uncomfortable, and quickly shoves his last piece of sushi into his mouth instead.

“What would you do if you were in my position?” Brian asks eventually, picking up his chopsticks again.

Roger thinks the answer is pretty obvious, but says anyway, “probably cut myself some slack and not work three jobs outside school.”

“If you got an offer like mine,” Brian says with an expression that says that he thinks Roger is being difficult, “if you were to choose between going and staying.”

“I’m never gonna be in a position like that,” Roger says.

Brian gives him a look, but Roger means what he says. Brian has this whole complicated relationship with his parents, one which seems to built on guilt and expectations and love a little too fierce, and while Roger loves his parents very much, he wouldn’t let them get a say in something regarding his future. And as for school, well, he’s only doing it until the band gets on its feet.

“You know what I would do,” he says at last.

Brian picks up a piece of sushi, studies it carefully. “Right.”

“Have you talked to John about it?” Roger asks, sorry he cannot help even though he feels he should be able to, “I think he would understand. Better than Fred and I, at least.”

“Ah, no, haven’t. Want the rest of this?” Brian asks, pushing his box towards Roger.

“Thanks,” Roger says carefully, “but you’ve barely eaten anything.”

“I’m not really hungry,” Brian says, picking up his cup of coffee, “besides, I have to get back soon.”

So that's what they do. Roger eats the rest of the sushi, Brian drinks the last of his coffee, and then Brian goes back to the shop at Charing Cross Road. Roger watches his retreating back for a second, wondering why he always feels like he's missing something when he talks to Brian. Then he goes to find Freddie.

Beyond Retro is downstairs as well, but unlike the bookstore, it’s possible to breathe, and even though it smells like old clothes, it's a fairly nice store. Full of wannabe hippies, of course, but he supposes they have to buy their overpriced second-hand clothes somewhere. As soon as he steps inside, he spots Freddie behind counter, dressed in satin trousers and a flowery, embroidered jacket, and chatting to a customer in a weird, fringed cape with horses on.

"I'm out in twenty minutes, darling, if you'll wait here?" Freddie says when the customer leaves and Roger has is just about done judging everyone’s outfits.

"Sure," Roger says, about to ask if he can come to the backroom to play Candy Crush, but then Freddie steps out from behind the counter and gestures for him to follow.

They weave in and out between clothing racks, Freddie occasionally going through one at lightning speed, picking out ugly shirts and Levi's, a pair of red trousers and a velvet jacket, before he hands it all to Roger. "I want you to try this, I think it might fit you."

Roger would really much rather play Candy Crush and almost says so, but Freddie is already walking away, and so he grudgingly follows.

It's not so bad when he's in the fitting room, and he quite likes both jacket and red trousers. The Levi's fit him well, but they are expensive, and he already have several pairs back home. The shirts are not so bad on, but the colours are dull and they smell a bit weird. Roger has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that anyone would wear this back in the 1970s, let alone now. It looks good on Freddie though, and Roger himself has a couple of things back home—gifted to him by Freddie—which he quite likes, but was he to browse the store by himself, he doesn't think he would even try something on.

"Roger?" Freddie calls a while later, when Roger has tried it all on and become distracted by his phone.

"In here."

“Don’t sit on the floor, dear,” Freddie tuts, “get up and let me see you.”

Roger does, with some difficulty, and turns around when Freddie tells him to.

"I like the jacket on you," Freddie says, looking at him critically, “not with that shirt, though. How about this one?”

Roger makes a face. “I really don’t like that one.”

“Try it with the red trousers.”

Figuring it’ll be over sooner if he just does what Freddie tells him, he strips down to his underwear, accepting trousers and shirt from Freddie.

“It’s not very professional to ogle your potential customers, is it?” Roger asks, fastening the buttons. Not that it bothers him, but he thinks Freddie could at least pretend not to look.

“Are you kidding, it’s the best part of the job,” Freddie says, in that way that makes Roger question whether he is joking or not, “it’s not the first time I’ve lured a customer into the fitting rooms.”

“Please spare me the details,” Roger says, pained.

“What do you think of this?” Freddie asks, moving out of the way so Roger can look himself in the mirror.

“It’s better,” Roger admits.

“You can also pair it with these,” Freddie says, picking up a pair of discarded Levi’s, “they’re a shade darker, it’ll look better than with the light ones.”

They finally leave the store 15 minutes later, but only after Roger has tried on every possible combination, plus a satin top and a pair of shoes which he may have fallen a little bit in love with.

"I haven't had lunch yet,” Freddie says as they step out on the street, “we can eat at Wasabi if you want?"

"If you insist," Roger says, unable to help a grin forming.

Freddie glances at him, amused. “I really don’t.”

“Aw come one, it’s been ages!”

Once inside, Roger goes straight for the Hana set, smiling widely at the cashier when he pays because he is not ashamed.

“That was fast,” Freddie says, joining him a moment later, “did you have sushi earlier?”

“No,” Roger says, letting out a little sigh of happiness.

They take the tube to Notting Hill Gate and walk the rest of the way to Portobello Road where Mary is waiting by the stand.

“You’re late,” she says, looking unhappy even as Freddie apologises and greets her with a kiss on the cheek, “I have a lecture in 40 minutes.”

They usually manage the stand alone, but other than actual vintage clothes, they also sell some of Mary’s creations, and if an emergency comes up, she will, albeit unwillingly, take over for awhile. Today Freddie had a morning shift he couldn’t get out of, and Roger a mind-numbing 8am class which he barely survived, and only because of three iced coffees and the pack of Jaffa Cakes in his bag.

“See you later,” Mary says, and it’s only when she tries to hug him goodbye that Roger realises he’s zoned out.

Not much time passes before he finds himself missing his warm, not actually yellow, snowsuit, and he looks with envy at Freddie, who is wearing very nice gloves and a new vintage fur coat. It was of course fake fur when showed to Brian, but Roger suspects it really is not. Suppressing a shiver, Roger buries his hands, red and stiff from the cold, deeper in his pockets.

“What do you want for your gloves?” he asks.

Freddie eyes him over the rim of his thermo mug. “A blowjob.”

“Freddie, come ooon.”

“Alright, give me your hands,” Freddie sighs, putting his tea down and taking off his gloves.

Eagerly, Roger does, and Freddie sandwiches them between his own for a moment before he starts massaging life back into his hands. Then two women stop by the stall, and Freddie and his nice, warm hands leave him cold and miserable once again. At least he can light a smoke now, he thinks, patting his pockets for his pack of cigarettes.

"You really shouldn't smoke near the clothes," Freddie says, once their customers have left with one of Mary's dresses.

"We're outside," he complains, but stubs it out anyway, because it’s a lousy argument and he knows it.

Freddie sits down on the folding chair and reaches for his tea. "Have you bought your Christmas presents yet?"

"Only for you and John."

"Oh?" Freddie says, a glint in his dark eyes, "what did you get us?"

"For John I bought that Yellow Submarine box set from HappySocks," Roger says, reaching for Freddie's forgotten gloves, "and for you a great, big bag of coal."

"Now that was a disappointing ending to that sentence," Freddie says, and Roger swats his shoulder with one of the gloves, "been naughty, have I?"

"When aren't you?" he says, nudging Freddie's expensive boot with the toe of his own, "what about you?"

Freddie sighs, loud and dramatic. "I have no fucking idea what to get Brian and John, to be honest."

"That super expensive chess set for John, and more books he'll never read for Brian. There."

"Chess set?" Freddie asks, an incredulous look on his face, "John plays chess?"

"Not that I know of," Roger shrugs, "no, it's that super rare, super expensive Lord of the Rings chess set he's been lusting after the past four years."

"I think not," Freddie says, cradling his mug in his lap.

Roger rolls his eyes, fondly.

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He goes straight for the shower once he gets home, hands and feet so cold it takes him a minute to undo the laces and kick off his Docs. He lets the water run hot while removing his lenses and stripping off his clothes, leaving it on the floor which is already strewn with several pairs of dirty socks and boxers, pyjama bottoms, and a jumper he recognises as John's. The water is scalding hot when he steps under the spray, but it doesn't warm him up, even when his skin turns an angry red. Shivering, he reaches for the soap, wishing for all the world that he was back home in Cornwall, taking a long bath while Mum made dinner.

He ends up standing in the shower for 20 minutes even after he has finished washing, the thought leaving the warmth of the shower not the least tempting. At last he turns off the water, does a half-hearted attempt at drying the floor with a towel, and secures another one (dry and clean) around his waist.

John is on his bed reading, earphones in and barely acknowledging him when Roger steps into the room. Stepping over one of John’s hobbit feet slippers, he passes his own empty closet and opens John's instead, not prepared to find nothing but a sock and a pair of distressingly short shorts in bright yellow.

