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thevindicativevordan · 3 years

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Why isn't Nightwing a bigger deal? He has all of Batman's skills and Superman's faith in humanity and is arguably the most beloved hero in the DCU, but most people seem to know him either as the leader of the N̶o̶t̶ ̶J̶L̶ Teen Ttians or just Robin.

Thank you for asking me about Nightwing, I've been wanting to write a piece about him for a while now. The short version is that everyone who claims Dick becoming Nightwing was him "moving out of Batman's shadow and becoming his own man" is completely wrong.

Dick Grayson is a fantastic character, someone who saved Bruce Wayne in-universe both by forcing Batman to grow up a bit, and the countless times he saved Batman's life as his partner whether as Robin or Nightwing. Dick saved Batman in the real world as well, hard to believe but Batman was actually in danger of being cancelled due to poor sales early on. Enter Robin, a young daredevil audience stand in the creators hoped would get kids interested in reading Batman. And it worked! Sales on Batman doubled once Robin showed up which is crazy to think about, but Dick Grayson has always been a popular character. Cartoons like Teen Titans, Batman: The Animated Series, and The Batman only helped grow his audience.

Character-wise, Dick Grayson really does fill a number of crucial roles in the DCU. For Batman, Dick is proof that Batman is a positive force. Meeting Batman helped change Dick for the better, helped him heal after his parents died. With Dick, Batman can take comfort in knowing that yes, he has made a difference in the world for at least one orphan boy, which is all he wanted when he lost his parents himself. To the wider DCU, Dick is a friendly face who convinces others that Batman is competent and not a complete asshole. He took this kid in, trained him to be one of the best heroes the DCU has seen, and did it all out of the kindness of his heart. That someone like Dick can confront the evils of Gotham and not break means there's still hope for that city. As Robin, Dick has led the Titans and is an icon in his own right as The Sidekick, the original, the one every other Robin is built around copying or contrasting. The one all other superhero sidekicks are drawing on as a basis. As Robin Dick Grayson is very much on Batman's level.

Just not as Nightwing. As Nightwing, Dick has been a second rate Daredevil which means he's a third rate Batman (fully prepared to get hate for this but I've read and enjoyed the Miller and Bendis DD runs so I feel entitled to my opinion). A typical Nightwing run tends to go like this: Moving to Bludhaven (which is Gotham... but WORSE!), Dick Grayson usually enrolls in a pointless job we don't care about in order to provide some meaningless soap opera drama that doesn't go anywhere. Patrolling the city as Nightwing, he fights a variety of bad guys who are usually rather lame and unthreatening, with his big bad being a Kingpin knockoff called Blockbuster. Villains are fought, long running plotlines are set up, then everything is abandoned because it's Batfamily event time, and Dick has to run back to Gotham in order to play sidekick again. Usually his involvement is completely superfluous and it would've been better if the writer had gotten to opt out. By the time we finally get back to Nightwing's solo plotlines, the audience has usually ceased to care and the run gets cut short.

That's how Nightwing has been since the New 52 at least. Anyone who thinks that's "becoming their own man" is out of their mind. Dick is so thoroughly in Batman's shadow that he got shot in the head and spent a longer time as "Ric" which everyone fucking hated and sold like shit, than he did as Agent Grayson which was extremely well-received. Reiterating: Ric went on longer than Grayson because of a fucking Batman plotpoint Tom King wanted where Bruce was sad and cut off from the Batfamily because of Dick getting shot. Not just calling out King either, how many times was Kyle Higgins Nightwing run derailed because of Scott Snyder's crossovers? Or how about that entire run getting dumped to the side because Johns wanted to out Dick during Forever Evil, a Justice League/Lex Luthor story? DC has repeatedly made their contempt for Nightwing clear, he's Batman's sidekick still in their eyes, and he serves whatever story role the Batman writer wants.

Hell his best stories tend to have been the ones where he's not Nightwing. He was Robin in a good chunk of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans run. Morrison really showcased his depth as a character when they wrote him as Batman, their time with Dick under the cowl was actually one of the first Batman runs I ever read, and no Nightwing run has ever matched it in terms of quality in my humble opinion. Scott Snyder's work with DickBats also was a high point for the character, showing Dick as competent and examining his relationship with Gotham and the Gordons. King and Seeley gave him one of the best comic runs with Grayson, a series where he wasn't even a "superhero" technically! When it comes to actual pre-New 52 Nightwing runs that are highly recommended where he *is* Nightwing, there's Chuck Dixon and uhhhhhhh... Tomasi's brief run before Dick became Batman? It's not exactly an overwhelming list.

Look there has been good work done with Nightwing, I'm not claiming there hasn't been. Tim Seeley wrote a great run with Nightwing Rebirth. Seeley fleshed out Dick's Rogues Gallery with cool new ones like Raptor, he brought back old foes like Dr. Hurt (why oh why couldn't you have brought back Flamingo too?), he gave Dick's world some character it solely needed. Bludhaven under Seeley is pretty much the only time I've really felt like it lived up to being Dick's city.

The problem with fictional cities is you have to put in the work to give them the character of real cities. You have to make the cities feel like characters in their own right. Gotham is the best example of this, it's a character all it's own, one that tells you a lot about Batman and his cast. In contrast Bludhaven is usually one of the worst. Any place that wants to claim to be worse than the city that is built over the gate to hell and gets wrecked every other month by the Arkham freaks has to really put in the work to compete. Simply put, Bludhaven typically fails utterly. There's nothing about it that makes you really buy it's worse than Gotham, I mean does anyone really think Nightwing's Rogues wouldn't get their lunches eaten by Batman's? No, no one genuinely buys that. When Bludhaven claims to be worse, it just comes across as tryhard, an attribute that does end up telling you about Nightwing in unintentional ways.

So Seeley didn't do that. Instead he created a city built for a hero like Dick Grayson. Someone who is bright and flashy, but does have an element of darkness to him. Someone who loves the spotlight, but often uses it to obscure. Seeley turned Bludhaven into Las Vegas, and that was the fucking best concept for Bludhaven I have ever seen, it makes so much sense. Las Vegas is the "Entertainment Capital of the World" and isn't that the perfect city for a hero who got their start working in the circus? Isn't the aesthetics of the gleaming casinos, the glamorous sex appeal of the performers, and the spectacle of the shows, all being used to cover up the seediness of mob bosses meeting backstage perfect for Nightwing? It's so utterly unlike New York City, yet Las Vegas is still dangerous, it's got a crime culture all it's own. Seeley used it to great effect, as did Humphries during his brief run, and I will always be pissed that DC didn't continue to use it. That should have stuck around and been the definitive look for Bludhaven.

How Seeley's take on Bludhaven was treated feels like a small scale version of how Nightwing in general gets treated. Whenever creators pitched ideas for him, if editorial thought there was potential to break big, they asked for those ideas to be repurposed for Batman instead. Anything big or good gets repurposed for Batman or tossed to the side so Nightwing can go back to his default: having irrelevant adventures in a city that is supposedly worse than Gotham but can't live up to it. Just like how Nightwing is supposedly better than Batman but never gets to show it. Goddamn it's so frustrating seeing his potential get wasted like that.

The Nightwing book should be one of DC's most ambitious books in terms of storytelling. You can go from traditional superhero stories, to romantic soap opera, to spy stories, to crime noir, to horror, to cosmic adventures, and ALL of them would fit because Nightwing is someone who has a foot in both Gotham and Metropolis. He's got friends everywhere on every team, and has been a hero longer than most Leaguers have at this point. No reason DC should still be afraid to let him loose and insisting on hewing close to what Dixon established almost over 30 years ago is only holding him back. At the very least get him some better Rogues, why the hell didn't he get to keep Professor Pyg? That's Dick's villain not Bruce's! Bullshit that they didn't let Dick keep him. Hopefully Flamingo comes back, with a slight revamp I think he'd make a great reoccurring Nightwing Rogue.

Luckily it does look somewhat like Nightwing fans have reason to be optimistic. While Taylor isn't to my taste, DC clearly views him as a "big" writer, and that they put him on Nightwing says a lot. Taylor has been selling well so far, so hopefully he gets to tell his story, hilarious that even he lampshaded having to write Dick running over to Gotham for another tie-in after Taylor's big opening arc was all about Dick committing himself and his money to Bludhaven. Scott Snyder is apparently working on a Black Label Nightwing book which will explore how he's a different detective than Bruce. The Gotham Knights video game has him as one of the main stars, and while Titans is... controversial, it's one of the most popular streaming shows and Dick is the main character. There's a lot of content coming that features him in the starring role, and that will only help his star rise further.

For the first time in, well, ever it feels like DC may be serious about elevating him. Time will tell if it pays off, but I for one choose to be optimistic that the 2020s will be a turning point for Dick Grayson where Nightwing becomes hugely popular in his own right. Not just as Batman's sidekick.

#nightwing #dick grayson #batman #gotham knights #titans #dc comics

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novelconcepts · 3 years

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Jamie & Dani short prompt- Online Dating au meeting online and being from bad past relationship. Thank u

This is probably a bad idea. It is, isn’t it? Almost certainly.

Why is she here?

Dani Clayton has been playing this particular set of thoughts--bad idea, terrible idea, why would you do this?--on repeat for three days. Ever since setting up that dating profile. Ever since realizing there isn’t much use in setting up a dating profile if you’re not going to use it.

Oh, it’s all fun and games, building the thing. Find a photo that accentuates all the best parts of your face--Dani, after an hour of careful consideration, wound up going with one that accentuated her hair, more than anything, but she suspects the same idea counts. Then, the profile. What do you like? Teaching, long walks, new experiences, bad coffee. What don’t you like?

Men, she’d thought, and snorted aloud into her wine before settling on: Deep water, accordion music, expectations, being called Danielle.

A little more flourish, tipsy keystrokes, a casually-framed short-version of her life. Perfect. And then...well, then you hit the publish button, don’t you? You decide, for better or worse, to jump off this diving board and see just how far you can stand to swim before the energy gives out on you.

The faces appearing before her hadn’t been bad, certainly. Pretty, most of them. Interesting, a few. Still, she hadn’t swiped right on any--once or twice, because she’d forgotten which way meant yes please, but mostly because no one seemed quite...right. Which, she’d thought, was silly. The whole point of an app like this is to cast as many nets as possible and see what comes up. The whole point is to have fun.

But every time she’d hovered over a promising image, a woman who likes dogs, or plays the violin, or goes rock-climbing in her spare time, she’d thought of him. Eddie. Who had taken one yes to a single date, and tried to make a whole life with her out of it.

Eddie, who had taken her two decades to pull away from.

What if the women here were the same? Not Eddie, exactly, but--presumptive. What if they believed a swipe-right was as good as a marriage proposal? What if she got bound up in conversation, and then a date, and then a relationship with someone else who just didn’t fit right?

Left. Left. Left.

And then: the mistake.

She hadn’t meant to swipe right. Exactly. She hadn’t planned, maybe is the better way of putting it, on swiping right. She’d only wanted to look at the woman’s profile a little longer. Only wanted to inspect the facets this woman had put out on display with almost resigned simplicity.

Some people, Dani had by now realized, wrote poetry and paragraphs to describe themselves.

Jamie Taylor had bullet points.

“Gardener. English. Likes: Plants. Stories. Tea. Dislikes: Bullshit.”

The end. That had been quite literally the sum of it. Gardener. English. No bullshit.

But the picture, somehow, Dani hadn’t been able to look away from. Not because of carefully-arranged lighting, not because of a curated model-clean image--but because the woman appeared to have posted the photo almost under duress. It came in profile, as though someone else had done the job, her head turned toward the camera as if interrupted. Her hands were buried in a flower pot. Her clothes were simple--a tank top, a silver chain resting against the jut of collarbones, a pair of worn-looking jeans with holes in the knees. Her eyes--some fascinating color Dani couldn’t quite place--looked somewhere between amused and irritated.

She looked real.

Stupid, Dani thinks now--because that was probably the idea, wasn’t it? This woman, Jamie, had planned to look exactly this way. Real. Vexed at the idea of putting herself out there. Reluctantly available.

It was a ploy, certainly--but one that seems to be working, because not only did Dani accidentally-not-accidentally swipe right, she found herself texting the woman. For hours. She’d expected much less, had figured this Jamie person would be as brief in text as she had been in bio, but...

Jamie had talked to her. Willingly. Teasingly, with more humor than truth, maybe, but with no sign at all that she was sick of Dani’s questions, bad jokes, nervous assessment that I really don’t do this, I honestly don’t get it.

I don’t, either, Jamie had replied, and that had felt like enough of a reason to keep testing the waters. Enough of a reason to keep the conversation going back and forth, back and forth, until nearly two in the morning.

Shit, she’d said. I need to be at work in four hours.

Shame, Jamie had replied, her tone already searingly familiar over text. Own your own business, make your own hours. Far wiser approach.

I’ll make a note of it for when I found an elementary school, Dani had replied, laughing. She hadn’t said she’d already been in bed for an hour, the phone resting on the pillow beside her head so she wouldn’t miss the buzz of a new message. It had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, with wine-warmed blood and the happy haze of good conversation. Jamie made her laugh. Jamie put her at ease. Jamie might not have been real, but she felt real, and that was good.

Better than anything she’d felt in years, if she was honest with herself.

Still, when the next day had come and gone with no message, she’d thought, Fair enough. Jamie had been good virtual company for one night. It was more than she’d expected to get out of this app.

Far more than she’d expected, particularly when Thursday night rolled around and her phone buzzed.

Teacher, yeah? No school on Saturday?

Correct, Dani had replied, as amused by the out-of-left-field text as she was irritated with how her stomach had flipped over upon receiving it. You have figured out the complexity of the American school system.

I am a genius, Jamie sent back, followed quickly by: Drinks tomorrow night?

Drinks. A thing that people do. A thing that adult people do for date reasons.

She isn’t real, she’d thought, even as her thumb was punching back: How’s 8? Miller’s?

A mistake. Definitely a mistake. Because the app had been a lark, and the conversation had been too easy, and the fact that she can’t quite pick out the colors in Jamie’s eyes from a single photo is making her crazier than she’d like to admit.

A mistake, saying yes. A mistake, suggesting the local pub-like establishment around the corner, whose beer-and-burger specials had kept her fed on too many evenings spent working late. A mistake, because once this goes south--as it’s absolutely bound to, as everything Eddie-shaped always has--she’s going to lose her favorite hangout in the deal, too.

And yet: here she is. Standing at the door, wondering if the outfit chosen for the evening festivities--tight jeans, pink blouse, hoop earrings--is too much or not nearly enough.

What am I doing here?

Maybe, she thinks with mingled alarm and hope, she won’t even have showed up. Maybe it’s all part of the ruse: look approachable, look human and normal, look a little too beautiful in the most grounded way possible--then, cheerfully, invite a woman to drinks and just don’t show. A fun story for whoever comes next. Can you believe she thought I’d want to meet her after one night of texting?

“Dani?”

English, Dani thinks with a sudden rush of heat. Right. Somehow, she hadn’t quite been prepared for the accent, which--coming out of this woman, draped with languid ease at a table--is truly a little more than Dani thinks she can handle just now. The accent, combined with the mess of curls dragged back from her face, and a dress sense that manages to be both casual and deeply attractive at the same time, is...

“Jamie,” she says, her voice a little lower, a little more hoarse, than is truly necessary. The woman pushes up from her seat, a small-framed figure in a black button-down, suspenders, ripped jeans. She’s pressing a hand toward Dani, offering a firm shake as though they are business partners, not an off-the-cuff bad idea of a date. “You look--”

“Never been here before,” Jamie says, almost apologetically. She gestures for Dani to sit before dropping back down in a sprawl that implies exactly the opposite of what her mouth is insisting. “Wasn’t sure about the, ah, dress code.”

“You--you did fine,” Dani tells her, wishing suddenly she’d gone for a dress. Or a different human body altogether. She feels too tightly-strung, too anxious for the easy smile on Jamie’s lips. “Um. You’re very. In person.”

“Very,” Jamie repeats, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. “Is very American for wish I’d gone left, after all?”

“No. No. Absolutely not. That.” Bit too forceful, she suspects, judging by the smile spreading into a grin. “No, it’s just--your picture didn’t--tell me you’d be so...”

“Clean?” Jamie suggests innocently. She raises her hands, wiggling her fingers in a small wave. “Scrub up fine, when I need to. Seemed to call for it.”

“And you...sure did answer,” Dani says stupidly. “The. Call, I mean. I’m sorry, I really don’t do this often.”

Something seems to soften in Jamie, her smile less teasing as she leans across the table. “Hey, no worries here. Same person you were talking to the other night.”

Dani nods, embarrassed, and flags down a server. Drinks ordered, she draws in a deep breath.

“I mean, I haven’t done this in years. Or. Ever, I guess.”

“A first date?” Jamie asks. When Dani doesn’t answer, she adds in a knowing tone, “A date with a woman?”

“Both,” Dani says honestly. “My last relationship was--well, I mean, we were engaged--”

Jamie whistles under her breath, reaching up to scratch her head. “Blimey. What happened?”

“He’s...him.” It’s too much to go into on a first date, too much to explain, even though talking to Jamie over text had been so dangerously easy. “My best friend growing up, but that was...growing up.”

Jamie nods thoughtfully, tilting her chin in thanks when the server deposits two full pint glasses and a basket of fries on the table. “Rough time, sounds like. I can relate. My last relationship also did not go well.”

“Was he also a man who thought you’d be all too happy to quit your job and take care of a bunch of babies?” Dani asks, perhaps a little too bitterly for the occasion. Jamie flashes another grin, sipping her drink.

“She was a woman who thought I’d be all too happy to take the fall when she got busted for possession.”

Dani gapes. “Oh. Oh--I didn’t know--I’m so--”

Jamie shrugs. “She wasn’t wrong. I was nineteen, and deeply stupid. Live and learn, as the poets say.”

“Which poets?” Dani asks, smiling a little. Jamie’s brow furrows.

“John...Lennon, possibly? Hard to say. Anyway, relationships are a chore and a half, but the greatest people in the world tell me thirty is too old to play musical bedframes, so. Here we are.”

No bullshit, thinks Dani approvingly. For what little she’d put into her profile, Jamie evidently hadn’t been lying about that.

“You haven’t been in a relationship since you were nineteen?”

“In my mind, I was still in the relationship at twenty-four, when they let me out. She didn’t agree. Found out she’d been married two years, by then.” Something darkens in Jamie’s eyes for a moment. She sighs. “Like I said. Not my finest. But I am, as they say, a shining beacon of reform these days.”

“Now, when you say they,” Dani teases, grinning. Jamie nods decisively.

“John Lennon. Definitively.”

There it is, thinks Dani, watching Jamie pop a fry into her mouth. There, the easy roll of conversation from the other night. As though they’ve known each other forever. As though two people who have thus far failed irrevocably at relationships make a perfect match.

Easy, she thinks. Don’t go wild, now.

“So,” she says, when the comfortable silence between them has grown a bit too comfortable for the setting, “who are the greatest people in the world? The ones who tell you thirty is too old for...did you say musical bedframes?”

Jamie laughs. The ring of it curls gently around Dani’s head like a soft hand, a sound she’ll find herself replaying later with a skipping heart.

“Not many willing to put up with a grump of my caliber, but Hannah and Owen fight the good fight. So long as I at least pretend to try.”

“Let me guess. They set up the account for you?”

Jamie makes a sort of gesture in the air with the hand not holding her glass. “Threatened to bury me in puns and children, respectively, if I kept putting it off. Owen’s still grumpy about the photo choice.”

“I liked it,” Dani says without thinking. Jamie raises an eyebrow.

“Well, you did swipe as much. Mind if I ask why?”

Walked into this one. Still, she doesn’t mind as much as she probably should, not with the genuine curiosity in Jamie’s eyes. “You looked--don’t laugh.”

“No promises,” Jamie says, but with the gentle tone of one who knows exactly how much to tease before it’ll hurt. The idea warms Dani in a way she’s not quite ready to look at yet.

“You looked real,” Dani says. “Like you weren’t going to play games, or waste anyone’s time. Like you just wanted to be happy in peace.”

“That is,” Jamie says, holding out a fry for Dani to take, “sort of the idea, yeah.”

There’s an almost puzzled cast to her smile, like she didn’t entirely expect this answer, and is pleased by it at the same time. That same sense from the photo sweeps over Dani now--that this woman is authentic, even if she’s not always shiny, that she’s kind even if not entirely clean. That she doesn’t have any interest in muddled expectation or living a comfortable lie.

“And me?” Dani asks. She doesn’t entirely mean to--but she’s sure, in asking, that Jamie will answer. Jamie is unlike anyone else she’s ever met, the first person she’s ever known to meet each question head-on.

“Honestly?”

Dani nods. Jamie seems to consider it, turning it over in her head as she twists a fry between her fingers like a cigarette.

“All of it.”

“That’s,” Dani begins to laugh, “that’s not--”

“No,” Jamie says, and she isn’t smiling, exactly. Her eyes have a sort of shine Dani likes very much, but there is no hint of teasing in them now. “Really. All of it. You’re...very pretty, and that’s--but the way you described yourself. Like you didn’t care to be anyone in particular. You like new experiences, and bad coffee. You hate being called Danielle. I...I wanted to know why.”

“It’s not my name,” Dani says simply. Jamie gives a brief laugh, her hand moving across the table to lightly brush Dani’s fingertips.

“I wanted to know why all of it. Why do you like bad coffee--”

“It’s the only kind I know how to make,” Dani says automatically. “Just sort of leaned into it.”

“--and teaching--”

“I want to make a difference,” Dani says.

“--and where you most like to go on those long walks--”

“Anywhere I can breathe,” Dani says. Her fingers are hesitant, tracing the tips of Jamie’s. There’s something electric about this, about barely touching, about barely knowing someone and still wanting to give them neatly-packaged secrets shaped like the mundane.

Jamie is smiling. “See, that. I like that. All of it.”

It’s nothing, Dani thinks reflexively. A collection of details. A sparse approximation of a life. Eddie knows all of this, and then some, and never matched up to knowing her.

But this woman, leaning across the table with one hand outstretched, looks so different. Watches her with steady interest. Is listening to every word Dani says, though the bar is growing crowded around them, and soon, conversation will become a task instead of a gift.

“Would you,” Dani says, feeling certain that some mistakes are not as bad as they seem, “like to take one of those walks?”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. Tonight.” Emboldened by the smile, by the curl falling into Jamie’s eyes, by the knowledge that she still can’t quite make out what color those eyes are, Dani takes her hand. It’s so easy, she thinks she could do it even without looking. “Right now.”

No bullshit, she thinks. No expectations. Just Jamie looking at her like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing. Dani can’t blame her. This isn’t at all what she’d thought she was getting, walking in tonight.

But there’s something about it--something about the feeling that she’s been here before, or should be here forever, or will always find her way back to a woman who looks at her just like this--that almost makes her feel brave. Almost makes her feel wonderful. She rises from the table, laying cash beneath her half-empty glass, and feels a pleasant jolt in her chest when Jamie follows without another word.

If this a mistake, she thinks as they step out into the brisk evening air, it’s one she’s hungry to make.

#fanfiction #ficlet #the haunting of bly manor #dani x jamie #damie #okay I liked this one way more than planned #it's sort of nice doing a modern AU under a million words long

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writefasttalkevenfaster · 3 years

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Take My Hand (Part Five)

Summary: everything is perfect, only when its not (five of ??? parts - more parts to come!)

Pairings: Sonny Carisi x Reader, Rafael Barba x Reader

Word Count: 5,985

Song: Oh, I can't / Stop you putting roots in my dreamland / My house of stone, your ivy grows / And now I'm covered in you (ivy by taylor swift)

Warnings: T, swearing, lots of fluff but some angst sprinkled throughout, a mild foray into “sightless in a savage land” (22x04) (basic facts of the case), also the v*rus doesn’t exist b/c i don’t want to live in reality.

