#can you imagine this Romeo and Juliet pairing between the dark sides and the light sides? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dinosaurtsukki · 4 years

Text

wherefore art thou, romeo? | an osamu x f!reader one-shot

pairing: osamu miya x f!reader

word count: 6.1k words

contains: a boatload of crack, fluff if you squint, high school setting, more bickering than working on the actual play, mutual pining, best friends to lovers, brief mentions of the romeo and juliet with leonardo di caprio in it

summary: being best friends with the miya twins for years has prepared you for all of their shenanigans but even you’re taken by surprise when osamu, the guy you’ve been in love with for years, nominates you to play juliet for the class play and atsumu to play romeo

a/n: *squints at word count* okay this was supposed to be released in three chapters but i ended up writing all of it in one go and i didn’t know exactly where to separate the chapters so here it goes

the day started out fairly normal, if fairly normal meant that your two best friends were using your ruler to divide a candy bar accurately into two during homeroom while waiting for the teacher, could be called ‘fairly normal.’ but when those two friends were the miya twins, that’s how normal things got. the teacher arrived a bit later, announcing some reminders about the cultural festival dates, before the time was handed over to the Class President, a guy with glasses and straight black hair that you and your friends just called ‘Mr. President.’

“for the cultural festival, our class, due to majority votes, has decided to put on the play: ‘Romeo and Juliet,’“ Mr. President announced. judging from his cheeky smile, you could tell that he may have had a hand in those ‘majority votes.’

“aw, yuck. don’t tell me ya voted for that, y/n,” atsumu nudged you from behind your desk.

“why are you assuming its me?” you grumbled, batting his hand away.

“aw, no crepe cafe then,” osamu said sullenly beside you. your gaze was pulled to him, as it always was. now that the spring inter-high was over, osamu was mostly in his school uniform, not that you minded. his silver hair, that he got in trouble with the principal for, was pushed haphazardly to the side and gleamed in the sunlight.

“now,” Mr. President continued. “what we have to decide on right now is who gets which acting roles and who gets to do the technical jobs.”

“painting sets? painting sets?” atsumu poked you and osamu.

“hmm, i’d kind of like to work on the lights,” you hummed, already imagining yourself scrolling through your phone and switching on the spotlight once every few minutes. osamu was quiet and you knew he was probably thinking of painting sets too.

“now, is there anyone who’d like to volunteer for playing romeo?” Mr. President asked, surveying the class. “you can also nominate people and--”

osamu abruptly raised his hand up. your eyes widened, wondering if he was going to volunteer. atsumu had the same concern.

“whoa, whoa. don’t tell me yer thinkin’ of playing romeo?” atsumu laughed incredulously.

but that isn’t what osamu did. in full Dramatic Flair, osamu miya pointed at his twin and announced “i nominate miya atsumu to play romeo.”

the laughter in atsumu’s voice died as quickly as the class erupted into murmurs. based on the snatches of conversation you heard, atsumu was going to be wielding a sword and probably wearing tights.

“okay, that’s one nomination for atsumu to play romeo,” Mr. President nodded, writing atsumu’s name on the board. you stifled a giggle as you heard atsumu stand up in his seat behind you.

“wait! wait! i nominate ‘samu to play romeo!” atsumu exclaimed hurriedly. the reaction wasn’t as loud as before and osamu flashed his twin a smug grin.

“i’ll make sure to get a nice, bright spotlight on you,” you smiled cheekily at him.

“so, we have atsumu-san nominated to play romeo and--”

“i’m not done,” osamu interrupted. “i also nominate y/n to play juliet.”

if atsumu reacted at a snail’s pace, yours was quite similar to how ketchup fell out of a bottle: none at first, before coming out all at once. within that length of time you spent staring into the void, Mr. President already wrote down your name on the blackboard and proceeded with the rest of the nominations (there weren’t any). the class voted, and you just barely felt someone pat you on the back to congratulate you for the role.

it was right when the decision over the roles was over when you turned slowly towards osamu, who had the audacity to flash a peace sign at you, and whisper ‘what have you done?’

...

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YA NOMINATED US TO PLAY ROMEO AND JULIET!” you and atsumu practically screamed at osamu during lunch break and for the rest of the day until you got to the miya twins’ house, where you spent most of your time, and cracked open the script that Mr. President handed out.

“sheesh, that was hours ago. get over it already,” osamu said, not looking up from the book he was reading: Beginner Techniques in Set Design. you didn’t even think he was reading, just mocking you and atsumu about the fact that he got the awesome job of painting sets.

“it was hours ago but atsumu and i are stuck with rehearsals for weeks!” you complained.

“not only that, but we’d have ta read shit and memorize shit,” atsumu seethed. “and we know that y/n sucks at that!”

“hey! i bet i could do better than you!”

“i don’t think ya can!”

osamu watched the battle from the top of his book, smiling to himself as you and atsumu quickly got into one of your fights that distracted you from the main reason behind the fight: osamu himself. ‘they’re still just like kids,’ he thought, watching you proceed to trap atsumu in a headlock.

the three of you had been the best of friends since grade school when you pushed atsumu off a jungle gym and osamu laughed and high-fived you. it was when the three of you were eating breakfast after a sleepover in your first year of high school, when you said that atsumu only had two brain cells and that ‘one was a skater boy, the other said see you later boy’ and osamu laughed so hard he got milk coming out of his house, that he realized he just might be in love with you.

“so, why didn’t you nominate yourself to play romeo?” suna asked him the next day while they were in the middle of stapling felt stars on a piece of dark blue fabric. like osamu, he was also lucky enough to be put in set design. “i mean, if you like her so much.”

“because i don’t want to play romeo,” osamu said as-a-matter-of-factly. “and i think making ‘tsumu do it is hilarious.”

“you really do have a one-track mind,” suna hummed and turned around to where atsumu and y/n were already busy working on the scene where romeo and juliet meet.

“ugh i have to kiss her hand?”

“well, do you want to kiss my foot?”

“i’d rather kick ya in the face!”

“you know, i feel like this on its own would make a great play,” suna said, watching the scene.

“a romeo and juliet where the lovers actually hate each other but their opposing families desperately want to push them into an arranged marriage. sounds pretty neat,” osamu mused.

“okay, why don’t you two take a break, collect yourselves, and then we’ll come back in ten,” Mr. President sighed. at that, you and atsumu quickly stopped quarreling and stalked off in different directions. you headed straight for osamu and suna.

“sometimes i can’t tell who’s the more insufferable one between you two,” you narrowed your eyes at osamu who had the audacity (the only thing he never seemed to run out of) to smile innocently.

“it’s one of life’s greatest mysteries. like, whether the chicken or the egg came first,” suna added.

“just give it a few weeks. atsumu will soon embrace his fate and you’ll be an amazing juliet,” osamu patted the top of your head. if you weren’t so annoyed with him you would have felt the butterflies in your stomach. except now you just wanted to bite his hand off.

“you know what, i’m going to kita’s later,” you muttered, pulling your phone out to text kita shinsuke, aka your adoptive mother.

“hmm? why?” osamu asked.

“because he’s the only sane person i know. plus he’ll help me out with my lines,” you explained, sighing with relief when you got a prompt reply from kita.

“oh, well i was planning to buy some convenience store snacks that i saw on sale for when i do homework later,” osamu said, trying not to sound disappointed.

“maybe next time,” you smiled apologetically. “but in the meantime, maybe get your twin over there to memorize his and not fuck up.” osamu looked up at his brother who was holding the script up a few inches from his face.

“you’re right,” osamu agreed. “but, it would also be funny to edit out a few words here and there.” you returned his cheeky grin.

“you read my mind.”

...

“kitaaa what if it means something that osamu chose to make me and atsumu romeo and juliet,” you groaned, face planted on the coffee table in kita’s living room while he peeled tangerines. “like, what if he realized i actually liked him for this long and this is his way of friend-zoning me?”

“osamu’s the kind of person who’d tell you right away if he doesn’t have the same feelings for you,” kita shook his head.

“that means he’s going to reject me soon!” you sat up, planting your hands on the table.”

“y/n, you’re doing it again,” kita gently reminded. “think of it this way, maybe he nominated you to play juliet because he wants to see you as juliet. but he’s not fully ready for the commitment so he nominated atsumu to be romeo.”

“or he just wants to mess with us, which is probably the case,” you chuckled half-heartedly. “maybe i’ll just believe that.”

“or, think of it this way,” kita placed a peeled tangerine into your hand, like the mom friend that he was. “you could use the opportunity to be the best juliet ever, someone that osamu can barely tear his eyes away from.”

“and i can show up atsumu at the same time!” you grinned at the idea. kita sighed.

“you know, i feel like your sheer desire to just beat atsumu at everything may be a hindrance but go on.”

“yeah, yeah, you lost me at ‘beat atsumu at everything’,” you sang as you cracked open your script. “now help me. i have to memorize all this by tomorrow.”

...

“i think yer all wondering why i’ve gathered ya here today,” atsumu began.

“we’re... in the volleyball clubroom,” aran spoke slowly.

“which is where we always hang out,” suna added. atsumu raised an eyebrow and a hand to silence them, which sometimes worked.

“i’ve gathered ya guys to form the all-important, top-secret team with only one goal in mind!” atsumu paused for dramatic effect, which suna purposely ruined by coughing. “we’re gonna to get myself out of playing romeo for the class play.”

“let me guess, whatever it takes?” aran asked, his arms folded.

“whatever it takes!”

and atsumu took that completely seriously. the next day, he gathered aran and suna to the clubroom again to execute his master plan, version 1: operation casting call.

“get it? cause, ya know, i’m part of a cast, and i’ll be showing up in a cast,” atsumu grinned proudly, showing off the roll of bandages that he bought yesterday at a drugstore.

“okay, first of all: lame pun,” aran sighed. “secondly, that’s not a cast you’re just wrapping your foot in bandages and not encasing it in plaster which i think was what you were originally going for. lastly, do you realize just how many holes your plan has?”

“oh yeah? like what?” atsumu crossed his arms and scoffed.

“like the fact that your twin brother would know whether or not you were injured yesterday,” suna brought up.

“...i’ll jus’ say that i sprained my ankle jus’ now,” atsumu said.

“as if he’s going to believe you,” suna snorted.

“i’m just saying, please ditch this plan before you embarrass yourself,” aran sighed. atsumu felt his face heat up with embarrassment.

“sh-shut up! this plan is gonna work and i’m not gonna play fuckin’ romeo for another day!” atsumu snapped. “now help bind my foot.”

aran and suna looked at each other. “you’re taking a video of what’s happening later,” aran said while suna nodded.

“i hate ya guys,” atsumu crossed his arms.

a few minutes later, his foot was all wrapped up thanks to aran and atsumu was propped up on suna as he hobbled into the classroom. with full dramatic flair that he never seemed to run out of, atsumu slid open the door to the classroom.

“Mr. President! sorry to say this but i sprained my ankle!” he cried. everyone inside turned to look at him with you raising an eyebrow at the dubious looking ‘sprained ankle.’

“you know, if you spoke like that all the time you’d make a great romeo,” his twin quickly piped up from near the door where he was busy painting a tree.

“shut up ‘samu, ya traitor,” atsumu muttered at him. Mr. President had walked closer and inspected the bound foot.

“osamu, is this true?” he asked.

“w-wha? don’t ya believe me?” atsumu splattered. beside him, suna had already brought out his phone. mad, atsumu pushed himself off his ‘friend’ and tapped his ‘sprained’ foot on the ground. ‘it hurts! see! ow!” atsumu lied.

quick as a flash, osamu kicked atsumu’s good foot, causing him to hop on his ‘sprained’ foot.

“fuck! ‘samu!” he yelled.

“well, i guess there’s nothing to worry about,” Mr. President smiled and clapped his hands together. “and atsumu-san, that was a good attempt at acting. i hope you channel that passion into rehearsal today.”

atsumu could do nothing else but mumble. “yeah, fine...”

...

“i can’t believe atsumu even thought that his plan would work,” you laughed, recounting the events of earlier that day. you were sprawled across the wooden floor backstage the theater your class was going to use for the cultural festival. osamu was right beside you, painting one of the backdrops for the play.

“i really do think all the brainpower went to me sometimes,” osamu mused as he carefully painted the sky around the white clouds. there was a look of pure concentration on his face that made you think that maybe osamu was quite excited to do the set design for the play. ‘it’s always the things that you don’t really expect him to get into,’ you wondered as you watched him.

“hey, is this shade of blue a bit too... blue?” he asked, holding the paintbrush to you. you scooted over next to him, grateful for the excuse to be nearer osamu.

“it could use a bit more white to look more like the sky,” you answered.

“hmm, can you pass me that can of white from over there?”

“sure, let me just-- hey!”

a splatter of blue paint landed on your nose as osamu swiped his paint brush over it. once again, he had the audacity to snicker as you grabbed the paint brush from him to splatter blue paint over his hair.

“you are so dead, miya osamu,” you narrowed your eyes and grinned at him as you picked up the tube of red paint from beside your knees.

“wait, wait y/n,” osamu laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “that’s red paint right there.”

“you didn’t seem to have a problem with brushing light blue paint on my nose!” you exclaimed pointing at your face.

“well, it is a bit of a good look because it brings out your eyes--” he was cut off by you squirting red paint right at his face. slowly, osamu raised a hand to touch the paint on his cheek. “you know, i kind of deserve that.”

“you definitely do,” you stared down at him with both hands on your hips before bursting out laughing. osamu blinked up at you before joining in the laughter. even with your blue nose, you still looked absolutely radiant. just like how you were earlier during rehearsals as you did your best performance of juliet. you captured everyone’s attention and even atsumu actually made an effort to get to your level.

“come on,” osamu chuckled, standing up and ruffling your hair with the hand that still had red paint on it. “let’s go wash up.”

the feeling of him ruffling your hair was such an old and familiar gesture that you couldn’t even remember when osamu started doing that. but you could clearly remember everything else you did when you were kids. watching cartoons and mixing different kinds of cereal in the morning, trying to climb up the drainpipes into each other’s rooms, the endless cycle of calling each other names, crying from too much teasing, and saying sorry only to forget two minutes later.

you watched, head cocked to the side as osamu washed the paint from his face while you dried your hair. he didn’t realize just how much soap he was getting in his eyes and the cute, childishness of it made you giggle.

“what?” osamu looked, or rather, turned his head to you.

“your eyes are going to burn at this rate,” you snickered, stepping over to him and placing your hands under the faucet before gently washing the soap from osamu’s face. you didn’t even realize what you were doing until you were doing it and by then, it was too late. osamu didn’t seem to mind, not even when you used the towel around his neck to pat his face dry.

“there, now you just have a big red stain on your nose,” you laughed nervously as osamu opened his eyes.

“at least it goes with my hair,” osamu snickered, tossing his towel over your head before ruffling it. you felt your face heat up and smiled awkwardly at him in response.

“is this your idea of trying to dry my hair?”

“i think it’s kind of working.”

“it’s not working,” you laughed, taking the towel from him. “but thanks.” you felt your throat tighten with the words you wanted but were too afraid to say. you didn’t know when you started falling for one of your best friends and maybe it was thanks to all the shoujo manga you’ve read for years, but you knew that the best friend and the main character rarely ever got together.

luckily, it was osamu who said something. “you know, you were pretty good earlier as juliet. i bet ‘tsumu was threatened,” he laughed, lifting his bag and starting to walk towards the school exit. you jogged to catch up to him.

“no thanks to you though,” you snorted.

“hey, it’s all for the sake of making memories,”

“we could have made memories while painting sets,” you huffed. “you know, like more paint fights.” osamu flashed a sideways smile at you.

“we’d have those regardless. i wanted to see you as juliet.”

you could feel your heart beating loudly in your ears as you forced yourself to think of a million other reasons as to why osamu would say that, only to focus on the single, most probable one that could mean everything you’ve ever dreamed of coming true. “osamu, i--”

“i can’t believe ya left me!” atsumu exclaimed loudly behind you two, causing you to jump. you turned around just as he slung his arms around both of you and his twin.

“i can’t believe you thought pretending to sprain your ankle would work,” osamu muttered, looking slightly annoyed at his twin.

“shut up! i can’t believe ya’d break my cover! my own brother!”

“i think you two are way past that already,” you snickered, slightly annoyed at atsumu’s sudden appearance but unable to admit that you didn’t miss having him around either.

‘if i never get to confess to osamu, i’ll still have this,’ you thought, with a satisfied smile on your face.

...

“no offense, atsumu, but i think you should just move on from the fact that your plan to get yourself out of playing romeo just isn’t going to work,” suna said, lounging across his friend’s bed and uploading the video he took of atsumu’s ‘master plan’ failing. “just accept your fate, like what romeo did.” atsumu stopped pacing and regarded suna with a raised eyebrow.

“ya read the play?”

“i read the summary,” suna answered. “at this rate, everyone knows you’re going to be faking some accident.” atsumu made no response and suna realized he needed just one more push. “also, you’re basically losing to y/n.”

that got atsumu’s attention. “since when did she wanna be juliet anyway?” he muttered.

just then, the door to their room flew open and in walked a very excited aran carrying a relic from the past, an actual DVD in its case, and a bag from the convenience store.

“yer late,” atsumu scowled at him.

“yeah, and you didn’t listen to what i said and looked really dumb earlier,” aran said, much to atsumu’s embarrassment. “anyway, i think i have a solution to your woes,” he grinned, presenting the DVD to the two of them.

“what the fuck am i gonna do with movie ‘romeo and juliet?’“ atsumu frowned.

“it’s not just any romeo and juliet movie, it’s the romeo and juliet movie!” aran said enthusiastically. “starring leonardo di caprio!”

“who now?”

“he’s the guy who didn’t win an oscar for years until the bear movie,” suna explained.

“ooooohhh.”

“you uncultured shits,” aran sighed. “anyway, atsumu, just accept your fate--”

“that’s what i’ve been trying to tell him!”

“... and open your eyes to how awesome it is to play romeo!” aran finished. atsumu looked from the DVD in his friend’s hands, to suna on his bed, and to the bag of convenience store snacks, before sighing and nodding.

“if i decide it’s shit ten minutes in, we’re dropping the movie and yer all gonna tell me i’m right.”

but he was wrong, oh so wrong.

just like every middle-aged mom or english literature university student who watched Romeo + Juliet, atsumu was pulled in by leonardo di caprio’s sincere, expressive eyes. he practically swooned at the scene where romeo and juliet met from different sides of the fish tank to that iconic pool kiss, and by the end of the movie, atsumu almost teared up. he tried to hold back his emotions, in the hopes of not looking lame in front of his friends, only to find aran practically sobbing and suna clutching his knees to his chest.

“that was... really fucking beautiful,” atsumu cursed as the credits rolled.

“do you understand now? what it means to play romeo?” aran put a hand on his shoulder.

“do it for leo di caprio, atsumu,” suna added. atsumu sniffed and nodded his head eagerly.

“i will, i’ll do it for leo.”

...

it was a normal day at school, if normal meant you were wearing a blanket wrapped around your waist to make you ‘feel as if you were in costume’ and mixing vending machine coffee and vending machine chocolate milk in styrofoam cups with your best friend who also happened to be the guy you were in love with. that was as normal as thing got when you were best friends with the miya twins.

and that only meant that seeing atsumu come in for rehearsals, with a determined spark in his eyes, and recite every line to utter perfection that you knew william shakespeare himself would be proud of, was just pushing the boundaries of ‘normal.’

that only meant you had to be on your A-game too and before you knew it, you and atsumu had put on your best performance yet. your undying competitiveness and atsumu’s devotion to leonardo di caprio had gone a long way. all throughout that, osamu had a ‘cat-who-just-ate-the-canary’ smile on his face as he watched from the props area.

