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echo-three-one · 3 years

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How ‘bout Jealous Soap x reader?

Hello Earthisdonut 🌍 🍩

I saw your ask while I was at work and I can't stop thinking about how the story goes... I had a lot of ideas but as I wrote, it kept on swinging on the other direction. Maybe it's my feelings being resonated into the words or an entire force telling me to go this way. Anyways here you go...

A jealous soap x reader fic.

Take me home

You take a deep breath and closed your eyes, clearing away the mixed sounds of random chatter, loud tv commentary and the all the yelling. 'Friday evening shifts are the worst' you thought to yourself as you make your way back to your station, wearing a smile on your face.

"Hey miss!" a customer whistled from the far end of the counter. You hastily walked to him and smiled.

"What can I get you?" you asked with sincerity in your voice. You've worked long enough to master the art of faking a smile when in fact you are tired, but this job is all you have and the tips kept the bills afloat.

"Two beers and roasted nuts, please." He ordered, you were impressed at how kind he was, unlike the other new customers who reeked of rudeness and bad manners.

"Coming right up, Sir!" you winked as you tend to his order, mentally noting his tab for later. You hand him over the beer, placed on a circular chip that served as a coaster, followed by a heaping bowl of roasted nuts.

This kind of scene continued throughout the night, just with different kinds of people with different combinations of orders. You feel tired but you tend to forget it when you look at the tip jar, the thing that kept you moving forward. It's also the thing that's holding you back from life, you remembered when your best friend told you that you should unwind sometimes instead of rendering overtime during your day offs, to which you replied : "Soon enough", and that was well over a year ago.

As you wiped off the recently left spot by the counter, a well built man immediately took the spot and sat down, you tilted you head upward as the action surprised you. There he was, you couldn't miss his look, he stood out on the crowd because of his haircut, a perfectly cut mohawk and a scar on his left eye. He grinned at you, his blue eyes looked excited as soon as it met yours.

"John? I didn't know you'd be home!" You gasped as soon as you realized he's actually there, quickly putting a shot glass and pouring his favorite drink.

"Hey Y/N! I knew I'd find you here!" his hand gestured for a shake but he quickly dismissed it as soon as he realized he couldn't do it while you're at work.

"Yeah, working as always." you replied, trying to sound contented. He smiled at you as he raised his glass and downed the drink. You couldn't help but look at the way his Adam's apple moved as he consumed the drink.

His face turned into something incomprehensible as he let the taste of the strong alcohol set in, making you chuckle a little. His eyes turned to you as he heard you laugh.

"What's funny?" he asked. You simple shook you head and poured another pint on his shot glass.

"I'll be back in a few. I have to serve drinks for these wild crowd." You informed him, but as soon as you were about to step out, you hear him stand up.

"What time will you be off?" He asked.

"Two more hours." You replied without looking back. You could feel your cheeks warm up and an uncontrollable smile plastered on your face.

"Okay. I'll be here till then." he yelled as you entered the door to the employee's area.

'Shit Shit shit shit.' you whispered to yourself as you regain composure. He felt way off. He didn't act like this toward you before. You could feel something odd between you two, and you're very distracted about it.

You made your way to your manager's office to request a five minute break. You knew he'd approve a breather from you because he was a accommodating to you since day one. You believed it's because you always give it your all in every shift.

You softly knock on his office door and pushed it slightly ajar, peeking your head through it as you saw him on his desk, doing some paperwork.

"Ah, Y/N. You need anything, love?" he greeted in his usual tone. His endearment didn't matter you as he calls every female "love".

"Can I take a five? Just needed to breathe." you huffed. He nodded in approval and stood up.

"Let's puff it out, yeah?" he smiled as he offered a stick of cigarette.

The cold breeze of the Saturday evening wrapped around your work uniform. The noise from the bar was muffled but occasional screams would echo across the street. You exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke through your mouth as the relaxing feel of nicotine coursed through your system. Smoking was your go-to activity whenever you feel extreme unexplained emotions, such as seeing John MacTavish after a long time.

"Tough crowd?" Your manager turned his head to you as you casually leaned on the cold metal railing.

"Not really. I just saw someone I least expected to see." You retorted, pressing your lips against the cigarette butt as you closed your eyes and inhaled the vice.

"Someone you hate?" He queried.

"Not necessarily. But at one point of my life, maybe... It's just... it's complicated." You complained, sighing at the thought of him once again. You mentally fought against yourself whether to reminisce or not, reminding yourself that the reason you went out here was to clear your head, not to fill it with memories of summer 4 years ago.

You fixed your posture and flicked off the cigarette butt to the ashtray. Your boss followed, escorting you back to the office.

"Thanks for the company. I needed it." You thanked him as you crossed the street. He hummed in acknowledgement as he opened the door for you. You couldn't help but scan the room quickly for a mohawk, but he wasn't around. Maybe he went to the bathroom, you thought to yourself as you get back to your station.

9:59 pm. Your eyes trailed to the huge digital clock by the door, rapidly moving across the crowd still no mohawk in sight. This actually made you sad, he wasn't the kind of guy who dissappoints, you always saw him as a man of his word. You did confirm that he already paid for his tab about an hour and a half ago, just after your short break.

Guess you're going home alone. So much for ' I'll be here till then' you mentally argued, frowning as you wiped off the last glass in the tray.

10:00 pm. You sighed and lazily grabbed your time card and let the huge metal clock record your departure. You felt your energy quickly deplete due to the dissappointment that is John MacTavish.

"See you on Monday!" you waved goodbye to your coworkers who seemed to notice your sudden loss of energy. You push the back door slowly and stepped outside. It was getting cold and you weren't prepared for it.

"Hey." A low scottish accent muttered just beside you, making you yelp in surprise.

"Holy crap, you scared the shit out of me!" you angrily punched his strong arm, hurting yourself in the process.

"I'm sorry." he spoke lazily, almost tired or drunk. You couldn't exactly tell, but it was far from his tone earlier.

"Pretty chilly, eh?" you asked him, imitating his accent. Something that you always considered a major turn on when it comes to him.

"A little bit. And your impression is way off, I don't say it like that." he retorted nonchalantly making you worry if something happened while he was waiting.

"You seem a little off, what's the problem?" you asked, playfully bumping him while you walked the empty streets on your way home.

"It's just... uh.. Nevermind." he trailed off, his secrecy was making you impatient and you stopped on your tracks. He continued walking, looking down at the ground until he noticed you're no longer beside him.

He turned back. "You forgot something?"

"I don't get you." you raised your voice. He slowly walked back to you until he's just inches away from your face.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I should've just asked..."

"Asked what? You told me you'd stay here till my shift is over and then you're gone like that?" you complained, the tone of your voice was demanding and you could see him flinch when words hurt.

"I didn't want to raise suspicion."

"Who would be suspicious of you?!"

"Shortly after you left, I took a smoke. But I didn't do it by the smoking area. I was way up here, enjoying the breeze." he said, turning to the smoking area which was very visible from up here. Was he sad because he saw you and your manager by the smoking area? What kind of eyes did he have? You didn't want to assume things so you started to supply him with questions to fill in the blanks.

"And? Was the area too sad for you to be all emo like that all of a sudden?" you complained, soing your best impression of an angry person, but you know deep inside that you couldn't get angry at this man.

"Yeah. You could say that." he chuckled. He couldn't even look at you anymore.

"Bullshit." you retorted. He slowly tilted his head and smiled as soon as your eyes met. The view was so gorgeous you almost felt like the world was in slow motion.

"You don't have to believe me if you want. Why are you walking with me home anyway. You could've said no. I bet he has some nice fancy car to drive you home." he blurted, fog started to huff out of his mouth as the snow started to fall from the sky.

"Where are you going with this, John?" you spat, letting the emotions get the best of you. If only he was clear enough then this wouldn't have happened.

"I saw the two of you smiling while talking, I thought to myself. Yeah, she's happy with that bloke huh, I wish I knew that before I invited her earlier." he breathed out. You almost felt guilty, but it wasn't your fault. He easily assumed things that weren't even true.

"What made you think we're together? Just because we're smoking together doesn't mean we're in a relationship. Is that what you thought?" you replied, fighting back helping him on his way to the truth.

He paused, it's as if his whole thought process was shattered when your words stung him.

"I got jealous. To be fair, I was gone for 4 years... I always thought you already found someone else within that time." he frowned. It was not usual of him to feel this vulnerable.

"Look-" you tried to explain but you suddenly felt his warm embrace wrapped around you.

"I'm sorry..." he whispered. The same words he said before leaving 4 years ago. The same words that hurt you back then and the same words that's going to hurt you at this moment. He was the one that got away, he was the one whom you shared your most magical moments with, but not the one who's going to be there until the end. He'll have to leave anytime soon, as his job requires him to save the world. You told him he could settle for less risky world saving endeavors but he insisted that this was his purpose. And you were not willing to let him choose again.

"You know... you're not supposed to feel jealousy." you consoled, rubbing his well sculpted back.

"I know... I couldn't help it." he whispered.

"Let's get you home, John." you whisper to him as he pulls away from you, his face pouted like a baby whose candy got stolen.

"Why are you here anyway?" you added.

"I'm getting reassigned to a new task force. I figured I could say goodbye to someone I hold dear." he smirked, he felt normal, but then again you couldn't help but feel that this would be the last time you'll be seeing him. You we're thinking he won't be able to travel freely back here anymore or worse, he'll be the hero the world wanted him to be.

#earthisadonut asks for a fic #horRAYfic #no spoilers in the tags #but aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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imagine-that-100 · 5 years

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Conversation | Part 2 |

Description of Part 1: Matty Healy x Reader (Female) | You are a photographer, who lives in Manchester, that’s trying to make it down to London for your latest job. Your hectic morning leaves seconds to catch your train and luckily for you the 2 hour journey goes a lot faster when you have someone to make conversation with.

Word Count: 7.5k

A/N: If you haven't already guessed Matty doesn't have a girlfriend in this series. Just wanted to clarify that one. Don’t worry there will be many more parts to come after this, I’m thinking lets make it 10 parts! I really hope you all enjoy the latest part and I’m so excited for you all to read it! Feedback is appreciated and thanks so much for reading. Love you all x

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| MASTERLIST IN BIO |

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When Matty told you on Friday that the train home was going to be busy, you’d really underestimated how busy it actually was. You’d managed to get to the train station for 9:45am not chancing being late home, partly because you couldn’t afford it and partly because all you wanted was to be back in your own bed.

Your Premier Inn single bed didn’t compare to your double with a memory foam mattress back at your flat. You practically lived in bed when you were editing your photos and you planned on doing just that when you got back home.

Euston station was just as busy as Piccadilly was because of the amount of people stood gazing up at the announcement boards, checking if their train was on time or delayed. The crowd made you feel suffocated and you couldn’t stand it, so to waste some time before your train was boarding, you went to the shop. You bought yourself a meal deal consisting of a sandwich, a chocolate bar and a bottle of Coke.

You had a sweet tooth and couldn’t think of a life without the fatty foods you consumed almost daily. A life without chocolate really wouldn’t be worth living.

On your way back over to the platform gate, your senses were overwhelmed. The screens around you were constantly changing to different advertisements and the floral scents filled your nostrils when the Body Shop doors opened and closed. The smell was quickly replaced with fresh chips and other fatty foods from Burger King.

Surprisingly, no-one had barged into you during your morning here, so you were in a good mood. You’d had a really nice weekend. You had taken some really good pictures on Friday and had a lovely day sightseeing yesterday.

When your train changed on the screen to boarding, you made your way over as best you could, trying to avoid hitting anyone with your bags. This had proved to be difficult though because of the bag on your back and the one on your front.

When you got to the end of the queue, you looked down at the yourself to see if you were still presentable. You hadn’t slept well the previous night which lead to you waking at 6am meaning you had 3 hours to chill out in the hotel as you slowly got ready to leave.