A/N: finally we’ve gotten to the actual premise of this fic!! i don’t know what to say thank you to all of you for reading, your comments and reblogs have kept me going! thank you to @laneygthememequeen and @bucky-of-the-opera for being the best beta readers!!

“What is this?” Sonny asks, a hesitant half murmur into your ear, the two of you curled in his living room, your head resting against his chest, your legs tangled in each other’s in bed — his fingers tracing a circle on your hip, his teeth bearing down on his lip, And you turn to face him, your elbow propped up on the pillow, head tilted.

“What do you mean?” he pauses, pursing his lip, “Sonny—”

“I know it’s early,” it had been about two weeks of bliss — weekends spent at each other’s places, week nights spent keeping the other company —- a routine so natural you didn’t know how you had spent three years without him by your side. His hand moves to cup his cheek, and his lips move to kiss your palm, resting his over your cheek, “but it’s also three years late.”

A soft chuckle leaves your lips, “Already looking to put down roots?”

He shifts slowly, until he’s hovering over you, his breath warming your lips and his eyes even warmer, “Always when it’s you,” but there is a soft of disbelief that is already taken root in your heart — months and months before this had began — its poisonous roots already twisted around your chest. Planted from the seeds of doubt and false promises, of plied kisses and fake reassurances — none of which Sonny had done.

And yet — he sees you hesitate, and the hurt ricochets from his eyes right to his heart, and he begins to pull away, “If it’s too early—”

“No, no, Sonny,” your fingers find purchase at the back of his neck, tugging him gently back to him, his eyes finding yours with reluctance, “It’s not too early. I’m just—” you needed to tell him, you wanted to tell him when this had first begun, but it was too hard — too difficult to burst the bubble the two of you had made a home in, without talk of reality, “I need to tell you about something.”

But you needed to.

He furrows his brow, and you bite your lip, shifting so that both of you were sitting up, your back pressed against his headrest, “Before, any of this — before I even met you,” you lick your lips, twisting your fingers in your lap, “you remember I was seeing someone right?”

“I do,” he frowns, “you don’t have to—”

“No, I have to,” you’re practically chewing your bottom lip now, “you deserve an explanation—” he deserved it a long time ago.

He purses his lips, but nods, “Well, that was the reason I had to leave,” you raise your eyes to meet his, “the idea of seeing him every day—at the office—I couldn’t do it.”

And the pieces seem to click together for Sonny, “It was—”

The name dies on his lips, just as your relationship with the A.D.A. did, “It was Rafael,” it had been so long since his name had been on your lips that it was now unfamiliar, the same syllables that had made a home on your tongue — said between laughs at the office, whispered in his ear, muttered against his lips — now was a stranger’s, the vowels and consonants foreign, “we tried — I tried to make it work, but he never wanted a relationship.”

“Sweetheart,” Sonny whispers, and you shake your head.

“Every time, I said I wanted more, he never did,” you knew it was wrong — you knew you deserved more, but you still did it, you tolerated it, “I stayed, I hoped things would change, but they didn’t. The night I came to you — we had fought, I had tried to end things, and what I did—” the words spilled from your lips, but you refused to let any tears spill — no, you had shed far too many over him, “I left because I was ashamed, I was so ashamed of letting myself get into that situation.”

He’s silent a moment, before speaking, “You were in love with him,” his fingers slowly intertwine with yours, “and everyone does stupid things when they are in love.”

“I was,” And you let yourself stew in silence of that truth, for a moment, before squeezing his fingers, your eyes finding his gaze with a small smile, “but not anymore.”

“And what does that mean for us?” he asks.

“I just don’t want things to go wrong like it did with him,” you were always waiting for the other shoe to drop — for something to go wrong, and when you spend your time waiting for something to go wrong, it usually did, but at least you expected it, “I don’t want to lose you.”

“In case you didn’t notice,” he tilts your chin up with two fingers, “I’m not him.”

“I know,” your forehead falls against his, his arms wrapping around you, “I know.”

“You’re leaving me in suspense here, doll,” he mutters, his thumb brushing against your cheek, “but it’s okay if you’re not ready—”

You lean back, “I don’t know what this is, but,” you press a kiss to his lips, and he tastes like home — not one that would crack beneath your feet, but one that was steady and strong, “I know I only want you.”

“Sh—” Sonny cut himself off, sucking air between his teeth, as he stared at the pile of paperwork he had accidentally knocked off his desk in his office. Some office, a shoebox fit for a junior A.D.A. — one that he could barely fit his desk into — it had taken three different people to maneuver his desk into his office. He sighed, slipping from his chair and rounding his desk and now on his knees, gathering the papers off the floor.

But what did he expect? For them to hand over the keys to Barba’s old office? He felt an odd twinge at the thought of his name — he was his mentor, his friend (at least he’d like to think so), and yet, it felt like he was living in his shadow still. With the squad, with his bosses, with—

“Counselor,” you knock on his door, leaning against frame of the doorway to his office, until you see the papers, and bend down to pick them up, “this would be a really good meet-cute if we haven’t met before,”

“Too bad,” he smiles up at you, before you lean forward and press a kiss to his lips, and his hand cups your cheek, your tongue tracing his bottom lip, “Doll,” his voice drops an octave.

“Not all bad, huh?” you breathe, grinning, breaking the kiss to help him pick up the rest of the paperwork, his eyes falling back onto the pile, and the stress creeps back into his shoulders, “now I’m guessing you weren’t throwing these papers up in a victory celebration, were you?”

“Not exactly,” he sighs, both of you getting to your feet, as he moves to shut the door, collapsing in his chair, “when did you start to feel good at your job?”

You lean against the edge of his desk, “What’s wrong?”

“I asked you first,” and you shake your head.

“You don’t— if you’re any good you question yourself every step of the way, you think carefully with every choice you make,” you cross your arms, “Sonny, they say your first year as a lawyer is akin to your first year in law school — how did you feel as a 1L?”

He folds his arms, “Incompetent, like everyone had the answers except me, and that I was gonna fail outta school,”

“And did you?”

“No, you’re right,” he leans back in his chair, “I just didn’t think this would be this hard,”

“It’s something new,” your fingers find his, “of course it’s going to be hard, but you’ll get the hang of it — I know you will. And you’ll screw up, you’ll make mistakes, but everyone does—” you grimace, “remind me to tell you about the time I got grilled by Judge Lopez for my mistake during discovery.”

“Bad?” you shudder.

“I still have nightmares,” and he cracks a smile, and your lips curl too, “there’s that smile that I—” you cut off, sucking your bottom lip into your mouth.

And Sonny can’t help the way his lips split into a grin, “What was that?”

“Sonny—” but you can’t escape because he’s already got you trapped, rising to his feet and pressing you into the lip of his desk. And he kisses you, relishing in how you melt into his touch, your fingers twisted in his hair, your other hand resting on his shoulder. His lips draw a path down your neck, kissing right above your leaping pulse, “I—”

“Mm?” he murmurs against your warm skin.

And he knew it was too soon to be saying those three words — it hadn’t been enough time, but there was something about you that made reason disappear between the tips of his fingers, and he was only left holding you.

“I love your smile,” you lean up to kiss him again, softly and wholly, “you should do it more often.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let’s go,” and his eyes fall back to the pile of papers on his desk, but you draw your attention back to him, small kisses dotting his face — his chin, his cheeks, his neck, “it’s late, and you’re exhausted, and these cases will be here in the morning.”

“But—”

“Is everything for tomorrow taken care of? Is there anything pressing?” he pauses, before shaking his head, and you find his lips again, before sliding off the desk, holding your hand out to him, “let’s go.”

He takes your hand, fingers laced together, grabbing his jacket, and shutting off the light, casting the room into shadow, and spared a glance at the room, before he allowed you to lead him out of Hogan Place.

Maybe he didn’t have to worry about a shadow after all.

“Come on, you gotta let me do something,” you leaned against Sonny’s kitchen counter, watching him cut tomatoes, “I have to be able to help.”

“Not after last time,” he replies, a wry smile on his lips, “not happening, sweetheart, no matter how much you pout at me.”

“Oh come on, I didn’t cut myself that—” he raised an eyebrow, “okay I burned myself once, but—”

“And the injuries are not just limited to you—” he held up his hand, where a faint scar could be seen, “if it was just you getting hurt, maybe I’d let you help.”

“Ouch,” you feign mock hurt, before shrugging and sipping at your drink, watching him finish, crushing the tomatoes with the flat side of his blade before placing them in the pot with olive oil, onions, and garlic, “but it is sexy to watch you cook.”

He snorts, gesturing to his stained apron, “This is sexy to you?”

“I have needs,” you smile against the rim of the glass, “and those include being fed.”

“Well, good thing we got that covered,” he sets a timer, turning his back to stir the pot, and you bite your lip, as your eyes rake over him until you reach one of your more favorite features— “are you staring at me?”

“Yes,” you reply unabashedly, and he glances over his shoulder, lips curled, “but I think I rather do more than look,”

“Oh yeah?” you can hear the smirk in his voice, “well, you’re gonna have to wait until after I finish.”

You round the counter silently, until your arms are wrapping around his middle, leaning to press a kiss to his neck, “What if I don’t want to wait?”

“Doll,” he warns, but your hands continue to slide up and down his sides and front, “the sauce will burn—”

But you’re turning him around anyway, your hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down to your lips, his smile presses against your lips, and then he’s kissing you back, his back pressed against the counter. He tastes a little like tomato and you know he must have been tasting the meal as he went. His large hands sliding down to your waist and squeezing.

You gasp and he’s grinning, swallowing your noise with pleasure, and he takes control from you easily, and suddenly the lip of the counter is digging into your skin, and then he breaks the kiss, smiling, “What?” you ask, laughing.

“I was just remembering the first time we cooked together,” he traces your cheek, “I never thought we’d end up here.”

You raise an eyebrow, “Did you want to end up here?” and he clears his throat, the pink flushing across his cheeks a tell tale sign, “did you have a crush on me?”

“Sweetheart,” he sighs, a begrudging smile gracing his face when he hears you laugh, before he leans closer, “so what if I did?”

What if he wanted to end up here — holding you like he was, imagined briefly what it would be like to hold your hand, to fall asleep next to you, to hear your thoughts — and he did, and he kisses your forehead — and he didn’t want to question how.

“Well I got good news and bad news,” you kiss him again, languidly, “good news is that I most definitely have a little more than a crush on you,” and he snorts, your lips smiling as they press kisses across the length of his jaw, “bad news is I think your sauce may be burning—”

“Oh shi—” and he’s rushing over to the pot to see what he can salvage, while you are carefully peering over his shoulder, “go sit,” he wags a finger at you, “you’re a danger to the process.”

“Yes sir,” and you don’t miss the way he looks at you — and you smile as you watch him begin to cook the pasta — you’ll have to keep that in mind for dessert.

“Are you sure you want me to come?” you tugged nervously at your clothes, straightening everything for the twentieth time, “I don’t want to intrude on your family—”

“You’re not intruding,” he presses a kiss to the top of your head, “It’s Theresa’s engagement party—you’re doing me a favor by coming—” he wraps his arms around you from behind, watching you scrutinize yourself in front of the mirror, “they are going to love you, relax.”

You murmur, “How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve told them about you — my mom is the one who basically begged me to bring you,” he kisses your cheek, lips lingering.

“You told them about me?” your heart squeezes, as he laughs, furrowing his brow.

“Of course I did,” he snorts, “do you think I could keep you a secret this long?” and you bite back a smile, chest warm, as you lift one of his hands to your lips, “plus, it doesn’t hurt that you’re beautiful, now does it?”

“Sonny,” you lean into his touch, lips finding the side of his face, “You’re sure that—”

He pulls away, facing you, “Do you not want to go?”

“No, no,” you shake your head, wringing your hands — you weren’t used to this, you were used to hiding in bedrooms, and sneaking kisses in between cases, not used to meeting the family and holding hands in public, “I’m just nervous.”

He presses a kiss to your forehead, “You have nothing to worry about — they’ll love you,” he smiles, “just like I do.”

Sonny had said the words a few days before — whispered in your ear after dinner, as the two of you curled up on the couch together, his arm wrapped around your shoulder, you had found him staring at you softly, a small smile on his lips.

“What?” you had asked, tilting your head.

“I love you,” he had said, “and you don’t have to say it back right this second, but I do, I love you, sweetheart.”

And you had wanted to say it back — burning on the tip of your tongue and deep in your chest, standing at the edge of a precipice, unable to see the bottom, but also unable to jump. But you knew he would catch you, you knew he would keep you safe — but—

You still couldn’t say it.

You lean up to kiss him, “I know.”

“So you’re the one my son’s always talking about,” it hadn’t been more than a minute since you stepped in Sonny’s home, the woman standing before you was none other than his mother.

“Ma,” she engulfs him in a hug, pressing kisses to his cheeks, “so this is—”

She cuts him off with your name, holding her hands out that you take, and she squeezes them, “I’ve heard so much about you — all good,” she elbows her son, “but not nearly enough about when you’re getting mar—”

You flush, while Sonny is gaping at his mom, “Mom—”

“I’m just joking, Dominick,” she laughs, she squeezes your hand again, “come on, let me introduce you to the rest of the family.”

Your introduction to the rest of the Carisi clan is relatively painless for you — though you can’t say the same for Sonny. You swore his skin turned several different shades of red — by his sisters alone.

“Is he going to be okay?” you ask Gina, as you gesture to Sonny standing with several of his cousins, who seemed to currently be ribbing him.

“He’s fine, he’s a big boy, he can handle himself,” Gina waves him off, leading you over to a couch where the rest of his sisters are sitting, “how long have you two been together?”

“It’s been a few months,” you smile.

“But you’ve known each other longer right?” Theresa asks, crossing her legs, “he’s mentioned your name before years ago I think?”

“Yeah, we used to work together,” you had a feeling where this was going, “I—”

“Yeah, yeah, you had left all of a sudden, right?” Bella tilts her head.

“I did,” you furrow your brow, and Theresa waves you off.

“Look, Sonny didn’t ask us to talk to you — he actually didn’t tell us any of this, but our brother isn’t hard to figure out,” Gina shakes her head, “we just—”

“Look—” you purse your lips, “I know you are trying to protect your brother, and I get that, I really do — so can I just say something?”

“I know I’ve done wrong by Sonny before, I have,” you lick your dry lips, hands in your lap, “I know, he knows. I don’t want to hurt him — I’m scared of hurting him.” you swallow thickly, “I just want you to know, I...love him”

You loved him — even if you couldn’t say it to him, you loved him. Your eyes drift to him easily — his lanky figure by the dining table, smiling at you — no matter where he was. It was a compass finding north — and he was home.

You continue, “If I could change what I did before, I would, but…”

They all glance at each other, shoulders relaxing, exchanging a smile, “Come on,” Bella squeezes your hand, “let’s get started with dinner.”

Your shoulder is brushing Sonny’s, his hand finding yours under the table, squeezing. The clinking of knives, spoons, and forks against plates accompanied with the boisterous conversation between the family booming — no one was sparing from the teasing in the Carisi family it seemed, a lull in the conversation is when you found yourself speaking, “The food is delicious, Mrs. Carisi—”

“Please call me Elena,” she had her son’s smile — a smile that consumed their entire face — even her sparkling blue eyes crinkling as his did, “What did Sonny say you did again?”

“Defense work,” you reply, “I used to have the same position as Sonny, but I moved on to a private criminal defense firm.”

“I bet the hours there are much more reasonable than Dominick’s,”

“Ma—”

“I’m just saying,” she lifts her hands in defense, “It would be nice if you could come home and see your family more than once a month now, wouldn’t it?”

You interrupt before Sonny can reply, “Well, I have my fair share of late nights as well. But you should see the work that Sonny is doing — he’s doing incredibly at the D.A.’s Office.”

You share a look with Sonny, a smile on his lips, “Someone’s exaggerating—”

“Someone doesn’t take enough credit when it’s due,” you bump him, and his arm is wrapping around your shoulder.

“He doesn’t,” Elena raises her eyebrows, “gets it from his father.”

Dominick Carisi Sr. was a little more of a mystery, slivered blonde hair and a small smile on his lips — a man of little words compared to his wife. You could see Sonny in his brow, in the same sharp bone structure, and even in the mustache that laid above his lips (although it suited much more than his son).

He offers you a smile, the conversation continuing, and you hold in a sigh, as Sonny pressed a kiss to your head.

It was going well. It was okay.

And after dessert — a delicious and quite-possibly-too-large serving of both tiramisu and cannolis — you found your way to the kitchen to wash up.

You passed by the wall of pictures — each picture was different in age — you spotted a few of the Carisi children together (Sonny was lanky even as a 8 year old), another of Sonny standing with his parents on his high school graduation, one of him receiving his promotion to detective, and another on his law school graduation — and there was another of his parents’ wedding, his mother and father standing side by side, smiling.

“Happiest day of my life,” a voice said behind you, and you found Dominick Carisi Sr. standing with his arms crossed, “can’t remember a single thing I regret about that day or any day after that. Well,” he frowns at the picture, “perhaps the choice of suit.”

You snort, “Well if that’s your only regret, I think you’re in good shape.”

“Do you want to get married?”

Wow, the intentions talk was coming at you from all angles today.

“I do, I think,” you smile, hands in your pockets, “I don’t know when—”

“As long as you do, someday,” he smiles, glancing at the pictures, “please take care of my son, okay?”

And your heart warms, glancing at the father of the man you loved, your gaze softening, “Of course, sir.”

His hand brushes your shoulder, giving you a nod, before he slips away from the kitchen, back to the festivities.

And you spared one more glance at the photo wall — falling onto the wedding picture yet again — and you let yourself wonder, if only for a moment, if your picture would be up there someday.

~~~

Eventually the party began to die down, and you found yourself slipping away again to use the bathroom right off the kitchen, before you and Sonny had to get ready to go. You were washing your hands when you heard quiet voices speaking in the kitchen. You pause, the voices floating through the walls.

“So when are you going to pop the question?" you raise your eyebrows — no one in the Carisi family pulled any punches, and you were starting to see why Sonny was so blunt to begin with when he came to S.V.U.

"Ma," you can hear the sigh in his voice, his brow most assuredly wrinkled.

"At least tell me this," she cuts him off, “Is this who you want to marry?”

Your heart catches in your throat, his soft reply stealing air from your lungs, “I think I do,”

“Have you told—”

“Not yet, Ma,” there’s clattering as they place the dishes in the sink, and you can’t hear the start of his sentence, “it’s too soon right now,”

“But eventually?” and your chest warms at the smile in his voice.

“Eventually.” he sighs, “now can we move on? Before you start asking me what my children’s names will be?”

“You two both want children right? Because I better be getting grandchildr—” their voices drift away as they head towards the living room, and you lean against the door, smiling for a moment.

The car door closes behind you, and Sonny relaxes, head against the headrest, “Thank you for—” But then your hands cup his face, and you’re leaning over the console to kiss him, and his brow is furrowed for a moment, before relaxing into your touch, “I—”

“I love you,” you breathe, eyes fluttering, and he’s blinking, “I love you, I have for a long time, I just couldn’t bring myself—”

“Sweetheart—”

“No, please,” your eyes are glassy, as you blink away tears, “I love you, Dominick Carisi, so, so much—”

And he’s kissing you now, your hand dropping to fist in his shirt to pull him closer, his palm warm against your cheek, a tear rolling down his knuckles.

“I love you too,” he breathes back, a ghost of a laugh on his lips.

“So should we start discussing our children’s names now?” and Sonny’s eyes widen, before snapping to his parents’ home.

“Did they—”

“I heard your mom,” and he’s pinching the bridge of his nose, “hey,” and his eyes drift back to you, “I love you.”

And he smiles, pressing a kiss to your forehead, “I love you too.”

There is an annoying buzzing. It’s low at first, but then it grows louder as you turn, your nose wrinkling at the light falling across your eyes, and then you realize — eyes snapping open to see the alarm blinking back a time that taunts you with a late start you can’t escape from.

You’re late.

“Shit—” you’re up with a start, shaking Sonny beside you, “Sonny, we’re late — get up.” You’re pulling on your clothes from last night, running into the bathroom. You’re washed and essentially ready in five minutes, leaving the bathroom, finding Sonny still motionless, and you sigh, shaking him again, “Sonny, Sonny,”

“Mm?” one eye cracks open, and he’s groaning, rubbing his eyes, “sweetheart—”

“Sonny, my love,” and he’s blinking, glancing at you, still barely out of the throes of sleep, “it’s 8:50 AM, we’re late. Get up!”

And now he’s getting up, stumbling out of bed, “Shit—”

“Go take a shower, you have arraignment at 10, don’t you?” and he’s nodding, pulling you close a moment for a kiss, “what a mess huh? Maybe we shouldn’t spend the night when we have hearings in the morning,”

“Or maybe we need a more permanent solution to the problem,” he presses a kiss to your lips, “like moving in?”

“Moving in?” you furrow your brow, before your phone is buzzing, “shit I have to go. I’m sorry I got to get to court—”

“What about—”

“I have a steamer at work and an extra blouse in the car, I’ll change when I get in,” you press a quick kiss to his lips, “get ready, meet for dinner at my place?”

He nods, “Have a good day—”

And the door shuts behind you.

“Are you cooking?” Sonny’s arms wrap around your middle, pressing a kiss to your neck, “didn’t we establish that’s incredibly dangerous?”

“Not when it’s just eggs and not when I ordered chinese takeout,” you slide the cooked eggs onto the plate, and your lips find his, as you set the plate down, “it’s been a long day.”

“What happened?” you sigh, wiping your hands off with a dish towel.

“Let’s just say my steamer isn’t worth the price I paid, and my semi-wrinkled clothes did not fly in front of Judge Williams,” you wrinkle your nose at his name, “sexist piece of—”

He snorts, “Did you win your motion?”

“By the skin of my teeth,” you shake your head, as you walk over to the couch, your leg folded underneath the other, “I should keep a spare set of clothes on me when I stay over.”

Sonny slides beside you, leaning against the top of the couch, his arm stretched across the top of the couch, “Maybe you should keep more than that here,”

You raise an eyebrow, “Like a drawer or something?”

“No, I was thinking maybe you should move in?” his mouth is dry, as he sees you blink, hesitate.

“I don’t know if it’s the right time—”

“But don’t you think it’s worth discussing?” but his voice softens, “I want to wake up next to you, doll. I want to be able to wake up late and not worry about you having to change in the bathroom, and we’re both busier than ever — I want to come home to you every night. Our home.”

“Sonny,” you pull him into a sweet kiss, “you’re right, and I want to, I do, I just—” you pull back, arms crossed, “I just don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

“Not ready for what?” For him? For us?

You frown, “Don’t be mad, please—”

“No, I’m not upset, I just want an explanation,” he wasn’t angry — he was disappointed. Throughout this relationship, you were the one playing catch up. He was the first to fall, he was the first to love, he was the first to want more — the first, the first, the first.

He was always the first.

“Sonny, I promise,” you lace your fingers with his, “I want a future with you. I do. I’m just not ready right now. I’m—” you cut off, “I will be ready, eventually, just not now.”

He only smiles, pressing a kiss to your head, “I understand.”

And he would be the first to get hurt, wouldn’t he?

Just like he was before.

“Hey,” Sonny taps you on the wrong shoulder, making you turn, pressing a kiss to your other cheek, “are we doing something for New Years?”

You shrug, handing him a hot coffee, walking arm and arm with him towards the courthouse, “If you want to? I thought you usually see your family around this time,”

“They decided to go down to the Poconos,” he shrugs, “I got seven arraignments on Monday—”

“Say no more,” you press a kiss to his lips, “we’ll do something to make up for last year,” Sonny had left for his family’s place for New Years when you both had just started dating, and you had stayed behind — to work.

“What do you usually do on New Years?” you sip at your drink.

“Not anything usually,” you lick your lips, before smiling, “but now, I think I have something very special to do.”

He pulls you into his arms, “Oh really?”

“What better way to ring in the new year?” and he kisses you, carefully pulling you closer, savoring the taste of the dark roast and milk on his lips.

“Can’t argue with that.”