“you look like you’re going to say ‘all according to keikaku’ at any time,” suna observed.

“oh, i am saying it in my head,” osamu said, watching you and atsumu onstage. he had hoped for two outcomes: either you were both comically terrible at the play, or that you were slightly mediocre. but a part in his mind knew you would find a way to surprise him. you always did, after all.

yours and atsumu’s performance got everybody in class even more motivated about the play. osamu ended up in a million meetings with the fellow set designers, even learning how to paint trees to look as life-like as possible. although being busy wasn’t enough to distract him from looking at you, especially when dress rehearsals began and you were wearing the most stunning dress that the costume department worked on. meanwhile, atsumu pretty much rehearsed, ate, and slept with his prop sword.

finally, the big day of the cultural festival came around. despite the fact that you utterly loathed having to play juliet at first, you couldn’t help but feel proud at how far you’ve come.

“hey, maybe i should just go to acting school or something,” you joked, sitting beside osamu and smoothing your dress over your legs which dangled over the side of the stage.

“you’ll run home crying after you hear any sort of criticism,” osamu snorted.

“mean! i deal with criticism really well!” you pouted. osamu raised an eyebrow at you and you rolled your eyes. “you know i was joking. the fact that i haven’t received any acceptance letters from the universities i applied to is kind of making me crazy.”

“so, is the fact that you’re playing a fourteen year-old girl who has to hide her love from her entire family before later killing herself a good way of escaping?” osamu asked.

“yeah, that and watching atsumu’s surprising transformation,” you snickered, turning around to watch atsumu and suna horsing around onstage. or rather, it was just suna from one end of the stage tossing chocolate chips at atsumu who was attempting to catch them with his mouth.

“i asked suna and aran about what changed but their lips are tightly sealed,” osamu shrugged. “i like to think that he hit his head somewhere.”

“well, he’s going to hit his head some time during the day at the rate he’s going right now,” you said, watching atsumu laugh and choke at the chocolate in his mouth. it was funny at first, until you noticed that atsumu kept on coughing.

“osamu,” you quickly tapped his twin. osamu turned around and immediately rushed over to his brother who was now turning a bright shade of red.

“oh my god, were there peanuts in that chocolate?” you asked. atsumu let out a gasp and nodded his head.

“i’ll go get his meds,” osamu quickly jogged off only to be replaced by a very concerned Mr. President. “someone get him some water!”

“i never thought atsumu-san was allergic to nuts. is it serious?” he asked, handing you his water bottle which you opened and quickly gave to atsumu who was now sitting down on the floor.

“well, it’s mostly rashes and an itchy throat but as long as he takes his medicine, he’ll be fine,” you shook your head.

two allergy tablets, an apology from suna, and a long explanation later, atsumu was lying down in the nurse’s office with the swelling noticeably reduced. “unfortunately, he’d have to sit out the rest of the play so that the reaction completely subsides,” the nurse told you, osamu, and Mr. President. you sighed and regarded atsumu with hands on your hips.

“you thought they were chocolate-covered raisins, didn’t you?”

atsumu didn’t say anything except: “i’m sorry leo di caprio.”

“this is the absolute worst time for this to happen,” Mr. President sighed as he addressed your classmates backstage. “there’s only thirty minutes before showtime and our romeo is out of commission. anyone have any bright ideas?”

“does anyone else here vaguely know atsumu’s lines?” you asked around. “someone who read the script?” instead, you were met with silence. as much as you wanted for some miracle to happen and for the show to go on because you genuinely did want to play juliet, putting up a half-assed play with one of the two main characters gone wasn’t going to look good either.

you sucked in a deep breath, preparing yourself to make the call, but osamu, who had noticed your expression earlier, stepped forward. you looked at him with wide eyes and just caught him glance at you before addressing mr. president.

“i can step in for romeo.”

“osamu...?” you asked.

“i haven’t really read the script but i’ve heard atsumu rehearsing by himself often enough to pick up a few lines,” osamu rubbed the back of his head, already feeling nervous.

“also, twin-sense,” suna piped up. “you know, your psychic connection between twins?”

osamu nodded his head slowly. “yes, that too.”

“alright, alright,” mr. president nodded his head. “well, i guess that’s better than nothing and osamu can fit into atsumu’s costume too. if you can, use these thirty minutes to read as much of the script as possible.”

“got it,” osamu nodded. and with that, everyone resumed preparations and you were pulled into the dressing room to get your hair and make-up done. when you emerged, osamu was sitting on the floor against the far side of the backstage, bent over a copy of the script and muttering in concentration.

“hey,” you greeted, sitting down beside him. he was already dressed in his costume: a white, long-sleeved shirt with golden buttons and some tassels on the shoulders. his hair was also combed back with a few strands falling across his forehead.

“god, i can’t believe atsumu memorized all this shit,” osamu shook his head and looked up at you only to stop short. he had seen you about a million times in your juliet costume but with the make-up and your hair arranged so elegantly, you looked absolutely breath-taking.

“something wrong?”

“i... i’m just panicking about having to play romeo all of a sudden,” he blinked.

“i know. scary, isn’t it?” you nodded. “i... you didn’t have to though. i’m pretty sure everyone was ready to throw in the towel.”

“and waste all my hard work painting sets?” osamu raised an eyebrow at you. “no way.” you tossed your head back and laughed.

“well, if you put it that way...” you nodded and smiled bravely. “the show will be fine. if you forget a line, just improvise. the most important thing is channeling the emotion.”

“i think i can do that,” osamu smiled and reached a hand out to you. “to the best show ever?”

you grinned and shook his hand. “to the best show ever.”

...

the show was a complete disaster. as much as osamu did try to recite atsumu’s lines completely from memory, it was as if everyone was thrown off their game throughout the entire play. cues for special effects were forgotten (someone accidentally turned on a smoke machine during the first scene), props were misplaced (the actor for Tybalt was using a footlong hotdog against osamu’s prop sword), and there were more than a few times when someone missed their lines. at one point, you ended up reciting Team Rocket’s iconic spiel after the line ‘a rose by any other name is just as sweet.’ but, despite everything being a shitshow, it still ended up being overall entertaining. the audience laughed through most of the obvious fails and that caused the actors to loosen up just a bit.

and it was osamu who ended up spearheading the comedic aspect of your ‘romeo and juliet’ play. from his dry, deadpan delivery of the very emotional lines, to his small inserts and side-comments about the play itself. you even had to stop yourself from laughing at times. but if you and atsumu were amazing at playing the scripted ‘romeo and juliet’, you and osamu were complete naturals when it came to improvising.

“i don’t know if this is a success by conventional definitions,” Mr. President addressed everyone backstage as soon as the play was over. “but... we sure did make everyone out there laugh.”

“and i consider that a win!” atsumu cheered beside you. he was looking much better, still with a bit of rashes though and his voice kind of heavy from the medicine. “kind of sad that i didn’t get to play romeo though,” he whispered at you.

“that’s alright. i channeled you in spirit,” osamu patted his twin’s shoulder.

“like hell ya did! i couldn’t believe ya used the dagger to kill yerself at the end,” atsumu argued.

“right?? i had to be all ‘oh romeo, you must have forgotten to use the poison you brought in your pocket!’” you recalled.

“i see dagger, i use dagger,” osamu reasoned. “wait, that’s ‘Macbeth’ isn’t it?”

“in a nutshell,” you shrugged.

“ugh, i’ve had enough of nuts for a day, don’t even mention it,” atsumu groaned, pushing away from the two of you and wandering off to the snack table that your classmates prepared.

“damn, i had more puns up my sleeve,” you sighed, watching him leave.

“you’ll find a time to use them, don’t worry,” osamu reassured you. “in the meantime... do you want to, get out of here first? explore the rest of the cultural festival?” you felt your face flush but nodded nonetheless.

“i’m sure no one will notice the main characters of their cast go missing,” you grinned. “let’s get out of here, romeo.”

when osamu meant ‘let’s check out the cultural festival’, he really meant buying a bunch of snacks from the stalls set up all around the school. but then again, that’s what he did all the time. soon enough, the two of you were sitting on the rooftop with your prized horde.

“thank god i don’t have some weirdass nut allergy like tsumu. that’s definitely evidence that i got the stronger genes,” osamu said, biting into a crepe he just bought. “also the fact that he didn’t check that chocolate-covered nuts packet.”

“i still feel sorry for him. he worked really hard to play romeo well,” you sighed.

“hey, i tried to play my part seriously. well... sometimes.”

“you did nail the whole ‘yearning for my love juliet’ part right,” you grinned, remembering the surprise at seeing the tenderness and longing on osamu’s face as he recited romeo’s lines about being in love with juliet. ‘well, that’s something for me to daydream about for the rest of my life you,’ you thought.

that was until osamu said “well, it’s good practice for when i actually confess to someone.”

confess to someone.

‘does that mean, all this time? he’s liked someone?’ you felt your stomach drop. you’ve never known osamu to be expressive when it came to people he had feelings for. were you just ignoring all the signs? was--

“it’s you, idiot,” osamu sighed.

“wait, what?” you looked at him with wide eyes. osamu sighed again and ran a hand through his hair.

“you know, i was thinking of a more suave way to say this but you looked like how you did earlier when you were supposed to be engaged to tybalt,” he chuckled. “so, i put two and two together for the first time. you’re the one i like, y/n.”

it was the moment you’ve been waiting for for so long, and yet the only thing you could come up with was “haha, cool.”

in response, osamu stared at you long and hard before taking another bite out of his crepe. “i think your brain is fried,” he muttered through a mouthful of crepe.”

“hold on, hold on,” you held a finger up, finally coming back to your senses. “you had a crush on me and also the audacity to make me juliet and have your twin brother as romeo?”

“i thought you’d be really cool as juliet but i didn’t want to go through the work of being romeo,” osamu said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “obviously it backfired but--”

“that’s called karma, osamu,” you pointed an accusing finger at him. “if you think i’m going to let you off easy i’m--”

you were cut off by osamu’s lips meeting yours and the taste of whipped cream and strawberry on your tongue. your brain short-circuited, trying to think of a way to describe this situation other than ‘haha, cool’ again. osamu, sensing your brain waves, pulled you even closer with a hand on your cheek.

“are you going to let me off now?” he raised an eyebrow at you after you parted. you smirked.

“i’ll have to think about it.”

“yeah?” osamu mumbled, his smirk matching yours. “what else do i need to do?” you leaned forward before taking a bite out of the crepe in his hands. you chewed while grinning at the surprised look on osamu’s face.

“now we’re even.”

taglist (still open to anyone who wants in!): @montys-chaos @miyumtwins @strawberriimilkshake @pocubo @sugawara-sweetheart@akaashisbabydoll @laure-chan@therainroguefanfiction@atetiffdoesart@stephdaninja@oikaw-ugh@charliefredb@dramaqueenweeb1469@tremblinghearts@applepienation@doodleniella @haikyuu-my-love

135 notes · View notes

apocalypticwafflekitten · 4 years

Text

Northern Lights

Maul x Reader

A/N: I’m back at it again with another Maul fic! This is a cute idea that was suggested to me by @justalittlecloud! I needed and idea and they didn’t let me down! I kind of made up a story for the Northern Lights in the Star Wars Universe since I couldn’t find anything with a quick search. Did I take beats from Romeo and Juliet? Yes. And did I take inspiration from an Estonian myth? Absolutely. I just hope it’s a good story! ALSO! If you’d like to be tagged in my Starwars, or Maul-specific writings, or any other writings that I post, feel free to let me know!

Original Imagine/Summary Kinda Thingy: Maul is curious about the Northern Lights!

Warings: None, just cute, sweet, cotton-candy fluff!

Word Count: 2,322.....this was supposed to be short.....whoops.....

“Come on Maul! It’s just a few feet further! We just have to cross this little creek, and get through that bit of underbrush ahead of us.” You explained excitedly as you all but drug Maul up the side of the mountain.

“My love, I know that you know what you’re doing, but are you absolutely sure that we’re going to the right place? This seems pretty out of the way, and we lost the trail a while back.” Maul stopped walking and pointed behind him, taking you by surprise.

You turned and snickered at him with a smile.

“Of course hun! I wouldn’t just take you to some random planet and travel far off a mountain trail if I didn’t know what I was doing! I’ve done this a thousand times dear. It is my home planet after all. And my favorite place on that planet no less.” You gave Maul a smirk, and he gave you an unsure look.

“Alright. I trust you, but if you get us lost, I’ll hold it over you until the day we die.” He joked with scrutiny, pointing an accusing finger at you. Still, beneath his uncertainty, he could feel your excitement and certainty through the force, and it sent a endeared warmth through his chest. You were so cute when you were excited.

“We won’t get lost dear. I promise! We’re almost there!”

You smiled as he gave in, and let you take his hand again to lead him.

You and Maul had been married for a year now. Today was your anniversary, and you wanted to do something special for him. You had to admit that coming to your home planet was a little personal pleasure just for you, but you wanted to share it with Maul, and show him something you knew he would never forget. And where better than your favorite spot in the galaxy (besides at his side of course)?

When you pushed away the last of the underbrush Maul’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes widened. Before him lay paradise. From the top of the cliff he could see the emerald, mountainous valley for miles. The river than ran through was thin and shining like a silver ribbon under the night sky. And that sky. He had never seen so many stars in his life. Never had darkness been so beautiful.

He was brought back to you by your chiming giggle. He didn’t even realize that you had let go of his hand, and sat on a blanket you had laid out presumably hours before you had brought him here. He closed his mouth which had fallen open at the sight of this paradise. He hadn’t realized that had happened either.

As Maul joined you on the blanket, you smiled to him. You were surrounded by soft light from the many little candles you had lit around you. The glowing light brushed your cheek with gold, and shined off the silk dress you wore. For a moment he forgot about the valley and the stars. You were so beautiful. Enchanting and alluring in this paradise.

You giggled again, amused by his stunned silence.

“I was much the same the first time I saw this place. It’s gorgeous during the day, but the night makes this place indescribable. The glittering stars, and the silver river. It’s like magic. It’s paradise for me.”

Maul was finally able to gather his thoughts into some semblance of a coherent sentence. There was so much he wanted to say, and it all wanted to spill out at once.

“This place is...you’re...everything here is just....perfect.” He said, “Everything here is perfect.”

He breathed out, looking from the valley, to you again with all the adoration in the galaxy.

Joy beamed through you and through your smile. Maul felt it wave through the force as you hugged him. He melted. He fell into the hug, and all but crushed you. Maybe, if he hugged you tight enough, you would be able to feel all the love, appreciation, adoration, devotion, and everything else he felt for you in it’s full measure. If only words could be passed from skin to skin.

“Thank you for bringing me here.” He murmured into the crook of your neck.

“Of course my love. Only the best for our anniversary.”

Maul pulled away with a suspicious look.

“You’ve had this planned for months haven’t you?” He teased, knowing full well your meticulous tendencies.

You chuckled, and pulled away to look him in the eyes, hands slacking around his neck to rub the skin at the base of his neck.

“Perhaps.” You gave him a mischievous look paired with a smirk.

“The cutest smirk in the galaxy.” He thought.

He laughed at your ambiguous response, though he knew the real answer.

“Well, then I will happily enjoy whatever it is you have planned my dear.” He said as he pulled you in close beside him. You merely smiled at him in a way that said that you were indeed hiding something.

He had his suspicions about your plan. There was certainly something he wanted to do tonight, though that could wait if need be. He wondered what exactly it was that you were so excited to show him. What could make this paradise better? He never could have guessed what was in store for him.

“Don’t worry love. That which I want to show you will show up soon.” You promised, “Until then...”

You held his face, and turned his gaze from the stars to you.

For the first time tonight, he really looked at you. His eyes met yours, soft and deep as he watched you, memorizing the colors of your irises and the candlelight glowing within them. His eyes wandered slowly to follow the curve of your cheek, and when he reached your lips, his thumb brushed gently against them. His eyes didn’t leave your lips until you looked down, bashful because of his intense gaze.

“Hey,” he cupped your jaw with his hand, and gently nudged you to look up at him, “Don’t look away from me.”

His whisper sent a shutter down your spine and sharp inhale through your lips.

He stayed there. Staring at you with adoration and a little something more.

There was a beat of silence before he took a shaky, laboured breath in.

“May I?”

His voice was breathy; desperate and he cupped your cheek, glowing with candlelight.

You chuckled a little, and looked into his wanting eyes.

“Of course you can my love. We’re married remember. You don’t have to ask every time you want to kiss me.” Your hand held his to your face as you smiled back up at him.

His lips crashed to yours. They melded together as though they were made for each other long ago when the universe was first born. Your hands reached out to hold his handsome face.

His touch traveled to your waist, and ran up your sides, pulling your frame in to press against him. He could feel the silhouette of your body beneath the silk of your gown. His hands wandered and rubbed at the fabric, feeling it wrinkle under his fingertips, barely protecting you from his searing touch. Oh how he wanted you to touch him. He wanted to feel your skin on his, your hands on his bare chest. Your lips on his neck. Oh he needed you to cool the burning desire in his soul.

But before he could make his desires known, he felt you begin to pull away. His lips followed yours, unwilling to let you go. He tightened his hand around your waist and gave a disappointed whimper at your persistence. He never wanted to stop kissing you.

You chuckled into his kiss, and held him back by his shoulder.

“I know my love. I’d adore to kiss you more, but there’s something I have to show you...Look off to the horizon.” You whispered to him, pointing out to the edge of the world.

He pouted, but he was curious, as always, so Maul turned his head and when he saw what lay on the horizon, his eyes blew wide, and your smile grew wider.

“Wha-what is it?” His smooth voice was filled with wonder at what he saw.

The night sky had grown darker. Deeper. The stars were still shining, but cutting through that darkness, and through the stars were bright, beautiful ribbons of lights, cascading down to the horizon. Blues and greens danced between the mountains, and the river ran silver below.

“It’s called Aurora Borealis. The Northern Lights.” You explained, endeared by his curiosity.

“It’s beautiful.” He whispered.

He was transfixed. His eyes were filled with whimsy, and for the first time in a long while, he smiled as wide he could, and he didn’t think of anything else. The hues from the sky mirrored in his eyes, and you couldn’t look away from them if you wanted to.

“What are they?” His voice pulled you from your state of admiration.

You blinked and collected your thoughts.

“Do you want the scientific answer, or the legend I was always told.” You asked.

“Either.” His voice was breathy again, but this time it was filled with wonder; He still hadn’t looked away. He looked at the sky the way he looked at you.

“I’ll start with the legend then.” You smiled, and scooted closer to Maul, laying your head on his shoulder, your arm reaching up to rub his back, “The story goes that there were once two lovers who were bonded by the Force. Their love ran stronger than any in the galaxy,” You noticed Maul grimace in reaction, and you huffed in amusement, knowing full well his opinion on that detail, “But despite the strength of their love, they were forbidden to be together. He was a nobleman, and she was a slave girl who served his mother. So, for many years they hid their love until the nobleman was married off to a princess whom he did not love, and made to move to her home planet. The slave girl was heartbroken, as was the nobleman, but they promised never to forget one another. And their promises held. So, as a reward, when the two had lived their lives, and passed on from this world, the Force reunited their spirits, and they were wed in the afterlife. The lights you see are their spirits, travelling together for eternity, followed by the celestial spirits, and beings that celebrated along with them. They travel the sky and bless those who see them with a love strong enough to last through life and death and beyond. You explained before releasing a happy sigh,“That’s how my parents always explained it to me. I loved that story.”