This morning you’d had time to put your usual effort into your make up which you were thankful for, because when you got to your hotel on Friday, you thought you’d look like a wild animal. Today you’d gone for a natural eyeshadow with a sleek winged eyeliner, and on your travels around London yesterday, you'd gotten yourself a nude matte lipstick which your adored.

You were wearing the same black boots that you arrived in, with blue ripped jeans and a black skull top that was stylishly torn, showing a fair amount of cleavage. You had your leather jacket on as well and your hair was now straight. You had Queen blasting into your ears, and you nod your head along to the beat of ‘We Will Rock You’ smiling to yourself feeling content with life.

Thankfully the queue had started moving so you slowly took steps towards the gate whilst only paying close attention to Freddie Mercury’s voice. In fact, you paid so close attention to the music in your ears that when your earphones were tugged out of your ears it made you jump.

You look to the side to see a familiar face, that was partly hidden by sunglasses, and a smirk also graced his lips.

The now curly haired man says, “Fancy seeing you here?”

“Are you stalking me?” You ask him, looking at him up and down in disbelief that he was actually next to you again.

Matty was wearing a white top, black skinny jeans with holes at the knees, and some black boots. He had his leather jacket on over the top and the only major difference was his hair being wild and curly.

“No, not stalking. I saw you in the queue and I wanted to get on the train quicker” He told you with a smile and you laugh.

“So, I’m a fast track then?” You question pretending to be slightly offended.

He replies with a grin, “Essentially, yes”

“Ouch” You say faking your heart breaking at his comments. “How was your weekend?” You ask.

“Decent actually. I quite like my flat in London, so it was nice to be back again” He tells you.

“Did your people fix your hair for you?” You question with a smirk and Matty grins at you.

You both get to the gate and show your tickets to the staff members and they let you through. Both of you then walk slightly faster towards the train.

Matty asks you, “How was the ballet?”

You tell him, “It was really good! I think I got some great shots of them and they were brilliant to watch as well”

You had an amazing weekend starting off with your bizarre train journey and you had a surprisingly fun time taking photos of the ballet dancers. They were so kind, and you tried your best to get an image of each of them before you had finished what you had been employed to do.

You had also been astounded by their incredible talent. The best you could dance would be jumping up and down at a gig or a party in time with the music.

“Well, it was good to see you again” You tell him as you see that the first-class doors coming to an end.

“Yeah, see ya around Y/N” Matty said before he made his way onto the train.

You slipped your other earphone back in and made your way to carriage E as quickly as you could, hoping that your seat would be empty. You really didn’t have the energy to awkwardly ask someone to move.

Luckily your seat was empty and once your bags were up on the shelf you took your seat. You looked over to the seat that Matty had been in a few days ago and smiled to yourself. You don’t think that you would be forgetting any of the memories you had of him on that train journey for a while yet.

Thanks to Matty, your Instagram account had nearly a thousand more followers and you had read some of the loveliest comments about your work from people all around the world. You would be eternally grateful to him for his kindness.

The train had quickly started filling up around you and the sunlight was now streaming through the window right into your eyes. You luckily had your new sunglasses in your pocket and put those on to shield your eyes.

They were big and gold and very feminine, they made you feel like you were on Love Island doing a brand deal, but they were the nicest ones the shop had to offer. They were also mirrored so they also came in handy for you checking to see if your make up was still okay.

When the train eventually set off, you were cornered into your seat by the man that was sat next to you. He was reading his newspaper and loudly flapping it around when he turned the page.

The man sat opposite you was typing away loudly on his laptop and staring angrily at the screen. The woman next to him looked like a flight attendant crossed with an office worker and she was chewing her gum loudly.

Thankfully, you had your phone charging and were listening to Queen on full blast through your earphones now, drowning out the world for your journey back home. You rested your head against the window and looked out of it until your eyes began to close.

When you lent your head forwards, you felt your hair cover your face and it was then that you accepted that you were going to be catching up on your missed sleep whilst being on the train. As bad as it sounded you were never up this early on a Sunday morning, as it was usually your only day off most of the time.

Due to photography not always being stable, you also worked in a bar a few nights a week. You usually did a longer shift on Saturday nights, meaning that your Sunday morning were essentially for you to catch up on missed sleep.

You felt the train rock from side to side as your eyes grew heavier, but that unfortunately didn’t last long. Freddie Mercury belted a note through your earphones which startled you out of your drowsy state.

Your heart started beating faster from the shock and you felt your tiredness dissipate. You turned down your music to about half way so it kept you entertained but wouldn’t startle you again if you dosed off.

After about 15 minutes of being on the train you were holding your head up against the window and you were losing the will to live. There were 4 loud girls sat on the table opposite your own, where you and Matty had sat last time, and they were annoying you so much.

They hadn’t stopped squealing and giggling for the past 15 minutes and you wanted to slap them for it.

You’d been in such a good mood this morning and seeing Matty again was nice. It was a shame that the trip home wasn’t going to be keeping your good mood going.

The sunlight continued to stream into your eyes because unfortunately your sunglasses weren't very good ones. You just squinted as you looked out of the window hoping that watching the passing scenery would make the time fly faster.

A few minutes later, you were yet again startled but this time by the drumming of hands on your table. You, and everyone else seated at your table, turned around quickly and saw a skinny, curly haired man with familiar sunglasses on looking down in your direction.

You took your earphones out and wrapped them around your phone, as a smile made its way onto your face. You chuckled to yourself moving your glasses down your nose, so you were looking over them at him.

“Hey Matthew” You say with a smile on your face.

He smiles back at you before reaching up onto the shelf and your just watching as he brings them both down. You look at him confused and half ask what he was doing, but a second later he reached over the man to the side of you, holding his hand out for you to take.

You shoot him a questioning look but Matty just moves his hand closer to you insisting you to take it. After a second you take his hand and he tugs at it, wanting you to get up.

You don’t ask questions, instead you just unplug your phone charger and say, ‘Excuse me’ to the man next to you. He politely got out of his seat to let you out all while Matty still held onto your hand.

“Where are we going?” You asked him, grabbing your carrier bag off the table.

Matty then let go of your hand and started walking up the train with your bags over his shoulders. You let out an amused sigh and followed him.

You noted that Matty no longer had his jacket on and you could see the tattoo’s that littered his arms. It was amazing seeing those tattoos so close, especially when you’d only seen pictures of them for years.

“Matty, where are we going?” You question him as you reached a slightly quieter part of the train.

“You’re following me” He tells you without looking back and you just rolled your eyes.

You weren’t leaving your bags, which meant you weren’t leaving him. As you came to the first-class doors, Matty just walked in but you grabbed his shoulder causing him to turn towards you.

He looks at you with his eyebrows raised and you say, “I can’t sit in here, I have to pay for it”

“Don’t worry I upgraded you… It’s sorted” He tells you as he continued up the train.

You looked at him shocked and said, “You can’t make that decision, I really don’t have to money to pay you back for it right now”

You had spent most of your savings in London yesterday, treating yourself and now you regretted doing so.

“Well it’s done now, so you don’t need to worry about it” He hushes your worries in a flat tone as he reaches what you assumed to be his seat which was across from an older lady.

“The company is payment enough” Matty tells you with a smile.

He then proceeds to playfully push you into the seat near the window. As you sit down in the slightly wider and more comfortable seat than the one you were previously in, you smile at the lady across from you.

She politely smiles in return and then her gaze fixes on the book in front of her. You look back towards Matty as he shoves the last of your stuff up on the storage shelf above and he smiles at you once he sits down.

“Hey” Matty says nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t just dragged you up the train and payed for you to sit with him.

“Hi” You say back at him laughing.

“You really couldn’t last half an hour without speaking to anyone?” You question him and he just laughs sarcastically.

“I like these by the way” He points towards your sunglasses and you say a small thank you.

He takes them off your face, but they get caught in your hair. You let out a whine followed by a half angry stare as he untangles strands of your hair from. Matty just smiles and takes off his own, replacing them with yours.

You pick up his glasses and put them on and you look at each other. It was like you were both 5 years old and playing dress up.

“They suit you” You tell him, holding back a smile.

“I suit everything” Matty says confidently with a cocky tilt of his head.

You don’t scorn him for it though, because it was true. You smile, “Fair point”

“I think I wanna keep these” He announces as he takes them off and looking at them in his hand.

“You can have them if I can keep these” You jokingly offer, gesturing towards the ones you were wearing.

Yours had cost you like £5 from some shop you had gone in to buy yourself some food the day before. His would probably cost you 2 days wages.

“Deal” He says, and you shake your head in disbelief.

“How was the promotion stuff you had to do?” You asked him, taking the glasses off and putting them on the table along with your carrier bag that contained your meal deal.

“T’was alright I guess… Just the usual… Good to go back to London though before the American tour” Matty informs you and you slipped into an easy conversation with him.

After about 20 minutes Matty took your glasses off and you took your phone out of your jacket pocket. You realised your music was still playing through your earphones, which was something you accidentally did all the time.

“Are you listening to Queen?” Matty questions looking down to your phone.

You pause the music and nod, saying, “Yeah”

“Let me see what music you like?” The brunette asks and you happily hand him your phone not having a problem with him having a look.

He presses the home button on your phone and the password screen comes on. Matty turns the phone towards you and you give him a look.

“Believe it or not, you already know my password” You tell him and he looks at you confused, then stares back at the phone.

Matty thinks for a few moments about a 4-digit password when it becomes clear to him. He asks disheartened, “Are you really that basic?”

You nod grinning as he types in 1 9 7 5 and he just laughs shaking his head in disappointment. “It’s just easy to remember” You defend yourself but he still just shaking his head.

Instead of gracing you with a response Matty clicks onto your Spotify and he goes on your playlists. You have a few different ones there, either dedicated to old classics or new release, even a party playlist. Different genres of music all seemed to come up too and you had some for your favourite bands and solo artists.

However, you forgot why you never usually let people on your phone because you see him tap on a playlist that starts with: Matty Healy can...

“What’s this?” He says as the screen loads, and you try to take your phone back out of his hand.

“Matty no” You say half leaning over him trying to get it back.

But Matty just extends his arm further out and pushes you away with his other, making you unable to get it.

When it eventually loads, he reads the title that says: Matty Healy can fuck me senseless 👅

Matty’s laugh rings out around the carriage causing the older woman in front of you to look at him. You move back into your own seat and rest your hand over your face.

‘For fucks sake’ You thought. How many times could you embarrass yourself in front of this man?

“That’s adorable” Matty laughs looking through the playlist that’s just full of his band’s songs.

After a minute, you look back at him with your cheeks red hot and he just looks at you humorously. He puts a hand on your arm and rubs in slightly, as if easing your embarrassment when he says, “It’s okay, everyone wants me to”

You sit back and say, “I named it that before I met you and realised you were a twat” with half a smile on your lips.

Matty then looks towards you, without any emotion on his face. His blank expression on his face somehow made his dark eyes lifeless as he stared at you, evidently unimpressed.

After a moment, he blurts out, “Don’t fuck with me Y/N, you already knew that before you met me”

He just smirks at you when you raise your hands jokingly in defeat and say “True”

“How old are you anyway?” He asks you curiously, still looking through your Spotify, silently judging your taste in music.

“Twenty-two” You tell him, and he nods his head as if agreeing with himself.

Matty then looks you up and down and you catch him doing so, and you widen your eyes at him. You raise your eyebrows too, and that seems to prompt him to reply to you.

“What?” He asks, “You’re in my age range” He says, resting his free hand on your thigh.

You roll your eyes at that. He really was quite the flatterer.

“Keep your hands to yourself Healy” You laugh, slipping his hand off your leg, pretending like his touch hadn't just set you on fire.

Matty hands you your phone back a minute later and you both start talking about which artists you both like, and your favourite songs of theirs. Matty creates a new playlist and adds some more music that you haven’t yet listened to.