~~~

“I hope you didn’t mind—” Sonny murmurs, and you elbow him discreetly, glancing at a sleeping Amanda.

“Of course not,” A sleeping Jessie is curled next to her mom, “I love Amanda and Jessie — although I may sue you for the headache I’ll be getting from the pot banging.”

He snorts, and you shush him, watching Amanda and Jessie shift, and you’re handing him a throw blanket from the couch and he’s gently placing it on top of them,

You smile, as he settles back next to you, “What?”

“It’s nice to see her relax for once,” you lay your head against his shoulder, your chin resting on his shoulder, “and you too.”

“Well that’s thanks to tonight, and to you,” he leans down and presses a soft kiss to your lips, “I love you.”

And you smile, “I—”

A screeching cuts you off, as you sit up, and both of you are reaching for your phone, “An Amber alert,” Amanda is slipping from Jessie’s side, “S.V.U. requested.”

She adjusts the blanket on Jessie, running her hand through her hair, “You two will?”

“Of course,” you nod, “Go Amanda.”

She sighs, rubbing at her eyes, “2021 begins.”

And in a second, she’s changed and ready and out the door. The door clicks behind her, and you rise to check on Jessie, adjusting her blankets, “Should we move her to her bed?”

“Let her sleep for now,” Sonny holds his hand out for you, and you take it — pulling you back into his arms, “When do you think you want kids?”

Your fingers combing through his hair pause, “I don’t know — whenever I get married I guess.”

“But you want kids?” and you smile, pressing a kiss to his brow.

“I do, maybe not yet, but someday,” and he nods, two fingers tilt your chin upwards, “Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year,” he murmurs, drawing you into a kiss, one of his hands slipping into his pocket, thumbing the velvet ring box in his pocket — maybe this year would be the year that he’d convince himself to ask.

What were you about to get yourself into?

Your shoes click against the concrete floors, approaching the entry point, “I’m here to see Mickey Davis,” you flash your I.D. badge at them, “I’m here from Noble-Gordon LLP as possible representation.”

You sigh, adjusting your coat while the guard has someone check on Davis. Taking on a case like this was tricky — the press could spin it either way — getting off a cold blooded vigilante or saving a war vet from unjust punishment. But right now, Noble-Gordon needed a win, and needed it to be on the side of the military. Their firm’s recent win of getting off a man who had murdered a vet had left the firm in bad form with several of its benefactors — and right now, you were trying to direct pro bono hours to go any which way you could towards veterans’ rights — pro bono cases for veterans for damages, against abuses by the V.A. helping deal with HIPAA laws to obtain medical files — anything and everything.

But this case — this case would be the kicker.

A high profile case of a veteran shooting a man who had molested and raped his daughter — it would be perfect.

Or so the partners at your firm thought.

You were only there to secure the case for the firm — or that was what you told them. You knew this fell well into Sonny’s case load — and you didn’t want the unpleasant experience of having to tell the judge that you were in a relationship with the A.D.A. trying this case.

Not to mention the fact you hadn’t told him your firm may be taking the case — you checked your phone, several unreturned texts — but it wasn’t like you could reach him anyway.

The guard turns back to you, “Right now, Davis is meeting with his counsel—”

You furrow your brow, “That’s impossible, I had let him and the prison know I wasn’t arriving until now, I’m his co—”

“Not his only counsel it seems,” a voice says, emerging from behind the gate, as the guard buzzed him through.

His hair was neat, if not a tad overgrown, but so was the rest of his face — consumed by a thick beard that put his five o’clock shadow to shame. But his lips were still curled in that signature smile of his, the very same that made your heart squeeze — as it was doing right now. But his eyes were different — softer, as he tilted his head.

“Rafael,” you breathe, even though you were breathless, “you’re back.”

He only smiles, “I’m back.”

#sonny carisi #sonny carisi x reader #sonny carisi fanfiction #sonny carisi imagines #rafael barba #rafael barba x reader #rafael barba imagines #rafael barba x you #svu #svu imagines #svu fanfiction #law and order; SVU

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felassan · 3 years

Text

Highlights and insights from the N7 Day cast & crew reunion panel

[Rewatch link]

In case a text format is better for anyone. There are some NSFW references. Cut for length.

(Some paraphrasing.)

“Some of us are inebriated”

“Patrick Weekes, the killer of man and beasts, the breaker of hearts”

JHale put the whole thing together, it’s the biggest ME cast reunion to date

The cast had no idea that the remaster was a thing

Lots of ace discussion about what the magic of the MET is (“it captured lightning in a bottle”)

Lots of warm fuzzies between the cast, crew and community, and lots of fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes

Lots of great discussion on the diversity and inclusion in ME: on gender, sexuality, representation, empowerment, the core message in the MET that “we’re all in this together or we’re screwed”, the progress made in the portrayal of female characters in gaming, etc. “Everything behind what went into these characters was authentic, we [the VAs] could tell that so much research, texture, authenticity etc had gone into them. It really made a difference”. JHale: “I’ve spent my career kicking down ceilings [barriers and so on women actors experience] with my steel-toed boot. To get to be a part of this game that has now created the expectation that there now be a female PC, ‘duh’, is once of the great things of my life. BioWare listened and put her on the box. The first time someone dropped the box in front of me I held it over my head and screamed over the crowd, ‘Casey Hudson, thank youuu!!’ It was a divine moment. This game was the moment the boot finally crashed through the glass, pushed by millions of women.”

The panel received many messages from the question submission from fans expressing that MET really helped them through very dark places and periods in their lives. The cast have had a lot of interactions with fans over the years where the fans expressed similar sentiments to them

ME was one of the first games Keythe Farley (Thane) acted for that had branching dialogue/dialogue choices, and when he saw the script with that when he went in, he was like “wow”. ME was the second big game D. C. Douglas (Legion) ever did. In his first audition he didn’t know it was for a robot-type character as it was disguised as something else with a military-feel. The second time it was to do a speech/lament at someone’s funeral and he knew it was for a robot. He said playing Legion for him was a case of “wake up, drink some coffee and go to work”

Jack was really special to her VA Courtenay Taylor because she relates to her so much and had a lot of similar emotional problems and personal troubles in her past. Jack helped her become who she has became. The host added that in his interactions with Courtenay over the years, he realized very quickly that she is very much like Jack

AWR has two moms, something which she hasn’t talked about/expressly said publicly before. Talking about recording lines between Sam and Femshep made her tear up. She said that being raised by two moms in the 80s was tough due to societal attitudes at the time, and so to see a loving relationship between two women depicted in a game was a big deal for her. When recording the white picket fence conversation, she was actually crying (“and then I’m crying because of the lesbians”). It was a huge moment for her to represent her moms’ journey. When she went home she told them all about how her character is gay and wants a white picket fence and everything “just like we had”.

When PW was working on Sam’s arc, one of the things they did was show it to one of their colleagues, who is a lesbian, asking what things she’d like to see in an arc like that and what things she felt were missing from it. The white picket fence conversation came from the colleague’s feedback (“we wanna see the nice, healthy, happy domestic stuff”, as it’s often missing in portrayals of wlw relationships)

As the VAs got more into their characters, they sometimes had feedback and input to the process to offer, like “I don’t think she’d say [this] like [that]”. Sometimes they knew their characters even better than the crew did sometimes. JHale waxed lyrical about Caroline Livingstone’s awesome direction, with the host adding that he has interviewed a lot of the VAs over the years and they all talk about Caroline like she’s Gandalf the White coming to the rescue in LotR. AWR expressed that Caroline is really funny (“don’t worry it’s not you, PW was sick when they wrote this line that’s why”) and emotionally in-tune with them and this makes long hard sessions with her a joy

When Mark went into record for the Citadel DLC one day he asked Caroline “wouldn’t be great if Shepard’s clone had been made to be the opposite gender? Then the two Shepards could fight each other!”

William Salyers (Mordin) likes the way Mordin’s story ended and felt that it was wonderful to be able to play that. He feels like the luckiest person because as he wasn’t the original VA of Mordin, he got to come in late to something that was amazing. “Caroline helped me get to where I needed to be emotionally to play that final scene. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever gotten to do personally for a piece of interactive art”. PW related that with Mordin’s writing, they didn’t realize how much they were asking for. They thought William was amazing doing all the science-speak/technobabble, as they themselves didn’t know what it meant, and then suddenly having to deliver emotional heartbreaking lines. William’s always been a secret science nerd and so he loved that fact about Mordin. “It was a real treat to say your words”

Karin: “I always claim credit for the Scientist Salarian song even though I had nothing to do with it. I opened that door for PW”

Steve Blum (Grunt) found it a real treat playing Grunt as Grunt is a tough soldier on the outside but a [babey] on the inside, while he is more the other way around (softer on the outside, fight-y inside). He isn’t a gamer and so didn’t know what to expect or what he was getting into. There was the big pile of words, they showed him the picture of Grunt, and he just ran with it. “Grunt was kind of a perfect character for me in that respect”. Side note: his wry comments throughout the panel were hilarious

“Casey Hudson, our glorious loving overlord”

Courtenay jokes about “interspecies snorkeling”

The women Courtenay met working on this game are her friends for life. Ali Hillis (Liara) gave her her number the night of the ME3 drop and was like “let’s hang out!!” “JHale is the shit. I go to England and there’s AWR and I have this friend for life”.

“We’re a family”. The host comments that you don’t see this kind of closeness between the people on a lot of projects

Kimberley Brooks (Ashley) thinks things have and are changing for the better in terms of roles for women, and roles for brown and black women. This year she has noticed increasing awareness of inclusion and of where it’s lacking. “The copies I’m being sent for auditions, it’s drastically changing, I’m seeing it change before my eyes. It’s really exciting, there’s more and more roles for me.” “Ash is such a strong character and I felt very badass playing her, it was life-changing”. She’s excited that the remaster is going to be a new way to see these characters that they’ve been so lucky to voice. Kimberley/Ash was the first female character Karin saw in the studio, when she saw her she was like “Wow, she’s so kickass and inspiring”. At this point Karin hadn’t been working at BioWare for all that long, and she wanted to thank Kimberley, because she saw her and heard her voice and had a personal ‘this changes everything’ moment

Raphael Sbarge (Kaidan) finds it very moving how many women were encouraged into gaming due to ME

Raphael: “Everyone here has awesome varied careers, but because ME was so collaborative [and so on], [it was something really rare and special]. Nothing else I’ve done has been so important or impassioned, it has almost a religious experience to it, which you can see from tears in fans’ eyes and tattoos and people talking about it 10 years later”. “I’m so grateful for it.” “Clearly we’re going to do this again next year! :D” D. C. added that it’s going to follow him for the rest of his career. Courtenay says it has catapulted her career

PW talked about how it’s great that the female chars in ME were allowed to have real, realistic flaws and dark periods (as opposed to nonsense stuff like ‘her flaw is that she’s clumsy’)

Having the male and female PC be voiced was a big, expensive commitment for the studio. Karin commented that at the time, it was a risk that the pretty-much almost entirely-male leadership of BioWare at the time decided was important to take, and so she was happy that these were the values her colleagues had

PW was “the junior baby writer on ME1. I’d just gotten to the studio and Mac Walters fell down a flight of stairs and hurt his back, and they pulled me in while he was healing”. Karin: “Mac was very understanding when PW fell on the ice and hurt themselves during ME2.” PW: “My job in ME1 was to come up with conversations between followers to pass the time in the elevator loading times. I was throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick”

Steve turning his volume down before he shouts classic Grunt quotes down the mic

Caroline: “Do you know how many tears were shed in the booth? How many times have we all cried in the booth...” JHale: “We were recording the end of ME3, which I never call the end, because I’m always like I’M HERE! [wink] The goodbye Garrus lines” - these lines got right under her skin and when she went to say her lines she couldn’t speak because she’d burst into tears. “It was all I could do to say those words... and then there was silence... [and Caroline had gotten choked up too].” This was one of the last sessions they did. PW: “John Dombrow wrote Garrus in ME3 and I’m gonna tell him that he got you both to break.”

Caroline was also really teary during Keith David’s (Anderson)’s performance where he tells Shepard she’s like his daughter. This moment was one of JHale’s favorites to act

BioWare came up with a proprietary VA recording system which JHale describes as a secret sauce as-yet not widely-used in the industry

Lots of fun in the line-reading portion at the end. The lines/scenes were sent in by fans. This starts around timestamp 1 hour 50 mins. There’s a break where they discuss more anecdotes after a bit then some line-reading resumes at 1 hour 59 mins 18 secs

"Salarian Vorcha Conrad Verner simmering sexual tension scene”

One of PW’s fondest memories is of ME3 when JHale and Mark got to play off each other (which they naturally didn’t get to do very much), when PW had shoved the entire script of the Blasto movie into random ambience throughout the Citadel. They knew Mark was going to be Blasto as he voiced most of the hanar. PW: “We had to have Blasto’s elcor partner’s hot sister... And I was like could it be JHale?? Because they hardly ever get to talk to each other. It was one of my proudest moments”. Mark: “Not only that, we had a romance.” JHale: “Yeah, it was hot”.

“Think of the poor cold freezing Edmontonian hanar”

PW’s story about Sam’s toothbrush: They wrote it as a throwaway line but AWR did it so well that PW wanted to bring it back in the Citadel DLC, as that DLC was the action-comedy one. So they decided the toothbrush was going to save the Normandy. The art director at the time was in an early playthrough of the scene and in that version of the scene Sam held up her empty hand. The director was like “We gotta make the toothbrush? Really? It’s gonna be thousands of dollars to render the toothbrush.” It then got to the next few lines and the director deadpanned at PW “Okay that’s pretty good, we’ll make the toothbrush.” PW: “Good, I got my toothbrush.”

It was John’s idea that we find out that Mordin had been working on a crime noir novel. There was a period in the development of the Citadel DLC where PW was feeling like “Mordin’s gone, he had his big moment, I want to respect and honor that” and the entire team were like “I think Mordin needs a couple more songs dude”. “Well alright!” By that point William had shown them he could deliver literally any line

“Oh I need a shower that was so steamy hot”

PW got in trouble with Localization over Jack’s “Save some of your energy, we’re gonna do it on the pool table” exchange. Localization were like “Um could you explain what Jack means by this??” These lines were PW’s, Karin as an editor got the question about it and passed it on to PW like “nope this is your fault”. “The best part is it was France that needed PW to explain the joke while apparently Germany were like ‘Yes please confirm that this is regarding the possibility of oral sex-’”

Keythe on voicing Thane: “Thane was a real lesson in opening up to the character, allowing this beautifully conflicted character to exist. Each character in the MET has conflicts within themselves and a tragic flaw that is revealed through the course of conflict.” He also waxed lyrical about how the MET was akin to Star Wars and Citizen Kane, and about the interconnectedness and representation in it

D. C.: “I have a question for you guys. Was it a conscious decision to not have Legion as a romance? Because there are a lot of upset people out there!!” “Voltage problems.” “A lot of creative reuses of ‘There was a hole.’” PW: “It was a process of us figuring out what we wanted to do. If we had known... The number of people who were like ‘I don’t know, are people gonna wanna romance Garrus? Liara? She’s blue and has no hair. Are people gonna be okay with that?” Karin: “We were young and naïve, now we know BioWare fans are thirsty.”

Derek brought in the first picture of Thane to show Caroline and she was like “He’s really hot, that’s gonna be a killer character. People are gonna want to romance that gentleman”

Raphael asked the BioWare team if there’s ever been a point where they thought about doing more DLC content or some kind of revival. “Has that ever come up?” “We’re legally obligated not to say, sorry, we’re going through a tunnel right now, bad reception!!”

D. C.: “Does this country have a soul?” “It does.”

“An N7 Day to remember! Go forth and heal.”

#bioware #mass effect #video games #lgbtq #feels #lul #garrus vakarian #best boy #please remember if you are a minor you should not be following me #a minor = under 18 #next mass effect

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prayedtoyou · 4 years

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overrated - read it on ao3

<< when you get home, will you help me with a project?

>> sure thing. i have to stop by the gas station on my way back, want anything?

<< yeah, grab me some of those chocolate covered raisins that i like

>> you got it. see you in 15

Dean had plans to go home after his three classes of the day to watch Netflix with his hand in his pants and eat pepper jack Cheez-Its until his stomach hurt, but he supposes it wouldn’t hurt to cancel those plans to help out his roommate for a few hours. Dean doesn’t often interrupt plans with himself, especially on a day where he doesn’t have any homework and he doesn’t have to show up for a shift at the salvage yard, but Cas is someone Dean doesn’t mind giving up a few luxuries for.

Dean met Cas in their Design 101 class during freshman year. It was nothing more than a foundation class, one that Dean and Cas had to take in pursuit of their BFA degrees in film and television, and photography, respectively. Dean expected to jack off to the course by flirting with the fellow classmates while still paying just enough attention to pass the class and turn in projects and assignments on time, but when Cas started sitting next to him in the third week of the semester and heckled him about listening to the professor and taking better notes, Dean really started to buckle down and take it a little more seriously.

They’ve been friends ever since. They had late night study sessions during their first year when they were only an elevator ride away from each other’s dorm rooms. Their first college summer was mostly spent at the Biggerson’s just off SCAD’s campus where Cas served tables; Dean would come in to bother him, drink coffee, and take advantage of the free WiFi. They found an apartment they could barely afford just south of the metro area and moved in a week before the new school year started. They still have that same apartment.

This was to Charlie’s disappointment, at first. She had suggested moving in together before Cas had and Dean had been on the fence about it. He loved Charlie, they got along, she understood his nerdy references, they had similar taste in women--but he had been holding out for another photography major to make his move. She quickly forgave him when she met and later moved in with her girlfriend, Dorothy.

There was just something about Cas that set him apart from Dean’s other friends. It might have to do with how passionate Cas was about his classes and major; since sixth grade, he’s known that he would grow up to be a photographer for National Geographic so he could travel the world and take pictures of all his favorite creatures. Or it might have to do with his sense of humor--a little dark and always just flirtatious enough to make Dean wonder just how serious he is and whether or not he should laugh or take him up on his offers.

More than likely, though, it has to do with how attractive he is, how his smile is so bright it puts the sun to shame, how his laugh makes Dean’s heart swell up like a helium balloon, how he’s intelligent and eloquent, but also absolutely clueless about a lot of stuff Dean considers to be required life knowledge. Does most of that knowledge revolve around Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones movie references? Yes, but that’s beside the point.

And that’s what led Dean to living with the guy for going on three years, to spending entire days dedicated to showing Cas his favorite movies and shows, to picking up dark chocolate Raisinets on his way home from school, to walking into their apartment and calling out Cas’s name just like Ricky Ricardo.

Cas shouts back from the opposite side of the apartment where their bedrooms are. Dean finds Cas in his room, furniture pushed away from one wall and replaced with Cas’s favorite reading chair from the living room (that old, forest-green armchair that Cas found at an antique store on the Savannah River that Dean verbally hated, but secretly used when Cas wasn’t around because it’s about the most comfortable thing in the world), and a camera set up on a tripod facing the chair. Cas is wearing that white button down that looks especially good against the tan he got over the summer, the one that matches Dean’s after they spent several long days on Tybee Island right before their senior year started.

“So, what’s the project?” Dean asks, handing over the box of Raisinets. He curses at himself for forgetting to get a snack of his own while he was out.

Cas takes the box with a smile. “Thanks, Dean. This one is based on touch and what emotions it brings out in us, but we can’t have more than one subject in the shot. So, I need you to put this on.” Cas reaches out and drops a small black object into Dean’s palm.

It’s… a tube of lipstick.

“Uh, Cas? I thought we’ve established that I’m not really much of a model.”

Cas rolls his eyes, no doubt remembering the arguments they had on the river walk during their second year when Cas tried to shoot Dean for an assignment that ended up with them deciding that Dean would stick with filming and Cas would recruit performing arts majors to be his models. “I know, I'm not taking pictures of you, you’re taking pictures of me. I already have the camera focused and everything, you just need to put that on, give me a few kisses, and snap some pictures.”

Dean’s brain short-circuits. “K-kisses?”

“Yeah. I’m using lipstick kisses to represent my past relationships and how I feel about them touching me. Just cheek and forehead kisses. We’re not going to be Frenching or anything.”

“Oh.” Dean looks down at the lipstick, caught somewhere between disappointment and relief, wondering if it would be better or worse if these kisses were meant for Cas’s lips instead of the rest of his face. Would it even be right of him to take Cas up on this offer when he already fantasizes about putting kisses all over Cas’s skin? Would it be wrong for their first kisses to be over some project? “I don’t know how I feel about this, Cas.”

“About what, kissing me? They’re not even real kisses, you just have to pucker up like you're kissing your mom.”

Dean chews on his lip. Would it be so bad to take advantage of the situation and indulge in something he’s wanted since their second semester together? Shouldn’t he be a good friend and roommate and help Cas with his project, no matter the requirements?

Cas must see the uncertainty in Dean’s expression because he continues with, “Come on, Dean, we’re graduating next semester, we’re practically professionals. Are you really going to be embarrassed about a little lipstick when you could be filming HBO sex scenes a year from now?”

Dean looks back up at Cas. If he’s going to insist, who is Dean to tell him no? “Alright, asshole, I’ll do it. But you owe me.”

Cas smiles wide and, damn, Dean would wear lipstick every day if it meant Cas would look at him like that. “Okay, there’s a mirror behind you. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just put some on and lay it on me.”

Dean turns to find Cas’s mirror hung up with his portfolio. Photos are hung, tacked, and taped up from vacations, day trips, school projects, and family holidays. Dean is up there a few times: laughing on the opposite side of the table from Cas at Biggerson’s, a selfie of the two of them under the unflattering flash of a smartphone in a dark movie theater, the only good shot Cas got of Dean that day on the river walk, Dean asleep on the couch with a book folded up in his arms like a teddy bear.

Dean didn’t even know Cas took that last one.

He puts on the lipstick, ignoring the photos of himself. It’s definitely not as easy as he thought it would be--staying inside the lines was something he’s improved upon since childhood, but crayons are a lot different from makeup. He manages to swipe the color onto his face, grimacing at the taste of it.

When he looks back at Cas, all he gets is a blank stare and a slight nod. Feeling less than confident with deep red lips, Dean steps up to the plate.

“Where do you want it?”

Dean can hear the click of Cas’s throat as he swallows. He raises a hand, pointing to the knob of his left cheekbone.

“Here.”

Dean steps just a little closer. Cas is about his height, maybe an inch shorter, but it’s not even noticeable when Dean tilts Cas’s face up with a finger and thumb gently pinching his chin. He leans in and--smells Cas’s shampoo, notices the pores on his nose, finds trimmed whiskers along his cheeks--presses his lips right where Cas wanted them.

With the lipstick, Dean can’t taste Cas’s skin, but he can smell the face wash where his nose is sticking into Cas’s temple. Like pomegranates.

When he pulls away, he knows he’s blushing, but he has no way of hiding it, so he just smiles and says, “That’s a good color for you.”

Cas, a little pink himself, scoffs. “Just take the picture, Taylor Swift.”

Cas takes his seat, Dean steps behind the camera. He clicks the shutter button a few times, watching Cas’s face on the screen. He’s leaning his face up and slightly away, lips parted, eyes cast toward the door instead of the lense. It’s a great angle to show off that jawline of his.

Dean was never destined to be a model, but Cas looks just as good in photos as he does in real life. He knows exactly how to position himself, which light to use, how his face should look. He could model, if he ever wanted. Dean asked him if he would star in a short film Dean had to film, but Cas just laughed and said if he wanted to act he would have gone into performing arts.

“That should be enough,” Cas notes, and Dean realizes that he had taken way too many photos while thinking about Cas’s face. He backs away from the camera. “I’ll need a fresh layer for each kiss, so apply some more lipstick.”

Dean does as he’s told and goes back to Cas to kiss him again. This time it’s just above Cas’s right eyebrow. They go on like this a handful more times, until Cas has lipstick stains across his entire face. Each time feels like the first, and Dean has a harder and harder time removing his lips from Cas’s skin as they progress through the photos. Cas doesn’t seem to be as phased--he sits right down and assumes his pose. In each and every picture, Cas mostly just looks sad.