Maul took a second to look at you, his eyes holding only admiration.

“That’s beautiful my love. It reminds me of you.”

“Of me?” You asked, cocking your head in curiosity.

“Of course.” He stated, looking back to the ribbons of light before continuing, “The way you love me, it transcends this galaxy. Your love is that strong. That true. And you show me that every day you stay beside me. Even beside that, like the lights, getting to see you, even just once, is enough to leave one wanting for a lifetime. And getting to see you every day? Your light never dims. You could never dim.”

Maul kept his eyes glued to the lights. He may be married to you, and tonight may be your anniversary, but when those words fell from his mouth, he couldn’t look to you. Embarrassment warmed his face. In all the time you had been together, he still had trouble letting his heart spill from his lips. But when you turned his face towards you with a gentle palm on his hand, he knew that his words were more than welcome.

He saw tears in your eyes, but these weren’t tears of sorrow. No. He could feel your overwhelming gratitude and love and admiration for him crashing into him. He knew you could feel his love as well.

“I love you.” You whispered before pulling him in, and kissing him with your whole heart.

“I love you too,” He breathed between kisses, “I have always loved you. The minute I set eyes on you I needed you to be by my side. My heart begged your name when we met, and since then I have never wanted any other word to fall from my lips. You are the light in this universe. You are every star. Every sun. Every planet. You make my dark soul feel beautiful.”

“It’s because you are beautiful my love.” You cooed, tracing his jaw with your finger, and following his tattoos with your eyes, “You’re calming like the ebbing of waves on a shore. When I hear your voice, it’s a soft lullaby. I remember, when we met, it was your voice that caught my attention. It never seemed to match your reputation. I couldn’t get enough of it, and to this day, I still can’t. WHen I hear you say my name, my world stops and everything is perfect.” You huffed a laugh as your eyes flitted from his jaw to his own eyes.

“I can’t believe I was lucky enough to marry you.” Maul whispered to you, although you were alone.

“I can’t believe I was lucky enough to meet you!” You smile at him through a laugh with endearment shining in your eyes.

“You’re the world to me my love. The galaxy.”

“And you’re the galaxy to me.”

Maul kissed you softly before turning his gaze once more to the Northern Lights. He loved you. His wife. His rock. And he would love you through life and beyond. That was a guarantee, and promise he would never, ever break.

Tags!

@justalittlecloud, and @fanficsforheartandsoul !

Feel free to let me know if you want to be tagged!

#i really like this one #darth maul x reader #darth maul imagine #darth maul #star wars #i made myself emotional while writing this #i just.....dang I love maul #i hope yall love this too

64 notes · View notes

adam-dumortains · 3 years

Text

only you - mc x adam du mortain | chapter one

Your fingertips trace my skin to places I have never been. Blindly, I am following, break down these walls and come on in.

Book/Pairing(s): MC x Adam Du Mortain Rating: 16+ Category: Mini series Warnings / Trope: mentions of blood, slight mention of violence, angst

She could feel the searing on her neck and the blood trickling down to her shoulders. She screamed out for him. She screamed out to see his face, those green eyes, one final time before the inevitable. It wasn’t long before she could feel the life drawing from her body. She was dying as the teeth sunk into her further. Her eyes closed, smiling at the last flash of his face before the end.

Detective Maya Kingston (faceclaim: adelaide kane)

Agent Adam Du Mortain (faceclaim: matthew noszka)

note: hey! this is my first real wayhaven chronicle fanfic on mc x adam du mortain and i’m nervous but excited! enjoy.

Maya’s whole body jolted as the nightmare woke her up, her breathing erratic as a bead of sweat fell from her forehead. It took a few seconds for her breathing to calm down, a small pain in her chest from breathing so hard. Her fingers slowly made their way up to the scar on her neck, gently moving across the risen skin. Her eyes instinctively closed as she gritted her teeth. She hated that Murphy still had this effect on her after all this time. She was Detective of Wayhaven. She shouldn’t be scared. She needed to be brave. But she was. What scared her more than Murphy, however, was the thought of being without him. She sighed heavily, slowly swinging her legs to the side of the bed with her head in her hands. It was 3am, and she was awake, yet again. Knowing she would find it hard to fall back asleep after her nightmare, she made her way to the library to have a drink of water and read, with the hope that she would nod off at some point.

As she made her way to the library, she felt her body stop in front of Adam’s door. She thought about knocking but she knew it would be best to carry on to her intended destination. She sighed quietly and she continued walking towards the library. When she quietly stepped into the library, she scanned the bookshelf and chose a book and sat down on the big, deep red couch with her knees to her chest as the book lay between the gap.

——

Thump. Thump. Thump. It was all he could hear. He knew it was her heartbeat. Whilst he was alone, with nobody to see, he let himself listen to the soft beating. It calmed him. The sound of her being alive. He closed his eyes to heighten his senses. All he could hear was her. The peace he felt was soon interrupted when the beating sounded as though it was beating against her ribcage. Then the beating travelled further away. Something is wrong, he thought to himself. As though it was instinct, he jumped off the bed and opened his door, letting her heartbeat be the guide until he came to the library. He stopped outside the door, his hand hesitating above the doorknob. Her heartbeat was back at a steady pace and he could now hear her calm breaths. He knew she was okay at this present moment. He thought whether it would be best to slink back into his room, knowing that once he opened that door and laid eyes on her, he would have a hard time saying goodnight to her. He opened the door anyway.

Maya’s head turned towards the door as she heard it creak as it opened, her breath hitching as she saw Adam standing at the doorway, his body as stiff and still as ever. As he stepped forward towards the dim lamp, she could see the features on his face. How the softness of his concern contrasted with the harsh details and contours on his face. Her legs became weak as her heart fluttered. Looking at him was one of the most intense feelings Maya had ever felt, and she revelled in it.

“Maya.”

Maya cleared her throat, to drown away the thoughts about Adam she was just having. “O-oh, uh, Adam. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Not at all. I was merely checking if you were alright.”

“Yes I’m fine, I just had a nightmar- wait, how did you know I was up?”

Adam coughed, almost losing his footing as he searched his mind for an answer. “You can be rather... loud.” He was not going to admit that he was listening for her heartbeat.

“Oh,” Maya frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t sleeping anyway. You said you had a nightmare?” Maya couldn’t see his concerned frown in the dimly lit room, but it was there nevertheless. All he wanted to do was comfort her, but he thought better of it. At the same time, Maya yearned for him to move closer to her. He stayed perched at the doorway, to Maya’s dismay.

Maya frowned, looking down at the book unable to meet Adam’s eye as her voice cracked ever so slightly. She didn’t want to seem weak. “Yes.”

“What about?”

Again, her fingers touched the scarred skin on her neck, making Adam’s eyes flicker towards her neck. His face fell slightly, as he shook his head. “But I’m fine.”

Every time he saw the scar on her neck or saw her flinch at the mention on Murphy, it was like a weight on his chest. A reminder that he wasn’t there in time to protect her. The ache wasn’t because it was his job and he had failed, but because he had failed to protect her. These feelings terrified him.

He turned to leave, headed towards the door before a small whisper stopped him. “Adam..” He paused for a moment before slowly turning his head to face Maya. “Can you stay with me for a while?” His jaw clenched as he thought about saying that he couldn’t. But he couldn’t leave her.

“Yes. Until you feel the need to go back to bed, that is.” He turned back around and sat on an armchair opposite her, his back straight as he watched her.

“Thank you, Adam.” She smiled softly at him, her heart skipping a beat as their eyes met. Their gaze held for a few moments before Adam coughed, tearing his eyes away from hers to look at the book she had in her hand.

“It’s no trouble.” He smiled slightly to himself as he grabbed a book from the shelf, his fingers delicately brushing against the book’s spine. He sat back down opposite her and opened the book.

As they both read in comforting silence, neither could help looking up to glance at each other. Maya watched as Adam’s brows furrowed in concentration and his chest rose in soft breaths as he read. Just looking at him ignited a feeling she had never felt before inside of her. A feeling of heat and fluttering of butterflies deep within her. Her tongue slid against her bottom lip gently as she imagined what his lips would feel like against hers.

Unbeknownst to Maya, Adam was allowing his eyes to move from the pages of the books to her. He couldn’t help but notice how her dark hair fell onto her cheeks, how her eyes followed the words she was reading and how her breathing shallowed whenever their eyes met.

After around an hour, the room was silent. When Adam looked up from the page for what could be the thousandth time to look at her, he noticed she had fallen asleep, the book askew on her legs. Her chest was rising and falling slightly, in a state of serenity. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched her before he quietly stood up and placed the book he was reading back on the shelf. He walked over to her, in almost complete silence to ensure she wouldn’t be awoken by him and let himself be consumed by her. He allowed himself to listen to her soft, steady heartbeat and the gentle, sleeping breaths escaping her lips. He allowed himself to smell the faint scent of her perfume. He slowly took his hand from his side and hesitantly brought it close to the skin of her cheek, mentally debating whether to let his fingers touch her soft skin. He gave in to temptation. His fingers glided delicately across her slightly blushed cheeks. He let out a shaky sigh as the feelings inside of him grew. And how he wished that he would be able to hold her. In another life, maybe. But not this one. He couldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t let himself hurt her. His thoughts were interrupted when Maya, still asleep, moved further into his touch. A slight draft hit both of them, causing Adam to quietly grab the knitted blanket drenched over the back of the couch, to gently put it over her to ensure she wouldn’t become cold.

As he did this, he felt the book that was parched between her legs fall. In a fast and instinctive reaction, he caught the book in his hand before it fell to the floor. As he looked back up to Maya, his eyes widened as he realised she was awake and their eyes had locked. Her light brown eyes, the colour of caramel, searched his face. His breath became unsteady as he realised how truly close he was to her face, her lips.. before he came momentarily distracted by the book in his hand that had fallen. His eyes slowly falling onto the book she was reading. Romeo & Juliet.

“These violent delights have violent ends,” Adam muttered, almost in a whisper. The line from the book playing over in his head. He frowned gently as he remembered Sanja’s words in the fortune tent about the darkness consuming them both. As though he was snapping out of a trance, he quickly stood up and shook his head. He took one last look at Maya, before abruptly turning around and storming out of the door.

Maya blinked, the sudden encounter shocking her into silence. A wave of sadness came over her, revealing itself as an escaped sigh as she was left alone, yet again, yearning for the man she wasn't entirely sure would ever feel the same.

#the wayhaven chronicles #adam du mortain #adam du mortain x mc #mc x adam du mortain #mc x adam #adam x mc #twc fanfic #twc fanfiction #the wayhaven chronicles fanfiction #agent adam du mortain #mc x adam du mortain fanfic #mc x adam du mortain fanfiction #im nervous about posting this lmao

13 notes · View notes

mako-and-tails-and-stuff · 3 years

Text

Day 13 - Paranormal AU

Pairing - Rita/Veridia

Words: 2,698

Rating: T

Here there be Vampires. More sort of Upir type vampires like in Hemlock Grove where they’re vampires but still ‘alive.’ Not exactly fluffy, it’s a bit darker, mentions of blood, death and other vampirey things.

It was an old rivalry, like many of the old family rivalries. They all spanned back centuries. Rich, immortal Vampires families, at each other’s throats for centuries. Not literally at each other’s throats - Vampire blood is worth nothing nutritionally and tastes like off-wine. It’s not worth the effort.

It was like one those old playwright’s tales - the feuding families who couldn’t actually remember why it began in the first place. Rita had read it once, she found a copy in the library when she was barred inside the house following her transition. Romeo and Juliet it was called. Two lovers from rival families who both end up dead. The fragility of humanity.

Of course the book was burned the moment her grandmother found it and threw it into the fire, screaming about how no human literature should be in the hand of a Vampire. If no ‘human literature’ was allowed then why it was even in the library to begin with was beyond her.

Rita would definitely rather be holed up in the library right now, instead of accompanying an assortment of cousins, uncles and her grandmother to this ‘social gathering.’ A ‘social gathering’ being a mass gathering of the richest, most influential Vampire families of the country. Of course many of said families bitterly hated each other.

But once a year there was cause enough to push said hatred aside and pretend to get along for the sake of these gatherings. This was the first time Rita was permitted to attend along with the rest of the Santana del Rosario family. Newly transitioned vampires were considered too ‘volatile’ for events such as these and transitioning was deemed to take years, hence she been left at home while everyone else attended.

The moment they arrived she had been awestruck. The manor was huge, inquisitive decorated, even beyond their own mansions and ballroom was easily the most impressive place she had ever seen - high arched ceilings with glittering lights the entire way up, leading to a crystal chandelier that looked impossible to clean. The floor was marble, enhancing the clicks of her heels as she walked.

Cousin Felix slipped an arm in hers, almost tripped her up as he pulled her closer.

“See that lot over there,” Felix whispered, nodding his head towards a group across the room. Each had the same curly coppery hair, and pale eyes, noticeable even from here. “Romanos. Stay away.”

There it was. Romano was a name she knew, they hated her family, and her family hated them. At least they were easy to spot.

“Ooh, they took their newest little one out,” Felix dropped Rita’s arm and slicked his dark hair back. The little one was what they called her, being the youngest to transition in their family. She’d never met another Vampire as young as her before. She tried to spot who Felix was talking about, but his incessant fussing with his hair pulled her attention to him. He made such a simple action such a momentous task.

“What are you doing?” Rita asked. “You already spent three hours doing your hair before we left.” He had taken over the main bathroom for the entire time, not letting anyone else in. She’d tried to get it to get her good comb that Felix had ‘borrowed’ but found the door locked with a note on it ‘Hair in progress. Disturb at own risk. Signed, Felix Serigo Santana del Rosario.

“Making an impression,” Felix shrugged. “Can you imagine being the one to finally end the blood feud? I’d be a hero.”

“You have no chance with that one,” Rico, Felix’s brother butted in and mussed up Felix’s hair. “She’d freeze you over with those icy eyes. You’d have better luck with Harry Yorke. Or try his brother.”

“Hector’s here?” Felix asked, smoothing his hair back down, “I will be right back.”

Harry Yorke was nice enough, the Yorkes lived in the neighbouring manor, but they didn’t often meet. The grounds between the two properties were rather… large. Felix used to sneak through the woodland to meet Harry until -

Rico nudged Rita’s arm, “Grandmother wants to show you off to people.”

“Why?”

She was not some show piece to be shown off. That’s what the others did with the horses, cleaned them up and took them out to show all their friends. They’d done that to her own horse, Angel, an Andulcian mare from the same line as Rico’s high class stallion. It was Uncle Jaime who took Angel out and ended up selling her to Kilian Falk.

She saw Falk standing with Harry as she watched Felix slip away, wishing she could follow him and escape this. Falk’s blonde beard hid the sneer on his face as Felix came up to them.

“You’re our youngest. People don’t know you. And you won’t be the only one. That Romano one’s here too, Antonio Romano will be parading her about too. Not often they have a new one to show off, Antonio himself was the last one.”

As Rico had said, their grandmother had indeed wanted to ‘show her off’ with every new person she was forced to meet, her mood turned sourer and sourer until she could no longer even enjoy the architecture of the building that she had marvelled at when they first arrived.

Rita took the first chance she could to slip away, sneaking through a little door at the side and stepping into a cool corridor, the music instantly muffled. It was then it occurred to her she’d never been told who’s place this was.

There was no shortage of families in this area. The Yorkes were their neighbours, Falk and his range of relations had a large range about ten miles south, the Kilbride's twelve miles east. It wasn’t until the carpeted corridor turned into a wider chamber like room with portrait paintings on the wall that she finally learned it was the Ivanov Manor. There was no mistaking the scars across Sergei Ivanov’s face from the claws of a werewolf.

The last Ivanov was killed only three years ago by Alfonso Romano and the Manor passed into

‘Communal control’ meaning a council of families ran it. Her uncle Jaime sat on said council. As side Harry’s mother Sylvie Yorke and Alfonso Romano himself.

“You’re missing all the fun.”

Rita jumped in fright and spun around, coming face to face with the most beautiful Vampire she’d ever seen. A Romano for sure, she had the same curly hair, albeit pinned back, combined with eyes like ice and a pointed jaw.

“And what fun would that be?” Rita forced out, trying to regain any dignity she still had. Vampires don’t get frights. Yet here she was, getting scared by a Romano creeping up on her.

“They just brought in the human sacrifice,” the Romano said. She sounded serious but there was no way any Vampire would bring a human to an event like this. Much less to be killed, it was unbecoming. Killing for food was a private affair, at least it was in her family.

“There is no human sacrifice,” Rita said, just managing to avoid catching the Romano’s eyes. She had such nice eyes, a bright, ice blue. If she was any weaker she might want to just stare at them forever. And if the Romanos were not her family’s most bitter, hated rivals.

“You got me. Too many Vampire not wanting blood on their nice clothes. It’s such a travesty,” the Vampiress shook her head, the loose curls around her face bouncing slightly with the movement.

The soft coppery blonde of her hair matched with the dark green of her dress, the fitted lace bodice, left both her shoulders bare as the straps curled around her upper arm. The lace went to her waist and flared out into a heavy skirt that to the ground.

“You hiding?”

“No,” Rita lied, “just having a look around,”

“I saw you being paraded around by that old witch. My dad was doing the same so when I saw escape, I decided I might as well try it too.”

She must be the new Romano that Felix and Rico were talking about, Antonio’s daughter. Rico hadn’t said her name and Felix had taken off to flirt with Harry and/or Hector before she could ask him.

“She’s just excited to have new blood around,” Rita defended her grandmother, because that’s what you do. You defend your family and you don’t waste time taking to your family’s enemies, no matter how pretty they may be.

If her heart still beat she imagined it would be hammering in her chest. She couldn’t remember how that felt now, it had been years since she was alive. In the biological sense.

“My dad’s the same. I’m the first since him so everyone’s acting like it’s the Messiah or something.”

“A religious Vampire?” Rita joked. “Never met one of them before.”

When you live forever, and when religious symbols happen to cause pain, you tend to avoid religion.

“You are hilarious. Do you know humans have people who make others laugh as a career, you should try out for that, I think you’d go really far.”

“I think you’re right; I should really try out for that.”

The other Vampire shoot a smile that literally made her knees weak and her stomach flutter. What was wrong with her? This was a Romano, she shouldn’t even be talking to her, let along joking with her or feeling any of these feelings. But then again, she really was nice to look at…

The Vampire turned her head and looked down the corridor, the way Rita and presumably this Vampire and come down.

“Someone’s coming.” The Vampire grabbed her arm and pulled her down the corridor before Rita could protest. She found herself running alongside the Vampire, the carpet muting her heels and the other Vampire’s. Then she was against the wall, shoulder pressed in against a wooden railing part the way up the wall and the other Vampire pressed against her. Actually pressed against her with her hand still around Rita’s arm. She could smell the Vampire’s perfume, it was the same one she normally wore herself.

One of the serving staff, another Vampire, out with the families passed by without a second look and the Vampire pressed up against took a step back.

“I’m Veridia, by the way. Veridia Romano,” the Vam – Veridia introduced herself.

“Margarita Santana del Rosario,” Rita said. Her voice was weaker than she wanted it to be, she was still a little in shock from having Veridia literally pressed right up against her.