“Uhm, John?” he says, but realises he probably can’t hear anything when the music sounding from his earphones is so loud Roger easily recognises it as ABBA. He throws the shorts at him. “John? Where are all your clothes?”

“Dirty,” John replies, having moved one earphone, “I think I have a pair of clean jeans somewhere, though. And a sock, but I was planning on wearing it myself if I can find the other.”

Roger looks back into the closet, then opens his own. It’s just as glaringly empty. “We should probably do laundry tomorrow,” he says, as much as he dreads the thought. John nods briefly and puts his earphone back in.

Beginning to feel a bit cold standing there in only a towel, Roger leaves the room in favour of raiding Freddie’s closet.

Upon entering his room, he quickly discovers that Freddie did mean it when he said he didn’t want Roger to borrow his clothes. Disbelieving, he gives the padlock on the closet doors a tug.

“Why?” he asks loudly, jumping when a windswept Brian appears in the doorway.

“Hi?” he says, red-nosed and hair a mess.

“I need you to tell me where Freddie keeps his key,” Roger urges, stretching his hands out towards Brian and almost accidentally flashing him when the towel around his waist loosens. He hastily secures it.

“I don’t know where it is,” Brian says, working a hand through his no longer close-cropped curls, “but I imagine he put a lock on for a reason. Something about you borrowing his clothes and he having to retreat it from under your bed along with dirty socks and underwear. He wasn’t happy.”

“But I need clothes! What am I gonna do tomorrow?”

“You could actually do your laundry.”

“That doesn’t help me now,” Roger says, pulling at the lock one last time before turning around to see Brian sitting cross-legged on the bed. He widens his eyes slightly, purses his lips just a little. “Unless I can borrow some of yours?”

“It’s much too large for you,” Brian says warily.

“I can borrow a pair of jeans from John. Between the two of us, we’ve got two pair of trousers, one t-shirt, and three socks, and none of them are even Christmassy.” He very badly needs John to do his laundry, because while his usual sock collection is fairly impressive, his Christmas socks are simply epic. Then because Brians looks like he needs more convincing, he gestures to the lower part of his body with a grin, “please? I'll let you have a peek?”

Brian scowls. "You're disgusting."

"What? You've chased dick since birth but you don't want to see mine?” Roger says, feigning offence, “honestly, what a kick in the balls."

Brian almost smiles at that one, but attempts to cover it by rolling his eyes. "Just take what you need and leave me alone.”

"Thanks, Bri," Roger says cheerfully, "I knew I could count on you!"

“But you have to promise to do your laundry tomorrow.”

“‘Course,” he says, having already opened Brian’s closet. It’s not as impressive as Freddie’s, who organises his clothes by colour and material, but Brian’s system is fairly neat, too ... Roger lets out a snort of laughter. “Do you actually fold your underwear?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Brian asks, as if the answer isn't obvious.

“Nothing,” Roger says, picking out an awful, brightly coloured sweater, “seriously though, this one? Where did you even get this?”

“If you’re going to insult my clothes, then feel free to leave,” Brian says, and Roger can just picture his face right now, eyes narrowed and mouth an unhappy line.

“Oh but it’s very stylish,” Roger says, putting on a pair of underwear before throwing the towel aside, “hey, wanna go shopping tomorrow?”

Brian doesn’t deign himself to answer that, and so Roger picks out a pair of almost decent and very comfy-looking pyjama bottoms, a wine red jumper that doesn’t look half bad, a shirt and a pair of underwear for John, socks, and another shirt which is most definitely Freddie’s and must have gotten there by mistake, before thanking Brian and leaving him to his readings or whatever it is he does when he is not working.

John leaves for his pub crawl with Freddie soon after, and Roger figures he might as well do his readings and get it over with. He then proceeds to procrastinate wildly for an hour or so, making the ultimate motivational playlist—Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, Suzi Quatro and Aerosmith, some Blondie, and every hard-hitting, Tusk era, Lindsey Buckingham song—and playing four or five rounds of Candy Crush.

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It's only half past nine when he finishes his readings and throws himself on his bed. He would be a right sad twat to go to bed this early, but he doesn’t want to join Freddie and John when they have already been out for hours.

Deciding to see what Brian is up to, he leaves the comfort of his bed and shuffles into the kitchen. He puts on the kettle, retreats Brian's Nasa mug and one of the tall, blue glasses from the cupboard along with two boxes of tea, one Earl Grey, the other the citrussy stuff Freddie brings home from God knows where. Humming along to the faint sound of music still playing from his room, he dumps the teabags into mug and glass along with a spoonful of sugar and milk for Brian, and has put it all away again by the time the water finishes boiling.

He only realises his mistake by the time he is halfway between the kitchen and Brian’s room. With a sigh of annoyance, he stops, holding both cups as far from his face as possible, wanting to smack himself for not taking off his glasses before making tea. He feels a bit of an idiot standing like this, but he figures it’s better than entering Brian’s room with fogged up glasses and tripping over something.

When he feels fairly confident that is not going to happen, he crosses the floor and pushes down the door handle with his elbow for the second time today.

"I made you tea," he announces, kicking the door shut with his foot. Brian looks up from where he is sitting on his bed with a book, propped up by pillows against the headboard and dressed in pyjamas already, a thankful smile instantly visible on his face.

“Hold this,” he says, handing Brian both teas and climbs onto the bed, taking off his glasses and putting them on the nightstand.

"The Martian Chronicles! Oh, I loved that one," he says once he has settled and got his glass back, noticing the cover of the book Brian has put down in favour of sipping his tea.

"Yeah?" Brian says, an amused smile on his lips, "why’s that?"

“It’s science fiction, what’s not to like?”

“What an inspiring and insightful response,” Brian says, hiding his smile behind the rim of his cup.

“Ugh,” Roger says, “why do you always want an hour long talk on every book we’ve read? I liked that the characters and their actions were believable above all. I mean, what we see are only snapshots, so the author really has to make every word count, and he does—I think he describes the human race perfectly, which is both sad and a bit scary, but, well. It just moved me, I suppose. And anyway, it’s way better than Fahrenheit 451, couldn’t even finish that one.”

Brian, who up until now has listened with obvious interest and agreement, now looks so offended that Roger can’t help but laugh.

"You don't like Fahrenheit?"

Roger blows on his tea. "I don't exactly dislike it, it was just a bit disappointing, I suppose. I had such high hopes after reading this one, and it's supposed to be a classic and all that jazz,” he says, waving a hand demonstratively, “it just didn't live up to my expectations."

"I see." Brian says slowly, like he’s considering exactly how many layers of diplomacy he needs to wrap his vehement disagreement in.

“Of course it’s still relevant,” he adds hastily when Brian looks like he’s about to start on his soliloquy, pulling it out of his arse as he goes, "as we continues to dumb down education and, uh—”

“Yes?” Brian prompts, looking very amused.

“And I mean, the government are already spying on us, it’s not unlikely it’ll evolve, so. Still very much relevant.”

Brian actually laughs at that. “Good point.”

"You know," Roger says, settling more comfortably into the pillows, “you should read aloud.”

"I should, should I?"

"Yes, you've got a nice reading voice, and I've been reading all evening and I made you tea."

"A compelling argument," Brian says, picking up the book. "Any preference as to what I shall read?"

"The one with the guy who plants trees, Green Morning or something."

"All right."

As Brian starts reading, Roger puts down his tea and creeps under the covers, surprised as always by just how soft Brian's bed is, and feeling just a bit envious that him and John got the smaller room and only have room for twin beds. Then he figures it doesn’t really matter, because he is here now, and the warmth from covers and tea and the proximity of Brian's body makes him sleepy. He snuggles a bit closer to Brian, nose almost touching the thigh of his pyjamas, and it doesn't take long before he lets himself drift.

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When Roger comes to, he is almost positive that it is morning. Either that, or the angry red behind his eyelids means that someone is holding a flashlight over his face. Which regrettably wouldn’t be the first time.

Then comes a lazy drawl which Roger recognises as Brian’s, except Brian never sounds like that unless it’s weekend and he has got at least nine hours of sleep.

"Have you seen?" he says, "I've landed Roger Taylor in my bed."

Roger thinks that perhaps he should respond to that, but then John’s voice sounds, offensively flat. "What a catch."

It is possible that they keep talking after that, but if Roger is honest, he wouldn’t be able to recall a single word later. He does, however, register that the warm weight pressed against his cheek disappear, and he thinks he hears a chuckle follow his noise of protest.

Then the bed dips down again, and he snuggles closer to warm body creeping under the sheets. He is certain his name is being called, but figures it’ll stop if he ignores it.

"Roger, wake up."