“Why do you look like that?” Dean finally asks after the sixth kiss, snapping pictures.

Cas unfurrows his brow and looks up from the floor. “Like what?”

“Like your dog just died.”

Cas cracks a small smile. “These kisses represent each of my exes and how I felt about my relationships with them.”

“They were all that bad?”

“They certainly weren’t good. After being cheated on, left for someone else, and dumped over text, I don’t exactly have fond memories of most of these people.”

“I remember when that dickhead Balth slept with that web designer. You didn’t leave the house for a week.”

“You took me to the Atlanta Aquarium and pointed at all the ugliest fish and said they looked like him.”

“And I was right. ”

When Cas smiles broadly, Dean sneaks in another picture. The shutter of the lense gives him away, but Cas doesn’t mention it.

“Remember when I watched 500 Days of Summer eight times in two days?” Cas asks. “That’s because Hannah kept telling me she didn’t want a relationship and ended up leaving me for someone who she got engaged to after five months.”

Dean chuckles low under his breath. “Yeah, I remember. I had to force you into the shower and then we went out for burgers.”

“And when Gadreel drunk texted me all the things he hated about me--”

“We toilet papered his frat house and went to a baseball game the next day. We got so sunburnt.”

Cas laughs at the memory and Dean captures it with the camera. He looks so much better like this, happy and covered in kisses from someone who actually cares about him. He deserves to be this happy for the rest of his life.

Cas sobers up and looks at Dean. His expression is soft, something closer to adoration than anything else. Dean wonders if he’s just amused by the makeup.

“You were always there for me, Dean.”

Since Dean can’t take a compliment to save his life, he shrugs it off. “I was just trying to be a good friend. You did the same for me when Lisa and I broke up.”

They go quiet for a moment. Dean reflects back on the two weeks after their break up. Dean was drinking daily, taking whiskey in a travel mug to his classes, going to bars at night, falling asleep on the couch with a bottle in his hands. It took Cas several tries to get him out of his rut, first by asking Dean what was wrong, then by requesting that he eat something solid, and finally by whacking him with his rolled up yoga mat until Dean cleaned himself up and changed into some fresh clothes.

Dean had grumbled about it for a few days, but it was just what he needed. He couldn’t mope around forever and fall into a pit of alcoholism just because his year-long girlfriend finally got fed up with his shit. Cas spent extra time with him that month, changing his schedule and cancelling plans to hang out or do homework in the same room as him, occasionally reaching out to lay a hand on Dean’s shoulder or knocking their feet together to remind him that he wasn’t alone. It helped tremendously.

The worst part wasn’t losing Lisa, it was coming to terms with everything he had been trying to deny since he was seventeen. His attraction to men was something he first noticed when a new kid came to his high school and he fell for the linebacker build and honey-sweet Cajun accent. But after dating women exclusively his whole life, the last thing he wanted was for Cas to feel like some sort of experiment.

“What happened? With Lisa. You never told me.”

Cas catches his eye, but Dean directs his gaze away quickly, suddenly finding the curves of the camera very interesting.

“I, um… I wasn’t very good to her. I was kind of using her to get past a crush I had on someone, but it didn’t go away and she said she couldn’t keep living like that. Like she was competing to be my girlfriend. I don’t blame her one bit, she was right to leave me. I just thought, if it was just a crush, it wouldn’t be a problem once I was with someone else, but when I couldn’t stop liking them…”

Dean chances a look at Cas, who looks just as sad as he had in those pictures. His eyes are wide and it almost looks comical with all the lipstick kisses on his face.

“I realized it was more than just some crush,” Dean finishes lamely.

Every part of him wants to tell Cas. But what would be the point? The two of them will graduate and Cas will become the next most famous National Geographic photographer and Dean will be looking for work as a camera holder on low budget movies and shows that may or may not be cancelled halfway through filming. He could always turn to porn as a last resort, but he'll never make it as far as Cas and he’ll never make it with Cas.

In the beginning, he didn’t want to ruin their relationship. They worked well together, whether it was study sessions or getting back at exes or picking out mismatching furniture at second-hand stores. He worried about losing his friend. Now he doesn’t want to say anything because he knows he’s going to lose Cas one way or another, and it will hurt less if they don’t get involved with each other any more than they already are.

Cas takes a deep breath, processing the information. He searches the room. His eyes land back on the camera.

“I have one more shot to get.”

Dean blinks. It’s what he expected. It wouldn’t matter if Dean subtly tried to imply how in love he is with Cas or if he bluntly told him, he would always get the cold shoulder. It’s for the best, he tries to convince himself. Any other way would just end in a bigger heartbreak than necessary.

He turns back to the mirror. He finds the photo of him and Cas in the movie theater again. He can’t remember what movie they saw, but their faces are nearly touching and Dean’s arm is around Cas and he wishes more than anything that he’d taken the chance to kiss him back then. Because, what’s the quote? ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Does it count when Dean is, technically, in love, but just hasn’t voiced it yet?

With a new coat of lipstick, he faces Cas again. He’s standing in the middle of the room, right next to the camera, ready for his last kiss. Dean musters up all his fake confidence and closes the distance between them, standing just a little closer than he had before.

“And this time?” Dean asks.

Cas looks hesitant. Maybe he’s finally realizing that he should have chosen someone else to kiss him over and over again. Someone who he wouldn’t have to awkwardly live with afterwards. Someone who wouldn’t have made a straightforward project into something uncomfortable.

His hand comes up to his face. He points a single finger to his bottom lip.

“Here.”

Dean’s breath catches in his throat. He hunts for any sort of lie in Cas’s eyes, any indication that he didn’t want it, that he wanted to take it back. But Cas just looks right back at him, waiting, patient.

Dean fits the corner of Cas’s jaw into the center of his palm, runs his thumb across Cas’s cheek. A lipstick kiss smears under the pad of his finger, wiping into nothing but a blur, just like the memory of whichever lover that one was meant to be.

When their lips meet, Dean forgets about every single reason he didn’t let himself have this before. Everything in his head melts away until there’s just Cas and mouth and hands and Cas and Cas and Cas.

Cas doesn’t hold back. He grips Dean’s waist like a life raft in the middle of the ocean, opens his mouth and moans when Dean slips his tongue in. He takes everything Dean gives him. He moves his head aside when Dean trails his mouth along his jaw and down his neck, kissing and sucking and nipping at the skin. Dean pulls him closer, desperate to feel as much of Cas as he possibly can.

Dean feels like he’s shaking, or maybe vibrating, with need. Everything is tilting, moving, wavering around him. The lights could blow and he wouldn't even notice, he’s too wrapped up, too confused about which way is left or right.

Their mouths come together again and the world straightens out on its axis. They slow down, brushing their lips together the way pages of a book slide against one another. They take their time. They learn the way they move with each other.

Eventually, they part. Not to gasp for breath, but to rest their foreheads together; to align their hearts. Between them, Dean can smell Cas’s toothpaste and taste the lipstick.

“We should do projects together more often,” Dean concludes humorlessly.

“I think we should skip the projects and just make out,” Cas counters.

Dean pulls back to laugh quietly at Cas, but then sees his face. Cas is covered in lipstick, all around his mouth, his chin, across his jaw, down his neck. The makeup follows the patterns of Dean’s kisses, right down to where he had sucked Cas’s earlobe into his mouth.

He lets loose, practically wheezing at the state of Cas’s face. Dean’s must look similar, because Cas erupts into laughter too and they both sink into each other, bodies convulsing in their arms.

“Come on, come on. One more picture,” Cas begs, pulling out of Dean’s grasp and positioning himself on the chair. He couldn't wipe that smile off his face if he tried, and it looks like he isn’t putting in any effort at all to push it away.

Dean presses the shutter button three times, hoping at least one of them is a good shot, before diving around the camera to pull Cas into his embrace again.

The lipstick ends up on chests, wrist, bed sheets, and hips, but they don’t mind. They might even keep the tube for another time.

tags below the cut!

#destiel #fanfic #my work #destiel college au

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artificialqueens · 3 years

Text

And For Once, You Let Go (Jankie) - Mumu

A/N: For @aqpippin as part of @atresia ’s song fic exchange! The song was You Are In Love - Taylor Swift. Also on AO3.

Summary: Jan wants to give Jackie the fairy tale confession she deserves.

Morning, her place

Burnt toast, Sunday

The first time Jan feels it, it leaves her breathless. It comes quietly, and once it dawns on her, something changes in the air. She can’t get rid of it. Perhaps she’s known for a while, or perhaps this is a cumulation of brief moments. Jan doesn’t know. She doesn’t know much, except for the fact that the feeling lodges itself in her throat, pulsing when she looks at Jackie.

She’s in love.

Jackie’s in the shower, and Jan’s sprawled out on the bed. As far as routine goes, everything is perfectly normal.

On Sundays, Jan closes the bakery for the day. She moves languidly, takes her time waking up. Some days they sleep in so late they skip lunch altogether, and they take turns making dinner.

Jackie has introduced Jan to so many Persian dishes from her childhood since she’s moved in, and learning how to make new dishes is something Jan looks forward to. She’s always in awe of how Jackie is so at home in the kitchen, how she somehow knows exactly how much nutmeg to sprinkle on lamb or how much vinegar to pickle the garlic cloves in without measuring anything out.

Today it’s Jackie’s turn again. She’s laid out all her ingredients already, an array of spices set out on the kitchen counter that promise a delicious meal.

For now, though, the sound of running water is steady, and Jan takes comfort in the sound.

In the beginning, when Jackie had first suggested they move in together, Jan had been scared out of her mind.

Dating was good. Dating was fine, comfortable even. She got to spend just enough time with Jackie to ensure her ball-of-sunshine energy didn’t slip or dim. That’s what everybody loved her for, anyway: her optimistic, bright personality. Even Jackie had told her that was what drew her to Jan.

But moving in together? She’d be around Jackie 24/7 then. Jan knew it wouldn’t be possible to keep that energy up all the time. Besides, even the people closest to Jan, like her mom or her friends, had at one point or another asked if she could tone it down just for a second, Jan, please .

Jan knew she had a tendency to be too much. She was too loud in the morning, too clingy with those she loved, too childish when she was sick.

Moving in with Jackie was a real commitment, a part of herself she wasn’t sure if she was ready to share. Jackie had always been patient with her, giving her the time and space to feel comfortable. But moving in was also something she was dead set on, and well, once Jackie got an idea into her head, it was impossible to talk her out of it.

Jan still wasn’t budging, so she’d done it sneakily. It started with staying over at Jan’s for sleepovers. They’d watch movies and Jackie would mix up some face masks, slathering it on their cheeks with the back of the spoon or their fingers. Jan would bake cookies, and they’d stay up all night talking like they were little kids.

At some point a night over became two, then three, until Jackie’s stuff had a designated spot in Jan’s closet. Her coffee mugs had found a home in Jan’s cupboards. It became routine for Jackie to drop by, even when Jan wasn’t home. Eventually, Jan had to put aside her fears and admit that Jackie should just move in.

And at the end of it all, when the last of Jan’s stuff had been packed into cardboard boxes and carried into Jackie’s apartment, Jan didn’t feel scared anymore.

How could she be, when Jackie was so good to her? She was always so gentle and made Jan feel so safe in her company.

“ Moosh moosh-am ?” Jackie calls.

Jan hides a smile at the pet name.

She’d tried to ask Jackie what it meant once, but Jackie had gotten all flustered, so she dropped it. A quick google search had translated it for her, anyways, so now she’s content with pretending not to understand to ensure Jackie keeps using it.

“Are you still there?” Jackie leans out of the bathroom, still tugging the hem of her shirt over her chest. Her hair’s wrapped in a towel, but a few brown strands have already slipped out and drip water onto her shoulders.

“Hmm?” Jan hums. She flops over on the bed, hangs her head over the edge. “You look pretty upside-down-sie.”

“You’re such a softy,” Jackie says with a slight roll of her eyes. She leans against the doorframe, fixing a warm gaze on her girlfriend. “Can you take the dough out of the fridge, please? It has to sit for thirty.”

“Putting me to work already, huh?” Jan asks, popping her gum.

Jackie doesn’t respond, just raises an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Jan groans dramatically and heaves herself into a sitting position on the bed with a groan. “But you know I’m only doing it ‘cause I lo-”

The words get stuck in her throat. Jan inhales too abruptly, chokes on her spit. She coughs, rolling off the bed to land on her feet again.

“Shit, you good?” Jackie scrambles over to pound her on the back. “Don’t go upside down while chewing gum like that, you’ll choke.”

“No, yeah. I’m fine, I’m fine.” Jan recovers, still flustered. “Must have- y’know. Inhaled dust or something. I’ll go get that dough.”

She stands and shuffles over to the kitchen, stiffly going through the motions. The inside of her mouth tastes sticky despite the minty gum, and her hands are shaking slightly as she pulls out the saran wrapped dough.

What the hell was that? Jan’s heart pounds in her ears. She stares at the mound of dough with wide eyes, panic coursing through her.

“Thank you.” Jackie drags out the words, coming up behind her. She wraps her arms around Jan’s waist, nestles her chin into her shoulder.

Jan jumps at the sound of Jackie’s voice in her ear, taking a sharp inhale out of surprise.

“So jumpy today.” Jackie murmurs. She untangles herself from around Jan, putting her hands on her hips. “Alright, let’s get started then.”

Good. Okay. Jan blinks, tries to steady herself. It’s just the late-June heat getting to her, that’s all.

She pours herself some water and drinks it, trying to wash down the strange feeling rattling around in her ribcage.

One step, not much, but it said enough

Jan calls Gigi up the next day, first thing in the morning with the taste of her almost-confession still on her tongue.

Gigi agrees to breakfast straight away, no questions asked. It’s like the other girl can hear the urgency in Jan’s voice, the little tremor when she says it’s about her and Jackie. Whatever the reason, Jan’s grateful for how quickly she says yes.

Surprisingly, Gigi doesn’t bombard Jan with questions the second she slides into their booth at the restaurant. It’s a cute little place– a diner they frequent often– and ordering takes virtually no time at all as they both rattle out their usuals. She’s grateful for the grace period.

Jan’s halfway through her pancakes when Gigi finally cuts off her casual rambling.

“So did you and Jackie, like, end things? Cause, no offence, but I’ll literally kill you. You guys are perfect for each other.” She tears a croissant into half and poses the question around a mouthful.

“What?” Jan sputters out a shocked laugh. Her voice is a little too loud and she winces, tries again. “Absolutely not, where’d you get that from?”

“Babes, you called me all panicked and told me you had to talk to me,” Gigi says slowly. “About you and her.”

“Oh,” Jan says. She pushes a bite of blueberry pancake into the puddle of maple syrup that’s collected on her plate. “Oh, yeah. That does sound bad, doesn’t it.”

“Duh,” Gigi laughs. She pauses, taking a sip of her iced tea. “So if nothing’s going bad , then what’s the problem?”

And there it is. Jan clicks her tongue and drums her nails on the table, stalling as she tries to think of how to phrase her next sentence.

“I almost said I loved her yesterday.”

Gigi beams at that news- “Wait, are you kidding? That’s great!” -before collecting herself. She leans in, less excited after realizing the worry Jan said it with.

“Wait, I don’t get it. You do love her right?”

“Have you and Crystal said it yet?” Jan deflects, asking another question instead of answering.

“I mean, yeah. Like two weeks ago now, I think.” Gigi shrugs.

“How did you know when to say it?”

“I don’t know. It just felt right?” Gigi pops a chunk of pastry into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

Jackie nods like she understands, tapping her fork against her bottom lip. She casts around for an excuse for why it isn’t as easy for her as it seems to have been for Gigi and Crystal. There must be one. She’s not crazy, right?

“I feel like what we have now is really great. I don’t want to scare her off by saying anything stupid.”

“Jan, Jackie is totally head-over-heels in love with you. There’s no way that’ll do anything but bring you two closer.” Gigi rebuts, unconvinced.

Jan just hums, not trusting herself to speak. Her voice has frozen in her throat, and that’s not a factor she wants to deal with while she’s talking to Gigi, who picks up on everything.

“I think I know what your problem is,” Gigi says bluntly. She drains the last of her iced tea, before setting it down on the table and declaring with finality, “You’re worried about making it perfect like you always do.”

Jan cuts at her food to give her hands something to do.

“You watch too many romcoms. You’re putting this crazy pressure on yourself to, like, measure up to Hollywood scripts. But that’s not real life, y’know?”

Jan bites at the inside of her cheek, the taste of metal blooming in her mouth.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, that’s the point of it,” Gigi continues. She stops, notices that Jan’s attention isn’t totally on her.

“Jannifer-” She takes the knife and fork from Jan’s hands. “-Quit murdering that pancake and listen, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. Sorry, doll.” Jackie clears her throat and wipes her fingers clean on a napkin, still not meeting Gigi’s gaze.

“Do you love Jackie?”

The way she says it, it’s not really a question but more of a statement for Jan to agree to. Even phrased like that to make it easy for her, Jan still isn’t sure she’s ready to speak it into reality. Her eyes dart, feeling like everyone in the restaurant is listening in on their discussion.

“Jan?” Gigi prompts.

“I’m- I, um, need to use the bathroom. Excuse me.” Jan stands up, nearly knocking her drink into her lap at the sheer force of it. Her chair scrapes against the floor, too loud for her liking, and she practically sprints into the restroom.

She presses her palms flat on the marble countertop. The cold surface against her skin is enough to scramble her already overstimulated mind, and Jan forces a breath in through her nose, tears prickling behind her eyelids.

Why can’t she do it? Jackie deserves the world, as far as she’s concerned, and yet Jan can’t even put her feelings into words for her.

Jackie’s going to get tired of waiting for her to grow the hell up and say what’s on her mind. And when she does, Jan will have fucked up yet another thing she loves, because that’s what she does best.

Once the idea of Jackie leaving her takes root she can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop imagining scenarios. When it happens, Jackie might scream, or yell, or cry. She might go silent, start icing Jan out until there’s nothing left to keep them together. Either way, she’ll end up all alone again, and her apartment will feel twice as big because she’s gotten used to the warmth of Jackie’s presence.

There’s a spark of anger too, as irrational as it is, that tears through her at the realization that Jackie’s the reason she caved in. If it were up to her, she’d have kept Jackie at arms length, perfectly safe, where she can’t be harmed by Jan’s inability to be a proper adult in a proper adult relationship.

At some point she ends up on the floor, back pressed against the counter, and now she stays like that, curling her torso closer into her knees. Jan hears the door open, and a panicked sounding ohmygod from Gigi.

“Jan, honey, it’s okay.” Gigi sits down next to her. “Take deep breaths for me.”

Jan heaves a breath in and out through her mouth. “Sorry, I- god, I don’t know why I’m like this.”

“Hey, don’t apologize,” Gigi says. She works her fingers into Jan’s hair, braiding little sections in a calming fashion.

“Relationships are hard. The first time Crystal kissed me I, like, totally freaked out and ghosted her for a few days. Major dick move, don’t recommend.”

Jan laughs despite herself at that. She rests her head back against the counter and looks up at the ceiling.

“Do you think it’ll get easier?”

It’s quiet for a few moments, the hum of the electric lights keeping them company. Jan’s pretty sure Gigi has forgotten about the question or isn’t going to answer her when she speaks again.

“I think,” Gigi bites her lip, considering her words carefully. “I think you’ll get used to trusting someone that much. I don’t know if it’ll be easy, but it’s a process.”

More silence. Jan tongues her teeth, feeling the smooth enamel, unsure whether or not to speak.

“We just have to trust it?” Jan says. The question hangs in the air, drawing a noise of agreement out of Gigi.

“Do you know what Jackie said to me after we moved in together?” Jan asks, before ploughing on, not waiting for an answer. “She told me, just because you’re independent doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own all the time.”

Gigi still doesn’t speak, just lets Jan talk.

“And I think- no, I know she’s right. But it’s still weird, y’know? She’s so good to me and I want to do that for her.”

There’s a pause. “I don’t know why I can’t.”

“Don’t rush yourself because you think she deserves it, hun. That’s not fair to either one of you.” Gigi says.

Jan just sighs, makes a little hum of acknowledgement.

“Yeah. This was so much easier in the movies.”

Gigi snorts, shoving Jan with her shoulder. “That’s what you get for watching those heterosexual pieces of trash all the time. Unrealistic expectations.”

And Jan lets her say it, doesn’t throw back a jab about how if anything is disgustingly cheesy it’s Gigi and Crystal’s pet names they have for one another, because she knows this is Gigi trying to help her through her feelings.

“Let’s finish our food before they think we dined and dashed,” Jan says simply, and considers that growth.

You can hear it in the silence,

You can feel it on the way home

Over the next few months, Jan tries to say I love you many times. It never comes out smoothly.

The feeling isn’t so daunting now that she’s been living with it for a while. It’s a companion, a constant rattling in her ribcage that gets stronger and louder every time Jackie leaves a sticky note with a smiley face on the lunch she takes to the bakery.

She practices saying I love you to the mirror in her room, fascinated with the way the words sound and the way her mouth moves to shape them.

Some days she gets scared that she’ll never be able to voice it, that it’ll be trapped inside her throat with nowhere to go and no place to call home forever. On those days she sits for hours on the balcony while Jackie sleeps, just watching the city go by.

These things take time, Gigi had said, so give them time .

Be patient with yourself, her mom tells her, when Jan calls her up. You’ll get there .

Jan repeats those words of advice so often they seem to become part of her, swirling in her bones and in her blood. She imagines they float around her like an aura as she moves through the days, folding into her cake batter along with the butter and sugar. Trusting that when it’s right, she’ll know.

And you understand now,

Why they lost their minds and fought those wars

Today, Jackie’s come in to help Jan out in the bakery. It’s holiday season now, which means more customers and more work. Jackie’s already found an easy rhythm working the cash register, greeting guests with a warm smile and comforting air. Jan feels like everything in her life is coming together in the best way, wrapped up in a pretty bow.

She pulls a fresh ray of lemon cookies from the oven, setting it on the rack to cool. Jackie immediately leans over, trying to swipe a cookie under the guise of kissing the powdered sugar off of Jan’s lips.

“I saw that, Jacqueline,” Jan scolds, tapping Jackie’s wrist in an attempt to get her to drop it. Jackie takes a big bite anyways, trying to chew through the pain when it scalds her mouth. Jan laughs in response. “That’s what you get for stealing.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Jan,” Jackie teases. She offers the other half of the cookie to Jan, who takes it from her.

“For someone that used to track all our expenses, you’ve become quite lenient with eating the profits away lately,” Jan bumps Jackie’s hip with her own, turning to hide a smile as she pops the remainder of the cookie into her mouth.

“What can I say, you’re rubbing off on me,” Jackie replies.

“Hmm.” Jan hums. She catches Jackie trying to swipe another cookie out of the corner of her eye and pulls the rack away from her girlfriend before it happens. “Ah-uh. I don’t think so.”

Jackie pouts, wiggling her fingers at the rack. “Jan, it’s just one, please?”

“Sorry, can’t let you eat them all.” Jan doesn’t even spare a second glance at Jackie, turning back to whipping up another bowl of batter. “Go back to the register. We can have the leftovers after closing.”

“I can’t believe I’m being bullied,” Jackie whines. She does as she’s told though, trudging back to her spot at the counter.

Jan bustles over to the coffee machines, pressing a few buttons. “Shut up, you know I love you.”

It rolls off her tongue light and airy, just like her cookies, but the aftertaste catches in her throat regardless.

Jan stills, pausing with her hands over the coffee machine. Nothing in the atmosphere has changed, the air still warm and easy, the lingering taste of lemon still full bloom on her taste buds. She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, scared to look at Jackie.

“Do you-” Jackie comes over again, hovering around Jan, unsure of where to put her hands. “-Do you want to say that again or did I hear you wrong?”

Do you think it’ll get easier? That was the question she asked Gigi half a year ago, when she had been scared of this foreign thing that had started living inside of her.