Veridia raised an eyebrow.

“Most people call me Rita.” Her grandmother and Uncle Jaime were the only ones who called her Margarita. And under official ‘professional’ circumstances where everyone one went by their full and complete names.

“Well Rita, it’s nice to meet you. Hopefully I’ll see you around,” Veridia let go of her arm and set off back down the corridor. She tried to not to stare, but it was hard not to.

Rita tucked a loose strand of hair behind her eye and took a deep breath before following after Veridia and rejoining the party.

Veridia may have been joking about the human sacrifice but no Vampire gathering is complete without a little fresh blood. Mixed with alcohol. It wasn’t the nicest mix in the world but it did enough to stop her thinking about Veridia and focusing instead on dancing with Harry. He was a good dancer, and it was a nice distraction until she caught sight of Veridia across the room standing with her father. Rita’s mind was flooded with the memory of Veridia pushing her against the wall so that server wouldn’t see them.

Rita managed until the end of the dance and no more before she slipped off again, back down that corridor passed the paintings of the Ivanov’s and Sergei with his scars. Every time she turned she’d been looking for Veridia, so best to just leave completely and hide until it was time to leave. Hopefully no one would pay too much attention, if they did, she’d blame it on the alcohol. Or the blood, it tasted like nothing she’d ever had before. But that could just be the alcohol.

She could smell Veridia’s perfume again, so managed to avoid jumping when Veridia spoke beside her, “you’re hiding again?”

“Of course not,” Rita lied. She was technically hiding. From Veridia.

“So why are you out here?" Veridia asked, her ice eyes seemingly staring right into Rita’s non-existent soul. “You looked like you were having fun with that Yorke boy.”

“Harry? Felix is more interested in him than I am. Or maybe it’s Hector he likes more…” Felix switched every week between the two. But then he had been interested in Veridia when her saw her, a fact which now made her… jealous? She’d never been jealous before. She should not be jealous not of a Romano.

“That’s the funny one with the stupid hair isn’t it?” Veridia asked.

“That’s him.”

“Tell your Harry to keep him. He kept trying to flirt with me until he got dragged off. No. Thank you.”

“Probably wise. He locked himself in the bathroom for three hours doing his hair.”

“Harry can most definitely keep him. I don’t even take three hours.”

“Neither. It’s insane.”

Veridia laughed at that. It was a nice, soft feeling that brought up. She made Veridia laugh. Why did it feel nice? It shouldn’t.

“Come with me,” Veridia held out her hand.

“Why?” Rita asked. Where would a Romano want to go with her?

“I found something really cool when I was here with my uncle before, I want to show you. And before you ask – it’s a surprise. You have to come with me to see it.”

It sounded suspicious. Yet here she was, taking Veridia’s hand. Veridia lead her along the corridor and up a small set of flagstone stairs, then a set of flagstone spiral stairs. This end of the house was so still, no music drifted, no chatter, nothing. Just the sounds of their feet on the stairs.

On the last step Rita just missed the edge of the step and slipped, tipping forwards. Veridia’s arm shot around her waist to try to pull her up and stop her hitting the stone. All the effort succeed in was Veridia also hitting the ground, thankfully at the top of the stairs. Rita really did not like the idea of the edge of the stairs hitting into her, catching her skirt. Rather, she landed partially on top of Veridia, legs tangled and Veridia’s arm over her back.

She couldn’t remember how to move. She really couldn’t.

“Are you okay?”

Rita nodded, “are you?”

“Very.”

Veridia made no effort to remove her arm or try to get up. Maybe she forgot how to move as well. Rita wasn’t going to complain. Especially when Veridia slowly sat up, but kept her arm around Rita. Rita tried to pull away, not willingly, this closeness to another person, especially on as pretty as Veridia, was something she never really had.

It didn’t really feel… real. She felt like she was going to wake up any second back in her own room and Veridia would just be some dream phantom she imagined.

She still wasn’t fully convinced even as Veridia titled up her chin with one fingers, her nails painted to match her dress and lightly pressed her lips against Rita’s. Rita kissed Veridia back and reached up to touch Veridia’s face, feeling sharp cheekbones and jawline.

Veridia’s other hand found it’s way around the back of her neck, her fingers cool as they wound around Rita’s hair.

_________________________________________

“I have two questions,” Felix pounced the moment Rita slipped back into the party. “one where have you been? And two why is there blood on your neck?”

Rita caught Veridia’s eye as the other Vampire rejoined everyone as well, her hair slightly mussed and a smear of red at the corner of her mouth.

What rivals? And whoever said Vampire blood tasted awful, was clearly lying.

#mako mermaids #mako mermaids femslash february #FemslashFeb2021 #vampire au #rita x veridia

9 notes · View notes

imaginedisish · 5 years

Text

I Think We’re Alone Now (Five Hargreeves x Reader) (The Umbrella Academy)

A/N: BOY AM I MAD. SO this got deleted...presumably because @staff is trash and someone was like “EW SHE’S WRITING FOR A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD!” News flash AIDAN GALLAGHER IS A YEAR BELOW ME IN HIGH SCHOOL. I AM A JUNIOR. HE IS A SOPHOMORE. I JUST TURNED 17. HE IS TURNING 16 IN A FEW MONTHS....IM NOT SOME CREEPY CHILD PEDOPHILE. AND YA KNOW WHAT, THERE IS NOTHING SEXUAL ABOUT THIS IMAGINE! It is PURE FLUFF, and Five and the reader are BOTH 17 IN THIS AU!! I AM NOT SEXUALIZING HIM IN ANY WAY HOLY CRAP. Wow...I’m clearly mad...um...sorry?? I’m just honestly exhausted from my dance competition today. I WON FIRST OVERALL THOUGH...SO YAY! I might write a small headcanon for tonight...but I’m so tired...I might have to take a short break from writing until Sunday, since I’m competing at this competition all weekend. I’ll keep everyone updated. So, for now, here’s a repost of I Think We’re Alone Now...enjoy

Summary: You and Five are seventeen, and have just started dating, but you feel the need to hide your relationship from the rest of the Hargreeves. One night, you decide to sneak into Five’s room, and chaos somewhat ensues…

Warnings: MEGA FLUFFFFFFF AHHhhhh! Language, awkward reference to sex from Luther bc Luther is Luther…smh Luther.

Word Count: 2,883

Stars twinkle brightly above you, dancing whimsically in the dark night sky. The crisp autumn breeze passes through you, sending a chill down your spine. You shiver as you stare up at the brick building in front of you. Your heart begins to beat rapidly as you contemplate what is was you were about to do. You were going to sneak into Five’s room.

Five had told you, “It’s the second window from the left, south side of the Academy, third floor. Come around 9:30, okay?” No matter how nervous you were about the matter, you simply couldn’t say no.

You knew you’d have to be discrete, since the rest of the Hargreeves were unaware of your relationship with Five. They knew you were close friends with him; you were friends with the entire family, especially since they were helping you develop your power, levitation. However, because you had grown so close with the family, you and Five agreed that his siblings couldn’t find out about your relationship.

In truth, there was no ‘known’ force stopping you and Five from being together. You were both 17, you were both supers, and you were both extremely similar. You liked the same music: David Bowie, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, and The Strokes. You were both unbelievably witty, as you constantly bounced remarks and comebacks off of one another. Most importantly, you liked each other. In fact, you thought there was a chance you could love the boy.

But still, you had agreed with Five that no one could know. Maybe it was the fear of judgement that created the secret, or possibly the fear of disapproval. You knew that Five’s siblings had developed a liking to you, as you had essentially become a part of the family, but you weren’t sure if they would like you as Five’s girlfriend.

So, over the past month, as opposed to going on dates like normal couples do, you and Five had snuck around the city together, going on dates to Griddy’s, and having picnics in the park. Sometimes you two secretly hid away in his room, chatting and listening to music. You hated hiding things from Alison, Diego, Luther and Klaus, but as of right now it seemed as though it had to be done.

A cold breeze snaps you back to reality. The wind begins to pick up again, grabbing at your green, turtle neck sweater. You pull at your sweater, softly pressing it down against your body as your hair begins to take flight next. You groan in annoyance, wanting to be inside with Five instead of out in the cold.

You take a deep breath. I can do this, You think to yourself, yanking up the right sleeve of your sweatshirt, and then nervously scratching your forearm. While you were growing better at controlling your abilities, you weren’t always able to hold them for an extraneous period of time. Levitating yourself was also something that challenged you. More often than not, you would usually fall once you were around four feet in the air.

Obviously, that was nowhere near enough for a journey up the side of the Academy. The Academy was massive, and it’s size still amazed you, regardless of the fact that you had been here millions of times before.

You search the ground for a pebble, so you could let know Five you had arrived in a more romantic way, as opposed to sending him a text message. You quickly find a perfectly smooth, grey, round pebble next to your feet. You pick up the pebble and aim towards Five’s window. With a light throw and a tap, the pebble reaches Five’s window. The action was a bit “Romeo and Juliet,” (minus the double suicide at the end, of course), but it was fitting in the moment.

Seconds later, a pair of dark blue eyes meet your own. Five smirks at first, but his smile quickly widens, almost as if the longer he stared at you, the happier he became. Your heart flutters in your chest, and you smile back. He begins to crack open the window, his bangs falling in front of his eyes in the process.

“Come on up,” Five says loud enough for you to understand him, but low enough for no one else to hear him. You nod your head, swallowing harshly, nerves rushing through your body.

You close your eyes, imagining yourself floating in the air. Slowly, your feet lift up from the concrete. The wind swirls around you, helping you grow higher. You open your eyes, noticing that you were just one floor away from where Five’s room resided. You push the air down with the palms of your hands, and you levitate up to the next level.

I did it, I actually did it, You think to yourself, pride swelling in your gut as you finally reach Five’s window. After so much tiring training, and so much effort, you were finally able to fly.

There was Five, his smile growing wider now that you were face to face. His piercing blue eyes twinkle in the moonlight, just as the stars had been. No, in fact…his eyes were more brilliant than the stars. Stars held so much importance, serving as guides for the lost, wish granters for those who longed for something more…but that was what Five was for you. You didn’t need the metaphorical presence of a constellation. You already had that, wrapped up in the package of a 17 year old boy that you were growing to love.

He extends a hand out to you, inviting you inside. “Grab my hand, I’ve got you. You won’t fall, I promise.” He says. You fly closer to him in response, lifting your arm towards Five as he takes your hand in his.

However, just as you had been doing so well, a sensation of weakness overcomes you. You feel yourself beginning to lose control as you attempt to change your position, as to fly into the room horizontally.

“Shit,” You mutter, your eyes searching Five’s in fear. “I don’t think I can control this any longer,” Your voice is shaky, and your entire body begins to tremble. You had never flown for this long, and it was becoming too much to handle.

“Yes you can, (Y/N),” Five says, squeezing your hand tighter in his own. He tugs on your hand slightly, helping you get a bit farther inside the room. At this point, your shoulders are through the window, but that was it. Thoughts race around your mind as your powers weaken even further.

Suddenly, the pressure you normally feel between yourself and the air around you begins to fade away.

“Five!” You scream, as you feel yourself starting to fall. You grab onto the windowsill, attempting to hold yourself up. Five grabs onto your arms, pulling you quickly, yet carefully into his room. With one final pull from Five, you fall onto the floor of the room.

Five drops down to where you fell, reaching out his arms to help you stand up. “Are you okay?” He asks, concern prominently filling his voice as you stand to the ground with his help.

You take a second to catch your breath. “I’m fine, just a bit shaken up is all,” You say, smiling lightly. “And I’m much better now…” You pause, a bit nervous to finish your sentence. “You know, since I’m with you.”

Five smiles widely. “That was cheesy, but I like it, and only like it because I like you.” Your heart does a back flip in your chest at the sound of his words. Now that things have calmed down a bit, you recognize how close you are to Five. It feels as though you’re an inch away from Five’s face, since neither of you had moved from where he had helped you stand up.

“You can’t call me cliche or cheesy if you’re saying things like that,” You state sarcastically, crossing your arms in protest. Five steps a bit closer, uncrossing your arms as he takes your hands in his. He was never like this with anyone else. He was usually so cold, so distant, so sarcastic with his siblings. But with you, Five was kind, sweet, and overall an entirely different person. You two could sit on the edge of his bed, listening to music for hours, his fingers carefully combing through your hair. The only time either of you got up was to change the record that was spinning on the turntable in the left corner of Five’s room.

Five takes another step closer to you. He studies your face for a bit, his eyes often landing on your lips. This makes you a bit nervous, since you two hadn’t kissed yet. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to. God, did you want to. It was more or less that you were scared. You had never kissed anyone before, and quite honestly, this was your first ‘real’ relationship. You didn’t want the kiss to be bad, and you especially didn’t want to disappoint Five.

With one more step, Five becomes so close to your face that his breath tickles your nose a bit. He looks deeply into your eyes. “Can I just kiss you already?” Five asks, smirking a bit.

Your heart practically thumps out of your chest as you nod your head. Shit, this is it, You think to yourself.

Suddenly, Five’s lips come crashing down on your own. His lips are warm, and surprisingly sweet, moving slowly against yours. You hum a bit, beginning to feel more comfortable. Five smiles against your lips before pressing another soft kiss onto them.

Then, to your dismay, Five pulls away from you, leaving a slightly cold sensation where he had once been. You wanted more, but you knew you would just have to wait for the next time you had the opportunity to kiss Five.

Five grins a bit, his hands still holding yours. “You’re absolutely incredible, (Y/N).” Heat quickly rushes to your cheeks, and you can feel yourself becoming red. Five laughs at your new color, his dark, chocolate bangs bouncing against his forehead in the process.

“Don’t laugh!” You jokingly reprimand.

“Too bad, I already did. You’re just…” Five pauses a bit, anxiously scratching the back of his neck. “…well you’re cute when you get all frazzled like that,” Five mumbles, hoping you can’t hear him as he lets go of your hands and walking over to one of his many bookshelves. He pulls out a record from the shelf. He picked out one of your favorite records, ‘Bookends’ by Simon and Garfunkel.

“Is that new? I didn’t think you had Bookends,” You question.

Five can’t help but smirk. “I may have gotten it because of you,” He says softly, walking over to brown turntable in the corner. He takes the record out of it’s sleeve, and carefully places it on the turntable. He turns the machine on, and the record begins to spin. He slowly allows the needle to come down on the record, and “Bookends Theme,” begins to play.

There were no lyrics to the song, yet there was something so romantic about the incredibly short melody. Maybe it was the perfect plucking of the guitar strings, or maybe it was simply the chord progression itself. Regardless, the song made your heart flutter in your chest, more than it already was. Five walks over to his bed, and takes a seat on the edge. He pats the spot next to him, inviting you to sit with him. You smile, and walk over to the bed.

As you sit down, Five instantly raps an arm around your waist. Your head rests against Five’s shoulder, and you close your eyes. You never wanted this moment to end. Everything seemed so absolutely perfect.

Five began to lean back towards the bed, and you followed him, your back eventually crashing down onto the bed. You push yourself up farther so your feet are no longer hanging off the bed, and Five does the same. Five wraps his arms around you, pulling you into his chest. Your eyes now struggle to stay open, as you hear the sound of sleep calling your name. You allow yourself to give in, closing your eyes tightly.

You’re still awake as ‘Old Friends’ begins to play. The song is soft and calm. You listen closely to Five’s heart beat, which in contrast with the song is incredibly loud and fast. You open your eyes, looking up at Five.

“Are you okay? Your heart is practically beating out of your chest,” You say, concern heavy in your voice, picking up your head slightly to get a better look at Five’s face. Five’s piercing blue eyes find yours.

He swallows harshly. “I’m fine, it’s just,” He pauses for a second, contemplating his words as he looks up at the ceiling above. “Having you here with me, like this, I’m nervous…I guess…” Five trails off. “Having you here is exciting, it’s special.”

You smile resting your head back down on his chest. You close your eyes again, feeling at peace. “Hey Five?” You whisper.

“Yeah, (Y/N)?” Five responds.

“I like you, a lot,” You say, a smile spreading across your face.

“I-,”

Then, abruptly, Five is cut off by a loud knock at the door. You and Five practically jump up from where you had been laying down.

“Five! Turn your music off. It’s too late for this shit!” You hear Diego call out from the other side of the door. You and Five say nothing as Five rushes over to the record player to turn the music off. “Also, did you take my comb again?”

“No I didn’t take your fucking comb, Diego!” Five shouts back, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t believe you,” Diego says angrily. “I’m coming in to find it!”

“Shit!” Five mutters, his eyes widening with fear.

“What are we going to do?” You ask as the knob of the door twists, and the door creeks open. There’s nowhere to hide. You’re absolutely screwed.

Diego steps through the door, his eyes instantly landing on you. “Five, what’s (Y/N) doing in your room at 10 o’clock at night?” His eyes deeply cut through Five’s soul. Five takes a deep breath, preparing himself to explain the truth to Diego.

“Well, um, you see-,”

Klaus pops his head through the door. “Where did the Simon and Garfunkel go? I was having a good-,” Klaus stops talking as his eyes land on you. “Uh oh looks like we’ve go two troublesome teens on our hands, now don’t we?” Klaus cackles like a hyena.

Five scoffs. “Don’t you have some ouija board to be talking to right about now?” Five says, annoyed, taking a step towards Klaus.

Klaus crosses his arms against his chest. “You know what, just for that,” Klaus cups his hands, bringing them next to his mouth as if he was going to call a group of children to dinner. “Luther! Allison! Clean up on aisle ‘teenage love’! Immediate assistance required! Thank you!” He brings his hands back down, slapping them against the side of his thighs.

Five responds by showing Klaus his middle finger.

Seconds later, Luther and Allison are standing at the door. Luther’s jaw drops to the ground, and Alison begins to laugh lightly.

“Come on, you guys didn’t see this coming?” Allison asks, laughing still.

“Quite honestly, I suppose it was bound to happen eventually,” Klaus agrees. Luther and Diego nod along to Klaus’s point.

“I mean, do we let them have their privacy?” Diego asks, leaning over to Luther. Luther shrugs his shoulders.

“I guess so, but clothing stays on! Got it?” Luther commands. Five’s cheeks grow red with embarrassment.

“No shit Sherlock,” Five says, rolling his eyes.

“Alright, let’s leave them alone, boys,” Allison says, pushing her brothers out of the room.

“But I wanted to babysit!” Klaus exclaims, and you can’t help but let out a laugh. Allison is the last person out. She shuts the door behind her.

“I’m so sorry about that,” Five says, sitting back down on the edge of the bed.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” You say, a smile spreading across your face. Five lays back down, and you follow suit, reverting back to how you and Five had been laying down before. You rest your head on Five’s chest, his heart still beating just as quickly as it had been before.

“So before, you didn’t get to finish what you were saying,” You say to Five. Suddenly, his heart begins to beat faster.

He takes a deep breath. “Well,” He pauses, “I like you too, (Y/N).” Five responds. You can’t see his face, but you know he’s smiling. “I like you a lot. In fact, I think I might like you more than anything else on this planet.” His heart is thumping wildly against his chest now. He presses a kiss to the top of your head, his fingers combing gently through your hair.

“I like being here,” You whisper softly.

“I like having you here,” Five responds. You can’t help but smile. You close your eyes yet again, falling asleep in Five’s arms.

3K notes · View notes

wintersxsoul · 6 years

Text

Braiding time

Summary: Set years after the events of Matching Scars.