“It’s fucking boiling in here take the jacket off... You’re making me feel uncomfortable” He instructs you, and he likes when you roll your eyes dramatically at him.

“Stop trying to get me undressed you psycho. We’re on a public train” You say whilst slipping off your jacket, only now noticing how hot it was.

You get your charger out of your pocket and plug it in. You needed to charge up your phone as when you got back, you had a lot of editing to do and you would need the music to pass the time.

As the cool air hits your arms, you instantly start to cool down. You release a sigh of relief just before Matty lets out a loud gasp.

“You actually did it!” Matty gasps and you look at him confused.

But you completely understand once Matty takes your right wrist into his hand.

“You actually got the tattoo” Matty said excitedly.

You grin at him as he studies, which was something that you did all day yesterday after getting it done. It was really sore and red, but you still loved it.

“It looks sick” He said looking at the detail of it.

You’d gotten the box tattooed on your wrist with two roses over the top right corner and the bottom left corner. The roses were beautiful, they had so much detail in them and you were happy you had such beautiful artwork on your body to look at every day.

“Thanks” You say, and you watch as he traces the edge of it with his fingertips. You let out a small hiss of pain when his touch becomes too much, and he apologises to you.

“It’s alright” You laugh. “It’s just tender… And really warm” You say as you look at the black and white tattoo.

He let’s go of your arm and he says “I can’t believe you actually did it... I well thought you would pussy out”

“I’m hard as nails me” You laugh and Matty does too.

“I already want another one” You tell him excitedly.

“Addicting, aren’t they?” Matty says and you nod in agreement.

He then proceeds to ask you why you didn’t get the roses coloured in. But before you can answer, you get a snapchat of your best friend.

Both you and Matty look towards your phone and when you retrieve your device and open the message, it’s just a picture of her face really close up with the caption:

Please come and save me from work x

You smile at your phone and take a selfie to start typing your reply. Just as you’d taken it though you see Matty trying to get into the picture as well.

You start laughing at his disappointment when it doesn’t include him, and he tells you to take another one. You just keep the original one and type your reply: Sorry stuck on a train 😪x

Once that’s been sent though, you angle the front facing camera towards Matty instead of yourself and take a picture of him as he pulls a face. You save it quickly and send: With this guy again 🙄

“Don’t act like you aren’t thrilled by my presence” Matty grins, nudging you with his shoulder.

“I was on Friday” You tell him honestly.

“But by the end of that trip, I guess I just realised you’re just like me and my friends...So the shock of you being you wore off...” You continue and he just looks towards you and with a hurt facial expression.

After a moment it changes, and he says, “I’m only joking... I get it, it happens with any fans that we meet for a while.”

“Like No Rome?” You ask and Matty looks smiles at you.

“Yeah, Rome’s fucking awesome” He tells you and you tell him how much you liked his stuff at the concert.

You get interrupted by your best friend’s reply which was almost immediate. If there is anything that you friend loved to do, it would be to get paid to be on her phone.

Matty picks your phone up when he hears the notification and unlocks it.You watch as he manoeuvres through your apps until he finds snapchat.

When he opens it, you’re both greeted with a beautiful picture of your friend. Her face is completely shocked, and her mouth is wide open.

You knew you’d be having an hour-long phone call like she had done when Matty left your side on Friday. Not that you minded, meeting a celebrity didn’t happen to you every day and you had to fangirl with her about it, even if he was just as normal as the two of you. Her being excited caused you to be as well.

Matty leans his head on your shoulder and you smile at the camera as he takes a picture of you both. He types back Hello beautiful x and sends it back to her but not before saving the picture.

“You’re such a tease” You tell him, and he just keeps his head on your shoulder waiting for your friends reply. You feel his curls against you neck and you have to have to restrain yourself from playing with them.

“I’m a perfect gentleman… Don’t be jealous, you’re beautiful too” Matty retorts and you let out a laugh although you feel your cheeks heat up slightly.

You friend replies after a few minutes with a completely different picture from beforehand. You could tell that it had taken her about 5 attempts to get the right angle she wanted, and she was definitely trying to impress.

Hey handsome x was her message and you just giggle.

Matty takes another selfie of you both but this time he rests his chin on your shoulder and he’s looking at you when he takes the picture. You watch him save it and smile to yourself.

It was a really cute picture actually and you were glad you could keep it.

Messages kept going back and forth between them and you didn’t intervene. Matty kept saving the selfies he was taking of you both and you watched as he started to troll her saying things about the two of you.

For example, the last message he sent was a picture of you smiling looking down at his head resting on your shoulder again and he was pouting at the camera. Matty had sent the picture with the caption:

Did Y/N tell you about our eventful night? x

You rolled your eyes when he sent that and let out a sigh. You were actually intrigued to see what he’s going to say and when she replies with a shocked face asking, What?!?!?!

Matty picks his head up off your shoulder and says a low, “Be cool” into your ear.

Whilst controlling your body not to shiver in response to that, you were about to ask him what he was talking about. But then you felt his lips on your cheek.

You stay silent and feel your heart rate increase as you watch your phone capture him kissing your cheek with his eyes closed. You see him take the picture, he removes his lips, then saves it before he types out:

Lots of naughty things! Can’t believe she didn’t tell you…

Once it’s sent you look over to him questioningly, as if to say, ‘what do you think you’re doing?’ Matty just sticks his tongue out at you and you laugh, “Put that away”

Before he can reply your phone goes off again and your friend sends a blurry picture of herself, more than likely freaking out, and her message says:

Omg! What naughty things?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!

You snort trying to hold in your laugh and Matty sniggers at her messages. Matty then acts quickly, he licks up your face where he’d previously kissed you and takes the picture before you pull away in disgust.

“You’re actually fucking vile Matthew” You say wiping your cheek aggressively.

You couldn’t believe he just did that so you shove him away from you playfully. Really was a strange thing for him to do when you’d only met him twice. He then started laughing at your reaction whilst he replied:

Y/N’s favourite tongue was involved quite a lot…

You roll your eyes continuing to clean your face and Matty just kept leaning and nudging you with his shoulder. He was fucking good at trying to get under your skin, you would give him that.

“Shouldn’t you be avoiding rumours? Like the ones you’re making right now” You ask Matty and his dark eyes find yours instantly.

You can feel the heat on your cheeks but hoped he couldn’t tell how you were reacting to him.

“Just a bit of banter ain’t it?” Matty says with a cheeky smile on his face then he sticks his tongue out at you again.

Your eyes go wide, and you move away from him when he starts moving closer to you pretending he was going to lick you again. Luckily your phone goes off, distracting him and Matty opens the message immediately.

The picture was an entire blur and you just laughed to yourself. She would be a mess in work now because she would be trying her hardest to stay calm but internally wanting to scream the place down.

Y/N Y/L/N!!!!!!!! WTAF!!!!! You go gurl! Did you make him do the balaclava thing?!?!?!? btw I just threw my phone and cracked the screen… fml x

Your eyes went wide when you read the message and internally sighed. Matty turned to look at you with a smug face, “What balaclava thing do you want me to do Babe?”

You know he’s not going to let it go, so you decide telling him would be easier.

“When I was younger, I thought it was very attractive when you kissed the girl in the Robbers video with your balaclava on… Like ten outa ten relationship goals…” You mumble.

Matty smirks at you and bumps your shoulder with his again. You release a small laugh and then say, “In my defence, I was young and impressionable watching your music videos… So if we think about this… it’s really your fault”

He sends a picture back to your friend of him giving you a knowing look and you looking back at him trying to conceal your smile but failing. His message said:

Not yet, but dreams do come true…

“I’m sorry I don’t have one on me right now or I could make your fantasy about me come true” Matty said raising his eyebrows suggestively and you shook your head looking away from him feeling embarrassed.

“I was like Seventeen, okay… That was a long time ago” You say peaking back over at him.

The curly haired man didn’t reply to your comment until you were facing him again, and when you did, he bopped you on your nose with his finger, saying, “It’s alright babe, you’re allowed to fancy me”

You shake your head at him whilst smiling and he lets out a small laugh. Matty’s attention was then directed towards your phone again when the snapchat notification went off. Your friend had replied:

I can’t believe it x

Matty let out a light laugh which was adorable and double tapped on her name to reply. He wrapped an arm around your shoulder, his hand dangling around your neck.

He pulled you towards him and he kissed your temple. You let your eyes fall closed as he did so and opened them again when you heard him take the picture.

To say it was adorable would be an understatement, you looked happy and content with a smile on your face leaning into him and Matty’s eyes were closed as he pressed a kiss to your head. You smiled seeing the photo and Matty did too. Matty saved the picture to your memories and typed:

She’s mine x

“She’s going to fucking lose it” You say smiling at him and he looked back towards you with amusement evident on his face.

Matty’s arm was still around your shoulder and he pulled you into him. You let out a soft screech as you fell into his chest and then start laughing when he ruffled your hair up.

You reach up and get him back though. His hair was softer than you imagined it would be and your fingers ran through his curls easily. When you sat back up Matty was holding your phone expectantly and eager to carry on the ruse.

He looks gutted when your phone loses signal because he can’t get a reply. You try and think of a new topic of conversation not really wanting to sit in an uncomfortable silence with him.

Matty lets go of you and lets out a loud yawn, which causes you to yawn too. “I’m so tired” You tell him and he frowns a little.

“How come?” Matty asks.

“Always am” You laugh. “I don’t sleep till late in the night anyway and the hotel bed was crappy, so I ended up waking up at six this morning” You tell him.

“Sounds shit” Matty tells you and you nod in agreement, yawning again. He rests his head on your shoulder again and says, “I’m tired too”

Matty feels you lean your head against his own and he smiles at how normal it feels. He trusted you and he didn’t even know you that well, he hadn’t felt so easy around someone new in a long time.

Being his playful self, he flirted with you once more, saying, “Maybe you should have stayed at my flat? Least my bed is comfy”

You shook your head in disbelief at that, and Matty smiled feeling you do so. He’s surprised to hear your forwards reply though, “I have a feeling that even if I did I would have got the same amount of sleep”

Matty chuckles then. He liked that you were playful back. Yeah making someone blush and go quiet was fun, but Matty also liked someone who’d play along or give him some back.

You really were an intriguing one to him.

“Still be just as tired, wouldn’t we?” You say a little softer and Matty softly nods so he doesn't disturb your head.

After a minute of you both peacefully resting on one another like that, you watched as Matty unlocks his own phone this time and snaps a quick picture of you both like that. He then does the same on yours and then asks if he can put his thumbprint on your phone, so if your friend replies he can get to it quicker without worrying about losing signal.

You tell him it’s fine and watch was he fails to do it twice and you chuckle to yourself each time it doesn’t work. When he eventually completed his mission, you feel the vibration of him saying a low ‘yay’ when it works on the third try.

You smile contently feeling his curls on your cheek and your eyes close for a second until you feel your stomach start to ache, begging you for food.

You pick your head up off his and say, “Oh, I have a present for you”

Matty jerks his head up and exclaims an, “Ooo” looking over to you excitedly.

You pull out the chocolate bar from your carrier bag and toss it towards him. He catches it, looks at it then smiles. “Awh, aren’t you cute” He tells you and starts to open it.

“I’m fucking amazing, I know” You tell him with a laugh and open up the rest of your meal deal.

You open your sandwich and take a bite out of one of the halves. As you both eat, you sit in a comfortable silence, which it only broken by your gasp when Matty picks up the other half of your sandwich and takes a bite out of it.

You swallow the food in your mouth before saying, “Are you joking?”

“Evidently not” Matty replies with a full mouth and then takes another bite.

To get your revenge, you pick up the rest of the chocolate bar and start eating it.

“Hey! That was my present” Matty tells you and you give him a look.

You defend yourself with a cocky grin, “Well my meal deal was a present to myself… If I have to share, you do too”

Matty shrugs his shoulders and continues to eat your sandwich. You end up sharing your drink with him as well, not that you minded at that point.