Even through half-closed eyes, John doesn't look like he is feeling very well. "Did you have fun last night?" Roger asks, wincing when his voice comes out all hoarse and scratchy.

"It was all right," John says, closing his eyes, "Freddie bought me drinks, and now Bri's making me breakfast."

Roger perks up. "He is?"

"Hmm," John says, eyes still closed. "Promised to wake you."

Roger yawns. "I'm very much awake."

Now that John has mentioned it, Roger clearly hears Brian clattering around with pots and pans in the kitchen, and he wonders what he is going to make, pancakes dripping with syrup or scrambled eggs and bacon …

John appears to have fallen asleep, and Roger nudges him gently. "John?"

"Hm?"

He means to ask John if he knows what Brian is making for breakfast, but John’s eyes seem to have trouble staying open, and the risk of having his question ignored is too great. Instead he points at the poster on the opposite wall.

"Have you noticed this?" he asks, shifting a bit to left and beckoning John close again. "If you lie right here, it looks like Jimmy Page is looking you right in the eye."

“Creepy,” is John’s unenthusiastic response.

“Or titillating,” Roger hints. John lets out a snort. “If you’re into that sort of thing, I mean.”

"I doubt he’s put much thought into it," John yawns.

"Of course he has! He likes the whole—” Roger waves a hand, searching for the word, “voyeuristic thing.”

“And I suppose he told you so,” John says, looking sceptic.

"’Course not, Freddie did."

John wrinkles his nose.

"Anyway, it makes sense, doesn't it? His attraction towards Page, I mean. It's the whole narcissistic thing—you're bound to be more attracted to someone who looks like you."

"Says who?"

"It's obvious—I mean, look at Brian—he thinks Jimmy Page is the best looking guy since, well, ever. He plays guitar, he's pale and spindly and long-fingered, got that dark, curly hair, and high cheekbones. Who else do we know who looks like that? Brian!" Roger says, because it’s pretty obvious. To further prove his point, he adds, "so, like, take the four of us. If two of us were to pair up, it would most likely be Brian and Freddie, simply because they look more like the other."

"Or maybe because they are both gay," John says, an amused smile now on his face.

“Well, that too,” he admits, “but you see what I mean, don't you? That's why Debbie and I would be the perfect match."

"I’m not having this discussion with you again,” John says, getting out of bed at impressive speed considering he was mid-yawn a moment before, “she’s too old, it’s creepy.”

“I don’t want to do her now,” Roger calls after him, getting out of bed himself, “although … she is pretty fit for her age.”

“Not listening,” John says, already out of the door and with his hands coming up to cover his ears.

Roger takes off then, leaping onto an unsuspecting John’s back.

“Oh god,” John groans, before he collapses on the floor, Roger tumbling off him.

“Ow,” he says, even though John took most of the fall.

A wonderful scent wafting in from the kitchen hits his nostrils just then, and he is up in a second, about to scramble towards it when John trips him and he is back on the floor.

“You are such a pain,” John says, sounding out of breath.

“What on Earth are you two doing?”

“Er,” Roger says, “getting ready for breakfast?”

“I see,” Freddie says. He seems fresh out of the shower, and except his slightly puffy eyes, he doesn’t look like someone who has been out drinking.

“How are you not hangover?” Roger asks, shifting slightly on the cold floor, uncomfortable but not so much that he would consider getting up.

“Bananas, coconut water, and vitamin B,” says Freddie lightly, “now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe breakfast is ready.”

“I swear he makes this shit up,” Roger says when Freddie has left.

John gracelessly gets to his feet. “Coconut water has never sounded more unappealing to me than it does right now. Are you coming?”

“Right behind you,” Roger says, not moving. John leaves him then.

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After a long, indulgent breakfast, Brian leaves for work and Freddie goes back to Portobello Market, Roger promising to join him when he’s has finished doing his laundry. He figures it’ll take a couple of hours, tops, but once both laundry baskets and the chairs have been emptied and Roger has gathered another pile from under their beds, it becomes clear that it can’t possibly be done by one round. It’s also impossible to cross the room without tripping over the very large piles, something John unintentionally demonstrates when he tries to get to the door. Who knew they had this much clothing.

“Do we have to sort it into different colours?” Roger says from the safety of his bed, “what did we do the last time?”

“I don’t think there has been a last time.”

“That can’t be right, we’ve lived here for almost a year,” Roger says, but then he thinks about it, and perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch—both Freddie and John brings their laundry when they visit their mums, and if some of Roger’s clothes end up amongst it, John doesn’t mind and Freddie doesn’t notice, and their mums definitely don’t. It’s also not uncommon for them to borrow each other’s clothes, which makes it even easier to get out of laundry, because if yours have been borrowed, you demand they wash it, and if the other way around, it’s easy to slip it into the other’s hamper. Brian is the only one who actually knows how to work the washing machine and frequently gives them shit for passing it onto their mothers, but Roger did get him to do his once, so it’s not absurd to think he would do it again. True, he was absolutely piss drunk, and he still saw himself fit to rant about responsibility and adulthood, but the main point is that he did it.

“I’m pretty sure we need a separate wash for underwear,” John says, scrunching up his nose as he reaches for a pair of boxers, “but I don’t think we can fill the machine with underwear only.”

“Brian?” Roger suggests, and John throws the boxers aside and picks up his phone from the floor. He puts in on speaker, and they listen it silence until Brian picks up after fifth ring.

“Yes?” he says, sounding only mildly annoyed.

“Hi Bri,” John greets, and Roger doesn’t know how anyone could be annoyed when it’s John calling, “we need your help with laundry. So, we figured we should divide it into different piles, yes?”

“Whites, colours, blacks, and towels, linens, and underwear. Read the tags, and don’t call me while I’m at work,” Brian finishes, and the line goes dead.

“Right,” Roger says, picking up the nearest garment, “this is both black and white, which pile does it go into?”

“Freddie’s hamper?” John suggests.

When they have sorted all their clothes, Freddie’s pile, which consists of everything that doesn’t fit into the categories Brian mentioned, is almost as big as the blacks pile. Roger thinks they might have to sneak a few pieces into Brian’s as well, and maybe some under their beds.

“Alright, let’s start with blacks,” Roger says, trying to gather the whole pile in his arms. He doesn’t succeed—he always thought himself a rather colourful person, but clearly he is wrong, because there are a lot of black clothes. Or a lot in general, he supposes.

John picks up the rest and follows him to the hall where the washing machine is. It’s a big, ugly thing, and Roger feels a little faint upon seeing all the different settings.

“So, what, we just … put it in?”

“I think so,” John says, looking as much at a loss as Roger feels.

Opening the machine proves to be another problem—it appears to be stuck, even when he uses both hands, and Roger is afraid he might break it if he pulls any harder.

Then John presses a conveniently labeled ‘On/Off’ button, and Roger almost falls on his butt when it suddenly opens.

When he sends him a glare, the corners of John’s mouth lift in a smile that no doubt is supposed to communicate ‘consider this payback’.

Roger looks back on the rows of buttons. “Okay, so. Daily cotton or daily synthetics? Delicates? Don’t think we have much of that. Anti odour? That must be a good thing, right?”

John shrugs.

“This is your field! You should know how to do this. It’s electrical, right? So go … engineer it, or whatever,” Roger says, because really, if John doesn’t know, how are ordinary people supposed to?

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Roger says, not usually ready to give up after such a short amount of time, but. It’s pretty difficult stuff, this whole laundry business. “We can’t call Brian—we can call Brian! It’s practically an emergency!”

John looks like he is about to protest, but then thinks better of it. Roger has his phone out in a second.

“Hey Bri!” he greets, ignoring Brian’s less warm ‘what?’, “how’s work? You know, we’re having a bit of trouble—”

“Can’t it wait ‘til I get home?”

“But Bri, you made me promise to do laundry today, and we are both out of clothes; you can’t let us attend Tim’s friend’s thing without a stitch on.”

“I genuinely hate both of you,” Brian says. Always has trouble expressing his fondness, Brian does. Then he sighs, “all right, what’s the problem?”

“How do we start it?”

“Are your clothes in the machine?”

“Uhm,” Roger says, glancing at the clothes still on the floor from when he tried to open the door, “no?”

“That would be a start,” Brian says with thinly veiled impatience.

“All right, hold on,” Roger says, placing his phone on the washing machine before he begins filling it with clothes. He can almost hear Brian rolling his eyes.

“Am I right when I say you didn’t look at the labels even though I told you to?” Brian says when Roger has announced he is done.

Roger exchanges a sheepish glance with John. “Uh … Possibly, yes.”

“Okay, I’ll show you how to do it properly once I get home, for now you can go with Mixed. Have you filled it with detergent?”