“Huh? Jan-” Jackie asks. Oh, she said that part out loud.

“-I can- um. Should I go back to the counter?”

Over the speakers, the song changes into something with a bit more kick.

“I didn’t mean that,” Jan says. Wrong answer. Jackie’s face falls, and the thing inside Jan twists around her lungs, making it hard to breathe.

“No- wait, no, Jackie.” She speeds up, words falling into each other. Her hand slips from the mug and it crashes onto the floor, spraying coffee onto her jeans. “Hold on, that’s stupid, I’m not- fuck, I’m not scared.”

“Okay,” Jackie says, quiet, like she understands what Jan is trying to say. Maybe she does. She has a way of getting Jan like that.

“I’m, I-” Jan’s hands shake and she sticks them into the pockets of her apron to hide it.

“You don’t have to,” Jackie says, when Jan starts talking and stops again, like a fish, or somebody drowning underwater.

Jan shakes her head, so hard her earrings jingle. She taps the toe of her combat boots on the ground, counts to five, and then to ten. Then to twenty, because she’s chicken.

“I love you,” She blurts.

“Okay,” Jackie repeats, then louder, again, like she senses Jan needs to hear it back. “Okay. I love you too.”

And then it’s done, and it makes sense, all of a sudden. Jan throws her head back, laughs with her whole body, and Jackie looks at her, half in surprise and half in curiosity.

“I’m an idiot,” Jan says, by way of explanation. “ God , Jackie, do you know how long I’ve waited to say that?”

Jackie stares at her. She blinks rapidly, dabbing at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Are you crying?” Jan asks, her voice pitching higher at the sheer absurdity of it all.

Jackie sniffs and swats at Jan when she swoops in to hug her.

“Stop, go away, let me be an emotional wreck in peace.” The effect is decidedly ruined by the way she dissolves into laughter at the end of her protest, but Jan appreciates the effort.

So they just stand there, and Jan’s smiling with her forehead pressed against Jackie’s, all watery and loving. Jackie pulls her in closer for a kiss, Jan practically melting into her. It’s salty from both of their tears because they’re both crybabies, and Jan wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tonight, when they get home, Jan will make lasagna with her nonna’s recipe.

Jackie’s already prepped shir berenj for desert, and they’ll have it with the bottle of red wine that’s been sitting on the top shelf, waiting for a special occasion just like this. They’ll sit on the balcony until late in the night, safe in each other’s company.

Things won’t be perfect, or easy. Not now, maybe not ever.

But Jan’s okay with that. She’s okay with figuring things out as they go. Especially since it now comes with the promise of Jackie at her side, steady and comforting and loving Jan for every part of who she is.

Because she’s in love.

And wow, how badly she wants to scream it into the city, so that everyone knows about this magical thing that has come into her life, with such reckless abandon. It’s feral and wild, and it cuts up the soft parts of her sometimes, but that’s okay because Jackie’s here to help her heal.

Like: it’s far less terrifying when she knows Jackie loves her back.

Like: they live here, in this time and this place, with each other, and that is enough for her.

Like: she’s in love. True love.

#rpdr fanfiction #jan sport #jackie cox #gigi goode #jankie #s12 #lesbian au #fluff #domestic #and for once you let go #mumu #concrit welcome

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shannendoherty-fans · 3 years

Photo

People, September 9th 1991

High School Confidential

By Tom Gliatto and Michael Alexander.

Photos by Mark Sennett.

Beverly Hills, 90210 Gets Its Heat from a Dangerously Cute Cast of TV's Hottest New Stars CONFIDENTIAL MEMO: FROM: The Vice Principal TO: The Faculty, High School U.S.A. I'm sure I don't need to remind you what happened when we didn't prepare for Bart Simpson last fall. The school was flooded with rude, antieducational T-shirts. Some cows were had. Well, as a new school year gets under way, I believe we face another daunting challenge: Brace yourselves for Beverly Hills, 90210. That's the Fox drama about unworldly twin teens Brandon and Brenda Walsh (played by Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty), recent transferees from Minneapolis to the Hills of Beverly. There they struggle to assimilate into the fast-lane lifestyle of West Beverly Hills High School, where the kids come equipped with BMWs, call waiting and designer surfboards. In the process, the teens examine their emerging identities and the problems that adolescents everywhere face.

The show languished in the Nielsen ratings against Thursday powerhouse Cheers last year. But Fox had no replacement, so it stayed. While we were on summer vacation, new 90210 episodes began airing, and the show landed in the Top 20, becoming the most popular show among teenagers. To some extent, I take responsibility for having ignored 90210. I made the mistake of reading newspaper critics instead of my daughter's diary, and so I believed, as Howard Rosenberg sniffed in the Los Angeles Times, that the show was merely a "ZIP code for stereotypes and stock characters." Little did I know that this show would mesmerize teens by doing emotionally realistic shows that involved adolescent rebellion, alcoholic; parents, a breast-cancer scare and plenty of worrisome teen sex. "Most shows for adolescents," says 90210 creator Darren Star, "seem like they are written by 50-year-olds who think teenagers behave like 7-year-olds."

It also doesn't hurt that the show's male stars, Priestley and Luke Perry (who plays brooding loner Dylan McKay), are "to die for," as my daughter puts it. These two have each been receiving about 1,500 fan letters a week. So be vigilant: Surely some of these will be written by our students...during class! And I'm afraid that 90210 is only going to get bigger with our kids, if producer Aaron Spelling is to be believed. "I thought The Mod Squad and Charlie's Angels got a lot of publicity in their heyday," says Spelling, whose company produced those shows, "but it doesn't compare to this. It's crazy. We have merchandising coming out of our ears"—a complete line of T-shirts, beach towels, notebooks, etc. "And now these actors can't walk down the street!"

Or even streak through malls. You probably saw those alarming news reports about a frenzied mob of 10,000 fans that stampeded Perry when he appeared at a south Florida mall last month. "It's a little scary," says Perry. Scarier is the amount of time students will waste this fall discussing Luke. And Jason. And who is sexier. I provide some information on the two. Jason Priestley, 22, plays Brandon Walsh, a model of thoughtful level-headedness. In real life, however, the brown-haired, blue-eyed star, who started acting in commercials at age 4 and played an orphan on that very nice NBC sitcom Sister Kate, is no Oliver Twist. He likes dirt bikes, bungee jumping and is a chain-smoker (just about the whole cast puffs it up—but not on-camera). Vancouver-born Priestley likes to hang out in Las Vegas. As for his real romantic life, he was reportedly dating actress Robin (Doogie Howser, M.D.) Lively last spring, but it seems likely that now he is too busy for such dalliance;. He must be on the set 14 hours a day, five days a week. To avoid ever-present fans, Priestley says, "I look different from my character when I'm just walking around. I don't shave, I don't dress like Brandon."

On the show, 26-year-old Luke Perry (Brenda Walsh's boyfriend, Dylan) sports a leather jacket, dagger sideburns and a squint that spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Although he grew up and graduated from high school in Fredericktown, Ohio, he seems to have attended James Dean wise-guy classes. Perry, who played country-boy Ned Bates on the ABC soap Loving, entertains the 90210 cast by strutting around bare-chested making jokes. Does he have a girlfriend? "No. You know how I can get in touch with Linda Hamilton?" What kind of music does he listen to? "Tom Jones is awesome." Are he and Priestley ever mistaken for each other? "He's mistaken for me on his good days." And 90210, he says, is "the best show on television, except for Jeopardy!" We should act quickly, faculty, when we see any signs that Beverly Hills, 90210 is disrupting normal student activity.

How abnormal might things get? Consider: "It's almost like there are cults," says Brian Austin Green, 18, the North Hollywood High grad who plays the cutely dweeby David Silver. "Girls go to school the day after the show, and they actually become these characters. They say, 'Okay, today I want to be Dylan, you can be Brenda, you can be Brandon.' " Needless to say, students caught pretending to be TV characters should be brought directly to my office for detention. But you know, it might not be a bad thing if our students could show some of the good sense that the 90210ers display in coping with the pressures of fame and fortune. Jennie Garth, 19, who plays the very sexy, very blond, very snotty Kelly Taylor, is particularly admirable. The youngest of seven children, she grew up on a farm near Champaign, Ill., until her schoolteacher parents moved to Phoenix when she was 13. "Living in a small town and coming from a very tight and close family instilled a lot of standards that I need to live up to," says Garth, who just bought a home in Sherman Oaks. She also recently supplied her parents with the down payment for their new home, setting a splendid example for today's youth.

According to a tabloid that someone left in the faculty lounge, Memphis-raised Shannen Doherty, 20, a veteran of such wonderful shows as Little House: A New Beginning, is the only cast member to be accused of behaving like "a spoiled brat" on the set. But she maintains she is no such thing. "I think everybody gets in a bad mood," Shannen says. "You do not work 16-hour days and not start feeling it. But I have never thrown a tantrum. I've gotten upset on the set, but it's never been just to be a bitch. You have to stand up for yourself in this business. That was something I was told when I was 12 years old and working with Michael Landon."

As with about half the cast members, Doherty is in a relationship—in her case, a real-estate developer with whom she's exchanged commitment rings. "You really have to date a while before you decide if this is the person you want to marry," she says with Brenda-like candor. Almost sounds like the relationship could be a future 90210 plot. "The problems of young people have accelerated," says Aaron Spelling, "and so have their feelings and thoughts." The show, he says, has kept pace: Even with their Clearasil-perfect complexions and plump allowances, the students at Beverly Hills have encountered their share of problems. "We had the guts to make Luke Perry be a member of AA," says Spelling. "We had Jason, our star, drinking and driving. That's reality."

And, apparently, the adulatory fan mail often includes a sad dose of that reality. "I got a letter the other day from a girl who mentioned the show we did on parental drug abuse," says Perry in a rare moment of seriousness. "She wrote about catching her father freebasing in the basement. I get letters like that all the time, from people all over the country." Gabrielle Carteris (at age 30, she's 90210's oldest cast-kid), who plays Andrea Zuckerman, the bright student who comes from the wrong side of Rodeo Drive, remembers an encouraging close encounter in a grocery store. "One girl came up to me after we'd done the breast-cancer show," says Carteris. "She said, 'I went home with all my friends and we checked our breasts for lumps.' "

In conclusion: Maybe I didn't need to write this memo. Maybe things won't be that bad, even if every locker in every corridor has a picture of Jason, Luke, Shannen or Jennie in it. Perhaps our dear little school is more like West Beverly Hills High—at least the TV version—than I thought. That's what Ian Ziering, 27, thinks too. "The reality on the show pretty much mirrors the way life is all over, in terms of teenagers," says New Jersey—bred Ziering, who once did Fruit of the Loom underwear ads and now plays 90210's curly-headed jock, Steve Sanders. "There's a mystique about Beverly Hills. But that's not what keeps people tuning in. The show could have been Montana E-I-E-I-O." By the way, should any student pronounce his name "eee-an," correct him or her, please. It's "eye-an."

-- WHEN BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 PREMIERED last October, Highlights, the student newspaper at Beverly Hills High, ran articles mocking the school's TV counterpart, West Beverly Hills High. "They said that the show was a joke," says Jenny Brandt, 14, a sophomore at the 1,900-student school. But as the story lines improved and Jason Priestley and Luke Perry became stars, the jokes stopped, and Brandt found herself, like many of her pals, glued to the set on Thursday nights from 9 to 10 P.M. "No phone calls allowed," says Brandt. "Except during commercials." Hope Levy, a 17-year-old senior, has taken fandom a step further with her friends. "We have little handmade cards," she says, speaking from her mom's car phone. "They say you're a member of Club 90210." While some kids think the show treats them as snobby stereotypes, most agree with sophomore Jordan Rynes when he says, "It's like a soap opera for teens. The shows dealing with drinking and drugs are the most real—adults don't realize how accurate it is."

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artistic-writer · 4 years

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King of My Heart :: CS :: Rated E

Title: King of my Heart by @artistic-writer Fanart by @artistic-writer Rating: E Summary: Emma Swan is the biggest star in the entire world, a world-class singer with a voice that had made sure she was seated at the very top. She is the Queen of music that speaks to so many, but there is one thing in her life she is missing, and with whole albums dedicated to him, will Killian Jones finally hear her words and take up the throne beside her as the King of her heart?

Read on AO3 A/N: So, most of you will know that one of the biggest loves of my life after my husband is Taylor Swift. Ask @shardminds about my incoherent babbling and fangirling when i discovered that the Reputation Tour was on Netflix. THEN ask her about this song and how I was reduced to a dribbling mess when the drummers were shirtless. You can work out the rest. Thanks to her and @hollyethecurious who were willing to look it over and thanks to @csconcertseries for giving me the opportunity to create this little one shot <3

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Emma Swan hadn’t always been this famous, but she had dreamed of being on the big stage for as long as she could remember. There had been a time when she was a nobody, just some pretty blonde girl who happened to be good at dancing and had been so good, in fact, that she had gone to dance school. Because that is a thing. Never in a million years would she have realised that she would be standing where she was right now, with the people she was with, her life taken by a whirlwind force that had yet to spit her out of the other side.

The lights were blinding, the last show in her mega sell out stadium tour that had seen her travel all over the world, playing sell out shows to massive crowds all the way. It still baffled her sometimes, why she was so popular. All she did was sing about her life, about the ups and downs she experienced, but it seemed that her life coincided with so many others around the globe, that she had rocketed to super stardom overnight. She was more than the voice of Emma Swan; she was the voice of everyone.

Of course, without the hundreds and thousands of people who could make her life possible, she would be a nobody. She needed every single one of them. The road crew, the stage builders, the guys and girls who tuned all of her instruments, the security, the dancers, and of course, the fans. She might still be that struggling dancer, scrambling for the chance to stand behind someone has big as she was now, if it were not for that one moment that she still thinks about every second of every day.

If it were not for him.

There was a guy, of course. A guy who she had taken the time to get to know, another dancer reaching for the stars, who had become more than just competition. When he danced he was flawless, fluid and emotive, a better dancer than she could ever have been, but it had taken her a while to realise his true potential, and by the time she had, it was too late. Another dancer had taken his heart, another of their classmates who bore a striking resemblance to herself, and that was when she picked up her pen and her reason for being where she was right now was created.

Emma had always thought that albums were more than just words on a page. She never wrote a song that she didn’t mean or identify with on a personal level. How was she expected to sell albums with lies? So many other artists did that already, singing about what they thought people wanted to feel instead of what they had experienced themselves, and that’s what set Emma apart. She was raw and real and she had but one man to thank for that.

Killian Jones was single again now, she’d heard that much through the gossip and chattering of her crew. It had ignited the spark in her heart, relit the flame of longing that she feared had been extinguished so long ago. She felt like she was singing her lyrics with a renewed vigour, a new purpose for the glitz and glamour of her shows. She had written these songs about him, but now, when she sang them, barely audible over the sound of the crowd going wild, all she wanted was for him to hear her. To know.

She had tried to tell him once, twice, oh so many times, but for a professional singer, she couldn’t form a sentence for shit. He did that to her. The man who had heard her sing, told her how beautiful her voice was and had encouraged her to pursue singing rather than dancing, rendered her absolutely speechless. She could sing to him all day long, but unless he heard her, really heard her, they were just words, and Emma longed for so much more.

The final song of her show was a big one, not just because it would be the final time she sang on stage with this particular group of people and danced this particular choreographed set of moves with them, but because it would be the last time she could try and make him see. This was the song, the one that she had penned with such enthusiastic yearning, the one that, despite most of this album being about him, she really wanted him to hear her when she sang it. It helped that towards the end she had insisted on showcasing his talent as not only a dancer but also as a drummer.

Nothing got her quite so hot as the way Killian Jones simultaneously danced and played the huge drum he had pushed onto stage half way through the song. There were eight in total, but she had made sure that his was closest to her. She wanted to feel every beat vibrate right through her as he pounded the massive drum skin. The five minute outro to the song - his song - was nothing short of spectacular, the energy the sound exuded as it echoed around the acoustically perfect stadium something that left her so aroused, she was suddenly heady on adrenaline and the sound of the drums that echoed in time with her heart.

It didn’t help that, for reasons, she had decided that at this particular point in the show, the drummers would be barely clothed from the waist up, shirtless except for thin scraps of cloth that were tied around their wrists and matched the tassels on the muted sticks used to beat the drum surface. It was part of the flair, and for a second Emma was thankful she didn’t have any more words to sing because, between twirls and struts, she was too busy watching a bead of sweat run down through Killian’s chest hair to remember any.

The sound of the crowd became nothing but a high pitched buzz, like the sound you hear when silence overtakes you, her eyes fixated on him as he danced. Muscles bulged and flexed, sweat flicking from the ends of his pitch black hair as he swung his head from side to side, as lost in the rhythm of drumming as she often was in his eyes. His ocean blues that so often swept her out to her death and so crept up in all of her songs. It was a wonder he hadn’t realised that her career had been based on her admiration for him, the man who had seen so much potential in her in the first place.

He was as lost as she was, flawlessly playing his part, as the king and keeper of her heart. Whether he knew it or not, Killian Jones would always hold her heart right next to his, so close that she could swear that she could see two heartbeats thumping right under the skin of his chest when he spun around, twirled his sticks through the air, effortlessly catching them and raising them above his head to a crowd who went wild at the display. The song ended then, a single, reverberating drum beat accompanying silence, after which the crowd went wild.

Emma watched in the darkness, the tantalizing sheen of sweat over his body glinting off of phone flashes as the stadium lit up. She was panting hard, the whole set twice as long as any other in the show, and her skin prickled with heat from exertion and want. And then she felt arms wrap around her, another of the dancers, and then one of her backing vocalists, celebratory embraces that were welcomed by not what she wanted. Not from who she wanted.

It wasn’t until it was all said and done, and the cast had filtered from the stage and lights, that she saw him, just as perfect off stage as he was on. Her world turned to slow motion, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed some refreshing ice cold water hypnotic, her eyes drawn to a droplet that spilled from his mouth as he struggled for breath between each gulp. Then he turned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked right at her, the blue of his eyes that she so often waxed about almost gone behind his blown pupils, dilated and so erotically dark as they bore into her.

“You were bloody brilliant, love!” He yelled, the sound from the crowd still so overpowering, even in the wings. “Brilliant as always!”

In three bare footed steps he was on her, hoisting her into his arms and wrapping her up against his bare chest with a crushing grip that she didn’t mind at all. He spun them around and Emma wasn’t sure she wanted him to ever stop, the flashing of strobe lights behind her closed eyelids adding to the euphoria of his scent as she nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck and inhaled him. Again, he had rendered her speechless, and Emma couldn’t do anything but hold on, her fingers twisted in the soaking wet hair at the base of his skull as he whirled her around a few more times before setting her back down onto her high-heeled feet.

They were the same height like this, him barefoot and her with black leather boots laced up to her knees, and where she expected him to take a step back and create the distance between them that had created a rift before, he didn’t, standing fast and resting his hands on her hips. She gulped when his fingertips teased the edge of the leotard she was wearing, her heaving breasts drawing his eye when she gasped and some of the red sequins rustled against each other and the sound of the crowd disappeared around them.

They hadn’t been like this, this close and drowned in tension, since she had become world famous. There had been no time for them and she regretted it every day. He was more than her friend, he was the man she dreamed about, the man who had seen potential where she only saw words on a page of a dog-eared notepad that accompanied her guitar when she was feeling down. Killian Jones was the man she wanted to share it all with, the man she would come home to after months overseas, the man who would miss her like she missed him when they were apart.

Her hand was on his chest before she had time to stop it, stroking through the silky hairs there that were still damp from his routine, right above his heart that still beat in time with the drums that has since stopped. His hand found her face in response, his knuckles brushing over her cheek, hand shaking a little and making her mouth go dry. They had danced like this before, on stage but never in private, and a sudden warmth overtook her as Killian let his fingertip drag down the side of her neck, keeping eye contact the whole time, as if to torture her more when he skimmed over the swell of a breast.

“Stop.” The word left her mouth before she could stop it, the pounding of blood in her temples berating her as her blood screamed out for him. For a second he looked hurt, swallowing hard and taking a step back so that there was a palpable space between their bodies that left hers cold and alone, something she never thought she would feel around him. “Not here,” Emma whispered assuringly, her ruby coated lips ticking up into a sly sideways smile that had him arching a brow at her.

Killian stepped forward again, pressing his body into hers and making sure she could feel his erection through the thin, silky trousers of his outfit. Emma flushed hot and her brain short circuited, eyes blurring and caught between wondering how they would escape the stage and if they would get caught if they didn’t. He was too much, hands acting innocent as they stroked over the curve of her shoulder, friendly and casual to observers, but a painfully restrained attempt to touch her anywhere he could.

“Where?” He almost begged, his voice laced with darkness and sexual intent that had her biting her bottom lip in response, something that caused him to paradoxically whimper uncontrollably. “Gods, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

Once again, he had rendered her speechless, taking the words from the back of her throat like he always had with his barely there touches and thick, British accent that somehow had grown impossibly sexier with his arousal. Emma’s resolve snapped, hair prickling on the back of her neck with anticipation as she grabbed his hand in hers and tugged, hard, pulling him along the back of the stage and behind a huge piece of equipment that she neither noticed or cared to know about at that exact second. All that mattered was that it was tall enough to hide them, the space between it at the wall making sure that they were pressed together as close as can be for when, finally, his lips were on hers and every single lyric she had ever sung about him raced through her mind.

Killian wasted no time, knowing that what they would have would probably be brief, pinning her against the wall in the darkness and rolling his hips into hers, making her feel all of him, gobbling up her moans with his ardent and impassioned kisses. He trapped her in his grasp with his weight, and Emma needed to feel more, her hands caressing the expanse of his naked back, her nails raking over the skin there in an attempt to draw out more of his hunger, her efforts more than rewarded when he growled low in his throat and slipped a hand between her thighs.

“That last song is about you,” Emma breathed.

“I know,” Killian growled in between harsh, heartfelt kisses, smirking as he trailed them along her jawline.

“Fuck, half of my songs are about you,” Emma whispered with laboured breath, Killian’s kisses now assaulting her neck through his growing smile.

“I know,” he said arrogantly, one hand bunching the thickness of her hip whilst the other explored the apex of her thighs, searching for a way into more than just her heart. “I’ve always known.”

Emma’s hands are on his face and dragging his lips back to hers in a heartbeat, the echo of the rhythm of the drum solo pounding in her ears again, charging a new tension between them, something more sexual than ever before. There had always been a space between them, a professional barrier that neither would cross. Emma had poured her heart out in words whilst Killian had worked through his frustrations through dance, but right now, in this moment, there were no such walls to stop them from scaling the other.

Killian’s tongue skimmed over the seam of her lips, gently begging for a deeper entry as his fingers hooked into the gusset of her blood red sequined leotard and pulled the fabric aside. He frowned, met with another barrier as his fingers prodded and teased her entrance through a thin layer of sheer, diamond studded, sparkly stockings, and Emma couldn’t help herself when she bit down on his bottom lip this time, making him rut against her thigh to relieve some of the pressure building in his cock.

“These are…” Killian’s words trailed off as another irritated growl rumbled from his chest, vibrating through her lips as she sucked on the bite mark left by her own frustrations.

“One of a kind, hand studded to my exact measure-,” Emma began incoherently, her world spinning behind her eyes, her breathless babbling cut short by the sound of tearing fabric that she hoped no one heard.

“Such a fucking shame,” Killian lied darkly and repositioned his hand so that he could finally slip a finger into her, the extent of his pent up tensions leaving him on a satisfied sigh he breathed against the swell of her breasts as he scrapped his teeth over the flesh there and she let him, holding his face to her bosom and clawing the back of his head with her long, blood red fake nails.

After all the times she had dreamed of moments like this, hoping that one day they would become reality, there wasn’t enough of him inside of her and she whined against the shell of his pointed ear. Killian knew her too well already and paired another finger with the first, pushing them both into the wet heat between her legs in time with the pounding the blood in his ears. He curled them each time, pushing deeper on each thrust that rips into the material of her tights some more, right up until his palm was pressed against her clit and Emma was subconsciously chasing her high as she fucked his fingers.