When everything was finished Matty briefly got up and put your rubbish in the bin and when he sat back down Matty asks, “Can I see some of the pictures you took by the way?”

“Erm… Yeah sure, they haven’t been edited yet but I can show you them.” You tell him. “Am I alright to get up and get my bag please?” You ask him, but Matty just gets up and passes it down to you.

“Thank you” You say to him with a gracious smile and Matty watches as you get your camera out.

You quickly turn it on and go onto preview. Matty watches as you flick through a few different photos to find the best ones to show him. You come across a picture of the silhouette picture of a ballerina that you’re fairly pleased with.

“I got this one” You tell him angling the camera towards him and he leans towards it trying to look at the detail. “When I get home, I can edit this by making the background lighter, so she is completely dark and a perfect silhouette.”

You flick through some more and Matty listens to you intently. All the pictures that you were showing him, he was astounded by. To him they looked perfect and didn’t need anything doing, but you kept telling him how they could be improved.

“They’re really good” Matty says and you flash a shy smile back at him. He continues, “I can tell you really enjoy doing it”

You chuckle at that, “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have sat through the degree if I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life”

“Not that I remember much of it though” You tell him and Matty lets out a laugh.

“Ooo, were you a rebellious one in Uni?” He asks.

You shrug your shoulders as if you didn’t know yourself, as you say, “Let’s just say I either didn’t go to the morning lectures or I was very hungover”

Matty laughed at you and said, “I don’t quite believe it, you don’t seem like a party animal”

“Well that’s because you’ve never been on a night out with me… And, for the record, I’m not like that anymore” You tell him and Matty shoots you a look of disbelief. “Alright, not every night anyway” you correct yourself and Matty laughs.

Matty starts telling you about a night out that he had after the UK tour had finished. You listen intently to him and laugh at the band’s antics. You didn’t realise that the train had slowed down for its final stop until Matty looked out of the window and sighed.

The journey seemed to have gone faster than it did on the way there despite having a few more stops. You were really enjoying Matty’s company and it was disappointed when the train stopped in Manchester Piccadilly.

You let out a big sigh as your pull you jacket on and stuff your charger in your pocket. At least your phone was fully charged now.

“Yay, I get to be barged into by about fifty people on my way out now” You smile at Matty with sarcasm dripping from your voice.

“You’ll be fine, I’ll protect you” Matty says copying your movements and getting his own jacket off the floor and putting it on. You roll your eyes at his comment and you picked up both of your sunglasses off the table and handed Matty his back.

He takes them from you, unfolds them and then puts them on your head and you giggle. He takes yours and puts them on himself and strikes a pose. You quickly take a picture of him like that and laugh at it when you show Matty.

He takes your phone and pushes his face up against yours, you laugh when your glasses knock together and Matty takes the picture. When Matty taps on it, you both start laughing loudly.

Matty has his tongue pulled out on the picture and you are genuinely laughing in the shot.

“Sorry I have to have this one” Matty says as he starts to airdrop it to his own phone.

“It’s fine” You say running your hand through his hair again, attempting to annoy him.

As he accepts the photo on his phone, he gives you a look, but all you can see is your reflection in the gold glasses. He looks adorable with them on and you can’t help but giggle at his grumpy face contrasting with the bright glasses.

“Sorry to interrupt you both” The older woman who’s sat across from you reading for the entire journey says, grabbing your attention.

You and Matty look at the lady and she continues to say, “I just wanted to say that you’re both adorable together. You remind me of me and my husband when we were your age, always joking around and messing about. It’s lovely to see that love like that still exists”

“Oh w-” You start but Matty interrupts you.

“Thank you so much. Just glad I found her” Matty smiles back to the nice lady, before pulling you back into his side again.

She smiles brightly at the two of you before standing up and getting her bag from the empty seat that was beside her. “You’re certainly a lucky man...” She then looks to you as she begins to pass the both of you to get off the train, “Make sure he remembers it Sweetie”

“I will” You smile and offer her a little wave as she walks down the carriage leaving you and Matty on your own.

Matty’s head immediately looks towards you and he scoffs, “I cant believe you were going to destroy her vision of love then Y/N” He jokes, “I’m appalled”

“I just don’t like lying to people” You say as you slip out of his grip.

“So... She was old, probably be dead soon, and you could have destroyed her last glimmer of hope that real love still exists” Matty scorns you trying to make you feel worse.

You’re too busy gasping at him saying she’d be dead soon though. You scorn him shaking your head disapprovingly.

He’s persistent with his argument though, so you just end up saying, “I played along in the end, didn’t I? Shut it Matthew”

“Don’t call me that” Matty pouted.

“Don’t be a diva, then I won't have to full name drop you” You grin a little.

After that, Matty gets up and passes you both of your bags and you put them on quickly as the queue to leave the train was thankfully dying off. Matty gestured to you to walk in front of him and you thanked him as you moved past him.

When you step off the train you were greeted with a hectic platform and freezing cold air compared to London’s hotter weather. Immediately, Matty slung his arm around your shoulder as you both start walking to the end of the platform.

He smiles towards you when you look over at him and shake your head when he smirked at you. You both move over to the opposite side of the platform, so it was slightly easier to manoeuvre through the crowd.

Once you’d both got through the ticket barriers, Matty puts his arm around your shoulder again and you start walking towards the exit. You look at the chaotic crowd surrounding you but for some reason you don’t get barged into this time.

“I think I need you every time I’m in this station, everyone always runs me over” You tell him and Matty laughs.

You get your phone and earphones back out with your hand that isn’t trapped against Matty’s side and tap on your Spotify.

“What’s your final opinion for me Healy? What playlist shall I listen to on the way home?” You ask handing the phone over to him just as your about to exit the glass doors.

Matty scrolls through them and chuckles when he sees his self-titled playlist and you roll your eyes again. You get slightly embarrassed again and Matty just pulls you closer.

“You listen to the best band in the world on your way home” Matty instructs as you walk over to the bus stop just down the road from the station.

“Shall do” You tell him. “I’ll have to change the name of that playlist now” You say as you reach the bus stop and you can see your bus in the distance.

“Definitely not” Matty says with a smirk, before following up with a knowing look, “If I find out you changed it, I’ll just change it back… I know your password”

“Yeah yeah…” You say as you wave your bus over. You look back over to Matty and smile.

“It was great to see you again Matty” You tell him with a genuinely happy smile.

He grins and says, “Same to you... Thanks for the new specs”

Matty then pulls you into him and you wrap your arm around his side because you couldn’t give him a proper hug because of your camera bag.

He lets go of you when your bus comes to a stop and you wave saying, “Bye” before the doors open.

“By the way Y/N… I’d fuck you too” Matty says with a smirk gesturing towards your phone in your hand now blaring out The 1975 songs despite your earphones not yet being in.

You shake your head, feeling your cheeks grow hot again and step onto the bus. You tell the driver where you’re going and pay for your ticket on your card.

When you turn around Matty is standing with a lit cigarette in between his fingers, you say a soft “Bye” again and you quickly go and take a seat.

Matty stands and watches you take a seat on the bus and he lets himself be retrospective.

On Friday, he was quite annoyed at himself because he forgot to take his AirPods with him to London which had really frustrated him. But now he was grateful that he’d gotten so bored that he started a conversation with you.

As he inhaled the smoke, he felt satisfied with his trip and when he blew the smoke out and smiled at you when the bus started to move away. He saw you take one last glance at him and you both shared a little secret smile, both catching the other looking.

Matty stayed stationary for a second until your bus had gone further down the road. It was only then he started walking through the streets of Manchester back towards the studio where he was meeting the rest of the boys for a quick recording session.

He also found himself excited to show you off to them. Even if it was through the silly pictures you’d taken.

~*~*~*~

When you got back to your flat, you jumped in bed and immediately started editing your photos. Your 1975 playlist was on full blast in your ears and before you knew it 3 hours had passed by.

You only stopped working to get yourself a drink and a snack from your kitchen. You didn’t even bother greeting your flatmate because he was a bit of a twat, especially when he’d been working.

When you lay back down on your bed, you put your playlist on repeat so you wouldn’t be distracted about what music to listen to next. You wanted the pictures edited today so you could rest tomorrow.

However, it was proving difficult because your freshly tattooed wrist kept causing you pain as it lent on your laptop. But you tried to power through and not let anything distract you.

Your phone was on aeroplane mode and you were in the zone. So much so, that when you eventually got through the best of your photos, you looked at your clock to find it was 9pm.

You closed your laptop with a sigh of relief and rubbed your eyes. It probably wasn’t healthy looking at a screen for almost 8 hours but at least you had tomorrow to completely rest your mind after a bizarre but brilliant weekend.

You just felt so satisfied that you'd got the work done. You felt like you could rest easy now.

When you took your phone off aeroplane mode, your phone started to blow up. You were receiving about 20 snapchats from your best friend and she was also texting you. Your stomach dropped though, when you saw the 10 missed calls from her.

You immediately rang her back praying everything was alright and that something terrible hadn’t happened. As the phone continued to ring you felt your heart rate increase, and were beginning to panic that something really bad had happened.

After a few more seconds, she answered the phone.

“Hey, is everything alright? I’ve just seen all the missed calls, are you okay?” You ask in a rush.

“Hey, yeah, I’m fine” She says, and you release the breath that you had been holding.

You then began to calm down and you sighed a, “Thank god... I thought something bad had happened”

“Nah, nothing bad” She told you, “Have you seen the picture?” She asks excitedly.

You furrowed your eyebrows, confused as to what photo she was referring too. “What picture?” You ask.

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet… Go on Instagram” And you do as you are told. You quickly put her on speaker and flick through your phone until you find your Instagram.

You look through it and nothing out of the ordinary seemed to have happened since Matty had followed you the other day. “What photo are you on about?” You ask again and your friend releases a sigh.

“Go on Matty Healy’s profile now!” She tells you and you do. You tap on his account and you click on his most recent picture.

“What the fuck?” You gasp covering a hand over your mouth.

“I know…” Y/B/F says and you can hear how excited she is in her voice.

You smile to yourself as you study the picture on your screen.

The picture shows you sat on a train with your messy Y/H/C hair covering your face as you looked out of the window. You had your leather jacket on, and you looked blissfully unaware causing the photograph to be perfectly anonymous.

You realise he must have taken this picture of you before you’d even noticed who he was.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” Your friend asks.

You murmur a, “Yeah” with a smile on your face.

It was a beautiful photograph and you loved it. You double tap on it and smile to yourself as you read the text at the bottom.

London Babyyy x

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Taglist: @the-girl-before @14-bees @fairyyyfloss @murderousginger @siwiecola @grungegunnulfsen @colette2194 @hottie-chocolatie @darling-i-read-it

Let me know if you want to be tagged x

#conversation #matty healy #matty healy x reader #matty healy imagine #matty healy x you #matty the 1975 #the 1975 #the 1975 imagine #Matty Healy fanfic #Matty Healy fluff #Matty Healy blurb #the 1975 blurb #the 1975 fluff

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kee-writestrashh · 5 years

Text

Guns for Hire

Ramsay Bolton x Reader

Ao3

Summary: You are the wife to the Heir of the Red Kings, Ramsay Bolton. living the undercover life of a mob wife has its perks, and you love your husband. But you find out something that seems to unfold a series of unwanted events...

Chapter 4: Friday Night Brawls

You adjusted your green and red elf skirt, placed your little hat on, and gave yourself one last look in the mirror. You frowned thinking of all the clothes and outfits you would probably never be able to wear again when summer rolled around.

You loved dressing up for holidays. Ramsay wasn't a fan, but money was money. This costume was a bit more modest as you wore tights under the skirt because it was cold as shit. Thankfully the snow had been put on hold.

You walked into the living room. Ramsay was sprawled out on the couch watching TV and biting at his nails.

"Alright, baby. I gotta go." You said stopping at the end of the couch.