“Uh, no, not yet,” he says, reaching for a random bottle, “but, like, do I just pour it into the drum?” he asks, puzzled. It doesn’t sound right.

John takes the bottle from him and switches it for another one labelled DARKS.

“There a small drawer in the top left corner,” Brian says, “fill the cap with detergent, pour it into the second compartment, and close it again.”

“Right,” Roger says, carefully following Brian’s instructions.

“Now turn the knob to 8 and press the start button,” Brian says, speaking quickly now, “et voilà! See you later.” And the line goes dead again.

“That wasn’t so hard!” Roger says, not able to help a grin forming.

“So you don’t mind doing the rest?” John asks as they walk back into the living room.

“Are you kidding? It’s still a lot of work.”

“If you win three rounds before the others get home, I’ll do the rest,” John says, waving a Wii remote.

Roger snatches from the coffee table and throws himself on the couch. “You’re on!”

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Many hours and a lot of laundry later, Roger fits himself into his best jeans, newly washed and tumble dried, cuffs them just enough to show off his creepers but not so much that the tattoo on his ankle is visible, and picks out two shirts to go with it.

The others are in the living room watching The Two Towers, and Roger stops for a moment to appreciate a soaked Viggo Mortensen kicking orc arse. When the scene switches to something less interesting, he steps in front of the TV and holds up both shirts.

"Okay, which of these will get me laid tonight?"

Brian cocks his head to the side as if regarding both but doesn’t offer an opinion, and John’s eyes simply glaze over, as they always do on such occasions.

He turns to Freddie, hopeful.

"Oh but the green one would look magnificent on Brian," Freddie says, snatching it from him and holding it up in front of Brian, "brings out your eyes, dear."

Roger smiles patiently. “I don’t think you heard my question.”

"Oh let him have it, it's not like it’ll lessen your chances," Freddie says. “And for the other one, you really shouldn’t wear it if you insist on rolling up your sleeves. The girls may fawn over your flower tattoo, but I assure you no one will bed you if you wear that colour combination.”

“I don’t think—”

“Let me help you,” Freddie says, removing a purring Ziggy from his lap, who immediately jumps onto John’s lap instead where it starts kneading. John looks like he would rather be anywhere else.

The thing about Ziggy is that he really doesn’t like people—the exception being Freddie, of course, who claims to have a spiritual connection to him, and John, who strongly dislikes cats. He tolerates Brian, mostly because he’s the one who feeds him, but Roger he hates as much as any guest who dares enter the flat. Roger doesn’t mind too much, figures he can’t be well liked by everyone—at least he doesn’t take it personally like Brian, who, even after many pitiful attempts to win it over, still tries too hard.

“Roger?”

“Freddie, I really don’t see how it matters that the colour of my clothes and tattoos match,” Roger tries, trying to catch up with Freddie’s purposeful strides across the living room floor.

“I know you don’t,” Freddie says, looking through his newly washed clothes, “and it pains me.”

Roger suppresses a sigh.

“Here, try this one,” Freddie says, handing him a shirt almost identical to the other one, and Roger grudgingly puts it on, wondering if this is going to take as long as it did yesterday.

When Freddie has finally chosen an acceptable shirt to go along with jeans and shoes and skin, Roger rolls up the sleeves of his shirt so the cluster of coloured cornflowers on his left forearm is showing, because no matter what Freddie says, he's had much success with it in the past.

They leave soon after, all together for once, but then Freddie runs back to check Ziggy’s bowls and Brian, regrettably, to get his new selfie stick, gifted to him by the animal shelter he volunteers at last week for reasons unknown to Roger.

He knows, of course, that he should leave it be, that it makes Brian happy and relaxed if just for a short moment in his tragically busy life, but Roger swears he’ll throw it in the toilet the next time he finds a video of himself sleeping or Freddie eating carrots or John watching Mamma Mia on their Facebook page. He can't very well delete it, but he fears they might not be taken seriously, and really, he has to talk to Freddie about it.

When Brian insists they take a group shot, Roger doesn't bother to hide his sour expression.

♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛

To his credit, Freddie’s shirt pick does help Roger getting laid. Of course it could also be his incredibly good looks and undeniable charm, but Roger is willing to give credit to both Freddie and his weird rules about colour combinations. Still, that is not an excuse for Freddie to keep pestering him when he’s clearly, er, busy.

“Why don’t you just give me your wallet, go do your thing, and afterwards you can both come find me and drinks will be on me?” Freddie says, like he's being reasonable.

“It’s not on you if you’re using my money,” Roger mutters, not knowing why he bothers. They had been so close to slipping into the bedroom unnoticed. Trust Freddie to ruin that.

“I’ll pay you back.”

Knowing Freddie will keep bugging him about it until he gets what he wants, Roger relents, if only to shut him up. With a helpful hand from Dominique, his wallet is retrieved from his back pocket and lobbed at Freddie, who catches it with a grin and an "enjoy yourselves."

Of course, when they do finish—Roger feeling sated in a way he hasn't for a long time—Freddie is nowhere to be found, and then Dominique, perhaps tired, perhaps not really caring about finding Roger's friends, kisses him on the cheek and tells him goodbye.

He can’t find John or Brian either—someone tells him they went home already, another that there had been talk about going to a nearby club. Doing his best to hide his annoyance, Roger says goodbye to the people he knows, and then leaves the house to find a tube station. It’s when he gets there 10 minutes later that he realises he left his Oyster card in his wallet, which, along with Freddie, is probably halfway across town by now. His phone is almost out of battery, and even if it wasn’t, the chance of getting hold of Freddie is minimal at best. John and Brian could be anywhere, and even though he could go back to the house and find someone to stay with, he doesn’t much fancy having to go through another four hours of drinking only to be able to kip on some stranger’s couch. With a kick to a lamp post and half a minute of cursing Freddie, Roger retrieves his earphones from his pocket, puts his phone on flight mode, and begins the walk home.

It takes him a little more than an hour to get home, and if he is completely honest, he doesn’t mind too much. It’s cold, yes, but he has his earphones in and hands buried in his pocket, and London looks best at night, the dark, velvet sky and the bright city lights.

The door is open when he enters the flat, but all lights are out, and he trips over a pair of shoes but doesn’t bother turning on the lights himself. He figures that whoever is home has gone straight to bed, but Roger doesn’t feel tired yet and makes a line for Brian's room, wanting to borrow his copy of The Martian Chronicles. He is still humming along to his music when he pushes the door open, impressed but very glad that his phone hasn’t run out of battery yet, but the sight that meets him makes him stop dead in his tracks. There, on full display on his bed, is Brian—naked, on his stomach, and with a blond guy Roger vaguely recognises on top of him. What must have been seconds feels like a lifetime as Roger stares into the stranger's eyes, a lifetime where they just keep fucking, their breathing heavy and the bed springs creaking, and Roger's eyes accidentally dart to where they are joined. Something like disgust coils tight in his stomach, and he barely registers Brian scrambling to—cover up, back away, reach for him, maybe, because he is backing out of the room, only pausing to grab his shoes before he flees the flat.

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velvetchen · 7 years

Text

Dynamic | pt. ii

[ back to masterlist ]

Scenario: Superhero AU Pairing: Chen/Reader Word Count: 3009 Rating: T (warning for language)

Summary: You’re the leading superhero of the city, and you’ve fought Dynamo for years. It’s the way it should be - good vs. evil, hero vs. villain. But what happens when a bigger evil threatens everything?

<< previous part x next part >>

The alarm blares, startling you out of your sleep. Then your phone alarm rings, too, and it’s halfway across the room, so you have to get out of bed and turn it off. You’re completely groggy, your eyelids sticking together like paper. You’re about to lie down for five more minutes – it was a Saturday, wasn’t it - when you remember what it is and groan.

Orientation.

Not yours, of course. Your classes already started two weeks ago. No, this was for the elementary school you volunteered at. You’d be meeting all the parents today, so you had to be dressed professionally. Groaning again, you stumble towards the bathroom. It’s six-thirty. In the mirror, you see your droopy eyes and drool crusting over your chin. You brush and then step into the shower, turning the water as cold as it goes, hoping it’ll shock you awake.

Maybe you shouldn’t have stayed up past midnight sewing your cape. But you were invited to an inauguration in a few days, and it had to be ready by then. Kyungsoo was even helping you with some programmed LED lighting that would look really cool – lighting up the cape in flashy patterns. It was only for public appearances, of course. You’d be damned if you actually fought with a cape. You’d probably cut it up with your blade on accident.

Sighing, you finish up your shower and dry off, stepping out wrapped in only a towel. Kyungsoo isn’t home, and Jennie hadn’t come back last night, so you were alone. You hum as you get dressed – a tune that turns into a song as you pull on your formal pants and button up your shirt. Then you do your makeup nice and simple and finish off with some perfume. It's seven-thirty when you put on your blazer and stand at the front door.