The line was gone, so fucking gone, and the leg he’s slowly grinding his erection against became hotter than the rest of her, burning up from the way his dry humping became slightly damper thanks to the appearance of pre come seeping through the black silk fabric of his trousers. Emma knew his body was lithe, trained to bend this way and that due to his profession, but if she had any idea just how talented Killian Jones was, she would have signed him to her tours from the start. She’d always wanted to, but the line had always been too wide of a chasm to cross, except now he was finger fucking her with a slight aggression that turned her on beyond anything she thought she could ever know, and suddenly a bridge had appeared and Killian beckoned her to the other side with skillful strokes and the whimpering of a man possessed.

Sweat beaded her brow and he smirked against her cheek, lips parted as he breathed against her mouth, unable to kiss her for fear of losing sight of her. He wanted to watch her come undone as she climaxed and coated his hand with even more of herself. He wanted to imagine her body under his, to imprint the way she looked as she came on his mind, lipstick smeared by indulgent kisses and brow furrowed in pleasurable pain, whilst stretching up on his tiptoes to dry fuck her thigh. He doesn’t have to wait long before Emma is inexplicably pushing against his shoulders as she comes, hard, going rigid and overstimulation setting in, her mind fighting between the urge to push him away and the need for him to never stop reaching the best parts of her.

“Fuck,” he ground out, only just stopping himself from coming at the sight of her. He rolled his forehead against hers but was reluctant to pull his hand out of her warmth, swallowing the deepness of his voice thickly as he settled his feet back on the ground and her core muscles pulled at his fingers in detest when he withdrew them.

“Poetic,” Emma teases, brushing her thumb over the corner of his mouth.

“I’m no writer, love,” Killian admitted with another kiss, this time to the tip of her nose. “Not like you.”

“What do you mean?” Emma beams and he gave her a quizzical look. He loved the way her nose scrunches when she is being playfully naive.

“And all at once, you are the one I’ve been waiting for,” Killian muttered softly, eloquently, as if he is reciting more than just her lyrics.

“King of my heart,” Emma finished with a smile that would just not fade.

“If you’ll have me,” Killian said hopefully.

“Body and soul,” Emma whispered, the words only just leaving her lips before his were pressed to hers in final and definite acceptance of their future.

#CSCS #cs fanfic #king of my heart #cs fic #cs au #singer!emma #dancer!killian

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d-criss-news · 4 years

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With the film industry as we know it—A-list stars swanning around studio lots amid the swirling winds of an entire city bellowing buzzwords about makin’ pictures—essentially nonexistent at the moment, here’s an especially provocative idea as we contemplate its eventual return: What if Hollywood was... better?

Not in terms of quality of output, though if we’ve learned anything through the industry’s glacial inching toward progress, that will follow suit. But what if the industry was more inclusive? What if it was less afraid of change? What if it allowed gay people, people of color, women, and minorities to tell their own stories, to be in charge—and what if the people accepted it?

Better yet, what if it was always that way?

Like the loud, harsh clack of a clapboard coming down on 70 years of motion picture history, Ryan Murphy’s revisionist manifesto Hollywood arrives Friday on Netflix with blinding, blaring, technicolor confidence. Hardly subtle, deliciously ostentatious, and admirably mischievous, the lavish seven-episode series is a love letter to Hollywood by way of 2020 think piece.

It is messy and thrilling, upsetting yet profound; as uneven and as enthralling as any of Murphy’s big-swing, genre-contorting efforts: Glee, American Horror Story, or The Politician. But as with his soapy historical study Feud: Bette and Joan, it is a fastidious celebration of a glamorized time in Hollywood that mines nostalgia for modern meaning—a fragile undertaking swaddled in the dazzle of unmatched production design and talent pedigree.

Hollywood flops as often as it soars, but never rests in its grandiosity and ambition. The result is something escapist and frothy at a time when a retreat to a Hollywood happy ending is as alluring a fantasy as they come.

There is brilliant acting and there is bad acting. There are ovation-worthy ideas and there are off-putting ones. But, above all, there is reason to watch: It is gay, it is sexy, it is Patti LuPone.

Hollywood is a revisionist history of cinema’s golden age. It’s the 1940s in all their glamour and art: Casablanca! Citizen Kane! Alfred Hitchcock! Jimmy Stewart! Rita Hayworth! Cary Grant! It’s an era that’s been romanticized for so long that we’ve internalized it, morphing our own lifestyle aspirations to conform to its very heteronormative, very patriarchal, very (very) white ideas about sex and gender roles. These were ideas, however, that the industry was telegraphing, but not living in real life. Not at all.

Murphy and his team’s rewriting of history pulls the curtain back, exposing the sexually fluid proclivities of the stars—leading men sleeping with male escorts; Oscar-winning actresses in bisexual affairs—and the damning, racist barriers to inclusion fortified by studio heads thwarting any opportunity for progress.

Then, and here’s the crux of the whole thing: Hollywood changes that narrative. We glimpse the power dynamics inside Tinseltown’s gilded cage, and watch them being dismantled.

Some of the players’ narratives are real, and some are fiction. That makes for an amusing parlor game for viewers, attempting to separate the true history from the imagined one, and should birth a cottage industry of “The Real Story Behind…” stories in the weeks to come. But these are actual people who never had the opportunity to live authentically or see true, equal opportunity in the industry. Expect there to be a split among those who find happier, reimagined fates for them a sweet gesture, and those who find it in bad taste.

The story trains in on Jack (David Corenswet), a World War II veteran arriving wide-eyed in Hollywood, hoping some gumption and a jawline God shed a tear after creating will be enough to get him into the pictures. But he’s got a pregnant wife (Maude Apatow) to think about. Until he catches the eye of a casting director, he has to find some way to pay the bills. That cash flow comes surreptitiously from a gas station owner (Dylan McDermott), whose dashed Hollywood ambitions leave a soft spot for attractive dreamers like Jack—particularly ones who prove lucrative in his under-the-table prostitution business. A customer comes in for a fill-up, so to speak, and whispers the code, “I want to go to Dreamland,” and, well, you know the rest—and hopefully get the hardly nuanced metaphor about sex, power, sacrifices, and Hollywood.

This gas station business is without a doubt inspired by Scotty Bowers, the notorious L.A. hustler who died last year at 96, following a scandalizing, dishy documentary and memoir revealing the brothel he ran out of a petrol stand, sleeping with (allegedly) Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Gary Cooper, J. Edgar Hoover, and Rock Hudson.

McDermott’s character, however, is not actually Scotty Bowers, a distinction that’s necessary because Rock Hudson actually is a character, played by Jake Picking. So is Henry Wilson, the monstrous, closeted Hollywood agent played by Jim Parsons, who trades blowjobs for representation. Elsewhere, real-life trailblazers like Hattie MacDaniel, Vivien Leigh, and George Cukor show up. Their presence, on the one hand, lends credibility and grounds the fantasia of diversity and acceptance that Hollywood builds to. It’s also morally amorphous.

Hudson was closeted until the day he died of HIV/AIDS. He didn’t get the happy ending imagined here, publicly coming out of the closet by attending the Academy Awards with his fictional black, gay screenwriting boyfriend, holding hands on the red carpet, and staying on track on his ascension to Hollywood hunk. There’s also no evidence that Wilson, as caustic and self-loathing as the devil himself when we meet him in the show, had a change of heart and becomes a LGBT crusader seeking amends and atonement.

The wishful thinking is nice. But the bleakness of the reality shouldn’t be forgotten. There’s no clean place to land there, other than to consider both.

But these are just a handful of Hollywood’s players, and not even the true engine of the plot. In typical Murphyland fashion, there is a dizzying constellation of characters and their errant business to keep tabs on.

At the forefront is Patti LuPone’s Avis, the bored wife of a studio head (a scene-stealing Rob Reiner) who is first introduced as a client of Jack’s—hence all the press about the Tony winner’s explicit sex scenes that you’ve likely been reading—and eventually put in charge of the studio itself when her husband is incapacitated by a heart attack.

If it’s novel now to think of a female in charge of greenlighting projects and making commercial creative decisions, imagine it seven decades ago. And Avis shakes things up. With a casting director (Holland Taylor, perfect) and producer (Joe Mantello, heartbreaking) as her conspirators, she greenlights and positions as the studio’s next blockbuster a film called Meg, with its historically diverse creative team intact.

That means half-Filipino director Raymond (Darren Criss), black screenwriter Archie (Jeremy Pope), black leading lady Camille (Laura Harrier), and Jack and Rock in supporting roles. It takes willfulness to bulldoze the fortresses that bar progress. That is invigorating and moving to watch, especially as Hollywood dances between comedy, camp, earnestness, and tragedy with all the glee, if you will, that you’d expect from a Ryan Murphy production.

There’s sex—hot sex, gay sex, interracial sex, intergenerational sex—and there’s farce and there’s a wardrobe and set budget to sweep you away like a riptide.

There are scenes from Parsons and LuPone that will win them Emmys. Mantello and Taylor have a two-hander together that shattered me into so many pieces I am billing Ryan Murphy the cleaning fee. I worry that even with his Netflix money it won’t be enough—that’s how good it is.

Mira Sorvino and Queen Latifah give so much in their scenes as guest stars that you wish they were in more but are grateful for the flawless blips of bliss, while Michelle Krusiec as Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, is the epitome of an actor making a monumental moment out of limited material.

Criss solidifies his leading-man status—he’s captivating in every scene, even without much to do—and Corenswet brings glimmers of gravitas to eye candy. But the rest of the kids nearly torpedo the whole damn thing, they’re so miscast. The scenes with the older generation are so rich and such an utter joy to watch, it only makes the woodenness of performers like Picking and Harrier all the more egregious. Thankfully, there’s a larger message to it all that acts as absolution.

If Hollywood were a treatise on how society interacts with movies and TV both then and now, then the thesis could likely be boiled down to an early conversation between Raymond, Criss’ director character, and Dick, Mantello’s studio exec. It’s Raymond’s dream to direct a movie starring Anna May Wong. Dick kills the pitch, saying no one will pay to see a movie with an Asian lead, or any lead of color.

Raymond doesn’t stand for that. How does he know? No one’s tried. “Sometimes I think folks in this town don’t really understand the power they have. Movies don’t just show us how the world is, they show how the world can be. If we change the way that movies are made, you take a chance and you make a different kind of story, I think you can change the world.”

It’s not a stretch to argue that as the mission statement of Murphy’s entire career. He’s proved it time and again, from Glee to Pose: Bring the marginalized out of the margins and watch how things change. Someone just has to be the one to do it.

In essence, Hollywood sees Murphy dramatizing the progress that he played a part in catalyzing today, but imagining if it had come at a different turning point in cinema history—70 years ago. More tantalizingly, he raises the question of what society today might be like had it actually happened then.

Is it a little self-congratulatory? Sure. But, hey, that’s showbiz, kid.

#darren criss #the daily beast #hollywood #press #hollywood spoilers #just in case #april 2020 #hollywood review

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jazy3 · 4 years

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Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 16X21

I loved this episode! It finally happened! Hayes asked Meredith out and she said YES!!! I’m so happy right now! We're going to see them go on a date and have drinks next season! It’s all I could have hoped for and more! I can’t wait! This episode was a finale that wasn’t supposed to be a finale. With that in mind I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was great! I loved this episode! Mainly because it delivered on the one thing I’d been hoping for since the mid season premiere! It didn’t have the usual shock factor that comes at the end of a planned Grey’s finale, but it was exciting and we got movement on pretty much all of the major storylines up to this point. It’s not where the cast and crew were planning to leave things for this season, but with the sudden onset of the COVID-19 virus and the mandatory shutdowns worldwide they were forced to halt production when filming for this episode had wrapped.

So with that in mind this episode leaves things in a pretty good place with some great set up for next season. Originally the shutdowns and the quarantine was supposed to be temporary and so I had hoped that they would be able to come back and film the remaining four episodes for this season as from what I’ve read the scripts have already been written and the plan was already in place. Unfortunately, since none of us know when the quarantine will end they have decided to roll those episodes into next season and rejig what would have been episode 16X22 to make it more exciting so that it can be the season opener for Season 17.

While I’m sad we won’t see the remaining four episodes as planned this hopefully means that there won’t be any filler episodes next seasons as they’ll rejig and add the four from this season and then write 21 new ones. So let’s talk about that scene with Meredith and Hayes! It was so so great! After hearing the news that she and the other doctors had finally found a diagnosis for Richard’s condition Hayes sought Meredith out as she was leaving for the night. He congratulated her on a great catch and asked her if she’d like to grab a drink with him and celebrate. She said yes, but said she was to exhausted to go out right now and asked her if he’d ask her again some other time. He said of course and told her he’d see her later and she said goodbye for the night.

There were so many things I loved about that scene! It was perfect! I loved that Hayes respected Meredith’s boundaries. He didn't push or try to change her mind. He understood what she was saying and accepted it. With any other love interest they’ve put her with that would have been a whole thing. They would have tried to change her mind or argued with her or tried to convince her and that’s not okay. But Hayes doesn’t do that. Why? Because he’s a mature adult who’s got his stuff together who understands the concept of consent and that yes, but not right now does not mean convince me.

I love that he's so understanding! He gets it! She's tired. She wants to go home and sleep, but she also wants to go out with him when she's feeling better and he wants that too! I can't wait to see them go out! I'm so happy. He's so smitten! Just the way he looks at her! And the way she looks at him! She's so into him! My heart! I love that they established that Hayes doesn’t like setups and he doesn’t even know that he’s in one right now! Jo’s sure not going to tell him. Where would be the fun in that? And he’s right that people are talking about his personal life when he’s not around. Specifically, the fact that Cristina sent him across the Atlantic and set him up with Meredith and everyone’s into it. I love it so much!

Also how deceiving was that episode description? “Hayes asks Meredith a surprising question.” It’s only surprising if you’ve never seen the show before or aren’t caught up on this season! Hayes has been into Meredith since he got to Seattle and Meredith has been into Hayes since they worked that Vaping case together. It’s very obvious in the googly heart eyes they keep making at each other all the time. I love that Hayes asking Meredith out was done in a subtle way with not a lot of fanfare. I really loved that. Because the episode description made it seem like it was going to be this big dramatic thing and I love that it wasn’t. Because real life is not like that. Real life is about the small moments. The intimate moments. The moments that matter. That come naturally when you build up a rapport with someone over time. And that’s what Meredith and Hayes have built.

I was also worried, especially after the Conference episode, that Hayes was still processing his grief in such a way that he wouldn’t feel comfortable asking Meredith out or that everything that’s been happening with DeLuca and now Richard would make him hesitant to ask her out or take the next step. Instead, we saw the opposite. Jo made comments about how him and Meredith would be good together and implied that other people thought so too. He heard about the nonsense that DeLuca had pulled yet again and he heard about what was going on with Richard and his eventual diagnosis. Instead of preventing him from asking her out it actually propelled him. He heard about what had happened with Richard, sought her out, offered his sympathies, congratulated her on a great catch. He then used that as a spring board to ask her out and in response she reciprocated his feelings and said yes! It was subtle, simple, and sweet. As it so often is in real life when you meet the right person.

I’m a big Taylor Swift fan and the slow burn they’ve created for Meredith and Hayes and the way he asked her out really reminded me of Taylor’s music and album journeys from reputation to Lover. The reputation album is about the death of Taylor’s reputation and her response to it. But as she has spoken about in interviews it’s also about a beautiful love story. It’s about how in some of her darkest times she found and formed the most beautiful and amazing relationship with her partner Joe. There’s this undercurrent running through the album about that relationship as it begins. Then in Lover it blossoms fully and we get to hear all about it and how great finding that kind of whole hearted love really is.

To me there is such a great parallel between that musical journey and the relationship we see forming between Meredith and Hayes. It’s this beautiful undercurrent that’s forming amidst the constant chaos that is Meredith’s life and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s this steady current in the background that once given the chance to fully bloom will blossom into this beautiful thing. I’m excited that we’ll get to see that next season. Hayes was back in a big way this episode and I loved it! I love him as a character. I really hope they make him a series regular next season because he is great and he needs more screen time. The female patient Daya who couldn’t express emotion or smile because of her condition and needed facial surgery was hilarious!

I'm really glad that they figured out what was wrong with Richard and he's on the mend! I'm glad Richard kicked Catherine out. She deserved that and in fairness to him he doesn't remember her being there. It looks like he doesn't remember anything prior to the Conference so I get why he's mad. He was also real petty about it and I loved that. Although I was surprised that Meredith wasn't in his room with Maggie and Jackson and Catherine at the end.

She’s his family too and up until he married Catherine she was he’s next of kin, his emergency contact, and had medical power of attorney. Catherine’s left him and was MIA prior to him getting sick, Richard didn’t even know that Maggie existed until a few years ago, and Jackson had barely spoken to the man until Maggie pointed out that Richard thought he was taking Catherine’s side in the divorce. Side note: I’m glad that Maggie and Winston are still texting! Steamily I might add! He should definitely move to Seattle next season!

DeLuca annoyed the crap out of me this episode not because he was wrong, but because of the way he chose to express his opinions as usual. He was right but instead of explaining that calmly to others he screamed at Richard's family and threw a bunch of sharp surgical instruments onto the OR floor while Richard was on the table. I really hope they write him off next season because he annoys the crap out of me, he still hasn’t picked a speciality yet, and I feel they’ve gone as far as they can with his character and then some.

As for that end scene with Meredith and DeLuca here’s how I saw it. I didn't see it as her going home with him. I saw it as she was on her way home when she found him crying on the floor and either drove him home or admitted him for treatment. They established that Carina's back in Seattle so I think she either she drove him home and then called Carina to come take care of her brother or got him admitted and then called her to follow up and then went home and got some well deserved sleep.

I'm glad that he's finally acknowledged that he's got a problem and needs help. That's the first time since he started behaving erratically that we've seen that so that's good. I hope Carina can get him some help and get him admitted somewhere or that Meredith already has. More and more I see the interactions between Meredith and DeLuca as motherly. She’s clearly concerned about him and feels guilty because he went to jail for her and is now failing apart. I hope they write him off next season, but if they don’t I hope he gets the treatment he needs and they both move on or they remain in each other’s lives on a friendly co-worker basis as that’s the only time they ever really work on screen in my opinion. They don’t have chemistry romantically or as friends. I loved that moment in the OR where Bokhee prayed over Richard! Bokhee for the win!

Teddy was a hot mess as usual! I knew the truth was going to come out eventually, but I did not expect that god damn! I'm not an Owen fan, but that scene in the supply closet was still a gut punch. Oof! I loved Tom's speech to Teddy and how he called her out on the fact that she was running into marrying Owen rather than confront her own confused feelings. Teddy really needs to figure out what she wants and pick a lane! I hated the fact that she had sex with Tom in his office and then when he said let's run away together she told him this was goodbye and she was marrying Owen. Who does that? No matter what side you are on here Teddy’s behaviour is just not okay! Oy vey!

I’m glad that Owen stood her up and cancelled the wedding. It’s bad enough that she’s engaged to Owen and carrying on an affair with Tom, but the fact that she had sex with Tom in his office on the day of her wedding and then had the audacity to tell him that was goodbye and she was marrying Owen when she is clearly conflicted is an awful thing to do to everyone. She’s literally hurting all parties involved and that’s just awful. Also how is she planning on explaining this to her kids when they’re older?

Amelia and Link we're super cute this episode! I'm glad that their baby is okay and healthy and that Amelia is okay after what happened with her first pregnancy. She’s been through enough and it looks like she’s finally getting something good in her life with a beautiful new baby and a healthy pregnancy and delivery and a wonderful supportive partner. The throwback to Bailey being there for Amelia like George was there for her was so beautiful! Kudos to Bailey for showing all that strength after she suffered a miscarriage recently!

I'm glad we got to see Bailey spend time with Richard as I felt that was missing last episode. Carina was great in this episode! She has so much potential as a character and I wish they would use her more. She’s such a badass and her facial expressions are always on point. Although I only watch Station 19 sporadically these days I love her relationship with Maya. I’m not an Andrew DeLuca fan at all and I would love if they would start focusing on her more and move her brother back into the background or off the show entirely.

Jo was hilarious! I’m glad she’s getting her spunk back. She reminds me in a lot of ways of Amelia from her early Private Practice days. I loved her comments to Jackson in the OR! Real talk though, what do you think Jackson’s dating profile pic would be? Jet or Yacht? Comment below! Also I love that Jo is so team MerWidow! She totally ships them together! And she's helping to make it happen! Go Jo!

I love how she almost spilled the beans to Hayes about Cristina setting him and Meredith up but then stopped when she realized he didn't know and didn't like set ups. I'm glad she did. Because if she'd said something further then Hayes might not have asked Meredith out. I feel like by the time the truth comes out Meredith and Hayes will already have been dating for a while so he'll be annoyed, but it won't change the way he feels about Meredith. Although let’s be honest nothing could he’s so smitten and he should be! Meredith is amazing and she deserves an amazing man like Hayes.

I saw someone on Twitter comment that it looks like the storyline with Meredith and Hayes beginning to date and the truth coming out about how Cristina set them up was supposed to play out in the next few episodes and I think that’s true. I’m sorry we won’t get to see it this season because of the shutdown but I’m really excited to see this play out next season. Something that did surprise me is that the character interactions in this episode imply that Jo didn’t tell Meredith about what DeLuca did to her and tried to do to her at the bar in the episode ‘Life on Mars’ and still hasn’t told her. I’m surprised by that because Meredith and Jo are friends, what DeLuca did was disgusting and unforgivable, and Jo clearly hasn’t forgotten. In fact in this very episode she made it super clear to Hayes that she detests DeLuca and hates the idea of him and Meredith together and so do others.

This once again brings to light the big problem with DeLuca in that the only reason Meredith went out with him, continued to date him, and continues to interact with him out of concern is because her friends and family aren't being completely honest with her about his behaviour and how he acts when she’s not around. Because let’s face it. If Meredith knew what DeLuca was really like when she wasn’t there she wouldn’t give that asshole the time of day. I can’t emphasize this enough. Your friends and family should be able to be honest with you about the person you’re dating and anyone that’s in your life. They should feel comfortable being honest with you and telling you how they feel. They shouldn’t have to hid the worst parts of them in order to protect you or so that you can be happy. I also don’t get how anyone can ship Meredith and DeLuca together or want him to continue to be a part of her life when he treats the people she loves so horribly and they openly detest him so much.

I’m sorry we have to wait so long to find out what happens next to our heroes. But I am very much looking forward to next season and watching Meredith and Hayes develop further!

Until next time!

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yourlocalenglishmajor · 3 years

Text

Commonplace Book

Hello everyone! This is my first post on this blog, and it is going to be a project for my college English course! Feel free to read through it if you’re interested; if not, that’s okay, this is really just for my professor ^^

Piece 1: “Big Guns, Small Dicks”

Unfortunately, this piece does not have a specific author or creator; I found it on State Street in Madison last summer. It is an anonymous piece of graffiti that speaks to the movement it was created during. For those who may be less familiar with Madison, Wisconsin, it is considered a very liberal and even leftist city, especially with how frequent and powerful the Black Lives Matter protests were. This was created during those protests, as well as hundreds of other works all along historic State Street. As ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards - protests went hand in hand (usually) with BLM protests, the phrase “Big guns, small dicks” is a jibe at the police and its racist foundations and use of excessive force.

It best relates to class through the conversations about race and equity we’ve had. Our readings have been centered around a diverse cast of authors instead of the one viewpoint of the cisgender, heterosexual white man, which is something the BLM movement also aimed to achieve. In addition, although it has not been a focal topic yet, we have talked about police brutality and how it impacts POC most; another key point of the BLM movement. Lastly, we talked about what mythic America, or the American Dream, really is, and why it is never realized for so many people. The Black Lives Matter movement is all about how the American Dream is something almost no one can truly achieve, and how it leads to othering and a sense of disillusionment with the effectiveness of our society.