"Take the Nova." Ramsay said, sitting up as you walked in. He held out the keys.

You narrowed your eyes, "why?"

"Because I said. Be a good girl. Don't argue."

You took the keys and leaned down to kiss your husband. He pulled you down into his lap and kissed you hungrily. You melted into him as he kissed across your jaw and worried what was surely a large and very prominent hickey on your neck. He often liked to mark you before you went to work. You were his and he wasn't about to let anyone forget that.

He finally let go of you. You smiled, giving him one last quick kiss. He slapped your ass when you turned around to leave.

"I'll see you later?" You asked, opening the front door and glancing back at your husband.

He simply nodded.

×××

You walked through the backdoor, hanging up your keys and then hanging up your purse in a locker, exchanging it for your waist apron.

"Oly! I'm here!" You called, glancing around. The bar didn't open officially for another thirty minutes tonight, so it was just you and Olyvar until the new girls showed up.

"Up front! Finishing the decorations!" Olyvar's voice called.

You walked into the cavernous, empty bar. Olyvar too was dressed as an elf, in his green tunic and red tights. He was standing on the counter hanging the last of the Christmas lights.

"Be a dear and plug them in?" Your coworker asked.

You followed the trail of lights to the outlet and plugged them in.

Olyvar jumped down from the counter, jingling as he did so from his bells on his slippers and hat, admiring his handiwork.

"Not too shabby." You said, looking around the festive place. "So, what company?"

"Lion Gate." Olyvar said, walking behind the counter, grabbing two glasses and pouring out two shots.

You felt a panic surge through you. Lion Gate was owned by Tywin Lannister, head of the Rampant Lions. The Rampant Lions and the Red Kings had been at war in the city and surrounding areas for a long time. While Ramsay was heir to the Red Kings, he had formed his own little gang, the Bastard's Boys that he kept busy with the most. If the Lannister's showed up, it was sure to be trouble. What were they playing at? They didn't hold any ground or footing on this side of town.

"What were you thinking? They can't come here. If Ramsay finds out..." You began as Olyvar downed his shot.

"We are one of the best places in the city of a Friday night. And, money is money."

Olyvar pushed the second glass to you, but you shook your head. "I can't."

Olyvar scrunched his brow before realization spread over his face and he practically squealed like a teenage girl.

"Oh. My. God! How exciting! When did you find out? What was Ramsay like? Tell me everything!" He said, smiling broadly.

Olyvar was one of your oldest friends. He had started working at the bar when you did, both putting yourselves through school. But when the bar owner died he had split the place between you both. Olyvar did work from time to time for Ramsay, selling things on the side. He was like a brother to you, and it didn't hurt that he was into men. You assumed this to be the only reason Ramsay never said anything about you talking to him, or being friendly with him.

You took a seat and smiled, "well, I found out yesterday afternoon after Ramsay left. I've been feeling like shit for like two months now. Cramps. Headaches. Constant upset stomach. And then remembered I hadn't had my period in months. So on the way here I picked up a test and it said yes. I was actually kind if afraid of how Rams would react. We had never talked about it before. So, anyway, I told him last night and he demanded we go get some tests. You know him. Well, I took four. They all said yes. I guess he's excited. But, hard to tell. He doesn't really express excitement. Then he made me an appointment this morning and the doctor said I was about eight or nine weeks. Heard the heartbeat and I wanted to cry. It was so amazing. I have an appointment on the third to get an ultrasound done." You gushed, glad to have someone to tell.

"Little baby Bolton. This city is not ready for that." Olyvar said with a laugh.

You laughed. He was not wrong. There was a knock on the front door. You glanced at the clock. 4:45. You got up from your stool and walked to the front door, letting Damon and Ben in. You gave them both smiles, which they didn't really return.

Ramsay probably religiously threatened them to not look at you. He was a very scary person when angry, or bored. Whichever.

"We're streaming the fight tonight. Sure we'll be fine with only four of us and the two in the kitchen?" Olyvar asked turning on the various TV screens.

"Yeah. I think. Sorry, I forgot all about the fight. But we've had bigger events with fewer. Maybe could have done with a couple extra hands in the kitchen though. See if you can get anyone else to come in to kitchen duty?" You said, as two girls walked in.

Roslin was a quiet college student, who was looking to make a bit of extra money. She wasn't overly pretty with her dull eyes and mousy Brown hair, but she wasn't ugly either. But you weren't sure bartending would be something she was cut out for. She was timid and you were afraid of men taking advantage of her innocence as far as the bar scene went. But you had hired her anyways. Remembering how you were when you had first come here. And now look at you. Wife to the heir of a multi million dollar organized crime family.

You had no worries with the other girl, Tyene. She was loud, wild, and more than capable of handling herself. She had been working here for a couple weeks now, and the men loved her. Her dark skin, hair, and eyes made her stand out. Made then men pay extra attention, and money. She was born to hustle and get what she wanted. If she proved her worth, loyalty, and cunning you may talk Ramsay into getting her in with the girls.

"Hey hey!" Tyene cried, putting her reindeer antler headband on.

"Glad to see we all dressed up." You said, grinning broadly, looking the two girls over as Tyene snapped on a big, red blinking nose.

Roslin flushed and gave a timid twirl in her Mrs. Claus dress.

"Alright, so it's us four tonight on the floor. Kitchen will be a bit understaffed, as it's only Mac and Dag, tonight unless we can get a couple more in. So only finger foods and appetizers tonight. Big party coming in, plus the fight. I'm assuming you advertised we were playing it?" You said, glancing at Olyvar, who gave a nod. You left him in charge of the Facebook page and other advertising outlets.

"Great. So, we will be crowded and busy. Anything you make you keep, other than prices of the drinks and food. Remember ladies, they can look, but they cannot touch you. We may not be a strip club, but we follow those same rules. Anyone gives you any problems just raise your fist in the air and Ben or Damon here will come to your aid." You motioned to the two burly men. "Don't let no man give you any shit. Feel free to drink, just remember to pay for it, and stay with it enough to do your jobs. By the time the night is over, you ladies will be very happy." You continued, clapping your hands and glancing at the clock. The two cooks walked into the bar and giving you thumbs up before disappearing into the kitchen to let you know they were there.

As assumed, the bar filled quickly and the volume steadily increased with the flow of liquor, smoke, and smells of greasy buffalo wings, fries, and mountains of nachos.

When the Lion Gate group arrived you didn't recognize anyone that could possibly cause trouble. They seemed to just be regular employees, not gang members. But, you could be wrong. You weren't as good as Ramsay when it came to picking rival gang members out of a crowd. They were a very loud and rowdy group. Both your girls were pocketing bills like crazy, and Olyvar spent his time behind the counter mixing drinks and flirting with a couple guys.

The smoke, smells, and sounds were starting to get to you. Your stomach turned over and you suddenly felt nauseous. A headache was starting to form. You caught Olyvar's attention and mimed taking a 'time out'. He gave you a thumbs up as you disappeared to the safety of the back room.

You sighed, taking a deep breath. You pulled your phone from your apron pocket. It was almost ten. Only another hour.

You sat at a small table, resting your head on it for awhile, trying to compose yourself and fighting the urge to throw up when the police scanner in the corner sounded.

"All available units to seventy fifth and Trident. Multiple gunshot wounds. Back up requested immediately."

'No mans land.' you thought to yourself with a frown. What was Ramsay up to? Nobody every held that stretch very long.

After awhile you got a hold of yourself, stood up, and pulled a water bottle from the employee fridge, and chugged half of it before getting back to work.

"(Y/n)!" Olyvar called. You glanced over at him, who nodded to the corner to Roslin.

She was being harassed by a couple of men. Tyene was across the room cutting up with a group, and Damon and Ben were busy keeping a fight from breaking out. You frowned, clenching your jaw and stomping over to the corner.

Roslin's eyes were wide in pleading when you appeared at her side. One of the men grabbed her ass.

"Excuse me, sir. But you are not allowed to touch my girls. Release her and keep your hands to yourself or you will be asked to leave." You said, pulling Roslin away, and shielding her.

The man laughed, grabbing your hip. "Oh come on baby, it's just a bit of fun. Get into the holiday spirit. I could make it worth your while." He slammed a stack of bills on the table with a drunken laugh.

You stepped back, but his grip tightened. You narrowed your eyes at the man, "get out of my bar."

He laughed, releasing his grip and slapping your ass. You brought your hand up to slap him, but he caught your wrist.

"Or what, doll? You'll call the police?"

A hand landed on the man's shoulder and you looked to see Ramsay flanked by five men. He gripped the man's shoulder until the man squirmed in pain, fury painted all over his face.

"Unfortunately for you, we don't call the police around here." Ramsay growled as two of the men pulled the man from his seat and drug him towards the back exit.

Ramsay looked you up and down, "how many times did he touch you, baby girl?"

"Three." You said, watching the fire burn in his eyes. He gave a nod, gave you a fleeting kiss, and stalked towards the exit.

"(Y/n), I'm so sorry." Roslin squeaked.

You gave a glance at the other man. He was oddly calm, for his buddy being dragged away as he simply sat there, scrolling through his phone, pocketing the stack of cash. This made your pulse quicken. You hurried to the bar counter and then ran towards the exit.

You stepped into the alley to find Ramsay bouncing the man's head off the brick wall next door.

You averted your eyes and pursed your lips, trying to ignore the sick, crunching sound. "Rams, we have a problem. He's a Rampant. As was his buddy."

Ramsay stopped in his action, dropping the man, who fell in a heap. Ramsay grabbed the man's arm and ripped his sleeve back. On the man's forearm was a tattoo of a rampant lion in red.

Ramsay pulled a knife from his pocket. One of Ramsay's men stuffed a rag into the Lion man's mouth as Ramsay hacked at the tattoo until the skin came away. You watched in horror as Ramsay clutched the piece of skin.

"Make it clean, boys." Ramsay said, looking at the group of men. They all left quickly, pulling guns.

"Don't you make a mess in my bar!" You hissed at your husband. "The cops are already being nosy!"

Ramsay gave you a long look. "Not a drop." He said, walking past you and holding the door open.

You glanced at the severely injured man laying on the pavement. "What about him? You can't just leave him."

"Baby girl, don't worry yourself about anything. It will all be taken care of. They started it, coming to my kingdom. Now, get back in there and get back to work. The lions won't be back." Your husband said, rather impatiently.

You just gave a nod and went back inside. You hurried back to the counter, pulling Olyvar to you so you could whisper in his ear. "Volume up, lights down. Now." You hissed.

Olyvar did as you instructed. Nobody seemed to notice. They were all too absorbed in the fight and drowning in beer. You glanced around and gasped as a hand grabbed you. Instinct brought your hand up, but Ramsay's chuckle stopped you. You relaxed.

"Come on." He said, pulling you along.

You furrowed your brows, but followed him to the table the other man still sat at. Ramsay took the empty seat across from him, pulling you into his lap, as his group of men formed a tight circle around the table. He leaned forward, his wicked smirk in place.

"I believe you owe my wife an apology." He said casually to the man.

The man scoffed, "I didn't touch her, speak to her, or even look at her."

Ramsay tutted and rolled his eyes, "I said that you owe my wife an apology. I will not tell you again."

"Listen punk, I don't know who you think..." the man started, puffing up, but his words were lost as Ramsay slammed the crudely flayed tattooed skin on the table.

"Our blades are sharp." Ramsay breathed with so much malice the temperature seemed to drop.

Your stomach churned at the piece of flesh on the table. You frowned, closing your eyes, and saying a small prayer.

What happened next was a blur. You saw Ramsay pull his knife, but everything that followed wouldn't come into focus as you were on your knees, vomiting in the toilet of the bar bathroom.

"(Y/n)? Are you okay?" Came Tyene's voice.

You leaned back, heaving a shaky sigh. "Yeah, dear. I'm just... I'm pregnant. Apparently the little one didn't like what I ate last."