Pairing: Loki x Female!Reader

Word count: 1674

Warnings: Domestic fluff, fluff. F L U F F.

A/N: Thank you @madamefresa for giving me this great idea!!

After six years of being together and happily married, you thought maybe life would get boring, but it never did. You retired from the avengers a year after the wedding, since Odin’s attack nearly killed you and the physical aftermaths were showing in each mission. Tony, being the mama bear he was, pushed you to leave the team’s missions and just be an office agent, which you appreciated it. Loki still went on missions when magic was required, but it was mostly in and out missions, nothing too physical or dangerous. Thor came and went from home to Asgard, since he was the new king. Anne and Steve moved to Brooklyn and got married, adopted three cats and 2 dogs, since none of them wanted kids.

It was a lazy Sunday autumnal afternoon, you were reading a book in your too worn out pajama, Loki next to you drinking his tea, flipping through the pages of a book as well. You were wrapped in your fluffy blanket, the rain hitting softly the windows of your penthouse. Loki left his empty cup on the table and lay down on the sofa, resting his head on your lap, your fingers running through his hair instinctively and after a few minutes, book totally forgotten, you started braiding strands of raven hair.

“Love, I’m going to fall asleep if you keep doing that.” He said in a sweet, low voice. You leaned in and gave his lips a small peck, making him close his eyes and setting his book on his chest. You smiled and he brought his lips to yours again, to kiss you deeper. After all these years, your thirst for each other didn’t weaken a bit, it even increased.

Loki snapped his fingers and in a blink of an eye you appeared on your bed, his body on top of yours, his lips crushing on yours passionately.

“Daddy?” Loki’s head snapped, followed by you moving to the side of the bed, away from his body. Loki sat down at the edge of the bed nervously, looking at the door.

“Hello there, angel.” Your daughter was standing by the door, rubbing her eyes, recently awake. Suddenly, green light surrounded her and she appeared in Loki’s lap, hugging his neck. You stared at her in awe, looking at your husband in disbelief. He was teaching her magic, but you couldn’t imagine she knew that much already. He looked at you apologetically with a small smile, and you shook your head.

“Ophelia, love, what did Daddy tell you about using magic without help?” Loki said, and she looked at him and smirked. These two were gonna be the death of you one day. She was the vivid image of Loki. She had wavy black hair, green eyes and pale skin, his smirks and mischievousness, but your lips, nose and eyelashes. She was kind, sweet, loving and super intelligent, for being just three and a half years old. She started speaking when she was only two, being able to form almost perfect sentences.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” Loki patted her head amorously and Ophelia crawled to you, sitting in your lap.

“Hey there, Lia. You slept well?” She nodded and stared at Loki.

“Daddy, can I show Mommy what I learned?” He nodded effusively and she smiled, closing her eyes, trying to focus. You looked at her in awe, while her pale ivory skin turned into a soft shade of blue, marks splattering all over her features, her big green eyes were now deep crimson, full of pride and love, just as yours and Loki’s. She looked as gorgeous as he did in his Jotün form.

“That was impressive, Lia!” You and Loki clapped your hands while she giggled. You started tickling her sides while Loki tickled her tummy, making her squirm and laugh hysterically.

She turned back to her human appearance and disappeared in a green cloud again.

“Lia! Don’t break the rules.” You heard her giggle, knowing she was hidden somewhere near. “I’m going to paint my nails and I was thinking on painting Daddy’s. It would be a shame if you missed that.” You stood up from the bed and went to the bathroom to take the black and dark green nail polish. Lia appeared on the bed, jumping and shouting.

“I wanna paint Daddy’s nails pleeeeease.” Loki laughed and your heart swelled at the sound, always making you fall more in love. You sat down on the bed, followed by Lia and Loki approaching the two of you. Everytime he looked at you, he felt the luckiest man on the universe, not knowing how he got to have everything he ever wished for and more. Lia was his biggest pride and he made sure to show and tell her every time, he didn’t want to make the same mistakes Odin made. Loki wanted Ophelia to be proud of who she was, who she would become and what her heritage was.

Ophelia approached Loki with the black nail polish in her small hands, sitting down in front of him and grabbing his hand. She looked at Loki’s hair and smiled.

“Daddy, can you braid my hair while I paint your nails?” She asked in the most sweet and innocent tone she could manage to use, knowing it would melt Loki and get him to make whatever she wanted to.

“Let’s do something better. You paint Mommy’s nails while I braid your hair, and then you can paint mine. Okay?” She nodded and sat in front of you, giggling joyfully. Loki sat behind her and started braiding her hair, while she painted your nails very delicately.

Ophelia was very curious, so of course she wanted to know where her name came from. One day, you explained her very shortly Hamlet, and she was so invested in it, she asked you to read the whole book. After finishing it, she asked you to read more similar things, so today you had to finish reading Romeo and Juliet.

“How often are men happy right before they die! They call it the lightness before death. Oh, how can I call this lightness? Oh, my love! My wife! Death has sucked the honey from your breath, but it has not yet ruined your beauty. You haven’t been conquered. There is still red in your lips and in your cheeks. Death has not yet turned them pale…” Loki’s eyes were fixed on you, full of love and adoration and when you looked at him, your eyes reflected the same feelings.

To say you were scared to tell him you were pregnant was an understatement. You knew he wanted to be a father, but he was scared he would commit the same atrocities as his father did, but you knew him too well, and Frigga too. She raised Loki to be good, caring, gentle, soft and loving, so he was raising your little girl as he was raised.

“Eyes, look out for the last time! Arms, make your last embrace! And lips, you are the doors of breath. Seal with a righteous kiss the deal I have made with death forever.” After finishing the book, she looked over her shoulder with a big grin.

“Daddy, I want you to teach me how to fake my own death!” You stared at Loki in awe, not believing what Lia just said. She was finishing applying her second coat on Loki’s nails and they looked amazing.

“Hey, flower, that’s not something you should do. See what happens to Romeo and Juliet? Lying is bad, right Loki?”

“Totally right, honey.” Loki patted Lia’s head, and made some daisies appear at the palm of her hands. She stared at them surprised, and smiled.

“Pass them to me one by one, so I can place them in your braids, sweetheart.” She nodded and did what she was told, her smile never fading.

After dinner, Lia wanted to watch a movie, so the three of you laid on the sofa.

“What movie do you wanna see today?” You asked your daughter, fearing her answer. You adored Disney, but you were tired of watching the same movies over and over again.

“I wanna see the vampires one!” Loki frowned, looking at you confused.

“O, we saw all the Hotel Transylvania movies last night, don’t you wanna pick another one?” She shook her head at Loki’s words, and ran to the movie’s shelf. You gasped when you saw what movie she meant.

“I wanna see Mommy’s favorite movie again, I loved it!” Loki just shrugged his shoulders and nodded, knowing that she would fall asleep sooner than later.

Indeed, after fifteen minutes in the movie, she was fast asleep, her head pressed to your chest and her legs on Loki’s lap. You held her in your arms and took her to bed, Loki behind you. You placed her in her bed and tucked her in, holding the little stuffed bat and snake Anne gave her on her last birthday.

Loki casted an illusion on her ceiling, showing her the Asgardian night sky, just as he did on your first date, all those years ago. He closed the door and sighed.

“She really is something special.” He said, the adoration he showed melted you in your place.

“Of course she is, have you ever met her father?” He smirked at your words, and placed his arm on your shoulders, pulling you closer to his body.

“Well, don’t even get me started with the mother.” You elbowed him jokingly and kissed him, feeling that electricity again running through your veins. He deepened the kiss, leaving you dizzy and gasping for air.

“I love you.” You said between gasps, and he leaned in again, his lips on yours one more time.

“Let me show you how much I love you.” He smirked mischievously, snapping his fingers, making you land on your bed. He had that feral look that made you weak on your knees.

“Forever.” You said before his lips devoured yours in a hungry kiss.

Tagging my main hoes.

@trashpandabarnes @sideeffectsofyou @madamefresa @lilypalmer1987@gravedollie666 @sarahivi @gummiwormsandonedirection @deamstellarus @zeilenkrieg @lokixme

209 notes · View notes

m11leven · 6 years

Text

You’re an idiot, Mike Wheeler

description: Since the beginning of time (or at least as far as El Hopper can remember) the town of Hawkins, Indiana has been split into two sides, north and south. With two rival High schools, Hawkins high and Clearwater high, she can't imagine ever being associated with someone from the neighbouring school.

Little does she know that she'll soon get to know a boy who will make her forget all about that.

Fandom/Pairing: stranger things - mileven, lumax & (minor) jancy Rating: general audiences Wordcount: 1571

*author’s note: this fic might include a whole lot of Romeo and Juliet references, but mark my words when I tell you, Mike and El are smarter than they are so despite the fact that Romeo and Juliet die, Mike and El most certainly will not.

Chapter one - there’s a fine line between love and hate

You know those times you're sitting in class, staring at the clock, as if it'll go any faster if you stare at it.

Mike Wheeler liked biology, well… he usually liked biology, but at this very moment, he didn't want anything more in the world than for it to end.

On the other end of town, in another school, El Hopper was sat down staring at the clock in her classroom, the sound of her English teacher's voice merely a background sound. She was waiting for the class to be over. For the bell to ring to signal that it was 12:30 and that it was finally lunch.

“You can only imagine how they must have felt, Romeo and Juliet, having to hide their love from the world, scared that if their friends or families found out they'd be forced to leave each other,” Mrs Phillips was a great teacher, she really was, but she seemed to be a big fan of tragic love stories. In Els opinion, Romeo and Juliet were quite stupid. It wasn't their fault, they were merely innocent victims of their own story, but at the same time she couldn't help but think about how weird it is to die because of a boy that you've only known for a few days, a week at the most. She didn’t really understand why people wrote grand love stories, of tragic deaths and everlasting love. Why on earth would you sacrifice everything you have just to feel love, to be with someone for eternity. She didn’t think she’d ever fall in love. Every single boy in Hawkins High was repulsive to her, she’d only ever had a crush on one boy, but he went to Clearwater high and there was no way she’d ever date anybody that lived on the north side of Hawkins. It was an unwritten rule of Hawkins, Indiana. The North and Southside didn’t interact.

El was snapped out of her thoughts all too suddenly by a light kick to her shin. She looked in the direction of the person who had kicked her, ever so impolitely in the shin. A red-haired girl and a boy wearing a terrible bandana on his head laughed at her. She rolled her eyes and tried to listen to her teacher ramble on about how teenage love is the strongest force on earth, nothing will ever stop it or destroy it.

The bell rang. A faint “the bell doesn’t dismiss you, I do!” could be heard through the students rushing out to get to lunch. Now if it were any other day she would’ve just gone to lunch with her friends but it wasn’t any other day. It was Wednesday and on Wednesday she went to Benny’s diner and had waffles. For free. None of the kids from either Hawkins high or Clearwater high went to Benny’s for lunch and for that El was grateful.

She rushed outside to her bike and hurried as fast as she could to the diner. The second she walked inside she was met with the usual smell of french fries and the sound of burgers sizzling on the grill.

She was met with a couple of hellos from the staff when she sat down at the counter where the owner, Benny, was pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Hi Ellie,” he smiled “the usual Wednesday?” he had already started writing her order; waffles with ice cream, a chocolate milkshake and a small fries to the side. “You know me so well” she smiled at him.

She stood up and started walking towards her regular booth, she sat down and took her assigned reading for her English class, Romeo and Juliet, out of her bag.

“Hey, El!” Benny yelled from the kitchen, snapping her out of her book,

“what?”

“So last week there was a boy here for lunch, Mike, I think his name was. That Nancy Wheeler is his sister. You know him?”

“I’m pretty sure that he goes to Clearwater, I've never seen him at school.”

She wasn't pretty sure, she was certain. She knew who he was. He was the cute kind of nerdy. She'd seen him at the library, sometimes with two of his friends, one curly haired boy, slightly shorter than Mike and a lot more talkative. Then there was another boy as well, Will Byers. He was smaller than both of them and a lot more soft-spoken and quiet. She'd never spoken to any of them, god forbid she speak to a northsider.

She turned back to her waffles and the book, which was boring her to death, really, took a sip of her milkshake and looked out the window.

Speak of the devil and he appears, right? Perhaps not but at this very moment, none other than Mike Wheeler was hopping out of his beat-up jeep right outside the diner. El frowned. Why is he here?

The bell above the door rang as he walked in, El slouched down into her booth, still eyeing him (only slightly thinking about how cute he looked). Despite El trying not to make eye contact he turned to her. As soon as he saw her his eyes darted away, only for him to mumble something to himself and look back up, more determined this time he started to walk towards her booth until he was standing on the other side of the booth.

“Hi?” El didn't really know what to say, he was just standing there and kind of staring at her.

“Hi, uh- y-you're Jane Hopper, right? Sheriff's daughter? You go to Hawkins High?” he seemed incredibly nervous. El was amused.

“Yeah, I go by El, actually” she kept on eyeing him as he sat down in the booth, now sitting opposite of her.

“How does Jane become El? I don't, I mean- that doesn't,” He stuttered before taking a deep breath “It doesn't make sense”

“Doesn’t need to, does it?”

“It does not, and that's not why I'm here”

She took a sip of her milkshake.

“Well?”

“You write, right?” He looked as if he'd regained some of the confidence he'd walked in there with,

“Yeah, I mean sure, I write sometimes,” she was really confused as to why he was there, why he even knew her name and how he knew about her writing, “What’s it to you?”.

“I need your help with something”. He smiled at her, flashing his pearly white teeth at her.

“Isn’t Nancy Wheeler your sister? Isn't she a journalist for the New York Times or something? I'm sure she can help you more than I can,”

He laughed. “Well, that's the problem, she lives in New York, and…” he trailed off. She scoffed.

“And what?”

“And she didn't go to Hawkins High.”

“What is this thing you need my help with?” El was actually quite flattered that he'd come to her for help.

“I’m supposed to write an essay on something that I a) don't know and b) get help from an insider, and obviously I thought of Hawkins high, a school that I don’t really like but I also don’t really know anything about” (damn those beautiful eyes). The only reason that she'd say yes is that if she doesn't she's doomed to spend her time with Max and Lucas who spend more time staring at each other than being with El.

“Sure. I'll help you,”

“Really? Thanks”

“On one condition though,” he sighed. She smiled.

“You won't tell anyone that I'm the insider”

He smirked to himself, then he moved his hand toward her and shook it.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Hopper”.

When Mike pulled over in the Clearwater high parking lot he felt an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment. He talked to a cute girl and she'd even laughed with him.

When he walked in he was still on his little happiness high. He walked over to his locker, where Will and Dustin stood, pouring over their copies of the lord of the rings.

“Mike! Where have you been?” Dustins’ voice cracked the tiniest bit and Will hid a tiny laugh behind a cough.

“I was working on the new project” he beamed.

“Where? Haven’t seen you at all today”

“Bennys’ diner, great fries”

El Hopper went to sleep that night with a warm, fuzzy feeling in her stomach, the thought of dark almost-curls freckles and a smile that probably hadn’t left her face since a certain someone had left the diner during lunch. Even her dad mentioned how happy she looked.

She felt as if everything had changed during one lunch hour, she somehow had a tiny crush on Mike Wheeler, a northsider. Shit. This could not end well for either of them.

Little did she know that on the other side of town, in another neighbourhood, Mike Wheeler was laying in his bed, playing with the thought of a curly-haired and brown eyed girl. Of high-waisted jeans worn with a band t-shirt (the clash, yes! She listens to the clash!) and a pair of dirty converse shoes, of eating waffles and french fries on Wednesdays at a certain diner in the middle of the highway. A blue bike parked out front and the smell of strawberries and cinnamon (gingerbread, he’d thought). Mike felt as if he could drown in her smile, be blinded by her light, and somehow, when he thought about it, he didn’t mind at all.

37 notes · View notes

liquorisce · 6 years

Text

The Golden Girl

Pairing : Jughead x Betty, Veronica x Archie, Riverdale

Rating : T

Summary : The mailman, Principal Weatherbee, The head of the Serpents, The boy next door, The Heiress of the Lodge Industries… Everybody loves Betty Cooper.

A/N : So I’m back! After forever! With another fic! About a new pairing! SURPRISE SURPRISE.

Everybody loves Betty Cooper.

They're like Romeo and Juliet, society clawing at them from every side, destiny dragging them asunder, but she's got her arms around Jughead's neck and he's looking at her like the moon sees the sun, desperate and never enough, savouring the briefest moments in the light, and there's an undeniable pang in his heart that shocks him and maybe even reaches Veronica. "… Archiekins?"

The girl in his arms is beautiful, like the darkness that calls out to the wandering soul, and it enthrals him, keeps him entranced and his grip on Ronnie's waist tightens, but he wonders, just a stray thought in his head when he glances over at the blonde who grew up beside him - what it would be like to embrace the light.

He's got the jacket around his shoulders, the comfort of the snakes around him, they're here to celebrate what he's dreamed of his whole life - his dad reforming his ways. He was proud of this, his Serpent-hood, the Whyte Wyrm, the community that they had together.

But when he sees her, tousled blond hair, wild and beautiful, spilling over her bare shoulders, shimmying across the pole, deep green eyes probing, seeking him out, telling him things he hadn't even allowed himself to imagine…

… And why not? For a second the possibilities of this life flash before his eyes. They could have this, they could have this, together - He knows Betty, he knows she loves him and -

- He looks up at her and it is disgust - at himself? - that reminds him that this is Betty Cooper, and Betty Cooper deserves more than a life in the snake pit.

Issues, she called it. 'Deep - seated issues' that she could never possibly explain to the pure, big-hearted Archie Andrews. Those three words fell off his lips so easily, so contentedly, like he was blissfully unaware of the weight he had attached to them, the weight that was now crushing her heart.

They're seated in the school common room, Kevin with his ridiculous Santa hat and overbearing Christmas cheer, and it's Betty's turn to open her present.

It's like her smile goes on forever as she holds it - and Veronica's certain that the tiny package houses no Dior fragrance - and she chuckles softly glancing over at Archie, "… I think I know who picked my name based on these wrapping skills."

She watches the way they look at each other, cheesy, bright smiles glaringly obvious to everyone present as Betty shows off the record that they listened to when they were 5, their presence in each other's past stamped and inerasable. And Veronica knows that it's futile, that the more she lets herself think about this, the more she'll know that she doesn't even stand a chance.

It just makes the weight in her chest hurt even more.

He meets her at Pop's, not by invitation but by chance. He's typing away at his computer, so many, many things to write about, and he doesn't ask her what he's doing and certainly doesn't try to be sociable in any way.

But she sits next to him, regardless. There are fries on the table and a milkshake she's delicately sipping. He is quite capable of working, undisturbed, whatever storm may brew right beside him and he's definitely not going to let the presence of a brooding raven-haired River Vixen distract him.

Besides, Jughead Jones has his own issues to brood over.

And he'd be damned if he ever admitted he felt anything at all like kinship with Veronica Lodge but right now, the air was thick with the same kind of anguish that reeked of the people whom he knew too well.

So, he glances at her, once, maybe twice, the second time with questions in his eyes.

"… Oh, stop," she snaps, but it's not really the sharp lash that ever hits out at you if you dare cross the Lodge beauty, but more of a tired imperative. "If you want to ask me what's going on, then just ask me, Jones. There's no need to stare creepily at me about this."

It was a weak attack at his character that was easily ignored, so he proceeds. "Well. If you need me to ask." Because he was pretty sure, two more minutes and without him saying anything, Veronica would have started her tale without any prompting on his part. "What happened?"