You don’t have a car, of course. Who needs a car when you can teleport? After making sure you have everything ready and shoving some toast in your mouth you close your eyes, think of the shed, and blink yourself there. It's close enough to the school to walk, but far enough away that nobody sees you. You step out and make your way down the street for the second time in two days.

When you reach the school, you're relieved to see that you're early. Miss Park is there already, making sure the classroom looks good. The handprint art the kids did a few days ago is pinned up on a clothesline across the room, and the bulletin boards are covered in older work.

“Hi, Y/N! Sorry, I didn't notice you come in,” Miss Park says. “You're early, that's good. Can you do me a favor and just tidy up that paperwork on the desk, thanks!” She flashes you a smile and hurries out the door. You're alone in the room, so you blink yourself around the room, putting away papers there, cleaning up here. You're done by the time she gets back.

“Oh, done? Good,” she smiles. “The first parents are arriving.” You follow her outside to greet them.

Miss Park isn't that much older than you - still in university, maybe twenty-four or something. Still, she looks younger, childish even. She's so fun with the children, and you love chatting with her during breaks.

“There,” she gestures down the hallway. “Hello, I'm Miss Park…” The introductions trail off as they go on, and finally you've been introduced to all the parents.

Everyone's seated inside the classroom, the kids all quiet, Miss Park ready to start talking. There's a knock at the door. She gestures for you to open it.

Staring at you is the guy from yesterday, and next to him is tiny Minah, cheeks red and puffy from crying. He doesn't seem to recognize you in your fancier clothes, his gaze instead passing over to Miss Park, apologetic and with the same pout he had yesterday. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, wincing. “We had a bad morning and Minah wouldn't stop crying-”

“No problem,” says Miss Park, gesturing for them to join the rest of the group. She starts off with the orientation, but you're staring at him - Jongdae. His black hair is combed but messed up and his dress shirt is a little disheveled, but he's listening intently and his hands rest protectively on Minah’s shoulders, calming her down.

Your guess yesterday was that he couldn't be much older than you. But he was a father already? He must be much older than you first thought.

He catches your eyes on him and meets your gaze, and you watch him take in your face and realize who you are. The corners of his mouth lift before he turns his attention back to the orientation.

You catch him in the hallway afterward - or rather, you bump into each other again.

“Oh, hey,” he says, nonchalant. “Y/N, right?”

“Yes, that's me,” you say, fixing the shoulder strap on your bag. “Small world, right?” His smile relaxes and you continue. “I mean, I had no idea you were a parent here.”

“I - uh, Minah’s my niece,” he says, scratching at the back of his head. “My brother couldn't make it today, he’s busy. So I brought her.”

“Ah, of course” you reply awkwardly. “I thought you were a little young to have a daughter in first grade.”

“Right, I’m still in uni,” he laughs again. “You?”

“Oh, I just volunteer here,” you say. “I’m also a student.”

The conversation surprisingly goes smoothly, and by the end of the orientation you've exchanged numbers. He promises to text you, and you - as subtly as you can - bring up the idea of going to lunch.

“I can't today,” he frowns and checks his watch. “I have to drop off Minah, then I have...plans.”

“That’s all right,” you say as casually as possible. Stupid. He probably doesn't want to. “See you around then.”

You get the ping a little while later, just as you're finishing up lunch, on the National Superhero Network radar. Chaos downtown, a jewelry store hijacked and the owner held at ransom. The attacker disabled all the surveillance without any hassle and made away with some of the most expensive antique jewels.

It reeks of one thing - Dynamo.

You quickly pay for lunch and hurry to the bathroom, which is thankfully empty, before you blink yourself into the shed. There you step into your supersuit, paste the mask over your face, and tie up your hair. Purple contacts replace your glasses. Your Blades strap to your back, your extra gun at your hip. With so many years of practice, you’ve learnt to do this in under three minutes.

Then you blink yourself to the scene. It doesn't matter who sees, because you're Rush now. The unstoppable superhero. Dynamo’s arch nemesis. You grin and blink forward, appearing and disappearing over short distances until you reach the scene to conserve your energy.

You were right - it is Dynamo. There's a crackling fence of electricity surrounding everything. When you blink past it and into the jewelry shop, there's the familiar black-clad figure, the telltale scorpion embossed on the suit.

“Couldn't even wait a day to see me? Talk about desperate,” you call out. He turns to face you, and you feel him grin again. It's like a charge in the air.

“Ah, my lady has arrived at last,” he says and then your wrists are suddenly bound together by a thick rope of lightning. Your ankles, too.

“A jewelry heist,” you jab, trying not to look like you're bothered by this development. “So original. You really can't come up with anything else?”

He tightens the lightning-ropes and you wince, remembering the shock from yesterday. “I mean, last time was a bank robbery. Before that, another fucking bank robbery. Don't you get tired? I know I do.” You fake an exaggerated yawn as you try pulling your wrists apart.

Zzzzzzzp. You hiss. You're really trapped.

“What can I say?” Dynamo says, stepping closer. “The mafia’s been avoiding me recently, and I ran out of businesses to embezzle weeks ago. Besides,” He leans in, and you can actually hear his breathing inside his helmet. “There's just something romantic about meeting you in a jewelry store, isn’t there?” Fingers go down your spine. A burst of electricity follows, and you bite your tongue to keep from crying out in pain.

Now that was low. Maybe it was revenge for yesterday.

He walks away, over to where the jewelry store employees and bystanders are incapacitated in the same way as you, except they all have gags, too. You eye Dynamo. If you could distract him...it must be taking a lot of his concentration to maintain so many binds.

Think fast!

“Well?” you taunt. “Aren't you going to fight me? Or are you just scared I’ll beat you in front of the whole city...again?” The shock was making your nerves buzz, there was no way you’d be focused long enough to blink out of them.

“You're just going to tie me up and say it's a victory? That's a cheap victory and you know it,” you say, and he turns around to face you once more, hands crackling with lightning.

“Okay, you want a fight?”

“Damn right I want a fight.”

He doesn't wait another second, just flings a ball of lightning at your chest. This time you don't see it coming and blink away a second too late, reappearing sprawled on the floor and groaning in pain as residual sparks light up your body. “Fucking hell,” you groan. “Ass. You do that every time.”

“And you get hit every time. Sucks for you.”

Ignoring the aftershocks, you blink behind him immediately, arm wrapping around his neck in a chokehold. Electricity courses down your body again, a strong current that makes your muscles twitch, but you hold tighter. You can hear him gasping for air. The current gets stronger and you push the both of you forward until you hit the ground with an oof. Dynamo groans.

“There,” you pant, still wincing from the shocks. “Fucking finally.”

“If you wanted me under you so bad, you could have just asked.” His laugh is mixed with a cough as he rolls over and you stand up, putting your wedge-heeled boot on his chest.

“I could have, but where’s the fun in that?” You bat your eyelashes at him, then step off. “Come on, time to get out of here.”

He stands up watching you for a second. Then he shrugs, grabs the bag of jewels, and flies off.

“Hey, I meant without the jewels, you son of a -” Muttering under your breath, you sprint forward, drawing your Blades as you follow him. Damn Hoverboots! You really should have got some.

Blinking higher through the air, you follow after him as fast as you can, leaping from roof to roof, blinking onto windowsills and light poles as you go higher up. Soon you’re leaping from the top of the skyscrapers, a good fifty feet above him. Your blades are in your hands - two long katana-like swords, lined with glowing lasers to cut through anything. The third one, a ring shaped Blade that you wielded like a really sharp Frisbee, is still strapped to your back.

Hmm, maybe you’d try that one. Switching weapons quickly, you blink up to a good vantage point and fling it towards him. Dynamo spins around as it reaches him, catching it in a web of electricity and flinging it back at you. It slows down enough for you to catch it as it recognizes the sensors in your suit. Scowling, you throw it again, this time tumbling through the air and blinking forward so when he dodges it - just barely, you note smugly - and rebounds off the asphalt below, you blink into just the right position for you to catch it and throw it again.

You vault forward to match its speed, ricocheting off the nearest building and blinking into existence right behind Dynamo, just as the Blade thunks into his armored shoulder. You wrap your arm around his neck again, and you plummet to the ground together.

Dynamo’s Hoverboots kick in at the last second and you come to rest gently on solid ground again.

“I’ll take that,” you say, retrieving the bag of jewels. “And that.” You pull your Blade out of his shoulderplate and strap it back on.

“Ow,” he rolls his shoulder. “That's going to leave a bruise.”

You grin. “Something to remember me by, so you don't call me back for a toy store robbery just so you can see me again.”

He’s sulking, you can tell.