Which was true. Nachos had been a very bad idea. However, you weren't sure if seeing a man murdered in front of you or the morning sickness had made you wretch.

"Okay, well, your husband, I think, is waiting on you. Says you should go home and rest. I was confused at first. But now it all makes sense. Congratulations! You know, even if it's not the ideal position to be told." She said with a small laugh at the end.

Well, now you were confused. Didn't complete chaos just unleash in the bar?

You pushed yourself up, sighed, flushed the toilet, and stepped out of the stall. Tyene peered at you curiously as you washed your hands, vigorously.

"What's it like out there?" You asked, drying your hands.

"Normal? A few men were escorted out, but other than that, everyone seems to be having a hell of a time."

You sighed again. This time relieved.

Tyene held the door open for you and you stepped back on to the floor. Sure enough, it was like nothing had ever happened. Ramsay pushed his empty shot glass back to Olyvar and rose from his stool when he saw you.

He looked you over, and held out his hand.

"You sure you'll be alright without me?" You asked Olyvar.

He nodded and gave you a smile, "of course. You just worry about you. We've got this."

You nodded and let Ramsay lead you to the back room. He said nothing as he untied your apron, grabbed your purse, and the keys hanging up.

"Come on baby girl. Let's get home."

You turned to Ramsay, who was as calm as could be, lighting a cigarette.

"What the fuck just happened?" You cried, throwing your hands up.

"Business. Seat belt, baby doll." He replied simply, exhaling smoke.

"Business? I just watched you kill a man in the middle of a crowded bar and no one freaked the fuck out. Explain." You said, demanding the last part.

Ramsay gave a harsh laugh, "If no one hears, no one sees."

"What the fuck were you thinking? The cops..."

"Will know nothing." He cut across you.

"How many men did you kill?"

"Just the cunt in the alley and at the table."

"What about the others?"

"We saw them out and sent them running along with messages to deliver."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't worry, baby girl. Everything will be okay. You just worry about my child inside you."

You frowned. This city was about to become very unsafe. For everyone. Including the unborn child inside of you.

Fear and dread welled inside you as you burst into tears.

Ramsay raised his brows in surprise and gave you a quick look.

"This is not right! Everything is such a mess!" You sobbed, snatching your hat off and clutching it in your hand to cry into.

"Whoa there, little momma. Calm down. Everything is fine. It will be fine. I have eyes everywhere." Ramsay said, softly.

It wasn't a very reassuring voice. That wasn't him. He wasn't one to comfort.

You simply gave a sniff and nodded.

Neither of you said anything for the remainder of the trip home.

Ramsay opened your door and helped you out. He placed a kiss to your temple as he led you inside and straight to the bedroom.

You simply stood there as he undressed you, kissing each bit of skin he exposed.

"What do you want?" He asked, kissing along your collar bone.

"Something to make me forget the things I saw tonight."

"Oh come on now baby girl. It wasn't that bad." Ramsay chortled, grabbing your hips.

You rested your cheek on his chest and sighed, "Rams, I watched you smash a man's head into a brick wall and then cut his skin off. I watched you stab a man point blank across a table while I sat in your lap. You could have hurt somebody innocent. What part of that wasn't so bad?"

Ramsay placed his finger under your chin and brought your face up to look at him.

"First things first, baby girl. Nobody at a bar is innocent. Second, both of those men disrespected you. Therefore disrespecting me. I will not have that. At all."

You looked away from him. Maybe he was right. Or at least had a point. You looked back up at him and opened your mouth to say something when your breath caught. The cramps were bad enough. But the increasing nausea was getting really fucking annoying.

Ramsay raked his eyes over your face and frowned, pulling you to the bed. He undressed and slid into the bed next to you, pulling you close and running his hand through your hair until you finally fell into a deep sleep.

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The ThanksgivingWarrior 11/25/20 – THE CROODS: A NEW AGE, MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, ZAPPA, HAPPIEST SEASON, STARDUST and More!

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and usually I’d be struggling to figure out how much the new movies might make in what is normally one of the most unpredictable weekends at the year. Wait a second. I’m getting déjà vu here. Didn’t I say this exact same thing in the intro for last week’s column? Probably. Let’s face it, kids. I am absolutely losing my mind with how bored I am getting looking at my laptop screen all day long, even though I’ve now set up a pretty sweet new TV system to watch stuff on!

Anyway, there is one family movie coming to theatres this weekend, and in any other Thanksgiving weekend, I’d suggesting getting out and going to theaters, but at this point in the pandemic, with COVID numbers so bad that even I, “Mr. Reopen the Movie Theaters!” can’t recommend going to see a movie in theaters… well, except maybe in New York City, where they’re still closed. Sigh.

We’re going to do things a little different this week, because I wasn’t able to get to as many movies as I wanted but didn’t want to delay the column to Thanksgiving Day. Instead, I’ll post what I have done on Wednesday, then check back here on Friday when hopefully I’ve added a few more reviews. Cool?

Fortunately, the new animated sequel from DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures, THE CROODS: A NEW AGE, is a lot of fun, and this is from someone who really enjoyed the first movie quite a bit. The sequel’s premise is as simple as you can get: caveman family The Croods (voiced by Nick Cage, Catherine Keener, Emma Stone, Clarke Duke and Cloris Leachman), along with Ryan Reynold’s Guy, are still trying to survive in the wilds until they encounter a beautiful oasis that turns out to be the home of the more-evolved Bettermans, Phil (Peter Dinklage), Hope (Leslie Mann) and Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran).

I really liked the original The Croods quite a bit, so I’ve been waiting patiently for DreamWorks to figure things out for a sequel. My instincts were definitely spot-on, because even if the original premise sounded a lot like The Flintstones, putting those voice actors together, even if it’s just Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone proved to be quite prescient. A big part of the sequel is the burgeoning romance between their characters, Guy and Eep, much to the brutish chagrin of Eep’s father Grug (really Cage at his finest). Then along comes the Bettermans, and then it changes into a movie that is constantly showing the differences between the two families in many funny ways.

I’ve long admired Emma Stone as an actress, since she’s no naturally funny, and that’s even more apparent by how much she brings to Eep with merely her voice. Some of the scenes between her and Tran’s Dawn are absolutely hilarious. Cloris Leachman’s Gran also has some absolutely LOL moments later in the film. In some ways, Reynolds while funny, especially when pit against Cage and Dinklage’s characters, takes a back seat to the ladies.

I was equally impressed with the film in terms of its animation and how gorgeous and colorful the whole thing is, but more than that, it thrusts in a zaniness that I’d usually expect from something like Ren and Stimpy or SpongeBob SquarePants. So as much as it’s a kid movie, there’s enough to entertain older kids and even old men like me.

Without having seen Pixar’s Soul yet (this weekend!), Croods: A New Age may be one of the most entertaining animated movies I’ve seen this year, and that’s because it leans so heavily on being so absolutely crazy and zany that you can’t help but have fun.

You can read more about the movie and how it was made in a feature I wrote for Below the Line.

Next up is MA RAINEY’s BLACK BOTTOM, George C. Wilson’s adaptation of the 1982 August Wilson play that preceded Fences, which Netflix will give a theatrical release this week before it goes to streaming in December. Like Fences, this once again stars that film’s Oscar winner, Viola Davis, in the title role of Ma Rainey, a legendary blues and jazz singer in the late ‘20s who has come to a recording studio in Chicago to make a record with her band. The band’s hotshot trumpet player Levee (the late Chadwick Boseman) is more interested in breaking out on his own, and he does everything to grandstand and try to impress the label guy (Jonny Coyne) even if it means throwing the rest of the band under the bus.

Since I never saw Wilson’s play, I really didn’t know what to expect from this movie, although the fact that most of it takes place in a recording studio definitely had my interest piqued. In case, you’re wondering about that odd title, it’s actually a song in Ma Rainey’s repertoire that she wants to do one way, but her manager Irvin (Jeremy Shamos) wants to try Levee’s version of the song. Ma’s not having any of it, and a lot of the film involves her

There’s been quite a lot of chatter about Chadwick Boseman getting a posthumous Oscar nomination for his performance in this, and it’s probably well-deserved since he gives quite a showy performance as Levee, giving a couple moving monologues including one about his mother being sexually assaulted by white men. It’s a very powerful performance indeed.

Rainey is certainly an interesting character for Viola Davis to play, even if she’s not necessarily likable with her obstinate demeanor and the way she gloms over her eye candy Dussie Mae, played by Taylour Paige, and dotes over her nephew Sylvester (Dusan Brown). As interesting as those relationships are, I probably enjoyed the interaction between the musicians more, because Boseman is working with some greats like Colman Domingo, Michael Potts and Glynn Turman. It’s actually kind of interesting how it switches between Levee and the musicians and Ma dealing with Irving upstairs.

As much as the Wilsons are exploring some interesting topics about race and the treatment of black people in the times, the movie frequently feels dated and it feels like some of the ideas are never fully revolved, even as it builds up to a fairly shocking climax.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but it’s a perfectly fine dramatic piece, but I didn’t feel that it had the weight of other movies about race I’ve seen, including yes, Green Book (sorry, haters), and a lot of that probably has more to do with George Wilson’s direction than August Wilson’s writing.

Just want to quickly mention a couple movies I’ve already reviewed, which will hit the streamers this week, including Steve McQueen’s LOVERS ROCK on Amazon Prime Video, which I wrote about here, and Ron Howard’s HILLBILLY ELEGY, now on Netflix after a short theatrical release. I reviewed the latter here.

I’ve actually seen Lovers Rock a second time since the New York Film Festival, and I enjoyed it even more, as it’s really a well-crafted film even if it’s not as immediate maybe as Mangrove (now on Amazon Prime) and Red, White and Blue, which will be on Prime Video on December 4. I just love how Steve McQueen created a shorter piece that isn’t quite as deep as some of the others since Lovers Rock isn’t based on history but is just a nice young romance about two young people who meet and fall in love at a “Blues Night” party. It’s not as deep as the other movies I’ve seen, but is still good. Oh, and my interview with Steve McQueen is up at Below the Line finally, and I’m pretty proud of it, so check it out!

I don’t know if I have too much more to say about Hillbilly Elegy, but I hope people will give it a chance because even if it does have problems and isn’t perfect, it’s an interesting story, particularly for Glenn Close’s performance.

This week’s “Featured Flick” is Alex Winter’s doc, ZAPPA (Magnolia Pictures), an amazing film that takes a look at the life and career of the late Frank Zappa, best known for his quirky rock tunes but just at proficient at writing jazz and classical musical. I definitely went through a bit of a Zappa phase in my teens, and every once in a while, I would go back and see what had been released since his death in 1993, because his wife and widow Gail did a great job getting a lot of his unreleased music and live shows out there.

What shocked me when I saw Zappa was how little I really knew about the musician, because maybe he was a little bit of an enigma while he was still alive. I enjoyed the other doc, Eat That Question: Zappa In His Own Words, that came out a few years back, which was made up of public interviews Zappa gave, but it doesn’t really give as clear a picture of the man as Winter’s doc does.

For instance, Winter gets a lot of the musicians, including the amazing Ruth Underwood, who played with Zappa in the Mothers. You’d assume those musicians would presumably know the man best having toured with him for years, and yet, even they say that other than when they were rehearsing diligently or playing gigs, Zappa kept to himself. We also get a good sense of what a family man he was, since Winter was able to get Gail to talk to him before she herself passed way in 2015.

Zappa is an absolutely terrific doc that I hope music enthusiasts give a look even if they think they know what Zappa was about or maybe even those who didn’t care for his music. You might be pleasantly surprised by the tremendous amount of depth Winter brings to this talented musician and composer who still had a lot more to say. (And that’s an understatement!)

Incidentally, I’ll have an interview with Winter over at Below the Line very soon.