She takes a fry in between two perfectly manicured fingers. Twists it around, breaks off the tiniest portion and puts in her mouth. "… when I first came into town, I met Archie and Betty here, in this diner, looking like they were on a date."

She pauses, glances at him to gauge his reaction, but Jughead keeps it blank. He's an expert now, what with the years of schooling his emotions on the phenomenon that is Archie and Betty. "I was attracted to him. Since that very moment," she lets out a short laugh, bitter. "… I didn't even try to hide it."

"But when I mentioned it in school the next day, Kevin was quick to educate me about one of the vital truths of this town. You know what he said, Jughead?"

Jughead's not a fan of interactive role play games, and he's not going to play best girlfriend and ask her what she wants to hear, but Veronica is Veronica and she doesn't need him to.

' "You don't know? Archie and Betty are endgame," he said, like it was this unshakeable fact, that should've been obvious to any pair of eyes. And you know what the worst part is Jughead?"

He doesn't, he really doesn't, doesn't know what could be worse than sitting here listening to his fears vocalised by his girlfriend's - he has no right to call her that anymore, it’s habit, desire, a gaping hole in his chest that she used to fit perfectly - best friend.

"I knew, Jughead. I think I always knew. I knew that I loved Archie and that he may not have known it then, but he'd end up in love with Betty, and that I'd have no place in this messed up love triangle. But I still," her voice breaks off at this point, and she struggles to keep her tears in check, herself in place, because she can't be seen here, having a breakdown in Pop's with Forsythe P Jones the Third.

But he knows what she's going to say. She still hoped. And really, how different is it from his own pathetic situation, when all he ever really was just an outsider? To this town, to their relationship, to Betty Cooper?

"… I can't even hate her," she says, shakily, moments later after she's calmed down, slightly, "… How does one hate Betty Cooper?"

Jughead's mouth quirks up in a small smile as he remembers a little version of himself, his best friend and the blonde girl next door, as he tried to convey his frustration with the amount of time she was taking up with Archie. But then she showed up, freshly baked cookies in one hand, her other stuck out towards him in a mark of friendship, and sat between them while they played video games. “… You don’t.” He shakes his head as he says softly, "Everyone loves Betty Cooper."

He opens the car door for her, makes a show of his out of the ordinary chivalry and she laughs, maybe even blushes a little bit. "Thanks, Arch," she says, a little shy but beaming, a bright, warm smile.

“… I’ve missed this,” he says, before he even processes the fact that he’s speaking out loud, before he’s even sure if it’s just her smile that he’s talking about or something else, as she locks arms with him in an age-old gesture of familiarity.

“… We’ve had a crazy time, lately.” She says this lightly, reassuringly, a manner of reinforcing that the crazy was not the state of only her head.

“… What I did last night,” he starts, “… I didn’t mean to,” -

- “I kissed you back, Archie,” she whispers, shrugging, because there was no reason why she did what did, but at that moment, she gave into the idea of cosmos, and kissed the boy she had thought she’d marry. But there were no fireworks, or hasty realizations, it hadn’t felt like anything, and…

They slip into a booth, and order their milkshakes one chocolate and one vanilla, and for a minute, it feels like time has been rewound, and it’s just a red-haired boy and the girl next door and all is as it’s supposed to be.

But she takes a sip of her milkshake, and he looks at her, sitting across him, and all he can think of, is how vacant this booth feels, how quiet, how tasteless his favorite milkshake has become, without the girl who walked into this diner that one night, and turned his life upside down.

Pop brings her the hamburger that she ordered, and she takes a bite, and feels her appetite vanish. It’s strange, Archie thinks, because Betty usually just sticks to fries.

Their eyes meet and she opens her mouth to make small talk, to ask him if he wants some, but nothing comes out, and she's looking at Archie Andrews and his ginger hair, the boy she thought she'd meet at the altar someday, but the gears in her brain are stuck, where there's a boy with a beanie, and his arm loosely draped around her shoulder.

“… I just don’t understand,” she says, her voice breaking towards the end, “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

- Fin -

#bughead #varchie #betty cooper #jughead jones #ramblingpug fanfiction #riverdale #archie andrews #veronica lodge #bad writing #sigh

21 notes · View notes

grind-pantera · 7 years

Text

Better Books. [Beast! Prince Adam Oneshot].

I’M SUCH TRASH. I’m pairing this with another one of my imagines: Where Adam Tells you his name.

Title: Better Books. Pairing: Implied! Beast!Prince Adam x Reader. Words: 1,522. Rating: K.

After scanning the shelves for what seemed like hours, you had finally found the book you were looking for. Laughing softly in victory, you figured that Adam must have hidden it from you to assure that you didn’t read it again. You could hear his voice inside of your mind, ‘There are better things to read than that.’

You held the book in your hands close to your chest. Rubbing the spine gently, you felt somewhat conscious of the blue eyes lingering on you longingly from across the spacious room. Whether out of nerves or slight curiosity, you let one of your feet dangle from the ladder in the library, swinging around slightly so you could look back at Adam with a tender gaze. He was perched in a chair, sitting in what little sunlight was leaking into the castle from the overcast sky outside. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the sort of warm sunlight that soaked into your skin and made you feel a little more happy and optimistic. It was a dreary sort of sunlight that would bounce off you and create somewhat negative vibes. Fortunately though, you strode around with your own positivity the darkness that seemed to mindlessly drape around the entire residency.

By the time you looked back at him, he tried his best to seem completely invested in the book instead of the back of your head, but you knew better. It was something new between the two of you and has become more and more frequent. The stolen glances, as if it were forbidden to actually look at one another and allow yourself to be caught doing so. You had only stumbled upon the castle a month ago, and between then and now, he has actually warmed up to you surprisingly well. After all, it had only been a week or so since he felt comfortable telling you his name so you didn’t have to stumble around what to call him exactly.

Stepping off the ladder with a small ‘thud’ as you jumped onto the marble floor, you studied the book in your hand and made your way to the seat across from him. Adam noticed of course, watching you from his peripherals as you sauntered your way towards him and sat down.

Adam cleared his throat, setting his book down in his lap. “What’ve you got there?” He inquired, using his head to gesture to the gently worn out book in your hands. If he moved just right in his spot, the dim sunlight coming in through the large windows shined off his horns, somewhat reminding you of how water shimmered in the light.

You seemed a bit shameful when you answered quietly, “Romeo And Juliet.”

“Uhck.” He murmured softly, scrunching his face in mind disgust, “Have you not read that enough? It’s such a tragic story. The romance, the pining, the unforgiving end. That book will be in three pieces by the time you’re done with it. There’s so many books here, why choose the same one over and over?” Adam’s curiosity was legitimate. He never saw the wonder in romance like you seemed to. To him, they all seemed the same and never seemed to have the absolutely ideal ending.

You laughed quietly, “It may be. At least it’s a book that you don’t seem to care about. I’m sure I could set it on fire and you’d probably be very happy that I did.” Shrugging your shoulders, you rubbed the spine once again and answered simply, “It’s a bittersweet tale. I like that it’s not perfect. That’s what makes it enjoyable. Anyway, why does it matter what I read? It’s not like you’re the one reading it.”

He nodded his head in agreement. Thankfully, he wasn’t the one reading it, but he still argued, a bit more innocent and playful this time, “Perhaps, I can show you another story that’s just as good.”

“I dare you to show me one that I’ll love more than this one.” You held the book up and sat it down on the table to your right. “You’ve read everything in here, so I’m sure you can find one.”

Adam stood up, completely towering over you before holding a paw out for you to take. You smiled at him, accepting the help and let him lift you from your seat. “I accept your challenge. I’ve got just the book.” The smile he gave you was the gentlest thing you had encountered and left your heart swimming in an unknown feeling. You wanted nothing more than to see that smile for the rest of your days. Adam hesitated, but eventually let go of your warm hand before striding to the left. You followed closely, biting down on your bottom lip.

What was the feeling in your chest? It was as if someone had lit a thousand candles and let them burn inside of you. You denied any previous thoughts of adoration for Adam, telling yourself that you couldn’t possibly feel anything more than forced friendship for someone who was keeping you here. But at this point, the sensation in your heart was making you question your own words. There was no doubt some sort of attraction between the two of you. The hidden gazes, the gentle strokes of your hand against his arm while you pass him books.

If he let you go, who’s to say you wouldn’t want to willingly stay here with him? You would stay. Even if he didn’t ask, you would stay. But, why?

“Here.” His voice boomed you back to reality. Swallowing softly, you looked up at him with reddened cheeks before letting your gaze drop to the book in his hand. Taking a shaky breath in, you took it from his hands and studied it carefully. It seemed a bit more worn than ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the spine exceedingly bent at the moment, stirring you to ask, “Have you read this a lot?”

“More than most books here. It’s one of the books my mother used to read to me when I was a child.” Adam admitted softly, letting his icy eyes admire your reaction to the book. “It’s the only romance I can actually bear to finish.” He said without thinking. “You see uh--- I never finish them, usually. Romances, at least. I leave them off in the ideal place, almost….”

“Afraid of ruining it with the actual ending.” You finished his sentence for him. Adam seemed astonished that you had actually understood. Pressing it to your chest, you sighed and whispered to him, “You’re taking an opportunity away from yourself though. If you never read the ending, you’re not reading it in the way it was intended to be read. Some…” You clutched the book a bit harder, something he noticed as your knuckles were turning while, “Some stories have a happy ending that are so out of sight that you need to keep reading on. You can’t let one bad ending be the reason why you can’t enjoy other endings.”

There was no fighting your words because as Adam let them sink into his mind, he came to realize that you were completely right. He opened his mouth, ready to discourse but couldn’t find anything to say. He couldn’t. He was in such a position that you words were undoubtedly true. Before the curse, his ending was a bad one, though he prolonged it for as long as possible. It took a sharp turn and seemed even worse for a while before you came waltzing into his life, giving the slightest shimmer that perhaps even he could have a happy ending in a story otherwise full of despair, darkness and hate.

“Let me know what you think.” Adam said quietly, looking at the book in your hands. “I hope… you like it.”

Reaching up, you pressed your hand to the right side of his face and completely captivated his attention. The affection was sudden and seemed to leave Adam completely defenseless as you smiled sweetly at him. It was a tender stroke and reminded him of the last time that he had actually been touched so affectionately. It had been years. If it weren’t for the dramatic height difference, he could look at you eye to eye and if given permission, he would have kissed you. Just to see a response, to see that if getting his hopes up wasn’t just a waste now that there were only a few more petals left on the enchanted rose.

Adam was certain he could kiss you regardless, catching you off guard. The nagging voice inside of his head worried that you didn’t want it though, and so he refrained as best he could and tilted his head towards your hand.

You let your hand linger on him for much longer than needed, eventually bringing it from the side of his face to his wide shoulder before walking back to your spot in the small amount of sunlight. It was his time to follow you back. Sitting down, you stared up at him and gave a warm smile, “I’m sure I’ll love it.”

EYYYYY. Thanks for reading! Reblogs and likes are appreciated! :D

#Prince adam #prince adam x reader #prince adam imagine #beauty and the beast #batb #dan stevens #disney #emmy writes #fanfiction #fanfic

780 notes · View notes

mrsjugheadjonesthethird · 7 years

Text

I did it (Jughead x Reader)

Prompt: Hey! So I'm gonna make this request broad because I want you to kind of write it however you wish & be able to really add your own style/twist to it. You can do it in the form of a preference/blurb or a one shot/parts, doesn't bother me. But, could you do how you think Jughead would react to finding out you're the one who killed Jason? It can be for whatever reason: self-defense, revenge, somehow accidental, & so on. My only request is that Jug & the reader are together when he finds out.

A/N: This turned quite dark? You told me to add my own style to it so I wrote it the way I write a lot of my short stories! Hopefully you like it. Xxx

Warnings: Flashbacks of Jason’s death, mentions of rape, murder (obviously. Jason was shot after all.) Major Character Death. NOT A HAPPY ENDING.

Masterlist

I did it (Jughead x Reader)

Your heart aches.

You never wanted it to turn out this way.

Sitting on your bed, the flashbacks hit you.

“What are you going to do about it?” His voice digging a knife through your brain.

“Jason, All I want is an apology. Just say you’re sorry and you can be on your way!” You try to keep your voice from breaking. I need to be strong. The heavy metal stashed the back of your jeans.

Laughter bounces off the trees around you. “Say sorry? For what? You deserved everything you got that night, slut.” His eyes piercing through your cold skin. “Does your boyfriend know? What a little whore you are? You asked for everything that happened.”

“I was wearing a skirt!” Your voice raises as the blood inside you begins to boil. His words echoes from that night. Tell anyone and I’ll put a bullet between your pretty eyes. “How does wearing a skirt justify what you did to me? To the other girls?” Tears start to blur your vision.

“Maybe if you weren’t flaunting yourself everywhere it wouldn’t have happened. Now You aren’t getting your damn apology as you were practically begging me the whole time.” He sneered.

“I begged for you to stop. Yet you didn’t.” Cold and numb. His words repeating over and over again. Bullet between your pretty eyes.

You pull the gun from your back and point it blank at his face. “Say it or I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.” Your voice stripped from any emotions.

He laughs again. “I’d rather die than apologize to you.”

“Fine then.” Bang.

“(Y/n), You okay?” Jughead’s voice breaks the thoughts. Guilt fills your body.

Tell him. Before it’s too late.

You send him a smile and nod. “Yes. Just tired. Haven’t been sleeping much.”

He kisses your forehead and glances back at his laptop.

You have to tell him.

The flashbacks were getting worse day by day.

Jason’s case was all everyone talked about. Especially your boyfriend. His novel surrounding the murder.

Your heart breaks at the thought of him having to write that his rock, his everything, had killed Jason Blossom.

Your heart breaks at the thought of looking at Polly with her bump. Jason was still here through her. Through that baby. And You had to smile pretending to be happy.

Your heart breaks even more when Cheryl starts hanging out with the group. You can’t look her in the eyes. You took her soulmate, her brother, away from her.

The case was tearing you apart.

But You don’t feel an ounce of regret.

He needed to be taken care of. After everything he did, He needed to pay.

You couldn’t have gone to Sheriff Keller when Jason hurt you. Raped you. Carved a J into your thigh with a pair of scissors. All the other girls had it too. No one could move. It was his trophy. You were one of his toys and you refused to bend to his will.

The Blossoms owned the whole town. Your parents could have lost their jobs. The twins would have made your life even worse.

All you wanted was two words from his mouth and yet he ended up dead.

His pride is what killed him. The gun had just pushed things along.

Bang.

The gunshot echoed even hours after you had pulled the trigger.

“(Y/N)?” A gruff voice breaks your stare. Jason was dead not even 10 feet away from you. Blood had spattered everywhere. He was dead.

FP Jones. The father of your boyfriend staggers towards you and frowns at the scene before him.

“What did you do?” His voice laced with disappointment.

You broke down. Tears flowing as you tell him everything. The rape. The scars on your body. Your hatred for the boy you had killed. Your want for something to be done. You had just wanted an apology and ended up with a dead body.

He grabs the gun that had been thrown to the side and places it in his pocket.

“I’ll get this taken care of. You have to trust me.” You nod, still numb from everything.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” He clasps you on the back and pulls you away from the body.

That night it was settled. FP Jones was going to do anything and everything to protect the one thing that gave his boy so much joy.

You push the door to the Blue&Gold open and give your best friend a smile.

“Hey Bets.”

“Hey! Juggie’s just got to finish up some stuff and he should be done!” She sends you a smile as she collects her belongings.

You wave as she leaves and take a seat next to your boyfriend. Your stomach churning at all the evidence around you. Jason was his latest obsession. He wanted answers yet he didn’t know you had them.

You two sat in silence for a few hours.

You did your homework as he typed.

Suddenly he let out a broken gasp, making you glance up to see a broken boy.

“Jug?” Your voice filled with concern. Did he figure something out? What was he thinking right now? A million thoughts run through your head.

“My dad killed Jason.” He whispers with eyes wide. His focus glued on the screen in front of him.

Your heart stops.

Tell him. Tell him. Damn it, (Y/n). Tell the boy his father didn’t kill anyone.

FP’s voice fills your head. “Don’t tell anyone. Especially Jughead. You make him so happy and when he founds out that I did it, You need to be there for him”

“Actually Jug, we need to talk.” Damn everything, you weren’t going to have your boyfriend think lowly of his father anymore. He needed to know the truth.

His eyes slowly move to your face. “What do you know?” His voice sharpens.

You freeze as the guilt hits you again.

He was going to be the one to put you away.

You are a killer. How could he love a killer?

“I did it.”

You can feel his heart breaking as he processes your words.

“No. No, You didn’t. My Dad-” He shakes his head.

“Helped me. He planted the evidence to point to him so no one would know it was me.” You feel small under Jug’s strong gaze.

“Why?” His voice cold and removed of any emotions.

“I was over near Greendale taking pictures when I ran into him. He had raped me back in our freshman year, Juggie. I wanted an apology if he was leaving. He said no. I shot him.” You keep your words short and your head down.

Jug’s chair scrapes across the classroom floor.

You watch him walk over to their murder board and pause.

Rip.

He tears each picture, each article, everything off the board. Throwing all of it into an empty box nearby.

“Jug?”

He gathers all the papers from Betty’s desk and throws them in too.

“Please say something.” Your voice broken and small.

“Meet me at my dad’s in 30 minutes. No Phone. Don’t tell anyone anything.” He firmly says as he grabs his laptop and you watch as he pulls up his novel.

He presses the delete button and your heart drops. All his hard work gone.

“What? Why-?” You’re confused. You are a killer. You killed Jason?

He turns and grabs your face.

“(Y/n),” He takes a deep breath, “I love you. I have always loved you. If you had told me what Jason had done to you, I…” He pauses. “I would have done the same thing.”

Silence fills the room as he leans in and gives you a quick but firm kiss.

“Now, Meet me at my Dad’s in 30. Remember No Phone and don’t tell anyone anything.”

You nod and leave the room as he cleans up all the paper evidence. All the hard work Jughead and Betty had collected over the weeks now gone.

*A week later*

Sheriff Keller was sitting at his desk, staring at his murder board when his phone rings.

“Keller? We got two bodies in the lake.” The voice of one of his officers drones through the line.

He glances at the paper tacked on his wall.

Two Missing Teens.

Jughead Jones and (Y/n) (Y/L/N).

“Is it them?” He fears the worst.

“Yeah Sheriff. You need to get down here. Quickly.”

He feels his heart break as his eyes land on a group picture next to the missing flyers.

Kevin and all his friends. Now two of them were dead.

He pushes himself out of the seat.

“I’ll be right there.” He sighs and walks closer to get a better look.

Jughead and (Y/N). Both smiling at each other while the rest of the group grins at the camera.

The True Romeo and Juliet.

A/N: I know You guys can hate me for this! Let me know what you think!