Piece 2: Vonnegut’s Slapstick

For my second piece, I chose to utilize a work of a famous satire writer to draw comparisons to our coursework. As for the image, I took a picture of the copy I own and edited it. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick centers around two twins who are geniuses together, but entirely stupid on their own; they are neglected by their parents, who are a family of renown and ashamed of having deformed children. Their parents look at them as if they are to be pitied for the very nature of their existence. They use this to sneak around and live lives of luxury, continuing this ruse of being entirely stupid so that they may live as freely as possible in their circumstances.

In this work, the children are quite literally tossed in a house and locked away to prevent others from seeing them; this is something I personally connect to the concept of silencing, which happened frequently during the BLM movement. Protesters, peaceful or not, were arrested; protests were escalated by cops far more often than by protesters, but that was generally ignored and used as a way to disregard the protests as nothing more than “riots”; large platforms such as Twitter and Instagram incorrectly labelled some posts as “misinformation”. Voices were silenced all over the internet. In addition, some white allies were not using their platforms to actually help/spread information, but were using them to spew white guilt and accomplish very little. As L. Ayu Saraswati says in her textbook Introduction to Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, “Guilt as a response to...racism...does very little to contribute to efforts toward social change as it recenters whiteness” (page 15), basically saying yes, these folks are speaking their mind and are at least partially aware of their privilege, but their feelings of guilt without taking action are not actually doing anything to help what they feel guilty for.

Piece 3: The Hymn to Demeter

My last selection will be an ancient work known as the Hymn to Demeter, and the version I am using is translated by Gregory Nagy. I am using this statue of Demeter and Persephone as the visual accompaniment to this analysis. This piece was originally written to be performed orally by a poet/performer as praise to Demeter. It details the kidnapping of Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, and the subsequent founding of the Cult of Demeter in the city Eleusis.

When Persephone is first kidnapped, it is said that “she cried with a piercing voice, / Calling upon her father, the son of Kronos, the highest and the best. / But not one of the immortal ones, or of human mortals, / heard her voice” (lines 20-23). To me, this draws clear parallels with the silencing of victims of police brutality and their families. Public outrage did nothing to bring accountability to Breonna Taylor’s killers or the flawed justice system that let them get away with it. The victim’s family was silenced and the movement to convict her killers has died down since it happened almost a year ago.

Additionally, it is later revealed to Demeter through Rhea that this kidnapping was not only endorsed by but planned by Zeus himself. As Greek households were patriarchal, it was not uncommon for a father to arrange a relationship/marriage without informing the daughter or allowing the daughter to meet her betrothed first. This endorsed act of violence can also be paralleled to the actions of the police; their brutality is actively supported by a flawed, racist justice system, just as the actions of Hades were actively supported by the all-powerful Zeus. What’s more, nobody stood up to Zeus or questioned his actions because of all the power he has, which is another perfect example of how this parallel functions.

Lastly, Demeter’s pure rage and grief is reminiscent of the rage and grief of the black mothers who lost their children to police brutality. Last semester, I attended a Theater of War performance known as “Antigone in Ferguson”, and after the performance was over, there was a discussion led by a panel of educators and victims of police brutality. Several of them were mothers who told painful stories of how their children, usually sons, were murdered and how they are still trying to find a way to keep living. Their powerful grief is parallel to Demeter’s; the only difference is that Demeter gets her child back.

A Meta-Commentary

My process in finding these works and deciding which would draw the best parallels was to find a bunch of subjects I thought would work well and then cut down on them. I knew the “big guns, small dicks” would be included for sure, as it was an image I took myself and had good parallels to draw right off the bat. It’s a good way to catch someone’s attention! And the message is powerful. Seeing all the graffiti on State Street last summer was impactful, but this simple phrase stood out to me and was (I believe) the only picture I took out of all the graffiti down there. The Kurt Vonnegut work I included because I like the comparison between how the twins are treated in the book and how folks who were active and open about their opinions were silenced; also, I’d be lying if I failed to mention that part of the reason is because I adore Kurt Vonnegut and wanted to find a way to bring a work of his into this. My third choice, the Hymn to Demeter, was chosen because it’s a cool way to connect one of my other classes to this one. In addition, it’s a good piece to reinterpret as an allegory for how the justice system enables the wrong people and fails the right ones.

Also, although I did not choose many direct quotes, I think the parallels I drew between the content of these works is substantial! I put a lot of thought into how I worded things and what content actually related best to the works of this class, specifically the themes we’ve discovered so far in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. The heaviness of the book relates well to the power behind each of these pieces, especially the first one, as the message is plain and simple but impactful. The prose and structure of Rankine’s work is incredibly unique and not directly paralleled in any of the pieces I chose; however, the Hymn to Demeter is written in a very specific structure that is almost poetry? It’s a very confusing structure, because it does not seem to have any meter or consistency, but is still patterned in a specific way. This may be a result of translation, it may have been intentionally created this way by the original writer (who is not known; the transcript of this hymn was found in a stable in Moscow in 1777), or it could be a byproduct of the format itself as a hymn. The repetition Rankine takes advantage of in Citizen is actually something Vonnegut is known for as well. Several of his works have anaphoric phrases; Slaughterhouse V has both “po-tee-weet” and “and so it goes”, and Slapstick has the comedic “hi-ho”, used as a way to break the tension of the work, as it is supposed to be satire. This repetition and the more casual grammar these authors both share give their works a heavy feeling (cut far more frequently in Vonnegut’s than in Rankine’s) that also works as a conversational element, making both of the works feel like the audience is also in the narrative itself.

Commonplacing is a valuable step in making powerful literature more accessible to people! Providing unique and interesting analysis of a work makes it much easier for people to casually consume! Additionally, using platforms like Tumblr for this analysis makes things even more accessible, as anyone can see it and Tumblr allows posts to be any length! Opening thoughtful literature and analysis to the public like this also allows for good, guided conversation on a variety of subjects, and creates interest for the works in their entirety. This can easily inspire people to pick up a copy of their own of any of these works if someone is interested enough in how these can be interpreted! (If any of you are interested in the Hymn to Demeter, I used the one found at this website , it’s free ^-^)

A big thank you to any of you who read this all the way through (including you, professor)! I’ll be doing more fun and less serious literary analysis on this account as well, so if that’s something you’re interested in, stay tuned!

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captainchrisfics · 5 years

Text

Why Not?

About: Loosely inspired by Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams,” in which Chris Evans and the first-person pov narrator try to escape L.A. in search of some ocean air, planning to spend the night snuggling up on a secluded beach somewhere. At a crossroads in their lives, when there are so many choices regarding their careers and their future as a family, tensions rise as the couple suspects they may want different things after all.

Word Count: 5,855

Requested By: Anon! Thanks for giving me a chance to write this. I hope you don’t mind I changed the point of contention a bit from the original work, but I had this conflict somewhere in me instead and found that the song was a perfect foundation for it. Totally not an excuse to use one of these hot new beach gifs. x

“Let’s get out of this city,” Chris shouted suddenly, fast footsteps pounding down the hallway. Soon he was standing between me and the television with a hand on his hip as he dropped a packed duffle bag onto the coffee table with a clatter.

Chris looked tired, worn in a way only a day of stressful work with the press made him. His hair was messy, like his anxious fingers had been raking through it and tugging at the long strands with nothing else to let out the nervous energy. I knew he’d had a rough day by the way he stormed into our L.A. apartment late and locked himself in our bedroom since he didn’t want to talk about it, but this crisis was surprising even me.

“Oh?” I asked with a playful smile, liking this spontaneous outburst of his. Usually Chris was rather disciplined, strict with his schedule because he had to be. Thousands if not millions of other people’s dollars usually rode on it. But he did have the occasional break in routine, more often than not when the flashing bulbs of Tinseltown became a little too blinding.

“I want to drive out of here, out of the crowds you know? I mean,” Chris shook his head in exasperation before throwing his hands into the air. “It’s not normal, this place- God, this place isn’t normal. The grass is all AstroTurf and the water tastes weird. There aren’t even any stars in the sky!” He gestured wildly to the ceiling as he looked up. As if he was disappointed not to see the Milky Way swirling above our living room, his shoulders sagged as his arms fell back down and he looked at me dejectedly.

“That’s because they’re all in Malibu, babe,” I joked, earning a sarcastic laugh from my husband as he rolled his tired eyes. “Where do you want to go anyway?” I asked more seriously, genuinely entertaining the idea. I sat up from my lounging position on the couch to give him my full attention.

Chris smirked like the devil, sure he had me hooked. “The ocean,” he said and, before I could make a snide comment about how he’s able to see it from our backyard, he continued. “A beach without anybody else.”

I leaned back onto the couch, stretching my legs until my toes pressed against the other side’s arm. “Please, leave me and my DiCaprio movie at peace then.” I pointed to the screen behind him, where Rose was just about to ask Jack to draw her like one of his French girls.

Chris peeked over his shoulder before turning back to me, his upper lip curled underneath his beard’s mustache as he smiled. “Don’t be a smartass. You know you don’t count. Now come on,” he insisted, walking around the table in only a few of his long strides and extending his hand to me. I looked between his palm and his gaze, biting my lip before flicking the tv off and taking his in mine. Chris not only hoisted me off the couch but pulled me into his chest while peppering the top of my head with kisses.

“I’m not ready, though,” I said, wriggling out of his grip and holding my arms out as if he hadn’t seen me yet. I’d done rounds of auditions that day and I hadn’t bothered to change out of my nice dress, one with a floating fabric I saved for readings since my agent called it “age-appropriate,” let alone take off any of my makeup or unpin my hair. It was so exhausting, trying to keep up with Hollywood’s standard of idealized young women as I aged out of many roles, that I just collapsed on the couch when I came home. It seemed the longer I sat in the waiting rooms, the younger, prettier the girls who joined me on the couches were. The more roles I was rejected for.

My protest didn’t dampen Chris’s grin, I don’t think anything could’ve rained on his parade. “I packed your things. The tent is still in your trunk. Dodger’s got tons of sitters I can text on the way. And you don’t have a good enough reason as to why we can’t drive until this godforsaken place is nothing more than a twinkle in the rear-view mirror,” he said without his eye-pinching smile ever wavering once. Chris must’ve recognized the hesitation in my eyes as he gave it a last-ditch effort with, “We won’t be able to just pick up and leave for the weekend forever.”

I squeezed his hand a little harder, a meager but earnest smile creeping onto my face. “Guess you’re right,” I admitted, trying to feign absent-mindedness. I pressed a quick kiss to his lips, leaving behind a ghost of the cherry red color I wore on mine. Then I crept around him toward the front door. I grabbed the keys to my convertible, which housed our camping supplies from our last we-can’t-survive-in-this-city-for-another-second trip. Now that I thought about it, they were becoming more often than not. “Race you!” I shouted as I tried to push that thought and its implications out of my mind. Instead, I took off running out the door as Chris’s shouts about foul play and heavy footsteps trailed behind me.

The drive, however, offered too much time to think. Over the quiet hum of the engine and Chris’s low voice whispering along to the oldies on the radio as I drove, the wind whistling filling my ears as I sped down the curving roads carved into the side of the coast, I was left with little more than my own thoughts and Chris’s fingers tapping along to Elton John’s beat on my thigh. I realized this was the third weekend in a row Chris and I needed some sort of escape. Even before this last month, we jetted off to the Cape even though it was freezing or hopped in the car to drive until the lung-coating smog turned to salty ocean air or climbed mountains so high we could barely see the skyscrapers below. I was suffocating. I never thought I was trying to escape something until I realized how fast I was going, as if I desperately wanted nothing more than to put that city behind me.

Once we arrived at our usual spot, there were only a few hours of sunlight to prepare for the night. It was a small cove a bit of a hike from the beach’s parking, but it was private. The perfect place to set up camp without being bothered. Chris started propping up the tent while I got cracking on the portable grill and some hotdogs that would be inevitably undercooked for dinner. Neither of us minded too much, having become accustomed to worse food on our travels.

While we sat together in the tent, picking apart granola bars and waiting for the sun to start setting, I found myself playing with my wedding ring. Turning it around my finger, mulling over my thoughts. For better or for worse, we’d promised we’d be there for each other for as long as we could, but that was a hell of a lot different than asking him to give up this life he’d worked so hard to build. With a stiff resoluteness, I decided I couldn’t ask Chris to leave. I’d pick him and his happiness over and over and over again.

“Hey,” he said softly, placing a hand on my knee tentatively, like he was casting a line and praying I’d take the bait so he could reel me back into reality. “Look, the sky’s turning already. Why don’t we take a walk?” Chris prompted as he stood, tugging me along with him. I glanced out the tent’s entrance to see the sun was barely even grazing the water’s edge and the sky was still daylight blue, but I guess he thought a change in scenery might ease the creases in between my furrowed brow and at the corners of my frowning mouth.

We didn’t get far, only to where the last of the waves spluttered into foamy white bubbles along the sand as the water dragged away. It was cold between my toes and the whipping wind didn’t help, but Chris pulled me into his side to block some of the breeze. He was always hot, with skin like a radiator that was warm to the touch. I fit against his shirtless chest so perfectly since Chris was so much taller, curling up to his side like a cat hiding under the heater. He tugged the elastic out of my hair with a goofy smile, claiming he liked watching it whip around in the wind, but I managed to subdue the strands by tucking them behind my ears.

“Nothing lasts forever, you know. The way you’re feeling, it’ll pass,” I said quietly, partly hoping he wouldn’t hear me over the crashing waves and seagull squaks. I wasn’t sure if it was more for Chris’s sake or mine, but it felt like a rationalization even as the words left me lips. Of course Chris would get over these weekend-long sprints away, he just wanted a small break from the hectic celebrity life. I couldn’t blame him for craving an escape from all the paparazzi cameras, wanting for once to be able to leave the house in pajamas without worrying about getting recognized and looking your worst. It was all for work he loved, though. Ultimately that would overcome his frustration and, when it didn’t, we’d be here.

But I knew, deep down, I needed to hear those words out loud just as badly, even if they were coming from me. My yearning to leave the L.A. lifestyle behind, to find something that fulfilled me in the same way acting used to before it became little more than an age-shame game. To ask Chris to pack a few suitcases a lot bigger than his duffel bag and join me. It would pass, it had to.

Unaware of the tornado my thought-spirals were sucking me into, Chris’s arm fell from my shoulder as his hand reached for mine. “I want us to,” he said with a firm purpose. “Last forever, I mean.” He played with my fingers, running the tips of his over the length of mine before finally intertwining them.

I paused, too busy with my mind to adjust to Chris’s calm declaration of familiar love. “What a relief,” I laughed through the unease in my shaky breath, wagging my diamond-clad ring finger in his face.

We hadn’t been married for long. The ink was barely dry on our license, even calling each other husband and wife still felt a little funny on the tongue, but it meant our promises were still fresh. We’d known each other forever though, having lived in the same complex when we first moved to the city fresh out of high school, and we dated for years before he put this ring on my finger. If I had any insecurities when it came to our relationship, he would’ve known about them a long time ago, but Chris still looked past my hand, right into my eyes and through to my soul with nothing more than one eyebrow hanging slightly lower than the other.

“Are you having any, uh, doubts?” My eyes snapped to Chris, the worry lacing his voice as fresh as the preemptive hurt. He avoided my stare, instead watching the seashell he kicked back into the ocean. “About us?” Chris added like an afterthought, as if I could’ve thought he meant anything else with the dejected way he tore his hand from mine to shove it deep into his pocket.

“Why would you say that?” I spit out the words like poison. I didn’t realize I stomped my foot like a toddler throwing a tantrum until I felt the water’s splash. It was the very last thing to cross my mind, even amidst thinking about our drastically different wants right now, so it must be on his.

“Only because you said it like that,” Chris defended indignantly, crossing strong arms over his chest. He shot me one hard look, steely eyes looking ablaze with the setting sky’s reflection, before reverting his gaze back to the ground. “And you’ve been... I don’t know. You’ve been distant,” he concluded, rushing the words out of his mouth while he still had the courage to confront me. Chris shrugged, trying to pass himself off as blasé about it, but I could tell by the way he clenched his jaw tight that he was trying to bottle it up.

“Baby, the only thing I want is for us to be happy,” I asserted, choosing my words carefully. It was the truth, evident enough in my voice to quell any of his suspicions. More than I wanted to get away from L.A. and all of its pressures, I wanted to be with Chris. “Old and grey,” I continued with a wistful smile, “holding hands in creaky rocking chairs on a wrap-around porch somewhere in Massachusetts wouldn’t hurt either.”

It was quiet while Chris thought it over. Too quiet, in fact. I imagined it’s what it felt like to be on the other side of the moon, the dark one where there wasn’t any sound and anyone who could hear you if there was any was hundreds of thousands of miles away. So I stretched to reach a hand to his shoulder, only for Chris to shrug me off as he sucked a breath in between his gritted teeth.

Chris started walking along the foamy wet line drawn by crashing waves as they pulled out to meet the rest of the sea. I stood there, watching him walk away, feeling utterly useless. As I debated whether or not to follow the indents his feet left in the sand, Chris peeked over his shoulder. Seeing me still planted where he left me, he jerked his head forward, encouraging me to chase after him. We walked silently, the only sounds being rolling water, the squishiness of our feet hitting wet sand, and seagulls chirping overhead. After a moment, I couldn’t stand it.

“I just...” I released a defeated sigh, sputtering like a deflating balloon as I tried to find the words to explain myself. “I want you to remember this, though. You know how work’s been. Chris, I want you to remember me like this... not the way Hollywood makes me feel,” I divulged, hands wringing in the fabric of my billowing dress just searching for something to hold onto.

“Darling,” he said, admonished. Chris turned to face me, placing one firm hand on each of my shoulders as he dipped to be at my eye-level, imploring me to believe him. “That’s what this is about? You do know I’ll still love you even when you’re not. I mean, I can’t wait to grow old with you. Comparing our crow’s feet and arguing over whose hair is grayer.”

I met his eyes, their sincerity coupled with my desperate need to believe him, made me feel enveloped in his love. I cracked a smile, feeling awfully silly for even questioning it in the first place, as I joked, “Oh, I can already guarantee it’ll be mine with all the stress you and your antics put me through.”

Chris smiled too, although his was crooked and haphazard in a lazy sort of way, lips upturning with tired relief. “Just wait until it’s me and three or four mini Evans’s running around. We’ll be in for it then,” he said, eyebrows raising as he begged me to believe him, a smug smirk playing on his rosy lips.

Chris turned back to the ocean, tugging me to his chest with a new comfort. I thought I could last for a little longer in L.A. if it meant I still got to be held like this, his mountainy musk nearly drowning out the salty smell of the water. “Three or four?” I asked incredulously, wrapping my arms around his waist. Of course I thought about having kids with him before, but never that many. Although now that he said it...

He bumped my hip with his. “Mhm...” Chris hummed as he laid his chin on top of my head. He didn’t take his eyes off the horizon, where the sun was sinking below the water and turning the sky a brilliant kaleidoscope of colors as warm as the feeling in my chest, as he said, “A conservative guess, if you ask me. In rapid succession, too.” Chris laughed hard, but I had a feeling he was only partly joking. Suddenly, he sobered up. “I’m looking forward to starting a family with you, darling.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you won’t be the only one I’m calling baby for much longer. Enjoy it while you can,” I teased with wriggling eyebrows, leaning impossible deeper into his shoulder and slipping a hand in the back pocket of Chris’s jeans.

“You know what I’m really going to enjoy right now?” Chris asked, a rascal’s grin growing from ear to ear. Before I could even ask, one of his arms hooked around my knees while the other supported my back as he lifted me close to his chest. Carrying me bridal-style despite my squirming and shrieking giggles, he darted further into the cold water until he decided to drop me. Even submerged, I could hear Chris cackling. When I broke the water’s surface, I pushed down on his doubled-over shoulders suddenly with all the force I could muster, sending Chris tumbling head-first into the sea.

He stood up quickly, shaking his head like a wet dog before pushing his hair back and wading toward me. “So that’s how we’re playing this, huh?” he said in a low voice, looking at me in a way that made me feel all too much like he was a lion stalking its prey. Looking around for a way out, I realized I was the exposed gazelle. When Chris lunged, he missed, but I was drenched by his splash anyway.

Soon we left the water, not wanting to be caught with anything lurking under the surface at dusk. Somehow, even in the dim moonlight, Chris’s wet torso managed to twinkle and I was tempted to make my very own constellations out of the water dripping down the curve of his back. I hung back, watching as he pushed the long dark strands of hair matted from the ocean out of his face, the silhouette of his flexing bicep and the rippling muscles of his back driving me mad.

By the time I reached the tent, Chris had already traded his soaked shorts for checkered pajama bottoms. I turned to face the wall, as to avoid Chris’s wandering eyes and the inevitable, burning blush they’d ignite in my cheeks. I don’t know why, the clingy fabric of my wet dress left little to the imagination and my body wasn’t anything he’d have to dream up in the first place, but I tried to maintain an inkling of modesty as I kneeled so my head wouldn’t hit the ceiling, slowly peeling the dress away until I was left in nothing more than my underwear.

It was dark, with just the faint glow of a lantern filling the tent with an orange hue and exaggerated shadows. I saw Chris’s hand reaching for me, spindly shadow fingers projected onto the wall in front of me before he made contact, his warm palm pressing into the curve of my hip as he held me.

Chris’s chest melded with my back as he moved closer, our hearts pounding hard enough we could feel each other’s being somehow in sync. Our bent legs rested between one another, bringing us as near to each other as we could be. He gathered my hair in one hand, moving it all out of his way as he rested his scratchy beard on my shoulder’s bare skin, nuzzling into the crook of my neck. He placed gentle kisses along the exposed skin, trailing up my collarbone. I reached around, tangling my hand into the long hair at the nape of his neck as I urged him to continue. My neck craned, trying to give him more surface area to suck on while I released breathy, fluttering gasps that elicited a deep moan from the very bottom of his throat.

Chris reached my ear, nibbling on the sensitive skin. Instinctively, my head moved toward his until our noses were brushing. Every breath was borrowed. “It’s not good for you to stay in wet clothes, you know,” he growled instead of kissing me as I anticipated. Instead, he went back to marking me neck, always such a tease. His hand on my hip reached across my stomach, dragging his fingernails across my cold skin until he held me, pressing my impossibly closer toward his torso. His fingers didn’t make themselves at home, choosing instead to travel up the other side of my torso’s curve until he reached my chest. Over my wet bra, Chris kneaded my breast, already tender from the cold. His warmth was a welcome contrast.

“Wouldn’t want you catching a cold, darling.” Chris’s lips left my neck suddenly, leaving me feeling a rush of the night’s frigid air in the wake of his absence. My hand fell to his chest, the back of it landing just over his heart as my fingers curled with anticipation. I felt him pressing against the back of my thigh, hard through the thin fabric of his pants. It continued to fall until I found the hem of his pants. My fingers hooked below the flannel, beginning to tug it down the subtle curve of Chris’s hip. Then his teeth grazed my shoulder as he gripped my bra’s strap, tugging until it slipped. My breath hitched in my throat as his hand traveled up my spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake, and I froze.

He started to unclasp my bra as my lips, trembling like there was an earthquake, spit out a word I wasn’t even anticipating. “Stop,” I whispered earnestly before I even registered that I’d thought the word. My hand dropped to my bare thigh, tightening into a fist with frustration at myself.

If Chris wasn’t so attentive, he may have mistaken it for a lustful sigh. But in a second, with no questions asked, he untangled himself from my body and sat back on his heels so there was a foot or so of space between us. It wasn’t much, but considering the size of our small tent, it was all the room I could have to breathe.

I sighed, snapping my bra strap back into place with my thumb. “I just-“ I tried to say, only for my voice to betray me and break. “Damnit, I’m really sorry.” I buried my face in my hands, too afraid of the hurt Chris’s eyes would inevitably hold.