On the other end of the musical spectrum (more or less) is Gabriel Range’s STARDUST (IFC Films) -- not to be confused with Matthew Vaughn’s far better Stardust – this one starring Johnny Flynn, who played a young Albert Einstein in Genius: Einstein, this time playing a young David Bowie. Years before breaking it big with his album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, young David just can’t catch a break in the U.S., so he goes on a road trip in 1971 with his Ron Oberman (Marc Maron), the A&R guy from his U.S. label who hopes to get Bowie across to young American audiences.

I’m not quite sure how someone can screw up a movie about Bowie, one of my all-time favorite artists, but making a movie that a.) takes place in the most boring era of Bowie’s career and b.) Not actually being able to use any of Bowie’s beloved tracks, certainly doesn’t help matters. It also doesn’t help that the script just isn’t great, creating a fairly dull biopic that relies more on Maron’s personality basically playing the same character we’ve seen him play so many times before to stay even halfway entertaining. I couldn’t even get excited by Jena Malone, an actress I generally appreciate, as David’s wife Angie, because she plays her to be such a despicable and unsympathetic character.

If Maron is decent than Johnny Flynn is just plain flaccid as Bowie, playing him so mopey and aloof that when he finally emerges from his chrysalis as Ziggy Stardust – also with little of the flamboyance in his stage shows -- you just don’t give a rat’s ass anymore. Oh, and a lot of the movie is based on the theory that the history of mental issues in his family is what haunts the singer. Drab and dull, Stardust manages to make the most exciting rock star of the last half century seem like the most boring person on earth. It’s a flat-out failure as a biopic.

Joan Carr-Wiggins’ GETTING TO KNOW YOU (Gravitas Ventures) is a witty Canadian high-concept rom-com, starring Natasha Little and Rupert Penry-Jones as two strangers who have a chance encounter at a hotel in Northern Ontario. The latter plays New Yorker Luke Manning, who is back home for his high school reunion, but when his positively smashed high school girlfriend Kaila (Rachel Blanchard from Peepshow) shows up at the hotel hoping to rekindle their spark, he asks Little’s character Abby to pretend to be his wife.

I don’t have a lot to say about this movie which was a nice surprise and clearly a labor of love for the filmmaker. Honestly, my favorite part of the movie is how hilarious Rachel Blanchard is in it. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me that found her deliriously drunk nightmare of an ex to be kind of sexy, but maybe that’s just me. In fact, the movie might have been even funnier if the rest of the cast were able to keep up with Blanchard, but the connection between the two leads did grow on me as it went along. It definitely has some funnier moments like when Kaila’s bowling husband Kenny shows up, and then some of Luke’s other classmates pop in as well, but it does have to work very hard whenever Blanchard isn’t on screen. (I also enjoyed watching the soap opera that seemed to be going on between the employees of the hotel, which was perpetually funny.) Otherwise, it does feel a little flat whenever Blanchard is on screen.

The filmmaker’s lack of experience is sometimes obvious, because there are things like the repetitive music that I wasn’t so crazy about. Otherwise, this is a light and quaint indie that’s a little off the beaten track, but you won’t have any regrets if you make the effort to go looking for it.

I’m thrilled to see actor Clea Duvall back behind the camera for her second film as a director, HAPPIEST SEASON, which was going to get a theatrical release through Sony’s TriStar Pictures at one point. Instead, it’s now going to be on Hulu starting Wednesday. (Today!) It’s a high-concept rom-com starring Mackenzie Davis and Kristen Stewart with Davis playing Harper, a woman who has not come out of her closet to her family, which makes it that much more awkward when she brings her girlfriend Abby (Stewart) home for the holidays.

As mentioned, this is a fairly high-concept comedy that uses the idea of someone coming out to their disapproving family we’ve seen in many movies, but does it in a way that can take it seriously but still allow for some funny moments. In fact, there are times when the comedy even goes into Meet the Parents territory in terms of the character humor.

I really enjoyed Duvall’s previous film, The Intervention, and once again, she has put together such as great cast to realize the script that she wrote with Mary Holland. In fact, Holland has a great role, playing Harper’s bubbly sister Jane, who steals so many scenes in terms of the humor that I was shocked that I only realized later she co-wrote the script with Duvall.

Mackenzie Davis continues to be every director’s secret weapon, because like in Jason Reitman’s Tully, she can literally deliver on every aspect of the movie, keeping the comedy aspects grounded but also deliver a really poignant performance. She also works really well with Kristen Stewart, maybe bringing out things in Stewart we just haven’t been able to see before.

Besides having Alison Brie play Harper’s older sister and Aubrey Plaza as an old flame, Duvall also had the foresight to get the amazing Dan Levy, recent multi-Emmy winner for Schitt’s Creek, to play Abby’s best friend, who is constantly there for her to kvetch and who shows up to pretend to be her boyfriend. (Oddly, there’s a lot of that sort of thing going on in movies this week.)

Happiest Season works as a perfectly fine albeit fairly traditional holiday rom-com in a similar way as The Family Stone. More than anything, Duvall continually proves her abilities as a filmmaker that can handle comedy and drama equally well.

Next up, is Alan Ball’s UNCLE FRANK (Amazon), the Oscar-winning writer of American Beauty, directing only his second movie after 2007’s Towelhead – you might remember his HBO shows Six Feet Under and True Blood. This one, set in the ‘70s, stars Paul Bettany as the title character with Sophia Lillis from It Chapter One and Two playing his niece Beth, a teen from Creekville, South Carolina who worships her New York-based professor uncle. When she goes to college in New York, she attends one of Frank’s parties with her pseudo-boyfriend and ends up learning that Frank’s “roommate” Wally (Peter Macdissi) is actually his boyfriend. When Frank and Beth return to South Carolina for his father’s funeral, he has to try to keep his sexuality and relationship with Wally a secret from his family. Yeah, this does sound a little like Happiest Season, doesn’t it? It is, but only to a point.

At first, Uncle Frank is a cute but not-particularly-deep coming-of-age story about Lillis’ character as a fish out of water in New York City. Once Wally is introduced, he seems to be there just to make jokes and lighten the mood as it turns into a road trip. From his previous work, I’ve grown to enjoy Ball’s unconventional storytelling, but by comparison, this movie is very by-the-books, so it never really grabs the viewer.

The biggest problem with Ball’s latest--and it’s one that I see in a lot of movies these days--is that it doesn’t know whether it should be a comedy or a drama, and because it isn’t particularly funny, you expect it to fare better as a drama and yet, it doesn’t.

Ball has such a great cast including Judy Greer, Margo Martindale, Stevens Root and Zahn, all playing the duo’s racist Southern family, but they disappear for long sections of the movie, and then don’t do much when they return for the more dramatic last act where it turns into such a maudlin melodrama once Frank and Beth get back to South Carolina. As they mourn the dead patriarch, Frank keeps reflecting back on what drove him to New York in the first place, and we’re pummelled with so many flashbacks. Lillis’ character almost gets lost at this point, even this story is supposed to be told from her point of view.

Essentially, Uncle Frank falls somewhere quite literally between Hillbilly Elegy and Happiest Season but not being as good as either. It’s just disappointing that Ball didn’t have someone offering good advice on handling material that will constantly have you groaning, “What was the point?”

Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom, State of Play, 21 Bridges makes his directorial debut with MOSUL, which will debut on Netflix this Thursday. As you can figure out from the title, this takes place in Iraq in the fall of 2016 where an army of 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and militia men mobilize to liberate Iraq’s second largest city from ISIS along with the embedded journalist Ali Maula. Surprise, surprise, this is another movie from last year’s September festival season, too, and there also was a documentary from last year with the same name about the same story, too.

I’ve been a fan of some of the films Carnahan has written over the years, some mentioned above, but his directorial debut certainly sounds ambitious, since he’s working with an all-Arab cast. I look forward to watching and reviewing this one, hopefully before Friday.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday after losing its theatrical release – this is becoming the norm for Disney, huh? – is Ashley Avis’ adaptation of Anna Sewell’s classic piece of literature, BLACK BEAUTY about a girl and her horse. The girl is played by Mackenzie Foy from Interstellar and The Conjuring, and Black Beauty the horse is voiced by Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet. No, I did not make that up, and I can’t wait to watch this, to see how that works exactly. Look for my review later this week… hopefully.

On top of that, those Trixie Pixies at Disney+ have somehow managed to secretly pull together a Taylor Swift concert called folkore: the long pond studio sessions, which will premiere exclusively on Disney+ November 25. Oh, that’s today!

Debuting on Showtime this Sunday is Errol Morris’ new doc MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY, which takes a look at the Acid King Timothy Leary through the eyes of his lover, Joanna Harcourt-Smith, trying to figure out her part in his turn into a narc for the CIA. Another one I hope to get to soon because while I like Morris’ political films like The Fog of War and even the Steve Bannon doc American Dharma, this seems more in the vein of Tabloid, which I also enjoyed. Will try to watch this over the weekend and report back.

Also of note is that the doc She is the Ocean (Blue Fox Entertainment) will be hitting On Demand this week. I guess I never got around to reviewing it.

So, let’s see. We’ve had some good movies, we’ve had some not great movies, and we’ve had a few movies that I just didn’t get around to watching yet. What does that leave? How about two of the worst movies I’ve seen this year? Are you ready?

SUPERINTELLIGENCE (HBO Max) is the latest comedy from Melissa McCarthy and hubby director Ben Falcone, and boy, it won’t take you long to realize why New Line decided LONG before COVID not to give it a theatrical release, instead handing it over to its new streamer HBO Max.

In this, McCarthy plays Carol Peters, an average Seattle woman, who – I mean, honestly, does it even matter what she does? It’s irrelevant. Carol encounters an artificial intelligence being with the voice of James Corden that has just achieved self-awareness and wants to study Carol in order to understand humanity. But what are its plans… to save humanity or destroy it? Only Carol has the power to keep the world from finding out.

I honestly don’t even know where to begin except that I was a Melissa McCarthy stan for a long time before Bridesmaids; Superintelligence makes it all-too-obvious that she needs to stop making movies with Falcone. It’s not that he’s an incapable director, but he just doesn’t give her the actual direction she needs. The movie is just all over the place, starting with the physical comedy McCarthy has done so much in her movies, but then turning into a romantic comedy as the AI tries to reunite Carol with her college boyfriend George, played by Bobby Cannavale. Apparently, making The Heat with Sandra Bullock has made Falcone think his wife could or should be Sandra Bullock. No, she can’t. Throwing her into a ridiculous concept like this one that isn’t very solid does little to endear McCarthy to the fans she keeps driving away with bad movies like this.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I really hate James Corden and hearing his voice over the course of the movie while also acting very META by referencing the ACTUAL James Corden, Carpool Karaoke, etc. Just none of it is very funny. Oddly, this is written by the same guy who wrote the duo’s earlier movie, The Boss, which I didn’t think was that bad, but mainly because McCarthy was paired with Kristen Bell for a lot of the movie.

On top of that, Superintelligence wastes its entire supporting cast from Brian Tyree Henry to Sam Richardson (from Veep) but also has Karan Son from Deadpool playing the EXACT SAME CHARACTER he played in Like A Boss, but only for a few minutes then he’s gone. At least it had the forethought to cast Jean Smart as the President, but the fact that I didn’t even like Bobby Cannavale in this might be the biggest sign of how much I absolutely detested Superintelligence.

There are movies you might hate when you see them in theaters but later realize that they’re probably funny enough cable. That is Superintelligence, except for the funny part. What else can I say except that “Superintelligence” is not a term I'd use for whoever greenlit this piece of crap.

Also debuting on HBO Max this week is the new thriller series The Flight Attendant (HBO MAX), starring Kaley Cuoco, who really hasn’t been doing much outside The Big Bang Theory, so this should give her a chance to show how funny she is. She plays a woman who wakes up in the wrong hotel and wrong bed with a dead man, so it already sounds like a great premise right there. I guess the entire first season will debut on Thanksgiving.