Tag List: @nooneshoney @intwoweeks @duckseverywherex @young-gh0st @royalworldtraveler @sweetmisseddreams2002 @raifusfandom @siaralovesgaming @kristinaorfanakos @rice-seedling @divastar777 @saltedpeanuts @in-need-of-a-social-life @kingpendleton @nadya0128 @isitfuckingfridayyet @barbarachern @yazminmcd @casismyguardianangel @jealousbitxh @kindfloweroflove @lustfulskam @cat200037 @xxnaomixxblr @baasooreexiiaa @apocalypticangell @morgan--lee--currant @superoriginalteenwolf @heir-of-light-33 @mesmerizedbyblackandwhite @murderyoursoul @irrajj @fan-of-many-bands @multiversegalaxygirl @mrssstilinski @molethemollie @anotherweekinhell @katshrev @saycute1998 @milkshakejones @itsjaynebird @bangtanbookfrog242 @awesomefandomsunited @imagine-lovebug @imperfectanatomy @sgarrett49 @theatregeek01 @annoyingsibling @xbobaaa @theselfishllama @kaylinfayezink

and my love: @full-dark-no-starsxx

#jughead x reader #jughead jones #jughead oneshot #jughead imagines #jughead #riverdale #fics #my fics #requested #holy shit #not a happy ending #Im sorry!#It's dark af

481 notes · View notes

how2to18 · 6 years

Link

ONE SINGULAR PLEASURE of this “Second Acts” column — which examines, à deux, second books of poems, one of which had appeared 20 or more years ago and the other only recently — is the chance to discover mutual sympathies between two poets and their projects, both aesthetically and in terms of subject matter. These connections may be conscious — what Goethe called “elective affinities” — or they may be unconscious. Either way, reading the texts in counterpoint can prove illuminating, even surprising.

Susan Stewart and Jennifer Chang seem like an obvious pairing; the two certainly share some scholarly and poetic DNA. Both are intrepid, lucid literary critics and poets of visceral intellection. Stewart, currently Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at Princeton University, is such a dazzling academic (a MacArthur Fellow who has also served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she will deliver the prestigious Clarendon Lectures at Oxford University in 2020) that it might be understandable if her critical work overshadowed her poems.

Fortunately, earlier this year Graywolf Press released her Cinder: New and Selected Poems to wide acclaim. New and selected volumes allow readers to encounter recent work in the context of a career, ensuring that early work is not lost to time even as we indulge our infatuation with the new. But the focus of such collections is usually, and perhaps rightly, the new. I feel it is important to focus more intently on early work, if only to appreciate how and in what ways a poet has evolved, something perhaps especially appropriate for Stewart, who has written discerningly about the primacy of praxis and process in the poetic endeavor.

Second books make an especially provocative place to delve into a poet’s work because they can either stall or extend the promise of the inaugural book. Will the poet become self-parodic, a one-trick pony, or a formal shapeshifter? Ideally, the second book confirms what will become lifelong obsessions, evinces a spirit of experimentation, and is rife with the suggestion of forays and fulfillments to come.

“Field in Winter,” the poem that opens Stewart’s Cinder, begins this way:

The world, a museum of itself. The cold colonnade of dying elms. You cannot will a dream, though you, too, can fall, and fall asleep, and wake in wonder […]

It is this stereoscopic perspective on the world as its own Wunderkammer — a place to fall and dream and wake and fall and dream and wake again “in wonder” — that has kept me reading Stewart since the appearance of her first book, Yellow Stars and Ice, in 1981. The poems in the first book are a young woman’s work, yet they are charged with an awareness of unbreachable distances, especially the longings of language of love, as in these last lines from the collection’s title poem:

As far as the space between word and word, as the heavy sleep of the perfectly loved and the sirens of wars no one living can remember, as far as this room, where no words have been spoken, you are as far as invention, and I am as far as memory.

In landscapes as various as rural Pennsylvania and Italy, the interconnected themes of Stewart’s first book — precariousness and endurance, loss and tenderness — swell and progress in her sophomore collection, The Hive, and find particularly deep expression in the notion of sacrament, ceremony, and what Pasolini calls, in the book’s epigraph, “the ancient rite […] // which only by dreaming inside a dream / could [be pronounced] by its true name.” Unsettling forces — birth, death, war, love, violence, separation — create the central tensions in each of these poems, tensions which Stewart then moves to address and sometimes even resolve through acts of private, sometimes secret, ceremony.

In the opening poem, “Man Dancing with a Baby,” for example, a new father finds sure, if mobile, footing when faced with the terror and vulnerability of his parental responsibility by putting on a record and dancing around the house with his newborn, an act of ritual importance:

The slippery floor shimmers and spins like a record while The light is swinging footloose on its rope Out of time. The shadows

Slip, shimmering black, and spin across the floor, Then turn back and pick up again. Oh seedpod stuck for just One moment on the cattail, out of time, out of shadows, Downy cheek against a beard: oh scratches

On the record, oh baby, oh measure Oh strange balance that grips us On this side of the world.

Likewise, the speaker in “Consecration” redeems the loss of a building that has been demolished by finding in the empty lot,

like the gestures of the dead in her children’s faces, […] the flowered paper

of her parents’ bedroom, the pink stripes leading up the stairs to the attic,

and the outline of the claw- footed bathtub, font of the lost cathedral of childhood.

In “The Summer Before the Moon,” Stewart uses the inchoate feelings of a girl on the cusp of adolescence to articulate how each of us, whatever our ages, must find fresh words for the new worlds we enter in the wake of every one of our changes. The girl in the poem waits,

as if a cloud had stepped back like a startled deer, as if a door had been closed so softly no one noticed, although the other side would now be understood as a different world. This is how the child learns to wait for hours,

listening for something like a ceremony to begin, something that as yet has no name.

In “Secret Ceremony: The Sailboat,” parting lovers share private trigger-images of loss: “how they flare up suddenly // from the stillness of the heart / like an oil spill — secret faces / in the surface of the river.” And in “Gaville,” the poem from which the book takes its title, the speaker imagines how a now-sleepy Italian town might be threatened again by an array of historical and natural forces — the Cavalcantis, the Nazis, a power plant disaster, a devastating rain, a fire — and concludes that

What this fascination with consecration and ceremony implies, of course, is a reckoning with the sacrament that is the lyric poem itself, which can express, to paraphrase Sharon Cameron, what it can’t redeem or restore by any other means. In their forays into iconography — a raven’s wing leaving its “print, a deep / and liquid stain,” or a child-prince’s opulent ornamental gown (“the surface of things being / a kind of armor”) or that lone, lost, gem-like bee — the poems in The Hive foretell the marvelous experiments with orthography, symbol, and field poetics that Stewart would explore in later books, both of poetry and criticism. The Hive suggests that current innovative poetries are not necessarily anti-lyrics, but rather attempts to embody what a lyric poem — hybrid, othered, outed, plural, polyphonic, “unmastered” — can be, mean, and accomplish.

Jennifer Chang’s newly published second collection, Some Say the Lark, which follows her award-winning The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia, 2008), is, like Stewart’s work, preoccupied in part with provoking and questioning the lyric poem. Her book’s title comes, of course, from a well-known passage in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which, after exclaiming to Romeo that what he hears is not the lark — harbinger of the daylight that must separate them — but rather the nightingale, Juliet revises her wishful denial to admit that what she hears is the lark. But rather than allowing the lark its typical pastoral, dulcet association of “sweet division,” marking the distinction between the darkness and the light, she reveals a decidedly unromantic association, linking the lark’s music with the inevitable wrenching of lovers from one another’s arms.

Chang, who is assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at George Washington University, holds a PhD in English literature and an MFA in poetry writing. In her second book, she sustains the obsessions of her first book — identity (personal and cultural), history, effacement, and the realms of flora and fauna — and extends them into a questioning of the limits of lyric poetry itself in a world fraught with contingency and anomie.

In “The Winter’s Wife,” for instance, Chang’s speaker acknowledges that despite her wish to believe in the pathetic fallacy by which literature displaces into nature the “want” of human experience (“I want wild roots to prosper / an invention of blooms”), she, “unlike twilight, [does] not / conclude with darkness. I conclude.” Chang is fearless in taking on traditional notions of what poetry can do to the self and to the natural world. In the section “Phenomenology,” from a series called “Small Philosophies,” she talks back to Keats’s famous nightingale ode, refusing the traditional poet-bird conflation, reminding us of the rape of Philomela, and stressing the dangers of romanticizing either song or silence:

Permit the forest armature, neither elm-brigade

nor garden-lust. You are a twilight and a twilight bird. Isn’t that

a sparrow forlorn in the greenest branches?

Why forlorn? Because the clouds have gone brute.

You are a quality and a thing silenced

by pine-shrug. Stern willow. Now run and hide in the fern.

Conversing with poets and cultural figures as diverse as Sir Thomas Wyatt and Patsy Cline, Mary Wollstonecraft and Frank O’Hara, Wallace Stevens and Thomas Jefferson, Oedipus and William Butler Yeats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the speaker’s own children and childhood friends, this philosopher-poet asks again and again: “Brittle page, history, what am I to you?” (“Whoso List to Hunt”) These inquiries and assays are both personal to Chang, a first-generation child of Chinese immigrants, as well as relevant to all of us.

Stalking Chang’s poems is an awareness of never, of no, of nada — “Never is / a strange design, to name what can’t be / or won’t begin,” she writes in “Mount Pleasant” — and this sense of absence, this hole of aught, is the secret center of all lyric poetry. Chang confronts the poet’s essential quandary — how, and whether, to word the unwordable — again and again, perhaps most strikingly in “Dorothy Wordsworth,” which begins: “The daffodils can go fuck themselves. / I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings / about the spastic sun that shines and shines / and shines.” After rehearsing the “old joy” of “spring again,” Chang concludes her stunning poem with an unflinching expression of what it means to be a poet in the first place:

If I died falling from a helicopter, then this would be an important poem. Then the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous

youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank. The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre, the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop

interrupting me with your boring beauty. All the boys are in the field gnawing raw bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who the hell are they? This is a poem about war.

Both Chang and Stewart, then, foreground the machinations and motions of the lyric poem — site of sleight of hand, site of ritual, in which there is an economy of sacrifice — in verse of daring beauty, honesty, and depth. In “Ceremony,” Chang writes, “I am quiet / and won’t / squander words / to make what’s / false true.” In both The Hive and Some Say the Lark no word is wasted. Each serves a world in which “all waste […] shall bequeath to our heir. Our air,” as Chang writes in “About Trees.” She closes “Again a Solstice” this way:

What does it even mean to write a poem? It means today I’m correcting my mistakes.

It means I don’t want to be lonely.

Lisa Russ Spaar is a poet, essayist, and professor of English and creative writing at the University of Virginia. She has published numerous books of poetry, and her latest collection, Orexia, was published in 2017.

The post Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Susan Stewart and Jennifer Chang appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2k2c84s via IFTTT

#Blogger

0 notes

firstjustgoin · 7 years

Text

Other Women’s Boyfriends I’ve Loved

2003

When Georgia first tells me that she has a boyfriend, it’s between the last two stalls in the girl’s bathroom. I can only see her shoes dangling through the crack in the stalls, her gold high-tops and rainbow socks with the scalloped edges that I’ve always wanted but knew I could never pull off.

I think she’s telling me now, between pees, because she doesn’t want to see my face, or maybe she doesn’t want me to see her’s –– how the dark reds must have crept up her cheeks and into the curves of her ears.

“He’s super cool. Nothing like you think he’ll be like because, you know––” She’s referring to his tendency to wear his pants belted right below his butt, with Christmas or Halloween-themed boxers ballooning out above them or how he carries a skateboard with him everywhere but never rides it. “Yeah, okay,” I say but inside I’m thinking bitch. It’s not a word I’ve used out loud yet but it’s been used on me: just once in sixth grade when Johanna was waiting behind me to drink from the water fountain and I took too long or something so she shout-whispered bitch loud enough for the whole hallway to hear and start cackling.

The toilet flushes and then the door next to me creaks open and I realize that I’ve been just sitting here not saying anything for thirty seconds, maybe longer. I pull up my striped pink and white leggings over a pair of My Little Pony underwear I won’t even wear to sleepovers just in case anybody sees. Georgia’s layering on cotton candy lipgloss and making intense eye contact with herself in the mirror when I leave the stall so I just wash my hands quickly and mutter, “See you at passing” and let the bathroom door swing closed behind me.

Zack starts hanging with us at lunch, once or twice a week and it’s the first time I’ve ever eaten with a boy so I never knew how disgusting their eating habits were. He brings over two or three slices of sausage pizza and then drowns each slice with what he calls “special sauce”: a combination of ranch dressing, ketchup, and mayo. It makes me want to barf into my tuna sandwich, but Georgia –– a girl who forced me to have British tea parties until we were 11 –– just sits next to him, twirling her hair and laughing at all of his dumb jokes.

The first time I hear him tell her that he loves her is after school by the bike racks. We’re waiting for the bus and he’s just fiddling with the wheels of the skateboard I’ve still never seen him ride. We’re about to board the bus and all of a sudden they’re making out right in front of me –– their thick, messy tongues jousting between gaping, open mouths –– and then when they finally pull apart he looks right at her and says, “I love you, Georgie.” Bitch, bitch, bitch, I think all the way home until it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore.

They break-up and get back together more times than we have pop quizzes in math class. During one of their off times, Zack turns to me during the one class we have together and says, “Damn, what do you think Mr. Carlson did over the weekend? He looks like he got eaten and puked out by my cat.” I’m kind of shocked that Zack’s talking to me at all, especially since he just walked past me rubbing the shoulders of his sobbing ex-girlfriend less than an hour ago. But when I look at Mr. Carlson, I break out into a fit of laughter. His hair is moving in a million directions like it’s been electrocuted, his eyes are shining red, and his collared shirt is crinkled up too. He looks exactly like cat puke.

Zack starts laughing too and before we know it Mr. Carlson is standing right next to us saying, “Is there something you’d like to share with the class, folks?” and we shake our heads back and forth as hard as we can and say, “No sir” while biting the insides of our cheeks to keep from laughing again.

After that, we’re always laughing about something during 6th period History class. When Georgia tells me that they’re back together I say, “Yay! That’s awesome!” but I’m still thinking bitch like a metronome in my head, this time because I’m not even sure if she deserves him. He’s got dark green eyes and one of the few kids our age who’s managed to nearly escape puberty without any pimples or acne scars. He starts showing up in my dreams, laughing and smiling with his eyes looking right at me.

It’s almost Christmas vacation and Georgia and I are sitting in her kitchen looking at Florida Keys guidebooks in preparation for the family vacation I’m tagging along to.

“Hey, Nell,” she says quietly, her eyes still glued to the page about sea life off the Florida coast.

“Yeah?” I say, my mouth half-full of Cheerios.

“What if I told you that Zack’s gonna come with us? To Florida? That wouldn’t be weird, right?”

Wouldn’t be weird, right? I can’t say anything else but no so I shake my head and say, “no” when what I really mean is Yes, bitch, it would be weird and I hate you for even asking.

But I don’t say that, I don’t say anything not then and not for the whole four days we’re lying on the beach crisping up like toast left too long in the oven. I don’t say anything because Georgia’s weaving her fingers in his and sharing virgin mango daiquiris with the same curly straw and whispering “I love you” and rubbing up against each other when they think I’ve already fallen asleep.

2007

Emmanuel leans back in his chair while Ms. Neusen is looking the other way and whispers to me, “Hey, you got a piece of gum I can cop?”

I giggle nervously and fumble through my backpack looking for a loose stick of gum that isn’t coated with the crumby leftovers of the many extra large bags of Doritos I’ve been stuffing in my face in the car before pulling into my driveway. I find a clean stick and hand it to him wordlessly, afraid to make eye contact for fear that my face will erupt in a firework of pink hues.

When I finally get the courage to look up at him, he’s unwrapping the stick of gum, eyeing it with his dark brown eyes nestled below thick black eyebrows. He pops it in his mouth so casually like he’s doing a commercial for Trident. He turns back to me and smiles wide and says in a light singsong, “Nell rocks my world” to nobody but me.

I’m sprung.

I trace his full name into the tops of my desks during every class. Emmanuel David Díaz. I actually look forward to 1st period English. I toss and turn in my sleep on Sunday nights, imagining how he’ll saunter through the doorway into our class the next morning, his shaggy brown hair waving behind him like a cape.

You might not think to look at him, the quarterback of the football team, always surrounded by a hive of boys with small heads and large biceps, but he has real thoughts and feelings and maybe it’s because I’m currently living in a cesspool primarily devoid of both those things, but it makes me love him even harder.

Usually it starts real quiet and then builds. A quick nod and a “hey” when he slides into his desk next to mine. Ms. Neusen will say or do something ridiculous –– like attempt to use household appliances as metaphors for Romeo and Juliet –– and we’ll cover our mouths to mute the laughter and turn to each other with eyes wide.

“You think she practiced this one in the mirror this morning?” I say.

“Maybe to her husband over breakfast?” He says.

“I’m sure the dog had to sit through at least one rehearsal,” I say, before the giggles become too intense. I cover my face with my hand and turn away. He can’t see me like this.

Too sprung.

I’m an A student, honors English, but when I’m slouching in the back of Ms. Neusen’s first-period English Lit class with Emmanuel, I’m the class clown. Second and Third quarter report cards bewilder my parents. Turns in above average papers always on time, but does not know when to stop socializing in class. Smart but often insubordinate.

“Every single character in Shakespeare’s plays are insubordinate,” I say to my mom when she corners me in the kitchen while buttering my toast, “She really doesn’t give us very good role models.”

“Honey,” my mom sighs, her face stuck somewhere halfway between disappointment and bemusement, “Most of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays end up dead. I don’t think she’s trying to give you role models.”

I don’t tell her it’s because of a boy, the boy; the boy who has been taking up major real estate in my poetry journals for the last seven months and counting, the longest a boy has ever taken up residence there.

Cuz that boy can make a hill look like a giant mountain

he can make a flower look like a room filled with roses

like the sunshine has just come out after the storm.

When we’re exchanging jokes at the back of the classroom, it feels like we are levitating in a world without gravity, without reality. But then the bell rings and my stomach drops because I know what’s waiting for us right outside this door.

Leaning up against the lockers –– black choker around her neck, dark eyeliner painting her face, wearing a short black jean skirt –– is Louisa, Emmanuel’s girlfriend. She smiles when she sees him, wraps her long thin arms around his neck and plants a thick, wet kiss on his lips. His hands travel from her back down to her ass and I stand there for a few seconds too long, unable to remove my eyes from her tiny, little ass.

Louisa and Emmanuel are the couple everyone loves to spin stories about, no matter how true or false they are.

“I heard she went down on him in his mom’s Escalade on the side of the highway.”

“I heard they had sex in Conor’s dad’s pool after everybody passed out.”

“But she’s been fingering that foreign exchange student in the girl’s locker room during gym class.”

I stumble upon these glimmers of gossip like a peek into a portal to a world I can’t understand -– Escalades, oral sex, kegs, pool parties –– all of it pieces of him I never see in the back of Ms. Neusen’s 1st period English class. I can visualize this world only because of how I actually spend my Friday nights: cuddled up with Marisa and Ryan in The OC or Blair and Serena on Gossip Girl. When I imagine Louisa and Emmanuel having sex in a pool, it’s a villa overlooking the Pacific Ocean. When I imagine Louisa fingering a foreign exchange student, it’s in the coat check room at the Met Gala.

But when I’m sitting in the back of the class with him, I don’t tell him that’s how I spend my Friday and Saturday and Sunday nights. I don’t tell him that I line my eyes with black charcoal every morning only to rub it off before walking outside or how I listen to The Pussycat Dolls more than the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I slouch and chew contraband gum and laugh at all of his jokes, trying to cultivate that illusive low-maintenance personality that will make him realize that I see deep into his soul in a way none of his slutty girlfriends ever will.