You wink at him and blink off, speeding back along the ground towards the store. Along the way you can hear cheers, shouts of your name, and you slow down in places to wave or sign autographs.

“Mom, look, it's Rush,” says a little girl wearing a shirt with a cartoon of you on it. When the merchandise started rolling out, you were more than a little overwhelmed. Only the big leagues got that kind of hype - Archangel, Glamour Girl, Whirlwind - you’d grown up with their action figurines, their faces advertising things and plastered on the covers of magazines. When you joined them, it felt ethereal.

“Hey, little superhero,” you say, going up to the girl and taking the pen and paper she gives you. “How are you today?” You sign the paper and step back, blowing her a kiss. Then you blink and are on your way.

It wasn’t just Dynamo and the other villains you had to fight. With them, your life - and their lives - were never really in danger. It was just a show of good trumps bad, light beats dark. It was a show of hope for the people. That's why you’d never kill Dynamo, or he’d never kill you.

It was the smaller things, like saving people from fires, helping people in disasters, stopping the back alley muggings and murders. That was the stuff that threatened you. That was the stuff they never telecast on the media unless you were successful, and if you weren't - if you were injured or killed, they covered it up.

Heroes were hope. They couldn't lose that, and it made the pressure huge sometimes. You wished it was all just fun and games.

You stop by a few more people, shaking hands and smiling. A small crowd by a supermarket calls out to you, and you blink over, smiling.

A teenage girl gets a kiss on the cheek. An old man gets an autograph. The next person, though, surprises you.

You almost say his name, but catch yourself at the last second. Instead you bite your tongue and smile again. “Autograph?”

“I, yeah. I’m a big fan.” Jongdae smiles shyly and holds out a tablet. Oh god, you’re blushing. Thank god for the mask.

You sign it and hand it over. When your fingers brush, it sends familiar tingles up your arm. Pulling away as quickly as you can, you hurry and blink back to the jewelry shop.

After returning everything and making sure everyone was okay, you reappear in the shed and slump down on the floor, not bothering to take off your suit yet. Using your powers drained you and made you drowsy, but a quick nap and some sugar usually fixed it.

Here isn't the place for a nap, though, you tell yourself, and pull yourself to your feet. Peeling your suit off limb by limb, then your mask, then your contacts. You dress in your regular clothes and step out again, walking as casually as you can down the street and to the main road, where you can catch a bus to your apartment. Thankfully, you don’t encounter anyone on the way, and soon enough you’re at your door, fumbling with your keys.

You can’t wait to go take a nap, but you have to eat something first, so you grab some ice cream out of the freezer. Not the healthiest option, but hey, you just saved the day, right?

“Hey, Y/N, when did you get back?” your roommate Jennie asks, walking into the kitchen. She looks like an absolute mess, her hair plastered to her head and makeup streaking down her face. She’s still in party clothes from the night before, a bright red bandage dress that’s half-unzipped.

“Just now,” you reply through a mouthful of mint chocolate chip. “You look like death. How was last night?”

“Insane,” she says, but with a groan. “I was dead drunk, couldn’t even walk. Someone took me home and I woke up in bed with another couple.” She shakes her head. “I have, like, the worst hangover of all time.”

You hold out your ice cream and an extra spoon, and she takes it. “Thanks. Ugh. How was your day?”

“Usual. Wait, I met this guy. He’s nice as hell and he gave me his number.” Your phone buzzes. “Shit, I think that might be him.” Jennie leans over to look at your screen as you open up the message.

[unknown]: Hey Y/N it’s Jongdae! ^-^ [unknown]: Sorry I turned you down today, do you want to get brunch tomorrow?

“Wow, that was fast,” Jennie says, raising her eyebrows. “Say yes, what are you waiting for?”

You: No problem, I’d love to! What time?

Jongdae is typing . . .

You bite your lip.

Jongdae: Does 9 30 work for you? You: 9 30 is perfect, I’ll see you then :)

The phone screen fades to black. For the first time, you actually have a date. You’ve been asked several times, sure, but you always turned them down – what if you had to leave halfway? What if you keep having to leave halfway? You blow the hair out of your face, thinking. This was just brunch, right? What was the worst that could happen?

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life-love-and-alcohol · 7 years

Note

I got a prompt!!! How about... Oh oh... Ok... *Clears throat, steepling my fingers* this might be a lil long winded but here's what I got. Viktor is retired and Yuuri is still skating, viktor still his coach. They bought a house in heastu, and are walking home from the rink... They're walking up the drive when they see a basket on there stoop... Mewling coming from the basket.... A lil baby with a letter on top of it's belly laid in the basket... What do you think???

HELLO FRIEND!!! THANK YOU FOR BEING THE NICEST PERSON EVER AND REQUESTING THE NICEST IDEA EVER!!! (we now have Lori’s custody, we own her lol) Anyways…I hope you like this!! Even though I first thought you meant a kitten and yeah XD

Life and Love.

Viktor had thought he knew what those words meant. He didn’tneed to look them up in a dictionary to define them, they rolled out his tongueon a casual daily basis, he spit them, voiced them a thousand times with thesecurity only habit could provide. He was Viktor Nikiforov, after all. Owner ofa great life, five gold medals, a beautiful poodle named Makkachin, and a smilethat could set any stare on fire.

How could it have been possible, in any way, that someonelike him didn’t know about Life and Love?

But all of a sudden, this clumsy guy stepped in with hisawkwardness and his glasses, making music with his body, and giving acompletely new meaning to two terms that, before, had seemed completelyobvious.

They weren’t as obvious anymore.

What he could so easily define in the past, the solidity ofthose words, would now melt into meaningless babbles when he looked at him,when he heard him laugh, when he felt the needy press of fingers on his skin.Suddenly, words weren’t enough.

He had built a whole new definition for Life and Love. Awordless definition. That was so easily summarized into a specific shade ofbrown, and that he only got when he stared at Yuuri in the eyes.

However, there were times when the meanings escaped hisrestrains, and they flew in the empty air and away from his hold.

There were times when Yuuri wasn’t there, maybe at the rinkpracticing or hanging out with Phichit. There were times, when Yuuri was busyor uninterested, and Viktor’s roaming hands weren’t enough to convince him.There were times when he was alone, maybe staring at the sea, feeling he stillhad so much Life and Love inside of him he didn’t know where to fit, where topour.

It wasn’t Yuuri’s fault, he knew. He had no one to blame buthimself.

Sometimes Yuuri would find him sitting on the couch, lookingat his old performances, those in which he still had his long hair and waybefore he started to question the meaning of Life and Love. Back then, bothwere found on the ice. And Viktor sometimes desperately wanted to feel thatagain, that youthful, innocent certainty, that precise definition. In thosemoments, his husband would reach for him and hug him from behind, massage hisneck with loving, caring hands and plant some few kisses on his hair.

And right then, when Viktor stood up from the couch to pickhim up, carry him all the way to the bedroom and make love to him for hours, heknew that was it. That was Life and Love.

But he wasn’t sure if it was all of it.

One afternoon, they were returning from the rink after abusy day of practice, walking the warm streets of St. Petersburg with summerbeing just around the corner. They were holding hands, just like theyalways did, chatting about the routines and the moves Yuuri was having troublewith, or even gossiping about some other skater or two. That was Viktor’sfavorite moment of the day. And he believed it was Yuuri’s too, judging by therelaxed smile on his lips and the occasional caresses his thumb traced on theback of his hand.

He was thinking just about that, of how lovely he looked ashe talked about his skating, eyes so shiny with passion that they reflectedthen sunset thrice as strongly, so submerged into his favorite definition ofthe two Ls…when he suddenly heard him cut off mid-sentence, and he followedthe path of his bugged, widened eyes that were resting somewhere that wasn’tViktor’s own.

A basket. At the side of the road.

Only then, with the silence generated by shock, he was ableto hear the faint noise of whining, and he shared with his husband asimultaneous panicked look.

Of course, they both had heard numerous stories about kidsbeing dumped on alleys or porches, waiting for someone to pick them up andcare. Of course they had heard about the cruelest crime of all, which wasabandoning a child. Of course they knew this was it. But hearing the story from the news hasnothing to do with actually hear the crying, the blabbering, the sobs of aone-year-old inside a basket.

And by the time Yuuri was kneeling, picking the creaturebetween his arms, desperately rambling about how they needed to contact thepolice right away…Viktor wasn’t listening.

His attention was fixed on those big, teary eyes, that smallfurrowed nose and sobbing lips. Little hands instinctively reaching for theheat of Yuuri’s chest as he was rocked back and forth, crying, desperate for abit of warmth. For a bit of Life and Love.