And yet, believe it or not, Superintelligence isn’t even the worst movie of the week! Nope.

Apparently, Josh Duhamel’s new comedy, BUDDY GAMES (Saban Films/Paramount), played in some theaters over the weekend, but it’s now available on digital and On Demand. It’s Duhamel’s directorial debut, and it’s about as dude-bro as you can possibly get, as it has Duhamel, Dax Sheppard, Kevin Dillon, Nick Swardson, Jensen Ackles and Dan Bakkedahl as a group man-children friends who regroup five years after going their separate ways to bring back their “Buddy Games,” a series of obstacle and endurance tests that end up reviving ill feelings between a few of them.

I’m not sure how quickly I knew I was in trouble with this one, because at first, I thought that maybe Duhamel made a fun indie comedy about friendship ala the underrated A Good Old Fashioned Orgy. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was wrong as wrong could be, since by the halfway point it turned into something as innately immature as Jackass.

The general idea is that Duhamel plays Bob, the guy who found enormous success after splitting from his friends, marrying Olivia Munn’s Tiffany, but then he finds out that his old friend Shelly (Bakkedahl) has been put in rehab for a drug overdose. Turns out that at the last Buddy Game, Swardson’s character shot Shelly in the nuts with a BB gun, and he eventually lost his other testicle as well. That’s about the level of this low-brow comedy that rarely fails to grab the lowest hanging…um… fruit.

As it goes along, it just gets worse and worse to the point where there was one scene where the guys are at a bar while trying to get girls to buy them drinks that just got so disgusting, I almost turned it off. If I did, I would have missed the scene with a gila monster going after steaks strapped to the heads in another lame competition.

I can go on and on about how Buddy Games is but probably the worst infraction is that it does the most sexist thing possible by basically putting having women for a few moments and none that particularly advance anything.

Duhamel isn’t a bad director, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got hired to direct another comedy someday soon, but this movie just very bad, very gross and almost excruciating to sit through at times. To call Buddy Games moronic, idiotic or even asinine, would be an insult to the morons, idiots or asses, who are likely to be the movie’s target audience.

On Friday, New York’s Metrograph is bringing back the 2017 4k restoration of Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong as a ticketed screening running from Friday through December 3. You can also still catch Shalini Kantaya’s Coded Bias and the French New Wave anthology Six In Paris as ticketed screenings through December 3.

Up at New York’s Lincoln Center, you can catch its World of Wong Kar Wai with a couple films available this Wednesday, including his fantastic drama In the Mood for Love, but you can also get the 7-film Janus Bundle for $70 which is a saving over the individual movie cost of $12 apiece. Those seven films and five more will be shown over the course of December.

Other stuff out this week that I wasn’t able to get to include:

The Christmas Chronicles 2 (Netflix) Last Call (K Street Pictures) Faith (Vertical) Saul and Ruby’s Holocaust Survivor Band (Samuel Goldwyn) The Walrus and the Whistle Blower (Gravitas Ventures) Life in a Year (Amazon Prime) 32 Weeks

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #Zappa #MaRaineysBlackBottom #HappiestSeason #GettingToKnowYou #VOD #Streaming #Superintelligence #BuddyGames

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samdukewieland · 4 years

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Stuck Inside Media Diary Week 2

New week. New movies I had never seen before. Only one was on the DVR so now it’s just like a glorified streaming guide and for that I apologize. There were three movies this week that I had seen before, but I’ve decided, because rules are important, that I won’t re-watch a movie until I watch a new one. Does this matter? No. But it has made me realize that I might be exposing my ass in the upcoming weeks, because we all lie about saying we’ve seen some movies when we actually haven’t. Not the case for this week, but it’s impending.

Sunday, March 29

Warrior, O’Conner 2011 [as of now this is available on Amazon Prime]

As a person who doesn’t really care about MMA or UFC or boxing or bum fights or bare knuckle brawls I went in under the impression that there’d probably be some kind of barrier in my way of enjoying it, despite knowing its esteemed reputation for being man-weep canon. Any movie that opens and closes with a song by The National is fairly transparent about the type of movie its going to be, despite having an extremely yolked Tom Hardy as one of the main characters. My first cry came at a very unexpected moment, especially because Frank Grillo had a significant role in making that happen (though I will say, I had no idea Frank Grillo was in this movie and about midway through I thought “man, that guy kinda looks like Grillo, but he’s kinda small and has a fashion mullet”). However, I’m a cryer, so I don’t want to set the expectation of you will cry at this you piece of shit! but you might and it’ll come out of a good place, because this movie doesn’t trick you into crying by manipulating you into it (okay, it does at one point, but it involves Moby Dick, so again, it’s kinda unexpected). It opens with “Start A War” and ends with “About Today,” a top 5 sad boy song by The National and I’ll be damned if I didn’t listen to it once a day all last week.

Better Call Saul

“Sunk Costs”, “Sabrosito”, “Chicanery”, “Off Brand”, “Expanses”

John Getz hive, assemble.

Monday, March 30

Working Girl, Nichols 1988 [as of now this is available on HBO]

Sometime in college, I think in a detective fiction class I took, we talked about knowing a reference to something before knowing what it’s either paying homage to or directly referencing. For example: the first time I read The Long Halloween (which is a Batman comic by Jeph Loeb) I had no idea that basically everything involving Falcone is just ripped from The Godfather, because I had never seen The Godfather at that time in my life; literally the first page of the book is “I believe in Gotham City.” Or in Django Unchained when they go to Mississippi and the title card moves across the screen just like it does in Gone With The Wind (Tarantino movies are generally just long homages and references to other things, so if you need another example, just look to really anything he’s ever worked on). There’s probably a German word for this feeling of recognition and I just don’t have the energy to look to see what it would be, but I felt it while watching Working Girl in two regards.

The first was that I didn’t realize that School Of Rock is essentially just Working Girl and when you have a realization like this, you feel kinda dumb, because you just assume everyone figured this out before you did. The second was that Joe Swanberg has tried to model his movies after Mike Nichols ones like his life depended on it and he just can’t or rather hasn’t. Also I’m not a person who was alive in the 80s and I’m sure there’s some modern day equivalent (potentially her daughter) who I defend out of some weird sense of contrarian obligation, but what’s uh, what’s going on with Melanie Griffith and her as actor?

Better Call Saul

“Slip”, “Fall”, “Lantern” [Season 3 finale]

BCS season 3 really stepped up to the heights of Breaking Bad and I think I might like it just a little bit better than it? I haven’t watched Breaking Bad in long time, I find it pretty difficult to re-watch (it’s very fire works factory for me) so I’m sure there are some BB highs that I just don’t remember fully, but that BCS can juggle being three different shows all at the same time and do it excellently really has me taken aback. It’s like watching the Coen Brothers jump from genre to genre and not be worried about the end result.

Tuesday, March 31

Say Anything..., Crowe 1989 [as of now this is available on Hulu]

I’m unabashedly in the can for Cameron Crowe, which is a semi-embarrassing thing to admit, but whatever. I saw Aloha in theatres and watched We Bought A Zoo when it was on FX once (in real time too, so that means with commercials-this was also the only time I’ve seen We Bought A Zoo, but I think I’d do it again); you can’t hurt me. I think I kept my distance from Say Anything... for so long, because it was one of those things that I’d be annoyed at because it’d resonate with me too much, because feeling that is kinda hacky and embarrassing, but if there’s one thing that Cameron Crowe movies put an emphasis on of importance on, it’s being sincere. And I sincerely loved it (hot, HOT take). Thanks to Russillo for recommending it on Simmons’ podcast last week.

Better Call Saul

“Smoke” [Season 4 premiere]

Wednesday, April 1

The Graduate, Nichols 1967 [as of now this is available on Amazon Prime]

Sucks that this movie has been used by a certain type of dude who use it as a blueprint for their life and how they view relationships. Other than that, good job everyone. [I definitely thought it would be clever to watch this after watching Say Anything... because I just assumed Ben Braddock walked so Lloyd Dobbler could run-I was kinda right, whatever]

Hot Rod, Schaffer 2007

While April Fools Day means nothing to me I do try to watch a comedy on the day, because...eh, why not. Hot Rod is maybe a perfect comedy and I think I could spend hours talking about it. I don’t know how there hasn’t been some kind of programming that’s been done around The Lonely Island and their catalog, because it seems very obvious.

Hot Rod with Digital Shorts played before and after and then Wayne’s World

MacGruber and you play MacGruber shorts before and after and then whatever grotesque 80′s action movie you’d want, maybe Commando

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping with Lonely Island music videos before and after and then This Is Spinal Tap

The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience sing-a-long followed by The Lonely Island pilot and either a collection or the entirety of I Think You Should Leave

maybe this is all a lead-up to Palm Springs, a movie I have’t seen and know very little about other than they produced it and Samberg is in it

Thursday, April 2

The In-Laws, Hiller 1979

I wrote it as my letterboxd. “review” , but this thing’s 1979 funny until they go to South America and then it is actually funny. Falk is just gangbusters.

Better Call Saul

“Breathe”, “Something Beautiful”

Friday, April 3

You Can Count On Me, Lonergan 2000 [as of now this is available on Amazon Prime]

I say this as a very big fan of his, but! Timothée Chalamet, consider yerself on notice for borrowing heavily from the Mark Ruffalo school of acting. Also, I get it now with Laura Linney, who I’ve liked before, but thought she might kind of be overrated by some people. Also, Matthew Broderick made this after Election (and also Inspector Gadget), so quite the infidelity streak for Brody, probably not a double feature.

Better Call Saul

“Talk”, “Quite A Ride”, “Piñata”

Saturday, April 4

De Palma, Baumbach & Paltrow, 2015 [as of now this is available on Netflix]

The definitive documentaries for the directors of this friend group are basically perfect in their own ways. That this is just De Palma talking about himself and his career and movies, sometimes being incredibly critical of his own work and others. He seems pretty self-aware, probably the most of that group of directors, while still coming across as incredibly cocky. De Palma is perfect for Brian De Palma. However, if anyone wanted to make a 10 hour documentary on Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma and Lucas in this style or it’s just the 5 of them interviewing each other moderated by like Fincher or someone, man....I could really go for that. (I mean if Michael Jordan can get one, why not these guys?)

The Other Director Documentaries

Spielberg, 2017 (HBO) [Interviews and retrospectives about Spielberg’s career, with personal highlights. It’s essentially Spielberg in a nutshell: big, flashy with a lot of time on particular moments that are more important to him than they are to you]

Empire Of Dreams, 2004 (Disney+) [Ostensively this is about Star Wars, and it’s made by a company-man, it says so much about Lucas, a man who hated how institutions told him what he could do so he unintentionally created one that has copied what he hates]

Heart Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, 1991 [A truly wild ride, tells you everything you need to know about Coppola]

Italianamerican, 1974 [While a new documentary about Scorsese is probably what I covet most, he’s a pretty open book about his controversies and he’d probably enjoy talking about other people’s work more than his own-catholicism’s a helluva thing]

The Godfather Pt. I & The Godfather Pt. II, Coppola 1972 & 1974

I don’t know if I necessarily endorse watching both of these back-to-back; I guess I’m glad I did it, even if the motivation was mainly to just see if I could. Obviously these movies are important and good and are about so much more than just gangsters and thugs, but a lot of the time it just feels like eating vegetables for me. I did not grow up in a household that emphasized the importance of The Godfather so maybe that’s part of it, but I’m definitely not as dismissive of these as I used to be (though part of that could be the mental Stockholm Syndrome Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey have given me). Once I finished Pt. I, I felt like I could re-watch it; once I finished Pt. II I felt like my eyes were melting out of my head and onto my hands (this could be because I had just watched 377 minutes of a story). I will probably never do it again, unless it’s the weekend after Christmas and AMC is just going for it-at least then I’ll have intermissions every 20 or so minutes telling me to go shop at Target.

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