2011

Wyatt and I met a couple years back at Freshman orientation, a hopelessly awkward time when everyone’s pretending they’ve had more sex and gotten drunker and have more cool friends from high school than they actually do.

Wyatt didn’t have any time for that shit, which I respected though couldn’t exactly emulate. He was part of a pack of boys, wild and rabid, on the hunt for frat parties they could get into and I had developed a bit of a reputation for sneaking into them. Total fluke. After a hot streak, my luck dried up and they went off wandering for the next party hopper to whom they could affix themselves.

But Wyatt stayed. On Friday nights when the rest of the dorm floor ventured off to find upperclassmen to buy them booze, we climbed up through the dense forested hillside next to campus and smoked weed, talking about the end of the world. It wasn’t imminent or anything, but when you’re a college freshman, riddled with anxious energy to know more than you do, talking about the end seemed fitting.

We’d stay up there until all the was left at the bottom of the bowl was ash and the early morning fog started descending from the sky. Then we’d stumble back down the hill grabbing blindly for branches when we tripped over tree roots and rocks.

After those first few months of college where you cling to whoever’s close by, we found ourselves flung to the opposite sides of campus: me staying up in bio labs late into the night instead of getting high and him jamming in underground shows in whatever band he was in that month. I’d get the occasional last-minute text invite for a while until even those dried up and then we’d nod to each other in the library and chat about whatever professor was killing us that semester, but never broached the subject of the inevitable apocalypse or even the destruction of the coral reefs.

We’ve reconnected recently, now that we’ve got a mutual group of friends who all get together to do improv together. I still can’t believe I’m in a college improv group given how much it used to scare the shit out of me in high school. Whenever I’m up on stage with the spotlights staring coldly back at me and I hear someone yell, “Give me a random word!” I freeze up and think for a second that I’m fifteen and part of some cruel practical joke.

After a big showcase event, we find ourselves squished together on a fraying, floral couch with god knows how many substances soaking into its cushions. Someone passes me a joint and we just turn to each other and start laughing and fall right back into it again.

“You read the story about the bees?” He says, his mouth turned downward but the creases along the edges of his green eyes betraying the laughter bubbling up.

“Oh yeah, fucking scary shit. And how about North Korea’s nukes?” “Fuck, I know. People are saying with what’s-his-face dead now that we might be able to intervene but I don’t know.”

“I know!” And we both crack up. He’s still the only person I know who can talk about worldwide nuclear warfare while laughing.

“Hey, babe!” I hear from across the room. It’s Margot, Wyatt’s girlfriend, who is cool as hell and made a big name for herself on campus recently for her feminist photography. She even got a cover of her period blood-stained underwear and bushy underarms on the front cover of a campus zine, much to the chagrin of the Board of Trustees. She ambles over to us and sits down on his lap, her long, hairy legs draping over mine.

“Hey Nell,” she says, “How’s the night? You killed it up on stage today.” I smile and squeeze her hand, “Oh I don’t know about that,” I say, pausing to exhibit proper modesty, “I think the whole team kicked ass.”

“Can I borrow Wy for a sec?” She asks as she pulls him up and towards the beer pong table. “I need him to do a celebrity shot.” I gesture a “go ahead” motion with my hands and watch and she leads him away.

Two lost games of flip cup and a chugging contest later, the whole world’s spinning, making me feel like one foot’s walking up a flight of stairs while the other foot’s trying to walk down. I rest my head on the side of the couch and after what I think is just a second, Wyatt’s leaning over me, shaking my shoulders and whispering, “Hey, Nell! Nell! You okay?”

I groan and try to sit up. The lights are dimmed and the room’s empty besides us, just littered with a bunch of crumpled red solo cups and PBR cans. “Er, yeah, I was just –– just sleeping it off a bit. But I’m feeling, just, uh, fine.”

He sits on the couch next to me and pulls my legs over his lap. “Yeah, you seem just, uh, fine to me,” he smiles and starts to rub my calves.

“Hey, Wyatt?” “Yes?”

“Is the world ending?” He laughs. “No, I don’t think it is yet. Though, if it was,” he pauses for a second and looks at me with his eyes suddenly wide and mischievous, “what would you want to do?” His hand is crawling up my leg towards the edge of my skirt. My heart’s pounding against the bone and for a second I think about pushing his hand away but the couch is so deep and soft and his hand feels like fire against my skin. I don’t push him away; I pull him in.

His tongue slips into my mouth at the same moment as his finger enters me and I want to say that I’m still drunk, but I don’t feel the alcohol anymore, just the buzz of synapses flying. I unbuckle his belt with one hand and plunge my hand onto his dick, hard and ready.

It’s not until he’s inside me that I realize that music’s still playing from speakers in the other room. I hear a man’s voice crooning and it takes me a second to realize who’s singing. John fucking Mayer. I can’t help it, I burst out laughing.

“Um. Yes?” He says while he rocks back and forth above me.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s just that ––” I think about trying to explain: the years I spent lying alone on my bed in my childhood bedroom, staring at the ceiling and imagining myself into the lives of my classmates. It was Heavier Things, it was Room for Squares that set the score for those interminable, pimpled years where my brain didn’t fit my body and my body did not fit my life.

But there’s a boy inside me and so I don’t say any of that. I just shake my head and mumble, “Ugh, tequila” and pull him closer and deeper.

When we’re done, he buttons up his pants as I clasp my bra, not needing to say a word. As I’m about to walk out, he grabs my hand and kisses me on the lips, barely a peck, and I shuffle the rest of the way home wondering what the fuck just happened.

The next time I see him is at a party a couple weekends after, in a black lit basement with a hanging beer pong table and a bar glued with beer bottle caps. College chic. I’m there with a group of other friends and I don’t even know he’s going to be playing, but there he is in the corner with his bass, hair falling in front of his face. My heart starts beating fast and I feel it in every part of my body. I stare shamelessly, waiting for him to look up and catch my eye.

Then I see her: Margot, standing to the side closest to him, staring too. She’s mouthing every word to this shitty college basement faux-rock and bouncing along with the bass. My heart’s beating like crazy now, but instead it feels like it’s crawling up my throat trying to escape.

When the music ends, I watch her step across wires and over speakers to get to him, her hands sliding into his back pockets and he kisses her, his hands covering both of her cheeks. I back into the corner of the room where the black light doesn’t hit and sink into the sticky concrete floor, feeling nothing but emptiness now buzzing inside me.

2017

The first time Paul and I speak, it’s with our backs on sticky linoleum floors of a fourth grade classroom, scraping gum off the undersides of the desks.

The janitorial staff is on strike again, and instead of offering to meet their demands, the superintendent's office has decided to initiate the adult version of chore charts for an already precarious teachers’ union. It’s mine and Paul’s turn to scrape the gum off the desks and it’s a duty I hold with the same amount of honor and responsibility as cleaning the errant pee off the bathroom floors in the kindergarten wing.

“This is karma, huh,” he says to me from under a desk in the next row.

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, for all of the gum I shoved under my desks when I was a snotty kid.” He rolls out from under the desk and I do the same, surprised to see a tall man in his early 30s with a full head of hair in front of me. Most teachers in this school are either 24-year-old white women straight out of education school or octogenarians.

“I’m Paul, by the way,” he reaches out his hand to shake mine, but changes directions mid-course. “I suppose this isn’t the best circumstance for a handshake.”

“I suppose not,” I say, and offer an awkward fist bump instead. “Oh, I’ve clearly been hanging around too many fifth graders.”

He laughs and reveals two rows of perfectly straight, white teeth. His mouth looks like the white picket fences lining the bougie part of town I sometimes drive through after work, just to remind myself to get the hell out of this town before I settle for a house barricaded by the suburban sprawl cliché.

“You new to Deer Park?” I ask, lamely, knowing the answer already as he begins to nod.

“Started last week, brought me in just in time for this rousing array of household chores. Left behind a cushy programming job for this too, can you believe it? But now I’m the newest intrepid Computers teacher, determined to make a difference by teaching third graders how to type 20 words a minute.”

“Have you seen a third grader recently? They can type 100 words a minute as long as it’s on Snapchat.”

“Oh god, we’re really old aren’t we?” He smiles again and this time his rows of pearly teeth reflect off the fluorescence in the room, shining like tiny moons.

We go from scraping gum after school to eating lunch in the teacher's lounge every day, talking about the latest murder podcast we’re listening to and quietly snickering while Brenda, the school librarian, stands in front of the refrigerator smelling her brand-new turkey sandwich only to decide it might have mold or salmonella or something and throwing it out.

My favorite part about being a teacher, besides the sweet perks, is the continual realization that the young, hip teachers I had growing up were all rushing home after a hellish day in the classroom to drink a bottle of wine or smoke a joint or have crazy sex with a stranger. It’s comforting to know that teachers have been defying stereotypes for generations just as much as the more adventurous chosen careers of my college friends, who are all investigative reporters and backpackers and third-year residents.

While everyone else at our quarterly appreciation parties (a half-hearted attempt from the administration to thank us for not striking) is shoving baby photos into each other’s faces and complaining about their IRA accounts, Paul and I sneak out to the playground and pull a few long drags off a joint one of us has in our pockets while taking turns pushing each other on the swings, feeling almost light enough to be seven again.

He’s the only one I can say these kids are the fucking worst to and he knows to read the love I have for them underneath the frustration. Other teachers just let their mouths hang open in disgust and whisper, “you shouldn’t say such things” like they are duchesses in Victorian England, the purveyors of decorum.

But something’s been off about Paul in the last couple days. We’ll be sitting at the corner table in the lounge and I’ll be telling him about one of my fifth grader’s writing a story about his sister having sex, and nothing. He’s a blank stare.

“You okay?” I ask, but he just shakes his head quickly and stands up, making up some excuse about prepping for next period.

Last week, we were both on lunch duty and I swear I saw him just mindlessly eat some leftover french fries off a kid’s tray, his eyes never leaving some indeterminate place on the wall.

When I finally get him alone, I circle around the elephant-sized silence in the room, and finally just blurt out all in one breath, “So what’s going on? You seem a billion light years away these days.”

He nods, not betraying even a glimpse of his teeth. “I’m sorry, Nell. It’s been a week from hell.” He sucks in a huge, heavy breath. “We were at the doctor last week. Actually, four fucking doctors, all more clueless than the last.”

My brain’s turns off slightly at the first mention of we, a pronoun I usually try to ignore coming from him. We means him and his girlfriend, nearly fiancé, once he saves up enough cash to buy the engagement ring. The older female teachers love chatting him up to ask about what kind of proposal he’s going to do and I spend about as much of that time talking about how expensive proposals and weddings are an archaic symbol of a sexist society.

I think my face is showing the proper amount of concern, though, because he keeps talking. “They, well the last two doctors who finally got a good read of her test results, think it’s cancer. Fuck I just, I can’t deal with her having cancer. ” He pauses there and finally looks up from his twitching hands at me, and I’m at a near loss.

“Shit. That’s so scary, I’m so sorry. That’s the fucking worst,” I say. “What happens next?” I’ve watched my mom navigate grieving people my entire life like a master. She’s an empathy machine, always knowing exactly the right questions to ask and the right amount of sadness to express personally. I did not accrue those skills. I hide in bathrooms at funerals, stuff too many hors d’oeuvres into my mouth and just say weakly, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” if I have to speak the grieving person directly, while thinking what good is I’m sorry when someone they love is fucking dead? What good is an apology in the face of death?

For someone who spends so much of her time thinking about death and how life on earth will end, I am remarkably inept at dealing with actual, in-your-face death or dying. Paul knows this; we’ve talked about this a million times, but here he is telling me that the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with has tumors literally growing inside of her and I can’t do anything but throw these weak-ass apologies in his face.

I don’t talk about murder with him anymore and he doesn’t either. During lunch, he’ll call home to check in on his girlfriend and I’ll watch Brenda sniff and sniff each corner of her sandwich while sliding further and further into my chair. When we do eat together, I test the waters with what kinds of conversation topics he can stomach.

“You hear about that conspiracy with the dogs Vulture posted this morning?” I ask. “It’s actually crazy; there was this huge investigative piece that came out about the town across the river that’s literally taking people’s dogs and bringing them to a kill shelter.“

Paul’s sipping a diet coke and nods, “Yeah, Jenna was texting me about this today. She thinks we shouldn’t even let our dogs go outside anymore in case they come by our neighborhood.” Jenna’s losing her hair, I see it on the cuffs of Paul’s jeans. Thick clumps of dyed red hair wrapping around him like chains.

I’ve gone too dark; I try to pivot back. “You missed it the other day, Frieda brought her dog in for her parent-teacher conferences and it shit all over the Hendersons. They had a field day, talking about suing the school or something for damages. I don’t know who I hate more: rich people or fucking dogs.”

“I can’t believe you don’t like dogs. There’s something seriously broken about you,” Paul says, laughing. “Sometimes I think our dogs are like the biggest thing in my life right now.”

I’m walking out of school the next day and I see him sitting on the benches in front of the bus stop, his tie pulled out and hair all mussed up. I’m about to head over to check in on him until I hear him whisper yelling on the phone.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s all unimaginably worse for you, but you’ve gotta understand the position you’re putting me in,” he’s saying, his perfect moon teeth gritted so tight, I’m surprised I can understand a word coming out of his mouth.

Picking a fight with a cancer patient. Classy, Paul.

“I’m about to come home, can’t we just talk about this there? I’m just exhausted is all. Today, a kid puked on my shoes. And like a fucking maniac he just wiped off his mouth and kept typing.”

I lean awkwardly against the bike racks and pretend to flip through Facebook, a skill I’ve perfected after a year-long teaching gig with 11th graders. High Schoolers can ingest social media while listening in on their friends’ conversations like master multi-taskers.

“I’m trying. I just don’t feel like you’re hearing me at all. I’ve got nine hours a day in this sinkhole of a school and then I come home and it’s just ––” He puts his hand up to his eyes like he’s about to cry and I think about walking back into the school, awash with shame over witnessing this moment of naked sadness.

It feels like a minute passes while we’re both suspended in silence.

Then he snaps. “Fucking great. See ya.” He pushes his finger hard to his touch screen and slams his phone into the briefcase beside him on the bench.

I begin ambling down the steps, pretending I just walked out of school while still aimlessly refreshing Facebook every few seconds.

He looks up at me with bloodshot eyes.

“Oh hey, Paul. What’s up?” I say with the same amount of nonchalance as a rocket launcher.

He shakes his head but says nothing. I reach out my fingers to touch his shoulder but curl them back to my palm.

I look back and forth quickly to the edges of the empty parking lot. It’s Friday afternoon and everyone’s long since run off to their respective cocoons. “Wanna get high?” I ask and he smiles for the first time in what seems like a long time and follows me to our cars, parked side by side in the abandoned parking lot.

We sit on a bench off the highway for an hour smoking and saying almost nothing at all. It’s 78 degrees and humid for late spring, but my whole body is shivering like every hair on my arms and neck is being pulled separately, invisibly. I drive the rest of the way home with our last interaction playing on repeat in my head: his swollen eyes staring into mine, his body leaning towards me until finally, smiling faintly, he just says, “Thank you, Nell” and then drives away. Maybe I’m stoned, but it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to a man in my life and I can’t shake the electricity from my veins.

The next morning I awake before sunrise, just as the warm glow peeks out from above the horizon. I run through my neighborhood, my legs feeling powerful and assured, watching as the first lights flicker on in living rooms and dogs bark to be taken out for a walk. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been up to watch the first moments of a stranger’s daily routine; to watch them brush the sleep from the corners of their eyes through filtered light, the muted yawns while slouching against the kitchen counter watching the coffee drip, drip, drip through the percolator.

When I started teaching, at a school as far up in Bronx as you can get without being in Yonkers, I would roll out of bed like a knot of hair and bad breath and clumpy mascara. I lived in a six bedroom loft in Bushwick at the time, where the walls didn’t quite reach the ceilings and I could hear my roommates tripping over shoes in the hallway at 3:00 am with random people they’d met at bar, followed by low moans and the creaks of bedsprings long into the night. I was young enough at the tie that I could delude myself into thinking that I wasn’t gentrifying Bushwick; I was hovering there like a spectre until I could jet out of its muggy concrete streets and back into a land that made sense –– upstate maybe or out west, a place that aimless twenty somethings settled into like sand on a layer of glue.

I would catch the L at Wilson and take it across the bridge to Union Square at the same time as the street vendors and morning TV crews, all of us staring at nothing across subways and in empty platforms, imagining ourselves into other lives. Then I’d catch the 4 up to Woodlawn just as most of my students would be eating breakfast, willing myself into waking up in time to teach a class on To Kill a Mockingbird or All Quiet on the Western Front, or whatever unrelatable lesson plan I had been assigned to teach that day.

One year and I was burned out, pushed out of the Bronx and New York City altogether by my own incompetence and inability to mold my life to the thrum of the city while expecting it to mold itself to me. A classic New York failure story. I moved out the next summer with a teaching degree and a year of trauma under my belt and $250 in my savings account.

I teach fifth grade in the burbs now at a school with a compost heap and an annual gala planned by their Parent Teacher Association with literary themed cocktails. Tequila Mockingbird, the moms order at the bar and laugh and laugh and laugh. The same moms who storm into my classroom during parent-teacher meetings to demand I structure my lessons around Tommy’s learning style. He really prefers to meditate while learning math, I’m sure that won’t trouble you.

After five years, teaching here has settled into this one-note, tasteless, perfectly straight road leading nowhere. Until I met Paul under the desks, smelling like Bubblicious and Old Spice.

I can’t fully explain what this sense of closeness is with a man whose life I just hover around, but it’s addicting. I want him to know me without having to risk an emotional investment; I want to know him without worrying about his attachments to the world outside of me.

I don’t tell my friends any of this. I let Paul float like a fantasy coloring my living reality. During the day, I watch him from across the playground, chasing kids across the blacktop with his arms flailing wildly. But at night, he is the person who infects my thoughts just as I’ve released conscious control while falling asleep, the one who sneaks into my dreams and smiles 32 moons.

On Monday, Paul comes in and he looks like a new man, his face aglow and doing everything but literally whistling as he saunters down the hallway. I wait until lunch and corner him in the teacher’s lounge. “You look happy. Anything in particular?”

He whirls towards me and for a second I think he’s going to lift me up in the air or something he’s got so much energy. “I proposed,” he says, his eyes sparkling.

“You what?” I say, forgetting to be cool or calm or collected or all of the other things I imagine a Cosmopolitan article titled “10 Tips & Tricks for Reacting to When the Man You Thought You Loved Gets Engaged” might suggest.

“I proposed, Nell. Jenna said yes. We’re getting married! Obviously, it’s going to be crazy. We trying to do it by the end of the summer, you know, while she’s still got energy and before the next round of chemo, but we’re doing it. Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re doing it.” This is the most I’ve ever seen him talk, except when he’s high and talking about the history of astronomical discovery or something else I thought he only talked about with me. I know better now.

“Holy shit, dude. That’s incredible. How incredible! What an incredible thing.” Does he notice that I’m repeating myself because my brain’s buffering and can’t move past it? “I’m so happy for you,” I say, hoping that he can’t hear the flatness of my voice from his perch in the clouds.

I can’t look at him, the joy radiating from him, the love he sees beyond the walls of this elementary school, the future he sees with a woman who might not make it past the next teacher appreciation party. I hate how much I hate a woman whose body is literally crumbling inside her but whenever I think about the love she’s taken from him, I can only think bitch, bitch, bitch like a metronome in head.

0 notes