The immediate course of action was to feed him. They didn’tknow what was the last time the poor thing had eaten, and so they took her totheir apartment and gave her some milk. They had to stop by a store to buy somesupplies, even though they were obviously planning to contact the authoritiesas soon as possible. But they needed some diapers and special food for themeantime.

The basket had a little note inside, written in Russian ofcourse, and Viktor could easily tell a huge amount of grammar and spellingmistakes, and he couldn’t help but make assumptions. Maybe her parents couldn’ttake care of her, maybe they didn’t have the money…but why leave her there?In the middle of nowhere?

By the time they got her to eat and sleep, it was alreadynighttime. Viktor could see just how stressed his husband was. He could readhim very easily, and knew his empathy and kind heart were the culprits of hissilence and the tension accumulating in his shoulders. Viktor told him torelax, that they could decide what to do the next day, and that he shouldprobably go take a shower.

Yuuri complied, carefully putting the sleeping baby into thebasket again, but this time with a much comfortable cushion underneath and theheat of a cozy blanket.

Viktor was still in daze, not really sure of what he shouldbe doing, or what he should be feeling. He was numbed by surprise, the impactof seeing such a scene. But he was forcefully taken out of his shock by thesurreal sound of crying he still couldn’t believe that was coming from his ownliving room.

He picked the girl up, not really sure of how babies worked,but the yelp the poor thing let out as he held her by her feet was enough of aclue to understand he was doing something wrong. He grabbed her from under herarmpits instead, warily, almost afraid, as if she could start breathing outfire at any second or jump at his neck with sharp teeth she didn’t even have.

How did someone stop a baby from crying?? Shaking it??

Nope, definitely not shaking it.

Maybe turning her around?

Ok he wasn’t good at this.

The baby kept crying and Viktor kept fearing he would loseall of his hair in the term of one night. Didn’t these things comewith…instructions or something? Just to satisfy some sense of curiosity andridiculous hope, he pressed a finger to her belly-button, as if it were anactual button that would stop the whining. But the only reaction he got, was aninstant kick on the face.

“Oh fuck!”

Much to his surprised, however, the crying ceased. But ithadn’t been the belly-button, the baby was laughing at the way he held his nosein pain.

“What are you laughing at, you meanie!” hefrowned, getting nearer, but the baby didn’t seem to take him seriously as sheextended a hand to grab his nose “hey, let go! I know it’s a prettyhandsome nose but you can’t have it”

She chortled merrily, grabbing his eye-lid next, andlaughing even harder as Viktor blinked in pain.

Well, at least she stopped crying.

“Ouch! Keep those hands to yourself, young lady!”

He booped her nose, and realized that might have been the buttonhe had been looking for, since she gifted him the purest, fondest smile Viktorhad seen in years. He did it again, mouthing silly noises, enthralled by thehappy yelps and giggles he got for an answer, feeling the joy beginning to rubon him.

He didn’t know how much time he spent playing with her,ticking her belly and pinching her cheeks. But she was laughing, she wasbeautifully laughing and Viktor was laughing, too. He felt cloyed, overwhelmed,so full of emotions he couldn’t fit anything else. There were no worries, nostresses, and no need to define Life and Love. Right then, he felt complete.

He hadn’t even noticed when the hum of the shower hadstopped, nor how much time Yuuri had been staring at him from the bathroom’sdoor frame, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, smiling to himself.By that time, the little girl had fallen asleep, and she was clutching Viktor’sfinger in her tiny hand, occasionally taking it to her mouth to suck on itaffectionately. He was fascinated.

“Seems you get along quite well, huh?” Yuurichuckled softly, hugging him from behind, and planting a kiss to his temple. Heseemed to be feeling better.

“Yeah, Lori is perfect”

“Lori?”

“That’s how I named her”

“Vitya, no” Yuuri sat beside him on the sofa, andViktor got to see the previous worry back in his eyes “We can’t name her,love. She’s not ours”

“Yeah, but…” he debated if he should say thefollowing words, but they just burst out before he could find a gentler way tophrase it “…what if she was?”

Yuuri blinked, staring at him with what he recognized asdisbelief, gaze torn between his husband and the baby on his arms.

“What??”

“Yuuri, darling…wouldn’t you like to be a father? Wetalked about this already, and you said you would like to someday…” thelook in Yuuri’s eyes made him stop mid-sentence.

“Oh, Vitya” he sighed rubbing his face, giving along sighed onto his own hands “I would love to, you know I do, but Ijust…this is so sudden! I still have one or two more years at skating, Idon’t know if I could handle a baby and my career, I just…”

“But we can do it together, Yuuri! Together we can doanything!”

“A baby is not a joking matter, Viktor. We can’t just try. Maybe we should wait until Iretire…”

“But look at her!” Viktor hugged her close, as ifsomeone may try to take her away from him “Lori is so beautiful! And sheneeds us!”

“I think that Lori-” he stopped himself “the baby, needs a family who will takegood care of her…You are my coach, and you are just as busy as me. And I’mafraid…”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid to be a bad parent”

Viktor saw the beginning of tears shining in his husband’seyes, and he immediately closed the space between them, letting him hold Loriso that he could hug him instead. He had been selfish and impulsive, he knewYuuri was an anxious, insecure person, and he hadn’t considered his emotions.The idea of being parents was way too overwhelming for him to decide in justone night. In fact, it was way too hurried for anyone. He was being irrationaland acting out of mere raw emotions. He needed to think things out.

“I’m sorry” he whispered, watching Yuuri’s gazegetting lost in Lori as well, but immediately forcing himself to look away“You are right…we shouldn’t hurry things up”

For the next week after they contacted the authorities andleft the baby at their custody, Viktor wasn’t the same as before.

He knew he shouldn’t act so mourning, he hadn’t lostanything. His life was just like it was before, and he had always been a happyman. He still had Yuuri, his friends, skating…yet, he couldn’t pretend hedidn’t notice the feeling of emptiness.

He returned to his habit of watching his old routines. Onlythat he did it every day, and he spent an alarming amount of hours at it. Andwhen Yuuri walked in, tracing his fingertips down his neck and kissing himsoothingly, Viktor didn’t stand up to take him to bed. He just stood there,silent, eyes fixed on the screen.

He noticed his husband was conflicted too, but they justseemed unable to deal with the commotion together. They didn’t talk about it.He would sometimes find Yuuri in the kitchen plainly staring at the wall, thekettle boiling and whistling loudly in the stove, asking to be turned off. Butthe man would just stay still, in trance, holding the cup and the tea bag inhand but not moving at all, lost in thought.

One day, Viktor had decided to go for a walk. Sometimes,staring at the sea cleared his thoughts a bit. But the salty scent of the waterdidn’t seem to help at the moment. He returned to the apartment with his hopesdown, trying not to sulk as he opened the door, so that Yuuri didn’t feel evenworst at the sight. But as soon as he got in, the false solemnity of his facebroke into curiosity, as he saw a bunch of papers sprawled on top of the coffeetable, and his husband sitting on the sofa with his arms crossed.

“What’s this?” Viktor asked, warily, taking adocument into his hands.

“Read”

His eyes widened, and he put down the paper to stare atYuuri in disbelief.

They were adoption papers.

“Are you serious?” He asked, his voice a thread.

Yuuri stood up coyly, with tears in his eyes, and in nosecond Viktor was hugging him close, kissing him, and crying a little bithimself, too.

The paperwork took weeks, but after signing many documents,answering many questions, and buying many baby items online, Lori was finallyat home.

They talked to Yakov, and asked him if he could be Yuuri’scoach whenever things got busy. Mari was glad to help, too, and took good careof Lori when her parents were way too busy with competitions. Yuuko offeredsome help as well as soon as she heard the news, being so happy for her friendto finally experience the joy of parenthood, and willingly giving him a handwhenever he needed.

Even Yurio was enamored by the baby girl, and sometimes heheld her and played with her when they took her to the practices.

And Viktor? Viktor was obsessed. Viktor would pamper hisdaughter and rant about how he was PERSONALLY going to teach her how to skateas soon as she could stand on her feet.

“We are the luckiest people in the world” He wouldalways say, watching his husband as he changed her diapers or lulled her tosleep between his arms.

Because, from that moment on, Viktor had a new definitionfor Life and Love.

Life and Love were ephemeral, volatile, and constantlybuilding themselves, changing, morphing, absorbing more and more meanings,smells, eye colors and feelings.

Life and Love would always have different significances.

And, maybe, he may have found his third L.