“No, no, darling,” his measured voice reassured me, just barely above a whisper. His hands wrapped loosely around my wrists, tugging me out of my hiding spot. Despite my trepidation, Chris’s whole being only held concern. Between his low shoulders and soft eyes, all he had was repentance. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you weren’t feeling-“

“Don’t you start saying sorry then either, Evans,” I responded with a sudden insistent flare. “It wasn’t anything you did. God, it never is.” I reached for Chris’s hands, where they sat wringing in his lap, and enveloped them in my own. “I-I don’t know... I’ve just got too much on my mind to enjoy this... To enjoy how great you make me feel, baby,” I disclosed, looking at him longingly through my eyelashes. In all honesty, I did want to make the most of our alone-time together. To make Chris feel that bliss he came here craving, to allow him to return the favor, but I couldn’t pull myself out of my own head enough.

“You don’t have to explain yourself. No worries there, Evans,” he responded with a giddy grin, still not used to calling me by his last name. He tucked some of my hair behind my ear so I couldn’t hide my blush. It was infectious, coupled with his kind words, I couldn’t stop from breaking out into a smile myself. “Why don’t we go look for some shooting stars then? I think NASA tweeted something about Jupiter and Saturn lining up with the moon this week.” Chris stood as tall as he could, though it wasn’t much more than a painful-looking crouch. He extended a hand to me, a peace offering I accepted with open arms. Or, rather, by taking his hand and allowing him to lead me back toward the sand.

“Oh, babe,” I giggled, a mischievous smirk of my own making its home on my lips. I stumbled a little, having difficulty finding my footing in the sand when I could hardly see in front of my face. “You know I love it when you talk nerdy to me.” Chris laughed while shook his head at the sky as he searched it, deciding this spot was nice until he thought the view would be better another couple side-steps to the left.

Finally he dropped, making a quiet thud against the sand as he dragged me down with him by our joined hands. Chris intertwined our fingers before nodding with satisfaction and laying down. He stretched his other arm, resting his head on his bicep as he jutted his chin out to the spot next to him.

As I snuggled into the soft sand, Chris pointed up to the sky with a lazily extended finger. “You see the Big Dipper?” he asked, a childlike amazement evident in his voice. I said I did, although I was too busy being overwhelmed by all the other dazzling lights twinkling in the sky as well. Feeling awfully small and insignificant in an inexplicably liberating sort of way. I curled up close to Chris, trying to catch every bit of his body heat I could.

“It’s actually called Ursa Major, Latin for the Great Bear,” he continued. Instead of staring at the sky, I turned to Chris. I watched his blue eyes light up, although I wasn’t sure if it was the moon’s bright reflection or a burning passion inside of him. “The Greeks had a story for it, tons of them actually. But I like the version where this nymph named Callisto swore a vow of celibacy to Artemis, although Zeus had a bit of a thing for her,” Chris turned to me with wagging eyebrows.

“They end up having this son…” he trailed off, turning back to the sky as his face tightened with concentration. “Sorry, I can’t remember his name now. Anyway, Zeus’s wife, Hera, gets super pissed and turns the poor nymph into a bear. She spends years like that until, one day, her son happens to find her.” Chris squeezed my hand, his eyes flickering between watching me in their corners to staring at the constellation again. “It’s not the happiest family reunion though. He’s a hunter now so, without knowing the bear he’s afraid might attack him is really his mom, he goes to kill her.”

Chris pulled our laced-together hands to his lips, pressing gentle kisses to my knuckles as he tried to prolong my suspense. “Zeus takes pity on them, but if you ask me, he was trying to make up for being the dick that got them in this situation. Ease a guilty conscience, if gods even have those,” he paused to scoff. “He ends up carrying Callisto and her son to the heavens and turns them both into constellations so they couldn’t be hurt anymore,” Chris finished, his voice growing quieter until he reached the end, barely above a whisper.

“Is the moral supposed to be that kids ruin everything?” I said sorely, offering a bitter laugh to try to pass it off as a joke, but Chris could tell my heart wasn’t in it. In fact, I’d been thinking the opposite all night. A lot longer than that, actually, now that I think about it. Too nervous to see the confirmation I suspected may be in his eyes, I kept mine glued to the sky. Feeling an awful lot of the vulnerability I imagined Callisto may have, if only in a fraction.

“Nope,” he said, popping the word on his lips. “I just think it’s comforting to know that we won’t be able to fuck up that badly. I mean, as far as I know, neither of us are deities so, unless you’ve got some secret jealous ex with that potion from Brave, we’ll be alright parents. Sure, we’ve got crazy lives, but I don’t think we’ll suddenly wake up tomorrow with all the answers, so I don’t see why we’re still waiting.” His voice was as level and laid-back as if he was talking about the weather, not actually starting a family someday soon.

My neck nearly snapped with its velocity when I turned to Chris, flabbergasted in every sense of the word. Of course I knew he wanted kids, I don’t think there’s a person that’s ever watched a minute of a Chris Evans interview who didn’t. But we were always too busy working. Too focused on each other. Too far from a good school district. Too not-living-the-lives-we-want-to-lately.

“That is what you’ve been thinking about, right? Kids?” Chris asked, his whole face contorting with confusion, screwing up as he thought he did. “I figured, you’ve been worrying about getting older a lot lately. Plus, it seems like you’re tired of the whole L.A. lifestyle, lord knows I am, and like you’re ready to do something else career-wise. So I thought… I don’t know. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you if-” he rambled, trying to put words to his thoughts in an attempt to make me understand them as well.

“Chris,” I said. It came out more sternly than I intended. “What do you want?”

He flipped over to his side so we were facing each other completely now. “Well, of course, I want you to be happy-”

“No, Chris. What do you want?” I repeated, unrelenting. Our eyes bore into each other, playing the world’s worst staring game with a poignant intensity. Chris’s eyes narrowed, his thick lashes nearly brushing his cheeks, until he lost.

“Honestly?” he said, liberating a heavy sigh from his lungs. I turned on my side to face him completely, curling up against his ribs which nearly rattled with every one of his stalling, shaky breaths. “I want kids,” Chris admitted in a breath. “If you aren’t ready yet, if I misunderstood whatever you’ve been going through lately, I’m really sorry, but I’m ready to settle down a little more. Move out of the city, find a nice home in some suburb with a yard for Dodge and a few empty bedrooms to fill.” Chris spoke with longing for a life we weren’t quite living, not dissimilar to the one that’d been plaguing my thoughts ever since I figured out the words for it. Although he was hesitant at first, once he started rolling, Chris couldn’t help confessing this residential life he’d planned down to the picket fence.

“Do you- Chris, don’t fuck with me like this. Do you really mean that?” I asked, utterly unable to hide my desperation. More than anything, I wanted that picket fenced front yard and a dozen little feet pitter-pattering down the hall. All I needed was for Chris to want it, too.

“Absolutely,” he said with confidence and a slow nod to boot. “I mean, we’re both tired of L.A. anyway, right? We aren’t getting any younger. I figure, why not, you know? I’d rather raise our kids where they can see the stars and walk down the street without getting papped. What do you think?” Chris inquired, chewing on his bottom lip anxiously. He’d gone out on a limb, hoping I’d be there to catch him when he fell.

I couldn’t stop the tears brimming in my eyes at just the thought of packing school lunches. Shutting the fridge, littered with finger-paintings of our family and tacky magnets we’d collect on every vacation, before handing a bag to each little kid. Kissing the tops of their heads as they rushed out the door, ready to board the big yellow school bus waiting out front.

“If that’s not what you want, that’s okay,” Chris rushed. His eyebrows dipped, heavy with concern that tugged down on the corners of his lips as well. “Really, it’s okay. No pressure. Please don’t cry about it.” Chris reached an arm around me, pulling me close to his chest to comfort me until my quiet cries erupted into laughter. “Wait, wh-what?” he stuttered.

“You meatball,” I teased, trying to catch my breath. “God, you don’t know how badly I’ve been wanting to hear you say that. Would it be wild if I told you I think that’s exactly what I want, too?” I laughed again, relishing in every bit of the relief.

“Not at all, darling,” Chris reassured me quickly. “I think it sounds like a dream, waking up with one arm around you and our baby snuggled in the other.” His eyes turned glossy, like he was remembering something that hadn’t even happened yet.

“In that case,” I said with a smirk that grew into a devilish grin. I placed my palm on Chris’s chest and pushed him back, flat against the sand, as I rolled over to straddle his waist. His eyebrows shot up in surprise as an incredulous laugh left his rosy lips. I flipped my hair to one side, biting my bottom lip with an excited suspense, as I looked down at Chris, balancing myself with a hand on his stomach. I swear I could feel his diaphragm halt as he forgot to breathe. “Why don’t we get started?”

Chris’s hands found their place on either side of my hips. His eyes watched his finger as it slipped under my underwear’s waistband, tracing the horizontal line dangerously low on my skin. As his gaze rose slowly, trying to soak up every last drop of this moment. “Are you proposing we make a baby right here, right now?” Chris asked when his eyes met mine, a soft smile carving crow’s feet next to his blue eyes.

“Well, in your very own words,” I purred, laying my chest to his so our faces were only inches from each other. I ran my fingers through his dark hair, trying to engrave the way he was looking at me now into my memory, as if I was the moon and the stars and the whole, entire sky. His grip tightened on my hips with anticipation as I leaned in to press a longing kiss to his lips, only a tease of what was to come. “Why not?”

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some-lists · 4 years

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Ranking all the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers

Go Go Power Rangers! I felt it was time for another 90’s throwback. Today I’m ranking all the Power Rangers from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Just about every 90’s kid was obsessed with this show. It was a phenomenon. It started out with the original five in its first season. As the show went on, we saw a number of replacements added to the cast.

As a child, I had my definite favorites based on my childhood memories. I later rewatched the series as an adult and my perspective on the characters really changed. This is my ranking based on what I observed as an adult looking back.

10. Kat Hillard (Pink Ranger)

Kat had the unfortunate task of filling Kimberly’s shoes as the new Pink Ranger. She was doomed from the start. The writers introduced the character as a villain -- a fellow student under an evil spell to undo the Pink Ranger. It made us not like her from the very beginning. Kat eventually grew into her role, especially in the following seasons of Zeo and Turbo. But initially, she felt like an imposter who literally did not fit the suit.

9. Aisha Campbell (Yellow Ranger)

I liked Aisha as a kid. I liked her sassy attitude and that she was girly and short. After watching the show again as an adult, I realized how completely useless she was as a ranger. She had no fighting ability whatsoever, couldn’t do any flips, and didn’t offer any brain power either. I actually felt embarrassed watching her fight scenes.

8. Rocky DeSantos (Red Ranger)

I think Rocky got a raw deal as the new Red Ranger. Many viewers were used to seeing the Red Ranger as a leader. However, when Rocky was introduced, he was just another ranger on the side. I don’t think this was his fault as Jason had already been demoted as leader after Tommy became the White Ranger. As a kid, I liked Rocky. I didn’t mind him as an adult either. His taekwondo skills were actually better than Jason’s. He was faster, more agile, could kick higher, and do more flips. Unfortunately, as one of the replacement rangers, he was always in the background.

7. Jason Lee Scott (Red Ranger)

Ranking Jason this low is gonna shock some die hard fans. As a kid, I absolutely loved Jason. He was one of my favorite rangers. I thought he was a great leader and strong fighter. He was the glue who got his team to work together. I especially preferred him as a leader over Tommy. But when I rewatched the show as an adult, I realized he really didn’t do anything! He had maybe two episodes about him. One was about him bench pressing a world record where he lifted weights the entire episode. That’s pretty much all he ever did. He lifted weights, punched bags, and occasionally taught a karate class or two. Essentially, he was there to flex his muscles and not much else. Even his sword, which I remembered being so cool, was pretty much useless. That was a big eye opener for me. I was also disappointed to see that his taekwondo skills weren’t as great as I remembered them. He was really slow, kinda clunky. Overall, Jason deserved better than what we was given.

6. Billy Cranston (Blue Ranger)

As the resident brain, Billy managed to invent the team’s communicators, which were also teleportation devices, and a flying car. He often operated the computers at the Command Center along with Alpha-5. It’s fair to say he contributed significantly to the team. He was a weak fighter in the beginning, but somehow became a super ripped expert gymnast by the end of his run. The show never explained that, but it was never a realistic show anyway.

5. Adam Park (Black Ranger)

I remember not liking Adam very much as a child. He was so quiet, shy, and often in the back as one of the replacement rangers. In my child mind that meant he was boring. However, as an adult, I realized how awesome he really was. First of all, he was way cute and I didn’t even see it before. He was smart and often operated the Command Center along with Billy (good ole Asian stereotyping). But mostly, he was an incredible fighter. His Shaolin kung fu style was a beauty to behold. His kicks, spins, and flips were so quick, effortless, and graceful. He had the best line in the movie: “I’m a frog,” which turned out to be the best zord as well. As the seasons went on (especially into Zeo and Turbo), he became much stronger, more confident, and a lot funnier too.

4. Zack Taylor (Black Ranger)

Zack is seriously underrated. He had a great personality. He was the life of the party, a great dancer, and funny. He even created his own martial arts style called Hip Hop Kido. He especially shined in the second season as he incorporated his karate with dance moves and incredible acrobatics. In my opinion, he was a way better fighter than Jason. If he had been given the proper treatment, Zack would’ve been on the same level as Tommy. After Zack left the show, the cast wasn’t nearly as fun.

3. Trini Kwan (Yellow Ranger)

Original Yellow Ranger Trini was the best. She was strong, brave, and intelligent. She had a spiritual side to her that was cool, calm, mature, and classy. She had natural leadership skills that were completely overlooked. I’d even say that when unmorphed, she was the true leader. She often stepped up and encouraged the other members no matter what situation they were in. She could understand Billy’s nerd talk and translated for the team. She also kicked serious butt. She became a big role model for many Asian American girls, as she was one of the first Asian American actresses with a visible role on television.

2. Tommy Oliver (Green & White Ranger)

I loved Tommy as the Green Ranger. His karate took the show to the next level. He was super bad ass and totally convincing as a villain. That evil laugh was perfect. Even after becoming good, the writers found a way to keep him around. His weakening powers and ultimately losing his powers gave him a tragic appeal. His relationship with Kimberly was also super cute. He was an exciting fighter and a compelling character. But, I didn’t really like him as the White Ranger. Once he became the White Ranger and the new team leader, he became a lot less interesting. He no longer had a real story. His martial arts was always top notch, but compared to the Green Ranger, White Ranger Tommy was too perfect and a lot more boring. Separately, I would’ve ranked White Ranger Tommy after Adam, but Green Ranger Tommy was awesome. Like I said, he elevated the show.

1. Kimberly Hart (Pink Ranger)

Kimberly was such a popular character. She was loved by girls who wanted to be like her, and by boys who had a crush on her. As an adult, I could easily see why and I was actually really surprised. She was hands down the star of the show. She had the most episodes dedicated to her out of all the rangers. Even when the episode wasn’t about her, she often saved the day with her bow and arrow. Seriously. She saves the team in almost every episode. Even though she wasn’t the strongest fighter unmorphed, her gymnastics skills were crazy impressive. Overall, she was the most valuable and consistent ranger on the team. Without her, they would’ve been toast.

Overall Thoughts

First of all, I couldn’t believe how poor quality the show was. They obviously reused the same footage over and over again. Even more unbelievable is how we all believed it as kids! But that cheesiness is now one of the best aspects of the show.

I was also surprised by how much the show favored certain characters over others. Kimberly had the most spotlight, followed by Billy. When Tommy showed up, it became all about him. Zack and Trini were tied for second to last place for air time. Jason was dead last. He was barely even in the show. It’s no wonder the three were unhappy and left the show when they did.

Rewatching the series also made me realize how much the movies glorified Tommy at the expense of the Pink Ranger. In the first film that meant Kimberly, who I mentioned in this list was an incredibly strong character. In the Turbo movie, they weakened Kat for Tommy to rescue her as well. That’s super disappointing as the show offered some really cool role models for young girls.

One thing I appreciated about the female rangers was how feminine they were. Kimberly was a fashion crazy mall rat, but she was never diminished for it. It just happened to be her personality. It was never a weakness. None of the girls were expected to act like boys in order to be strong. Later in Zeo and Turbo, Tanya was more tomboyish. She naturally excelled at sports and that was really cool too.

Overall, I was impressed by how much stunts these young actors did. The putty scenes were my favorite. We got to see the real actors (not costumed stunt doubles) do all their own stunts. They were all talented martial artists of various styles and masterful gymnasts. As the show progressed, so did the choreography. I can understand why the actors complained about not being paid enough.

Today, most of the newer Power Rangers shows don’t do their own stunts like the originals did. They’re a lot more flashier as well with explosions going off in every episode. Even though the budget is higher and the actors have more rights now, it doesn’t beat the nit and grit or the talent of the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.

#90s nostalgia #90s #90s throwback #power rangers #mighty morphin power rangers #red ranger #blue ranger #yellow ranger #black ranger #pink ranger #green ranger

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broadway-book-badger · 4 years

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Let’s talk about books

Back in the day, about three years ago, I went through a phase of posting monthly write-ups of what I’d been reading on here. In these trying times there seems to be a little bit more time for reading, plus escapism and procrastination are always fun, so I though I’d share a few recommendations. There’s a few different genres (amazingly, hardly any YA fantasy), and I’ve mostly read these in the last year or so. I’ve kept my thoughts as spoiler free as I can. Read them under the cut.

1. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Everyone and their mother has read The Hunger Games. I have read The Hunger Games before. But, a couple of weeks ago, I reread the trilogy for the first time since my first reading, which was around Christmas 2011. And to be perfectly honest, these books hold up! I think maybe it’s because I read so many not so good dystopian YA novels after I first read the Hunger Games that I thought less of this trilogy, but I don’t know. This is a solid series. If you’ve never revisited it (or if you’ve never read it at all), now could be the time! I love the fast paced writing - once things kick off, they do not stop and I burned through the whole trilogy in about three days. The world building is decent, and it doesn’t back away from some pretty heavy stuff. I remember certain scenes being much more gory, but that’s probably just because I’ve read much worse in the past 9 years. Also being older, I appreciate Katniss as a character a lot more. I remember 13-year old me getting annoyed, but now I kind of like that she is allowed to be confused about her feelings and struggle with what she’s been through and generally be a pawn rather than a flawless 16-year old rebel commander as seen elsewhere. The love triangle also isn’t as bad as I remember, although I was reminded of my own love for Peeta. Some people complain that he’s boring, but I think he’s a lovely boy.

2. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I’ve been wanting to read this since I saw someone on the internet pitch this as something along the lines of “The queer dragon fantasy epic you’ve been waiting for.” I did a lot of waiting for it to come out in paperback, because it is an absolute behemoth over 800 pages, and while incredibly pretty, the hardback was just too big. It was, however, well worth the wait. I haven’t read a ton of adult fantasy, because a lot of it is so big, but this was a good place to start, because the writing style is pretty easy to read and also its a standalone, so the story is told by the end, it’s not the first of like 6 800 page bricks. While the plot and the characters and the love story between a queen and her handmaiden who’s a badass sorceress in disguise are all enjoyable, the thing I loved the most was the worldbuilding. I love the time and effort that was spent developing the religions and mythologies of all the different kingdoms and how they clash in ways such as different takes on the legend of St George and the dragon, and the contrast Western dragons as monsters to be slain by knights vs benevolent Eastern dragons that kind of echoes real world mythology. I saw one review of this describing ‘Priory’ as ‘a feminist successor to Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.’ While I think you could definitely say that that is the case, I would say that equally being more feminist than either of those titles is not a particularly high bar, given that there are only about 5 named women in the whole of Middle Earth, and most of the women in Game of Thrones are assaulted and brutalized for no good reason.

3. Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

This book made me so happy, you have no idea. An enemies to friends to lovers story about the son of the first female American president and the Prince of England, that reads kind of like fanfiction but in the best possible way is exactly what the world needs right now. Everything about this book is delightful, from the characters to their relationships to the pseudo-alternate history that its set in. I think the thing that increased my enjoyment of this is the fact that the main characters are in their early twenties. It seems to me that most protagonists, regardless of genre are either 16 or pushing 30, and while I still enjoy their stories, there was just something infinitely more relatable about a character the same age as me. If anyone knows of any more books with characters in this age range, please let me know, because they seem few and far between. Back to this, however, I think I was grinning like an idiot through most of this book. I laughed, I may have shed a little happy tear, I fully recommend.

4. The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin

Another foray into adult fantasy, this is such a good series. The books aren’t too long and the writing style is easy to digest, but it is DARK. It’s set in a world which experiences apocalyptic natural disasters every couple of centuries. There are people with powers that can help control this, but they’re super oppressed and treated as evil, rather than potential saviours. The story follows a woman searching for her missing daughter in the wake of an apocalypse, a young girl coming into her powers and others, and it is so well done. It’s such a unique and diverse world, and there are some great reveals as to why the story is being told the way that it is, as well as interesting takes on things like living vs surviving and systems of oppression.

5. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

An aging and reclusive Hollywood star decides that the time has come to share her life story to an unknown journalist and it’s amazing. This is so well done that its easy to forget while reading that Evelyn Hugo is not a real person and you cannot go and watch her films. I first heard about this book and thought it sounded interesting, as I have a love of Old Hollywood musicals. I then promptly forgot all about it, until I heard other people on the internet talking about how it had a bisexual protagonist, which both reminded me about it and made me want to read it more and here we are. Evelyn Hugo had a hell of a life, with seven husbands and another great love story, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it. This book does a great job at showcasing both the glamour and less glamorous underside of the era, as well as the lengths people are willing to go. It also had me sobbing at 1am because I couldn’t put it down, and if that isn’t the mark of a quality book, I don’t know what is!

6. Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

A coming-of-age story following two childhood friends as they move from their small town to Dublin for University in the 1950s. Quite a chunky book, but a lovely story and I found it read pretty quickly. As I was saying about Red, White and Royal Blue, it’s rare to find books about characters of this sort of age range. Equally rare I think are books with a university setting - the only others I can think of are Fangirl, the Magicians and the Secret History - any recommendations, let me know! I enjoyed the characters growing and finding their confidence and independence, as well as the period setting. I also greatly appreciated the ending, in terms of the main character’s love interest, as it’s something that you don’t often see in this type of book. I may have to read more by this author.

7. Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

This is one of those books that I just happened to read at the perfect time in my life, and for that reason it means a lot to me. I read it at the very end of 2018, when I was feeling really down and not myself, and something in there just spoke to me and maybe gave a little perspective. I don’t read much non-fiction and this is just the memoirs of someone as she navigates her teens and twenties. I can see why someone might not like it, but I really did. There’s some relatable content in here. As the book went on and I read all these parts about bad dates and third-wheeling friends, I kept waiting for the part where she said, ‘but then I met so-and-so and it all changed’ but that NEVER happened. By the end of this book, this woman is still single and praising all the types of non-romantic love in her life, and that I think is a bit of a revelation. It is so rare for a woman to stay single at the end of a book (see every YA love triangle ever, even when both boys are terrible), and so this resonated deeply with me. I laughed, I cried, I go back and reread bits every so often, and I wholeheartedly recommend.

8. Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare

There are those who say that Cassandra Clare needs to stop, but I wholeheartedly disagree. As long as she wants to keep writing Shadowhunter books, I will keep reading them, because they are a hell of a lot of fun. I’ll admit, bits of the OG Mortal Instruments series aren’t the best thing I’ve ever read, but the historical series are in another league altogether. I adore the Infernal Devices trilogy, which features one of the few good love triangles in YA, and Chain of Gold is a promising start to a new series about the children of the Infernal Devices characters. I think there’s something about the historical setting that just works so much better than the modern series, it could be the angst that comes from things like marriages of convenience and ruined reputations, but I digress. I really enjoyed getting to know this new cast of characters, while also getting some appearances from old favourites. The plot was solid too, and I liked the new expansions to the mythology, while wondering what they mean for what’s coming in the rest of this trilogy. I think the fact that I read this in less than 48 hours, mostly sitting in the same spot tells you everything you need to know.

#booklr #books #reading #the priory of the orange tree #chain of gold #the seven husbands of evelyn hugo #lizzy reads

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