Now I can’t take Lori out of my head…what did u do to me gurl. You just gave me a killing headcanon

#yoi #yuri on ice #yuri!!! on ice #yuri katsuki #yuuri katsuki #viktor x yuuri #baby #baby headcanon #victuuri parents #victuuri #victor nikiforov #victuuri fanfic #victuuri fanfiction #viktuuri #viktor nikiforov #victuuri fic #fanfic #fic #fanfiction

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josephkitchen0 · 6 years

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Chicken Clothes for Halloween and Christmas

By Wendy E.N. Thomas – Olivia Dougherty, who lives in Delaware, Maryland, created her chicken clothes for a contest, sponsored by Cooptastic, one of the nation’s premier educational conferences dedicated to small and backyard poultry flock. And each conference holds a chicken costume contest.

“It’s along the lines of the lamb- and sheep-dressing contests frequently held at 4-H shows,” said Brigid McCrea, PhD, associate professor at Delaware State University and extension poultry specialist who organizes and helps judge the conference’s contest.

“Audience loves it to pieces,” McCrea continued. “Not only for the creativity but also for the conversation. It provides an opportunity for people to converse with one another and to talk to other poultry people.”

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For her entry in the contest, Dougherty designed a “Superman” cape, complete with an egg logo. “I made it for my favorite chicken who is our biggest, white and black, ‘Supersize’ chicken.” Although her family no longer has chickens, if she were to design future chicken clothes for costumes, Dougherty thinks it would also have a superhero theme, along the lines of a Chicken Spiderman.

Dougherty does have goats and a pig and she admits to dressing them with collars, necklaces and little blankets. She has also dressed up her dog up as a lady bug and has put tiny shirts on her cat.

“It’s fun,” she says of the experience.

Holidays

A holiday chicken. Photo by Dead End Acres.

For some, the urge to put their backyard chickens in chicken clothes simply comes from a need. Kelly Nichols of Bloomville, New York, wanted to do a Facebook Christmas card, and decided what better subjects to use than a kid and her chicken? Nichols also works with a few of her hens to participate in agility challenges as well as hen therapy.

“It has been difficult,” said Nichols of the designing aspect. “I’ve tried a few dog outfits, but they just don’t fit right. I make our own chicken clothes. We’re pretty lucky; we have a couple different hens that will be patient enough to let me pattern on them.”

Raise Awareness

Some people, like Jennifer Pike, of Florida, became inspired to dress their flock in chicken clothes on a whim. “I was shopping with my mom at a store and came across a cute teddy bear outfit. We started joking about how people dress up dogs, and I said I was going to get it to put on my house chicken for a cute picture … and that started it all.”

Pike, who said she suffers from depression, also sees posting her chickens in their chicken clothes on Facebook as a way of bringing enjoyment to others, and has helped her connect with others who also use chickens as a means of coping.

“I liked posting funny pics of my chickens,” Pike said, “as raising chickens can be a heartbreaking hobby and many people who I chat with on forums. … The cute pictures bring smiles to people and also get non-chicken people interested in how chickens can be neat pets.”

Throughout the years, Sophie’s chicken clothes for her favorite pet Silkie chicken have included: a pirate costume, a police officer, a cheerleader, a bride, a Santa suit and a rain jacket. Pike has also had her chickens wear barrettes in topknots in shapes of bows or flowers along with a chicken diaper when they went to stores.

Everywhere Pike takes a dressed-up chicken, people can’t help but stop and ask questions. “Kids seemed very interested as well as parents. They never knew how diverse the looks of chickens could be or how sweet. Sophie traveled with me in my truck everywhere. She often rode in my lap, looking out the window glass or in a towel sitting in my seat console.”

Once, Sophie said, a lady at a drive-through got so scared of the chicken — “a little fluffy chicken with a hair barrett and a flowered diaper” — that another lady had to hand her the food.

“Eventually she started asking questions and became less afraid,” Sophie said.

Bring Joy

Holly Olejnik from Huntington Mills, Pennsylvania, first started dressing up her chicken, Cheep Cheep, four years ago for a Halloween contest on Facebook. “Everyone loved her and went nuts on how well she took to being photographed.”

That was only the beginning. Cheep Cheep’s chicken clothes are fairly small now with about 30 dresses.

Dress and photo by Holly Olejnik.

“We donate all that she has worn to family and friends that have little ones on the way,” Olejnik says of Cheep Cheep’s dresses. “All the chicken clothes that she wears are bought from thrift stores or yard sales. We shop in the children’s department or look for Halloween costumes that look fun. My grandmother Carolyn Gensel loves to go hunting for my next dress to post to Facebook. She carries a photo of me and shows off her grand-chicken to anyone wondering who the pretty dress is for.”

Cheep Cheep has quite the Facebook following from around the world. In fact, Olejnik says, “A lot of her friends, if they are in the area on vacation, ask if they can come meet her in person because she has brought so much joy and smiles into their life.”

If you’re interested, Cheep Cheep’s Facebook fan page is “Cheep Cheep Olejnik,” and her regular profile page is “CeeCee Olejnik.”

Functional Attire

Sometimes, chickens need functional accessories like aprons (for protection against a rooster’s nails) and diapers (for, well, you know). Julie Baker, owner of Pampered Poultry (pamperyourpoultry.com) decided that if a bird has to wear functional chicken clothes, then it might as well look pretty. She has made designer chicken clothes, including floral chicken diapers and has added ruffles to chicken aprons to make them look more like attractive summer dresses.

Designer chicken attire by Julie Baker. Photo by Julie Baker.

Plain Old-Fashioned Fun

And then there is Kevin, the chicken that just showed up in Leona Palumbo’s driveway one day.

“I never had chickens nor did I know much about them,” Leona said. “My husband found her in a tree next to our driveway and brought her in to me as a joke, and she fell instantly asleep on my lap and it was love at first sight from there. We put flyers up about her around the neighborhood, but never heard from anyone. It quickly became apparent that potty issues needed to be dealt with, so I did a quick search online on a lark for ‘chicken diapers,’ and lo and behold, several designs popped up. I picked out the one I thought would work and ordered it. It works great and she fit in at home inside with all of our other pets just fine.”

Then one day, she bought Kevin a Christmas sweater.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know why the heck I bought it and put it on her … I really don’t. I just did and it she was so calm and easy going about it that it just became a thing we did and took pictures of. … We try to do holidays and family events and just fun things. I keep her page completely free of hot-button topics and I am amused and pleased at the incredibly varied following she has acquired in a very short time.”

Most people think it is fun, says Palumbo, but she has gotten some negative comments from animal activist types who think it is mean.

“But they just don’t know how loved and spoiled Kevin is. We never do anything that makes her uncomfortable and I swear, she even knows what’s going on as she sits so calmly, and once the picture is taken, she goes off again on her little way. Some other people have remarked that they can’t believe I let a chicken on my counters and furniture. Well, ‘That’s why there is soap and water in the world,’ I usually remark. Kevin is my pet, no different than my cats, dogs or other animals, and she is just as loved and welcome anywhere in my home.”

Kevin, on her motorcycle. Photo by Leona Palumbo.

Safety Tips

Whether it be for a competition, holiday, or just for pleasure, many people enjoy putting clothing and accessories on their chickens in order to dress them up. If you are going to costume your chickens, advises Brigid McCrea, PhD, associate professor at Delaware State University and extension poultry specialist, for the health and safety of your birds keep the following clothing guidelines in mind:

• Watch the weight of the costume, as chickens will get flustered if an outfit weighs them down.

• Along with fabric weight, be careful to not use fabrics that will overheat the bird. Polar fleece is a lightweight material but if worn for a long period, it may make your chicken too warm.

• An interesting fact about chickens is that they are naturally attracted to the color red and will peck at it; be careful of where red is used in the bird’s costume.

• Make sure that the chicken can move her wings and that the outfits do not in any way restrict her wing movement.

• If you are putting something around the chicken’s neck (necklace, bandana), make sure that it is lightweight and does not hang down so low that the chicken could potentially trip over it.

• Try not to use hats or head coverings. Chickens are prey animals, meaning they are constantly on the lookout for predators who may be after them. A hat restricts vision and won’t be tolerated very long by any chicken. Consider this the first step toward learning how to protect chickens from hawks and other predators.

• Be careful of beads and hanging decorations that the chicken may be tempted to try to eat them. Likewise, inspect the construction of the outfit to make sure that it does not have loose, dangly threads or that it might fall apart while the chicken is wearing it.

• Allow for waste to happen (because you know that with chickens it eventually will); either leave the back area open in a costume or prepare the chicken to wear a diaper. Composting chicken manure is an excellent way to add nutrients to your garden.

• Lastly, make sure that the costumes are made from washable fabrics, and for bio-security reasons, wash them after each wearing in order to avoid possible contamination among chickens.

Have you ever dressed your flock in chicken clothes?

See our fun fan photo shares and share your own #BackyardPoultryHalloween inspired pics on Instagram.

Originally published in 2014 and regularly vetted for accuracy.

Chicken Clothes for Halloween and Christmas was originally posted by All About Chickens

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